Murderous "Mona Lisa": Facing AIDS in Reinaldo Arenas's "Mona"

Author(s): Jorge Olivares

Source: Revista Hispánica Moderna, Año 56, No. 2 (Dec., 2003), pp. 399-419
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30203739
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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA: FACING AIDS
IN REINALDO ARENAS'S MONA

"Yo pensaba morirme en el invierno de 1987. Desde hacia meses tenia un

fiebres terribles. Consulte a un m6dico y el diagn6stico fue SIDA." With these
words, written four months before he took his own life on 7 December 1990
Reinaldo Arenas begins the introduction to Antes que anochezca, his posthu
mously published memoirs (9). Arenas goes on to explain, in the book's intro-
duction and in his suicide note (appended to the memoirs), his reasons f
committing suicide: (1) he cannot write and fight for Cuba's freedom because
of the advanced stage of his illness; (2) he has reached closure in his life as
writer, having successfully completed a literary oeuvre on which he has been
working for almost thirty years; and (3) he finds that life is not worth living if
he is unable to have sex with other men, who no longer find him attractiv
because of his AIDS-ravaged body. Toward the end of the introduction, Aren
writes, "Veo que Ilego casi al fin de esta presentaci6n, que es en realidad mi
fin, y no he hablado mucho del SIDA. No puedo hacerlo, no se que es. Nadie
lo sabe realmente" (15). In fact, Arenas says a great deal about AIDS. Although
only briefly mentioned in the narrative of Antes que anochezca (78, 115, 318
334, 337-39) and in the framing texts (the introduction and the suicide note)
AIDS is undeniably present in the nostalgic and elegiac tone of Arenas's death
driven autobiography.
As in Antes que anochezca, AIDS appears in Arenas's fictional universe as
phantomlike presence, lurking in references scattered throughout his texts. Even
in El color del verano (1991), Arenas's last novel, which he started writing during
hospital stay and finished shortly before his death, the specter of AIDS - though
referred to, directly or indirectly, in 32 of the novel's 446 pages - remains elusive
It is there but not as the novel's primary explicit concern. Unlike many othe
AIDS-afflicted writers, the prolific Arenas chooses - or so it seems - not to privi-
lege AIDS as a sustained and overt theme in his voluminous literary output. "N
se que es," Arenas says about AIDS, explaining his reticence about the syndrome. 2
Although he does not know what AIDS is, Arenas does know what the fear
AIDS is. And I contend that this terrifying fear, which haunts some of Arena
later texts, is thematized, albeit figuratively, in one of the Cuban's most original
and "queer" works, Mona (1990), a short novel that Arenas wrote in 1986, on
year prior to his official diagnosis. Mentioned twice in the novel's two fiction
prologues, AIDS makes its way into the narrative allegorically, the only way i
which Arenas faces the AIDS-disfigured body in his fiction.3

1 For references to AIDS in El color del verano, see 31, 74, 76, 85, 135, 167, 168, 17
171, 172, 175, 184, 200, 227, 228, 247, 250, 260, 261, 264, 289, 344, 351, 362, 379, 384
389, 392, 404, 407, 414, 424.
AIDS is not a disease, as many people call it, but a syndrome, a complex of sym
toms related to HIV infection. On this, see Grover 19-20.
SOn AIDS and allegory, see Parker, and Roman and Sandoval.

399

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400 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

Mona is a fantastic tale about a love affair b

heterosexual Cuban exile residing in New York
Lisa, who comes to life every night by "coming
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the pa
vre. 4 Passing as a stunningly attractive Greek
Ram6n at a Wendy's restaurant in Manhattan,
security guard on the night shift. Their ensuin
late-night sexual encounters, after which Elisa
Ram6n's apartment without disclosing her desti
Intrigued by Elisa's behavior, Ram6n surrepti
occasions to the Metropolitan Museum, where
right before his eyes. Since Elisa does not devia
Ram6n imagines that she must be employed at
decides to search for her everywhere in the bu
among the museum's female guards in one of t
may instead be among a large group of foreig
painting. He forces himself into the crowd, ult
with Elisa but with the Mona Lisa. Noticing the
and the woman in the painting, Ram6n, who kn
she must have been the painter's model. Howev
composition, 1505, Ram6n surmises that the pai
of Elisa's remote ancestors and that Elisa, as its
the valuable painting, making sure each morn
during the night.
Elisa, whom Ram6n has constructed in his im
ria ninfomaniaca" (93), soon disabuses her lover
does not appreciate Ram6n's curiosity as to who sh
not only that she and the woman in the paintin
that the woman in the painting is a self-portrait o
"mujer lujuriosa y fasciriante" (97) that Leonardo,
and wanted to be. As long as the painting exist
When nobody is watching, she can concentrate
maintaining her alluring beauty, have sex wit
have found desirable. Having disclosed her iden
that he will keep her secret, Elisa has to elimin
forcing herself one last time on her bewildered
and desires her. But in the midst of their passi
Elisa loses her concentration, forgets her murd
into an old, bald, toothless, stinking, and repu
gusted Ram6n nonetheless penetrates anally b
days later, convinced that his survival depends
ing, Ram6n goes to the Metropolitan Museum
death. Seeing Ram6n approaching with weapon
the alarm button on the wall next to the pain
arrest. In jail, fearful for his life and hoping that
Ram6n writes what he calls his "testimonio" (73

