And then it did come. The government decided that people could run their own private restaurants in their homes. They were to be called paladares, delicious places. People gave up their family living rooms so that foreigners could eat real picadillo and tostones, while their children stared from the shadow of the doorway to see if foreigners ate differently. But Segundo wanted more and he had been a good revolutionary all these years and had contacts and this was his chance.
His “contacts,” of course, was Miguelito, who had been working his way up in the party. “Miguelito,” he said to his childhood friend, “I want to do a paladar in our courtyard. It is a beautiful space and I could make this place a real restaurant. I can cook Gallego and Basque food and Cuban. But you know, a real place for real people, you know? With a maître d’ and a wine cellar. A place to be seen in Havana.”
It was this last part that caught Miguelito’s attention. “Yes, yes. This can be done. We should do this.” He smiled his horrible crazy-fanged smile.
* * *
A truck arrived with huge earthen pots of low-sprouting palm trees for the tiled terrace. Segundo did not have to ask who’d sent them. Segundo and Esperanza put out most of the tables in the house, including nightstands, which they expanded with round sheets of plywood also sent over by Miguelito, along with white tablecloths to cover them. The tables were surrounded by almost every chair in the house, some folding, some stuffed, their own rickety mahogany dining room set, some of the claws at the feet cracked or broken like fossilized remnants of earlier life-forms.
This was his moment. The old porch off of the terrace was turned into a kitchen. There was no kitchen in Havana—not the Basque, not the school, or the Nacional—with as many appliances as Segundo’s paladar. There was a steamer for the vegetables and an electric grill for fish and a toaster oven for additional oven space and an electric can opener for the beans, which he didn’t use because he had an electric pot for slow-cooking soaked beans, and a food processor for making sauces and grinding up yucca roots for croquetas, a toaster for the toast rounds that he would serve with Spanish sausages and French pâtés. He had a rotisserie for chickens, which he would serve in a sauce made from garlic chopped in a food processor and sour oranges squeezed by his juicer. He even had an electric tostones masher because Aunt Medea once saw his mother flattening the banana slices with a bottle. In truth, Segundo found the bottle easier to use and a lot of banana slices were too flat after being smacked with the automatic tostones flattener. He had a blender for the daiquiris and a little beater, which Arsenio said could be used for beating the egg whites in pisco sours, but he still could get no pisco, which came from Peru, so he made rum sours with egg-white foam. And there was the Mixmaster for making cakes and the house specialty, flan con nata.
“Adé,” Segundo called to the babalawo who now walked with a cane, his white hair flying out wildly so the top of his black head looked like a boulder by the Malecón with a wave spraying over the top. “I am going to have a restaurant,” said Segundo. But the babalawo just smiled because he already knew. He knew everything that happened in the neighborhood. Even in “special times,” Adé could get birds and goats for sacrifices, and he promised Segundo that he could always get him meat.
Two days before he opened, Segundo started cooking beans in the Crock-Pot. Then he decided to make some toast rounds. As he turned on the toaster, before the coils even turned red he heard a short puff noise, almost like a fastball landing in a catcher’s mitt. Then there was no more electricity.
“Where is Miguelito?” Segundo, who was beginning to sweat in his white chef’s uniform, asked Adé, who pointed down the block. Segundo made his way down the narrow street, clinging to the crumbling walls to let smoking cars lurch past with a rumble like percolators about to squirt coffee. And, to his horror, at the end of the block, in an ornate building with a balcony over the front doorway missing half its stone balustrade, was a sign welcoming customers to the Paladar de La Mulata. She had already opened and was serving chicken, congri, and tostones nightly to customers in her low-cut tight gown—so tight, extra rolls of flesh showed everywhere and her chest rose out of the bodice like the steep soft tropical hills of Pinar del Río. Even in the dark room he could see a row of white roots to La Mulata’s black pulled-back hair, like a black frame with a white mat.
But Miguelito did not seem to see her flaws from his seat as she leaned over to afford him the best possible view while he sipped rum with a bucktoothed smile and a large Cohiba, the kind Fidel had decided not to smoke anymore back in some midlife health fad.
Ignoring this situation, Segundo walked up to Miguelito as though he were alone and told him about the electricity.
Miguelito puffed rich clouds of smoke far bigger than he was and simply said, “You need more power.” He gave the word “power” a special puff. “I will take care of it.”
“But when?” Segundo could tell that Miguelito was playing suave for the Mulata to see.
“It’s done,” he said, as though dismissing Segundo. But as he walked out into the white-hot sunlight Miguelito followed him and, looking back nervously at La Mulata, said in a whisper, “Look, I am your customer. Do you understand?”
Segundo nodded uncertainly, so Miguelito exhaled smoke and rolled his eyes at his old friend’s thickness. “I intend to eat on your terrace. I will be seen there every night. It will be my place. If people need to talk to Miguelito, like you just needed me, they don’t chase down the street. They come to your paladar, where they will find me dining on champagne and caviar.”
“Caviar?”
“Yes, make sure you have it. And champagne.”
“How do I get caviar?”
