by Tim Weed
She knelt on the floor and put a cassette in a paint-spattered boom box that must have been at least twenty years old. A lukewarm breeze came in through the window slats as we both undressed. The cassette was Joni Mitchell.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d had girlfriends before. Nothing like this, though. Not a girl I’d met in the street and come to visit for the specific purpose of having sex. But then, I’m not the only foreigner who’s behaved differently in Cuba than he would at home.
After it was over, Lisbet and I lounged on the bed in silence. The Joni Mitchell tape ended, and down the hall the muffled television blared. At risk of drifting off to sleep, I got up and started getting dressed. Lisbet rolled over to watch me, a teasing smile playing across her lips. “Don’t dress. I’m not finished with you.”
“I have to get back,” I explained. “The tour group. You remember.”
She stopped smiling and sat up, not bothering to cover her generous, inquisitive breasts. “Stay with me. You can get up early. I’ll make you a good Cuban breakfast.”
“No. I really have to go.” I took a roll of twenty-peso bills out of my shorts pocket and saw from her dismayed expression that I’d made a mistake. But it was too late to change course. She watched in wide-eyed alarm as I pulled three crisp bills off the roll. I held them out for her to take and she glanced at them in distaste.
“I’m not a prostitute,” she said, quietly indignant. “I’m a student of accounting.”
I was embarrassed, but I tried to put the best face on things. “I know you’re not a prostitute. But I also know you can use this money. Please, take it, as a gift. For your family.”
She shook her head. Her eyes had filled with tears. I sat beside her on the mattress and put my arm over her naked shoulder. It felt awkward, so I took the arm back. “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. But you do need the money, don’t you?”
After a moment she nodded, tears flowing, and held out her hand for the twenties.
If you went to Cuba before the opening, then you know that the island held a peculiar kind of magic for visitors. It was a gritty time capsule, a rustic, communist Never Never Land. Cubans were lean, handsome, well educated, and literally starving for cash. Doctors and engineers had to skip meals in order to stay afloat. The government issued ration coupons, but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet. If you were a tourist—if your pockets were full of international currency—everybody wanted to know you. You possessed a special magnetism, unlike anything you’d ever experienced in your home country. It was like one of those amazing dreams where you discover a new superpower. It was as if you’d swallowed a pill that had transformed you into Johnny Depp or George Clooney. It was easier than you might think to lose touch with reality.
My second Cuban girlfriend was older than Lisbet, and somewhat less educated. The retirees had gone home, pleased with the sanitized experience of Cuba I’d provided for them, and I had a few independent days before the next group came. I rode out of the city in the same ’57 Buick as before, the driver having been pleased enough with the tip I’d given him to set up operations outside the hotel as my personal chauffeur. We took the western highway, past rusting tankers, billboards with anti-imperialist slogans, and oil refineries chugging out their clouds of poison. I told the driver to stop at a small beach overlooking a shipwreck. A Cuban tour guide had pointed it out to me several weeks earlier, a Spanish ironclad from 1898 visible as two massive, rusted gun turrets jutting out at weird angles from the turquoise sea. In college I’d done a term paper on Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and it was my intention to snorkel out and explore the wreck.
Stepping down off the highway onto the pleasantly shaded beach, I nearly bumped into Yanita. Lovely Yanita, with bracelets on her wrists and a thick Pocahontas braid teased forward over one nut-brown shoulder. Sexy Yanita, her curvy body only minimally concealed by a threadbare yellow sundress. She sold me a polished conch shell for a peso and offered to watch my duffel bag while I snorkeled. Her availability for other services was clear from the beginning, but I’d come to explore the wreck. Grinning sheepishly, I took my roll of convertible pesos out of the duffel and stowed it in the pocket of my swim trunks. The undivided attention of a woman so fetching made me feel like an awkward teenager.
The water was clear, fading out in all directions to voids of opaque blue. Not far beyond the beach, the bottom dropped away, algae-covered rocks slanting down to a distant blue basin of featureless sand. I hate deep water. It makes me feel vulnerable to attack from below. The wreck was farther out than it had looked. Several times, I almost panicked and turned back. But the basin slanted up again, and I began to see fragments of the ironclad. Soon I was drifting slowly over the prow of the ship, its well-preserved outlines encrusted by coral. The hull had been split in half by American artillery, but otherwise it was surprisingly intact. Beneath the coral crust I could make out the steam drivers, the bunkrooms, the galley, and of course the bases of the two gun turrets, one of which I climbed in order to take a rest. Dripping and pleased with myself, I took off the mask and breathed in the rich tropical air. I gazed at the distant shoreline: the sea grapes and gently swaying palms. I could make out Yanita in her lemon-colored dress, waiting faithfully beside the green speck of my duffel. I waved to her. She waved back. I decided to head in.
She was waiting in the shade of an old sea grape, leaning against the smooth sweep of the trunk with the duffel on the white pebbles at her feet. She handed me my towel and watched intently as I dried off and put on my t-shirt. Her desire for me was exaggerated, almost slavish, but I believed (and still believe) that it wasn’t entirely artificial. I sensed primal forces brewing within Yanita’s alluring frame. Deep loneliness combined with a lust willed into being by actual gnawing hunger.
