Map Drawn by a Spy, page 32
He went to the ministry to pick up the passports and got the fright of his life.
“Listen,” Arnold said, with the same intonation he had used on the fatal night which seemed like years ago, “there is a problem with your Belgian visa.”
He waited for Arnold to go on.
“Here are your passports with the Spanish visa, but the Belgians don’t want to give you one.”
He could have said he would arrange his entry into Belgium from Spain, but that might reveal an urgency to leave Cuba that could give away his plans. So he said, “Leave it, I’ll try to get Gustavo to fix it.”
“Well,” Arnold said, “if you can get it fixed, do it. Here are your passports. Have you already got the tickets?”
He said he had and thanked him.
“Well, have a good trip and good luck.”
He found Gustavo at home, which was a good sign. He explained what was up and Gustavo laughed: “Consider it done!” And he called the Belgian ambassador. He set up an interview, not for that day, unfortunately, but for the next, on Saturday morning.
“Gustavo,” he said, “there isn’t much time left. You should have tried to seem him today.”
“Ah, don’t you worry. Everything will get straightened out tomorrow morning. You’re leaving on Sunday, right? There’s plenty of time.”
He felt encouraged by Gustavo’s limitless enthusiasm, but it did not diminish his anxiety about the little time left to obtain the Belgian visa. If he could not get it, he would have to travel on the Spanish visa alone and try to go rescue (he had to smile when he used the word, but he was thinking in those dramatic terms) Miriam Gómez in Brussels – or in any case Miriam could meet him in Madrid. The essential thing was to leave Cuba as soon as possible.
He would have liked to say goodbye to Silvia in bed, but after the last time he felt some trepidation about 69 C Street. Besides, he had returned the key to Rine that very day in a gesture he considered a silent rebuke, but Rine had accepted it quite naturally. In reality Rine was a Cuban Candide: everything was always great, in the best of all possible worlds. He was convinced that Rine’s capacity for adapting to anything would ensure he never had any problems in Cuba. Had not Rine told him in a memorable conversation that whatever Cuba’s future might be, he would embrace it as good, since after Stalin came Khrushchev, since even Hitler improved over time? Of course their friendship did not end with the handing over of the key, which had been, in truth and for a good while, the key to happiness inside misery. But on some level he could not forgive Rine for his lack of tact, no matter that it was his own home he had entered (at his best Rine was careless). More than anything, Rine’s behavior showed an utter lack of refinement, and after the incident lack of refinement was what the apartment on C Street seemed to represent to him. That said, he knew himself well enough to know that what he would remember would be the caresses, the sex, the first time he went to bed with Silvia, the successive times they made love in that tiny, hot room miraculously cooled by the only window above the bed, where they had bathed so many times together – for him a form of communion – and where they had listened to music he wanted to hear over and over, music he wanted Silvia to keep but did not dare ask Rine for, not even to suggest trading it for one of his own records (which of course he had already sold). In the end the apartment was for him a sort of lasting monument to the love that was receding, a monument that would endure in his memory, if not in any other form.
After all, he thought, it was better for his sexual liaison with Silvia to be cut short, as indeed it was, rather than come to an end on its own; this way it remained inconclusive, not yet over, incapable of ending – in other words, endless.
Still, he continued meeting up with Silvia as he had every afternoon since the first time in September. Now, October already, she came to his apartment and they sat in the living room listening to Billie Holiday. This would be one of their last times together, since soon the buyer would come for the record player and he was leaving on Sunday. (For him there was no doubt he would make it out this time, all the omens pointed to success. Even the Magus had come to tell him he was leaving, she had consulted with the saints and all of them agreed: he would travel, he would travel.) The girls came into the living room and chatted with Silvia. Carolita took her green kerchief and started dancing, fluttering the kerchief in the air, waving her arms, moving to the rhythm of music that she alone could hear (they had stopped listening to Billie Holiday the moment the girls came in, so Silvia could talk with them), and intoning: “I am an enchanted princess.” This, in turn, enchanted (yes, that is the word) Silvia, who could not stop herself from getting up and going over to the dancing Carolita – or perhaps she waited until her improvised routine ended – taking her in her arms and giving her a hug and a kiss.
“Okay, I’ll give you my kerchief.” It was an act of great generosity, for giving away a piece of clothing that has meaning (and no doubt it did for Silvia: she always held it in her hands, wore it on her forehead, around her hair; perhaps it was – love’s ironies – a gift from the Hungarian) was not at all common in Cuba those days, when there was nothing in the stores and the only chance to buy a dress came, if it came, twice a year when you had to take whatever fabric was on offer, nearly always the most unappealing, nothing like the kerchief, which was unquestionably fine, certainly scarce.
