“He was top dog at the Young Communist League, a political farm where they recruit the more committed kids to become Party members. Ricardito created all the organization slogans like ‘treinta y uno y palante,’ thirty-one and onward, to celebrate the thirty-first anniversary of the revolution. He organized rallies in support of the government and was Castro’s right hand until the day he happened to yell, during a gathering at Revolution Square: ‘Él que no salte es gusano,’ he who doesn’t jump is a worm and then—”
“Why a worm?”
“That’s what the government calls dissidents, worms.”
“Oh, yes. So did not jumping imply that people were against Castro?”
“It was a silly thing to say, even Ricardito admits it now. Something he came up with in the spur of the moment, to get the masses fired up. Of course, all those old fat Communist Party militants felt that they had to jump high to prove their loyalty to the revolution. The incident marked the fall of poor Ricardito, who was sentenced to the ‘Pajama Plan’ the next week—and he was lucky he didn’t end up in jail. Can you imagine Castro jumping up and down, with beard and everything?”
Not only Castro: it was hard to imagine Ricardito himself, who was pushing three hundred pounds, hopping like a kangaroo in the middle of Revolution Square, or anywhere else, for that matter.
“Is that true, Anne?”
“Se non è vero, è ben trovato.” She laughed for the first time that night. “It’s probably an urban legend, but I like to tell the tale.”
She ordered a beer, and then another one. Matt didn’t feel like drinking. He had barely tasted the cocktail.
For dessert they chose natilla, egg custard, and an éclair to share.
“So yummy,” said Anne, enthusiastically savoring the chocolate crust of the éclair. “Whoever has replaced poor Mercedes in the kitchen is every bit as good, if not better.”
They were having coffee (Anne’s with a shot of whiskey) when Ricardito came to the table, all smiles, and asked how everything was.
“Delicious!” Anne pointed to the empty dessert plate. “This is the best one I’ve had here.”
“Leidy knows just about everyone who is someone on the Havana food scene,” Ricardito boasted. “She hired our new baker, a guy that used to work for the Canadian embassy and trained with a Le Cordon Bleu chef.”
“The natilla was awesome too.”
“Ah, Leidy made the natilla herself. That girl’s got talent, eh! The day we are allowed to have private corporations in Cuba she will be the CEO of El Refugio Inc. because she has capitalist mendó.”
Anne high-fived Ricardito.
“One has to have mendó in beautiful Cuba!” she said, slurring her words just a little.
The bill, with tip included, was seventy-five dollars. Anne insisted on paying it.
“It was my idea to come here.”
“Fine—but I didn’t remember El Refugio being so expensive before. It looks like Ricardito is catching up with American prices.”
‘“You can’t go back to that shithole,” Anne said after they left the paladar. “We are going to Villa Tomasa, period.”
“I’m concerned for you. They may want to talk to you too because you met Yarmila once. They know everything.”
“They? Who are you talking about?”
“The police. La Seguridad. Both. I’m not sure how their laws work.”
“This is ridiculous, Matt. You should tell the cops what happened and why you are moving to another place. They’ll understand.”
“Or not. This is Planet Mongo.”
“That guy attacked you with a metal bat, for God’s sake! What if he was the one who killed Yarmila?”
Matt hadn’t considered it. He had avoided thinking of Pato Macho since the incident.
“Yeah, I may tell Detective Martínez after all.” He sighed. “But he didn’t look like . . . God, I don’t know. I don’t even want to—”
“In any case, you are coming with me now. You can send for your things tomorrow.”
“All my things are with me.” Matt patted his backpack. “I guess I wasn’t planning to return to ‘the penthouse.’”
“Good. You are getting yourself some mendó.”
“What the heck is mendó?”
“Street-smarts, buddy. Something you and I sorely need if we want to survive in Cuba.”
