by Achy Obejas
After a month, my aunt’s patience was finally exhausted. I still remember the night I arrived and found nothing to eat for me. Where there had always been a pot, there was just a note telling me they’d bought me a ticket on the next morning’s train. That’s when I knew I was truly alone in Havana.
Without asking questions, I took my suitcase and left. I headed for Prado Boulevard and made myself comfortable on a marble bench in front of the Hotel Sevilla. The laurel trees made a fine roof over my abandoned self. I put the suitcase near my feet and crossed my arms under my neck and settled in to sleep.
I was just drifting off when I heard voices coming from the roots of the laurel trees. It was a debate about the previous Christmas, about curses that had befallen the city.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
I thought about the kinds of dreams hunger provokes. Yet that endless conversation had a strangely calming effect on me. The voices seemed to be coming from a megaphone. Now and again, they were drowned out by a droning laugh.
“Eh!…What are you? Fish? Angels? What?” I pleaded.
I threw myself down at one of the laurel trees and put my ear to its roots, where I could now hear a jazz band, Glenn Miller and his “String of Pearls.” I stayed there a long time, my face resting on the ground. Finally, I heard a bizarre dialogue. “That hive of humanity that lives up there, that Havana that is enslaved by the light, will one day build a monument to our catechistic work, a monument to our galleys which sail the earth’s furrows, a monument to our warehouses chock-full of salt and coffee, cured meat and garlic, brimming with commerce and customer service, filled with the soundtrack of the world’s life.”
It was at that moment that I heard the scraping sound of my suitcase being lifted from the park bench on the Prado.
I saw two people fleeing with it into the night through the street next to the Sevilla. Laughter rose from the bowels of the earth, and I uttered one of those words reserved for when you’re miserable. My voice was completely drowned out by the sound of the jazz band.
I didn’t sleep that night. I spent it running up and down the Prado and Central Park. A lot of people think that if you’re cross-eyed, you see objects differently. But I saw the city as it really was. Even though I’d only seen it for about one month, I could, in an instant, sense danger. There was no light in the public areas. All I could make out was the marquee of the Hotel Inglaterra. The García Lorca Theater seemed like a sylph’s castle. The Payret movie house sign featured Catherine Deneuve. The capitol building was the city’s ultimate reflection. Central Park looked like it does anytime people go out to find the latest gossip. Black guys in colorful shirts looked like they were AWOL from a carnival. Women wearing dresses made by pious seamstresses on Monte Street strolled through the shadows. Sodomites tattooed trees with men’s hearts, and other creatures of the night lost their money on the Chinese lottery.
I was walking through the forbidden city. My hunger chased after the smells, my guts doing somersaults.
A mulatto made me an offer from his selection of sweets: “C’mon, big man, buy a little piece of rum cake.”
“Pain and fate,” I muttered like a fool.
I was thinking about what I’d just said, that phrase that I’d always heard coming from my mother when talking about human travails. Havana was so different from my hometown, the sounds of the night so alien. My hometown didn’t have the nightlife that now spread before me, only a few early commuters taking the train to Camagüey. The great city was like a shop window on display for those who were denied the light of day, creatures who lived in caves in the tenements, in shacks where the daughters’ beauty was discovered too soon by the fathers, shacks where the sky was never seen, where the sun was a curse on the law of switchblades and blood, the law of an Old Havana made for carriages and slaves, for light from bitter firewood, a city still getting used to the workings of the modern era.
In the farthest corner of the park, there was a newsstand with little or no sign of life, a newsstand with an old man selling and buying old magazines: Nat King Cole singing at the Tropicana, Che Guevara with his visionary gaze, Camilo Cienfuegos astride his huge mount, the 1962 missile crisis, Khrushchev with a black showgirl on his arm…People bought the magazines that were the biographies of their souls. And me, I was running from those experiences, from the photos that weren’t of me, and yet were all about me. I wandered aimlessly by the doorways of the tobacco factories, still hearing the echo of the fluttering of leaves from Pinar del Río, the specter of the binnacles whose treasures were Romeo y Julietas, Partagás, Montecristos.
