The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  From downstairs came the notes of a Spanish love song, played, she was sure, by the old gentleman they had met when they arrived. Earlier he had been playing flamenco with a driving rhythm appropriate to the intensity of their lovemaking. Celia wondered if he played the music in that order deliberately, knowing that it was likely to coincide with the activities of guests who disappeared into his rented room in mid-afternoon. Perhaps he used the music to fuel his own fantasies. Or to give life to memories of when he himself might have been the young man making love in the afternoon.

  When the music ended, she rolled off Miguel and went to shower. She returned with a towel. Seeing he was awake, she tossed it to him. He wiped himself and glanced out the window. It was growing dark.

  “Would you like to go out to dinner?” he asked.

  “If we can go somewhere close by.”

  • • •

  They stood on the street holding hands as they waited for the vendor to bake two pizzas in a split oil drum recycled into an oven. She paid, because the vendor was unable to change Miguel’s one-hundred-peso note. Then they walked until they saw a blender in an open doorway and from its owner ordered fruity milkshakes. Again Celia paid for lack of change on the part of Miguel or the vendor.

  “Generous woman!” Miguel grinned. “I could get used to being a kept man.”

  “Oh really? I was just beginning to consider the benefits of being a kept woman,” Celia joked, choosing not to remember that only three days earlier she had considered exactly that—with Miguel not the keeper she had had in mind.

  They sat in the park and ate slowly, admiring the Andalusian Moorish architecture around the square. An organ grinder cranked out a tune that probably dated back to the late nineteenth century, when many such instruments were imported to Manzanillo from France. Although quaint, the music was not as romantic or well played as that from the guitar that had serenaded them earlier.

  “How was the conference?” Miguel asked.

  “Not too devastating.”

  “You were expecting devastation?”

  “It was a definite possibility.” Between sips of milkshake, she told him about her Santiago presentation on the role of second-hand smoke in children’s asthma and the furor caused by her laying blame at the feet of the government.

  “Fortunately,” she concluded, “in the month since I gave my presentation nobody has had time to collect data to refute it, if it can be refuted, which it cannot. I expect that was why it was ignored by presenters at this conference. Even so, when we broke into working groups, no matter what group I was in, it seemed that there was a ‘designated hitter’ who attacked me and forced me to defend my methodology, my conclusions, my credentials, my politics, my—” She looked at him from under her lashes. “I guess if the conference had lasted any longer, they could have attacked my morals too.”

  “You could have told them your morals are squeaky clean. I’d vouch for you.”

  They kissed like adolescents, kisses the flavour of fresh mangoes. Then they wrapped arms around each other’s waist and walked back to the casa. The stairway leading to the top of the house was dimly lit, but when they emerged onto roof, the moon glistened gorgeously on the ocean. Celia turned away from the view, it causing some uneasiness in her for which she could not account.

  Miguel switched on the light. Celia immediately began removing her clothing. With smiling eyes, he did the same. He hung his vest on the back of the chair and reached for something in the pocket, what she took to be another condom. As she sat against the headboard waiting for him to prepare himself, he pulled one of her feet into his naked lap and from a tiny square of paper, unwrapped what he had taken from the vest pocket.

  She could not believe . . . a glint of gold, long sensitive fingers, trembling just slightly as he fumbles with the clasp on the thin chain now looped around her ankle. Celia gasped and jerked her foot back as if the gold were burning hot. Miguel’s mouth opened in surprise, his expression confused, and hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, balling the gold chain into his fist. “I just thought . . . that is, I know ankle bracelets aren’t politically correct. But when I was in Santiago a couple of weeks ago, an old woman on the street was selling them and I thought—”

  “Surely you know,” Celia interrupted tersely, “that Celia Sánchez wore an anklet.” What was he trying to do, force her into a hallucination she had managed to avoid until this very moment? Why would he deliberately jerk her back in time like that?

