The Domino Diaries (34 page)

“How bad is he?” I asked him.

“Have you ever spoken to him on the phone when he isn't drunk?”

“I don't
think
so,” I said.

“Exactly.” He shook his head.

In conversation, he often didn't know what day or month it was. I was never sure if he was joking. He'd switch from English to Spanish to Russian. If Muhammad Ali was locked in his body as the physical cost for his career, what was the price Stevenson paid locked in the vise of this body politic?

“I think it's fairly obvious how bad he is, isn't it?” my translator lamented. “He's not meeting you for the pleasure of speaking with a foreign journalist. He needs the money. So do I. So does everybody in this fucking country. This man is a great hero of mine and to many around the world, and having him reduced to this makes me feel ashamed.”

“Do you even think he'll talk with us?” I asked.

“I doubt on camera. He's not well. There's his car up ahead. There.” He pointed to a rusting green early-1990s Toyota behind a fence. “That's his. He turned down five million dollars and he drives
that
. Do you think I'm proud of my country for that? That's the house of Teo. By Cuban standards it's nice, but in Miami he would have lived in a palace. You want to know how hard things have gotten? He doesn't even have enough money to put gasoline in his car.”

In 1987, Stevenson had been involved in what many assumed was an alcohol-related car accident that took a motorcyclist's life. The crime, if indeed it
was
one, was swept under the rug to preserve Stevenson's iconic status. He was never charged or convicted of any wrongdoing, and although he slowly receded from public view, symbolically he remained a lodestar for Cuba's moral compass. Many Cubans still set their moral watches to Stevenson's clock, and even some of those opposed to his socialist principles admire the man's courage and conviction.

I wasn't looking forward to undermining that. Galileo wasn't put in prison because he was wrong about anything he discovered looking through his telescope; rather, he was incarcerated simply because he saw what others didn't wish to see.

When we arrived at Stevenson's driveway we could see through the padlocked fence that his front door was open. My translator hollered out and a few tense moments later Stevenson, shirtless and in blue track pants, a cigarette dangling from his lips, wound his stiff six-foot-five frame into the entryway with care, bracing himself against the doorjamb. I wasn't sure if the fragility in Stevenson's movements owed more to his boxing career or the booze. Nonetheless, he'd recently celebrated his fifty-ninth birthday and still looked lean and handsome.

Stevenson approached us, holding out the key to his gate while my translator turned to me with a look of dread.

Te
ó
filo Stevenson won his first Olympic gold medal in 1972 and his last world amateur championship in 1986. He won 302 fights and once went eleven years without a single loss. The offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold medal in Montreal in 1976.

Ali was a man adept at finding weakness in his opponents and cruelly exploiting it to his own advantage, yet he never saw weakness in Stevenson, not even in his refusal to turn professional and face him in the ring. He admired a man standing up for what he believed in, as Ali had done when he refused to compromise his spiritual beliefs to fight in Vietnam. In 1996 and 1998, Ali donated a total of $1.7 million worth of medical aid to Cuba as a way of opposing the economic embargo against the island nation, which had contributed so much to the brutal economic crisis of the previous decade. Stevenson greeted Ali at Havana's international airport and they were inseparable during both of Ali's visits, equals.

Stevenson pried open his lock and pulled back the gate until we had entered and then proceeded to lock us in. There were rumors that he kept a pistol Fidel had given him personally for protection. He offered a warm handshake and smiled, yet his eyes were bloodshot and turned sad the moment he noticed my camera.

“Please come inside,” he said in English.

“You like speaking English?” I asked.

“As long as he doesn't start the Russian.…” My translator smiled in Stevenson's direction.

Once we got inside his home—surrounded by photographs, mementos, and trophies—Stevenson pointed to a chair for me to sit in while he sat across from me, the street visible to him out the open front door. I quickly realized why this was: every last person who walked by, spotting Stevenson, sang his name in joy, raising a hand of praise, and it lifted his spirits. I handed the bottle of vodka to Stevenson and he tilted his head in thanks, asking the translator if he could go back into the kitchen and bring out some cups and orange juice for us.

