Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  Diane put her hand on my leg and rubbed. “Take it easy,” she said in a whisper.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  We both watched the streets as we neared Pepín’s house. Whores patrolled the avenue where I had once stopped at the Dairy Queen for a Brown Bonnet. There was a racial joke somewhere in there—Brown Bonnets of some kind were still for sale. On my grandfather’s street most of the houses and tiny lawns were well-kept. But there were bars on the windows and no one on the porches. On a humid spring night they used to be full of people gossiping and arguing politics, calling across to each other, their kids strolling to a now abandoned store on the corner for candy. Our driver was nervous when he had to stop at the light on Nebraska to make the turn onto St. Claire. Eyes checking and rechecking his side and rearview mirrors, he crept forward gradually so he was virtually through before it went green. I gave him a big tip. Some cabbies would have refused to take us.

  We carried our overnight bags to the dark porch. A gate covered the door. To ring the bell you had to reach through its bars; Grandpa’s sounded a plaintive pair of notes, a corny ding-dong. From the avenue a block away I heard a series of popping sounds, like distant firecrackers.

  “What’s that?” Diane asked.

  “Who is it?” called a thin voice that had told me on the phone he was my brother.

  “It’s Rafael,” I said, rolling the R and lingering on the L. Diane glanced at me.

  Inside, another voice spoke inaudibly. A light came on in the front room. There was a sliding noise and an eye peered through a circular peephole. “That’s him,” I heard my father say and the eye disappeared. After that came another pause, then some fumbling with locks. At last the door opened.

  Cuco filled the entrance, dressed in a white T-shirt and what looked like new blue-jeans. He was at least three inches taller than me, six seven or six eight, his eyes the warm brown of my father’s. Otherwise, the family resemblance was not obvious. His skin was coffee-colored, his hair kinky, and his features were rounder, less defined than my father’s. His chin, for example, barely existed. And although he was far from fat, he had inherited Carmelita’s big bones and square shape: he did not have the wide shoulders and narrow hips of the Gallego that my father used to brag about. In fact, he looked as if he would be an excellent outside linebacker, a big man whose long legs and thick body could make him both quick and punishing. I thought of Albert, graduating high school that spring. He was being heavily recruited by top colleges as just that—a premier defensive player, the next Lawrence Taylor, his hyperbolic coach liked to say. Cuco’s voice, however, was far from suggesting brute force: high, thin, and gentle. “Rafael?” he said and smiled sweetly, his broad cheeks opening to show little teeth set in a crooked jumble, like a Mediterranean hillside town. “Come in,” he urged, easily lifting our bags with one hand, as if they were empty.

  “Were those gunshots?” Diane asked him as she entered.

  “I think so,” he said with a sad shake of his head as he shut the door behind us. “All night, there are crazy noises.”

  “I’m Diane Rosenberg,” she said and offered a hand that looked preposterously small. The two of them made a hilarious sight; Diane is a foot and a half shorter than Cuco.

  I looked around. The furniture was unchanged from thirty years ago, except that the couch had been re-covered. Everything looked neat and tidy, but if Grandmother Jacinta had seen it she would have fainted. The rug wasn’t shampooed, the credenza’s surface wasn’t polished, and the drapes needed washing. Behind Cuco was the door to the bedroom where I had napped after returning with my arm in a cast. It was dark. I maneuvered to see the dining room and beyond to the kitchen. There was a light on in the kitchen, but no one in evidence. “Abuelo is asleep,” Cuco said, gesturing to the front bedroom.

  “Is my—” I changed my mind about how to put it. “Is Francisco here?”

  Cuco looked toward the kitchen, then back at me. His pleasant face now seemed pained. “Yes. He said if you need a bed, take that room.” Cuco indicated the doorway off the dining room, where my parents used to sleep when they visited.

  I gestured to the kitchen. “I’m going to say hello.” I asked Diane, “You’ll be okay?”

  Cuco took Diane’s elbow with a huge hand and gently urged her toward the couch. “We’ll talk and become friends,” he said.

  Diane beamed at him. “It’s not fair.”

