Havana Noir

by Achy Obejas

  “What’s the deal with Mahler? I mean, why do you guys even put up with him?”

  Dionisio grinned. “Malía, you don’t believe he’s part of the family?”

  “No, I don’t think you guys can stand him—which is why I don’t get why you let him think that he is.”

  Rocky cleared her throat. “It’s another one of those Cubed things,” she said.

  “What did you call him when I first explained it to you?” Dionisio asked her.

  “Pet foreigner,” Rocky said in English.

  “That’s right, he’s our pet foreigner,” Dionisio repeated.

  “Your what?”

  “Our pet foreigner,” he repeated, relishing the English through his laughter. “It’s every Cuban family’s aspiration to have one. See, we need someone who can travel back and forth, bring us things, bring us dollars, and remind us that there is another world.”

  “One of the pet foreigner’s obligations,” Rocky chimed in, “is also to give hope.”

  “And you don’t count?” I asked pointedly.

  “Sometimes, yes,” she said.

  “But sometimes not,” said Dionisio, now screwing up his face with mock concern. “Because, frankly, these days she doesn’t bring in much more in real dollars than a well-connected Cuban. Yes, we get wasabi and ukulele music, but no hulas—did I tell you?—she won’t grace us with a hula—”

  “That’s her job,” Rocky said, her chin aiming at me.

  “I’m not dancing hula here,” I said. “But—wait—you’re going off subject.”

  “Ah, yes, the pet foreigner. How is my English, eh?”

  “Diiiiiiiiiiiiiooooooooonisio!”

  “Yeah,” he said as he and Rocky laughed it up, slapping their chests and snapping their hands in the air. “Okay, so what can we do? He attached himself to us and we realized, here’s one lonely little leftist. So we took him in. Don’t get me wrong—there’s real affection there. And he is well-intentioned. You see, he really believes. He believes so much that he just can’t see why we need him.”

  “Or that you might be using him.”

  “Malía!” Rocky said, aghast.

  “Well, that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t you see that it’s mutual?” Rocky argued. “Don’t you see how Dionisio’s family authenticates his experience?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Dionisio literally put himself between us. He turned to Rocky. “Why pretend? Of course we’re using him.” Then he turned to me. “His services are invaluable, what he does for our hospitals and clinics. Do you realize every clinic in Chinatown has a computer now? And us—well, before Rocky, how else would we get medicine? Who would negotiate for us, even with other Cubans? Here people do for foreigners—for strangers—what they would not do for their own mothers.”

  Just then, Raúl stepped up, the squirming pink piglet in his arms, its unsuspecting mouth turned up. “Beautiful, no?” he asked as we left, bopping his head cheerfully.

  There is a terrible joke in Cuba which people perversely insisted on telling me over and over while I was visiting: A global conference is being held on the future for young people. The CNN reporter—all foreign TV reporters in Cuba seem to have morphed into CNN—asks a young Belgian, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The girl says, “A chemist!” The CNN reporter poses the question to a Chinese kid, who says, “An investment banker.” Finally, the CNN reporter asks the Cuban delegate. “Me?” says the boy, inevitably named Pepito. “I want to be a foreigner!”

  The joke’s tragedy is not just that it underscores Cuba’s obsequious deference to outsiders in order to survive, but also that it betrays history: Cubans—and my sister’s the proof—have never wanted to be anything but Cuban. Scattered to New York and Madrid, Tampa and Luanda, Miami, Moscow, and Honolulu, they hold onto their Cubanness with audacious caprice.

  But bizarrely, in Cuba, I told Rocky, it seemed Cubanness was diminished.

  “No, no, no,” she said, annoyed.

  “C’mon, it seems like Tom Mahler’s more interested in Cuba, more Cubed than most people here!”

  She sighed. “He’s a necessary evil, in spite of his good intentions. And that’s just for now. You’re missing the point. The idea, Malía, is that Cuba not turn into Hawai’i.”

  “Hawai’i? Please…there are worse fates.” I was appalled.

  And now it was Rocky’s turn to be amused. “Really? Because back in Hawai’i nee, hearing you and Mami and Papi, but especially you—with your Hawaiian language classes and your sovereignty speeches and your Pele—Hawai’i isn’t exactly paradise.”

