The Distant Marvels

by Chantel Acevedo

  “What did you do with the money?” Mireya asks. She is quiet about it, as if the question shames her.

  “I fed myself. It didn’t last very long, in the end. The money wasn’t enough for passage to New York on any ship I could find,” I say. “I sent a few letters to Blanca Lora. A few. I lost count. I—” I stop there.

  They are quiet again, and I notice that the rain has stopped completely, and that the sun is piercing the windows and illuminating the room in ways I had not noticed before. A yellow stain blooms on the ceiling and it looks as if the storm has damaged the roof. There is a mouse hole in one of the walls, and tiny, black droppings outside of it. The wall, too, is stained yellow. I think of that smart mouse that knows it’s best not to foul one’s home, that such things are left outside, and I wonder at myself, having revealed so much in this small room, polluting the space with my confession.

  “What became of Mayito?” Susana asks. “You never saw him again?”

  I shake my head, and, trembling, I draw the picture frame from my pocket. I do not let the women look at it for long. Instead, I take apart the frame. The page of newsprint behind Mayito’s picture is folded tightly to fit the frame. I undo the fold carefully, afraid that it will disintegrate in my hands. A separate sheet of onionskin paper comes loose as I lay the newsprint flat on the dusty bed in the center of the room. A fine, faded scrawl fills both sides of the onionskin paper.

  “It’s from Blanca Lora. She translated the article. Her article,” I say. “This explains why I didn’t go to New York. This is why I’m confessing to you all now, because I can’t live another moment carrying this shame on my own.” I wince, and have to grip my sides with both hands. “The envelope with this,” I say, gesturing to the article, “found me in August.” I squeeze my eyes shut and Susana flies to me, trying to take hold of my shoulders. “No. I deserve this,” I tell her through gritted teeth. Dulce shakes her head at me. “I deserve worse than this,” I say, looking at her hard, and then, when the pain passes, I begin to read.

  A CUBAN MASCOT

  Blythe Quinn Witnesses

  “Butcher” Weyler’s Reconcentration Camps

  You will Learn Here About Wretchedness and Squalor in Cuba—How the Wickedness of Spain Abuses Poor Creatures—The American Soldier Who Befriended a Cuban Negro Infant—The Generosity of Members of the Manhattan Club

  Quite recently I had the idea that a woman undercover in Cuba would possess an advantage over any other who might go to this tumultuous island and attempt to report what he saw. I speak fluent Spanish, and my accent is inflected in the Galician way, and so, I passed easily for a Spanish nurse. In Cuba, I was witness to abuses by the Spanish armed forces upon the simple Cuban people that I may never shake from my mind. What did I see that so rocked this reporter to her very foundations?

  I will tell you.

  General Valeriano Weyler, he whom they called “The Butcher,” proved to be aptly named. We have all read with great interest of the reconcentrados, those unfortunate villagers in the Cuban countryside, who were, because of their support of the Cuban Liberation Army, sequestered in their own homes, left to die of starvation and disease.

  To such a place my duties as a nurse led me. One village in particular, named La Cuchilla, or “The Knife,” was among the most miserable.

  I witnessed a woman no older than forty, dying of yellow fever, left alone in a small hut that the Cubans call a “bohío.” Flies gathered at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were swollen shut. She was one of many in such a condition.

  I saw a child, of no more than five, sitting up with the bodies of her parents in her bed. She had laid a hand on each of them, and it took several nurses to tear her away from their cold forms.

  The Spanish would take the bodies and dump them not far from the village, so that they formed a great pyramid of death, and buzzards circled the place day and night, blackening the sky.

  All this happened in the name of Spain, to thousands of innocents, and in defense of that nation’s terrible army.

  One Woman’s Misery

  I was able, through wile and subterfuge, to rescue one young woman from La Cuchilla. She was unmarried, and with child. I could not help but imagine her in New York City, where lost girls such as she was would find refuge in places like Magdalen’s House, where she might be reformed.

