Naked in Havana (4 page)

“It’s true.” I searched his face, looking for the Angel I knew. “We’ve known each other since we were little. You know how I felt about you.”

“Did I? You’ve kept me dangling on a string since the first time I tried to kiss you. How old were we? Thirteen? You never loved me till now, you were just playing with me.”

“I was a virgin before you.”

His cheeks turned bronze with shame, but he put a brave face on it. “I’m sorry, Magdalena.”

“You knew, didn’t you? When you took me to bed, you knew about this!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t want people to know about us any more than he did.

He spread his hands, a helpless gesture. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought...I thought it was what we both wanted. I didn’t know you wanted to marry me. How was I supposed to know that?”

“You think I’m just a whore?”

“I thought you’d get over it.”

“But I love you!”

“I told you, this isn’t about love. This is about marriage, this is about children and families and connections. “

“You sound just like your father.”

“Hey, don’t say anything about my father. He’s a good man, he’s going to come out of this all right. He’s looking out for me, which is more than...”

“Go on, say it.”

He held up his hands in surrender, knew he had gone too far.

“I despise you. You’re a coward.

“And a minute ago you loved me. I haven’t got time for this. I’m sorry, okay, but you’ll be fine. This time next week you’ll have forgotten all about it.

“I wouldn’t have done any of it if I didn’t think you loved me.”

“My father wants me. I have to go.”

I looked around, saw a big man with a Montecristo clamped between his teeth waving him over. I watched Angel’s father wrap an arm around his son’s shoulders and draw him in to his circle of cronies while I stood alone on the top of the steps enduring my humiliation a second time.

Our talk hadn’t gone at all how I had imagined it, and I wanted just to escape somewhere, but then there was Angel’s sister, Lourdes, walking up to me and shouting my name as if I were her best ever friend. “Magdalena! I’m so glad you could come. Dios
mio
, look at that dress. You look so beautiful!”

I was too choked to speak.

“Angel is getting married! I can’t believe it. If it was anyone, I thought it would have been you,” she added, driving another stake through my heart.

She must have seen the look on my face. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. I’m really excited for him. What’s she like, this girl? I hope she’s passionate enough for him. You know now flighty Angel is. He needs a challenge.”

“Well, she’s certainly pretty enough. And her family is so rich! They own half of Florida. I can’t wait to go to Miami. They’re going to make Angel a partner in their property company! I hope you won’t miss him too much.”

You spiteful bitch.
“Well, there’s plenty of young men in Cuba who have been begging to take me out. I won’t be lonely.”

I saw some of my old school friends, they were all headed towards me now. Havana is a small place, and everyone knew Angel and I had been seeing each other. I couldn’t bear it. I made some excuse and hurried into the house to get away from them.

The Macheda mansion was gaudy to the point of excess, designed by Angel’s great-great-grandfather. The entrance hall had two large windows with stained-glass scenes of knights and maidens. Every ceiling had pastel friezes of angels and cherubs as if the architect thought he could outdo heaven. There were gilt-framed oils on the walls.

A century ago, the Machedas thought they could buy their way to respectability. Now they thought they could marry their way to notoriety.

I took a flute of champagne from a passing tray and tried to hide behind a potted fern. I stared through the window, watched a red Pontiac pull up in the forecourt. Angel came down the steps with his father to greet these latecomers. A man dressed in a white suit got out, followed by a glamorous woman in a pill box hat who looked like Jackie Kennedy.

Now here was Angel kissing some red-headed girl with freckles. This cannot be her: this flat-chested sparrow just cannot be the girl he will marry instead of me.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Consuela Caballero, another old school friend. “If a girl’s got money, she doesn’t need big tits,” she whispered.

“Is that Esmeralda Salvatore?”

“Not much to look at, is she? But who cares when your father owns half of Miami?”

Chapter 5

I couldn’t bear it. Consuela and I went into the courtyard and looked around for someone to talk to, but there was just some senators and their wives, a few of Batista’s people, no one who wasn’t twice our age.

Except that man there.

I had never seen him before. He wasn’t as old as my father, but he was certainly older than Angel and his friends. He looked like a boxer, rugged rather than handsome. He had a pencil-thin moustache and wore a powder blue shirt with a sharp, white linen suit. He was smoking a thin cheroot.

People were stealing glances at him, like they were not sure if he had been invited. The men moved a little aside--none of them went to shake his hand, while the younger girls looked at him like lions examining their dinner. He seemed amused by the whole affair. He tapped a waiter on the shoulder, refused the offer of a champagne, and whispered something to him. The waiter returned with a glass of rum and ice.

