The Domino Diaries (28 page)

Some snow was falling outside and clung to her hair and jacket collar, and the rest of her looked like some tropical princess. Before she'd left Cuba, all her life she'd wanted to see the snow, and on the day she finally arrived to Canada, Toronto was under siege, battling a blizzard. She'd traded one excruciating extreme for another, and that was before she had enough English to contrast Cuban men with their Canadian equivalents. Leaving home as a teenager, Cuba was like a bear trap where the only means of escape required amputating vital portions of her soul. Food and music were the only safe areas to remain connected. Everything else seemed to bring into focus how the two worlds she straddled had left her life completely off-balance. And because our meetings after this one had all been restricted to fleeting marathon fuckfests around Toronto—behind the backs of our respective partners—there was always a kind of wartime urgency compounded by a tacit prohibition of talking about the past or the future.
Last Tango in Paris
was for both of us a favorite movie, and so we re-created our own version in my home country each time I departed for her hometown.

But the good-byes were rigged with all kinds of explosives. The moment I'd raise the prospect of seeing her again she'd pull up her drawbridge and dig a moat around herself, informing me we'd never see each other again. “We'd only make ourselves miserable anyway,” she'd sneer. So I stopped asking permission and continued to lay over in Toronto for a few days every time I went to Havana with the express purpose of ambushing her. The more secure a setup she had with a man, the easier it was to entice betrayal.

Back in Havana Sof
í
a finally smiled. “I know where I want you to take me,” Sof
í
a said. “Let's get off the truck and grab another car.”

“Where do you wanna go?”

“Quinta Avenida. Let's go to Miramar and you can fuck this sadness out of me at Parque de los Ahogados. I'm tired of feeling grumpy. It's my favorite park and where I lost my virginity. While you fuck me I'll think about him.” She smiled.

“Hold on, I'm still stuck on
ahogados
. Park of the
hanged
?”

“Yeah, from all the suicides who hung themselves off these incredibly haunting banyan trees there. The park looks like someone's nightmare.”

“This is where you lost your virginity?”

“Mhmm,” she said, waving at our driver in the rearview to stop the truck. “My old house isn't far. I'll take you to see where I grew up.”

*   *   *

We stopped an old Plymouth that was huffing its way over to Quinta Avenida, the avenue where the Malec
ó
n ends and dips under a tunnel and climbs to blossom into a six-lane avenue, divided by a lush, tree-lined island for pedestrians to stroll in the shade or relax on stone benches straight out of Santa Monica, California. When you exit that tunnel Miramar isn't so much a different neighborhood of the city as a different world. The decay and despair of so many homes in Vedado give way to the abandoned, opulent mansions that run for miles, many converted into foreign embassies. At night the most expensive
jineteras
across the city strut in their Lycra catsuits looking to lure diplomats and other rich visitors until someone accepts their price.

We turned off the avenue down a side street just before the spooky suicide park Sof
í
a had mentioned. A man from a group playing dominoes over a table on the corner glared at Sof
í
a in her summer dress and then over at me. He muttered something and they all stared at us.

“
¡Co
ñ
o!
These tourists steal the best of
everything
in our country,” one of them moaned.

Our visit to her childhood neighborhood hadn't begun auspiciously.

Sof
í
a turned and gave me a scolding look before smiling her satisfaction. “My people giving you shit definitely helps cheer me up.”

“It's depressing as fuck,” I said.

“People like you are all the same. The ugliest thing you can find traveling around damaged places is always another tourist. That's your biggest fear, isn't it?”

“I can't help where I'm from any more than they can help where they came from.”

“Why should you be depressed? According to them you've stolen the best
mujer
in all of Cuba. I bet they wouldn't have said the same thing about Fidel Castro's granddaughter. Who knows, maybe she'll see us around Havana.”

This was an accurate forecast of my doomed last stretch in Havana. And after this she walked away emphasizing her triumph with each voluptuous step and wrecking-ball swing of her hips while the domino table full of men hissed and shrieked their approval. I followed her over to the park until she reached behind herself to pull up her skirt. We unpacked some much needed cheer and goodwill at the Park of the Hanged under one of the nightmarish banyan trees while Sof
í
a sarcastically called out the name of the guy she lost her virginity to as a means of encouraging me to pick up the tempo before we got arrested.

Afterward, we wandered a few blocks off the avenue and turned up at a residential street littered with drowsy homes that wouldn't look out of place in any suburb across the United States. Most had the familiar Cuban sausage dogs behind fences yelping “Intruder! Intruder!” until they abandoned their posts once we went over to pet them and applaud their ferociousness.

“The next house was ours,” Sof
í
a said softly. “They painted it yellow. It was nicer pink. I wonder if the man my father sold it to still lives there now. Probably. I've heard he's had a terrible time since he bought it ten years ago.”

“Who was he?”

“A Spanish businessman. Supplies the hotels in Miramar with various things. I don't know him well. I don't really know why I'm taking you here actually.”

Sof
í
a opened the gate and I followed behind her into the front yard of her former home. As she walked she looked a little shaken glancing over at her neighbors' properties. When we got to the front door we could hear what sounded like a sledgehammer coming from the backyard. We went around the side of the house and saw construction workers being overseen by an older, debonair gentleman who'd brought out a pitcher of mojitos and was pouring glasses.

“
¡Oye, Mario!
” Sof
í
a cried out.

Mario turned around and smiled wide with his lips slowly parting.

“Still here?” Sof
í
a laughed.

