Loving Che (13 page)

I next went to see Ileana, an aficionado of Cuban art, whom I knew through mutual friends. I hoped that she might have heard of an artist named Teresa who lived in El Vedado after the revolution. And if de La Landre wasn't her real name, I hoped at least that Ileana would be able to give me some clues as to who she might have been.

Ileana was working then at Vizcaya as a consultant to the curator. I sent ahead the parts of Teresa's story that I thought would most interest her and arranged to meet her at the museum the following Tuesday.

In her office, which wasn't in the main house but in a temporary trailer just outside the grounds by the service gate, Ileana told me that she had been intrigued by the excerpts of Teresa's story and was curious about the rest. She then pulled out some notes that she had taken. Unfortunately, she told me up front, she had no knowledge of an artist named Teresa working during those years. She had also made some inquiries with contacts in Cuba and though they were still asking around, they did not have any recollection that might be helpful to me. But this, she told me, did not mean very much. The times were very chaotic then, she reminded me, and many galleries and collectors had run into difficulties. Many of the capital's wealthiest collectors were often in a rush to leave, some afraid for their lives. As you may know, Ileana said, many hid their art behind walls. In other cases, some very fine collections were confiscated by the state. It was quite conceivable that an artist, even a very good one, could have been working in obscurity during those turbulent times, might even prefer to be working in obscurity.

She launched then into an account of her own education and her thoughts on Cuban art. The forties and fifties, she said, had given rise to one of the most exciting periods in Cuban modernism, as if all the turbulence of those years had been compressed and reinterpreted in lush palettes. This was the time of the greats: Wifredo Lam, Victor Manuel, Rene Portocarrero. There was also a woman, very well known at the time, named Amelia Pelaez. Ileana must have seen my expression change because she quickly added, But this couldn't have been your Teresa—I believe Amelia was into
her sixties by the time of the revolution, and anyway, she died in Havana in 1968. After a while, she continued, Amelia is a favorite of mine. She was born in my home province of Las Villas and when her family moved to Havana they settled in La Vibora, which is where my own family eventually settled. Perhaps we formed similar impressions of the world—or perhaps, Ileana said laughing, I'm flattering myself. No matter how hard we try to be objective and scholarly about art, one's favorite artists always end up saying more about one's own world than anything else. A friend of mine, she said, a melancholy sort, has long been obsessed with a painting by a Belgian contemporary of Rembrandt's named Michael Sweerts. The painting,
Burying the Dead,
has never appealed to me—I think it's static and gloomy in a rather melodramatic way—but to him it speaks to all our anxieties about death, and into the distant building he reads the classicism of Rome that might yet comfort us. Me, she said, I've never believed that redemption lies in the past. Ileana smiled.

Anyway, she continued, Amelia is a favorite of mine precisely because she was part of the movement then that was breaking with the past. Here Ileana stood and walked to her small bookcase. She took down a book, flipped through the pages and then held it out to me. I turned through the pages for a while. You can see the cubist influence, certainly, she said. But there is something else, an exuberance, that to me has always seemed particularly Cuban, even in our darkest times.
Amelia, incidentally, designed the plates at El Gato Tuerto, the legendary Havana nightclub where artists used to gather. I don't know if it's still there, Ileana continued. Are you planning to go to Havana? I would think you are. Maybe you can ask there. If you go, you should also visit the great artists' studio near the cathedral. It was opened in the early 1960s when Pablo Neruda persuaded his friend Che Guevara to provide presses and a studio for a group of printmakers. It's very easy to find; you can't miss it.

Ileana then drew me a little map and wrote down a name. If you go to Havana, you should get in touch with this man who runs the studio. Mention my name, she said; he's a friend. I always buy a few pieces from him when I'm there. Ileana talked a little bit more about the contemporary arts scene in Havana and then asked me if I would like a tour of the museum and the grounds. Having nothing else planned for the day and genuinely charmed by Ileana, I gladly accepted.

After my visit to Ileana, I began to consider her suggestion to travel to Cuba again. She had mentioned it in such a casual way that I felt a fool for not thinking of it myself. Often I wondered if it was really necessary for me to press forward with these desultory investigations into Teresa's life. But I had embarked on a quest that I now had to see through to its finish. And finally I knew that I must travel to Cuba again.