  “By comparison? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s always worried that native Hawaiians will be wiped out by development and ‘immigration’ from the mainland? I mean, isn’t that part of the tragedy, that native Hawaiians are already outnumbered in their own land?”

  “But Rocky, there are no native Cubans!”

  “There are no indigenous, Malía, but what the hell do you think we are? What the hell do you think I am?”

  As it turned out, the luau came off fairly well. I’d brought spices for the pork, and between Dionisio and Rocky they’d found taro leaves and something they said was a butterfish (it didn’t look quite right to me but Rock swore by it). The Cubans were skeptical, made faces about it, but polished off every last shred of meat nonetheless. We also made lomi lomi salmon and cold mac salad, which didn’t seem to do much for them, but they were knocked out by our fried rice—not Hawaiian or Chinese but a Mercado family recipe that included all of those crazy influences (like huli huli sauce and chorizo). Tom Mahler ate with enthusiasm.

  “So long as he keeps eating, nothing to worry about,” Raúl whispered to me as his chin aimed at the family’s pet foreigner. The guests lounged about the courtyard, oblivious to the plastic-covered cement bags lining the walls.

  Most importantly, everybody loved Eddie and Myrna Kamae, both of them impish and kind: Eddie’s twinkly eyes nodded approvingly while sipping from his iced red wine, Myrna bravely trying on new Spanish phrases and laughing heartily. With them was Eddie’s accompanist, a boyishly handsome Hawaiian named Ocean, who the Cubans adored for his playfulness. After much eating and drinking, Eddie slipped his ukulele into his arms and—the Cubans again unabashedly skeptical—graced his fingers across its strings. As he played, the Cubans’ astonishment was obvious: Their mouths eased open as Eddie pulled sounds from that little box that not one of them had ever imagined. Clearly loving the way Eddie had upended expectations, Ocean grinned and followed on guitar. All the while, Mahler’s eyes glistened without his usual malice.

  “He plays the cuatro so well!” exclaimed Raúl, reappropriating the ukulele, if not for Cuba then for the generalized Caribbean.

  I don’t know how long Eddie and Ocean played. I know that I was flush with satisfaction, the closest to happiness I’d been since arriving in Havana. I looked up, past the enthralled group, leaned on Myrna’s shoulder, and found the sky. Like Honolulu, Havana glowed right back at the stars, a duel of lights canceling each other out in a shimmer. The air smelled of a dark sweetness, like molasses. And the faces, familiar to me now—even Mahler—were, I knew even then, the touchstones of future memories.

  “Ake a e kamanao e ike maka,” sang Eddie and Ocean. I closed my eyes and joined them: “Ia Waipi’o e kaulana nei.” The mind yearns to see / Waipi’o so famous.

  “What’s the song about?” Dionisio asked, leaning across Myrna to me. I looked around: Rocky was nowhere to be seen. He smiled, unconcerned.

  In English, I explained Waipi’o: its fecundity, its five deafening waterfalls, the tension between the water’s beauty and our volcano, how Pakaalana—the ancient place of refuge nestled in the valley that protected innocents during wars—is now nothing but a rumor. I didn’t tell him about all the weekend camping trips my family took to the Big Island and Waipi’o, trespassing onto what is n
ow private land to look for Pakaalana and other signs of Hawai’i’s glorious past. We’d pick opihi—those stubborn little limpets that attached themselves to rocks—by prying them off with knives. I loved them grilled over an open fire but Papi would just salt them, like the few natives left on the islands, and pop them into his mouth whole and fresh.

  “Huli aku nana i ke kai uli,” I whisper/sang, my eyes closed—Turn and gaze at the dark sea. “Ua nalo ka nani o Pakaalana…” The beauty of Pakaalana has vanished.

  When I lifted my lids, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Rocky was dancing hula, dipping and swaying, her torso liquid, fingers fluttering. Eddie, Myrna, and Ocean beamed but she was somewhere else: back in Hawai’i, back in misty Waipi’o perhaps.

  “Haina ia mai ana ka puana / Ua ike kumaka ia Waipi’o,” we sang as she turned her back, its slope a wave. Let the refrain be told / The mind has seen Waipi’o.

