Private House (28 page)

In Parque Central they got into a taxi. Lorraine had walked so far ahead that she was standing beside it, the door open, waiting. It was one of the government taxis; some of them were Peugeots but this was a Skoda. Mathilde slid in beside Bailey. They sat close together, while Lorraine wedged herself into the corner, on the other side. But the gap between them wasn't all Mathilde's fault, she thought. It occurred to her now that Lorraine had lied to her—yes, she had— because Lorraine hadn't told the truth the day she'd said she was
going to the art gallery. Yet it wasn't a question of lying; each, in a way, was only thinking of the other while still being herself. Bailey slipped his hand over her thigh and she felt desire stir. Yes, that was something else he had said on the phone. “Of course I'll come, but it wasn't how I was planning to spend the day.” Now she felt it too. It was always so direct with him, what she wanted: I want to be under this man, I want to feel his weight pressing me down. What Lorraine wanted . . . that was harder to figure out. What was she doing? What did she
think
she was doing? It was up to her, she thought, to keep Lorraine out of trouble. She leaned forward and said to the driver, “Right here.”

The taxi drew in. Mathilde was mildly surprised. The corner was busy; everywhere you looked, people were out and about. It was Sunday, but, more than that, Mathilde felt the sense of a holiday.

They stood there, blinking; it was bright and hot. It was a slum, but the people looked happy, smiling, calling to each other—quite different from the morning they'd walked down to the Merced. Some had pulled out chairs, and sat in the street in front of their door: men had set out a table and were playing chess. A woman in a suit, with a great silk puff at her neck and a bouquet of lilies in her hand, hurried past on four-inch heels, as sure on her feet as if she were wearing sneakers. Mathilde looked around. “I waited here. You see, I was here before him. Adamaris told me he was on the Malecón, she'd followed him all that way—I had to wait five minutes or so.”

Lorraine said, “I do give you credit for nerve.”

Mathilde said, “We went up here . . . I think.” In fact, they hadn't. She was remembering the direction the boy on his bicycle taxi had headed after he'd dropped her. She led them that way, walking slowly, letting her bag swing loosely from her shoulder. She
strolled. . . . She seemed to be walking in a fine cloud of dust. The sun was incredibly bright. It poured down, searching you out. Did she feel deceitful? Something of the line between Lorraine and herself was now reproduced inside herself, dividing her. And it annoyed her; she told herself not to make so much of it. Lorraine had to be taken out of harm's way: there was no need to feel guilty. Still, it bothered her; probably because it was premeditated, wasn't just a matter of saying what came into her head. I'm no good at scheming, she thought. And after two blocks, she stopped and said, “This is too far,” and turned around, and took them back, to the street where Almado had actually gone. “Yes, this is where we turned, I'm sure of it.” And after that, up to a point, everything she said was quite true. “It was so dark, there weren't any lights. . . .” Across the street from the building with the hole punched through the wall—where she'd seen the cat—she stopped. “I'm not sure, but I think we passed this place.”

Lorraine said, “I read in my
Lonely Planet
that sixty buildings fall down every year in Habana Vieja.”

“Think of those places near the hotel.”

These exchanges were easy, agreeable, normal. Mathilde walked on. It was hot, walking. After a time, she said, “I'm not sure how far I came. I wonder now if he did go in somewhere—that's what I thought, but I could have let him get too far ahead and not seen . . . I told you. I was wandering by then. . . .” Another lie, after all. Not wandering, exactly. For it must have been around here that the men had begun shouting and calling, and she'd started losing her head. She looked around. Now, it was just another stretch of dirty, rough street. Mathilde could feel Lorraine watching her; but she hadn't said very much. Mathilde glanced quickly at Bailey. There was no point going on; what she had to do now was bring this to an end,
close the deal, as they say. What they should do, she thought, was get Lorraine back to the hotel. They could have a drink, and leave her safely there. Mathilde looked at her watch. She groaned inwardly. It was almost noon.

By this point, they'd come up to a corner. Lorraine said, “Isn't this Cuba Street? Look, down there, that's the church—Our Lady of Mercy.”

