by Burton Hersh
“Exit strategy. Remember: Strategic Investments? Also, we like to collect the other $25,000.”
“You better let me blow the whistle on that pistol. I really don’t want anybody to get killed.”
Olivia nodded agreement, not happy. The door to Seminario Casa C was coming open, slowly. The editor stepped out. We followed her back in.
“What’s with the meatloaf in the hall?” I wanted to know. “This was supposed to be an off-the-record-type meeting.”
The editor shrugged. “In socialist society no secrets all the time, like with you,” she informed me. “Our leadership says, sunlight makes purificacion for everything.” She looked to Olivia.
“Makes clean,” Olivia said.
“Yes. Cleans. Here we discuss all matters in a democratic fashion, and then comes the decision.”
“What are the choices here, would you say?” Dad asked.
“Comrades in this group have commit crimes against the state. Against Cuba. And now you want to cov—“
Suddenly one of the veterans in the green uniform of a Comandante was starting to rant. Olivia attempted to interpret for us. He was, Olivia translated, an old man now. He had been side by side with The Maximum Leader when they stormed the Moncada barracks. He sat in prison with Fidel. They fought together again in the Sierra Maestra. During the evil time of the Special Period after the Russians sold them out he had become disheartened, la lucha seemed too hard. He had been contacted by one of those maggots in Miami, and he had agreed with this gusano to place some heirloom jewelry from his family in safekeeping outside the country.
Tears streamed from the old man’s eyes. That was a terrible mistake. Now he must die in Cuba. If the leadership decided that he would die in prison, he was prepared to accept that.
The emotion rising from all the others was palpable, like steam. The editor confronted Dad and me.
“We have made our plebiscite,” she informed us. “Keep the documents. We are every one of us in agreement with the honored companero here. Cuba must remain foremost. Several of us have already seen the inside of the Combinada del Este.”
“That is the main prison in Cuba,” Olivia said.
21
There was a kind of restrained collective grunt emerging from the delegation; at just that moment a face looked in from the slightly ajar door: Mary-Ellen Fondling. Horrified, Dad took a step to push her out again but she had edged into the seminar room while one of the guards outside slammed the door shut.
I heard Dad take a very deep breath. “Please tell the madam editor that I would really appreciate the opportunity to say something to the group myself,” Dad said.
The editor translated; there was general ascent. “This is a democratic society,” the editor said. “Please, not at too great length, because the guards outside are waiting to take you directly to the State Security Offices in Villa Marista.”
“I can’t wait,” Dad said. He put his arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “Jetzt muss du uebersetzen,” Dad breathed at her.
“Du sprichts Deutsch?”
“Genugend,” Dad said.
“En Espanol o English, por favor,” the editor said.
A cold sweat was appearing across Dad’s temples. “But first,” he said, “the lady who just turned up came in by accident. She’s one of those precious tourists the government keeps trying to attract. She just wanted a word with me. You should let her leave.”
“Too late,” the editor said. “The authorities must decide those things.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Dad said. “OK, this is where I’m coming from. First, my son here and I are at most the messengers. We had nothing to do with any of this. No matter how things work out we will not profit one penny. All we ever wanted was for the whole thing to end quietly. I think that right now Senor Ramon feels the same way. He is prepared to turn the whole schlamazel over to anybody available around here and just walk away.”
“I don’t know schlamazel,” Olivia said when she got that far.
“Mess is fine,” Dad said. “The point is, we’re turning over to your people every bit of the evidence that involves the entire matter. You work it out, decide who gets what or maybe the regime gets whatever there is, and that ends it. You dick us over and pretty soon people in the States, in the government, are going to look into this thing. That’s not going to help with your embargo problem.”
“Dick man over?” Olivia questioned.
“Schwierigheit machen,” Dad said. “You guys will catch the blame.”
I could sense the uneasiness beginning to sweep the group.
“What has any of this to do with socialist principles?” the editor demanded.
