Waiting for Snow in Havana (23 page)

Then one Sunday, in church, the priest read aloud the passage from the Bible in which Jesus says that the end of the world will take place when people least expect it. Yikes! They'd left that one out of the
Bohemia
article! Maybe the world was about to end in a few days!

I began to scan the blue sky for signs of the end. I tried to peer into the clouds, hoping I might spot Jesus approaching astride one of them before everyone else did. I wanted time to run to the first priest I could find and confess all my sins before the lines at the confessional became too long. I went to bed in a panic many a night in third grade, fearing the end was near. It would be so hard to beat the others to the confessional in the middle of the night.

But it was the daytime sky I focused on the most, the sky outside my classroom. I saw the most beautiful clouds in all shapes and sizes, and in all shades of white and gray. (No Cuba clouds back then, no.) Hundreds of them, thousands, tens of thousands maybe. I didn't count them. I looked for Jesus, that's all I did. Soon my grades began to plummet, and my eyes to fail. I couldn't read the blackboard or the subtitles on films at the movie theater. Everything looked fuzzy, as if it were turning into a cloud.

It was at the Miramar Theater, as we watched Cantinflas and David Niven in
Around the World in 80 Days,
that my mother noticed me straining to read the subtitles.

“Here, try my glasses, Carlitos. Tell me if you can see better with them on.”

It was a miracle! I could see again. The fuzziness was gone!

She was nice enough to suggest that I keep her glasses on for the rest of the movie. She was also wise enough to point out that no one would be able to see me wearing women's glasses in a darkened theater. They were pale green harlequin frames, with curving tail fins at the ends.

A few days later we went to the optometrist and I became a four-eyes. I picked out big square eyeglass frames made out of real tortoise shell. Cuban tortoises, I bet, probably the same species as one of those on my classroom wall. The same kind of frames Fidel wore back then. I'd seen his photo in
Bohemia
. Come to think of it, I'd seen a picture of Fidel holding a rifle in the very same issue that had the article about the end of the world. I thought his beard was cool. And also his eyeglasses.

I knew Fidel was somewhere in the mountains, fighting against Batista. Anyone who was against Batista must be good, I thought. Batista tortured people and ran a corrupt government. I'd heard about the corruption from my dad, who was no great fan of any politician. He preferred a monarchy, of course, and for him all politicians were bad simply because they weren't kings. He gave us no details on the corruption, but I believed him. As to the torture, I'd heard about it since first grade, from many sources, but more recently, I'd heard about it from my uncle Mario. His wife's brother had been arrested and tortured by Batista's police. He didn't go into details, but he said his brother-in-law had been subjected to awful cruelty.

That was all I needed to know. Anyone who treated human beings like lizards couldn't be a good president. He had to go. And the sooner, the better, so we Cubans could at least enjoy a brief spell of decent government before the world ended.

Equipped with my Fidel glasses, I scanned the clouds even more feverishly than before for signs of the end. Such great details I had missed! I could see every leaf on every tree, every billow on every cloud. Now, for sure, I'd be able to spot Jesus riding those clouds, descending into Havana over the turquoise sea, ready to pronounce sentence on us all. I knew that God the Father figured in there somehow, but I wasn't sure exactly how. It was Jesus who worried me because he was the one pictured in the illustrations I'd seen. He worried me because all judges worried me, as did fathers. I knew what they were like up close. All too well.

Swwissshhhhhhhhhhhhh! Whack! Swishh, Thwack! Swishh, Whack!

Of course, instead of inspecting the clouds, I should have been scanning the hills and mountains of eastern Cuba. Doomsday really did arrive that year, when I was in the third grade. And the judge sported a beard all right, just as in Catholic iconography. But the rest was all wrong. He also dressed in olive-green fatigues, sported cool-looking tortoiseshell eyewear, smoked large Cuban cigars, and rode a Sherman tank.

Surprise!

