King of Cuba

by Cristina Garcia

  The abuses got more outrageous every day. Just yesterday he’d heard that prison buses were being rented out for weddings, quinceañeras, and beach shuttles. That three tanks’ worth of oil from human remains (stolen from the Guanabacoa crematorium) were being sold on Havana’s streets as cooking oil. That everyone—rappers, cartoonists, school children—was mocking the moringa, a miraculous plant he’d taken great pains to import from India to feed the people. Black market hustlers had even gotten ahold of the pesticide from the campaign against dengue fever and were auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Nobody on the whole goddamn island did a lick of work but complained all day about the lack of fucking mops. His were a people sans rigueur, as Napoleon might’ve put it. They expected the country to prosper without sacrifices on their part.

  How the hell could he not take it personally?

  El Comandante coughed up a knot of phlegm and summoned El Conejo with the push of a button. His principal adviser appeared without delay, nose twitching, teeth so severely splayed that they invited both revulsion and pity. El Conejo didn’t keep notes, relying instead on his computer database of a brain. In nineteen years of service, he’d forgotten nothing, nobody, not a single salient detail entrusted to him by the tyrant. The man couldn’t be blackmailed either, because he’d never been known to so much as blink with carnal interest at another living creature.

  “Find out what’s going on with those hunger strikers. I want a full accounting.” People were surprised at how soft the tyrant’s voice could be in private, too; so opposite his public thunder.

  “A sus órdenes, Jefe.”

  Towels

  Everyone thinks just because I work at a resort that I’m rolling in money. But the tourists who come here don’t leave tips. Since they’re on prepaid package tours, it doesn’t occur to them to leave me so much as a miserable peso for cleaning their rooms. So here’s what I do: short them a towel and pretend it was they who lost it. The hotel charges fifteen dollars for a lost towel, so it makes sense for them to pay me a peso or two to “find” it. If the guests indignantly refuse (only the Germans refuse), they’ll still be charged and I’ll get my cut from the front desk.

  —Idalia Ferrer, chambermaid

  Havana

  Every public appearance by the Maximum Leader required the efforts of dozens. If he didn’t look perfectly groomed and lucid—tremor-free, no slurring of words or faltering of any kind—the rumor mill worked overtime churning out more lies. The latest outrage making the rounds would be ludicrous if it weren’t so poisonous: that the tyrant was, in fact, already dead and the government was using a body double to maintain stability. But the lies that irked him most took aim at his manhood: that cancer had eaten away two-thirds of his balls; that his pinga had shriveled to the size of a Vienna choirboy’s. Maybe he should drop his pants on television and show those bastards what he still had between his legs!

  Around him, the TV station was on high alert. Everyone was running back and forth and talking at once. His nephew Javier was the producer in charge of this mayhem. An ambitious little man with a theatrical streak, he was the opposite of his taciturn father. Whenever El Líder looked into his nephew’s eyes, he saw someone who wanted to stand in his shoes before he’d stepped out of them.

  “Por favor, Comandante, look this way.” The makeup artist moved El Líder’s chin an inch to the right and patted some foundation on his nose with a spongy wedge. She’d been entrusted to make him look as healthy and youthful as possible by minimizing his liver spots, lightening his under-eye pouches, tinting his lips and cheeks with a touch of color. Endless mariconería, but he submitted to these indignities for the sole purpose of deflecting viewers’ attention from his battered appearance to the substance of what he had to say.

  A violent debate broke out over the degree of formality appropriate for El Comandante’s first speech in fourteen months. Should he stand in military dress behind a podium (with its added assurance of support), or appear relaxed on a sofa, more like the commander in chief emeritus? If this was going to be his swan song, the tyrant decided, then he would go down—if he was going down—like a soldier. A staff physician injected him with vitamins while a nurse spooned cough suppressant into his mouth. His dentures were pinching like the devil, but there was no time to adjust them.

  If there was any grumbling about the bumping of the Argentine telenovela, nobody dared say so to his face. Often, he wished that Cuba could grow rich again. The despot recalled the fleeting possibility some years back that the island might be sitting atop huge oil reserves. Before the exploratory drilling even started, the United States had filed a slew of lawsuits, claiming that the oil, should it exist, belonged to them. In the end the reserves were far smaller than El Comandante had hoped and far too costly to drill. As his best economist told him: “Trying to extract it would put us all back in loincloths.”

