The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Carmen was looking out the window, and it occurred to Vivian that she had not heard a thing. She was far away, somewhere over the water, and her words came slowly. “All he wanted was to be left alone with his stars,” she said. “That’s all he talked about, what he loved.”

  “That was just another way of escaping,” Vivian said.

  “Yes, but only in his mind. He would have stayed if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Even if that’s true, Carmen, would you have done it any differently?”

  “If I had, he would have lived.”

  “You don’t know he’s dead.”

  “Please, Vivian, don’t raise my hopes. You know he’s dead.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve spent my life picking up balseros, raft people, and many of them make it.”

  “It’s been five days!”

  “Five days is nothing. Some have drifted for ten, fifteen, twenty days. Some have been picked up off Port Canaveral, within sight of the missile gantries at the Kennedy Space Center.”

  “What about the hurricane?”

  “I told you, some have survived hurricanes. I didn’t make that story up for your benefit. I wouldn’t do that to you, Carmen.”

  “I thought, with Margarita there…”

  “Carmen, many, many make it. You know that!”

  “And many don’t.”

  Vivian was silent for a moment but quickly came back: “I read a book about a man who was shipwrecked in the Atlantic and was adrift for seventy-six days in a small rubber life raft. Seventy-six days! And he survived. Five days is nothing.”

  “Juan is pretty smart. I’m sure he was prepared,” Carmen allowed.

  “Of course he was.”

  “Have you heard from that pilot friend of yours, Alberto?”

  Vivian stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out over the water.

  “No.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The wind smelled of rain, and it was darker now as clouds rolled in from the east. Juan was confused and had been throughout the afternoon. He had been hearing things, voices. And he fought his confusion and the voices because he knew their cause. I’m slipping fast, he thought, in moments when his mind was clear enough to think. But part of him felt ready to stop struggling, ready to let go of the rope and slip under the warm water.

  In the morning he had not been ready. It’s strange to think about death in the morning. In the evening, though, it seems more natural, more familiar, he thought. And he knew that he was becoming intimate with death in the way that a man and a woman become intimate. He no longer thought of death as an idea, or a distant event. She was real, and warm, and now he felt her arms wrapped around him, pulling him slowly, with infinite promise, toward her womb. So he loosened his grip on the nylon rope and began to slip gently into her arms.

  Then he heard a voice he had not heard in a long time, a voice he had not heard since he was a child. It startled him and he tightened his grip on the rope. “I knew you would come,” said the voice. “I knew you would come looking for me.”

  Behind the voice, in the distance, Juan heard the sound of sugarcane rustling in the wind, and he realized it was his father’s voice. “I know you stayed up in the tree because you were afraid after what they did to me,” his father’s voice said. “But I understood and was not sad. And I knew you would come looking for me.”

  Juan felt his blood pounding inside his head, and he was suddenly alert. The voice had seemed so real but now it was gone and he felt the wind and sensed the coming rain.

  Now, in his mind, he saw his father’s face and he remembered him and thought about life on the big farm in Camagüey province before they took his father away. He remembered the big wooden farmhouse with the porch wrapped around it. And he remembered riding his bicycle on the porch, circling the house, crashing into rocking chairs and side tables and hammocks spread along the great porch like an obstacle course. And the huge flowering framboyán trees surrounding the house with fiery red and purple and orange and yellow flowers that rained on the porch and covered the roof of the house in an iridescent blanket. Beyond the trees, the green expanse of pasture with horses grazing here and there. Bright horses the color of gold, and white full-blooded Arabians and chocolate-brown thoroughbreds, their black manes and tails moving with the breeze. And farther out, in the distance, the great fields of cane, sweet-smelling, fluid, swelling and moving in waves like the sea and, like the sea, reaching to the horizon in all directions. He remembered sitting on the hardwood floor in the damp coolness of the house, the smell of leather everywhere, leather chairs, leather holsters, leather switches, his father’s leather riding boots. And the kitchen with all its smells: of coffee and arroz con pollo and platanos maduros; of garlic and onions and green peppers; of guava pastries and other things baking in the oven.

  And now, because it was getting darker, he remembered riding at night across the fields, his own horse following his father’s horse, the wind stroking his face; dark shapes, like brujos and fantasmas and other spectral things whizzing by him in the dark. And he remembered feeling manly and defiant riding behind his father with his rifle holstered and hanging from the saddle next to his leg, thinking that perhaps other boys who hung around their mothers were afraid of things that prowled the night. But he was not afraid because he was Juan Cabrera, son of Don Fernando, and he was sure that as they thundered through the black fields, their saddles squeaking and the sound of the rifle holsters slapping against their horses, every dark thing that saw them or heard them was afraid and shrank back into the night as they passed. That is what his father had told him long ago to give him confidence, once, when he had mentioned—casually, so as not to appear afraid in front of his father—that he thought he saw a brujo, a goblin, peering from behind a tree.

  Since the day they took his father, Juan had hidden these memories well; hidden them deep, the way men hide private things in secret places. But now they bubbled up unexpectedly. Without effort, without being called, they arose from the depths and filled his mind with the glittering details of his life before everything changed.