4 For a "fantastic" reading of Arenas's novel, see So

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 401

Two prologues precede the Cuban's first-person n

compatriot Daniel Sakuntala, who one week after
the mail Ram6n's testimony. Written in New Yo
prologue contextualizes the tale and provides info
On 11 October 1986, as reported by the internat
dez, a twenty-seven-year-old mentally ill Cuban who
Mariel boatlift, is apprehended by the police for
Mona Lisa. On 17 October, Sakuntala explains, The
readers about the Cuban's "ins61ita muerte" (72).
and having been deprived of anything that he co
Ram6n is inexplicably found strangled in his pris
newspapers report the mysterious disappearance
morgue.
While the respectable press regards the incident at the museum as the
actions of a deranged man who later strangles himself with his own bare
hands, other publications, Sakuntala tells us, offer alternative interpretations.
The yellow press proposes that "detras de todo eso" there may be "un crimen
pasional" (73). The New York tabloids consider it a terrorist act by an anti-Cas-
tro Cuban who attempts to destroy France's most famous art work because of
his opposition to that country's socialist government. And a Cuban rag pub-
lished in New Jersey sees it as a patriotic act by an exile who wishes to draw
French President FranCois Mitterrand's attention to the plight of a Cuban dissi-
dent who, having been granted asylum in the French Embassy in Cuba, has not
yet been allowed to leave the island. Sakuntala then writes about his failure to
find a publisher for his friend's testimony and his subsequent determination to
pay for its publication out of his own pocket.
Sakuntala's "Presentaci6n" (71) is followed by a shorter "Nota de los Edi-
tores" (75), written in Monterrey, California, and dated May 2025. These
unidentified editors explain that Sakuntala, despite his efforts, could not pub-
lish Ram6n's testimony because of his meager financial means. It is eventually
published, we are told, by Ismaele Lorenzo and Vicente Echurre in NewJersey,
in November 1999, after Sakuntala's mysterious disappearance in Lake Ontario,
on the shores of which his clothes were found. Like Sakuntala a quarter centu-
ry before, Lorenzo and Echurre also have disappeared, as have most of the
copies of the book. The unnamed editors justify their decision to republish
Ram6n's testimony with their own clarifying footnotes as well as those by
Sakuntala and by Lorenzo and Echurre by pointing out that copies of the 1999
edition not only are hard to find but are riddled with printing errors.
Although "el caso," as Sakuntala writes six months after it was first reported
in the press, "parece cerrado" (73), it remains unofficially open for years to
come, since Ram6n's story piques the curiosity of potential editors even into
the twenty-first century. And curiously, as if cursed by their editorial enterprise,
three of the editors (Sakuntala, Lorenzo, and Echurre) mysteriously disappear
in ways reminiscent of Ram6n's disappearance. Because of these enigmatic
coincidences, Mona invites us to look "detris de todo eso," as the yellow press
did in its reporting of the case, and consider the suggestive link between the
fate of the testimony's author and that of its editors. If Sakuntala, believing
Ram6n's tale about Elisa, rules out suicide (the official explanation) as the

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 402 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

cause of his friend's death, then the reader ma

tions for the ways in which the editors' lives co
responsible for Sakuntala's, Lorenzo's, and E
specifically, have these editors, as Ram6n's agen
dreaded Elisa?

To begin to answer these questions, I now turn to Reinaldo Arenas, who

inscribes himself as a character in the novel. In his preface, Sakuntala not only
explains that Arenas summarily rejected the publication of Ram6n's testimony
in Mariel, a magazine he publishes, claiming that "este tipo de 'relato a manera
decimon6nica' no cabia en sus paiginas" (74), but also interjects the apparently
gratuitous information that Arenas has just died of AIDS. In their prefatory
remarks, immediately after discussing Sakuntala's, Lorenzo's, and Echurre's
disappearances, the editors of the 2025 edition state, "En cuanto a Reinaldo
Arenas, mencionado por el sefior Sakuntala, se trata de un escritorjustamente
olvidado que se dio a conocer en la decada del sesenta durante el pasado siglo.
Efectivamente, muri6 del SIDA en el verano de 1987 en Nueva York" (75-76).
With these self-referential comments, Arenas the writer accomplishes three
things: (1) he winks to his readers in a manner that suggests that the text tha
they have in their hands is not a straightforward, omniscient, third-person tale
typical of the nineteenth-century, a narrative modality that he finds aesthetical-
ly unappealing; 5 (2) with his characteristic morbid humor, he prospectively
refers to his death from an illness with which he has not yet been diagnosed; 6
and (3) at the diegetic level of the story, by alluding to Arenas's death in the
same passage where he discusses the editors' fates, he associates, by narrativ
contiguity, Sakuntala's, Lorenzo's, and Echurre's destinies with his own. Becaus
of this, the text seems to be prompting the reader to speculate about whethe
AIDS, the enigmatic syndrome that led to Arenas's death, may also be behind
Sakuntala's, Lorenzo's, and Echurre's enigmatic disappearances.
If indeed Ram6n's death is connected to Elisa; and if indeed Sakuntala's,
Lorenzo's, and Echurre's disappearances are connected to Elisa and AIDS;
then is it possible to establish a link between Ram6n's demise and AIDS? In
other words, can one posit a relation between ELISA, the woman responsible
for the marielito's death, and AIDS? I use capital letters in the preceding ques-
tion when referring to Arenas's female protagonist because her name, especial-
ly in this graphic rendition, evocatively participates in the novel's elaborate sys-
tem of signification. ELISA is the acronym for the Enzyme-Linked Immuno-
Sorbent Assay, a commonly used blood test to detect HIV infection (Grover
20-21; Patton 32-34). When considered together with Arenas's suspicion that
he is HIV-positive at the time of the writing of Mona, with the fact that fear of
Elisa is the emotion that consumes the novel's protagonist, and with the obser-
vation that "Elisa" is also an almost perfect anagram of el sida, this bit of med-

5 On Arenas's dislike for nineteenth-century realistic narratives, see Arenas, "Celes-

tino y yo"; and Olivares and Montengro.
6 Set in the future, the story's plot unfolds after 4 October 1986, when the novel was
written, as indicated at the end of the manuscript. Arenas thus foresees his death from
AIDS occurring in the year following the completion of the novel. But Arenas, who was
officially diagnosed in 1987, lived until 1990, the year he committed suicide and also
the year Mona was published.

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 403

ical information helps the case for arguing that

Arenas's novel stands in for HIV/AIDS.7
Elisa first bursts onto the scene when she
evening at Wendy's restaurant as "un ejempl
extraordinario" (79). The Cuban security guard,
stunning beauty, declares, "Nada raro note en ell
to reconsider his initial appreciation, Ram6n im
veces, un extrafio acento al pronunciar algunas p
Asi, por ejemplo, comenzaba una palabra con un
la terminaba con un sonido grave, casi mascu
presence of this comment early on in Ram6n's
"raro" to describe Elisa are telling and instruct
"raro" is most commonly used in the sense of
Koch renders it in her translation of Arenas's n
Just as in English the meaning of "queer" easily
mal" to "sexually deviant" and "gender transgres
And this is how, I want to argue, the text wish
immediately follows Ram6n's initial statement is
voice, a gender-bending oral performance. Ram6
signs of Elisa's rareza, her "queerness," only wh
surfaces, he listens to and reflects on the curiou
Like Ram6n vis-fi-vis Elisa, Mona's readers must
face, its startling plot, and listen carefully to an
the words of the text, the intriguingly inflecte
Like Elisa to Ram6n, Mona "speaks" to its reader
"other" language of allegory. " Indeed, as Mona's
Elisa's story, they gradually come to learn that, lik
er (Leonardo), Mona speaks for something othe
cially the fear of the HIV/AIDS-afflicted "queer
about a sexually voracious and murderous woma
gendered gay man who is passing as a woman al
nist, homophobic, and transphobic discourse on
Before I proceed, I should note that while it
transsexual (as opposed to a transgender) nar
changes into Elisa and vice versa, I do not subs
reference to the climactic scene, in which Elisa t
helpful here in explaining my view. On the one
ly asks Elisa about "ese fen6meno del cambio de
response, tells him that she is the embodiment
portrait, in which the painter portrayed himsel
one is invited to read Elisa as a transsexual cha

7 HIV and AIDS are of course not the same thing; t

the latter is the terminal phase of HIV infection. Mai
the HIV-positive person/the person with AIDS as th
"metonymic shift" (Caron 108) also takes place in M
HIV/AIDS-afflicted person and HIV/AIDS.
8 I am thinking of the Greek roots of allegory: allo
See "Allegory."

