“Do you know a friend of his by the name of Maykel, from Granma?”
“From Granma? No, chico, I don’t. Why? Should I?”
That night I went to visit Eliezer. Everything was exactly the same—the house, the old couple watching TV, the little room in back full of books, although he seemed to have acquired many more in the past few years. There used to only be piles of books along the walls and now they were everywhere: in the middle of the room, on the chairs, in the hallways.
Eliezer greeted me as if we’d seen one another the day before:
“Look at this: it’s a bomb. Fuera del juego by Herberto Padilla. Do you know the story? They put him in jail, he had to write a statement of self-criticism, and a whole commotion erupted around the world. This edition is from Miami and contains blurbs from all sorts of people. If they find me with this, they’ll jail me for sure.”
Eliezer didn’t seem particularly traumatized by his encounter with the Cuban justice system. He was even talking about expanding the bookstore: “I’m looking for a bigger place. I can’t fit everything in here anymore. I told the old couple I need another room, that they should rent me their bedroom. They’re always in the living room—they can just sleep there and give me their room for my books. But they don’t want to. As soon as I find something bigger, I’ll move. I’m going to put up bookshelves and have it all organized.”
“And Maykel?”
“Maykel had a kid but is still hustling around Central Park. His woman lost it. She called him a fag and yelled at him. He told her he did it for her and their son, and there was this whole uproar. Can you imagine? Whoring to support his kid.”
“So he doesn’t come around here?”
“He hasn’t. But you’ve got to meet this other guy, newly arrived from Holguín. He’s like Maykel: blond, blue-eyed, looks like a movie star. He’s got a bicycle taxi, but that’s just an excuse to ride tourists. He comes by every evening. Drop by tomorrow around seven and I’ll introduce you.”
“Another time. I leave for Santiago tomorrow.”
I realized that Eliezer’s world, like Freud’s unconscious mind, was timeless. Eliezer wasn’t fazed in the slightest by announcements of arrivals and departures, news of international flights and travel plans, because he lived in a static world that never changed. All that marked the passage of time were his books, piling up over the weeks and years: grains of sand in a big Havana hourglass. What would happen when the last grain fell?
After that trip, it was years—nearly a decade—before I returned to Havana again, and during that time so much happened: Fidel Castro fell ill and withdrew from politics; Raúl rose to the presidency; private property was legalized and so were cuentapropistas, those small-scale entrepreneurs; Mariela Castro campaigned for LGBT rights.
When I arrived in March 2014, I noticed changes the minute I got into a taxi at the airport. I recalled how, on my first trip, before I’d learned the hand signals, I had been careless enough to ask the driver—a lovely, candid woman in her thirties—what she thought of Fidel Castro.
“Shhh!” she hushed me. The rearview mirror revealed the panic in her eyes. “Don’t say his name. Do this,” she said, using her right hand to stroke a long, imaginary beard, then changed the subject and asked me about life in New York.
But that was then. This time, my taxi driver was a plump, chatty man. Once we had left the airport, I asked: “So, how are things going with Raúl?”
“Raúl?” he growled. “That piece of shit? He just fucked the country more than we were fucked already,” he said as a prelude to launching into a list of complaints that was also a review of the last fifty years of Cuban history. “Angola?” he demanded. “We went over to Angola to fight, and now that they’ve got cash, do you think those ungrateful black bastards remember Cuba? Not so much as a thank you. Do you know how many of us went over there? We went to do a job and to fight for those bastards who are now oil millionaires and don’t even remember socialism. Angola! Then we had to get through the Special Period. And the Russians, who were supposedly our best friends? Do you think the Russians sent a dime? No! We’re practically dying of hunger and it’s as if we don’t exist, after their missiles nearly get us caught up in a world war. Do you think they remember that?”
There was no stopping the monologue that seemed to cover it all—from Sierra Maestra to the alliance with Venezuela—and lasted until we reached the hotel.