He caught my eye and stared at me in a sardonic way that made me think that either my nipple was showing or my mascara had run. I fidgeted and looked away. When I looked back, he was still there and still looking.

He took off his sunglasses with one practised sweep and gave me the benefit of his smile. His eyes were ice blue.
Dios mio
, here was a tomcat on the loose. I gave him a look of utter disdain and turned away.

“Who is he?”

“That’s Reyes Garcia,” Consuela said. “I can’t believe he showed up here.”

“I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

“Lourdes thinks he’s Cuban, but if he is, no one’s ever heard of his family. I heard he’s running guns for the Fidelistas, or that he has something to do with the Americans--the CIA. Don’t talk to him. They say he can talk a girl’s pants off in ten minutes.”

“Why? He’s not that good-looking.”

“Are you kidding me? He’s outrageous. And they say he has the most enormous...you know.”

“He probably started the rumour himself. I bet he’s just another down on his luck gambler. He doesn’t look much to me.”

“Well, my father said to watch out for him.”

He was still looking at me. I felt my cheeks burn. He started across the courtyard towards us.

“He’s coming over,” Consuela said, and quickly put a hand to the neck of her dress and pulled it down a fraction. “Breasts out and smile,” she whispered.

But he didn’t get that far. Halfway across the room someone shouted out to him and pulled him into their conversation.

Consuela sighed. “Men! They ruin everything.”

She wandered off to talk gossip to some other girls. I was about to follow her but hesitated. I couldn’t take my eyes off this brute in the powder blue shirt. I didn’t understand why. His only redeeming feature as far as I could see were those piercing blue eyes.

I took another champagne from a passing waiter and wandered closer, listened in on the conversation. I didn’t know any of the men, none of them were friends of my father. They were talking politics as usual, which bored me. No one ever talked about anything except Castro and Batista and the rebels these days.

But this time I stayed to listen.

“Do you think the rebels will take Havana?” someone said.

“They’ll never take Havana! They can have the mountains, they can even have Santiago and Santa Clara if they want, but the Americans won’t let them in here.”

“I hear Fidel has revolutionary squads all over the city.”

“There’s no support for him in Havana! They’re contained in the Sierra Maestra. Since the latest offensive in March, there’s no problem in the city.

“It’s just a few students without arms or training causing all the trouble. Batista will finish them off before the New Year.”

“If he doesn’t, Coca Cola will!”

They all laughed at that, and then one of them turned to the man in the powder blue shirt, smoking the cheroot.

“What do you think, Reyes?”

He took off his sunglasses. It was a trick, I realized. He kept his eyes hidden, only revealed them to charm or to threaten whenever he wanted to. And now here was that deadly smile. In a moment he had changed from a boxer to a movie star.

“What do I think? I think I heard a bomb go off this afternoon.”

They all fell silent.

“They felt it in Galiano street,” he went on. “Although three Cuban cleaners in the Bacardi offices won’t be feeling anything any more, and half a dozen more walking past in the street won’t walk past anything ever again.”

“Anyone can plant a bomb. It doesn’t mean they’ll take over Havana. The Americans won’t ever let that happen.”

“Won”t they?” Reyes smiled. There was some uneasy shuffling of feet. “If you believe America can really order the world around to its liking, then I fear you may be a little misguided.”

“But Eisenhower has billions invested here.”

“Well you know what they say about investments, gentlemen: If it’s high return, there’s high risk. And it seems to me that Havana is about the riskiest place to make a dollar right now.”

“There have been rebels fighting the government for as long as anyone can remember,” one of the men said. “It’s part of our culture. As you would know if you lived here, Señor Reyes.”

“What is it exactly that you do here anyway?” another man asked him.

“Whatever turns a profit. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t care for politics and I don’t much care for wars, but there’s money to be made in both. The only side I’m on is mine.

“You must believe in something.”

“I’m the only cause I’m dedicated to, and that’s true of all men, I believe, if they’d only be honest about it.”

“Is it true you were arrested in Miami on a murder charge?” another man asked, and there was a deadly silence.

Reyes fixed the man with a blank stare. “Everything you hear about me is true, even the lies. But it’s too fine an afternoon to be talking about politics.” He put his sunglasses back on. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get myself another drink. I find the service here is rather slow.”

After he’d left, the men smoked their cigars and turned to each other with sour looks on their faces, all their previous bonhomie evaporated. A few of them muttered about him under their breath. She heard what they said, and none of it was kind; half of them called him a communist, the others said he was a spy, and all of them said he was an opportunist who’d sell his own grandmother to make a profit.