The Distant Marvels

by Chantel Acevedo

  When I woke, I was on shore, and Mario was hovering over me, his hands on my stomach, pressing down on me with all his might. I rose up as if pulled by strings, and vomited on his shoes.

  “Gracias a Diós,” he said, scooping me up in his arms and kissing the top of my head.

  “I’m dizzy,” I said. Water fell off the top of Mario’s head onto my face. The rain sounded like a million drums being played at once. Lightning lit the shore for an instant, and I cringed against Mario. My head throbbed, and it felt as if my shoulder were burning. When I reached to touch it, Mario held my hand.

  “The lightning. I saw it strike a tree above your head. It knocked down a branch that fell on you.” His face was tight with concern, which made me afraid. My right arm had gone limp, and I was having trouble hearing on that side. In fact, my right cheek felt hot, as if I’d been slapped. Carefully, I peeled back my undershirt’s collar to take a look at my shoulder. It was scraped, a thin layer of skin shredded and lifted, like the outside of an onion. I winced at the sight of it, and Mario helped me to put my shirt back in place. His hands trembled as he did so.

  Hail began to pound into us, big pieces the size of marbles. I screamed when they bounced off my shoulder, and was up in Mario’s arms at once. He ran under a little outcrop of rock several yards from the river. It was a dry, mossy place. The hail scattered over the rock and came down on our feet, but we were able to keep our heads and bodies dry.

  “You’re back,” I said, sniffing. The smell of the river was trapped in my nose.

  “Our regiment is just north of here, on an abandoned sugar plantation. I thought I’d come see you. I can hear the cornets sounding if trouble comes.” As he spoke, he kept his gaze fixed on the wound on my shoulder.

  “You came to see me?” I asked. My stomach was a knot of tension. I thought I might even vomit again.

  “Sí. If that is all right.” He picked up a shard of hail. It was the size of a peso. Already, it was melting in his hand.

  “Of course it is,” I said. I gathered some of the hail, too. At first, we said nothing as we picked up one piece of ice after another and watched them melt in our hands. When he reached across me to get to a perfectly round and smooth hailstone, his arm pressed against my bosom. I held my breath. Mario squared his jaw, the muscles in his face flexing, as he pulled away slowly.

  “Perdón,” he said softly.

  “No hay de que,” I answered, but I crossed my arms tightly around myself. “Did you really come back to see me?” I asked.

  Mario nodded. I said nothing. I would have, but my throat was full and I was trying hard not to burst into tears. We held each other’s gaze for a long time. The storm had subsided, and the woods had gone quiet, save for the rush of the river, which had swollen and grown faster with the rain. I don’t even think I took a breath in that space of time. Waves of heat spread over my body as I stared into his eyes. Mario broke first, looking away and clearing his throat.

  “I love you, María Sirena. You know that,” he said.

  I nodded and took a long, trembling breath. The truth was, I hadn’t known. I’d been full of doubt, but Lulu had always told me never to complicate a conversation with unnecessary explanations. “During battles,” he whispered, “my mission, my real mission, is to come home to you.”

  I started to cry in earnest now. I couldn’t help myself. The soldiers we tended on occasion rarely talked about the war, and we knew never to ask for any specifics about their time spent in the wilderness, about their encounters with Spanish forces, about what they’d sacrificed, what they’d had to do. To hear Mario talk about it now felt so unfamiliar, and I knew what it cost him to do so.

  “I want to know I have you to come home to, Sirenita. Every day.”

  I think I kissed him first, though I can’t be sure. The rest of that day was spent testing one another in breathless kissing sessions, broken up by stunned silence. The sun dropped into the horizon. My clothes were still in a soaked heap by the river. The sun had broken through the clouds, drying hair and my modest underthings.

