On another occasion, when my grandparents were calmer, they told me for the first time that my parents had died long ago. That their names were María and Melecio. That’s all they said. They didn’t like to talk about the past, so they only told me as much as they had to. Like that time when I came back to the house in tears because I’d never had any brothers and sisters, never had a mother or a father, just grandparents, and Grandpa Benicio told me he had never known his mother and barely knew his father. This all happened in the late 1980s. My grandparents were really old by then; they were fragile, with papery skin, while I had just turned twenty-eight and was still getting it on with Elena who by now was my steady girlfriend. By then all the stuff with the writers had happened, the Padilla Affair and all that, and books by Reinaldo Arenas, Cabrera Infante and Virgilio Piñera were banned in Cuba.
‘So you’re just like me,’ I said to Grandpa. ‘Parents are shit. When they don’t get themselves killed, they dump you at someone else’s house and let them bring you up. If it weren’t for the fact that grandparents are always prepared to take responsibility for their kids’ mistakes . . . I suppose you could say we’re united by the same misfortune?’
Grandfather took a deep breath, as though a great weight had been lifted from him. He asked me to fetch him a glass of water.
‘Actually, bring me a litre of milk.’
‘A glass of milk?’
‘No. Bring the whole bottle.’
I ran into the kitchen and came back with the milk. Grandpa poured himself a big white glass and drained it in a second. Then he told me that when he was young, there was no such thing as glass, there were no litres, no milk, no cows. Only rich landowners had cattle, and a few Chinese people who traded in contraband.
I told him that, thinking about it, we were united by more than one misfortune, since even now no one could buy a cow, still less eat it. Grandfather tilted his head to one side. Gertrudis was still sitting on the sofa in the living room, listening to our conversation. ‘And as for glass,’ I said, ‘sure, people these days know what it is, but who wants a litre of empty glass? If Antonio the milkman didn’t sell it to us on the sly at an exorbitant price, you wouldn’t even have that glass of milk.’
The old man stared at me with his big, bewildered owlish eyes. He wondered if I was comparing the times I lived in with his own. I told him I wasn’t, but that he couldn’t deny that we didn’t have milk these days.
‘Maybe you don’t have milk these days. But you have paved roads, you have electricity. Imagine living in a place with no electricity, no television, no radio, completely cut off from the world.’
‘What’s the difference today, Grandpa? Cuba is completely cut off from the world. And ever since the Russians turned their backs on us and the “special economic period” started we don’t have electricity, or radios or television. The streetlights outside are just decoration, they’re there just to make the place look ugly. We were lucky this morning the electricity came on early, but you’ll see, they’ll cut it off in a minute. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the fridge is broken. I asked Elena to ask Colonel Heriberto on the corner if he’ll store our meat and fish in his fridge so it doesn’t go off. I’m just worried that everyone else in the neighbourhood will have got in before us, since he’s the only one round here with electricity. That’s just how things are. A hundred years later and the only thing different is that at least we have lampposts.’
My grandfather said I didn’t know what I was talking about, that for all its faults Cuba was much better today than it had been, that young people these days knew nothing about history and spent their lives complaining, not realising how much worse things used to be.
‘Fine, Grandpa, have it your way,’ I said, wiping his forehead. That was the last time Grandpa and I talked about politics. I’ll never forget what happened next. Grandma Gertrudis, who had been sitting in deathly silence, suddenly started to laugh.
‘What have you got to laugh about, Gertrudis?’ asked Grandfather. The laugh began as a trickle but slowly caught like tongues of flame until it became a thunderous belly-laugh that startled Grandpa and me. ‘Gertrudis, what’s got into you? What on earth are you laughing at?’ Grandma went on laughing uproariously, tears in her eyes, spraying spittle everywhere. I tried to calm her, I fanned her with the ration book, brought her a glass of water, but her laugh was contagious and I caught it. I ended up laughing like her, doubled over and clutching my belly. Only Grandfather remained solemn, probably because he knew what would happen next. He barely had time to take her hands in his before Grandma Gertrudis’s heart burst as she suffered a heart attack.
