by Wendy Guerra
“Why would they keep from me that my mother had been to the United States? Are these sources reliable? Who gave you these last photos?” I asked, inconsolable.
“The State Department gave them to me. But tell me…don’t the dates and the photos match?”
“Yes. But who in Cuba is giving them the information, the recent information, the current news?”
“I would imagine that would be Cuban Intelligence.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“Well, I think there are international agreements, exchanges to assist with clearing up certain issues related to national security. In Rodríguez’s case, there must have been long-term agreements, to make sure there would be follow-ups, but I’m only telling you one part. We have a lot, but they have way more and they’re not just going to give it to us…for now. The files aren’t entirely declassified. Some sections are, but some aren’t.”
“Who executed that man? What did he do?”
Gerónimo looked at me, tired and sleepy.
“It’s too long to tell, and I can’t believe you don’t know who he was. It’s better if we meet tomorrow and start from the beginning. To be frank, I thought you knew all this. Would you mind meeting tomorrow? I just arrived today and I’m exhausted,” he said, as if he was talking to someone whose entire life wasn’t at stake.
* * *
—
At dawn, the other violet hour, the hour of workers and bohemians, strange birds and sleepless seniors, the one for whoever’s already awake and those getting ready to sleep, skulking around the beauty of Vedado and the arrogance of its ruins, the actor/director was gone, the foreigner was gone. He abandoned the big house I inherited from my paternal grandparents, those who now, in the short trajectory from night to day, in the deep breath of a broken and hot sunrise, had ceased being kin.
I promised Gerónimo I would check every document until I found some evidence of any of that absurdity. My otherness, the other me in the fourth dimension. The possibility of being someone else, to have come from someone else, now projected on my body, acting on what had seemed to be the stage of a sweetened real life.
I closed the door and, after saying goodbye to him, was left alone with my everyday routines—except that, at this point, everything of mine seemed borrowed and everyone else’s seemed dear. Sleeplessness was stirring my emotions and the rum transported each of my personal dreams to a strange nowhere, an abstract world I’d never explored.
The computer had been left open and the screen showed a photo of my mother kissing Mauricio on the day of her wedding in Manzanillo. It’s so awful to not be able to understand a photograph! A photograph is understood through its context, the people in it, the color of its genesis. But I didn’t understand. There’s not a nerve or emotion that could have moved me when I stood before this image. If the house seemed alien, then my bed was irritating, and that place seemed like a transient hotel, where everything was too big or too small, where I’d been cheated for three decades. “What a nightmare!” I said aloud, exhausted, covering my head, burying myself in my clean sheets, going down, down, down to the core of my dreams until I promised myself I’d get to the bottom of everything, and to the beginning of me.
Everything is apocryphal, my life is autofiction, and if I write poetry, I return to the original idea…Certain nights when I’m asleep, the child I was returns, that girl you remember who hides under my skirt without a handler or a straitjacket.
Everything is apocryphal and I’m a character in an unfilmed movie, a version of my wishes that doesn’t even have my name.
I woke up at two in the afternoon and opened the house to let in the light. I wanted the sun to wipe away everything Gerónimo had told me. I turned on the shower and, under the stream, I swore to not see him again and, even better, to not revisit the subject at all. Not to think, not to feel, and, more precisely, not to be. Why did I want to be what I’d never been or to know something my mother didn’t want me to know? At this stage, I’d look pretty silly searching for a father. I opened the French doors and stepped from the bathroom to the bedroom, where I saw myself in each of the giant mirrors. Seven versions reflected me back as an intruder. I shook my head, splattering water all over the room, rubbed my skull with the towel, and returned to myself.
I prepared my escape. I’d go away to the provinces for three weeks. For years, I’d been promising myself a trip through Cuba so I could check out how things were going, because Havana is legendary compared to how people live in the countryside. I wanted to go to Oriente; I’d never been to Baracoa. I dug up my little military suitcase and began to pack some camping clothes, a small first aid kit, bug repellent, cans of food…I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Gerónimo would not be able to find me upon his return. Hadn’t I wanted to start writing prose? Well, first I needed to figure out how…
There was a sudden explosion on my block. The dark hallway was lit in a flash and I suddenly had six people—or, rather, six off-duty police officers—breaking into my house.
THE SEARCH
I try not to feel watched
To not listen to that neurotic melody
But they’re following me I know because of the me
that’s missing
in the objects disturbed
They take your heart from your home
Toss your documents and attachments
Kill the spirit of the photographs
Break your circle of trust
Inspect your coats and behead your toys
You undress between translucent walls
Live marked filmed overheard
They peel your image from mirrors exile your soul
in-xile your being
Rattle the innate order of things
Discover your weaknesses and work the wound until it
becomes a scar
You always thought you were nothing
but now you are
that nothing’s nothing.
