Revolution Sunday

by Wendy Guerra

  That’s what it feels like during my summers on the island.

  It’s intense to open your eyes and see the shadows above your head. Drunken warriors armed with children and rum. There they go, dancing, their golden bodies kicking about, deformed or perfect, scorched by the sun and by intemperance. You let them go. They free themselves and float up, and you let them go so you can have a moment to yourself.

  It’s so hard to be alone on a Cuban beach…You try to get comfortable on that clear bottom, you pass the murky line, the cold or warm currents, you manage the air in your lungs and put off, in intervals, the hyperrealist surface because, so long as your body can stand to be submerged, you have no reason to go back to the surface.

  You propel, you seek out the original phosphorescence, you launch yourself up like an aimless bullet…and now, here’s the sunny truth: You take a stroke, take deep breaths, and then go down, down, down, once more, abandoning everything. Screams warn you there might be life above but, honestly, you don’t care. Real life is happening in your chest, far from Cuba’s illusionary stage, that deranged island going around your head, driving you mad, seducing you with all sorts of entanglements and neurosis. It forces you to penetrate the incoherence, invites you to believe it’s all logical. It embodies you until it chokes you and drives you to your knees when you emerge. Delirium!

  * * *

  —

  I was trying to make a Cuban-style gazpacho (with whatever’s available): melon, onions, stale bread, three small garlic cloves that together are the size of a big one, vinegar, truffle oil I bring in as contraband in my luggage, salt, pepper, seven tomatoes the sun hadn’t burned yet and the heat hadn’t spoiled, and then, right when I was going to press the button to mix it all in my Russian blender…the electricity went out.

  A collective wail rose up from the neighborhood. Silence and shadows invaded our street. I remembered I didn’t have a single candle to rescue me from the darkness. I should add candles to the list of things to bring back from out there. There’s nothing here. The stores are empty and I barely have enough oxygen to go on.

  Too much time surrounded by water and politics, scarcity and socialist stopgaps. A blackout with this heat!

  I stretched out on the floor, seeking relief from the cool tiles, slowly undressing my sunstruck body. The day was sticking to me and night had found me golden, burning, alone but intact: lightly served, like a Mediterranean meal, screaming to be tasted, but by whom?

  Stretched out and appetizing, distilling, from the ground, the desire the sun leaves on the skin of coastal women, I explored my beautiful old house. In the yard, a slanted section of tiles on the roof allowed me to see the full moon in the sky and then, in the distance, through the windows in the dining room: two art deco buildings, splendid between the trees and the picuala’s climbing vines.

  “What a waste of sky, of house, of womanliness,” I pondered as I curled up on the floor.

  They say a little bit of vinegar calms the nerves, relieves the sting, eases the heat on the flesh. After I smeared the balm on my arms, I yanked my white panties off and buried my whole hand in my burning vulva; the wetness facilitated the move and, soaked in honey, I furiously and painfully rubbed my inflamed opening, searching for that rare gem of desire. On my tummy, I tightened my sinewy thighs, opened my legs, and created a bold counterweight against the floor. I came down hard with my pelvis until I felt how this angry rhythm created a kind of circular pleasure, sharp though imperceptible at the start; it was the same pleasure that would later explode penetratingly and exquisitely.

  Dazed and delirious, out of my body, I could see my small sex, like a purple mollusk with its distended opening, offering itself to my hands, shivering when touched by my fingers. The thrusting made the pleasure so extreme that it almost killed it, but there were still a few touches left. I love to look at myself and I love touching myself and finding myself fearless. At the end of all this deliciousness, I’d really polished the floor. I left a pool of sweat after my usual final scream. The little animal in me roared, sighed, and surrendered after that romp.

  I fell asleep. I don’t know if we had two or three hours of darkness, but I woke up when the electricity came back on. It’s back! There was light. The blender began to noisily grind. The doorbell screamed insistently. I got up, drowsy, awkward, slipping on my underwear as I made my way to the door.