Silvia stayed for a while that afternoon and then went home to change and return so they could go together to Lisandro and Marcia’s house, for the final – and the best – goodbye party his friends would give him. She got back just after dusk. She was wearing the same dress she had worn to the party given a few days before by the woman who cannot be named. He felt a sweet sadness for Silvia and went to the closet where the few things left from his mother were stored. There were, he recalled, a few pieces of fabric that no one had taken, though he did not know why. They would be for Silvia, but he thought he had better give them to her another day. When they went out, he took along the Billie Holiday record to listen to at Lisandro’s house; he did not know what impelled him to do so and later he regretted it. After waiting a long time they managed to get a taxi that would take them to the neighborhood of La Puntilla, on the other side of the Almendares River in Miramar, where Lisandro and Marcia lived. At the entrance to the neighborhood stood a guardhouse that had been there since the beginning of the Revolution, where all cars were stopped, since there was an anti-aircraft emplacement where La Puntilla juts out into the sea. He had to give the name of the house where they were going and they got through. He was happy not to have to walk the remaining blocks in the darkness, where he might have been stopped by a watchman or maybe shot at without warning; these things happened and he would not have been the first to get shot by a zealous or fearful guard. Fortunately, they arrived without incident.
Lisandro and Marcia lived in the same house he had known so well before he moved to Europe, with its one large room broken up into a sitting area, a library, and a dining room, and at the back the enormous enclosed balcony with large windows overlooking the mouth of the Almendares River, as if it were in Venice. He showed Silvia around, and when Marcia joined them (the maid had shown them in) and he saw Silvia’s empty hands reaching out to greet Marcia, he remembered: “The record!”
“We left it in the car,” Silvia said, after a moment’s thought.
He had paid the driver and he remembered handing the record to Silvia without a word, meaning to convey that she should hold on to it. He answered Marcia’s queries with only, “Too late now.” And looking at Silvia, he saw she understood that the loss of the record would leave a deep scar. The evening, the occasion, their very relationship would not be the same.
Lisandro’s appeared and his praise of Silvia’s beauty helped to dissipate their feeling of loss. Then the others began to arrive. Fornet even brought a check, which he handed over in his usual furtive manner. He was puzzled. “It’s for your collaboration in the anthology,” Fornet said. He looked at it and saw it was for a hundred pesos; he had not expected so much for his story, he had not in fact expected to receive anything, and he thanked Fornet. Still implying some mystery, the man said, “You’re welcome, viejito, you’re welcome.”
The party was much like the one Lisandro and Marcia gave him when he first left for Belgium, all that was missing was Miriam Gómez and the food. This time there was only a tiny bit to drink in the Otero household and no one said anything about eating. At one point he went into the kitchen to ask the maid/cook/driver for some water and when she opened the refrigerator he saw there was nothing inside except bottles of water. The party seemed sad for all these reasons, but also because he knew what they did not know: he might never in his life see these friends again, including Silvia, above all Silvia. But he did not let on and the night went by quickly amid stories and jokes and everyone’s plans to visit him in Europe soon – everyone, that is, except Silvia. Of all of them not one would carry through on those plans, not even Lisandro, who was best positioned from a bureaucratic point of view to make an overseas trip. There was, yes, the mercy of time. Time goes fast, and the party was over a bit after midnight, at which point he left, accompanied by Sarusky, who as on other occasions gave Silvia a ride home. But this time was the last, he hoped and he despaired.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, after reading the prayer his aunt Felisa had found for him, he went to Gustavo’s house so they could go together to the Belgian Embassy. Suárez was not available to drive them, so they took a shared taxi on the corner of Avenue of the Presidents and 17th Street and headed for Miramar.
Not allowed into the embassy portion as on the previous occasion, they entered the consulate. After making them wait a few minutes, the Belgian ambassador came in. His greeting was rather cold: he must have known that neither he nor Gustavo had any connection with the Cuban Embassy in Brussels anymore, or maybe he had other reasons. Gustavo explained what was up, more or less, that he was going back to Europe, this time with a regular passport, and he needed a visa for Belgium. With no hesitation, the Belgian functionary said it would be impossible since he had no power to automatically grant visas; he would have to make an application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brussels and await their response, which would take about two weeks. His tone of voice implied that the visa would not be granted. Instantly, he felt everything fall apart. Even though he had an alternative, he had been counting on the Belgian visa to get out of the country. He might be able to leave with only the Spanish one, but suppose the ministry found out before he got on the plane?
A desperate solution occurred to him and he spoke up: “Isn’t there another type of visa?”
Reluctantly, the ambassador admitted, “Well, a transit visa allows the holder to remain a minimum time in Belgium, but…”
“That’ll do for me!”
Gustavo stepped in: “My friend is not going to be in Brussels for long, just enough time to collect his things and go to Spain.”
The official reluctantly agreed to give him a transit visa. Everything was fixed. The only obstacle remaining was the airport security police – and what an obstacle!