There’s a brusque knock at the door. If you don’t open it, they change their tactics: a good kick or a set of elegant master keys will serve to unlock it, depending on whether you’re a Cuban citizen without rights or a chance of being heard at any level, or, instead, if you’re a diplomat or some other kind of foreigner who can file a legal complaint. The methods vary, depending on whether anyone will mourn your death or if you’re a common and helpless mortal, in which case they destroy everything. If you’re someone who matters to them, then they’ll do it with care.
Do they want you to know, or not, whether they’re carrying out a search on you? They might come while you’re gone. They might take your hard drive and bring it back so stealthily you’ll never know it was gone. Or they can tear your house apart, to make it obvious, scare you, stop you dead in your tracks. Those days of terror will help you reconsider if you should or shouldn’t be doing whatever you’re doing, be involved in whatever you’re involved in. What am I involved in?
The problem comes when I’m not involved in anything and they come and threaten me over what I might be thinking or writing.
The entire operation depends on the initial purpose of the raid. Although, in fact, there are the usual, classic domestic raids. For example, everything I’m writing right now will be checked by my housekeeper tomorrow or Monday. She knows I know but we share this “dark splendor” knowing that, just by writing, I’m risking my life and that, without her, my life would be much more complicated…It doesn’t have to reach the level of a raid. It’s always better if the housekeeper takes care of informing on your movements and calming them down; otherwise, it can get too violent. The next level is the “family spy,” like the one I’m always talking about, the lifelong friend, the guy who reads over your poems, helps you prepare the materials for national and international contests. He types your manuscripts and takes your memory stick so he can print things up for you, because your printer has unexpectedly stopped working. That’s who, even if he loves you, keeps the members
of State Security up to date on your case. He knows you know. You feed him, you love him, you help him with everything because it’s always better that the case is in his hands and not in those of a complete stranger.
They also have a way of reading your email, but I don’t have an Internet connection at my house. I live surrounded by books and ghosts. I’m alone and I only rarely get calls from editors of different translations who ask me if I want to go out and get some air so I won’t suffocate in here.
My poetry is my magic protector against fear; if I write, if I read poetry, if I recite poetry to myself, in silence or in a whisper, like a mantra, I know nothing will happen to me. At a table in Córdoba, seated next to Herta Müller, I once heard her say she recited poetry to herself whenever she was taken to the Securitate for interrogations. I turn to Eliseo Diego for prayers when the interrogations start at the airport, during raids, and during the daily sequence of fears. One of Eliseo’s poems, then one of mine, one of Eliseo’s poems, then one of mine. That’s how I calm down, that’s how I keep myself from being disarmed as they try to neutralize me.
Among the ranks of State Security, there are those with degrees in literature, history, linguistics, physics; there are writers, singers, philologists, scientists, psychiatrists, mechanics, philosophers. “We have the most cultured prostitutes in the world,” according to Fidel in one of his most extensive speeches, along with the most well-prepared doctors, the most literate people in the world. What we don’t have here is the chance to build our own world; therefore, everything we do—the good and the bad—is entirely deliberate, and that’s what terrifies me. On this militarized island full of farewells, we’re trapped between conformity and defecting. We Cubans have been well trained; our real damage is in our souls. Innocence isn’t possible here.
* * *
—
Hardly anyone visits this house since my parents died, just the housekeeper (the same one for the last thirty years), who has come back to work three days a week, so she must have skipped something or done something wrong for them to break in like this, in such a violent way, and scared a woman alone, defenseless, who is neither brave nor possessed of the stuff of heroes. What could I do against them?
I stood in the middle of the hallway, as if I were waiting for the worst, numb. I let them come and go all over the house. Anyway, this house isn’t my house anymore. I know that.
First, they searched behind several paintings, using these strange little gadgets I’d never seen before.
Then they asked questions:
1. About my computer. (I handed it directly to the officer in charge of the raid.)
2. About the suitcase filled with clothes, food, and medicines: “And where is our little compañera headed?” (“To Oriente.”) “Why.” (“Just because.”)
3. About Gerónimo, his intentions, and how many times he’d been in contact with me, here or abroad. (What could I say? Nothing. Even I don’t quite understand what’s going on.)
4. About the photos, or the family album. (I handed them all over, every single one.)
5. About the liquids and substances I imbibe that can be found on the premises. (There was very little liquor and they took it…to analyze it?)
* * *
—
I only asked one question, to which they responded with laughter.
“Do you have a court order?” It was probably too late: The house was already upside down.
One of the officers, the one assigned to read the files in my computer, read my poems in a mocking voice, dying of laughter, defiant and ironic. He gave the reading the same intonation as the morning announcements at an elementary school. They checked my videos, my photos, they filmed my room, took an inventory of what was in the fridge, the cash, and everything I had in the pantry. They took the phone receipts and asked me about the very few calls I had jotted down. They checked the electric bill, the gas bill, even the water bill.
They read a list of names to me and asked me to nod my head if I recognized any of them. No, I didn’t know anybody. Then they showed me images of those same people taken in my own home…
Their harassment became increasingly intense. They threw all my clothes to the floor (it was curious to see my underwear tangled with the books that had my name on them). They searched the books in a very detailed way and a photo was taken of each cover by the raiding party technician.
