Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  32

  El Castillo de San Carlos de La Cabaña—the Fort of St. Charles of the Cabin—is known simply as La Cabana. It is the dirtiest word in Spanish to those unfortunate creatures who have been forced to suffer its humiliations today. It is the largest of Havana’s forts and one of the most expensive in the world. Relatively it is of recent construction having been completed in 1774, according to the inscription over the main entrance.

  The plan of the long grim fortress involves a high wall flung along the top of a hill, plus three bastions and a moat forty feet deep. It took eleven years to build the monstrosity and the cost was about fifteen million dollars. Legend has it that, when His Most Catholic Majesty Charles III was presented with the tab, he went to a window of his palace, looked westward and said, “For that amount of money surely I should be able to see it from here!”

  La Cabaña has never fired a shot in defense of the city or bay, although the ancient cannon are now interlarded with modern Commie artillery and ack-ack guns, against the much-feared invasion of the “Yanqui imperialists.” Bugles blow, beams of searchlights sweep the skies, and jittery soldiers man battle stations every time a detachment of Marines is dispatched anywhere by LBJ.

  The nine o’clock cannon fired every night bears the date, Barcelona 29 de Avril D1796. Fidel’s boarders, housed beneath it, hopefully wish every night that someone will slip a round shot in it that will land directly in his lap in his stinking palacio, across the bay.

  Almost lost in the vast interior, in an open space at the angle of three towering walls, is the famous, or rather infamous, place of execution known as El Paredón—the Firing Wall. A plaque depicts the Spaniards killing the Cubans during the long struggle for independence terminating in the Spanish-American War. There is no plaque as yet to depict Communist Cubans killing other Cubans who wanted to be free.

  This historic memento of military murder is known as Los Fosos de los Laureles or Laurel Ditch. While the gusanos shot in Laurel Ditch had the advantage of dying in a congenially historic atmosphere, since Fidel’s freewheeling freedom took over in 1959 the traffic became too much to bear. With true Communistic efficiency, other ditches were quickly dug around La Cabana and opened for business around the clock.

  I really can’t say how many there were, but I know of six including Laurel Ditch. I was executed seven times, two of them being in Laurel Ditch. These dry-run executions by militiamen, militiawomen, Havana city police, prison guards, and soldiers of the F.A.R. were merely routine methods of calming the nerves and loosening the tongues of the zombies buried in that walled inferno.

  One of my fellow prisoners told me a story the first night I was there: An owl turned to an optimist and asked bitterly, “What do you think, now?” His friend said, “I don’t think any more.” Acting on that, my existence became merely a series of thoughtless impressions. When I did allow myself to think, my mind always turned to Milagros, and the details my captors spread so carefully in front of me of what she was forced to undergo in Guanajay. But on those I didn’t dare dwell too long. They had to be quickly brushed away.

  The trouble with the ancient Spaniards was that they had imagination and confined their delicate tortures to producing exquisite agony in the human frame. Russia, the birthplace of Communism, has never had imagination in spite of her much vaunted love of music, dancing, singing, folk song and ballet. The national mind of the Soviet Union is that of a perpetual adolescent, fascinated with erector sets, but resenting learning and hating any depth of thinking which marks maturity. It has molded the beatniks and the juvenile delinquents, all of whom are unconsciously or knowingly under its sway.

  There is nothing as cruel as kids in school to the nonconformist. The Commies have never lost their love for this sadistic play. Freed of their age-old bondage they threatened to run amuck and kill each other, but no one man was ever strong enough or ever will be to control them. Still, they had to have a leader or perish, so they created a Frankenstein’s monster to rule them and called it “The Party.” All the dictators under it became #2 Boys: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao Tse-tung, Ben Bella, Castro, or anyone else you may care to name will vanish into the nothingness where he belongs the instant he dares to cross the Party Line. (Check them today!)

  As the monster grew older, putrefaction set in. It clothed itself in a shining armor of hollow promises and great deceptions to hide the milling mass of maggots feasting on the carrion within. Inevitably its suppuration became so great that it burst through the chinks of the flimsy armor, leaving pus balls dotted around the world which the monster called prisons.

