Waiting for Snow in Havana

by Carlos Eire

  I learned early on never, ever to set foot in a restroom at Senn High School. This was where all the greasers, gang members, and troublemakers hung out, and where most of the stabbings took place. I’d wait until gym class and use the urinals in the locker room. Those were fairly safe because nearly everyone else was following the same tactic. Safety in numbers.

  But not always. One day, one of the most violent guys in the school ran into me as he rounded a corner in the locker room. He smacked me on the jaw several times, hard, and barked: “Stay out of my way,” and added a long string of four-letter words to that sentence. Every single day, every year of high school, this guy had at least a dozen hickeys on his neck, each in a different stage of development. Some were bright purple. Others were kind of yellow, with a touch of green. His neck was one giant hickey museum. I’m sure he could have made the Guinness Book of World Records.

  He was killed by the enemy in Vietnam a year or two later.

  I didn’t know who was worse: my teachers or my fellow students. My English teacher, who was fresh out of college, rambled nervously most of the time. The rest of the time, she’d have us diagram sentences, or she’d scream at the top of her lungs for us to quiet down. The guy who sat behind me in English class loved to punch me in the back and call me names, but she never yelled at him. I tried the same trick on him as on the guy in art class, but it didn’t work. He kept right on punching and taunting me all the way into June.

  My history teacher also rambled and yelled a lot. He loved to address us as “Mr.” or “Miss” even as he insulted us.

  “Miss Theodoropoulos, you miserable wretch, the Maginot Line was not imaginary.”

  “Mr. Hashimoto, you miserable wretch, the bubonic plague did not cause people to grow boobs on their necks!”

  My science teacher and math teacher both shared the same talent for making the simplest things seem complicated. I would walk into the classroom thinking I knew something and walk out confused. Then I’d have to straighten myself out in study hall later. My art teacher did little more than read at his desk. Rumor had it that he nestled Playboy magazines inside those large books of his.

  Chicago. I hated everything about the place. Even the name was an awful joke. In Spanish “cago” means “I defecate.” I had made fun of the name when I was still in Havana. Me cago en Chicago. Now I lived there.

  I should have known that all of those flame-throwing smokestacks I’d seen from the train were omens of woe.

  Attending Senn High School was a delight compared to working at the Conrad Hilton, the largest hotel in the world. I despised the tens of thousands of dishes, glasses, forks, spoons, knives, cups, creamers, pitchers—all needing to be cleaned, sorted, and put away. Over and over and over, without end. It was just like the repetition my third-grade teacher, el profesor Infierno, had used to scare us into holiness.

  If you’ve ever attended a convention or a large banquet, try to imagine what happens when the dirty dishes leave your table. Picture tens of thousands of items, all dirty and smelly, needing immediate attention. Those busboys just kept bringing them in through swinging doors. Tray upon tray of stuff for us to sort out, scrape, bring over to the giant dishwashing machines, pull off the conveyor belt, sort, stack, put away. Every night the same thing. Over and over and over.

  The worst part was the smell. It’s not that the food started to rot instantly, it’s just that the odd combination of smells was a real witches’ brew. Fumes from hell, worse than those at any butcher shop.

  The only “good” job was that of pulling the clean dishes off the conveyor belt. But that was reserved for the foreman’s favorites. He tried me out once, but I broke so many dishes that he never dared to pick me again.

  My coworkers, all of whom were Puerto Rican, had taken to calling me “Cubita,” little Cuba. They all knew I had lied about my age, even the foreman. They put up with me, and ribbed me in a good-humored way, because they understood how much I needed the job.

  I was a terrible dishwasher. Probably the worst dishwasher who ever worked at that hotel. I must have cost Mr. Conrad Hilton more in broken dinnerware than he paid me. It got to the point that any time something broke, my colleagues would shout, “Tiene que ser Cubita!” Must be Cubita! Or they’d simply start shouting, in unison, at the sound of breaking glass, “Cubita! Cubita! Cubita!”

  On weekend nights I got to ride the subway and El home with my patron at the Hilton, Señor Mancilla, the elevator man, and it wasn’t so bad. But on weeknights I was on my own. That was the worst part of the job—walking the four blocks to the Harrison Street subway station at two or three in the morning, past all the topless bars, flophouses, and missions, waiting for the train on that platform, usually with a few other weird-looking men, or all by myself, and riding the train home.

