I Was Never the First Lady

by Wendy Guerra

  My mother was always the veiled queen of this small circle of apprentices. She enjoyed and suffered from the halo conferred on her because she couldn’t—she wasn’t able to (or didn’t want to)—publish her poetry. In the 1970s, she submitted an original manuscript to one of Cuba’s few publishing houses, but they never responded. That’s as far as her efforts went. It wasn’t just censorship. My mother couldn’t have published anywhere. She was a brilliant long-distance thinker. She brought together a group of artists who are now part of the Cuban intelligentsia active inside and outside Cuba. My house was a meeting place for many poets, the axis of debates, headaches, parties, arguments, tears, goodbyes, and disappointments for those who weren’t accepted as part of the diversity of opinions at that time.

  If a friend fell from grace, my mother would rescue them. She catalogued books to protect them; this way the volumes with the homemade dust jackets eventually reached more than three hundred readers. And since the end of many of those friendships almost always came about because the friends emigrated, we kept the books safe.

  When I finally read them, my mother wasn’t with me anymore. She’d fired everyone and left without saying goodbye to anyone. Little by little she’d been trying to answer these questions: What could justify censorship—a book’s author or its contents? Can certain authors and titles be eliminated in Cuba for an entire lifetime?

  My mother’s “nest” has been resettled; the same dark place now hides her treasure box. She pulls seven carefully covered books from her purse and continues to ponder matters of trust. It’s fear that confuses her and makes everything difficult.

  When I met Eliseo Diego, I was eight years old, and I asked my mother: “Mami, does he write ‘covered’ books?”

  “No, he writes poems to recite from memory,” she said, “but he belongs to the generation of ‘covered’ books.” (His son, Eliseo Alberto Diego, “Lichi,” was an heir to the Orígenes group, and he wrote “covered” books too.)

  Right now, we’re stripping the books of their homemade dust jackets.

  I bring my mother out to the porch. I cover her because the sea air is treacherous. I help her settle in the wooden rocking chair she’s taken over these days. I want her to see our ritual from a front-row seat. Our requests, our prayers, are fulfilled at last.

  Lujo and I light a pyre in the garden overlooking the Malecón. Then we take the coverings, the gags, the masks, the chastity belts, from the books, peeling off their fears, throwing aside the jackets so the fire can devour them. Some jackets have pictures of martyrs; others, the faces of Russian models; the most recent, ads and posters for American movies.

  The fire makes us delirious. My mother doesn’t quite know why, but she claps when she sees the flames.

  Lujo cries and I laugh. I don’t want to forget this moment. This is freedom by fire, my little historical revenge. The time has come to open these treasures, to reveal what they are and let them go out into the dense air of the Havana Malecón. A golden light illuminates the names and surnames.

  Dear authors: I give you Havana in full color.

  I wonder when they’ll be allowed through customs, or when they’re going to be published in Cuba once and for all. Not one more hidden book, not one more silenced word. That is my greatest wish as a citizen.

  My library is empty, and now I have to save my mother. Before she completely loses her memory, let me unveil the original covers. I give her the pleasure of seeing them in all their splendor, even if she doesn’t understand anything, even if it’s too late for her. How wonderful to look at them together before they go into the fire! I read exile classics just like I read the classics still here but dying.

  No question about it. A good book is meant to be published for its natural audience, in its homeland, with the taste of its origins, the smell and feel of how it was originally intended. Books are meant to be read. Run your finger over their bare covers and choose the command for those of us who want to listen and be heard freely.

  Down with homemade dust jackets!

  My mother claps. Lujo keeps crying. I take photos to capture the moment. My new artwork.

  Monologue with the TV

  There’s an interview with Fidel, maybe by an Argentine journalist on TV. It was not conducted in Cuba. I try, a little late, to write down the things Mami is saying in response to Fidel from her chair.

  FIDEL: Yes, it seemed like a triumph of the Revolution, but everything still had to be organized.

  MAMI: We were all with you. I swear by my daughter, Nadia, whom I haven’t seen in twenty years.