I searched for the Prado again via the sleepy routes of the buildings in ruins, and then, once there, just killed time until it was morning and I had to take my train back to the pastoral world of the provinces, back to my mother, back to the habit of pissing every night at 10 and going to bed, beaten down by obedience and pretense.
I was now standing right in front of the marble bench from which my suitcase had been stolen, the laurel trees placid in the absence of Glenn Miller.
“Get your peanut brittle right here!” chanted a dwarf at the corner of the Hotel Sevilla. He repeated his mantra like a suicide: “Hey, kid, peanut brittle!”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t have one red cent, that I felt like the biggest loser and nothing could save me, except maybe the train, which would take me far away from Havana.
Then the dwarf crossed the street and stood right in front of me, grinning, wearing a corduroy cap, giant shoes, and muslin pants.
“Here,” he said, extending a piece of peanut brittle my way. “It’s on the house. C’mon, c’mon, take it.”
I looked at him and he looked at me.
“Who do you sell to at night?” I asked himy.
“No one. Nighttime’s just fun.”
He left, intoning his chant.
Everyone here’s nuts, I said to myself, and looked out at the abandoned streets, where the only sound was a distant voice coming from the upper floors of the Sevilla, a woman’s voice wailing because of the loneliness that boleros provoke, then this was followed by quieter words of comfort, coming, I think, from another woman.
I woke when a crow’s shit splattered next to me. The sun was coming up and the crow seemed polished with tar. Sparrows flew from their hiding places to initiate anonymous battles in the laurel trees. I checked my pockets and realized I still had the train ticket, the ticket that would spirit me away from all hope.
I started to make my way to the train station when I saw the Prado had come alive. People hurried from one side of the boulevard to the other aimlessly, lining up at bus stops to board nonexistent buses. On my way to the trains, there wasn’t a single restaurant open, not the slightest aroma of coffee. As day broke, the city was a mere geographical point, with no odors, only a fresh breeze that blew in from the sea; that was probably the only smell: the morning sea, awakening.
“God exists,” a fifty-something woman said as she passed me near the station.
“So does the devil,” I replied, not giving her another thought.
I was soon showing my ticket to the security guard at the door of the station lobby, then standing in line for the window where they would verify that the ticket was mine. I took out my ID, my stamped photo, which showed my crossed eyes. The woman looked at me, then at the photo, checking my ID number as if it were the number of some domesticated animal, my height in inches, the nervous tic on my mouth, my travel permit.
“The train will leave early for the first time in fifty-two years,” the woman said ecstatically. “Go to platform three, coach fifty-two, seat eighty-one. If you’re traveling with food, it may be confiscated; no animals are allowed; the traveler’s responsibilities include…”
I stopped listening and made my way to the entrance to platform three, where they asked for my ticket again and insisted on seeing my ID. This time it was a short, fat man with a graying mustache. Finally, with a little push, he let me through and I ran d
own the platform, always terrified that I’ll be late for everything. Where was coach fifty-two? All were there but that one. I started screaming. A crowd of about thirty gathered around me. The locomotive whistled its final warning.
“Coach fifty-two!” I demanded.
The fat man came up to me and explained that because of an unforgivable error, they had not hooked up coach fifty-two. Later, with an asthmatic voice, he told us our fares would be refunded and we could leave the next morning. I drew up to my full height and demanded to see the supervisor, anybody, to claim coach fifty-two. Pulling on his mustache, the man muttered something about the effects of the imperialistic blockade, the need to have a conscience and a spirit of sacrifice.
“Travel tomorrow, folks.”
I decided not to go on. Nobody was paying attention to me anyway. I went back to the cashier and the same woman who’d boasted about an early departure now gave me a refund for my ticket. It barely totaled twenty pesos. At that moment, I reached a decision. I would not leave Havana. Maybe my destiny rested among the two million souls who lived facing the Gulf. If I died trying to make a go of it, nothing of value would be lost. Who would care about a cross-eyed guy? Who would cry for a cross-eyed guy? My mother would be the only one who suffered, but she’d get over it. It would be like when my father died. Days of grieving, days of mourning, and then Christian comfort.