  Why waste time on such obsolete articles as racks, whips, thumbscrews, Spanish donkeys, and wheels? The ultima Thule of torture had finally been achieved. It was self-contained and part of the pus ball. All that was needed was to drop the squirming victim in.

  La Cabana. Of the Cuban prisons for men, or women, considered the best or the least worst. Three hundred creatures, who once were men, to a single galera or shed, 21 feet 6 inches wide by 105 feet long. Strange how you remember the inches when you’re packed in so tight that there is scarcely room to squat on the floor and standing, not room to fall. No roof overhead, just open to the sun and rain. Beddingless broken-down bunks of board. One kitchen to prepare the daily slops of rice and beans. A single toilet to serve us all. There were many days the food didn’t come and our galera had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours.

  Shoeless. Clad in filthy pants, a tattered shirt, and no underwear. Barred iron gates at each end of the galera. One end opening on to a ditch and across the ditch, around the clock, a guard behind a machine gun. The other end opening on the prison courtyard, the patio.

  Item: I hated that courtyard worst of all. Twice in the early hours of the morning, five or six hundred prisoners were forced to go out there completely naked to be physically and morally ill-treated on each occasion for more than three hours. Assaulted with bayonets and rifle butts until every inmate of the prison was suffering from bayonet wounds.

  Item: Fifty men standing naked in the rain along the ditch, covered from the other side by machine guns, while an early morning search went on to deprive them of any pitiful stores of medicine or foodstuffs they might be concealing.

  Item: An expatriate Baptist Minister with a church in Cuba for thirty years. He had been in La Cabana for eighteen months, awaiting trial as a collaborator with the CIA.

  Item: A sadistic guard with a drooping mustache who counted all of us at any hour of the day or night by sticking a bayonet in our rears. The Baptist Minister had nicknamed him Pica Culo— Pinching Ass.

  Item: Medical care: no hospital or clinic. I am one of twenty-one doctors in our galera. We have no instruments or medicines. Today a lawyer died without receiving the medicines sent by his family—once delivered at the prison they take fifteen to twenty days to reach the prisoner.

  Item: Water for bathing and personal cleaning has been reduced from three to two pails a week for each man. Two cans of drinking water are allowed each man every day. They are two-thirds the size of a beer can.

  Item: Taken to the office again last night and interrogated for six hours. Where is Villaverde’s hiding place in Sancti Spíritus? What is the name of the man who impersonated an officer in the F.A.R. and freed you from the militia? What is the name of the Negro who drove your escape car? Who was the man you ate dinner with at the Rio Cristal? Who were you trying to contact in the Plaza Hotel? (At least they didn’t know that!) How long have you been a member of the CIA? How long—? Who—? What—? When—? Where—?

  Interlude: One hour while a tall, gray-haired Czech gave me details of the inhuman treatment traitorous women, like Milagros, were subjected to in Guanajay. Hear all about the Lesbian guards who stripped and fondled her night and day, and forced her to drink water from the toilet bowl.

  “They’re going to shoot her tonight because she won’t talk. You can save her and yourself from that fate. Just give us the location of three of the places Villa
verde uses as a hideaway. What is the name of the Negro sargento who drove the jeep? How did you get by the roadblock in Placetas? What’s the real name of Javier, the fisherman who brought you in from Cayo Francés?

  “It’s all right with us if you want your wife shot, but the militia-women say they will miss her in Guanajay. They love her red hair not only on her head but other places, they say. What’s the name of the man you were with at Rio Cristal? How long has he worked for the CIA? The Lesbian militiawomen like to play with that tiny mole beneath her left breast. Remember? It will be no fun when she’s dead clay. Just tell us when she started working for the CIA.

  “Okay! Take the gusano out and shoot him in pit number five. Let that squad of militiawomen do the job. Strip him and let them see what a naked worm looks like who will let his own wife die. It will give them a thrill. On the double! There are too many mouths to feed around here right now.”

  Item: Naked. Hands tied. Walking through the night to pit #5, followed by six gun-toting Amazons giggling in glee at the bawdy show. A chief head-huntress commanding the squad, filled with orgiastic lust at the thought of dealing the coup de grace with her bloodstained hand.

  ¡Preparese!— Get ready! The floodlights are on.