  The Cubans went nuts. They clapped and shouted. Rocky laughed. Then the policeman cousin started tapping out a rhythm on his chair. It had the same wooden tone as Hawaiian meles but I realized immediately he was building a rumba, the beat hiccupping, sparkling. Dionisio palmed his thighs. Mahler, who was squatting during Rocky’s hula, stood up and raised his arms in jubilation, as if the Cubans had won some kind of competition.

  I thought Rocky would stop then. But instead, she stamped her feet, twisted her heels like they do on Moloka’i. “A la ’a ko ko i ke a u!” she shouted in Tom Mahler’s direction, and he grinned, not realizing she was taunting him.

  “That means a swordfish is jabbing you,” Myrna explained, and Dionisio nodded but I wasn’t sure he got it.

  Rocky bent her knees, thrust her pelvis, and aimed her ass at him. While I sat agape, she mercilessly slid from hula ku’i to guaguancó.

  “Eh mamá / eh mamá,” the Cubans chanted.

  Now it was Eddie, Ocean, and Myrna who stared wideeyed.

  Suddenly, everybody was up—Raúl had acquired actual bongos, Dionisio’s mother was scratching at a gourd with a thin stick, and a crowd of friends and neighbors I’d barely noticed before were singing. I couldn’t understand any of it. It was as if they’d excised every consonant from the words. Out on the floor, Dionisio and Rocky mesmerized us with their turns and twirls, their busy feet. When Raúl finally slapped the bongos to conclude the dance, his hands like starfish across the skins, there was explosive applause.

  Dionisio leaned on my sister and put his moist cheek on her shoulder for an instant, then made a motion for us to calm down. “We have…we have an announcement,” he declared in English between labored breaths. Rocky leaned down and giggled something into his ear. I noticed Mahler, his arms across his chest.

  “You know, when Raquel and I met, well, it was like east and west, the four cardinal points coming together, all the distances reduced to nothing,” Dionisio said.

  I translated his Spanish/English mishmash as best I could for our guests from Hawai’i.

  “We promised to be together and, you know, she threw her lot in with us, she stayed here…in Havana!”

  “That’s love!” interjected a sarcastic neighbor, and everyone laughed.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dionisio continued, so giddy he seemed a little drunk. “That is love…Hey, she has bathed with just one cup of water!”

  Rocky nodded, bending at the waist to acknowledge the Cubans’ spontaneous applause.

  “And stood in line with us for eggs!”

  The Cubans continued with their merriment but Mahler was shaking his head now, scowling.

  “What’s wrong, huh?” I asked him.

  “What’s special about any of that? Cubans do that every day, it’s ridiculous that they’re making such a big deal out of her doing what they do every single day here as part of the revolutionary project.”

  “God, Tom, do you ever get off your soapbox?”

  “This is wrong,” he said.

  “Relax,” I told him. But when I went to uncross his arms, he shook me off. “Oooookay,” I said, and backed away.

  “So now…after three years, it is my turn,” Dionisio continued.

  “Yes!” Rocky said in English, pumping her fist in as American a gesture as I’d ever seen on her.

  “My Cuban sister…disappeared!” I joked with Myrna. “Who is this woman?”

  “That’s right, that’s right—my turn,” Dionisio repeated. “We’re delirious because we can’t believe it—I got a flancé visa to La Yuma—and the Cuban government is letting me go!”

  Dionisio’s mother bit her trembling lip and held her hands to her heart. I could feel her prayer of gratitude even in the wild screaming and hugging that was now taking place.

  “How is it possible? You’re a doctor! The government doesn’t let doctors go to the U.S.!” Raúl exulted.

  “It was some weird mistake,” Rocky said, her own limbs now echoing Dionisio’s mother, her hands folded over each other right at her chest, reaching to her throat. “The papers somehow—we don’t know, we don’t care—they left off Dionisio’s occupation.”

  Raúl shushed her, his fingertip to his lips. “There are Moors on the coasts,” he said, indicating the guests.

  “And ideologically correct pet foreigners,” I muttered under my breath.

  “We’re just going to try it, that’s all—see how we feel in La Yuma,” Dionisio said, clearly backpedaling. “It’s an—”

  But he didn’t finish. Tom Mahler had stepped up, his red face within inches of Rocky. “Try it, my ass,” he fumed. “You’re trying to take him, you’re trying to take him from his country, from his family—from all the people who need him. Are you happy now? Are you? Because I, for one, am not just going to stand by and let you get away with this! First thing tomorrow morning, you’ll see!”

