Havana Noir (14 page)
“Señor Luis, please, don’t make me do that, please.”
At this moment, Luis knew that Eladio would do as he asked. And Eladio knew Luis well enough to be certain that if he, Eladio, did not do as ordered, his employer would do as he threatened and find another way to end his life. But Señor Luis was clumsy with tools and his method wouldn’t be as quick or as painless as what Eladio could deliver.
With much reluctance, Eladio crossed himself several times and prepared himself to carry out his employer’s wishes. He kissed Señor Luis on both cheeks, then knelt on the ground, head bowed, and asked for Luis’s blessing.
At his advanced age, Luis Rodríguez-López was so frail and thin that twisting his neck was as easily and quickly accomplished as with the chickens, maybe even easier. Blinking back the tears that were flowing down his cheeks, Eladio looked at his employer lying at his feet and realized for the first time: He had really loved the man.
As Eladio stared at the body of the man who had meant so much to him, he could feel in his own heart the reason that Luis had asked him to end his life—not just because he could not serve his friends a proper meal, but because he had become tired of living. Luis had felt it was his time to leave this earth, and he had wanted to do it on his own terms. He needed to be able to control something, and the end of his life was the only thing left. And Eladio was the only person he trusted to do the job properly.
After taking the photographs from Luis’s hands, Eladio carefully laid the body down on the garden bench, arranging his employer’s features in such a way as to make him look as comfortable and peaceful as possible. He wanted María Eugenia to see her husband in the best way, so she would be assured he did not suffer in his last moments. He waited until he felt composed enough to get her and then, with one look back at Señor Luis, headed up to the house.
“Señora María Eugenia!” Eladio called out as he ran toward the house. “Señora María Eugenia!” No response. He called her name again. Now he was frightened, his heart beating so fast he thought it would explode inside his chest.
Eladio went into the main quarters of the house and looked everywhere, to no avail. The house was deserted. He went room to room again, this time searching more carefully. The only thing he noticed amiss was that the photo album was nowhere to be found. Had Luis taken it? He’d had only the three photographs with him in the garden. Where was the album?
Not knowing what to do, he went back outside to the terrace and sat in Luis’s rocking chair. He did it as a reflex, an impulse: It was suddenly the right thing, to take this seat. He remained where he sat, in the chair that belonged to Señor Luis, for the better part of the day, with terrible thoughts coursing through his brain about what he had just done, and fears of what horrible fate could have befallen María Eugenia. Making matters much worse was the fact that the day was exceptionally hot, and knowing how heat affected corpses, he kept having visions of what was happening to Luis’s body.
Rocking in the chair, he felt he was going mad from worry when, finally, he heard the familiar sound of the front gate. He jumped from the chair, ran over to the entrance of the house, and almost wept with joy when he saw María Eugenia slowly making her way up the path. He saw she was carrying the photo album.
“Eladio, hola!” María Eugenia cheerfully waved to him. “I’m home!”
It had been a long time since Eladio had seen María Eugenia in such good spirits. “Hola, señora,” Eladio replied. “I was worried about you, you left without letting us know you were going—you’ve been gone all day.” He knew it was not his place to scold his employer’s wife but he’d been so concerned about her that he was past caring about behaving in a proper way. This day had devastated him.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, Eladio, but I had to run an errand. I needed to do something that I did not want Luis to know about, and I didn’t want to have to tell him a lie. So I slipped out of the house. I’m sure he’ll be happy when he sees what I’ve done.”
María Eugenia stepped closer to Eladio and took one of his hands in hers. She looked so happy, with her eyes sparkling and a huge smile on her face. “You know how worried Luis has been that he can’t find the seafood to serve his friends?” she whispered in his ear, as if telling him a secret, and waved the photo album.
Eladio thought he was going to pass out. It took all the self-control he could muster not to fall to the ground. How could he say to her that her husband was dead? Oh God! He wished it was him lying on the bench in the garden, not Señor Luis!
“Yes, Señora María Eugenia,” he replied. How was he going to tell her? He couldn’t bring out the words; this was worse than what he’d already done. It was starting to get dark and Señor Luis had been lying outside on the garden terrace for close to ten hours.
