Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

by William Kennedy

  In the forest El Quin and the brown rebel, both on foot, chopped vines and briars with their machetes as they moved, the horse moving with them. They rested in a dry streambed, faces bloody with scratches from trees and thorny overgrowth, and ate berries they had picked. El Quin sipped from his canteen and asked the rebel why he had joined Céspedes as a Mambí warrior. He said if he had not become a warrior he would still be a slave. Whether warrior or slave he would die, but it was better to die as a killer of Spaniards than to let the slave drivers kill you. Quinn wanted to tell the man he had lunch with three slave drivers in a sugar mill at Villa Clara, pretending to seek work as one of them. But then he decided that the warrior might misunderstand his ruse and would only hear this stranger saying he wanted to be a slave driver. He would then swing his machete and slice off Quinn’s head.

  Renata heard the drum in a dream, a Santeria drum, and was moved by it. She opened her eyes and the drum was not a dream. She opened the window of her hotel room and as she listened she moved to its beat without willing the movement. It entered her, took charge, and reminded her of her mother dancing at the Biltmore Yacht Club, moving in a way that she herself had never moved, nor wanted to; but the beat was as old as Cuba. She had heard the Santeria drum so often, but this seemed new, and she was dancing. She looked out to find the source of the drum but saw only a few army cars parked on the empty edges of Céspedes Park. Then she saw women in black dresses, dozens of them streaming out of the cathedral in what was clearly a planned demonstration. They immediately raised placards, CESEN LOS ASESINATOS DE NUESTROS HIJOS—MADRES CUBANAS—Stop killing our children—and walked from the cathedral to the park; but a dozen soldiers with rifles blocked their way and more soldiers moved across the park as backup. The women took a new direction and the troops followed them in a moving blockade. A military car stopped on the edge of the park near San Pedro and an army lieutenant colonel stepped out to watch what was unfolding.

  Renata was dressed for driving, flared gray skirt, powder blue blouse with buttons. She put on her blond wig and pinned it, pushed into her shoes. She found a black scarf and put it in her skirt pocket. She went down the stairs to the lobby, crossed the park to where the women, three dozen at least, had been halted. She spoke to a heavy woman at mid-throng, but with only partial knowledge of the reason for this protest. She had heard on the radio that two bloodied bodies of young men who had disappeared from their homes or cars in recent nights had been found on the beach horribly abused; but she was not yet aware of the official madness of the past three nights, a terror unleashed against the people of Santiago, none of it reported on the radio.

  “Did you lose someone?” she asked the heavy woman.

  “The son of my sister.”

  “I lost my greatest friend.”

  “Here?”

  “In Havana.”

  “Everybody is losing,” the woman said. “The disease. I am old enough to remember Machado when I lost two uncles, and my mother remembers the war with Spain when the beast Weyler killed whole villages.”

  “My father was shot in Machado’s time,” Renata said.

  “The soldiers will come after us now,” the woman said. “They will beat and rape us.”

  “Do you want to kill them?”

  “I don’t kill things,” the woman said. “I would make them disappear back up into the cursed stomachs of their mothers.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “The new American ambassador, he is in the Ayuntamiento just there,” and she pointed toward City Hall where three cars and a limousine were parked. The lead women moved down Calle San Pedro but they did not get far. The troops held them back with rifles. “Libertad,” one woman yelled and many echoed her.

  Renata wondered: Why am I talking with strangers under siege? Is it true I’m in love with death? Diego was in love with death and killed himself out of love. Am I a child of suicide? If I die the revolution loses a soldier. She tied the black scarf around her arm in solidarity with the women. She could still hear the drum but faintly, moving away, and she did not understand its source. But she felt the beat and still felt the impulse not only to dance but to dance well. This was strange and now she had the thought that all this came with Quinn, who is new and rare and a bit mad.

