The Domino Diaries (14 page)

After we reached Cojimar we got temporarily lost. The town was too quiet, almost somber, and both Lesvanne and Montalvo immediately sensed something was wrong. The few people we saw in town refused to make eye contact with our vehicle except for strange men inventorying all movement from street corners. “
Joder,
” Montalvo moaned, “secret police. Something went down here last night. Can we visit this man another day, Alfonso?”

“It's not a crime to visit Fuentes. We're not doing it in secret. What happened here?”

The streets were almost completely empty. Lesvanne spotted a face he recognized walking with some waiters in uniform to La Terraza, the most famous tourist bar in town. When Lesvanne hollered to them out the window none of them stopped walking. We pulled over and Lesvanne got out to ask some questions and to double-check our directions to Fuente's home. When Lesvanne returned to the car he reported that a delegation of three hundred people from across the United States had been visiting and doing volunteer labor in Cuba. Most of the delegation stayed in the dorm facilities athletes had used during the Pan American games near Cojimar. A couple of days before, a young woman with her friends from California had visited a beach outside of town with a video camera. Three men approached her and demanded the bag with the camera inside. She refused. One of the men struck her in the face while another snatched the bag. The police were called. Within two hours Cojimar and two other areas the boys were suspected of living in were under complete lockdown. Scores of police and special police invaded the towns and searched each home, door to door, until they found the perpetrators and the girl's property. The boys were quickly arrested and the government notified the girl's family back in the States that the camera, along with the girl, were promptly being sent home.

“Those boys who took the camera are
fucked
.” Lesvanne shook his head. “Even a thief could get the drawers. But to attack someone before robbing them?”

“What the hell are the
drawers
?” I asked.

“It's like a morgue, only they put living people into the space of a coffin and push you into the wall. You're left there for one day, or two days, or three. You shit all over yourself. You lose your mind. Striking a woman is terrible. There is very little violence here and they should know how that will be treated. They must have been truly, truly desperate for some reason. You can be arrested in my country for not carrying your ID card. You can imagine how bloodying a tourist is handled. The tourist dollar is the breathing hole in our little cage.”

*   *   *

We found Gregorio Fuentes's small apartment on the corner of a narrow, hilly street, and the 103-year-old man answered his own door. He was puffing away on a cigar and refused to wear glasses, but his grandson held his elbow for support just in case. After he sat down, Gregorio looked healthy and alert, his chair surrounded by photographs and paintings of himself and Hemingway. The gift shop feel of the living room didn't seem to be his idea, but he wasn't embarrassed by it, either. He was giving you his time for the fifteen dollars and a bottle of rum you were expected to bring. The money went toward the revolution, the rum stayed on the premises.

I knew that Gregorio Fuentes, who could fish before he could walk, had stopped fishing for the remainder of his life the day he found out Hemingway had committed suicide in 1961. I knew it, but I can't say it really prepared me for
feeling
the intensity of that bond in Gregorio's living room, with him sitting there.

I told him the day before I'd seen his old boat the
Pilar
for the first time, and he nodded. “Isn't she beautiful? I don't think she's very happy away from the sea.”

Which was true. I didn't think
Pilar
had much interest parading herself around as a centerfold beside the swimming pool in Hemingway's backyard. You could tell she missed the action. She'd helped Hemingway catch some of the biggest fish ever caught, was rigged to spot U-boats during World War II, had hidden explosives for the rebels during the revolution, but now she continued to work for Fidel winning him all those cover charges from tourists eager to pose in front of history.

“I don't know anyone in the world as identified with their profession as you,” I clumsily began. “But after Hemingway died you never wanted to fish?”

“After we got news of his death…” Gregorio stared at me, adjusting his ball cap. “I had no desire to fish anymore. I was captain of the
Pilar
for twenty years. I had fished all my life. I have loved the sea. I have loved all that lives in the sea. But this man was my friend. I had no desire to fish after I knew he was gone. I miss him. He was such …
fun
.” His crinkly lips curled into a smile as he relit his cigar and took some more drags from it.

