Waiting for Snow in Havana (17 page)

“You know that if you go into the water before your food is fully digested, you'll suffer an
embolia
and drown.”

“What's an
embolia
?”

“It's bad. It can kill you.”

“But what is it? What does it do to you?”

“It's something that happens in your brain. It paralyzes you, and if you're in the water, you'll sink to the bottom immediately and drown.”

“How does it happen? What does food have to do with it?”

“Your body just can't handle digestion and swimming at the same time. It's some sort of overload. Too much for your body to bear.”

“Then why are there so many people in the water? I saw some of them eating a little while ago. Look, they're all fine.”

“They're all in grave danger, risking too much. If they don't get an
embolia,
then they may get a
calambre
.”

“What's a
calambre
?”

“It's when your muscles get all cramped up and you can't move them. They're also very painful. If you get a
calambre
in the water, you'll drown.”

“Even in shallow water?”

“Yes, you might fall down so quickly no one will notice, and you'll be unable to get your head out of the water. Especially if you get an
embolia
on top of the
calambre.
”

I didn't find any of this scary, just irritating as hell.

Mom continued: “I've known of many people who have gone into the water too soon after eating and drowned, or nearly drowned. Most of them got
embolias
.”

“Who? Anyone I know?”

“My uncle Emilio, who had just arrived from Spain. He didn't know about the three hours, since they never went to the beach in Galicia. They found him all twisted up in the water.
Todo jorobado
. All twisted up, but he was lucky enough to survive drowning. But one of my childhood friends drowned from an
embolia
. And a lot of other people you don't know.”

“But why don't we ever see anyone drowning at this beach?”

Silence. I continued pursuing my line of logic: “I see people eating and swimming, and I never see anyone getting
emboliado.
”

She set me straight: “You don't get
emboliado,
you suffer an
embolia.
And the answer is still
no,
you can't go in for another hour. Your body is still digesting its food. If you go in now, you could die.”

“So why did you give me lunch, then? If I have to wait three hours before swimming every time I eat at the beach, it's not worth coming. If I have to wait another hour, it will almost be time to go home when I finally get in the water. Why did you give me lunch? Why?”

“Because if you don't eat, you'll be too weak to swim. And you could drown.”

I gave up and went back to digging my trench in the sand.

Maybe if I dig deep enough,
I thought,
I could get to China.
I thought that in China, maybe, they jumped into the water right after eating or even ate
in
the water.
Anyone who made firecrackers,
I thought,
had to be smart enough not to have such stupid rules.

So I dug furiously, dug and dug, until I hit water. “Carlos, be careful. If you hit water in that hole you're digging, don't put your feet into it. You could get an
embolia
that way, too.”

No way to win. None.

Embolias
and
calambres
at the beach were just the tip of the iceberg. The world was an infinitely dangerous place for my family, full of risks at every turn.
Pulmonía
was always a possibility. Pneumonia. And it was always fatal.

Here are some of the ways in which my family thought you could catch pneumonia and die: standing in front of an open window with wet hair. Going outdoors without a shirt on, except at the beach. Going outdoors in the daytime wearing just a T-shirt, except at the beach. Wearing a shirt without an undershirt. Wearing shorts between November and February. Going outdoors without a jacket between November and February, no matter what the temperature. Taking a shower with water that wasn't warm enough, no matter what time of the year, even on the hottest days. Wearing shoes without socks.

Catching a chill, under any circumstances, was a death sentence. And you could catch a chill in a million and one ways. Being out in the rain for too long, even with an umbrella. Running too quickly from an air-conditioned room into the tropical heat, or vice-versa. Eating ice cream between November and February. Standing in front of an open refrigerator too long. Scraping frost from the freezer and eating it.

God forbid you should ever bathe or take a shower while running a fever. Sudden death would surely follow after that first contact with the water.

These were not superstitions, mind you, but quasi-scientific
theories,
based on centuries of cumulative experience and thousands of reports of
pulmonía
felling someone you never knew directly.

Then there was traffic. Tales of people who had been run over by cars were a constant source of conversation, especially for my father.
Arrollado
. Run over.
Sí, pobre tipo.
Yes, poor guy.
Arrollado
. He didn't see the car coming.
Wham!
Gone.
Pobre mujer.
Poor woman. She didn't look both ways before crossing the street and a bus hit her. Knocked her to the ground, ran over her with its wheels, and then dragged her for a block. And she was pregnant too.

“Ay, Dios mío.”
Oh, my God. Always a woman's voice for this phrase. Only women were supposed to say this. Don't ask why.

My dad had to deal with a lot of these accidents in court, so I'll cut him some slack. In his world, at least half the people were
arrollados
. The other half were the drivers who ran them over. And I'm sure he had to linger over all the gory details. It was his job.

But for us,
arrollados
were only in stories. Except for the afternoon I actually got to see a guy get hit by a car, while out with my dad.

Well, I really didn't see it happen. I only heard it—a loud noise off to my left as we were crossing a wide boulevard in Vedado, one of the older suburbs of Havana. It was, I must admit, a most disgusting-sounding thud. It sounded like twenty watermelons dropping onto the ground at once. After the thud came the squealing of brakes.

