Revolution Sunday

by Wendy Guerra

  Once again, the salty flavor of café con leche, the bittersweet aftertaste dissolving in my mouth.

  Once again, raising the altar, although it isn’t the real refuge in which to seek shelter. I felt naked and observed in the heart of my house.

  That morning, as I looked at the purple tracks left on my arms by the blows I received, the upside-down house, empty, and the beautiful trees in the garden dropping leaves on the terrace, I recalled the amber stain Gerónimo seemed to leave behind when they dragged him to the car that would take him from here. In the moment, I thought maybe he and everything we’d experienced together until that day had just been a bad dream and that, if I chose to share it, few would believe me. There’s a big gap between what’s real and what’s plausible.

  I closed my eyes and that amber stain kept coming back time and again. I knew my next book was in that stain.

  Then I remembered a poem by Heberto Padilla that I’d read for the first time in Barcelona.

  TELL THE TRUTH

  At least, tell your truth.

  And later

  let anything happen:

  let them tear your beloved pages,

  let them knock your door down with rocks,

  let the people

  crowd around your body

  as if you were

  a prodigy or the dead.

  My God, that text had come to me like an arrow. I couldn’t believe I had learned it by heart.

  How long had it been since I’d written anything? I didn’t have my computer. I didn’t know if they’d give it back to me.

  I needed pencil and paper. I went in my bedroom and saw Márgara had placed my mother’s old, small computer on the bed—I thought it’d been lost in the first raid—the unmistakable fountain pen with my grandfather’s initials (a souvenir from Gerónimo), and a new notebook. Inside I saw only these simple words in Márgara’s script: “Write and be quiet.”

  DAZIBAO

  Let the masses hate this woman

  and let the organisms of the state

  break their contacts with her by special decree.

  Let her quickly lose her judicial standing

  her rights as a citizen

  her ration book and her identification card.

  Let the folder and the copy of her birth certificate

  vanish into the dusty

  notebooks of the Municipal Courts.

  On this wall I denounce her in front of the people

  here I’ll expound on how she left one evening

  without prior warning without a word

  and without love.

  I’ll inscribe her beauty on this wall

  and extinguish, with a suicidal gesture, the light in her eyes

  on this wall I’ll put out the fire in her mouth and on her body

  stretch her long legs

  stop the movement of her adolescent pianist hands

  and record the complicated world that is her hair.

  I’ll leave her here so she can be seen

  next to this reclamation

  this cry against loneliness

  this grave social conflict of which only I suffer

  and turns me, at least for tonight,

  into a dangerous man in the city.

  Raúl Rivero

  I wouldn’t open the door and only occasionally answered the phone. Only the times I’d agreed to with Gerónimo, my agent, and my editors.

  I wrote like an automaton. I talked to myself and read aloud each of the fragments of my novel in progress.

  I’d erase what I wrote, tore apart pages with drawings, returned to the keyboard, cried, laughed, showered, came back to the writing machine while still dripping wet, ate alone, drank alone. I felt as lonely as a dog abandoned on the highway.

  That’s how I spent the end of summer and all of fall, though fall is imperceptible here.

  Sometimes I’d be visited by two or three officers who’d come to ask me if I was willing to collaborate with a report about the research I had done with Gerónimo. I’d refuse and that, I know, lengthened my confinement.

  My only joy had to do with Márgara. I’d anxiously wait for her, for hours, so I could read her everything I’d written overnight. I slept during the day and wrote at night.

  As soon as I finished breakfast, I’d go to bed and wake up only to have lunch and look at everything with a fresh eye. I’d compare the revised pages with Márgara and then say goodbye to her, sometimes until the following Monday.

  I rarely went out. My weekly outing was to the Immigration Office, where I would ask to have my passport returned and get no answer. I urgently needed to apply for a visa to the United States so I could meet up with Gerónimo in Los Angeles. They were already editing the movie but the Cuban authorities demanded I wait and come back the next month. The letters of invitation would expire and Gerónimo’s office got used to sending a new one every two months. By the beginning of December, I was desperate.

  “What would you think if I talked to Alberto?” I asked Márgara one afternoon, interrupting our silence and only a half hour after reading to her, for the fourth time, the new version of my book’s final chapter.

  Alberto had disappeared from our lives the same day as the raid. It might just be my imagination, but I seriously think even he had been caught off guard by everything that happened.

  Márgara made a face that suggested she didn’t approve, but I let the thought rest in my mind, kept it there all night and, at daybreak, exactly at six when it was getting light, I dialed his number and invited him over for breakfast.

  He seemed defeated, thinner, bearded now; his face looked anemic. As always, Márgara made herself scarce and then, without a word about what we both knew, I asked for his help.

  His eyes lit up when he realized I was alone, almost dead socially, and that I needed him. He took my hands and promised, in a schmaltzy and almost melodramatic way, to help me get out of here.

  “How?” I asked, pulling my hands back, a little alarmed by the excessive tenderness.

