Borderline

by Marita van der Vyver

  She looks at Ruben next to her, his white panama hat apparently glued to his head, and remembers how fascinated she used to be as a child by all those movie cowboys who never lost their hats, no matter how furiously they fought or how fast they raced around on horseback. Ruben’s body is too big and too heavy for a cowboy, but she nevertheless senses something of the older John Wayne in his manner. Not the swagger of the ageing cowboy, rather the silence and the self-confidence.

  Which could probably also be read as arrogance.

  ‘What is so funny?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing, I was just wondering … Did you ever watch cowboy movies?’

  ‘We did not have many cowboy movies when I was growing up. Our glorious leaders of the revolution did not believe in showing, ah, praising the American Wild West.’ He keeps his eyes on the road, something playful tugging at the corners of his mouth when he says ‘glorious leaders of the revolution’. ‘But I loved those that I see.’

  ‘John Wayne?’

  ‘John Wayne, James Stewart, later on Clint Eastwood …’ The deep voice sounds wistful. ‘But in my heart I was always on the side of the Red Indians.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says, smiling. ‘My dad was a great admirer of John Wayne. He couldn’t stand it when my sister and I cried about the Indians or the horses dying. In his world view there was a natural hierarchy, with the white man right at the top and any native running around half-naked right at the bottom. Along with the horses.’

  ‘And where were the women?’

  ‘In the kitchen. With the children. Only just above the horses in the stable.’ The sharpness in her own voice surprises her so that she starts to laugh apologetically. ‘Now he is so senile that hierarchy no longer means anything to him. And I miss the old chauvinist bastard. Strange, isn’t it?’

  Ruben nods slowly without taking his eyes off the road. He is an empathetic listener. If she doesn’t set a watch before her mouth, this Cuban taxi driver will soon know more about her than any of her colleagues in Cape Town.

  The palm trees on both sides of the road look ragged, the leaves dusty and torn, quite different from the photogenic palms she has always admired in postcard pictures of tropical beaches. She feels secretly relieved to find something that isn’t reminiscent of a postcard or a Hollywood movie. Perhaps now that she has left Havana, she will finally discover the ‘real Cuba’.

  After travelling some distance, the landscape flattens out, fewer palm trees, fewer trees of any kind, smaller shrubs with grazing animals she cannot identify. ‘Goats?’

  ‘Sheep,’ says Ruben.

  ‘I’ve never seen sheep like these,’ she says. ‘And I come from a country with lots of sheep.’

  ‘Well, every country has its own sheep, and the ones we have look like that.’ He shoots her a sidelong glance. ‘We are talking about real sheep, not human sheep, yes?’

  ‘We have plenty of both kinds.’

  They drive past a wall with a painting of Che Guevara’s iconic head with the ever-present black beret. Viva Cuba libre is written in big red letters next to the gigantic face, but the paint is starting to peel and some of the letters are so weathered they’re almost illegible. She remembers the slogans from her own country’s freedom struggle in the late eighties. Not usually on walls, or else they were painted over before she could see them, but often on banners and T-shirts in protest marches, and from the mouths of thousands of people. ‘A luta continua.’ ‘Amandla! Awethu!’ It is so far removed from where she is now, both in time and distance, and yet the memory is suddenly more vivid than it has been in years. This journey continues to be a time walk, backwards and forwards, constantly.

  In the picturesque town square in Cienfuegos, Theresa experiences yet another moment of déjà vu that at first she doesn’t understand – until she realises that she recognises this scene from every story she has ever read about small towns in South America. The small symmetrical square with the statue of a folk hero in the centre, a small bandstand with a domed roof, shady trees and benches for sitting on, stately colonial buildings on all four sides. A pristine white theatre, an equally pristine white cathedral with two angular domed towers, an imposing old town hall with a massive domed roof, a palacio with light-blue pillars crowned by an open cupola.

  Exactly the way she recognised England’s country lanes and verdant hedges and hedgehogs when she travelled overseas for the first time soon after finishing her studies. Or New York’s Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge, when she first found herself in that city two decades ago. Thanks to the books she’d read in childhood, and the many movies she watched later, such faraway destinations had always seemed more familiar to her than most countries in Africa. Even more familiar than a neighbouring country such as Angola.

