Loving Che (15 page)

The woman, who had introduced herself as Judi, cooked furiously at the little stove as she talked. Forget education and equality and health care, she said, Without dollars in this country you're as good as dead. Which means you might as well bury yourself under a sidewalk at the Colon cemetery if you don't have family in Miami, if you don't know anybody in the counterrevolutionary Miami Mafia—and this last part she said with such a deep, brilliant imitation of Castro, complete with upraised finger, that I laughed. You look to me like a professional, Judi continued without letting me answer. You probably go to an office in the day, pay bills, see friends. Do you have any idea of the boredom we endure here? There's no police state here; that would at least be exciting. No, the police can't follow you around—once you got into a car, you'd leave their bicycles in the dust. Instead, they have anesthetized
us with boredom. Cuban days are the longest in all the world. Even work, such as it is, is boring. You could disappear for three months and no one would notice. All these new clubs and stores around here, do you think any Cuban can afford them? She let out an exaggerated sigh. Our entertainment consists of figuring out how to get enough food for dinner. She waited a beat before adding, And even this is boring. Judi continued in this vein for a while, her observations becoming more and more outrageous until I began to suspect that she was giving me a rather cartoon version of what she expected I wanted to hear, perhaps her way of paying me for my attention and generosity. I finally decided that her true thoughts were private and unknowable.

As she talked, I was quiet, not able to get one word in and also mesmerized by the volume of food that she was managing to furiously put together on her little stove. Little by little, as she talked, new dishes emerged, which she handed to her son without hesitating a second in her narrative. The rickety card table where the boy laid the dishes quickly was becoming crowded with salads and rice and black beans and stewed radishes and beets.

Over lunch, Judi became more serious, as if her story could afford to slow down now that she was finished with her manic cooking. She was only looking for the opportunity to leave, she said, though she'd never be so stupid as to take this poor innocent child on a raft. Thank God, she said, the rafter business had died down. Now and then, the Cuban wakes up for a little bit, Judi said, and it's like a sudden fever, all of a
sudden everyone has to get out. It's a kind of panic, as if someone had just yelled Fire! in a building. During the last rafter crisis, Judi said, I thought that I alone would be left in Havana. One morning, I passed by the statue of Marti in the park, and you know what they had done to him? Judi laughed. These Cubans, she said. From his outstretched arm, someone had carefully hung a large suitcase.

I parted from Judi and the boy with promises to return, though we all knew I probably wouldn't. Walking away from the building, I wondered how many other tourists had fallen for their delightful little game.

I found my way back to the hotel by asking people to point me in the direction of the malecón (a system I developed after a surprising number seemed to have no idea what the Habana Libre was) until I saw the top of the hotel rising over the rooftops. This first accidental interview had gone so pleasantly that I was emboldened to consider knocking on some doors. But by the time I returned to the hotel more than an hour later, the courage had drained out of me. I was also exhausted. So, promising myself that I would begin tomorrow first thing in the morning, I took the elevator to my room and fell asleep almost instantly, satiated and happy.

The following morning, I awoke full of energy, and wishing to avoid the omelet man, I decided to skip breakfast and get
right to work. I took the usual left out of the hotel and began once more to walk the streets of El Vedado. I was wandering about talking to myself and trying to decide where I should start when I found myself in front of a pastry store, Pain de Paris. The store was narrow and deep and one entire wall was taken up by glass display cases that held every kind of French delicacy: pink and blue petits fours, tiny fruit tarts, rows of baguettes. When the door shut behind me, blocking out the din of the city, and the smell of the place overtook me, I had the sudden unshakable feeling that the previous days had been a dream and I was just now sitting down to breakfast at the little cafe near the Place de la Concorde. I ordered a palmier and sat facing the street, hoping to force my mind around the incongruity of this place's existing in these streets.

