Map Drawn by a Spy, page 33
“Well,” said Carlos Rafael, “it doesn’t matter where, what counts is that you not forget your roots.”
He ought to have said, “Never,” but he just smiled his acquiescence.
“What do you make of the national panorama?” Carlos Rafael asked.
“Very interesting,” was all he said.
“The work of the Revolution,” began Alberto, but Carlos Rafael interrupted him:
“No, not that. We talk about that every day. I mean the cultural panorama. After so many years away…”
“Three,” he filled in.
“Has it been three years already? Time flies! It seems like the Cultural Congress was just yesterday.”
“That was four years ago,” he said.
“So what do you think of the Union?”
“Good, very good. I’ve just come from there.”
“I know.”
“I had to pull him away from a reception,” Alberto said.
“They keep inviting me, but I have no time for that sort of thing,” Carlos Rafael said. “I don’t have time for anything. Even so, I try to stay on top of what’s being written. Have you read anything new that’s worthwhile? Cuban, I mean.”
“Not really. Although it seems Carpentier is having great success, even officially.”
“Yes, his Explosion in a Cathedral is now required reading for the Rebel Army.”
He was going to add: To the eternal sorrow of Guillén, who gets compared to him. And not favorably, it seems. But he remembered the old and close friendship between Guillén and Carlos Rafael, and said nothing.
“I gather Raúl liked it a lot,” Alberto said.
“Yes, that’s true. Although, just among us, I’m worried about the book he’s writing now.”
“El año ’59?” he asked.
“Yes, don’t quote me, but the first few chapters they published took me aback. More than that, I found them really worrying. I don’t think Carpentier really understands the struggle against Batista and the first days of the Revolution.”
“Well,” said Alberto, “he wasn’t here during the underground.”
“No,” said Carlos Rafael, “and he doesn’t seem to know much about the first period after the Revolution took power. I don’t want to jump the gun, but there may be problems with the book as a whole. Of course we don’t want a Doctor Zhivago, and we have to ensure the book doesn’t become one, without of course censoring in advance. In any case, that’s just my impression.”
He thought: If Carpentier finds out, he’ll die of fright. A silence fell when no one spoke. It lasted longer than half a minute. He looked at his watch and said:
“Well, Carlos, we don’t want to steal any more of your time. I only came to thank you for what you have done for me.”
“No need to. Now we’ve got to see what you can do for yourself.”
He did not understand what Carlos Rafael meant, then Alberto intervened:
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Ah, that’s true, you’re going to Europe too. When?”
“Well,” said Alberto, “I hope soon. That’s in Dorticós’s hands now.”
“I’m going to give him a little nudge.”
“That would help. Thank you.”
The two of them stood up. Carlos Rafael offered his hand and he took it.
“See you later. Have a good trip.”
“See you later. Thank you.”
They departed down hallways made of plywood partitions. He felt very relieved. They said nothing until they were in the street, but Alberto was smiling.
They returned to the Union, more than anything because Alberto wanted a drink. When they arrived, however, only a few people remained – Pablo Armando and Miriam Acevedo and Arrufat and Virgilio had all disappeared – and there was nothing left to drink. After a few minutes, Alberto took him home. That night he barely slept, thinking about what the following day would bring – his last day in Cuba, if all went well.
In the morning he went early to say goodbye to Carmela, who was still insisting Miriam should spend some time in Cuba so she could see her. This time he did not contradict her, saying that maybe they would come together soon, leaving her with that hope. Miriam’s brother Richard behaved like an adult this time, maybe because he was thinking they would not see each other again – or maybe because his growth spurt was internal as well as in height.
He returned home to pack his bags well in advance, and more than anything to ask Hildelisa to take care of the girls’ things. He was unable to stop her from putting the pieces of fabric he had planned to give to Silvia into the big suitcase. Later on, he took them out when no one was looking, but upon opening the suitcase in Brussels he found two of the pieces inside: for sure Hildelisa had packed them up again. Or maybe it had been his grandmother, who always kept a vigilant eye on everything that occurred in the apartment.
