The German Girl (27 page)

Aunt Hannah takes this as a demonstration of affection and strokes my cheeks, which are burning from the heat. Mom is proud of me—me, the one who is always so solitary and removed, being friendly toward the only other person who is a link to the father I never knew. I close my eyes and let myself be. For the first time, I feel close to my aunt.

The cemetery is a real walled city. The entrance arch is crowned by a religious sculpture.

“It represents faith, hope, and charity,” Catalina explains when she notices me looking at it. We park inside the cemetery and get out to walk the rest of the way. Catalina is carrying red and white roses, and has sprigs of basil tucked behind her ear.

“They’re refreshing,” she explains.

Seeing that I am trying to take in everything around me, she becomes my guide.

“Señora Alma has not yet found peace. She suffered a lot. She left with a heavy suitcase, and you should go to your grave as lightly as possible. Remember what I’m saying, child. And that goes for you, too,” she says, raising her voice so that Aunt Hannah can hear.

We’re surprised at the familiarity with which Catalina treats Aunt Hannah. She doesn’t use the polite form of address in Spanish, although she is always respectful. She talks to Aunt Hannah as if she had more experience.

“We have to leave the past behind,” says Catalina, sniffing the roses. She goes on: “These are for Señora Alma. She still needs a lot of help!”

We walk along slowly, not because of my aunt but because of Catalina, whose legs are heavy. She is constantly fanning herself. Aunt Hannah leans on Mom’s arm as she gazes at the avenues lined with mausoleums. Leaving the main avenue, we are surprised by a sea of marble sculptures: there are crosses as far as the eye can see, laurel wreaths, and upside-down torches adorning the monuments. It’s a real ode to death.

Some of the mausoleums look like plundered palaces. According to Aunt Hannah, a lot of them have been vandalized. “A great society in decay,” Mom whispers.

I stop to read some headstones. One is dedicated to the heroes of the republic, another to firemen, another to martyrs, and, of course, to military and literary heroes. On one tomb I read this inscription: “Kind passerby: Absent your mind from the cruel world for a few moments, and dedicate a loving, peaceful thought to these two beings whose earthly happiness was cut short by fate, and whose mortal remains lie at rest in this sepulcher in fulfillment of a sacred promise. We thank you from eternity.” This helps take my mind off the unbearable May heat.

At Catalina’s request, we head for the central chapel. She says she wants to pray for her dead, and for ours as well, I suppose. While we wait for her, we stand in silence. When she comes out, we turn onto Avenida Fray Jacinto to look for the Rosen family plot, and finally arrive at a mausoleum with six columns and an open porch. A temple that provides shade for its dead and for those who come to visit them. The family name is engraved near the top.

There are five tombstones, one for each of the Rosens, whether or not they were born, lived, or died in this supposed place of transit. The first reads “Max Rosen, 1895–1942”; the second, “Alma Rosen, 1900–1970”; the third, “Gustav Rosen, 1939–1968.” The fourth is the one for my father: “Louis Rosen, 1959–2001.” A fifth stone is still blank: I guess it is reserved for my aunt, the last Rosen on the island.

Catalina kneels down with great difficulty in front of my great-grandmother Alma’s tomb, because in the end, she explains, that
was the only one that really had a body in it. The others are symbolic burials. The mausoleum will keep for all eternity only the two women who one day disembarked from a liner that had no destination. The men of the family died far away, and their bodies were never recovered.

Catalina joins her hands together, lowers her head, and then stands for a few minutes saying her prayers for a woman who “came into this world to suffer and left it full of sorrow.” She lays the roses on my great-grandmother’s tomb, then straightens up very slowly. Mom takes four stones from her bag—where did she find them?—and places them on each of the four named tombs. Catalina looks almost offended—her eyes open wide in astonishment, as if she is waiting for an explanation for such rudeness, but nobody bothers to offer one.