  “Not fair?” Cuco was puzzled.

  She sat on the couch. “Your family. God made all the Nerudas too big.”

  I walked through the dark dining room toward the kitchen. The house had seemed small to me even as a boy. To my adult eyes, it was so shrunken from the memories of childhood that I felt as if I were dreaming. I was a giant now beside these tokens of the past. At least, I was physically. Stepping into the kitchen I could swear my legs buckled. I paused to look at them, surprised I hadn’t collapsed. The linoleum was the same black and white squares. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the yellow Formica table with its aluminum legs. I looked up at the sink to see if my grandmother was cleaning a plate I had dirtied from a late-night snack. There were bars on the window she used to look out while preparing meals, but, of course, no Jacinta. I inhaled for courage and turned to survey the table. My father wasn’t there.

  I heard a step behind me. I jumped. At least it felt as if my heart did. I turned to face the small television room where they kept the fold-out couch that had been my bed as a child. My father stood astride the door sill. His hair was all white, thinner of course and receding, completely exposing his high forehead. His thick eyebrows were still mostly black. He stood straight, just as I remembered him, his chest out, proudly. He had no paunch, although his face was full. He was very tan. I was impressed by his handsome, dignified, and commanding appearance. That had not been an illusion created by my childhood, after all. My father was no fantasy.

  “Hi Dad,” I said, and now I had shrunk to the size of a boy. The sound of my voice was foreign to me: unsure, sweet and scared.

  He said nothing. He watched me as if he were seeing something that didn’t require a reaction, as if I were an image, not a living thing.

  “You look great,” I said. I seemed to have no defenses, no ability to plan what came out of my mouth. “I’m really glad to see you.” I studied him again, amazed that this vigorous figure was seventy-four years old. Perhaps because of the stories of Cuba’s economic woes, or more likely some sort of guilty projection, or worse, a deeper wish from buried rage, I expected the years to have treated him harshly, to find a withered broken man.

  “I’m not glad to see you,” he said in that extraordinary voice, so convinced of its correctness, so musical and dramatic—the kind of voice that sells us cars, beckons us to fly the friendly skies, and reads us the news headlines. “I hoped you wouldn’t come.” He glanced down pensively. When he looked up again, he nodded toward the dining room. “You brought someone? Your wife?”

  “No. We’re not married. But she’s a friend. I mean, we’re very close …” I stammered like an embarrassed teenager.

  “You mean you’re fucking her,” he said and chuckled. He caught himself doing it, glanced at me and then away, frowning. “We’re going to look at two nursing homes tomorrow and pick one. Then I want you to return to New York. For my father’s sake, I’ll act courteous in his presence. Otherwise, don’t speak to me.” He stepped into the television room, and seemed to remember something. “Unless,” he added, beginning to swing the door at me, “you don’t mind being ignored.” His timing was perfect, shutting it in my face with his last word.

  When I returned to the living room, Cuco interrupted whatever he was saying to Diane to ask, “You are done talking so fast?”

  “I said hello.” Diane twisted to look at me. I added, “Maybe we’d better find a hotel.”

  “No, no,” Cuco said. “There are no hotels. And we have a date.”

  “A date?” Diane asked.

  “A
t a home for seniors. Eight o’clock. That’s early, yes?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “It’s better you stay here.” He smiled at me, showing his jumbled teeth. Cuco added, nodding in the direction of the kitchen, “He’s hard-headed.”

  I was amused. Hard-headed was a favorite comment of my grandmother’s, what she used to say when caving in to a demand she didn’t approve of—my third Coca-Cola of the day, allowing me to swim less than an hour following a meal; or, permitting a more dangerous act, letting my hair dry in the air after a shower, rather than insisting she towel it. “You’re so hard-headed,” she would say and pretend to rap me on the skull with her knuckles. Once, she got into a fierce squabble with my father and I was thrilled when she said it about him too. “We’re both hard-headed,” I called out cheerfully. Francisco and Jacinta stopped their fight. They looked at me, puzzled for a moment, and then their grim faces broke into smiles. “He’s proud of it,” Grandma said, and laughed so deeply, she held her belly. Francisco took my head in his arms and squeezed out the world. When he released me, although my ears were ringing, I could hear him say, “He’s right. Hard-headed people get things done.”

