Loving Che (17 page)

The woman in front of me seemed smaller and paler with every passing second. And I was caught inside conflicting thoughts and emotions. I leaned back and was silent.

I think my mother could help you, the woman said. What harm is there in trying? What harm is there in trusting?

I spent the following morning making arrangements to return to Miami. I had decided to leave a day earlier than I'd originally planned, but changing the date proved to be difficult. Frustrated and angry and tired, and once again disillusioned by this city, I collapsed into bed by mid-morning. I turned on the television and flipped channels. Finally, running out of distractions, I reached into my pocket and fingered the paper where the young woman had written down her mother's address.

That afternoon, after lunch in the hotel, I took a taxi downtown. The driver was a disagreeable old man who kept insisting on taking me to the French restaurant for lunch. There you will eat very well, he insisted. The downtown area, it is all for tourists only, no Cubans there. After a few minutes of this, I finally lost my temper and screamed at the driver to do what he was told. This outburst, so unusual for me, I instantly
regretted, especially because the disagreeable old man had managed to transform himself into a wounded creature whose eyes now and then darted in fear and sympathy to the rearview mirror. When he finally deposited me at the address I had given him, I tipped him almost 50 percent of the amount. He took the money with the same wounded expression and drove off without saying a word.

I found myself in the middle of a street so narrow that I thought it might be an alley, and instantly I feared that the odious driver had dumped me in some crime-infested corner of the city as punishment for my American imperiousness.

Just as I was about to walk in the direction of the sea-smell, I was stopped by a very old woman. She was brown and wrinkled and bent over, and I would have missed her entirely had it not been for her tugging on my skirt.

You are the one looking for Teresa de la Cueva?

Teresa de la Landre.

Yes, that is what she chose to call herself for you. She didn't want you to come looking for her.

Where is she? I said.

The old woman regarded me very closely, and I was reminded of Dr. Caraballo's intense scrutiny of my face. After a moment she said, Yes, of course.

Where is she? I repeated.

The old woman pointed up to a window in a dilapidated old building. This is where she worked. Maybe she told you something of her studio.

Is she up there? I asked.

The old woman smiled. Of course, she said. She is up there.

With labored steps, the old woman began to walk to the building. But I stayed in the street. I had come this far; I had spent two weeks in the new Havana without anyone's trying to pull a knife on me, without falling prey to any scam except for the dinner with Judi. Now what? What if I climbed the stairs after this fragile old lady, perfectly chosen for her fragility, beyond suspicion? What if upstairs a gang of toughs awaited? The old woman turned at the door. I stood in the middle of the street. The old woman watched me.

Trust me, she said. I have no reason to lie to you.

In fact, if someone had wanted to rob me, they could have done it right where I stood, the street was so quiet and deserted. And what if my mother. … My God—my mother; to say the words alone … What if my mother were upstairs waiting for me? But why hadn't she come down? Was she in a wheelchair? Was she in fact Caridad? My mind was a jumble of ideas, and I longed to run away from myself, from my insecurities and my cautions.

Finally, scarcely aware of my movements—when I think back on that day it was as if I had been half paralyzed by my longings—I took one step and then another until I reached the door where the old woman stood. Then together we climbed the flight of stairs. This time I had to wait for my companion, and the climb seemed endless. We turned one corner and then another and walked down dark hallways full of cooking smells until we stood before a door. The old woman fumbled with a
key, but the door wouldn't open. She went through a few other keys in her collection; still the door was shut tight. Finally, she knocked ever so lightly. There was silence, and then the sound of faint footsteps on the other side. My heart rose. The door opened, and the woman who had met me at the hotel the previous night stood before us. In her arms, she held a big package wrapped in white paper. She smiled without saying anything and then squeezed past us and was gone.

The old woman asked me to follow her inside.

The apartment was just a single room with a toilet, visible through a tattered curtain, in one corner. A hot plate had been set up on a pair of boxes. And all along the walls were leaned up painting after painting. The old woman was talking to me, but I didn't hear what she said. Slowly I began to walk along the walls. The paintings were sometimes piled three and four deep, and many canvases had begun to peel away from their frames. I looked back at the woman, and she nodded. I crouched down to the paintings and began to carefully sift through them. Some still lifes, an orange, cubes of color layered one on the other. Near a corner, I stopped at a painting marked “From My Window,” and when I pulled it forward, I saw that it was part of a series. The first was a daytime view from a window into a courtyard, done mostly in whites and grays except for a red window frame in the far left corner. The second was an afternoon view: dark shadow slanting across the bleached-out buildings. Then the same view in the blue of early night, the red window frame now a darker
smudge. The last painting was entirely black except for the reflection of a lightbulb on the window and the dark buildings beyond. I looked at this last painting for a long time before I caught, in the far right corner, the small image of a woman, her face turned slightly, her features blurred in the clouded mirror of the glass. Barely breathing, I moved in closer, but then the face lost all definition and all I could make out were the tiny strokes of color. I stood and looked from the painting to the old woman.

Where is she? I said, and my voice was almost a whisper.

The old woman stood by me for a while in silence, and then she walked over to the worn couch and sat down. She patted the seat next to her. The couch faced the apartment's one window, and when I sat on it, I recognized the view from the paintings. Is that her face? I asked. Where is she? The old woman was quiet. I looked around the apartment. Mold crawled up the walls. The ceiling, mottled here and there by water stains, had peeled away in parts, exposing the wood beams. The place had a feeling of sickness and death. And had it not been for the paintings, I would likely have fled, filled as I was now with a strange anxiety.

The old woman took my hand. She worked here for many years, she finally began.

Where is she?