  After a while, I got to know some of the winos on the way to the subway, and they got to know me. Those guys couldn’t hurt anyone but themselves, but at the time I didn’t know it. We learned to keep our distance, but every now and then we’d scare one another.

  Looking through the large front windows of the topless bars was a sin, so I tried not to. But Mancilla got me into the habit of doing it. And some habits are hard to break. Especially habits that are a sin, when you’re fifteen years old.

  I couldn’t figure out how those tassels stayed on the women’s nipples. I’d never seen any glue that strong. They spun those tassels around like airplane propellers, and they never came off. Amazing.

  Beneath the sidewalk, in the subway, this bad habit of mine made little difference to God. I must have had a squadron of guardian angels looking over me, as I rode that train home through some of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago, night after night.

  Only once did a pervert show up. I knew I was in trouble when he got on at the Monroe Street station and made a beeline for the seat next to me, even though the entire car was empty. Please, God, please, make him go away. I started praying.

  Baneful little man. Degenerate. Miscreant. Lost soul enslaved by demons. He sat next to me and started squeezing my knee.

  I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there, mute, praying up a storm inside, ignoring the man and his squeezing. Just sat there, and looked out the window while he clutched my knee.

  What if he had a knife, like the pervert who’d accosted me back in Havana four or five years earlier? A sharp, shiny knife, this time without lizards reflected in the blade?

  He squeezed my knee for what seemed an eternity. About five station stops. That’s all he did, that miserable wretch. He fondled a fifteen-year-old boy’s knee on the subway for about ten minutes at two in the morning, way down under the earth, and then he got up when we reached the Fullerton station, the first one above ground, and, as the doors opened with a whrackettetat, he looked back at me before exiting and said “good night,” dolefully.

  I looked him in the eye. I fired heat-seeking missiles into his depraved soul. I don’t know if they hit their target, but I tried. I felt rage and shame all jumbled together. James Bond wouldn’t have sat there and taken such crap. No way. Neither would Batman.

  But I didn’t have a license to kill, or weapons designed by Q, or a superhero’s costume or a cape, so my fear got the worst of me. All I had was long underwear and a pair of corduroy pants. And my prayers took me far away from him and that subway car, so far that I couldn’t even hear the screeching, rumbling, and squealing of the subway, down under the streets of Chicago. I was elsewhere, in another body.

  Gone back to Miramar. To the beach, at the Club Náutico. I saw clouds, beautiful white clouds, hovering over the turquoise sea. I heard the waves, and in the distance, from the club bandshell, a live orchestra playing a soft and sweet cha-cha-cha, the kind King Louis despised. I smelt the saltwater, even tasted it, and felt the sting in my eyes. I felt the sun on my skin and the warm breeze. I felt the wind whip through my hair, just as it had that Nochebuena when we made our way home past the seawall of the Malecón.

 
When I got home to our apartment building on the southeast corner of Winthrop and Hollywood, Marie Antoinette was peering out the basement window, her head level with the sidewalk, waiting for me, as always. She had struggled mightily for three years to get to us, given up everything, including her husband, mother, father, brother, sister, and homeland, only to find herself spending all day and all night in an empty apartment. She cooked for us and cleaned the house and did our laundry, which was a welcome change from what we’d grown used to, but aside from showering us with love, that was all she could do.

  My brother and I became her guardians. We supported her. We found our apartment. We bought our furniture. We found the used TV, the radio, the dishes. We spoke for her. We read newspapers for her and interpreted movies and television programs. We took her places on buses and trains. She could never give us advice on anything that mattered, or so we thought. And we barely spent any time in her presence.

  Her love for us was boundless, even when we were blind to it.

  That night I hugged her when I walked in the door, as always, took a shower, scrubbed my knee raw with a washcloth, and went to sleep on my sofa bed in the living room, under the pipes, below street level, no more than twelve feet away from the rushing traffic on one of the busiest streets in Chicago, a stone’s throw from the rumbling elevated train.

