Waiting for Snow in Havana (5 page)

The older boys were rounded up for justice. They were unmasked before their fathers for the bullies they were, and they paid for what they did. I don't remember the punishment, but whatever it was, it must have been far too light for the crime they had committed. They never again did anything so cruel, but they joked about what they had done for years, and even bragged about it when we were in the company of other boys who hadn't been there. They probably bragged about the punishment, too.

After a while Rafa and I began to brag about it too, and even to laugh. It was the kind of story that always got the right kind of reaction from other boys.

With girls, it was different. The first time I told the story to a girl should have been the last. But I kept trying for years, thinking it would impress them.

Nowadays I play a game with my own three children. I ask them, suddenly and unexpectedly, at the oddest moments: “What is the Law?” They know the answer, and they pronounce the words as I have taught them, slowly and ponderously: “We shall not walk on all fours. We shall not drink blood.” The answer is especially endearing when it issues from my youngest son's lips: “We sall not walk on all foahs. We sall not dwink bwood.” They've never seen the movie this line is taken from,
Island of the Lost Souls,
with Charles Laughton playing the part of a deranged scientist, Dr. Moreau, who turns beasts into humans and has to keep them in line with a whip and the ever-central question, “What is the Law?”
Snap!
goes Dr. Moreau's whip. “What IS the Law?”
Snap! Snap! Snap!
“What IS the Law?”
Snap!
Moreau's creatures, barely erect, ask themselves and their creator, “Are we not men?” And they reply to Dr. Moreau's question in unison, slowly and ponderously, “We shall not walk on all fours. We shall not drink blood.”

To this quiz on the Law I have added a third response of my own: “We shall not inhale poison.”

My children think I'm joking when I launch into this pop quiz. But I'm deadly serious. I want them to know that there is a law, and that there is a beast inside each of them, always itching to ignore it and to break free. I want them to know, too, that there is a whip snapping over their heads, silent for now, gentle and silent. Someday, I tell them, they will hear the crack of the whip and realize they are wielding it themselves, standing erect, abstaining from blood, seeing poison for what it is, and avoiding it like the plague.

So, what is the Law?
Snap! Snap!
What IS the Law?
Snap!

Your turn now. Go on. Answer.

T
here He was again. How I wished He would stop this.

There He was, at the window, shouldering the weight of that huge, awful cross. He always showed up so unexpectedly. So swiftly. It's not as though He walked to the spot, or anything like that. He simply appeared. And He never made a sound.

How I hated it. How I feared it.

He just stood there, as always, blood trickling down His face, that nasty crown of thorns piercing His forehead. They were such huge thorns, and so sharp. His hair was long and messy, and bloody too.

He just stood there and stared at me.

My family kept eating dinner, as always, oblivious to the visitor. There they were, seated around the table, stuffing food in their mouths, making small talk, while Jesus parked Himself at our window, staring at me. “Pass the fried plantains, please.” “Azucena, dish me out some more
malanga
.” “Tony, eat your soup, it's getting cold. If you eat cold soup, you'll get indigestion.” “Antonio, are you ready for dessert?”

How He stared. God, those eyes, those eyes, so full of pain. Brown eyes, not blue. So all-commanding, so all-consuming. Eyes that pierced right through to the very core of my soul, eyes that read my mind. Eyes that seemed to beg and command at the same time.

“Come, follow Me.”

Go away, go away, go away, please. Vanish. Disappear, please. Stop torturing me. Why do you do this?
I didn't have to speak. He knew what I was thinking before I thought it. And I knew He knew it.

He just stood there and stared at me.

I tried to speak to my family, but no words would come out of my mouth. It was useless to try. He let me know it was useless. He was there for me alone. And then He would vanish, as suddenly as He had appeared.

This happened so many times I lost count.

Funny thing, whenever Jesus appeared, I was sitting in my father's usual spot at the table, facing the window that looked out on the house with the breadfruit tree. When awake, I sat at the other end, facing the window that looked out on the house with the bitter-orange tree. Chachi's house.

Chachi was a girl my age. Her father was in the cigar business, and she was an only child. I don't know what her real name was; all I can remember is her nickname, Chachi. All of the adults in my house used to tease me constantly: “Chachi is so cute; she'll be your girlfriend someday.”
Tu novia. Novia
means both “girlfriend” and “bride” in Spanish. It's that kind of language, especially when it comes to matters of the heart.
Te quiero
means both “I love you” and “I want you.” They were merciless, relentless, my elders: “Wait and see: you'll grow up to marry Chachi.” “You'll marry her someday.” “What a cute couple you two will make.”

