by Anthony Hyde
PENGUIN CANADA
A PRIVATE HOUSE
ANTHONY HYDE was born in Ottawa, where he still lives, though he frequently travels. After a brief stint as a political activist, he became a professional writer. He has written for the CBC and the NFB, and his earlier novels, including The Red Fox and Formosa Straits, have been translated into many languages and published around the world.
Also by Anthony Hyde
The Red Fox
China Lake
Formosa Straits
Double Helix
Promises, Promises (non-fiction)
A PRIVATE
HOUSE
ANTHONY
HYDE a novel
PENGUIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2007
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)
Copyright © Tusitala Inc., 2007
“Money (That’s What I Want)”: Words and music by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford © 1959 (renewed 1987) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. All rights controlled and administered by EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. and EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. on behalf of JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC., and STONE AGATE MUSIC (a division of JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC.). All rights reserved.
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Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Hyde, Anthony, 1946–
A private house / Anthony Hyde.
ISBN 978-0-14-305339-2
I. Title.
PS8565.Y34P75 2007 C813’.54 C2007-900283-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305339-2
ISBN-10: 0-14-305339-6
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Booker’s
Condemn me if you will. It does not matter. History will absolve me.
—FIDEL CASTRO, SANTIAGO, CUBA,
16 OCTOBER 1953
Money won’t get everything it’s true
What it won’t get I can’t use
Now give me money
That’s what I want
That’s what I want, yeah
That’s what I want, wah
—“MONEY (THAT’S WHAT I WANT)”
BY JANIE BRADFORD / BERRY GORDY
1959
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Sacha, special thanks for all your generous help—truly, sine qua non (Hamlet in memoriam); also thanks to Marianne, for her lovely spirit, all the way, and for helping me find Santísima Trinidad; to Judy and John for so wonderfully rallying round about all things Spanish; to Trapper, for a crucial source; to Lukas for an important hint; to Incubay (the original) for guiding me through Belén; and to a wonderful couple in Havana, whom it’s perhaps best I not name, who showed me their wonderful city—always, hugs and kisses from Ottawa.
A PRIVATE HOUSE
MONDAY, MAY 2, 2005
1
A crumbling cement wall protected the house from the street and Lorraine, despite being so tall, had to stand on tiptoe to look over it. Leaning forward, she felt the hot Havana sun on the back of her neck, and then the tangle of shrubs and vines in the overgrown garden pressed damp, heavy air up at her face. And it wasn’t ten, she thought. The tattered leaf of a banana plant sagged across her vision; she pushed it aside. Now she could see that the stone facade of the house was carved with foliage as intricate as the growth she was looking through, a rococo bouquet whose stems curved gracefully down to the doorway. The door, within a cavity of shadow, seemed to be open. On the left side of the frame, two wires wrapped in black tape stuck crookedly through a hole in the stone, and below this a pale spot showed where a house number might once have been fixed, but there was nothing now. She let go of the leaf and settled back on her heels. Was it the right house or wasn’t it?
A cock crowed lustily, a perfect cock-a-doodle-doo. A hen, somewhere behind the wall, clucked a reply.
Settling her floppy straw hat on her head, Lorraine walked slowly along the wall till she reached the entranceway, formed by two pillars leaning at crazy angles. Pale grass sprouted from the top of one of them; a stone urn, broken in two pieces, lay just at the bottom, overgrown with moss. The other supported a sagging iron gate, stuck half open, calcified by rust and paint into the stone of the walk. The walk was cracked and broken, petering out in patches of bare earth. A white hen pecked at one of these, then tottered toward the open door. And the door, she saw, was open—half open, at any rate—though somehow not in invitation. There was no one to be seen. Lorraine stood a moment . . . then turned away and kept on down the street.
All the houses in Vedado were the same: ruins hidden in the jungle of their gardens whose present occupants, squatters, probably couldn’t even remember the era their dwellings represented. The next along was derelict, too far gone even for Havana; a tree trunk propped up a teetering balcony, half of whose floor had broken away, and cardboard was nailed over the windows. Its neighbour seemed to be occupied; two white sheets and a collection of faded T-shirts were draped over the railing of the porch. But the garden was so thick with bananas and palms that she couldn’t see the door. Across the street it was just the same. More washing—more sheets. In the shade of a porch, a young man painted the sidecar of his motorcycle, the bright green paint shining wetly: hens squawked on a roof. Lorraine kept on. But then she came to a wooden gate, with a number crudely painted in black: 146. She hesitated; stopped; and then took a folded paper from her trouser pocket. It was written in Murray Stevenson’s square hand and still bore the impression of the paper clip that had attached it to his will. She’d long since learned the address by heart, but she looked around, as if there might be some mistake. No. She’d found the right street, Calle K—and if this was 146, the house with the pillars had to be right. She flushed inwardly. And now she admitted to herself that she’d been hoping for any excuse not to go on. How like you, she thought. But she knew this judgment was harsh. She didn’t lack courage, only needed a moment to summon it up. It was an aspect of her shyness; once over her initi
al awkwardness, she could rush on happily toward intimacy.
