by Naomi Holoch
“We must create a place for poets like you, who write in English,” he said, “a Cuban place, of course, but different.”
“But,” I said, “sometimes I write in Spanish as well.”
He smiled indulgently. “Yes, I’ve seen what you bilingual poets do. It started with the Chicanos, didn’t it?” He paused. “‘Chicanos’ is right, no? Or should I say ‘Mexican-Americans’?” He looked about and giggled, as if we were sharing a terribly mischievous secret. Then he sipped noisily on his coffee.
“No,” I said, “I’m not that type of bilingual poet. I write in English and Spanish, but not in the same poem.”
He smiled, his fingers twisting the thin ends of his long mustache. The wind, whipping up from the streets and the ocean through the open windows, ignored his work and scattered the hair above his lip, making him look like a ferret or a mouse. “You mean, of course, that you translate into Spanish what you write in English.”
I squinted and shook my head. “No, no,” I said. The light was falling. “Some things come to me in English, others in Spanish. I write in whatever language it comes to me.”
He nodded, as if he understood. “Yes, I write some things in English too. I even have a few things in Russian, from my youth, when I spent some time studying in Moscow. That was a beautiful time.”
I looked out one of the huge windows and down to the street. I spied Isabel, who had refused to come up to see the poet. “He’s overrated,” she’d said. “But he is well connected. You should see him.” She was waiting for me. Her body was spread out on the hood of her gray Lada, looking like someone who’d thrown herself down in an attempt at suicide. The street was deserted, otherwise she’d have drawn a crowd. The wind made her long, golden hair dance on the windshield.
“The poet’s true language is the one in which he thinks,” my host announced abruptly. “And you? In what language do you think?” He moistened his fingers and pressed down on his mustache, as if trying to hold it in place.
“It depends,” I said. “Right now, I was thinking in Spanish, maybe because we were talking in Spanish. I don’t know. I go back and forth, depending on who I’m with, what I’m doing.”
The poet’s eyebrows, pencil-thin black lines above his eyes, squiggled like an electrocardiogram. “Yes, yes, but what language do you dream in?” he demanded.
“Well,” I said, “it depends. I don’t always recognize the language in my dreams.”
After my shower, I sit on the porch at Isabel’s house trying to compose my thoughts into something coherent on the page. I’ve told myself I need to write every day I’m in Cuba, no matter how tired I am, how much activity there is around me. Above my head, shirts and towels flutter on a clothesline.
In the United States, I’d heard about Isabel’s house mostly from friends. They told me it was on the beach, on the water at Varadero, and I had imagined something pastoral and pleasing, where I might feel the breeze off the ocean and smell the salt in the air. What no one mentioned was that there is a great expanse, a vacant lot, really, between Isabel’s house and the sea, and that between the lot and the water there is a highway with trucks and buses and rented cars full of Argentinean and Spanish tourists coughing fumes and throwing litter out the windows. The lot, which is apparently no one’s concern, is thick with aloe, brambles, and garbage, unpassable unless you’re wearing long pants and hiking boots.
In the morning, we’d gone to the beach. We drove there in the Lada, fifteen minutes of maneuvering through narrow streets lined with prostitutes and illegal vendors.
“I always thought you lived on the beach,” I said to Isabel.
She seemed confused. “I do,” she said, her head nodding, as if I had somehow missed the fact that, yes, her house is right there, only a matter of yards from sand and sea.
“Well, yes,” I said. I was going to go on, to explain what I meant, when someone tapped my arm through the car window. I turned to see a young man holding a lightbulb. He looked newly scrubbed, his hair combed back and still wet, his clothing perfectly pressed.
“Oh, we need one of those,” Isabel said, reaching into the pockets of her shorts for some money.
“Here, I’ll get it,” I said, beating her to my bills.
I handed the young man a damp American dollar and though all he’d heard us speak was Spanish, he responded in English. “Thank you,” he said with just the slightest accent and dropped the lightbulb into my hand. He smiled broadly, showing a pair of missing teeth, and backed away from us and into the crowds. Isabel took the lightbulb and shook it, seemingly satisfied with it. The whole exchange seemed odd to me, out of sync.