“Well, I wasn’t supposed to do it,” she said, “but knowing how important it was for Luis to make this dinner perfect, I sold my wedding ring! We were saving it for a time when we had nothing at all to eat. But I knew that this crisis was, for Luis, even worse than starvation. You want to know what I did with the money I got for the ring? It was worth more than I had thought—it was white gold, Eladio, not just regular gold. Luis never told me it was white gold!”
María Eugenia held out the photo album and began turning the pages. “You see, Eladio, I’ve been thinking about the dinner, and all that seafood—the lobsters, the crabs, the shrimp—and how there is nothing to be found in Havana.” She began to laugh triumphantly. It was so strange to hear the señora laugh that all Eladio could do was watch her helplessly. He should have told her immediately, the moment he saw her. It was a mistake to wait. “Well,” she said, “I thought and thought about where Luis was going to get the seafood for the dinner. He would never consider serving anything else, he’s stubborn, we both know that, no?” She leaned over to Eladio and—looking around, as if to make sure she was not being overheard—whispered, “You know Ricardo had to sell his family’s painting of José Martí to pay for last year’s dinner?”
“Yes, señora, I heard that,” Eladio muttered. “Very sad.”
“Well, we don’t have anything like that—only my ring—so I had an idea.” María Eugenia opened up the photo album and looked up at him. “You know, there are three pictures missing—maybe Luis took them—I have to ask him about that when I see him.”
Eladio jumped back as if the pictures he had slipped in his pocket earlier that day were burning a hole. “Yes, señora, I know those pictures,” he mumbled.
María Eugenia looked so happy, so pleased with herself, that now Eladio felt suicidal. For a fleeting moment he wondered if it was possible to wring his own neck.
“I decided,” she said, “that since Luis and his three friends were great fishermen, why couldn’t they fish for the seafood for the dinner themselves? I know it’s against the law for Cubans to fish for lobster, crab, and shrimp—but, Eladio, they know the waters around the coast of Havana like they know the backs of their hands. After all, that’s where they used to fish!
They would be too smart to get caught!” María Eugenia was so thrilled with her solution to the dilemma of what to serve for the dinner that she was beside herself with joy. “Don’t you see, Eladio? Fishing for the meal is the perfect answer! They would feel young, happy, and resourceful! They could drink the rum you make—just like in the photos!”
“But, Señora María Eugenia, what about your ring? You said you sold it for the dinner. I don’t understand.”
“Oh, Eladio, you’re right—I’m sorry—I forgot to tell you the most important thing!” María Eugenia seemed years younger as she almost sprinted away. “I sold the ring and bought a small boat with the money—I went to the pier by the old Yacht Club, you remember, where the señore
s
used to row? Luis told me there were old boats for sale there. I traded the ring for one of the boats, not a very big or fancy one, but it won’t sink—I made sure of that. It needs some work, but it’ll do!” María Eugenia placed the photo album on a table and began to walk away, the smile on her face making her look like the young girl Luis had married forty years before. “It’s the Special Period, you know, Eladio, everyone wants and needs something—everything anyone has is for sale—so it wasn’t very difficult to buy. And now all our problems are solved! The dinner—with seafood—will take place…I’m going to find Luis and tell him not to worry anymore.” She turned to Eladio. “Where is he?”
He couldn’t answer. He only could shake his head as she walked past.
He didn’t follow. Instead, he took his seat again in Luis’s chair, knotting and unknotting his hands. She would find his body. It was better that way, because if he spoke, she would know he was lying.
