Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  I nearly fell for it, even after that four hours of having “You don’t speak or understand English” dinned into my ear.

  I said, “Discúlpame pero no le he entendido. ¿Decía Ud.? ¿Habla Ud. español?— Excuse me but I didn’t understand you. What were you saying? Do you speak Spanish?”

  “The totally blank look was good, chico." He had the courtesy to grin. “But the uptake was about a tenth of a second slow. You’d better not drink more than one rum collins if you go in a bar. If one of Xiqués’ big-bosomed G-2 señoritas puts her arms around you from the rear and whispers in English: ‘You beautiful soldier, I could go for you!’ and you react …” He shrugged. “Xiqués will bury you.”

  The bus was one of those de luxe English jobs, an extra fare especial with reclining seats. It was nearly full, but I found a seat on the aisle near the rear. I put my army kit bag in the rack overhead, and sat down by a bullet-headed man with piggy eyes and a shock of unkempt black hair. He was wearing a yellow-and-black checked shirt with elbow-length sleeves. A small square briefcase sat on the floor at his feet. He was gazing out of the window beside him with pointed interest.

  One thing I had always liked about traveling by bus in Cuba was the spirit of camaraderie that quickly developed among the passengers, and the banter that flowed back and forth among them, even including the driver. That appealed strongly to the Latin American part of me.

  My main dislike about it had been the Carretera Central, as I had remembered it, a two-lane concrete road sorely in need of repair and a far cry from Florida’s parkways. We hadn’t gone two kilometers before I realized that Fidel had smoothed out and widened this much vaunted artery. I doubted if he had the comfort of travelers in mind. It was undoubtedly to provide smoother riding for those pretty missiles while he was hauling them in and taking them away.

  I pushed the button, lowered the back, and closed my eyes prepared to mentally review my catechism and perhaps enjoy a peaceful snooze. It wasn’t my day. A voice came to me out of nowhere asking me a question in a heavily accented version of that language I wasn’t supposed to know, “Pardon me, Comrade, but do you speak English?”

  My eyelids snapped up. I stared at the man beside me with my mouth open and an expression of surprise which would have brought down insults on my head from Professor Rodríguez. Actually, I expected to find him there baiting me again. When I saw it was my seatmate, I quickly fed him that, “Excuse me, I didn’t understand you. What were you saying? Do you speak Spanish?” routine.

  That switched him into Spanish all right, or at least a bad facsimile of the same. He said, “Tenga la bondad de hablar un poco más despacio— Please speak a little more slowly.” He went on with his story feeding me each syllable like a piece of beef Stroganoff dipped in sour cream.

  “I am Nikolai Karamzin, from Leningrad, a technician on tractors. I have been instructing your wonderful farm boys in the operation of those tractors which keep your cane fields so green.”

  I muttered some slow words of appreciation.

  “I asked you if you spoke English just now, for I speak it better than Spanish which I am trying to master. However, if you will be kind enough to bear with me and speak slowly, I would be glad to learn something of the foliage and trees which add so much …” He pointed out the window. “To this colorful scene.”

  “I’m no expert, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “Gracias. I’ve been stationed in Santiago de Cuba and am making this trip to Havana for the first time.”

  I snapped at that like a trout. “Ah, Santiago, Compañero Karamzin! That is my birthplace and my home, I, too, am making this trip to Havana for the first time. I’m on leave from the Morro fortress—”

  The piggy eyes narrowed suspiciously. I learned then that Russians may be stolid, but they don’t miss anything. “But you got on the bus at Sancti Spíritus—”

  “Where I had stopped a day to visit some of the historic landmarks of ancient Cuba. Sancti Spíritus was founded by Don Diego Velásquez as La Villa del Santo Espiritu in 1514.” History seemed as safe a bet as anything so I went on to tell him about Las Villas Province—Las Villas meaning the villages. It was named after the important early settlements made in that area: San Juan de los Remedios del Cayo, called Remedios today, Sancti Spíritus, and Trinidad. (Skipping all mention of the Bay of Pigs fiasco!)

