The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  He shook Raúl, who was already awake.

  “Did you feel that, Raúl?”

  “Yes, what was it?”

  “Don’t know, felt like we hit a rock.”

  “See anything?”

  “No.”

  The blow came again, and this time it was followed by a wet squeaking sound as the back of a shark rubbed against the underside of the raft. The skin of the shark was solid and rough, and it felt as though the inner tubes were being dragged over barely submerged rocks or concrete pilings. In the darkness, the shark did not feel like a living thing.

  An arm’s length away from the raft, Juan saw a swirling phosphorescence as the shark passed under them. The glowing whirlpool lingered on the surface of the water while the full length of the shark slipped beneath the raft. Then he saw the edge of a fin moving away, cleaving the still water. His eyes followed the thin line and saw it turn broadside twenty feet from them. The outline of the fin showed ghostly white in the starlight as it began to cut a circle around them on the surface of the water.

  The shark circled twice, and then the dorsal fin dipped lower and disappeared. It was a tiger shark with a very broad, squared-off head. At either end of its shovel-shaped snout it had large, wide-open nostrils that looked more like the nostrils of a horse than the usual small nostrils that most sharks have, and they were covered by ugly flaps of skin that fluttered as the shark moved through the water. It was sixteen feet long and must have weighed over a thousand pounds. Its jaws were a foot wider than a man’s shoulders and were filled with rows of serrated teeth that were notched on one side and angled on the other, like the comb of a rooster. It had a ravenous appetite and was one of the few sharks that, like the great white, sometimes attacked boats and other things floating on the water.

  Juan could not see it now as it moved toward the raft, several feet under the surface. But soon he felt another bump. This one was more tentative, almost gentle, then the shark turned away and slid deeper into the water.

  “Is he gone?” Raúl asked.

  “There!” Juan yelled. “See? There’s the fin! No, over there!” he said, pointing toward a dark shape moving on the surface.

  Then they heard a rippling sound as the shark gained speed and the dorsal fin raised spray, splitting the water. Juan followed the dim white spray circling the raft.

  “You think he can smell the fish?” Raúl asked.

  “What?”

  “The fish, the fish I tied to the inner tube.”

  “No, well…”

  As he said that, Juan yanked the slab of dorado from under the ropes lashed around Raúl’s inner tube, and flung it at the shark. It splashed a few feet in front of its snout, but the shark, paying no attention to the piece of fish meat, kept circling.

  Again and again it circled them and then, suddenly, Juan saw it turn and head straight toward them before it disappeared once more into the dark water.

  “He’s coming at us, Raúl! He’s coming straight at us! Look!” Juan yelled as he watched a green phosphorescent streak rushing toward them about eight feet under the surface.

  The shark came under the raft at speed and, without slowing, arched its body and shot straight up. The flat snout crashed against the bottom of Raúl’s inner tube, flipping the raft and tossing them through the air. It then turned on its back, showing its pale belly just under the surface, and bit into Raúl’s inner tube, tearing it to pieces.

  Treading water a few feet away, Juan could see the one good inner tube, still inflated and lashed to what remained of Raúl’s, dragging back and forth across the surface enveloped in a cloud of spray as the shark jerked its head from side to side in violent spasms, all the while clicking its huge jaws and tearing chunks of rubber from the deflated inner tube.

  “Let go, you bastard! Let go!” Raúl yelled.

  As he shouted, Raúl began to swim toward the inner tube that was still throwing up walls of spray each time the shark jerked it across the water.

  “Stop, Raúl! Stop! He’ll kill you!” Juan called.

  “If he tears the other one up, it’ll be over anyway!” Raúl yelled back.

  In his rage, Raúl swam toward the shark. When he was halfway between Juan and the shark, the inner tube stopped moving. The surface of the water became still again, and everything turned quiet. Raúl stopped in mid-stroke, letting his legs drop under him, and his motionless body hung suspended for a moment in the water. He then began to adjust his position, moving his legs like scissors, as he scanned the surface of the water around him looking for a sign of the shark.

  The sea was like a sheet of glass. Thirty feet away from him he could see the silhouette of the inner tube against a patch of stars hanging low over the eastern horizon.

  A few minutes passed, and then Juan whispered, “Do you see him?”

  “No.”

  “Can you reach the inner tube?”

  Raúl did not answer as his eyes skimmed the surface of the water. The inner tube was now drifting away from him, and Raúl began once again to swim toward it in a smooth breaststroke. With his head high above the water, he kept looking all around him while he swam.

  A light breeze ruffled the water now and blew the inner tube farther away. Raúl picked up his pace as the breeze teased him, pushing the inner tube out of his reach whenever he came close.

  Then the breeze blew stronger and Raúl broke into a crawl, chasing after the tube. His big arms came down hard, beating the water with each stroke, and his legs churned the water, leaving a frothy trail behind him.

  Raúl was now within reach of the inner tube, and he gave a few powerful strokes and lunged toward it. As his right hand grasped a line, the water under the inner tube exploded and the head of the shark burst out in front of him. Raúl let out a scream as the snout struck his chest and pushed him back, whirling through the water, out of the way of the massive animal. The shark’s momentum carried it past him, and for a moment Raúl could see the back of the shark just under the water, speeding away from him into the darkness. Then he saw the dorsal fin, as wide as a door at the base, turn around and head toward him, slicing the surface and throwing up spray.

