Map Drawn by a Spy, page 19
“No, it’s good. What’s too bad is that they won’t let you stay.”
“Well, I’ll work that out myself.”
“You? How are you going to do that?”
“I’ll figure that out when I get to Madrid.”
He said no more. Later on, he learned that Marcelo Fernández had told Sabá he would send him back to Spain because he trusted him, and the intelligence service was not going to tell him what to do. Maybe that was true, maybe it was a lie, but that was what he was told.
That afternoon, the two of them went to El Carmelo on 23rd to buy cigars (the good ones they only sell singly), and at the door they ran into Alejo and Lidia Carpentier, who were headed for the Riviera to see a Russian film.
“Hombre, how are you?” Carpentier asked. “How’s it going?”
“Well, Alejo. Thank you.”
“How long will you be here?”
“A while yet.”
“Why don’t you come see me at National Publishing House?”
“Yes, sure. One of these days I’ll drop by.”
Alejo turned to Sabá.
“Weren’t you in Spain?”
“Yes, and I’m going back day after tomorrow.”
“Well, if you see Adrián ask him what happened with my suitcase.”
They said goodbye and the Carpentiers went on to the cinema. Then Sabá explained what Alejo had meant. He had left a suitcase with Adrián García Hernández because when he got to Madrid he had too much baggage. Adrián offered to keep the suitcase and take it to the embassy so that it could be sent to him in Cuba. However, Adrián opened it and found it only contained old clothes and a few new shirts bought in Paris. He decided to keep the shirts for himself, and he threw the suitcase out. The two of them laughed.
Sabá wanted to take along the painting that Adrián’s mother had entrusted to them, since Adrián was not doing well in Madrid, but he persuaded him not to. On the morning Sabá was to leave, he called from the airport.
“Listen,” he said, “I should have brought Adrián’s thing. It’s quiet as could be here.”
He said good, better that way, and he hung up. Then he sat thinking about the phone call and its implications. A few days later he returned the painting to Adrián’s mother.
A RUMOR WAS GOING AROUND Havana that Captain Emilio Aragonés, a major figure in the Party who had been the National Organizer of the July 26th Movement, was in serious trouble. People said it was sexual, but no one knew anything for certain. Then Franqui told him Aragonés was accused of organizing orgies and there was photographic evidence, apparently taken by Aragonés himself or with his consent. The orgies were said to have featured everything, even lesbianism and homosexuality. For anyone who knew Aragonés or was familiar with his political ambitions, this was unbelievable. But the photographs left no room for doubt. Did other government personalities take part? No one knew. All anyone knew was that the affair was as bewildering as it was impenetrable.
How the orgies came to light was also complicated. Figures from the new underworld of the Revolution were involved and an important role had been played by a friend of his, Norka, a well-known model and also the former wife of his friend Korda, the photographer. It seems one of the participants showed the pictures to a lover of Norka’s, who told her all about it. People said when she found out she immediately tried to locate Ramiro Valdés to tell him. (Norka had relations with high government figures and people said she had been a lover of Fidel Castro, which explains the ease with which she could approach the interior minister in person.) According to the story, Ramiro Valdés went to see her late at night and then threw Norka’s lover and his friend in prison. What’s more, after Aragonés’s arrest, there was an attempt on Norka’s life by two unknown assailants. The story grew even more intricate, with people saying that as punishment Aragonés had been sent to fight in a guerrilla war being organized in Congo-Brazzaville against the Republic of the Congo.
Franqui knew no more. He did, however, say that Norka told him Ramiro Valdés had told her that he was going to get serious about cracking down on homosexuals and people involved in other illegal sexual conduct, that now it would be done methodically, with each workplace and the Defense Committee on every block keeping a list of sexual delinquents. That had Franqui worried, and he shared Franqui’s concern since he knew how broadly the term “sexual delinquent” could be interpreted in official hands.
