King of Cuba (8 page)

El Comandante approached his friend cautiously. He was relieved that Babo was alive but afraid that there was nothing left for them to discuss. In their heyday, their conversations had lasted for days, interspersed with fishing trips and the reverential hush that accompanied their smoking of fine island cigars. There were few subjects they hadn’t broached, analyzed, laughed over, and argued about, all the while growing fonder and more admiring of each other. Not that there hadn’t been a thorn or two. Once Babo stopped speaking to the tyrant for months over a rust-colored beauty they’d discovered on a visit to El Cobre’s foundry. She was just Babo’s type, too—pure liquefied mulata sugar. But at the last minute, the tyrant chose her for himself, pulling a revolutionary droit du seigneur. Every now and then the incident rippled through their friendship like a Cuban water snake.

Nonetheless, Babo had proved as savvy about politics as he was at writing about the darkest recesses of the human heart. It was a rare combination in a man of his accomplishments, and there’d been a time when the tyrant had envied his friend’s gifts. (In truth, his envy still flared on occasion.) But Babo’s unfailing good humor, his generosity toward the Revolution, and his unflagging personal loyalty to El Comandante had won him over. There wasn’t another soul on the planet, save Fernando, whom he trusted as much.

“Hombre, what are you doing lying there like a beached whale?”

Babo opened his rheumy eyes and cracked a half smile. That initial spot on his lungs had developed into a tangled web of ailments impossible to unravel. As the afternoon light faded, Babo’s surprisingly small study filled with shadows. Night’s arrival would console El Comandante, at least until his exhaustion began to feed his paranoia and worsen his mood.

“Hijo de puta,” Babo whispered, his grin widening a quarter inch. “Did they tell you I was dead?” The pale light gleamed off the side rail of his bed.

It seemed to El Comandante that something in the room itself, in the shelves of thick, silent tomes, in the collection of vintage typewriters and the fountain pens arranged in a perfect arc across Babo’s desk, seemed charged in some imperceptible way. His friend’s breathing grew labored, deliberate, as if he had to concentrate on it fully. A nurse who reminded the tyrant of his mother—dark-skinned with sinewy legs—held a handkerchief to Babo’s mouth until he expectorated.

“Carajo, you look almost peaceful,” El Comandante joked. “That’s something we vowed never to become.”

The old friends coughed companionably. The nurse poured each of them a glass of water, which their respective wives helped administer.

“All this love and we’re still powerless against death,” Babo said,
regaining his composure. “In the end, I want to leave behind something imagined, not simply recalled.”

The tyrant couldn’t have disagreed with Babo more, but he was in no mood to antagonize him on his deathbed. No, he would much rather reminisce over his lurid, manic, garish, heroic,
lived
life than dwell on anything that even the great Babo could conjure up. It was action that fueled his ideas, El Líder thought, not the other way around. He was a man of action; action and appetites.

“Facts paralyze,” his friend continued, a disconcerting rumbling emanating from his chest. “Imagination frees us.”

El Comandante grew impatient. “But what good is imagination without action? No history is made. No lives are changed. Worthless.” He registered the discomfort on his friend’s face. “You deliver words. I deliver action.”

“Words
are
action, mi amigo, as compressed and devastating as any bullet—or caress,” Babo said with surprising vigor. “What do we have left except”—he paused—“the adventure of language between two wrecked ships.”

“Carajo, everything you say is invention!” the tyrant countered.

“Couldn’t I say the same of you?”

Son of a bitch. If Babo weren’t so sick, El Comandante would launch into one of his infinite tirades. Instead he sulked.

“Have we forgotten how to laugh at ourselves?” Babo chided. “Then this must be the end.”

The two remained silent for a moment, neither wanting to surrender to the other.

Finally, Babo blinked and changed the subject. “These days I prefer the language of rain.”

“He’s been praying for rain,” Gloria interjected dully.

The tyrant turned to her. “And what have you done about it?”

“About what?” She inspected her fingernails.

“The rain.”

“Mi cielo, they’re in a drought,” Delia protested. “Haven’t you been listening to the news? Gloria, did you know we have the worst meteorologist in Havana?”

“This is your husband’s last request and you haven’t found a way to grant it?” El Comandante demanded.

“But, Jefe, how can I—”

“There are machines that can make rain. I could stand on the roof myself with a fucking bucket so that he might—”

“Don’t get upset, Papi! This isn’t something you can control!” Delia flushed with embarrassment.

The obdurate bells of Mexico City announced six o’clock, echoed by the grandfather clock in the hall. Socialism, or death? What was the damn difference? Babo remained placid in his bed, inhabiting the hour. Then, pink nostrils quivering, he requested his daily ration of chocolate tapioca and dispatched every last wobbly spoonful with enthusiasm. Visibly weakened by the effort, he collapsed onto his pillows and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was traveling back in time, to his childhood, to the river journey with his grandparents that had marked him forever.

The tyrant felt faint, though his heart beat wildly. Delia held a vial under his nose that smelled of Fernando’s prison disinfectant. His brother had stayed behind in Havana, tending to emergencies: another hunger striker had tried to hang himself in La Cabaña; Fernando’s daughter had imprudently called a dissident blogger “a sex-starved lesbian whore” on national television and was now combating a firestorm of international criticism; and, worst of all, one of the Damas de Blanco
¹
had set herself on fire in the Plaza
de Armas with rationed gasoline, like that monk in Vietnam years ago. Were the times really so desperate?