  Raúl saw the water bulge before him, and as the shark came upon him, he stretched his arms out, trying to fend off the attack, and jammed a finger deep into the fleshy nostril on the left side. The shark turned its head away from the offending finger, and Raúl saw its black eye turn white as the nictitating membrane closed over it. Then the shark circled back and flipped on its side as it came toward him. And Raúl saw the blurry outline of the jaws as they opened beneath him, showing the enormous, all-devouring black cavity against the pale underbelly.

  Juan had followed Raúl, swimming behind him. And now, as he moved closer, he felt something that does not carry a name. Something that had lingered like a vapor in the secret memories of his childhood. Juan could not explain it and he did not understand it because there was nothing to understand, nothing to explain. He had been afraid and now he was not. And how do you explain such a crossing? From darkness to light, from death to life. How do you explain such a thing?

  Raúl turned toward Juan and shouted, “¡Atrás! Go back!”

  But Juan swam closer, closer, until he sensed the swirl and bulge of the water ahead of the onrushing shark. As the shark came at Raúl, Juan grasped a pectoral fin and struck the gills hard with his fist before reeling back from the force of the moving shark.

  Then he saw the strange, broad teeth thrust out and the jaws close around Raúl’s waist, ripping the flesh and sinking deep into his abdominal muscles. And he saw Raúl lifted clear above the surface and shoved down headfirst into the water, only to be raised again as the shark shook its head back and forth, back and forth.

  In the starlight Juan saw the rippling lateral muscles of the shark as its whole body convulsed and he saw Raúl struggling, striking the shark, his dark blood staining the white underbelly every time the shark raised its head out of the water. Then Juan heard the crunching sou
nd of bones snapping as Raúl’s ribs and spinal column cracked, and the noise the bones made when they snapped was louder than Juan ever imagined such a sound would be. And he saw the jaws open very wide and then shut tight, severing Raúl’s body in half.

  The bloody severed torso fell from the mouth of the shark and floated on the surface for a moment before the shark opened its mouth again and swallowed what remained of Raúl in a single bite.

  Then the shark dove back into the depths and the ripples on the water faded until the surface was flat again and there was only silence and the light of the stars reflected on the sea.

  Numb with shock, Juan swam to the remaining inner tube that was floating nearby, grabbed a line, and towed it back to the spot where he thought Raúl had last been. But there was no way of really knowing that the place he swam back to was the exact spot, and even in his confused state, he was aware that he could not know.

  Still, he imagined that he was back at the place in the sea where Raúl had been, because he felt a great need to be there—as if all the fear and all the death and all the duplicity of the last thirty years had been swallowed in that place, had vanished in that place.

  Then he thought that even if he had come back to the same place where Raúl had been, the current was carrying him away from there, and it made him anxious and for a moment he started swimming against the current. But then he thought that the current carried everything with it, just as it had carried him and the raft together as he swam toward it, keeping their relative positions the same as it swept them along, and the only thing that made a difference was the wind. But there was no wind now, so everything must be moving together, even the exact spot, which had to be moving with him now, right with him, and below him, and all around him.

  The thought that both he and the place where Raúl had been were flowing together in the Gulf Stream brought him a mysterious comfort—filled him with a confidence that he was sure came from Raúl. And even as he felt the comfort and the confidence, he knew that it made no sense.

  Then he thought that he might be going crazy, but he realized in a flash that he was aware of the strangeness of the ideas that filled his mind, and this meant that he was not mad. And that very realization almost brought him back to his old world, but he saw the door begin to open and he caught a glimpse of the horror behind it and he knew that he did not want to face it. So he shut the door and thought that the water felt warmer over the place, and he even reached out and touched the other water outside the place and felt that it was, indeed, colder, which meant that he was still where he was supposed to be.

  Chapter Nine

  The alarm clock rang and Carmen stretched, turned it off, and lay on her back a few minutes before walking across her bedroom to the bathroom. The tile floor felt cold against her bare feet. Before stepping into the shower, she slipped off her short blue silk nightgown and stood naked before the full-length mirror while she let the hot water run, warming the tub. She waited until the steam began to fog the mirror, blurring the reflection of her body, and then stepped under the shower. The warm water felt good as it ran through her hair and down the curve of her back, softly caressing her glistening buttocks.

  As she lathered, Carmen moved with the natural, almost haughty confidence that beautiful women everywhere always move with. At thirty, her body was nearing the ripe perfection it would reach in the next decade, but it already exuded a sweetness that unseasoned younger women lack.

  She toweled herself dry and dressed while she watched a Spanish-language television newscast. The strong aroma of espresso coffee filled the small apartment, and the first rays of the sun filtered through the vertical blinds, casting parallel shadows on the white tile floor of the living room. The apartment was immaculately clean and perfectly ordered. The furniture was sparse but elegant. Everything seemed light and cheerful, and there was an open feeling about the place that made it seem much larger than it actually was.