Mamá spent the entire day in her tiny room, without saying a word, and it pained him to know she had shut herself away because her feelings were overwhelming. He was certain she knew she would never see the girls again.
Close to noon, he heard an insistent car horn and peered over the balcony. Gustavo Arcos was calling to him, leaning his head out a car window. He went down and saw that someone he knew, but could not identify, was behind the wheel.
“I came to say goodbye,” Gustavo said. “I’m headed for the beach now.”
“I was going to drop over to bid you and Doña Rosina farewell.”
“I’ll tell her for you.” Then turning toward his driver, he said, “You know Paco Chabarry, right?”
It was Francisco Chabarry, once very influential at Minrex and an intimate longtime friend of Gustavo’s. He had never liked him at all, not before and not now.
“Yes, how are you?”
“What’s up, chico.”
“How’s everything going?” Gustavo asked.
“Just fine. The thing’s tonight at ten. Now it seems we really are going.”
“Well, have a good trip and take care.”
“Thank you. We’ll see you in Europe.”
“Ha, ha. I hope so,” Gustavo said, transforming his laugh into a smile.
He would have liked to speak with Gustavo alone, to insist once more he had to leave Cuba, to make him see sense, but in that moment it was impossible. He wished the other times he had spoken to him had had more effect.
In the afternoon, the apartment filled up. His uncle Niño and Fina came early, as did Silvia, and Héctor and Teresa from next door. Many of his friends did not show up: some did not know today was the day, others may have forgotten, and he was relieved not to have a very large crew accompanying him to the airport like the last time. Franqui would pick him up; he did not know whether Harold would come. He had not seen much of him lately, and given his treatment of Walterio at the Casa de las Américas event, it was just as well.
The girls ate their last meal prepared by Hildelisa. He could not eat and was glad to have his nerves as an excuse. Toward dusk the canary began to sing and that reminded him. He brought Silvia over to the cage and told her it was hers, that it had belonged to his mother, but now he was giving it to her to remember him by. She said she would come for it later, although he never found out if she did. There, in the canary’s corner, he handed her the check Fornet had given him, duly endorsed. He had put it in a white envelope.
“What the hell is this?” Silvia said, pulling it out of its envelope.
He wished she had waited to get home before taking it out, when no one was present and there was no chance she would refuse it.
She looked at the check, front and back.
“It’s for you,” he said.
“Is this an advance payment? No, more like a late one.”
He smiled.
“I want you to buy something you like.”
“What the hell could I buy? Don’t you know the stores are empty?”
“Well, use it as best you can.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Do me the favor of accepting it. As you can see, it’s not payment for anything. It’s very little for all I owe you. Even in the worst sense it’s lousy payment. I’m not going to spend it. Who better than you to have it?”
“A hundred pesos and a canary, when I wanted a short, dark man who smokes cigars.”
She made a joke of it and he was pleased: she had accepted it.
Franqui arrived with his driver. Elsa came too in her own car. He had decided – also on Franqui’s advice – not to commit the mistake of turning up early at the airport like last time. According to Franqui that gave Security extra time to act. But he knew that if Security (or whoever it was) wished to keep him from leaving Cuba, they would stop him even if he turned up five minutes before departure. In the end, they decided to go neither very early nor very late.
Like on the other occasion, his father disappeared when it was time to say goodbye: he hated goodbyes. Mamá, his grandmother, came out of her room to kiss her great-grandchildren and her grandchild.
“Oh! My son, I’m so happy you can go at last! I know I won’t ever see you again but it’s better for you this way, and what’s good for you is better for me.”
