Cuba and the Night: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Pico Iyer

  We passed through the grand entrance and walked into the city of the dead. There were giant sepulchers everywhere, ornate, sculpted, with weeping angels and robed saints and family histories, and huge domed monuments and marble plaques; there were walled tombs and minichurches, and thirty-foot statues of Jesus with his arms extended for forgiveness. On Calle 1 and C, she pointed out a statue of Innocence, eyes blindfolded. At the Milagrosa—a statue of an upright figure, clutching a small cross with her right hand, and cradling a baby with her left—women were placing roses in her fingers, and touching the lid of the brass casket beneath, and walking around the statue counterclockwise, some touching the feet on the baby, others resting their flowers in tree-trunk vases at the base. There was no noise here, and no commotion. Only the silent, touching ceremony of the women and, now and then, a long, slow procession of white station-wagon hearses and mourners all in black.

  “You see what I mean?” said Lourdes softly. “You see why I come here? Something here is pure, is clean. Like in the days before. It is like we are no longer in Havana.”

  “I see,” I said, and my anger of an hour before was forgotten.

  “Here I can come and feel empty,” she said, walking away from me. “There are no posters of El Señor here. No slogans. No offices. Nothing can go wrong here, nothing reminds me of our world. When I am tired sometimes, when I am worried, I come here, and my mind is calm.”

  “Only here?”

  “Only here. Because no one is making a deal here, no one whispers from the corner, no one tries to hear what we are saying. I could say anything to you here—about Fidel, about my hopes, about Martí, anything. But I do not want to. I want to forget all that. It is like a church for me.”

  “A sanctuary, kind of?”

  “Sanctuary?”

  “Tranquilo?”

  “Tranquilo, yes. When I am here, I am free to think.” A small family walked past, carrying roses to a marble statue. They walked slowly, and with dignity, together. “You see the people?” she said to me. “They are different here, pure. They are not thinking about money or food or sex. They are not worrying about la situación. They are thinking about human things; about their mothers and their grandfathers. They are innocent again. I think this is like Havana a hundred years ago. In the time of Martí.”

  “And when I come here,” she went on, standing still, and looking at the grieving angels and the sad madonnas and the Milagrosa’s eyes, protective above the roses, “I feel I can talk to the old people. And ask them about their hopes and memories. Because maybe some of them never wanted to die, or had plans and feelings they never spoke. Or maybe some died who chose to die. Or someone lost his girlfriend, and had no life again. Or maybe they fought in wars, or maybe they are watching us now. All their thoughts, all their feelings, come to me here, and when I leave, I am like a different person.”

  “Purer?”

  “Purer, yes, and calm. Like those angels they keep in taxis? So when I leave, I have new plans, new energy. Maybe a new me. This place is like a new birth for me.”

  We walked around some more, not talking, both in our own separate silence, and in silence I followed her around sepulchers, and down avenues of graves. There was no sound anywhere, except for the occasional snifflings of old women, and the sound of footsteps on gravel, and a cock crowing in the distance.

  Before we left, I asked if I could make a picture of her, next to the Milagrosa. She went up to the figure and held her fingers in a ball, knocked three times on the brass lid, then walked around the marble forms, resting her joined hands on her chin and closing her eyes. Then she stood with one arm around this patron saint of miracles, a rich woman who had asked to be buried among the poor, and only later, when I got back to the city, and developed the image in my darkroom—a dark-eyed girl in the city of answered prayers—did I realize that that was the first time I ever caught a picture of her alone.

  That evening, Lourdes was waiting for me when I got to her home, and she told me that she wanted to make the circuit of her neighbors’ houses.

  “But this is our last night together.”

  “Yes. And everyone wants you to help them.”