Grandfather tried to pick her up in his thin, feeble arms, to lift her from the bed and run. I stopped him and said this was madness. I took Grandma’s pulse, checking for any sign of life, but her spirit was already somewhere else.
‘There’s nothing to be done, Grandfather,’ I said.
Then he began to sob like a little boy. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen in my life. Elena arrived a little while later and together we tried in vain to comfort him.
The neighbours helped us to dress Grandma in her favourite dress. Elena did her make-up, using her lipstick and blusher, and she tucked a pink rose behind her ear. She looked like a sleeping Madonna. There was not a hint of pain on her face, as though she had not suffered. Later we called the Funeraría Mauline on the Calle Diez de Octubre near Santa Amalia, the most respectable undertakers in the area, and they sent a hearse. With a few of the neighbours, I helped lift her on to the gurney. Then we all headed to the funeral home where we held a vigil until dawn, then we cremated her. Grandma had always been one for staying at home, and recently she had barely left the house so there were only three neighbours at the vigil. Afterwards, they tossed a flower into the coffin and left, terrified by the eerie smile on her face. Grandma was laughing still.
Grandpa Benicio ceased to be the cheerful man everyone knew. That’s what people said in the neighbourhood. He walked around with his head bowed, his arms hanging by his sides, he no longer talked to anyone when he went to get bread at the store, no longer went for a drink at the bar on the corner. ‘Cheer up, Benicio,’ the neighbours would say, ‘why don’t you come and play a game of dominoes.’ But he simply ignored them and went on his way, looking like grief incarnate. Everyone said my grandmother’s death had put years on him, but I think it was Facundo’s death that really finished him off.
A week after Grandma died, Facundo, our dog, suddenly became ill. We went to fetch the local vet, who, after examining him, wrung his hands, saying he realised it was a bad time to give bad news, especially since we were mourning Señora Gertrudis, but there was nothing he could do to save Facundo.
‘I hate to give bad news to people like you. Especially you, Benicio, you being the only man who ever knocked out that son of a bitch Masferrer, but Facundo will die four days from now.’
We had had Facundo for fourteen years. He was a black and white English pointer and my grandparents adored him, especially Grandpa Benicio who always said that, after Gertrudis, he loved Facundo more than anyone.
‘All of my friends are shits,’ I’d heard him say at times. ‘Facundo, now he is a true friend.’
Facundo’s liver and spleen were enlarged and, given his age, there was little that could be done for him. On the fourth day, just as the vet had predicted, his body lay beneath a mound of black earth, having been buried at the foot of the mango tree in the garden.
After that, Grandpa Benicio never put in his false teeth again. He stopped eating, stopped washing and more than once we found him sitting in the middle of the Calzada Dolores. Elena and I were worried about him, we tried to get him to talk, but he preferred the shade of the mango tree, the hammock, silence. He felt strange sleeping in his bed. Most nights he did not sleep. Soon he started to talk to himself; in the cracked mirror in the bathroom he would see a young man who gradually transformed himself into the balding ninety-year-old man who stared back at him sadly.
Then came Grandma Gertrudis’s will: two letters. Nothing more. One for Grandfather, and one for me which I was not to open until Grandpa Benicio died. Grandfather’s letter read: ‘The greatest happiness I have had in life was to have you as my husband. I will be waiting for you by our flame tree, but before that, tell Oscar everything. Everything. It’s time that he knew who he is.’
I read it to my grandfather and he listened carefully, without so much as blinking. Then he asked me to fetch him a glass of milk. I brought it to him and then took a shower while Elena cooked something. A few minutes later, when I came out of the bathroom, I found Grandpa lying on the living-room floor.
Elena and I carried his six-foot frame to the vast marriage bed where for the past two months he had been sleeping alone. His frail body looked like a wild flower in a meadow, fragile and defenceless.