  * * *

  —

  There he was. The man at the door was none other than Gerónimo Martines, the famous Hollywood actor from Nicaragua. He showed up as if I was waiting for him. Naturally, I welcomed him with a kiss, this Gerónimo who, in this heat, was not exactly the same Gerónimo I’d seen in the movies. He was swimming in sweat, tired, and seemingly lost. What was he doing here? Would he read my poems in…? No, I couldn’t believe it.

  “Hello,” I said as I pulled him inside, where it was illuminated and the light seemed to underscore the impression that I had been waiting for him, or at least waiting for something equally important to shake up my story and take me in another direction, to another turning point, the kind that come now and again in life (every ten minutes), when someone wants something and something or someone becomes an obstacle…That’s why I recognized him without knowing him, and in spite of the pitch blackness around him on the street, I’ll say it again: Even though he didn’t look like Gerónimo Martines, I recognized him.

  The actor decided to play along with an attitude that said you-act-like-you-know-me-but-shut-up-now-I’m-tired and, though we’d never seen each other before in our lives, we managed that odd whirlwind of emotions. He treated me with familiarity, addressed me casually, and was comfortable by my side. He was wearing a blue sports cap with English lettering, his hair (practically an afro) bulged out at the sides, a comfy-looking loose-fitting black track suit, and a white T-shirt like the kind I wear to sleep. I thought he was overdressed for these temperatures. His sports shoes made him float down the amber hallway and he was so tall that he almost hit the art nouveau hanging lamp in the living room. When the pendulum light bonked him, that’s when I thought I’d welcomed Archangel Michael of the Bronx into my house.

  “Do you want some gazpacho?” I asked him, following a script from another life.

  “Do you have anything stronger?” the actor improvised, now starring in a new chapter of my personal series. His voice was deep. He was rude without being rude. Fringy without being fringy. Yet also smooth as silk, elegant, and a little childish. His accent was very pronounced but he spoke perfect Spanish, a childish Spanish, very musical, perhaps from his mother; I don’t know. I showed him my improvised bar in the cupboard and he chose a bottle of Havana Club dark rum that had been forgotten since the last New Year’s Eve I’d spent with my parents. As I passed by him and caught a glance of both of us in the enormous mirror that separates the kitchen from the dining room, I realized I was still in my underwear. I excused myself, went to my room to put something on, and returned more or less dressed.

  I watched him slowly, calmly, as he drank his rum: He, in turn, watched me savoring the gazpacho right from the blender. I stuck my hand in the jar over and over, running my fingers along the bottom to pick up the lumps that had dripped off the blades. I sucked the broth with gusto.

  “Well, say something,” I said, smeared with everything. He just smiled, meditating as he grimaced because of the rum’s acidity, and looking around at the house from his privileged corner. I realized it wasn’t that he was a man of few words, but rather that he was a deep and observant man, perhaps a little shy…or, perhaps, if he wasn’t saying anything in particular it was because he hadn’t come for any special reason. I didn’t care if he talked or not. My problem was that I didn’t want to be alone between the blackouts, stuck in the family mausoleum, so I went on as usual, as if my visitor was a longtime friend, the guy that comes by every afternoon just to chat. While the actor took his time and drank his dark rum, I washed the utensils, rinsed out my bathing suit, and hung it in the
backyard, then swept up the sand I’d tracked in from the passageway around the house. I kept coming and going and he kept checking out the place, but without ever leaving his post. I offered him drinks straight from the bottle and brought out the few ice cubes that had survived the blackout. In the first hour of his visit, we did not speak a word.

  Why the hell had he come, and who had given him my address? I don’t know, but there he was, calmly drinking my parents’ rum, closing that chapter I…

  “I came to…” He tried to speak but the electricity went out again and I think it may have been for the best; it was easier to talk then. “I came so we could talk about your father. I want to make a film about him. I’m looking to start production.”

  “About my father?”

