The midmorning news was banal: a topless woman protesting who-knew-what at the Supreme Court, more politico peccadilloes followed by a rehash of yesterday’s assassination attempt against the tyrant. What?
“Did you know about this?” Goyo demanded.
Víctor twisted the kitchen rag in his hands. “Sí, Jefe.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”
The Andean hung his head.
“Speak up!” Goyo lost his temper.
“You n-needed to sleep,” Víctor stammered.
“I’ll be sleeping for eternity!” Goyo pushed himself to standing but fell back, crab-like, onto the sofa. “Help me up, goddamnit!”
Víctor ran to right his boss, who was trembling violently.
“What time is it?” Goyo barked.
Víctor pointed to the clock on the far wall. It was nearly ten in the morning. Goyo rushed to his desk and turned on the computer: fifty-two messages, including several all-points bulletins from Hijodeputa.com. So it was true then. Somebody had tried to kill El Comandante again, and failed. Now every exile group on the planet would be taking credit for the dubious heroics. Carajo. After nearly sixty years, it was time to get it right. Goyo envisioned the act precisely. It must be executed in a clean, controlled manner. If all went well, it would be over in six seconds. Six seconds, and the world would finally know his name.
Word
Nobody talks to me anymore. From one day to the next, I’ve become persona non grata. I look back over what I’ve written. Nothing egregious. My fair share of praise for the Revolution and whatnot. I’m not one to go around throwing rocks at glass houses. I come to every writers’ union reception dressed in my one good jacket. Yet everyone finds an excuse to leave me con la palabra en la boca. At least there’s plenty of rum. That’s how they keep us in line here, try to force the illusion that we’re free men, not the kowtowing scum we’ve become. ¡Salud!
—Francisco Sotomayor, poet
18.
Exeunt
Sic transit gloria mundi
The chapel around the corner from the United Nations was open twenty-four hours a day to accommodate the faithful from every time zone. The interior was modern with abstract stained-glass windows and Stations of the Cross that merely hinted at the blood and suffering. The signs were in English, Russian, French, and Chinese, the languages of the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council. Goyo searched for a confessional and ducked inside. A handwritten note was tacked under a buzzer: PRESS HERE TO SUMMON PRIEST. His legs felt shaky, out of fear or tiredness he wasn’t sure.
The loud clap of the wooden slat announced the arrival of the priest. “What brings you seeking the Lord this morning, my son?”
Goyo’s eyes watered at the phrase “my son.” It’d been so long since his own father had called him mijo. He remembered their last afternoon together in Papá’s sparse apartment in Brooklyn Heights. He’d served Goyo a fried hamburger and sliced tomatoes with olive oil. Papá was in his late sixties then, but he’d looked much older. The Revolution had aged him, had taken his youngest son, driven him to penury and despair. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve had a good life, mijo,” Papá said as he sent Goyo on his way. A few days later, he shot himself in the head.
Goyo got right to the point. “Can murder ever be sanctioned, Father?”
“There are exceptions to everything,” the priest said. His voice clacked like river stones. “Are you a believer?”
Goyo hesitated. “Most days, I guess.”
“And on the days you’re not?”
“I think of all the evil that goes unpunished.”
“It is for God to decide who are the sinners—”
“Then why do we have courts?”
“Such judgments are preliminary. The last and final judge is Our Lord.” The priest seemed to weigh each word as he spoke. “No Christian ought to die in any other state than that of a penitent.”
“What else can you offer me, Father?” Goyo struggled to keep the irritation out of his voice. His entire history felt diminished, wilted. He wanted to die the way he should’ve lived, like a blow to the head.
“Hope.”
“And to the hopeless? And to hopeless situations?” Goyo’s voice rose. He reached for a caramel in his pocket and noisily unwrapped it.
“More hope,” the priest said with finality.
“In my homeland children don’t have milk, Father. How can you say to one child, You will grow, and to another, You will not?”
“You must rely on the Lord, on the power of prayer.”
Goyo grasped the ledge of the confessional booth and pushed himself to standing, tonguing the caramel to one cheek. A back molar felt loose and he feared uprooting it. He’d hoped to take Communion, but he didn’t want to risk sacrilege on top of murder.
“Go in peace, my son.”
The United Nations loomed on the banks of the East River, its flags snapping in the wind. It was supposed to be a bulwark against rogues and anarchists. Why, then, did it permit criminals to give speeches? Goyo remembered something his history teacher used to say, quoting Shakespeare: “No king, be his cause never so spotless . . . can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.”
