Now it was Melecio who spoke up.
‘I’d like to tell a story,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘What story, Melecio?’ said Betina. ‘You’re a little young to be telling stories.’ She gestured at him to sit down again. The kite-maker said it did not matter, that the game was for all ages. ‘It’s true, Betina,’ said José. ‘Let the boy tell his joke. Maybe he inherited my sense of humour.’ Betina rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Let him, señora . . .’ everyone chorused, ‘let the boy tell his joke.’
Betina had no choice but to agree. Melecio clambered on to his stool, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his shorts and in a thin, falsetto voice began:
The squalid reality is the oblivion which enfolds our village
The squalid reality is that no one cares about the squalid reality
The squalid reality is hunger, it is the everyday suffering of the outcast, the true existence of the negro
The squalid reality is Pata de Puerco, the starvation ingrained in the skin of its people, the endless begging
The endless waiting, the pain of Pata de Puerco: the squalid reality
There was a ghastly silence. No one knew what was happening and though many did not understand Melecio’s words it was clear that his story had delved into their souls. No one laughed. On the contrary, many of those present began to sob and went on sobbing long after Melecio’s little mouth was closed.
‘Where did you learn that? Who taught you that? Tell me!’ Betina demanded, shocked.
‘No one, Mami. I just thought it up right now. Why is no one laughing?’
‘It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Abel Santacruz, ‘and it’s true. We can’t go on like this. We have to improve our lives.’
Everyone agreed; everyone except for Evaristo who carried on insisting that this was a celebration and that they should not allow their joy to die. But no one had the heart to go on celebrating. Their joy, like a rickety shack dragged along by a storm, had been knocked out of true.
José thanked the kite-maker and all those present, saying that the food and everything had been wonderful but that it was time to go home.
‘Don’t go now,
caballero
. . .’ Evaristo protested. ‘Have you heard the one about the deadly avocado?’ But José, Betina, Gertrudis and Benicio had already set off, carrying on their shoulders little Melecio as though he were some treasure that had suddenly been revealed to them. The wind blew gently, whipping away the dry dust only to bring more, suffused with the smell of horseshit common to country paths. And so night began to draw in, and Pata de Puerco sank into utter silence.
One day, José borrowed the old mare belonging to Evaristo the kite-maker to take his children to El Cobre. Evaristo begged him to bring the mare back with all four legs and José assured him that he would not allow God Himself to touch the old nag’s tail. He yoked the beast up to the cart and they set off while the dawn sky was still dark and the dew still settling.
It was a long journey. Geru’s little cotton skirt embroidered with flowers grew damp with dew, as did Benicio’s shirt and his patched shorts. Benicio tried to touch Melecio’s shorts to see whether they too were wet, but his brother quickly covered himself with his hands.
They stared at the cows, at the mud-caked farmers tilling the earth, at the steep mountains of the Sierra Maestra which looked like giants standing guard over the valley. Butterflies and dragonflies were beginning to flutter across the lush green plain. It was a glorious day and, for the first time in a long while, José and Betina seemed happy.
‘Hey, Benicio, you see those canebrakes over there on the left? That’s where we used to work, me and your fa—’ Betina gave José a clip round the ear. ‘You and who?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Me and a good friend.’ It was a terrible job, José added, telling his children that when they grew up they should plant crops or raise animals, because working on a sugar-cane plantation was backbreaking and badly paid. They would soon be adults and it was time for them to think about what they were going to do with their lives. At this point, Melecio said he wanted to be a cook. Grandfather protested that the kitchen wasn’t his and pinched his arm.
An hour later, the family found themselves in the little square of a small town with stately detached houses, most of them built from stone. In earlier times, El Cobre was known as ‘
el barrio negro
’ – the black neighbourhood. The area had been populated by ‘the king’s slaves’, some of the few slaves in Cuba to receive an education. Most of them worked in the copper mines, and they were educated because the work required a greater level of knowledge.
The Americans had taken control of most of the strategic sectors of the Cuban economy. In addition to sugar production, they held sway over the mines, public services, banks and much of the land; they also owned the Cuban Electric Company and the Cuban Telephone Company, and much of the power industry including coal, oil and alcohol. The first thing José, Betina and the children noticed when they arrived was the number of white men, all of whom spoke a strange language.
‘Look, Mamá, milk men,’ shouted Melecio.
‘They’re not made of milk,’ said Benicio. ‘They’re white because they come from a faraway place where the sun doesn’t shine.’
Geru pointed out that the sun shone everywhere, so that could not be the reason they were white. In the end, they asked Betina who said, ‘Where do white men come from? Juanita says they come from Alaska.’
‘Alaska! What’s Alaska?’
Betina explained that, according to Juanita, Alaska was a place where ice came from, where everything was white and it was always very cold.
‘Well then, that’s where these men must come from,’ said José, ‘because they’re the coldest people I’ve ever met.’
‘So they come from Alaska,’ Melecio concluded and Betina nodded slightly.
None of the children had ever seen anywhere like this: concrete houses, cobbled streets; here was a town with no grass, no trees, no animals. They studied everything with great curiosity. José tried to recognise some of the places he had haunted years earlier before Oscar rescued him and signed him up to the war, but all of the old taverns were gone now, as were the markets and the grocery stores. The town was brand new with signs everywhere in English. ‘It’s time to go,’ said José and turned the mare towards the outskirts of the town where the old church stood.
When they reached the cathedral, José tethered the horse to a tree fifty metres from the church courtyard. Benicio, Geru and Melecio’s eyes grew wide and their mouths gaped to see such a vast building with its towers and its belfry. Five black carriages drawn by white horses drove past and stopped at the entrance to the church. They watched as impeccably elegant ladies and gentlemen alighted and made their way into this palatial building.
