Julia de Tejas said. . .
Hi, Yarmi! What’s going on? You haven’t updated your blog in a while. Is your American boyfriend there now? Well, I am sure you are pretty busy, but don’t forget your readers. Take care, my friend.
Part V
Chapter One
The Devil’s Wedding Day
In the morning Matt showered for a long time, letting Taty’s smell of gardenia and sweat slip away from him and disappear down the drain. For the first time in Cuba, he wished water were hotter. His skin was red and ticklish when he got out of the shower.
When he went to the living room, Anne’s suitcases were by the door. Román was counting money and writing in his ledger book. Anne, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit and brown Uggs, was smoking a joint.
“Are you leaving?” Matt asked, surprised.
“Oh, just going to Varadero for a week. Hopefully, your problemita will be solved in the meantime,” she whispered. “Any news?”
“Nothing yet.”
“You’re still welcome to come with me. I’ll be all by myself.” She paused and added with a wink, “For a while, at least.”
“What about Yony?”
“He isn’t invited. We had a disagreement. Well, more like a fight. An ugly one.”
Despite his own, more pressing concerns, Matt was intrigued, and a bit vindicated. That’s what you get for playing with boy toys, he wanted to say, but instead asked, “What happened? I thought you guys were doing fine.”
“We were,” she said. “Until we weren’t.”
Román came back with the morning coffee. He brought them two small cups and retreated again to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
“Yesterday Yony invited me to El Refugio,” Anne said. “He paid for the meal, which was new. We had arroz con pollo and mojitos, plus beer and two glasses of wine. I shouldn’t have mixed all that, but he kept ordering more drinks. When we were done, he took me to his house. It’s in the strangest, most psychedelic hood I’ve ever seen with these horrible murals all over . . . Anyway, we made love and it was—oh, I’m ashamed to admit it, but it was truly earthshaking.”
At that point, Matt regretted having asked for details.
Women always want to give too much information. Well, some of them.
Then he blushed, remembering his own earthshaking moment the night before, which he wasn’t about to share.
Anne brought the joint to her pale lips and inhaled deeply. Then she went on. “When he had me all happy and soft, he dropped the bomb. I mean, he proposed. He had had many women, he said, but I was his one and only, la mujer de su vida, as Cubans say.”
Cubans say many things that aren’t true.
“Remember the day we arrived, when we told the customs officer that I was getting married?” Anne smiled sadly. “Perhaps it was a premonition, I told myself. He was el hombre de mi vida too! When was the last time I had experienced such passionate lovemaking? Never, that was when. Yes, I could marry him and take him to LA. He could be a security guard at El Mercado. Or get his very own booth and sell—I don’t know, tamales. We would live happily ever after . . . I must have been really drunk to be thinking like that, right?”
Matt gave a polite, noncommittal grunt.
“He assured me that we could bypass the red tape thanks to a friend who worked at the International Notary,” she went on. “We could go to his office, like, right then, in his almendrón, and come out of the Notaría husband and wife. I—I agreed.”
“Jesus, Anne!” Matt said. “After all I’ve been through, you still—”
“I told you, I was drunk! But when we were getting ready to leave, a rooster crowed. It was a big red bird that had been in the room all the time, watching while we made love. It looked like the devil with its bright beady eyes staring at me.”
“The rooster was inside the house?”
“Yes, flying around, not in a cage or anything. Surreal. Maybe they still have cock fights here. Suddenly, I snapped out of it. I had to be crazy to marry that crap-peddling, smooth-talking Cuban redneck! So I told him that I hadn’t requested a travel permit from the Department of the Treasury and our marriage wouldn’t be valid. It sounded like a decent enough excuse, but he didn’t buy it. We began arguing. ‘You already said yes!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t play with me like that. I’m a real man, not a Yuma pendejo!’
“‘You are a comemierda!’ I replied.
“If nothing else, thanks to him, I have mastered Cuban slang. Then he slapped me.”
Matt gasped. “Oh, Anne!”
“Don’t pity me. I work out at a Pilates studio four days a week. I’m no shrinking violet. I punched him in the face and got away from him. He tried to follow me, and I gave him a kick in the shin for good measure. Then I left. End of story.”
She pretended to laugh but didn’t meet Matt’s eyes.
“I’m sorry it turned out like this,” he said.
“Frankly, it’s all for the better. Imagine if I had gone ahead and married him!”
Matt remembered the wedding dress he had brought for Yarmila and his own unanswered proposal. “Yep. Things can always get much worse.”
“I’m sure that this voodoo detective will take care of you,” Anne said while they had breakfast. “Don’t worry too much and have fun. Life’s short!”
In truth, Matt was more worried about his attraction to Taty, the night they had spent together, and the pleasure he had experienced when his pinga—as Yarmila called his penis, as Taty had also called it—had entered the other man’s body. It might just have been a way to release tension, though. Considering how his love for a woman had gotten him in such trouble, it was only natural that he looked for a totally different escape route. But the simplistic explanation didn’t satisfy him. Was he gay, un maricón, as Cuban men like Pato Macho said disdainfully? If he was, he wanted to find out.