  ¡punte!— Aim! ¡Fuego!— Fire!

  Item: Bullets crashing over my head into the wall. Too bad, gusano. We missed you that time but tomorrow we’ll have another try. Back to the galera and put your clothes on. Which time was that? I’m sorry but I really don’t know. As the owl’s friend said, “I don’t think any more!”

  No feeling. No fear. Just a brief moment of infantile pleasure, when my overfull heart and bladder responded to being killed again. My sphincter relaxed rewarding me with a steady long yellow stream, which even with my hands tied behind me I pointed toward the firing squad.

  “¡He aquí!—Behold!” I shouted in boyish glee. “Once more you unmaidenly maggots have failed and the gusano rises again from the dead to piss upon you all.”

  The trial and the seventh shooting is the one that I recall. Midnight. Aroused from my sleep on the floor by Pica Culo. “Up, gusano, on your feet! The Revolutionary Court is sitting to try your case.”

  “At midnight?”

  He poked me with the bayonet. “Hurry! You’re lucky to be tried at all.”

  I staggered on ahead of him and went into the lighted room at headquarters. Blinking around me, I was certain that my eyes and mind were deceiving me, and that the debilitating effects of my endless stay had finally crushed me. The insides of my head were dark and woolly and playing curious tricks.

  Seated behind a long deal table were seven people glaring at me with stony faces. They were pictures from somewhere out of my past and slowly I named them from left to right, as the pictures say: Alfredo, Xiqués, Nikolai Karamzin, and the prison commander. It was the other three that set my weakened mind and body to reeling. Comandante Ernesto García, promoted now up another step to Comandante de Ejército, with a shield instead of a five-sided frame for his star; beside him was Orville Harrington, and Soledad sat at the end of the line. Pica Culo propped me up with his bayonet when he saw I was about to fall.

  What was the need to question me. One by one without even rising they told their stories, fantastically fitted to just one end—to prove my perfidy. When Ernesto told how he had landed in Matanzas three days before to find that I had had Milagros jailed on trumped-up charges, and demanded that I be shot at one o’clock on the dot in Laurel Ditch by a squad of men from the F.A.R., I wasn’t surprised.

  That white-haired Friend of Cuba, Albert Clooney, had promised to look after him, and he certainly had. He’d sent him back on the Kerritack in ample time to start me on my last long trip to the firing wall.

  It was.

  When the floodlights went on in Laurel Ditch, a bearded man strode up to me and pushed a pistol into my ribs. “¡No dispare!—Don’t fire!” his voice cracked out. “This is my prisoner. I’m taking him with me. He’s wanted for questioning by the CDR.”

  No one had any eyes for me, for this man wore a uniform with epaulets and on each shoulder strap a raised red diamond supported a golden star. I couldn’t think of anyone in Cuba who rated the insignia of Comandante en Jefe—Commander-in-Chief—of the F.A.R. outside of Fidel Castro himself. Unless of course, his name was Leo Rodríguez.

  With the gun in my back he rushed me out to where a long black Cadillac was parked with Guido sitting behind the wheel. He pushed me violently into the back, slammed the door and got in the front.

  Milagros was waiting for me in the back of the car.

  BOOK IV

  FLIGHT

  33

  All of life is a paradox. Deprived of a loved one, the mind builds up a mounting chain of earnest desires and conceives the most eloquent torrent of words to express all the agonies endured during separation. The carnal cravings of the body grow daily to a peak of passion which eventually consumes itself in the molten heat of its own fire. The paradox is that the higher an emotional crisis becomes, the more quickly the stepping stones to the summit crumble and vanish.

  When Milagros and I were reunited, the quick fulfillment was more than either of us could bear. Eloquence turned to dumbness, and passion into numbness. There were no kisses and no terms of endearment. There weren’t even any tears of joyful release from stress. We just sat crushing each other closer and closer, conscious only that the other one was there.

  She slowly relaxed in my arms with her head on my shoulder, and I knew at last she had gone to sleep. I arranged her more comfortably. For the first time I became aware of the terrific speed at which Guido was pushing the powerful car. We had turned inland from La Via Blanca, the coastal highway that touches all the beaches between Havana and Matanzas, and circled around Guana-bacoa. Instead of heading for the Carretera Central, we had turned left again, following the railroad, on a secondary road that led through Campo Florido to Jaruce.