They charged the little gadgets again. By then I understood they were cameras and microphones.
After they left, I felt exposed, naked, empty. There were still questions which, though unanswerable, I preferred to keep quiet: Why do this to me? Who am I to them? Above all, who am I to me? Why doesn’t anyone visit me since my parents died? Who can tell me? Who that doesn’t experience this fear?
* * *
—
Márgara, our housekeeper since time began, has been a shadow that silently flutters through the house like a black butterfly. I have no memory of my mother cleaning or cooking. It was always Márgara who helped us, never once missing a day.
She’s a mature woman, tall, slender, black, and sinewy, who moves the heaviest furniture without breaking a sweat, and skates barefoot around the house with the broom, shining the wet floors without losing her balance. She doesn’t speak, or says very little, a silence she imposes. There’s never a need to complain or to ask her to do what only she knows how to do.
Márgara brought a bowl of chicken soup to the table, put it in front of me, then sliced a lemon and squeezed it right into the broth.
What am I doing here? I thought, I’m exposed on a reality show, on a stage I once believed was my house now filled with cameras and microphones.
“We’re being filmed, Márgara,” I explained to her. “Everything we do is being watched someplace else.”
She simply nodded and continued with her daily routines. She made my bed and left at dusk, the house clean, everything in its place.
How can I go on living with this lack of privacy, crossing this long stretch of autofiction, sharing my life with everyone and no one?
When I put my head down on my pillow and felt the intense scent of the laundry soap—the one boiled in the yard, made with charcoal and potassium to swallow the dirt, the same yellow soap used by Barbarito Díez—I returned to my original sentiment: This is my house and these are my white sheets. As I tried to accommodate my bones on the mattress, I found some papers under the pillows. They were my poems—but what were they doing there? Márgara had just changed the linens. I sat up to read them and discovered two copies of each poem, my text and a different version of each.
Where I had said exile, it now said delirium.
Where I had said fear, it now said ice.
Where I had written fascist abyss, it now said guttural abyss.
Where I had put enclosure, someone had written winter. There were copies of more than twenty of my texts and at the end, a blank sheet with Márgara’s handwriting, which until then I’d seen only on grocery lists and telephone messages. It was a warning.
“I’ve changed them for your own good. Forgive me, but I had no other choice. Take care of yourself and let’s never speak of this. Márgara.”
I was on all fours and I’d lost track of my heartbeat and any notion of time when I let Gerónimo mount me by throwing all six feet of his body on mine. His weight was part of the ecstasy, and the effort of holding him up on my back kept me distended, potent, as tense as a harp string. I fit around his sex like a glove from behind. He threaded it softly until it reached a magnificent curve and clenched. He raved between assaults, just touching the head of the diamond, provoking a sharp torrent of joy, all the while tapping little explosions, rockets of pleasure, swells that came and went, riding the onslaught of lights and exultation, shattering fiercely and wet at the end of combat. With my mind blank, crazed with his smell, smeared with his sweat and holy water, I’d wake up between orgasms just to look at the artifacts on the wall. I felt like a traitor for not telling him
they were taping us, spying on us, watching us. I’d retreat to pleasure, trying not to think about the eye on us. I’d return to the den that was my body, rise with the sway of his efforts and convulsions, then go back to the interminable mortification I complied with on all fours, with my knees on fire, buried and bruised by the bedsprings, feeling him tremble as he surrendered to the power of my bones.
If you’ve played a keyboard boosted by lead counterweights at the ends of the keys, you’ve felt the tension designed to train and strengthen the fingers, and you know just how hard it is to pluck music out of that. You know pleasure hurts, but it also transports when the music flows in spite of the pain.
“Gerónimo, they’re watching us,” I said between whimpers, extending my knees, letting my body drop on the mattress, making him fall on top of me as if he’d just leapt from the second to the first floor.
“Where? Who?” asked Gerónimo, sitting up, scared.
“The cameras. They’re there.”
“Okay, okay…take it easy. Don’t scare me like that. I thought there was someone in the room.”
“Well, who knows how many of them are watching this from wherever. Don’t you care?”
“Cleo, I’m so used to cameras, to the paparazzi, to friends who sell your life to the tabloids…Anyway, they’re probably disconnected. It was probably just a threat…Turn over, please. I love looking at your back,” he said, peeling off his T-shirt and throwing it on the nearest piece of furniture before turning back to my ass with his fine lust.
Making love in front of the cameras, showing off your nakedness in the privacy of your room, undressing for the multitudes in your childhood hideaway, the place where you spent your fevers, your adolescence, your nightmares, your games, and your most secret tribulations—where I hide my weeping, my obsessions, my joys, and my defeats—making love with Gerónimo in all possible positions in front of the camera, with my back to the camera and as I’m peaking, nearing heaven, always aware we’re being watched. The walls of my room are viewed from who knows where in this city, a place where other men and women share the crumbs of our intimacy.
