Ruins (8 page)

This was too much drama for Usnavy, who was now clutching the injured lamp to his chest.

“Let me explain, compañero, let me explain,” said the sparkly man, sitting Usnavy and his lamp down in a dirty plastic chair the lamp factory offered its potential customers.

Usnavy looked up at the flickering tube of light. He really needed to get to the bodega. People were waiting for him, people depended on him. But what choice did he have in any of this? Usnavy surrendered, his face in and out of the gentle strobe.

The way the sparkly man told it, Louis Comfort Tiffany didn’t set out to make lamps; they were more of an accident. “He had this biography of himself commissioned at about the time his lamps were most popular and he only had them mentioned a couple of times. They couldn’t be ignored—but how he wanted to ignore them!”

Usnavy rested his hands on the injured lamp. He could tell this could be awhile—this could, in fact, take longer than Frank and the guys’ storytelling during the domino games. Why couldn’t Mr. Tiffany be satisfied with the success of his lamps? If Mr. Tiffany had embraced his fate, Usnavy thought, he’d be free to walk away now, spared …

His mind wandered back to the sea, to Obdulio and his family. Had they made it? Where were they? Surely someone at the domino game would know by now about the end of that story.

But the sparkly man continued with his own narrative: Tiffany’s father was a jeweler but the son was enamored of stained-glass murals. He eventually created a few, including a massive mosaic in Philadelphia, an extraordinary glass theatrical curtain in Mexico City.

“In fact, Tiffany didn’t come up with the idea of the lamps at all,” said the sparkly man, looking over at Yoandry for confirmation.

The boy had obviously heard the story many times. “That’s right,” he said, nodding vigorously. He could have been in the congregation of some visiting evangelist preacher from Harlem or Atlanta, shouting amens.

Amazingly enough, the sparkly man claimed the stained-glass lamps were actually his own grandfather’s idea. “He worked for Tiffany as a gaffer, a glass blower,” he explained, gesturing as if he were exhaling into a long pipe. “And one day, bored, he took some of the discarded glass from other projects and he made a lamp with an exceptional shade. Electricity was coming into vogue then, it was a big deal. The shades had to be different than before, with the old oil lamps. They had to be opaque. People say it was Thomas Edison who gave Tiffany the idea for the lamps, but it wasn’t, it was my grandfather. And then Tiffany stole the idea.”

“So your grandfather was American?” Usnavy asked, not paying strict attention, distracted by his own concerns, remembering the ongoing exodus in Cojímar and wondering then why the sparkly man was still in Cuba. With an American relative, he could probably claim U.S. citizenship. Even if there were still people like Mayito, who could resist his wife’s entreaties from the U.S., what some people wouldn’t give for that!

“American? No, no—he was an immigrant to New York, an Italian glass blower from Murano who was hauled in to save Tiffany’s fortunes when things got rough,” the man said with a laugh.

“And a Jew,” added Yoandry, rubbing his fingers together as if bill after bill were going through them.

The sparkly man chuckled. “This is important only because—I don’t know if you know—glass blowing is an old Jewish art.”

“I didn’t know,” said Usnavy, uneasy. He was now feeling totally trapped by the sparkly man and Yoandry, a reluctant audience to their story—a show he sensed he was not fully understanding, or perhaps worse, wasn’t meant to understand. “So you’re Jewish … Italian then …?”

“I’m Cuban,” the sparkly man said with a thump to his chest. “My grandfather and his entire immigrant crafts guild came to Cuba when Tiffany was hired to do the interior design for the Presidential Palace in the 1920s. I was born here, right here in Havana.”

“You mean Mr. Tiffany worked on the Museum of the Revolution?” Usnavy asked, appalled. “But there’s no stained-glass there.”

The sparkly man and the clerk looked at each other for a suspended second then burst into laughter.

“Not now there isn’t!” exclaimed Yoandry, his face wide and red from the hilarity.

Usnavy stood up; he’d had enough.

“Don’t be offended, compañero, we’re just laughing at life’s absurdities, not at you,” the sparkly man said and gently touched Usnavy’s elbow. “Forgive us, we lost our manners. I wanted you to understand why I know a little about lamps. You see, it’s in my blood.”

