Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

by William Kennedy

  “I also want to put Cuba in it.”

  “Quite a place, Cuba. I went to Havana in ’27 when Mayor Goddard was thrown out of an open car. Do they have any bums in Cuba nowadays?”

  “No bums allowed. They’re all communists.”

  “Society isn’t complete without bums.”

  “Tell that to Fidel. You know my grandfather wrote about Cuba. You ever read his books?”

  “I remember he was quite an achieved figure. What was his name?”

  “Daniel Quinn.”

  “Unforgettable name.”

  “He wrote about Grant at Vicksburg, Sheridan at Cedar Creek, what a story that is, and he did a book on the Cubans’ Ten Years War against the Spaniards and their slave empire. He went down there in 1870 to find the Mambí rebel leader nobody could get to, and he got to him. He rode with the Mambí troops in a battle with the Spanish, he wrote later on Irish genocide that started in Cromwell’s era, and he turned up stories of Irishmen in Albany who’d been sold as slaves in the West Indies. He also rode with the American Fenians when they invaded Canada after the Civil War to take Ireland back from England, and he tracked the famine Irish, which he came from.”

  “He consorted with death and darkness,” Jake said.

  “Exactly, and it fed his argument on the children of desolation, dead millions destroyed by true believers who waged the holy and then the unholy wars. He concluded that the great losers never lose, and revolutions never fail; they evolve heroically, with the memory of martyred multitudes and the survivors’ imagination perpetually breeding a counterforce, and new heroes to drive it.

  “He wrote of a runaway slave in Cuba, Nicodemo, wounded in the war with the Spanish, left arm useless, doing a furious dance of sexual abandon to the beat of a Mambí drum and galvanizing the black men and women watching his every twitch. He equated Nicodemo with an illiterate slave of sixteen, Sooky, who yearned to be a poet and sang her poems at the Albany Pinksterfest, a wonderchild to all who heard her. The Pinksterfest, held when the azaleas bloomed, was a week-long Mardi Gras where the slaves of Albany vented their misfortune through music, dance, and carousing.

  “Nicodemo died in battle a week after his dance, beheaded by the Spanish. Sooky carried live coals in her shoes to burn her slavemaster’s barn to ashes and was hanged as an incendiary on Pinkster Hill, where she’d sung her poetry. Albany cancelled the Pinksterfest forever, believing so many blacks drinking and dancing held the potential for revolution.”

  “Your grandfather wasn’t old enough to see a Pinksterfest, was he?”

  “No, but he knew the old Adam Blake, who was always master of the revels. Body servant of the Patroon, an unlikely revolutionary. But my grandfather imagined such people having ecstatic dreams that rose up from a dimension of the spirit where revolution against the invincible is perpetual—no matter how many billions are massacred or destroyed. Nicodemo and Sooky were such warriors. We insist, therefore we continue. Call me dead, call me phoenix.”

  “Your grandfather sounds like Candide,” Jake said.

  “But Candide wound up tending his garden. My grandfather never quit throwing himself into losing causes and war all his life, not as a warrior but as a witness who needs to know how it turns out. It became his political necessity. I heard his weird music in high school when I read his books and scrapbooks, and it eventually sent me down to Cuba, which was lush with death, spurious gods, and pernicious doctrine, but also with that century-old Mambí warrior spirit that had never died. It drew me into compacts with gunrunners and I went up in the hills to see Fidel. I even married a gunrunner in a ceremony presided over by ancient African spirits.”

  “I’m deeply sorry I missed that. Is this what animates your book on the slums?”

  “Ethereal slumgullion, a mythically nutritious new literary form. Are you aware my first novel comes out in September?”

  “The story of the political kidnapping?”

  “That’s the one. It’s about my uncle, the pool hustler.”

  “Am I in it?”

  “Under another name.”

  “Any true believers in it?”

  “Under another name.”

  “Will I recognize them?”

  “I call them politicians.”