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404 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

because Elisa unambiguously states in that

hombre" [97], she declares) and, at the mo
been turned back into Leonardo, insists
name, one is invited to read her not so muc
gender subject, meaning a person who cha
much as I approach Arenas's oeuvre in rela
second reading, which focuses not on corpo
nection between male same-sex desire and
who desired to be penetrated anally by "ho
nas was indeed woman-identified but he
woman. What I see at play, in Arenas's lif
the issue of transsexual embodiment but of tr
as it may, what seems clear to me is that,
Leonardo character in Mona as a transsexua
is undeniably transphobic.
Ram6n's testimony, the core of the narra
a "queer" issue. The narrator-protagonist w
should use when referring to the person he

Escribo este informe a toda velocidad y ain a

Ella sabe d6nde estoy y de un momento a
Pero, digo ella, y tal vez deba decir dl; aunq
mejor manera de llamar a esa cosa. Ya veo q
e1?) me enreda, me confunde y hasta trata d
alegato. Pero debo hacerlo; debo hacerlo, de
Si lo termino, si alguien lo lee, si alguna pe
pueda salvarme. (77; emphasis in the text)

At the level of plot, the reader eventually

finds it difficult to choose between "she" a
turned-nemesis. But at the level of interp
with which the narrative begins is intrigu

9 Much has been written lately on what is m

Prosser, "The etymological history of the ter
threads of transgender connecting to and separ
transsexuality. 'Transgenderist,' from which 't
late 1980s to describe a male subject with a comm
stantial than that denoted by 'transvestite' or 'c
the transsexual, the transgenderist crossed the
contradistinction to the drag queen, the transg
was not intrinsically bound up with a homosex
made sense of through drag's performativity. [.
ing transgender apart from queerness and transs
difference between these projects and subject
which 'transgender' has come to be used, often (c
'Transgender' now also functions as a container
genderists but to those subjects from whom it
transgenderists: transsexuals and drag queens,
with butches and intersexuals and any subject w
(176). As Halberstam succintly puts it, transgend
ferent forms of non-normative gender present

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 405

sex/gender implications. If not a woman or a ma

thing" that Ram6n cannot satisfactorily designat
resent? Like Ram6n, I find that "she" and "he"
character's essence. I take Ram6n's opening rema
Leonardo not as a person but as a thing. 10 More
thing that threatens the Cuban's life and from
saved turns out to be, in Ram6n's own word, a "
tion - a symbol or representation - of HIV/AIDS
The story of Elisa, an "engendro" (106), as Ram
end of his tale, tellingly follows the discursive
sentations of HIV/AIDS. " To begin with, like
Ram6n's has an apocalyptic vision. 12 Writte
Cuban's testimony consistently portrays Elisa as
which it is impossible to escape. Convinced t
momento a otro vendrai a aniquilarme" (77), as h
graph in a statement that reverberates throug
99, 101, 106), Ram6n, with a sense of doom, awa
as a hopeful cry for help, Ram6n's writing soon
"Ahora mismo, que ya no tengo escapatoria, y a
muerte, hago este recuento, sobre todo, por pu
esperanza y porque no me queda otra alterna
repeatedly and mysteriously entered his locked
one occasion, while pursuing him in Grand C
todas partes" (103), Ram6n fears that she will j
jail cell. Repeating earlier pleas to his prison guar
the last paragraph of his testimony, "lo que
entrar" (107). Clearly, Ram6n's fear extends be
will penetrate his prison cell; he is terrified that
trate his body's cells.
Foreign-born, exotic, enigmatic, elusive, invas
in her character several of the features commo
in cultural narratives about the epidemic. The "stor
briefly goes something like this: It is a foreign
furtive killer that invades the body, in which it lo
et, destructive, and secret work, the appropriat
system, the destruction of which inevitably leads t
a foreign provenance, she easily and stealthily i

10 On two other occasions, Ram6n refers to Elisa a

" Cultural representations of HIV/AIDS frequently
ster." See, e.g., Erni 36. But, as Watney points out, "
gay men into monsters, for homosexuality is, and alwa
sically monstrous" (Policing 42). For a fine discussion
Benshoff.
12 On AIDS and apocalyptic rhetoric, see Dickinson and Sontag.
13 Earlier, Ram6n had made statements such as "Ya hace tres dias que estoy en
prisi6n y no creo que me queden mis que otros tres dias de vida" (85); and "Tengo que
apurarme, pues no creo que me queden mis de dos dias de vida" (92).
14 On dominant representations of AIDS, see, e.g., Crimp; Epstein; Erni; Griffin;
Landers; Meyer; Treichler; Watney, Policing, and Williamson.

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 406 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