  What have we gotten done, Father?

  “How about you, Cuco?” I asked. “Are you hard-headed too?”

  “Me?” He touched his chest with the palm of his hand, astonished. “No.” He smiled at Diane. “I’m soft-headed,” he said and laughed pleasantly.

  I sat opposite them, in the armchair where my father used to hold court on cool nights, explaining the world to his family. “Tell me about yourself, Cuco. Do you mind? We’re brothers and I don’t know anything about you.”

  “No?” He shook his head as if this were a sad and astonishing fact. “You said. On the phone. That you were not told about me.”

  “It’s my fault, too,” I said. “I could have asked.”

  “Yes?” He seemed skeptical.

  “Do you live in Havana?”

  The answer was, some of the time. He was a coach for the Cuban Olympic baseball team. He had been a player—a first baseman, he said. But he’d hurt his back a year ago. He stood up to illustrate the problem. I was surprised when he got into a left-hander’s batting stance.

  “You’re a southpaw?” I said, pleased and proud, for some odd reason. We had no lefties in the family: the novelty somehow made me feel he really was my brother. I could almost hear myself boring someone sometime in the future with anecdotes of Cuco’s left-handed feats.

  “I throw right,” he said.

  “No kidding. Did you always bat left-handed?”

  “No,” he said, eager to explain, breaking out of his batting stance into the pose of a frozen runner. “You know it’s faster to first base if you’re a lefty.” He pointed to the bedroom. “And there’s the hole at first and second when there is, you know … ?”

  “A runner on first,” I finished for him.

  “You know baseball!” he said and actually clapped.

  Diane laughed. “Rafe’s a big baseball fan.”

  That was something of an exaggeration, but it was the one sport I kept track of, and I even attended a couple of games each season. I asked, “You played first base for the Cuban team?”

  “For the national team. You’re a fan, but you don’t know me?” He wasn’t petulant, merely curious.

  “They don’t cover Cuban baseball here,” I explained.

  “We know all your players.” He nodded to himself. “They censor news about us, that’s what they say. Many of our boys are as good as the major leaguers. Linares is better than most of your players.”

  “We know your players are good,” I assured him. “They tell us that much.”

  “It’s a pity they can’t come here and play for our teams,” Diane said.

  “Yes?” Cuco asked, again with that mild tone of surprise. “Why?” he added.

  “Why?” Diane repeated. “Well, you know, so they could be in the big games.” She knew she had gotten herself into an awkward spot. She pressed on anyway, “So they could become famous and play in the World Series.”

  “It would be good for a Cuban team to play in your so-called World Series, but not so good for the Cuban players to become toys for the owners.”

  Diane didn’t blink. She insisted, “The players here have a lot of power, almost as much as the owners.”

  “No,” Cuco said, confidently.

  “Yes.” Diane was just as confident about the life of a professional ballplayer, and, I suspect, just as ignorant. “Anyway,” she added. “It’s wrong that you can’t play here. It’s a shame when people aren’t free to do their work wherever they want.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Cuco said. Diane cocked her head at him, surprised. I wasn’t.

  “You agree?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But you can’t say that in Cuba,” she commented, not provocatively, with sympathy.

  Cuco sat down sideways on the couch, angled to her, his massive legs as big as a coffee table. “Why not?” he asked.

  I laughed. Diane and Cuco looked at me. “The embargo, Diane. We’re the ones who stopped American baseball teams from having spring training games in Cuba. We’re the ones who first made it illegal for a Cuban citizen to play professionally in the United States.”

  “But,” Diane stopped herself. She glanced at Cuco and then shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “But what?” I asked. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “But Castro wouldn’t allow it anyway.”

  “Fidel has asked for it!” Cuco gestured to the ceiling, his reedy voice squeaking, strained by passion. “He has called for a stop to the embargo since 1961. He has—” Cuco shut up, to stare at something behind me.

