Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

by William Kennedy

  “Your sister thinks in multiples, like you. What will you tell her about how we got here?”

  “I will think of a lie. I am a very good liar and I am smarter than she is. She is older and more beautiful, but she is so beautiful I think she is ugly like her house.”

  Renata rang the bell and Felix the gardener opened the great wooden gates and greeted them. He said he’d let Esme know they were here, and then Renata and Quinn went into the main salon, which was dominated by what Quinn assumed was a portrait of Esme, standing on a seven-foot easel. Quinn looked for the beautiful ugliness that Renata had suggested, but he found only beauty and a strong resemblance to Renata. Esme had been married only six months when she sat for the portrait by the Spanish painter Berenguer, who had come to Cuba and expressed fascination with her provocative beauty. He made many sketches of her and asked her to come to Spain for a sitting. The finished portrait placed Esme in a spectral mode, a regal, standing presence, wearing a vexed expression and with her left hand pointing to the center of herself in an ambiguously sensual gesture. Berenguer said she wears her persona like a weapon, aggressive behavior for a great beauty. It was the most popular work in the artist’s subsequent exhibition and Berenguer did not want to sell it. Esme’s husband offered twenty-five thousand but Berenguer refused to sell. After months of persuasion he finally yielded the painting to Esme as a gift. How did Esme persuade him?

  That is my secret, Esme always says.

  It is no secret, Renata always says.

  Esme came into the room four steps ahead of Moncho. She kissed and embraced her sister, greeted Quinn with an odd gesture of elevated fingers and pursed lips, with her breasts rising from excited inbreathing, a gesture of concern.

  “So, you’re alive,” Esme said. “Mother called me five times. All that shooting she thought you were dead.”

  “I called her from the museum,” Renata said. “All afternoon you could not use a telephone. If you stood up you’d be shot.”

  Esme looked to Quinn, and Moncho offered him a handshake. “Ramón Quevedo,” he said.

  “Daniel Quinn,” said Quinn. “A pleasure to meet you. I understand you don’t live here.”

  “Only historically,” Moncho said. “It is not possible to separate from Esme. No husband should be asked such a thing.”

  “Husbands seem to play a peculiar role in Cuba,” Quinn said.

  “Husbands are extinct,” said Moncho. “Wives are eternal.”

  “I may refuse to become a Cuban husband,” Quinn said. “I’ve already proposed to Renata, but maybe I’ll postpone the wedding.”

  “You proposed?” said Esme. “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “When did you meet?”

  “Last night.”

  “What took you so long?” Moncho asked.

  “Daniel rescued me after the attack,” Renata said. “He found a taxi to bring us here when no one else could. He’s a reporter and Max just hired him to write for the Post. He was near the Palace all during the attack.”

  “How intrepid,” Esme said, and she sat in the Peacock cane chair in front of her portrait. “You really proposed?” she said to Quinn.

  “He suggested the possibility,” Renata said. “He wrote the story of the Palace attack for Max.”

  “A pity they did not kill the puta,” Moncho said.

  “Be quiet or they’ll arrest you,” Esme said. “Did you see the shooting, Daniel?”

  “I did, but my luck seems to be running,” Quinn said. “I didn’t get shot and I found the gorgeous Renata when the shooting stopped.”

  “You can do two things at once,” said Esme.

  “I do covet beauty,” Quinn said. “That portrait of you is very beautiful, and it does you justice.”

  “The artist said he made me too beautiful,” Esme said.

  “There is no such thing. An artist can only imitate the exquisite beauty that runs in your family.”

  “Such a charmer. Please sit down, Daniel. Would you like a drink?”

  “As my uncle once said, the last time I refused a drink I didn’t understand the question.”

  Moncho exploded with laughter. “I understand the question and I will make you a drink,” he said, and he left the room.

  “Very droll,” Esme said. And she asked Renata, “Nena, what brings you here on such a day?”