  So we made the rounds of her neighbors, and her neighbors’ friends, and the cousins of her neighbors’ friends, and all of them, as she had warned me, had letters they needed taken to New York. “Include a photo for them,” they said. “Send it to my uncle, my aunt, my cousin.” “I have a message,” they said, “for mi padre in New York.” “I want you to send this letter for me to Ronald Reagan. You have good connections: will you do that for me?” The addresses were smudged, or to towns not listed in any book, or to places without street names or people no longer alive. Dead letters to dead souls, saying, Querido / Inolvidado Hermano / Padre / Abuelo, saying, “I have not written before. I hope you are well, and your family too. Here things are not so good. I need food, I need clothes, I need money. I do not want to ask you for your help, but you are the only person I know in North America. Please reply quickly. Please send me something. Not through the mail—the government will take it. But give it to someone who is coming to Cuba, give them the money to give me. Here things are not easy. I am waiting for your answer. Please remember me. I never forget you.”

  Inside, there were sometimes prescriptions—this was the country with the best doctors in the hemisphere, and no medicines—or ill-spelled scraps listing sizes of jeans, or names of offices they’d heard from friends, or friends’ cousins. Some of the letters were left unsealed, some of them were scrawled in writing no one could read. I was used to it now: I packed light when I came to Cuba—just my equipment and my diary and things to give away—and when I went back, it was always with a full suitcase.

  We went into Marielita’s mother’s house. It could have been anyone’s—it was everyone’s—and friends were shuffling in and out of all the rooms, while an old man lay outstretched on the floor next to the balcony: the extended family seemed to reach all the way through Centro Habana, as if everyone was in it together, even if brother could not trust brother, nor novio novia.

  On the table in the living room, under glass, there were pictures of the family in Florida: their new Datsun 280Z, their condo in Coral Gables, their wet bar. “Mis primas,” said a fat woman in curlers, and there were three pretty girls, discernibly Cuban, with diploma hats over their big hair, and juicy red smiles and bright eyes, three Cubans who’d never heard of Camilo.

  There was a large framed picture on the wall, of some pouting, curly-haired toddler; and a Marlboro packet; and a collection of ads for Heineken. There was a tiny antenna on the TV, on which, the woman said, you could get eight stations. There was no bathroom anywhere, though: one room served the entire building.

  “Tell them about your house,” said Lourdes, showing me off. “How many rooms it has, how much it costs. Tell them.”

  But before I could do so, the woman was pulling me by the arm. “Mira, Richard. Take a picture for my mother!” And she got a comb and dragged it through her hair.

  “Now the two of us with the dog.”

  “Now Cari, and then one of me and mi novio.”

  Photos went off, smiles went on, neighbors came and grinned from the doorway. “Oye,” said a neighbor, bursting in. “Can you take a picture of my baby? For my sister. She is in New York.” She copied out an address in Queens. I moved closer to the baby, and it screamed and screamed and bawled. Everyone broke up. “She’s scared of you. She sees the camera, she thinks you are a spy!”

  Lourdes took the camera from me and, coochy-cooing, snuck up to the baby, and took a picture of its smiling face.

  Then someone grabbed the camera and looked at it the wrong way round. Someone else wrote down, “Olympidu.” Some kid began playing with the lens cap, back and forth, back and forth. I pulled it away, and took one more. “So you will make two copies, Richard? Two copies? One for her, and one for my abuela?”

  It was Cari, at my shoulder, grabbing my arm, and her face was
creased, almost desperate, and I thought this time the tears might really come. “The nice size, okay? Not small. Nice. You will not forget?”

  “No.”

  “One for her, and one for my abuela in New York.” She was talking as if the last ship was leaving the port.

  “Is not too expensive?”

  “No, it’s fine,” and I thought of where these snapshots would go—to drug dealers in prison, to women who couldn’t speak Spanish, to P.O. boxes that were long since reassigned, to others who wanted to forget everything that had anything to do with Cuba. To cousins who could not remember the little girl of twenty years before.

