Havana Noir

by Achy Obejas

  It’s nighttime and I fall asleep.

  The sun’s fucked up, intense. My head hurts a little. I’m really sleepy. It’s been awhile since Yovanoti has said anything about what he’s gonna do when he gets to La Yuma. He’s thrown up so much he doesn’t have anything left to throw up. He’s just oozing green spit. El Cao says we should think about good things, we shouldn’t think about how thirsty we are. That’s hard to do. I think about sucking Vanessa the blonde’s tits and then I think about being in church and then about the corner. Later, still, I think about the mulatta’s pussy, the one from the movie. And, to be honest, I do feel better, I even get a hard-on.

  When El Cao speaks up again, he says, “Now it’s nighttime again.”

  Yovanoti starts to cry and El Cao slaps him twice. So that he’ll calm down. Then Yovanoti throws up a little more. There’s not much moon tonight and I can’t see anything; I don’t stare at anything either.

  When I wake up, I see the sun and I see the helicopter. It doesn’t look like the Cuban police. From way up there, with a bullhorn, they shout down something in English. When I look around the boat, I see only El Cao, just lying there, fainted, I think. Yovanoti is nowhere to be seen. To think he was the one who most wanted to go live in Miami. Tough luck. I really need a chug of rum right about now. I splash some water in El Cao’s face and he wakes up, but he stays down.

  “We’re saved,” I tell him, but I’m very sleepy again. I open my eyes real wide and look up at the sun, just as if I were back on my corner, and I sing a little of that song about the bitter smell of desperation.

  Translation by Achy Obejas

  1Cuban slang for the U.S.

  PART II

  ESCAPE TO NOWHERE

  THE DINNER

  BY CAROLINA GARCÍA-AGUILERA

  Flores

  1992

  Señor Luis, I walked all over Havana, I promise, I went everywhere, all over—but nothing!” Eladio Martínez was close to tears as he stood wringing his hands on a rag of a handkerchief that was once beautiful, beautiful linen. “I couldn’t find any!”

  Eladio reached out for the railing around the terrace, balanced himself, and then slowly raised his feet—first one, then the other. He wanted his employer to see that the soles of his shoes had eroded almost completely, so much so that the paper he’d lined them with was also worn through in places, and the balls and heels of his feet were walking directly on the ground.

  “Just like the other times, Señor Luis, nothing!”

  “Thank you, Eladio, I know you tried your best—it’s not your fault. As always, I appreciate all your work.” Luis RodríguezLópez looked down at the shoes and shook his head in sorrow. Lifting his head then, as if it were heavy, he gave Eladio a wan smile. “I’m so sorry about your shoes. I’ll see what can be done; maybe get you a new pair to replace those.”

  Even if Luis had been able to afford to purchase a new pair of shoes, it would be highly unlikely he would find them, as footwear was either in very short supply or priced out of reach in present day Cuba. Life in the Special Period was brutal, a never-ending struggle for survival. Both men knew that Eladio’s loss in trying to accomplish what Luis had asked of him was permanent.

  Eladio raised his right hand, and then slowly, as discreetly as possible, dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. Even in such extreme heat, gentlemen did not show sweat. But in the steaming air—and wiping with a bit of fabric worn to a fragile lace—fresh sweat continued to pour down his face.

  “I would appreciate that, Señor Luis,” Eladio replied, though he knew there was no chance that the señor would be able to fulfill his promise. “New shoes would be nice.” They had both been living such a duplicitous life, pretending all was as before for so long.

  Luis nodded. “You look so very hot and tired. Please, go inside the house and drink some water, and rest.”

  “Thank you, Señor Luis, I will.” Eladio bowed—the habit was ingrained. “Before I go inside, is there anything I may do for you?”

  “No, Eladio, I don’t need anything right now, thank you very much. I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer myself. But you go now, before the heat and your exertion make you ill.”

  Eladio had worked for the Rodríguez-López family for more than forty years, but the relationship between the two old men was more like friends, especially as he had not been paid for the last thirty years. Still, a sense of rank remained, and manifested itself in their formality with each other.

  At this point in their lives—they were both seventy years old, their sunset years—Eladio and Luis were so similar in appearance that one could easily have been mistaken for the other. They had both once been over six feet tall but they had each lost a few inches with age. And, as was the case with most ordinary Cubans—because they never had enough to eat—they were both quite thin, and their clothes hung loose on their slight frames.

  Ever since 1959, when Fidel Castro’s revolutionary army swept into Havana, life in Cuba had been difficult for both of them. For the past three years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, life had become almost unbearable. The Soviet government had kept Cuba afloat with fuel, food, and supplies for decades; its demise left the people of the island to cope as best they could. Power shortages and blackouts occurred daily, worsening the situation. The Cuban government was no longer able to feed its citizens—the most basic needs were unmet—and as a result, Cubans had to fend for themselves and scrounge for food.

  Castro tried to rally his compatriots by proclaiming, “Socialism or death!” but both were a hard sell. Rather than choose Socialism, a number of Cubans had hurled themselves onto rafts and taken their chances on the high seas, risking drowning or sharks, rather than continuing to struggle at near-starvation.

