The Sweetness in the Lime

by Stephen Kimber

  “Elián is also from Cárdenas,” Mariela told me. She insisted on telling me the Cuban version of his story. Elián was a “sweet five-year-old boy” whose mother “stole him” from his father, then tried to smuggle him “illegally” into the United States aboard a raft with her boyfriend. The mother and the boyfriend drowned, but Elián survived. The little boy ended up in an international tug-of-war between his father, who “naturally wanted his son raised with his family in his homeland,” and the boy’s Miami relatives, who “kidnapped him” so he could be “saved from the evils of communism and visit Mickey Mouse every weekend.” Fidel became involved. Fidel won, she said with obvious pride. What were her politics, I wondered? Was this even about politics?

  “I was there the day Elián came back to school!” Mariela exclaimed in a voice that sounded almost rapturous. “September 1, 2000. It was my first day as a teacher. Fidel was there too. He shook my hand, thanked me for being a teacher.”

  “Did you know him—Elián, I mean? His family? It sounds like you did.”

  “No,” she replied, suddenly formal. “I did not know them personally.” I wanted to ask why Elián’s story seemed to touch her so deeply, so personally, but she didn’t give me time. “You asked how I became a tour guide. Like every Cuban, I could not make enough money to survive in my profession. So after a few years as a teacher, I decided I wanted to do…something else with my life, to live…somewhere else. I asked Uncle Lío, and he brought me to Havana, and I’ve been here ever since.”

  I sensed this was a truncated version of a story she wasn’t ready to tell. Not yet. Or at least not to me. The little hiccup hesitations in her sentences. Do something else…be somewhere else.

  “So do you like it? Being a guide, I mean.”

  “Of course,” she said, smiling. “I meet all sorts of interesting people. Like you.”

  Even I understood she didn’t mean that. Did she? Could she?

  “Or maybe like…” I parried, testing now, “what were their names? Hank? And….”

  “Ellen. Hank and Ellen.” She laughed. “No, not like them.”

  Mariela sketched in what she knew of the empty rooms of their lives. Ellen and Hank were a childless couple from Michigan. He was a lawyer, she a university professor. They’d driven from Ann Arbor to Toronto, explained to officials at the border they were meeting old friends in Canada. There, they boarded a flight to Havana instead. When they returned, they would tell border officials they’d spent their entire vacation in Canada.

  Mariela had met Hank and Ellen this morning in the lobby of the hotel. Hank had arranged it through Lío and apparently suggested the rendezvous point—a small table behind the grand staircase near the entrance to the men’s room—so he could keep a watchful eye on…who knew? “I wouldn’t be concerned,” he’d explained to Mariela at one point, “except I’m a lawyer back home, and we’re not even supposed to be here. If someone sees me—”

  “They’ll think you’re an asshole,” Ellen had cut him off flatly, rolling her eyes at Mariela. “Which you are.” Before they left the hotel, Hank insisted Ellen slather on an extra layer of sunblock in case customs agents at the US-Canada border demanded to know how she’d gotten a tan vacationing in Canada in the middle of winter.

  We’d laughed. Together. As one. Stupid tourists. Stupid Americans. Would she laugh later with her friends about me? Was I too obvious? Too ridiculous? A pathetic old man hitting on a…how old was she anyway? Older than Wendy Wagner. Old enough. Was I really hitting on her? Was she indulging in my harmless fantasy? Was I old? Was I harmless? This was certainly a fantasy.

  “That’s why I was so happy when I saw you in the bar,” she said. No, you weren’t, I thought. You didn’t even remember who I was. Mariela raised her glass. “Thank you for rescuing me from Hank and Ellen.”

  I raised my glass, clinked. “You’re welcome.”

  “How much do I owe you?” I finally remembered to ask. “For this afternoon, I mean.” Part of me understood these delusions had tumbled around in my brain far too long. I needed to close the eyes on my what-if fantasies before I said or did something I could not take back.