An hour after Anne had left in a government taxi—she refused to ride in another almendrón—Matt got a phone call from Padrino.
“The case is solved,” he said. “Lieutenant Martínez will be contacting you soon.”
And he hung up.
Matt waited, biting his nails, until two thirty when Martínez summoned him to the police station. He took the first cocotaxi that he found in Malecón Drive and didn’t even discuss the price in advance. It turned out to be five dollars; he would have gladly paid fifty for the ten-minute trip to the Unidad.
Marlene handed Matt his passport. Her monumental behind was taxing the limits of her olive green uniform. Matt felt like kissing the passport. He briefly wanted to kiss Martínez too.
“Thanks, compañera,” he said. “So, is—is this it? May I go home now?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered, then added with a sly smile, “Next time, try and be more careful when you choose a Cuban girlfriend.”
She turned around to leave, but Matt stopped her.
“May I ask, compañera—could—you tell me who killed Yarmi?” he stuttered.
Marlene hesitated. The case wasn’t technically closed, though, and she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the details.
“Sorry, I can’t talk about that,” she answered, then went back to her office before Matt’s pleading eyes changed her mind.
Matt waved down an almendrón that took him to El Hotel Nacional. The Aeroméxico employee, a mustachioed young Cuban, charged him three hundred dollars for changing his return flight. He couldn’t find one for Tijuana until the following week, so Matt settled for a nonstop flight to Cancun, where he would take another plane to San Diego.
“It leaves in two days,” the clerk said.
“Good enough.”
From the hotel, Matt went straight to Padrino’s house. It had started to thunder when he left El Nacional, but he took the ferryboat and crossed the bay before the rain came down. He had to ask several times for directions—fortunatel
y, most people in Regla knew who the santero was, and where to find him. As soon as Matt got to the property, the storm that had been brewing for a couple of hours exploded in gushes of water and crazy whips of gale.
He accepted the cup of coffee that Gabriela brought him. Padrino was finishing a consultation, but Matt assured her he wasn’t in a hurry. He sat on the porch to watch the rain come down. A steady torrent of long-legged ballerinas crashed gracefully on the tiles. The air was charged with the smells of soaked earth, healthy vegetables, rotten fruit, ozone, blue, green, life and death.
“The devil is getting married,” people said in the countryside when it rained on a sunny day. It was one of these days—the sun’s rays filtered through a veil of raindrops.
The soft voice of Padrino’s wife startled him. “Come, señor. He’s ready to meet with you.”
Matt expected to be led to the office where they had had the initial chat, but Gabriela went outside, oblivious to the rain, and walked with him toward the hut.
“The mango lady just left,” she said. “I’m sorry she took so much time. It is always the same: she asks for a five-minute consultation and stays over an hour.”
The mango lady had lived up to her name and brought a basket of red and yellow fruits. It was placed on the floor, in front of Padrino. Matt felt his mouth water at the sight of it.
“Hi!” he greeted Padrino.
“May the orishas bless you.”
The santero was sitting on a black, red and white rug woven with intricate designs. Two small coconuts lay on it next to a glass jar full of bills and coins—Cuban pesos and CUCs.
Though he was sure that the santero knew everything by now, Matt told him about his interview with Martínez and thanked him.
“Whatever role you have had in this, I’m eternally grateful,” he said, and meant it. “Do I owe you anything else?”
“No, no. It was easier than I anticipated. I still have to give you fifty dollars back.”
“Oh. Please, keep them.”
“No, bisnes is bisnes, as our honest bisneros say.” He suppressed a laugh. “Well, most bisneros aren’t honest. But it isn’t always their fault.”
He opened his wallet, took out three bills and pressed them back into Matt’s hands.
Matt hesitated before asking in a low voice, “So—who killed Yarmila?”
“Someone you didn’t know,” Padrino answered curtly. Like Marlene, he didn’t want to talk about the case.
“Did you find out why?”
“We are still working on it. It was one of these crazy Cuban things.”
“Most Cuban things are crazy.”
“You bet.”
Matt studied the rug pattern. He felt cheated. He would have wanted to know more, at least a name or a motive. Padrino noticed, but didn’t want to talk about Yarmila’s Seguridad activities. They hadn’t been made public yet.
“Does it matter now?” Padrino asked in a casual way. “Look, my friend: this is over for you. You will go back to your country and forget even the saint she was named after.”
“The saint—?”
“It’s an old saying. Olvidar hasta el santo de su nombre. It just means you won’t even think of Yarmila Portal again.”
Matt doubted it.
“It has been a pleasure, señor.”
Padrino walked to the door, a clear indication that the visit was over. Time was money for both santeros and bisneros, but Matt was willing to pay for it.
“I would like to know if, by any chance, you—er—your santos could help me with a spiritual reading of sorts.”
“You mean a consultation?” Padrino stopped and looked at him. Matt couldn’t tell if he was confused or amused.
“Isn’t that what you do here?”
“It depends. When I perform a reading with the dilogún, people find out, in a very general way, if their future holds iré, good fortune, or osorbo, trouble.”