  But Luis and Eladio had managed to escape some of the ravages of time and privation, though: The eyes of both men still sparkled with intelligence.

  On this exceptionally hot July afternoon in 1992, Luis had spent most of the afternoon outside, sitting in his favorite wicker rocking chair on the terrace of his family’s house, fanning himself, trying to escape the oppressive heat. For the past three hours he had been awaiting Eladio’s arrival, wanting to hear his report. He knew what the other man was going to tell him, but the truth was he had nothing else to do.

  The Rodríguez-López house, which was located in the Flores section of the city, had once been beautiful and majestic. Unfortunately, it had fallen into such disrepair that it was difficult to imagine what it had once been. To those few individuals who still visited, the sad state of the house and its grounds brought to mind an aging but still beautiful woman: She had good bones and erect carriage, and one wanted desperately to do something, anything, to help her regain at least part of her once famous beauty. Whatever paint was still on the walls was so faded that it was impossible to tell what its original color had been. The deadly combination of neglect, mold, and mildew had caused chunks of plaster to fall from the walls and ceilings with terrible consequences. The few treasures—items of only personal value, mainly Luis’s photo album—were kept wrapped in layers of old newspaper. Even in such dismal circumstances, there was the hope that the house wasn’t too far gone to be restored to her former life.

  Although Eladio dusted and swept several times daily, his efforts made no noticeable difference, as there was always a white layer of fine dust everywhere. He kept on, with as much fresh energy and vigor as his seventy-year-old body would allow.

  With the passing years, the physical deterioration of the house was such that gaping holes would appear all over, creating bizarre, puzzling patterns in the walls and the floors, as if whoever had built it had run out of materials to finish the job. There was nothing Eladio could do about that either, except to watch it happen.

  And it wasn’t just internal damage that had caused so much destruction. In earlier times, only hard, sustained rains could cause the ceiling to leak; but because the structure had been so weakened, lately even the lightest
rain would cause damage, adding to the slow wrecking of the structure.

  The large garden surrounding the house was now a clutter of broken fountains, toppled stone statues, overgrown bushes, and fallen trees sunk in the tangle of weeds. Throughout the years, so much debris had dropped into the swimming pool, filling it to the rim, that sometimes the residents of the home forgot it had ever existed. For them, the state of the house and garden was heartbreaking, and it was difficult to believe that the property had been featured in magazines as being one of the most beautiful of pre-revolutionary Havana.

  Although the house was very large, only three individuals—Luis Rodríguez-López, his wife María Eugenia, and Eladio Martínez, their servant—had lived there for more than forty years. It hadn’t always been that way, however. All three could still clearly recall the days prior to the Revolution, when the house had been filled with noises from the kitchen, with the clacking of ladies’ shoe heels against the marble floors—the times when it had not been unusual to have thirty or forty family members come over for Sunday lunch, after the noon mass at Santa Rita. The house, built in the Napoleonic style, had been in the Rodríguez-López family for more than one hundred years, and if the current owner had his way, would continue to be so for the next hundred.

  The fact that Luis believed so strongly that the house should remain in his family was the primary reason he had refused to go into exile with his family when they had all left Cuba in the early ’60s. For him, the house was much more than just a structure; it represented a way of life that he refused to let go of—for Luis, to leave the home would mean forfeiting his family’s history.

  As the Castro government would immediately confiscate—without any form of compensation, of course—the homes of any Cubans who fled the country, Luis knew the only way to keep the house in Rodríguez-López hands was to stay and protect it. Even so, remaining in the home was no surefire guarantee that the three of them wouldn’t be evicted, or be forced to open the house for others to move in with them. He’d heard stories of that happening to other families, and each case had made him more determined than ever to avoid those scenarios.

  Staying was better, Luis believed, than just walking out. As if losing their properties were not enough, those owners who left Cuba were forced by law to hand over the keys to the government upon their departure. Fearing that one day he would need the knowledge, Luis had become increasingly obsessed with the laws that governed all aspects of Cuban property rights under the Castro regime. Since he, María Eugenia, and even Eladio lived in the house for more than three years, supposedly they could not be evicted. Eladio, by virtue of having lived there so long, had the same rights (in other countries, those were referred to as squatters’ rights) as the actual owners of the property. In truth, as long as the three continued living there, they could feel reasonably secure—or as secure as anyone could be under the present regime—that they wouldn’t find themselves out on the street, homeless, especially since they were all over sixty-five years old, the cutoff age for eviction. Yet knowing how mercurial and arbitrary the Cuban government could be, Luis worried nonetheless.

  He knew he could make some extra money by renting out some of the bedrooms—an illegal but commonly practiced activity of the cash-strapped residents of Havana, especially those who lived in or near tourist areas. Luis feared, however, that this might jeopardize his ownership of the home. Suppose whoever he rented to would not move out after three years and became another owner? Also, the idea of strangers living in a house that had been the home of eight generations of the Rodríguez-López family was truly distasteful to him. Special Period or not, he knew his ancestors would turn in their graves if he were to do that.