  “I need a car. After today I absolutely must go away, anyplace, Cárdenas, perhaps, but I can’t take Mother’s car from her. You don’t know, Esme, you don’t know.”

  “Of course I know, dear. Take the Buick. Those hateful people trying to kill the president, shooting all over the city, nobody is safe anywhere, what’s wrong with them? They’re all insane and lower class. As soon as I heard the news I tried to get a flight to New York, but they closed the airport. Americans will be afraid to come to Havana now.”

  “Soldiers killed an American tourist,” Quinn said. “I was in his suite at the Regis Hotel when they shot him.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “An armored truck and a foot soldier both fired at us. I saved another man by pulling him to the floor when the shooting started.”

  “You saved someone? You are a clever person. What are you doing in Cuba?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out. My grandfather wrote a book about the Mambí revolution and he put Cuba into my head. Now you’ve got another revolution going and it pulled me in.”

  “Did you come to write about Castro?” Renata asked.

  “He’s a good subject, don’t you think?”

  “Batista says Castro is dead or gone away,” Esme said. “Batista should know.”

  “Of course,” Renata said. “Batista knows everything.”

  “He knows nothing, he knows less than nothing,” Moncho said, reentering the room. Oliva, a housemaid, followed him in, wheeling a serving cart with a bottle of white rum, a bucket brimming with ice, a bowl of powdered sugar, a plate of cut limes, four cocktail glasses and a silver shaker. When Oliva left the room, Esme said, “If the servants repeat what you say you’ll be shot.”

  “She is right,” Renata said.

  “Of course she’s right. Tell the truth they shoot you.” Moncho squeezed the limes. “Batista’s planes bomb the Sierra and kill guajiros but they find no rebel corpses. Fidel is not gone.”

  “Where is he?” Quinn asked.

  “In the Sierra.”

  “How do you get to see him?”

  “By invitation,” Moncho said. “Without invitation they will shoot you as a spy.”

  “How do you get an invitation?”

  “No one knows.”

  Moncho poured a cascade of rum into the shaker, added sugar and the lime juice. “I was in law school at the University with Fidel. He was a wild schemer with the political gangs, never went to class. But he learned something. He’s outthinking Batista’s army.”

  “We will change the subject, Moncho,” Esme said. “Daniel’s grandfather wrote a book about Cuba.”

  “Ah,” said Moncho, shaking the shaker.

  “He came looking for Céspedes, the revolutionary, and he found him.”

  “Céspedes!” Moncho said. “In 1948 I went to Manzanillo with Fidel to get the Demajagua bell, the one Céspedes rang to start the revolution. Like your Liberty Bell, Señor Quinn, a three-hundred-pound symbol of our rebellion.”

  “I know the bell,” Quinn said.

  Moncho poured daiquiris from the shaker and passed them around.

  “We brought it to Havana to confront Grau, the president,” he said, “but the police stole it from us. Fidel made a speech at the University about the bell and about Grau betraying the revolution he promised the people, and thousands came. He repeated Céspedes’ words the day he rang the bell to summon his slaves—Céspedes called them citizens and said they had been his slaves until today but now you are as free as I am. He was launching the revolution and said the slaves could join him in the fight or go wherever they wanted, but all were fre
e. Fidel knew how to use these words. He was very powerful. He lit a fire in their minds.”

  “They will put us all in jail if you don’t shut up,” Esme said.

  Moncho raised his daiquiri glass.

  “I drink to Fidel.”

  “You will be a prisoner,” Esme said.

  Quinn drank and Renata crossed the room and turned on the radio to a news broadcast. The Palace was circled with tanks and a newsman was saying that scores were dead and Batista had survived the attack on the third floor of the Palace with his wife, their ten-year-old son, forty soldiers, and an army colonel with a Tommy gun. The president rode out the attack with a pistol in one hand and a telephone in the other. The attackers never reached the third floor. The camera showed shooting, then the corpses piled in the street and the park. Corpses, corpses. Renata tried to hide her weeping. Batista praised his courageous soldiers and blamed Prío for the attack. Not Castro? asked a newsman. No, said the president, Castro is nothing, of no significance.