  “What will we do?” Mario asked, helping me out from under the little cove. My limbs ached from sitting curled up against him, and I imagined this was what it felt like to be a crab or snail, unfurling from within a rocky carapace to stretch and meet the world.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, tucking my hair back in place with long pins that had come undone. My shoulder still burned where the branch had struck me. My face hurt, too, but I was certain that had nothing to do with my injury and more to do with the hours I’d spent with Mario, his fingers digging into my cheeks as he kissed me, holding me in place as if I might flee at any moment. “You and I,” Mario began, shaking his head.

  I felt panicky. My heart quickened. “I know what you mean to say,” I said quickly, the words racing out of my mouth. “But it’s a new era. The revolution means to bring us all together, black and white. You said so yourself.” I was clutching his hands tightly. Lulu would understand. Wasn’t she always making speeches at dinner about equality, about the plight of Cuba’s negros, of their heroism in war. She would be glad I was in love with Mario.

  “That’s all words,” Mario said. “My regiment is all black, and in each battle we’re assigned to the vanguard. Every time, María Sirena, we’re at the front of the line. We’re disposable. The white regiments wait for us to plow through the Spanish, and when we’re sufficiently tired or enough of us are dead, they come in, machetes in the air. The great white heroes.” Mario sat hard on a boulder and looked across the river. His eyes were narrowed, and I thought that he might be on the verge of tears. We were so young—seventeen and fifteen years old—and in moments like that it showed.

  “They executed our captain. They said he stole ammunition from one of the white regiments. He didn’t! They killed him because we were doing too well, making the white regiments look incompetent.” Mario spoke with renewed energy and anger, his brow furrowed and his fists clenched. “They killed him, the bravest military man the Liberation Army has ever seen, because he was black, and we are black, and because of that we aren’t allowed to be better than the others. All those battles against the Spanish devils, and it was Cubans who killed him.”

  “Oh, Mario, I—”

  “They blindfolded my Captain then shot him. His last words were, ‘Viva Cuba libre,’ and still they shot him. They made us watch, María Sirena. They made us watch.” Mario broke down in tears then, and sobbed in my arms. I had a feeling he wasn’t telling it all. That he was holding back for my sake.

  “Your father, Mario. Was it your father?” I asked in a whisper, and he nodded against me and cried harder. Orphaned at seventeen, and yet so strong, I thought. And I was all he had left in the world.

  “We’ll be together, Mario. You will see, you aren’t alone,” I murmured into his hair.

  He shook his head. “The world won’t allow it. I don’t care what they’re saying about equality, it isn’t true.”

  “My mamá isn’t like that,” I said. I was surprised to find myself defending her after the fight we’d had. Still, I felt its truth in my heart—Lulu was an idealist, not a hypocrite. She’d stand with Mario and me, no matter what.

  “Perhaps she isn’t,” he said after a while had gone by and he’d composed himself. He looked up at me, his cheeks glossy and tearstained, and smiled. I leaned over and kissed him on the lips, lingering without moving, simply breathing him in, my hero, my young knight, who smelled like leather and iron.

  We were frozen that way, as if an artist had trapped us in a portrait, when I heard my name bellowed from a short distance. “¡María Sirena!” came the shout, and following it, I heard a rifle blast.

  Mario and I separated with a mighty jump, and there was Agustín, nearly upon us in three quick strides, his weapon pointed at Mario.

  10.

  The Butcher Does His Work

&nbs
p; Lulu and I would see Agustín once or twice a year, and each time, we were surprised he was alive. He’d return with tales from the battlefield—how he’d served under a captain who would have the men carry his rocking chair to each fight, so that he might sit in it, smoke a cigar, and read a newspaper when the fighting started, impressing the Spanish with his nonchalance. The instant his newspaper would tear—either by bullet or debris—then the captain would rise and shout, “¡Viva Cuba libre!” and enter the fray. Another time, Agustín told the sad story of a former slave from El Cotorro, who, returning to that village with his company in order to capture it, took shelter from Spanish bullets in the very house in which he’d been born, and was killed there, a bullet whizzing through a window and into his head. There were many such stories, and with each return, Agustín told a new one. I consumed them all, like fresh bread, gobbling the stories up and begging for more. By then, I’d seen many men come to the tallér, husbands and fathers of the women and children who worked there. None told stories like Agustín. In fact, most did not want to speak of what they’d seen at all. When prodded, they’d grow angry or morose, say something about wanting to forget rather than remember. But for Agustín, the war lived on in his mind like a tragic fixation. Even when he was given a respite from it for a while, he revisited the battlefield again and again.