Usnavy noticed the guy’s hands were long and tapered, his nails shiny and healthy, the fingertips full of razor-thin scars. His fingerprints—the map of his hand—must change all the time, thought Usnavy.

That evening, Usnavy was late for his domino game. First, he had to rush to the bodega to store the injured lamp. There was no room in the tenement on Tejadillo, and besides, he didn’t want to tell Lidia and Nena that he’d gotten it by rummaging in the trash, like their awful neighbors; he didn’t want to relive that terrible moment when he’d told them the bike was stolen because of his carelessness and he’d caught the two of them looking at each other knowingly, worriedly.

At the bodega, his coworkers looked at him and the lamp askance and asked if he was all right. Conscience-stricken, Usnavy just muttered and lowered his eyes and hurried out again. He raced home for a dinner of salty white rice under the lustrous light of the magnificent one (the signature—damn it, he’d look for it later, when he had time) before making his way over to the comfort of the game and his friends.

“How I wish I had my bike,” he complained under his breath as he moved along. The blister on his foot was growing, now a bubble of delicate skin that grazed the shoe’s leather and caused him to wince with each step.

Even under normal circumstances, when it came to walking, Usnavy was not a typical Cuban. Most Cubans loved to stroll, to saunter about as if an actual destination were a second thought. But he hated walking, hated getting lost in the crowds, hated the way the air hung on him, sticky and hot. On foot everything took longer, especially now that the government was allowing artists and craftspeople to gather in certain parks in Old Havana and on the Malecón. People spilled onto the streets without regard, treating the sidewalks as storefronts or vitrines, showcasing their meager fruits, cheap watches, and spare parts (the rusted pedal from a sewing machine, for example, or the handle from a meat grinder). With the heat and humidity gripping him, Usnavy considered every gesture an exhausting struggle, as if he were living in slow motion.

“Guapón!” Frank yelled, pointing at his watch.

Usnavy was out of breath. He’d had to fight the crowds milling at the bus stops, as well as a bread line at a nearby shop, plus all the usual hustlers. The blister, he knew without looking, had burst; his skin was raw down there.

On his bike he could have avoided all of this. Since cars had practically disappeared because of the lack of fuel, on a bike the streets were now like thoroughfares. How he missed cruising downhill on his Flying Pigeon—how he yearned to glide on the open roads, the wind in his hair. (He never thought about driving a car, never imagined himself free behind the wheel, never longed for it at all.)

“What’s the matter with you? This, now that we need you?” Frank said in mock reprimand. Frank loved to jab, loved to poke; most of the time, he didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but sometimes he plain relished making people squirm, whether from pain or embarrassment; it was as if he couldn’t tell the difference.

Usnavy threw himself down at the domino table, gasping like he never did when he rode. Why did his lungs prefer one mode so clearly over the other? Under the table, he discreetly pulled his foot out of his shoe, resting it on top, letting the burst blister breathe.

Without Obdulio, there were just four of them now, the exact number required to play. Sure, they could have had anybody else join in—in fact, it was perfectly common for neighbors to drop by the game to watch or ask in, and when one of the friends wanted a break, they’d let somebody else play (usually Oscar Luis, a former geologist turned cab driver who lived nearby). But by having the fifth man be one of their own—Usnavy—the friends had always kept complete control of the game. If somebody they didn’t like showed up, they stalled. An extra man could make the wait last forever. Conversely, an extra man could pressure a stranger out of the game faster, if he got in at all.

The guys who watched regularly—the sapos, as they were affectionately called—all knew the rules, nobody had to tell them, and part of the entertainment value of the game resided precisely in how the friends dealt with strangers who showed up unexpectedly. That was grist for the best stories to tell later, at home to the wife or lover, at work the next day, or even later, right there on Montserrate, when the looming stars allowed the tale to go however it needed.

Yoandry, the sparkly man, and their Tiffany tales had nothing on these guys, thought Usnavy, who loved going home and regaling Lidia with accounts harvested at the domino games.

“All right, you and Mayito,” Frank ordered Usnavy. They were each, in their own way, dealing with Obdulio’s absence. In Frank it manifested in a gruffer than usual style, his eyes floating, averting contact with everybody.

“Ah, c’mon, give me a break,” Mayito protested, speaking unexpectedly. “No offense, Usnavy, you’re my brother but you’re salao, man. These days you lose every single time. The thing with the doubles the other day—that was the topper.”