  The young woman’s name was Carla Carvajál, and she had fallen in love with a hero of the Cuban Liberation Army, a freed slave and courageous son of Cuba. She posed as a nurse in the Spanish field hospital where I worked, and proved herself to be both a talented caretaker of so many wounded and ill Spanish soldiers (all of whom were her enemies, though they did not know it) and a marvelous storyteller, as well, as is true of many Cubans, for whom it seems the knack of weaving a tale comes naturally.

  She bore a half-negro son shortly after her rescue. I took pity on Miss Carvajál, and on her son, and arranged a safer place for them to stay. The Cubans were willing to look the other way when it comes to women who have started on the downward path. The Spanish are far less tolerant, and indeed, there was talk among the nurses in the field hospital of disposing of the infant, as one would rid a house of a rodent.

  I would have arranged for Miss Carvajál and her son to accompany me to New York, but she declined my offer, proving once again what I have known all along—that one can only seldom rescue another being, be it war-struck women or stray animals, and that the role of a reporter is one of objective observation and not interference.

  A Delightful Turn

  How delighted then was I to learn that Miss Carvajal had decided that the best course of action for her future and her son’s was to submit the child to rearing by the most upstanding of men—Sergeant Christopher Lewis Landon, chairman of the Manhattan Club.

  It was during a meeting of that illustrious group of New York men that I discovered the happy turn of events. The war being over eight months now, the Manhattan Club members were gathered to celebrate and I had been invited as well, to capture the event in print. After dinner, which consisted of calf’s liver with bacon of such delectable quality that this reporter can taste it still and feel absolute satiety, the housemaid brought forth a light-skinned negro child, of about one year old. They set him down, and introduced him as Fourth of Landon, named in honor of our nation’s independence day.

  “Go on, Fourth of Landon,” Sergeant Christopher Landon said, “show them what you know.” Then, the child clapped his hands, and proceeded to untie the laces of all the shoes of the men present. Then, with a dexterity that is characteristic of his race, he tied each and every shoe with a perfect loop.

  “Where did this marvelous child come from?” I asked. “Where are his parents?”

  Sergeant Landon relayed the curious origin of Fourth of Landon.

  A Son of Cuba

  “We met a young Cuban woman while on tour of a Cuban field hospital in Oriente. She was desperate for someone to take the child off her hands, and specifically, to bring the child to New York City. Curiously, she had gotten hold of your name, my dear Miss Quinn. Where she came by it we could not have guessed, as your time in Cuba was secret to all. How disastrous it might have been for you, had she revealed your identity while the war waged! We had no one among us who spoke Spanish at first, and so, much of what she was saying was unclear to us except this: that the child should come away with us,” Sergeant Landon explained.

  “I told my companions, ‘It’s the Fourth of July, isn’t it? And we’ve just captured Siboney, haven’t we? I’m feeling patriotic. Yes, I am. And, well, the Manhattan Club needs a mascot.’ Then, I gave the mother a generous amount of coin, and told her, ‘The boy will be a mascot to the greatest club of men in all of America. He’ll be my little friend. He’ll be safe and fed and educated. He’ll be American,’ and she seemed pleased. He’s the brightest little chap I could ever imagine.”

  I
knew at once who the babe was, and I rejoiced that he had found a home. I told the marveled celebrants of my time with Carla Carvajál, and the role I played in the child’s rescue.

  “His mother remained in Cuba then?” I asked, and was told that she had happily taken the money and stayed behind, advised by a certain Cuban investor named Gustavo Bernál, who happened to arrive at the scene at just the right moment, and translated the mother’s wishes to Sergeant Landon.

  “His English was terrible, the poor chap. But he did his best by the woman and the boy, alleviating her fears,” Sergeant Landon told me.

  While I am delighted at the happy turn of events for the boy, I would have liked to see Carla Carvajál again, and to have shown her New York, as I had promised on more than one occasion during the war.

