Waiting for Snow in Havana (33 page)

One day, at recess, I couldn't hold it in any longer. It just sort of jumped out of my mouth, like a toad.

“You know, Ciro, I think I'm in love with my right-hand neighbor. You know who.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” he nodded. Ciro was my best friend.

He could see all right. He could see himself playing Judas.

A couple of days later at recess, it happened. Ciro got close to me and gave me a bear hug, and all the other boys in the class descended on me. I was besieged, captured, and pushed towards the center of the playground. I resisted as much as possible, keeping my eyes closed. I didn't want to know how close we were getting to the awful moment.

Finally, I peeked through half-closed eyelids at the approaching doom. She looked so terrified on the other side. So utterly scared.

We were pulled and pushed to the center of the playground, my first love and I, and God knows what happened there at the center. I can't recall the full horror.

All I can remember is that within four weeks she was gone. Gone forever, just like all the other kids. One by one they disappeared.

It was early 1961. March, to be exact. About one half of my classmates had vanished without saying a word. One day they'd be there, and the next day they'd be gone. Teachers vanished too. Off to the United States or some other country. The rest of us knew why they were vanishing and why they couldn't say good-bye, but it hurt all the same to see the empty desks.

By April the school had to close because there were too few students and teachers, and because so much had changed for the worse.

We children of the Revolution had much to learn when I was in fifth grade. Everything changed. I will tell you all about that soon enough. And as bombs fell from the sky, and bullets flew, and money evaporated, and Fidel laid claim to our souls, and everyone I knew and cared about vanished quietly, and I began to face the prospect of my own vanishing, what do I remember most vividly?

Her beautiful brown hair brushing against her neck. It was cut in such a straight, straight line.

T
hey say when you die your entire life passes before your eyes in a split second. But even if it's more like an ocean of time than a split second, I'm willing to bet that when my turn comes, I'll see one whole section that is nothing but fragmentary images.

Sometimes, when I least expect it, they'll pop out, these fragments of a world turned upside down. Like flashbacks from a bad trip.

Bummer, man.

Here we go. Hold on…
Aguántate
…I feel one coming….

There are Pioneers marching down our street. Kids our age, all dressed alike, wearing red berets and red neckerchiefs, marching like little soldiers.

“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro…”

Soldiers in the making. Militiamen and women of the future. Spies. Informers. Obedient servants of the Revolution.

The marching is relentless. Every single day, and always at the same time.

Little copies of Immanuel Kant, taking his stupid walk at the same time every day. Dozens and dozens of them, marching down our street. Always in the same direction, too.

How I long for the pesticide Jeep to show up and spray them all. Maybe they'll all get tripped up in the fog and march into one another. A heap of Pioneers left behind, all coughing. We all know they probably couldn't take the poison the way we can.

Stupid red berets and red neckerchiefs. Stupid marching slogans.

“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, Cuba sí, Yanquis no, Cuba sí, Yanquis no…”

“Fidel, seguro, a los Yanquis dale duro…”
Fidel, undaunted, hit those Yankees hard…

But there's no more pesticide Jeep. No pesticide to spray. Like everything else, none to be had.

Tony and I had been Cub Scouts for a while, a couple of years earlier, but had given up in disgust. Too many petty rules masquerading as important stuff. Stupid merit badges. Stupid salutes. Stupid uniforms. I don't think we lasted more than three months. Our troop leader, Fred, was French and had served in the Foreign Legion. What the hell was he doing in Havana, running a Cub Scout troop, and trying to turn us all into little Legionnaires?

We didn't stay with the Scouts long enough to find out.

And now those creeps next door want us to be Pioneers. They badger our parents about it, those creeps who run the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. They want us to be just like all those kids marching in lockstep down our street, and all around the neighborhood.

They moved into Chachi's house, these neighborhood spies and busybodies. Chachi's family had moved to that gorgeous house by the seaside, only to leave it behind a few months later. Off to the United States, their new house left for someone else. Their old house left behind for spies and meddlers.

Every block in Havana has one of these houses. They're everywhere. Watching. Listening. Prodding. Intruding. Threatening. Controlling. We're unlucky enough to have them next door, and to live in a climate that forces us to keep the windows open all the time.