  “I don’t know. I have to get organized, I’ve been disconnected from everything. They kicked me out of the Party. I’m unemployed. I barely have enough to eat.”

  “Then come have dinner with us every night. When Márgara leaves, I get very lonely.”

  “Aren’t you writing?” he asked, staring me right in the eyes.

  “No,” I said firmly, but using my best victim voice.

  As soon as I closed the door and saw Márgara’s face I knew what would come next. But it didn’t matter because that was my only route of escape. I couldn’t see any other way.

  “Be very careful, child. That man has always been after your bones.”

  * * *

  —

  Marijuana creates the illusion of a relationship with whomever I smoke it, a very intense connection. While I am under its spell, it seems to transform me into someone who’s dependent on others, a person I’m not and one I’ll never be. When my parents died, I learned about the uselessness of emotional dependency. We are profoundly alone, and I’m no exception.

  No one has ever—no matter how much love they profess—been able to keep their promise to always be there, eternally, by another person. Not parents, not children, not siblings, not lovers.

  I refuse to create connections I’ll have to dissolve later. Passion is a straight line to that dependency. I’d rather establish rational relationships that skirt passion and improve on it within a reasonable time.

  * * *

  —

  After so much concentration and so many parades, after so much camping, so many bunk beds, after so much overcrowding, here I am, profoundly alone, but addicted to finding others with whom to communicate and share my life.

  During these last few evenings, I wait anxiously for Alberto. Havana’s few cold days were upon us and during this time another body felt like a treasure.

  Who said there are no insufferably cold days in Havana?

  The humidity digs
into your bones and sneaks into your soul, rattling you.

  Stretched out on the couch, with coats on and only a little bit of light in the living room, we smoked and watched movies rented from underground clubs. We ordered pizzas and hamburgers from nearby eateries, reheated Márgara’s food, bought beer, listened to music, danced, emptied the bottles and let them accumulate by the patio’s entrance.

  Sometimes he fell asleep and I stared at him through the light filter pot installs in my eyes. He’s not beautiful but he’s not ugly either; he’s a common man, someone who doesn’t seem to want anything from life anymore. He let his beard go for days at a time, like somebody who doesn’t care about looking good anymore, or maybe, simply because he couldn’t find something to shave with. I asked myself what Alberto would look like if he got cleaned up and ate better. Cubans, generally speaking, are handsome, but that beauty is usually hidden by the effort to resist waste and annihilation. The lyrical features begin to fade, lose their charm, stop being what they once were, vanish and gain greater distance from the pictures on their ID cards, which were taken when they were twenty years old. They become someone else; they age at an impressive rate. They desert themselves, escape, yes, but where do they go?

  Could I get used to living with a man like this? No, no, I couldn’t. I was adrift but even so, I couldn’t take that step. I wasn’t desperate. What I really wanted to do, though, was to read Alberto my novel. But I didn’t, I contained myself, because something told me I shouldn’t, that he wasn’t trustworthy. And, besides, I had already told him I wasn’t writing.

  “Good evening,” Alberto said, coming to from his lethargy, getting up slowly to go to the bathroom, and rearranging, to my great surprise, a pistol he had tucked into the back of his pants.

  A gun? I’m getting him out of here for good tomorrow.

  For me, that was it. The night had ended.

  When Márgara arrived, I’d already left. For the first time ever, I needed to go to a hotel to get an Internet connection in Havana.

  I’d promised myself I’d never do that. To write my password, to let it go through an internal server, to give my privacy away one more time, it’s like undressing in the middle of the street, like revealing my writing, risking that it’ll be stolen without ever being published. But this time I had no choice.

  It was a risk, I knew, but very necessary.

  I couldn’t have the original manuscript at my house even one more day. A novel isn’t meant to be kept hidden in a drawer until someone finds it. A novel needs air, ink, light. It needs to be seen by editors, to go out into the world, to fly.

  Alberto’s gun was now the secret weapon pursuing me on the streets, the motivation to launch my novel far and beyond.

  In a small office in Barcelona, someone was waiting for it.

  * * *

  —

  Márgara and I unpacked everything they’d returned which, of course, wasn’t everything.

  I felt almost happy. It was like receiving gifts from myself, things I’d sent myself. Like what the tide brings in at dawn and you discover while walking in the early hours on the cold sand.

  I was so scared of opening things up and not seeing essential items like photos of my parents, or my computer. What had they returned? What had they kept?

  With a knife, Márgara opened the first box. A thick smell of cigarettes and alcohol rose from my belongings.

  Slowly, as I began to touch them, I felt they no longer had my scent nor my spirit. They’d been manhandled, used by others. They had an alien film to them and no longer seemed trustworthy. They’d been violated.

  I rescued the photos of my parents from the wreck, and the correspondence with my grandparents during their travels.

  I now had back my books by Jorge Luis Borges, José Martí, Julio Cortázar, J. D. Salinger. Postcards from my return to Cuba, the photos from when I climbed Pico Turquino with my classmates at the end of twelfth grade. I recovered more than I’d imagined.