We piloted the Lada through the streets and onto a driveway leading up to one of the newer tourist hotels. It sat on a hill, its architecture hinting of the Bahamas, with sparkling whitewashed walls, red-tiled roofs, and cozy verandas. As we drove through the resort, I spied a sign in English that read MINI-MARKET. There was no Spanish translation. Another, in the shape of a small arrow pointed to a glistening lawn and read (also in English and without translation) GOLF COURSE.
“It’s not completed yet,” Isabel said, as if reading my mind. In contrast to the jammed, sweaty streets of Varadero, it was cool and empty up here.
Isabel pulled up to a designated parking space. A uniformed security guard waved at her from a distance. “He’s a friend,” she said, gathering her beach towel and a pair of goggles from the backseat. “He and I went to school together.”
We entered the ocean slowly, almost cautiously. Isabel had dropped her shorts on the shore but she kept her T-shirt on and now it expanded and became transparent. She wore brilliant tropical colors underneath that came alive when wet. It was low tide so I dropped to my knees to immerse myself in the water. There was nothing refreshing about it, though. It was as warm as bathwater, thick with salt and something vaguely oily on the surface. When I asked Isabel about it, she shrugged, put her goggles on, and dove into the sea. She swam about for a minute or so, emerging with a small rock in her hand. She examined it carefully then tossed it back. I watched as she glided underwater, a ribbon of color against the sandy bottom. As she explored, I hovered, my arms outstretched, sitting in the shallow water, searching out the shore for signs that this was, in fact, Varadero and not an abandoned St. Croix.
“Hey,” Isabel said, coming from behind me and putting her arms around my neck. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and kissed me.
“Me too,” I said, holding hands with her underwater.
We are just friends but, at different times, we have been involved with the same woman, a rather reckless Don Juanita who now lives in the U.S. and who recently dumped Isabel in favor of a former Olympian. Isabel knows about her own breakup with Don Juanita mostly through friends; our mutual ex has managed to communicate only indirectly.
“I’m not angry at her,” she said, “but the Olympian, yes, I’m mad at her.” She shrugged, took her goggles off, and dunked them in the oily water. She rubbed the lenses as if it mattered. “It’s circumstances,” she said.
“You ready?” Isabel asks. She pokes her head out from the house, car keys in hand.
“Absolutely,” I say, and close my journal.
She turns off the porch light, bright with its new bulb. A truck drives by on the highway, its groaning muffled somewhat by the ocean. Smoke rises from its exhaust pipe and trails up to the low-hanging moon, a big yellow ball rising on the horizon.
We are on our way back to Havana for a party. I am well aware that if it weren’t for me, Isabel would probably not go. She’d stay at home and read or watch American movies with Spanish subtitles on TV. But she wants me to see Havana, her city although she lives in Varadero, and she wants me to have a few good stories to tell when I return to the States.
In the car, we listen to Marta Valdes and Sara Gonzales on a tape player I sent her for her birthday last year. The music is soft and sad, its lyrics remarkably gender-free. The car rattles, but it’s soothing in its own w
ay. As we drive along, we pass a handful of other noisy cars, a couple of closed roadside snack shops, and the huge, aviarian shadows of oil cranes on the shores. They silently dip and rise, one after the other, for miles and miles. The car window’s wide open, my elbow sticking out Cuban style, and my black T-shirt flaps like wings on my shoulders as we enter the city. The moon floats over the sea.
At one of the first stoplights in Havana, we’re examined from a distance by a small crowd of male and female prostitutes. The Lada, with its fading paint, is clearly local, but both Isabel and I mystify them: though her clothes and body language correspond to the languorous way of the island, she is blond and wears too-fashionable-for-Cuba yellow and black frames for glasses (a gift from another New York friend); there’s too much burnt red under my tanned skin, and my clothes—all dark colors—do not correspond to the logic of Cuba’s heat and humidity.
At the stoplight, I lift my camera to my eye and focus and, as if on cue, the prostitutes descend. The first is a sinewy boy in his late teens, chocolate-skinned and perfect but for the gold tooth that appears when he smiles.
