Cuba Libre

by Elmore Leonard

  "He treats me like I'm recovering from diphtheria or tuberculosis. He's considerate... but he's so sure of himself and that's one of the things I wonder about. Is he confident because he knows what he's doing, or because he's rich and everyone agrees with him? He talks a lot, in that quiet way he has. He doesn't laugh much. Did you notice? He's fairly clever with words, but doesn't have much of a sense of humor. Does he? I can't imagine why he has a bodyguard. Not if he has an army."

  They switched from tea to sherry.

  "I could do without Novis hanging around. He's so serious, he's creepy. I was out on deck--Novis came up to me and said, "Mr. Boudreaux wants to see you inside," and motioned with his thumb, like he's telling me to get in there. I said to tell Mr. Boudreaux if he wants to see me I'm out here. Novis didn't know what to do. Go in and tell his highness I wasn't coming? He wants me to go with him to visit his estate, Rollie does, I think to impress me. Look at how rich I am, girl. What're you saving you're so proud of when you can have me? Take the train to Matanzas to look at the estate, then go up to Varadero to see his summer place. Lots of horses to ride. I've decided I have to be myself with Rollie, not some poor little girl awed by his attention. What would I be giving up if I exiled myself to this island? Well, living with Mama and Daddy, for one thing. Mama taking laudanum and whatever else she can get her hands on. Daddy coming home with an other woman's scent on him, what does he care, all the money he's made selling cotton abroad, he can do anything he wants. What I'd be giving up is boredom. Now, what I'd gain... If Boudreaux's wealth doesn't impress me, what would be my reward, living on a sugar plantation with the poor and deprived? Not a happy bunch, I'll bet, out in those cane fields."

  Amelia paused to sip her sherry in the lobby of the Inglaterra Hotel with Lorraine, Lorraine quiet, no doubt thinking about her police chief, no longer giving Amelia her full attention. Or she didn't know what Amelia was getting at and wasn't interested enough to care.

  "We had a housemaid when I was a little girl," Amelia said, "who was from the south of Spain, Jerez de la Frontera, where they make sherry. I loved to say her name, Altagracia. Are you listening?"

  "Of course I am."

  "She used to tell me bedtime stories about anarchists. I was eight or nine years old. How the anarchists got the vineyard workers to stand together and demand justice and higher wages. In her stories the landowners are all bad, but the real villains are the Civil Guards. They arrest and torture the anarchists and accuse them of forming a secret society called the Black Hand. They said its purpose was to assassinate all the landowners in the district."

  Amelia paused again to sip her sherry.

  "He's showing me the house tomorrow," Lorraine said. "It's in Vedado, a suburb. Just like a placd on Rampart Street Where gentlemen kept their mistresses in days gone by." She said to Amelia, "Are we living in the past?"

  "Or we're ahead of our time," Amelia said. "I'm not sure which."

  On the train to Matanzas, seventy miles east of Havana, Amelia would see people working in cane fields they passed and she would think of Altagracia's anarchists and vineyard laborers. She asked Rollie Boudreaux if he'd ever heard of the Black Hand.

  He said, "Of course. It's a secret society of assassins." "Altagracia said the only people they assassinated were informers. In fact, she said there was no such organization as the Black Hand. The Civil Guard made up the story so they could persecute the anarchists." "You mean prosecute." "I mean persecute."

  "And who is Altagracia, please?"

  "Our maid when I was a little girl."

  She watched him laugh out loud for the first time and dab at his eyes with a hankie he kept in his sleeve.

  He told Amelia as she looked out the window of the firstclass compartment at palm trees and wooded hills, huts with thatched roofs, cultivated fields, "That's corn. That's yucca. That, of course, is cane." She asked if this was his railroad. No, this line as the Ferro Carriles Unidos, owned by a Havana bank heavy with British and German capital. His sugar railroad ran north and south, from the central below a place called Benavides to the Matanzas docks and a few miles up the coast. He told her he was talking to American investors about building a major line from Santa Clara to Santiago de Cuba, at the eastern end of the island.

  She asked him, "Why not Cuban investors?"

  "There aren't any."