  A trio of perfumed wardrobe assistants helped the tyrant into his uniform. The jacket was heavy with medals. Why was it that the most beautiful women worked in television? For a time, El Comandante had preferred the taut angularity of ballerinas (Cuba produced the finest dancers in the world). Yet for all their grace and passion under the floodlights, they proved inhibited in bed, too critical of their bodies. To them, an ounce of fat was the stuff of tragedy. He’d devoted a great deal of thought to what constituted the perfect woman. He had his proclivities, of course—blondes with blue or green eyes, tiny waists, ample hips, and the younger the better. Women over forty, with rare exceptions, were best viewed fully clothed or in the dark, though many were good for the game all night long. Ay, to have seen Delia as a seventeen-year-old in a tight white bathing suit strolling along the beach at—

  “Jefe, I have the news you requested.”

  Irritated, the dictator turned toward his adviser. “I’m about to go on the air.”

  “Infiltrated by foreign agents. Potential fiasco.” El Conejo barely moved his lips when he spoke. His consonants were mere fumes. “The Church, too, is involved.”

  “That asshole Mexican bishop?”

  “Along with the Pope and peninsular agents.” El Conejo’s nostrils flared.

  The tyrant had underestimated the international impact of those goddamn hunger strikers. He didn’t know who was worse—those idiots starving themselves, the bloggers spewing lies, or the Damas de Blanco subjecting themselves to daily beatings and arrest. Those bitches might turn out to be most dangerous of all. Hadn’t the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo brought down the generals in Argentina? And those Mirabal sisters, murdered under Trujillo, had set in motion his demise. Assassination plots he knew how to handle. Armed insurrection. Political dirty dealings. But unarmed women? Men starving themselves in the name of freedom? Damn it, he’d have them force-fed if it came down to it. Not a single one of them was going to croak on his watch.

  “Let’s get this show started.” He thrust his cane at an underling and hobbled to center stage. The lights brightened and the cameras rolled. El Comandante barely waited for the last notes of the national anthem before he broke in: “Nobody, do you hear me? Nobody will steal this revolution away from us. I’d prefer to see it in ruins than sold off, piecemeal, to the highest bidder. The day is coming, ciudadanos, when your faith in our great society will be tested.”

  Damn it, how he loved to hear his voice fill a room; nothing was more powerful to him. Nothing sounded more like Cuba than his voice. It was bigger than him somehow. Oceanic. Invincible. He was two people: him and his voice. Fuck them all, he thought.

  “I’m well aware that there are persons at home and abroad who’ve been plotting, under the guise of empty martyrdom, to embarrass our revolution in the eyes of the world. Listen to me well, counterrevolutionaries and imperialist coverts: your tricks will not be tolerated! Not by me nor by the legions of good revolutionaries who continue to carry on in the spirit of Che!”

  The dictator looked directly into the eye of the biggest camera, which was moving in for a close-up, black and
glossy as a Cyclopean owl’s. He shifted from one leg to the other, felt the grind of bone in socket, imagined himself flying through the air, a basketball at the tips of his fingers, rotating light.

  Carajo, where was he?

  “Next month, we’ll begin the first in a series of historical reenactments of our revolution, to remind ourselves—as well as our friends and enemies around the globe—how hard we’ve fought, how much we’ve been willing to sacrifice for our goals. Never in the history of mankind has one small country accomplished such gargantuan deeds. Not only here at home, where freedom and prosperity have reigned for nearly six decades, but abroad, where we’ve sent legions of our doctors and nurses and teachers, who’ve struggled, and continue to struggle, in solidarity with our friends and fellow revolutionaries.”

  El Comandante touched the microphone on his lapel. It was round as a beetle, reminiscent of the Ministry of the Interior’s antiquated bugs. A screeching echoed through the studio, and the soundman jerked off his headphones. The tyrant preferred the bulbous, old-fashioned microphones, the ones he could adjust and tap and caress while his next volley of thoughts coalesced. Tonight he wanted to strike fear in his listeners, renew their unswerving dedication.