But there was one more thing he would do for his employer of more than forty years. He would push out to sea in the little boat, dive for crab and lobsters, haul a net for shrimp until he had found all he needed and more. Then he would serve that dinner, and he would make it a feast. The three friends would eat his catch and drink his rum—they would drink and grieve—and they would toast the eternal honor of Señor Luis.
for Gerardo Alfonso Piquera
O
n September 23, 1995, Johnny Ventura settled into the bow of the
Ana María
, a fifteen-foot launch he built expressly for the voyage, and took his last look at the city of Havana, illuminated dimly by the first rays of dawn. It was Johnny’s seventh attempt at crossing the Straits of Florida, and having consulted a babalao in Arroyo Arenas, he was certain that the
Ana María
would land him in La Yuma, if not in Miami, then somewhere along the Florida Keys, where he could claim his right to political asylum. He had spent six months in jail after his previous attempt when the raft he’d put together in the back room of his mother’s house had fallen apart in rough water three miles from shore and he and his two companions had been forced to swim back, landing on the Malecón just as a patrulla drove by. If he failed again, he was certain the authorities would make him rot in jail. That is why he had been extra careful, consulting the babalao (not that he believed in any of that Santería nonsense) and paying a hefty amount, in fulas, for a Russian outboard motor that sputtered and smoked the two times he started it but otherwise ran beautifully.
Despite the care he took in building the boat from plans left behind by his grandfather, Alepo Rodríguez, the great shark fisherman who had been swallowed by the waves off Jaimanitas in 1952, and despite the babalao’s blessing, Johnny had already acquired a reputation as a salao, a fellow forever mired in the salt of bad luck. Crossing the Florida Straits was serious business. If the storms and sharks didn’t get you, the Guarda Costas would and they’d put you in the same jail cell with a gang of pathological pederasts. The several friends he approached who were as desperate to leave the island as he refused to join him. The most circumspect simply kept the secret of Johnny’s voyage to themselves. At least two, however, spread the news around the neighborhood, and when Cacha Manguera, the head of the neighborhood Committee for Defense of the Revolution, heard that El Salao was at it again, she gave a big, raucous laugh and didn’t bother reporting Johnny to the higher-ups or paying a visit to his mother to ask the usual impertinent questions. Only Obdulio Martínez, the dim-witted son of a garbage collector who lived down the street, agreed to accompany him.
Johnny ignored the neighbors’ comments, the sly halfsmiles as he walked by, the occasional shout, “Bacalao Salao,” coming from one of the balconies overhead, and went about his business with the aplomb of a seasoned old sailor. Mornings he waited in the rationing line to get whatever food he and his mother were entitled to—split peas one day, dried mackerel the next. On a good day they might have some eggs, cheese, or a half pound of rice. Afternoons he’d go to his aunt’s house in Lawton to meet up with the pork man. Black market vendors required dollars, however, and if he didn’t have any, he’d simply head in the direction of the Malecón and walk along the seawall, looking at the ocean as it stretched all the way to the horizon and beyond where the Promised Land lay. Everyone was leaving the island. Why couldn’t he? He was home by 6 usually, when his mother served him rice and beans or, on bad days, which came all too often lately, watery split pea soup. After 8 o’clock, when his mother went to sleep, he’d leave the house again and walk through the streets of Havana, never taking the same route twice in a row, to the old garage where his Uncle Berto hid his 1956 Chrysler Imperial, waiting for the day when the nightmare of the Revolution was finally over and he could drive it proudly down the street like the old-fashioned capitalist he fancied himself to be. The garage was about thirty feet deep and the Chrysler was all the way in the rear, up on blocks and quietly rusting away. In the front, unbeknownst to anyone but Obdulio the dimwit, Johnny would work through the night building the
Ana María
, a boat so sturdy nothing but the most extreme act of God would sink it, and even then, Johnny would think while taking a cigarette break, the Old Man would have a real struggle on his hands.
And so, building the
Ana María
made Johnny a creature of the night. Often he could hear, or thought he could hear, a faint but comforting susurrus settling over the city after midnight. Off in the distance a dog barked or a radio played; outside the garage two lovers spoke.
“My love, did you bring the banana?”
“Yes, darling. It’s ready for you.”
Johnny listened to them while Obdulio slept in the backseat of the Chrysler and salivated, whether from lust or old hunger he didn’t know. All conversations in Cuba somehow devolved into matters of food.
“Give it to me, papi.”
Johnny dropped the hammer he was holding against a metal bucket and made a loud noise.