‘I’ll be right back,’ said Elena and went out into the streets of Lawton, half naked, wearing the floral top and checked cotton trousers she used as pyjamas. I saw her run past the window that served as a headboard for my grandparents’ bed, watched her vanish into the narrow streets, into the crowds.
Grandpa Benicio regained consciousness just after Elena left. For a moment he stared at me like he did not recognise this boy sitting by his bed. He looked at me curiously, as though he had seen me somewhere before but could not remember where. His mouth suddenly opened. He said that if there was one thing I should learn, it was that events never begin in the moment that they happen. As he said this, he set the pillow up against the window so he could lean back and get a better look at me.
‘Don’t talk, Grandpa. Just lie there and rest, Elena has gone to fetch a doctor. What’s happened has happened, and there’s nothing to be done about it now.’
‘Ah, that’s just the problem. If you think it was the deaths of your dear grandmother and poor old Facundo that caused my heart attack, then you don’t understand anything. This heart attack began a long time ago. Now get me some coffee and listen to what I have to tell you.’
I went into the kitchen. I picked up the coffee pot and poured a little of yesterday’s coffee into a plastic mug, then ran back to my grandfather’s room.
‘Now listen to me and try not to interrupt, because we don’t have much time. The time has come for you to know who you are.’
I told him I knew exactly who I was and rather curtly told him to get some rest.
‘Don’t speak to me in that tone, I’ve not been fitted for a wooden suit just yet, which means I’m still your grandfather . . . You think you know who you are, yes? Well, tell me then, how can anyone who does not know their history truly know who they are? Now, listen to me carefully, and don’t interrupt.’
All I could think about was that Elena was not back yet as I stared at the wrinkled, careworn eyelids of that toothless old man who had given me everything. These were his last moments on earth so I had no choice but to do as he wished and say nothing. And then he told me that in the 1800s, Pata de Puerco was just a sweeping plain with a few scattered shacks between the Sierra Maestra of Santiago de Cuba and the copper mines of El Cobre. That the earth was so red and so green that it looked as though this was the last place God made. About the Santistebans, about José and Oscar; he told me everything I’ve told you here.
‘I know how you must feel right now, Oscarito. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this now just as the last of your relatives is about to die,’ said Grandpa Benicio when he had finished. ‘At this stage, I’d rather not fill your head with problems that can’t be solved, but I have to fulfil your grandmother’s last wish. All I can think to say to you right now is that the best time to plant a tree is always twenty years ago. If, for some reason, you did not plant it then, the next best time to plant a tree is now. I hope that helps you.’
I hugged him hard and looked into his eyes for the last time; he said he hoped I would have lots of children with Elena and, more importantly, that I would come to understand the value and the meaning of things so that I might finally find peace. Before I could say anything, there was a power cut and at that moment Elena burst through the door with the doctors who, despite the darkness, evaluated my grandfather’s condition. Elena wept inconsolably. As she did so, I realised for the first time that my grandparents were in fact my uncle and aunt, though really they were my parents.
‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ the doctors said, adding that I shouldn’t hesitate to call them if I needed tranquillisers. Elena and I walked them to the door and, after they left, Elena put her arms around my neck, a gesture that turned my trickle of tears into a never-ending flood.
We sat vigil for Grandpa Benicio at the Funeraría Mauline as we had two months earlier for Grandma Gertrudis. He had had more friends in the neighbourhood and so more people came to pay their respects. Towards dawn, just before the body was taken to be cremated, a little black man appeared with prominent cheekbones and thinning, grey hair meticulously slicked back. He wore a black suit and shuffled slowly through the crowd, dragging his feet. He stood for a long time staring into the coffin and Elena asked me who he was. I shrugged. Then we saw him throw a red rose into the coffin and whisper, ‘Cross and hook, Choco!’ A moment later we watched as Kid Chocolate disappeared into the crowd, not knowing that the famous champion would die a few weeks later.