  “Do you think the reactionary Yankee henchmen do what we do? Why do their slums teem with poverty and the unemployed? Why do their people die from a lack of basic health care? Why do millions of their homeless roam the streets? Why, ciudadanos, are the poodles in Beverly Hills taken to plastic surgeons for tummy tucks? Profit, and more profit, that’s why! It is profit, not justice, that motivates the capitalist scum—and they will step on, overthrow, murder, or destroy anyone who gets in their way. Necessities that we provide to each and every one of you free of charge cost infinitely more than luxuries for a few. Think about it: you can buy a thousand bicycles for the price of one brand-new Cadillac!”

  Fernando made a chopping motion at him from the wings, but his brother ignored him. Focus, the tyrant reminded himself. Focus.

  “These historical reenactments, ordered by me, will bring to life the most illustrious days of our revolution. The inaugural event will be a solemn remembrance of our triumph at the Bay of Pigs. Never before had the imperialist colossus to the north been defeated, much less by an adversary a fraction of its size, with a fraction of its fighter planes, ammunitions—”

  A tremor skittered up the back of El Comandante’s leg and spread to his buttocks, which began twitching like a rumba dancer. A milky substance occluded his vision. Focus, focus.

  “What the Yankees hadn’t counted on was that our material deficiencies were nothing compared to our surplus of determination—the determination of a people unwilling to behave like the slaves they kept enchained for centuries. The Empire’s days are numbered. Do you hear me? Numbered! But . . . but . . . our revolution has only just begun!”

  Something pink swirled behind his eyes, a fleeting iridescence. He heard his mother singing at twilight, a plangent song from another century. Bésame, bésame mucho / Como si fuera esta noche la última vez / Bésame, bésame mucho / Que tengo miedo a perderte, perderte después . . .3

  “So I am here tonight, ciudadanos, to exhort you to fight like those brave men and women at the Bay of Pigs, who saved you from a fate still suffered by millions around the world and who—”

  A cramp seized his other leg and his breath came in ragged bursts. The tyrant forced himself to continue. “Furthermore, it has come to my attention that shameful irregularities and abuses of our resources are taking—” And then he passed out.

  * * *

  1 Radio Bemba: Fernando is looking to partner up with Mexico for a share of the drug trade. But you know what they say: cartels = organized crime; government = disorganized crime.

  2 Stealing is an ugly word, Papito, but I ask you this: when I steal your entry fee from the state, why do you call that “theft”? Everyone here works for slave wages, so I ask you: who’s robbing whom?

  —Yvette Aguirre, Partagás factory tour guide

  3This is our most lucrative song. We pick out the fattest, ugliest tourist we can find in La Plaza de Armas and love her up with it. Tony plays guitar, Miguel has the voice, and I put on my Panama hat and move in for the kill. When she opens her purse to give us a tip, I get a good look at what’s inside. More songs, another tip. A kiss or two, another tip. You never know where it might end. If she insists “No más,” we move on to the next one. Later, we divide the spoils.

  —Luís Rivera, hustler

  8.

  Sugarcane

  Miami

  Perhaps it was the heat and agitation of these last days—the Everglades; his son’s incessant phone calls; the vigorous rendezvous with Vilma in his Cadillac; the rear-ending by that balsero in the stolen Camaro (the accident had made the evening news and revived the debate over elderly drivers, a hot topic in Florida); his daughter’s badgering him about finances; the continual pricking and prodding by the medical staff since his arrival at the hospital some hours ago—but Goyo had had enough. He scowled at the mule-faced nurse and refused to roll over for another injection. No, no, y no. The ensuing silence magnified the hum and whine of the medical machinery.

  “Dad, don’t be difficult.” Alina crossed her arms, gearing up for battle. She pushed aside a pair of monstrous cameras hanging from her neck. “If you keep up the militant psycho act, they’re going to transfer you to the loony bin.”