  JOURNALIST: The overthrow of that regime brought on a new government led by people who were quite inexperienced.

  FIDEL: So what? Tell me, so what? Find me a better model, and I swear to you I’d do my best; I’d start fighting all over again for another fifty years for that new model.

  MAMI: That model should be about opening up to the world. I told you they were cheating you. That no one can come to or leave Cuba if they don’t have permission. I told you this was going to drive you crazy, because people need to feel they can come and go, even if they have nowhere to go or the means to pay for it. Oh, Fidel! This is the way it is, but you have to travel and see a bit of the world without so many bodyguards, my friend.

  JOURNALIST: How do you imagine the future of Cuba, when Castro isn’t center stage?

  FIDEL: Many people ask that question. I ask myself too.

  MAMI: You have to leave with everything taken care of, because if you don’t, who knows who will crawl through the window, and the Americans, who only want to screw Cuba, will soon be here again. Hurry, my friend, you’re not a young man anymore. Hurry up. I’ve been warning you for twenty years, and you’re still infatuated, like a little boy with an ice cream cone you won’t share that just melts in your hand. Hurry up, Fidel. We’re with you.

  JOURNALIST: So then?

  FIDEL: The mistake is to believe Castro is everything, because you say: Castro does this . . . Castro does that. For example, I can give myself credit, though I’m a little embarrassed—I mean, I don’t want to exalt personal things, far from it. Let’s look at the idea of how to solve the Batista problem when the coup took place on March 10th. We didn’t have a penny or any weapons, and there was a tremendous force confronting us. Moreover, nobody was paying much attention to us because the overthrown government had resources and the support of many army officers. We decided that, despite everything, the problem could be dealt with. But there’s not much merit when luck plays such an oversized role. Because you can ask me: “Why are you here?” And I’ll say it’s a question of chance, among other things. But there are ideas. This problem was very difficult, and there were also great personal risks, but it could be solved.

  MAMI: Listen to what I’m going to tell you. You’re everything because you and I know we wanted it that way. But now we have to pass the baton to the young, because you’re not eternal. I’m going to have a fit because you’re not listening to me. You don’t listen to me . . . Girl, girl, turn off the TV because I’m going to have a breakdown—and don’t turn it on again until Fidel calls me. Until he comes to tell me what’s new, don’t turn it on! He’s being deceived. Deceived. No one has the nerve to tell him what he needs to hear. If Celia were alive, she would’ve told him clearly. If he didn’t lose touch with reality and the people before, it was because she kept him current on everything. Without deifying him. She talked truth to power.

  “Mami, calm down.”

  “Turn off that thing and bring me the radio; he doesn’t talk like that on the radio.”

  I turn off the TV and realize she is crying very quietly into one of Lujo’s handkerchiefs. I turn on the National Radio newscast for her. I stay with her for a while. I run my hand through her hair.

  “Mami, who am I?”

  “My sister.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “In Havana.”

  “And where are you now?”

  “In limbo. Let
me cry in peace for a while, by myself, to see if I can forget this too.”

  She falls asleep on the rocking chair. When Lujo comes home, it is after nine o’clock. I read the notes I took of what she said because I don’t want to forget. Lujo begins to cry too.

  “If they loved this so much, how could they walk away and leave us alone?” I ask.

  “You’ll understand eventually, Nadia. For you, it starts now. Your mom once spoke to Fidel at the house on Once Street. But no one knows what they talked about because she wasn’t one to divulge that kind of thing. Apparently it was something interesting, because she left energized enough to want to take on the world. They assigned her to the station, and that’s where her life in radio began. That’s why it took her so long to leave, after art school . . . Things changed a lot after Celia died. People no longer ran into Fidel on the street, like before.”

  “Do you know what they talked about, or don’t you want to tell me?”

  “That conversation was in the stolen novel. If you didn’t find anything among the documents in the box, forget it. She never told anyone. Maybe it’s still in that lost head of hers. Nadia, at this point it’s better not to know anything about the past. Live now—this is your moment. I’m going to bed. I’m taking your mother to bed. Turn off the radio.”

