"Not lately," Anthony said. "Where are you staying?"
"A colleague and I are renting a room in a casa particular under the name Philippe and Sophie Dubois. You don't need to know the address. I'm reachable by phone."
"Dubois. Are you French now?"
"From Lyon. I manage a chain of photo supply stores. My wife is an artist who spends a lot of her time at the museums." A smile appeared fleetingly on Bookhouser's thin lips. "The owners noticed that we don't share the same bed. I think they feel sorry for me. We'll talk tomorrow."
Everett Bookhouser went back across the street and headed west, swallowed up by the crowds of people milling about the crafts fair, lines of booths with hand-carved ox carts and maracas and the other assorted trash that tourists took home.
There would be taxis over there. For a few dollars Anthony could find one to take him back to Maria's house. Gail would ask him what had happened this afternoon, and he didn't know what he would tell her.
The fishermen stood twenty yards farther down the sidewalk, a bottle of cheap rum or aguardiente next to their bait bucket. More men fished from small boats close to shore. A teenager floated on a truck inner tube. The fishermen on the sidewalk began to talk about whether to use the next fish for bait or keep it to eat. From their accents Anthony guessed the men had come from central Cuba, perhaps Camagüey.
He vaulted to the top of the seawall and sat facing the water.
The men's backs were wide, their long arms heavy with muscle, their skin dark as belt leather. Anthony remembered such men in the cane fields in Camagüey. He had seen them riding with their machetes in open trucks on the long, straight roads. His grandfather Quintana's mixed-race family had worked at the central, the sugar mill owned by a family so wealthy they had sent their sons to Harvard. The owners fled to Miami after the Revolution and settled in Palm Beach.
In elementary school, Anthony had gone with his classmates to the sugar collective. The kids provided no real help; the purpose was to teach them about work. It was summer, and they wore long pants and long-sleeved shirts and gloves to protect their skin from the sharp edges of the cane stalks. Carrying armloads of it, they sweated like pigs under their straw hats, and their red scarves quickly soaked through. The sugarcane had seemed twenty feet tall, and as the men swung their machetes, the steel sounded like bells, and the cane fell as though pushed over by the wind. Yolanda Cabrera had been there, too. When Anthony ran out of water in his canteen, she ran to refill it for him.
The steel clanged on the tough stalks, and the kids sweated and sang. Barquito de papel, mi amigo fiel, llévame a navegar por el ancho mar— Little paper boat, my faithful friend, take me sailing on the wide sea—
Smiling, Anthony shook his head, unable to remember any more of it. Yolanda had known all the songs, all the words.
He watched one of the fisherman pull in a fish, drawing it out of the water, rolling the line around his plastic yo-yo. He tossed the fish into a cooler, and it beat against the sides for a while, then was quiet.
Anthony had wanted to rent a car and take Danny to Camagüey with him, the two of them. He had wanted to show him the town, Cascorro, where he'd grown up, its dirt roads and concrete houses, the stream where he used to go fishing. The elementary school, how small it was. On a trip to Cascorro, they would have to carry their own food and take things to give away. It would be good for Danny to see that.
Would have been good. There wasn't any chance now that they would be going to Camagüey.
15
The lenses were scratched, and a bent wire held one of the hinges together. José Leiva took off his bifocals, revealing the deep lines at the corners of his eyes and dark pouches beneath. He unfolded the new glasses and held them up to the light. "Yes. Very nice."
Leiva slid the earpieces through his shaggy white hair and settled the glasses on his nose. He picked up a book from the side table, turned it over, and read the print on the back, tilting his head to bring it into focus. He lifted the book toward his visitors, a salute. "Son perfectos. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks to all of you." His smile went around the small living room to include his six visitors from America, jammed onto the sofa and sitting in chairs brought over from the dining table.