  I told him how they were all originally established along the coast by the earliest Spanish, but because of the attacks of pirates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all moved inland seeking security. It didn’t do much good, for Sancti Spíritus was burned to the ground by marauders after it had moved twenty miles from the coast to its present location.

  I spoke very slowly, but I don’t know how much he understood, though he seemed to be taking it all in. By the time we got through Santa Clara he could have passed a test on Santiago de Cuba in any high school, not to mention Las Villas Province. Then I saw he was brooding about tractors and carburetors or maybe T-54 tanks. I switched and gave him a rundown on laurel trees, palms with feather-duster heads, bougainvillea shrubs, and the dazzling orange of golden-shower vines which made up the “colorful scene.”

  Then it was his turn to try to bolster my love for the Happiness Boys, Marx and Lenin, whose three-sheet posters were desecrating every foot of wall space in Cuba. The hairy Karl Marx, glaring out at the world from behind a bush twice the size of Fidel’s, and the semibald Lenin with his heavy goatee simply weren’t types that appealed to me. As rulers of anything but a nation of cretins, their pictures belonged in some dark closet instead of haunting a beautiful countryside where all must look and see. No wonder it was costing Russia a million dollars a day to keep those pictures on display.

  I had had only bread and coffee for breakfast, the regular Cuban repast which leaves room for a decent lunch and a better eight o’clock dinner. I was getting hungry, and I had become so thoroughly indoctrinated with the Communist’s love of his fellow man that by the time we ate a terrible lunch in Jovellanos, I even offered to pay. He let me.

  Rolling down the Avenue Rancho Boyeros into Havana proper, it struck me that this dashing lieutenant, Gabriel Alvarez, not only possessed six hundred pesos, given him by Dr. Villaverde in exchange for his American money, but that in addition he had developed a most winning personality. In a few short hours he and Comrade Nikolai Karamzin had become buddy-buddies and cemented an entente cordiale.

  It was then I conceived a truly brilliant idea, one worthy of any teniente in the intelligence corps of the F.A.R. What better cover could I find than to alight from the bus at that cop-crawling Habana Terminal de Omnibus in the company of my old Soviet pal, Tractor Technician Nikolai Karamzin?

  All of the foreign technicians and other big wheels put up at the Hilton, at Calles L and 23 (now the Hotel Habana Libre). It had been especially stocked up with a shipload of Beluga caviar and bird’s-nest soup in exchange for a year’s crop of sugar. I would offer to drive him there in my taxi, stake him to a split of champagne in the Turquino Bar, and then take off for some unnamed cheaper hostelry farther downtown, after promising to phone. It is most impolite to give anyone the brush-off in Cuba without promising to phone.

  We got off the bus almost cemented together with undying friendship and passed quickly through a cordon of station-house types, uniformed and otherwise, pleasing one militiaman so much that instead of shooting he almost saluted and gave us a smile.

  I explained my generous impulse, and had started toward a taxi when Nikolai suddenly seized my arm. “But, Camarada Teniente, that will not be necessary. There is my friend coming now who will drive us with him to the Habana Libre in his personal car.”

  Before I could protest, Nikolai was shaking hands with an unobtrusive, dark slender man, immaculate in a white linen suit complete with Panama hat and Malacca cane. “Camarada Xiqués, it is my pleasure to present Camarada Primer Teniente …” His gut teral voice trailed off along with my falling stomach. “¡Por Dios! We have talked
together since he boarded the bus at Sancti Spíritus, but somehow I did not get his name.”

  Now I ask you: When the eight-ball blows up in your face like that, ¿Quién tiene la culpa?— Who’s to blame?

  27

  To me the savoir-faire of the fictional agents in books and on the television screen is truly heartwarming to read and see. Suddenly confronted with a trio of Gestapo officers, or a clutch of the late Mr. Beria’s boys, they conceal themselves under mantles of cool indifference, and burst out into logical well-phrased explanations in their fluent German and Russian, of which they are all masters, that believe it or not they weren’t in Hilda’s or Natasha’s bedroom for any dishonorable political purpose, but merely to while away a few idle hours while waiting for a plane.

  One chapter, or commercial, later, they are quaffing a couple of ice-cold steins in the officers’ mess at S.S. headquarters, or slugging down vodkas with the chief of the NKVD in his secret private office behind the walls of the Kremlin.