Not long after, Franqui was truly ill at a clinic in La Sierra on Mendoza Avenue, whose name he could never remember. Suárez drove him and Gustavo Arcos to see him. When they arrived, Franqui had another visitor, a blue-eyed blonde in a brown tweed skirt and a white silk blouse, with such a youthful air about her she looked like a girl. She did not look Cuban (she had never looked Cuban: not even the day he first met her in 1958, when to strike up a conversation he spoke to her in English as he and Jesse Fernández got out of a taxi on the corner of Infanta and San Lázaro). But when she opened her mouth, she revealed she was more than Cuban, she was a Habanera of humble origins. It was, of course, Norka, who was more beautiful than ever with her hair cut short and her long legs bare below her short skirt. Franqui introduced her to Gustavo, who seemed to know her, which was not surprising since Norka was the most famous model in Cuba after 1959.
They chatted for a while and when Norka got up to leave he said he would accompany her and said goodbye to Franqui, Gustavo, and Suárez. They walked the length of Mendoza Avenue looking for the old Columbia Road and then turned left toward the bridge and 23rd Street. It was late afternoon and the sun was dropping out of sight behind them. They ambled slowly toward Norka’s house in Alturas del Bosque. Crossing the bridge, they saw the sun’s orange reflection in the Almendares River. Like nearly all summer afternoons in Cuba, this one was sweet and soft. He felt very good walking beside Norka, breathing in her perfume, listening to her so-very-Cuban speech while the afternoon air ruffled the hair she swept off her forehead with a quick movement of her hand. From the moment they left the clinic, Norka had been telling him the story of her discovery of the high-ranking orgies.
“Listen to me,” she said in her strong accent and with the very masculine mannerisms that so contrasted with her profound femininity. “Two guys broke into my house. I got up because I heard the sound, it was about two in the morning, and when I turned on the light in the living room I saw an enormous black guy coming at me and calling to somebody in the kitchen, who turned out to be another black guy with a knife in his hand. When the first guy came at me, the one without a weapon, I caught him with a judo move, picked him up, and threw him at the guy with the knife. The first one, the big guy, fell on the knife and got stabbed. So what do you think the second guy did? He ran like hell out the door and took off, leaving the other guy on the floor bathed in blood.”
While she talked, he thought about her voice, her mannish way of speaking, which fit with her judo but was so at odds with her feminine way of walking and the image she projected of a beautiful Nordic model.
“Viejo,” she continued, “I swear on my blessed mother’s grave I am not feeding you a line. As soon as the other guy took off, I grabbed the phone and called the private number Ramirito gave me and in less than five minutes he was parking across the street along with two patrol cars. They took the wounded guy to the hospital and Ramirito was asking me questions and his people were going over the whole place and they figured those two guys that attacked me had been hiding in my garden for a long time, waiting, one of them even defecated in the roses.” He liked that brief incursion into refined speech, even as it surprised him to hear Norka say “defecated” instead of “took a shit.”
“What was that about?”
“I guess out of fear, right? What the fuck would I know. The only thing for sure is I was scared out of my wits and the first thing I did was wake my kids and take them with me to my sister’s place.”
They were nearing Norka’s, which was a fancy house in a well-heeled neighborhood filled with elegant homes. He wondered who would have given it to her, Fidel Castro or Ramiro Valdés? She asked him if he would like to come in for a drink. (Apparently, it was also well provisioned.) He said no, he had to go home to eat, they were waiting for him. As she stepped inside, she suggested they go out one night, they could go to a movie, and he said he would call her. In reality he wanted to get away from Norka as fast as he could, since he found everything about the story repugnant, including the new bit Norka supplied.
The following morning Gustavo Arcos called him.
“Listen,” he said, “I want to talk to you about that girl yesterday. Don’t you know she’s in serious trouble?”