  “Yes, if that’s okay by you, of course. I know you don’t remember him anymore but, for me, your version of events is important, or whatever you think happened. You’re his only daughter, I believe.”

  “I don’t remember who?”

  “Your father, of course.”

  “Why wouldn’t I remember him?” I asked, disconcerted.

  “Well, if you were born in January 1978 and they executed him in July of that same year…I don’t think…”

  “Executed him? Oh, for the love of God, no, you’re confused. Who are you looking for?” I said, guffawing, then laughing as anxiously as ever.

  “You’re Cleo, right?”

  “Yes, pleased to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand from one side of the table to the other, clearing the darkness, touching him one hour after receiving him in my very own home.

  “I came so we could talk about him.”

  “About who? Define ‘him,’ ” I said as I lit a lamp from the literacy campaign, which my mother had kept around since the seventies.

  “I’m talking about your father.”

  “My father wasn’t executed. You’ve been given erroneous information. My father died in a car accident two summers ago,” I said, managing to give the dining room a bright and fiery light.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, squinting and staring at me with his huge gray eyes.

  “Of course…do you want to see photos?”

  “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked, now with a kind of villain look, delighting in a smile that hid his volatility.

  “How could I not be sure?”

  “Can I use your computer?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, pointing the way to the office next to the kitchen. “But the blackout…we’ll have to use the laptop. Wait a minute.” I got up and came back with the laptop, turned it on, and put in a memory stick in the shape of a whistle, which he’d kept in his track suit’s pocket.

  The half-light from the computer let me see his rude and perfect face much better. His pronounced cheek bones, the bleak light in his eyes, and even the purplish red of his full lips. There he was, typing away with his meaty fingers, scrolling through his writings, clumsy when it came to the art of finding information to show me who I was and how I fit into his story.

  “Since the case of Cuba–U.S. relations isn’t closed, it was difficult to get this file from the State Department; it was part of the Cold War archives. There are still unexplained sources and circumstances connected to witness protection programs and other things.”

  This disclosure confused me even more than the moment when he showed up at the door of my house. Now it turned out I had ties to the State Department? I had no words; I could only feel bombs exploding. Then he started to tell me about the things he hadn’t been able to study more thoroughly, but which were also related to the CIA and its Cuban connections. Oh my God, just what I needed. In the morning I’d wake up to the whole block cordoned off and the compañeros assigned to me in their white guayabera uniforms, full-time at my door. I’m going to have to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner just for them until they figure out if I do or don’t have anything to do with this. Everything I make from my writing will go to feeding them, I thought, a little in jest and a little seriously.

  Like a flashback about the future, or a thread of blood that drains and jettisons the story of my life with a dizzying effect, I knew I had been expecting all this for a reason I can’t elucidate right now, and I knew it would be a very long night. Seeing my parents’ rum had been consumed by Gerónimo in just two hours, I decided to get another bottle from the cupboard, this time a Santiago rum. I opened it, made an offering to whichever saint could help me in that moment, poured a little in a dining room corner, then very responsibly served us each a drink, no ice, neat. I was playing around, but I was serious too, handing him the glass and pulling it back, so he’d tell me what the devil I had to do with these State Department files and, to top it off, the CIA.

  I finally gave him his drink. He asked for ice. I indicated the way to the fridge. He got up slowly then took a few steps toward the big white Russian polar bear that, at this hour, was pretty much defrosted. He must have found something there and came back with a few cubes in his glass and a few more to drown in the clearness of my drink. We stared at each other in the dark, and toasted.

  * * *

  —

  His theory—which he explained quickly and gracelessly during the blackout—sounded crazy to me. But what was weird was that he had my birth certificate, knew the exact dates I had started each school, and the exact dates of all my publications. Why? What other interest could he have in me, in someone so insignificant as me? Why was he leading me on like this? I watched as he put it all together, the genealogy of a life that was supposedly mine and simultaneously foreign, but I couldn’t find the logic in his words. His huge hands moved between the darkness and the light emitted by the computer screen.