Then I remember hearing a woman scream near us,
“Ay, Dios mío!”
And people running, and more screaming and shouting. And my dad saying,
“Mira eso!”
Look at that. And my dad turning my head with his hands.

A very fat man lay sprawled on the street about a hundred yards away. He was wearing a white shirt and green pants. The man lay motionless on the street, flat on his back, about ten yards behind a car with a smashed-up hood and a broken windshield. His limbs looked awfully funny—twisted like a rag doll's. And he didn't have any shoes on. Some people knelt around him. Soon a circle of people enveloped him and he disappeared from view.

“Look at that. He must have gone sailing over the roof of the car,” said the judge.

“What do you mean,
Papa
?”

“I mean that when he got hit, the impact sent him flying over the car, and that's why he's lying there so far behind it. I bet he's dead. No one can survive an impact like that. Look, the car even knocked off his shoes. Whenever that happens, forget it, you're dead.”

“How come I don't see any blood?”

“Internal injuries. Bad sign.”

“Can we go take a look close up?”

“No, no. Better not…ah…here are the police. Good. They'll handle it. Let's get going. I'm glad this isn't my district, and I won't have to hear the case. I have more of these than I can stomach.”

And that was it. I had seen proof of the danger of traffic. Cars did hit people. It wasn't at all like
embolias, calambres,
and
pulmonía.

But I was still annoyed by the restrictions placed on my bike riding. Strict boundaries. Can't cross Seventh Avenue. Can't cross this street, can't cross that street. Not by yourself. Never.
Te puede arrollar un carro.
A car could run you over.

I knew it could never happen to me, but I obeyed all the same.

My brother Tony never listened to these rules. I think he rode his bike all over Havana, and my parents never knew. He did this with Manuel and Eugenio. But I didn't, and neither did Rafael, or Jorge, or Julio. We were younger and dumber.

Now, years later, I pray every night that my children will be even dumber than I was.

And then there were always bad people who wanted to snatch you away and hurt you terribly.
Mala gente.
Not just
El Colorado
and his cronies, but legions of bad people whose sole purpose in life was to inflict pain on others. There were specialists among the
mala gente
who targeted children. This we heard from very early on. I guess my dad was all too familiar with this kind of danger too, and had trouble handling those cases.

Like every kid on earth who is warned about
mala gente,
I didn't pay much attention to this. I learned not to accept candy from strangers or to climb into cars with people I didn't know, but I didn't learn to be as cagey as a fox. Which is what you need to learn about when dealing with bad people. They're usually much too clever, especially when they are hell-bent on damaging the lives of others.

How I wish I had listened more carefully to that item on the list of dangers. Right in front of my very own house, one day, after the world changed, not long before I left Cuba, one of those bad people would try to harm me. And if it hadn't been for our neighborhood wino,
El Loco,
who rescued me, God knows what might have happened. But that story will have to wait. Not now; I'm not ready. Just let me say that the guy looked perfectly normal, and that a knife was involved.

For now all I can do is focus on one sweet irony. My family had lots of rules for avoiding peril, and death lurked everywhere for us. Yet we played with firecrackers and went car surfing under killer waves. We also swam in shark-infested waters all the time. Fernando, who understood the rules so well, ended up becoming a jet pilot, and later, a bomber and gunrunner. How could this be?

My family's logic, like Kantian logic, can only take you so far. Maybe if you think about death all the time and are always trying to communicate with the dead, you'll eventually find all sorts of odd ways to flirt with danger, even with death itself.

So, though we sat on the beach for three hours after lunch, waiting for our food to be fully digested, we got to throw rocks at one another. And my dad watched us do it. Sometimes he even helped us find good rocks.

Those were splendid rock fights we had. I can't count how many times we did it, because we did it practically all the time. Usually at vacant lots, or on the street, or down at La Puntilla, on the seashore, where we also flew kites. The best rocks were there. They were all pointy and sharp edged. Killer rocks.

Once, for three or four incredible months, when the gas company dug trenches for a new pipeline in our neighborhood, we not only had an endless supply of the most beautiful chunks of quartz to heave at one another, we actually had trenches, too. And we stocked up on those quartz chunks for future fights. Rocks are recyclable, you know. Even when bloodstained.

What we usually did was break up into two teams and throw rocks at one another. Was there a point to this? Any rules? Any end to the game? No to all three. Stupid questions. This was sheer, pointless anarchy.

We all had scars to boast about. Especially the ones that had required stitches. Eugenio's blond head was full of scars. Manuel had a very nice scar on his head, which always gleamed through his shortly cropped black hair. Tony had one too, though smaller. I had a nice scar above my left eyebrow back then. When my thin blond eyebrows turned into the Black Forest later in life, the scar was swallowed up, and I've lost track of it. Maybe it's still there. I was very proud of it. Especially because it was a scar caused by an almond, rather than a rock.

Yes, an almond. Almonds can do a lot of damage. Forget the almonds we all buy at the store, which have all been removed from their hard, pointy shells. I'm talking about almonds fresh off the tree. The fresh almonds we had at the play yard at my school, La Salle de Miramar, and which we loved to throw at one another.