her pernicious mission, and she feels no com

exotic Elisa may not hail from Africa or Haiti
originally linked to HIV/AIDS, but she is from
exoticized "somewhere else." 15 A killer who has claimed "innumerables victi-
mas" (107), Elisa is, as is generally - and misleadingly - said of HIV/AIDS,
invariably fatal. 16
Like HIV, which may go undetected for a long period of time, Elisa, a
ticking bombshell, initially hides her destructiveness from the unsuspecting
Ram6n. But after masking for awhile a monstrous inner-self with a deceptively
beautiful appearance, she eventually reveals her deadly nature to her curious
lover. It is then that Ram6n finally realizes that she is "una loca peligrosa" (97).
In one sense she is, as Dolores Koch translates this phrase, "a dangerous mad-
woman" (57). But if one considers the colloquial meaning of loca, she is also "a
dangerous queen." Elisa is peligrosa because she is lethal; lethal because she is,
allegorically, el sida; and el sida because she is, among other things, loca and
una loca. In the homophobic imagination, HIV/AIDS is linked to locas; in med-
ical discourse, it is linked to a number of illnesses, including locura, a possible
neurological consequence of HIV/AIDS.
After having anal intercourse with Elisa/Leonardo, la loca peligrosa, Ram6n
behaves like a loco, roaming the streets for days. He tellingly falls ill: "Tembla-
ba, pero no era s61o por el miedo, sino tambidn por la fiebre. Alguna gripe, o
algo peor, habia pescado" (101; my emphasis). Seeking shelter, Ram6n goes to
his friend Sakuntala, who takes him in and gives him Riopan to combat a bout
of diarrhea. This cluster of references to Ram6n's health is highly suggestive,
since it encompasses maladies commonly associated with HIV/AIDS. When
considered together with Ram6n's diarrhea, his fever, and the flu that he fears
he may have caught, the ominous and indeterminate circumlocution algo peor
seems to point to, without actually spelling it out, the unnamable syndrome. 17
But there is something else that validates reading Elisa as a vector of HIV
transmission, as the one responsible for contaminating Ram6n with algo peor.
Early in the narrative, after their first night together, Elisa treats Ram6n to a
dinner at an expensive restaurant: "Al otro dia yo estaba off (digo, libre) en mi

15 As Treichler explains, "The term exotic, sometimes used to describe a virus that
appears to have originated 'elsewhere' (but 'elsewhere,' like 'other,' is not a fixed cate-
gory), is an important theme running through AIDS literature" (46; emphasis in the
text). Greece not only is associated in modern gay sensibility with Ancient Greek same-
sex sexual practices among men, but is also a major destination in present-day gay
tourist culture.
'6 Critiquing the notion that AIDS is "invariably fatal," Watney writes: "[O]ne must at
once distinguish between approaches to AIDS which proceed from entirely fatalistic
assumptions concerning the rate of progression from HIV to AIDS and the life expectan-
cy of people living with AIDS, and other approaches which attempt to question and
problematize precisely such fatalism" ("Short-Term" 159-60). See also Erni 37-40.
17 Especially at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis, many people feared that
colds or flu symptoms were possible signs of HIV infection. People with HIV/AIDS are
known to have frequent bouts of diarrhea. At the 1986 American Public Health Associa-
tion Annual Meeting, AIDS activist Michael Callen said: "AIDS is about bedpans and
respirators. It's about loss of control - control of one's bowels and bladder, one's arms
and legs, one's life. [. . .] It's about swelling and horrible disfigurement, the fear of
dementia. It is horror" (162).

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 407

trabajo y ella me propuso irnos a cenar al Plum, u

no compaginaba con el estado de mi bolsillo. Se
dome fijamente pero con cierta burla, me dijo que
hice rogar" (80). This passage is significant not for
does not say - what is edited out of Arenas's origin
and incomplete first draft of Mona, Arenas conclu
following sentence: "y nos fuimos para el lujoso re
emphasis). 8 With these two words, "easy sida," a
tion unusual in Arenas's writings, he explicitly connec
to these two terrifying words, el sida, that Ram6n
peor, clearly - albeit obliquely - allude. Eating with
to be expensive - but to Ram6n, who ends up h
Although Arenas leaves out the direct reference to
sion of Ram6n's testimony, he leaves the syndrome
AIDS into the novel's structuring absence, which
manifest.

Supporting this reading is the fact that Elisa has many of the features of the
classic femme fatale - the beautiful, seductive, and destructive woman who
emerges as an erotic icon in the nineteenth century and who continues to
populate artistic, literary, and cinematic productions. '~ With her stunning
beauty and seductive charms, the "irresistible" (80) Elisa lures Ram6n into a
dangerous sexual relationship. A "verdadera gozadora" (79), she shamelessly
tells him that all she wants is to have casual sex with him before returning to
her country. Although Ram6n, who brags about his way with women, initially
accepts her terms, he ends up falling in love with her. Much to the macho's dis-
may, he soon begins to wonder whether he is satisfying her, and ultimately he
has to confront the fact that it is Elisa - and not he - who comes out victorious
when their sexual "batallas" (88, 90) are brought to an end. The mysterious,
alluring, and dominant Elisa reduces the self-proclaimed womanizer to noth-
ing, to a literal absence, as his textual eradication demonstrates. Let us recall
that Ram6n not only dies but that his body later disappears, never to be found,
from the morgue.
The bewitching and predatory Elisa can be connected to the figure of the
femmefatale, "that abstraction of the woman posited as simultaneously most fas-
cinating and most lethal to the male" (Doane 125), not only because of the
destructive effects that her behavior has on Ram6n but also because of who
she is: the Mona Lisa. Admired for three centuries as a portrait of a gentle and
cheerful woman painted in a natural style that captured the subject as faithful-
ly as possible, Leonardo's most famous painting began to be interpreted differ-
ently in the nineteenth century. Particularly because of her smile, perceived as
"unfathomable" by the influential nineteenth-century aesthete Walter Pater,

18 This version of the novel can be found in the Reinaldo Arenas Papers (box 13,
folder 3).
'" On the femme fatale, see Allen, Bade, Doane, Hart, Praz, and Stott. Arenas may
have been inspired, partially at least, by Mona Lisa, Neil Jordan's acclaimed 1986 film
noir about a stunning femmefatale named Simone, a call girl who is the Mona Lisa of the
story.

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 408 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

who was undoubtedly inspired by the emerging m

femmefatale, the Mona Lisa began to be regarde
pire." 20 No longer seen as a representation
Leonardo's masterpiece has demanded since the
ply contemplation but deciphering" (Boas 220)
the mystery of Leonardo's smiling woman, wh
popular artistic icons of the menacing femme f
the woman in the painting? But, more to the p
and in particular what has inspired her beguilin
Like Leonardo's Mona Lisa, Arenas's Mona
Cuban's appropriation and literary elaboration
Elisa within a well-established female iconic tradition and makes of her an

enthralling enigma. Accordingly, like the critics of the Mona Lisa, the critics
Mona are compelled to ask: Who is Elisa? What does she represent? And wh
has inspired her beguiling smile? As I have been arguing, because of her allu-
sive name and the circumstances surrounding her intrusion into Ram6n's life
Elisa can be viewed as a representation of HIV/AIDS, a reading that is also sug
gested by Elisa's characterization as a femmefatale, the embodiment of eros an
thanatos.21 Occupying the position of the destructive and deviant femme fatale,
the irresponsible and malignant Elisa engages in casual, promiscuous, an
non-procreative sex with men in a constant search for libidinal pleasures. Bu
things are not, as Elisa tells Ram6n, what they seem to be, since she is actuall
Leonardo da Vinci. One can then substitute the artist's name for "Elisa" in

the sentence in which I have encapsulated the femme fatale's sexual behavior
and the message of the statement, given the change of sex, undergoes a su
stantial and significant transformation. It is no longer a description of the typi-
cal conduct of a femme fatale, but a common phobic depiction of the sexu
behavior of men who have sex with men, which, especially in the age of AID
regards their "lifestyle" as fatal. According to this view, gay sex equals death. 22
Arenas's deadly femmefatale emerges as a double of the HIV-positive "homose
ual," the gay homme fatal. Thus, Mona participates in the production of wha
Simon Watney calls a "discourse of fatality" (Policing 21), which represents g
men, in the age of HIV/AIDS, as lethal carriers of a life-threatening virus th
they, suicidally and homicidally, are responsible for spreading in multiple sex
al communities.

