by Paul Vidich
Mueller nodded. He too had come along with a vague interest, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about being reduced to an American tourist doing the casino circuit. But he was curious, and if he was honest with himself, he wanted to investigate the scandalous offering that lured businessmen on their weeklong junkets without wives. There was always something to learn from buttoned-up men letting loose in the safe space of licensed striptease. Jack had called twice to remind him of the invitation. Mueller obliged, thinking that if he got bored, or he found the company tiring, he’d slip away. And he knew that some of what he saw would find its way into his magazine piece—and please the editor—and that thought convinced him.
Jack again put his arm around Mueller and repeated, “Glad you came?”
The four of them had made their way to a table marked “Reserved,” and six seats were held for their party. One of the six seats was already occupied.
“Here’s someone I thought you’d like to see,” Jack said. Later, Mueller realized he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Toby Graham seated at the table. Graham turned, having risen from his seat, and faced Mueller and in the suddenness of his getting up came the surprise.
Mueller felt Jack’s fingers dig into his shoulder in the unpleasant way he had of putting physical emphasis on his declarations. Jack boasted. “I had one hell of a time finding him and it took some persuasion to get him here, but I told him you’d be here and that was enough.”
Jack turned to Graham. “You know George, of course. Quiet man. Former diplomat. Teaches Shakespeare. Always lost to me at poker. He can’t bluff to save his life.”
Jack coaxed Liz forward to join the little group.
Mueller saw Liz’s face had the startling pallor of death.
“My wife, Liz. And her friend Katie.” Jack turned to Liz. “This is the guy George was looking for. Works in the embassy doing something he can’t talk about. Is he the guy you thought you didn’t know?”
Mueller looked at Jack, curious about the way he phrased his question, as if he were confirming a suspicion.
“We’ve met,” Liz said. “Through George.”
Mueller didn’t impeach her lie.
Jack added, “He works in Camagüey.” Jack turned to Graham. “Community development work. Is that right?”
“Yes.” Graham looked at Liz, who looked away.
“You’re near us. Our ranch is an hour north. We’ll get you out for a visit.”
The moment was usurped by an explosion of brassy sound from the stage. It was the call to be seated, and the music drove the group to their chairs. Mueller found himself beside Graham and across from Katie, and Liz was on his other side, so he was aware of his place separating them. Jack had gone to the other end and greeted his cattle buyers, pressing fingers into shoulders, making small talk, and when he was done, he sat beside Katie. Jack looked over his spiny lobster tail at Graham.
“There was a rumor you were dead.”
Graham raised an eyebrow. “In Cuba you discover that things aren’t always as they seem. Castro has been reported dead three times and each time he’s had a miraculous resurrection.” Graham smiled. “Here in Cuba death can be a temporary matter.”
“That’s a good line,” Jack said. “Maybe George will put it into his travel piece. How is the piece going? Anything good?”
“Good? Where’s your confidence in me?”
“Go to Colon Cemetery. It’s bigger than Père Lachaise in Paris. No one writes about it.” He looked at Graham. “Nothing temporary about the dead in Colon Cemetery.”
Jack turned his attention to the cattle buyers, and Mueller looked at Liz, and then at Graham. Liz was sullen, eyes on her plate, avoiding the conversation. Graham was quiet too, his eyes fixed on the glass of rum that his fingers touched like a chalice. Mueller looked at each, but neither looked at him, or at each other. Mueller again found himself in Jack’s orbit.
“And this too is a fact.”
Mueller had missed the predicate so he leaned closer to understand what had been said, all the while nodding knowingly, because to do otherwise would have been rude.
“She was a new maid at the ranch,” Jack said to the cattle buyers, “and she knew no English. Not a word. And Liz’s Spanish was not too good at the time. We were hosting dinner for the ambassador, the previous one—a nice fellow but a political appointment who had no clue about Cuba and didn’t speak Spanish—and his wife. Liz wanted everything to be perfect for our guests. She told the maid that she wanted the main course, a whole fish, to be served with a lemon in its mouth. The maid thought this was a silly idea, and protested violently. Even threatened to quit. But Liz insisted. Con un limon en la boca.
