That morning, the tension on the streets was palpable. José Antonio Echeverría had been murdered a few days earlier. ‘Manzanita’, as Echeverría was known, had already taken many beatings, but he had gone on fighting and in 1957, after leading students storming the Presidential Palace and the headquarters of Radio Reloj, he was cornered by a patrol near the University of Havana and gunned down. Things were spiralling out of control, people started to shut themselves up in their houses, they were afraid to go out. Some stooge had grassed up the M-26-7 sympathisers in Lawton and the cops were out looking for them with orders to shoot to kill. They searched print shops, bodegas, grocery stores and shoe shops, investigating, poking around, putting pressure on people to find out where the meetings were being held, where the posters were being printed. And that’s how it happened that seven men in plain clothes, sporting the sort of hats worn by mobsters in movies about Al Capone, turned up at the laundry. By chance, my grandparents had stayed at the house, leaving me in the care of Judío and Augusto.
‘Judío, grab little Oscar,’ Augusto said to his friend when he saw the cars draw up outside. El Judío popped his head above the counter and then took me out the back.
‘How can I help you?’ said Augusto. The men pushed past him and started rummaging through everything, tossing things on the floor. It didn’t take them long to find the posters in an empty washing powder drum.
‘Found them,’ said one guy.
Four starving dogs appeared from nowhere. One of the men who had stayed outside drew his gun, flicked the safety catch and fired. Judío and Augusto jumped. One of the scampering dogs fell dead, its body skidding across the pavement; the other three bolted as Augusto watched helplessly.
The man who had fired walked over to the dead dog and kicked it. He was a tall, blond guy with a moustache that made him look like Errol Flynn, and he was smoking. He ducked as he stepped into the laundry, like he was afraid of hitting his head on the doorframe, then smiled as though he had just pulled a prank.
‘Hey, Augusto, you know what this means, don’t you?’ said the guy, obviously in charge. El Judío, meanwhile, was trying to sneak out the back door with me in his arms.
‘Hey, hey, where d’you think you’re going? Get the fuck back in here, I’ve got business with you too,’ said the boss and his men pushed Judío back into the laundry. The man turned back to Augusto. ‘Now listen up, don’t think we don’t know what you’ve been up to. We didn’t arrest you before now because you’re Colonel García’s uncle, but this is serious. This time we have no choice but to use force.’
‘The reason of force cannot prevail against the force of reason,’ said Augusto and the man looked at him as though he were ill, or had got the wrong person.
‘Fucking hell. I didn’t know you were a philosopher. Shame, actually, because I love philosophy. Got any other words of wisdom before I put a bullet in you?’
At that moment, Judío opened his eyes wide and set me down on the ground.
‘Yes,’ said Augusto, ‘tell Pilar, that thug of a nephew of mine, that his time will come. Tell him that. Now do what you have to do and get it over with.’
Hearing this, the man tossed his cigar butt on the floor.
‘OK, in that case . . . You heard the philosopher, boys. When you’re done, I’ll be waiting for you at Pío Pío in Santa Catalina. Oh, and bring me the little black brat.’
The boss climbed back into his car and disappeared. His men began loading up boxes of pamphlets. They ripped the washing machines out, leaving the walls bare. A bunch of them headed out, but three of the men stayed behind.
‘Don’t let the kid see this,’ shouted Augusto.
‘Walk over to the wall,’ the men ordered.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Judío. ‘Oscarito, come over here.’ I tottered over and gave Judío a kiss, and one to Augusto. The men grabbed me roughly by the arm and dragged me away. Then, without wasting a second, they gunned down my grandparents’ friends, riddling them with bullets. The sound of the shots could be heard all over Lawton. They killed them right before my eyes. Someone ran to tell my grandparents what had happened. My grandmother started wailing.
‘Stay here, Gertrudis, and try to calm down,’ said Benicio and set off running down the Calzada Dolores.
Arriving at the laundry, a grey pall of steam from the boiling clothes slowly rose to the ceiling where it formed a dense, dark-yellowish cloud that obscured everything. He groped his way around, and heard a moan like a child trying not to vomit. He came upon the bodies, drenched in blood and soapy water. He shook Augusto and Judío, but they could no longer speak, could no longer moan. He stumbled out on to the street again and saw the dead dog on the pavement. He screamed my name. ‘They took him, Benicio,’ people told him, ‘they took him down towards Santa Catalina.’