Arenas's portrayal of HIV/AIDS as a femme fatale is consistent with domi-

nant representations of the virus/syndrome. As Sander Gilman has pointed
out, the iconography of AIDS activates the iconography of syphilis, which puts

20 In an essay on Leonardo da Vinci, included in his influential book The Renais-

sance (originally published in 1873), Walter Pater refers to the Mona Lisa's "unfath-
omable smile, always with a touch of something sinister in it" (97), and adds that, "like
the vampire, she has been dead many times" (99). On the Mona Lisa as a femme fatale,
see Boas, author of the seminal article on the subject.
21 Like the femme fatale, HIV/AIDS is associated with eros and thanatos. As
Williamson notes, "They [sex and death] are also inevitably linked with AIDS: sex as a
means of HIV transmission, death as its probable outcome" (70).
22 As Hanson has written, "AIDS has helped to concretize a mythical link between
gay sex and death" (324).

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 MURDEROUS MONA ILISA 409

a woman's face on the disease - that of a "corru

"innocent" male ("AIDS and Syphilis"). Because the
nized, and because, as Leo Bersani has noted, the
al imaginaries confuse fantasies of vaginal sex wit
mainstream media's representations of HIV/AID
transmitted diseases are recirculated with the gay
tute's role. As Bersani writes, "The realities of sy
ry and of AIDS today 'legitimate' a fantasy of fe
diseased; and promiscuity in this fantasy, far fro
of infection, is the sign of infection. Women an
with an unquenchable appetite for destruction
of HIV/AIDS, and, thus, "intrinsically disease
(Leonardo in the guise of Mona Lisa) literally em
tion of woman and gay man. In the telling of "he
perpetuates misogynist discourses, past and prese
death as a woman or as a woman-identified gay man
In an insightful analysis of the narrative systems
ry of HIV/AIDS in films, literary works, mass
everyday communications, Judith Williamson ide
ror story - as the favored genre to which writers co
the ravages of the "monstrous" virus/syndrome
which focuses on the terror posed by the dreade
more specifically a vampire tale. Aligning himsel
consider the Mona Lisa a vampire, Arenas include
erary rendition of Leonardo's femmefatale. In so
that links the figure of the vampire to the "hom
acquired special significance in the context of t
its association with bodily fluids (primarily blood
an exceptionally graphic way to perpetuate hom
"homosexuals" - as life-threatening vampires, as men
Although it is true that Elisa is not, literally,
can be regarded as one because she sucks the lif
Furthermore, the double life of Arenas's femmef
During the day, Count Dracula, the archetypical v
castle's burial grounds and at night he rises from
were, stalking and attacking his prey. 27 During

23 On Arenas's misogyny, see, e.g., Epps 280-83 and

24 Williamson sees the presence of primarily two ge
cultural representations of AIDS. She explains, "where
the viral monster, one might say that AIDS discourse
when it is on the 'passive' (non-complaining) sufferin
into Sentimentalism" (75).
25 On homosexuality and vampirism, see Craft, Dyer
26 According to Melton, "Nineteenth-century roman
gested that real vampirism involved the loss of psychic
of vampiric relationships that had little to do with
metaphor of psychic vampirism can easily be extended
which one party steals essential life elements from the
27 On vampires, see Bunson and Melton.

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 410 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

lifeless, to a wooden case (the picture frame) i

Gothic structure, the Metropolitan Museum, o
search of hapless lovers (Ram6n and others) wh
bite - to death. 28 And like vampires, Elisa no
powers of seduction" (Dyer 79) but also has
(85).29 Arenas's Mona thus exhibits what Ellis H
vampirism" (324), which is prevalent in ph
HIV/AIDS. Discussing vampirism and its links
son writes:

Whether by strategy or by error, the media have a commonplace tendency

to collapse the category of "gay man" with that of "person with AIDS" with-
in a convenient discourse of "high risk." In this way, myths about gay sex
serve to amplify myths about AIDS; and so when I speak of the vampire as
the embodiment of evil sexuality, I speak of gay men and people with
AIDS in the same breath. I am talking about the irrational fear of PWAs
and gay men who "bite." I am talking about essentialist representations of
gay men as vampiric: as sexually exotic, alien, unnatural, oral, anal, com-
pulsive, violent, protean, polymorphic, polyvocal, polysemous, invisible,
soulless, transient, superhumanly mobile, infectious, murderous, suicidal,
and a threat to wife, children, home, and phallus. (325)

Ram6n recalls in his testimony a series of monstrously queer apparitions of

his vampiric lady of the night. Once, after making love to Elisa, Ram6n turns
to her to contemplate her "bello estado de serenidad" and notices, if only fleet-
ingly, that her eyes suddenly "se borraron" (84); later, as he admires Elisa
standing naked before him, he momentarily discovers that "a [su] cuerpo le
faltaba la cabeza" (85); and on another day, in bed, when he is about to begin
making love to Elisa, he briefly sees that his lover "carecia de senos" (90). In
addition to having these bizarre visions of Elisa, Ram6n experiences equally
bizarre tactile sensations when he is with her. On one occasion, while kissing
her, Ram6n suddenly senses "los belfos de algun animal" (81); and on another,
while caressing Elisa's shoulder, Ram6n for a moment feels "una aguda pro-
tuberancia," as if "el hueso se hubiese dislocado formando un garfio" (81).
These fleeting, and seemingly imaginary, depictions of a deformed Elisa are
quickly replaced by images of Elisa's gorgeous - and supposedly "real" - body,
images that make Ram6n forget, as he tells us, "las excentricidades [. .. ,]
imperfecciones, defectos, anomalias [...] que en ciertos momentos habia crei-
do descubrir" (93).
Narratologically, these instances of Elisa's bodily disfigurations have a pro-
leptic function, since they prefigure Elisa's subsequent transformation into the
grotesquely disfigured Leonardo. One early vision in particular, which occurs
on the first Monday that Ram6n and Elisa spend together, most distinctly fore-
shadows the novel's climactic scene. On their way to an unnamed city in west-
ern New York state where Elisa wishes to spend the day, Ram6n takes pleasure

28 Elisa only comes out at night, except for Mondays, when the museum is closed.
29 References to mist and fog throughout the narrative (81, 85, 91, 95, 100) simulta-
neously evoke vampire tales and the Mona Lisa's "misty atmosphere" (Bramly 366).