  I’d had enough by now, I figured; I needed time with Lourdes; if I didn’t stop them soon, I’d end up shooting eleven rolls full of people whose faces I couldn’t recognize, and sending their pictures to all the wrong people. This never happened to Capa, I thought. So I took a few more pictures, for myself, of their pleading faces and excited smiles and knockabout hopes in these dismal, empty, forty-watt rooms, and then I told them I was out of film, and we took off.

  As we sat along the sea, old men waving bottles came up to us, and jabbered crazily, and then reeled off into the night, like Old Testament prophets shouting warnings to the dark. Girls in torn stockings primped their hair and put on smiles. Dollar changers sat along the wall, muttering numbers under their breath.

  Lourdes was quiet that night, and I guess the sea made her think of the distance between us. I was quiet too, after seeing her in the cemetery. Again, it was when she was farthest from me that I felt closest to her, or could see most easily what I loved. I thought that maybe this would be the moment.

  She sat with her hands around her ankles, and I tried to make it easier for her by following her eyes out to sea. I didn’t touch her; I left her to her thoughts. I was an expert at departures.

  “Misterioso,” she said quietly.

  “Right.”

  No oil rigs in the distance; no winking lights of cruise ships. No lights at all tonight: only the two different shades of dark. You could almost imagine how it must have looked to the strangers from some distant party, walking down the long lawns of the Nacional to look out toward Miami. But the party was long over now, and the streetlights were hardly lit, and when she needed to take a pee, she had to go across the street to the space behind the gas station that never had any gas.

  “Lourdes,” I said when she came back, and, in the dark, her name sounded very intense.

  She nodded.

  I touched her cheek, brushed her hair, tried not to check on the light.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “If I tell you, you will be angry,” and I told myself, She’s waiting for me to ask her, and she doesn’t know, can’t know, that I will.

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “I was thinking about the jeans,” she said, “and hoping you wouldn’t forget my size.”

  Something broke in me then, and I left her to her silence, and a little later, I walked her home. The street outside was empty and dark. She held me, I kissed her, she held me so close it was as if she wanted to impress herself on me, to brand my body with her name. She pulled back to look me in the eyes.

  “You will not let me down?” she said. “You will not forget?” Her eyes were large and silver in the dark.

  “I won’t let you down. Yo soy un hombre sincero.”

  “Like Martí,” she said warmly, ruffling my hair.

  “Cómo no?”

  “You do not have room for me in your case?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “I am small. Duty-free. No tax.”

  “I wish I could, Lula.”

  “You will write to me often, every week, Richard? And come back soon? Please don’t forget me. Don’t forget me.” It was like seeing a photo fade before your eyes—a Polaroid in reverse. I could almost see her fading out of view, and the images getting blurry, and then just a big black space, exposed.

  “Please remember,” she said, and the last thing I saw of her, as I walked away, she was behind a big car at the far end of a long and unlit street.

  III

  The next time I went down there, it was to shoot a piece for S.I. Linares, El Niño, was coming out of his teens then; Victor Mesa, El Loco, was still running the bases like a madman, wiggling his hips every time he jumped on home plate; Ajete was coming in from the bull pen to throw smoke. No one knew how old these guys were—some of them had been on the team for twenty years—but still they played like the Revolution in cleats: sharp, cocky, full of bravado. They played baseball the way Capablanca played chess: in the high Cuban style, all glitter and flamboyance. And I knew they’d be a story for years to come—the Pan Am Games in Havana, the Olympics in Barcelona, the increasing pressure to defect. Fidel’s last PR weapon, storming the world and exporting the Revolution. I’m going to shoot the latest incarnation of the Havana Sugar Kings, I told the editor, the team whose last game was canceled in 1959 because Fidel had just taken the capital; the truth was, I was going to shoot Lula.

  It was never hard to find anyone in those days in Havana: you just had to walk down the street, and you’d meet eyes in the darkness, or find friends leaning out of windows, or see schoolboys coming toward you with a smile. The whole city was a circle of informers. And for someone like me, if I had a camera around my neck, a city of friends too, friends who invited you to come with them to the Diplostore where their cousin worked, friends who could tell you where José was, because his cousin’s sister used to be their esposa, friends who told you to forget José in any case because they had friends too. This time, when I got to her door, it was locked, and I didn’t have the patience to sit and wait all night. My first night in Havana, I was always on flame, and ready for adventure. I went up to a ginger-haired kid who was coming out of the house next door, and asked him if he knew where she might be.