She took me by the hand and led me to a rough wooden shack hidden in the mangroves at the far end of the beach. The shack was empty and there was no electric light, but bright slats of sunlight streamed in through gaps in the weathered planks. I could make out the ashes of a small cooking fire, and a military-issue cot with rusting sidebars. Yanita gestured toward the cot and I sat down. She shrugged off the sundress.
There’s no point in going into detail about what happened next, other than to note that her hands were callused from manual labor and that she was passionate, beautiful, and quite vocal. There was no formal transaction, though I left a few twenty peso notes tucked discretely under a skillet on the bare earth next to the fire pit. It pleased me to think that this was probably more money than she would make in an entire year. That she and her children—and I had no doubt there were children—would be well fed for at least a few months.
On the way back into the city in the ’57 Buick, I sang aloud to an Eliades Ochoa tune I was listening to on my iPod:
Como no tengo dinero, tu cariño es falsedad. Falsedad, falsedad, tu cariño es falsedad.
The driver turned to me with a look of disgust on his big, mustachioed face. “Why you sing that?” he asked in English.
“I don’t know,” I replied, momentarily caught off guard. “I just felt like singing, and this is the music I’m listening to.”
He turned his gaze back to the road. “So you do everything you want?”
“Sure. As long as it’s not hurting anybody.”
He shook his head, and the conversation ended. My mood had soured, and I resented him for it. He seemed to believe that he had some insight into my character that I couldn’t see for myself. I decided that it was time to find a new driver.
My next Cuban love interest was Marisleysis, a dancer. She was one of a half-dozen salsa instructors at a rooftop studio adjacent to the main plaza, where I’d arranged lessons for a museum group from Chicago. The way she moved her body attracted my attention. She wasn’t beautiful per se, but she was striking, with ice-blue eyes and the light, freckled complexion Cubans usually associate with Galician ancestry. Her face had a solemn, serious cast that I found intriguing. When she danced, it was pure magic.<
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I kept trying to catch her eye, but she refused to participate. So I joined the line to learn the dance step myself. When my turn came up Marisleysis was polite and professionally courteous, but cool. I found her reserve intriguing. I determined to win her over.
The Chicagoans were enthusiastic. They wanted to keep going beyond the hour-long lesson, which would end up costing extra and eating into my profit, but I didn’t care. My eyes kept returning to Marisleysis. I loved her self-contained grace as she moved through the salsa steps. When my turn came I reveled in the sensation of my hand resting on the curve of her dancer’s waist.
After the lesson I paid the studio director and gave him a generous tip to distribute among the dancers. I waited by the stairs for Marisleysis. She’d changed into street clothes, jeans and a black t-shirt. She had a book bag slung over her shoulder and wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, which gave her an irresistibly studious, schoolgirl look. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Of course.” She nodded, eyeing me coolly from behind the lenses.
“Thank you for the way you interacted with the group. It was impressive. Everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.”
“It was nothing,” she replied with a modest wave of her hand. “We collaborate. Each one plays a role. I am glad you are satisfied with the class.” She glanced toward the stairwell. I felt myself reddening.
“I was wondering if you’d be willing to give me private lessons. I would pay you well. In dollars, if you wish.”
She regarded me with a stony expression. “Private lessons for foreigners are against the law in Cuba.”
“So are private taxis,” I replied, “but they still operate.” I glanced at the studio director, who was standing just out of earshot, pretending not to watch us. “Listen, we could keep it between ourselves. No one would have to know.”
She turned toward the stairwell. “I am glad the class was successful.”
“Think it over,” I called out, as she vanished down the stairs.
I got her schedule from another dancer, one who was more pragmatic about the power of foreign currency. Three nights after the salsa lesson, with the museum group wrapped up and headed back to Chicago, I walked over to a small theater near the university to attend a performance of what my source had called a “baile folklórico.”
It was carnaval in Santiago. The streets were filled with lean, sweat-soaked revelers drinking white rum out of plastic water bottles. The mood in the air was tense and watchful, a feeling of repressed violence just beneath the surface. The theater space offered some refuge from the sweating mob outside. A few other tourists had found their way in, possibly feeling equally discomfited by the atmosphere in the streets, sun-bleached Australians or Germans, from the look of them. Other than those few, the patrons were entirely Cuban.
The other tourists stood sheepishly against the back wall, but I wanted to get closer to the stage. Some of the other audience members turned to glare at me as I shouldered my way down the center aisle. Their expressions were aggressively contemptuous, reminding me of the look the taxi driver had given me when I started singing to Eliades Ochoa on my iPod. I began to wonder what exactly these people thought they saw in me, but I quickly shoved that thought into the back of my mind. Marisleysis was so beautiful. I had to see her.
The performance began with rattles and bells and a weird, low chanting in Yoruba, an African language. At first, it seemed predictable enough, with the dancers filing out one by one in costumes representing the Orishas, the deities of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería. Marisleysis came out in a lacy, white wedding gown. There was a veil covering her face, but I recognized her immediately from the way she moved. When all the Orishas were out on stage, it became clear that each one was associated with an element, such as fire or water, and some other state of being, such as purity, anger, or crippling illness.