Without waiting for an answer, Lorraine began walking that way; in a moment, she was lost in the crowds, always heavier here, but especially so today. And it was amazing how many people were carrying flowers, daisies, lilies, roses, clutched in little bouquets or cradled in their arms.

When they caught her up, Mathilde said, “Isn't it beautiful? You're always seeing something beautiful in Cuba. Even in the middle of a slum.”

“I know. But look. They're all carrying flowers.”

“It must be a saint's day,” said Mathilde, and then, thinking it would please Lorraine that she knew: “It's Ascension Day!”

“But that was
last
week,” said Lorraine.

Bailey laughed. “It's not a saint, it's the eighth of May—don't you know? Mother's Day. It's huge here. It's kind of their Thanksgiving.” He looked at Lorraine. “Didn't our pal Almado say he was going to Matanzas today? That's to visit his mother.”

Lorraine looked at him. “You'll have to convince me.”

Bailey laughed again. “You don't know Cuba. Even monsters visit their mothers today.”

They were right in front of the church, and Mathilde said, “What do you think we should do? Is there any point in going on?”

Lorraine said, “Well, we can at least say we tried.”

“I think that's what you
have
to say, Lorraine.”

“All right. I'm saying it. There's obviously no point going any further. I think what I'd like to do now is go into the church. And you two can go off on your own.”

Mathilde hesitated. She looked at Lorraine—and Lorraine looked at her. And even if Mathilde sensed that Lorraine was turning the tables, could she say so? “Oh, Lorraine, I don't like leaving you.”

“Don't be silly. It's Sunday. I'd
like
to go to church.”

“Why don't we go back to the hotel? Or somewhere. We could have lunch.”

“Mathilde, I'm going to be perfectly all right—listen, I have my pills in my bag, and from here I know my way perfectly. It's your last full day and you must have it to yourselves.”

Bailey and Mathilde exchanged glances. Mathilde felt herself give in, but then she reached into her bag. “Here. Take my phone.” And then she went into her bag again and came up with a scrap of paper and a pen. “This is Bailey's number—or the woman in the apartment next door.”

Bailey said, “Her English isn't great, but just say ‘Bailey' and she'll understand.”

“Well . . . you don't have to do that. I'm going to be perfectly all right.” But she took the phone and dropped it into her bag. “Anyway,” she said, “I'll see you later at the hotel—or leave a message if you'll be late.” Quickly, she leaned down, kissed Mathilde's cheek, and turned away.

“Be careful,” Mathilde called after her.

Lorraine smiled, and waved, and then they were standing there as she disappeared inside the church.

Mathilde said, “Do you think it's all right?”

Bailey didn't say anything but he took her hand, and they headed down Cuba Street. Gradually, Mathilde's anxieties eased; the division
she'd felt within herself melted away. All around, people hurried along the dusty street, carrying flowers. Cars nudged up and cheerfully blew their horns. Everyone looked happy and Mathilde smiled at a young woman, who had a glorious bouquet of daffodils in her hands—she was wearing a filmy red dress, all frilly at the neck, and she was humming to herself.

Mother's Day? Was that what she wanted for herself? Was that what this was all about? Well, she wanted Bailey, there was no doubt about that. She had stopped thinking about Lorraine, and she didn't look back, as Lorraine stepped out of the church, and after the darkness inside, stood blinking against the sun.

2

As quickly as she could, Lorraine walked away from the Merced, retracing the route Mathilde had taken.

