As Inocencia said, you couldn’t be half in and half out of anything, that was how people got hurt. For the first time in my life, I suspected that Papi might be wrong about Cuba, and that we needed to prepare for the future before it swept us away.
Chapter 20
The Cathedral de San Cristobal was one of those gaudy baroque churches that the Jesuits loved. It was small for a city cathedral and preposterous for its size. In the glare of the midday sun it looked lopsided, and the whitewashed facade hurt the eyes.
They said that a hundred years ago they found a casket with Columbus’s ashes sealed up in a niche in one of the walls. I wondered what he would think of the new Havana, at what the men from Miami were doing here, mining as much money as they could out of the island, sending it all back home. He would probably approve. The new conquistadores wore Bermuda shorts and loud shirts instead of steel casques, but Lansky and King Ferdinand would have seen eye to eye on most things.
There was a flock of doves roosting on the roof of the cathedral. A cab backfired in the square and sent them all flapping panicked into the sky, looking for refuge among the eaves of the lottery shops on O'Reilley Street. I flinched as well and threw myself against the wall. A cab driver grinned at me, showing a gold tooth; his friend, a battered flat cap pulled low over his eyes, thought it was even funnier. He mimed being shot.
I suppose it was funny seeing a girl flatten herself against the wall like that, if you hadn’t seen your music teacher’s legs get blown off by a bomb two nights before.
The churros sellers were doing brisk business in the square. Small children poured out of the School of the Holy Innocents in their black and white uniforms, running and shouting through the colonnades past the gourds and rattles and negro dolls in the curio shop.
It must almost be time for siesta. I gave a coin to the blind beggar on the steps outside the cathedral and went inside.
The interior of the cathedral was sunny yellow, alive with frescoes. The hush was startling after the bedlam of the square. The rows of dark pews were almost empty. I wouldn’t have blamed God for striking me down the moment I dipped my fingers into the holy water, but there was no rumbling from the sky as I walked in, just the clip of my heels on the marble.
An acolyte was busy replacing the votive candles. He interrupted what he was doing to discourage an American tourist from stepping over the altar rail to take photographs.
I slipped a mantilla veil over my head and ventured along the cloister to the statue of the virgin. I lit a candle and fell to my knees.
I had never been one for prayers, the sisters at the American Sisters of Clare school in Vedado had squeezed out any fondness I had ever had for religion. My father insisted I accompany him to Mass at Easter and Christmas, but apart from our ritual duties, our family had never been devout. But I had read once, in an American magazine, that soldiers had a saying during the war: there are no atheists in foxholes.
When you have exhausted all other possibilities, who else was there to ask when all your luck had turned against you?
I fidgeted on my knees, trying to form some kind of prayer, even the first sentence of one that would actually make sense, and not sound self-serving and utterly hypocritical, even to me.
But I couldn’t do it.
I kept thinking: what could a virgin like her make of someone like me, a girl with an itch between her thighs, who only ever thought about boys and being liked? I supposed I was more like my namesake, Mary Magdalene, the whore. She should have a statue, somewhere at the back, so girls like me could go and talk to her. She understood us. She had danced for the men in the temple for money, and if you believed the talk, she did a lot of other things as well, before Jesus found her and made her one of his followers.
Even bad girls have a good side, so perhaps she would understand.
I finally just dropped my head and asked for forgiveness. There was a part of me that wondered if what had happened was all my fault, that it was God punishing us because of my lying and whoring with Angel. My father had a bomb left in his club, Inocencia had lost her legs, and I couldn’t even tell anyone that I was to blame.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
But even that prayer was hard. How could I ask for forgiveness when I knew in my black, rotten heart, that I really wasn’t sorry? I was sorry for the trouble I’d caused, yes. But I wasn’t sorry for spending those afternoons in Angel’s bed. It seemed to me you couldn’t have a passionate spirit like mine and still reckon to be holy.
My knees were starting to hurt.
So what was it I came here to ask for? For Angel not to marry that bitch - sorry, My Lady - in America, for him not to run off to Miami? Really, even I could see that there were more important things happening in the world than me and my love affairs. God was too busy to listen to all that.
So what then?
“What is going to become of me?” I said aloud, and it was an honest question rather than a prayer. I didn’t expect the Virgin to tell me, and anyway I would rather she didn’t. I thought I already knew.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered to her. “We can’t all be sweet and patient like you. I’d like to be but I’m not. You see what I am, don’t you? I think it’s just that some of us make good virgins and some of us don’t. Just don’t punish other people for what I do wrong!”
I thought that by squeezing my hands together and closing my eyes even tighter some fervent feeling might come. But it didn’t. When I opened my eyes Mary was still looking at me with that same expression of boredom and cool despair.
“Please don’t let my papi die,” I murmured. “And don’t let anyone take his club away from him. It’s all he has left. He’s a good man, don’t hurt him.”
The candles flickered in the draught.
“And help poor Inocencia. Why of all the people in Havana did you have to take her legs? Now what is she going to do?”