  The women in front were arguing with the soldiers. Why can’t we go down San Pedro? A lieutenant said, nobody goes, an answer as arbitrary as the new military violence that had been terrorizing the city in recent nights—reprisal for work stoppages, for the growing public support of the Santiago underground and for Castro’s rebels. Three rebel bombs had gone off this week, one on the patio of navy headquarters. Military jeeps now patrolled the streets and the central highway, and the roads to Ciudamar, El Caney, El Morro, and the airport were all barricaded, with checkpoint guards stopping every car. Most businesses were closed, and pedestrians few.

  Three nights earlier packs of army, navy, and police raiders invaded public plazas and parks, clubbed pedestrians with gun butts, slashed them with whips, overturned tables in cantinas, yanked people out of cars or off porches of their homes in random attacks against all classes of the population who might or might not be guilty of rebellion, or thinking about rebellion. The raiders picked up one youth who had grown a beard, which was the black flag of the revolutionaries, for Fidel wore a black beard. The raiders crucified the youth, spreadeagled him on top of a police car and drove him through the city with eight other police cars blowing their horns to show the town what happens to rebels who let their hair grow. People locked their doors and windows and stayed home. The count of men who had disappeared rose to seven, then to eighteen, but no one thought that was the end of it. Of these very new events Renata knew almost nothing when she started talking to the woman protester.

  Renata felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Felipe Holtz with a great new shock of black hair, he had let it grow, and a substantial new mustache, well shaped and deep black, more handsome than ever. He wore a tan linen sport coat and she thought him very attractive; but she was not in love with him. She knew that immediately. She had loved many things about him for years. She did not think he would ever become involved with the rebel cause. He was smart and serious but he did not seem drawn to this danger like Diego. He seemed a man for whom danger was déclassé.

  He said to her in English, “We’ll go now, my dear,” and squeezing her arm firmly he pulled her away from the woman and toward Calle Heredia that bordered the Hotel Casa Granda. He put his arm on Renata’s shoulder as they walked and with deft fingers untied the knot in her black scarf, pulled it off her arm and palmed it. Renata stopped to look back and saw the women yelling at the soldiers as two fire trucks and four police vans arrived. A lieutenant colonel was shouting orders to the fire trucks and troops. The women broke ranks and moved singly into the park and stood on sidewalks, watching City Hall. The troops separated to widen their blockade of the dispersed women.

  Holtz led Renata into the open entrance walkway to an apartment building and said, “That is a wig you’re wearing, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Give it to me,” and he stuffed the wig flat under his shirt and buttoned his sport coat. He rolled her scarf into a ball and pushed it into a crevice in the brick wall of the walkway. Then he led her back to the street and made her walk ahead of him.

  She had not expected to see him. She had left him messages and knew if he got them he would call and invite her to his home. She tried to tell him this but he said don’t talk, just walk, you must be a crazy person to stand in the middle of a protest with soldiers about to pounce.

  “You are correct,” she said. “I am a crazy person.”

  “That’s no excuse. Do you think you will get up to see Fidel by being arrested?”

  “Why do you say I want to see Fidel?”

  “Because everybody wants to see Fidel. I also talked to Moncho who talked to Max who talks to everybody. You’ll come to my house.”

  “O
f course I’ll come to your house. That’s why I’m here. Where is Moncho? I saw him at Esme’s house after the Palace attack.”

  “He’s in Palma Soriano. You’ll see him. He thinks the SIM may be after him and it’s possible, but he also may be bragging.”

  “Moncho is very beautiful when he is angry. His words are beautiful.”

  “And you are more beautiful than ever,” Holtz said.

  “Are you still in love with me?”

  “No. I’ve known you too long and you live in Havana. Also you are too beautiful to love.”

  “I’m traveling with an American who loves me.”

  “I know. In spite of that we will bring him along.”

  “Why are those soldiers surrounding the women?”

  “The women are very important today. They have a message for the ambassador.”

  “Am I in trouble for being with the women?”

  “It’s possible. The military has big eyes. They trust no one. But at least you’re no longer a blonde.”