  During his visits, Agustín would stay in the tent I shared with Lulu, and I was shunted off to stay with one of the women. At breakfast, Agustín and Lulu would sit close to one another. His hand would brush hers as he reached for a plate, or she would lay her hand on his thigh and eat that way, never budging, as if they were making up for lost time by being in constant physical connection. On a few occasions, his visit would quickly turn sour, and we could hear them fighting all across the tallér. One time, when Bernarda was still with us, Lulu had come to breakfast with a red and swollen ear. Though she’d said it was simply an infection, Bernarda picked up a broom and brought it down on Agustín’s head the moment he entered the tent. “Desgraciado,” she’d hissed at him, and he’d left without a word, confirming for everyone his guilt with his silence. When he came again a few weeks later, he brought violet candies for all the women, which he’d taken from a small Spanish regiment they’d beaten at the entrance of the woods of Manjuarí. He also carried three live chickens with him, dangling by their feet from a cord across his chest. The women of the tallér seemed to forgive his past offense, and welcomed him by making some fresh chicken soup.

  On the day Agustín found Mario and me embracing by the river’s edge, he carried nothing but an empty knapsack and his rifle. I would later learn that he was low on ammunition. He had spent one bullet already, firing it into the air above our heads. He would not waste another, not even on Mario, who he was looking at with disgust, as if he might vomit. But we didn’t know that at the time, and so I wrapped my arms around Mario and closed my eyes tightly, hoping that Agustín would not risk taking a shot if it meant he might hit me.

  I heard the safety mechanism on his rifle click.

  “Señor, for the love of God,” Mario said. He pushed me behind him. I pressed my forehead against his back and sobbed. It was unfair, so unfair, I was thinking, that I would find love and lose it this way. A few feet from us, Agustín looked down the sight of his weapon at us. He was very still, the way he stood when he hunted small game.

  “God has nothing to do with this disgrace,” Agustín said. He cocked his head, motioning me to step away from Mario, saying, “Go put on your clothes. You dishonor me, and you dishonor this soldier who is about to die.”

  “No, Papá. Leave him alone!” I squeezed my arms around Mario.

  “You would let her die with you, negro?” Agustín asked. My breath caught in my throat. What happened to the man who’d defended Macéo, the Bronze Titan? What happened to his grand speeches about equality, about humanity and the future?

  Mario undid my grip forcefully. We stared at each other a moment. “No,” I said, and made as if to hold him again.

  “Vete,” he told me, but I insisted, lifting my arms. That’s when he took my shoulders and gave me a shove. “Go, I said. It’s just as I told you, isn’t it? I’m just un negro. A throwaway.” His lips trembled as he spoke, but when he turned to face Agustín, Mario grew steady again.

  They stood that way for a long minute. I’d fallen to my knees, praying to la Virgen for protection, except I couldn’t hold on to the thread of prayer. The words to the Hail Mary would fail me, the Latin verbs tangling in my mind, becoming other, wrong words. I thought of the mermaid vision and could see her driftwood face before me, compelling me to join her. Perhaps I would. Perhaps I would drown myself after Agustín murdered Mario.

  Suddenly, a cornet trilled. The sound made me yelp, and I fell forward, my forehead to the ground. “My company,” Mario shouted, turning in the direction of those long, diminishing notes.

  Agustín slung his weapon onto his back. “Where is your gun?” he asked Mario, who indicated that he’d left it back in the tallér. Agustín unhooked a machete from his belt and thrust it at Mario. “Toma,” he said. “I’ll follow you.” Then, they were both gone, without a word to me.

