Pig's Foot (27 page)

They ate
spaghetti à la Napolitana
at a pizzeria near the Esquina de Toyo. Then, since it was Tuesday, the day when women were admitted free to cinemas in Havana, Grandfather took her to the Cine Valentino on the Esquina de Tejas which was showing
One Good Turn
with Laurel and Hardy. They enjoyed the film. At around five p.m., they began to stroll back up the Calzada del Diez de Octubre.

Stopping at a florist, Grandfather bought her a beautiful bouquet of flowers and Gertrudis told him they were beautiful and covered him with kisses. Someone in a passing car shouted, ‘
Vaya Negro fino!
’ while passers-by stopped and applauded, saying, ‘Well done. That’s the way to do it!’ Benicio slipped an arm around Gertrudis’s shoulders and they walked on up the hill. They turned and headed to the Lawton church which was just off the main street.

‘Where are you taking me, Benicio?’ In front of the church was a glorious, towering flame tree. ‘I’m taking you to the only flame tree I could find. The only one in the
barrio
.’ Gertrudis rushed over, hugged the tree and sighed. ‘It’s beautiful. Just like the flame tree in Pata de Puerco, remember? I wonder how everyone is back home? I wonder if . . . ?’

‘Forget all that, Gertrudis,’ said Grandfather. They stood in silence. Grandma Gertrudis asked what was going on. Grandpa sat down on a bench next to the flame tree and buried his head in his hands, as though he were tired or feeling ill. An old woman coming out of the confessional stopped and stared at the two strangers as a younger woman went in to confess her sins.

‘Are you feeling all right, Benicio?’

‘Listen, Gertrudis,’ my grandfather was trembling, ‘I brought you here to say that I can’t compose poetry like Melecio. I don’t know how to read or write. But there is one thing I do know, something I knew from the day I first opened my eyes: that you are the love of my life, Gertrudis. I would like to marry you. Would you do me that honour?’

Grandmother was pale. Grandfather slipped a hand into his pocket, went down on one knee and, still staring at the ground, he held up the ring. Gertrudis lunged for it and the ring flew into the air, then rolled down the street. They raced after it, finally catching up just as it was about to fall down a drain. Grandma gave a little laugh and then slipped the ring on to her finger.

‘Why are you shaking?’ said Gertrudis. ‘Your hands are all sweaty. Don’t tell me you were nervous.’

‘I was scared,’ said Grandfather.

‘You’re such a fool, Benicio. Were you really afraid I would say no?’

‘No. I was afraid that having blown all my savings, the cursed ring was going to roll down the drain.’

They laughed again. Then they kissed beneath the flame tree that brought back so many happy memories. The faint glow of the gathering dusk illuminated them. Suddenly, a soft breeze blew up and they felt a wave of joy surge through them. And that was all. No carrier pigeons, no sweet buns, no Matamoros and his Band. Not everyone realises that magic lies in simplicity. It’s something I have come to know only too well.

A moment later, they heard the celebrations. People came pouring into the streets with passionate excitement, singing, screaming, turning their music up full blast. From where my grandparents stood, they heard something like the sound of a baseball bat hitting a column. It could easily be somebody’s spinal column, my grandparents thought, or the six-foot column of a house. And then more screams. When they asked people in the street what the celebrations were about, they were told Machado had been toppled. He had fled the country for Nassau.

The festivities continued with their friends back at the laundry until the small hours. My grandparents’ engagement and the fall of Machado, two good reasons to celebrate. My grandparents were married a month later at Lawton church in the presence of their loyal friends Augusto García and Judío Alemán. The laundry didn’t close that night either.

The Homecoming

Time, as it does, went on passing. By now Machado was dead and the Jackal of Oriente had hanged the forty-four peasants in Santiago. The Pentarchy of 1933 had been dissolved, Batista had mounted the coup d’état that overthrew Grau San Martín and construction of the art deco López Serrano Building had been completed. The Hotel Riviera had crowned itself the first hotel in the world with centralised air conditioning and work had begun on the FOCSA Building which, for a time, would be the tallest reinforced-concrete building in the world.

I know I’ve just leapfrogged the rest of the 1930s, the whole of the 1940s and landed slap bang in the middle of the 1950s, but to be honest nothing that happened during that period is relevant to the story. Besides, I’m the narrator and I don’t feel like talking about it, and anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off. Fuck 1940 and its ‘progressive constitution’. I don’t want to argue about whether
chicharrones
are meat or espadrilles are shoes. I’m sorry? Did you say something? I already told you, I don’t want to talk about Carlos Mendieta, Miguel Mariano and that bunch of old duffers, so stop being such a drag or I’ll kick your ass out of here too.

Bueno
, we’ve just skipped from the part where Ernesto Lecuona was nominated for an Oscar, to Pérez Prado’s song ‘Patricia’ topping the American hit parade for fifteen consecutive weeks, a record unmatched even by Elvis Presley or The Beatles. All that stuff had happened when my grandparents decided to go see a doctor to find out why Grandma Gertrudis couldn’t get pregnant. They had been trying for a baby for a while by then. They tried during fertile periods when Grandma was ovulating, they tried at the full moon, but nothing worked. There came a moment when Benicio began to think it was his fault.

‘My milk is no good,’ he said sadly.

The blood that flowed through his veins, the blood of his father, was a curse, he said. My grandma said that if anyone was to blame it was her, that every time after they had sex, she would go to the bathroom to pee to stop Benicio’s sperm getting any farther. Benicio said she was crazy, insisting that he was to blame. Grandma insisted that she was. So they concluded there was only one way to find out.