  Nevertheless, the child Fourth of Landon is a testament to the good work our men accomplished in what is now a free Cuba, and his presence in Manhattan is a joy to those who know him.

  Today, there is a cry of gladness that resounds over that tropical place, so far from New York. “¡Viva Cuba libre!” It echoes there and here, in the halls of Manhattan’s salons and in the mouths of all who believe in liberty.

  I finish reading and clear my throat. I am shaking all over. “I sold him, you see,” I say to them. “Like a slave, I sold him. His father was a slave once, and now he, he—”

  Rosalia is weeping openly, while Mireya stares and stares. Dulce has placed her withered hands over her eyes, as if she might block out the pictures I’ve planted in her head. Susana holds my hand and says, “No, you must not think that.”

  “What then?” Ofelia asks. She has been standing in the doorway for a while, and I noticed her mid-story. Every so often, another soldier would come and chat with her in whispers, but she remained, neglecting whatever duty she had to listen to my tale.

  “What do you mean?” I answer her without looking up.

  “I mean what happened next? Where did you go?” She sounds vulnerable for the first time, her voice raspy as if she’s been shouting for days. The skin under her eyes is shadowed, and her clothes hang limply on her, as if she’s lost weight over the course of the storm.

  “Why does it matter?” I ask.

  “It matters,” Ofelia says, coming fully into the room and sitting before me. “You survived, didn’t you? War and bloodshed and horror. And yet here you are.” There is something desperate in Ofelia’s eyes. I wonder why the epilogue to my story means so much to her. What does it matter? My story is simple.

  I sold my son. The end.

  “There has to be more than just sorrow,” she whispers intently, and I see in her a wish unspoken—a hope that her life has not amounted to the wearing of olive green uniforms and barking at old women.

  I do not tell her about the long days afterwards, how I was transfigured into a mute thing, finding work on farms and in hot, greasy kitchens up and down the province, nor do I mention a disastrous month in 1912, where I sat on the sand day in and day out, carving faces out of driftwood and trying to sell the pieces for pennies. I leave out the times I sat in the dark, counting money, trying to scrape together enough for a passage to New York and always falling short. I say nothing about the painter from Bogotá, who gave me a typewriter in exchange for posing in the nude for him, and how I learned to type while sitting in a park, the heavy machine resting on my thighs. I am sure that Ofelia does not want to hear about other things I did to survive, trading parts of myself for paltry change. The men I slept with were like boys trading marbles, this for that, and I would oblige, because there was nothing else for a girl like me. By the time I remembered Gilberto, and his offer, I had become quiet, like a doll made of felt—I was played with and made no sound.

  “There was Gilberto. My Gil. I found my way to him, to Placetas. He was well, and the yellow fever had left no mark on him. He made me a lector in his father’s cigar factory, and this is where I told the men snippets of my story, written by a woman named Carla Carvajál. When they asked me what the book was called, I would say it was The Distant Marvels, and they accepted it as true. I learned to forget Mario, and to love Gil. I miss them both. There is Beatríz still, who lives in Havana. She promises she’ll visit me at Christmas. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Ofelia nods and squeezes my hands. “Sí, it’s something,” she says, and leaves us again.

  The women break off into small groups, leaving me alone. I think of the little sloops that used to sit in Havana harbor when I was a child, how Lulu and I watched the big ships go, leaving behind these small vessels, tossed in the troubled water. I think of them, and feel myself swaying a bit, as if I, too, am bobbing up and down on the waves. Susana sits by my side and says only that she is sure the others will not forget my story.

  “Maybe it will even get to Mayito, wherever he is,” Susana adds.

  I nod and smile at Susana, who accepts my smile like a gift. But I know it is a pale copy of real happiness I’ve just handed her. The hope she wants for me—that my son still lives, that somehow, by some miracle, this story will reach his ears, will roll like a pebble through a pipe, tumbling, growing smooth and fast and true—is a kind of fiction.