They crossed Malecón Drive, the roadway that stretches for about five miles along the Havana coastline. It was a busy outdoor hangout. There were couples sitting on the wall, families with children, lonely fishermen, older men smoking cigars, and young women in clothes made of lycra. Cops slunk among them while tourists strolled around. The almendrones driving under the dim street lights evoked a sense of time warp.
Anne walked unsteadily, tottering in her high heels. Her dress was wrinkled and even her diamond earrings appeared to have lost their shine. Though she tried to hide her tears, Matt saw them. He felt bad for her, and guilty. Shouldn’t he be the one crying his eyes out? He had just lost his fiancée; the happy life he had created with her in his imagination had been shattered to pieces, and here he was so calm and composed . . . But he remembered that his fiancée had cheated on him with tall, handsome Pato Macho and that his imagined life might have never come to pass at all. The guilty feelings dissolved in the salty breeze that came from the ocean.
“I should have known better,” Anne mumbled. “Anybody with a functioning brain would have known that a guy like Yony couldn’t be in love with me. But that and then hearing about Yarmila—I’m sorry for her.”
“Uh. Me too.”
“They use us, Matt. These Cubans . . . they don’t care about us. They don’t see human beings with feelings, they see dollars. Walking cash. A visa. They are heartless.”
“They use each other too,” Matt reminded her. “Look at Ricardito and his manager-wife. Do you think she’s in love him?”
“It’s so dirty. I know it happens everywhere. But here it’s more obvious, more in your face.”
“Plus we are on the receiving end of it. Pinches cubanos.”
“What does that mean?”
“Damn Cubans, in Tijuana slang.”
“Well said. Fuckers. And excuse my French.”
A car with just one headlight on drove by sluggishly, like a giant iron bug, and covered them in exhaust fumes. They turned onto San Lázaro Street and left behind Malecón Drive.
“It’s only a few blocks from here,” Anne said. “You’re going to like Villa Tomasa. The owner looks like a hippie and the house is relatively modern, with hot water, working showers, and, as they say, ‘a color TV.’”
“Do you suppose they still use black and white sets?”
“You bet. I saw one when we visited Yony’s sister. She has an old Russian television, huge and boxy. It only gets two channels—of the available three. Ah! All the Villa Tomasa rooms have air conditioning. This is rare here.”
“How much does the Cuban hippie charge?”
“Thirty dollars a night, breakfast included. Román makes it himself. He’s a great chef.”
They passed by a lit-up door, the only bright place in an otherwise dark street. café arabia read the small, pink neon sign. Music and laughs came from inside. Matt tried to look through the door, but the glass only mirrored back his own face, which wore a bewildered expression.
Anne turned to him. “What are you doing?”
“Is this a bar?”
“Probably a private one. They are called bares clandestinos.”
“It doesn’t seem very clandestine to me.”
“They’re tolerated, like almendrón drivers and other small businesses. Yony and I have been to some.”
“Were they any good?”
“They were okay. Cold beer, Havana Club rum, cheap wine. But the mojitos were a rip-off. Wa
y too christened.”
They went on walking. Matt remembered the card Taty had given him. “Enjoy an unforgettable evening straight from One Thousand and One Nights.”
Chapter Three
Smoke and Mirrors
Villa Tomasa was an unassuming house that wouldn’t qualify as a “villa” anywhere else: a plain one-story building with no architectural charm or definite style. But the lawn was cut and well-tended and the front porch newly painted and clean. There was a sign on the door, two blue triangles on a white background—the government-issued logo for the casas particulares. Below, another, bigger sign with red letters read: bienvenido a villa tomasa, donde se sentirá como en su casa. (Welcome to Villa Tomasa, where you will feel like at home.)