  “Whatever you think is fair.” I had no idea what was fair. Would I offer too little, and risk insulting her, and therefore never see her again? Or too much and be seen as an easy mark.

  “What about Hank and Ellen? How much did they pay you?”

  She seemed reticent to reply with an actual number. She told me instead about the Cuban economy, that the Cuban pesos Cubans used as cash were worth one-twentieth of a CUC, about the real costs of goods in Cuba today, about—

  “You don’t seem to want to answer my question,” I said finally.

  “I don’t,” she laughed. “I want you to decide what it was worth to you.”

  Now there was a question. “Will you have to pay any of it to Lío?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, he was not involved. This is just between you and me.”

  I reached into my wallet, took out five twenty-CUC bills, slid them across the table to her.

  “No, no. That is much too much.” She put her hand over mine. It was soft, her palm damp with sweat, the tips of her elegant fingers shooting flashes of electricity into the back of my hand. “It was my pleasure. Really.” She tried to push my hand back across the table toward my body. I held my ground.

  “You asked me to decide how much it was worth to me. I’ve decided.”

  She shrugged finally, let go of my hand, accepted the bills. “Thank you.”

  Which was when I’d asked her about Hemingway. That way, I wouldn’t ask her something I would regret.

  “Do I love Hemingway?” Mariela repeated my question. “Do you want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “The only book of his I have read all the way through was The Old Man and the Sea—and only because it’s about Cuba and because the tourists always ask.”

  “Did you like it?”

  She laughed. “Not really.”

  “Me neither,” I confessed. “All those short, choppy, man’s-man sentences.”

  She looked puzzled. “So why then—”

  “Hemingway’s a writer. I’m a writer, sort of….” I shrugged. “I didn’t plan this trip very well. I hadn’t intended to come to Havana at all, so I didn’t even consider what I might want to see. And now I’m here, and—”

  “There are many things to see and do in Havana besides Mr. Hemingway, my friend.” Was that an invitation?

  “Would you be willing to show me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Not in the morning. There’s…something I must do first.” That hiccup hesitation again.

  “The afternoon then?”

  “Of course.” Of course.

  6

  This one? That one, perhaps? Was the facade pastel blue, or perhaps pink or, more likely, the dull-grey, weathered concrete of all the other buildings on this block? Had Mariela entered through an actual door, or was there a wrought iron gate that opened into a ground-floor apartment, an interior courtyard? How many storeys? Two? Three? More? Balconies? No balconies? Had I even looked up? So many questions.

  Perhaps I was asking myself all these peripheral questions to avoid the central questions I was not asking. For starters, what the hell was I doing here this morning, obsessively walking up and down Havana Centro’s dusty, narrow streets, staring at buildings, trying to identify the one where Lío had dropped off Mariela? And then, of course, there was that other central question I was not asking: What would I do if I did find her building, or what I thought was her building? Knock on a door, ring a bell? “Does Mariela live here?” “Can Mariela come out and play?”

  None of this seemed logical, even to me. We’d already agreed to meet later outside the Habana Libre Hotel in Vedado.

 
; During our afternoon and evening yesterday, I hadn’t told Mariela anything important about my own life history—why spoil with reality whatever illusions I might have conjured?—and she had shared almost nothing meaningful from her own. I knew where she was born, but not how old she was. I knew she’d been a teacher and was now a tour guide, but not what happened in between. I didn’t even know her last name? She still thought my last name was my first name. Did she have a husband or a boyfriend, family she lived with here in Havana, family back in…where was it, Cárdenas?

  I’d offered to walk her home. She’d demurred.

  What had we talked about—besides Mr. Hemingway, of course? We hadn’t kissed. We’d barely touched fingers. And yet I was in love. I knew I was in love because it had happened to me before. Once. Long ago. I had vowed to myself never to let it happen again.

