VÁSQUEZ Action is the dignity of greatness. GOYO Ah, the words of the great José Martí! Now he was a true Cuban hero. VÁSQUEZ You wish to be like him? GOYO I would give everything I have. VÁSQUEZ Like Martí, your moment will arrive. GOYO Riding high on a white horse, eh? VÁSQUEZ Each man must meet his destiny. (Percussion: VÁSQUEZ RIFF. Vásquez vanishes.) (LIGHTS UP on El Comandante’s bedroom.) EL COMANDANTE Carajo, look at those lovebirds on the malecón, verging on public fornication, giving our island a bad name. Brothel of the Caribbean, my ass. It’s the anniversary of the Revolution— and NADA! As if we didn’t exist. But I still exist, hijos de putas. That’s right, you fat, lily-livered exiles. My precious enemies. You keep me alive. Your hate—ha!—is oxygen to my blood. You tried every dirty trick in the book: exploding cigars, arsenic milkshakes, foot powder to make my beard fall out. And I’m still here. Why? Because nobody has bigger cojones than I do…Ach, dry toast and oatmeal again. What I wouldn’t give for a porterhouse steak and three fried eggs—y porqué no?—a double scotch. Fuck it if my insides turn to lead . . . EL COMANDANTE [Continued] I was four years old when I saw my father’s cojones for the first time. Steaming like a locomotive after his hot bath. I knew right then that they were my inheritance, my destiny. That night, I asked my mother, ‘Mami, will all of me grow?’ And you know what she said? MAMI’S VOICE Ay, mi cielo, your pinguita will be the greatest in all the land, in all the Americas, perhaps in all the world!
FALL 2017
WEBER
THE CONTEMPORARY WEST
27