Naked in Havana (14 page)

“Really? I heard you were smuggling guns to the
rebelde
.”

“Well I understand guns, I understand tanks--that’s war, and there’ll always be wars. But this makes no sense to me. How’s Amancio?”

“Papi is home now but he’s still not himself, he just lies in bed all day. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“He’s lucky to be alive.”

“He’s very lucky. And I know if he was here he’d like to thank you for your part in his luck.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t do anything. I just carried you out, princess. That doesn’t make me a hero.”

“Everyone else ran for the door. You didn’t.”

“Well, I guess I’ve seen bombs go off before.”

He stared at the worn stone flag under his feet. I had never seen him morose, had never thought him capable of deep feeling. It only intrigued me more.

“I don’t understand. Whoever did this, what did they get from it? Our
bolero
singer never walks again, my father loses his club, and now Batista will resign and get out of Cuba. Is that what they think?”

“Do you know what this war’s about, princess?”

“Politics.”

“Politics? Do you know what that word means?” he said.

When I shook my head, he stood up and said: “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He led me through the brute streets of Trocadero, Ánimas, and Virtue Street, a huddle of rundown one-storey tenements called
solares
. Cheap women beckoned from the windows, and men with sullen expressions watched us from the doorways. I took his hand and held it tight. I was not about to let go until we were out of there.

I had only ever seen this side of Havana from the car. With the feel of leather upholstery on my back it seemed so far away. That day, breathing the stink and danger of it, was the first time Magdalena Fuentes lived in the same city as the blacks and the
mestizos
. Suddenly it was real.

Reyes pointed out a shabby building with broken shutters on the windows and a down-at-heel prostitute lounging in the doorway. “See that
solare
over there?”

I nodded.

“It’s where I grew up.”

“You’re really from Havana?”

“My father’s a yankee but my mother was from Santa Clara. She met him when he was here on shore leave. He fell in love with her, jumped ship and hid out with her family. Never went back. Me, I got out of here when I was sixteen, went to Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He still had family there.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“There were three of us. I was in the middle. My kid brother’s still in Florida. My older brother’s with the rebels in the mountains, or that’s what they tell me. Don’t suppose I’d recognize him anymore.”

“What happened to your mother and father?”

“Ma died, that’s why I left. I don’t know what happened to the old man. Drank himself to death I suppose. I never heard from him again after I left.”

“Did you try and find him?”

“What’s the point? All he ever did was drink cheap rum and beat the Jesus out of his wife and kids.”

“So why did you bring me here?”

“I brought you here so you’d understand why they bombed the Left Bank. It’s not because your father’s a bad man, he’s not. But he’s still the enemy as far as these people are concerned, so are you, and so am I. Sure, they hate Batista and the secret police and the corruption. But it’s the clubs they hate more. Five minutes from here there’s tourists drinking
mojitos
that cost more than they make in a month while they drink filthy water from a tap they have to carry home in a bucket. Your father may not like Batista any more than them but it doesn’t matter one hot damn to the people down here, and even less to the
barbudas
in the mountains.”

“And that’s why Inocencia is never going to walk again?”

“I don’t condone it, princess. I’m just trying to help you see the situation. Lanksy and Salvatore and the rest of these mobsters think they can do what they want here and these poor bastards don’t matter. But now they’re fighting back. Fidel took a stand against the mob bosses--
gangsterismo
he calls it--and he’s kept them at arm’s length. That’s made him a national hero everywhere but the yacht club and the Tropicana.”

“But the rebels can’t win?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. A few months ago the United States government withdrew its support for Batista and embargoed a large shipment of weapons. They can’t get tanks or rockets anymore, so every one the rebels destroy can’t be replaced. Fidel’s
barbudas
are well organized, and they know what they’re fighting for.”

“But the newspapers say he’s winning.”

“That’s because Batista controls the newspapers.”

“So Fidel could be our next president?”

“Possibly.”

“And these people here think he can change things?”

“Oh, he’ll change things all right. I’ve talked to him and his brother and guys like Che-- they’re all crazy. What difference will they make down here in the
barrios
? Not much, that’s my guess. People here think Fidel will give them a piece of the action but he won’t. They’ll still be poor, same as before. There just won’t be any rich.”

“Papi still tells me everything’s going to be all right, that it will all blow over.”

“Well of course he does, he’s trying to protect you. He doesn’t want you to worry, so he lies to stop you from getting hurt, same as you lie to him. Isn’t that right?”

I wanted to get out of there. I saw a rat scuttle into the shadows. Then right there on the cobblestones I saw a smear of chicken blood, a beaded necklace, the stub of a cigar. There was a little black doll lying beside it.

“Voodoo,” Reyes said.

A group of men started following us down the street.

“Are we safe here?” I asked him.

He drew back the jacket of his tailored white suit and showed me the Smith and Wesson revolver tucked into the waistband of his pants. “Pretty safe,” he said.

“Do you always carry a gun?”

“Always.”

“They say you killed a man in Miami.”

“I killed two. Which time are we talking about?”

She looked up at him. He was serious.