  She asked why he believed Cubans were unable to govern themselves, a view he had expressed on the boat.

  "Read Cuban Sketches," Boudreaux said. "I'll give you my copy. The book's observer characterizes Cubans as a people of 'smiles, easy talk and time-killing dilettante-ism." " Amelia said, "Yes? What's wrong with that?"

  "You're kidding, of course." He said, "The book's observer comes to the conclusion that laziness is as natural to the Cuban as foppery is common."

  She said, "Do you believe that?"

  "Well, the book exaggerates, yes, to make a point, but no more than Cubans themselves, who exaggerate with an ease that's appalling. They deplore manual labor and reserve it for the Negroes, of which there are plenty on the island." He said, "Just past Benavides we come to a main road, where horses will be waiting." He said, "You weren't kidding me, you do like to ride."

  "I love to."

  "Because if you were kidding, what I'll do is send someone down from Benavides on a handcar and bring a carriage of some kind, a small barouche."

  "Believe me," Amelia said, "I ride."

  He told her this was considered quite a fast train, though you wouldn't know it, would you, with all the stops it made. Regla station to Matanzas would take about seven hours.

  He told her Cubans loved ornamentation and bright colors, though young ladies applied an astonishing amount of rice powder to their faces.

  He told her both men and women in Cuba prided themselves on having small feet.

  He told her that while Cubans were basically honest, they tended to become homicidal when jealous.

  "Wait till you read Cuban Sketches."

  Amelia dozed off.

  She opened her eyes to find the train sliding past a facing of stone buildings, a water tower, soldiers tending a dozen or more saddled horses in a barn lot, and now the compartment window came to a station platform, the train barely moving, slowing to a stop in the shade, opposite the center of the platform crowded with soldiers in pale gray uniforms and military straws, some of them looking this way now, at the train, Amelia in the window. "Guardia Civil," Boudreaux said. He rose to open the window and sat down again in the seat facing Amelia.

  "They've got a couple of prisoners. See? The two wearing filthy clothes. I don't understand why dirt doesn't bother these people. You'd think they'd wear something darker, in a heavy denim."

  They were farm workers and looked to Amelia like all the Cuban laborers she had seen in the past few days. If they weren't black they were small men, like these two, with big mustaches, yes, in heavily soiled clothes and shapeless straw hats. These two were bareheaded, hands tied behind them, ropes around their necks, the ropes looped over beams that supported the. platform wooden awning. The two stood less than twenty feet from the compartment window, staring back at Amelia, while about them the Guardia seemed to be arguing among themselves.

  Boudreaux turned his head and called out, "Victor!"

  The compartment door opened and Fuentes and Novis were standing in the aisle looking in. "What's going on out there?" "You want me to, I find out."

  "Yes, I want you to. Go on." Boudreaux said to Amelia, "Why does he think I called him?"

  Novis, still in the doorway, said, "You don't mind my saying, it's 'cause they're stupid, all of 'em."

  Now as Amelia watched, Fuentes appeared on the platform and approached one of the soldiers, an officer. "That's Lionel Tavalera," Boudreaux said. "He fought the Berbers in North Africa before coming here. You want someone to tell you something and he refuses, you hand him over to Tavalera." Amelia was looking at Boudreaux now. "They say he hates Americans, but he and I get along just dand
y. What it comes down to, despite political differences, is mutual respect. They can be mean, those Guardia Civil--some say barbaric-but they get it done."

  Amelia turned her head to watch Fuentes in his white suit talking to the Guardia officer towering over him. Earlier, when they were waiting to board the train, Boudreaux called Fuentes over and said to Amelia, "This is Victor, he's supposed to be my segundo, but all he does is argue with me. Victor, I'm putting Miss Brown in your care. You understand? Miss Brown wants something, you make sure she gets it." They looked at each other as Boudreaux spoke, Amelia sensing that Victor was sizing her up, curious, wanting to know who she was rather than waste his time fawning, trying to make an impression. Amelia smiled and Victor seemed surprised.

  Now, as Fuentes spoke to him, the Guardia officer was looking this way. Boudreaux said in the open window, "Major," giving him kind of a salute and called to his man, "Victor, if you'll come over here, please."