I left the station, headed nowhere in particular. Since I’ve always been a dreamer, I convinced myself someone would take pity on me. But in the meantime, where would I go? Hunger kept tapping at my stomach. I thought that with my twenty pesos I might be able to buy one of those fish fritters they sell down by Puerto Avenue. I only had to go down a few winding alleyways and I’d soon be there. But as I was about to set off, I saw the same dwarf who’d given me the peanut brittle that morning, and he was now standing on top of a manhole cover sticking out of the street like a metal helmet. He recognized me and waved his corduroy cap. I went up to greet him, but he was muttering under his breath. He was saying something about young people, that it was impossible to recruit them these days, that the chosen few would be fewer each time, that the Grail would have to import creatures from another planet.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, “just an old dwarf’s crazy ramblings.” Then he gave me another piece of peanut brittle. I was grateful, but my hunger was calling for more. Nonetheless, I ate it with the same frantic appetite as before, and he asked me where I was headed. I told him what had happened and shared my determination to stay in Havana.
He immediately asked me, “Do you dare work for a dwarf?”
“Just tell me what to do and I’ll start right now,”
I answered. “I’m going to take a chance with you,” he said.
I was about to tell him I was a good man when he suddenly leaned down and removed the manhole cover, reached in, and—I don’t know how, through what act of magic—retrieved a package.
He looked both ways then spoke, pronouncing each word very carefully. “Someone I trust has to deliver this package to Aramburu 111. I can’t move from this corner, maybe you’ll understand someday. I trust you can complete this task; your future depends on it.”
He paused, took off his cap, scratched his head, and talked about the forces that govern the underground, about the palaces King Solomon had built after his death under the cities.
“Take it or leave it,” he said.
I grabbed the package and felt it rattle like an old treasure chest.
“Sausages! Inoffensive sausages!” the dwarf chanted, overcome by a strange giddiness. “Be very careful. At the first sign of trouble, just toss the package at the feet of the police; they won’t follow you then.”
That’s how the dwarf pushed me into my first black market venture, which I completed nicely. Of course, my nerves were on edge the whole time I moved along the streets. Whenever I saw a cop, I got ready to toss the damn sausages at his feet. But I arrived on Aramburu Street without any problems, rang the doorbell on number 111, and was received by an old couple. They grilled me about a password I didn’t know. I explained that it was my first day on the job. They said that whenever I visited them, I had to say, “Pontius Pilate!” Then they led me to the living room and opened the package. It held about thirty cans of frankfurters.
“Here,” the old woman said. I saw two twenty-dollar bills and two singles.
I headed back to the train station but there was no trace of the dwarf. One of the taxi drivers said he’d seen him getting into a blue car. I didn’t know what to do with the money. It was past noon and I wanted to sit down to a real meal, to sit at a table and stuff myself, like I hadn’t done since I’d left my hometown. With that in mind—more daydream than reality—I went back to Puerto Avenue, not via the Old Havana shortcuts but through Central Park and the Prado, which at that hour was burning with a heat that scorched every corner.
Once on Puerto Avenue, after some haggling with a woman in a colonial doorway, I was able to buy a fritter and a tamarind soda from an illegal vendor. From there I went window shopping at the tourist places around the cathedral and became enchanted by the lighters with little scenes of Havana on them, and by the pens which showed naked rumba dancers in oily seas when you shook them, and by the racks of fashion magazines from all over the world. I toured the Bodeguita del Medio and scrawled my name into the graffiti on the bathroom wall. Then I went back to Central Park and saw the Catherine Deneuve movie at the Payret.
