by William Walsh

Arturo was so much happier before the revolution. And this is how he should be remembered, performing every night of the week at La Huchina, two shows, some nights three. Old regime, new regime. It didn’t matter to Arturo. His politics ran only as deep as the acne scars on Generalissimo’s brutal face. Arturo poked fun, mimicked, took potshots from the low stage. Then he would retreat and mock himself for three quarters of an hour. His lack of height. His wide ass. His crooked teeth. Arturo flopped onto the stage and pulled hard at the fine hair on his temples, wiped the glossy sweat from his bald pate.

We don’t need another revolution, he’d say. The old one still smarts.

Draw it mild, his agent counsels without disagreeing. You want to be a captive performer in buggerer’s bay?

Fascism can be funny. But you have to tiptoe. Arturo makes a joke about the waterboarding—pretending to confuse the term with wakeboarding. Tiptoe.Tiptoe.

-o-

After the late show, Arturo gets a note from the Minister of Public Affairs and International Relations: Topical, thought-provoking jokes are welcome by the new regime. But take care not to compromise the island’s re-blooming tourism. Don’t you want to be the face on all of the colorful brochures, Arturo?

But what wit can stay shut up with parody the ruling power? Arturo wants to paint a wordless still life of the puppets and seize the island with laughter.

Arturo labels the Generalissimo’s anti-gay campaign as the fight of the fairies. His twelve-piece band plays a leaping tune. Arturo tiptoes girlishly across the stage, then implies in so many words that this battle originated internally for the Generalissimo. Tiptoe. Tiptoe.

Americanos. Canadians. Germans. The happy-go-lucky Dutch. And lately the Irish, who tend to empathize, perhaps, too much. All can generally be described as old but mobile. Men too old to veer from their vacation habits, they come to the little lemon-shaped island with half a million mature lemon trees and half a million carefree women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. They love to laugh at Arturo each spring. They love to see his perfecto impression of the Generalissimo. Without it, their vacations would be incomplete.

Arturo: Lemons are the chief export. Next come round asses and pretty tits.

Arturo is a good son to his aging mother. Forget about the early woes, the beatings that she attended to. All the new foreign coins go to his Madre. Arturo calls her his banko securo. She’d chase away any daring robber with her pistola breath.

Dig a hole, Arturo, she advises. Do it before I die, she says, crossing herself quickly. Dig it deep. And in her prayers Arturo’s mother says, Lord, I will forgive these women of today who have a higher tolerance for filth, but I better know that they wash between their legs to make a clean place for my Arturo.

Arturo to the cute touristas: Come with me. Arturo will teach you the native tongue.

The Generalissimo shares with Arturo the same taste in wristwatches, sunglasses, and young chicas. But when Arturo scores first with one the imported showgirls, the Generalissimo must not know. Still, as the Generalissimo sits at his table with the leggy blond dancer from Texas, Arturo lets his audience in on the secret of his seduction with a nearly undetectable wink right in front of the Generalissimo. Arturo can wink with both eyes at the same time.

Arturo, so sly, smooth: I only taught her to dance the lemon merengue.

Arturo prepares for Ms. Texas a double-rum-lemonita, unsweetened. She sips from a thin straw and her face craters with a painful looking pucker, involving not just her mouth but her eyes. Two days later, she is gone, gone, gone. The Generalissimo has no comment for the press.

The right friends for the island and the right enemies, too. Good rum. A Coca-Cola bottling plant running three shifts a day. The blessed lemons. It’s like they tell the little league ballers: You can’t walk off this island, slugger. Arturo swings away, no matter the count. Ball four is not an option. Always the big swing. Always thinking homerun.

A good tux but ill-fitting, comically snug. Arturo’s passable singing voice:

If you lose the coup the joke will be on you.

And all of your pretty sisters, and their sisters’ sisters, too.

Under his breath, with the microphone behind his back, Arturo sings another couplet:

And all your cousins’ uncles and the man who sells you bread.

Everyone who ever hugged you—a bullet in the head.

Tiptoe. Tiptoe.

At the end of his act, Arturo bites hard into lemon after lemon, shows his sour face to the audience. This is my country, he says. This is my flag.

WILLIAM WALSH is the author of Without Wax: A Documentary Novel (Casperian Books) and Questionstruck (Keyhole Press). His story collection, Ampersand, Mass., is forthcoming from Keyhole Press in spring 2010.