At last, a flicker of emotion. But there was no point in getting angry with the Madonna. You came here to ask for her intercession, not to blame.
This was pointless. I got up from my knees and crossed myself. I kissed the Madonna's feet and hurried back along the aisle, past the shrines of the saints, the echo of my heels rattling the bones of the long dead. My mind was no clearer than when I walked in, it was still a jumble of terror and self reproach.
I was about to step back into the bright light of the square, but I found the door blocked by a man who was about to walk in. I squinted against the glare, trying to make out his features.
“Reyes,” I said.
Chapter 21
Reyes shook his head. “Well, whenever I’m somewhere I don’t want to be seen, there you are too. How do you think that happens?”
I hadn’t stopped thinking about him for the last two days. Now he was here in front of me, I couldn’t speak.
“Have you been to confession?” he said.
I tried to recover my poise. “No, have you?”
“That’s where I’m headed. Never miss it. I miss one day and I get too far behind to catch up. I used to write all my sins down in a book but I ran out of pages after a week. So what are you doing here?”
“I’m having an affair with a priest.”
He nodded, as if that wouldn’t surprise him.
“I was praying.”
“You?” He sounded incredulous.
“I’m a good Catholic, Señor Garcia.”
“If you were praying for me to suddenly appear I’d say the Virgin can work miracles after all. You should write to the Vatican. You could get mentioned in dispatches.”
“I certainly wasn’t praying for that. And you shouldn’t make jokes like that in a holy place.”
“Oh, God doesn’t mind me, he has more important things to worry about.”
“I lit a candle for Inocencia.”
“That’s kind.” He stepped to the side and sat down heavily in one of the pews. As soon as the trademark grin fell away he looked as if he h
ad the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Do you know how she is?” I asked him.
“I just came from the hospital, she’s not so good. How could she be?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand bastards who put bombs in crowded places and hurt women and children.”
“Really? I heard you were smuggling guns to the rebelde.”
“Well I understand guns, I understand tanks--that’s war, and there’ll always be wars. But this makes no sense to me. How’s Amancio?”
“Papi is home now but he’s still not himself, he just lies in bed all day. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“He’s lucky to be alive.”
“He’s very lucky. And I know if he was here he’d like to thank you for your part in his luck.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t do anything. I just carried you out, princess. That doesn’t make me a hero.”
“Everyone else ran for the door. You didn’t.”
“Well, I guess I’ve seen bombs go off before.”
He stared at the worn stone flag under his feet. I had never seen him morose, had never thought him capable of deep feeling. It only intrigued me more.
“I don’t understand. Whoever did this, what did they get from it? Our bolero singer never walks again, my father loses his club, and now Batista will resign and get out of Cuba. Is that what they think?”
“Do you know what this war’s about, princess?”
“Politics.”
“Politics? Do you know what that word means?” he said.
When I shook my head, he stood up and said: “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He led me through the brute streets of Trocadero, Ánimas, and Virtue Street, a huddle of rundown one-storey tenements called solares. Cheap women beckoned from the windows, and men with sullen expressions watched us from the doorways. I took his hand and held it tight. I was not about to let go until we were out of there.
I had only ever seen this side of Havana from the car. With the feel of leather upholstery on my back it seemed so far away. That day, breathing the stink and danger of it, was the first time Magdalena Fuentes lived in the same city as the blacks and the mestizos. Suddenly it was real.
Reyes pointed out a shabby building with broken shutters on the windows and a down-at-heel prostitute lounging in the doorway. “See that solare over there?”
I nodded.
“It’s where I grew up.”
“You’re really from Havana?”
“My father’s a yankee but my mother was from Santa Clara. She met him when he was here on shore leave. He fell in love with her, jumped ship and hid out with her family. Never went back. Me, I got out of here when I was sixteen, went to Fort Lauderdale in Florida. He still had family there.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“There were three of us. I was in the middle. My kid brother’s still in Florida. My older brother’s with the rebels in the mountains, or that’s what they tell me. Don’t suppose I’d recognize him anymore.”
“What happened to your mother and father?”
“Ma died, that’s why I left. I don’t know what happened to the old man. Drank himself to death I suppose. I never heard from him again after I left.”
“Did you try and find him?”
“What’s the point? All he ever did was drink cheap rum and beat the Jesus out of his wife and kids.”
“So why did you bring me here?”
“I brought you here so you’d understand why they bombed the Left Bank. It’s not because your father’s a bad man, he’s not. But he’s still the enemy as far as these people are concerned, so are you, and so am I. Sure, they hate Batista and the secret police and the corruption. But it’s the clubs they hate more. Five minutes from here there’s tourists drinking mojitos that cost more than they make in a month while they drink filthy water from a tap they have to carry home in a bucket. Your father may not like Batista any more than them but it doesn’t matter one hot damn to the people down here, and even less to the barbudas in the mountains.”
“And that’s why Inocencia is never going to walk again?”