  I raised my head enough to look at the speedometer over Guido’s shoulder. He was sitting unemotionally smoking his inevitable cigar, his huge hands resting lightly on the wheel. I drew back hurriedly with a sinking feeling of fear. This time not at the glowing cigar, but at the speedometer hovering steadily around 130. It took an effort to shake the cobwebs from my brain, and remember I was looking at kilometers and convert them into the fact that we were making about 80 miles per hour. It seemed plenty fast, at that, over a secondary road that wasn’t in very good repair.

  The infallible Leo must have heard me stir. He turned halfway around in his seat beside Guido and said, “Awake?”

  I said, “Yes, but Milagros is sleeping. I imagine she needs it.” I could see the red diamonds and stars were missing from his shoulder straps.

  “I’ll come back there beside you, if there’s room for three.”

  “Plenty.”

  He got over the seat back with his usual agility and settled himself beside me. “Milagros?” I asked him softly. “They kept telling me they were going to shoot her. How did she get out of Guanajay?”

  “Almost the same way you got out of La Cabana, except her father called for her in person at nine o’clock tonight. Said she’d been falsely imprisoned and was wanted for investigation by the CDR. Then he arranged your trial for midnight and your shooting in Laurel Ditch for one. We had to coordinate our watches pretty accurately. He’s been promoted, by the way. Really, I mean. Now he’s just one step under me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw. I think for a minute everybody thought you were Castro. Where did you get the uniform with the diamond and star?”

  “Veradero Beach,” he said shortly. “It got burned up there at the dry cleaner’s several weeks ago. I thought we might need it sometime. We did. This Cadillac came from there too, this afternoon. It’s the official visitor’s car from the motor pool on Fidel’s estate there. Of course, it has our own painted wallboard tags on. Neat. Or didn’t you notice?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t notice,” I said. “That was t
he seventh time they’d shot me, tonight. Nothing seems to matter anyway, except that Milagros is here with me. What’s the date? I’ve lost all track of time.”

  “It’s Wednesday, September 8, 1965.”

  I tried to make that register but the computer wasn’t working. “I feel like I’m coming out of a tunnel, Leo, and the smoke’s all around me. I can’t seem to get events straightened out, or know exactly what’s happened. My head is all woozy.”

  He said, “Lots of things are better forgotten. You’re doing pretty well for a seven-time loser. The salt air will have cleared the fog from your brain by morning.”

  “What salt air?”

  “The fresh salt air off of Jibacoa Beach. Like the owl and the pussycat, you and Milagros are putting out to sea.”

  “Tonight?”

  “As soon as we can get you there. You’ll have company: Teresa and her two children, José and Victoria; Carlos, a fisherman, and Ana, his wife. Elio, another fisherman, has borrowed the boat to take you in from a nearby cooperative where he and Carlos work. He and Carlos have been burying food and gasoline on a sand bar off the beach for two weeks now.”

  “Teresa Nunez?” A shutter clicked open and flashed me back to Dr. Maciá, Ágata, Room 414, and that stairwell at the Plaza Hotel. “Teresa was dying.”

  “So was Ernesto García, a month ago. Arturo got the necessary penicillin to save her. He collected the children from where they were hidden out with Ágata and brought them and Teresa up here tonight from Havana. He was afraid he was followed and didn’t dare stay. Don’t worry about Arturo. He’s led them a chase for four years now. He’ll be okay.”

  “Arturo?” He wasn’t coming through.

  “Dr. Arturo Maciá, you fool!” His steel fingers closed with excruciating strength on my arm. “Get with it, chico! There’s no time to fold on me, now. Carlos and Elio are two of our best men, and they haven’t even had time to say good-bye to their parents or friends. Or dared to. The jefe says all of you must leave tonight, and he’s backed up by García. I don’t need to tell you that you and Milagros are hotter than a couple of those Czech metralletas. It’s only because they hoped Teresa would sooner or later lead them direct to the jefe that they’ve left her on the loose long enough for us to get her away. It’s tonight, or nothing.”