“There isn’t a dead person in the world who would prefer a stone to a flower,” she says to me in a whisper, so as not to upset Mom or my aunt, who seems pleased at this gesture by a woman who also loved her beloved Louis.

“Flowers wither,” I explain to Catalina. “Stones last. They will be there forever, unless somebody dares to move them. Stones protect.”

However much I explain, Catalina will never understand. To her, the roses cost money: they were cultivated and cared for. The dusty stones had appeared from heaven knows where. It’s not right for them to be placed near the dead.

Still grumbling about this, Catalina pauses, takes my hand, and asks me to follow her. Aunt Hannah and Mom are still standing in silence at this mausoleum my great-grandmother had built when she received the news of Great-grandfather’s death. On our way here, my aunt told us that on that day, Alma had made a vow: all the Rosens who ended their days on the island, as well as those born here, were to be buried in the family plot. For Great-grandmother, forgiveness did not exist. She blamed this island for the misery, and swore that “for at least the next one hundred years” Cuba would pay for the tragedy of her family.

“The curse of the Rosens!” Aunt Hannah concludes with a resigned smile, recognizing the hatred her mother had tried unsuccessfully to instill in her.

Catalina leads me to a much-visited tomb strewn with flowers. I can see several people standing reverently before a white marble sculpture of a woman with a baby in her arms, leaning against a cross. The worshippers move away without turning their backs on the figure.

When I raise my camera, Catalina shoots me a stern look.

“Not here,” she says, covering my lens with her hand.

She closes her eyes for several minutes before speaking again.

Finally, she says without explanation, “This is the tomb of Amelia la Milagrosa.”

Waiting for her to continue, I watch the silent ritual of the pilgrims visiting the tomb.

“La Milagrosa was a woman who died in childbirth. They buried her with the baby at her feet, but when the tomb was opened years later, they found the child in her arms.”

Catalina forces me to go up close and stroke the child’s marble head. “For good luck,” she whispers to me.

When we return to the family plot, we see Aunt Hannah with one hand on her mother’s tombstone. As she straightens up, it occurs to me that it will be up to us, her descendants, to engrave her name on the headstone left blank for her. Someday we will come here and leave a stone on it. If Catalina outlives her, she’ll bring her flowers.

“I think the time has come to reclaim our real name,” Aunt Hannah says gravely, staring at the name engraved over this tiny Greek temple in the midst of the Caribbean. “For us to become Rosenthals again.”

As she is talking to her mother, she places another stone on the tomb.

At dusk, we return home, and Mom and I go to bed without supper. I think this worries my aunt and Catalina, but the fact is, we are exhausted. In bed, Mom talks endlessly about Aunt Hannah until I fall asleep.

She says that Aunt Hannah is thin and frail but is protected by her dignity. I, too, am amazed at the way she holds her body erect like a
ballerina. Mom says her gestures are feminine; there is an unusual gentleness about them. And despite everything she has suffered, she refuses to let any hint of bitterness show in her face.

“I can see you in her, Anna. You’ve inherited her beauty and her determination,” she whispers in my ear. I barely hear her, as sleep is creeping up on me. “We were so lucky to find her!”

M
y mother missed cold mornings. She detested the endless summer and the constant tropical downpours on the island.

“It’s an archipelago of frogs and savages. Aren’t you nostalgic for the seasons? Do you think we’ll ever enjoy autumn, winter, or spring again? Summer should be a season of transition, Hannah,” she would repeat.

We lived on an island with only two seasons, dry and wet: where the vegetation grew ferociously; where everybody complained and talked of nothing but the past. As if they knew what the past really was! The past didn’t exist; it was an illusion. There was never any going back.

She returned to Havana with Gustav on a warm, humid thirty-first of December. He was the smallest baby I had ever seen. Not a hair on his head, and very grumpy.

“He’s like a grouchy old man,” laughed Hortensia.

