Private House (7 page)

Mathilde nodded; she'd come across this name. “They're still here. They can't go anywhere.”

“You mean, a sort of colony?”

“Something like that, yes. Not only them, all sorts of exiles.”

“That's amazing. What are they like?”

“I don't really know yet. There's one in France I spoke to on the phone, he's lived for years near Grasse growing flowers for the perfume industry—he can't leave because of some warrant, I don't know for what . . . the man I want to speak to here is wanted for murder and robbery, though of course he says it's a frame-up.”

“It probably is.”

“Well, maybe I'll find out. I'm going to see him today for lunch.”

“But you've been here several days?”

She nodded. “I came early, so I could get a feel for the place. And I wanted to see Castro's Primero de Mayo performance in the Plaza de la Revolución.”

“I went, too. I wanted to see him—you know, to be able to say I'd seen him.”

“What did you think?”

“I was glad I went, but I didn't think it was very good public relations. Chavez, the man from Venezuela, seemed so much stronger.”

“I know,” said Mathilde, “in his red shirt. I thought Castro looked silly in his guerrilla uniform and that cap. Like an actor dressed up for the part.”

“An actor who doesn't know when to get off the stage!”

“But you are a supporter of the regime?” Mathilde's voice, asking the question, was clearly uncertain of the reply.

“I suppose I am. I support Cuba.
Cubans
. I think the Americans should leave them alone.”

“The trouble is, they're Stalinists. I have problems with that.”

“Well, Murray always said that the Cuban revolution was a failure, but an honourable one, and he still put the emphasis on the ‘honourable.'”

“I suppose I would agree, but I might put the emphasis the other way around.”

Lorraine finished her coffee, and Mathilde followed suit. It was clear they were leaving. Lorraine said, “We're quite a pair. I'm seeing a priest, and you're having lunch with a Black Panther.” Mathilde laughed. She could see, at the moment of parting, bashfulness coming over Lorraine, the shyness that was probably an important side of her character. It seemed to leave things up to her, and as they stepped into the lobby she said, “Perhaps we should meet every morning to keep up to date with each other's adventures?”

Lorraine was pleased, and the pinkness she'd picked up from the sun deepened. “I'd like that very much.” She turned away, then looked back:
“Au'voir—à demain.”

Mathilde, again, was surprised:
not quite
. For Lorraine's French had been quick, her accent not so much correct as natural. She seemed to be a type, someone you could sum up fairly easily; but it didn't turn out that way. She watched as Lorraine went down the steps, into the brightness of the hotel entrance, and disappeared.
I am everything Adamaris desires to be, and Lorraine is everything I don't wish to become.
But this thought was only a test, formulated to be denied. She would have believed it yesterday, on the basis of seeing Lorraine around the hotel. But now she knew it wasn't fair; it wasn't even true. But it was interesting; whether thinking of Adamaris or Lorraine, she was faced with the fact that you did become
someone
, not just for yourself, but for other people. A “character.” Who would she be?

2

The address Lorraine had for the church was on Calle 13, but when the taxi dropped her, she discovered it was on the corner of Calle K, so it wasn't far from the house where Almado had lived and where
she'd been the day before; which made it slightly more plausible that Almado had actually gone to the church and was known there.

The church charmed her at once. This was Vedado, so it was almost impossible to see, lost in a plantation of palm, magnolia, and oleander—and even one scraggly pine; but when she stood back, on the other side of the street, she could make it out, white, Spanish Mission in style, through the green.

It was enclosed by a high fence: the gate was chained and padlocked, but through the bars she spied a sign of the kind that marks Anglican churches all over the world. Catedral Episcopal de la Santísima Trinidad:
BIENVENIDOS
.