For the next ten minutes his grandson cut into the conversation and elaborated on Hemingway's love of Cuba, Gregorio's allegiance to the ideals of the revolution, how the embargo was harming the island, and a few other perfectly interesting things I wasn't really paying attention to. Gregorio's face, while he was quietly smoking and thinking, was too captivating to take much else in.

The last thing I ever asked of Gregorio was why he thought Hemingway had such an effect on people. Especially Cubans.

His blue eyes looked like cracked, half-frozen puddles. He stared at me and puffed on his cigar for a while. Then he put down the cigar and cleared his throat before saying, and smiling with that century-old face, “He knew who he was.”

It was late when I got back to my neighborhood. At night conversation and arguments and music were everywhere, with the percussive slap of dominoes hitting the table from the porches of myriad Cuban homes. One of my favorite sounds at night.

 

11

ELEVATOR MUSIC

The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

—Milan Kundera

“I
WANT TO TELL YOU
my favorite story about Che,” Videliah, Jes
ú
s's seventy-four-year-old mother, told me over coffee on one of my last nights in Havana. “Before his death three years ago, I was married to the love of my life for fifty years, God bless his soul. My husband played the piano, was close friends with Ernesto Lecuona, one of my country's most beautiful composers. I fell in love with my husband at first
listen
. I could hear we were soul mates even before I could see his lovely face. Wherever he is, I hope he cannot hear this confession. The only man I would have cheated on him with owned the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life. I saw them when I shared an elevator with Che when I was still young and beautiful. He was with two soldiers, but he couldn't pay attention to their conversation as the elevator climbed in that office building. He leaned over to confess my beauty was too distracting. It wasn't a dirty compliment—it was warm. Che never cheated on his wife. He was very respectful of women. He passed very unpopular laws where powerful men were forbidden from sleeping with their secretaries. No other Cuban would ever
think
to pass such a law. Fidel had many lovers and many children from different women. Che wasn't that way. But calling me distracting was all he had time to say before it was time for me to leave the elevator. I worked as a secretary in the building and my stop was before Che's. You have no idea how many times I've returned to that brief little climb in the elevator with him. Even as an old woman the wound is fresh. But the story I wish to tell you is when Che left Cuba for the last time. He changed his identity and radically altered his appearance in order to sneak out to Bolivia. It was a suicide mission from the very beginning. He had no illusions. Che was never going to live to be anyone's grandfather. And the irony of Che's downfall is that a peasant betrayed him to the police. The police passed on the information to an American-trained and funded army. Che could have been drinking mojitos at the Nacional, but instead spent his last days nearly starving to death trying to help these oppressed people, only to be betrayed by a peasant and executed on the CIA's orders. The wristwatch Che was wearing when they murdered him is now worn on the wrist of a man in Miami as a trophy. But before Che left he had dinner with his wife and family one last time. His wife introduced him to his children as Ram
ó
n, his new identity's name, and they didn't recognize him. The disguise was so well done even Che's children were all fooled. When dinner was served, out of habit, Che sat at his usual place at the head of the table. Instantly one of his small children confronted him and grabbed the chair. ‘You cannot sit here! My
father
sits here.'”

Videliah smiled and reached a hand across the table to place over mine. “You don't have the hands of a boxer, do you?”

I had to look away at her
quincea
ñ
era
portrait placed over a bookshelf. Along with free birthday cakes for all children delivered to their door by bicycle and a free wedding day, the state offered a party for all girls on their fifteenth birthday celebrating their transition into womanhood. A banquet hall is rented along with a feast and they receive a dress and fancy dress clothes for their family. All the boys in attendance wear rented tuxedos. Fourteen couples dance a waltz around the
quincea
ñ
era
, who is allowed to select a boy of her choosing to dance with. A photographer is hired to commemorate the day. Every Cuban lady lives with an arrestingly beautiful portrait of herself posing dreamily somewhere on the premises of her home. Videliah's portrait was the most lovely I've seen.