“The maid agreed to serve the fish that way, thinking it was a stupid idea, but she relented. That night the ambassador and his wife were seated for dinner, and her face went pale when the maid brought out the whole fish on a silver tray, a lemon clenched in her teeth.”
Liz snapped. “Stop, Jack. That’s a stupid story. It was my fault. I didn’t communicate what I wanted her to do. Why must you tell it?”
“Well, it’s a funny story. You handled it well. You got him to see why it’s important to speak the language.” Jack turned to his beef buyers. “Here’s another story. We had a maid we had to let go. She was an uneducated girl from the campo. We asked her to cook a chicken in the gas oven—”
“Jack, that’s enough.”
“Can I finish the story?”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” She looked at Jack with rebuking eyes and then at Jack’s audience. She flared a smile. “What he was going to say is that she filled the oven with paper and logs. She’d never seen a gas oven. We live in our own little worlds and don’t understand how people can’t be just like us. That’s the story.” Her face had paled with awkward kindness toward the drinking men.
She stood. “I’m exhausted, Jack. Do you mind terribly if I go home?” She turned to Katie. “Will you come with me?”
“I promised to stay.”
“Then I’ll go alone. I’ll take a taxi. I’m sorry, Jack, I have a terrible headache. It’s been a long day.”
Graham turned to Jack. “If it’s no trouble I can take her.”
Mueller saw Liz briefly consider the offer, but whatever her hesitation it passed quickly, and she said, “Kind of you, but that’s not necessary.”
Lights dimmed as Liz made for the exit, and no one among the small group had the presence of mind to protest her departure. From the band onstage came beating drums and whooping calls. The band leader, in a rainbow-colored shirt and a headdress of threaded palms, shouted “Diablo” to start the mambo, and the horn launched a catchy repeating rhythm that gathered in intensity. Dancers emerged doing a cha-cha-cha, slow beats done one-two-three, and there followed an up-tempo syncopated melody that drew a handsome couple onto the stage—he in tuxedo and she in a colorful flowing dress. Their precise footwork and acrobatic turns were the start of the show.
Mueller stepped back from the table and found a nearby pillar from which to watch. He observed the audience, and in particular watched Graham, now alone at the table. Mueller pondered him, pondered this man obviously trying to look at ease. Mueller slowly let his eyes drift back to the dancers—like a stage director watching the evening’s performance.
A curtain opened. Props onstage evoked a plaza in Old Havana and into the spotlight of a streetlamp strolled a woman in stiletto heels, carrying a sequined handbag, but otherwise naked. Her coffee skin, black hair, and scarlet lips were luminous in the bright light. She swung her handbag with a lazy arm and little acting skill, but no one in the audience was there to judge her acting. She used a come-hither finger to catch the attention of men prowling the plaza. She was joined by three other nudes in heels, elaborate feather hats, and rhinestone handbags, with the bored eagerness of women looking for business. The band played a rumbling percussive arrangement pierced by a bright whispery flute. The women came up to a passing car with exaggerated hip movemen
ts and whistles, but then the call-and-response to the driver was broken up by a policewoman who entered stage left.
She was a tall, voluptuous mulatto dressed in visored police cap and gold epaulets, and carrying a black truncheon—two feet long and rubber that she slapped on her palm. She harassed the girls for soliciting customers and lined them up under the spotlight.
She had the first spread her legs and proceeded to search for concealed weapons. The harassed woman moved her hips rhythmically to the sound of a snare drum and the kitsch burlesque quieted the audience.
“Watch this.”
The voice was beside Mueller. Katie nodded at the stage. She had whispered her instruction when Mueller saw her, and she again looked at the stage. She added a moment later, “They make more in a day than a cane cutter makes in a year. Young women wait hours for auditions. But it’s a short career. The best get noticed. They go to Vegas or Miami, or find a man who supplies a visa.”
Mueller looked back at the garishly lit stage and watched one dancer be culled from the lineup. She was slight. He recognized Ofelia’s raven hair and pearl skin. Her feigned surprise and mimed objections were grossly overplayed, but her youth and beauty forgave her amateur performance.