‘‘What good are your socialist principles going to do you if the regime isn’t around in five years. I hadn’t expected to have to bring this up, but something else surfaced you ought to think about.”
Lopez, the delegate to the People’s Assembly who had been attending rather languidly until now, suddenly spoke up. “At times socialist principles require flexibility,” he put in. His English was almost without identifiable accent. “What else is there?”
All right,” Dad said. He took a deep breath. “Over the course of this kerfuffle we picked up a geodetic survey map of this island on which are pinpointed the important deposits of rare earth, where, the specific types, and estimated tonnages. Plus core samples from each location. We—“
“We waste time,” the editor said, sharply. “I told the guards before four o’clock—“
“Calmese!” Lopez commanded. “We must hear this.”
“I’ve talked with a number of my colleagues in the scientific community,” Dad continued, “and every one of them says that if word of these mineral finds ever gets around, the isolation the regime keeps complaining about will collapse in a heartbeat. The question is, will Molycorp or BHP Billiton take the place over first? Remember, U.S. Marines never did leave Guatanamo.”
“How will that be?” Lopez said. Olivia continued to translate, but sketchily.
“What has kept Cuba socialist all these years is the fact that the place is fundamentally worthless.” Dad was warming to his subject. “Cane brakes and soggy putas. Historians I’ve spoken with suspect that the only reason the Kennedys were so apeshit to take the island back was because old Joe still controlled the Coca Cola franchise and Meyer Lansky had his ass in a crack about losing his gambling rights.”
“What is ass-in-a-crack?” Olivia wanted to know.
“Pissed off. Now – after water, rare earth is probably the most sought-after commodity on the planet. The age of computers would flame out overnight without these specialized minerals. China holds the important deposits, and they’ve already started to dole the stuff out very sparingly.”
Lopez looked extremely earnest.
“You let us alone and this will be our secret. If any of us have to get anywhere near socialist justice my colleagues are under instruction to plaster up word of this bonanza on every media outlet you can imagine. The same holds if anybody in our family, or Ramon’s family, even stubs his or her toe back in the States.”
The editor from Granma had gone from shock to anger. “Please do not think that you can—“ she began; the wen beneath her eye seemed to darken, to throb.
Lopez shut her down. “These are new facts,” he announced. “We will have to hold another plebiscite. You must wait in the hall,” he instructed us.
“Fine,” Dad said. “But I expect you to let this colleague of mine go.” He nodded toward Mary-Ellen Fondling. “She is a mere economist, she really doesn’t understand anything about how the world works. This has nothing to do with her.”
“Thanks a bunch!” Mary-Ellen gasped at Dad. But she had picked up enough on the drift of events not to waste any time before scuttering through the door.
The plebiscite did not take long. Lopez himself came out to deliver the news. We were free to go. Or stay.
I unzipped my document case and solemnly turned
the sealed mailer inside over to delegate Lopez. He accepted it without emotion. This exchange of views had never happened, he suggested. He hoped we would enjoy the remaining days of our convention in Cuba and that we would recommend the island to our friends. He had found my father very eloquent.
22
There was a patio under the eaves on the Gulf side of the hotel set out in handsome native furniture, the ideal place to order the drinks we all needed badly by then. Dad led Olivia and me out of Seminario Casa C and up the corridor and into the lobby. It was perhaps a minute before four: Behind one of the pillars I spotted the geezer version of Sonny, already beginning to pull his wooden leg in under him, preparing to rescue us all.
“Dad nailed it,” I informed Sonny under my breath as we went by. “Find us on the patio.”
We settled into the big woven-raffia armchairs around a glass-topped coffee table and requested a round of mojitos while Olivia went up to change out of her working clothes.
“Things really got squared away, from what I could tell,” I said to Dad. “You done good.”
“None of the other options had a lot of appeal. My retirement years in some vermin-infested hoosgow, or getting caught in the crossfire when Olivia and those two gonnifs in the hall opened up. I’ve made my peace with enough gunshot wounds. After that exchange of pleasantries in the Swamp I had reverbs for a couple of nights.”
