Read Online Mona and Other Tales by Reinaldo Arenas - Free Book Online

Germans) gathered around a painting, while several guards, almost shouting, were trying to prevent the taking of photographs. Maybe I can find Elisa among them, I thought, and pushed my way into the crowd. And in fact, there she was. Not among those taking the photos, nor among the guards warning that this was not permitted, but inside the very painting everyone was looking at. I got as close as the red cord that served as barrier between painting and public would allow. That woman, with her straight, dark reddish hair and perfect features, with one hand placed delicately over the other wrist, was smiling almost impudently, against a background that seemed to be a road leading to a misty lake. The woman was, without any doubt, Elisa. I thought then that the mystery had been solved: Elisa was a famous, exclusive artists’ model. That was why it was so difficult to find her. At that moment she was probably posing for another painter, perhaps as good as the one who had made this perfect portrait of her.
    Before asking one of the guards where I could find the model for the painting that so many people wanted to photograph, I got closer in order to see it in greater detail. Next to the frame, a small placard stated that it was painted in 1505 by one Leonardo da Vinci. Stunned, I backed up to take a good look at the canvas. My eyes then met Elisa’s intense gaze in the painting. I held her gaze and discovered that Elisa’s eyes had no eyelashes; she had the eyes of a serpent.
    The prison bell is again announcing it is bedtime. I will have to continue this report tomorrow. I must rush, since I believe I have no more than two days left to live.
    Of course, no matter how much the woman in the painting resembled Elisa, it was impossible for her to have been the model. So I quickly tried to find a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon. According to the small catalog at the gallery’s entrance, the painting was valued at many millions of dollars (more than eighty million, the catalog read). 6 The woman in the picture (according to the same catalog) was European. And so was Elisa. The woman in the picture then could be one of Elisa’s remote ancestors. Therefore Elisa could be the owner of that painting. And since it was so valuable, Elisa could travel with it for security reasons and would come and inspect it every morning. Then, after checking that nothing had happened to it during the night, which is the time when most thieves choose to operate, she would withdraw to another area of the museum. Now her pains to hide her identity seemed clear to me. She was a nymphomaniac millionaire who, for obvious reasons, had to keep her sexual relationships anonymous.
    I have to admit I enjoyed the idea of being associated with a woman who had so many millions. Perhaps, if I played my cards right and pleased her in every way (and this was my heart’s desire), Elisa would help me out and I could someday open my own Wendy’s. In my enthusiasm I was forgetting the eccentricities and the imperfections, the defects, anomalies, or whatever you want to call them, that at certain moments I detected in her.
    Now the only thing I had to do was to be pleasant, to allow no interest in money, and not to bother her with indiscreet questions. I bought a bunch of roses from a stand that, being on Fifth Avenue, charged me fifteen dollars, and I went to wait for Elisa at the front entrance of the museum, because if she was inside—and I was sure she was—sooner or later she would have to come out. But she did not. With my bunch of roses, I remained at my post, under a New York drizzle, until ten o’clock, when the museum closed on Fridays. 7
    When I got to Wendy’s it was eleven P.M. I was three hours late. I was fired then and there. Before leaving, I gave the roses to the cashier.
    After walking around Broadway until very late, I returned to my room in a state of depression. Elisa was there, waiting for me. As usual,