“Señorita,” he says, doing his best Latin Romeo imitation, “perhaps you would like a little company tonight, no?” He affects an Iberian accent, taking a chance that I’m a Spanish tourist and might be amused by his attempt to sound like a compatriot. He leans into the car window and with him comes a waft of soap and cologne.
“She’s already got company for tonight,” Isabel says a bit too quickly, too protectively, in her own open-mouthed Cuban Spanish.
“Ah,” he says, still holding onto the car, but waving over two much-too-young girls with his other arm. “Then perhaps you’d like to make it a party, eh?” He’s looking at me but talking to Isabel, unsure where I’m from or whether I understand. His gold tooth seems to spark. “This is Nena,” he says, pushing one of the girls up to the window. She’s no more than fourteen, her eyes encircled with heavy black liner and fatigue. “And this is Pilar,” he says, grabbing the other girl by the arm. This one is caramel-colored and resentful, her lips curling.
“Encantada,” I say.
Isabel rolls her eyes in disgust. The light has changed. The other cars are involved in their own transactions or going around us, the drivers indifferent to the scene.
“Ah, you’re from Miami,” says the boy, understanding my accent as native but my demeanor as foreign. (I’m too amused to be local.)
“No, from New York,” I say, smiling at them. “Pilar has a cousin in New York,” he says, yanking her up closer.
She shakes him off. “Ya coño,” she says, resisting. She’s not much older than Nena, her face still round and babyish under all the makeup.
“We can show you Havana,” the boy says, “a private Havana, a Havana especially for you.”
An exasperated Isabel shakes her head, tells him no. He leans in, his whole head inside the Lada now. I’m blinded by his gold tooth so I push myself back, giving him room to continue his sales pitch to Isabel, who I know won’t be moved.
I look out the car window to Pilar, who’s standing out on the street, her arms folded stubbornly across her chest. She stares back at me, full of pride and hate.
The party’s in an old, majestic but dilapidated mansion in the Vedado neighborhood. It’s a colorless, muddy shade but I can see its former elegance in the chipped Roman columns at the front, the scalloped borders on the doors. A young girl sits in front with a metal cashbox on her lap. She asks for ten pesos—not even a dollar’s worth. I give her a few American bills and Isabel and I enter through the large wooden doors that seem to open just for us.
Inside there is a crush of bodies, revolving disco balls, and a suffocating humidity. It’s wall-to-wall flesh, all of it drenched and alive and yearning. I smell talcum and blood, sex and perfume. It takes a minute for me to adjust my senses. There is a dizzying disco song blasting from the speakers—large, coffin-size boxes hung from chains on the ceiling; paint flakes down like confetti.
As the partygoers come into view, I see men and women pressed up against each other, men rubbing their naked nipples against other men, women gyrating between pairs of men who encourage them with grins and long snaky tongues that dart in and out of their purple mouths. Shirts and blouses are translucent, second skins sticking to breasts and bones. Everything’s gauzy.
In one corner, I see a black figure separate into two silhouettes, long dark hair soaked and fused to their naked shoulders. “I want their picture,” I shout to Isabel above the noise, pointing to the two women breathing in the corner. She has her finger around a loop in my jeans, making sure we don’t lose each other. She follows me as I approach the lovers.
“Con permiso,” I say in my loudest voice, although I can tell from the way they’re looking at my mouth that they are lip-reading. “Listen, I’m a writer—a poet—from New York and I wonder if you’d mind if I took your picture?” I lift my camera for them to see.
They are both gorgeous, olive-hued, with dark, wounded eyes and creamy skin. The smaller one turns away and folds into her lover, who looks at me with a sober and unforgiving expression.
“We would mind very much,” she says. And I hear her slightly accented English through the crunching sounds of some German industrial dance song.
“Aaaayyyyyyyy, take my picture, take my picture!” shouts an excited young queen dripping with faux pearls who drags his drunken lover into my face.
I laugh and nod, bring the camera up and push the button. The flash explodes, freezing everyone for a split second. Faces turn toward us, some excited, some enraged. The beautiful women are gone.
“Mi amor, photograph us!” says a boy in a sailor’s suit, pushing his companion, a soldier in full military drag, at me.