  Would she like to use her cellphone, Ruben wants to know. The square is the local hotspot, he explains, with the best internet signal in the area. Judging by the frustrated body language and caustic comments coming from a few tourists fiddling with their cellphones in their vicinity, ‘the best’ is still not exactly satisfactory.

  She shakes her head resignedly. On the journey here, she told him how she had struggled the night before to upload a single picture onto her brand-new Facebook wall. She had chosen the picture of her and Oreste on the mosaic bench outside José Fuster’s cheerful house, to at least let Nini and her sister know that she was safely in Cuba and had not yet given up her search. She hadn’t realised how slow the internet could be on this island; she thought she was probably doing something wrong – always her first thought when she came up against an obstacle – given that she was such a social media novice. In the end she went to sleep, tired and fed-up, with her phone still connected to the hotel Wi-Fi, and when she woke up this morning, she saw that the picture had in fact been uploaded at some point during the night.

  There was even a ‘like’ and a comment from Nini: Give my regards to Oreste! As well as a few friend requests from colleagues in Cape Town, which she ignored. Why would she want to become virtual friends with people she saw in the flesh at the office every day?

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says to Ruben. ‘I think I should rather stay away from the internet while I’m in Cuba.’

  He doesn’t smile but looks pleased nonetheless.

  The address where Luisá’s family lived twenty years ago – and perhaps still live, as Theresa keeps hoping despite everything – looks less shabby, more middle-class than any of the houses or apartments she has so far visited in Cuba. (Besides Ruben and his son’s place, which is nevertheless so much more basic than her own Cape Town cottage which she likes to describe as ‘modest’.) It is a complex, really, three small colourful houses behind a trellis gate, with a shared courtyard where splashes of purple and orange bougainvillea compete with the bright colours of the walls.

  But definitely no security complex. The gate isn’t locked, and given that there is no bell or any other means of announcing their presence, they simply push the gate open and walk up to the largest of the three houses, the one in the centre. The small structure to the right of the gate is what would probably be called a granny flat in Cape Town’s well-to-do southern suburbs, a garden flat with one or two rooms, but the exterior walls are painted a shade of turquoise you wouldn’t easily find in the genteel Cape Town suburbs. The house in the middle is canary yellow, with an ugly cement staircase leading up a side wall to a flat roof where a third home was evidently added later, its windows in a different style to those on the ground floor, the walls more orange than yellow. And next to the orange-yellow roof apartment is a rainwater tank, on the side of which is a gigantic black-and-red painting of Che Guevara’s face.

  Theresa’s eyes flick from the rainwater tank to Ruben and back to the tank, with such a bemused expression that he shrugs and says, ‘He’s everywhere, isn’t he?’

  ‘Is there a law that says every street in the country has to display this guy’s face in a highly visible spot?’

  ‘I think it is just that we like hi
m. And we discovered that our tourists like him even more.’

  They can hear a radio somewhere, but there’s no reaction after Ruben has knocked on the front door of the yellow building a few times. When they turn around to try one of the other doors, a woman appears on the stairs leading up to the roof apartment and greets them in Spanish.

  Ruben raises his panama hat and returns the greeting with old-fashioned chivalry. The woman smiles and commences a stately descent.

  Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard is the image that immediately occurs to Theresa, because they are gazing at an apparently middle-aged woman who refuses to accept that her glory days are behind her. Her shoulder-length hair has been dyed corn-yellow with a fringe that hangs suggestively low over one eye. Her pink T-shirt hugs her body too tightly, and the round neckline is low enough to display a pair of breasts separated by a deep cleavage. Across these breasts the words PRETTY WOMAN are spelled out in bright pink sequins, the letters slightly distorted due to the great circumference of those breasts. Her white capri pants are likewise precariously tight around her strong thighs and wide hips. But her waist and ankles are slim, her brown calves shapely, her neck fairly lean. She is not what Theresa would call beautiful, just slightly too vulgar for that, but some older men would probably find her attractive. Like an overripe banana whose skin is turning brown, but which may well taste just as good as a fresh, young banana.