* * *

Before I left, I called Dr. Caraballo and reminded the secretary of the professor's offer to see me.

She received me some days later in her office, which was small but bright and decorated with framed cigar box covers. I found her tall and elegant and was surprised at how little I remembered of her. As she spoke, I noticed that she was studying my face as well. Still holding my hand, she led me to a chair and then sat down at her desk. The shelves behind her were stacked with books, every one of them, as far as I could tell, about Cuba. One long case held rows and rows of novels. The other two were crammed with history books, quite a few of which I recognized from my own growing collection.

A little disconcerting, isn't it, she said, following my gaze. One feels instinctively that they can't all be right.

I smiled at this. I was very happy to hear from you, Dr. Caraballo said. Of course I remembered you, or I should say I remembered your work. You were doing something on the writings of Marti, weren't you? I nodded. How he had invented the concept of the Cuban exile? She nodded back and then reached under some magazines to pull out a file. She began to go through the papers that I recognized asTeresa's story. I was very interested in this when you first sent it, she said. She looked up at me and was quiet for a while, and this time I had to look away from her gaze. I was quite interested, she continued after a time, because any new information on Che Guevara's life is, of course, of immediate interest. He is probably the best-known
Cuban in the world after Fidel, which should tell you something—our best-known Cuban turned out to be an egomaniac and our second-best-known Cuban was a foreigner. Is it any wonder we make such exemplary exiles?

She leaned back in her chair, laughing at her joke. When she had calmed, she shook her head and said, Well. I took a special interest, too, because I came to this country by myself when I was sixteen years old. Here Dr. Caraballo paused to look at me again, and I couldn't decide if it was my features that interested her or if she was trying to read some lie in my face. I lived in Indiana for some months, she continued, still studying me. It was fine until winter arrived. It wasn't just the cold, which was bad enough, but the darkness, that afternoon gloom of which we are completely ignorant in the tropics.

She paused for a time before continuing. I was reunited with my parents the following year and we moved to Miami. But I think I can understand that feeling of vastness at your back that you described in your letter. I can understand how in the absence of a past, one might be tempted to invent history. Dr. Caraballo looked at me very closely. In this sense, I cannot agree with your Teresa when she likens history to personal events. The world is much bigger than ourselves, though it is pleasant to think it might fit in the space of our fist.

I wondered if she was accusing me of having written Teresa's account myself, but not wishing to seem paranoid and thereby magnify the perception of guilt, I only nodded as if I agreed. I expected Dr. Caraballo to continue, but she sat looking at me with a curious expression. I was then at a loss and,
my usual shyness overtaking me, I mumbled some thanks and asked if there had been a specific reason she had wanted to see me, other than to extend her kindness, which she had done and which I was grateful for.

Well, Dr. Caraballo began, I wanted to see you, of course. And also, I didn't want to disappoint you in a letter. You were a very good student, as I recall, your research always impeccable. She leaned forward on her desk. Perhaps you know that a woman named Lilia Rosa Perez gave birth to a child of Che's in the early sixties, 1963 or 1964. Dr. Caraballo paused, and I could tell she was waiting for a reaction to show itself across my face. No, I said, I didn't know that. Dr. Caraballo nodded. The child was a boy, she said. You know, Lilia had met Che in Santa Clara—I think that would have been 1958—and then again at La Cabaña. You have to admit, she said, that La Cabaña is a likelier place than El Vedado to make the acquaintance of a revolutionary.

I leaned back in my chair. You are saying the story is a lie? I said. Dr. Caraballo shrugged and said, Does it matter to you? I didn't respond. There are some errors in the dates, she said. Omissions. Maybe this isn't important to a love story. I don't know. Myself, she said smiling, I would have liked to have seen something about how we have Mr. Guevara to thank for introducing Soviet-style prisons to Cuba. I'm sorry, Dr. Caraballo continued, more serious, I'm not here to dash whatever hopes you had. I don't know anything about you. But it was difficult for me to read about that man as a lover; it was difficult to see his photograph. I wanted to help you in any way I could, but if you really want my opinion, I'm afraid that what you
have here is an impossible reinvention of history, a beautiful fraud.