Drowsiness enveloped the tyrant. He didn’t want to nap, but his body overruled him. With Delia’s help, he settled himself in an overstuffed chair by Babo’s bedside, sank his head to his chest, and, like his friend, fell asleep. The two snoozed together, leaving their wives to freely ignore each other. An hour later the men awoke with a start, almost simultaneously. The evening sky was hazy, reflecting the lights and smog of the city. Babo and El Comandante were pleased to find themselves still in each other’s company.

“The moon dies with the night on its back.” Babo’s face creased with emotion. “I thought I had dreamt your visit.”

“I’m no dream,” the tyrant said, pressing his tongue against his palate. “Nor am I ready to repent or regret!”

Babo laughed a weak facsimile of his laugh. His mind was shorn of most wordplay, but his emotions remained fierce. “To the only son of a bitch who ever came close,” he said, quoting himself.

“To the monarch of the word,” El Comandante retorted, holding up an imaginary champagne glass.

In the spreading darkness the old friends surrendered to the ordinary happiness of being together, oblivious to the sounds beyond the study: the ringing telephone, a faraway television, the ticking of the grandfather clock, the few drops of rain moistening Babo’s windowsill at last.

It was past twilight when El Comandante left Babo’s side. What he least expected accosted him on the sidewalk: an ex-lover in red dreadlocks with a teenager—presumably their love child—in tow. Television cameras surrounded them. Supporters shook signs scrawled with accusations:
EL COMANDANTE IS A DEADBEAT! PAY UP, PAPI
! A cocktail waitress at the Meridian Hotel in the capital, Angela Reyes had flirted with him at a conference of Formerly Non-Aligned Nations (FNAN). It’d ended predictably—in his
hotel room as his bodyguards waited outside. He might not have remembered her at all if it weren’t for the threats Angela began sending him once she learned of her pregnancy. Next to her slouched a skinny, pimply teenager with multiple tattoos and piercings. There was no way in hell this punk could be his son.

The reporters stampeded toward El Comandante, but he and Delia ducked into the waiting limousine. Outside the tinted windows the crowd chanted: DO THE RIGHT THING! DO THE RIGHT THING! Delia had endured such sordid displays before but never said a word. This was one of the reasons the tyrant loved her, or at least felt sporadic surges of gratitude for her tolerance and discretion. The ride to the airport was miserable, slowed by the fierce rain. Entire neighborhoods of Mexico City were converted to mud and plunged into darkness by a sudden blackout. During the Special Period in Cuba, apagones had been a way of life. On street corners children with wild, squinting eyes peddled Chiclets alongside drenched newspaper vendors and peasant women hawking homemade tamales in plastic baskets.

El Comandante reached across the backseat for Delia’s hand. It was cold and inert, and this enraged him. Over the years, the tyrant had refused all paternity tests. Cojones,
he
would decide which children were his. Hadn’t he done right by Delia and married her, legitimized their sons? It’d taken twenty years because he’d waited until Ceci Sánchez, his compañera of the Sierra Maestra, had passed away. Yes, this was his Holy Trinity of women: Ceci, Delia, and his accursed first wife, Miriam. Unless he counted his indomitable—even in death—mother, who sometimes visited him during thunderstorms to argue politics. The rain came down harder. Lightning illuminated the night sky. At last, he and his wife arrived at the airport and climbed into the private propeller plane that would take them back to Havana.

What the hell are you looking at? That’s what I really want to say, but I need your money more. Lost both legs and my eyesight outside Luanda with only a month left of my tour. Then I came home—to find what? A hero’s welcome? A pension? My fiancée? Ha! One bad joke after another. I still have my dick, but what good is it? The Revolution used me, used thousands of us, then tossed us away. People say it’s the same everywhere, but I don’t believe them. In Cuba they want their veterans healthy and whole, devoted revolutionaries who’ll still sing the national anthem. Fuck that. This country ruined my life, and it keeps on ruining it. Oye, can you spare any change?

—Abel Padilla, veteran

TIRED OF DOING NOTHING ABOUT THE TYRANT
?

Yes, Goyo was tired and impotent and infuriated. How many times had he glumly reviewed his life—the fruitless years, days, and hours that he’d wasted
not
fighting to reclaim his homeland? He clicked on the e-mail. There were no explanations, only a map with a cross tucked deep in the Everglades; a date and a time, which happened to be three hours from now. Most likely the message wasn’t meant for him, yet nothing had cut through Goyo’s layers of equivocation more cleanly. He packed his unused gym bag with a change of clothes, extra underwear, socks, and a stick
of deodorant. Then he fetched his Chief’s Special .38 from the file cabinet and packed that, too.

Twenty-five minutes later he was pulling out of his parking garage and heading to whatever awaited him in the swamp. He was no longer young, but his hands were still steady enough for him to be a good shot. They—whoever “they” were—couldn’t refuse to take him. His brother had died in the Bay of Pigs, his father had shot himself from grief, his first love had hanged herself over that tyrant. Goyo’s hatred was incontestable, lavish beyond measure.

About a month after Papá died, he visited Goyo in the middle of the night. His father looked shrunken in his white linen suit, his cuffs frayed, his sallow face averted, mumbling under his Panama hat. “Where are you going, Papi?” Goyo cried out, but his father ignored him. Instead he checked and rechecked his pockets, growing increasingly despondent as he jangled loose keys and change. Goyo wondered if Papá was looking for his watch, the one with the thin gold chain. Of what use would it be to him in the afterlife? Then, without a word, he faded away.