How I hated her stupid lipstick. And what the hell was she doing wearing lipstick at the age of six anyway?

Knowing that your future is sealed is an awful thing when you're a child. I didn't know which was the worse window to face: the one where I could expect to see Jesus with His cross or the one where I knew I would see Chachi with her lipstick. Jesus let me know my future clearly: I was going to get one of those giant crosses and a crown of thorns. My family also predicted my future: I was going to marry Chachi and be smeared with her stupid lipstick for the rest of my life. Which was worse?

Both were frightening prospects. But there was a huge difference between these two beings, and their place in my life.

One was God, the other was not.

And there was another difference too: I saw Jesus only in dreams; I saw Chachi in the flesh just about every single day. And I heard her voice all the time, drifting over the wall that separated our houses.

If my family had not soured my relationship with Chachi, we might have become good friends. I suspect her family also teased her about me constantly, in the same way. Cubans like to do things like that. I suspect that many Cuban mothers begin planning their children's weddings and arranging relationships for them before they even get married themselves. Anyway, whenever Chachi and I played outside at the same time, or even saw each other, we were like two positively charged magnets: a force field pushed us away from each other. I don't think we ever had a single conversation.

The closest we came was the time I got drunk at her aunt's wedding reception.

It was a nice party. Everyone was all dressed up, and Chachi was wearing more lipstick and makeup than usual. We must have been about eight years old. I was spending my time with Chachi's cousins Jorge and Julio, who were both younger than me. It was great to be the oldest one in a friendship rather than the youngest. And Jorge was very funny, and I liked him, despite the fact that Chachi was his cousin. Julio was too young to be funny, but I liked him too.

The party was being held two doors down from my house, at the home of Chachi's and Jorge's and Julio's grandmother. You see, Chachi's dad lived next door to his mother and father. This was not at all unusual. Jorge and Julio lived with their grandmother most of the time, and I never bothered to ask why. This, too, was common. Anyway, they were serving champagne at this big table and it looked good to Jorge and me. The thin-stemmed glasses were all set up, full to the brim, there for the taking. We didn't have to ask anyone to fill them. So we drank and drank and drank. It tasted so good, and those tiny bubbles were unlike those in any soda drink: they exploded in your mouth like a thousand microscopic firecrackers.

Chachi was there, weaving in and out of the crowd. I remember staring at her bright red lips and thinking that maybe they were not so scary after all. Even her black patent leather shoes no longer looked scary or incomprehensible.

Suddenly everything looked different at that wedding feast. I was so happy, so so happy. Jorge was happy too. We laughed and laughed at God knows what, not knowing we were drunk. And we got drunker and drunker. I remember asking myself:
Why does the world seem so much nicer all of a sudden? Why has Jorge held back on all these great jokes?
As I was puzzling over all of this, I said something Jorge must have found hilarious, for he laughed so hard that the champagne he was drinking came shooting out of his nostrils.

Two thin yellow streams, symmetrical and seemingly endless.

It was as if his nose had turned into a garden hose or he had become an elephant. I had seen elephants do this in Tarzan movies. The champagne streamed to the marble floor and made a yellow fizzy puddle at my feet. I laughed so loudly at the sight of this that my whole body shook and my eyes watered. Jorge stared at the puddle in disbelief, feeling the lingering droplets on his nose with his fingers, and his entire body convulsed, just like mine.

A large fat hand appeared from somewhere. This hand grabbed me by the shoulder. Then another hand appeared from somewhere else and grabbed Jorge the same way. My feet left the floor and all of a sudden I was horizontal. The last thing I remember was my father whisking me out of the wedding feast in his arms. Then I sank into a deep, dark, bottomless void. I don't remember being carried home, two doors down, or getting into bed, or undressing. But the next morning I woke up in my bed, wearing pajamas. I stared at the dust particles whirling in the shafts of sunlight, as I always did upon waking. Something was different that morning, though. I remember being disappointed by the fact that the world was no longer so nice and funny, and wondering why it couldn't always be that way.

