“That story was successful. We received a lot of—”
“You’re right. I remembered that as soon as I said it. How about a travel piece? Do you still have an interest in going to Cuba?”
She explained her idea about a circus performer who had traveled around Cuba in the 1850s. She could use a few of the passages from the memoir as a way into the article. She recognized only a few of the many cities where Glenroy had performed—Matanzas, Espiritu Santo, Santiago de Cuba, Manzanillo, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara—but from what she had read, she could tell that Cuban life had been grand and gracious. An article about Cuba a hundred and fifty years ago could be intriguing, especially if she were able to track down the descendants of the Marquis de Cardenas.
David lowered his glasses to look at her clearly. “Just to make sure I understand. You want me to send you to Cuba not to write a travel piece on Havana but to write about a circus performer—an American one at that—who lived over a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“It’s not a crazy idea.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Helen did her best to convince him, but the story did not move him. He reminded her that their readership would only be interested in Havana and not in the list of towns she had rattled off, which he had never heard of. He had no idea how she could spin her idea into an article, but in the past when he had given her leeway, she had surprised and impressed him. She couldn’t give him a strongly reasoned understanding of what the piece could end up being except to say she would begin by tracing the travels of the circus performer. They both knew that some of her best work came from going places when she did not know why she was going there. Plus, he knew she and Christopher were having a difficult time, and he sensed it was important for her to go. He hoped it was just one of those bad patches every marriage goes through.
Helen couldn’t define why she was so fascinated with the story. Perhaps she felt some deep sense of concern for this little boy who had learned to navigate an unsympathetic world by himself at an early age. She sensed he had found refuge in Cuba and she wanted to try to unravel why. His account was so lacking in emotion, and yet he said his purpose in writing was to give pleasure to others. “And now readers farewell, hoping that a recital of my slight experiences expressed in the foregoing language have allowed you to pass a few pleasant hours.” Was it because he had led such a solitary life that he felt the need to share it with others? Maybe she was searching for the words that had not been written, trying to find a key to his flatness, his lack of emotion, trying to understand what was underneath. Could her desire to understand be related to her failure to understand Christopher? Did it matter anymore?
Chapter Forty-Three
Havana
Havana was not a city to visit alone—at least not the first time. Had Helen been with Christopher, she would have liked to think they would have spent all afternoon and evening walking around the civilized ruin of a city that once had tried to rival Paris and Madrid in its grandeur. They would have paused to have a coffee or a glass of wine or a cold beer at one of the outdoor cafés, and she would have made up stories about the tourists who strolled by. They would have gone to dinner each evening at different paladares in the old section of the city.
Through a contact at the paper, Helen was introduced to a young American couple, both journalists, who had moved from Brooklyn to Havana to write novels. He was of Cuban descent, and they had been offered his uncle’s house for a meager under-the-table rent. They had a small child, and he had just published a children’s book about baseball. Helen explained her idea to them over a supper of beans and rice and cold beer. She asked about the Marquis de Cardenas. They had never heard of him. They said it would be impossible for her to get access to the National Archives, but they did tell her about the man who had the official title of city historian of Havana. He might be able to help. They advised her to stop by his office the following morning to make an appointment.
She showed them her map. They had not been to any of the towns. They said they had to be careful not to do anything that suggested they were still journalists. They did not have a car, and gas was not easy to get even if they did have one. The only town they commented on was Santa Clara, a town in the middle of the country, the site of Che Guevara’s last battle with Batista’s forces. But that was not why they mentioned it. They had heard about a bishop who kept a low profile but was pushing the government in civic areas. He had amassed a large library of printed material and archives and provided a cool, well-lit space for students to study in the evening. They couldn’t remember his name, but they told her Santa Clara was small, and his diocese would be easy to find. It was close to the town square. Her hotel would be able to arrange a guide to take her. “Be careful,” they said. “Anyone in the travel services works for the government as a spy. Tell the guide you want to go to Santa Clara to see the site of Che Guevara’s victory, and then, when you are there, you can ‘stumble’ across the bishop.”
On her way to the office of the city historian, Helen walked along the Malecón. The waves were hitting the rocks at the base of the concrete sea wall and bouncing back, sounding like echoes of the wind. The historian’s office was in a two-story house built around a courtyard. Louvered shutters kept the interior-facing loggias shaded from the sun. His assistant said he had meetings all morning and taught in the afternoon. The earliest he could see her was the following morning.
She spent the afternoon walking around the old town. She liked coming to countries where she was not facile with the language. She could hear herself breathe in these places. The coming and going of motorized bicycles ricocheted down the narrow alleyways of three- and four-story houses. A woman gave a rug, draped over her balcony, hard slaps with a stick. Helen wandered past the Catedral de San Cristóbal but did not go in. She found a café and ordered a coffee. She watched flocks of tourists drift around the city. She noticed a group of three women, all dressed in white, followers, she assumed, of the Santería religion. They crossed the plaza and headed down an alleyway behind the cathedral.
