[2012] Havana Lost

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  The paper was eight by eleven inches. Thick. Off-white originally, it was yellowed now. On it was a sketch of three squiggly vertical lines about an inch apart. In the middle was a straight line that angled right. A jagged horizontal line bisected all the lines near the top of the page. Near two of the squiggly lines were three dots. One was below the horizontal line. A second was below and to the left of the first. The third dot was about three inches farther down the page. At the bottom of the page the letter “C” was written twice. The “C’s” were followed by the letter “L” which was circled. On the lower left was another sketch: a circle of dots with something in the center.

  Luisa couldn’t make any sense of it. “What is this?”

  Gran didn’t answer for a moment. Then she looked up, her eyes bright. If Luisa didn’t know Gran was one of the toughest women alive, she could have sworn those eyes were wet. Then Gran blinked, and her expression reverted to normal.

  “Your grandfather could have been an artist,” she said softly. “But he had—other interests.”

  “Granpa Luis drew this?”

  “He gave it to your father when they were in Cuba.” Frankie didn’t add that Luisa’s mother was sure it was the reason her father died. Frankie kept that to herself.

  “It’s a map,” Gran continued.

  Luisa held it up. The squiggly lines, the dots, the letters were unreadable. “Of what? Where?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Luisa gazed at Gran. “Really? Ma doesn’t know?”

  Gran shook her head.

  “You don’t, either?”

  Gran arched her eyebrows. “By the way, if your mother finds out I showed this to you, she’ll be furious.”

  Although Gran had a propensity for the dramatic, Luisa’s stomach knotted. Her entire life she’d been aware of secrets held, stories untold. Gran and her mother told her only what they wanted her to know. Memories that had been approved and sanitized. Why couldn’t they be like other families, sharing their histories, warts and all?

  “So why did you? Show this to me, that is?”

  Gran shot her a sidelong glance. There was something she wasn’t telling Luisa. “Because I think you have an adventurous spirit. Like me.”

  Luisa was about to say she knew Gran wasn’t telling her everything when Gran smiled.

  “You’re always asking about your father. This sketch was important to him. Your grandfather, too. Over the years I have kept wondering why. I’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

  Her smile was too broad, Luisa thought. “You want me to find out what this is all about and report back, don’t you? That’s why you showed it to me.”

  “Aren’t you curious? It could be a quest.” Gran paused. “Of course, if you don’t want to…” She let her voice trail off.

  Luisa knew her grandmother. “Of course, I’m curious, but why now?”

  “I was thinking with your engineering background, you probably have access to better resources than me.”

  “Are you sure you want me to look into this? What if we find out something we don’t want to know?”

  “Querida, whatever this represents is over twenty years old. Who would care after all this time?” She paused. “Still, you probably shouldn’t say anything to your mother.” She paused again. “So, what do you say?”

  Luisa studied the map again. Then she looked up at Gran. “Why don’t you ask the bank to make a couple of copies?”

  “Good idea.” Her grandmother beamed. “I knew you were the right person for this.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “So everything was okay while I was gone?” Carla asked her daughter that night as they were finishing dinner. Carla had returned from a medical conference on developmental disorders in children and spent the afternoon preparing arroz con pollo. Unlike Cuba, in Chicago the ingredients for any recipe she dreamed up were permanently stocked at an enormous grocery store only five minutes away.

  Carla still couldn’t get over how large and shiny and prosperous everything in the U.S. seemed. She knew it was mostly a mirage, that poor people were crammed into substandard housing; that gangs roamed the streets of the South and West Side; and that the American murder rate was one of the highest in the civilized world. But living, as they did, in an affluent part of Evanston, it was easy to ignore the flaws. In fact, with both she and Luisa coming and going all the time, a peaceful evening at home, without security guards invading their space, was a rarity.

  “Everything’s fine, Mama.” Luisa smiled through a bite of the chicken.

  “And your grandmother?” After twenty years, Carla could almost say the word without any particular emphasis.

  “Oh, you know Gran.”

  Carla nodded. She had a love-hate relationship with Francesca DeLuca. She never doubted her mother-in-law loved her granddaughter more than life itself. But the woman’s values were so different from hers. It wasn’t the conflict between socialism versus capitalism. Over time Carla had grudgingly come to believe that a capitalistic system was healthier and—shockingly—more reasonable than what Fidel had in place. She couldn’t complain about her treatment, either. The day she arrived in Chicago with Luisa in her arms, scared, destitute, and desperate, she’d showed Francesca the photo of her and Luis taken forty years earlier in Santa Clara. Francesca broke down and from that moment on treated Carla and Luisa like royalty. She helped Carla become proficient in English, sent her to medical school, but made sure she still had time for the baby. She found Carla a job at a hospital as a pediatric resident, and when it was time for Carla to start a private practice, was there to help her launch it. There wasn’t a dollar she didn’t spend, a connection she didn’t use, a string she didn’t pull.

  Which was the problem. Francesca wasn’t happy unless she controlled the lives of everyone around her. And Carla did not like being controlled.

  “Gran wants to help me find an internship this summer,” Luisa said.