  Carmen picked up the portrait of Vivian’s son and examined it once more in the sunlight. She had worked and reworked the eyes, and now she was finally satisfied with them. They were strong, confident eyes that, when the time came, would return to rebuild a homeland they had never seen.

  In the exhilarating atmosphere of Miami, Carmen had sat through many heated discussions about the anticipated post-Castro transition to democracy, and had heard countless experts debate the process of privatization. But she knew that those light brown eyes looking back at her now, and hundreds of thousands like them, would do more to restore La Patria—“the Fatherland”—than the millions of dollars in goods and services tugging at the bit now, ready to rush south across the Straits to begin the reconstruction.

  From the moment she arrived in Miami, Carmen had been filled with pride at the obvious success of the Cuban exiles. Growing up in Cuba, a child of the revolution, she had heard so many contradictory things about American society and the Cuban exiles in Miami that she did not know what to expect, what life in Miami would truly be like, or how she, a well-known artist who had worked for Castro’s propaganda machine, would be received by the Cubans living in the United States.

  In the late sixties, when she was a schoolgirl in Havana, she had been taught that the Cuban expatriates had it very bad in Miami. Castro always referred to the Cubans who left after the revolution as gusanos, which means “worms.” At first he told the Cubans on the island that the gusanos in the United States were treated badly, that they were shunned by the Americans, that they were poor and lived in ghettos and led miserable, lonely lives. A well-deserved fate in the eyes of Castro. And if things were bad in Cuba, the Cubans on the island at least had the comfort that it was worse for the Cuban exiles in Miami, or so they were told. After all, in Cuba, under Fidel’s leadership, they were building socialism. Hardships in Cuba had to be expected, they were natural, they came with the territory. But back then they had something to look forward to, they had a future. A glorious revolutionary future, and they were sure to achieve it, against all odds. That was what she was taught as a child. And she believed it then. She firmly believed they would succeed.

  Had Fidel not defeated the Yankees at the Bay of Pigs during the battle of Playa Girón? That was undeniable. She had seen the films of the American warships off the coast, and of the enemy airplanes blown to pieces by Castro’s air force. And she had heard tapes of the intercepted radio communications by the desperate men on the beach, surrounded, outgunned, calling for air support amid the massacre, begging the Yankees for air cover that never came. And she had seen the American warships turn and run, out of harm’s way, abandoning the bloodied men, leaving behind the body-littered beach of Playa Girón. Yes, Fidel had defeated the Yankees, that was obvious.

  Then, later, when she was a student at the university, she had actually met Cuban exiles from Miami when the exiles began visiting Cuba for the first time since the revolution, during a brief period of warmer relations between Cuba and the United States in the mid-seventies.

  Meeting these free Cubans was a great shock to her, and it changed her life forever. Contrary to what she had been told all these years, the exiles did not appear poor or miserable. They were well dressed, they looked happy, and they brought so many things with them, so many wonderful things. And they gave everything away to their relatives and friends and sometimes to strangers on the streets. The exiles gave away clothes, medicines, makeup, electronic gadgets. Some of them even gave away their suitcases and returned to Miami with only the clothes they wore.

  Carmen never forgot the day her schoolmate, Susana, came over, all excited, to model some underwear that a distant cousin visiting from Miami had given her. Susana tried on several pairs of panties, each time strutting around the room, naked except for the panties, and swinging her hips in an exaggerated way. Each pair was a different color, and they were all cut high around the legs and accentuated Susana’s youthful feminine thighs and tight rear. Then Susana put on a black underwire bra that was a little big for her, and asked Car
men to try it on.

  It was a perfect fit, and, looking into the mirror at her full round breasts, gently held up by the cups, with the dark erect nipples showing clearly through the lace, Carmen felt like a woman for the first time in her life. Seeing how perfectly the bra fit, Susana, suddenly overcome with generosity, gave it to her, and for years it was one of Carmen’s most prized possessions. She wore it only on special occasions and always wrapped it carefully afterwards and hid it in a special place, a secret cubbyhole that she cut out behind her bookcase only for that purpose. After a while the bra became a symbol to her, and she always thought about it when she thought about the contradictions in the speeches of Fidel.

  Then she began to wear it under her dull outer clothing every time she was forced to attend a mass rally and listen to Castro drone on about building socialism. And she thought that wearing it during those rallies almost qualified as a private protest, and she often fantasized about climbing onto the podium, stripping off her blouse, and showing off the American bra to the astonished crowd. That fantasy, and other equally outrageous ones, kept her mind occupied and amused through the stifling heat and boredom of the rallies.

  The telephone rang as Carmen was going out the door, and she rushed back to answer it. It was Andrés’s daughter, Margarita.

  “They’ve left.”

  Carmen hesitated for a moment. She felt lightheaded, and the tips of her fingers began to tingle.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I just talked with Rogelio. He’s in Cojímar. He told me that when he last saw them, about a week ago, they were headed east, toward Guanabo.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “He doesn’t know. But he has not seen any of them since then. He said Juan has not been at the university since Monday. The G-2 is looking for him and for my father and for a third man who left with them, Raúl. Rogelio didn’t know his last name,” said Margarita.