Manuel comes up with the perfect counter-slogan for the pioneers:

“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, comiendo mierda y gastando zapatos…”
One, two, three, four, eating shit and wasting shoes…

I must explain: for Cubans, anything that's dumb or a waste of time can be called “eating shit.” A chump or a fool is a
comemierda,
or shit eater.

Anyway, after our resident genius Manuel comes up with his counterslogan, we can't refrain from using it. We hide on the porches, or up in the trees, or behind the shrubs, and shout out as they walk by:

“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, comiendo mierda y gastando zapatos…”

They're all so busy marching in lockstep and shouting out their stupid slogans that they don't hear us.

Or can they hear us? Maybe they can. Every now and then we see a head or two turn and look around, at their own peril. Looking in any direction but forward is wrong. For a Pioneer, that is. Che Guevara has a slogan they also chant, ad nauseam:

“Marcha atrás nunca, ni para coger impulso.”
Not one step back, not even to gain momentum.

It's dangerous for us to call the Pioneers shit eaters and to accuse them of wasting shoes, especially since shoes are scarce and rationed nowadays. About three or four months ago shoe repair shops started using old tire treads as heels and soles. I see them every day on my dad's wingtip shoes.

And I yell at Pioneers from my hiding place and call them shoe wasters. I wonder how different my life would have been if my mother hadn't caught us doing it.

It frightens her to the core. She has visions, the kind mothers get. Flash-forwards rather than flashbacks. Ugly, tormenting visions of my brother and me being hauled away by militiamen, never to be seen again. Visions of our Defense Committee neighbors overhearing us. Visions of us in some juvenile prison camp way out in the provinces, where all we'd do for the rest of our lives is cut sugarcane. Or even worse, visions of us being packed off to Russia or East Germany or Czechoslovakia, of us disappearing to some foreign land and never returning.

Someday I'll lose count of how many times she's told me about how much we frightened her that day she caught us yelling at the Pioneers, and how much that awful moment weighed in her decision to get us out of the country as soon as possible, in any way possible.

She sees us as little Fernandos, I guess. Next thing you know, we'll be planting bombs and hauling weapons. She knows about our love of firecrackers, so I guess she's not entirely wrong to worry.

And the rumor begins to circulate. The rumor of all rumors.

The Revolution is going to take all the children away from their parents, and soon. Something in the new Cuban constitution allows for it:
Patria Potestad.
My mother is now convinced that the state is going to herd us into trucks and ship us off to parts unknown. Maybe even to Russia. After all, it happened during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, in some areas controlled by the Communists, and everyone knew someone who had known someone who had known someone whose kid had been sent to Russia, never to be seen again.

There are so many Spaniards in Havana, and so many children of Spaniards. The memories are fresh. My mom and many others know it's possible.

Communists? I am hearing the word for the first time. Batista is still president. I am about five years old, and I'm in our car on the way to my grandparents' house, just as we pass what will become the Plaza of the Revolution. It's still under construction. Tony and I are in the backseat, as always, and I hear my parents talking about Communists in the front seat.

“Hey, those Communists must be good guys,” I chime in.

“Why do you say that?” asks Louis XVI, with a tone that can only mean I've made a mistake.

“Because they must help people communicate…”

Prolonged laughter from the front seat. “How cute,” says my mom.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, never mind, you're too young to understand. But Communists aren't good. Not at all. They're very bad.”

Now I am a few years older, passing the same spot, staring at a hammer and sickle on a billboard from the backseat of the car, and we're all supposed to become Communists.

Fidel has declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and proclaimed the Revolution and the country Communist. No more private property. No more mine and thine. No more exploitation of the masses by capitalists. Share and share equally. And if anyone fails to work, then he or she will have nothing to eat. And you can't work just for yourself or for your family. Everyone has to work for everyone else. And everyone owns everything, all together.

So he says.

The Chinese hot dog man has lost his hot dog stand. The Revolution won't tolerate anyone claiming a business for himself. Not even a hot dog stand. The hot dogs have vanished along with a lot of other stuff. Like Coke and Pepsi.