Even though at the time I had no idea that this was going to be the last interview of Stevenson's life before his sudden death a year later in June 2012, I knew this wasn't going to be easy.

I turned and began attaching my camera to a small tripod. I was in the process of stretching out and unfolding it just as Stevenson lit another cigarette, turned to our translator, and said in Spanish:

“Tell him he has to pay, or there is no interview. Make him come up with something.”

“How much do we ask for?” my translator asked Stevenson.

“You tell me,” Stevenson grunted. “You have experience in this. Give him a number.”

“I say we ask for eighty or a hundred. I'm broke.”

“Okay.” Stevenson shrugged. “But I'm worse off than you. If I say there is no interview—”

Just then he noticed the camera pointed in his direction. “Don't film me now. No camera! Put the camera away.”

I swung the camera away.

Stevenson was in an impossible situation. He not only rejected America's millions, but he also had to pretend there was no consequence. Stevenson had to be just as defiant in his choice as Puig was in pretending he'd reached salvation entering American life, with no lingering pain. Zero tolerance for dissent on this point cuts both ways. The emotional truth remains hidden.

“Is it off?” Stevenson growled.

I turned it off.

The translator spread out three cups before Stevenson and placed a large bottle of orange juice next to the vodka.

“We can talk but I don't want to be filmed.”

“If you grant me an interview I have to film,” I said. “That's why I'm here.”

“For one hundred dollars you can film the pictures on my wall and have the audio of our interview.”

“I'm sorry.” I laughed. “On the phone I asked for a filmed interview. That's why I came here. That's my work.”

Stevenson put out his cigarette on the floor and looked for another in an empty pack. I offered him one of mine.

“What is this?”

“American Spirit,” I said.

“You want Te
ó
filo Stevenson to smoke
American Spirit
?” He spat out the words. “Why did I ever let you in my house?”

With that, Stevenson went about preparing three drinks in the large paper cups. He filled all three cups to the brim, but two had nine parts orange juice to one part vodka, while the last had nine parts vodka to just a token splash of orange juice. Half the bottle of vodka was already gone.

“Okay.” Stevenson laughed. “How long you want for our interview?”

“An hour?” I said.

Stevenson nodded thoughtfully, reached down for the suicide screwdriver, and hoisted it up toward me.

“Fuck that shit.” I waved it off. “I don't even drink.” I knew the drill. I had seen my own father try to drink himself to death, just as Stevenson was doing now.

“My friend”—Stevenson snickered—“my deal is this. If you pay a hundred and thirty dollars, you can have an hour with me on camera and film my trophy walls and pictures with Fidel and Ali.”

“Done.” I reached over to my camera.

“
Annnnnnnd,
” Stevenson added, “the time starts now, but you can only begin filming once you finish
this
drink. These are my terms.”

“Those are your terms?”

“Yes.” Stevenson smiled coyly. “Do you accept my terms?”

“Deal.”

I took the cup of vodka, chugged it in five or six excruciating gulps, struggled not to vomit in Stevenson's living room for the next few moments, and once it had finally settled in my stomach, I reached over to turn the camera on to catch Stevenson's reaction.

“
Nooooo!
”

“Deal's a deal,
campe
ó
n
.”

The translator shook his head. “You're
both
insane. What am I doing here?”

“Okay, one minute,” Stevenson pleaded. “One minute.” He staggered to his feet and wobbled his way into the dining room and found a shirt and cap after tossing aside some dominoes on his dinner table. He returned in a Che Guevara T-shirt and gray cap as armor and stared at me like an old lion.

I started filming. “Are you happy with your life in Cuba?” I asked him, my voice shaking. “Are you happy with the life you've had?”

“Happy? I'm happy. I'm
very
happy.”