  “Well, no, I didn’t.” Hurt mingled with perplexity at her tone of accusation. “Pictures I’ve seen of Sánchez, she is usually wearing army fatigues or slacks. I wouldn’t have thought she went in for jewellery.”

  He tried to rise, to reach for his vest to discard the rejected gift. But Celia pressed her foot into his lap, holding him there. “Wait,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Just . . . wait a minute. It’s not what you think.”

  Of course she had no idea what he thought. He lapsed into stillness, waiting for her to calm and collect herself. She struggled to regain composure that the coincidence had startled out of her, to erase the sensation of that split second when the hands had been not Miguel’s but those of someone else, someone with longer, more tapering fingers that trembled while trying to fasten the clasp of a fine gold chain, just as his had.

  “Celia Sánchez did wear an anklet. I saw it when my mother and I visited her. I liked it. I liked it on her and—” She took a deep breath. “I think I would like it on me.”

  He said nothing, nor did he look at her. Clearly he was not convinced.

  She leaned forward and touched his arm. “But you must find it strange, Miguel.”

  When he did look up, she saw that the flecks of gold in his eyes were almost as bright as the glitter of the delicate gold chain, but the brownness of those eyes, which was most of their colour, was very steady. “Strange that I think you have beautiful ankles? That Fidel noticed hers? Not really.”

  Celia believed what he said, believed that for some inexplicable reason she was trying to turn mere coincidence into a mystical moment. She wanted to believe that, so she did. And would go on believing . . . until the next hallucination. She wiggled her foot, which still lay in his lap, provocatively close to his penis. “Put it on, please.”

  He unclenched his fist and looked at the anklet. “It’s not like a ring that might get in the way of a woman carrying a rifle—or a stethoscope.”

  “It’s perfect,” she said softly. “Trust me.”

  What she meant was, Trust yourself. Not me. I am as unreliable as they come.

  Later, after they had made love again and were lying on their backs a little apart, Celia held her leg aloft to admire the slim gold chain around her tan ankle.

  “Are you sure you like it?” Miguel asked.

  “Very much. Which is odd, because normally I don’t care for jewellery.” She paused, considering that that too was a similarity between herself and Sánchez. She said nothing to indicate that she was thinking of the other Celia, but from the way Miguel was watching her she knew he guessed where her thoughts had taken her. What point was there in trying to conceal them? So she asked, “Why do you suppose Fidel loved her?”

  He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the white plaster ceiling. “That’s easy. Because she was totally devoted to a cause they shared. And to him.”

  “A lot of women in his circle were that.”

  “Yeah. But from what I’ve heard, Celia Sánchez was different.”

  “In what way?” She had been immersed in the Sánchez persona, or the Sánchez myth, so long that she had lost track of what normal people thought about the woman.

  “She was also totally independent.”

  “Totally devoted yet totally independent? Isn’t that a paradox?”

  “Maybe. But any halfway intelligent man, when he meets a woman like that, can’t help but love her.”

  Celia rolled onto her side. She could not tell if there
was something personal in the assertion or not, so she asked, “Do you think I am like her?”

  Miguel cut his eyes toward her and smiled. “Hard do say when I’ve only met one of you.” He turned full toward her and pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts, as if to keep from being distracted by them. “When your personality gets mixed up with hers do you feel like a different person?”

  Celia had asked herself the same question more than once. “Not a different person. A stronger one. Like I could, if I had to, pick up a rifle or survive prison or face torture. I could stand my ground against Fidel himself if I thought he was in the wrong. Neither his political power nor his physical size would intimidate me.”

  “Sounds like an infusion of the Sánchez spirit would be a gift for anybody.”

  It had not occurred to Celia that her mental aberrations might have value. She turned the idea over in her mind a while before replying. “I think it has helped me in my career.” Then she added, shyly, “And without it I would never have had the audacity to walk into your arms the moment I saw you.”