She returned to the small hotel where she was staying and tried to take a nap before the late evening meal. Her room was at the back of the building and was hot. She opened the window, but the sound of voices and metal bins being moved below shattered the quiet in irregular intervals. Despite the hotel’s assurances, there was no internet. She typed her notes and then headed back outside to the Malecón.
The wind had quieted down and was no longer crashing waves against the sea wall. She watched the seagulls and pelicans and tried to decipher the algorithms of their movement. Two men in a small rowboat headed out to sea as if making their getaway. She walked along and looked at the people passing her. Most were in groups of two, men with wives, boys with girlfriends. An old lady sat on the wall knitting a pair of baby booties and looking out over the sea. She was passed by a young man with a gym-built body who offered his shirtless chest to the sun. A middle-aged woman stopped to look in slow motion for things that could not be found in the sea. Who were these people? A cluster of small children shrieked and shrilled as if imitating happy seagulls. She thought about her nieces and nephews. Henry, who was turning eight, would be going off to Summer Fields in September.
The afternoon felt old.
She had wanted to go to a place she had never been with him. She had wanted to go to a place where no one would know who she was, a place that could protect her from the three and a half years she had lived with him. In the evening, she walked down to the harbor before dinner. She looked out over the sea. There was nothing to do anymore. Time was stretching out. Everything was as empty as the flat surface of the water.
She watched the people who came to dinner at the restaurant. The Russian couple who started with mojitos and ordered lobster and who did not say one word to one another. She couldn’t decide whether they were bored or just comfortable and food and drink were their main pleasures. Then there was the Canadian couple—he was tanned but u
nathletic looking, a little heavy, and wore glasses that were severe and angular and suggested he might be an architect or a designer. His wife had gotten a lot of sun, and her shoulder-length hair was blond and still wet from a shower. She was thin and fit and refused all attempts by the waiter to give her a second helping of the fricase de pollo they had ordered.
Nights were the hardest. She listened to the sound of the cars until the intervals between them stretched past each hour. The space between two thirty and four was the quietest. Once in a while the clank of a bicycle or a motorbike heading home restarted the interval of silence. Just after five, the air filled with sounds of people heading off to early morning jobs.
The city historian knew nothing about the circus that had traveled the country in the 1850s and doubted that there would be any information in the National Library. Nor was he interested in learning more. He only wanted to speak about his work in Old Havana, how many buildings he had restored and how many more he planned to save. Halfway through the interview she understood that, because she spoke English, he had assumed she was American. When she corrected his understanding, he seemed to relax but also to lose interest in telling her about the funds needed to continue his projects.
She asked about the Marquis de Cardenas, he proceeded to tell her about the town of Cardenas, and she was not sure if he understood her question or only offered what he knew. She asked again about the marquis, who had given Glenroy refuge at one point. He didn’t know anything about the marquis, but he did know the house that had belonged to the Cardenas family in the 1800s. He spoke very excitedly about the Casa de la Obra Pía. The Cardenas family had inherited the beautiful home of the Obra Pía Charity. He couldn’t tell her when. The house was now a museum, and she could walk there—it was not far from his office. As his cordial way of ending the meeting, he stood up and pointed to the painting hung behind his desk. It was of a road that disappeared into a forest. He told her that he liked the image because he understood that there was never an end to his projects, and he always started them off without knowing how he was going to finish them. “Things are there whether we see them or not. The path is there, we know it continues, we just can’t see where, but we know it continues.” He walked out with her and pointed in the direction of the Casa de la Obra Pía.
The docent of the museum knew even less than the city historian. If she were not more successful, Helen knew that at some point soon she would have to let go of what she was trying to find. She returned to her hotel and asked the manager if he could arrange a driver to take her to Santa Clara. She said she wanted to see the sight of Che Guevara’s famous battle. The manager told her she looked tired. She asked to have a tray brought to her room for dinner.
Chapter Forty-Four
Santa Clara
They left at seven and followed a two-lane road out of Havana. They drove through communities where small one-story houses were clustered around railroad crossings, where skinny, worn-out horses pulled buggies past small farms, where a goat or cow was kept enclosed by densely planted cactuses trimmed in straight lines, where people with leathery skin and clothes that had been washed and laundered for decades walked slowly. The car was old and they drove with all the windows down. Villages became clusters of houses, small clusters of houses became fields, fields blurred into borderless stretches of land long left untended.
The driver turned south, and soon there were only acres and acres of orange groves on both sides of the road—no houses, no cars, no farm equipment. Only once did Helen see a man. He was on an ill-nourished horse moving in a slow jog down a row of trees. A thin dog followed a safe distance behind. She didn’t know if the man was overseeing the groves or just passing through. Soon, in the distance, she saw a long four-story building rising out of the field. It was gray concrete that had never been painted and looked as if construction had been abandoned at some point. She tapped the driver’s shoulder and asked about the building.