The door was unlocked. Matt and Anne came into a living room straight out of the fifties, with oil pastels on the walls—marinas and rural scenes—and five porcelain figurines on the mantel of a fireplace that had never been used. Two macramé plant hangers with healthy cacti and a teardrop lamp dangled from the ceiling, over a Rococo-ish coffee table with curved legs and a marble top. There was a Danish credenza in a corner, facing a yellow sectional and a black leather lounge chair. A shiny, flat-screen TV on top of the credenza looked like an anachronism in that setting. The room smacked of kitsch but in the right way, as if the designer had chosen to throw in a splash of tawdriness to make a statement.
A man was sprawled on the lounge chair, his eyes closed and a serene, Zen-like countenance. Anne touched him lightly on the shoulder and he opened his eyes.
“Ah, good evening, Anita.” The Zen man noticed Matt. “And this gentleman is—”
“My friend Mateo, who wants to rent a room. He is an American like me, a journalist from California.”
“Great. Thanks for bringing him in. Welcome, señor.”
The man, who introduced himself as Román De La Porte, was dressed in faded blue jeans and a Lacoste shirt. A gold medal with a crucifix hung from his thick pink neck. He was sixty years old, short and red-faced, with blond hair that reached his shoulders. He accepted Anne’s explanation about Matt’s passport problemita.
“You see he has no luggage either,” she said, surprising Matt with the added twist to the story. “They kept it too.”
“These airport clerks always find a bone to pick with decent-looking foreigners,” Román said.
“Hopefully, the issue will be cleared up soon. Matt has notified the higher-ups.”
“Good for you, señor.”
He asked to see the passport photocopy and added Matt’s name and date of birth to the ledger.
“This is a formality, since you came with Anita. But just in case—”
His minimum was a three-night stay. Matt handed him ninety dollars.
“Don’t you want to see the house first?” Román asked.
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
Adjacent to the living room was the dining area, furnished with a rectangular table that could accommodate eight people, matching chairs, and a china hutch in a corner. They were all old pieces, but had been meticulously restored. Instead of the original leather seats, the chairs were upholstered in velvet, a deep red, the same color as the window shutters. Set in the middle of the wall was a gilded portrait of a white-haired woman dressed in black.
“Nice place,” Matt said, impressed. This was by far the most elegant room he had seen in Havana.
“I try to keep it up, which isn’t easy,” Román answered. “But at least it has no structural problems. Villa Tomasa was built in the early fifties, a ‘capitalist’ house, as people call them now. They last for a long time. They will still be standing when the last micro-brigade building falls down.”
“Are those ‘socialist’ buildings?” Matt asked.
“Excuse me?”
“The micro—whatever you called them.”
Román slapped his knees and laughed. “Ha, that’s a good one! The micro-brigades were teams of volunteer construction workers, teachers and bureaucrats who had no training whatsoever as stonemasons or plumbers. All the houses they made fell apart in less than twenty years. Pura mierda.”
Anne went to the kitchen to “pour herself a little something.” Román showed Matt one of the two available rooms.
“This has its own private bathroom,” he said. “There is also a TV. Color, of course. It’s small, but you are always welcome to watch the big one in the living room.”
The night breeze made an art-deco pendant lamp sway above their heads. It had a brass top and an amber glass shade that bathed everything in golden light. The room was over furnished with a heavy mahogany queen bed covered in a ruffled red gingham bedspread, two nightstands, an armoire, and a faded Oriental rug. A full-length mirror made the lamp’s reflection bounce back.
A Smith-Corona typewriter sat on a roll-top desk next to a collection of Reader’s Digest magazines from the fifties. The space exuded such a vintage mid-twentieth-century feel that the four Kenner Star Wars action figures placed on a wall shelf above the desk seemed utterly out of place. Darth Vader, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and R2-D2 (with a lightsaber) were displayed on a white lace doily that had become yellowish with time.
“Are they popular in Cuba?” Matt asked.
“Star Wars?” Román used the Spanish name, La Guerra de las Galaxias, Galaxy Wars. “Among some people, yes. I am a fan. I own around sixty figures, if not more.”
“Some collection you have. How do you get them here?”