Hildelisa hugged him, crying silently. Finally, they departed, but not without him first giving Héctor Pedreira a firm handshake. Downstairs there was some confusion at the cars, and he decided to go with Silvia and Elsa. His daughters went with Niño and Fina; Franqui and Margot went in their own car with their driver. At the last moment Pablo Armando, whom he had not laid eyes on since his drunken scene at the Writers Union, turned up. He got into Franqui’s car.
They arrived at the airport and he went alone into the room for all passengers who were not officials – the one called, with a mixed metaphor, “the fishbowl for worms,” meaning it was the glassed-in room for passengers leaving as exiles. Since he was going as a secret exile, he would later make his way to the protocol lounge used by the Foreign Ministry for its diplomats and by the other state bodies for guests in Cuba.
More than anything in the world, he feared the moment when he would have to present his exit permit to the official on duty, who this time (nothing new) had the face and mannerisms of a bulldog. The policeman took his documents and examined them suspiciously, as if he figured they must be false. He studied them, studied them again, and yet again.
“Where are the other passengers?”
Like the other functionaries, this one had not honored him with the title of compañero or its opposite, ciudadano.
“They’re those two girls outside,” he said, and he pointed to the hallway where Anita and Carolita stood with Niño and Fina.
“Ah, okay.”
The policeman scrutinized the exit permits once more, and finally stamped and returned them. He thanked him, but the man did not respond: it was obvious he hated people who left Cuba, no matter under what circumstances. He collected his documents and returned to get his attaché case and traveling bag where he had left them. He did not notice then, but a box of cigars was missing; a packet of margaritas Felito Ayón had given him after searching for it across half of Havana. By the time he discovered the theft upon arriving in Madrid, he was too overwhelmed, practically stupefied, to worry about it. He never knew who stole them.
Now, instead of going to the protocol lounge, he went into the bar and sat next to Silvia. Earlier, before getting out of Elsa’s car, he had noticed almost against his will that Silvia’s eyes had a telltale shine; now she was near tears. At that moment he first became aware that they were blasting a speech by Fidel Castro over the loudspeakers. It was not a repeat of the other day, rather a new one, as interminable as the previous, to mark yet another anniversary of the creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Without understanding a word, he listened to the speech as music, an appropriate soundtrack for his departure. He asked for a rum and began to drink. He knew he had to, so as to avoid thinking about the policeman who would certainly arrest him as he stepped out, one sent expressly by Barbaroja Piñeiro. Nor did he want to think about Silvia, who he could see was now crying silently.
Franqui was talking about something he paid no attention to, although he nodded as he sipped his rum with clear Coca-Cola. Not even the goodbye took away the rum’s taste of gasoline, undiminished by the insipid mixer. Across from him, Silvia was also having a rum cocktail with clear Coca-Cola and now he looked at her face. The timeless smile formed by her perfectly Egyptian lips was gone, as was the last of her restraint, and tears were smearing the eyeliner she had painted on her lower lids. He picked up and held her hand, but there was nothing he could do to keep her from weeping. Everything had already been said, and although in her posture there was the same pleading she had been directing at him for several nights – “Don’t go, please!” – for once she had nothing to say, and he had nothing to add. All they could do was wait.
Time took its time: on the one hand he wanted it to accelerate so he could finally head out to the tarmac, and on the other hand he wanted to delay the moment when he would have to say goodbye to Silvia forever. As always, fate knocked and the moment arrived: it was time for the protocol lounge – he had the vague sense he owed that privilege to Franqui, though maybe it was for anyone leaving Cuba as a friend – and he got ready to depart. He did not kiss Silvia and she did not lean over for him to kiss her, rather she sobbed, only once, a loud, strangled sob. He shook Elsa’s hand and said goodbye to Niño and Fina; he hugged Pablo Armando and was careful to make it appear casual. His papers said he would return and there was no reason to show the enemy that would not be the case. He heard once more the thin, spineless, monotonous voice of Fidel Castro during the pauses between goodbyes, and he and his daughters entered the protocol lounge at last, accompanied by Franqui. Inside, there was no one he knew and again he was pleased: nothing like last time’s agglomeration of friends. A few moments more, and the flight was announced with a shout, since all the loudspeakers were occupied by Fidel Castro’s speech. He shook Franqui’s hand, passed his traveling bag to Anita, and with his free hand took Carolita by the hand.