“No regrets?”

“
No.
”

“Why is that so hard for people to believe?”

“There are people who become immoral. I would never do that. I endure until the end.”

“I've just come from Ireland, where Guillermo Rigondeaux had his last fight. He told me you defended him after he tried to defect.”

“The Cuban system helped him. Where he grew up, in Santiago de Cuba? They did not have the conditions that the revolution has created today. He should have respected that.”

“F
é
lix Sav
ó
n told me he felt Rigondeaux betrayed the Cuban people,” I said.

“I rejected all that money. Because they wanted me to stay out there in the United States like Rigondeaux and the rest of them. Rigondeaux decided to leave. He wasn't allowed to box anymore in Cuba. He betrayed the Cuban people. And …
he left.
”

“What does this decision feel like, to stay or to leave?” I asked Stevenson. “Is it a decision from the mind or the heart?”

“There are decisions that emerge from your heart and your soul and those decisions can't be betrayed. Now please stop the cameras for a moment. I don't want the children to see the champ smoking, please. It's a bad example.”

*   *   *

On that warm night in Canc
ú
n, Helmys Stevenson wore a long white dress with her curly hair hanging over her shoulders. While she was built long and lithe like an Olympic swimmer, her arms were as large and sculpted as any middleweight boxer I'd ever seen.

“You lift trucks for a living in Canc
ú
n or what?” I asked her.

“I do no exercise.” She blushed. “I'm fortunate with good genetics.”

“You know, women box in the Olympics now.”

“I heard.”

“Maybe to settle the argument between your dad and Muhammad Ali I could promote a fight between you and one of Ali's daughters.”

“Laila Ali was a world champion!”

“So was her dad when Te
ó
filo got all those offers to fight him.”

“I'll consider it.”

Just as Ali and Stevenson bore an uncanny physical resemblance, Helmys could have easily passed as one of Ali's daughters. But I wondered how different her life would have been if she had enjoyed the benefits Ali's children enjoyed from his fame and fortune. Te
ó
filo Stevenson was a national hero, but he could never offer his two children the comforts and security of the millions Ali would leave behind. Yet I saw no sign of this fact burdening this lovely woman in any way.

After I warned Helmys of the distance to where I had in mind for us to have dinner, she exchanged her heels for flip-flops.

I took her to the same hotel where Yasiel Puig was held captive under threat of having his arm chopped off by a machete until the ransom was paid. It was the only hotel that fit all the basic clues Katz had provided me: U-shaped, with a pool, looking out over the water at the massive Mexican flag on Canc
ú
n, and a drunken stumble away from that strip club. Katz had tried for weeks to identify it on Google images but failed. Since Puig had been held there, the hotel had undergone a
massive
renovation. I wonder where the money came from to finance that? My aunt was certain the previous incarnation of the hotel was the dive Katz wrote about in his piece.

We walked in the darkness along the shoulder of the road, a New York avenue worth of land dividing two seas. Helmys wasn't wearing perfume but the scent wafting off her hair, detonated by moonlight, was distracting.

“How did you leave Cuba?” I asked her.

“I studied international tourism in Mexico. I applied for a visa to stay and work in Mexico. I visit my home in Cuba as often as I can.”

“Where did you grow up in Havana?” I asked.

“The house you visited, where my father eventually moved to, was in N
á
utico. We had the only swimming pool in that neighborhood, but he wouldn't use it for swimming. He liked turtles and ducks and let them use it. But before that home Fidel gave us a house near the Plaza de la Revoluci
ó
n, where he spoke to the Cuban people. Actually, our house was next door to Che Guevara's widow. Che's children were all my friends growing up.”

“And was Fidel close with your father?”

“
Very
close.” She slapped my arm for emphasis, as only the daughter of a three-time Olympic Champion might. “After I was born my father introduced me to Fidel and apparently I pulled his beard very hard while he cradled me in his arms.”