‘Why would I read a guidebook when I have a living breathing guide beside me?’
‘You know I am not a real guide, so there is not much more I can tell you about a karst landscape. I know it has something to do with soft limestone and many caves and underground streams. Oreste would have been able to explain more.’
‘At length, yes.’ She smiles, admiring a row of mogotes on the horizon. ‘No problem.’
‘Don’t joke, he’s my nephew,’ Ruben says with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
‘I’m not joking,’ she assures him. ‘I like your nephew a lot.’
When by late morning they reach their destination and drive down the wide main street of Viñales, she looks around her with even greater surprise. She has already grown used to the rainbow-coloured houses all over the island, but here every house also has a veranda with blue or yellow or pink pillars right on the street, and a pair of rocking chairs on almost every veranda. The chairs are all alike, apparently in the local style with tall backs consisting of wooden struts that fan out at the top, but every veranda’s chairs have been painted a different colour. In broad daylight, during working hours, most of these chairs are empty, but it reminds Theresa of the kind of platteland town where at dusk people could be found on their stoeps, striking up conversations with neighbours and passing pedestrians. The kind of town that probably no longer exists in the country of her birth.
She sighs, which makes Ruben look at her quizzically, and makes her look away in turn. How does she explain to a socialist Cuban that she’s feeling nostalgic about the platteland towns of the seventies in South Africa? All he knows about that decade in her country is that an immoral government was in power and that his own government wanted to help end that regime. Which landed Lazaro in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and caused the death of many other Cubans.
She is getting to know him more and more as a man with deep reserves of empathy. She is scared of saying something that might make the empathy dry up.
‘I thought it would be bigger and busier,’ she muses while they wait for a horse-drawn cart to cross the road in front of them. The old man driving the cart, with the horse’s reins slack in his hands, is as brown and shrivelled as a walnut. And the horse looks almost as old as the driver.
‘It maybe seems quiet in daytime,’ Ruben says, ‘but there are tourists enough here to make for a busy nightlife.’
‘But would a place like this have a proper hospital?’
‘It’s a policlínico, really, a clinic, but people call it a hospital. It is only a block or two from that plaza with the church.’ He gestures towards a tower. ‘Near the casa particular where Oreste booked our accommodation.’
‘When did he do that?’ she asks, surprised, when the car starts moving again.
‘This morning while we were on our way here. No problem.’ With the hint of a smile in his beard.
She must remember to thank Nini properly for the competent guide she had arranged for her. And for the little guide’s big uncle that she got in the bargain.
He turns right down a dusty street leading from the square and parks the car. ‘I think we find something to eat before we book into the casa,’ he says. ‘I prefer to take on the clinic with a full stomach.’
She is quick to agree, grateful to postpone the inevitable disappointment that awaits her at the clinic for another hour or so. She feels like a poker player, convinced that she is going to lose badly, but she doesn’t dare abandon the game while there remains even the slimmest chance of a stroke of luck.
At a parador in one of the side streets, Theresa orders a stew of shredded beef with tomatoes and onions that is called ‘ropa vieja’. It means ‘old clothes’, Ruben translates when the teenage waiter brings the food. The consternation on her face makes the waiter bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He watches her surreptitiously, pretending to rearrange the salt and pepper pots on the table, while she takes a careful bite of the stew. It’s tasty beyond her expectations, slivers of beef that melt on her tongue, the vegetables flavoured with garlic and herbs.
‘Mm,’ she mumbles with the second bite already in her mouth. ‘The tastiest old clothes I’ve ever eaten.’
Now the waiter laughs with childlike abandon and hurries back to the kitchen.
Ruben tucks into a plate of ajiaco, his favourite stew, he has already told her, a combination of pork and chicken and a wide variety of vegetables and fruit. Mealies, cassava, green bananas, yellow bananas, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, sweet peppers, just about anything you can think of.
‘Actually, you can add whatever you find in your kitchen,’ he says between mouthfuls, licking his lips with pleasure. ‘Beef, too, if you can get your hands on it. The more different kinds of meat together, the better it tastes.’
Theresa eats much too fast because as usual she hadn’t realised how hungry she was. This inability to pay heed to the needs of her own body is probably the result of all those years of starving herself deliberately to lose weight. This is something she would rather not admit to someone like Ruben who had no choice but to starve in the ‘special time’ in the nineties. Fortunately he, like his friends she has shared a meal with, also tackles his food with the kind of haste and enthusiasm that might elsewhere be considered bad manners. As if they’re scared the food might suddenly disappear again.
‘Why is beef so difficult to come by?’ she asks, chewing. ‘I haven’t seen steak on a menu anywhere, and yet there are cattle everywhere on the side of the road?’
‘You will find steak on tourist menus, but it is forbidden in a parador.’ Ruben shrugs with an apologetic smile. ‘Es un enigma. One of those Cuban mysteries that are difficult to explain to foreigners, because we are struggling to understand it ourselves. All the cattle belong to the government. Farmers are allowed to milk their cows but not to butcher them. Every time a calf is born, the authorities must be informed, and then the authorities will decide when the animal will be killed and what will be done with the meat. Sometimes, of course, the birth of a calf is concealed from the government and then the farmer can butcher it himself and sell the meat on the black market. Hay que inventar?’