The entire world shall be judged on one spot, at Doomsday, the Bible says. But it shall not be Jerusalem. It shall not be the Plain of Megiddo, when the Battle of Armageddon is over and done, and the whole world is awash in blood. No. If you read the Bible carefully, with the right inspiration, and your third eye open, you'll see it for yourself. Most of the world is in for a big surprise.

Prepárate!
Get ready.

Swwissshhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Any day can turn into Judgment Day, anywhere, when you least expect it. Don't look for it up in the clouds. Look way down deep, and all around, at all the hells you've helped create in and around yourself.

Expect more than one Doomsday, and one judge, and one end of the world. Expect the unexpected. Expect unjust verdicts and crushing punishments, along with just ones and others that are way too merciful. Expect some sentences to be both fair and unfair at the same time. Expect mercies that are punishingly beautiful and beautifully punishing. And at the very end, the end of all ends, so goes the rumor, all things shall be well.

And who knows? Maybe what we mistook for the most unfair verdict of all will turn out to have been the most merciful.

T
he light outside was a faint, dim blue, and we were unwrapping our presents. We had been waiting for this moment all year long.

Christmas morning, 1958.

We always got up before dawn on Christmas. It was my brother who couldn't wait and always woke me up so early. Some years he barely slept at all, I think. We'd get to the tree in a hurry and paw through the presents like starving kids looking for edible scraps at the garbage dump. Some presents were too big to wrap. Once, years before, we'd woken up to find a Lionel train set under the tree. Another year, it had been Ivanhoe's castle, full of knights in armor. And one memorable year it was Fort Apache, complete with U.S. cavalry, a tribe of Indians, and all the characters from our favorite television show,
Rin Tin Tin.

That morning it was bicycles. A brand new bike for my brother and one that looked strangely familiar for me.

“How do you like your new bikes, boys?”

Our noise had woken up Mom and Dad, and they'd come out to the living room.

“I love it!” My brother was very happy.

“Is this Tony's old bike?” I was confused.

Although it was green, with hand-painted yellow stripes, a new seat, spiffy new whitewall tires, and multicolored plastic streamers coming out of the yellow handlebar grips, I could have sworn it was Tony's old red bike.

“Why would you ask that?” Louis XVI seemed surprised by my question. “Look, it's green, not red, and it's totally different.” My father, like his father before him, and his grandfather, had been educated by Jesuits. He was an expert at the art of casuistry.

“Yeah, I see the color, and the streamers, and the seat, and the light on the handlebars, but it looks a lot like Tony's bike.”

“Look, that's Tony's bike right there.” Marie Antoinette pointed to the shiny twenty-six-inch blue bike with the streamlined light on the front fender. My mother hadn't been educated by Jesuits but instinctively thought like one.

“Yeah, that's Tony's
new
bike. Where's the old one? This one looks a lot like it.”

I ran down the hallway to the side door where we kept our bikes stored. No one tried to stop me. One look was all I needed. My old bike was still there, as beaten up as ever, but Tony's was gone. I shouted at my parents from the side door, down the long hallway where the shoe had once hit my toe, “Hey, Tony's bike isn't here! Where is it?”

Silence.

I felt an odd mixture of enlightenment, anger, and disappointment that my ancestors had recognized as disillusionment, or
desengaño.

“Hey, you gave me an old bike for Christmas. You gave me Tony's bike—all you did is get it painted and put some new stuff on it.”

“It looks brand-new,” said Marie Antoinette.

“But it's not. It's not. It's Tony's bike and it's no good. It's not fair.”

“Come look at your other presents. You have so many of them,” Marie Antoinette said, using the most powerful weapon in any mother's arsenal: distraction.

“Oh, look at this giant box,” she continued. “I wonder what could be inside?”

She triumphed. After two or three more transparently diversionary suggestions, I gave up complaining about the bike.