Obdulio woke with a start. “Qué pasó?” he said, sitting up and looking through the rear window.
“Nada. Go back to sleep,” Johnny answered, and kept on working until his eyes closed involuntarily and he dreamed of Miami Beach nightclubs and gorgeous tanned women with large, shapely breasts.
Johnny, it must be said, had a wife, but she was one of those women who consider sex an unpleasant marital duty to be performed twice monthly without abandon or fanfare, like getting an injection. In the three years they had been married, Johnny’s wife had grown dull and morose, feeling betrayed that Johnny had not made good on his promise to get her pregnant. She was subject to fits of resentment that took the form of burning Johnny’s coffee so that it became undrinkable, or salting his food to such a degree that he had to spit it out. When she finally went to live with her sister in Cotorro, Johnny was overjoyed. In fact, he celebrated that night by drinking a bottle of rum and running the Russian motor until it whined and rattled like it wanted to die.
“A Mayami me voy, a Mayami me voy,” Johnny chanted, dancing round Obdulio, who hooted and leaped like an African warrior about to wrestle a lion.
In six months the
Ana María
was finished and it was such an exemplary visage of a seagoing vessel that Johnny entertained the thought of selling her for a thousand dollars and staying in Havana until the son of a bitch Fidel died. With a thousand dollars he could fix up his uncle’s Chrysler. With a thousand dollars he could approach that girl with the long legs and jet-black hair who lived on the corner of Manrique and Lagunas streets and call up to her, “Come on, sugar, let’s take a drive around the city.” With a thousand dollars he’d be a big man in this godforsaken city.
But those thoughts stayed with him only two nights.
By God
, he said to himself on the third night,
I’ll make it to La
Yuma or die
. With a renewed sense of purpose he went off to Jaimanitas, a little fishing village in the outskirts of Havana, to observe what time the patrullas passed by; he did so for two weeks, hiding behind a stand of sea grape, swatting at mosquitoes, and recording the times in an old notebook.
Rather than tell his mother directly, he decided he would leave a letter for her stating that he was sorry but he had no option and reassuring her that he would send for her as soon as he was settled. She still loved El Comandante as she had loved Johnny’s father, who abused her and disappeared for weeks at a time, showing up to take her money and beat her up again. “Fidel is the most wonderful man in the world,” she would say, raising her eyes to the ceiling as people sometimes do when contemplating Jesus. After reading the letter, his mother would cry for a day, then go downstairs to gossip with the neighborhood ladies and forget about her son. At least this is what he told himself.
In preparation for the voyage he had been gathering provisions any way he could, buying some, borrowing others, and, when he had no choice, stealing the rest. In the forward compartment of the
Ana María
he stored ten liters of water, several bags of stale bread, a block of farmer’s cheese, and seven cans of Russian meat. Carefully balanced along the sides of the boat he placed a flashlight (stolen), two oars he had borrowed from his uncle, a fishing line with several hooks and sinkers that Obdulio’s father had given them, a knife that had seen better days (taken from his mother’s kitchen), a compass and an ancient sextant, both stolen from the Naval Museum in La Cabaña, and sixty liters of gasoline that had cost him several hundred dollars. Also on the boat, well hidden from view for now, was a small American flag he hoped to wave once he got within view of La Yuma. In a frivolous moment he decided to take the leather backseat of the Chrysler, cracked and brittle with age, and glue it down on the deck of the boat with marine epoxy so that Obdulio could sleep comfortably on the way across.
At midnight of the appointed day, Johnny and Obdulio waited for Obdulio’s father, Manolo, to arrive with the garbage truck he had commandeered to transport the
Ana María
to the little cove in Jaimanitas. At 12:30 Johnny grew worried; at 1 o’clock he was desperate. At 1:15 Obdulio’s father finally showed up, not in the twenty-five-footer with a canvas cover he had promised, but in a small Moscovitch pickup with a sixfoot bed. Johnn
y
’s heart sank to a level it had never known before. He sat on the front fender of the Chrysler and felt tears welling in his eyes, but he contained them.