“The Russian commissary. It is all arranged. Everything is arranged. Even the electricity.”
Segundo went back to his house, passing Adé on the way. Adé winked at Segundo. What a world, thought Segundo. The Mulata winks at Miguelito and the babalawo winks at me.
Segundo told Esperanza what had happened, and this was really the turning point for the paladar. Esperanza had not been very interested in the paladar until she learned about La Mulata. It was just as Che had warned. The moment you introduce private enterprise you introduce ruthless competition. Esperanza went to Silvio, who still had good clothing connections, and got him to find her a very tight satin—maybe polyester—red gown, which she tailored to the shape of her body, her black satin skin set off by red satin cloth. She would be the waitress.
That afternoon seven men in uniforms the greenish brown of overripe fruit came from the Ministry of the Interior and hung wiring—three hung and four sat and sipped the bittersweet cortaditos that Segundo offered as a way of testing his coffee machine.
After they left, the terrace had a web of sagging black wires. Segundo was in the kitchen when he heard a scream that sounded like the last outrage of a tough old man. He cautiously went out to the terrace and at first saw nothing unusual. He looked up to make sure his new wires were all still hanging, and there, in utter silence, staring at him, were five very large shiny coal black birds perched on the wires. Cuervos, he thought. Ravens. What should he do? They looked too large and too dangerous for him to enrage them in any way.
Miguelito came by for another cortadito to have with his cigar. Segundo pointed out the cuervos, but Miguelito, relighting his Cohiba, insisted, “Cornejas.” Crows.
“No,” Segundo insisted. “They are too large to be crows.”
Miguelito ended the discussion with a sharply pointed glare and then ducked his head to work on relighting his cigar.
Segundo understood. They were crows. It was the official decision of the party. Crows.
Then Miguelito’s small black eyes—crow eyes, it suddenly occurred to Segundo—grew bright. “It can be the trademark of the restaurant. You can call the restaurant”—he paused for a moment and then wrote the words on the air with his cigar—“Paladar de C
ornejas.”
Segundo felt an anger rise within him. He thought he could smell Esperanza’s fury, listening out of sight in the next room. They had chosen the name already—Paladar de Esperanza. Esperanza liked it because it matched Paladar de La Mulata. But Segundo liked it for its other meaning, “the savoriness of hope.”
“If we call it Crows, people will not be prepared for how big they are. People will be afraid,” Segundo weakly argued.
But Miguelito dismissed the argument in a cloud of humid smoke. “That’s the way crows are in Cuba. Cuban crows are very big. Paladar de Cornejas Cubanas.”
So the name was settled.
* * *
Adé had a 1957 two-tone Chrysler, turquoise and white, that he used to go to ceremonies and to gather sacrificial animals. If he nursed the push-button gears carefully it could get up to a good speed. Segundo borrowed it for shopping. He drove along the Malecón, where the waves were splashing onto the road that morning. The fish was being delivered, but he had to go out to his old neighborhood in Miramar where the Basque lived, past all the fine diplomat residences on Fifth Avenue, past the Chinese embassy, and turn onto a street of small houses surrounded by chain-link fences. At the end of the street was a small organic farm, just a few acres planted by his friend Mariano, who became a farmer like his grandparents after he lost his job at the helicopter factory. Segundo bought fragrant fresh-picked herbs and small bright tomatoes and a bag of bright red little round chucha peppers that were not nearly as fiery as they looked, and long green plantains for tostones. On the way back he bought oranges from a covered outdoor market in Vedado, where good revolutionaries crowded into the abandoned homes of bad revolutionaries who had wormed their way to Miami. The market, heady with the perfume of ripe guavas, had great piles of plantains and onions and oranges and some meat that was not as good as Adé could bring him.
From there he could walk past a row of rotting mansions to the Russian market. Several people stood in front of the closed door as though some event was about to take place. Some men would knock on the door; it would open a crack, but they would not be let in. Segundo thought he must have the wrong place. “Is this the Russian market?” he asked a very tall, dark-skinned man who had just been turned away at the door.
“Yes, just go knock at the door.”
He did, and a blond woman came to the door. She did not look like she was really blond, but she did look like a foreigner. She asked what he wanted and he explained that he was Segundo Montero and Miguel Debrazos had sent him. The instant he pronounced Miguelito’s name the door was opened. Inside was a very small store selling American toiletries and some foreign liquors and a few Russian items—all on closed shelves behind counters. They did have caviar, both red and black. Miguelito had not said which color he liked. The red, the cheaper one, at fourteen pesos for a four-ounce tin, was expensive enough.
He bought Esperanza some American shampoo in a white bottle, called Dove. It was odd the way of late everything seemed named after birds. He should ask Adé about this. He bought a bottle of red vermouth to make Americanos because he had a reservation for ten Yumas. Do americanos really drink Americanos? he wondered.
He was very excited about this reservation. He had never met real Americans who weren’t born in Cuba. Two years before he had been excited because the Baltimore Orioles were in the country to play the Cuban national team and the Basque had Segundo cook a meal with three of the players as guests. But these Americans turned out to be born in the Dominican Republic. This night, he thought, he would be cooking for real Americans.
