Naked in Havana (20 page)

Before I could pull away he grabbed me, pulled my face towards him and kissed me. “I told you,” he said, “we’re meant to be together. It’s fate.”

I wrapped one leg around his thigh and kissed him back, pressing my face against his, my fingers tangled in his hair. When I pulled away there was a smear of blood on his cheek from my lip. The kiss left us both breathless.

“When will I see you again?” I said.

“I have to go away tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m getting out of town before your father gets back,” he said and grinned.

“I hear you’re running guns for the rebels.”

“People also say I’m spying for the CIA. It’s hard to know what to believe these days, isn’t it?

“How long will you be gone?”

“Until I get back.”

“Will you come back?”

“I always come back. I told you, I don’t have enemies. No one shoots at me because I’m on everyone’s side.”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said and got out of the car.

I managed to creep back inside the house without waking Maria. I watched from my bedroom window as he drove away. It had been the most terrifying, most memorable night of my life. I lay down on my bed, wondering how I was going to explain my bruises to Maria.

I ran my own bath, and stripped off my dress and underwear. When I stepped into the water I felt quite calm, but by the time I lay back and stretched out I was sobbing. An hour later I was still curled up on the cold tiles, shaking, unable to move.

Chapter 27

Two days later Papi got back from Miami. I watched from my bedroom window as he got out of the taxi in his Panama and white suit. Maria rushed out to meet him, took his case, ushered him inside. He glanced up briefly at my bedroom window. I knew from his face that he’d already heard what had happened, just as Reyes had said.

I sat in my room for hours, waiting for the summons that never came.

Finally I crept down the stairs. He was sitting on a cane chair in the patio with his cigars and his rum. Green parrots playing in the avocado tree, butterflies danced among the ferns. Rafa lay sprawled at his feet, the poor old dog had missed him.

Perhaps he intended to be angry with me, but as soon as he saw my face his expression changed. He rushed over and hugged me. “What did they do you?” He clung to me so hard it hurt. When he finally let go there were tears in his eyes.

He touched his thumb to my cheek. “Those bastards,” he said, and he didn’t apologize for using bad words. Instead he picked up a cane chair and threw it across the patio. Gaucho yelped and ran for cover inside the house.

“I’m all right,” I said.

“What were you doing out there?” he shouted.

“I was with Angel.”

“And he left you?
He left you?
”

I nodded.

“A true Macheda! Things get tough, they run.”

“I’m sorry, Papi.”

“Sorry doesn’t cover it, cariña.” He paced up and down, then threw his cigar at the wall. “He took you into the barrio?”

I nodded.

“Don’t tell me what you were doing there, I don’t want to know.”

“I shouldn’t have gone.”

He paced the tiles. “No, you shouldn’t have gone! What the hell were you thinking? How could you do this?” His anger evaporated as suddenly as it had come, and he threw his arms around me again. He held me close and I felt his chest heave, I realised he was crying. Oh, Papi, please don’t cry. That’s much worse than shouting. I can stand you shouting but not this.

“What were you doing with that boy, anyway? He’s getting married soon.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Are you in love with him?”

“I’ve always been in love with him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but there was never a right time.”

“If he had any respect he would have come to me first.” He stared into my face and I wondered how much he knew, or had guessed. “Did you sleep with him?”

“No,” I said. It was a lie but I told myself it protected us both, not just me. I had already hurt him enough. I couldn’t tell him all of it, I just couldn’t.

“I shouldn’t have left you here on your own. I’m away four days and everything goes to hell.” He started pacing again. “I believe we have our Señor Garcia to thank for your rescue.”

“I don’t know what would have happened if...”

“Why did he do this? Have you made any promises to this man?”

I shook my head. That much, at least, was true.

“Perhaps I’ve misjudged him.”

“Perhaps you misjudged me, too, Papi. I’m sorry. I let you down.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t let me down. It’s funny, you never knew your mother, you were still only a kid when she died. It’s a shame, she would have understood you better than I ever could. She was a spirited woman, just like you. When she was your age her father threatened to put her in the convent to save her virtue, stop her running around with the wrong kind of boys.”

“Which boys?”