  The bell on the entrance gates rang. Oliva came into the room and whispered to Esme, who then went to the door. She came back to say that the police were asking about a car abandoned nearby. “They want to know if anyone here has seen strangers coming or going.”

  “What did you tell them?” Renata asked.

  “I said I saw no strangers, today or yesterday. Did you see anyone when you came in your taxi?”

  “There was a man hiding behind a tree,” Renata said. “He looked like Fidel Castro.”

  “Don’t joke about such a thing,” Esme said. “They will arrest you.”

  Renata drove Esme’s Buick in a way that Quinn decided was more dangerous than traveling with machine guns in the trunk, and more liable to get them arrested on this day of assassins on wheels.

  “Let me drive,” he said. “You’re too distracted.”

  “I am not distracted.”

  “You’re speeding.”

  “They’re not arresting speeders today.”

  “Let me drive.”

  “Later.”

  “Later we’ll be at your house.”

  “I can’t park this car at my house.”

  “Are you saying we have another parking problem?”

  “I cannot do anything strange that will attract the police.”

  “Everything you do is strange. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I’m falling in love with you because of your bizarre turn of mind.”

  “Thank you, Daniel.”

  “Thank me? For falling in love?”

  “I love it when men love me.”

  “You have so many. How many is enough?”

  “I don’t think of it that way.”

  “How do you think of it?”

  “I can’t think of it. I have Diego in my mind. I can’t think of other people’s love.”

  “I don’t want to be considered other people.”

  “Diego was my love.”

  “He was one of them. You can lose two or three and still have loves to spare.”

  “I don’t like your attitude.”

  “I’m sorry for Diego but I can’t grieve as you do. He was a very, very brave man and I’m sad a warrior of the revolution was killed. Yours is another kind of sorrow from mine.”

  “You must stop talking or I’ll start to hate you and I don’t want to hate someone who is falling in love with me.”

  “What are you going to do with this car?”

  “Esme will tell my mother I have it. But if I park at my house and the police come, Esme will be involved.”

  “She’s already involved. The police came to see her. They may even think she parked Diego’s car.”

  “Never. She is too close to Batista.”

  “I can park it someplace.”

  “Yes, you can, can’t you.”

  “I can park it by my apartment.”

  “Where is your apartment?”

  “In the Vedado. Near the Nacional. I could even leave the car in the hotel parking lot.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Take me home—Twenty-second Street.” She stopped the car and changed seats with Quinn. They were on Fifth Avenue in Miramar.

  “Did your parents know Diego?”

  “They heard his name, but they can’t keep track of my life. I tell so many lies I can’t keep track myself.”

  “I would like to meet them without lies.”

  “They will like it that you’re an Americano. They will assume you have money. Do you?”

  “I can pay my rent and still have some left over for the laundry.”

  “Pobrecito.”

  On Twenty-second Street Renata said her house was on the right. Two Oldsmobile sedans, nobody in either one, were parked in front and every light in the house seemed to be lit.

  “Keep going,” she said. “Those cars are the SIM. They’re probably talking to my parents. God, how my father will hate this. He hates all politics since Machado. My mother will be dying of anxiety.”

  “Which way do we go?”

  “I have to talk to somebody. I know nothing. I want to see Diego.”

  “Diego can’t help you. What about Max? He’ll know what’s happening.”

  “Max knows nothing I want to know. But I can use his telephone, yes, good. I so want to go to Diego.”

  Renata wanted to love a dead man. The living man next to her would not do. She needed love that was no longer available and she needed it now. Maybe they could find a dead man somewhere. There were many in Havana today. It impressed him that she was broiling at organ central, a woman questing to love death. If I take her to the morgue she will fall on the corpse. Usually you don’t need to die to get laid in Cuba, but tonight it would help. She’s from another dimension, perhaps nature itself, equally ready for life or death.