He asked the blond woman if they had any pisco from Peru. They didn’t.
* * *
Segundo ripped along the fish’s belly, cutting fillets while thinking about Miguelito. He had found some Catalan champagne, some Cava for him to drink with the caviar. The important thing was the tall Spanish crystal champagne flute he had found for him to drink it in. It was, after all, the glasses that made it champagne. He had learned that in hotel school.
Miguelito insisted that he be served by the maître d’, Silvio. Segundo could not decide if this was because Silvio was looking so elegant or if it was at last revenge for having called him a beaver all those years ago. Silvio had found a white tie and tails complete with gold studs, high-collared white shirt, white tie. He looked like the men at the clubs in the pictures before the Revolution. Esperanza in tight red satin, it seemed to Segundo, was one of the great sights of Havana. The American shampoo had not worked, made her hair look as though it had received an electrical shock. But she wet it and pulled it back tight on her head, which was the exact way La Mulata always wore her hair.
Everything was ready. The fish was filleted. A sauce with garlic and chuchas and herbs had been puréed in the food processor. The small American fryer was heating oil to exactly 85 degrees centigrade, which he had calculated to be exactly 185 degrees on the American dial. The toast was toasted. The chickens were slowly spinning in the rotisserie. The sour oranges had been juiced. The beans were in the Crock-Pot. The daiquiris were in the blender. The octopus was steaming. The ropa vieja, which used to take his mother five hours to make, was in the pressure cooker and would be ready in another twenty minutes. The nata was whipped for the desserts. The flan was in the electric flan maker. He even had some dough kneading in the bread maker. The electricity was holding up, and of course the crows were lined up on the wire.
Yumas, Segundo had been informed, are always on time, and it was true. At exactly eight o’clock the ten of them arrived in flowered shirts and those five-peso straw hats they sell in Habana Vieja and the bright rose faces white people get when they come to the tropics. They were exactly what Segundo thought they would be, and they followed like ducks as Silvio ushered them onto the terrace. He thought that they might enjoy seeing the appliances in his kitchen. He might show them after dinner.
“Look at the ravens,” a woman with pleasant fleshy exposed arms squealed from her sundress.
“No, Madame,” said Silvio in the correct English he had learned in hotel school and a perfect voice that Segundo have never heard before. “Those are Cuban crows.”
“Are you sure? They look like ravens. Are they dangerous?”
“Not at all. They just sit there.”
“Why?”
Silvio, who had been well schooled in revolutionary dialectic, thought for a second and then said, “Because that is their place.”
Miguelito entered in a puff of pastel smoke. He was wearing a white linen suit, a kind that had not been seen in Havana in some time. It was the look Miguelito said he wanted, though it seemed surprisingly pre-revolutionary. But then again, so was caviar and champagne. Silvio had found it for him. It looked several sizes too big and the left padded shoulder drooped down. Only the red suspenders—another Silvio find—saved his voluminous pants from unseemly disaster.
Silvio greeted him at the door. “Good evening.” It was the best he could do. Miguelito had hoped for a “señor,” but this was, after all, just Miguelito. Silvio ushered him to a corner table he had picked, a mahogany table with a round marble top that Segundo and Esperanza used to use for family photos in their upstairs living room. It was placed in the corner by the largest potted palm so that Miguelito could be partially hidden behind the palm with clouds of cigar smoke marking his spot.
A couple dressed in practical clothes as though they had just been camping came in. When Segundo took the reservation he had hoped by their accent in Spanish that they were also Americans, but now they were speaking French and insisting they were from Canada.
Silvio told the large American table that their waitress would be out right away.
Esperanza made her red satin entrance. As she walked across the terrace every eye followed her, even the crows. Was she going to dance? To sing? To embrace a lover from some hidden recess on the other side of the room? Her heels clip-clopped across the tiles. It was ha
rd to believe that she was only going to wait on a table. She offered them all Americanos to start, and the eagerness with which they accepted made Segundo smile, watching from a small kitchen window. He was right. That was what Yumas drank.
While Esperanza took orders at other tables Silvio brought Miguelito a chilled bottle of Cava and a crystal flute and went to the kitchen to prepare the caviar. He arranged toast on a turquoise plate and piled the coral-colored salmon eggs like polished topaz cascading over the plate. Segundo even had a silver caviar spoon left behind by the family that had abandoned this house before his family moved in. It was a subject of much laughter when he was a child and the family would imitate Aunt Medea in reverse—“gusanos pobrecitos living in Miami forced to eat their caviar with no spoon.”
As Silvio was bringing out the caviar, two British couples walked in with no reservation. Segundo based his day’s shopping on the reservations, but surely there was some extra. Silvio presented the platter to Miguelito, at the same time working out in his mind an elaborate ritual about squeezing the four in even though they had no reservation.
Suddenly a hoarse scream echoed through the terrace and all the customers looked up. All of the crows fluttered their wings and a few issued short squawks. One of the British men apologized in diplomat Spanish for not having reservations and said they would call next time. Silvio tried to tell them they could stay, but they were gone.
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