“Boys like me. I married her because of her spirit, and you remind me a lot of her. Sometimes it makes me smile and other times it scares me half to death. I was hoping you’d be more cautious, a bit more like me.”

“I won’t ever disobey you again.”

“Yes you will. It’s in your nature, I know that.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Luis was covering for you all this time, is that it?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“I caught him stealing some of Mama’s jewellery.”

“When?”

“About a year ago.”

“You blackmailed him?”

“No, I helped him. I didn’t want him to lose his job. And I asked him to return the favour.”

“You
blackmailed
him.”

I supposed I did.

“They say he was in the movement,” he said.

“I don’t believe it. They’re making it up.”

“No, I don’t think so. It makes sense. He was poor, I heard his father was beaten to death on a sugar plantation when he was a kid. I don’t blame him. I don’t disagree with what these people are doing, just the way they’re doing it.”

“He’s dead, Papi. They beat him to death.”

He nodded.

“Do you think it was Luis that bombed the Left Bank?” I asked him.

“Luis?”

“It would have been easy for him to do. The police said they caught him at a rebel house on Calle 5 and there was bomb making equipment everywhere.”

“You don’t believe what the police say.”

“They lie about a lot of things but why would they lie about that?”

“I can’t believe that Luis would do something like that to us.”

I wasn’t sure anymore. He had been our driver for a long time but I had never really asked him anything about himself. How he must have despised me, lying to my father, shaming myself with Angel, blackmailing him to keep quiet about it. I suppose he had no cause to admire us.

After what Reyes had shown me in the old city, after everything he had said, I had started to look at Cuba and my life a different way.

“What were you doing in Miami, Papi?”

He went to the table, opened his cigar box, chose one and lit it. He watched the smoke drift upwards and then closed his eyes. Finally: “I was looking for a place for us to live.”

“But you said you’d never leave here.”

“That was before they bombed my club, that was before the police arrested my own daughter and threatened to rape her!”

“They didn’t touch me, Papi. They were just trying to scare us.”

“Look at your face. You tell me they didn’t touch you?”

What could I say to that? What a filthy little brat I was, how could I shame him this way? What had I done?

“This isn’t my Havana anymore,” he said.

“Are you leaving because you want to go, or because of me?”

“What do you think?”

“Don’t do it because of me.” I thought about Lansky. Was it him who planted the bomb, who had me arrested? I hated the thought of him getting his own way now, and I would hate it even more if Papi left Havana because of me. Cuba was in his veins. He would shrivel up and die anywhere else.

I watched him debate with himself, his hands opening and closing into fists. He said, “The repairs to the Left Bank are going to cost a fortune.”

“Lansky offered to pay for them.”

“I would rather take money off the devil.”

“What would we do in America anyway?”

“I don’t know. I would get only a fraction of what this house is worth now. It would be like starting again.”

“Just a little while longer, Papi. If you can stand it, I can. I’m not frightened.”

He turned around and hugged me with such ferocity that I couldn’t breathe. He stroked my hair. “I promise I’ll never let anyone hurt you again,” he said.

A few days after Papi got back from Miami, Rafa died. One morning we came down for breakfast and he was lying sprawled on the patio tiles, and we thought he was asleep, but when Papi went to pat him he was cold. He picked him up and wrapped him in a blanket, then he carried him out to the old ceiba tree in the front yard and buried him there. When he was done he sat there for hours, and none of us went near him. He didn’t talk for days. Another part of the
Vieja Havana
was gone, at least our part of it.

Papi cleaned up the damage at the Left Bank and re-opened with a fanfare, but the crowds were disappointing and it was never quite the same again. He never found another
bolerista
quite like Inocencia. I watched him grow older every day, it was as if the life and soul had been sucked out of him.

I had not heard from Reyes in weeks and I wondered where he was. I imagined him in the jungle somewhere, leading a line of mules loaded with crates of guns up some overgrown mountain trail, or slipping a barricade in some ancient fishing boat, loaded to the gunnels with rifles.

He didn’t believe in wars but he helped other men carry them on; he didn’t believe in Fidel or Meyer Lansky but he served them both. He lit votive candles for women he only half loved. He was an enigma to me and to everyone who knew him, perhaps even to himself.

For all his brash confidence I supposed that one day he would have his reckoning, too.

Chapter 28