“That doesn’t make you less of a stand-up guy.”
“Stand-up comedian would be closer to it. A Jackie Mason lookalike, isn’t that what Ethan Stokes said?”
“You get it done.” I toasted Dad with my mojito glass. “And – you’ve still got it. Our tour leader is obviously trying to hunt you down.”
“Never happen,” Dad said. “We’re too far out of touch. Lovemaking is a very open conversation carried on by two people’s genitals. As time goes by not many can keep that going. Sick as she’s been, your mother and I have never quite given up on amour, and that’s probably what saved us.”
“Still, a lot of casual sex is available these days.”
“Casual is the word. Condoms. Lap dances. Peekaboo on the internet. Techniques to avoid involvement.”
“You are a throwback,” I said.
“Eighteenth century. My emotional development ended with the eighteenth century.”
Olivia was making her way across the lobby in our direction. The short, loose, medallion-imprinted silk dress she was wearing pointed up the power in her thighs. The neckline was uninhibited, dramatically scoop-necked.
Dad signaled the waiter and pointed to his glass. Olivia took the loveseat adjacent to our chairs and set down her sizeable hanging purse.
“No grenades in there, I assume,” Dad said.
“Chust a little mustard gas,” Olivia said. “Air freshener-upper.”
“What did you think?” Dad wanted to know. “Could it have gone either way?”
“Sure, jah. Cuba is like that. Impulsif.”
“For quite a while there it looked like a contest between senile idealism and common sense. I thought we could easily be goners. Were you really prepared to shoot it out?”
“In this consulting business we make a lot of verrueckte bullshit. Fun und games.”
“You certainly do,” Dad said. “That editor from Granma was after our immaculate Yankee tails, nothing was good enough until she had us tucked away in that slammer she booked. Wasn’t that your impression? Could she have made that stick?”
“Granma is a big deal in Cuba,” Olivia assured us. “Where else they gonna get their toilet paper?”
“So that was definitely in the works?” Dad looked concerned. His nerves were coming off the crisis. “Could somebody at home have ransomed us out of a cesspool like that?”
Olivia began to frame her answer; I felt the presence of people converging. First came the waiter, bringing Olivia her mojito along with a plate around which slices of papayas and mangoes had been fanned out artistically. Behind him came Sonny, out of his disguise. He took the unoccupied chair across from Olivia. I introduced them.
“How do I think we met before,” Olivia wondered, with a crooked smile. “Do you remember where?”
Sonny shrugged, very much the barefoot buck just off the reservation. Dad indicated his mojito, but Sonny turned it down.
“Sonny brought the documents in,” I told Dad.
“It just gets weirder and weirder with you, Michael,” Dad said. “Are you really the Operations Director at the CIA?”
“Only until I get a real job.” I knocked back the last of my mojito. “Sonny here was backup. In case we needed to get our butts off the island.”
Dad looked amused and a little startled. “What does that mean? In case Olivia couldn’t blast our way out?” He turned to Sonny. “Would this be possible?”
“I think so,” Sonny said mildly. “We’ve worked things out with personnel in most of the penitenciaras. This regime cannibalizes everything from the black market to the dollar economy. Everybody except the Comandantes is scraping along, and nobody is going to feed himself without a payoff. Convicts with rich relatives disappear from the head count every day. Exfiltration isn’t that hard.”
“And who is we?” Olivia cooed, leaning deeply forward to pick out a slice of dripping papaya with her fingertips.
“We?” Sonny said. “My employers. The YMCA.”
Olivia laid the papaya out onto her tongue.
“How does papaya taste” I asked. “Never tried any.”
Olivia shot me a sidelong glance. “Papaya is something for which everybody should cultivate an appetite.” She presented Sonny with a very amused wink. Without warning Sonny blushed, a backwoods lad in faster company than he could handle. Red on red.