  Two chapters, or commercials, later, they have knocked out all their credulous captors with a rabbit punch, climbed down seven flights of skeleton stairs of the fire escape, shot that lone pursuer who survived the fisticuffs, and blown up the ammo dump at Bastogne or Chu Chin Chow’s nuclear stockpile in Krasnoyarsk.

  In the last five chapters, or after the refreshing pause which includes what you can see of the girl in the bathtub, the filters, the tigers, the headache pills and the gal with the hairdo, we find our intrepid characters crossing three thousand miles of enemy territory on foot, either to escape through the lines or float over the Berlin wall in a balloon. One thing for sure. Unless she was on the side of the Philistines, and a dirty double-crosser, none of them ever lost the girl.

  Of course, all these supermen pulled their coups far, far away, or long, long ago while Primer Teniente (pro tern) Gabriel Alvarez was operating in La Habana of 1965, and had stepped in something which was clinging to his shoe.

  Driving up Calle G, otherwise known as the Avenida de los Presidentes, past the familiar grounds of my alma mater, wedged in the shiny Cadillac between Camarada Karamzin and the urbane gimlet-eyed Xiqués, the one person in the whole wide world I wanted the least to meet or see, I had to pinch myself to realize that I was once more back in the place of my birth and my native land.

  Or was I? Was it the atmosphere, or those execrable posters with their canned Marxist lingo plastered on all the buildings and walls, or the University students marching with a purpose, where they used to stroll along so laughingly, that gave me the feeling of being wafted into East Germany?

  Or was it the miserable sensation that dripping shoe blacking from my hair, eyebrows, and mustache was covering my face with unsightly streaks, that was terrifying me? I didn’t dare look at myself in the rearview mirror by the time we turned right on to Calle 23. I knew I must be blacker than Guido when we got out in front of the Habana Libre.

  Xiqués had gotten my name and where I was stationed when Nikolai had introduced us, but his air was one of sheer good manners and nothing more. His hand clasp and his invitation to ride with him had both been friendly and warm. His glance at my face as he shook my hand, far from being searching, had been the look that anyone would give on meeting a stranger. If there was anything official about it, it had been leavened by his amiable smile.

  His conversation on the short drive from the terminal had been mainly directed to Karamzin, and concerned a dinner to be held that night at the hotel to award Hero Medals to the workers who had made records in “production” for the first six months of the year. The Russian and Chinese Ambassadors were invited guests.

  It was at that point that I had my first inkling of how infernally subtle and clever Xiqués could be. He had been including me in the conversation desultorily, so that I would not feel left out of things completely. When he got to the two Ambassadors, he started laying the eulogies on with a trowel. Both of them were maravilloso, prodigioso, extraordinario, and pasmoso, and the words streamed out of him at such speed that I was certain Nikolai wasn’t catching one out of ten. Nevertheless, I could feel the Russian swelling with patriotic pride.

  He was also missing the point entirely. The fulsome praise left me with the impression that Xiqués considered the two Iron Curtain Ambassadors just a couple of stooges and no more than symbols, like flags on the wall. I didn’t need his sidelong glance to convince me that part of the conversation was aimed directly at me. If he was fishing for a reaction, he didn’t get any. Not from this loyal teniente!

  I had my first break when we went into the lobby. A sign on the reception desk said: no vacancies, reservations only. Xiqués caught my glance at the sign, which I tried to make look disappointed.

  He said, “This hotel is always full. It is also the most expensive in the city. Are you familiar with Havana?”

  “This is actually my first trip here,” I told him. “Frankly, I would be better satisfied with a place more in line with the income of a junior officer in the F.A.R.”

  “No hay pero que valga. ¿Verdad?— There are no buts about it. Isn’t it so? Join us for a drink in the bar and let me see what I can suggest to you.” Politeness, or polished police pressure? I wished I knew.

  I had reached the stage of imagining things and it wasn’t good. The babble of a roomful of drinkers in the Turquino Bar hadn’t stopped, but I was positive it had missed a beat or lowered a fraction in volume as we walked in the door.