“She’s Jack’s girl,” Katie whispered.
Mueller watched the girl being put through a mock humiliation. Jack’s girl. Mueller’s understanding settled in, and with it the sense that it was something predictable, knowing Jack as he did, and that feeling deepened when Katie said Liz didn’t know. Mueller felt the burden of the unwanted secret. He rehearsed how he would speak with his two married friends—graciously, thoughtfully, mindfully, but never again carelessly.
8
* * *
COLON CEMETERY
IT WAS later when he retold the story that Mueller saw how absurd the whole misunderstanding was, and he found in the episode enough of his own fault that he used it as a calculated example of his naïveté, and in so doing he hoped to reinforce Jack’s opinion that he was the amateur journalist. Everything he recalled for them was true but it was also true that he was glad to have the absurd incident to remove scrutiny from his assignment.
The incident occurred the morning after their visit to Sans Souci. At Jack’s insistence Mueller had risen early to visit Colon Cemetery, taking the advice that any travel writer putting together a piece on Havana might want to highlight the necropolis. A spectacle of mausoleums. Great pompous structures with an air of grotesque comedy.
Mueller hoped to drag Katie along to take photographs, but she hadn’t been in the lobby when the car Jack arranged arrived. So he went on the tour alone. Cemeteries had always fascinated him, and he’d been several times to Mozart’s grave in Vienna’s St. Marx Cemetery. These feeble efforts of the living to honor the incomprehensible. That thought drifted through his imagination, feeling as he did whenever he walked down the avenues of headstones, slightly displaced and awed, acutely aware of his place among the living.
His tour ended when he came to the wrought-iron gate where stonecutters displayed their inventory of markers for the cemetery’s new inhabitants, and across the path, conveniently for bereaved mourners who would visit the new residents, sheds filled with elaborate wreaths and wax candles.
He heard his name called when he was gazing at the orchids, each delicate and aromatic. He looked up and faced a man on the other side of the gate.
“Señor Mueller?”
“Yes.”
“A car has been sent for you.”
“It was worth the trip,” Mueller said, stepping into the backseat, past the driver, who he noticed was not the same driver who had brought him out. “My friend was right,” he said, “a marvelous necropolis. As old as the ones in Europe. There was a funeral in progress.”
Mueller settled back into the seat and stretched his lanky frame. The day had gone gray and the tropical greens were lush, deep, saturated. He was glad he had come. Thinking tourists, the ones who needed a break from gambling and exotic floor shows, would be moved by a thirty-minute side trip to the city of the dead.
Mueller leaned forward and said to the driver, “I need to stop by the hotel to collect my bags before you take me to see the others.” A moment later he saw the driver had turned from Avenida Carlos III toward the train station.
“Excuse me,” he said. “This isn’t the way to my hotel.”
Mueller got no answer, nor did the driver make eye contact in the rearview mirror. It was the man’s determined silence and the odd feeling of being held prisoner that led Mueller to try the door. He found it locked.
“Who are you?” Mueller demanded. “Where are you taking me?”
Kidnapped? Mueller considered the driver’s position, his head vulnerable, the speed of the car. Mueller clenched his fingers, calculating the power of his fist, and then, while he was building his courage for a fight, the Oldsmobile pulled up to a gleaming marble portico surrounded by sandbags. The back door was opened from the outside and Mueller faced two men. One held the door and the other offered Mueller a hand. Both men were alike in their trim tan suits, narrow ties, and polished leather shoes, and both looked strong. Mueller saw no difference between them except that one had a thin moustache and the other was clean-shaven; otherwise they were similar and hard to distinguish. But then Mueller saw they were really not alike at all. The one with the moustache was short and smiled when he offered a helping hand, and the other was tall with a hatchet face.
“What’s going on?” Mueller asked. “Who is he?” Mueller pointed to the driver. “This is a mistake. I didn’t call a car.”
