by Wendy Guerra
I’ve had a very brief career. The truth is I shouldn’t be a risk. The real danger is created by politics. “I am the scream and not the echo.”
I’m a pest, and my mere presence is contagious, as if my simply standing, breathing, next to them is a problem. When I walk away from the cliques, I hear laughter and whispers behind my back. Why? Why?
Alone, I silently cross that wonderland of trees. I walk until I find the backyard, the circular vegetable patch, the gym, the baths, and I sit down to breathe in the depths of the night by the side of another pool, a smaller one, like a kids’ pool, which looks to belong to the original house. At that hour, it resembles a pond where whimsical multicolored fish might play. The sounds of frogs, fireflies, owls, and the polyphonic Vedado soundtrack get mixed up in my head. The champagne and the collective snubs result in a serious dizziness that finds me staring at the bottom of the pond, stunned, where I discover my wavering reflection. I take off my tight heels. I raise my evening dress to my thighs and submerge my feet in the brownish water so I can feel the night enter my body.
I’m alone for a while, trying to figure out why I’d been insisting on staying somewhere I’m not wanted, in a country that’s no longer mine, in a city where there’s so little left that’s recognizable. Does everyone have this argument with their country? Does every citizen reach a moment when they ask if they should continue under its jurisdiction? This isn’t very common here; indeed, it’s pure treason.
No one should stay for very long where they’re rejected, but I go in circles, aimless in the pool of my own social defeat. I feel like I’m about to drown in my own tears, my own verses, dizzy with my own blah blah blah writings, choking on the suffocating and ever guarded summer haze. Then a hand appears in the dark. I take it without asking questions and rise out of the water. Lluvia is there, watching everything. She dries my tears with a paper napkin and, without asking what’s troubling me (in fact, avoiding the subject), she says the tables have assigned seats, and that mine is quite far from hers.
“Well, Cleo, I’ll see you in a little while, okay? That way I can tell you about what brings me to Cuba.”
“Of course. Don’t worry,” I say as I pull myself together and straighten my dress, making it seem as if I’m about to join the dinner and thinking that, sooner or later, Cuban authorities will convince her that it would be inconvenient for her to include me in her project…But, no, I don’t join the dinner. I turn and march straight through a sea of waiters. When I reach the front door, a shadow falls across my path.
“Cleo, are you lost? I’ll take you to your table. I’ve seated you next to some of the folks visiting from exile. Is that all right?” says the host as he takes my hand, making me turn on my own axis, as elegantly as a classical ballerina. He accompanies me so I can’t run, sitting me down the way you might punish a little girl, condemning her to a long dinner at the grown-up table.
“Hello everyone. I want to introduce you to a young Cuban writer, by all accounts excellent, though I haven’t had the chance to read her myself yet. Her name is Cleo.”
Exiles, I think as I take in all those masked and polished people. How would I have turned out if my parents had deserted and I’d grown up in, say, Orlando? It’s almost impossible to know. And anyway, during my childhood, what parent could take their child out of the country? We, the children, were hostages.
“Hello,” I say, afraid they too won’t want me at their table, because for exiles it’s also suspect that a woman like me continues to live in Cuba, in spite of everything. I’m trapped between two floors—the elevator of my life has stopped at a dangerous point: the limbo of not being accepted here, and my determination to not leave Cuba. I’m suspect because I’m not intelligible. What should I do? Should I force the door and jump into the abyss so I’ll be read, literally, here and there? I don’t know.
And these people: Why have they returned? Why now and not before?
The current crisis is a tangible reality. Many come back to reconnect with their old lives, to remodel their old homes, rearrange their affections; they try to rehabilitate their lives among us who, at this point, are just ghosts to them from their pasts.
Others only come to say goodbye to the dying—to all that’s dying—overcoming that short and unsustainable distance: Havana–Miami. They slip away on that invisible bridge of water that will take them so far and so near.
But in spite of all the changes, from here, living in enemy territory will always be seen as a declaration of war. Once you decide to live there, you’ll never again be seen as a trustworthy person; you start to become that target we were taught to shoot at. They’ll be suspicious, suspicious, suspicious about you, because you’re not some simple American tourist. No, you’re a Cuban deserter now among the exile ranks.
Us, the arrow, and them, part of the giant bull’s-eye drawn on our heads, aiming always for the red spot on the scope.
We’ve survived the heroic round of the gunshot, we’ve withstood the crisis, the hurricanes, the political delirium, the harassment, and the distance to give them the welcome they deserve, but in official spaces none of that can be seen as such. To return/visit your homeland/break away. You’d think it would be a pretty straightforward story but, to the military that runs this country, an emigrant is still a traitor.
* * *
—
I sat just as the visitors were removing their masks in order to partake of a cold sautéed lobster soup with onions and curry. In that moment, I realized all their faces were familiar to me. One by one, I recognized the artists, writers, playwrights, and actors surrounding me. I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen many of them onstage when I was a child, or on the ICAIC news-reels. Others I only recognized from the back cover photos of books—banned? Covered up? I’d enjoyed the talents of the two women in front of me in Cuban movies from the 1970s.