“Dormitories.”
“All the way out here? For what?”
He explained that during the 1970s and 1980s, the USSR had invested in Cuban industry and agriculture. They had built the dormitories for students who were required to work the fields planting orange trees for five days every other week.
“All the students?”
“All the students.”
“But what if you didn’t want to plant?”
The driver shrugged. She suspected he had been one of those students, but he did not volunteer the information and she did not ask. She remembered what the American couple had said at dinner about drivers being spies.
“And now?”
“After the breakup of the USSR, the program was abandoned. No one comes. Everyone wants to be in Havana. Money is much better.”
She wanted to stop and look at the building, but they had passed it, and she knew if she were too inquisitive early on, she might unnerve him and sabotage her plans to find the bishop.
As they were about to turn onto the National Highway, which ran the length of Cuba on an east-west axis, they were overtaken by a large tour bus. It was Chinese made and filled with Japanese tourists, the driver said. They were heading to the alligator farms on the western tip of the island.
From the map in her guidebook, Helen guessed they would be in Santa Clara in an hour. They were making good time on the road, which looked more like a boulevard in a European city abandoned in the 1950s than a national highway—four lanes with a grass median separating the two directions and ornate black lampposts appearing at random intervals. There were no signs anywhere. On either side, invasive marabu trees had taken over large swaths of land. Considered a weed in Cuba, the thorny trees grew in dense thickets and in some areas reached heights over twenty feet. She had read somewhere that Cuba imported most of its food, which surprised her now, seeing how rich the land was. They drove east for over an hour, and she counted four trucks and three cars. There was something soothing about the sameness of the land skimming past.
As they turned off the highway, the driver told her there was a famous cigar factory she might like to see in Santa Clara. She was happy to stay away from any of the tourist spots, but he was insistent, and she sensed she should not resist.
The cigar factory was several blocks from the center of town and smaller than Helen had imagined. The streets leading from the town square were narrow, with more horses and buggies than cars. The factory was the width of one of the buildings—not more than forty feet wide and extending deep into the block. Inside were rows and rows of tables where workers—mainly women but some men—sat with piles of tobacco leaves. She watched as their hands moved across the five piles, choosing a leaf for the wrapper from one pile, three for the filling from three separate piles, and then one for the binder from the last. Their fingers moved with so much memory that they seemed detached from their bodies—as if they had a heartbeat of their own.
She soon understood why the driver had been so keen to take her to the factory. His mother worked there. He had surprised her by coming. Even after they embraced, she clasped his face in her hands and did not want to let him go. Helen noticed a man in a small enclosed cubicle that had been built out from one of the walls. When her driver joined her, she asked why they needed a security guard.
“Oh, he is not security. He is the reader. He reads to all the workers. In the morning he reads the news, in the middle of the day, stories of general interest, and in the afternoon, novels—tales of love and romance.” These middle-aged women—all day on a bench rolling cigars, an extended motion performed more times than the times they brushed their children’s hair or leaned over to help with homework or cooked the evening meal—were joined together by this one man, who came every day and opened the world for them with words. She walked by the reader’s cubicle and saw a thick paperback on his desk with a faded cover and curled pages. Lil, la de los ojos color del tiempo by Guy Chantepleure. The pen name made her smile—it had to be a woman, French most likely, who had probably writte
n before the revolution. Everything in Cuba dated back to some time before the revolution. She wrote down the name of the novel though it would not be hard to remember—and the idea that time had eyes reminded her of the end-of-year party in Bermeja when the poet recited Baudelaire’s poem about the moon. When she returned to London, she would try to locate a copy. She liked the idea that she would be reading the same text as the workers.
The driver kissed his mother good-bye. She was slow getting back to her workstation. Even after she sat back down and continued rolling cigars, she kept smiling at him. Inspired by the admiration from his mother and her fellow workers, Helen’s driver assumed a more official air and informed her he would now give her a tour of Santa Clara. They walked to the town square, but the heat and his homesickness wilted his ambition. When she suggested she might walk around a bit and meet him in an hour, he was happy to oblige her. They agreed to meet in front of the tallest building in the square, the Santa Clara Libre, formerly the Santa Clara Hilton. He headed back to his mother.
From where she stood, she identified a tall spire and walked toward it. The well-maintained church and the two flanking buildings stood out like an oasis amid the decay. Helen knocked on the door and a nun answered. Helen explained who she was and her reason for coming. She pulled out her copy of Glenroy’s book and explained that he had performed in Santa Clara in the 1850s. She had heard that the bishop had amassed a large library of periodicals and newspapers and wondered if he might have some historical information on this circus. She said they most likely had performed in the square.
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