  Three hours later, Marie Antoinette would be up making breakfast for Tony, as always. And two hours after that, I’d be back at school again, as always.

  I never told my mother about the pervert. It would have broken her heart. She still doesn’t know, and, unless this is translated into Spanish sometime soon, she will never know in this life.

  Thank you, Fidel. Thank you very much. Muchas gracias, compañero.

  Whooooosh! Fffrrrrrrrggshhhh! Sssswrrrrooosshhh!

  “Fullerton. Next stop, Fullerton.”

  Whrackettetat…“Good night.”

  22

  Veintidos

  The bullets were wonderful. Bullets in all sizes, from harmless-looking .22-caliber midgets to huge, armor-piercing monsters. The ones we liked best were those with pointy tips. They looked more lethal than the rounded ones.

  Any time we saw a bearded guy in fatigues, we’d say, “Tienes balas?” Got any bullets?

  There were plenty of bearded guys in fatigues roaming the streets those first few weeks after Batista fled and Fidel took over. Most of them were on the young side and, in our neighborhood, they were usually the grown children of affluent parents, or friends of theirs. Hard to believe, but there were well-to-do idealists in those early days of the Revolution who genuinely thought that Cuba could become a much better place. Idealists who set themselves up, and everyone else, for the ultimate desengaño. Some of them came back to our neighborhood after triumphing up in the mountains of Oriente province and sweeping through the island in a matter of days in January 1959.

  Those bearded guys didn’t stick around much past 1959, if that long. They either shaved and put on regular clothes, or they went back underground, to fight against a gathering dictatorship known as the Revolution. Or they fled elsewhere, usually to Florida. Some of them would return with the Bay of Pigs invasion. A few became the new ruling elite, taking over abandoned houses even bigger and better than those of their parents.

  Those who simply shaved and sat down to dinner with Mom and Dad each day, and danced the night away in nightclubs, smelling of Old Spice and Brylcreem, those heroes, they didn’t necessarily “sell out” as American hippies might have said around 1968. No, they’d fought the good fight and now got down to the business of living in a halfway normal country.

  Isn’t that why most young men fight revolutions, so they can dance the night away, fall in love with the girl of their dreams, and feel great about it?

  I fell in love with three blondes that year. Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Eva Marie Saint. Eva Marie was a distant third, Kim a mind-blowing second, and Marilyn was so close to God that it was hard not to confuse the two.

  Forget that bitch Tinker Bell, and even Doris Day, who had also struck some very deep chord in my soul. Forget Brigitte Bardot, too, that French tart. Couldn’t feel the pull, not the same way.

  I loved those three blondes. They were much too old for me, I knew that—real love, real sex had little to do with it. I didn’t know anything about sex, except that there were dirty magazines and that chauffeurs loved them. These women just tugged on my soul as if it were a wide lapel, and pulled me close to their heavenly faces, and I could almost smell them.

  Poor Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, I knew just how he felt about Kim Novak, and I didn’t even have to practice looking as lost as he did. It just came naturally whenever I thought of Kim.

  What was that fire within, that burning? Why did I dream about them? It was such a relief to dream of women other than Maria Theresa, Torso Lady, and Candlestick Lady. And such a great gift to undergo that meltdown of the soul, to bask in their presence, to feel fully redeemed. Sorry, God the Father; sorry, Jesus and the Holy Spirit; sorry Brother Pedro, and all the other brothers, and profesor Infierno, and all my other teachers at La Salle, and every priest to whom I have ever confessed my sins. Bless me fathers, bless me brothers, for I have sinned: this was the only redemption I could genuinely understand. That attraction, that meltdown, that total invasion of the self by the presence of a beautiful woman.

  Blondes and bullets in Havana. My world in 1959.

  Hey, but those bullets. Once, Eugenio talked one of the bearded guys into giving us the bullet belt that he had strapped across his chest.

  “Okay, kids, they’re yours. I don’t need them anymore.” He undid the belt and tossed it at us.

  We collected them as if they were gems. We each had our own stash, though we often traded or, on rare occasions, shared our loot. And we did very dumb things with them. We loved to pull a bullet out of its shell with a pair of pliers, spill the gunpowder on the ground, and set a match to it, as close to our faces as possible. Whooooosh! We also threw the bullets down on the ground as hard as we could to see if they would go off. Or we pounded them with rocks and hammers.