The Negro coachmen, wearing frockcoats and derby hats, parked off to one side and waited for their masters. Ragged mendicants, all of them black, some missing parts of their bodies, begged for alms. Soldiers chased them off with kicks and insults. There were many of them. Men with no feet, no hands, children no older than Melecio, Benicio and Gertrudis. These people were forbidden from entering the church.
Ignoring the entrance, the Mandinga family walked to the balustrade surrounding the basilica. From here, they could see the grounds of the cathedral which seemed to include the whole valley. In the distance, they could make out huts and shacks just like their own and next to them a vast gaudy tract of land ringed by lush jungle. This tract, José explained, was the municipal rubbish tip. In the midst of this pestilential riot of colour, scurrying frantically up and down, were tiny coffee-coloured specks. ‘It seems incredible,’ said José, ‘but Oscar was right. Thirty years of war and all for nothing. Everything is still the same.’
They stood looking at the men scavenging through the garbage and Betina put an arm around José’s shoulders. He flinched and then sighed, then suddenly he began to laugh. The last time he had laughed like this was when he smashed the kitchen table at home, hurling it against the door. But Melecio did not care. Pointing to the largest, most elegant carriage, he said, ‘I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be like that man.’ They all turned to look in the direction he was pointing.
‘A coachman?’ said José. ‘Over my dead body.’
‘No, Papá, not a coachman. I want to be like the other man, the milky man getting out of the carriage.’
Melecio was referring to the white man in a black suit descending the steps of the most opulent of the carriages. He was a thin man with an aristocratic face. People crowded round to welcome him and as he passed men and women greeted him with the same admiration they might a hero. José bent down so he could look his children in the eye.
‘Listen carefully to what I’m about to say. That man is not one of our kind. Our kind are over there foraging in the garbage dump. These elegant people, with their horses and whatnot, these are the people who started the wars, the ones who cut the arms and legs off those children, the ones who invented black coachmen and slaves . . . don’t you understand? He is our enemy and should be feared. If one of them should come up to you some day, the best thing you can do is run away, do you hear me? Run anywhere, run as far from them as possible, to somewhere where there are only people like us or plants or animals. Do you understand?’
The three children nodded though none of them had understood a word José had said. One of the Negro coachmen from the imposing carriages came over to them. He was dressed in a red jacket with a long tail at the back, belted at the waist. He doffed his large black hat and the sun glittered on his bald pate, emphasising the broad scar across one cheek.
‘Excuse me, I couldn’t help hearing you laughing and I thought to myself “at least there are still people who can laugh”. You know, with all the terrible things you see these days, it’s rare to meet someone cheerful. Today is your lady’s birthday, is it not?’
‘No,’ José replied.
‘One of your children then, surely?’
‘No, I only laugh like that when I’m angry.’
José turned away from the man and back to his children. Betina stood staring at the coachman. Not prepared to give up, the coachman exclaimed that he had seen so many strange things in his life he had almost begun to think he had seen it all. Life was wise, he said, and constantly managed to surprise him and in the end many end up a fool. José turned back to the coachman, his face now was calm.
‘Tell me, señor . . .’
‘Aureliano. Aureliano Carabalí, at your service.’
The coachman bowed and smiled, showing a yawning gap where four of his teeth were missing.
‘Tell me this, Señor Aureliano, slavery has been abolished, has it not?’
The man nodded. José said that if this was true, how could Aureliano bring himself to serve a white man after all the terrible things they had done?
‘The terrible things they did? I don’t understand, señor . . .’
‘José. José Mandinga.’
‘Could you explain to me exactly what you mean,
amigo
José?’
José said there was no need, because the coachman knew very well what he was referring to. White men had spent their lives exploiting Negroes. They were to blame for the poverty, the misery in which the black man lived. For thirty years war had been waged with the sweat of the Negroes of this country, with slaves and those who were already freemen; that it had been the Negroes who had truly triumphed with their machetes. But even now, José went on, there were no white coachmen and Negroes were still in the same shit they had always been in while white men enjoyed every luxury. Of course there were exceptions, men everyone knew about, José Martí, Máximo Gómez, but in general, José concluded, that was how things were.
The coachman listened intently, all the while baring his broken teeth. ‘I can tell you are a man of passion and that you speak from the heart; this is why I am going to give you my honest opinion on the subject. I never talk about such things with anyone, certainly not with someone I have just met, but I feel I can trust you.’
The coachman told José his story. He had lived in slave quarters on a sugar plantation near Santa Clara, one of the most vile, where the food was poorer than the slaves themselves. They were never allowed to stop to rest, not even for a moment, because the overseer was always there with his whip ready to beat them. Aureliano hated the whip, but many times he bridled because he was stubborn. He was put in the stocks and was whipped until his back was lined and furrowed like a rice field. On other occasions he was shut up for weeks in one of the tiny recesses set into the walls, and when he was finally let out the pain in his back from being forced to squat for so long, unable to stretch his arms or his legs, was unbearable. And yet there came a time when he was to suffer a punishment far worse than whipping.
‘A punishment worse than whipping? What can be worse?’ asked José.
‘To be betrayed by those closest to you,’ said Aureliano.
These were the lashes that truly hurt, the coachman said, and he had endured them all his life. His sisters, his mother, everyone had betrayed him. When not robbing him, they were playing some other dirty trick. A boyhood friend had slashed his face. Another raped his wife. The worst thing of all was that they never justified their actions but went on living cheek by jowl with him, their consciences clear, as though nothing had happened. This was why when slavery was finally abolished he went far away, where no one would ever find him. This was how he had come here. He was lucky to find the man who engaged him as a coachman, who taught him to read and write, a white man, the most generous man he had ever known.