  “She likes the movies, right?” he said.

  “Right,” I said, though that was news to me.

  “There is a new Brooke Shields movie here. Near the Capitol. I think she is there.”

  I went down the street to the old place where we’d gone before, and shoved a few notes under the till to the girl, and went in, the ghost of the opera house behind me. Inside, it was still pitch black, darker even than the porno cinemas in Asunción. I stood by the door to let my eyes adjust, and then I fumbled down an aisle, bumping into outstretched legs, putting my hands on shoulders, hearing cries of surprise, feeling strange hands on my thighs.

  Even after a few minutes, I couldn’t see a thing. I found an empty seat and sat down. But soon I felt a hand tugging at my shirt, heard someone eerily close to me. Onscreen, Brooke Shields was immaculate as ever. Offscreen, I began to make out necks, and arms, and masses of dark curls, and sometimes I could hear sniffles too—or were they gasps? There were couples all around, the usual sea of murmurs. A flash of skin, hands on legs, a shiver of pleasure here and there. The cinema was a true democracy: everyone was equal in the dark. No way you could tell brown from black, friend from sister, rebel from spy. No way you could tell here from there. Around me, the sound of boys unbuttoning shirts and blouses, girls turning for long kisses; urgent whispers, tiny moans.

  And then, just at the moment when the father sees David and Jade going for it on the living room floor, I saw her, or what looked like her: a small face, dark hair, a thin white shirt, two or three rows ahead of me to the right. I couldn’t be sure it was her, but it looked like her, the way she turned, when she smiled at the person beside her, and sometimes the smiles became open-mouth kisses. I saw the way her jaw moved, wondered if that was how she moved when we were together. I thought I saw her tuck her hair behind her ear, with the quick, impatient flip that was hers and hers alone.

  I tried to get closer, thought of moving down the aisle, but the place was packed, and the audience was preoccupied, and all I could do was sit there
, amid the whispers and gasps, looking at Brooke Shields, looking at her, looking at her looking at Brooke Shields. Looking at her not looking at Brooke Shields.

  When the lights came on, there was a final chorus of snuffles, and a sudden rush of black and brown and golden limbs. I tried to follow her, but I lost her in the crowd, distracted by some other black hair, another white shirt, and when I pressed out into the street, she was nowhere to be seen: just hugs, kisses, tears, and then someone calling “Ricardo”: José, at my side, eyes red. “So what you think, Richard?” he asked, as if I lived down the street. “I think is too sad. I see this movie three times, and every time I cry.”

  “Sure; me too. Look, José, I’m sorry: I’ve got to split. I’ll look in on you soon.”

  “Sure, no problem,” he said, and then I was running back the way I’d come, hardly caring why José had seemed so calm to see me, and what he was doing, crying over Brooke Shields and then materializing by my side.

  When I got to her door, it was open, and I took the stairs two at a time.

  “Lourdes,” I said, knocking on the kitchen door. “Are you here?”

  “Claro,” she said, opening the door, and hugging me.

  “Where were you before?”

  “Only here. Same as usual. Doing nothing. With Mamá and Marielita.” She looked so happy to see me, I thought she couldn’t be faking it. Her shirt, I noticed, was blue.

  “You were here all night?”

  “Where else? I’ve been waiting for you, Richard: you said you were coming tomorrow.”

  “I got an early flight.”

  “Good, is good for me.” She looked me all over. “Oh, Richard, I am so happy to see you,” and it was true, I could tell, she was glowing all over. “Marielita was in Varadero last month. At the Siboney. Before, in Cayo Largo.”

  “Cómo no?” said the saucy teenager with the jet-black curls.