  At least that is what Theresa surmises when she notices the mischievous sparkle in Ruben’s dark eyes. He says a few words in Spanish to the woman who introduces herself as Benita Madrigal Rosabal.

  ‘What a lovely storybook name.’ Theresa extends her hand in greeting, but the other woman barely glances in her direction.

  Benita Madrigal Rosabal’s full attention is seized by Ruben Torres Márquez’s large (ring-less) hand that is likewise extended in her direction.

  ‘Call me Benita,’ she says with an arch little laugh. ‘If I can call you Ruben …’

  There is no need for Ruben to translate these words for Theresa. The body language of flirtation is as old as humankind and universally understood. And Ruben wastes no time in playing along. He takes a step closer and gazes deep into the eyes of the smiling Benita while he explains why they’re here and who they are looking for. ‘Amat’, Theresa hears. ‘Luisá Amat. Mercedes Perez Amat.’ As usual that is about all she understands, only the names of the characters in this strange detective story.

  Benita places a hand on Ruben’s arm and starts babbling excitedly, at such great speed that after a few sentences Ruben gives up trying to translate. He just nods, asks a few short questions, receives answers that inexplicably become longer and longer. Theresa feels so redundant that she cannot suppress a sigh of boredom. Benita frowns at her before she invites them upstairs with a wave of her arm. Presumably only to drag out the flirtation with Ruben a while longer.

  ‘We are going to join her for a quick drink in her apartment,’ Ruben says apologetically when they follow Benita up the stairs. They can’t help staring at the woman’s swinging buttocks, because she is a few steps ahead of them with her backside awkwardly close to their faces. Although Ruben isn’t looking all that awkward. ‘She tells me her family exchanged this place with the Amats since twelve years before.’

  ‘Exchanged?’

  ‘Well, we cannot really buy property, you know. Houses like these are handed down from one generation to the next, or else exchanged for a bigger or smaller home. She says Luisá’s sister used to live in the downstairs house with her children. And the “old people” – Luisá’s parents – over there next to the gate. And Luisa up here in the roof apartment for a while after she came back from Havana. Now Benita lives up here, with her children and grandchildren downstairs. You could say it’s a Cuban version of Dallas.’

  Theresa doesn’t respond to his wisecrack. She stopped listening as soon as she heard that Luisá had lived in this apartment. On the porch outside the apartment, directly below Che Guevara’s face on the rainwater tank, she feels her stomach knot like when Marta in Havana told her that Luisá had also worked in the Hotel Nacional. She is closer to the soldier’s wife than she has ever been.

  ‘Is this where she died?’ she asks Ruben. ‘Here on the roof?’

  Benita signals that they should sit on the plastic chairs on the porch while she fetches cooldrink and beer from the fridge.

  ‘I do not know if I should ask her that.’ Ruben strokes his grey-flecked beard, considering. Through the open front door, Theresa catches a glimpse of a few pieces of cheap mismatched furniture. Nearest to the door is a bookshelf without any books, just a display of tiny kitsch ornaments. ‘People like not to know that someone else died in their home.’

  But when Benita returns with a tray with bottles of beer and cooldrink, he asks anyway, as if he understands how important it is to Theresa to know the answer this instant. Benita gives a nonchalant shrug and raises her beer and says ‘Cheers!’, the only English word she has volunteered so far, before jabbering on in Spanish.

  She doesn’t know if Luisá died here or in hospital, Ruben interprets for Theresa, and it doesn’t look as if she exactly cares.

  Benita’s attention is once again exclusively on Ruben, her back half-turned to Theresa. Theresa no longer picks up any mention of Luisá’s name. She has a suspicion that Benita is sharing her own life story with Ruben, at length and in the finest detail.

  Ruben has abandoned any attempt to stem the flow of words. He drinks his cooldrink resignedly, a faraway look in his eyes.

  Theresa tries to imagine what it must have been like for Luisá to sit on this porch looking at the purple and orange bougainvillea down in the courtyard and longing for her student daughter, while she got sicker and weaker every day.