  A waiter came. Nikolai ordered vodka, Xiqués a vermouth cassis, and I had a rum collins. I had never expected to be shoved so quickly into a situation that would bring back Leo’s warning to stick to one. I couldn’t detect the hidden cyanide that Villaverde had mentioned, but the memory of Leo’s statement: “Xiqués will bury you!” made the proximity of this agent most unnerving.

  Xiqués struggled for awhile with Nikolai’s Spanish. When the drinks came, he said to me, “I’ve been going over several hotels, among them the Ambos Mundos, a favorite of Hemingway’s; the Pasaje, and the Inglaterra. I think the Inglaterra on the Prado would be the most likely to suit you. The rates are less than half of this, and it still retains a considerable amount of charm.”

  “I’ll be glad to try it,” I told him. “It’s most kind of you.”

  “No es nada. I’m very much tied up here with this dinner tonight, or I would gladly offer to drive you”

  I assured him it really wasn’t necessary. I would take a taxi to the Inglaterra, and be happy to see something of the city. After a little small talk, I excused myself and left with more of my thanks to them both.

  Tiny items began to take on monstrous proportions. Why hadn’t Xiqués mentioned the Plaza Hotel? Had it been taken over for the army and militia like the Hotel Nacional? The Plaza was located at the junction of Neptuno and Zulueta streets, one of the busiest corners in Havana. It had opened one of the first roof gardens in the city. Formerly one of the best known, it had gone commercial before I left, but had still boasted an excellent bar adjoining at 277 Agramonte (a continuation of Zulueta). Villa verde’s daughter was there, according to what he had told me, so it couldn’t be closed. Why should Xiqués be suspicious of me? No reason. So his omission of the Plaza must have been accidental rather than deliberate.

  It only took a minor run-in with the cab driver to convince me, once and for all, that this was a Marxist-Leninist Havana all right, and that everything in it was definitely all wrong.

  I said, “I want to go to the Inglaterra Hotel. I just got in an hour ago from Santiago and it’s my first trip here. I wouldn’t mind if you took me in a roundabout way and showed me a bit of the town.”

  He leaned out of the cab window, studied my uniform and the kit bag I was carrying, and reprovingly shook his head. “I don’t doubt your word for a minute, Compañero. If you’re not a teniente, the props are awfully good, but I’m a law-abiding man with a family to support. I never take passengers from one place to another except by the best possible route and the shortest way.”r />
  I said, “¡Caramba! I’m an officer in the F.A.R. Do you think I’m a member of the police?”

  “¡Qué sé yo!— How do I know? ¿Qué más da?— What’s the difference? My brother’s in prison right now for showing the sights of the town to a young militiawoman visiting from Camagüey. So all of us drivers know only one thing: the longest way around is the shortest way to jail.”

  We drove to the Inglaterra the quickest way, Calle 23 to the Malecon, then right by the Castillo de la Punta down the Prado to the hotel. Along the Malecon I kept my gaze turned out to sea and away from this city that I didn’t know. An unwanted and unwelcome passenger had climbed in to share the taxi with me in front of the Habana Libre. He was not only sticking his skeleton elbow into my ribs, but I could smell his hot and loathsome breath as he sprawled all over me. His name was Señor Temor, Mr. Fear.

  We stopped in front of the Inglaterra. I paid off the cabbie and watched him go, as glad to be rid of him, I suppose, as he was to be rid of me. Mr. Fear didn’t offer to carry my kit bag, but he came right along with me. It’s impossible to rid oneself of a slimy presence that like a thick black fog is blanketing an entire city.

  Without even bothering to enter the hotel I walked the half block to the Farmacia Cuba Libre. The place that I had remembered as Dr. Lorie’s American Drug Store was always full of American tourists and was staffed with English-speaking clerks. Now it was empty, except for one man in a druggist’s smock. He wore glasses with wide black horn frames. His hair was slicked back over a dead-white face. Except for some rows of stock patent medicines and a sparse collection of cheap perfumes in a glass showcase, the shelves were as empty as the drugstore.

  I asked if he was Justino Jorrín. He studied me for a short space before he said, “Si.”