She'd known it was the cathedral, that it was the only Anglican church in Havana, for Murray had filled her in on various political details: that the Cuban church had once been connected to the Episcopal Church in America, that this tie had been broken, and its renewal refused; and that now it was governed by a council that included the Primate of Canada, and was part of an archbishopric whose seat was in Santo Domingo. But the charm of the place brushed all these dreary details away, and she walked around the corner—she was now on Calle K again—and passed through an open gate into the grounds. A few people were talking in front of a notice board, others were on their way into several low buildings, presumably the bishop's offices; so things were happening. But Lorraine continued along a narrow walk that led around the side of the church, to the entrance she'd first seen. The main door was open. Inside, a green chalkboard was set up in the aisle, with a dozen people sitting in nearby pews, while a tall black man spoke to them—in Spanish, of course; but going by the notations on the chalkboard, Lorraine guessed it was Bible study. And it was over almost at once: presumably Father Rodriguez had said ten o'clock because he knew that's
when it finished. A few people came out her way, but most went farther into the church and left by a side entrance, two taking the chalkboard with them; then she had the church to herself.

She stepped inside. Lorraine loved churches, but not all churches. Canterbury was special, and so was Westminster, but “great” churches filled her with awe, and she was never sure about awe. Her favourite churches were small, like All Souls in Charlottetown or King's College Chapel in Cambridge. She was certainly in favour of exaltation and uplifting the spirit, but in the churches she liked she was hushed, her spirit set free in the quiet. And she began to feel this now in a church that had been so special to Murray. It was a lovely church, all white inside, full of light and softly moving air, fragrant with the garden outside. She thought of St. Anne's in Kennebunkport, which was like a whaling dory turned upside down on the shore: this was a white shell lying beside it, stony smooth and bleached clean by the sun. A plain mahogany cross hung on the wall of the apse. She went up the aisle a few steps toward it, then made the sign of the cross (backwards, the Eastern way, as they all three did or had done) and slipped into a pew. She knelt. She closed her eyes. And at once Murray rushed into her mind, and then Don; and she smiled, remembering how she'd damned them both in Coppelia. Yes, she did owe them a prayer. And all at once, bringing them all together again, she was remembering—had they been watching
Brideshead Revisited
on television?—an argument about Waugh on the one hand, Graham Greene on the other, both converts even beyond Eliot's conversion. Should they be tempted? That had been the question, the sort of question they'd loved to play with after dinner, or during summer afternoons with drinks on the dock. They'd decided, she remembered, that Waugh's zeal was suspicious, in fact pretentious. It had certainly made his book ridiculous— Charles Ryder would never have been so
rude
. But then Greene might
go too far in another direction: he believed in God almost by default, even in desperation; whether He existed or not, you had to believe in Him if you wanted any chance to be a good man . . . “though grace bails him out,” Don insisted. In the end, they'd agreed that they were better off as they were. “After all,” Murray had said, “resisting temptation is the essence of Protestantism, and so God, in His Wisdom, created the Catholics.” She wondered, now, what she had thought; she wasn't sure. But she must have had some opinion, for after all she was a convert herself—a convert to the beliefs her two men had been born to; so she had more in common with both Greene and Waugh, and Eliot, too. She admitted to a little of Waugh's zeal, also Greene's respect for simple piety. It came out here, in prayer. Now her own belief could find expression, her private piety shine forth; she was alone with Him—and she did seize her chance with zeal. She got in touch, she always felt, in a more personal way than either Don or Murray managed, or perhaps wanted; she allowed a little of the anthropomorphic to creep in. So now, letting her mind clear, and then sink away, she began to pray, praying for the peace of her husband and Murray, whispering the words in her mind so God could hear her voice, and then softly she said a little of “Sweeney” for both of them, and herself: and then she just prayed. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't; now it did, and she felt herself, quite as herself, merge with something larger, a wonderful restfulness. And then it was over. She lifted her head and she was simply waiting, but not unhappily, for she always found that time passed to a different measure in church, not exactly the beat of eternity, but it caught her up, carried her along, so she was never the least impatient.