  In the city room Max was in his cubicle, his shirt wilted. He looked weary, and bored with whoever was on the other end of the telephone. Quinn watched him stare at Renata who was sitting at a desk in a far corner, next to a tall black man he’d seen on his first visit and who now was making up pages for the next edition. Renata was on the phone. She’s close to Max and he’s red hot for her and she likes it. She likes it hot. Max would, beyond hotness, also be gallant and suave with women. Quinn didn’t trust him.

  “We came for the news,” Quinn said when Max ended his call. “Renata can’t live without the small detail of what’s happening. She’s obsessed with knowing who’s dead. I think somebody from the museum may have been killed.”

  “How did you hook up with her today?”

  “I saved her from solitude after the attack.”

  “You move as fast as a sex tourist.”

  “Havana accelerates the blood.”

  Max preened and said he’d had a ten-minute exclusive interview with Batista after the attack, a bit of a scoop.

  “What’s exclusive in it?” Quinn asked.

  “Nothing except he said it in English.”

  Batista had whetted Max’s appetite for an interview with Castro. “I don’t think he’s dead and I don’t think Batista thinks so either. He’s sure the army’s going to deliver his corpse. You want to try for an interview? Matthews’ story in the Times opened him up but there’s a lot more to get.”

  “Why me?” Quinn asked.

  “You’re on a roll. You go someplace and things happen. Is it always like this with you?”

  “I try to keep the status quo at arm’s length.”

  “I have a Santiago contact who may or may not get you started. But he can pass the word and then it’s all whether they trust you. Fidel will trust an American newsman before a Cuban. Some Cuban newspapers are with Batista and the rest are monitored by censors.”

  “Not this one?”

  “We are sometimes independent. You’re from the Herald and you’re a Time stringer, no? Those are definite pluses.”

  “Assistant stringer.”

  “But you did make the connection to Time.”

  “They didn’t pa
y me yet and I didn’t write anything for them yet. Otherwise it’s a deal.”

  Renata came weeping to Max’s office, blotting her tears.

  “My friend’s entire family was arrested,” she said. “Seven people.”

  “Everybody was arrested today,” Max said. “Anybody who wasn’t will be arrested tomorrow. They’re leaving bodies all over Havana, one hanging from a tree. Anybody linked to the Directorio is a target. A dozen attackers were students and they found some of their guns in an apartment near the University.”

  “Did all the attackers die?” Renata asked.

  “Two or three got away, so the army says. You know any?”

  “I may, but I don’t know who was killed.”

  “We have a few names,” he said, and he pushed a paper with six names on it toward Renata. “They’re compiling the full list. We’ll get it. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing.” She was almost weeping again.

  “I can take you to dinner, with your friend here, if you like. We can even pick up your parents.”

  “I couldn’t eat,” she said.

  “Eating goes with grief,” Max said. “You always have lunch after a funeral, then think of the Last Supper.”

  Renata smiled a very small and silent thank you but no, and stood up.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Max said.

  “I may go away,” she said.

  “I’m here whenever you need me.”

  In the car she said, “My friend said to stay away from the necrocomio.”

  “Good. You should,” Quinn said.

  “And he says I shouldn’t go to Diego’s funeral. Diego had two children. He never mentioned them. My friend doesn’t want me connected to anybody in the attack. He thinks I should go away until things calm down. I want to go to a babalawo. Do you know about the babalawo?”

  “No.”

  “A wise man who reads the language of the soul. Narciso Figueroa. He’s over ninety. He will know how my soul is damaged and will help me.”

  “You believe this?”

  “The babalawo has visions. Do you ever have visions?”

  “Not since grammar school when I saw myself playing the banjo in heaven. When I got older I gave up on heaven, also the banjo. I don’t trust religion anymore.”