“I've been stranded ever since I bought the place. Look at you. You're as beautiful as your mother. Come closer so I can give you a kiss.”

They talked for twenty minutes while Mario showed Sof
í
a the changes he'd made to the house in an attempt to improve its value for a sale. In between Mario pointing out his changes and Sof
í
a updating him on her family on the island and in Canada, she showed me where she'd taken her first steps, where she'd slept with her brother and aunt, and the room where she'd kissed a boy for the first time. It was as if we were viewing her past and the forgotten dreams she'd long since abandoned behind the glass of a pawnshop window. In every room we entered she made a face like her heart caved in.

“It's a beautiful home,” I said to both of them. I turned to Mario. “Why are you trying to sell it?”

He sighed as Sof
í
a shook her head.

“My friend.” Mario put his hand on my shoulder. “As I'm sure you know, to
visit
Havana is paradise. But to
live
in Havana is hell. And that's before I could even begin to explain what doing
business
is like in this fucking country. Over the years they've come here and seized my car, my motorcycle. I'm harassed constantly. They've seized all kinds of things. You can't do business here without dealing with the black market. Of course the government knows this. The illegal economy is bigger than the
official
economy. It's all institutionally corrupt and I was just too na
ï
ve to think I could ever navigate such a hideously broken system. I need to go back to Spain and start over. I give up. I've spent everything I've ever earned here just to improve this property to sell it off so I can finally leave. I'm dying faster than even this rotting-away city.”

“Would you leave tomorrow if you could sell it?” I asked Mario.

“
Por favor.
” He laughed. “Would I leave tomorrow if I sold this place? I would leave
tonight
.”

“Brinicito is here trying to interview the family Guillermo Rigondeaux left behind.”

“A very beautiful boxer. What a sad face he had even before Fidel called him a traitor. A true Cuban champion for his time.”

“How dangerous is it to try to talk with them?” I asked Mario.

“Two government cameras are focused on his house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Easily the most politically radioactive home in Havana. If you go, be prepared for a knock on the door any second and to be escorted to the airport by security. I wouldn't go if I were you.”

“I don't even know where it is yet.”

“
Qu
é
va.
” Mario snickered. “We all know where it is. Boyeros. Near the airport. Everybody knows the little green house. His house was on the news here for weeks after he tried to defect. Stay here, I'll go inside and get a pencil and paper and draw you a map.”

After he'd finished sketching the street and government buildings next to Rigondeaux's home, I asked how he knew the directions were accurate.

Mario smiled and asked me to stop any taxi on the street, secure a ride, and then ask them to take me to the address he'd written down. After we'd left her old home, Sof
í
a and I tried this twice back on Quinta Avenida. Both times drivers gave us an incredulous look before driving off. It was pretty evident this was a real danger in a land where, if there was a suggestion you were sympathetic to one of the most famous living traitors in any way, your whole life was in peril. Maybe not just
your
life, either; anyone close to you, also. While you aren't likely to meet a people more generous,
nobody
can hold a grudge like Cubans.

 

24

JUDAS

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

—Fidel Castro

“
L
ISTEN
,
B
RINICITO,”
S
OFÍA WAS SAYING
in bed at our apartment, late on the night before we went to the house Fidel had given Rigondeaux as a reward for his first Olympic medal. “We don't have long in Havana together. It's only because of Rigondeaux winning his fight that we have this time together, so I'll go with you to this house. I'd like to meet his family. Keep in mind, if we visit that house you're never going to be let back into this country again. So if you're comfortable with that, you better get everything you want to film in Havana before they take you away.”

The phone rang.

“
Oye,
campe
ó
n,
” a voice slurred. I knew from the word
campe
ó
n
that it was a boxer, all right, but whoever it was, he was drunk out of his mind and I couldn't make out much. “
Lo siento, campe
ó
n. Lo siento. Emergencia. Por favor. Lo siento. Mi familia. Emergencia.
I must see you right away.
Lo siento.
”

The only boxer I'd ever spoken with on the phone who was drunk was Te
ó
filo Stevenson. He'd declined or indefinitely postponed every request I'd ever made to meet with him and usually ended each phone call with the same tragic question, “
Campe
ó
n
, what
time
is it anyway?” I'd answer with the time and he'd follow up, “
Bueno
. Which
day
is it?” After I'd tell him the day he'd break my heart again asking what month it was. It made no difference what hour I called him. No matter how early it was that I called him on his cell phone, Stevenson was to some extent intoxicated.

But after a dozen of these horribly awkward phone calls, I was very familiar with his nasal voice that enjoyed toying with me, using Russian and English sprinkled into the conversation. This wasn't him or any voice that I recognized. Then it dawned on me.…

“
H
é
ctor?
”

“
S
í
,
” he groaned, clearing his throat. “
Lo siento, campe
ó
n
. But I must come over.”

“What's wrong?” I asked.

Sof
í
a was glaring at me.

“
Con permiso,
” I told H
é
ctor. I turned to Sof
í
a and covered the phone: “He says there's some kind of family emergency and he has to come over.”

“He's drunk?” she asked.

“He's drunk or he's badly injured. He sounds
awful
.”

“He knows where we are?”

“Yeah.”

“
Madre m
í
a,
Brinicito. There's no
family emergency
. He needs money! Don't let him come over here. Give me the fucking phone,” she demanded, reaching over to grab it.

“This has never happened before! H
é
ctor's a friend. What if there
is
an emergency?”