  Then came the upheaval and confusion of the revolution. Going to Havana, joining the young Communist Pioneers, telling everyone his mother had been a maid in a great mansion in Miramar, that his father had been killed in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, fighting beside Fidel. Making up stories to get ahead, telling everything except the truth: that he was born to a proud, respected family who owned vast tracts of land in Camagüey, that he had been a latifundista.

  Only Raúl had known the truth. Raúl, who was born in a tiny, dirt-floored shack on Juan’s land; Raúl, whose father had cut sugarcane for Juan’s father; Raúl, who saddled Juan’s horse and played with him when he was bored. Only Raúl had known the truth and he had never told anyone, not even Carmen.

  And where is Raúl now? he thought. Has he been thoroughly digested and ejected into the water? And why think of it in such detail? Why think of those dark, nondescript clumps breaking, dispersing, and rolling in the confluence of currents? Why was his mind filled with those silent, unseen things that are pushed and shoved and scattered in the great violent ejaculate squeezing through the Straits, and then carried by the streams around the circles of the sea?

  It really did not matter now, though, because after he heard his father’s voice, death had become distant again and he could think of these things (and others) without feeling personally involved. After he heard his father’s voice saying, “I knew you would come looking for me,” death shrank back and ceased wooing him, and her promise of dark, forbidden ecstasies faded in his memory.

  But now that he was alive again, he felt tormented by his shame, embarrassed by his life, ashamed of hiding who he had been, of having accepted the unacceptable and serving the purposes of those who had killed his father and destroyed his own soul. A spurious, ridiculous, pitiful life of dissembling, of fabricating outrageous tales; of looking away,
turning away, hiding in dark corners.

  “Aren’t you the son of—”

  “No.”

  “You have the same name.”

  “Many people have that name.”

  “He had a big farm in Camagüey.”

  “I’m from Havana.”

  “You sure look like him.”

  “I told you, I’m not his son. I never knew the man. I don’t know anyone from Camagüey.”

  “Well, you sure look like him. I could have sworn—”

  “I’m not him! I’m not his son! I’m not one of them, I tell you. I’m not one of them!”

  Why? Why did he do and say such things? Why did he invent such lies and pretend to believe even bigger lies? Lies so monstrous, so vast and so transparent that no one could possibly be expected to believe them, and yet everyone pretended to believe them.

  And even as he asked, he knew the cowardly root of his debasement. But he also knew that the bone-chilling, all-pervasive fear, the negrura that had been his companion since the moment they took his father away, was gone now and something else had grown in its place. He felt refreshed and free. And comforted by the memory of his father, and of his father’s voice: “I understood and was not sad. And I knew you would come looking for me.”

  Had he not finally faced the truth? Had he not finally chosen? Yes, he had chosen—and deliberately, with great pain and much planning. There had been no rashness in his decision, no sudden passion. This must count for something, he thought. This should serve as some atonement for such a miserable life. This and the constant pain.

  Or was the escape just another form of cowardice? No, escape had been the logical choice, the only choice that offered hope, and it carried no loss of honor. The other choices led to accommodation, or death. How many times had he gone over it in his mind? Had Martí, the great patriot, the Apostle of the Patria, not spent most of his life in exile? Exile was not cowardice. There was hope in exile, and Carmen was there.

  Carmen. It was good to think about Carmen. There was always a sense of resolve whenever he thought about Carmen. Maybe he would share these things with her in Miami. Maybe she would understand why he had lied all his life, she would understand and forgive his cowardice, and it would be new and different in Miami.

  But the first thing was to find Raúl’s brother. And what? What would he say to him? What could he say to him?

  Don’t think about Raúl’s brother, he told himself. Think that you must be very close to land. And to sustain his resolve, he thought that perhaps if he could stand up on the water right now, on the tips of his toes, or climb a tower—even a very small tower—he would be able to see a hint of the Keys. Tonight, surely, he would see the lights—or the reflection of the lights in the sky.

  Hunger gnawed at him now. Great hunger, and thirst. The open sores, brought on by the sun and salt water, that covered his face and arms and waist and crotch tortured him. He also felt horrible pain in his legs and his bare feet from the constant jellyfish stings, and deep-down-in-his-bones fatigue.

  But he tried not to think of these things. He sensed that the crossing was nearly over. Or perhaps this was the beginning of another, darker crossing, he thought. Who knows? No matter, he was ready for that too. Either way, soon there would be rest.

  Rest. Rest. In the end, when you no longer care, it is good to think of rest. But it was dangerous to think about rest now. It smelled of death, it spoke of death. And there was little practical distinction. Perhaps there was no distinction. So he fought this thought too, even though it was pleasant and hard to fight.

  Juan was used to fighting thoughts. He had done it all his life. But now, because of his exhaustion, it became very strange when he tried to empty his mind. His head began to spin, going here and there, avoiding this, fighting that, and he became very tired and confused.

  Later, in his confusion, he again heard faint sounds and voices from far away. “Espera, wait, espera,” and then the sound of thrashing in the water. “Espera, por favor, espera.” He also thought he heard a strange sound coming from the sky.

