Waiting for Snow in Havana (36 page)

Some never came home from that prison, or from the others to which they were dispersed. Uncle Filo was one of the lucky ones. He actually came home several months later. The bad news was that he'd lost his mind in prison.

My father wouldn't give us the details even though Tony and I begged for them. We wanted to know what it was like to be totally insane—
completamente loco
. It sounded so interesting to have a crazy uncle. But Louis XVI wouldn't budge.

“You don't want to know, believe me.”

One day, however, my father slipped and mentioned that the electric shock treatments weren't really doing much for his brother. He went on to describe the shock treatments in some detail. It sounded a lot like the electric chair to me.

Eventually, the shock treatments did something. Or maybe it was just the passage of time. Filo gradually regained some measure of sanity. But although he began to interact with others, he couldn't talk about what he had lived through for a very long time. Eventually, he told a few stories, but my parents kept most of them to themselves. They only spoke about the firing squad trick played on Filo day after day.

“Hey, Nieto, when you hear firing outside, that'll be your son we're shooting today.”

I remember visiting him at his house about ten months after his arrest, just before I left Cuba for good. He spoke in a whisper, warning us that there were listening devices everywhere. He also constantly checked the window shutters to make sure they were closed.

“They're always listening, you know. Always. And they're everywhere. Where you least expect them, when you least expect them, there they are. Always.
Siempre. Siempre. Siempre.
”

Most of the time he just sat there like some kind of living mummy, with a strange look in his eyes. There's really so little to talk about when you think someone is always listening to you. Especially when those who are listening might throw you back in prison for saying the wrong thing.

How beautiful, those Committees for the Defense of the Revolution! How utterly beautiful an instrument of fear and intimidation. Because we had one right next door to our house, we always had to watch what we said inside our own house. The walls had ears. Voices carried.

Too bad we didn't have greeting cards for the CDRs, as they came to be known. If only someone had thought of it, or if there had been enough paper and ink to produce them. You'd need a lot of these cards in Havana alone, given the fact that every single block had a CDR—and still does, even as I write this.

Imagine writing the text for such cards.

Worms. I should explain. That was the new name for counter-Revolutionaries. Fidel called the invaders and all who supported them
gusanos.
Worms. Maggots. The lowest of the low. Crawling vermin. Vile insects seeking to destroy the Revolution.

And Fidel made all of the captured invaders wear yellow T-shirts, so they would look wormlike. How he was able to come up with thousands of yellow T-shirts for the prisoners when all clothing was in short supply was one of those miracles made possible by the Revolutionary will to power. Then the men in the yellow T-shirts were interrogated on live television for days on end. Since all television sets back then were black-and-white, and newspapers and magazines didn't carry color photographs, and very few Cubans got to see the prisoners in person, the yellow T-shirts were also a fitting symbol of the genius of Revolutionary thinking.

Somehow, though, we found out that the T-shirts were yellow. And, like the ancient insult “Christian,” the name “Worm” was proudly taken up by those of us who had wanted the invaders to triumph.

But those men didn't inspire much pride. There they were, being interrogated on television, one by one. Fidel made sure that those who were the sons of the “finest” families were given the greatest exposure. Worms. Crawling vermin, returning to reclaim their property and privilege, returning to enslave all other Cubans once again. Fidel wanted everyone to think that all of the invaders were the sons of the rich and powerful.

One of them was the son of one of my father's closest friends. He was a funny guy, about ten years older than most of us kids. He had one of the nicest rooms I had ever seen. It was full of model airplanes hanging from the ceiling. I liked visiting his house, just so I could see the room. And it was a dangerous house, so that's saying a lot. His patio had more lizards than I had ever seen in any one place. They were everywhere, crawling, darting, jumping, basking in the sun. My dad would sit out there with his friend and talk, ignoring their presence. I couldn't. I tried to spend as much time as possible away from that patio.

And there was something else scary about that house. The guy with the airplanes hanging from the ceiling was a hypnotist, and he loved to terrorize us.

“Watch out, kids, here I come. All I have to do is look at you and you shall turn into my slaves. Here I go…Ommmmmm…you are under my command…you shall do as I say.”

We believed him, of course, and we ran away from him, and he chased us. One day, at the beach, we spent an entire afternoon running away from him and avoiding his gaze.

Now, there he was, on television, looking totally submissive, his eyes lowered in shame and disgust. He wasn't hypnotizing anyone. No. Just the opposite: he looked as if
he
had been hypnotized. Or brainwashed. In reply to the question “What did the Americans do for you?” he was saying the same thing as all the other men.

“Nos embarcaron.”
They shipped us off. They left us hanging. They screwed us.

This was hard to believe. Inconceivable. The hypnotist and all the other yellow-shirted Worms, each and every one of them, said on television that the Americans, who had planned and funded the Invasion, had dumped them at the Bay of Pigs and left them stranded without any of the support they'd been promised. None of us watching our televisions believed them. They must have been drugged, or brainwashed, or hypnotized.

Americans didn't break promises or screw freedom fighters. No way. These men were all lying. They were lying so they could be treated well in prison, or released maybe.

Desengaño.
Hard to take.