“Okay,” the driver said, putting an end to his diatribe as he took the twenty-five Cuban convertible pesos I handed him as I got out.
Things were noticeably different around the Hotel Habana Libre, too. The surrounding streets had filled with small businesses: cafés, music stores, souvenir shops, and restaurants that offered food from around the world, everything from Italian to Iranian. The sidewalk in front of the hotel looked like a small bazaar filled with customers of every nationality: Germans and Brazilians, French and Mexicans, Italians and Argentines, all bartering with taxi drivers and getting on and off Transtur buses.
The only thing that hadn’t changed in all those years was Antón Arrufat: he was still living in the same apartment on Trocadero and was still as sharp as ever. We headed out to one of the many new restaurants that had opened in Centro Habana, and he told me the latest gossip over dinner.
“Did you hear about Eliezer?” he asked.
“No. What happened?”
“With the new laws, he got himself an entrepreneur’s license so his bookstore is now legit.”
“He must be happy.”
“Happy? Says he doesn’t sell nearly as much now; what tourists wanted was the thrill of buying from a clandestine bookstore. Now that it’s legal, no one comes. At least that’s what he says.”
“I’ll go see him tomorrow. And I won’t stop buying books from him.”
“You’ll see the house is quite different.”
“Do you still have to walk through the old couple’s living room?”
“The old couple? Chico, they died years ago. Rumor has it that Eliezer killed them to get the house.”
“Do you believe that? How could he? They were so fat and he was so thin.”
“He killed them like this . . .”
Antón’s face assumed a naughty-boy look as he brought his two palms in front of my face and clapped an imaginary object between them.
“He asphyxiated them . . . with the dust from his books.”
I went to see Eliezer the following day. The front porch was now crowded with bookshelves and tables at the entrance, displaying neat stacks of the Cuban Revolution’s bestsellers: biographies of Che, speeches by Fidel, the works of Eduardo Galeano, accounts of the 26th of July Movement. The door to the living room was open, and I peeked in to confirm that the old couple really was gone. The interior was unrecognizable: gone was the furniture, the television, the figurines, the lace curtains. Books had taken over everywhere: there were mountains of them all over the place, barely enough room to get around—a bibliographic metastasis.
I tried to remember where the old couple had sat to watch TV, but it seemed impossible that this insalubrious storeroom had ever been a home. There was dust—and churre, the Cuban term for grime—everywhere. Clearly no one had cleaned in years. Books lay open on the floor, covers ripped off or crumpled under the weight of other books. And from it all, there exuded a pungent, acrid stench.
“Well, look who’s here,” Eliezer said, coming out from among the mounds of books, using his arms to keep his balance, as if sliding down the side of a cliff.
He was the same, or near enough. No longer the handsome thirty-year-old, he was still thin and trim, sporting the mischievous look I knew so well.
“I’ve got a new book for you, about all that’s happening in this country. It’s called Al otro lado del espejo and it caused quite a stir: it tells the whole story, about jineteros, prostitution, the guajiros who come to Havana from the provinces to chase tourists,” he said, as if picking up a conversation we’d starte
d the day before.
“Nice to see you,” I said. “You haven’t changed. But the house has. What happened to the old couple?”
“Poor things passed away,” he said, and I thought I caught an ironic glint in his eyes.
Apart from books, the house was also now full of dogs. I had seen three or four lying in the entrance as I came in. I thought they were strays, until I saw a tiny one come out from between the stacks, following Eliezer, and then three more sleeping among the piles. They were runty and mangy, and smelled horrible. The stench permeated everything, including Eliezer. The tiny dog began to bark, sharp yips that didn’t stop until Eliezer shouted, “Nachi! Enough! Shut up!” as he lifted her up in his arms.
“Compañero, you wouldn’t have any medical texts, would you?” asked a young student who had come in to browse.
“No, we don’t sell those here,” Eliezer replied curtly.
“And that radio, how much is it?”
Eliezer was now also selling old radios; models from the forties and fifties were on display on a table next to speeches by Fidel.