  A woman screamed and as Renata turned she saw a soldier striking the screaming woman with the butt of his rifle. Other women broke through the ranks of soldiers and yelled things Renata could not understand as they ran toward the men coming out of City Hall. Firemen opened their hoses and the force of the water knocked down many of the women, drove them against buildings. Still they came running, and soldiers clubbed a few. Two women, both drenched, reached the limousine and were yelling to the man Renata took to be the ambassador, and they shook their flyers at him. The man took one flyer and waved his hands to the troops to stop the water cannons. He spoke inaudibly. Soldiers were dragging and pushing most of the women into vans. Renata counted two dozen arrested and saw the lieutenant colonel approaching the ambassador.

  She and Holtz were now past her hotel and out of sight of the women and soldiers.

  “Those brave women,” she said.

  “They are ready to die for their anger. We have to get you away from Santiago and out to my house,” Holtz said. “We don’t want you dead.”

  “I must go to the hotel.”

  “Not now. They have chivatos spying on people like you, and they monitor the phones. One of them may have seen you at the protest. You’re out, so stay out.”

  “I have no clothes.”

  “You can wear Natalia’s. You’re the same size. Later we’ll find a way to get your clothes.”

  “I have a gun in my suitcase.”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “A Colt .38. A Cobra.”

  “What do you want with a gun?”

  “I want to give it to Fidel.”

  “Then we must get it. Give me your key. They’re not looking for me yet.”

  “Bring my chartreuse blouse and black skirt. The pistol is wrapped in my underwear. Bring my underwear. And the bottle of Gardenia perfume. And my Changó and Oshun beads. You know the Changó and Oshun beads, don’t you? Of course you do.”

  “I will carry what I can hide on my body. I can’t come out bulging in unusual places.”

  “Then just the blouse, the gun, and the underwear. You can wear the beads. I do.”

  “Don’t tell me how to behave, Renata. You are insane and insane people do not give good counsel. Go sit in that café and have a coffee. I’ll come by on the other side of the street and then you follow me at a distance.”

  “Where will we meet Quinn?”

  “Moncho will contact him at the hotel or he’ll find where he is from Max. Don’t worry about Quinn.”

  “I do worry. I met him two days ago and he wants to marry me.”

  “Smart americano. I’m glad to see you, Renata.”

  “I am very happy to be rescued by you, Felipe. You are a dear man.”

  “I’m trying to get over that. We also rescued your guns from the apartment on Sixteenth Street, your friend Alfie and I.”

  “You got them? Maravilloso. Where are they?”

  “On the way to Fidel.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Alfie was superb, I’ll tell you all about it. He’s quite clever, and fearless.”

  “He seems to be a first-class criminal.”

  “It’s nice to meet one who isn’t in politics.”

  The army flew the press back to Santiago airport from El Macho’s landing field, and Quinn took a taxi to the Casa Granda to call in his story. It was mid-afternoon when he got to the room and he found Renata gone. His phone message that he’d be here in an hour had been delivered but lay unopened on the floor. Her purse and all her clothes were here, no note. He called Max with his story and told him Hemingway wasn’t interested in the duel, so it was back to Cooney—go public if that’s what you want.

  “If he does go public Hemingway will have to come up with some sort of reply.”

  “No, he won’t. He’s Hemingway.”

  “He’ll look like he’s afraid.”

  “He’s in mourning for his dog. And his writing isn’t going well. He said if he wanted to die he’d do it himself.”

  “Is that his statement?”

  “Not really. But he said it, and a lot more. But no.”

  “I’ll tell Cooney.”

  Quinn dictated his army story to the desk man he had seen on his first visits to the Post, a black Americano named Julian Stewart, a New York actor and aspiring playwright with a Cuban wife, who edited copy and did layout. He laughed at Quinn’s paragraph on the fluctuating army death tolls in the battle with Fidel and he told Quinn, “You should go to Fidel and get the real total.” Quinn agreed that was a good idea. “Tell him I said hello,” Julian said, “and I’m available if he needs help.”