The sky soon clouded over; it looked like rain. Instead of cursing the weather, I was suddenly grateful for something that would finally persuade me to take refuge inside someone's house. I left the cafe and crossed the street, and after stalling for a few minutes, trying to decide between a blue house or a gray one, I finally stepped up to the heavy door of a third house and knocked hard. I waited several long minutes. No one answered. I stepped back into the street and looked up; all the blinds were drawn and, in fact, the house looked deserted. Turning, I caught the eye of a woman looking at me from a high balcony in a house across the street. She waved over and I waved back. After a few seconds of this, she shouted for me to come in out of the rain.

I called up a quick thanks and she disappeared inside. I walked to the door and waited. After a moment, the door popped open and I was surprised to find no one waiting behind it, just a steep climb of stairs. It was then that I noted the rope that had been strung from the top of the stairs down to the door lock. The woman waited at the top with one end of the rope in her hands. To my astonishment, she was in a wheelchair. Make sure you shut the door well behind you, she said.

When I reached the top she nodded and introduced herself as Caridad and led me into a dark but tidy reception room. The contrast with the tiny apartment I had been in the previous day was striking. Though the apartment was in need of paint and some repair, its fine lines were visible everywhere. The floor was a light tile, marred only by a few tire marks from the wheelchair. Elegant wooden screens covered the window, shielding the rooms from the sun and leaving everything in a soothing half-light. The rain fell outside, muted through the window screens.

Late summer is like this, the woman said. It can rain at any time. She excused herself and rolled out into a back room and around a corner. I spent the next few moments scanning the room: the cane-backed rocking chairs, the dark polished armoire, the bookcase full of books in French, a small gallery of photos. These last, of course, instantly interested me, and I was about to stand and look at them more closely when Caridad returned with a tray holding two small cups of coffee and a plate of cookies that I recognized from the display case at Pain de Paris.

Those are my nieces, she said, following my gaze. I've never met them; they live in Miami—my brother's children. He has a house in Coral Gables and another one in France—somewhere on the coast, I think it is. Caridad set the tray down on a table in front of me and rolled over to the desk to pick up a photo. She brought it back to me. A little girl in pigtails standing in front of what I recognized as the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. Do you know this hotel? I asked. Caridad shook her head. I've never been out of Cuba, she said. She put the photo down on a seat and parked her wheelchair in front of me.

She was dressed in draped black slacks and a beautiful red silk blouse that exposed her collarbone. I could tell that she had once been striking. Her nails, which I noticed when she held the plate of cookies out to me, were carefully manicured and painted a deep glossy red that matched her blouse. She took a sip of coffee and regarded me for a moment. I thanked her for the coffee and the excellent cookies.

I've been watching you walk around the streets for the last couple of days, she said. I spend a lot of time out on the balcony—it's the only time I get to spend out in the sunlight. I figured you were looking for an address, but you didn't seem like you were in a hurry, like anyone was expecting you.

She leaned back and relaxed against her wheelchair as if she were reclining on a divan. I half expected to find a highball in one of her hands and a long cigarette holder in the other. She had such a languid way about her that I had a feeling of being almost hypnotized. After some time, I noticed that she
hadn't spoken in a while, and I took this to mean that she had asked a question that I hadn't heard.

I'm sorry, I said.

I was asking what it is that you're looking for, Caridad said.

I'm looking for a woman named Teresa, I said, hoping to catch a slight change in her expression that would tell me what my heart so wanted to believe: that this was the woman, that this was my mother, whom I had stumbled on so quickly and easily as if drawn by fate. But her face didn't register anything. And instead she said, Family of yours? My mother, I said. And then I added, Though I've no memory of her.

Caridad sat, reclined in her wheelchair. I see, she said.

The rain continued to fall outside.

Have you lived in this neighborhood long? I asked after a moment.

I was born in this very house, she said.

Did you ever know a woman named Teresa de la Landre? A painter? Her husband was a professor at the university. Calixto. Linguistics.