  Carla picked up the dishes and took them into the kitchen. She had to be careful in her responses to her daughter about Francesca. She didn’t want Luisa to feel torn between them, although she suspected her attitude seeped through anyway.

  “I told her that my advisor already set me up with some interviews.”

  Carla called out from the kitchen. “Really? How nice of him.” She returned with a little cake, a gateau the store called them, and set it on the table.

  “He likes me,” Luisa said.

  Carla couldn’t suppress a smile. Luisa was so like her father that way. What some might call boasting was simply a matter of fact for them. For about the millionth time, Carla wished Michael was alive to see what they had created. She retrieved a knife and sliced the cake.

  • • •

  Carla was relaxing in the recliner later that night, poring over a conference abstract on radical hemispherectomies in children, when Luisa came out of her room. She’d been inside with the door closed for over an hour, which was unusual for her. Carla looked up and smiled. Evenings like this when she was doing one thing, her daughter another, but they still managed to connect, were small miracles. Carla knew Luisa would move out soon, and she was trying to mentally prepare herself for that day, but for now she cherished their shared moments.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as Luisa plopped down on the sofa.

  “Putting the finishing touches on a flyer. And surfing the net.”

  “A flyer?” Carla frowned. She still had trouble with idiomatic English.

  “You know. For the protest next month.”

  Carla smiled faintly. Although her daughter had not grown up under a Marxist government as she had, Luisa shared her belief that society should not focus on the accumulation of wealth at the expense of public welfare. She hoped Luisa’s desire to become an engineer would contribute to that welfare one day. It was an ambition that Carla supported. She wasn’t sure Michael would have. He had been independent, a lone ranger, more interested in personal than societal goals. But in his
heart? Who knew?

  His father, Luis, had been different. In fact, Carla found it curious the way values often skipped a generation. Or two. She never said much about Luisa’s activism, but secretly she was proud of her. Although she suspected that part of her daughter’s commitment was due to her boyfriend, a long-haired computer student named Jed.

  Now Luisa cleared her throat and sat up straight. A serious expression came over her.

  “What is it, Luisita?” Carla asked.

  She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Mama, tell me about Granpa Luis.”

  Carla closed the abstract she’d been reading.

  “Your grandfather was a wonderful man. Intelligent. Curious. Firm. But gentle. He was a man everyone looked up to. The kind of man everyone should have as a father. Or grandfather,” she added.

  “But he was killed, right? Shot in his bedroom.”

  Carla hesitated. “That’s right.” Neither she nor Francesca had hidden that part from Luisa. Her daughter knew about the Pacelli Family. She knew about their history in Cuba. She knew how Francesca’s father, Tony, had torn Francesca away from Luis during the Revolution. And how Michael, after being raised by Carmine DeLuca, discovered who his father really was. How their reunion had been cut short by tragedy.

  Now that Carla knew the whole story, in fact, she often thought the family was cursed, like the Kennedys. The evils of the fathers—or in both cases, the grandfathers—had been foisted upon the children. But Carla was determined that the curse ended with Michael. Luisa would not be exposed. And from her behavior, she assumed Francesca felt the same way. Still, an unsettled feeling bordering on fear made her straighten and cross her legs.

  “Why do you ask?” Carla hoped her voice sounded casual.

  Luisa tucked her feet under her. “Why was he killed?”

  Carla remembered asking Michael the same question on the way to Regla twenty years ago. A few minutes later, he’d handed her the photo and the map. And then he’d been shot by the border guards.

  “I don’t know, Luisa,” she lied.

  Luisa looked as if she couldn’t accept such an inadequate response.

  “What was his life like? Before you met him?”

  Carla remembered the mornings at Luis’s home when Michael was out, mornings she and Luis had talked while drinking contraband coffee, the only luxury Luis allowed himself.

  “Well, I know he was in the army for a while.”

  “The Cuban Army.”

  “Of course. He knew Fidel from Oriente—I mean Santiago de Cuba. They fought together. Well, maybe not together, but like Fidel, Luis fought against the Batista government.”

  “I know all that,” Luisa said impatiently.

  “What?”

  “That Papa Tony couldn’t bear the thought of his daughter being with a revolutionary. It’s why he broke them up.”

  Carla nodded.

  “And that Gran was already pregnant with my father.”

  Carla inclined her head. “Why so curious all of a sudden?”

  “We have a—a colorful family. Full of drama. I want to know the characters better.”

  Carla shifted, reflecting on her daughter’s question. “Well, as I said, I always felt Luis was more of an intellectual than a soldier. I was surprised when he said he spent time in Angola. It didn’t seem—”

  “Angola? Granpa Luis was in Angola?”

  Carla nodded.

  “You never told me that.”

  “I suppose it was not important. Half a million Cubans went to Angola. Soldiers, doctors, social workers… Fidel would never admit it, but Angola was Cuba’s Vietnam.”

  “Where was Granpa stationed in Angola?”

  Carla furrowed her brow. “I am not sure. It was so long ago. Let’s see. He was a General de Brigada, I know that. And he was there for two years. Then a peace accord was signed, and he came home. Although he said the rebels were still fighting each other in the jungle.”