“Manolo,” Johnny said to Obdulio’s father, “how are we going to load a fifteen-foot boat on that cockroach?”
“Don’t worry, asere,” Obdulio’s father said. “We’ll do it. I brought enough rope so we can tie it securely on top. No problem.”
Obdulio’s father was determined to have his son in the United States so he could send remittances home.
“What are people going to think when they see a Moscovitch with a boat twice its size tied on top?”
“Nothing, asere,” said Manolo. “Because there isn’t anybody out at this time of night. You think this is Nueva York?”
“I thought you were going to bring a big truck,” Johnny said.
“Asere, what happened is somebody else took it for the night. But don’t worry so much. This is going to work, you’ll see.”
It took the three of them an hour to load and tie the
Ana María
onto the Moscovitch. Johnny thought for sure the shock absorbers would give way but he was wrong. The pickup merely lurched and groaned and finally settled nicely six inches from the ground. The
Ana María
lay upside down, its prow extending six feet beyond the cab and blocking all but a six-inch band of windshield. Manolo reassured Johnny that he could drive the streets of Havana with his eyes closed. Given that the government shut down the city’s electric power at night, that was pretty much what they’d have to do: drive in the dark with the headlights turned off.
“One pothole and there goes the front axle,” Johnny said.
Manolo once again tried to calm him, then reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a bottle of chispa de tren that he passed to Johnny. Johnny took a swig and gave it back to Manolo.
“That’s for the trip,” Manolo said, pushing the bottle away. “Make sure you make an offering to Yemayá before you push off.”
They drove in silence and darkness without hitting a single pothole and reached the turnoff at 2:45 a.m., with plenty of time to ship out by 3:27, when Johnny had determined no patrullas passed by. As Manolo negotiated the sandy road that led to the cove, the Moscovitch waddled and almost tipped over a couple of times, then hit a rut where the wheels spun themselves into the sand and lost traction.
Manolo smacked the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. Johnny cursed God and all the angels, and both left the cab simultaneously, walking around the truck to gauge how deeply the tires were embedded in the sand. Manolo dug around the two front tires while Johnny stood by the passenger door and looked at Obdulio, who was sleeping soundly inside. What he wouldn’t give to sleep like that! He had already resigned himself to going back to the garage to wait for another day, when Manolo stood upright and proclaimed that they would have to take the boat off the Moscovitch. He would let some air out of the tires and that would do the trick. “Easy,” Manolo said.
Easy
, Johnny thought, momentarily feeling sorry for himself. Nothing had ever been easy for him.
Suddenly he sensed someone next to him, and when he looked to his right he saw a round bristly face peering up at him. Johnny’s blood turned cold, the back of his neck tensed up.
“Señor, what’s the problem?” The man was being overly formal given the circumstances.
“Nada,” answered Johnny, too nervous to say anything else.
The man looked at the truck’s wheels sunk halfway in the sand, then back up at Johnny.
“It looks like something to me.”
Manolo came over and asked the man what he was doing there at such an hour.
“The same thing you’re doing, trying to get off this shitty island.”
He led them on a path through a stand of sea grape to the water where a boat, or what passed for a boat, was waiting to shove off. The man called to two others who were helping some women and their children board, and between the five of them—Obdulio remained blissfully asleep—they were able to unload the
Ana María
and drag it across the sand to the water’s edge. The three men were impressed by Johnny’s launch and wanted to tie it to their ramshackle vessel, an old wooden boat with no motor but a sail made out of two bed sheets sewn together. Four empty oil barrels, fastened on either side, kept the boat from sinking. Johnny said no. “We have women and children with us,” one of them complained.
Johnny had heard of men fighting over provisions out in the open sea and pushing the weaker ones overboard. Besides, the
Ana María
could move faster without dragging the boat. He said that he and Obdulio were going it alone. One of the men made a threatening move in Johnny’s direction but Manolo intervened, thanking them for their help and offering the men four liters of water and a few cans of Russian meat for their efforts. Two of the men finally went back to their boat. The guy who had first approached them remained behind.