  We also threw them at one another, wondering whether we could actually toss them hard enough to tear through flesh, just like a gun. I had visions of my bullets sticking to people like darts.

  Lucky for us, none of them ever exploded, or stuck into anyone, or poked out an eye. Much to our disappointment, of course. Not one bang. No wounds. Not even when Eugenio took a very large bullet and put it in a vice, and then struck it on the bottom with a hammer and a Phillips screwdriver, really hard. He thought that was as close as we could come to approximating the action of a real gun.

  Good theory, but it didn’t pay off. We wanted some bangs, and also some blood. Not too much, just some. Well, what we really wanted were real guns. But not even the craziest revolutionary would give a rifle or a pistol to a nine- or ten-year-old boy. We knew because we tried repeatedly and failed miserably.

  It was a good start to a revolution. All these guys with beards and long hair, and all these kids playing with bullets. Kids who saw far too many war movies, and too many Westerns, and too many films with blondes in them.

  I was lucky enough that year to see three Marilyn Monroe films. First Some Like It Hot, then The Seven Year Itch, and finally Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Something about that woman was unearthly. I’ve been trying to figure it out since 1959, and am no closer to understanding it now than I was then.

  My lovely wife, fortunately, gives me no grief about Marilyn. Once, when we were living in Madrid, she asked a guy at a newsstand for a poster he had of Marilyn—an advertisement for Winston cigarettes—and the guy gave her a funny look, the kind only Spanish newsstand guys can give you. “My husband is in love with her,” she said, with an obviously American accent. The guy gave her look number two, a more intense version of the first funny look. “It’s all right,” my wife said, “she’s dead.” And the newsstand guy smiled from ear to ear, threw up his hands,
nodded, took down the poster, and gave it to her, saying, “Muy bien, entonthess.” Very good, then.

  At least this is what she tells me.

  Kim Novak had more or less the same effect on me, but there was something too gloomy and menacing about the character she played in Vertigo. I felt the pull, no doubt about it, but there could be no comparing her to Marilyn. No way. Apples and oranges.

  Years later, I ended up befriending a guy in high school whose father had dated Kim Novak, when she still lived in Chicago. “Did you know Kim Novak could have been my mother?” he once said to me. “Well, if she had been, then you wouldn’t be you, would you, and it would be some other guy sitting in your chair, wouldn’t it, if he were sitting here at all?” I said, applying as much logic as possible to raw emotion.

  I guard my memories fiercely, especially when it comes to these blondes. Sometimes I think these memories are as religious as Fidel’s men were in 1959.

  Many of the bearded guys wore rosaries around their necks when they came down from the mountains. Some wore several of them, and religious medals, too, which they proudly kept in view, rather than tucking them away under their shirts. It seemed for a few days that these young men who had come from the mountains were saints. Selfless holy men, who prayed as much as they fought, modern equivalents of the Knights Templar, or Knights of the Order of Santiago. Good Catholics, all of them, devoted to the Virgin Mary and the Sermon on the Mount.

  Come to think of it, many of them looked like Jesus, with their long hair and beards. One of Fidel’s right-hand men, Camilo Cienfuegos, looked so much like Jesus I wouldn’t have been able to tell the two apart if it hadn’t been for the big hat that Camilo always wore. He looked just like Eye Jesus, especially. Maybe this is why Fidel made him disappear early on in the Revolution.

  Fidel too looked a little like Jesus. Those first few weeks of 1959, a poster appeared, plastered everywhere, which showed Fidel in a pious-looking pose, gazing off into the distance, or heaven, or both, with a nimbus and a hint of a halo surrounding his head. There were even cardboard fans with this image on them. These fans were a necessity for many Cubans. Without air-conditioning or electric fans in the tropics, you’d better be ready to fan yourself a lot. And a cheap, mass-produced cardboard fan with a thin, flat wooden handle works just fine, sometimes better than one made from expensive silk and mother-of-pearl. All the poor people in Cuba had these fans. Too many to count. Fans for the fans of Fidel.