She shakes her head uncomprehendingly. ‘And these rules only apply to cattle, not to other livestock?’
‘There are some rules for other products,’ he admits after swallowing an enormous bite of stew. He suppresses a smile as if her incomprehension amuses him. ‘You can plant anything except potatoes and cannabis. Do not ask me why.’
‘Well, the cannabis I suppose one can understand, but potatoes?’
‘Perhaps the government is afraid people will start smoking potatoes and then the tobacco farmers can no longer make a living.’
‘But what is the purpose of such a stupid rule? Why does the government do it?’
‘Because they can?’ He is not jesting now. His dark eyes look sad. ‘Cuba is a fucked-up place, as you have probably noticed. But I love this place, believe it or not. I do not know if I could be happy in any other country. Other countries are fucked up in other ways.’
‘I know what you mean. We don’t choose where we are born, do we?’
‘And since we are talking about stupid rules,’ he says after he has eaten a few more mouthfuls of his stew, ‘it is maybe best if you leave the talking at the clinic to me.’
‘Even if there is someone who speaks English?’
‘I mean, it’s maybe best if I go inside the clinic on my own.’ He shifts his heavy body uncomfortably on the plastic chair. ‘It is not a rule, not as far as I know, but tourists are not always welcome in our hospitals.’
‘So what do I do if I get sick?’ she asks, alarmed.
‘They will not turn away emergencies, but the staff do not like it when tourists walk around in the hospital. They may decide you are just curious and chase you out.’
‘Why?’
‘No sé – I suppose it has something to do with patriotism.’ He scrapes his plate to load a final mouthful of th
e ajiaco onto his fork and looks at the empty plate with disappointment while he chews. ‘We are very proud of our health system. Free health services for everyone, for life, among the best in the world. But because we are poor and because there are boycotts and everything is handed out for free, our hospitals do not always look as clean and clinical and modern as those that tourists from the so-called First World are used to—’
‘I’m not from the First World,’ she reminds him. ‘I’m from Africa.’
‘But you can afford private medical care?’ The deep reassuring rumble of his voice hasn’t changed, but his gaze has become challenging. ‘You do not have to go to a free hospital like most of the people in your country.’
‘I do have a good medical aid,’ she admits, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. ‘But I know the conditions in some hospitals in my country are worse than anything I will encounter here. I have no reason to pull up my nose at Cuban hospitals.’
‘I believe you, Theresa, but we do not want to look for trouble, do we?’
She appraises him across the table for a few moments. She knows the only reason why seeing the inside of a Cuban hospital suddenly seems so important to her is because she may be prevented from doing so. Ridiculous, she scolds herself, as if a small part of a rebellious teenager will always be present somewhere inside her.
‘And it won’t work if I pretend to be your Cuban sister?’
‘And if someone talks to you, you ask for a glass of wine? Or have you meanwhile learned to say something else in Spanish?’
‘All right, fine,’ she concedes reluctantly, ‘then we’ll do as you suggest.’
‘I am going to ask if there is anyone who has worked there for longer than ten years – doctor, nurse, cleaner – anyone who maybe remembers Mercedes. If I can get a name or two, I can try to find out when they come off duty. Then we will wait for them outside the hospital, invite them for a drink, tell them your sad tale. You know, see what happens?’
‘If you can get a name or two,’ she says sceptically. ‘Who are you going to ask?’
‘I will ask at the administration office. And if that does not work, I will just walk through the building and pretend that I belong there and ask all the staff I see.’
‘Let’s hope there’s someone like Benita Nightingale Whatsername who works there – then at least you can flirt to try and draw some information out of her.’
He leans back in his chair and looks at her with that rare, wide, open-mouthed smile that makes him look easily a decade younger. ‘There’s a difference between flirt and charm. I will admit that I flirted with Benita—’
‘And I’m very grateful for that,’ she swiftly assures him.
‘But with Aleja I had to use my natural charm. I had to, ah, persuade her over the phone to meet with you. Sin lenguaje corporal. Without body language or eye contact or any other resources.’
‘Just you and your sexy voice.’
‘Just me and my sexy voice,’ he says and nods with a show of modesty.
‘Well, this afternoon you can use all the resources you have available to you. Flirt, charm, ask her to marry you, I don’t care, just as long as you get information out of her.’
‘And if it is a he?’
‘Flirt, charm, ask him to marry you, I don’t care.’
Life on Mars. Since her arrival at the José Martí airport a week ago, she has frequently had the feeling that she has accidentally wandered onto a movie set, caught up in a movie about a past era. This time it’s a British TV series, with the same title as David Bowie’s song ‘Life on Mars’, about a police detective, who, after a traumatic car accident, travels a few decades back in time to the early seventies. What she especially recalls about this series, aside from the fantastic soundtrack with music she used to listen to in her teens, is the decor. Everything in endless shades of brown, from the clothes worn by the detective and his colleagues to the furniture in their offices. With here and there a splash of dull orange or olive green.