  Later he traversed a family tree and talked about grandmothers, aunts, and a family totally alien to me…

  I tried to tell myself he really did want something from me but, who was I? Why go through all this trouble to get to me? I’m not a beautiful woman, or sensual, or attractive; I don’t have any of the attributes that might be expected to seduce a Hollywood star. While he talked about guerrillas and operations in places like Africa and South America, complicated networks and contacts in the United States, I tried to connect myself to his story, but I’m too scattered and a bit frivolous when it comes to men. I only withdrew to try to imagine his romantic past…the thing was, I knew nothing about him; he was a lone wolf. I always get the weird guys. In any case, what could we Cubans know about show business gossip? Nothing, nothing at all. We’re out of the loop.

  I focused back on the screen, trying to follow his strange story about a Cuban Rambo active during the Cold War, with the cartels, the guerrillas, taking care of business and completing stoic missions, which, to be honest, made no sense to me. All that seemed so foolish, so distant from me. What could I add to these interminable and incendiary adventures by this Mauricio character? I don’t like crime stories or action movies. I hate the military and, worse, I hate what the military represents today in this country. The last thing I needed was for Gerónimo to show up and convince me I’m the offspring of one of them…

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said as files started popping open and revealing scanned official documents. In one, there was the name Cleopatra Alejandra (me) but with the surname Rodríguez (from my alleged father) and Mirabal (my mother), a child’s fingerprints—mine?—registered in Washington, D.C., the same day as my birthday: January 28, 1978, at three in the morning (the same hour I was born). So many coincidences! The mother: Aurora de la Caridad Mirabal Álvarez…and Rodríguez? (my mother), originally from Varadero, Matanzas, born June 30, 1950 (that’s correct), a Cuban citizen, married, a doctor by profession. Everything coincided, except the part about me being the daughter of Mauricio Antonio Rodríguez…As far as I know, I was born at the Military Hospital in Havana, Cuba, that same January 28 in 1978 that’s on the papers. The weird thing is, it says I’m an American citizen.

  “To them, my father isn’t Rafael Perdiguer, and I’m n
ot Cleopatra Alejandra Perdiguer,” I muttered nervously.

  “No, according to these official documents, your father is Mauricio Rodríguez, born in Mayarí on January 12, 1942.”

  Gerónimo talked about all this in a loud voice, translating small bureaucratic matters and the notes at the bottom of the pages from English to Spanish. But there was no information about my father, the one I had known all my life: Why? It also didn’t say my mother had ever married anyone but this Mauricio. We reviewed the document together. No, there was no Rafael Perdiguer anywhere.

  Could this be a nightmare?

  I pulled a chair and sat down next to Gerónimo. I was tired of standing and I was shaking all over. I saw him trying to find reasons to convince me or to convince himself, and I thought it took a lot of guts to knock on my door, without knowing me, and tell me my father is not my father, that I was born in the very heart of “the enemy,” in Washington, D.C., and that, in fact, I was not, at this stage of my life, who I thought I was. Please!

  We then looked at my mother’s marriage certificate, the one for the marriage to this gentleman whom I’d never once heard talked about in my entire life (and I made sure Gerónimo understood this). It occurred in, of all places, Manzanillo, on October 30, 1969. Not at the clerk’s office but at a private home, a family home, but what family? This was so strange. Manzanillo? I never heard her talk about that place. She only talked about Varadero. Always Varadero, to the point that when I think of my mother’s birthday, the first thing that comes to mind is the horizon line in Varadero.

  Later, he showed me photos of my mother all bundled up in different places in Washington, D.C., and New York, photos of my mother in Havana, before and after my birth, then in Varadero, celebrating a birthday at the home of my grandparents, Bebo and Luisa. More photos at the School of Medicine in Girón, at the Military Hospital, and more recent ones at the brain research laboratory. There were two here at the house, with me and my father, Rafael, the last Mother’s Day we celebrated.