  The cornets sounded mournfully, and then shots could be heard. Never had a battle come so close to the tallér. I ran back to the workshop and could hear the shouts of men, their moans and screams. Their voices seemed to prick at my back, compelling me to run faster. When I reached the tallér, the women were already in motion. Some were clearing off the worktables for the wounded who were sure to come. Others were gathering the children, strapping packs with supplies onto their small backs, and leading them away from the tallér, away from the fighting. Most were arming themselves.

  Lulu put a pistola in my hands. It was the same one she’d always kept with her, the one that had once belonged to Aldo Alarcón. She said nothing about my clothes, or about our fight that morning. Instead, Lulu took hold of my hand and led me outside with a group of other women. She ducked back into the tent and emerged a few moments later with a fresh shirt and skirt for me, which she put gently into my hands. “We will defend the tallér,” she said as we formed a line in front of our home.

  We stood there for the better part of the day. The sounds of the battle being waged close by seemed to amplify in the valley. Vibrant green parrots were rooted out of the trees every so often by gunshot, and their bodies would blot the setting sun. Even then, with the cawing noises overhead and the slap of rifle fire that shook our bones, we were silent, crouched low in our long skirts, our pinned hair coming lose as the day wore on, so that we looked like wild women.

  I grew impatient. I was, after all, only fifteen. I said prayers for Mario, and for Agustín, too, and when that bored me, I began to think of kissing. A warmth would flood my body then, startling me, so that I would begin to pray again. So it went, back and forth, for a long time. When Spanish forces finally broke into the valley, we were tired. Some of the women had sat on the ground and fallen asleep.

  What came through the brush was a force of only twenty or so men. At the head of them was a man atop a black horse. What I remember most was the placidity of the man’s eyes. For a moment, I thought he would greet us warmly, perhaps ask for our assistance, as so many men had done in the past. He held a gleaming saber in one hand, the reins of his horse in the other. Golden tassels hung from his shoulders, and these twitched in the breeze. Bushy sideburns grew on his cheeks, like moss on the trunks of trees. He was not an old man, but he seemed ancient like a tree, as if men such as he was had always existed on the earth and he was only the latest in that long, familial line. His uniform was un-mussed, even after the battle. The pistol in my hand felt cold. I wasn’t sure my bullets would find their mark if I shot the gun. The man seemed that impenetrable to me. The men with him pointed their weapons at us. One was a boy, younger than I was. He hoisted a Spanish flag on a short staff and waved it slowly, as if on parade.

 
The man on the horse pointed his saber at us. “Viva Cuba española,” he said, then, he waited. We were supposed to respond in kind, pledging our loyalty to a Spanish Cuba. The women of the tallér said nothing.

  “¡Viva Cuba española!” the man yelled. This time, when we did not make a sound, he lowered his saber in a swift motion, and a single shot rang out, hitting a woman named Luisa in the head. The bullet made a cracking sound as it struck her. I cried out, and tasted her blood on my lips.

  “¡Viva Cuba española!” he said again. This time, a few of the women answered the call, though weakly. Again, the saber came down, and once more, a woman was shot. This time, death came to the left of us. A woman named Leonora, who was especially good with a needle and thread, gurgled as she lay dying, saying her children’s names a few times before she could no longer speak.

  “¡Viva Cuba española!” the women began to say without prompting, weeping as they spoke. Again and again they said it. I began to chant the words, too. “Say it, Mamá,” I was screaming in between phrases until finally, Lulu spoke, crying the entire time, holding me awkwardly, trying to shield me from the guns.

  Though we didn’t know it yet, we were in the presence of our greatest enemy, Governor Valeriano Weyler, the man they called “The Butcher.” Later, we would learn he was on tour of the island, and had not intended on engaging in battle. His small retinue had surprised Mario’s regiment, who’d settled themselves on an abandoned sugar plantation very close to the tallér. Weyler’s men had set fire to the barn in which the regiment had hunkered down, and so, though they were few, the Spanish, with Weyler on horseback, were able to come away from that battle mostly unscathed.