Sipping her wine, Gail watched with interest José Leiva's reactions to the things that Anthony took out of the bag: a notebook computer, a staple remover, a box of paper clips, ink cartridges for the printer, film for the camera. Leiva would look at whatever was put into his hands, nod politely, and explain how that this or that item would be helpful in his work. The more personal items—a shirt, some underwear, a package of socks— received the same solemn appraisal. He reminded Gail of her political science professor in college, a gentle but melancholy man past middle-age, with a small white beard like Leiva's. The professor had been so conscious of the misery of human affairs that suggesting in his classroom the possibility of happiness would have been as much a faux pas as laughter in a confessional.
Leiva's wife, Yolanda Cabrera, walked from his armchair to his desk, stacking and arranging. There were CDs of classical music, double-A batteries, a can opener, a pack of 60-watt lightbulbs, vitamin pills for him and calcium tablets for her. She set his old eyeglasses alongside the other gifts, perhaps saving them for the day that the new pair might break. Gail thought Yolanda would be the sort of woman who could make dinner from one egg and a carrot.
When she came back, Anthony handed her a set of Caswell-Massey bath products that Gail had bought for her. With a cry of delight, she bent down to give Gail a hug. She opened the hand lotion and rubbed it into her skin. "This is wonderful! Thank you, Gail. You are too good."
Trailing the faint scent of lilies, she put the box on the desk, then detoured by the front windows to pull back the lace curtain and look out at the street.
Reading her mind, Leiva asked, "¿Mario no viene?"
"Me dijo que sí. " Yolanda told him that Mario would be here. He had said he would. She let the curtain fall into place.
The house was located in the Santos Suárez district. Ramiro Vega's driver had brought them in the minivan just past sunset, not too late to view the run-down condition of the neighborhood. The house two doors down might have been built a century ago, with its Doric Columns of poured concrete and its rusted metal railings. No one lived there. The roof had fallen in, and weeds grew in the cracked walls. Leiva's house was newer, perhaps from the 1940s, with a small front yard and a chain-link fence. Windows of frosted glass set in flat metal bars enclosed the porch, and potted flowers brightened the doorway.
José and Yolanda had given a tour of their library—three walls of books in what had once been the garage. Shelves made of old lumber went floor to ceiling. Anthony gave them the hardcover books he had brought: the latest Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa; Spanish editions of Milan Kundera, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Vaclav Havel. José Leiva examined each one carefully, running his hands over the covers, flipping through the pages.
In the last light of day, Yolanda had led them into the backyard. More flowers. A trellis. Folding chairs where one might sit and listen to the birds. A garden to supply, fruits and vegetables. For twenty pounds of boniatos and a bag of mangos, a neighbor had repaired the brakes on their car. Yolanda tended the garden, worked at the retirement home, organized the library, and still managed to keep her floors mopped, the laundry done, and a smile on her face. Gail thought that she herself, put in Yolanda's shoes, would have wanted to cut her wrists.
Danny leaned over to take another ham croquette off the plate on the coffee table. He had already eaten half a dozen croquettes, two glasses of orange soda, and several crackers. Dinner would be served when Mario arrived.
"What's this for?" Danny picked up the end of a yellow extension cord that came through a window and dangled against the wall near the desk.
Leiva explained that it was in case of an apagón, a blackout. The cord ran to the house behind them, which was on a different power grid. If the lights went o
ut, you plug in a lamp.
Anthony finished his translation, then said, "Danny, Angela. I have never seen an apagón in the tourist sector, nor in Miramar in all the years that I have visited my sister's house. Why do you think that is?"
"Because Aunt Marta pays her electric bills?" Danny's flip answer was met by a cool look from his father.
In the adjacent chair, Angela made a soft laugh. "There is no electric company. The government owns everything."
"Whatever," said her brother.
Anthony said, "You don't remember anything I told you about Cuba, do you?"
"Yes, I do. You just never told me about blackouts."
"Why do you think the lights stay on in the tourist sector?"
Danny glanced uncomfortably at the others in the room. "Because ... they don't want the tourists to leave."
"Exactly. Start paying more attention. You might learn something.'' Anthony resumed taking things out of the bag. Danny stared at the floor. Gail almost felt sorry for him, being put on the spot that way. Anthony had been wrapped tight as a golf ball ever since coming back from his meeting with General Garcia.