When I got out, sunset was coming on, and I moved down to the docks again. With the little money that was left, I ordered a double rum at the Dos Hermanos Tavern. From the bar, I could see the ferries to Regla and Casablanca, their passengers coming and going. There was a lot of serious drinking going on in the bar. The stevedores drank bottles of that hellish rum as if it was water, the bartender shouted out orders in a lingo I couldn’t understand, and the women that came in and out resembled characters from a Japanese comic book, their tight dresses like badly rolled cigarettes.
“Take off those glasses,” one them said to me provocatively. She was a mulatta with Chinese blood who was supposedly about thirty-five years old, not at all unattractive, although tourists no longer looked her way; she was forgotten in the game of international flags of love. She’d put on weight and her hips were square.
“I’m cross-eyed,” I told her bravely. I lowered my glasses and she looked at my eyes, scrutinized them, and said that cross-eyed guys brought her luck.
She touched my head with an exorcist’s flair meant to transmit that luck, then turned around and shouted something like, “This guy’s cross-eyed!”
Two other women came and touched my head. The gentle bartender refilled my glass of rum. A black stevedore came up to me and told me about a blind virgin on an altar in a church near the outskirts of the village of Guanabacoa. “In the wilderness, right on the edge of the jungle, there’s a chapel with a virgin that’s said to be from Toledo who cures anything that’s wrong with the eyes,” he said.
The black guy left and the Chinese mulatta said he was a bullshitter. She ordered a drink and made the bartender fill my glass again.
“Does the virgin exist?” I asked.
“God only knows,” she said.
To make a long story short, I got the drunkest I’ve ever been in my life. At 10 o’clock, I left that hole in the wall with those wasted women and other port dwellers, arm in arm, everybody touching my head. Surrounded by so much alcohol, my only concern was those forty-two dollars that, if the dwarf never showed up again, would be my only salvation.
In that state, we strolled down Puerto Avenue, leaving behind the customs office and the old stock market. The Chinese mulatta shamelessly licked my eyes like a windshield wiper, then stuck her tongue in my ears, between my teeth; her tongue and my tongue parried…that mulatta’s tongue and that deadly alcohol. Right at the Point, with Morro Castle and its lighthouse before us, she stuck her hand in my
pants, shaking me like a bottle of elixir; I practically overflowed in front of all of Havana.
“C’mon, fill me with your suds,” she begged me.
But her voice worked against her and made me bolt. I don’t know what lonely thoughts or fear caused me to dash toward the Prado and leave the mulatta behind, down to the Malecón, that barrier between the ocean and the city’s captive souls. I only paused when I got to the Hotel Sevilla. I took refuge in its doorway, next to the dwarf in the corduroy cap and his card table display of peanut brittle.
Right away, he saw the strange trance that had overcome me and said, “Hey kid, kid…”
But I was jabbering about the virgin who cures sick eyes, that virgin in Guanabacoa, the virgin from Toledo. Demanding to know if she existed, I kept moaning, “Hey, dwarf…that’s it, dwarf…c’mere, dwarf…”
Then he offered me the third peanut brittle in less than a day and I began to eat. “Did they pay you?” he asked.
I dug around in my pockets and I gave him his forty-two dollars. He took the bills, held them up to the moonlight, checked them closely, and handed me two dollars.
“Your pay…hee, hee, hee…your first pay as a man.”
I started to vomit and splattered the dwarf’s muslin pants; all life was draining from me, and in the midst of all that, he said, “They call me Pascualito, now don’t drink anymore—it’s not allowed in our business.”
I made my way to the bench that had been my first refuge when my Aunt Buza threw me out of the house, and I leaned on one of the laurel trees. I could hear the dwarf shouting at me from the Sevilla, saying we’d meet tomorrow at the station, and to be there. I spewed another bilious black stew between the roots of the laurel trees and detected a conversation coming from beneath the earth, and somebody shouting a song of praise to vegetables and grains. Glenn Miller and his impetuous music filled my head’s every nook and cranny. I finally lay down on that marble park bench, thinking about the crow’s shit that would surely awaken me at daybreak.