“Time for this girlfriend to visit the Ladies,” Olivia decided. She found her feet and started into the lobby.
“What was that all about?” I asked Sonny.
“Around here papaya is peasant slang for vagina.”
“That’s what it was. And here I thought you were reacting to those tremendous nipple erections she kept flashing in your face.”
Not long after that Olivia decided to retreat to her hotel room to have a nap. Sonny left soon afterwards. While we were flying home late Sunday I asked Dad whether he thought those two had gotten together.
“I’d imagine they did,” Dad said. “Didn’t you notice? After Olivia got back from the can the pheromones off those two fogged out the coffee table.”
“I hope she didn’t waste Sonny too bad.”
“She’d probably leave enough so he can start things up again. In time.” The cabin attendant brought Dad a Sprite. “There is a variety of European woman that likes to move from one man – or woman – to the next and arranges to gratify herself by chewing the marrow out of everybody’s goddamned bones. The granddaughters of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. They run to a type -- polygamous, ambisexual and voracious. Dybbuks. These ladies flout traditional boundaries whenever it comes to meeting their needs, they never mind gorging on anybody’s blood. They are the closest thing I’ve ever met to Werewolves.”
“I gather you’ve mixed it up with one or two.”
“One or two at least. It was outstanding. I suspect your accomplice Olivia falls into that category.” Dad took a sip. “She had her eye on you,” Dad said.
“So it was a good thing Sonny turned up.”
“Good for Sonny.”
“You think I missed something.”
“For sure, that.”
“Looks like I’ve turned conservative,” I suggested. “Comes with being a father.”
“What!” I had never seen Dad’s jaw drop with surprise before. “Linda?”
“So Sonny tells me.”
“You meshugena,” Dad said. “Really?”
23
As everything turned out, that interlude in Havana was what
it took to cauterize Ramon’s exposure. And ours. Everything
opened up for us. A wave of ener
gy rolled into our lives
we could barely cope with.
I thought it probably had something to do with the congregation of spirits that descended on our wedding. It made sense to put the actual ceremony off until the beginning of October, when everybody could be sure that the worst of the blanketing heat and chronic hurricane scares of late summer were behind us and Dad wasn’t scheduled to be jumping around the country pushing his Keynes biography. The pre-reviews were euphoric, and all the late-fall festivals and book fairs were clamoring to ink him into their schedules.
If Rabbi Ginsburg thought Wendy’s wedding in Coral Gables pushed intercultural accommodation to the breaking point, I found myself wondering what she was going to make of our wedding. We held it at the principal reform temple in St. Petersburg. Rabbi Ginsburg and Linda’s mother, Sakwa, conducted the ceremony jointly. Sakwa’s accomplishments as a medicine woman gave her a standing among the Comanches equal to a tongue speaker in the Native American Church, eligible to oversee ceremonies or conduct a vision quest.
Along with the dovening and the readings from the Pentateuch and the V’Yistadal, our wedding was highlighted by a sun dance on the side lawn. Rabbi Ginsburg had anticipated no problem with that, and didn’t begin to panic until she and Angela McCarthy happened upon a brave – naked to the waist in buckskin leggings, wooden skewers woven in and out beneath the flesh and muscle of his chest and connected by long rawhide thongs to the top of a cottonwood center pole hauled in from Lawton. The moment the ceremony ended, the brave launched into his high-stepping gyrations around the trembling ridgepole, a propitiation of the sun spirits executed against the throb of tom-toms.
“I know we’re supposed to represent the liberal wing of Judaism,” Rabbi Ginsburg cornered my father to insist during the reception in the synagogue’s atrium afterwards, “But, Bube, your family keeps pushing out the mothering limits.”
“Wait ‘til you meet the Hutu maiden my nephew’s got his eye on,” Dad said. “We’re all trying very hard to get her to give up cannibalism. Between missionaries. She is especially susceptible to people of the cloth. They’re so well cared for, and plump. Meticulous about depilating themselves. Toothsome!”