  Goyo didn’t move a muscle. The nurse placed her syringe on a metal tray with a ping and left the room. Victory. But the pain, carajo! His leg was immobilized in some plastic contraption, and his blackened toe looked twice its normal size. The doctor told him that he’d probably broken his leg when he hit the brakes, but Goyo found that implausible. Alina pulled out what looked like a huge metal spider from her shoulder bag and unfolded a tripod. She positioned the larger of the two cameras on it and aimed the lens at his face. Let her take his picture. She would get nothing from him but a spectral trace. He had more important things to do.

  “He’s coming up,” Alina announced.

  “Who?” Goyo smoothed the front of his hospital gown and shifted to a more comfortable position.

  “Goyito. I told him where to find us.”

  The phone rang, and Goyo reached for it. It was the hospital receptionist complaining that his guest was insisting on bringing in a Great Dane. “You better talk to him.”

  “For God’s sake, Goyito, leave Rudy in the car. The hospital has rules. You can’t bring a fucking dog in here!”

  Goyo instantly regretted speaking harshly to his son. Who knew what might set off another bout of self-destruction? He’d read somewhere that a proclivity for suicide was genetic, a deep cellular longing. Why had some men jumped out their windows after the 1929 stock market crash while others patiently rebuilt their fortunes? His father had lost everything at the onset of the Revolution, but there were thousands like him who hadn’t killed themselves, who’d worked as janitors or waiters, biding their time until they could grow rich again. But when Papá decided something, nobody could stop him.

  “My father was the king of Cuba!” he blurted out to no one in particular.

  Goyito stood in the doorframe carrying a dwarf areca palm in a terracotta pot. Its fronds gave him the appearance of sporting waxy wings, an ecological innocence. He looked heavier than the last time Goyo had seen him, and he wore a malodorous, salmon-colored tuxedo from the seventies with a ruffled shirt, matching cummerbund, and scuffed-up sneakers with the laces untied.

  “Jesus Christ, who did this to you?” Alina looked her brother up and down.

  It pained Goyo to see his children together. It redoubled his sense of failure.

  “Come here, hijo. Give your father a kiss.”

  Goyito shuffled toward him, stiff as a mannequin, and set the potted palm down at the foot of the bed. His wrists jutted out of his too-short sleeves. He extended a hand, like the Pope offering his ring to be kissed. There were dimples where the knuckles should
be.

  “It’s a pretty little palm tree, Goyito. Gracias.” Goyo brought his son’s stubby hand to his cheek.

  An afternoon thunderstorm erupted, rattling the hospital windows. An hour ago it was coasting over Cuba.1 A flock of parakeets chattered in the coral tree. Goyito narrowed his eyes, as if trying to decipher the birds’ litany of injuries. His son could be stubbornly inarticulate, but he understood every chirp and bark in the animal kingdom. Goyito began sweating profusely, as if some internal faucet had been turned on. Rivulets dripped off his forehead, slid down his neck, wilted the ruffles on his shirt. All color seemed to wash out of him.

  “Alina, call the doctors!” Goyo shouted. His monitors twittered, red lines spiking.

  “I-I-I wanted to come for the funeral,” Goyito stammered. There was a gap where his front teeth used to be.

  “What funeral, Goyito? Nobody has died here. Alina, what did you tell your brother?”

  “What the fuck—” she sputtered.

  Goyito’s eyes teared up, but he betrayed no other emotion.

  “Ay, hijo, you’re just tired from your trip. Alina will take you home so you can rest. She’s going to pick up some lechón y pastelitos for you and Rudy.”

  “I’m going to what?”

  “Por favor, Alina. Let’s not argue for once. If you won’t be of help, then just go away.” Goyo waved her off with a flutter of his wrist. With much clanging and muttering of obscenities, Alina collected her equipment and left.

  Goyito looked down at his feet, then climbed onto the hospital bed. He put his damp, shaved head against his father’s chest and fell instantly asleep.

  “Now that’s a good boy,” Goyo said. “You rest now, you rest.” He stroked his son’s head, bristly with stubble, felt the punctual beat of his heart. A vein, thick as a varicose, snaked up the side of Goyito’s neck. His nostrils seemed enlarged, too, as if he were sucking in more than his share of oxygen. Goyo unbuttoned the top of his son’s shirt and tried to tug off the tuxedo jacket. A crusty elbow peeped through a tear in the sleeve.