The old woman continued, ignoring me. And even after her husband died, she kept this place. In the late seventies, it became harder and harder to obtain materials. Most of her friends had left for Miami. She used to tell me that she worked
not for the paintings themselves but for the smell of the oils, which took her back to happier times. She worked until she could no longer get her oils, and she switched to charcoal. But then paper became scarce. I watched your mother, unable to paint, go mad before my eyes.

The old woman stopped at the mention of my mother and looked at me for a while before continuing.

They had come for her husband, after the Bay of Pigs. That's when they were rounding up everyone.

He was arrested?

The old woman pursed her lips and nodded slightly.

I don't understand, I said. She told me he was traveling in Spain.

She told you this? When? In her letters?

She said he was in Spain when I was born.

The old woman looked at me for a while. And then shrugged. I don't know, she said. If she told you that … I don't know why … She was quiet for a while. And then she began again, What I understood was that Carlos had written something—I don't know.

Calixto?

Carlos. Calixto, he used both names. The woman continued, Something in a Spanish journal that got back to the authorities. Your mother took it very hard. After that, she would walk to her studio, to this apartment, every morning, work for a few hours and return home in the afternoon. Some days she was fine. Others, she was in her own world, talking to duendes, seeing ghosts.

The old woman was quiet then. She leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes. She kept them closed for such a long time that I thought she had fallen asleep.

My fingertips were cold inspite of the heat.

Who was my father? I asked

The woman remained still, eyes closed. Why would you ask that?

Did my mother know Che Guevara?

The woman opened her eyes and turned to me.

I looked around the room. Did he come up here? In this room? Didn't she paint him? Where are all the drawings of him? I know she made drawings of him.

The woman rose from the couch with some difficulty and walked to the window.

After a while she said, Your mother loved Che very much, yes, as we all did. But only from a distance. The old woman turned to me, and she was dark against the light coming in from the window. Many people loved him, men and women. Many people. But your mother never knew him. She would have told me. You must understand this.

The woman stepped away from the window. She poured water into a tin pot and set it over the hot plate. When it boiled, she stirred in the coffee. She returned with two grimy cups.

When she handed me my coffee, I noticed a spot of blue paint beneath her fingernails. She followed my eyes, but didn't say anything.

When things became very difficult, the old woman continued, Teresa had to give up her house. There is no sale of property here, as you know. She smiled. But in those years everything was for sale. I don't know who lives there now. My daughter goes to that neighborhood now and then. I've never been back.

I drank my coffee. Sounds came through the walls: a baby crying, a man coughing, faint singing.

These were difficult times for most of us, the woman continued. But your mother—she lived in her imagined country, this promised garden of ours. She wouldn't hear of shortages or hardships. She woke in the morning, rolled up her mattress and began painting. I used to envy her. Always it was left to me and my daughter to find what we could to eat. The old woman said this without bitterness. But her voice had grown softer.

Where is she now? I asked.

The woman didn't answer. She picked up my cup and rinsed it in the bathroom sink.

When she returned, I asked, Are you Teresa?

The woman smiled and looked at her hands. I paint now and then; I try to. Your mother had made friends with a Spanish couple who came every year, and they brought her acrylics. She left behind three boxes of them.

Left behind, I said.

The old woman was very quiet before continuing.

About a year ago, she said, Teresa set to work, sometimes for hours, on some writings. I asked her many times what it was she was writing, and I tried to look into her books now
and then. But she would get very angry with me. I realize now that she was writing this letter, or these letters, to you. It took her many months to finish them. I don't know how she got them to you, she didn't speak of it to me, but I suppose her Spanish friends took care of it.

In those months that she was writing, the woman continued, I had detected some of her old sadness. But I was absorbed in my own problems. We were three of us living in this little room. I wanted my daughter to do something, be someone honorable. The pressure now to have money … you can imagine what it is. At best they become waitresses in a jazz club. At worst … you've seen. How do you tell these young people that it's in their interest to study? What good is a degree? Learning for learning's sake, this is a fine idea. But it does nothing for hunger.

Last December, the old woman continued, your mother climbed to the roof, as she often did. You can see the whole of the malecón from there and at the end, La Cabaña, like a ghost fortress. Often, she would spend hours out there, in good weather even taking a small notebook for sketching. I returned from shopping in the late afternoon; I remember it was already getting dark. As the years have gone on in this country, simple tasks take longer and longer. And when you don't have dollars … well.

Here the old woman looked at me for a long time and sighed before continuing. My daughter was out at a dance rehearsal. I was surprised to see the room dark. But I turned on the lights and went about preparing dinner. When my daughter came
home and Teresa still had not returned, I sent her up to the roof to call her down for dinner. My daughter returned alone, saying Teresa was not up there. We waited a few more minutes and then, too hungry to wait anymore, we sat down and ate. It was unusual for Teresa to miss dinner. But not unprecedented. She was still very beautiful. And now and then there were nights when she didn't return and no one asked her any questions.

The old woman stopped and closed her eyes. After a moment, tears began to darken her lashes.

They found her body in the morning, the old woman said. The police didn't bother to come for a report.

Why?

The woman took my hand.

I don't understand, I said.

I felt, in my chest, the first pull of mourning. This woman who had put herself always beyond my grasp. Had her notes really been a fiction? An elaborate fable of her own life and death?

Why? I asked myself this question too, the woman said. It is natural to feel responsible. I was sorry for myself, too. Sorry that I hadn't done anything and now I had this terrible tragedy and I was all alone with it. And then as the days went on, I began to cry and couldn't stop. Crying not just for her, but for all the things I didn't tell her. Crying for this beautiful woman so broken by hoping.

I looked away. Late afternoon was settling.