I was quiet. After a moment, she stood and I stood also. She walked to me and looked at my face again for a long time and then, to my shock, she reached over and ran her fingers over my forehead. Your forehead protrudes, she said softly. And I, beginning to sweat, thanked her again and, wishing to save her dignity as well as my own, walked out as quickly as I decently could.

So often in Miami I have departed from a friendly conversation with a lingering chill, as if some malignancy ran beneath the surface. So often, as I did with Dr. Caraballo, I had the sense that the person chatting so pleasantly with me was only waiting to be offended, to detect in some innocent or ignorant statement a secret adherence to repellent beliefs.

Perhaps what unsettled me was the suspicion that the professor might be right; that Teresa's story was impossible. My plans already set, however, I had little choice but to depart for Cuba a few days later.

On Ileana's suggestion, I had applied for a visa to travel legally to the island, something I had never bothered with before. As family, I listed “Teresa de la Landre, address unknown.” And to my surprise, the visa was granted.

I was to travel by charter flight from Miami to Havana and was advised to be at the airport at least four hours before the scheduled departure time. I took a cab to Miami International
and when the driver asked me where I was traveling, I told him, without thinking, Havana. I watched his face change shape in the rearview mirror and sat still as he went on a tirade about giving money to Castro. I explained that I didn't plan to spend very much, that I wasn't a tourist and that I was only trying to find my mother. This last mention seemed to calm him, and after a while he said in a softer voice, This has been the worst legacy of the Cuban Revolution, this tearing apart of families. His own son, he said, was still in Cuba with his mother. He hadn't seen him in fourteen years. When I got off, the driver helped me with my luggage and kissed me farewell on the cheek.

Inside the terminal to which I'd been directed by the agency, I found no evidence of a flight to Cuba. Everyone I asked, from porters to ticket agents, looked me up and down before answering that they had no idea. I felt, after a while, as if I were asking for directions to the nearest porn emporium.

After a few anxious minutes of wandering around the concourse, I spotted some stairs and decided I had nothing to lose by descending. It was so dark that at first I could barely make out the throngs of people standing in line below.

Over the next several hours, the line shifted, bulged, thinned, but never seemed to move. People came and went as if they had been standing there simply for the experience. The whole thing had such an air of unreality that I began to wonder if I had lost my mind. Then, just one hour before the flight was scheduled to depart, the line acquired a sudden orderliness, and it occurred to me that most of these people were
used to the drill. My anxiety gone, I could now concentrate on the conversations around me. In front of me stood a group of trim and distinguished older people who I came to decide were professors. One appeared drunk, though not vulgarly so. She was the most animated of the group, and I couldn't help staring at her as she excitedly discussed all the fabulous places they would see, the fabulous architecture and the fabulous people. There then ensued a discussion of the ingredients of a
mojito,
which I felt tempted to enter into before thinking better of it.

Behind me stood a dour couple with a young boy I took to be their son. The three were dressed in very new and very bright clothing, and I decided that they were Cubans returning from a visit with their Miami relatives. They didn't talk very much and when they did it was in barely audible whispers. Like most of the other travelers, they were burdened with large and obviously heavy bags. But theirs had been wrapped in plastic by those semi-hucksters who've proliferated across airports in the last years.

These sealed shabby bags, looking rather like shrink-wrapped rags, attracted the attention of the professors. They discussed the odd-looking bags among themselves for a moment before one of them stepped forward to ask the family outright why they had wrapped their bags in plastic. The man shook his head to indicate that he didn't understand, so the happy professor asked him in Spanish. The man looked at his wife and she shook her head and whispered something, holding her son very close to her. The man shrugged and shook
his head. No reason, he said in English. The woman insisted, But I just don't understand. What is the purpose? No purpose, the man said, no reason, no problem. The woman began to insist again and the man behind me simply turned his back and began to talk to his wife in a low voice. I couldn't even be sure what language they were speaking.