“They sell in dollars. Thirty each.”
“Thirty dollars!” the student repeated, aghast.
“They’re more than fifty years old,” Eliezer said, but the student was already out the door and didn’t hear him.
“Naaachi!” Eliezer said in that voice people often use when talking to babies, high pitched and childlike, as he rocked the dog in his arms. “I know you’re jealous, but I have to speak to customers.” Then, to me: “Do you know why she’s called Nachi? There are two of them, both puppies I picked up when they were abandoned. This one is Nachi, which is China transposed. Do you know why? China is Raúl Castro’s nickname. Her sister is Elfid, which is Fidel transposed. You see? Two female dogs named after the two brothers. Do you know how I got them? Before the old couple died, they rented a room to a jinetera. After they got sick, I didn’t want any trouble with the police, so I threw her out. Can you imagine? They accuse me of being a pimp and throw me in jail. She left behind two puppies in the wardrobe. She hid them there so the old couple wouldn’t find them. And then she was just going to leave them there to die. You see how mean people can be? I found them and thought: I don’t want the same thing to happen to them that has happened to us under the Castros.”
A dogfight had erupted at my feet: a black one leaped on the back of a white one, biting her, as a gray one tried unsuccessfully to get into the game. The three tousled and nipped.
“Let me show you something,” Eliezer said, lifting Nachi way up.
“Isn’t that right, Nachi?” Eliezer said, his lips practically against the dog’s snout, as if about to kiss her, speaking in such a piercing voice that it made him sound like a kid having a tantrum. “You’ll never snitch on me, right, Nachi?”
Nachi—who was up above Eliezer’s head—raised her snout to the ceiling and, as Eliezer continued to ask, “Isn’t that right, Nachi?” let out a long, deep howl, as if responding to her master’s exhortations with that sharp, interminable complaint, her desperate wail filling the bookstore.
“You’ll never snitch on me, right, Nachi?” Eliezer repeated as the dog howled louder and louder. Some of the other dogs had woken from their slumber and joined in her melancholy yowl. Wooow wooow wooow wooow. Wooow wooow wooow wooow. A cacophony of dogs howled and barked around Eliezer as he continued to ask, “Isn’t that right, Nachi?” and glanced down in amusement at this canine circus, which lasted for several minutes, ending only when he brought his arms down and set Nachi on the floor.
“Did you see that?” he asked. “For me, taking in strays is a form of resistance. Can you imagine if State Security found out that my dogs are named Nachi and Elfid? What I’m doing is exposing how bad the people have it, so bad that we live like dogs. I live like my dogs: I sleep on the books like they do—over there, look, on that table by the entrance—and I eat what they eat. Whatever I earn, I spend on food for them and to pay the guajiros who help out. What I’m doing is showing the mess that this country is in, while they try to hide it. Look, let me show you something. Come.”
Eliezer plunged into the mountains of books that filled what had once been the old couple’s living room. I followed him, both of us treading over mounds of paper, advancing slowly as we stepped on copies of La historia me absolverá, Raúl’s speeches, El socialismo y el hombre nuevo, all of which seemed to have been strategically placed under our feet. We finally reached the room at the back, where I had visited Eliezer the first time I came. He opened the door, and the room was unrecognizable: it was now roofless—up above you could see the blue Caribbean sky—and at my feet, lit up by rays of sunshine, was a pile of rubble: bricks, plaster, and cement.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The roof capsized,” Eliezer said with his impish smile.
I saw Eliezer regularly over the few months I was there. I would stop to say hello whenever I went by the Hotel Habana Libre or Coppelia. Well, not always. Only when I had a free afternoon, because one needs hours to visit that world of books and dogs and guajiros. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I would look at my watch upon leaving and discover that I had just spent four hours in there.