Leaving the air-conditioned lounge for the tarmac, a warm haze enveloped him, too warm for an October night. The weather was perfect and he could see the stars above. He walked quickly to the airplane, and once inside, the stewardess showed him where he had to sit, across from a very elderly couple who by their threadbare clothing and yearning expressions he could see were on their way not to a foreign airport but into exile. “Like me,” he dared to hope, though he had sworn to himself he would not even think about his destiny, would not allow himself the least taste of it until the plane was far from Cuba.
It seemed they had been on the runway for hours waiting to take off, although in reality it was only a few minutes. All the while he expected his enemies to come for him. He knew of cases where travelers – that is, exiles – had been taken off the plane and their seats given to functionaries making a last-minute voyage. But the only thing that happened was the stewardess going up and down the aisle, making sure everyone’s seat belt was fastened. Then the plane began to move, rolling slowly, then stopping, racing its engines, and finally accelerating faster and faster. They took off.
He kept track of the time on his watch. He knew that four hours into the flight they would reach the point of no return, when no one could make the plane go back to Cuba. He waited patiently, looking at his daughters sleeping beside him, feeling the effect of the alcohol as it wore off bit by bit. He did not think about either Silvia or Miriam Gómez or the relatives he was leaving behind or the friends inside or outside: he simply waited. When the moment arrived, that point of no return he knew about from the movies, he opened his attaché case and looked underneath the handful of photographs and blank sheets of paper for his handwritten notes; he unfolded them and began to read what he had written: “Cabrera Infante usually sat next to the driver out of some shallow democratic sentiment. But that afternoon, on the 1st of June 1965, Jacqueline Lewy, the secretary, had asked him to drop her near her house and he decided to sit in the back with her. That saved his life.”
PERSONALITIES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
ACEVEDO, MIRIAM (1928-2013)
Actress once married to Oscar Hurtado who left Cuba in 1968 for Italy under a work permit and did not return. She died in exile in Rome.
AGÜERO, LUIS (1937)
Writer and film critic, husband of Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s sister-in-law Sara Calvo. He lives in Miami.
ALONSO, ALBERTO (1917-2007)
Dancer and choreographer. He died in exile.
ALONSO, LUIS RICARDO (1929-2015)
Writer and Cuba’s ambassador in London in the 1960s. Born in Asturias of a Spanish father and a Cuban mother. In 1965 he went into exile in the United States.
ALONSO, MARITZA
Spaniard resident in Cuba. Artists’ agent and organizer of cultural events, she represented Sara Montiel, among others. She invited Guillermo Cabrera Infante to give a series of lectures at the Fine Arts Palace, which were published as Arcadia todas las noches.
ÁLVAREZ RÍOS, RENÉ
University professor.
ANDREU, OLGA (1930-1988)
Old friend of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and first wife of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. She committed suicide.
ARCOCHA, JUAN (1927-2010)
Writer, journalist, and friend of Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Fluent in French and Russian, he served as interpreter for Fidel Castro on many occasions. In 1971 he went into exile, and in 2010 he died in Paris.
ARCOS, GUSTAVO (1926-2006)
Cuba’s ambassador in Brussels and veteran of the attack on the Moncada Barracks. He was jailed in 1966 and died in Cuba.
ARENAL, HUMBERTO (1926-2012)
Writer and theater director who since 1948 lived in New York and visited Cuba regularly. After the Revolution, he returned to Cuba at Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s urging and remained there for the rest of his life.
ARRUFAT, ANTÓN (1935)
Writer and dramaturge long sidelined for being a homosexual. He lives in Cuba.