“Look, princess, everything you hear about me is true, even the things they make up. But I’ll tell you this. I don’t hurt anyone unless they try to hurt me. But whatever anyone’s said about me, I don’t care, because whatever it is, it’s never that far wrong.”

“My father doesn’t like me even talking to you.”

“If I were your father I’d tell you the same thing. I’ll never be good for your reputation.” He stopped, drew on his cheroot, and took the revolver out of his waistband. He turned around and levelled it at the men behind us. They scattered. He put it back in his waistband and kept walking as if nothing had happened. “You don’t fit here, do you, princess? In Havana, I mean. You’re daddy’s little girl, but you’re also passionate and hot-blooded. It must be a tough balancing act. You try to be a lady for him, but you’d like to be a
bolerista
or a dancing girl for an hour or two now and then. You want to be good but there’s a part of you that’s bad to the bone. You think you have everybody fooled, and you have…
almost
everyone anyway, but that just makes you feel even lonelier, so sometimes you just don’t know what to do with yourself. So you just keep smiling for daddy and smiling for your friends, and no one ever knows who the hell you are, you least of all.”

I stared at him. He had just surmised every feeling and every thought I had ever had in the last twelve months. “Am I supposed to applaud?

“Am I right?”

“Not in the least. I thought you were a clever man but you don’t seem to know me at all.”

“You’re not a virgin either, are you?”

Dios mio.
I couldn’t believe he’d asked me such a question.

“Oh, come on, don’t pretend you’re shocked, we both know you’re not. But I bet Angel didn’t know the first thing to do with you.”

“Every time I think I’m getting to like you, you say something vulgar and stupid to make me despise you.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Why?”

“Because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. First time it’s ever happened to me. I don’t believe in all that hearts and flowers nonsense. There’s been a lot of women in my life, so I don’t know what’s so different about you, but something is, and I can’t make any sense of it.”

“Well let me know when you’ve worked it out, but I won’t be holding my breath.”

“You know why you chase that boy? Because you’ll never catch up with him. That’s his attraction. While you’re running after him, you’re in control. You think you’re unhappy about all this, but you’re not. You ever fall in love,
really
fall in love, it would scare you so much you’d run till your feet bled.”

I flung his hand away. I would have turned and walked off then and there, but I couldn’t do that in the
barrio
and he knew it. He grinned at me and that riled me even more. I hated him so badly right then I wanted to kick him in the shins.

An old woman was sitting on a stool on the cobblestones outside one of the tenements, puffing on a cigar, a live rooster wrapped in a shawl on her knees. She saw us squabbling and started to chuckle. “How much did you pay for her?” she said to Reyes.

“Two dollars. Do you think it was too much?”

“No, I think you both got a bargain,” she said, and that seemed to amuse her even more.

I didn’t like what he’d said about Angel, and I sulked all the way back through the cobbled lanes of Obisco. Finally I saw the familiar, wedding cake exterior of the Hotel Inglaterra. There was the comforting smell of tobacco from the Partagas cigar factory. This was the Havana I knew.

There was a radio playing somewhere, tuned to an American station: “Peggy Sue.” I started to regain my composure.”

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked.

“Why should I be mad at you?”

“Because I told you the truth about your boyfriend. What’s his name - Angel? The most unlikely name for a career opportunist I ever heard. Come on, I didn’t mean anything by it. Let me buy you a coffee.”

We went to the Plaza Hotel near the Parque. The Plaza was elegant, one of the city’s oldest hotels. Men stood at the bar drinking espressos, their cigar smoke drifting towards the ceiling fans.

I sat by the window watching the shoeblacks, a fat man in a white best and a battered straw hat with a wheel for sharpening knives. A woman in a bright orange turban was selling sugar cane juice from a cart that had lost two of its wheels.

Reyes sat close. I could feel his knee touching mine under the table but I didn’t try to move away. I liked it. His shirt was open to the second button, and I stared at the knot of dark hair at his throat. I thought about that glimpse I’d had of him, naked, in Inocencia's bed. I imagined, just for a moment, what he might look like in mine.

Be careful, Magdalena, hadn’t Papi warned you about this man?
But then he didn’t like Angel either. Perhaps it would always be like this--I would always fall in love with unsuitable men.

“You dance well.”

“So do you,” he said.

“No, I just followed you. I’ve never danced tango before.”

“Tango is all about the difference between a man and a woman. You allow, I suggest. That’s all. If we dance badly, it’s the man’s fault; if we dance well, it’s because you’re a beautiful woman and a wonderful dancer. You see? It’s a connection that allows the woman the freedom to be herself. You feel what I’m going to do but I must feel how you will do it. It is different for everyone. Some of it is practice, some of it is experience, and some of it...” He stopped and their eyes locked. “Some of it is knowing something about the woman that no one else knows. Can I come close to you without stepping on your toes? Do I lean on you, do you lean on me? The secret is to come close without locking together. It is not about steps and clever tricks, but connection. It’s a little mysterious, in fact. If you find just one partner like this in this life, you are lucky and you’ll never want another.”