Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

The heavy-lidded eyes opened wide to look at me closely and carefully. Then the wrinkled face smoothed out in a smile. “Chico, you look far older than I do,” said Dr. Jorge Villaverde, “and far more in need of a doctor’s care.”

  25

  It was a very dramatic entrance!

  I thought of a thousand words of praise: for the ladies’ auxiliary of Fidel’s milicia which had flowered so fruitfuly in seven years; for the efficiency of the secret police; for the consummate skill with which Sargento Méndez chauffeured his springless chariot; for the tender care lavished on me by Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez in bringing what was left of my shattered body face to face with that Pancho Villa of the anti-Castro underground, Dr. Jorge Villaverde.

  My joy was unconfined! My tributes to the skill of the J-boys who had smoothed out all the rigors of my long journey from Miami to Sancti Spíritus both by sea and by land, burst all the wellsprings of gratefulness and utterly overwhelmed me. I considered several forms of neoplasms in tumors of various shapes and forms which might take root in both the sergeant and the captain, and happily rid the world of them both, slowly, cancerously, and most painfully.

  Striving to be utterly fair, and deprive no one of his or her just desserts, I carefully included Luis Martínez, my father-in-law, Albert Clooney, Orvie, Joe Slade, Old Grandad, pal Javier, Liliana and sister Soledad, and threw in for good measure Ernesto Lecuona who had started it all by composing María la O. Indiscriminately and without rancor, I said, “A pox on them all!” and on everyone connected with this Juggernaut which had finally crushed me.

  My cup of happiness was filled to overflowing. It ran down over the edges dripping into my lap and included Milagros and Jorge Villaverde, who was smiling at me so benignly. My gratitude finally burst all bounds. My diagnostic abilities instead of being dulled by my tribulations had been whetted immeasurably. A single glance at that patriarchal figure of the doctor, out of my bloodshot eyes, assured me that he not only had congestive heart failure, but had reached the final stage of heart dropsy.

  What rewarding joy! What ineffable bliss to think that nearly any night now cardiac dyspnea would take over, fill up his lungs and choke him to death without my help, and he’d expire most excruciatingly.

  My gratitude to the fates became too much to bear. I had finally reached my goal with the help of all these revolting people, and I wished they were dead as much as I loved them all. I dropped to my knees and rested my weary head on the comforting cushions of the edema making pleasant pillows of Jorge Villaverde’s swollen thighs and went to sleep like a newborn baby.

  I woke up in a four-poster bed blinking my eyes at a pink shaded light and a clock on the table beside me. The clock said seven. If it was running, as it seemed to be, I had not only slept it around but taken an extra hour. A wrist watch lay on the table beside the clock. I guessed it was mine, for when I looked at the back of my wrist I discovered the inch-wide crater of a neat volcano where it had been jammed into my flesh by the handcuffs.

  I was wearing a pair of black-and-white striped pajamas. Since the stripes ran lengthwise instead of around, it was clear that I hadn’t finished up in a chain gang. They were real screamers, and could have only belonged to a man of such perverted tastes and lack of refinement as Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez. (May his soul rest in peace!)

  A survey of the room itself gave me the sensation that I had been mummified and deposited for exhibition purposes in some rococo museum. The walls and ceiling were decorated with an elaborate ornamentation, combining shellwork, scrolls and foliage interlarded with enough cupids and angels to have worked Michelangelo for a year. The furniture including my canopied bed was heavily splendid, most of it nineteenth century.

  If this was Villaverde’s headquarters, the underground had definitely moved up in the world. I remembered starving nearly to death with the doctor and three other men in a dank cave in the Escambray Mountains. The thought of starving brought to mind that I was doing a passable job of the same right now. Someone else must have had the same idea. The door opened to admit a comely black Negress, capped and aproned, bearing a tray. On it was a bowl of steaming soup, a dish of guava paste and cheese, and a china pot of strong sweet black coffee.

  When she saw that I was awake, she favored me with a friendly smile, pulled up a chair beside the bed and put down the tray. “Please forgive me if I woke you up, Doctor. I’m Marta Méndez, Guido’s wife. Dr. Villaverde told me I had better bring you some food before you starved to death, or slept your life away.”