“That will be perfect. May we do it now?”
“I’m afraid not. That kind of ritual is time-consuming and my clients prepare for it a few days in advance. They ask the santos for guidance and do specific ceremonies. But,” he added quickly, noticing Matt’s disappointment, “I could work the coconut for you. This is a simpler divination tool that gives yes or no answers.”
“Sure, that will do it. How does it work?”
Padrino took a coconut from the rug and opened it with a pocket knife. He cut four pieces and trimmed them into three-inch bits, leaving the coarse shell on the outside.
“These little pieces of coconut are the orisha’s mouthpieces,” he explained. “When you ask a question, I throw them and read the results.”
“Let’s go for it!”
The santero smiled at Matt’s excitement. “You’ve never had a spiritual consultation?”
“I once went to a clairvoyant at a psychic fair in Old Town San Diego, but didn’t get much out of it. She said that I had been a Viking in a past life.”
They both laughed. Padrino returned to the rug and Matt sat down facing him.
“Go ahead,” Padrino said.
“Should I ask the questions aloud?”
“No, just take a deep breath and think of what you want to know. Obi will respond by making the coconut fall in a particular way.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi? “Obi who?” he asked suspiciously.
“He’s the orisha with divination powers.”
“Ah. Okay.”
“Keep the questions as simple as you can.”
Matt breathed in the air that, inside the hut, also carried the sweet aroma of mangos.
Has this nightmare ended? No, wait. Will I go on with my life as usual?
“Ready,” he said.
Padrino threw the coconut chunks in front of him. They scattered on the rug. Two had the white meat up and two showed their dark, coarse skins.
“This is ejife, which means yes, but don’t ask more about this topic,” he said. “There will be balance for you. See: two sides of light, two sides of shadow. That’s a positive sign.”
“I’ll ask a question about a different subject now,” Matt proposed, “since I’m advised to drop this one.”
“Good idea.”
What was this Taty business all about? Am I going to be attracted to guys from now on?
The coconut bits formed a new pattern, with three white sides and a dark one. Matt assumed that Obi had said yes. He felt incredulous and a little afraid.
“This is etawa and means maybe,” Padrino said. “We need to do a second throwing for clarification. Repeat your question, but be more precise this time and don’t try to cram two into one. Obi doesn’t like that.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Am I gay?
Matt’s eyes followed the coconut chunks as they arranged themselves again in the exact same way.
“The orisha doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to say, what your future holds in that respect,” Padrino said. “He can’t predict fate all the time, especially when it is tied to many different and contradictory possibilities. Obi is quite cautious about it.”
“I understand.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, one more, please.”
Will I ever find out who killed Yarmila?
The answer came in four white sides.
“Alafia,” Padrino translated. “Yes, and sooner than you expect.”
He stood up.
“Thanks so much, Padrino,” Matt said. “How can I pay you for this?”
“A donation will do.” The santero showed him the glass jar.
Matt didn’t want to act like an arrogant Yuma by dropping in a hundred dollars. He placed two twenties inside.
“Want a mango?” Padrino asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
Padrino offered
him one and took another for himself. Matt looked out the window. The rain had stopped and he wanted to leave before it started again.
“There is something else I’d like to tell you,” Padrino said. “It came to me while I was giving you coconut. If you want to hear it, naturally.”
“Of course.”
“Everybody has a head orisha, a santo, or what the Catholics call a guardian angel. Knowing who it is can help you sort stuff out. So I wouldn’t say you are a son of Obatalá, but I can assure you that you are under his special protection.”
Matt wasn’t sure he believed that, but nonetheless liked the idea of being under somebody’s special protection. He asked with a sheepish grin, “What’s Obatalá like?”
“He is the eldest of the orishas and the king of them all. His number is eight. He always dresses in white. Half of his roads, or embodiments, are male. The other half are female—”
“Excuse me,” Matt cut him off, horrified. “Does it mean that he is gay?”
Padrino smiled. “We don’t use these terms here. Embodiments aren’t about gender, but manifestation. He can appear as a very young man, a warrior, or an old guy. But he can also be Our Lady of Mercy and she comes as a pretty young girl or a wrinkled crone.”
“Which one is mine?” Matt asked, scowling. “The guy or the girl?”
“Both. Obatalá is just one. The orisha simply takes different shapes. But you don’t need to worry about that. The same thing happens with Changó, the most macho of the santos, who has Santa Barbara as his female counterpart. Changó’s sons are always getting in trouble because they can’t keep their pingas in their pants.”
“I guess Changó has many devotees.”
“He certainly does! As for Obatalá, he is calmer, cooler. His children are quiet and reasonable. Which doesn’t mean you can’t get into trouble, but you manage to get out of it unscathed, most of the time. You are lucky, after all.”
Matt let it sink in. He felt his shoulders relax and exhaled deeply.
I’m lucky.
“Thanks, Padrino,” he said.
He bit the mango and his mouth filled with the tarty sweetness of it.
Death Comes in Through the Kitchen Page 26