  Pain and Forgiveness

  I went to the hotel, and the guard asked, like they always did, where I was going.

  “I’m going to meet a friend.”

  The guard replied, “A friend?”

  Luckily, Paolo B. was already at the hotel door. It’s the site of so many sins, secrets, clean and dirty businesses.

  “This hotel is suspicious of me.”

  Paolo hugged me and decided to kiss me on the forehead. We went down to the restaurant by the pool. We sat facing each other. Paolo was different without a coat, unshaven. He’d taken off his helmet and shield and had come unarmed. Now he was indeed Cuban; he spoke like us, gestured like us, touched my skin, widened his eyes, made faces as he talked. What a transformation.

  “Three words: you’re my daughter. These are the papers. You’re my daughter. We can’t see each other any other way.”

  I looked at him uncertainly. My father’s face was coming into my head—I couldn’t help it. I reviewed the papers, clipped together, along with other documents from an Italian court. I don’t understand Italian. I could think only of the sequence of our lovemaking. I surrendered to Paolo, but there was no use crying here, since the collapse was entirely mine, and no one else needed to take part in my disaster—another disaster; it seems I can handle more after all. The papers lay in front of me.

  We were waiting for something.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Sign below. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. I don’t have any children—that is, I have no other children.”

  I signed the papers without pause, not looking at him. He tried to make a sort of speech, but I wasn’t listening. He talked about compensation as if money were the answer. I don’t know what he could compensate me for. This mess was coming from somewhere else. A parade of past grudges resolved themselves.

  I decided to look at him. I hadn’t heard his voice in a long time. I tried to see his features in mine. He said his family was from Pinar del Río, that his father owned tobacco fields, that he looked a lot like his mother . . . Now a new grandmother, now a new house . . .

  “What nonsense, Nadia! How did I not realize you’re just like my mother?”

  I took a deep breath. If I paid attention, I’d start to vomit.

  A tour guide went by talking like an automaton, telling the story of the Hotel Nacional. While Paolo B. was experiencing a catharsis in front of me, I had closed off. It was as if I’d just turned off the sound and muted Paolo.

  Tourist guide: “Located on the coastal overhang of Punta Brava, on the Taganana hill almost at the end of the San Lázaro cove, this was a common site for pirate landings. Cuba’s Hotel Nacional has stood here since December 30th, 1930, the most important hotel in the Greater Caribbean. This hill we’re on was the famous Santa Clara sugar plantation in the mid-nineteenth century. The Ordóñez cannon, one of the biggest of its time, is still in the hotel gardens. Near Punta Brava, the councilman Don Luis Aguiar overcame the British during their siege and assault on Havana . . .”

  It was pathetic to see him cry over me, the girl, over me, the lover. It seemed ridiculous to me that this man should be my father and that I’d put on that gymnastics sex show in his living room, far from this tangible, crude, Cuban reality of mine.

  I was mired in the disaster, and worst of all, I knew I’d never recover from it. The past tugged on my hair, yanked me out of myself. I stopped listening to Paolo again and observed the visitors and mobsters in the hotel.

  Tourist guide: “Among its first illustrious visitors were celebrities from the worlds of art and literature, such as Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Keaton, José Mojica, Jorge Negrete, Agustín Lara, Tyrone Power, Rómulo Gallegos, Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, and the famous Ernest Hemingway, who donated a stuffed blue marlin for our bar, Sirena . . .”

  I don’t want any more information about the past. The past seems to bring only bad news. The present is my business. The past is stuck on these hippies and urban guerrillas who made love to each other as an offensive against those of us who came later. I kissed Paolo B. on the cheek and left the room. In my new role as a grown-up orphan, I couldn’t bear to hear him anymore. He asked for forgiveness, please. This seemed like a song by Benny Moré.

  Sorry, sorry, sweet darling,

  sorry for abandoning you.