The Russian guard was expecting Goyo at the visitors’ entrance, smacking his thick lips. The smoked salmon and caviar delivered to him yesterday afternoon had had the desired effect. “Good to see you again, Comrade Herrera!” Yuri thundered, enveloping him in a fishy embrace. Goyo was relieved that Yuri, as usual, didn’t ask him to empty his pockets or walk through the metal detector. No matter that the Glock was safely locked inside Carla’s desk. Magnanimously, the Russian ushered him past the security station without a second glance. Goyo stopped by Carla’s office but, as prearranged, she wasn’t in. It was just as well. He feared that one look at her might make him abandon his plans. But he’d come too far to forget the past. The gold key to the bottom drawer of her desk was in his pocket. Goyo’s knees creaked as he bent to unlock the drawer and remove the pistol.
El Comandante was dressed in full military uniform for his speech. The damn thing weighed a ton, but he was aware that this might be his very last public appearance. Why not look his best? If he could make just one woman swoon—he’d try for that new delegate from Swaziland—and a convocation of diplomats rise to their feet in adulation, he would consider it a day well spent. Fernando strode alongside him, whispering furiously. The tyrant paid him no mind. His speech was in his jacket pocket, but he wasn’t inclined to play by the rules today. He was feeling good, energetic. Perhaps he would replicate his first visit to the General Assembly and shoot off another two-hour harangue. Everyone—delegates, newsmen, pundits, los gusanos themselves—would have to acknowledge that nothing at all had changed; El Comandante was still the same handsome, fiery devil the world had fallen in love with nearly six decades ago.
El Comandante and Goyo proceeded, almost simultaneously, into the gilded chambers of the General Assembly. It was the first day of its fall session, when even the laggardly diplomats appeared in their dazzling national costumes, eager to swap the summer’s gossip. The tyrant moved through the crowd with ease as Goyo took a seat behind the Trinidadian delegation. Its ambassador, corpulent and jet-black in a wide-lapel suit, turned and smiled at him. Goyo recognized the ambassador—he used to order the cottage cheese in a half pineapple special—and this made him uneasy, as if el negro could read his mind, or X-ray the pistol tucked inside his jacket. Nonsense; Goyo tried to calm down. He reminded himself that he looked like any other distinguished emissary from the tropics. Even those who’d known him as a purveyor of fine sandwiches probably couldn’t have identified him out of context.
Goyo’s nerves fired furiously as he watched his nemesis make a show of walking to the podium without assistance. The Turkish foreign minister, with his movie-star mustache, rose to his feet, and the rest of the delegates followed suit, giving El Comandante a standing ovation. Hadn’t the Jesuits warned ever
yone about demonolatry? Goyo looked around and spied Fernando in his executioner’s uniform to the right of the platform. Soon he, too, would know Goyo Herrera’s name. This wasn’t pity, the tyrant reassured himself, but an outpouring of gratitude for a lifetime of heroism. The applause was pure music, a balm, redemption itself. Goyo couldn’t endure the welcome the bastard was getting. He refused to stand, though he knew he was calling attention to himself. There he was, the monster himself, waving like the fucking Queen of England. Even with the best doctors that stolen money could buy, the son of a bitch looked a wreck, if a defiant one. Goyo thought himself to be in much better shape, and this flooded him with unreasonable pride.
El Comandante couldn’t get enough of the hero worship. Reluctantly, he lifted both arms to call for silence, but the diplomats were in no hurry to end the flattery. He felt a rising frenzy to talk, to dazzle them one last time. A part of him was tempted to cause a scandal and drop his pants, show his detractors that he was still the man they feared. Goyo was sickened by the farce, by the tyrant’s fatal deceptions. He recalled Adelina’s delicate wrists as she played Schubert’s piano sonata in A major; imagined her looping the deadly rope through her parents’ chandelier. El Comandante began with an old joke, saying that reports of his death had been highly exaggerated. The delegates clapped and screeched like monkeys. Impostor. Creator of ruins. The bastard had turned their island paradise into a fucking cemetery. How dare he perfume the weeds?
Goyo reached into his jacket pocket. The metal was already warm from his body heat. Six seconds. Six seconds was all it would take. El Comandante thanked his many supporters and allies. The list was long, the names and places mellifluous. That fiend could sneeze and lie at the same time. Goyo gripped his pistol and in one fluid motion took aim. A riptide of pain surged through his chest, numbing his arms. Carajo, his heart was giving out again, the blood bursting its chambers, but he managed to pull the trigger. El Comandante collapsed onstage, cracking his head against the marble floor. His breath escaped as if from a vacuum. His body rolled slightly to the left. Whoever the hell had shot at him had missed. Instead the bullet hit the pillar behind him and bounced who knew where. If he hadn’t turned at that exact moment to salute the Canadian delegation, he might’ve welcomed the bullet straight to his heart. He tried to get a glimpse of the gunman. From the corner of his eye, he spied a Panama hat, a linen suit, the stubby physique of what had to be a no-account gusano. Infamy would be his for all of an hour.