  “But you don’t know where?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No reason.” Luisa went into the kitchen. A drawer squeaked open, and Carla heard utensils clanging.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m getting another piece of cake. Do you want some?”

  After four days of starchy hotel food and sugary drinks, Carla felt like a cow that had been led to the trough. “Thank you, no.”

  • • •

  Luisa slid a generous piece of cake onto a plate and carried it back to her room. She set it down by her computer and pulled out a copy of the map her grandmother gave her. She jiggled the mouse to wake up her computer, closed Word and the flyer she’d been editing, and opened up Google Earth. When prompted to enter where she wanted to “fly,” she typed in “Angola”. She watched as the globe on the screen slowly rotated across the Atlantic Ocean, dipped south, and closed in on a mass of land in Southeastern Africa.

  She tapped the mouse for a closer view, but the colors on the map—green, muddy brown, and gray—made it difficult to determine the topography. Plus Angola was huge. She zoomed in close enough to see riverbeds, forests, and mountains, but nothing resembled the map her grandfather had sketched. In fact, she had no idea what the scale of his map was supposed to be. She pored over every inch of Angola, looking for the three skeletal fingers that snaked down from the top of her grandfather’s map. She assumed they were creeks or rivers or streams but nothing revealed itself. And the letters, two “C’s” and an “L,” written on the bottom of the page, were equally baffling.

  She sat up, stretched her arms, then dug into the cake. She’d examined maps of Cuba that afternoon at the library, but hadn’t found anything that approximated the sketch. She supposed she could hunt for more detailed maps of Angola tomorrow, but she wasn’t hopeful. Whatever her grandfather had drawn might be lost to history.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The next morning dawned April balmy, warm enough for Luisa to ride her bike to campus. That was spring in Chicago: prepare for the worst, then praise the weather gods when given a reprieve. A female security guard followed Luisa in a car. By now the guards were as familiar to her as her shadow—someone had been with her since she was a baby—and she’d learned to ignore them. She locked the bike in the iron bike rack and strolled across a wide plaza.

  McCormick Technological Institute was one of the more modern buildings on Northwestern’s campus, at least architecturally. In fact, the building’s only link to the past was some stone carvings above the door. Luisa wasn’t quite sure what they were and was too embarrassed to ask, but one looked like an ancient Greek using a primitive lever to move a boulder. Another could have been chemist John Dalton or Sir Isaac Newton sitting beside an unknown machine.

  She went inside and walked down halls marked by linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting. When she turned right, the interior changed dramatically, and she crossed a sunlit glassed-in bridge that took her to the Mudd library. Like the bridge, the library was relentlessly bright and modern. It wasn’t crowded, and she was able to get on a computer right away.

  She entered “Angola” and “maps” and clicked on search. A moment later she was crestfallen. Most of the maps and information about Angola were in the main library, not Mudd. She searched again, adding the terms “engineering” and “technical” but nothing materialized. She took the steps up to the stacks on the third floor where a small collection of maps was housed. She found nothing.

  She came back outside. She’d have to go to the main library. She was unlocking her bike, her back to the sidewalk, when a male voice called out.

  “Hey Lulu!”

  She turned around. A gangly young man in threadbare jeans and a bulky jacket was heading toward her. His brown hair was thick, curly, and flyaway, giving him an Albert Einstein look, which was magnified by rimless glasses. Behind the glasses was a pair of bright blue eyes.

  “Hey you.” She slipped her arms around his neck and gave him a long, slow kiss. His body relaxed into hers, an
d when they broke apart, those big blue eyes were squeezed shut, and she saw his languid smile. Jedidiah Collins, from Montana, was as different from Luisa as a horse from a rattlesnake, he joked. He grew up riding the range and helping his father herd cattle. He was a direct, easy-going cowboy, and she’d never seen him in a bad mood. It was as if coming from Big Sky country had imbued him with a permanently sunny disposition. With her intensity, complicated family history, and activism, Luisa was the exact opposite, an exotic hothouse flower. Which made them a perfect match.

  She finished unlocking her bike. They were a match in other ways, too. They were almost exactly the same height, which meant their pace matched when they walked arm in arm or jogged. In bed, too, they were a match, and she felt herself warm as she remembered the nights in his apartment when she was supposed to be at the library.

  “What’re you up to, Lulu?”

  She loved his nickname for her. “I was looking for a map of Angola.”

  “Angola? What for?”

  Although Jed knew her family history, and liked to hear the stories—he was the first to admit that everything he knew about the Mafia was from the movies—Luisa made a brushing aside gesture. “Just a little family business.”

  She was surprised he didn’t follow up. She realized why when he spoke.

  “Um, do you have any classes this afternoon?” There was a catch in his voice.

  Luisa knew what that meant. It had been a few days since they’d been together. She looked up. “None that I can’t miss.”

  They walked the bike back to his apartment. The security guard knew better than to tell her mother.

  • • •

  After making love, Jed dozed off. Luisa wondered if she should be irritated but decided it gave her an opportunity. She slipped out of bed, threw on one of his t-shirts, and went to the blinking laptop on his desk.