  Quinn flopped on the bed, nothing to do till Renata connected to the Holtzes. He raised his memory of her at their first meeting in El Floridita with Hemingway. Amazing, stunning, incomparable. Quinn now decided he would marry her before they left Oriente province. He was absolutely firm on this, but he also decided he would not tell her. He would make his plan public only when necessary; yet it was real in his imagination and now he needed only to actualize it. The ceremony would require no priest to sanctify it, no judge to make it legal. A babalawo would do, even if the union was legitimate only in Yoruba; for Renata saw the babalawo as a comfort figure. Quinn believed she was not yet aware how ready she was to marry him. The intensity of what he felt for her was without precedent, and her reaction to him certainly seemed strong. Her grief at losing Diego was enormous, but in its freshest hours she slept alongside Quinn in his bed; and in the wake of the Quesada murder she took revenge on the caprice that killed her love and gave herself to Quinn, transforming them both. She is a creature of perpetual intensity and mystical need, a nymph who could betray you in a blink with a stranger, if that act lit the flame that lights her days. You have an aberration wrapped into your life, Quinn, a walking, loving astonishment. Marry her quickly. She will understand your perception and will accept. Twice in the brief time you’ve known her she has admitted the possibility of marrying you someday, and she will accept now because of your persuasively absurd insistence. She is love insatiable but she has never accepted long life with her other lovers, who have all had the life expectancy of mayflies, products of her youthful misjudgment, her proclivity for fractured dreams, and her co-conspiracy in creating wrenching separations. You are a gift from an Orisha that arrived during her craving for something beyond the sexual fadeaways of her commonplace book of love, and your impromptu marriage scheme looms as a gesture any Orisha would respect, bespeaking your fluency in the language of the soul.

  But be aware, Quinn—Renata does not yet know she knows these things, and you certainly should not push her to premature awareness, for she may make a hasty mess and bend everything to her adorational needs of the moment. Let her discovery arrive during your next eureka moment together, which should be soon. Do not tell her that she wants to marry you above all her other lovers past or present. Do not spoil her surprise.

  Renata waiting for Felipe: an
other of the Holtz family taking in another of the Otero women. He would soon drive her to his mansion where her mother, Celia, had been taken in and raised, and where Renata visited as a child, never quite understanding back then why this had happened. But she had exotic memories of vacations here with her cousins, of games played in their vast house and in the stables and outbuildings, with secret hiding places and cuddling until they found you, early intimations of romance, which seemed to be what they called it. Whatever it was those visits were always too brief, always interrupted, and always with that hovering mystery no one talked about but everyone (except Renata) knew—the secret life of her grandmother.

  She sat at the first table in the café, near the door, and ordered a coffee. The waiter had a large scar on his neck, a rope burn from being hanged? Remnant of a murderous throat-slitting? But, Renata, might it not have been accidental? No. Something so egregious is rarely accidental in Cuba. She saw her Grandmother Margaret’s hooded eyes, and her scarred eyelids, and don’t try to tell Renata that was accidental. She conjured the face she knew from young photographs before the eyes were attacked. Such a wild creature, Margarita Lastra Pujol de Otero, who came to Cuba on a tidal wave of passion, unable to live without her husband of a few months, Jaime, who had left her in Spain in 1896 to join the war against Cuban rebels, also to elevate his military status, war can do that for a privileged young prince of a wealthy family.

  Renata was now sitting a few blocks from where Margarita, with her year-old Celia, had first lived in this city while Jaime was making forays into rebel territory. Her townhouse belonged to Jaime’s uncle, Sebastian Holtz Otero, who derived his wealth from one of the few sugar mills to survive three wars in Oriente Province. Jaime came there twice to be with her, brief visits but wild with conjugal frenzy and bliss and such emotional consummation that he composed a will against the day he might die in war, giving her all he owned or might inherit. What he asked in return was her eternal love and fidelity, which she granted with the first blink of her eye, her worship of his penstroke and sexual fury, his teardrop on the letter, his mouth on her own and on her body and on the spiritual lips of her love. You will kiss me everywhere and forever, she wrote him. In these days he sent her three letters, all he could manage, but they were very like the twenty-seven he’d written when courting her: passionate, even shocking. They burned her imagination; she thrived on their heat.