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 411

in seeing the woman's reflection in his motor

there is a moment when, instead of Elisa's face, Ram6n sees that of "un
anciano espantoso" (82). Visually framed, as in a portrait, within the rearview
mirror, this old man's appearance (in the sense of both his unexpected narra-
tive entrance and his unsightly physical looks) prefigures Leonardo's appear-
ance later in the tale. In a scene that brings to life and amplifies the motorcy-
cle "mirror" scene, Elisa indeed turns into un anciano espantoso before her
lover's incredulous eyes. It happens when, after disclosing her true identity to
Ram6n, Elisa decides to murder him by either stabbing him to death or drown-
ing him in a lake to which she has lured him. Before attempting to commit the
homicide, Elisa forces herself sexually on Ram6n one last time, and it is while
they are having sex that she metamorphoses into the disgusting Leonardo:

Sin dejar de Ilorar me aproxim&. Ella pas6 su mano con el pufial por
detris de mi cabeza. Inmediatamente apare6 su cuerpo desnudo junto al
mfo. Todo esto lo hizo con tal rapidez, profesionalismo y violencia que yo
comprendi que de aquel abrazo era muy dificil salir con vida... Creo que
nunca, en mi larga experiencia er6tica, actu6 de una manera tan lujuriosa
y tierna, tan experta y apasionada -porque lo cierto es que aun en aque-
Ilos momentos en que ella queria matarme yo la deseaba-. En el tercer
orgasmo, Elisa, que no cesaba dejadear mientras pronunciaba las palabras
mis obscenas, no solamente se olvid6 del pufial, sino tambidn de ella mis-
ma. Nott que al parecer iba perdiendo la "concentraci6n y energia" que,
segun ella misma me habia explicado, la convertian en una verdadera
mujer. Sus ojos perdian brillo, el color de su rostro desaparecia, sus p6mu-
los se hundian. De repente, su larga cabellera cay6 de golpe y me vi entre
los brazos de un anciano calvo, desdentado y hediondo que gimiendo me
sobaba el sexo. Al momento se sent6 sobre d1, cabalgandolo como un ver-
dadero demonio. Rapidamente lo puse en cuatro patas y, a pesar de mi
asco, me dispuse a darle todo el placer que me fuera posible, hasta dejarlo
tan extenuado que me permitiese escapar. Como jamais habia practicado
la sodomia quise hacerme la ilusi6n remota de que aquel esperpento,
aquel saco de huesos, al que ademis le habia salido una horrible barba,
segufa siendo Elisa. (99)

I shall momentarily return to this scene, which ends with Ram6n's narrow
escape. Suffice it to say now that, immediately before writing about his expo-
sure to Leonardo's repulsive body, Ram6n nostalgically remembers how care-
free and happy his days had been prior to, as he puts it here and in an earlier
passage, "la llegada de Elisa" (84, 99). Or, as the reader is invited to read
instead, "la legada del sidd' - an ominous phrase that one can anagrammatical-
ly hear reverberating in Ram6n's four words. 31 It is in this very scene, in which

"0 There is a divergence of opinion among the editors of Ram6n's testimony regard-
ing which city Elisa and Ram6n visit: Syracuse (Sakuntala), Albany (Lorenzo and
Echurre), or Ithaca (2025 editors). This is just one example of several in the text of
how Arenas refuses to write an authoritative, nineteenth-century-like tale. Ambiguity
and uncertainty prevail throughout.
31 By way of support for this reading, I offer what Arenas has to say, in Antes que
anochezca, when recalling his early years in New York: "Era verdaderamente un suefio y
una fiesta incesante. Yo trabajaba mucho entonces, pero nunca Nueva York fue tan

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412 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

Elisa reveals her shocking news, murderous int

that a terrified Ram6n first realizes that his "fin
Some days later, obsessed with Elisa's threat,
harks back to the climactic scene. Evoking th
also the case with the horrific scene on the la
tizes the fulfillment of the fatal (wo)man's wish:

Por filtimo, luego de tantas noches de insom

Soiet, desde luego, con Elisa. Sus ojos frios m
rinc6n del cuarto. Sfibitamente aquel rinc6n se
paisaje con sus promontorios de rocas verdosas
Junto a ese pantano me estaba esperando Elisa. S
las manos elegantemente enlazadas bajo el pec
impasible perversidad y su mirada era una orden
ella y la abrazase, avanzando hasta el mismo
arrastrindome. Ella puso sus manos sobre mi cab
tre. A medida que la posefa comprendia que ya
viejo en lo que adentraba, sino en una masa
hedionda masa me fue absorbiendo mientras
chapoteos cada vez mis pestiferos. Yo gritaba m
aquella cosa viscosa, pero mis gritos s61o se resol
teos. Senti que mi piel y mis huesos eran succion
go y que finalmente, fango yo tambidn dentro
el gran fanguizal que formaba el pantano. (101-0

Consistent with an interpretation of Leonar

figurative link between the enigmatic female
Ram6n's dream literalizes the connection. 32 El
which, in Ram6n's oneiric revamping of the p
macabre place. The femme fatale, Arenas's crea
"viscous thing," a "swamp," that "sucks" Ram6
that Elisa is Mona Lisa, and viewing her throug
see in the sucking masa de fango into which s
mouth of sorts - an image in a network of sym
two other equally terrifying orifices with teet
dentatus. Evocative of the fantasy of a castrating
of this passage, with its insistence on foul-smellin
redolent of anality. If earlier, in the climactic
Elisa-turned-Leonardo anally, Ram6n descri
inserts his penis as a "promontorio pestifero"
analogous terms: as an "hedionda masa" (102).
linguistic echoes compel the reader to smell in
swamp into which Elisa has been turned a malo

vital; quizi nunca vuelva a ser como entonces, pero m

do aquellos tiltimos afios, antes de que legara la plag
tambidn sobre la ciudad, como siempre cae sobre t
narias" (318; my emphasis).
32 On the relationship between the female figure
painting, see Bramly 364-66 and Smith.