  María Eugenia hadn’t originally been as attached to the house as her husband. It hadn’t been her family’s home, and she had only lived there, in the old times, for a few months as a bride. Still, she had married Luis for life, and if “life” meant staying in Communist Cuba with him and saying goodbye to her family and friends, then that’s what she would do. She knew that nowadays her husband mostly lived in the past—even while looking forward to the future, for the day when the nightmare that was Castro’s Cuba and this wretched Special Period would end and a more civilized, refined life would return.

  As the Rodríguez-López family had not been blessed with children, the couple was on their own, except for Eladio’s assistance. Eladio had never married—he had gone to work for the family as a young man, rising from junior assistant in the kitchen to chief butler, his position when Castro came into power—and so he too had no children, at least none that he was aware of. Like his employers, he was on his own.

  Of course, all three had numerous friends and relatives, but most had long ago left and gone into exile in different countries. Visitors to the house were few. The only ones who still came around were Luis’s three oldest friends: Roberto Cruz, Ricardo Mendoza, and Eduardo Menocal, all of whom, for various reasons, had chosen to remain in Havana.

  In pre-Castro Cuba, members of certain upper-class families had been friends for generations, and their offspring were expected to continue the tradition, even if they loathed each other. The difference in the case of Luis, Roberto, Ricardo, and Eduardo was that they genuinely liked each other.

  From kindergarten through high school, they had been classmates at Belén, a Catholic school for boys in Havana—ironically, the same one Castro had attended. And because they had been outstanding students, they’d gone on to Ivy League universities in the United States: Luis and Eduardo to Harvard, Roberto to Yale, and Ricardo to Princeton. Since the colleges were all located in the northeast, relatively near New York City, it hadn’t been difficult for them to get together frequently. They were as close as brothers, and had been ushers at each other’s weddings and, on occasion, gone into business together.

  They would often discuss their friendship while lounging on one of their boats, after having tossed aside their on-land seriousness and consumed many beers. They had decided somewhere along the way that the strong bond they enjoyed could be attributed to their mutual love of the ocean. As Cuba was surrounded by the beautiful waters of the Caribbean, it was not surprising that children—those of the upper class, at any rate—learned how to swim almost as soon as they began to walk. The four friends dabbled in almost every sport that related to the ocean, but their two favorites were fishing and crew.

  This choice was no surprise to anyone who knew them, since they each had a strong competitive streak. The four of them rowed so well as a team that when they trained and entered competitions—even as schoolboys they crewed against grown men—they invariably won. The more they won, the more they enjoyed rowing. They tried to stay in the best shape possible, training after school and on weekends.

  For practical reasons, they couldn’t keep up that schedule—though they wanted to—during the four years they were away at college, but they still fit in rowing during vacations. Being overly serious—apart from their water adventures—none of the four had much of a social life, so they used that free time to dedicate themselves as much as possible to the sport.

  For members of the Havana Rowing Club, their sports club, there was no higher achievement than the coveted gold medal given to the team that won the regatta which, in the Olympic spirit, was held every four years. The friends knew that if they were to win the medal, they would be looked at differently: Instead of bookworms, they would be recognized as athletes, as jocks. Because they were as ambitious as they were talented, the friends set their sights on winning the race, which would be in August 1950.

  It took a lot of early morning hours of rowing practice, but not only did they win the medal, they did it in a shell—a boat—they had built themselves. In the years prior to the race, they’d endured the comments of others who made fun of them and their boat. But confident that one day they would prove their detractors wrong, they persevered—and they were vindicated one cloudless morning when, at the age of twentythree, they were awarded t
he medal.

  They won not only because they were superb athletes but because they had faith in each other, and in their boat. That day, in the summer of 1950, when they came in first, was, and remained, the most important day of their long lives. They would never admit it to anyone else, but having won that race meant more to them than anything else—wives, children, family, professional successes. It had been a perfect day in an increasingly imperfect world.

  Whenever they’d gotten together in the forty-two years since the race, Ricardo, Roberto, Eduardo, and Luis would relive that one glorious morning when they had defled all odds and set out in La Milagrosa—the boat they had lovingly, patiently, and reverently built with their own hands—and passed the finish line far ahead of those who’d laughed. That day, they had celebrated their victory by throwing a huge party at the Rodríguez-López house, feasting on seafood heaped on enormous platters: lobster, shrimp, Moro crabs—all of which they had caught themselves the day before. For, in addition to being outstanding rowers, the friends were exceptional fishermen.

  Through the years, as often as time permitted, they would meet—early on weekend mornings, just as dawn was breaking—at the marina where their boats were docked, and jump onto whichever vessel was next in their rotation, and motor out to different diving spots. They would drop anchor and jump off the boat, emerging only when they were holding a lobster, or a crab, or a net full of shrimp.

  Sometimes they wouldn’t wait to get back to land to eat their catch—usually the hapless lobsters were first choice. They would break out the bottles of rum, and then, properly lubricated, they would drop the live creatures into a big pot of boiling water they had prepared earlier. After eating the fresh lobster meat out on the rolling sea, they would return to Havana by 11 o’clock in the morning—happy, laughing, sunburned, and slightly drunk.