“Former guests send them to me or I buy them in the black market. They are my weakness—one of my weaknesses.”
He laughed. A rose-scented air freshener mixed with incense floated around like an invisible cloud. A different, subtler smell emanated from Román’s body and clothes, but Matt couldn’t identify it.
“You can leave the window open.” Román pulled back the window shades. “This is a safe neighborhood.”
On the wall, a German cuckoo clock read nine o’clock.
The bathroom contained a small bathtub, a sink, a medicine cabinet, a toilet, and a pink marble bidet bigger than the other pieces.
“It’s what is left of the original set,” Román explained. “I’ve kept it because European women love bidets. We do have hot water, though it takes a while to warm up.”
Matt looked forward to taking a long shower. A real shower, with soap and towels. His injured arm had started to hurt again.
“There are bars of Palmolive, and bottles of shampoo and conditioner.” Román pointed to the medicine cabinet. “They are samples, but I have many of them. Now, to the most important room in Villa Tomasa!”
Matt followed him to the pantry area. Anne was still in the kitchen, having an aspirin with a glass of milk. An empty beer bottle sat on the table next to her. Román opened a well-stocked refrigerator.
“If you get hungry at night, come and get whatever you want,” he said. “I will also make breakfast for you guys in the morning.”
“Román’s Spanish omelets are a real treat,” Anne chimed in.
Their host smiled. “Thank you, my dear.” He turned to Matt again. “Thirty dollars a day is what you pay for your use of the room, señor. If you decide to bring someone else to spend the night with you, we need to talk about it first, and the price goes up ten dollars.”
Fat chance of that.
“No refrigerator privileges for nationals,” Román went on. “Sorry about it, but my fellow Cubans have no impulse control. They eat everything. They make messes. They steal too. A girl once left in the middle of the night with a whole ham I had just bought.”
“No worries. I don’t plan to have any guests.”
Román didn’t seem convinced, but said affably, “That’s all, my friend. Hope you enjoy your stay in Villa Tomasa.”
“Tomasa is a beautiful name,” Matt said.
He was thinking of an ent
erprising, pretty Tijuana cook who had a restaurant called Tomasita’s Kitchen in San Ysidro.
“I named it after my grandmother, Tomasa Suarez De La Porte, the lady in the portrait.”
“She looks very distinguished.”
“Well, she was. Cuban nobility, you know, from the good old times. This used to be her house and she passed it on to me, God bless her soul. If it weren’t for her, I would be eating a cable now.”
Comiéndose un cable was a Cuban expression that meant going hungry.
“You have much more than cables to munch on,” Matt quipped, thinking of the ham, cheese, eggs, and steaks that filled the refrigerator.
“Thanks to people like you, who keep me in business,” Román said. “That’s why I love to spoil my guests. You need something, you let me know. Whatever. I am here at your service.”
After asking Román for five aspirins and downing two right away, Matt took a lengthy, hot and comforting shower. His host’s scent had lingered in the room and he finally recognized it.
Isn’t pot illegal here? I mean, really illegal, like people go to prison for years if they are caught using? That’s what Yarmi told me. She couldn’t stand it. But maybe the government tolerated it, as they tolerated clandestine taxi drivers and bars.
He opened the window and let the fresh air in.
It was 10:05 and Matt wasn’t sleepy yet. He didn’t want to watch more local television, having had an ample serving of it that afternoon. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts either. As he smiled at his reflection in the mirror (the amber light favored him, making him look younger and tanned), he had an inspiration. He could visit Café Arabia. With Anne—or better yet, without her.
He got dressed and left the room.
“Anita isn’t feeling well,” Román told him. “She asked me not to wake her up unless there was an earthquake or a tornado.”
His speech had become slower and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. Matt saw four roaches on the table.
“Yes, she needs to rest,” he said. “I’m going to sit on the Malecón wall for a while.”
Death Comes in Through the Kitchen Page 9