Later that day, my parents explained inebriation to me. I didn't really understand what they said, all I could grasp is that I had gotten drunk at the wedding feast.
Emborrachado
. I did understand, clearly, that I had committed a sin, and that I should never, ever do it again. Dying drunk could land you in hell. What if you expelled so much champagne through your nose that you choked to death before you had a chance to confess the sin? And what if, on top of that, a chauffeur threw a dirty magazine and it landed, open, on your face, just before your heart stopped beating? Pretty scary. But not as scary as Chachi's lipstick. I resolved to stay away from alcohol for the time being, but I felt proud of having experienced something reserved for adults, and even prouder of having made Jorge's champagne shoot out through his nostrils.

Jorge and I talked about this for years, until I went away. We'd probably still be talking about it if it weren't for Fidel and his infernal Revolution.

Jesus, however, kept coming back again and again, all through my childhood, until I went away and became a man overnight at the age of eleven. He would show up unexpectedly. Right in the middle of other dreams, there I'd be at the table, facing the wrong window, in my father's seat, begging Jesus to go away. Every time I had one of those dreams, it shook me to the very core of my soul. He didn't so much read my mind as reveal to me what was there already. These dreams were the opposite pole from Chachi's aunt's joyous wedding feast: fear, terror, trembling.

I had no idea He was there to save me. Save me from what? Lipstick? Lizards? Bullies? Myself? The voodoo
brujeros
and their demons? I didn't know what to make of the cross, the crown of thorns, the blood, and the frightening message, “Come, follow Me.” Why couldn't it have been Eye Jesus at the window, with his blue eyes? He was just a head on a plate. No cross, no crown of thorns, no blood, just a neat trick with His eyes. Now that I think about it, why couldn't it have been Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana, with His mother the Virgin Mary at His side, nudging Him, bossing Him around? Why couldn't He have come to turn my water into wine? Or into champagne?

It seems that Bloody Jesus had something to tell me no one else could.

My dad, Louis XVI, said you never passed the test in one lifetime. So much to learn, so many mistakes, so much to pay for. You had to keep coming back. You had to pay and pay, and learn ever so slowly, so painfully. A billion revolutions, a billion guillotines, a billion blades slicing off a billion of your heads would not suffice. Oceans of blood would not suffice.

Sometimes I think Jesus stopped by the window to tell me, as I sat in the place reserved for my dad, that this man who believed in reincarnation, this self-professed former King of France, was wrong. Dead wrong.

“Turn around. Follow Me, not him.”

My mother, who never actually claimed to be Marie Antoinette until a drug reaction made her lose her mind for two days at the age of seventy-nine, didn't have much to offer in the way of lessons, especially in metaphysics and eschatology. She simply offered unconditional love. Sometimes I think Jesus stopped at my dining room window because He wanted to point her out to me.

“Behold your mother.”

Or maybe He wanted to join us for dinner. I'm sure that fried plantains,
carne asada,
and
malanga
taste much better than plain broiled fish from the Sea of Galilee.
Sí, claro.
Yes, surely, Jesus was not just looking at me. He was staring at our food and smelling it.

Inhaling deeply.

Who knows what might have happened if God had become incarnate in a place with really tasty cuisine, such as Cuba? Questions like that have made me realize that Jesus was there in my dreams to say an infinite number of things. Messages too vast in number to be understood all at once, or even in a whole lifetime on earth. Vital messages such as:

“Behold your mother.”

“Lipstick is wonderful.”

“Lizards are beautiful.”

“Demons are doomed to fail: I have defeated evil, and so shall you.”

“Fear not death: You shall live forever, in a wondrous body, just like Mine.”

“Drink champagne, and blow it out your nose.”

When I think back to the Jesus of my dreams I always remember the curly-haired, desperate man we wouldn't rescue during the shoot-out, and I recall my father's challenge to all those brought face to face with his Eye Jesus plate: “I dare you: see if you can get away from His gaze.”

Weird memories, even by Cuban standards. But useful, because the world is weirder than we can imagine, even in our dreams. Among the infinite messages conveyed by Jesus at my window in Havana, one stands above the rest in times of trial, those harsh, soul-crushing times none of us can escape. I didn't hear this back then, in my dreams, but I have heard it many times since, and hear it still.

“This pain, this cross, shall vanish as quickly as I did in your dreams; these stains on your soul shall be wiped clean, just like that lipstick smudge you once had on your cheek, that smudge you never saw, from the kiss you never felt, you drunken fool.”