The White Slave of a Man Named Lamine

His parents called him Tobías because, for the time, they were fairly modern people who had traveled through Kenya and Tanzania. His mother became pregnant right during that trip, and they always told that story as if the name held within it something of that distant continent.

Tobías had been an insatiable reader since childhood. He first devoured children’s stories and then quickly moved on to more serious books. In early adolescence he came across a history book about the slavery of Black people taken from Africa to the cotton and sugarcane plantations of America. The subject gripped him, and he kept searching for more. He later found a historical novel set in those years that spoke of slaves assigned to domestic service, of the strange relationship with their masters, of how loyal and grateful they ended up being for not being used like pack animals and for sleeping in the back rooms of the masters’ houses.

He often thought that Black people, as a people, had never been compensated for everything they had suffered. And one day, almost without meaning to, he imagined the situation reversed: whites enslaved by Black people. The idea stayed inside him, pulsing in some corner. He had never seen a Black man in person, only in photos and drawings, because there were none in his town, but he longed to see one someday.

The years went by. Tobías was already twenty-two when he saw a mulatto man for the first time, about forty years old, walking hand in hand with a woman down the main street. He was fascinated, it was hard for him to look away, but seeing him accompanied, he ended up stepping aside. Later he learned his name was Yunior and that he was Cuban. In the south he had met a white woman who clearly took an interest in him; she was willing to marry, and his tourist visa was about to expire. Shortly after the wedding, the woman inherited a house up north, in Tobías’s town, and so she returned with her husband to the place where she had been born.

Soon after, Tobías saw another man walking those same streets. Unlike the first, this one was always alone and was Black, not mulatto. Very tall, very strong, broad-shouldered, with huge hands. He was forty-five, had emigrated late compared to others his age, but to Tobías he was of an indefinite age, impossible to estimate. Seeing him always alone, he dared to hold his gaze a little longer than he should have and smile at him. He was clear about it: he wanted to meet him.

After running into him several times on the same corner, he decided to say «hello» to him. The man, whose name was Lamine, answered with another «hello» and a broad white smile. To him, the boy’s curiosity was just that and nothing more; he knew very well that there was no one else like him in the whole area. He thought it was all the boy’s innocence, and it was. Tobías knew nothing about sex, and although he was fascinated by Black men, he had never formed a single mental image that had anything to do with desire.

But from «hellos» Tobías moved on to «hello, how are you?», and day by day they advanced a little more. Lamine didn’t mind at all; on the contrary, he liked the boy. Not long after, they were sharing a line or a beer in a bar in the square. Although he came from a Muslim family, Lamine was not observant and had no problem with alcohol. He understood Spanish perfectly, but spoke it somewhat brokenly, with badly constructed sentences, because he had never studied it.

Two months had not passed when Lamine invited him to keep drinking at his place, a rented studio on the outskirts. There the boy learned that Lamine had arrived by patera and had moved to that town on Yunior’s advice. They had become friends in the south: one day, when Yunior was out for a walk leaving the Detention Center, he approached him, mistakenly thinking he was coming out of there too, and asked him some random question. They hit it off right away and kept in touch even after the Cuban moved north. Some time later, Yunior called him to say he had some «off the books» work near his town and that his wife was willing to rent him a studio under her name.

Tobías noticed at once that the flat was messy, neglected, and not very clean. He held back during the first visit. But on the second, almost by instinct, he started picking things up. There was already enough trust, so he said it outright: it couldn’t go on like that, it had to be tidied and cleaned. Lamine wasn’t offended. He let out a deep laugh that echoed through the small studio.

—I think you little bit girl —he said, still laughing—. Girls like that stuff.

—No… —Tobías replied, smiling too, his ears hot—. But a little order and cleanliness wouldn’t hurt. Can I do it?

—Really? —Lamine shrugged—. Well, better. If you want do it.