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 413

tatus, which, according to Hanson, may stand fo

but for all of his bodily holes. They are all cons
as having deadly vampiric teeth. 3 This being th
dream, which can be read as a figuration of a dea
when his body, coming into contact with danger
pirized" as it were - by Leonardo's swamp, his p
evokes his ano.

Ram6n's testimony concludes with these desperate final words: "iAyiden-

me, por favor! O pronto sere otra de sus innumerables victimas que yacen
sepultadas en el pantano verdoso que esta detris del cuadro desde el cual ella,
con sus ojos sin pestafias, vigila mientras sonrie" (107). Ram6n succumbs to
Elisa and death as his dream foretells. The mysterious disappearance of his
body without a trace suggests that Ram6n ends up in the pantano verdoso - the
lake in the painting, in the dream, and in the novel's unnamed city in western
New York State to which Elisa takes him twice and where Leonardo "comes
out" and forces him to have anal sex.

Having established several ways in which Mona can be read as an allegory of

HIV/AIDS, I want, finally, to explore a biograpical approach to the text in an
attempt to consider the meaning and significance of this allegory. If in their
work on the Mona Lisa some commentators have attempted to find an explana-
tion for the painting's mystery in the painter's biography, I would argue that
readers of Mona may also turn to its author's biography for elucidation of the
novel's enigma. More specifically, like the Mona Lisa, Mona can be regarded as
a self-portrait of the artist. 4 To pursue this line of argumentation, I return to
the climactic scene of the novel at the moment when Elisa is transformed from

female to male and is anally penetrated by Ram6n, who still calls her Elisa:

Y mientras lo posefa lo Ilame por ese nombre. Pero b1, en medio del
paroxismo, volvi6 el rostro, mirindome con unos ojos que eran dos cuen-
cas rojizas.
-iLlamame Leonardo, cofo! iLlamame Leonardo! -dijo mientras se
retorcia y mugia de placer como nunca antes vi hacerlo a un ser humano.

" Critiquing homophobic psychoanalytic myths about male gay sex, Hanson writes:
"I mean the psychoanalyst who has defined me in terms of his own repugnance for fem-
inine sexuality, who has made me not so much vagina dentata as anus dentatus. Rectum,
urethra, mouth, tear ducts, a gash in the skin. All my orifices are one and the same, and
all my orifices have teeth" (325).
4 On the Mona Lisa as Leonardo's self-portrait, see Collins 106-07, Dellamora 130-
46, McMullen 85-86, Nuland 77-83, Pater 77-101, and Schwartz. Although just a theory
and one not widely accepted by art historians, Arenas no doubt was aware of it and used
it as the structuring motif of Mona. Arenas goes against the historical record when he
says that Leonardo was "poco agraciado" (98); and he clearly approaches the Mona Lisa
from the perspective that sees in Leonardo's famous painting a portrait of an enigmatic
and vampiric femmefatale, the view that has prevailed since the nineteenth century. Are-
nas may have been drawn to Leonardo because of some significant similarities in their
biographies: illegitimacy, emotional attachment to their mothers, and passive homosex-
uality. Given that Arenas uses a passage from Leonardo's Notebooks as Mona's epigraph, I
would argue that he had more than a superficial knowledge of the artist's life and work.
On Leonardo's biography, see Bramly; Clark; Collins; Freud, "Leonardo"; Jackson 53-
73; and Nuland.

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 414 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

iLeonardo! Empec6 entonces a repetir, posey

decia y segufa entrando en aquel promontorio pe
segui musitando tiernamente mientras de un
pufial y, lanzando algunos golpes de ciego, me per
entre el terraplkn amarillo. iLeonardo! iLeonar
car sobre la motocicleta y partia a escape. iLeona
do! Creo que fui repitiendo aterrorizado duran
regreso a Nueva York, como si ese nombre sirvie
gar a aquel viejo lujurioso que ain se estaria conto
pantano que 61 mismo habia pintado. (99-100)

Calling attention to the act of naming with Ra

"Leonardo," this incantatory passage serves a du
it affirms the true identity of Ram6n's sexual p
the other, in its insistent invocation of the app
up another name: "Reinaldo." Sharing a sequenc
same four consonants (1, n, r, d), "Leonardo" and "Reinaldo" invoke one
another. 5 The secrets are out: Ram6n is told that Elisa is Leonardo and the
reader is (obliquely) told that Leonardo is Reinaldo. In the same way that
Leonardo has been read as projecting onto Mona Lisa an image of himself, so
can Reinaldo be read as projecting an image of himself onto Mona. In Arenas's
case, that image (Elisa) masks behind an attractive figure an unattractive self,
which, after a series of partial apparitions, ultimately comes to light and life as
a decrepit Leonardo. A handsome man who put a high premium on his fit
body, Reinaldo, feeling ill in 1986, envisioned, by way of the painter's revolting
old body, an image of himself that he thought he would eventually have to con-
front.

In Antes que anochezca, referring to the state of his health during the writing
of El portero, a period that extended from April 1984 to December 1986, Arenas
admits that "ya me sentia enfermo" (9). And writing, also in his memoirs,
about his friendJorge Ronet's death from AIDS on 15 April 1985, Arenas says,
"la plaga que, hasta ese momento, tenia solamente para mi connotaciones
remotas por una serie de rumor insoslayable, se convertia ahora en algo cierto,
palpable, evidente; el cadciver de mi amigo era la muestra de que muy pronto
yo tambidn podia estar en esa misma situaci6n" (334). One can surmise from
these comments that Arenas began to experience AIDS symptoms perhaps as
early as 1984 or 1985 but definitely in 1986, the year he wrote Mona. According
to his friend Roberto Valero (5A), Arenas was not officially diagnosed until
December 1987. In a moving and revealing reminiscence, Maria Elena Badfas,
Valero's wife, writes:

En el verano de 1987, Reinaldo sabia que estaba enfermo. Yo lo sabia,

pero no pude decirselo ni a Roberto. Habia notado que Rey tenia
trastornos estomacales iguales a los de un amigo que estaba contagiado
desde hacia tiempo. Rey no se lo admitia ni a si mismo. Era un hombre

According to Freud, "in dreams and associations names which have to be con-
cealed seem to be replaced by others that resemble them only in containing the same
sequence ofvowels" ("Significance").