“I’m not salao,” Usnavy said, “not anymore.” How could he explain? It would be easier to decipher the mystery of the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela, where angels were said to have worked side by side with African artisans.

“What do you mean
not anymore?
” asked Frank, leaning back, a grin erupting on his big rubbery Anthony Quinn face.

“I mean … Look, I just know I’m not salao anymore, okay?” No one would understand—especially these guys, who believed in nothing. But in his soul Usnavy knew that, in spite of everything, that broken lamp would bring him luck. It had to. It had hit him on the way home from Lámparas Cubanas: Now that Obdulio had left, things were so horrible, there was no other way to go. It was a matter of time.

“Okay,” Frank replied, “whatever you say, guapo.” He winked at Diosdado, who ignored him. “Let’s try out your new luck.”

Just then a group of foreign tourists sidled up to the game, smiling and nodding. The sapos stepped back with a sudden meekness, parting so that the tourists had a ringside view. Frank reclined and smirked, his cigar held extravagantly between his teeth. One of the foreign women ran up and posed, her flushed face above his shoulders while Frank leaned back, macho and sure, and another tourist took a picture, its unnecessary flash blinding everyone. Mayito squinted and rubbed his eyes. Usnavy thought he was going to be sick, the flickering light stirring the acids in his nearly empty belly.

A second woman—quite possibly the guide—then put her hands on Diosdado’s shoulders (an unexpected, disturbing familiarity), prepping to model for the photographer.

But, to everyone’s surprise, Diosdado shook her off. “No,” he said firmly, looking at her over his bifocals, his eyes like simmering coal. “No,” he said again, but the tourists argued with him in English.

Frank tried to negotiate. “C’mon, what can it hurt?” he said to his friend, shrugging.

But Diosdado remained firm: “No, I said no.”

“But why not?” Frank pushed. “You afraid of ’em, is that it? Are you an Indian or something and think they’re going to steal your image, or what?”

“Frank, leave him alone,” muttered Mayito.

“Why do I have to explain myself?” Diosdado demanded.

All the while, the tourists pressed, snapping away at the dominos on the table, at Frank acting tough, at the guys from the neighborhood, with their ragged pride and awkward postures. Finally, one of the tourists defiantly focused his lens on Diosdado and teased with the possibility of shooting him against his will.

Diosdado again raised his eyes above the rim of his glasses. “You guys are just going to go along with this, aren’t you?” he said to the sapos. “Why? Because they’re foreigners? So what?”

Usnavy laughed but he was on Diosdado’s side. He remembered the American missionary and his Cuban converts down by the cathedral and, without thinking at all, started to clap, first slowly, then more feverishly. And then the sapos—the autistic kid the loudest of all—followed, their rhythm full of spite, pushing the tourists away from the table, crowding them out until the only camera shot they would have had was of the Cubans’ backs.

Frank, however, did not clap. Long after the tourists walked away, he sat there darkly, his eyes fixed on Diosdado. As Mayito noisily stirred the dominoes to begin the game, Usnavy realized Frank wasn’t going to let the incident go. In the meantime, Diosdado leaned back from the table, his broad brow furrowed, unusually intense behind his blurry bifocals. It seemed to Usnavy that Frank and Diosdado had always been going at it.

“Anybody hear from Obdulio?” Frank asked, his cigar going up and down in his mouth. The way he asked indicated to Usnavy that the question was rhetorical, that somehow Frank had already managed to find out—in just a few days—how it was going for Obdulio in his new life in Miami. Diosdado squirmed in his seat.

“He made it, no? I mean, that’s what I heard at the bodega,” said Usnavy, too eagerly, then saw right away that he had inadvertently played into the set-up. Initially, he had been relieved to hear that Obdulio had arrived safely but then he had gotten all tangled up: He really wanted to wish him well though he was sad, hurt, flustered, maybe—to his horror—even a little jealous that, suddenly, Obdulio no longer shared the same worries. No doubt Obdulio wouldn’t be worried about what his family would have to eat.

“Yeah, all the way to Key West—no problem at all,” said Frank as he selected his dominos one by one from the scrambled pieces. “Got picked up at the beach by his brother, like he’d been on a fishing trip or something ordinary like that.”