  “Guido?”

  “Si, el sargento. ¿Está usted enfadado con él?— Are you angry at him? He was afraid you might be.”

  “¡Qué tonto!— How foolish! Everything he did was necessary,” I lied gallantly. “Maybe I was slightly annoyed at the time because I didn’t understand, but the smell of this delicious soup has already swept all of that away.”

  “Gracias. It’s ajiaco. I made it myself. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Dr. Villaverde will be here in a little while to talk with you.” This time she smiled forgivingly before she went out and closed the door.

  She didn’t need to tell me it was ajiaco. I was just as much Cuban as she or Guido, even though I had been away. Ajiaco is our national dish. Marta was a master chef, and she knew how to earn forgiveness for gentle Guido by the shortest route—to the stomach.

  Ajiaco is a thick soup with a pork base. It’s a golden dream, flavored with garlic and limes. Each mouthful brought me something new: yuca, sweet potato, yam, malanga (elephant’s ear), corn, yellow squash, plátano (the cooking banana), tomatoes, green peppers, and onions. It is the royal repast of rural Cuba. From the very first mouthful my aches and pains had started to fade. When the bowl was empty and I tackled the cheese and guava paste and black sweet coffee, I was filled not only with Marta’s soup, but with a built-in love for all mankind and womankind that I had hated so much in the morning.

  With my coffee I lit up a black cigar that was on the tray. I glanced at my striped pajamas again and decided they really looked pretty neat, which is way-out as the Beatle bugs say. By the time Dr. Jorge had hobbled in on his rubber-tipped cane, just to show the effects of ajiaco, I found myself thinking with real admiration about the qualities of that excellent character, Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez.

  It took an hour for Jorge Villaverde to cover the events of five years of bucking and outwitting Fidel’s Communism and secret police, and for me to tell him about the arrival of the Comandante, and the five-year journey I had taken in a single day.

  He said, “I was dead set against your coming here, Tony, but by the time I heard of it it was far too late to stop you. We hoped, at first, that you might land at Matanzas. I was in Pedro Betancourt, just seventy-two kilometers from there day before yesterday. I have to keep moving, on the jump constantly to keep alive. It used to be that I could stay a week without too much danger but not any more. Sometimes now, it’s move every day.”

  “You’ve done wonders, I would say.”

  He shook his head. “King Canute ordering the red tide to cease its advance and go away. Leo and Guido are my eyes and ears. They shifted your landing to Caibarién, where we had a friendly sergeant of Militia under the cover name of Justo Jiménez. Unfortunately, he was transferred and replaced by the cabo who arrested you. That was due to the near riot after Fidel’s speech in Santa Clara yesterday. Leo learned that the jails were full, and realized instantly that you would be seized by those Santa Clara militiawomen as soon as you stepped into the Hotel Union. So he telephoned them to hold you for his arrival. From there to here, as you saw for yourself, he and Guido had to play it by ear all the way.”

  “An admirable performance, jefe, although maybe a bit on the rough side to be called play. I can’t help wondering though what Compañero Augusto Piñeyro, Assistant Minister of the Armed Forces, is going to think when that capitán and sargento who slipped through the roadblock at Cabaiguán fail to show up with their gold-plated prisoner in Camagüey.”

&
nbsp; His heavy-lidded eyes were raised to regard me with amusement. “You’d have to ask Leo himself about that, chico. He and Guido took off for Camagüey this noon while you were sleeping.”

  “To meet Pineyro?”

  “There is no Augusto Pineyro, Tony, any more than there is a Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez, or a sargento de primera named Guido Méndez. True there is a Leo Rodríguez with a trunkful of uniforms of the F.A.R., an indescribable boldness and a lightning imagination. He has created a hundred ministers, and assistant ministers of nearly everything in a country that is already crawling with them. He has furnished the Militia and the F.A.R. with an endless roster of officers and NCO’s, all out of his fertile mind. They are subject to his every whim for demotion or promotion, inasmuch as he plays them all.”

  Again I was struck with the unreality of everything, and the feeling that I had walked on stage in the middle of a play. I waved my hand around the room. “What about Guido and Marta, and this place here? It looks like a museum.”