Decisively, she turned and walked back down the street. At the pillars, she stepped around the gate and followed the hen toward the door: it was still half open. Two steps led inside; standing on the first, she leaned forward, but all she could see was darkness. She took a breath . . . it had been her firm intention to call out Hola! but what emerged was a choked “Hello? Hello?” She cleared her throat. “Hello! Hello! Is anyone there?”
Then everything happened at once.
A man’s voice called from above her, “Hola! Yes! Yes?” And then, from behind her, she was struck by a shrill blast of Spanish, harsh and incomprehensible. She twisted her head: a fat, light-skinned Cuban lady in flip-flops and hair done up in big green rollers was lumbering up the walk. At the same moment a black woman charged out of the house to meet her, shouting and waving her arms. Lorraine stepped off the walk, getting out of her way. The hen, clucking frantically, flapped its wings and trotted off.
Lorraine looked up nervously. The naked torso of a man was bent down toward her; he was leaning on the balustrade of the first-floor terrace. He was small, but fiercely muscled, and tanned a golden brown. His head was shaved: it was as golden as the rest of him. And a gold chain swung from his neck in a lazy arc. “Hello,” Lorraine called again—but the two women began shouting even more loudly as a younger black girl appeared, peering around the edge of the door, her eyes wide. Lorraine summoned herself and called up, “I am looking for a man named Almado Valdes.”
The bare-chested man on the balcony straightened up—the chain jerked up, like a fishing line—but at once he bent down again, the chain swinging out . . . and Lorraine noticed that his feet were bare. “Almado?” he said.
“That’s right. Does he live here?”
“No, he doesn’t live here! Almado!” The man bobbed up and then down once again, and he hissed, “Let me tell you, lady, Almado is a whore.”
“It’s important that I see him.”
“You know what is a whore? You know—?”
But then the two women began screaming so loudly that Lorraine turned around, and the man, too, was distracted: he began shouting down at the women in Spanish, waving his arms at them. The girl in the doorway finally stepped into the light. She was beautiful. She was very black, her blackness enhanced by the pure, crisp whiteness of the brassiere she wore beneath her light periwinkle top: and when she stepped closer to Lorraine she smelled wonderfully clean and fresh. But now the fat woman saw her, and at once tried to step around the other woman, who blocked her way. But at least they were occupied and Lorraine took her chance and looked up again. “Please, what is your name?”
The man stopped shouting at the women and glanced down at her. “My name? My name is Enrique—” But then he turned away, shouting again.
“I’ve come a long way, Enrique. I must find Almado Valdes.”
At once his attention snapped back to her. His lips were full, his mouth beautifully chiselled; his black eyes glittered. He was hard, like a tiny boxer, a bantamweight—the word came into her mind because the rooster crowed just then. He bent even closer, and she was afraid that he might actually somersault over the railing. “Almado is a whore. I told you—” He broke off to spit something in Spanish toward the women, then came back to her, still in Spanish, spewing a torrent of words so fierce that Lorraine instinctively pulled back. She felt suddenly helpless. She knew she must look ridiculous, in her Anne-of-Green-Gables hat, a bonnet for heaven’s sake, trying to talk English while these dark people shouted Spanish all around her. The black girl leaned closer and said quietly, “They are gays. Enrique is telling you that Almado isn’t living here and that he has no idea of where he is and that if he ever sees him again he will kill him and that he is a whore, as he said.”
“Do you know where he is?”
But the girl had no chance to answer, for now the fat woman had taken notice of Lorraine; reaching around her adversary, she was pointing and shaking her finger. “That is the whore! She is the whore!” And at this the young woman sobbed and ran back into the house. Now the screaming of the other two reached a climax, they shrieked and shrilled, until finally, with a toss of her head—one of the big green rollers went flying off—the fat woman turned and flip-flopped down the walk. Hands on her hips, the black woman watched her go. It seemed she’d won. Turning back to the house, she passed Lorraine with a smile. “Buenos días.”
“Buenos días—”
But she was already gone, though the door still stood open. Looking up, Lorraine saw that Enrique had disappeared, too. She stepped back toward the gate. The green plastic roller spun one last time and rolled into the gutter, but the fat lady was nowhere to be seen. The street was empty. The sun beat down, and two small clouds drifted in the hazy Caribbean sky. All at once, Lorraine felt exhausted. She closed her eyes. What was she going to do now?