*   *   *

My time left of that first trip in Havana was nearing its end. I've always been terrible with good-byes. I've tried to sneak out of everything before it ends all my life—family, relationships, friendships, even life itself. Cuba as these people knew it had been coming to an end for fifty years, yet it just never actually
happened
. Castro's obituary has been on file at the
Miami Herald
for decades, yet at this point he might end up living longer than that newspaper.

After my last training session with H
é
ctor on a rooftop in Old Havana (he got tired of having to give a cut to the Macbeth witches at the front), I paid a visit to Montalvo's house a few blocks away from the gym. At Alfonso's suggestion, I'd bought some cigars and tracksuits through Montalvo's contacts on the black market to help cover some costs of the trip and maybe make it a little easier to come back. His street, like a lot of streets in the baked Old Havana maze, has a vise-like squeeze. The streets are potholed and dusty. The sidewalks are filled with dog shit and trash. Many windows on the homes are barred, with old men and women assuming poses gripping the bars and staring out with docile eyes at the neighborhood. There's never a bustling morning commute here, everything is clotted and fading or giving out. From the rooftops you feel a lot of eyes watch your movements. There's no homelessness anywhere, but what roofs people have over their heads leak, the plumbing doesn't work, food is terrible, electricity is finicky—everything everywhere is continually breaking down.

I banged on Montalvo's rotting front door just as I heard a needle drop on a Barry White record inside. Lesvanne was delivering the tracksuits and cigars soon. Typical of Lesvanne and Montalvo, the only cut Lesvanne wanted was a tracksuit for Montalvo to enjoy, and Montalvo wouldn't take more than a bottle of rum for his father-in-law. They were both insulted at the idea of anything more.

“
¡Oye!
” Montalvo hollered. “
Te gusta
, Barry Blanco?”

Montalvo's wife answered the door with their grandchild in her arms. I received and gave a kiss to both while spying Montalvo from the corner of my eye, wearing his pristine Cuban Olympic tracksuit, responding to Barry Blanco with the relish of Bill Cosby cleaning off a spoon of Jell-O.

“He cheats on me every afternoon with Blanco.” His wife shook her head. “Look at this? I'm not homophobic but to have to watch your husband of thirty years have an orgasm in your living room to Blanco every day? This man has no shame.”

“You cheat on me with Jorge Miguel,” Montalvo volleyed, under his breath, as he swayed. “‘Careless Whisper'?
¡Qu
é
va!
Don't tell me about Blanco. In our open marriage I have my Barry Blanco and you have Miguel.”

“Lesvanne already delivered everything?”

“Yes. He just stepped out. Thank you for this tracksuit. Aren't I a flashy
papi chulo
in it! Ay! Ay!” Three Cuban wrist snaps accentuated this point. “Brinicito, I have something for you while I cheat on my wife for the next four minutes with Blanco.”

He reached over and grabbed a massive photo album. Montalvo dropped it like an anvil in my lap but quickly reclaimed it to inspect the pages. For a reason I had significant difficulty determining, he began to show me pictures of people he had known in school or in track who had died. After pointing out four recent deaths, Montalvo gestured at another and shrugged, then almost sang, “Heeeeee's dead, too.” I looked to his wife for some explanation and she held up her hands and paced off to the kitchen to make some coffee on the stove for us. After he'd introduced me to twenty more dead people, he didn't bother to lift his finger anymore, simply slid it across the images. “
É
l tambi
é
n.
Dead.” Turned the page. “
É
l …
hmmm …
momento
.” Montalvo turned toward the kitchen and leaned back in the sofa until I could feel the backrest about to snap off. “
¡Mi amor!
Marco Antonio Reyes? Four-hundred-meter runner.”