  Renata put Gloria to bed and monitored her until she was asleep. Then she called Max at the number he’d left and told him to get a cab and come up here. Twenty minutes later he walked in with suitcase and briefcase in hand, wearing a white guayabera and tan shoes, a bit of leftover Cuba in his style, the first Renata had seen him in a year. He put down the bags and kissed her on the mouth, tried to linger, but she backed away and sat in an armchair. She pulled her skirt over her knees and he smiled. He thinks I’m on guard. She did not want to be alone with him, but it was necessary.

  “Those bags,” she said. “You don’t have a hotel room?”

  “I’m not staying. In transit, you might say?”

  “Where are you coming from, and where are you going?”

  “Miami, and I’m not sure what’s next.”

  “You flew in?”

  “I did. A charter.”

  “How flamboyant. Do you want to stay here?”

  “A tempting offer but I don’t think it’s in the cards.”

  “You’re mysterious, Max. What is going on?”

  “Everybody’s dying and I’m sick of it. First Inez Salazar, and then an actor I knew, both in Miami on the same day, now Bobby Kennedy shot, and an hour ago I hear Cody Mason’s on the way out with cancer—all this in two days.”

  “I know about Cody. I told Gloria we’d go to his concert tonight. That great talent disappearing. How did you hear about him?”

  “I was at the Havana Club and he came in. He’s thinner, but he looks pretty good. His son says he’s out of time.”

  “You talked to Roy?”

  “He tends bar. Smart and radical, like you.”

  “Why are you talking about these deaths?”

  “They seem connected.”

  “Is death following you? Is that why you left Miami?”

  “Problems came up. I saw Alfie in Miami the day before yesterday. He always speaks well of you. He’s done ridiculously well since Havana.”

  “Is he as wild as he used to be?”

  “People don’t change.”

  “Was he with Inez when she died?”

  “He took care of her, paid her rent and medical bills, but after she developed cirrhosis he wouldn’t go near her. He took it as an omen. Is liver disease an omen?”

  “We create our own omens.”

  “I saw her in the hospital, bloated and almost comatose. Her eyes followed me and I’m sure she was cursing me for being alive.”

  “Poor Inez. Life was so unfair to her. She probably saved my life in Cuba the night they shot Quesada, and then what she did for me at the embassy.”

  “I remember the embassy,” Max said. He picked up a small statue from an end table: bearded man on crutches, his bandaged head bleeding, a cloth around his loins, two dogs at his heels. “Lazarus in Albany. Babalu Aye, a bit of Havana.”

  “I’ve tried to keep Cuba in this house. That, for instance,” and she pointed to a painting of an arresting figure, Sikan, a woman in black and white net body wrap holding a fish that embodies the god Tanze, a discovery that threatens Sikan’s life. “It was the one painting I took when we left Havana,” Renata said.

  “You miss the old life. The country clubs, partying till dawn, all that shooting.”

  “I did love it. Not the shooting.”

  “I think you loved the shooting.”

  “I loved what was sensuous and unpredictable in how we lived.”

  “You don’t have that?”

  “Sometimes. I went to North Carolina for two weeks with a group from the university to register black voters. And I went to Selma for the march, the second one, after the blacks were gassed and run down by men on horses and beaten.”

  “You’re still fightin
g the revolution.”

  “Of a different kind.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No. No battle scars.”

  “What about your social life? No nightclubs.”

  “None like Havana. I never go. I’m too old for children’s games.”

  “You were no child when we played our game.”

  “Shhhh,” she said, shaking her head and pointing to the ceiling.

  “Would you go back to Havana?”

  “It is not possible.”

  “It’s possible if you want to do it,” he said, and when he smiled she saw a gauntness that was new: his cheeks, his neck slimmer than ever, his guayabera loose on his frame. The thin man. Was he sick? He seemed younger than his true years, hadn’t lost his hair, something of that old magnetism still there.

  “I didn’t expect you to come to Albany,” she said. “I thought you’d wire the money through a bank.”

  “Was your bank really going to foreclose?”

  “They threatened, which is why I called you.”