Years later, the truth would emerge. They did get screwed, after all. Those damn Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby, pulled the plug on the Invasion when it was much too late to do so. Pulled the plug and left the men there to be mowed down, as the dogwoods and azaleas bloomed in Washington. They were only Cubans, after all.

Fast-forward, two years or so.

The Orange Bowl is packed. People are lined up outside, unable to get in, but we have great seats behind one of the goalposts. We live only five blocks away and have hung around the small baseball stadium outside the Bowl countless times, waiting for home run balls to sail over the fence and into our hands. But we've never been inside the Bowl. What a thrill.

We're there to see President Kennedy welcome the returning heroes of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Imagine that! We'll get to see all the Worms and the president of the United States, in person. This is history in the making, and we're there. We'll be able to tell our kids and their kids all about this day. We're so lucky to live only five blocks away, in that orphanage.

The Worms have been exchanged for fifty-three million dollars worth of medicine and food. A fair trade. Fidel suddenly has a thousand fewer mouths to feed and he gets good American stuff in return for looking benevolent. Good riddance. Jack Kennedy gets to play the hero, rescuing the freedom fighters he screwed.

Jackie Kennedy is there, too. The Queen of America gives a speech in nearly flawless Spanish. She and her husband speak of the great sacrifice made by these men, and they promise that the flag of their Brigade 2506 will soon wave over a free Cuba.

I am still dumb enough to believe them, and I cheer and clap along with all the other Cubans at the Orange Bowl.

We return to our orphanage filled with hope. Cod for dinner that afternoon. The house stinks. And it's my turn to wash the dishes that day. I'm so hungry I try to eat the fish, even though it smells and tastes like putrid demon testicles from hell. But I can't; I just can't. I run to the bathroom, gagging, and I puke. Tony is brave enough to eat three or four mouthfuls. I come back to the table, scrape the cod off the rice, and eat what remains below the top layer, unpolluted by the fish. The other boys stare at me as if I'm insane. When everyone's done, I go into the kitchen to wash the dishes. The codfish pot has a thick crust on the bottom, which I have to scrape off.

Later that evening, around sunset, Tony and I make our way to the public library on Seventh Avenue. God bless my brother, he has found a place where we can read in air-conditioned comfort, away from the thugs at our orphanage. We go there several nights a week and stay until closing. I scour the history section. So few books left to read. I've read almost all of them. What will I do when there are no more history books left to read in this library?

The librarian announces that the library is about to close. We each check out a couple of books and head back to the orphanage. On the way back we catch sight of a dead possum, flattened and rotting on the curb-side. We've never seen anything like it. I say it's a giant rat.

“Look at the tail, Tony. Only rats have tails like that.”

“Don't be stupid. Rats never get that big. It's some kind of porcupine.”

“You're wrong. Porcupines have quills, not fur. It's a rat.”

“What do you know about rats, anyway? I say it's a porcupine.”

“And, hey, what are all those worms crawling all over it? They look like moving grains of rice. Look at them.”

“Disgusting. Yecchh. I've never seen so many worms eating a dead animal. I think they're maggots.”

“Heeew, I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat rice again. And it's about all I can eat at that house. What will I do if I can't eat the rice? Eat nothing but toast and guava paste?”

“Don't think about it. Let's go. Let's see if we can find some empty soda bottles.”

We scour the sidewalks, curbs, lawns, and empty lots for bottles we can cash in. Each is worth two cents. It's a good night tonight. We find enough bottles to trade for two ice-cream sandwiches. We talk as we walk and eat.

“Hey, we got to see President Kennedy today, and all the Worms too.”

“Yeah, that was great. But do you think he's right? Will Fidel be defeated soon?”

“You bet. We'll be going home any day now. Any day. Soon. Very soon, you'll see.”

“I hope you're right. I can't wait to go home.”

Flash forward thirty-seven years to the present day.

As my loved ones slumber all around me in air-conditioned comfort in our house in the woods, I imagine what might have been. What if the Invasion had gone as planned? What if Fidel's airplanes had been bombed to smithereens that April morning? I picture the uprising. I see thousands of ordinary Cubans reaching for the weapons Fernando and his friends had stashed away, fighting the militiamen, house to house. I visualize the United States Air Force joining in the fight, defending the men on the beaches.

I close one eye and see nuclear warfare between America and Russia. No good. Wait. I close the other eye and see the Worms victorious. That's much better. I see Fidel vanquished, lined up against a wall and shot with blanks for days on end before finally being sent to live for the rest of his life in Trenton, New Jersey, sentenced to a lifetime job as janitor at the train station, his mouth permanently gagged, a paperback copy of Kant's
Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft
in one pocket and one of
Kritik der Reinen Vernunft
in the other. I see Fidel being forced to read these two books at night, constantly, as he lies on a hard table wired for electric shock treatments. If he dozes off, or takes his eyes off the text, or fails to turn the pages in a timely fashion, or fails to answer correctly when quizzed on his reading of Kant by volunteers from the Princeton philosophy faculty, I see him being shocked. I see myself staying at home in Havana, with no Revolution left to chase me away, free to apply Brylcreem to my hair and dance the night away at a thousand and one nightclubs.