  I checked the collection of Lunes de Revolución magazines, which my mother had treasured. It was weird, but each and every issue had been returned.

  I opened my computer and charged it and soon realized there was absolutely nothing on it. Not a single program survived this time around.

  One of the boxes was full of correspondence that had arrived at the Havana post office but had never been delivered to me.

  One was a letter from my friend Armando in New York. It seemed to have been written before my parents died. I’d never received it. Had he received mine?

  Dear Cleo,

  Too much silence.

  How have you been?

  I thought of you today. I spent all afternoon at Epistrophy, an Italian café, my favorite, enjoying being alone in public. It’s on Mott Street in Nolita, a lovely little neighborhood near SoHo. You’ll see. It was there I wrote part of New York Isn’t You and The Book of Brief Loves, which were published last year in Barcelona. I’ve saved you copies so I can give them to you when you come here. It’s time for you to visit, even if it’s just for a few days. I’d love to go out with you the way we do in Havana. I know you’re going to love it; you know I know this city like the back of my hand.

  The trip back home was very beautiful. To be able to take care of my mother, and to leave her feeling better, and seeing you again, were real treats. You and a few other friends are what still makes that city for me. The return has been tough. This month I could barely pay rent. I’m living very frugally, even more than usual, but this is my reality. To be a poet, as we all know, is to suffer this sweet curse, perhaps more so here than in other places, but New York still continues to be my favorite city. I’m a divided soul, and there may be no cure at this point.

  Roberta, the Brazilian girl I was with in Havana, went back ten days ago. She’s reconciled with her husband; I haven’t seen her again. I’ve decided to accept her as a gift from Havana and the gods, although I confess I haven’t stopped thinking about her. It hurts every day, at every hour. “I’ll have to hide or run,” as Borges said in “The Threatened One.” Do you remember that poem? I read it to you that day we waited for daybreak at the little beach on 16th Street.

  You should come in summer, or, if not, in spring, which is beautiful here and people go outside even if it’s just to feel their pain. You know, everyone always says I’m so intense, but you and I both know life is a day and then you remember nothing of it. Think about it and let me know, because it’s getting late. I want to spoil you the way you spoil me when I’m in Havana.

  Don’t forget to say hello to your parents. I’m grateful to them for the ride to the airport. It’s never easy to say goodbye to Cuba.

  Take care of yourself, my dear Cleo, and finish your book, please.

  Love always,

  Armando

  P.S. It’s possible an actor friend of mine will come by to ask you some questions for research he’s doing for his movie. It’s a delicate matter so he’ll tell you about it personally.

  Did that mean it was Armando who’d sent Gerónimo my way? It’s a small world. Why hadn’t Gerónimo told me he was a friend of Armando’s? Maybe he assumed I was waiting for him. How long had this research been going on? Anyway, it was impossible to know now.

  I discovered messages from friends and acquaintances that had never reached me or my parents. Some were opened envelopes, some still sealed, others sealed for a second time with tape over huge rips. Invitations to conferences, catalogues with scientific bibliographies, postcards from colleagues written in Russian and German.

  Some letters wished us a happy new year and others announced weddings, births, the deaths of dear friends.

  The vast majority were long apologies to my parents, condolences, lamentations with complex and unanswerable questions about the nature of the fateful accident.

  What have I read and what have I not read of all that was sent to me? Who writes to me without my knowing? Why do they let some letters through and not others? Why now?

&
nbsp; I asked myself all this as I came back to the universe of prohibitions and returns, where the only thing that wasn’t returned to me were the books I’d covered up because they were “prohibited.”

  * * *

  —

  At dusk, when Alberto arrived, I realized he was stunned to see my belongings back in their place. Because of his surprise and the caution in his questions, I knew he’d had nothing to do with their return.

  I have a terrible defect, which is that I can’t shut up when I need to find out something.

  “I imagine you had a lot to do with the return of my things, right?” I said, a little sarcastically.

  “Me? Well, yes and no.”

  “So tell me, yes or no?” I insisted.

  “There are things a person can’t talk about. When did they arrive?”

  “Oh, you don’t know when they arrived? This morning,” I explained, being very careful. “Three military officers came in a truck. They asked me to sign something then unpacked seven boxes and brought them in.”

  “This all has to do with a very special request I made but, you understand, I can’t talk about that, baby,” he explained as he walked over to the kitchen with a bottle of rum he’d brought.

  That was odd, because it’s always been me who bought the liquor. An armed man drinking rum strikes me as very dangerous. There was no one else here but me and now that I knew about the gun I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I spent the evening trying not to drink. I’d sip a little, then get some ice and try not to lose control. I didn’t like the expression on Alberto’s face when he came in and saw my things were back. I was trying to figure out if he still had the gun but he had his coat on and he was well swaddled, so I couldn’t see anything.

  We watched two movies and ate a chicken Márgara had left for us.

  He drank and drank compulsively until he finished the bottle he’d brought. He asked for more, whatever was in my cupboard, but I asked him to go so I could rest.