  “Don’t you have money coming in?”

  “Daniel tells everyone his annual salary is below the federal poverty level, and I could make more begging on the street. The museum doesn’t pay serious money to my kind. They use wealthy women who take no salary, the same as in Havana. But we’ll be fine if we get through the summer.”

  “And after that?”

  “Daniel’s book will be published. That will bring a check.”

  “How big a check?”

  “Not big. We do not do anything that makes money.”

  Max pulled a two-inch fold of cash from his trouser pocket and took off the rubber band that bound it. He counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and pushed them aside, counted another ten. “Two thousand,” he said, and began a third pile.

  “Two thousand is all I asked you for.”

  “I’m giving you six. You want ten? Have ten.”

  “Six? Ten? My god, hombre, no. We could never pay it back.”

  “No need. Tell me a number.” He counted out six piles, then made them into a single pile.

  “Six thousand?” she said. “Un milagro!”

  Max handed her the money, then pocketed the still hefty wad. She put the six thousand in her purse.

  “Do you always travel with so much cash?”

  “It’s very spiritual to carry large sums, a holy form of danger. I once carried eight hundred thousand in two suitcases.”

  “Madre de Dios. Eight hundred thousand. Why?”

  “I was delivering it.”

  “Political money?”

  “I took it to an embassy.”

  “Ah.”

  “You think my money is evil. I see it in your eyes.”

  “I don’t know you anymore, Max. It’s been a long time.”

  He leaned toward her and went down on one knee.

  “It stuns me to see you, Natita. After all these years I’m still tortured in your presence. It’s an obsession. I’ve never been able to love anyone else, not even your sister.”

  “Max, get up. This is bizarre.”

  “You should’ve married me,” he said. “Leave your poverty and marry me now.” He put his hand on her knee.

  “Max Osborne marries whichever woman is next to him.” She lifted his hand off her knee.

  “Don’t scold me. I’m your fool. Love me. Love Max the fool.”

  “Get up. Fools don’t kneel for anybody.”

  He stood and he leaned over to kiss her. She did not turn away.

  “Sit down, fool. You haven’t asked about Gloria.”

  “No. Tell me,” and he sat. “What’s the matter with her? Why is she sleeping when her father is here?”

  “Father? Sinvergüenza. You haven’t seen your daughter in a year.”

  “I came to take you away from your husband.”

  “Nonsense. You have another motive.”

  “You read minds, like your babalawos.”

  “So do not lie to me. Why did you come?”

  “I want to go to Cuba. It’s unlikely they’ll let me in, given my agency connection, but what I know may interest Fidel.”

  “He’ll think you’re still a double agent. Why do you want Cuba?”

  “Cuba doesn’t extradite you to the U.S.—hijackers know this. So do black rebels who’ve gone down there. So do fugitives on the run—like me.”

  “You’re a fugitive? From what?”

  “I’ve been working with Alfie. They raided his operation and he left town. And so did I. I haven’t seen the papers but I assume they’ve gone public with my name.”

  “Those suitcases were Alfie’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drug money.”

  “I deal in money, not drugs. I’m just a courier.”

  “This is a tragedia, Max, a man of your intelligence doing crime.”

  “You think intelligence serves only law and order? What about all your intelligent Directorio friends who died trying to murder Batista? The lust for adventure can arrive at a late hour.”

  “A late hour. Are you ill? Dying? What is it, Max?”

  “Let’s say I’m aging rapidly.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I need help in getting to Fidel. He’s the only one who can make it happen. I want you to take me in. We can go through Mexico, or Canada. You have the connections and I have the money to buy our way in. You can’t imagine how much money I have.”

  “You think I have connections? You are loco. I am out of favor in Cuba.”

  “You were important in the struggle, even after you left Cuba, and Fidel knows it. Also, Moncho has risen very high. He’s close to the inner circle. He can get Fidel’s ear.”

  “I am an outsider to the revolution. I live in Albany.”