  Before anybody could figure out what had actually transpired, Mahler rocketed out of the courtyard to his room. The force of the door closing slammed into us like a storm surge.

  Dionisio took a step after him but Raúl, for the first time showing the iciness needed to do his policeman’s job, put a hand on his chest and effortlessly held him back. “Forget him,” he hissed. “You’re going to La Yuma. We can take care of this; we don’t need him anymore.”

  Eddie, Myrna, and Ocean left sometime after that, and though I offered to help clean up, everyone told me to go on to bed, since the next day would be my last in Cuba and I still had much souvenir shopping to do. I decided I was tired enough to accept. Sometime near dawn, when I made a somnambulistic trip to the bathroom, I heard voices and what seemed like a scuffie, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The noisy spillage into the courtyard made everything fuzzy, and at that moment I was instantly nostalgic for the breezy peace of Honolulu. It was definitely time to head home.

  The next morning, Tom Mahler did not emerge to make breakfast. Without need of notice, everyone of their own accord made coffee and made do with the bread rolls from the ration book. When I emerged from my room, I heard Dionisio muttering as he and Raúl left for the day. I confess I was thrown off—I’d gotten used to Mahler’s breakfasts, which were just scrumptious.

  “Where’s Tom?” I asked Rocky, who was making coffee when I stumbled into the kitchen. She shrugged and looked away.

  “That was pretty crazy last night.”

  She nodded and poured us each a demitasse of espresso. She was still in her bathrobe, her hair a mess.

  “Have you seen him yet? Has he said anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “My God, are you mute now?”

  Rocky shook her head again. “No, I’m just…tired,” she said, and I saw through her morning hair that her eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Everything all right?” I settled an arm around my sister’s shoulder.

  She finally turned her sad face toward me. “Rough night, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say…What an asshole Mahler was.” I didn’t mention Raúl; I still didn’t know what to make of t
hat. But I’d written quite the journal entry about the whole episode.

  Rocky moved away from me, her free hand massaging her temple.

  “I mean, there was just no excuse for that, none at all.”

  “Malía, please…” Rocky said softly.

  “What? C’mon, that was not appropriate pet foreigner behavior.”

  “I’m begging you…” She scrunched up her face, as if my words were lacerating her brain.

  “Okay, okay, “ I said, gulping my espresso and going off to shower and pack. “But honestly…”

  Tom Mahler did not show up for the rest of the day. I hung out until about 2 in the afternoon without any sign of him. When I returned many hours later from souvenir shopping (books, CDs, T-shirts, and tchotkes for my parents and friends) out in the scorching heat, I found Dionisio and Rocky in a morbid silence at the kitchen table.

  “Who died?” I asked in English.

  “Qué…?” Dionisio replied, his face losing all color.

  “Malía!” Rocky exclaimed, shooting up from her chair. “It’s just an expression,” she said in Spanish to Dionisio, who seemed on the verge of an anxiety attack.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just, please…” But she couldn’t quite finish it. Then she spied my shopping bags. “What’d you get?”

  “I’ll show you,” I said, hoping things might lighten up. “Let me change first.” I stuck my foot out and shook it a bit, showing off a shoe I’d borrowed from Rocky. It was flat and relatively comfortable but it still felt alien on my foot. Dionisio smiled weakly.

  I dropped the shopping bags on the table and ambled back to my room, past Mahler’s, which remained shut. I thought I smelled a bad patch right at his door—something thick, sulphurous like that breeze that had caught me at the airport the day I arrived. I continued to my room, undid Rocky’s shoes, and put on my slippahs, then grabbed a scrunchy and pulled up my hair. The back of my neck was sticky with sweat. I decided to wash my face and neck and noticed, at a different angle as I passed Mahler’s en route to the bathroom, that his door was slightly open. On the way back to the kitchen, my neck cooled, there was a sliver of view into Mahler’s. Had Tom, who always made himself heard, come back in that split second? I hadn’t heard any voices greeting him. Was it possible Mahler could be tiptoeing about in shame?