“I don’t condone it, princess. I’m just trying to help you see the situation. Lanksy and Salvatore and the rest of these mobsters think they can do what they want here and these poor bastards don’t matter. But now they’re fighting back. Fidel took a stand against the mob bosses--gangsterismo he calls it--and he’s kept them at arm’s length. That’s made him a national hero everywhere but the yacht club and the Tropicana.”
“But the rebels can’t win?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. A few months ago the United States government withdrew its support for Batista and embargoed a large shipment of weapons. They can’t get tanks or rockets anymore, so every one the rebels destroy can’t be replaced. Fidel’s barbudas are well organized, and they know what they’re fighting for.”
“But the newspapers say he’s winning.”
“That’s because Batista controls the newspapers.”
“So Fidel could be our next president?”
“Possibly.”
“And these people here think he can change things?”
“Oh, he’ll change things all right. I’ve talked to him and his brother and guys like Che-- they’re all crazy. What difference will they make down here in the barrios? Not much, that’s my guess. People here think Fidel will give them a piece of the action but he won’t. They’ll still be poor, same as before. There just won’t be any rich.”
“Papi still tells me everything’s going to be all right, that it will all blow over.”
“Well of course he does, he’s trying to protect you. He doesn’t want you to worry, so he lies to stop you from getting hurt, same as you lie to him. Isn’t that right?”
I wanted to get out of there. I saw a rat scuttle into the shadows. Then right there on the cobblestones I saw a smear of chicken blood, a beaded necklace, the stub of a cigar. There was a little black doll lying beside it.
“Voodoo,” Reyes said.
A group of men started following us down the street.
“Are we safe here?” I asked him.
He drew back the jacket of his tailored white suit and showed me the Smith and Wesson revolver tucked into the waistband of his pants. “Pretty safe,” he said.
“Do you always carry a gun?”
“Always.”
“They say you killed a man in Miami.”
“I killed two. Which time are we talking about?”
She looked up at him. He was serious.
“Look, princess, everything you hear about me is true, even the things they make up. But I’ll tell you this. I don’t hurt anyone unless they try to hurt me. But whatever anyone’s said about me, I don’t care, because whatever it is, it’s never that far wrong.”
“My father doesn’t like me even talking to you.”
“If I were your father I’d tell you the same thing. I’ll never be good for your reputation.” He stopped, drew on his cheroot, and took the revolver out of his waistband. He turned around and levelled it at the men behind us. They scattered. He put it back in his waistband and kept walking as if nothing had happened. “You don’t fit here, do you, princess? In Havana, I mean. You’re daddy’s little girl, but you’re also passionate and hot-blooded. It must be a tough balancing act. You try to be a lady for him, but you’d like to be a bolerista or a dancing girl for an hour or two now and then. You want to be good but there’s a part of you that’s bad to the bone. You think you have everybody fooled, and you have…almost everyone anyway, but that just makes you feel even lonelier, so sometimes you just don’t know what to do with yourself. So you just keep smiling for daddy and smiling for your friends, and no one ever knows who the hell you are, you least of all.”
I stared at him. He had just surmised every feeling and every thought I had ever had in the last twelve months. “Am I supposed to applaud?
“Am I right?”
“Not in the least. I thoug
ht you were a clever man but you don’t seem to know me at all.”
“You’re not a virgin either, are you?”
Dios mio. I couldn’t believe he’d asked me such a question.
“Oh, come on, don’t pretend you’re shocked, we both know you’re not. But I bet Angel didn’t know the first thing to do with you.”
“Every time I think I’m getting to like you, you say something vulgar and stupid to make me despise you.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Why?”
“Because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. First time it’s ever happened to me. I don’t believe in all that hearts and flowers nonsense. There’s been a lot of women in my life, so I don’t know what’s so different about you, but something is, and I can’t make any sense of it.”
“Well let me know when you’ve worked it out, but I won’t be holding my breath.”
“You know why you chase that boy? Because you’ll never catch up with him. That’s his attraction. While you’re running after him, you’re in control. You think you’re unhappy about all this, but you’re not. You ever fall in love, really fall in love, it would scare you so much you’d run till your feet bled.”
I flung his hand away. I would have turned and walked off then and there, but I couldn’t do that in the barrio and he knew it. He grinned at me and that riled me even more. I hated him so badly right then I wanted to kick him in the shins.
An old woman was sitting on a stool on the cobblestones outside one of the tenements, puffing on a cigar, a live rooster wrapped in a shawl on her knees. She saw us squabbling and started to chuckle. “How much did you pay for her?” she said to Reyes.
“Two dollars. Do you think it was too much?”
“No, I think you both got a bargain,” she said, and that seemed to amuse her even more.
I didn’t like what he’d said about Angel, and I sulked all the way back through the cobbled lanes of Obisco. Finally I saw the familiar, wedding cake exterior of the Hotel Inglaterra. There was the comforting smell of tobacco from the Partagas cigar factory. This was the Havana I knew.
Naked In Havana (Naked Series Book 1) Page 8