  Would she have yearned for Angel too? Or had she stayed angry with him right to the end because he let her down when he went to fight in Angola?

  Tears prick Theresa’s eyes, catching her so off-guard that she quickly excuses herself – Benita doesn’t even look around – and flees to the bathroom. But inside the apartment she is even more aware of Luisá’s almost physical presence. She feels the hair on her arms stand on end, as if she were encountering a ghost. An overpowering sense of the woman’s lifelong struggle for something better suffuses her own body, as well as the eventual realisation that nothing would ever get better, that at the age of barely forty she was going to die, with so many unfulfilled dreams, so many things she still wanted to do.

  It isn’t fair, Theresa thinks, with a surge of the old teenage rebellion that, these days, in her everyday life and her own comfort zone, she can usually contain with minimal effort.

  It isn’t fair.

  She splashes water onto her face and runs her damp fingers through her short spiky hair. She doesn’t dare fall apart now. She has a task to carry out, someone to find, a letter she must deliver. She glances in the mirror, takes her sunglasses from her bag to hide her red eyes, and heads back to the porch.

  In the living room she catches sight of three small amateurish landscape paintings – of dazzling white snowscapes you would never see in Cuba – and a picture postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Benita’s idea of interior decorating, which upsets her all over again. Benita probably has just as many unfulfilled ideals as Luisá did.

  Just as many as Theresa does.

  All this brooding over things that happened forty years ago must be transporting her once more to the Sturm und Drang of her teenage years. There can be no other explanation for the melancholy that is threatening to overwhelm her.

  Back on the porch she quickly finishes the rest of her beer and rudely interrupts Benita. ‘Ask her if she knows anyone who might know what became of Luisá’s daughter.’

  No, Benita shakes her head, she only knows that Luisá was buried here in Cienfuegos, but she could ask around among the neighbours whether—

  ‘Is her grave close by?’ Theresa asks eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ Benita confirms. ‘The Amat fam
ily had a crypt in the Cementerio la Reina. They’d been well-off people once. A very long time ago. These days …’ As Ruben translates, Benita sighs and turns her palms upwards in a helpless gesture, flashes a glance in the direction of Che’s face on the rainwater tank as if she were addressing him directly. ‘These days, of course, no one is really well-off any more.’

  ‘We can go look for the grave,’ Ruben says to Theresa.

  He fixes another hopeful look on Benita, asks her to please let them know if any of the neighbours have more information. They will be here until tomorrow, perhaps even longer. Depends on what they find here …

  At this piece of news, Benita brightens instantly. She wants to know where they will be spending the night – with a smile that strikes Theresa as a rather blatant invitation – and Ruben explains that Oreste has reserved affordable accommodation for them at a holiday resort near the beach where he regularly brings large tour groups.

  Two rooms, he indicates with his fingers, and Theresa wonders if it was absolutely necessary to spell out so clearly that he and his female travel companion are not sharing a room.

  Benita scurries away to fetch a pen and a pink notebook, writes her phone number down in the little book, tears out the page and hands it to Ruben with a roguish wink. While Ruben writes his own number in the little book, he glances up briefly, catches Theresa’s amused look, and quickly looks back down.

  She hardly knows him. For all she knows, he is looking forward to an opportunity to call Benita Madrigal Rosabal tonight to request further assistance with their search.

  All these shifting emotions are more than she can handle. They have been in constant flux, from the adrenaline-driven recklessness she felt on the open road this morning, to the constantly recurring moments of nostalgic déjà vu, from the intense melancholy that overwhelmed her inside Luisá’s former home, to her amused irritation with Benita’s brazen flirting. And now, after a frustrating search through the large, walled graveyard, among impressive white marble statues on the graves of the well-to-do dead and the modest little mounds of soil with wooden crosses where the poor have been dug in, after she has sat down miserably in the shade of a marble angel’s outstretched wings, hot and sweaty and convinced that they will never find the Amat family’s final resting place, Ruben calls her from a distance away, from a different path between the graves, his deep voice noticeably relieved. ‘I think we have got it!’