The boy picked up the clothes scattered on the floor, put everything back in its place, washed the dirty dishes piled in the sink, swept, and mopped. It didn’t take long. Lamine had almost no belongings, and the furniture was the basic four pieces you find in any rental. When he finished, he stood in the middle of the living room, contemplating his work with a satisfaction he didn’t know how to name.

—See? Now it’s much better —he said.

—Yes, thank you… thank you, really —Lamine answered, looking around as if he didn’t recognize his own home.

—You don’t have to thank me. I like cleaning, even if I’m not a girl. —He paused, playing with the rag in his hands—. But I ask you one thing. Can I take a shower?

—Of course. Clean towel in bathroom cabinet.

The bathroom was so narrow there was barely room in it. Tobías came out with the towel tied around his waist and finished dressing in the living room, still with his skin damp and water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders. He felt Lamine’s gaze before he heard his voice.

—You good ass —the man said, not taking his eyes off him—. Look like girl.

—Thanks —Tobías replied, and the heat rushed to his face at once.

—You like me say that?

—Well… —The boy adjusted the towel, buying time—. You complimented my ass. That’s why I thanked you.

Lamine laughed again, that deep laugh that seemed to come up from his chest, and he didn’t insist. But something had been said in the air of the studio, something neither of them dared touch yet.

Tobías walked back home slowly, and all the way he felt something different, a warm mix of pride and nerves. He was glad he had tidied and cleaned Lamine’s studio for him. He didn’t even know why it gave him so much satisfaction, but he was already thinking about doing it again at the first opportunity. He wanted to help him in any way he could. «His people already suffered enough,» he told himself, as if that childish idea he had read in a book were now the justification for something much more intimate.

***

From that afternoon on, they began seeing each other almost always in the studio. Neither of them had money to spare for bars. And without hardly noticing it, Lamine got used to the boy cleaning the house for him, washing his clothes, and tidying every corner. He left things where they fell, without bothering with anything, because it was convenient and because he came back exhausted from work. For him it was natural; for Tobías, a kind of privilege he would not have known how to explain.

The boy almost always ended the chore with a shower, and his ass had stopped going unnoticed. Lamine was struck by that pale, hairless skin, those firm round cheeks that stood in contrast to the rest. Every time he saw him come out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist, he followed him with his eyes without bothering to hide it.

—Every time you come out shower, I see your ass —he commented one afternoon, stretched out on the sofa with a beer in his hand—. White ass, good.

—Thanks, thanks —murmured Tobías, blushing, picking up the mop so he’d have something to do with his hands.

Lamine’s compliments, always aimed at the same part of his body, stuck in the boy’s mind. He repeated them to himself at night, without fully understanding why he liked remembering them so much. He realized, almost with shame, that he liked being liked by him. He noticed on many occasions how those dark eyes lingered on him when he bent down to pick something up from the floor, and he began to bend slowly, on purpose, pretending not to notice.

I just want to help him, he told himself. That’s all.

But it wasn’t just that, and deep down he knew it. Almost without thinking, he bought new, tight briefs and started making sure his pants showed off his ass properly before leaving home. He looked at himself from behind in the hallway mirror, twisting his waist, calculating the effect. Then he took his keys and walked toward the studio on the outskirts with his heart beating a little faster.

He went more and more often. He stayed longer and longer. And every time he cleaned that чужой flat, while Lamine watched him silently from the sofa, Tobías felt that he was slowly and willingly occupying a place he had spent years imagining without daring to name. A place at that huge man’s feet. Nothing had happened between them yet. But both of them sensed it, in every held gaze, in every whispered thank you, in every towel that fell a little lower than necessary.

That night, when he got home, Tobías undressed in front of the mirror and stood looking at himself for a long time. He thought about Lamine’s huge hands, his broken voice, the word «ass» spoken with that accent. For the first time in his life he understood that what he felt was not pity, nor a child’s curiosity, nor an idea taken from an old book. It was desire. And he knew, with a clarity that both frightened and relieved him, that the next time he crossed the door of that studio he would no longer be going there just to clean.