  “People talk of you. Renata Suárez is still a heroine for the torture she suffered and never giving them any names. For getting guns from Miami to Fidel with Alfie.”

  “You are an appealing liar.”

  “And you were a lover of Fidel.”

  “I was not Fidel’s lover.”

  “You were one of them.”

  “They say that of hundreds of women.”

  “And it’s true of hundreds of women, maybe thousands. And of you.”

  “Believe what you like.”

  “It’s valuable that you slept with the Comandante.”

  “Valuable to whom?”

  “To anybody who needs the ear of the mighty, and right now that’s Max Osborne. I rescued you from death, now it’s your turn to rescue me.”

  Max unbuttoned his guayabera to reveal a thin, brown leather shoulder holster belted across his chest. He lifted out a .32 automatic and set it on the coffee table. Renata clapped her hands and laughed.

  “A gangster, Max.¡Qué mono! How cute you are. And your pistol is cute, maybe too cute to do what you ask it to do. Do you remember I carried a Cobra in my purse when I drove with Diego?”

  “I’m not as serious a shooter as you, my dear. I only want to protect myself.”

  “You will shoot the police when they come for you?” Gloria said as she came down the stairs.

  “Gloria, mi amor, how are you?” Max said, and he walked to the bottom of the stairs, kissed his daughter, held her, stared at her. “You are a magnificent child, my Gloriosa, are you all right?”

  “She’s been working and studying too much. Life is overwhelming her,” Renata said.

  “Who are you going to shoot, Papa?”

  “I have enemies.”

  “Who is Alfie? What kind of criminal is he?”

  “He’s a Cuban we knew in Havana who ran guns. Never mind Alfie, tell me how you are.”

  “I just came home from a psychiatric ward. I’m not the Gloria you knew, Papa. I’m a crazy person and I can’t live here anymore. If you go to Cuba I want to go with you. Will you go with us, Aunt Ren?”

  “Do not make such plans,” Renata said. “That is not possible.”
/>
  “Wait a minute,” Max said, “what happened to you?”

  “They locked me up, Papa. I tried to kill myself. I smashed a window to cut my wrist and I tried to bleed myself with a straight razor.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m worthless, useless. I foul what I touch.”

  “You are priceless,” Renata said. “You are a perfect woman.”

  “They fired me from Holy Cross. They called me a slut.”

  “Who did?”

  “A woman on the board at Holy Cross.”

  “Why would she say that?”

  “I had sex with two men. One of them is her husband.”

  “Two men doesn’t qualify you as a slut.”

  “Don’t mock me, Papa.”

  “She has discovered the liberality of love,” Renata said.

  “Everybody knows what I did.”

  “How do they know?” Max asked.

  “The woman told them.”

  “Who is she, who is her husband?”

  “Alex Fitzgibbon.”

  “The son of a bitch.”

  “Yes, that’s him,” said Gloria.

  “Who is the second one?”

  “Roy Mason. We work together. You don’t know him.”

  “I spent this afternoon with him.”

  “No. Why, where?”

  “I went to Cody’s club. He tends bar there.”

  Max groped for a way to respond. Distant father suddenly privy to his daughter’s crisis, wise counsel now expected from him to manage her imagined disaster. Counsel her to change her ways? Absurd advice from Max the libertine. Point out she’s neither a slut nor crazy, that some women think one love, one man, is never enough, your Aunt Renata always needed a crowd. For years Max had imagined Alex turning his cultivated eye to the beautiful virgin on his doorstep. Women always stood in line for him. No doubt he gave her a graceful introduction to love, but the bastard shouldn’t be anywhere near her. Doting godfather, father substitute for the absent Max. During their lunch he said she was working well with a social agency that dealt mostly with inner-city blacks. He was voluble on Roy, who worked for the same agency and who also fronted for the Brothers, a Panther-like bunch that sees the Mayor as their enemy, and he says they’re ready to fan the race riot that could erupt any minute in this town.

  “You’re not crazy and it’s certainly not a tragedy,” he said. “Tragedy would have been that straight razor.”