He ran on down the Calzada del Diez de Octubre. He almost upset a flower cart that appeared from nowhere. He dodged the cars, the streetcars, the motorbikes, and when he finally arrived at the Avenida Santa Catalina he looked around. There was no sign of me. He looked in the cinema and searched the lobby then came out again and wandered up and down Santa Catalina and then along Soledad through a little square that locals used as a car park, then he carried on down Santa Catalina and as he came to Avenida Mayía Rodríguez he saw a line of cars parked on the avenue outside Pío Pío. The sound of celebrations reached him on the breeze. The sound of people having fun. Some men were forcing two small boys to fight. One of the boys was me. I had blood around my mouth and tears in my eyes. Grandpa waded into the crowd, elbowing his way through the circle of men and was just about to pick me up when one of them grabbed him by the shoulders. It was the same man who, minutes earlier, had given the order to kill Augusto and El Judío. Grandfather turned and instinctively threw a left hook that hit him square on the jaw, knocking him unconscious.
The other men pulled their guns. Some ran to help their boss Rolando Masferrer who lay sprawled in the road. The others simply aimed their pistols at my grandfather’s face.
‘Don’t touch him. Leave him to me,’ said a uniformed man of average height with the sort of pot belly that comes from too much beer. He asked my grandfather to walk with him to his car. The other men went on trying to revive Masferrer, but he was not coming round. We got into the swanky car and the man floored the accelerator.
For a while we all sat in silence. My grandfather hugged me to him as though afraid that the car would hit a pothole and I would go flying through the windscreen. The driver was smoking panatella cigars. He was staring straight ahead as though he did not know what to say.
‘If there’s one thing about me, it’s that I never forget a face,’ he said finally.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said my grandfather.
‘I’m talking about thirty years ago. You and your wife had just arrived in Havana. My uncle gave you a lift in his cart. I’m Pilar, the kid who was sitting next to you. Remember?’
‘Of course I remember. Just as I won’t forget that you had your uncle murdered.’
The man took a deep breath and tossed the cigar out the window.
‘Yes. I know,’ he said. ‘It seems nobody forgets anything. I’ll never forget the beatings my uncle gave me, or the sweets your wife gave me. You’ll never forget that I ordered men to kill your friends. And Masferrer will never forget you knocked him out with a single punch.’
When Grandma Gertrudis saw us arrive back in the car, she rushed over and hugged me.
‘Thank you, señor. Thank you for bringing them back safe and sound,’ said Grandma, sobbing. From his pocket the man took another panatella and lit it. Then he turned to Grandpa Benicio. ‘Now that no one owes anyone anything, I’d advise you to get out of here.’
‘Is that what a man has to do to live in peace? Go somewhere else?’ said my grandfather, still cradling me in his arms.
‘I don’t know,’ said Colonel Pilar García. ‘You could try. Go somewhere else, go back to the country, go back to Oriente. Hide in a cave if you have to. But don’t trust to hope. There’s no hope left in this country.’
Having said this, Pilar García climbed back into his car and took off with a squeal of tyres down the Calzada Dolores.
We buried Augusto and the Jew in Colón cemetery. They were solitary men, with no family, no friends, and so the only people at the wake were my grandparents, Gertrudis and Benicio, and me. We went on living in Augusto’s house since we had nowhere else to go and no heir came to claim it. Batista fled Cuba in the early hours of 31 December 1958 after a farewell cocktail party as the revolutionaries were marching into Havana. Gradually, American businesses were nationalised and eventually private property was abolished. The Bacardís moved their rum business to Puerto Rico. Masferrer was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Miami in 1975. Pilar García died of cirrhosis of the liver.
I remember none of this. The psychologists diagnosed me with elective amnesia, a defence mechanism used by people to forget traumatic events. I don’t remember Augusto or El Judío or the day they were riddled with bullets before my eyes. All I remember is that time when I strangled the fucking cat. That I remember only too well.