The big box contained an Erector set. What a marvel, those things. You had to put everything together using real tools. Screwdrivers. Wrenches. Pliers. Some genius in New Haven, Connecticut, had come up with the basic idea, and his company kept manufacturing and marketing endless variations of it. Little steel rods with holes in them. Screws and bolts. There were even little electric motors, gears, and winches on the better sets, like the one we got that Christmas. Thick instruction booklets—junior blueprints—guided you through the assembly process and suggested all the different machines and structures you could make. Eugenio's set had a real steam engine.

It made you feel like a man, an Erector set.

We were taking out the first few pieces when we suddenly heard loud, persistent knocking on our door. There, peering through that same glass pane through which my
Abuela
Lola and I used to look out onto our street, stood a nervous-looking man.

Marie Antoinette looked up, alarmed. “Oh, my God! What's that man doing here at this hour?”

Louis XVI peered right back through the glass, and spoke to the man without opening the door.

“What do you want?”

“Could you please let me use your telephone?” The man's voice was muffled.

“Why do you need a phone at this early hour?” Marie Antoinette called from the couch.

“My car broke down about a block away from here, and I need to call home.”

King Louis and Marie Antoinette exchanged puzzled looks. The stranger outside kept looking back over his shoulder, and he seemed to be growing more agitated.

“I'm sorry,” said King Louis, “but there's a taxi stand about a block from here that's open around the clock. Why don't you go there? You can call from their phone, or take a cab home.”

The man looked over his shoulder, then back at my dad.

“I can't do that. Please let me in to use your phone. It's an emergency.”

“Sorry, but we don't really know you and this is an odd time for you to be out knocking on a stranger's door.”

“But…but…your house was the only one on this block with lights on.”

“It's still an odd time for you to be knocking on our door. It's Christmas, you know? As you can see—” Louis XVI pointed to us, sitting cross-legged under the Christmas tree, clutching tools from the Erector set, our eyes fixed on the door.

“Please, please,
señor,
I beg you, let me in, I really need to use the phone.”

He was starting to look a lot like the man who had accosted us during the shoot-out by the Quinta de los Molinos.

“Sorry, go to the taxi stand. It's down this street, to your left, and down another block, also to the left—”

“But, you've got to let me in,
señor.
Okay, I'll tell you the truth: I've got to call the police. I saw some men digging up the street about a block away and they were very suspicious looking. So, please, let me in before it's too late and they blow up the neighborhood.”

Marie Antoinette stood up and joined King Louis at the door.

“Some men are digging up the street on Christmas morning? That doesn't make any sense—”

“
Sí, señora,
they're there, right now, and I think they're planting a bomb.” He looked over his shoulder about three times as he said this.

“Nonsense,” said King Louis. “The only one who's suspicious looking around here is you. Sorry, we can't let you in at all. Go to the taxi stand.”

The man looked down the street once more and, in a flash, leapt away from the door and over the fence that separated our house from the neighbor's yard with the breadfruit tree.

I had never seen anyone jump so fast or so high. I was amazed. That guy was just like Batman.

Louis XVI passed sentence quickly, as usual: “I tell you, that guy's up to no good at all. I bet you anything he's running away from the police. Good thing we didn't let him in. How dumb does he think I am?”

Probably as dumb as you think I am, hoping I wouldn't recognize Tony's bike with new paint on it.
The thought crossed my mind, but I didn't dare to say it out loud.

Marie Antoinette was pleased with the judge's quick thinking. “Yes, you did the right thing. That man looked crazed. God knows what he's up to. Probably one of those revolutionaries, or something.
Ay, Dios mío. Qué susto!
Oh, my God, what a scare! God knows what he would have done if we'd let him into our house.”

“But what if someone is really planting a bomb down the street?” I hoped it was true. A bomb, on our own street! Finally!

“No way,” said King Louis. “First of all, you don't need to tear up the street to plant a bomb. Also, no one would be dumb enough to dig up a street at dawn, on Christmas morning, in this neighborhood where there are so many children. Half the neighbors are up, just like us! Someone would see it happening and call the police immediately from their own home. Also, why would anyone want to blow up this neighborhood? The rebels blow up people, police stations, power lines, and government buildings, not neighborhoods like ours.”