Two of the drummers brought out a large slab of rusted steel. It might have been a part from a giant truck or a tractor. It was shaped like a plow, and something about the sight of it caused the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. The drummers struck it with pipes. It made a sound like a bell, only flatter and much less cheerful. It was a deathly sound, in fact, and it chilled me to the bone. I had to struggle not to get up and leave.
Meanwhile, the dancers launched into a frenzy. Their movements were rapid and mechanical. Their faces had gone blank with an almost sexual ecstasy. One muscular dancer who’d been hobbling across the stage on crutches pretending to be a cripple fell into what looked like an epileptic seizure, clenched and twitching and literally foaming at the mouth. Another, dressed in black, lit three torches and began to juggle. Suddenly the drumming stopped, and the lights in the theater went out. The crowd gasped. The dancer who’d been juggling guzzled a clear liquid from a plastic bottle and then spit out a long tongue of fire that leapt across the crowd, filling the room with a ghastly orange light. The people around me, delighted, touched their hair to see if it had been singed.
I was transfixed by dread. I couldn’t escape the fact that the fire dancer’s eyes, glinting like coal in the flickering light, were staring directly and accusingly into mine.
After the performance, I was a bit shaken up. But I was still determined to talk to Marisleysis, and I found myself following her as she left the theatre. The crowd parted in her wake. She seemed to possess some kind of innate authority that even the drunkest of the revelers instinctively honored. At the door to what I assumed was her apartment, I stepped out of the shadows to make myself known.
“You! What are you doing here?” She was surprised to see me, obviously, and not in a good way.
I held up my hands and gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry! I saw your performance, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to circle back with you about those private lessons.”
“You followed me home?” She was staring at me as if I were a giant cockroach that had just crawled up from the gutter. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, dressed in the same jeans and black t-shirt as before, with those library-chic horn-rimmed glasses.
She took out a key and pushed open the door to her apartment. “Goodbye,” she said, half-turning. “Please do not follow me again, or I will be forced to call the police.”
“I only wanted to talk,” I protested.
Inside now, she started to swing the door closed. Seeing that this was my last chance, I darted through the door before she could shut it, and there I was, inside her small apartment. She lunged for the phone. I grabbed her forearm, which was wiry, but not strong enough to escape my grip. “Look, all I ask is that you give me a chance. I could help you out, you know, in a number of ways.”
Her face was deeply flushed. She looked angry, but not frightened. Above the phone there was a signed photograph of a young Fidel Castro, a tall, bearded youth in a forested landscape, with rumpled fatigues and a rifle in his hand. I’d never been able to understand his appeal for Cubans, but now, looking at this picture, I could see how someone like Marisleysis might find him heroic. “You are a pig,” she spat. “You and your whole yuma country are pigs.”
Suddenly ashamed, I let go of her arm. I quickly apologized and let myself out. As I shut the door behind me, she was reaching for the phone.
I spent the rest of that night lying awake in my hotel room, bracing for the knock at my door.
The knock never came, and in that respect I suppose I was lucky. The whole incident left me in a depressed, self-loathing mood. I found myself replaying in my mind the events of the previous weeks. I began to wonder what kind of person I’d become. The thing was, I’d always thought of myself as a decent guy, someone worthy of affection and respect. But the look in Marisleysis’s eyes—like the taxi driver’s, and the people’s at the theatre—told a different story.
I found my thoughts returning to my first Cuban girlfriend, Lisbet. Her playful friendliness. How she’d asked me to stay for breakfast. How she’d cried when she took my money. Was I wrong to imagin
e that she’d actually liked me?
After a few days of indecision, I decided to pay her another visit. That night, as with many nights, there was a widespread blackout in Santiago, and there was no moon, so most of the city was drowned in deep, tropical darkness. I sat in the back seat of my new taxi, a blue ’58 Oldsmobile, as the driver guided me through the inky night to the Santa Bárbara neighborhood. This time, not relishing the idea of walking alone in this blackness, I gave him the address.
As I stepped up onto the creaky porch my heart pounded with excitement. My intentions are pure, I told myself. I looked forward to seeing Lisbet again, getting to know her for real this time, and letting her get to know me. It almost felt like a homecoming.
The younger sister, Lisbet’s lighter-skinned double, answered the door holding a candle. She wore a tank top that glowed yellow in the light of the single flame.
“Buenas noches,” I said with a brotherly smile. “Is Lisbet at home?”
The girl shook her head. “She went to Havana.” I couldn’t help noticing that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The outlines of her nipples were clearly visible under the thin cotton. Behind her, the house was dark and silent.
Before I could say anything else, she’d taken my hand and pulled me inside. There was candlelight coming from the back bedroom where I’d made love to Lisbet. The girl led me there, and I didn’t protest. On the windowsill, two guttering candle stubs illuminated the louvered window and a hardcover novel lying spine-up on the bed. The girl had been burning incense as she read.
“I’ll return later,” I said. “When do you expect her back?”
She was already peeling off the tank top. Despite myself, I felt stirrings of arousal.