Now she is lying in a bedroom in Casa Nina y Nino with ugly brown furniture and a wall that is half-painted olive green and a shiny orange satin bedspread on the bed and orange sunfilter curtains in front of the smallish window. She swears the last time she saw sunfilter curtains in South Africa was in the seventies. She had no idea the fabric even still existed. And why would only one half of the wall behind the bed be olive green – as if the paint ran out and the painter couldn’t lay his hands on another tin? She has been in Cuba long enough by now to know that such a far-fetched reason could very well be the right answer. She has seen plenty of evidence of how scarce everything is, from toothpaste and shampoo to beef and potatoes.
And it isn’t just the bedroom that takes her back to her teenage years. The owner of the casa particular, who’d introduced herself as Nina, an exceptionally talkative woman with the enormous bosom and the melodious voice of an old-fashioned opera singer, guided Theresa and Ruben through the sitting room and the kitchen, and finally even through a children’s room behind the kitchen, to reach their bedrooms on the back veranda. The entire house, aside from the children’s room, has been decorated in shades of brown and orange and olive green. The children’s room has one pink wall and one light-blue wall and two small bunkbeds with colourful covers printed with cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny. Impossible to guess the gender of the children, because there are no toys lying about. Does that mean the children are exceptionally tidy, or that they simply do not have enough toys to leave lying about?
Meanwhile Nina kept talking nonstop in Spanish to Ruben, but also frequently in broken English aimed at Theresa.
Theresa nodded and smiled and pretended to understand.
‘She says we should just walk through the children’s room tomorrow morning to come and eat breakfast,’ Ruben translated.
‘But won’t we disturb the children?’
‘She says they do not sleep here when there are paying guests in the rooms on the veranda.’
Theresa decided against enquiring where exactly the children were being hidden when their bedroom was turned into a corridor to the guest rooms.
But by now she is feeling vaguely concerned. It’s already late afternoon and she hasn’t heard any children’s voices in the house and she is starting to suspect that the children may have been packed off to other people so that they don’t disturb the paying guests. At the same time, she knows that the only reason she is fixating on the missing children is because she’s too scared to wonder what has become of Ruben. She is lying on her back, which clings sweatily to the synthetic bedspread, and looking at the ceiling which for some unaccountable reason has also partly been painted brown. It makes the room seem smaller and even stuffier. A miniscule electric fan on the night table next to the bed is blowing a light breeze onto her face. It doesn’t really help to cool her down, but it’s better than nothing.
It was the heat that made her decide to wait for Ruben here, rather than under a tree outside the clinic as she’d intended at first. And now that he has been at the clinic for over three hours, she is exceptionally grateful that she is not standing outside under a tree.
If it gets this miserably hot in spring, she would probably expire in summer. And then she doesn’t even want to think about the tropical rain and the wild storms and the devastating hurricanes that will come later in the year. And yet Ruben believes that he wouldn’t be as happy anywhere else on earth as right here, because this is where he belongs. His imperfect and fucked-up provenance.
The way she also still feels, despite everything, about her own country.
But what has become of Ruben? Surely it couldn’t take this long to confirm that there was no one left at the clinic who remembered the young doctor Perez Amat? Perhaps he gave up and went somewhere to drink. No, Ruben doesn’t drink; maybe he just got fed-up and drove back to Havana without her …
She must have fallen asleep despite the heat and the clinging orange bedspread, because Ruben’s deep
voice outside her door sounds as if it comes from terribly far away. Another planet. She sits up dazed and rubs her eyes. As if she has indeed landed on Mars.
‘Come in!’ She realises how thirsty she is when she hears her voice crack.
Ruben’s face is glistening with sweat under the brim of his hat. His white shirt and pants look almost as creased as her cotton dress, but his wide grin immediately makes her hope that he isn’t bringing bad news. Unless of course he’s grinning because she looks so ridiculous. She runs a hand over her short hair, feels the spikes sticking up in all directions from sleeping. And there must be pitch-black mascara smudges under her eyes. It’s only young people who can look good the moment they wake up. At her age there isn’t really anything like natural beauty any more.
‘Por dios, you cannot meet the doctor looking like that,’ Ruben says, confirming her suspicion. ‘He will definitely not want to marry you.’
‘What doctor?’
‘There are two doctors who worked with Mercedes. One of them has agreed to meet us at a cafe on the main street in half an hour.’
‘And the other one?’
‘Did not respond to our pleas.’
‘Our?’
‘A woman in the office helped me talk to staff members. Face to the face with some of them, on the phone with others. Mercedes only left there about five years ago, so there are many people who remember her. But she disappeared suddenly, circunstancias misteriosas, says one of the nurses.’
‘Mysterious circumstances?’
‘I think there was maybe a scandal that was covered up and no one wants to talk about it. Only this one doctor maybe knows what has become of her. Maybe,’ he emphasises when he notices her look of amazement.
‘How on earth did you manage it? To get them over onto your side so fast?’
He glances at his watch and shrugs. ‘It took many hours of flirting. And the doctor declined my marriage proposal. But he agreed to see us when I said that perhaps you will be willing to marry him – so you better go and wash your face and paint your lips before we meet him.’
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