  I was thinking of everything I wanted to say, but I didn’t have the strength to attend to my mother, sing truths to Paolo, overcome the death of my father, and accept Paolo and his family in Pinar del Río, never mind doing my work. I chose my battles. I had to swallow that bitter pill. It was the end—no more bad news. I’d hit rock bottom. Paolo had taken ownership of some land in Pinar del Río, something related to the expropriation of some farmland. He wanted me to find out about this, now that I was his daughter. I took a deep breath.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not time. Let me try to understand.”

  I ran across the garden. Paolo quickened his pace to catch up with me. Everything was bad except Havana. The beauty of the oceanfront garden seemed to contradict me. The sea surrounds us, saves and drowns us. It’s what makes us sleep with the same people, dream about them, give birth to them, hate them . . . and love them, despite the sea and despite them. I wanted to say to him: “You people are never going to pay for what you did to us. You’re so irresponsible.” We hugged at the hotel door. I didn’t say anything. I remembered I’d offered to make love to him in Paris, using the same seduction my mother had when they were lovers.

  “I forgive you because I forgive myself, but don’t talk about the past anymore. I’m here and that’s enough. That’s enough.”

  Paolo asked if he could see my mother, that he’d come for four days and still had to visit Pinar del Río. I told him tomorrow, with friends, at lunchtime. Today wasn’t a good day anymore.

  As I left the hotel, the guard smirked. “A friend, eh? What kind of little friend is that?”

  There were no answers, there aren’t always answers, no coherent responses to the simplest things. I went down the little hill on the Hotel Nacional grounds and crossed the tennis courts as the security guards tipped each other off when I passed. I skirted the fenced pool. I heard guests splashing about in their socialist tropics.

  I reached the street at the violet hour, my body and my gray dress colored a purplish blue. There wasn’t much left of the afternoon, just a moment. I crossed to the Malecón and wondered why they don’t sell pizzas at La Piragua, why they don’t fix the little houses eaten away by salt. Why? Why? Why this sea of flags if no one can save us? Has anyone seen us? Does anyone see us?

  NOTE

  No one home. I tremble with fear. I keep writing
in my diary.

  Pure Theater

  Hello, Nadia, little Nadia. Anybody here?”

  “You scared me. I didn’t see anyone and I thought . . . Mami can’t be left alone. I just got here. I have to tell you something. It’s very—”

  “You’re crying?” Lujo asked. “Your mother wasn’t lost. Stop being so melodramatic. Look how beautiful I’ve dressed her to go out. They’re your clothes, but not really. What’s wrong? You don’t like it? You can tell me your story later—mine first. I went out with your mother. We went to the theater. The Amadeo Roldán is very nicely restored; I have so many memories of that auditorium. Not this one (pointing at Mami), because she doesn’t even remember how to sit down anymore. (She’s happier this way, overall, given what she has to remember.) We went to see Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica. It was a spectacular concert. I felt such nostalgia for the Soviets, especially for those chubby Baltic women, who dress so much better now, with bouquets in their hands. They played pieces by Cherubini, something rabidly contemporary. (I thought of you, trying to conjure you, but you postmodernists have more cultural gaps than us, the elders.) They also played something by Kancheli, Shostakovich, and closed with the ‘Suite Punta del Este’ by Piazzolla. The encore was by Piazzolla too and then something from the soundtrack of a spaghetti western—I think it was A Fistful of Dollars. They had fun, the musicians. They were having a great time—you could tell. The public behaved like never before; I didn’t have to scold anyone for talking. We were hypnotized. The only sour note was the chlorine, or rather the lack of chlorine. The restrooms in the Amadeo stink like a zoo in summer. What would Roldán say?”

  “I’m glad you took Mami with you.”

  “Let me finish the story before you tell me your problem. We started clapping and yelling, ‘Bravo! Viva!’ There was a standing ovation, people threw flowers, you know, all that stuff we do here to honor our guests. In the midst of the euphoria there was a brief silence, and suddenly your mother shouts, ‘Long live Fidel!’ I can’t describe the effect that had: it stunned the room into complete silence. We ran out of there. Horrors! What a terrible misunderstanding! This poor woman. She can only communicate with the TV now.”