I didn’t dare ask anything. Everything seemed like a dream…But no, it was real. I was there listening to their jokes, their sarcasm, and even their awe at their return. My chest felt like it was going to explode. I was at the point of believing that yes, change is possible. The question was in the air and I worked myself up to it. “You’ve all come back?” I asked in a timid whisper. And the night just flowed; apparently, those had been the magic words, the ones that brought on the smiles, jokes, and anecdotes, confessions, hugs, presentations, coincidences. Two of them had read me and, of course, I’d “read” them too. It was when I was saying goodbye that I realized my real drama: I belonged more to their world than to the one I lived in on the island. And that’s a real problem because I hadn’t left, but I also wasn’t really here.
Somebody comes to your door with a “treasure” they’ve found for you, something so hot, it smokes: a recording of a few of your friends or acquaintances, a little drunk at some party, talking smack about you. In this case, it’s the only Havana party I’ve attended in years, yesterday’s party.
I still smell of cigarettes and rum from last night and the consequences are already playing out.
It’s noon and I haven’t had my first coffee of the day yet, I haven’t showered, I haven’t brushed my teeth. I’m sitting on the toilet trying to reconstruct faces, dialogues, circumstances. My soul isn’t even back in my body yet, and everything’s irritating. But it must be time, because there’s a knock at the door. I should pull myself together and show my face. They insist, they come at me in the fiercest way to make me confront the raw, revealing truth.
A golden iridescent string appears like an arrow, the smell of cologne breaks through the tiles. The magic string lands and connects me with life: water on water; I wake up and mark my turf. I spring toward the day, filling it with song, the echoes in the bathroom, and the bad news…which won’t wait.
Oh God/ to raise horses again/ they’re nothing/ more than sad beasts…
Radio Reloj, noon in Havana, Cuba; 6 p.m., Madrid, Spain;
6 p.m., Paris, France; 9 a.m., Vancouver, Canada;
11
a.m., Quito, Ecuador; noon, La Paz, Bolivia; 11:30
a.m., Caracas, Venezuela; noon, Santiago, Chile;
5 p.m., London, England;
11 p.m., Hanoi, Vietnam…
now broadcasting, Radio Reloj, from Havana, Cuba…
12:01 p.m., Radio Reloj.
The State Security guy assigned to my family has finally shown up. It’s the same charismatic, charming, and almost indispensable guy who sat with us at the dinner table while my mother set traps for him so she wouldn’t fall for his ruses. It’s the same guy who informed on my parents’ experiments and their possibilities of escaping while carrying classified information. There’s a very brief moment when Cuban science knows things the intelligence agencies don’t know. For reasons of security, they’re not told about certain decisive steps. These are delicate moments. And, those, surely, are precisely when Alberto, the “family spy,” established the “best” connections between my parents and his superiors.
Which of the recent studies were authorized? Were they on animals or diseased humans? Is the brain an active area of research in Cuba? What are the ethical limits? Has anyone signed a consent form for research in the name of a terminally ill relative? Are unidentified bodies used for research? Are you planning on going to any conferences? Will you see any deserters or relatives during this trip? Do you remember that doctor, also a researcher who defected, the cardiologist who now lives in Puerto Rico? All this was put on the table in the most natural way and, between rum and beer, cigars from the corner store and Populares cigarettes, a chain of jokes would be set loose to get much more out of my mother than a mere laugh.
“Better the devil you know,” my mother would say, resigned, her cigarette held high, making rings that would dissolve on contact with her very thin nose and the thick lenses of her seventies-style glasses.
She’d throw out abstract and alarming adjectives just for him, Latin phrases or very rare grammatical constructions straight out of her incomprehensible scientific vocabulary, her very stiff manners marked by how she was raised, and her medical education. My mother never forgot the Hippocratic oath, and maybe that was what saved her from falling into decadence and treason. She had a canon of wisdom and ethics this society could never change, but which it tried to violate time and again. That’s how she spent most of her life: on the lookout so she wouldn’t lose her way.
My father was the opposite: always silent. He’d sometimes share his rum with the “family spy.” When he came by himself to do his questioning, my father, drink in hand, would signal to my mother as if this matter belonged to some other department. His greatest weapon was always delegating.
In my adolescence, all that always seemed like adult stuff, problems between my parents, and a performance that was well beyond me…But I was totally wrong. The representation of that betrayal was just the first step in the disintegration of our family. Later, we would have a front-row seat to view the process of our lives falling apart. It’s possible everything that happened afterward, even the accident, was a result of Alberto’s snitching.
Now I’ve taken my mother’s place. I take a deep breath. I commit myself to her and follow her example. The dinner table isn’t set but the guest continues to play out his dangerous role. I don’t understand why he visits me. Can I be a real object of persecution? Or is it an old habit, his addiction to informing, that compels him to investigate me? Do they still listen to this man in this country? Is he capable of spying on both artists and scientists? What’s his specialty? Are they still using old KGB methods? Why me? Who am I to him, to them?