In fact, Father Rodriguez appeared five minutes later, a stocky, light-skinned Cuban in a white, short-sleeved shirt worn outside of grey trousers, and displaying no obvious sign of his vocation. He came in at
the side, where the Bible students had gone out, and strode up the aisle toward her. “Lorraine Stowe?” He had a deep voice, and bowed over her hand as he shook it. This was priestly enough; but he struck her as a man of business, rather than a professional, a commercial man, a dealer, or a broker in cloth or wine or machinery. She guessed he was thirty-five or forty years old. He sat in a pew across the aisle from her and turned his body to face her, leaning forward, his compactness gathered in to itself.

“Do you like our church?”

“Yes, very much. Murray used to talk about it. Now I see what he meant. The light and the quiet.”

“He was a quiet man.”

“He had great respect for you, Father. Your understanding . . . of who he was.”

“That he was gay, you mean?” He shrugged. “I love Jesus. Jesus is a man. What does that make me?”

“Well, I told you about Almado—”

“I remember him, of course, but I can't tell you much about him. We hadn't got that far. I have no idea where he is.”

“His family?”

He shook his head. “No. As I say . . . I'm sorry.”

On the phone, he'd been friendly, but now she sensed reluctance, as if he was regretting his offer to help. “You don't think I should go ahead, do you?”

“Well, I wonder. A young man like Almado . . . Murray, getting him to Canada, that was one thing. But all that money. Here. What will he do with it?”

“Live.”

“But what does that mean?”

He looked at her: his eyes were very blue and twinkling. And she returned his gaze, trying to guess its meaning. Perhaps it was simply
that she shouldn't meddle in places she didn't understand. . . . She said, “Father, I'm going to put you on the spot. This is a promise. If, after my best efforts, I fail to find Almado, I'll see that your church gets Murray's money.”

It took him a moment, but then he grasped this and smiled. “I see. How ingenious. Your good conscience is dependent on mine. All right, then. Come along, and we'll see what we can do.”

Calle K was as empty and hot and dusty as it had been the previous morning, with the crumbling ruins of the old houses lost in their over-run gardens; but with the priest striding beside her it was no longer menacing. Despite his stockiness, Lorraine had to work to keep up with him; and he was not very talkative.

“These must have once been very fine houses,” she said.

“It was a neighbourhood of possibly not the wealthiest people, but everyone here had some money. This is where the Americans lived.”

“Is that why the church is where it is?”

“I was born in 1971, Mrs. Stowe. I know nothing about that.”

He had lived all his life under Castro. She concentrated on that, and on keeping up, until the priest turned between the two pillars of the crumbling wall. The door was reassuringly closed. The priest knocked—three precise knocks—then stepped back, his hands clasped behind his back. The older of the two black women, the mother if she'd understood the drama of the previous morning, opened the door. The priest spoke quickly, turning once to Lorraine who guessed what he wanted before he spoke: “Enrique,” she supplied. The black woman nodded. She closed the door but they could hear her calling. Lorraine said, “He lives upstairs.”

The priest nodded. “He will come down.”

He appeared a moment later. He was even shorter than the priest, though somehow the stockiness of the one reinforced that of the
other: so that Lorraine, recalling her impression of a bantamweight-boxer, saw them as opponents in the ring. Enrique, though, was now fully dressed—a blue shirt with yellow flowers hid his chains— though the tautness of his body was still apparent, for his white trousers were tight and had a slightly nautical air, cut off at mid-calf; and today he was wearing flip-flops. Only once, as Father Rodriguez presumably introduced them, did Enrique show any sign of recognizing her—a smile,
“Sí, sí”
—but that was when he swung the door fully open and invited them in.

They stepped into a hall. To the left and right were doorways, though both were covered with curtains; at the back, a staircase. Most of the space was taken up by a large motorcycle (missing one wheel) and two refrigerators. Enrique and the priest talked for several minutes, Father Rodriguez eventually condensing this discourse to “He has no idea where this man is. None.”

“When did he last see him?”

An exchange produced: “The end of March.”

“Where was he going then?”