  He stripped off the sheet he had just pulled up and pressed himself against her. “Celia,” he said in a voice between a groan and a whisper. “Celia, Celia!”

  • • •

  It might have been three in the morning when she got out of bed. Miguel gave a moan of contentment but didn’t waken. She wrapped herself in a towel and tiptoed out onto the rooftop.

  Because what she called “Sánchez moments” generally came when she was in a place known to have been frequented by Sánchez, she had considered the possibility that such places remained the woman’s haunts after death—not that she believed that, but the notion had occurred to her. It surprised her that here in Manzanillo, where Sánchez had lived and worked first with her doctor-father and then for the revolutionary cause, that she had not experienced the sensation of her persona merging with that of Sánchez. Even at the memorial, on the very street where Sánchez once lived, Celia had been cognizant of the fact that she was one person and Celia Sánchez had been a very different person. The only slippage, and it was a mere fraction of a second, was when Miguel’s fingers had suddenly seemed those of another man, her ankle that of another woman.

  That had been enough, though, to tell her that she had not exorcised Sánchez from her psyche. Moreover, the fact that she was now creeping out onto the moonlight rooftop proved that she did not want to, that on the contrary, she was courting a hallucination. Seeking from it—what? The strength she had revealed to Miguel that she felt in such moments? Was that what she was after? And why now? In this safe place, wrapped in the presence of a man who wanted her with an intensity she had not experienced with anyone else, why was she trying to evoke an aura of strength that the other Celia had embodied, and which she almost certainly did not?

  There was no waiting. As she approached the wall of the roof the moon slid behind a cloud. Her eyes strained to see through the darkness.

  There was no moonlight to reveal what she sought: the boat bringing Fidel and his men from México. Why had they not reached the point of rendezvous hours ago? How could Fidel have let this happen? If only there was a god to whom she could pray, plead that this not be another Moncada, with men and women, boys and girls, tortured and destroyed because they confused idealism with reality and could not distinguish between leadership and charisma. Dear non-existent God, she half-prayed, give me the Granma and its courageous fools to go with the fighters I have recruited from the sierra; put them in my hands and there will be no more Moncadas. Ah, but you don’t exist; better I pray to the waves. Bring that boat ashore, Black Tide, and let me find it before Batista does. Just that, Ocean. Give me men and I will be all that Fidel is not, and this time, we will win.

  Celia’s eyes ached from trying to see into the darkness, for how long she did not know. She heard a whisper of footsteps crossing the roof toward her. For an instant she floated between two times, unwilling to choose between them. Then she turned and saw Miguel come toward her.

  Wrapping his arms around her, he murmured, “You’re cold. Don’t you want to come back to bed?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I want to come back.”

  SEVENTY-SIX

  CELIA stirred and came fully awake. Miguel slept soundly beside her, but she remained awake and troubled. It was not that the lovemaking had gone wrong, not at all. It had been almost equal to the first perfect time at the Comandancia. But not quite.

  That first time, when she had not known who he was or who she was, she had imagined that they had not only a physical and emotional connection but an intellectual marriage—a shared purpose that would survive as long as either of them lived. She was absolutely certain that with Celia Sánchez being the kind of woman she was and Fidel Castro the kind of man he was, the intellectual had come first. It was their strongest bond, the one that would hold them together if one of the other strands weakened or broke.

  It had not been like that with Celia Cantú and Miguel Ortega Ramos. In the hours just past she had loved him with her body, fevered with extreme emotions. She had not thought about whether it was wise or fair or permanent or passing. There had been no intellect in it, none at all. Once during the night she had fled his embrace to conjure a hallucination, but that was not thought. That was probably . . . fear. She had likely been trying to infuse herself with some of the “Sánchez spirit” to gain the courage to continue this reckless uncharted course with a man she barely knew. In the throes of such mindless behaviour, how could there have been an intellectual connection?