He said yes, he knew. That was all Gustavo wanted to talk about, but he did not want to do it over the telephone. They agreed that if he already knew there was no need to talk, but he went to Gustavo’s house anyway and discussed all those rumors, which for Gustavo were more than rumors: he had learned that the entire story about Aragonés was true. They laughed about how bizarre it was to hold orgies and leave a trail of photographs. Gustavo received a phone call from Rebellón just then, inviting him to a model farm that was Fidel Castro’s personal favorite. Gustavo told him he was there visiting, so Rebellón invited him along too. They would all go in Rebellón’s car the following day. After hanging up, Gustavo related a few stories about the man, who was now close to Fidel Castro. Apparently Fidel Castro used him as a taster for his cooking experiments, and now he was making soups with greens that usually only cattle eat. One recipe was some sort of stew made from digit grass, which Rebellón not only had to try, but had to say was really good, though it was awful. Another anecdote was about the day Rebellón arrived half an hour late for a meeting with Fidel Castro at his farm. Fidel Castro said nothing about his tardiness, but once the meeting was over, he drove Rebellón to an outbuilding at the back of the farm where they stored the tools and made him get out of the car and go in. “Now,” Fidel Castro told Rebellón, “you’re going to be jailed here for two weeks. For being late.” And Rebellón, no joke, spent two weeks imprisoned in the shed at the back of the farm.
He thought the story was horrendous, not only because he had liked Rebellón right from the moment they met in Brussels, but also because of what it revealed about the character of Fidel Castro, a Latin American caudillo who behaved like every other absolute monarch.
The farm proved to be big, though not enormous. There were all sorts of animals, but the cattle got the most attention, especially a cow imported from Holland that was being examined by a veterinarian. He wondered if that cow, like those in Walterio Carbonell’s story, also had tuberculosis, though it looked big and strong. They took in the whole of the model farm and when it started getting dark, they headed back toward the main house. He heard a murmur in a cornfield and asked what it was. “Mice,” Rebellón said. “That’s one of the problems we haven’t been able to solve: we can’t get rid of the mice.” Then he saw them, coming and going between the cornfield and a ditch Rebellón said was being dug for silos. Thousands of field mice of all sizes, confident, hungry, audacious. They filled the entire field at dusk and even the paths and the farm road. He was fascinated by the kingdom of mice; never had he seen so many in one place, especially in the countryside.
At the main house they ate the same meal everyone else was eating, not good but substantial. “All this is grown here,” Rebellón said proudly, as if he were revealing a family secret. There was nothing exotic about the food, nothing that could not have been produced on any old farm. Apparently, Rebellón wanted them to get an exhaustive picture of the place, including the mosquitos, moths, and fireflies, since they did not return to Havana until late. Because there was nothing else to do, they played dominoes to kill time. He had always detested the game and was horrible at it, but he had to play along. They stupidly kept at it until eleven or twelve at night, when Rebellón decided to take them home.
He received a surprise visit from Mariposa, Pipo Carbonell’s wife, whose name was not really Mariposa. It was a nickname that turned out to be more lasting than her real one. He had met her in Brussels – just as he had met Carbonell and Suárez and Gustavo Arcos and Aldama and Díaz del Real and Pollo Rivero – and he always found her earthy and very Cuban way of talking comical, and he still remembers his favorite story about her: they were at the table eating fresh cod and she said European fish weren’t salty enough (salt cod being a Cuban favorite). Now she told him she was working at the Cuban Workers Confederation, a job she got thanks to the elder Carbonell.
“What about Pipo?” he asked, despite having recently seen him.
“What would I know? We got divorced.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Oh yes, a while ago.”
“So, now what do you do?”
“Now I’m footloose and fancy free,” she told him, in a way that was both a statement and a suggestion. He pretended he had not heard or did not understand; though he had always suspected, since Brussels, that she found him attractive, he wanted nothing to do with Mariposa. They made small talk and soon she said goodbye. She returned another day and the conversation was just as meaningless, as empty as before, and after that she did not return. Later on, he often spied her at El Carmelo, always in the company of Germán Puig’s sister and never with a male companion.