What Gail had wanted was not to rush over here but to talk with Anthony for more than five minutes about whatever in God's name had gone on with Abdel Garcia. He'd come back to Marta's, turned on the hot water heater in the bathroom, and in the short time it took the water to heat up, he had told her that General Garcia expected him to become a spy for Cuba. Worse: The CIA wanted him to play along. Gail said no way, are you crazy? She followed him into the bathroom, but he told her to leave him alone. He hadn't decided what he was going to do.
Anthony looked into the zippered bag as if he had forgotten something and pulled out a small, pale blue box tied with a narrow white ribbon. He said in Spanish that it was for Yolanda from both himself and Gail. It was nothing, not expensive, but they thought she might like it. Yolanda came over and took the box, opened it, and exclaimed, "¡Ay, qué preciosa!"
Gail had never seen it before: a hair clip with a floral design that looked very much like antique sterling silver. She knew the box: Tiffany. Yolanda thanked them both, then held the gift out to her husband. "José, look, isn't it pretty?"
"Póntela," he said.
She hesitated, then laughed and pulled the simple plastic clip off her gray ponytail. She swept her thick, wavy hair back with both hands, fastened the silver clip, and turned to show them. The flowers curved gracefully around the back of her head. Her hair wasn't gray anymore; it was black and silver.
"That's so elegant," Irene said. "Muy elegante. Gail, did you pick that out?"
Gail sent her mother a little smile, then looked at Anthony. He sat back down on the other end of the small sofa and said quietly over Karen's head, "I noticed it when I was getting my watch repaired. You don't mind, do you?"
She reached across and squeezed his hand. "Of course not. It's perfect for her." Gail smiled once more at Yolanda, aware at the same time of a nudge of jealousy, which was totally irrational. There was nothing between Anthony and this woman. They had known each other from childhood. She took care of his father. They were lifelong friends, like cousins, one could say. Anyway, Yolanda was married to a man she clearly loved and admired.
On her chair next to Leiva's, Irene set her wineglass on his lamp table and picked up the paperback that he had given to Anthony, the collection of his writings. She dropped it on her lap and flipped through her phrase book until Angela showed her the place. Irene said, "Señor Leiva, usted es escritor. ¿Qué...." She bit her lower lip in concentration. "Wait, wait, I've got it. ¿Qué escrita?'"
Leiva's white brows rose quizzically before he nodded. "Ah. What I write."
Anthony translated: "José writes articles for the foreign press. The official newspapers in Cuba won't take them. An article of his was just published in El Pais, in Madrid. It will appear in The Washington Post next Sunday. He used to work in television. He made some videos about malnutrition in the eastern provinces and gave them to the BBC. He spent four years in prison for that."
José Leiva smiled. "I told lies. Nobody in Cuba is hungry."
"He was in a cell with murderers and thieves. He says it wasn't all bad. He lost twenty pounds. Unfortunately, he has put it all back."
"They think I am contrarrevolucionario. Maybe a terrorist." Leiva made his hands into claws and growled at Karen. "A very bad man."
Karen laughed.
He leaned over to give her an affectionate pat on the knee. "The Cuban people are educated and intelligent. Somos seres humanos—human beings, and human beings have from God the desire to be free. Anthony, por favor"
Anthony spoke Leiva's words: "Fidel Castro said that in Cuba there are no banned books, only the lack of money to buy them. The independent libraries started when people decided to take him at his word. They shared their books with anyone who wanted to read. When I was released from prison, Yolanda and I joined their movement. There is no censorship in this house."
Danny reached for another croquette. Anthony said, "Danny, escucha"
"I am listening, Dad."
From his armchair, the focal point of the room, José Leiva told them about the recent visits of a United States senator; a reporter from Italy; a group from Human Rights Watch. Anthony translated. Gail watched Danny stifling a yawn. His jaw stiffened, and his nostrils flared.
Finally, and more with gestures than with words, José Leiva told Danny to get up, walk to the front windows, and look across the street. After a glance at his father, he gave a little shrug and did as Leiva had asked. He stood by the window and pulled back the curtain.