The doctor first examined Benicio. He told him to masturbate and ejaculate into a little cup. Then he examined Gertrudis, touching and palpating her, something that infuriated Benicio who waved his arms, demanding to know what the hell he was doing; Gertrudis was his wife.

‘And I am her doctor, so if you could stand aside and let me do my job.’

Gertrudis begged Benicio to calm down and stop being so jealous.

Two weeks later, my grandparents received the sad news: they could never have children. Grandma Gertrudis had an obstruction in her Fallopian tubes, there was nothing to be done. This was followed by long weeks of grief and tears when Grandma locked herself in the bathroom and would not open the door, not even to God Himself. Benicio talked to his friends about his wife’s condition, about how worried he was. He asked their advice.

‘Love and affection,’ Augusto recommended. ‘Be loving and affectionate towards her, Benicio.’

But all his love, all his affection, were not enough to comfort my grandmother. Gertrudis felt that it was not worth carrying on. Her reason for living had died the moment the doctor gave his diagnosis. Her appetite and her sex drive dwindled. She forgot how to eat and how to fuck. For my grandparents, food and sex became something else, something unattainable, ineffable, something beyond action, beyond words. Simply undressing to put on fresh clothes was like flaying my grandmother alive. Grandma Gertrudis was really ill.

In the morning, she would refuse to go to work at the laundry. She would drink her coffee then lock herself in the bathroom. Benicio had run out of ideas. Then El Judío said, ‘Leave it to me,’ and he too disappeared from the laundry for several weeks. Augusto and Benicio now began to worry about the Jew as well. Nobody had heard from him. Nobody had seen him leave his apartment. One day, my grandfather went to his house. He lived in a rented apartment on the Calle Armas, in a dilapidated, ramshackle building. Grandfather peered through a chink in the blinds. El Judío was performing some sort of ritual. It was not exactly
santería
, though in the middle of the room there was an Elegúa altar on which lay the bloody carcass of a chicken; strewn on the floor and in the shrine were candles and sweets. There was also a large, thick tome lying in a corner of the room with the inscription
embossed in gilt on the cover. El Judío, dressed in black and white, was holding a candelabra.

He did not look like El Judío, but like some demon.

‘The devil has taken possession of El Judío,’ thought Grandpa and ran to tell Augusto. El Judío never meddled in such things, Augusto said; in all the years they had known each other, this was the first time he had performed a Jodío-Cubano ritual.

‘Jodío-Cubano?’ asked Benicio.

This, Augusto explained, was the correct term for a freakish fucked-up cod-Jewish part-Cuban ritual but asked Benicio not to use the phrase since it would only anger El Judío.

‘He is doing it because he loves you both. Even though we all know that a dead chicken and a few prayers from some old book will not change anything.’

Grandfather stared at the ground. Augusto came over and patted him on the shoulder.

‘Chin up,’ he said, and offered the sage opinion that life is shit. Then he turned back to his work.

A month later El Judío reappeared at the laundry. Grandpa Benicio and Augusto hugged him and told him he looked terrible. He had lost a lot of weight, his sleepless nights had left him with dark circles around his eyes which were further magnified by his spectacles. El Judío said that he had done all he could and that there was nothing to do now but wait.

‘Wait for what?’ asked Benicio.

‘For a sign,’ said El Judío.

A month passed.

‘Is Gertrudis pregnant yet?’ asked El Judío.

‘No,’ said my grandfather.

A second month passed.

‘Still nothing, Benicio?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s strange,’ said El Judío.

The truth was that neither my grandfather nor Augusto took El Judío seriously, and they were certainly not waiting for a sign or indeed anything to come as a result of his cunning ritual.

And yet, in the third month, something did happen. For years my grandparents had been sending letters to Pata de Puerco telling Betina about their new life. They had never had a reply. Nor did they expect one. And so they were extremely surprised when one morning a telegram arrived.

‘Come quickly,’ was Betina’s message. ‘I don’t have much time.’ My grandparents packed up a few things and caught the first train heading for Santiago.

When they arrived in Pata de Puerco, the village was exactly as they had left it, with the same communal well, the same flame tree, the same cemetery – though this last had increased in size to cope with the small thicket of wooden crosses planted in the earth. Having lived so long in the greyness of Lawton, the green of the trees seemed deeper, more intense. More than ever, the sun seemed to hurl its golden daggers. The sky was a dazzling, almost metallic blue, but for the most part little had changed since they left, except that now there was not a single familiar face.

To my grandparents’ surprise, people came out to greet them as though meeting with a living legend. At first no one recognised them. The villagers assumed they were travellers who had lost their way. Then someone shouted, ‘It’s Benicio – Benicio and Gertrudis!’ and suddenly children and adults began to pour from the houses and the shacks that still smelled of coal and kerosene. The villagers hugged them warmly, as though they were long-lost friends. Some were so moved, they had tears in their eyes.

‘Where is Ester the midwife?’ asked Benicio.

‘She died years ago,’ they told him.

‘And Juanita?’

‘Dead too.’

The Santacruzes, the Aquelarres, Señor and Señora Jabao, Eustaquio the
machetero
. They had all been cured of life and now rested in peace, lying face up in the cemetery.

They stepped inside the little shack where they had spent their childhood years. Memories were everywhere: in the wooden table bleached by time, in the bedrooms with no doors, in the chinks and holes in the walls through which my grandparents had peered as children. Benicio rushed to kneel by Betina’s bed.