  Fuentes glanced over but continued talking to Tavalera, gesturing, telling him something in earnest.

  Novis said, "I'll get the squirt."

  But now Boudreaux raised his voice to Victor: "Goddamn it, get over here." And this time he came, concerned, though, glancing back at the two prisoners.

  "The Guardia officer say they insurgents, but I don't think so."

  Amelia watched Boudreaux as he asked Fuentes if he knew them.

  "I know they work for you and live on the mill. They cut cane, both of them." He looked at Amelia and for a moment held her gaze. "I tell this Guardia, but he doesn't believe me." Boudreaux said, "You're sure?" "Yes, I'm sure."

  Amelia waited for Rollie to call to the officer now and put in a word for the two men, clear up an apparent misunderstanding. But he didn't. He said, "They could still be mambis, couldn't they?"

  Amelia's gaze moved to Victor, close to the open window. He said, "How can I see them in the field fighting the cane every day if they someplace else fighting these people?"

  Boudreaux nodded, thinking about it. He said to Novis, "You ever see those two before?"

  "I may ave, but how can you tell?" Novis said. "All these squirts look alike to me."

  Boudreaux turned to Fuentes again. "What're they arguing about?"

  "They need the two men to stand on something," Fuentes said, "they can pull out from under their feet when they hang them. One of the soldiers say a baggage cart. No, too high. Somebody say lay a hogshead on its side. No, much too high. A trunk, the kind you put clothes in. No, too high standing up, too low on its side. Whatever they say is that way, either too high or too low. Now somebody say put them on horses. But the horses, running from under them, whose horses you want to use?"

  Novis said, "Hell, yank on the ropes and pull 'em up by hand."

  Amelia watched Boudreaux look past Victor to Tavalera standing by the two prisoners, Amelia certain Rollie would now straighten out what appeared to be a misunderstanding. Yes, calling to Tavalera, "Major, if I could have a word with you...

  The Guardia officer came over to the window, touching the brim of his hat and smiling as he noticed Amelia. He said to Boudreaux, "Yes, how can I be of service?"

  "Victor says these two work for me."

  "Oh, is that so? I'm sorry, because we pretty sure these are bad people who fight us."

  "But you're not sure."

  "No, I say we pretty sure. What's the same as pretty sure? Quite sure? Very sure? Let's say I'm as sure as I have to be."

  Boudreaux said, "Well, if you're that sure..." and smiled slightly.

  Tavalera started to turn, but stopped as Amelia said, "Wait a minute," amazed that Rollie was letting it go. "Victor's just as sure they're not insurgents. There must be a way to resolve this kind of situation. Isn't there?"

  "Yes, of course," Tavalera said. "What we say is, why take a chance of making a mistake?" He turned from the window, motioned his men out of the way as he approached the two prisoners, removed the ropes from around their necks and placed the men one in front of the other, as though to march them off the platform. Now he drew his revolver and shot each one, barn barn, like that, in the right temple.

  Tavalera did not look at the train window again. His men did when he said something to them in Spanish, but Tavalera walked away without looking back.

  Fuentes watched him, then turned to the window as Boudreaux said, "Well." And said, "I guess that's that."

  Fuentes looked at Amelia. In the moment she was looking back at him with no expression, nothing, her face drained of color, and yet each knew what the other was thinking.

  Before they came to the road where the horses were waiting, Amelia used another compartment to change into boots and a riding skirt. It was the middle of the afternoon. Fuentes knocked on the door for her luggage, which would follow the horses in a wagon.

  She said to him, "Tell me something about Mr. Boudreaux. What side is he on?"

  Fuentes said, "Excuse me?"

  "You know what I mean."

  Fuentes looked at her directly and said, "The government or the insurrectos, the insurgents?" Amelia nodded. "Which?" "The wrong side," Fuentes said. "What kind of man is he?"

  "Like the rest of them. He knows only his own kind."

  The tea this time was served in the inner courtyard of Lorraine's home in Vedado, jade plants in pots, decorative blue tile on the walls, pillars that gave the courtyard the look of a cloister.