"Okay. What am I looking at?"
"The house over there, you see it? Con dos pisos. Two ... floor. Look at the tree. They cut it so they can see from the window on top of the house. The window that has no light. They watch us from there. They are looking at you right now. They are taking your foto."
Danny stepped back.
"Don't be afraid. They want that, to make you afraid." He smiled and signaled to his wife. "Es tarde, mi amor, se mueren de hambre." The guests were getting hungry. She replied that Mario would be here soon, but yes, it was late, and they should eat.
"Let me help." Irene got up. Her earrings clicked and swung in her auburn curls. She had found the earrings in a souvenir shop in Old Havana, miniature tropical fruit in colors bright enough to compete with her green slacks and yellow pullover. Irene had said she wanted to look Cuban, but Gail hadn't seen any actual cubanas dress this way. Yolanda Cabrera wore flat shoes, black pants, and a sleeveless shirt of tiny black-and-white checks.
"I'll come too," Gail said.
In the kitchen, which was barely big enough for three women to turn around without bumping into one another, Yolanda rinsed a bowl in the sink. On the windowsill, placed where the afternoon sun would come in, plants in glass jars sprouted new leaves. Wooden shelves took the place of proper cabinets, holding dishes and spices and cloves of garlic and dried sausages on a string. Yolanda gave Irene the bowl for the rice and showed Gail where to find the oil and vinegar for the salad. She opened the oven door and took out a pan of six plump, crispy fish. She sprinkled fresh parsley over the fish and slid the tostones, the fried green plantains, into the oven to warm.
Her nails were unpolished, her hands roughened by work. She wasn't beautiful, Gail thought. She wore no makeup, except for a touch of red lipstick. When she smiled, wrinkles appeared around her eyes and mouth, and she was overweight. Immediately Gail felt guilty for noticing this, and revised her appraisal: Yolanda was voluptuous.
Irene left the kitchen with plates and knives and forks to set the table.
Gail sliced the cucumbers and tomatoes on a cutting board so old the center had been carved to a shallow bowl. "You speak English very well. Where did you learn it?"
"In school. I studied in the University, and I listen to the radio from Miami." Working at the stove, with her back to Gail, Yolanda tucked in a strand of hair that had escaped from the cl
ip. The silver flowers gleamed in the light from the fluorescent tube in the ceiling, and the clip barely contained Yolanda's thick, wavy hair. Gail's own hair, blond and straight, was chopped level with her jawline. Anthony had said he liked it that way, but she wasn't sure he meant it.
"Does Anthony come often to visit you and José when he's in Havana? He doesn't talk much about Cuba. I really don't know what he does here."
"What he does? He comes to be with his family, you know, his sister Marta and the children. He has many friends here. He visits us, too."
"And when José was in prison?"
"Yes, Anthony was here, and he took me to see José. They put him in a prison in Ciego de Ávila, far away. That's what they do. They make it hard for the families to see the prisoners. Anthony tried to help. He talked to his sister's husband, but General Vega didn't want to do anything. Maybe he couldn't, I don't know."
Yolanda's warm brown eyes lifted to Gail's, and her lips parted in a smile. Her front teeth were slightly crooked, but this was hardly a flaw. "Two years ago, maybe more, Anthony told me about you, a beautiful American lawyer. He said he would marry you."
Laughing, Gail said, ''Oh, well, then you knew before I did."
"I hope you come back many times, and that Mario will be a friend of Daniel and Angela. And your daughter, Karen. How funny she is. And your mother is so nice. I like her very much. This is your house. Okay?"
"That's very kind of you," Gail said. She could imagine how Anthony would want to return again and again to this house and these people, to walk through this tiny kitchen with its row of plants in bright jars in the window, to sit in the backyard with his friend José while Yolanda tended her garden. A thousand miles from the pretensions of Miami.
Yolanda lifted the lid off a battered pot and stirred what was inside, a mixture of red beans and ham and chunks of a yellow root vegetable that Gail didn't recognize. A cloud of savory steam drifted upward.
Suspicion of Rage Page 15