The baby’s arrival had changed the demanding Señora Alma, at least momentarily. She didn’t complain about the open windows letting in sunlight, or the noise of voices and clattering dishes from the neighbor’s when she was feeding her children rice and black beans. Nor did she seem to mind that we listened in the kitchen to absurd radio soap operas full of betrayals, tears, and illegitimate pregnancies, or that Hortensia taught me to cook delicious doughnuts, or that we flooded the house with the smells of vanilla essence and cinnamon.

That first night, we were left alone with the baby. Eulogio had gone to celebrate the New Year with his family in Guanabacoa, and Hortensia had asked for a few days’ leave. Neither would be back until January 6. As soon as they had left, Mother gave me a big surprise:

“Papa is fine!”

I didn’t ask how she knew. If she had got another letter, she wouldn’t tell me. I tried not to let any emotion show on my face and went on trying to entertain that blob of a baby, who did not react to any of my songs or funny noises.

No news of Leo,
was my only thought. I found it hard to understand why I hadn’t received any sign of life from him.

I realized we were on our own for the first time in a strange, hostile city. Alone, with a newborn baby, and without a family doctor or anybody we could turn to in an emergency. Hortensia had left us some cooked meat; I would see to the rest. When she saw me taking charge of the kitchen, my mother couldn’t believe her eyes. She seemed to be thinking,
I’ve lost her! If I’d been away another month, I wouldn’t recognize her.

She went back to her room, with the baby in the wicker basket that Hortensia had brought home before Mother returned from New York. She had lined it prettily with blankets embroidered with blue silk and called it a “Moses.” She would say, “Move the Moses over here.” “Don’t put the Moses so high!” “Rock the baby in the Moses, and you’ll see how he falls asleep.” At first we didn’t understand what she was referring to.

That Moses turned out to be a great help during Gustav’s first months, because we could carry it easily around the house and even take
it out onto the patio so that at sunset or early in the morning he could get some sun when it was at its most gentle—if it could ever be called that. My mother said that, like plants, babies needed warmth and light to grow, and so I took over giving my brother his daily sunbath.

That last day of December, the three of us fell asleep around nine o’clock in my mother’s room. It had been a long, exhausting day. Gustav demanded to be fed every three hours; otherwise his cries would have reached the North Pole. Every time she breast-fed him, he fell asleep, but as soon as he woke up, he started protesting again. It was an endless cycle.

We were not in the mood to celebrate. In reality, there
was
nothing to celebrate: the two of us were stranded in the Caribbean; Papa was in hiding with other “impure” people in Paris, with the Ogres snapping at his heels. And now we had a baby boy who made me wonder with each passing moment why we had brought him into this hostile world. So we went to bed almost without realizing that one year was ending and another beginning, just as terrible as the previous one.

At midnight we heard explosions and an unusual commotion in what was normally such a quiet neighborhood. Mother woke with a start, and then closed the window and curtains. We went to my room to peep out through the shutters and saw our neighbors throwing buckets of water into the street. Some of them were even throwing buckets filled with ice. We couldn’t understand what was going on, if we were being threatened, or if this was just some exuberant local custom.

Our next-door neighbor opened a bottle of champagne with an extravagant gesture: the cork flew off and almost hit our window. She drank straight from the bottle and passed it to her husband, a bald, shirtless man with a very hairy chest. Then the music began:
guarachas
mixed with shouts of “Happy New Year!” from all sides.

We were leaving another decade behind as well. The sinister 1939 already belonged to the past. My mother was observing the extraordinary spectacle from her Petit Trianon, protected by the walls of a house she would gradually transform into a fortress.

When she saw us at the window, our neighbor raised her frothing bottle and wished us a “Happy Nineteen Forty!”

We went back to sleep. When we woke, we were in another decade. Our life had changed. We had a new member of the family: a little boy who would spend more time in the arms of a stranger than in his mother’s. Little by little, even if we found it hard to admit, Hortensia, in her own way, became another Rosenthal.