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 415

orgulloso. Le dolia reconocer que seria vencido, que

po se iba a desintegrar. Yo pensaba que podia estar
efectivamente Rey estaba enfermo, yo no queria ser
Se not6, antes que nada, el cambio en su personalid
teza, antes tan hibilmente amaestrada por su humor
tener. En el invierno de 1987 comenz6 a desaparecer
a inventar viajes, a mentir. A principios de 1988 no
si estaba enfermo. Tuvo que enfrentar la realidad p
do con pneumonia. No vale la pena detallar aqui el
se conoce muy bien c6mo procede el SIDA. (24-25)

In Mona's Leonardo, a "saco de huesos" (99) with a

age, Reinaldo stereotypically prefigures his AIDS
deterioration of which Badias speaks. In keeping
in visual representations of people with AIDS, es
the epidemic, of juxtaposing before/after photo
and "anti-bodies," Mona's linear narrative establish
("before") and Leonardo ("after"), thus bringing in
readers) a variation of what Simon Watney has called
By having a portrait as its central motif and by
of Elisa/Leonardo, Mona spotlights the act of
Ram6n's fleeting visions of Elisa's bodily disfigu
toward the end of the tale, of Elisa's grotesque m
are "novel" ways in which Arenas allegorically contem
deterioration: what he takes to be the imminent
from healthy and seductive to sick and repulsive.
on the highway, in which Ram6n has a portrait-like
figuration into a horrible old man, can be read a
foregrounding of visual - as well as mental - refle
reflected in Elisa's menacing and escalating mons
"monstrosity" (HIV) that he fears may be lurking
tually destroy - his body. Writing the shocking st
Arenas prospectively imagines the AIDS-wasted bo
Pertinent to this biographical reading of Mona i
in Italian, in reaction to his obsession with her:
una della tante calamiti di cui soffre l'essere
conoscenza o almeno quello della curiositai" (95-
lates in a footnote as "El veneno del conocimiento es una de las tantas calami-
dades que padece el ser humano. El veneno del conocimiento o por lo menos

36 According to Watney, "[T]he political unconscious of the visual register of AIDS

commentary [...] assumes the form of a diptych. On one panel we are shown the HIV
retrovirus [. . .] made to appear, by means of electron microscopy or reconstructive
computer graphics, like a huge technicolor asteroid. On the other panel we witness the
'AIDS victim,' usually hospitalized and physically debilitated, 'withered, wrinkled, and
loathsome of visage' - the authentic cadaver of Dorian Gray. This is the spectacle of
AIDS, constituted in a regime of massively overdetermined images" ("Spectacle" 78;
emphasis in the text). On "bodies" and "anti-bodies" (healthy bodies vs. ill bodies) in
discussions of AIDS representations, see Gilman, Picturing 115-72; and Landers. On
before/after representations of people with AIDS, see Erni 43-47 and Meyer.

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 416 JORGE OLIVARES RHM, LVI (2003)

el de la curiosidad" (96). Responding to Ram6n's

additional enigmatic comments, such as "Nunca
carle primero el porque" (96) and "A toda costa
yo, quieren saberlo todo. Y yo tengo, finalm
Curiosity and knowledge equal death. The re
Ram6n is the revelation that Arenas fears ELISA would make to him: the

death sentence that he believes is assured in a positive test result. The pers
ification, in this scene, of the HIV-test, and the embodiment, throughout
story, of the syndrome a positive test result would predict, Elisa is the me
by which Arenas dramatizes his inner struggles, in 1986, about whether t
know or not to know. Whether Reinaldo will become - or not become -
Leonardo.

Narrated from the frightened perspective of a heterosexual man, Ram6

testimony reproduces homophobic, transphobic, and HIV/AIDS-phobic clic
and stereotypes: that gay men are insatiable sexual predators; that HIV/A
and gay male sex are integrally linked; that "promiscuous" seropositive ga
men are responsible for spreading the virus among "innocent" "victims" in
so-called general population; that all people with AIDS are bodily (and mor
ly) disfigured; and that AIDS inevitably leads to death.37 Anyone who has r
Arenas's works, and particularly his gay-affirming autobiography, in which
revels in the telling of his sexually active life with multiple male partner
would find it difficult to understand at first the existence, in the Cuban's liter
ary corpus, of a text as profoundly phobic as Mona. And especially one th
conflating sex, disease, fear, and death, condemns the erotic pleasures of a
intercourse. Why, one would have to ask, does Arenas choose to tell the sto
from the point of view of a homophobic Ram6n, who voices his revulsion
unchallenged in the text, for the sexual act that historically has been mo
associated with male same-sex sex and the practice of which was central to
Cuban writer's sexual life?

If one keeps in mind the state of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and the
alarmist dissemination of that knowledge in 1986 (the year Arenas wrote
Mona); if one takes into account that life-prolonging anti-HIV drugs were not
yet available; and if one also considers Arenas's non-involvement with the gay
community and its politics, which prevented him from being exposed to gay-
positive HIV/AIDS discourses and to discussions on "how to have promiscuity
in an epidemic"; then one can understand how the general panic surrounding

Regarding the last two points, Crimp's comments, in "Portraits of People with
AIDS," are worth citing here: "[D]o we really wish to claim that the photographs by
Nicholas Dixon are untrue? Do we want to find ourselves in the position of denying the
horrible suffering of people with AIDS, the fact that very many PWAs become disfig-
ured and helpless, and that they die? Certainly we can say that these representations do
not help us, and that they probably hinder us, in our struggle, because the best they can
do is elicit pity, and pity is not solidarity. We must continue to demand and create our
own counterimages, images of PWA self-empowerment, of the organized PWA move-
ment and of the larger AIDS activist movement [. ..] But we must also recognize that
every image of a PWA is a representation, and formulate our activist demands not in
relation to the 'truth' of the image, but in relation to the conditions of its construction
and to its social effects" (Melancholia 100).

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 MURDEROUS MONA LISA 417

HIV/AIDS could have affected the Cuban author. 3

vulnerable, when he begins to feel ill and suspec
Arenas writes a novel in which he sees himself t
would see him: as what Robert Padgug would cal
should write, more specifically, a novel about a
deceived by a gay man with el sida (Elisa) is not su
of 1986: "the grave danger of AIDS to heteros
man who openly acknowledges his preference for
133) like Ram6n, Arenas adopts in this novel the
would consider "homosexuals" a major threat to
mining dominant HIV/AIDS-phobic discourses, Ar
system of representation. Mona is not a text of resis
and despair. A mea culpa for what Arenas may hav
hopes - as the error of his ways, Reinaldo's M
Mona Lisa, disturbing and enigmatic.

JORGE OLIVARES
COLBY COLLEGE

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