Isabel puts her hands squarely on my hips and drives me away, through the labyrinth of flesh out to a patio, where the air is suddenly cool and refreshing. We pass a small table, where greasy paper plates are piled up, and a cart full of rapidly melting ice from which a couple of lithe young men are selling beer and soda. We settle under a low hanging tree on which the leaves are ripe and aromatic. The moon is somewhere high above us.
“Jesus,” I say, laughing, “what is it about gay men, huh? It doesn’t matter where in the world I go, they’re always listening to disco, they always want their picture taken.”
Isabel pulls a handkerchief from her pocket. She wipes her face and sighs. “Good party?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah, and an amazing place,” I say, surveying the mansion. The owners have cleared the front room of all furniture and blocked access to all the other rooms. There are meaty men standing guard in front of the doors leading to the bedrooms and kitchen. Some of the windows that look out to the patio are boarded up, nailed shut, but we can see the glow of a light inside one of them and a solitary shadow in a rocking chair, reading a newspaper.
“That must be the mother,” Isabel says. “Listen,” she says, coming closer to me. Her breath is hot on my face. “No more pictures here, okay?”
“Yeah?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, you know … the flash.” I know it’s more than that, but it’s okay.
Then a short, brown-skinned woman comes over to us. She’s wearing a red suit, with a lacy red shirt and a red ribbon holding her hair in a curly, wet ponytail. Her apparel is sort of corporate femmy, but her demeanor is entirely butch. As she crosses the patio, she’s practically marching.
“Tú—mujer linda,” she says, pointing to me. Her smile is sly, cocky. “¿Quieres bailar?”
There’s an unintelligible rap song booming through the speakers now, which seem nearly as powerful out here as inside the house. I see Isabel in my peripheral vision, smirking at my little admirer. I tower over this girl.
“Maybe later,” I say, “something slower.” Isabel smiles, nods approvingly at my discretion.
But suddenly, the music shifts. The beat is tropical and lazy. “J’imanijé …” sings an indolent, Caribbean voice.
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��Ay, mamita, si es una canción francesa,” says the little butch, imploring.
Isabel laughs. “That’s not French,” she tells her, “it’s some kind of Creole.”
“You’re not together, are you?” the girl asks, as if it just occurred to her.
Instinctively, we both shake our heads. The red-dressed butch grabs my hand with her moist, slippery fingers and pulls. “Vamos,” she says, and I obey, laughing over my shoulder at Isabel, who seems entertained by the turn of events.
On the dance floor, we are overwhelmed by the long, gangly bodies that sway dreamily around us. Their features come in and out of shadow, sweat running from their temples unabated. A few women wrap themselves around each other, their bodies encased in shiny perspiration.
My dancing partner pulls me toward her with one swift, hard tug but I resist. I feel my T-shirt molding to my back, as soaked as if I’d been standing out in the rain. We struggle wordlessly back and forth until we come to a compromise: I nail my elbows to the inside of hers and her hand goes to the small of my back and works from there. All the while, she sings, “J’imanijé….” In my head, I make it French: “J’imaginais.” As we turn, I catch Isabel’s eye. She’s leaning up against a wall, watching us and smiling. She’s drinking a beer I don’t remember her buying.
When the song ends, my partner doesn’t give me a chance. As soon as the notes of the new tune begin—something even slower, even more drippily romantic—she takes advantage of the instant I relax to smash me into her. My breasts squish up against her chest, hers slide around under mine. My nose is in her hair, which smells of sweat and roses. She sings, and I know it’s for me. Her voice is raspy but strong, directed at my ear. I feel her flushed breath on my lobe and neck. I think I recognize the song—something by Marta Valdes?—but I can’t make out the words.
And now she seems more convincing, leading me, turning us in small, tight circles. The room spins, like a ride at an amusement park. I look for Isabel but all the faces have smudged together. I try to pull away but I can’t. It’s as if all the air has been sucked out of the space between our bodies and we’re being held together by suction. The little butch continues to sing, her tone rising with the song’s crescendo, her throat full of emotion. I feel as if I could drown.