  “You look like you’re lost, my friend.” I looked around. There was no one on the street. Then I noticed wisps of smoke leaking out from behind a gated entrance. I stepped closer and looked in. A shirtless man with milky café-con-leche skin was sprawled on a couch in what appeared to be a cavernous empty space, smoking a cigarette. There were no windows, so the only light came from the entrance where I stood. I could make out the outline of what looked like a concrete staircase off to my right. There were no railings.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he asked in a deep, resonant English as impeccable as Mariela’s. How did he guess I spoke English?

  “No, no,” I replied, too quickly. “I’m just looking…at the buildings.”

  “Ah, the buildings,” he said. He rose from the couch, walked toward me. I could see now he was younger than his voice. Late twenties? Thirties? Younger than me. He was handsome too, with a strangely languid, loose-limbed athleticism about him. He boasted remarkably detailed tattoos on his arms just below both shoulder joints, iconic images of Ché Guevara on the left, Fidel Castro on the right. “The buildings in Havana are worth looking at, my friend. So many different eras, so many different styles, even in this neighbourhood, even in its state of disrepair,” he said, opening his arms to envelop the neighbourhood. “David,” he added, pronouncing it Dah-veed, introducing himself, extending his hand through the opening. I shook it.

  “Eli,” I said.

  “I’m an architect. I’m also a tour guide. Would you like me to show you our city’s architectural wonders?”

  “No,” I said more sharply than I’d intended. Silvia had already warned me several times to avoid the jineteros, Havana’s street hustlers offering fake tours, cigars, chicas….

  “I have to go.”

  “No problem, my friend.” He reached into his blue jeans pocket, his movements still measured—was it the heat?—pulled out a business card, handed it to me. “David Ramírez, arquitecto,” it said, and then, in English below, “Your Guide to Havana.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pocketing the card. “But I need to go.” And I walked away, suddenly purposeful. At least I hope I looked that way.

  “Have a great day, my friend,” he said to my back.

  ****

  Forty-five minutes later, I found myself on the Malecón a few blocks west of the Hotel Nacional, putting in time, staring through a forest of noisy, flapping-in-the-sea-breeze black flags toward a stark concrete and glass edifice known as the United States Interests Section. I remembered spending hours in a previous lifetime sorting through wire service photos of anti-American protests here to determine which would best illustrate the latest blade-twist in the neverending knife fight between Washington and Havana. The Havana my mind’s eye had conjured then—an oppressive, vaguely threatening police state full of force-marched automatons hectored into obeisance by armies of bearded Fidels—seemed to bear no resemblance to the reality I was now living. Not that I was sure I understood whatever reality I was now living.

  In fifteen minutes, I was supposed to meet Mariela outside the Habana Libre.

  “I’ll treat you to a real Cuban ice cream at Coppelia and then I will find some nice things for you to see,” she’d said. “No more Mr. Hemingway, I promise!”

  I decided to circle round the building once more and head back toward the hotel. That’s when I noticed Mariela herself coming out of the Interests Section.

  “Mariela!” I shouted, loudly enough that the sentries in the guard houses outside the entrance started nervously, tensing themselves until they determined I posed no threat. “Mariela,” I called again, more calmly. She saw me but pretended she hadn’t. She looked away, brushed a hand across her cheek. She was crying.

  “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. But I could see she wasn’t.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Without thinking, I extended my arms, inviting a hug—an awkward, out of character gesture for me. Was this an act of spontaneous compassion? A suitor’s calibrated calculation? Not that it mattered. She ignored my proffer, straightened, stared bleakly out to sea as if to situate herself. Finally, as my arms slumped, defeated, to my sides, she spoke. “Why don’t we get a drink, talk about what you’d like to see this afternoon?” She said it as if none of what had just happened, happened. “I know a place.”