He went to visit Carmela again, Miriam Gómez’s mother, whom he had not seen for a while. He always found his mother-in-law entertaining, since she talked about so many funny things. But that day Richard was there, Miriam Gómez’s younger brother, who began to make jokes using phrases he thought he recognized from somewhere, until he finally realized they were things he had written; they were from his letters to Miriam Gómez. The fact that Richard was reading his letters angered him, and he asked Carmela if he could have all the correspondence she was keeping for Miriam. “Take it,” Richard told him, “since I’ve already read all of it, every little bit.” The only reason to forgive Richard was his youth. The two of them went to a bakery nearby to buy a loaf of bread Carmela swore was delicious and, unlike so many other things, not rationed. They went to the corner of 23rd and 16th and found the bakery not only closed but surrounded by swarms of bees. He had never liked bees, having been stung many times as a child, and he fled back to the street without even asking if they would be selling bread in the afternoon, while Richard just walked calmly through. He returned home with no bread and with the shame of Richard’s mockery buzzing in his ears.
Franqui was back. Apparently his illness had been a false alarm and it occurred to him that Franqui was not really sick, rather the tension of being a disgraced politician was killing him bit by bit. He went to visit him several times and one day met up with the sister of his wife, Margot, and her family, including a boy about eighteen who was doing his military service. The boy complained that despite having graduated as an artilleryman and doing his service, the people providing political orientation would not leave him alone because he liked to listen to modern music. That was when he learned that “modern” was what young people in Cuba called pop, which was expressly prohibited from Cuban radio. In some mysterious fashion these records were turning up and being passed from hand to hand among the young, and now they wanted to outlaw even listening to such records. Here was a generation, he thought, educated entirely by the Revolution but showing a tiny sign of rebelliousness, and if that seed had not yet flowered in Cuba, at least it had not died. That day he went home feeling strangely satisfied.
His satisfaction grew after a visit to the National Publishing House, though the feeling had nothing to do with that institution. The first person he saw there was Felito Ayón, with whom he had always felt a connection, not just from El Gato Tuerto (the restaurant/club which Felito ran across from El Maine Park) but from before, when Felito was the only truly modern printer in Cuba, and from even further back, long ago, when he first met him at an exhibition of paintings by Carlos Enríquez (one of the first exhibitions he had ever attended) and he had presumed that Felito, given his attire and his ponytail, was a painter. Now they hugged each other. Felito was pleased to see him and he looked happy with his work as lead designer for the publishing house. Working alongside him, making his visit even more fortuitous, was Cecilia Valdés. He had always found Cecilia Valdés enormously attractive, from the moment they met at a cocktail party at the Bacardí Bar he had gone to with Rine Leal. He could not remember what the occasion was, but he had never forgotten Cecilia and her broken zipper, which revealed an intimate part of her brown flesh. Ever since that first encounter he considered Cecilia to be the epitome of Cuban mestiza beauty. He remembered still her aroma and the pain of her hard, passionate kisses, just as he remembered those breasts first viewed and tasted in the stairwell of her house, as well as the stupid reasons why their relationship never went anywhere. More than anything he remembered one of the last times he had seen Cecilia, on 23rd Street near the corner of N, across from the building where he was living then, telling him: “I heard you’re marrying Miriam Gómez,” one hand meaningfully on her hip and a foot impatiently tapping the sidewalk. “What taste is that, muchacho, marrying that skinny woman.”
At the National Publishing House the moment flooded back because it was Cecilia Valdés who was very thin and had cut her hair very short and had lost much of her cachet as a mulatta fatale. He greeted her enthusiastically and she responded coldly: evidently she had not forgiven him for marrying Miriam Gómez. Even so, he was happy to see her. For him, she was the paradigm of the modern Cuban woman, even before the Revolution liberated her, long before her current marriage, which he soon learned was practically in ruins, long before becoming nearly an easy woman, so unlike the difficult girl of other days, of other nights.
Also welcoming him to the publishing house were Edmundo Desnoes (whose real name was Juan Edmundo Pérez Desnoe and whom he always called Juan Pérez) and Ambrosio Fornet. They had become an inseparable duo, thinking and saying the same thing, working in the same place, and going out to the same spots together. He also saw Sarusky, who he seemed to run into everywhere since that ill-fated day at the Brussels airport, and who he often greeted with: “Sarusky, the one who got away from Hitler.” Luis Agüero was also there, he had no idea why, though soon he discovered that, like so many others, he was seeking the favors of Cecilia Valdés, the incarnation of one of Cuba’s everlasting myths: that of the indispensable mulatta.