  “It is. Built in 1767. One of the oldest mansions in town. It used to be a Mecca for tourists, when there were any. Marta is the caretaker, with Guido’s help when he’s here. This room, one flight up, and the basement are their living quarters and shut off from the rest of the house in case anyone is curious enough to want to look around.”

  “And you, jefe? What about you? What Soledad told me about your health is half of what brought me here. I had medicine with me, but now even that is gone through my own stupidity.”

  “You seem to forget who taught you a large part of the medicine you know, chico.” He laughed softly. “I’m far beyond the digitalis stage but with the help of tourniquets and sassafras tea, for a little while longer I’ll manage to carry on. Let’s concentrate on the other half of what brought you here. The most important part, the part you have neglected to mention to me.”

  “Milagros?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I’ve been afraid to,” I said woodenly. “Reina Roja— the Red Queen. All right. What’s she doing and where is she?”

  “I’d gladly tell you if I could, Tony.” He turned his eyes away from me. “I’ve heard nothing from her or about her for two weeks now, although usually she’s in touch with me. My daughter, Teresa Nunez, will know if anyone does.” He paused and added cautiously, “If you can get to her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “The last I heard she was in Havana at the old Plaza Hotel.”

  “Alone?”

  “Except for her old nurse, Ágata, who has the courage of ten men though she’s well past eighty. Teresa’s husband is dead, but she has two children, José, who is six, and Victoria, who is four. Ágata has them hidden away somewhere in the maze of the city.”

  “Has the children hidden away?”

  “Yes. So the paternalistic government can’t take them away and ship them to China or Russia for a proper education as they have done with so many already.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I keep myself alive for one object, Tony,—to get Teresa and those grandchildren of mine out of this country, but I doubt if I will make it.”

  “Why? You may live a long time yet, jefe."

  “It’s not me, chico. It’s Teresa. She’s desperately ill.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said shortly. “She’s being attended by my oldest friend, Dr. Arturo Maciá, but he’s a marked man himself—a graduate of La Cabana four years ago. He’s under constant surveillance by Xiqués—”

  “Xiqués? Who’s he?”

  “Head of the Havana branch of G-2 and a most competent gentleman, I assure you. Arturo has to attend Teresa by making night visits to the hotel. My belief is that Xiqués knows this but gives him some leeway, hoping that Teresa will shortly be well again and lead him to me.”

  “But Dr. Maciá hasn’t told you what the trouble is with Teresa?”

  “Tony, Tony,” he gave me an indulgent smile. “This isn’t Miami where one just calls up a hospital and inquires about a patient’s condition over the phone. It’s hard enough to get medical aid in Havana today. It’s impossible if anyone remotely suspected the patient is related to me—unless there is some ulterior motive behind it all. Even then, Maciá would be lucky to get a bottle of aspirin without Xiqués’ okay.”

  “How do I get there, and when do I leave?” I asked him.

  “Day after tomorrow morning, on the nine o’clock bus,” he said after a while.

  “Why not tomorrow?”

  “It will take all day tomorrow for Leo to fix you up and train you in a new identity. I’m afraid, at that, it’s close to dry suicide, Tony.”

  “Dry suicide?” I gave a short and bitter laugh. “After surviving a rescue trip with him, nothing can kill me.”

  “You may be surprised. I just hope that you don’t run foul of Xiqués. He’s not Alfredo, Tony. He’s cyanide in a box of chocolates with a Christmas wrapping.”

  “I’ll chance it,” I said. “Even if Leo disguises me as the missing ‘Che’ Guevara, I have a feeling I can luck it through, just so long as he and Guido don’t feel they have to come along with me.”

  26

  The entire next day was devoted entirely to what Leo was pleased to call operacián transformacián. This consisted of utterly destroying any vestige of Dr. Antonio Carrillo, a handsome, intrepid, brilliant character, warmhearted and bilingual, whose few minor faults I was always ready to overlook, due to the fact that for more than a quarter of a century he had been very close to me.