  She did. It was, almost literally, a hole in the wall near the Hotel Nacional. I hadn’t noticed it before, perhaps because there was no sign to advertise its purpose, perhaps because its purpose did not include tourists. Beyond the hole, a narrow hallway led into a courtyard, in the middle of which stood a makeshift bar surrounded by a dozen card tables ringed by mismatched chairs, almost all occupied. Men played dominoes, women gossiped, and everyone seemed to know everyone’s name. It was Cheers with a Cuban cast. Bruno, a stout, balding man, was the bartender. Though he wore a stained white chef’s apron, he didn’t offer us a menu, didn’t ask what we wanted to eat or drink. He simply plunked two plastic cups filled with a clear liquid in front of us.

  “Be careful, Cooper,” Mariela said as she clopped her cup against mine. “This is not Esteban’s Havana Club.” She put the cup to her lips, leaned her head back, and swallowed it in a single gulp. Her entire body shivered, then she made a face, breaking into a smile.

  I tried to do the same. But the harsh liquid—was it rum?—set off a blast-furnace inferno inside my mouth, constricted my throat. I sputtered, gagged. She laughed. So did Bruno. So did the people at the tables around us. They must have guessed I wasn’t from here.

  “Más?” Bruno asked, looking at Mariela.

  “Dos,” she said, still smiling, “Before you return to Canada, Cooper, my friend, we will make you a real Cuban.”

  She began to talk—more quickly, more earnestly than the subjects seemed to require—about the sites we would visit this afternoon, like Coppelia. “Fidel loves ice cream, so Cuba has the best ice cream in the world. Many flavours. More than Howard Johnson. We’ll get in the Cuban line. It’s longer than the foreign line, but the ice cream is better, and we can pay in Cuban pesos. My treat this time.” The Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón. “Cuba’s most famous cemetery. More than a million people are buried there.” She sounded like she was delivering her tour guide’s monologue. “Alberto Korda, the photographer who took that famous picture of Ché, the one on the T-shirts? I will show you where he is buried. And then—”

  “What happened back there?” I said, cutting off her monologue. “At the Interests Section. You looked, well, upset….”

  “I’m sorry,” she said after another hiccup pause, as if she were sorting out what, or how much, to tell me. “I didn’t intend for you to witness that. It’s just that it is all so frustrating. All of it. All of them.”

  The story, or those parts she was prepared to share, tumbled out in fits and starts, between squeezed-dry tears and shots of what I would later discover was bootleg rum. The rum went down more easily the more you drank.

  Mariela had gone to the US Interest
s Section for an interview with an American foreign service officer, the final step to get a visitor’s visa so she could legally enter the United States as a tourist. She had been trying to get one for more than a year. “It is just so unfair.” I could see her eyes—those eyes—begin to spill over again. “The American government can’t get along with the Cuban government. The Cuban government can’t get along with the American. So the Cuban people suffer. I suffer.” That seemed to explain it all.

  Mariela then led me on a guided tour through the convoluted visa process. First, she told me, she’d had to pay the equivalent of fifty-five CUCs—“Nearly three months’ wages for a salaried Cuban”—to the Cuban government to get two official stamps to attach to her passport application. “That’s just so you can apply.” Then she had to fork over six months’ more salary for the passport itself. Even then, she couldn’t use her new passport to go to the United States until she’d received an official letter of invitation from some person in the United States who would agree to sponsor her visit, and then both the US Interests Section and the Cuban government would need to sign off.

  Since Mariela knew no one she could contact in the United States, Lío had asked one of his friends in Miami, who agreed to write a letter of invitation and even get it notarized—for two hundred American dollars. So, Uncle Lío was a scam artist, or…I was still undecided. But Mr. Miami had been as good as his word—and Mariela’s money. His letter, written in English and officially notarized at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, had arrived at the Cuban Office of International Legal Consultancy in Havana three months ago.

  Mariela then had to wait until today to get an appointment to present her documents at the Interests Section and be interviewed by a foreign service officer, who would say yes or no to her plan to visit the United States. The foreign service officer had casually leafed through her file while she sat in front of him.

  “He said to me, ‘You have no living husband, no children….’”

  Yes! I now had the answer to the question I had not figured out how to ask.