Caridad turned her eyes to the ceiling for a moment and then shook her head slowly. I know everyone who has ever passed through this neighborhood, she said. And I can tell you without any doubt that there has never been anyone by that name here.

Maybe she gave me a false name, I said.

Gave you? So you've talked with her, Caridad said.

No, not really, I said. And I began slowly to tell this stranger the story of my life.

By the time I was done, the rain outside had stopped and new sounds came up to us: the tires on the pavement, children out again and playing in puddles, their laughter coming up to us like tinkling glass.

Caridad sat for a while. I see, she said. I see.

I stood and thanked her for the coffee and cookies.

My son is at work now, she said. But he'll be here all day on Saturday. Why don't you come back for dinner.

I told her she was very kind, but that really—

Eight in the evening, she said. We'll expect you.

I walked some more of the neighborhood, stopping now and then beneath a balcony, trying to remember the one I had called up to all those years ago. When I returned to the hotel it was already getting dark. I decided to go straight to my room. I turned on the television and was startled when the image reconstituted itself on the screen and I realized I was watching CNN. So much of the last days had seemed like a dream, or like a travel in a remote universe, that the banal, inoffensive broadcast jolted me back to life. I spent the rest of the night making notes, finally falling asleep sometime past two in the morning.

I ate breakfast again at Pain de Paris, happy to be out of the hotel. I finished quickly and decided to get straight to work. The previous night I had worked out a plan that, to my surprise, was not difficult to stick to. With L as my dividing line,
I would begin on odd streets and visit every fifth house below L. The following day, I would take the even streets and do the same. The day after that, I would venture to the blocks above L. And then I would cross 23rd and do the same with the neighborhood around the Focsa.

This new plan reassured me; it seemed almost scientific, and I actually looked forward to the assignment I had given myself. The first house I knocked on was a little brown two-story row house. I knocked at the door for a long time and had begun to walk away, a little worried over my inauspicious start, when the door opened.

The woman who stood inside was very young and held a dishrag in her hand. She seemed impatient, and when I began to tell her that I was looking for a woman, an artist, named Teresa de la Landre, she immediately cut me off. I just moved in here a month ago. I'm from Güines and don't know anybody; I'm sorry. She gave me a thin smile and closed the door. I wasn't surprised. It was the treatment I had grown accustomed to in my previous visits—the same treatment I might expect anywhere in the world. I myself would never invite a stranger into my house. It was only Judi's and Caridad's hospitality that had thrown me off my original expectations.

This rejection, though, had the strange effect of encouraging me to continue; maybe I imagined that each rejection brought me closer to finding Teresa. So I continued down the streets, counting every fifth house. That first day, I made it inside only one house that reeked of urine. The old woman who answered the door and let me in was so overwhelmed by
the children she was trying to care for that I excused myself after only a few minutes, though I could see that she was hungry for adult company.

I spent the rest of the week in this manner, knocking on doors of every type, climbing the stairs to dingy apartments to wander hallways, asking everyone, anyone, Did you know of a Teresa de la Landre, a painter, a professor husband, a child? By the time the weekend arrived I was tired from the walking and the heat that yet lingered; and perhaps my exhaustion deepened a growing despair—again to walk the streets of a Havana lovely and sordid, offering up every florid variation of decay, every version of destruction, like a patient with a spectacular disease from whom one cannot turn away. I visited only two houses on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the afternoon lying face up on the bed in my room at the Habana Libre, watching the clouds drift by through the open window. I had scaled back my note taking and found myself more and more peering into little alleyways, poking around in small open garages, searching for the yellowed photographs of strangers.

At some point I must have fallen asleep, and when I woke the window was dark. I got up with a start—there was something to do. And I remembered dinner at Caridad's. I wasn't even sure if I could find her house again. Frantically I searched my notes for an address, and found none. I showered and dressed quickly and ran out the door. I expected to first find the Pain de Paris and then remember from there. But as soon as I turned down a street, I heard someone calling my name and looked up to find a young man standing on a balcony, waving to me.