* * *
—
The techniques have gotten more sophisticated, technology has reached us here, and the “family spy” connects his memory stick to my computer. I make coffee as I listen to the blaring soundtrack from La fiesta vigilada.
I try to imitate my mother’s gestures, to repeat them as if I were rehearsing a ballet. I try to stay calm and go with the flow…Oh! But it’s terrible to listen to this bunch of friends and acquaintances, and even strangers, finding the perfect sarcasm to demean what I’ve achieved.
They ignore how difficult it’s been and is to be alive in my right mind.
Jokes, jokes, sarcasm…Lies or modifications of the truth.
The recording comes to an end. A profound silence.
It would seem as if my world ends right there and then. I want to flee from my own house, which feels confined and suffocating now.
What am I going to do?
How many times have you itemized your parents’ or your friends’ shortcomings aloud, or even your own, crying in a lover’s bed, or in the quotidian darkness of a friend’s room as dawn breaks on a terrible Saturday? This is overwhelming.
What do they want from me? What do they expect from these games of social daggers? To bring me down? To disarm me? Disconnect me from others? To isolate me more and more until I’m speechless? Why is this man at my door with this stick full of voices? What’s the endgame after they do us the favor of having us deny the few affections that still survive? How did they record this?
You can recognize the accents. There’s irony in the air, and the way they insist on how thin you are, your histrionics, your fears, your weak points, your personal failures, and, above all: your past. Where did Compañero Alberto dig this up? Is it just a coincidence he showed up here with this time bomb in his hands? Should we be grateful to know who’s who? Are you a bad person? Did you behave badly enough in your life to deserve this? Shouldn’t you try to not damage other people’s sacred intimacy? Is this some kind of Decalogue? Or a right violated in the course of the divine and fragile passage of daily living?
I cross the hallway to my studio. I look at a photograph of my mother…When the hell have you ever cared what anyone ever said about you? she asks from the picture frame.
Should I thank him? Invite him in for lunch?
No, you can’t be grateful to people who do you these kinds of favors. You ask him to leave your house immediately, you kick him out of your life, and push him into the abyss because of what he is, a traitor. But it’s too late; you’ve heard everything.
And your other friends? And the other parties? And the authorities? And you, with you? Where are you?
You look around your living room, check your bedroom, walk around the kitchen, and analyze the layout of your domestic life. They’ve applied their techniques here too. Where did they put the microphones?
In the picture frames, in the decor, in your clock, in your cell phone, in your stereo equipment…Or did you really think they didn’t spy on you?
They say this happens in countries all over the world, that it’s a question of national security. Matters of state, a priority policy to protect the citizenry.
But, me? Who am I? A small woman who writes things and can’t deal with her own fate, much less with State Security or the integrity of the nation.
They record your phone conversations and file them away until they determine you are not a danger to the public. Thirty years will go by, your voice will change, you’ll lose the last of your loved ones and that’s when they’ll be done with you. And for what? Who will feel secure because of your insecurity?
Where are the microphones so I can pull them out by the roots? Where are they?
We can’t know. Can the compañero who records the conversations tell me?
I pick up the phone and ask: “Where are the microphones?”
* * *
—
The truth is that the real microphone—after years of whispering and refraining from saying what you think—the real artifact is already inside you.
July came, and with it the clarity of summer. The light in Cuba brings out the real me, all I’ve tried to keep to myself. Whenever I want to conceal a feeling, a gesture or bittersweet expression that instinctively follows a memory, the natural light makes my inner landscape plain and bares all right in the middle of the street, under unequivocal sunshine. Enlightenment lifts my dress and p
ossesses me. Nothing can be hidden here, not from you nor from others; this island’s transparent light tosses secrets about and overcomes them.
The constant olive green and the fiery red, the deep yellow, the moist orange over a range of blues, the scarlet white and violet clouds bleed at dusk, resisting the end of this fatiguing and searing day, defining the emotional patina of a country that constantly cries out how it feels.
It all describes the vulgar symptoms of what it’s like to be in Cuba for an entire summer: the taste of mango in your mouth, distilling the crude tropics, iodized, sweet; the gooey Spanish lime and the acidic almond squashed on the sidewalk that now smells of wet earth. Later, at dusk, the crash of a brackish rainbow drives you out of the water because you’re afraid of the danger lightning threatens; your mouth is salty; your fingers, wrinkled; you’re trembling; and hunger and thirst declare that night is coming. At home, they’re waiting for you, or not…but it’s late. You have to get out of the water.
On your way back, you consider you could have been born in paradise. It’s the perennial summer light that causes that vivid and eternal confusion that I carry in my body, and it owns me.
I came home from the beach at about seven in the evening and at nine I could still feel the bland sensation of floating in my ears. I was suffering from the volatility of that delicate film separating the surface from the depths. Those of us who are born here know this is a metaphor, but it would be best to live summer under water.
Few ships and lots of fish. The pain of the rafters who succumbed, the wildest animals, and a damper on all the noise coming from the city. Weightless bodies. Light travels through salt and algae. Your thoughts have been muted so you can resist in real life. There are names careening under your feet and happiness has emigrated forever.