  Then he heard other voices that he did not recognize, and he considered these to be animal voices: the deep, awesome voices of the beasts of the sea. They called to him and offered him pleasant things, as they did in the nursery rhymes of his infancy where fish and other marine creatures offered food and drink to little boys visiting the bottom of the sea, as if this were the most natural thing.

  The animal voices said, “Leave the raft and join us and you will see how nice everything will be. Come and play with us and we will sing the old songs together as we used to before everything changed.”

  And he began to go, following these voices. It was as if he were on land again, walking effortlessly, going to visit a friend who lived down the road. Until he heard his father’s voice again, saying, “I knew you would come looking for me,” and he looked up and saw the raft drifting a few feet away.

  He was amazed to see it drifting away like that. Dazed, he watched the receding inner tube for a moment, then lunged toward it, grasping the rope. Summoning all his strength, he pulled himself onto the inner tube and lay facedown across it, breathing hard and shaking all over. The voices were gone. The pain was gone, and he was glad to be alive.

  The wind had risen steadily and grew chill now, rippling the surface of the water. In the distance, Juan heard the rain falling on the sea, and he enjoyed the freshness of the wind and the sound and smell of the rain as it drew near. He raised his head, looked toward the horizon, and saw rain clouds scurrying across, changing shapes, tumbling into each other playfully.

  When the rain arrived it felt good on his back, running through his hair and down the sides of his face. He cupped his hands to catch the thick raindrops, and lapped the water with his tongue. But it was over too soon and the wind blew the clouds to the west, obscuring the sunset. Now, above him, the sky was clear and glowed deep red. The red grew lighter toward the east, mixing gradually with subtler shades of blue and gray, until it turned a pale rose and disappeared near the eastern horizon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alberto had flown past it, and now he was circling back, gradually increasing his altitude to gain perspective. He had sensed a sudden flash of color slipping under his left wing, one of those annoying, elusive visions reserved for the corner of the eye.

  “Waste of fuel,” he said out loud, arguing with himself. “I’ll barely make it to Key Largo as it is, and here I go round in circles again.”

  But his hands paid no attention to the bickering. They banked the Cessna smoothly to the left, keeping the wing-tip just below the horizon, out of his line of sight as much as possible.

  At such a shallow angle of bank, the turn was exasperatingly slow. But it was better than bringing the wing down farther to hurry it up and completely blocking his vision. Everything is a trade-off, he thought. High-winged airplanes are so comfortable—ride in the shade, nice view of the ground below—then the wing gets in the way when you try to turn.

  To see better into the turn, he leaned his head forward, tugging at his shoulder harness, and looked at the water through the curved left edge of the windshield. The harness restricted his movement. Should unbuckle the darn thing, he thought. But he didn’t. He always wore a shoulder harness. Years of habit drilling students were hard to break.

  He glanced down at the gas gauges: both needles showed empty. Must be the turn, he thought, to comfort himself. Gauges lie if you’re not straight and level. It’s only the turn.

  The nearest field, Ocean Reef Club, was about twenty miles to the northwest, twelve minutes’ flying time. Surely I have enough fuel to make that, he thought.

  To the west, cumulus clouds trailed gray skirts of rain across the water, like a somber procession of old women making their way to a sad and quiet place. Earlier he had flown through some of those showers, sun setting behind him, rainbows dancing in the mist around the propeller.

  Alberto looked down toward the instrument panel
again, this time at the directional gyro, which was swinging back to the southwest. When the directional indicator card approached the heading of two-one-zero degrees, he leveled the wings, pulling the little airplane out of the turn. Now he was heading back in the direction he had come from. Whatever it was he had seen—or thought he had seen—should be ahead of him, a little to the left because of the wide turn. Right where he wanted it to be.

  Alberto pulled back on the throttle, dropping the nose and putting the airplane into a gradual descent. Then he stretched his hand to the right of the throttle and brought the wing flap switch down one notch, lowering the flaps to slow the aircraft while he kept his eyes on the water.

  In a matter of seconds he had the airplane precisely trimmed. He let the Cessna fly itself while he swept his eyes slowly across the water, intensely searching each sector of an imaginary grid that spread out ahead of him and to his left, all the way to the horizon.

  The water was the color of slate broken by the dim, irregular lines of whitecaps still showing in the dying light.

  Nothing. He continued searching for a few minutes until he was sure he had, once again, flown past whatever was bobbing down there. Bobbing? Had he seen it bobbing? No, he had seen only color—a flash of yellow, he thought. The bobbing had been his imagination.

  Again he banked left, turning the nose eastward. This time the turn was steeper, more impatient. The directional indicator swung fast and stopped abruptly at zero-three-zero, his old northeasterly heading along the axis of the Gulf Stream.

  Alberto had leveled the wings and stopped his descent exactly at two hundred feet. But instead of retracting them, he brought the flaps down another notch to keep his speed down—barely sixty knots now.

  From a distance the Cessna looked like a solitary white bird searching in the twilight over the darkened water. Circling slowly, skimming the surface of the sea in the sad, wistful way seabirds do toward the end of the day.