My uncle Mario has lost his two businesses to the Revolution. The last thing he did at his furniture store was to burn all the accounting records so that those who still owed money on their furniture wouldn't have to pay the state. The Revolution wanted to keep collecting the money they owed. The money they owed to themselves, I guess, according to the logic of the Revolution.

My uncle is almost sent to prison for that subversive act.

Fernando Chan has lost his store, too. He can still work there if he wants, but he won't be the owner any longer. He can't give kids raisins and olives, either, since they're not his to give away anymore.

Everyone has lost whatever real estate they owned.

The state has compensated them, but with such paltry sums as to make the whole deal stink.

Besides, one fine morning, recently, Che came up with the great idea of doing away with money altogether. I've had it a few times myself, especially when short on cash. No money at all. Let everyone share and share alike. To each according to his or her needs. So all the banks have been closed, and all accounts have been seized. This is the first step. Everyone who had a bank account can keep some arbitrary low sum—a few hundred pesos, I think. All else is gone, obliterated.

My grandfather cries for a while about that.

The second step is to change all the currency so that the bills and coins that people have will be worthless and all Cubans can start on a completely level playing field. Each person is allowed to change a set amount of money, maybe fifty pesos.

It's a fine Sunday morning and everyone in the country has lined up at appointed places to change whatever money they can. If you haven't changed your money by the end of the day, tough luck. From that day forward, all the old currency will be worthless.

The lines are very long, but they move fast because you are allowed to change so very little. I'm standing in line, and so is my brother Tony, and everyone else I know. No one is sure about the rules, but the money changers don't ask very many questions. When you finally make it to the changing table with bills and coins in your hand, they take them from you and give you new colorful bills with pictures of Fidel and Che and Raúl and Camilo and all the other heroes of the Revolution. The new coins are so flimsy that we take turns trying to blow them off one another's hands.

No one panics, but it's still nothing more than controlled chaos. Very quickly, people discover that they can go to more than one changing center. So everyone is trying to hit as many lines as possible.

I don't think I have ever heard people talk more loudly or faster than on this Sunday morning. And that's saying a lot for Cubans.

“Did you hear that there's another changing center five blocks down, on Twenty-seventh Street?”

“Yeah, and there's another one ten blocks in the other direction, on Ninth Avenue.”

Those who don't have enough money to change hire themselves out as changers, for a fee. Some of the fees are pretty high. And there is a lot of thievery going on. You hand your money to perfect strangers who promise to change it for you for a twenty-five-percent cut and you never see them again.

There are plenty of stories about heart attacks.

Four decades later, I am staring at my troubled bank account, meditating on the numbers I see before me. Suddenly I see them all turn to zero. I am back in line that Sunday morning and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I still expect all the money in America to disappear someday, the same way. It's all an illusion, mere figures on paper. Retirement account? Stocks? Bonds? Savings accounts? Forget it. I don't put away one cent. I don't have any money in any bank, save for the little I have in my checking account, which is always fully depleted by the end of every month. I spend every cent I earn and then some. I'm always in debt, always ready for the day when everyone else will lose their money. On that day, thanks to my advance planning, I won't have any to lose. I'll only have debts to wipe out, like my uncle's customers, come the Revolution.

Ha.

I don't count on my retirement account at all, because I don't expect to see a penny of the money my employer has forced me to put into the hands of professional investors.

College funds for the kids? Ha. Dream on. What's the point? The Revolution will make sure they're educated for free.

Not one penny put away. Not one penny to lose.

I think of my relative Pepito Abeillé, who helped me see the futility of saving money. He was one of those who hired himself out as a changer that Sunday morning. He hustled that day as he had never hustled in his entire life. His problem and his salvation were one and the same. He had never worked a day in his life. His father had lost his entire fortune back in 1929 and he'd been poor since then. But, like some deranged Spanish hidalgo from a picaresque novel, Pepito always dressed in a white silk suit and refused to work, insisting that he was too dignified for any job. He and his mother lived in a tiny apartment in Old Havana that was full of old newspapers and reeked of cat piss. I think the rest of the family kept them alive with small contributions. He was a smart guy, Pepito, and always very proper. But he wouldn't work. He'd come to our house a few times a year, in his white suit, sometimes with his old mother in tow, and visit for a few hours. He had it all figured out. He paid visits to every relative, no matter how distant.