  I looked. My grandfather had emerged from his bedroom, wrestling with a red pajama top. He had no bottoms on. His face, chest and legs had the leathered brown of people who are always in the sun, in contrast to his waist, where a bleached triangle was spoiled only by the prunish darkness of his genitals. “Coño,” he mumbled sleepily. The pajama shirt was on backwards, his right arm through the left sleeve, the other empty. He jerked his shoulders back and forth; each time the empty sleeve whipped around, slapping him in the face, like a misbehaving tail.

  “Abuelo!” Embarrassed for Pepín, Cuco rushed into the bedroom and came out with his pajama bottoms. He didn’t notice they were wet at the groin.

  Grandpa pushed them away, saying in Spanish they were no good. Cuco returned to the bedroom. I helped Grandpa with the top. “It’s on backwards,” I explained, as I eased it off.

  “Rafael?” he asked.

  I slipped the top onto his arms and began to button it in front. “Yes, it’s me,” I said. I smelled the faint odor of urine.

  “You just got here?”

  His body was almost hairless from head to toe, except for his groin. Even there, the hairs were all gray and the hair tended to fade away. Pepín was six feet tall and wiry—the outlines of muscle and bone were visible, as if his skin were a size too small. “Yes, Diane and I just got here,” I said, shielding his nakedness from her as I indicated her presence.

  “Your girlfriend?” he asked, peering around me.

  “Diane. I told you about her, remember?”

  Pepín squinted at her.

  “Hello,” she called.

  Cuco emerged, carrying bright yellow pajamas in his arms. Pepín ignored him in favor of properly greeting Diane. He stepped around me and walked over to the couch, extending his hand and politely bending over so she could easily reach it. He remembered his Spanish manners, but forgot, however, that he was naked from the waist down. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Rafael’s grandfather.” The offered hand was in line with, and no more than a foot from, his privates.

  “Abuelo!” Cuco complained, bounding over. His huge body made the floorboards quake. He unfurled the yellow bottoms, holding them against Pepín’s stomach. The yellow top fell.

  Meanwhile, Diane gamely took Pepín’s ha
nd and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”

  Pepín finished the greeting and turned on Cuco. “What’s the matter with you, chico?” he asked. “Did you ask if they want coffee?” he demanded, wandering in the direction of the kitchen.

  Cuco danced beside Grandpa as he moved, keeping him covered. He nodded at the old man’s waist and said in an intense whisper, “Mira!”

  Pepín looked down. He frowned at the confusing sight. He was draped by the yellow bottoms and wearing the red top. He felt the yellow fabric, pressing it against his thighs. He reached around and touched his naked buttocks. “What did you do?” he asked Cuco in Spanish.

  “They’re not on you,” Cuco answered in Spanish. “You came out with nothing on.”

  “But why are they yellow?” Grandpa said.

  “The red ones are wet.”

  Grandpa thought hard. He touched the red top I had put on him. “This isn’t wet.”

  “It’s okay,” Diane said, guessing incorrectly about what they were debating. “I’m a doctor.”

  “You’re a doctor?” Grandpa asked her in Spanish.

  She repeated, uncertainly, “Yes, I’m a doctor. So don’t worry.”

  Pepín looked at me and said in English, “You said she was your girlfriend.” His face changed: chin pushing up pugnaciously, eyes narrowing. He walked over to accuse me in English, “You trying to fool me?” He had exposed himself with this maneuver. Startled, Cuco wasn’t quick to cover him. “You bring doctors and say they’re girlfriends.” He must have felt the air on him. He looked down as Cuco came over, waving the yellow bottoms like a bullfighter. Pepín saw his nakedness. “My God,” he exclaimed in Spanish. “They’ve stolen my pajamas!”

  Eventually, Cuco and I convinced Grandpa that Diane was both my lover and a doctor and that we were not interested in acquiring his pajamas. Once fully dressed, resplendent in yellow, Pepín again introduced himself to Diane. “I’m Rafael’s grandfather,” he told her solemnly. This time he took her hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I get confused when I wake up.” He rubbed her hand for a moment. “Cuco,” he said, “did you make them cafe?”