  Everyone fell to with a will. My hair, eyebrows, and mustache were dyed from brown to black. Then it was discovered that I looked like Raúl Castro, Fidel’s baby brother, and I was promptly provided with an inch-long scar at the corner of my right eye. Leo regretted that he had to use stain, due to lack of time to have a saber cut or branding with an iron heal properly. He felt much better when he discovered that, in the side and full-face photographs taken for my identity card, the disfiguring scar photographed beautifully.

  From some unknown source in Camagüey (which I’m sure involved a stealthy murder) he and Guido had obtained a uniform of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias. It was then I learned that I had been commissioned as a primer teniente in the F.A.R. The uniform was a bit on the large side, so Marta was pressed into service with thread and scissors and for two hours I stood like a tailor’s dummy while it was fitted on. The combat boots fit well. They had taken along my tennis shoes, after spreading my two hundred dollars out to dry. I shuddered to think how many corpses they had tried them on.

  After two hours of studying a legal-sized sheet of paper covered with questions in Leo’s cramped Spencerian hand, school opened. He attacked me with a barrage of questions, trick and straight, that lasted until bedtime. “You haven’t come back to Cuba, chico,” he told me seriously, his black eyes burning into mine. “This country never existed before you went away. You’re in a stronghold of the OGPU, or the NKVD, or whatever you want to call it. It’s all of the police states rolled together with a Fidel-Spanish overlay. The only way you can survive is by being what you are and knowing all the answers. Flunk one and you won’t last out the day. Now, let’s go. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What is your rank and name, and where were you born?”

  “I’m Primer Teniente Gabriel Alvarez, born in Santiago de Cuba, April 10, 1935.”

  “Do you remember the address of the house where you were born?”

  “Very well. It was 264 Heredia Street, two houses from the birthplace of the poet, José María Heredia.”

  “Do you remember anything he wrote?”

  “Not much, but I remember he wrote ‘Ode to Niagara,’ because fragments of the poem are on a plaque between two of the windows in his birthplace. My home was a block and a half from the Parque de Cespedes.”

  “I’ll bet you used to play there around all those statues as a boy, and in the evening you could sit on your steps and listen to the band.”<
br />
  “You must be thinking of someplace else, Compañero. The Parque de Cespedes, Santiago’s principal downtown park, is unusual in Cuba. It has no monuments, no statues and no bandstand.”

  And on and on and on—Your father’s name? Your mother’s maiden name? You’re on two weeks’ leave from El Morro fortress. Who’s in command? Rank and name? What American officer tried to bottle up the harbor during the Spanish-American War? Where did you get your two bullet holes and that scar? Battle of Girón? What was your rank when you were wounded? Who was your commanding officer? Rank and name?

  Then it was Jorge Villaverde’s turn. I had to soak in all the information possible in the limited time about the five organizations in the Communist government which controlled all the lives in Cuba: the C.D.R., the Partido Comunista, the Federation of Cuban Women (headed by Raúl’s guerrilla fighting wife, Vilma), the Union of Communist Youth (U.J.C.), and the Union of Cuban Pioneers (the Communist organization for youngsters from eight to eighteen years old).

  “You better get it down pat, Tony,” Villaverde advised me. “Those are the very first lessons taught to the kids starting school.”

  There was more: I didn’t speak or understand English. I had never in my life been to Havana before. I was to contact Dr. Arturo Maciá not by name or phone but by asking for Justino Jorrín in person in what used to be Dr. Lorie’s American drugstore, on the Prado, but was now the Farmacia Cuba Libre. I was not to inquire about Señora Teresa Nunez at the Plaza Hotel.

  Oddly enough that battle-scarred hero Primer Teniente Gabriel Alvarez slept like a top the first night he was born. His addle-pated head had been crammed so full of brand new facts that there was no room left for a single dream.

  Leo drove me to the bus stop in a disreputable station wagon, picking me up at a designated point several blocks from the museum hideaway. He gave me one more workout before I got out of the car. He had equipped me with a Makarov automatic and three extra clips of cartridges. Pointing to the gun, he said in English, “That gun works, but try to think of it as window dressing. Jefe assures me you know how to use one, but I’m assuring you that if you have to pull it out of that holster in Havana you’re a dead man. Nothing on earth can save you!”