Thoughts buzzed around in her mind but what carried her on was something deeper that she didn't examine. She was doing exactly what she wanted, purely what she herself desired, and the consequences must be dangerous and unpredictable. She was excited. She wasn't certain if Mathilde had lied, or simply hadn't guessed, but in any case Lorraine had out-manoeuvred her. And the freedom she now felt was transferred to the world; now the laughter of the women and the shouts of the children leapt into the sky and in the light of the sun, colours pulsed and glowed. Details jumped out at her: a black woman, in khaki shorts, was sitting in her doorway on a stool; she rocked back, and the skin tightened over the inside of her thigh, the lighter pores swelling up like a chicken's, huge, fascinating. The world was so bright she wanted to cover her eyes but as soon as she took her hand away her sight greedily sucked everything in. She hurried on.
People scarcely noticed her. On the broken, narrow sidewalk, she was always first to step out of the way and she was past before other people even looked up. A Santeria couple, as pure as black and white, managed to catch her eye long enough for a smile, but then she was by. Farther along, a group of men, with the sleeves of their Sunday-best shirts rolled up to their elbows—whose skin was grey, thick and rough, like the folds around an elephant's trunk—were bent over the engine of an ancient Ford, discussing it learnedly: she was around them and gone before they sensed she was there. She was alone. She was all by herself. But only in a special way: she'd felt this first when she'd discovered that her note had disappeared. Then she
believed
, at that point she
knew
. Bailey and Mathilde didn't believe, and she'd understood at once how completely her belief divided her from them; yet this only convinced her the more. After all, it was her belief; it was almost better that she didn't have to share it.

Only when she reached her final destination did she take thought in a more ordinary way, and it was almost a relief—though she also felt a certain satisfaction, a sense of having exceeded herself in some fashion, that made her blush. But looking at the ruined block— which she'd instantly understood was where Almado had disappeared,
I am going down a rabbit hole
—she was faced with certain practicalities, including the possibility that she might be completely wrong. That sobered her. Did Almado live here? Had Hugo really come here on Wednesday? The building had collapsed; it was obviously abandoned. If he was living here, no one else was: but surely that was an argument
for
, not against. It was just where he
would
live. For Havana, at least the old city, a demolition site like this was perfectly ordinary, and passersby weren't giving the building a glance. Mathilde had been right, it wasn't much different from the buildings just down from the hotel, which had been braced to keep them falling in on
each other. It was rather ugly—
that
suited Almado. There was never a patch of grass or garden with places like this. The facade, the exterior wall, butted right to the street, flush with the sidewalk, though here this was only a gravel path—the place was being worked on, a construction site.

She picked out the door. Sometimes the doors were metal grilles, and you could look through them; but this was solid. Yet she might as well try it, she thought, as a way of declaring her good intentions to anyone passing; and so she crossed over, and pushed. It was locked. Or blocked. But the obvious way in, anyway, was the rough hole that had been banged through the wall . . . to get the rubble out, she thought, as her eye followed a smooth skid mark back to a metal bin. This was stranded, like a hulk, on the side of a pile of broken masonry and debris. Could you trespass in Cuba? In a socialist state, with no private property, how was that possible? She waited a moment, until there was no one nearby, and stuck her head around the edge of the hole—thinking that children might be playing here—King of the Mountain; but perhaps they'd been warned away; and it was Sunday, besides.

But this was the extent of her hesitation; it was too sunny and bright to be afraid, as she would have been afraid at night: there was only the building itself, and its safety, to worry about. She would have to risk that. She stepped through the gap. Now she could see how the building had come down, and this struck her as odd, for the lower storeys had apparently gone, whereas the upper two or three were still intact, hanging, supported by a network of timbers and scaffolds.

Walking ahead, she discovered she was holding her breath, and as she released it and made herself, calmly, take another, she expected to inhale the strange, fresh smell that bricks and mortar dust give off, but instead she drew in a warmer, fetid odour of decay. This was a
shock, almost a blow to her morale, and she faltered; the excitement she'd been feeling was immediately less real. She'd expected fear, but this hinted at horror, and was a reminder of her innocence—she at once had an image of herself standing there on a mound of broken bricks and mortar, her bag hanging from her shoulder, her straw hat on her head. What was she doing? It was an odour infinitely older than anything she might encounter in her native land; poverty, misery, and death distilled into the stench of eternity. She wiggled her nose like a rabbit—she couldn't help herself. And then she thought, Don't be such a prude. She made herself go on. The smell wouldn't get any better, but then it likely wouldn't get any worse. Now she had to pass under some scaffolding; always, she walked around ladders, but she couldn't here. But she ducked her head. And now she was in that peculiar Cuban shade, as dark as the sun is bright; for a moment she was as good as blind. And she was holding her breath again. She made herself breathe. She could hear her breathing, the sounds of her own breath, but also detached from her, quiet, independent, autonomous: as of course breathing is, she thought, as part of the autonomic nervous system . . .