  "For supper," Amelia said, "we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, a crab salad, roast peacock, guava, cheese and some kind of pudding."

  "Peacock?" Lorraine said. "Peacock. Like the Romans." "What does it taste like, chicken?"

  "Turkey. Then for breakfast we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, fried crabs, guava, cheese and coffee. Breakfast is really dinner, the midday meal. The cook's name is Cimbana, she's from the Congo and keeps cigar butts in her turban, among other things."

  "It's different here, isn't it?"

  "Very different."

  "What about the house?"

  "There's the sugarhouse," Amelia said, "full of machinery they shove the cane into to make sugar.... " She paused. "If the mill doesn't have a centrifuge it can only make brown sugar. Did you know that? And there's the vivien da the residence, built in 1848. It has a red tile roof, verandas on three sides of both floors--kind of like old plantation homes but not as Greek Revival-looking. More austere, and without trees close around it. The living quarters are upstairsmdining room, sitting room, everything--offices and the servants' quarters downstairs, and a hall full of saddles, bridles and guns locked in cabinets. The kitchen's in back."

  Amelia looked up at the courtyard's high ceiling and the second-floor balcony.

  "I like your house better. It's warmer."

  Lorraine said, "Can I ask you something?"

  Amelia was still looking around. "Rollie's house has glass panes in the windows and doors, but they're always open; flies come in and out as they please. There're a few shrubs, tropical plants, a lot of banana trees, a few mango, vegetable plots and twenty thousand acres of sugarcane, three estates Rollie bought and combined into one. They call them estates, but what they are really are little towns with the main house in the center, the sugarhouse with its big ugly smokestacks, and streets of stone houses for the workers, a Negro quarter, a Creole quarter, a street that's all Chinese and a nicer area where the higher-ups, the people in charge, have their homes: the estate manager, another man who's a chemist and runs the sugarhouse--I think he's the one they call the sugar master-and a few others who work directly under him, engineers, machinists.... Rollie has over a million and a half in just the land, and spent another hundred thousand to modernize the sugarhouse, put in all the newest machinery. If it's a good year, you know how much sugar he'll produce and ship?" "Amelia?"

  "I've forgotten now how much, but it's an awful lot." She paused and said, "What?"

  "Have you slept with him?"

  "I have, yes," Amelia said, and had to smile at the way Lorraine was staring at her
so intently. "So you're staying?" "For a while anyway." "Where're you going to live?"

  "I guess wherever he wants me to."

  Lorrainecontinued to stare.

  "There's something you're not telling me." "What do you want, intimate details?" "You sound different."

  "Well," Amelia said, "nothing happened until we got to the summerhouse. It's smaller than the one on the estate but more comfortable, with a veranda and a view of the Gulf rather than cane fields. The first night we were there, finally, after not saying a word to each other for hours, he took me into the bedroom. Mine; he has his own. And kissed me for the first time. I'm quite sure he thinks he seduced me. He was serious to the point of being grim, sort of ritualistic about it, first you do this and then you do that. It's funny, when we're alone--and this was true of other times, too, on the train or riding horses together---he doesn't seem as confident as he does when he's with people, an audience agreeing with him. It might be me," Amelia said, "or he's just not that comfortable with women. Anyway, Rollie finished, he got off and said, as he stepped into his underwear, "That wasn't entirely unpleasant, was it?""

  "He said that?"

  "He wasn't kidding, either."

  "When I said there's something you're not telling me. Remember, before? I wasn't referring to what you did in bed. It was a feeling I had."

  "About what?"

  "That something happened you're not telling me about."

  They came through rolling hills aboard the sugar train to Matanzas, Boudreaux telling Amelia there were more sugar estates here than in any province in Cuba. "How many, Victor? Four hundred and seventy-eight, if I'm not mistaken?"

  "Not anymore," Fuentes said. "Maybe three hundred something. Many of them in the past year burn down, or the owner has enough--wake up in the morning and see black smoke in the sky, over his fields."

  "I ask you a question," Boudreaux said, "I like a simple answer, whatever is the fact, not your opinion."