2
Stepping into the Plaza de San Francisco, Mathilde was furious. She’d wanted to go to the Plaza de Armas but had managed to get completely turned around. She’d come down Armagura, when she should have taken San Ignacio—her hotel, the Raquel, was right on the corner; coming out, she must have turned the wrong way. Idiote. She stood a moment, her arms crossed over her chest. Did she want to go back? Actually, she hadn’t gone very wrong, she could simply go up Oficios, and it wasn’t far. But though it was barely eleven, it was already hot, too hot to be wandering around. Habana Vieja was a warren, like Venice or Plaka in Athens or the old town in Nice. You really needed a compass, and even then—
But she broke off and smiled to herself. It didn’t make any difference; there was no rush. And in the fresh light of the morning the plaza was too calm and peaceful for anger. Besides, she loved Plaka—she loved everything about Athens, probably even the smog. And only the tourists could spoil Venice. As for Havana . . . she would end up loving it as well, with its young girls who sang to themselves as they walked along and the old men in their underwear sitting on their doorsteps in the heat of the night. What she didn’t like was getting lost, anywhere, she never had, she was—what did the Americans say?—a control freak. At this she made a face and warded off another bout of self-censure, for she hated mixing English into her French, and certainly not in her thoughts. But that was crazy, too. She’d been crazy, angling for this job, though she didn’t speak a word of Spanish. She’d be better off admitting it and thinking in English all the time. Idiot!
She pushed this all away and walked into the square. The Lonja del Commercio, which loomed on its northern side, cast a huge block of shadow and she stayed in this shade until she reached its dark, cool edge. Beyond this the cobbles glistened and the freshly restored buildings shone in the sun. Ahead, three carriages were drawn up, waiting for a tourist foolish enough to brave the heat; meanwhile, the horses hung their heads, dozing, and one of the men sprinkled his with a watering can. The few small trees crouched inside their own shade. The plaza was almost deserted. The chairs of the two cafés had all been set out, awaiting the crowds at lunch, but now Mathilde counted only four couples, turned in their seats so they could see the far side of the square; here, three quinces girls were having photographs taken. She stepped in their direction, though she’d seen the ritual before; her first two mornings, in fact. Two of the girls waited patiently, smoothing and shaping their dresses against the faint, almost imaginary, breeze: a long red taffeta dress for one, a long blue taffeta dress for her companion, while the third— her dress was just as long, certainly taffeta, but the purest white—posed on the steps of the Fountain of the Lions. The girls were fifteen. This was their rite of passage into womanhood. Looking at them, Mathilde tried to recall herself at that age, but wasn’t sure that she could; “that age” probably didn’t exist outside of Cuba. She’d wondered about doing a story on the ceremony. The girls’ sexuality was openly celebrated, not covered up as a problem—that would be the theme. Their dresses— which all seemed cut from the same pattern, as if to emphas
ize what the girls now had in common—always left their shoulders bare; everything was symbolic in that way. The girl in white was truly lovely, the white of her dress setting off her golden skin and shining black hair; and her hands, lifting her hem, already possessed a languid, womanly grace. Mathilde eyed her. Almost from the day of her arrival, she’d begun noticing women in a way she would never have done in Paris. It wasn’t that she compared herself to them, but rather that they appeared, here, as more clearly a separate sex, their own sex; and it was almost a question whether she belonged to it, too. It wasn’t only a quality of Cuban women, she’d decided, but her own state, something to do with being alone. True, she would be thirty next year, and she’d lived on her own for five years; but to visit her parents was only one change on the Métro, she still saw many of her school friends, and she shared the day with the same colleagues, day after day. Here, she knew no one. She didn’t speak a word of the language and the place itself, a strange Atlantis with palm trees and blacks, had surprised her completely. She watched the photographer as he manoeuvred for his angles. A contrast to the girls, he was dressed in blue jeans and a brown checked shirt that was coming untucked. He was good, though, quick. He motioned: the girl turned. Mathilde smiled. She was thinking of Jacques, an old hand at the agency—“Photographers are as bossy as doctors.” The girl obediently stretched her arms behind her, so her breasts were subtly presented; the poses were all like that, emphasizing innocence on the brink of something else. The photographer got what he wanted; and when he took his camera away from his eye, he glanced up; the sun was already very high. He motioned the girl away from the fountain. Mathilde knew what would happen next. In an area behind the back wall of the basilica, near the statue of Father Juniper, the girl sank down on the cobblestones, spreading and smoothing the folds of her dress all around her. When she was settled, the photographer’s assistant, an older woman, began scattering bread crumbs. Pigeons, as familiar with this ritual as everyone else, were already hovering; now they descended. The woman motioned and the girl hesitantly stretched out her arms: two of the pigeons perched obligingly. And as a special favour one even dropped down on her head. Soon, they were all over her . . . and they were doves, Mathilde realized. The woman kept tossing crumbs, until, at a signal from the photographer, she clapped her hands sharply and in a flapping, fluttering cloud the pigeons rose . . . heavenward. Or so you had to assume. But it was hard to know if there was any religious significance to the ceremony at all. This was the Plaza de San Francisco de Assis but that was probably just an excuse for the birds. Mathilde smiled to herself and watched the white girl tidy up. Her next stop would be around the corner, where several statues were used as props. Meanwhile, the blue girl was already arranged by the fountain. . . .