The tyrant fumbled for his gun, but it skittered a million miles away. Voices floated around him in a dozen languages, a chorus of dissonant bells. “Don’t leave us!” “Have courage, Jefe!” But the tyrant kept on dying. He wandered through a vast palace, the furnishings covered with sheets, the dust inches thick, a lonely view of clouds through the windows. Ash blew on the wind. It was over. He’d done it. He, Goyo Herrera, had shot the son of a bitch dead. Let his heart stop, let the heavens fall down on his head, but he’d accomplished his mission. He’d come face-to-face with his destiny and pulled the trigger. Soon his countrymen would be chanting his name in the streets. There would be trumpets and merrymaking, congueros banging their drums round the clock. And his beloved Adelina, arms outstretched, would greet him in heaven with wild, white lilies. Goyo slumped over a row of empty seats, his face as radiant as his agony. He heard the commotion, but none of it mattered. Death, insistent, touched his brow. An ellipse of darkness engulfed him. Beyond it were vague shapes, a fading chaos. A hero. Sí, he would die a hero . . .
Where the hell was Fernando? The pain in his chest was unbearable. A knife thrust to his heart. Damn it, he should’ve taken the fucking bullet. He’d wanted to die in battle, on horseback, like the great Martí. Or like Caesar, looking his killers in the eye, the blood between them the last word. Too many years of surviving hadn’t prepared him to die opportunely. It infuriated him to succumb to something as mundane as a heart attack, or whatever the fuck was happening to him. He refused to surrender, to accept this as the story of his death. With a last surge of energy, El Comandante lifted his head and called for his brother. His inner voice diminished to the faintest of breaths. A slow roar surged inside him, but it, too, faded away. A dirigible floated on the horizon, its flesh-toned snout tilted toward the sun. An inexplicable joy overcame him. The tyrant imagined flying high over the Sierra Maestra, over Pico Turquino, which he’d scaled as a young man. Then he felt himself rapidly sinking, a leaky dinghy, deep into the Caribbean Sea without the prerogatives due him at death. Cojones, not like this!
Around him, loved ones began to gather: Mamá, her apron filled with silky rose petals; Miriam, beckoning to him in her wedding gown; his naked father, prodigious balls quivering, shouting: “Get up! Get up!”
“You’re very brave, mijo,” his mother whispered. “You are my bold boy.”
“Sí, Mami, lo soy,” the tyrant sang back, and then he, too, was gone.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my dear friends, near and far, who generously read this novel and made excellent suggestions, especially Alfredo Franco (gracias, hermanito), Scott Brown, Evelina Galang, and Dean Rader. Special thanks to my daughter, Pilar García-Brown, and to Elizabeth Frietsch for their editorial assistance; to La Madonna di Cosimo and Jill Patterson for extraordinary kindness; to my incomparable agent, Ellen Levine; to Alexis Gargagliano, editor extraordinaire; and to Walter Kiechel for his fount of humor and title ideas. My deep gratitude to Tom Grimes and the English Department at Texas State University–San Marcos for generous support and the gift of time. Finally, mil gracias to Las Dos Brujas family—Denise Chávez, Chris Abani, Katie Blackburn, Kimiko Hahn, Juan Felipe Herrera, and all our participants—for extraordinary community.
© ISABELLE SELBY
CRISTINA GARCÍA is the author of six novels, including the National Book Award finalist Dreaming in Cuban; children’s books; anthologies; and poetry. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages, and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers’ Award, among other honors. She has taught literature and writing at numerous universities, and is currently University Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University–San Marcos.
Visit her website at CristinaGarciaNovelist.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012037553
ISBN 978-1-4767-1024-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-1453-0 (ebook)
Contents
Epigraph
July 26–28
Chapter 1: By the Sea
Chapter 2: A Dangerous Season
Chapter 3: (To) Resolve
Chapter 4: Cemetery
Chapter 5: Rain
Chapter 6: Almost Dead
Chapter 7: Prime Time
Chapter 8: Sugarcane
August 13–15
Chapter 9: The Visit
Chapter 10: Myths
Chapter 11: Birthday
Chapter 12: Monkeys
Chapter 13: The Swamp
Chapter 14: Fireflies
September 8–10
Chapter 15: Lilies
Chapter 16: Turbulence
Chapter 17: The Works
Chapter 18: Exeunt
Acknowledgments
King of Cuba Page 20