  Celia Sánchez would have fallen in love with the man’s mind and only then given her heart and body. Celia Cantú had led with her body and followed with her emotions. Where was her mind in all this? Where was his? Those were the questions that gave rise to her unease as she lay beside him that morning, and which caused her to pick at her food when they went downstairs to take breakfast with the landlady and her husband.

  • • •

  The old gentleman, Celia decided, resembled a good many representations she had seen of Don Quixote. She thanked him for his guitar music of the evening before, and Miguel thanked his wife for breakfast. Then, in morning sun already blazing hot, they walked to the train station. If it ran on time Celia would be in Santiago by mid-afternoon. Miguel would ride as far as Yara, then find other transportation up into the mountains.

  The train did leave on schedule. They sat next to each other in the tan vinyl seats, his hand resting on her thigh, fingers interwoven with hers. Celia wondered how many such morning-afters Miguel had experienced and whether he was always so tender, yet withdrawn. The enormity of what she did not know about him weighed heavily. She wanted to lighten her burden of ignorance but did not know how.

  She had told him about Liliana’s abduction and its aftermath, and how Franci was trying to get at some of the girl’s feelings. There was, in fact, very little about herself that she had not told him, with the exception of her relationships with Luis and José, which she was determined to think of in the past tense. Miguel, though, had told her nothing of himself, and now she desperately wanted information about anything in his past relevant to the man he was, the man with whom she had repeatedly made love yet barely knew.

  She searched for a question that would not seem as obvious as, Who are you, stranger, and what are your intentions concerning me? She waited awhile, hoping he would initiate conversation, but he did not. Finally she asked where he was from.

  “Baracoa,” he told her. “My family has lived there for generations. Some relatives even claim Taíno blood, but I doubt there’s any truth to that.”

  “I would find it easy to believe that you carry a few of Chief Hatuey’s genes.”

  He smiled. “Oh, I don’t think so. There is a bust of him in the park in Baracoa. If it looks anything like the actual man, he was much fiercer than I am. A warrior.”

  “Maybe he was only that out of necessity. For all we know, he might have been a naturalist until the Span
iards came and he felt compelled to lead his people against them. Although the way he died—” She shuddered.

  “That’s another difference between me and that ancient non-ancestor. When they were about to burn him at the stake and the priest offered him a chance to enter heaven if he would become a Catholic, he told them that if there were going to be Spaniards in heaven he’d rather go to hell.”

  “You would not have made that choice?” Celia asked.

  “I wouldn’t have bothered to choose because I don’t believe in either place.” Miguel looked past her, across rolling green pastures to the purple silhouettes of mountains against a faded blue sky. “My paradise is here.”

  Although their fingers were still entwined, Celia felt that he was slipping away, that he had just entered those distant mountains without her.

  “Have you ever been married?” she asked suddenly.

  “No.”

  “Engaged?”

  “Three times.”

  “You have had three novias?” she exclaimed in astonishment, then laughed as she realized that was only one more than she had had.

  “That’s right,” he mumbled.

  “What happened?”

  He did not laugh or smile. He continued to gaze past her, toward the mountains. “That,” he said, waving his hand toward the window.

  She looked out the window but saw only grazing cattle. “What?”

  “La sierra.” Still looking past her to dark mountains sharply defined against pale sky, he said, “Everything I want is there. Not necessarily in the Sierra Maestra, but in the Rosarios or the Escambrays or the Cuchillas de Toa. I have spent time in all Cuba’s mountain ranges, but those around Toa, where I grew up, are my favourites.” He smiled in memory of the place. “The last ivory-billed woodpecker seen in Cuba, that’s where it was. There may still be some there, although none have been sighted in decades.”

  Celia was listening but not hearing what she needed to hear, which was how a love of mountains connected to the termination of his three previous love affairs, and how, she sensed, it might have the same effect on theirs. He must have known what was in her mind and wanted to avoid the subject. But they were entering Yara. He may have thought, as she did, that this was not the time to leave something crucial unsaid.