So logical, the judge. What a spoilsport. I wanted a bomb on our street! Some Christmas this was turning out to be! First I found out from Tony that there was really no
Santicló,
then I got a used bike, and now I had to hear that there was no chance of a bomb on our street. It was a Christmas of total
desengaño.

The night before had been so much nicer.

That Christmas Eve, like all others, we had gone to my grandparents' house to celebrate
Nochebuena.
The Good Night. Pronounced as a single word by Cubans: Goodnight. And every single year it
was
a good night.

We gathered early, around two in the afternoon. My grandparents, my uncle Mario and his wife, my aunt Lily, and the five of us from Miramar, including Aunt Lucía. We were six at home now that Ernesto had moved in with us, but he'd gone to celebrate Christmas with his own poor family. I think my dad had given him enough money so that his parents could buy a decent
Nochebuena
dinner and some presents for their six children.

There wasn't much of a welfare system in Cuba in 1958. If someone like my dad hadn't helped Ernesto's family, they might have had no Christmas at all. President Batista's wife used to collect toys for poor children whose mothers would line up outside the presidential palace in Havana to pick them up. I saw the line one day. It stretched for blocks. And almost everyone in line was dark-skinned.

My uncle's wife, Hilda, didn't look very happy that Christmas Eve. Her brother had just been released from jail and he was in bad shape. He's the one who had been badly tortured by Batista's police. My uncle Mario, as usual, joked around the whole time.

Everyone in Cuba who could afford it would eat roast pork on Christmas Eve.
Lechón asado.
The whole pig, preferably, with something in its mouth. I'd heard one slaughtered once, down the street from us. One of our neighbors had the gumption to pull this off in his backyard, much to the chagrin of the entire neighborhood. The sounds made by that pig as it was ineptly slaughtered still ring in my ears, along with the neighbors' complaints.

I wonder if the pig felt as anxious as the man who knocked at our door that Christmas morning. I wonder what might have happened if that pig had been able to leap over tall backyard fences.

Anyway, my grandmother didn't go for the
lechón asado
. She made a nice, neat pork roast, or some
carne asada,
or
ropa vieja,
or
picadillo,
or
arroz con pollo,
along with all kinds of Cuban dishes, including
yuca, malanga,
avocado salad, and fried plantains. She might have skipped the whole pig, but no longer cooked like a Gallega, thank God. She did make
caldo gallego,
a wonderful soup, and
tortilla española,
an omelette with potatoes, onions, and sausage, but that was it for Spanish dishes.

Thank God for that. I'm glad she didn't ever cook calf heads and rabbits whole, or serve fish with their dead eyes looking right at you, or boil up
paella
crawling with crustaceans and mollusks and slimy invertebrates, or plop an entire octopus complete with suction cups in front of you and say,
“Buen provecho.”

Spanish cuisine is not for the squeamish.

I'm still surprised that the Spanish didn't adopt lizards as their favorite food after they stumbled upon the New World. Lizards cooked and served whole. Steamed, probably, with as few spices as possible, with maybe a little parsley garnish, and an almond or an olive in their mouth, served on a bed of eels or slugs or, better yet, snakes. Or, why not all three?
Paella Infernal:
so many beady little eyes to stare into, so many little heads to bite off, so many little bones to pull out of your mouth as you chew.

That Christmas Eve we had a wonderful time. We ate a lot of good Cuban food. Slave cuisine, most of it developed by the Africans who had come to Cuba against their will and had ended up cooking for the Spaniards who owned and sold them like cattle.

We talked and talked. Stories of long ago. Stories from the recent past. I loved hearing my grandparents tell stories about their childhood in Spain. I especially loved hearing about snow and ice on Christmas Eve. I'd ask them hundreds of questions: What does snow look like? What does it feel like when you touch it? Does snow smell like the frost in our freezer? What does it feel like to wear coats and hats all the time? Did you ever make a snowman? Did you ever have snowball fights?