“Of course not, Mr. Mueller,” the taller one said, bowing slightly at the waist, extending his hand. “We are delighted to meet you. We sent the car so you wouldn’t be inconvenienced.”
“What’s this about?”
“Are you finding everything to your liking in Havana?”
“Not this.”
“Come with us. You’re expected. It won’t take long. The car will take you to your hotel. We have a few ideas for you as you think about how you’ll describe our country. We are at your disposal. I have read your book.”
Mueller was startled to hear that, and the blandishment gave him pause, taking away his guard for a moment. He was led through a door, and passing a vestibule he found himself in a polished marble corridor empty except for a gauntlet of sculpted busts of dead Cuban dignitaries. At the end, the hallway opened onto a large office area crammed with secretaries typing. The din of clacking keys modulated as he passed desks and women looked up. Mueller navigated the obstacle course of manila folders stacked on the floor.
“In here, Mr. Mueller.”
He found himself in a cavernous office with oil paintings, grotesque plaster molding, and huge casement windows shut to retain the cooling air from a wheezing air conditioner. A monstrous wood desk sat in the middle of the room, clear of all paper except one open file that held the attention of a slight man with gleaming black hair. Someone in authority, Mueller guessed by the way his two escorts held back when they presented him.
The man stood. Mueller detected the sweet, cloying smell of roses and he guessed it was the man’s cologne. He was trim and compact and by some contrivance of posture and confidence he made the two taller escorts look short and cowering.
“Thank you for coming,” the man said in crisp English. His shirt was starched, his creased pants were wrinkled only in the knees from sitting, and he dabbed his lips with a monogramed handkerchief. He approached Mueller from across the room. He had piercing eyes and the air of a man conscious of how he was seen by others and careful to preserve his authority.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Mueller said. “I thought it was a mistake, but you have my name so it’s not a mistake. And your man here claims to have read my book. So, I guess I should be flattered. But I want you to know this is quite ridiculous. Picked up on the street and brought here against my will. I have a mind to report it to the police.”
“We are
the police. Let me introduce myself, Captain Alejandro Alonzo. Servicio de Inteligencia Militar. We won’t keep you long. I know you are writing an article for Holiday magazine.”
Captain Alonzo lifted a recent issue from his desk and leafed through the pages as if it was a prop, before he returned it to the folder, and looked at Mueller.
“I have a few of your articles—the travel ones—and I liked your piece on Beirut. You found a way to express the city’s complicated soul. Havana too is an enchanted city. Throughout history there are privileged moments when the genius of a people and lucky circumstances combine to turn cities into incomparable attractions—Athens, Alexandria, Venice. Few places are as exciting as Havana right now.”
“Boys hanging from lampposts,” Mueller said.
“We have incidents,” Alonzo said in exaggerated offense. Suddenly, he coughed from deep in his chest, a hacking cough. When it passed he dabbed his lips. “Little incidents, but we have our famous cigars. We have casinos. We have your writer, Mr. Hemingway. Tourists come here to sample what we offer—liquor, music, gambling, a taste of paradise. What more could a vacationer ask for? And now we also have our own little insurrection.” Alonzo said this without a trace of irony.
“I can be useful with interviews,” he added, again dabbing his lips. “I suggest you speak with El Presidente and get his view. You will find him well-informed and quoting him might give your article some authority. Don’t you think?”
“Authority? Propaganda maybe.”
“We’d like a balanced picture of Cuba,” Captain Alonzo said. “Here in Cuba we have a talent for making do with what is at hand. It gets us through our governments one dictator at a time.”
Mueller smiled. He gazed at the man and thought his eyes too large for his face. He exuded charm and reasonableness.
“I noticed you looked at the paintings when you came in,” Captain Alonzo said. His hand rose and directed Mueller to the fine art that decorated the pale blue plaster walls. “This one,” he said, “is by Marcelo Pogolotti, a painter who painted just fourteen years and then went blind. A tragedy. Then he became a writer and later a communist. This painting is called Palabra, done in 1938, and it’s the work of a committed socialist. His politics were shallow and unfortunate, but his paintings are a fine expression of early Cuban modernism.”