In the afternoon Pablo Armando called to make sure he remembered the event that night at the Writers Union, and Alberto Mora called to remind him they were going to see Carlos Rafael Rodríguez that night to thank him for his efforts and to say goodbye. He explained to Alberto that he had a cocktail party to attend at UNEAC. Alberto insisted he had to thank Carlos Rafael and say goodbye. They reached an agreement: Alberto would pick him up at the Writers Union halfway through the party, a good compromise because, on the one hand, the party might turn out to be as boring as other UNEAC events (unlike the last time, Lido would not be there to help him get through the evening) and, on the other, government functionaries were in the habit of receiving visitors late at night. Alberto would pick him up at the Writers Union at ten o’clock.
The reception, celebrating the annual UNEAC literary contest, was precisely as boring as he had feared. The only surprise was that Pablo Armando had too much to drink and began to talk about the status of poetry “in the current situation” (those were his words), a monologue that soon went from friendly chat to cruel invective. Pablo Armando spoke ill of Guillén’s poetry with Guillén standing only a few imbibing bodies away. He was behaving like Harold Gramatges, who in his heyday (long over) was capable of chatting with one person and trashing the friend next to him. But Pablo Armando was no master of this art, and he worried he would go too far. (Once or twice he alluded to Minrex, giving the word a derisive pronunciation.) So he spent practically the entire evening running herd on Pablo Armando, to prevent him from going inside the mansion where his monologue might have turned into a dangerous dialogue with any of the UNEAC staff (and there were many) or the inevitable agents from Security (doubtlessly no fewer) rubbing elbows on that apparently innocuous occasion.
That is why he could not really focus on Captain Juan Nuiry, whom Juan Arcocha used to speak so well of and about whom he was curious after the suffering he apparently caused Elsa and the mirth her distress brought out in Silvia. When they were introduced, he could tell Nuiry was also interested in speaking with him.
Alberto finally arrived to pick him up, and he left Pablo Armando to his own devices, although he asked Miriam Acevedo not to let him drink any more and to make sure he watched what he was saying – or was about to say, which could be worse. Because he was busy with Miriam he missed the exchange between Alberto Mora and Juan Nuiry, both of whom were astonished to find themselves, two evidently reluctant militants of the regime, hanging around with the writers of Revolutionary Cuba in the literary halls of the Writers Union. Despite any misgivings about the regime, he could see these two still shared the belief deep in the heart of all patriots that this writing stuff only amounted to frivolous faggotry, which is how a police captain in the time of President Carlos Prío Socarrás had characterized such activities and the label stuck. Just because the Revolution took writers in (and over) did not mean that literature wasn’t a dangerous frivolity. Thus the smile that Alberto and Nuiry exchanged when they found themselves face-to-face. He would have to ask Alberto about him, but he would not learn much.
And, of course, he did not learn much. As Alberto’s Volkswagen sped toward the old Diario de la Marina building, now the mysterious ministry run by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, there was not much opportunity for conversation, since Alberto was truly worried about the impression that he, his passenger, would make on the man they were about to meet.
The building was virtually impenetrable. They had to cross several checkpoints (some of them bureaucratic, with tables or desks) until they reached the waiting room outside the sancta sanctorum. Carlos Rafael received them right away. He was pleased to meet the traveler whom he had met on so many different occasions, going back to 1957 in the underground against Batista, on up to the present when Carlos Rafael was an éminence rose (obviously gray was not his color) of the revolutionary government.
“So you’re leaving us?” Carlos Rafael began, and he used the short form of his name, which he usually did not care for, though in this case he didn’t really mind.
“But not for long, Carlos.”
He too used the short form of his name, which not everybody did; after all, he was following suit, and in any case Carlos Rafael had known his father for many years at the old newspaper Hoy, where both of them were writers.
“So, where are you going?”
“First to Brussels to pick up my wife, then to Spain, where my book is coming out soon.”
“Ah, yes, your novel that won the prize.”
“What’s it about?” Alberto jumped in, trying to soften a conversation that from the start seemed to veer toward dangerous waters for reasons he could not say.
“I’m sure it’s very interesting,” Carlos Rafael said, “and besides it will be very useful for the country. At least the title is promising.” And Carlos Rafael repeated the title, which in fact he had been planning for a while to switch for an earlier one (or perhaps another like it). He thought about that and at the same time tried not to let it show on his face, all the while knowing his thoughts always showed through.
“That’s good,” Alberto said.
“Well,” said Carlos Rafael, “are you writing anything now?”
“No,” he lied, “I haven’t had time. That is, any free time I’ve spent reading.”
“And making love,” Alberto said, laughing, hoping Carlos Rafael would be amused at the mention of such a typically Cuban activity. But Carlos Rafael did not laugh, since love was the Cuban pastime of another era. Now it required an adjective and had to be dedicated either to the Fatherland or to the Revolution, each with a capital letter. Wasn’t the daily life of the Revolution filled with examples of good revolutionaries who put their duty to the Revolution and the Fatherland far ahead of conjugal and even filial love?
Carlos Rafael had sufficient tact to say:
“I’m sure you’ll find more time now. In Europe, I mean. Where are you going to live, Paris?”
“No, first I have to go to Barcelona, where my book is coming out. Then I have to find a place where I can live cheaply.”