On every visit, I noticed slight, barely perceptible changes: one day a new dog would appear and the off-key concert of barking would become even more cacophonous; another day I would be met by a helper I’d never seen before, some young man newly arrived from Holguín or Camagüey, Santiago or Guantánamo; sometimes I would notice how much taller the mountains of books had grown; other times I spotted new cracks spidering up the bookstore walls. One day, exhausted by the heat of summer and the noise on La Rampa, I asked Eliezer to take me into the back room, now a roofless patio, just to get away from the mounds of books and packs of dogs for a few minutes. I noticed something different as we walked in: there was no more rubble on the floor; everything seemed tidier; you could see more of the sky.
“Did you notice?” he asked. “A couple of black guys stole my roof.”
“But the roof fell down. You told me it had capsized,” I replied.
“But the beams were still there, wooden beams. So one day, a couple of black guys come along and tell me they can sell them to buy concrete to put up a new roof. I said okay. In a single morning, they took out all the beams: took them down and carried them out as if they were pencils, up on their shoulders as if they didn’t weigh a thing. They never came back, and I was left with no roof and no beams. You can’t trust anyone in this country, much less the blacks.”
As we chatted, Eliezer’s new helper had come over. He was about twenty-five, short, athletic, with a face like a thug. His skin was tanned by the sun, and he was wearing the same uniform that all bookstore helpers wore: a sleeveless white T-shirt that left his shoulders and arms bare.
“Ever since the blacks stole my roof, he’s been my bodyguard,” Eliezer said, pointing to the young man who stood watching us with arms crossed. “He’s a police officer, but since they pay him a pittance, he comes here every afternoon and I pay him to look out for me.”
“Police? He looks like a nice guy, though.”
“Nice guy?” Eliezer laughed. “Reinier, show him.”
Reinier looked around and with a magic wave lifted the bottom of his T-shirt to reveal a muscular belly and a gun tucked into his waistband. I barely caught the glimmer of metal: he immediately pulled his shirt back down and looked mischievously at us.
It was the first time I had ever seen a gun in Cuba.
“With a police officer from Sancti Spíritus here at the bookstore, we’re safe. Plus, if you could only see,” Eliezer whispered in my ear, loud enough that Reinier could hear, “what a way he’s got with the foreigners. Yesterday, an Italian took him home and started to scream when he took out his gun. Pericoloso, pericoloso, he screamed, as if he were about to be killed. Later he loved it and kept cooing, il fucile, il fucile. Isn’t that right?”
“Ey,” Reinier smiled at us.
“The cookie one?” Reinier asked.
The catalog for the Sex and the City exhibit, curated by Píter Ortega, is a thin white pamphlet, printed in color on glossy paper, that includes the typical homoerotic photos and kitschy paintings that appear in gay art shows around the world. After several pages of inoffensive nudes, toward the end, is the work that unleashed the censors’ ire: a photographic series called La galleta, or “The cookie.” It shows a group of muscular, dark-skinned young males, without a stitch on, gathered in a circle, like a football huddle. The first photo shows them stroking biceps and triceps; the second one, kissing; in the third photo, one of them is holding a very common brand of cookie, a thin, round biscuit, in his hand; the fourth shows one of them holding his penis above the cookie; and the fifth captures the instant a whitish spurt drenches the biscuit. In the last image, one of the men—green eyes, pert nose—devours the soggy pastry.
“How about that cookie!” Eliezer said. “There was no way those photos could be printed here in Cuba: no printer would dare risk being arrested for pornography. That’s when the Norwegian ambassador stepped in and had them printed abroad, in his country. Then when the show opened, all hell broke loose! As you can imagine, all of the fags in Havana wanted to see this famous cookie, and the gallery became one big gay pride space. But the party didn’t last. Within a few days, the police ordered the show closed. The catalogs sold out; this is the only one left in Cuba. Take it. It’s dangerous for me to have it here. More so now that State Security has come by.”
“State Security came to see you? Why? You’ve got your entrepreneur’s license.”
“They came to ask me about the Spaniard who was killed. Because he used to come here . . .”
Cuba on the Verge Page 23