  We listen as the women talk to one another. They are weaving new tales now, of their own children, of the men they love.

  I catch a bit of Rosalia’s story, of the man who cheated on her, how she wrote on the windows of his car with red house paint, “How many putas can one man sleep with?”

  Snippets of Dulce’s story come to us whenever she raises her voice: she had a psychic once read her palm, and on her hand the woman saw that Dulce’s only daughter would cross an ocean alone, and she left for Miami two years ago and hasn’t come back.

  Estrella and Celia are in earnest conversation regarding their twin boys. They trade stories about youngsters who completed one another’s sentences as children, and now, as men, have married witches in disguise, who keep Estrella and Celia apart from their grandchildren.

  Mireya speaks the loudest, and she is telling everyone that she, too, loved a poet once, but he drank a whole bottle of aguardiente on a dare in his youth, and when sobered, he could no longer write poems. So, bereft of his gift, he had nothing but harsh words for Mireya, and she left him.

  We listen to one another until midday. The sun burns bright in a cloudless sky, as if the storm has propelled every single cloud in the Caribbean to some other part of the world. The sky looks bare and scoured.

  Ofelia comes in and announces that our stay in Casa Velázquez has ended, and that buses will be arriving soon to take us all home.

  I am glad. My ears are beached cockleshells full of stories instead of sand. I am bursting with them. I listen for my own story, and find it curiously missing. I can no longer remember the exact color of Lulu’s hair, or the smell of Mario’s breath in the morning, or what hunger, real hunger feels like. I cradle air, holding my arms as if an infant rested there, and find I can’t recall how much my son weighed at birth, or whether he was born in the morning or the night. Perhaps what was once important is no longer so. Other stories are flickering in my imagination, pushing, wind-like, insistent. I want to sleep in my own bed and dream the stories alive.

  There is also this: I want to go home to Maisí, and see what damage the winds have wrought.

  6.

  Tending What We Can

  Ofelia leads us out of that room which has been my confessional. It is late in the afternoon, and Casa Velázquez has a musty smell now, like paper steeped in water and left to dry. We trudge down the stairs and the steps give softly under our feet, bending with our weight. I notice a jagged brown line on the wall, about a foot over my head, and realize it is a water line. The others have noticed, too, and now we are all running our fingers along the length of it, following it out of Casa Velázquez. It reminds me of the veins visible inside my arms and in the backs of my legs, and I think that this desicca
ted artery along the walls is an omen. The pain in my midsection flares and fades, flares and fades, and I ignore it as best I can.

  Once outside, we stand in the sun, blinking like moles. There is so much debris in the roads I have a hard time thinking that the bus can get through it. I spot umbrellas and lawn chairs, gray tarps wrapped around lampposts, a drowned dog and a man poking it with a cane. All of this is in sight, and the sky above us is blue and spotless, mocking the ravaged earth with its beauty. The sun bears down on my neck and the place where my skin touches the chain I always wear burns. I adjust my necklace and sigh.

  “¡Esto es un sol africano!” Mireya shouts to the sun, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

  The others nod in agreement. Yes, it’s an African sun, I suppose, though none of us has ever been to that faraway place. I turn to look at Casa Velázquez one last time and think about the slaves brought here in my father’s youth, the ones who had sneaked sideways glances at the sun back home, felt it hot on their bodies, and carried those rays of light in their skin. What did they think of the rearrangement of light here in Cuba? Was it all that different from home?

  We hear the bus before we see it, rattling down a side street and blowing the wreckage of the storm out of its path. It rolls to a stop before us and the driver, another soldier, waves us on.

  “Bueno, damas,” Ofelia says, her hands on her hips as she faces us. “It has been a pleasure.” She smiles, but her eyes are tired. The women take turns hugging her before boarding the bus. Susana gives Ofelia a quick kiss on the cheek, the way friends who are sure they will see each other again do. I am last, and I wrap my arms around Ofelia’s shoulders and pat her back.