The Biggest Maggot in the World
This is where I begin . . . but before we get to my part of the tale, you need to know that it’s difficult to tell a story and be objective when you’re locked up in a dark room. What I mean is it’s not the same as telling the story lying on a sandy beach with a mojito in your hand. It’s difficult not to talk about depressing things when you’re strapped to a bed in a bare cell and have whiteshirts – who, like I told you earlier, are really members of the Cuban Ku Klux Klan – come by every two days and split your skull in two. Commissioner Clemente says that not only did I make all this stuff up, but he even insists that I don’t exist. Imagine if someone told you that you are not who you think you are, that your grandparents, your neighbourhood and everything you’ve ever known is a fiction, that you’re a ghost, a head case, a fabulist who goes through life spouting fairy tales and bullshit. The bastard has tried to convince me that I’m mad and that’s what really pisses me off. It’s enough to make you want to kill somebody.
But that’s what that damn fool Clemente said to me when he interrogated me. I’m not going to bore you with all that shit though, or with stuff about when I took my first steps or what my first word was. The story about the cat is simple, there’s nothing else to add to it except that the cat ate my lunch: fried chicken, vegetables, rice, black beans and guava jelly. The bastard cat only left the guava jelly. ‘I’ll get you,’ I thought. I went back into class and after the last lesson, at about six o’clock, I came across the cat, rummaging though a garbage bin. I went over and held out a piece of bread. The cat came over to me. It started eating the bread and I stroked its back. When I got it to trust me, I grabbed it by the neck and strangled it. All the way home, I gripped it tightly. People were staring at me and shouting, ‘Leave that poor cat alone.’ But I ignored them. I kept on walking. Grandma jumped when she saw me appear in the doorway. I told her what had happened and she yelled at me, told me that was no reason to strangle a helpless creature. I tossed the cat on the ground, the head came off the body and rolled across the pavement. Then I slammed my fist into the front door so hard I broke my wrist. And that was that for the quadruped.
My grandparents said that they used to have to take me by the hand and lead me to school because otherwise I’d head for any river or marsh or swampland along the way. Can you imagine? You have to remember that I took the stories Grandpa Benicio told me very seriously. He used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. One day he told me about the brave feats of Martí and Antonio Maceo, the same tales his father had told him when he was a boy. The next day, I came home with a face covered in bruises, two black eyes and my nose bent out of shape.
‘Oscarito!’ said Grandpa Benicio. ‘What on earth happened to you?’
Well, what had happened was during the game of marbles we played every day in La Loma del Burro park in Lawton, this boy named Enrique – everyone called him ‘the Terror of Lawton’ – took some other boy’s marbles. None of the other kids had the guts to stand up to him because Enrique wasn’t called the Terror of Lawton for nothing. But the story my grandpa had told me convinced me that I too had been put on the earth to free mankind.
‘If you don’t give Congo his marbles back, I’m going to kill you with my stone axe,’ I told the Terror of Lawton. When he heard this, fifteen-year-old Enrique drew himself up to his full height and launched himself at me. Then he blacked both my eyes, covered my face in bruises and broke my nose.
Grandpa Benicio angrily asked me who I thought I was to go round saving people.
‘José Martí would have done the same thing,’ I said.
‘Martí didn’t go round killing people with a stone axe,’ said my grandfather, then burst out laughing. I can remember that like it was yesterday. The reason I remember it so well is that the next day Elena enrolled in my school, in my class, and soon we were inseparable.
The first time I took Elena to bed, she warned me that it was nothing serious, that she didn’t want me getting the wrong idea. I liked Elena a lot, so didn’t tell her that she was the one who had to be careful because I was the most cynical guy she would ever meet. I just told her that I would let her decide the boundaries of our relationship and that I would respect her decisions. I knew she’d been with other guys, I’d even met some of them because she always introduced me to them and I introduced her to my ex-girlfriends like it was some sort of competition, like the Grand Prix for who had fucked more people. All the same, I was taken by surprise when Elena referred to our first sexual encounter as ‘satisfactory’. I knew that ‘satisfactory’ was way short of the mark after the eight-hour non-stop rollercoaster of sex I’d given her. We met up again a couple of weeks later and it was even better, but this time Elena didn’t say anything, she just kissed me on the cheek and left.