Havana Year Zero

by Karla Suárez

  I can’t tell you how often I thought about leaving the CUJAE. I was sick of the students, the poor food, the working conditions, the commute to and from the campus. If you think about it, as the crow flies the neighbourhood where I live, Alamar, is at the exact opposite end of the city from the CUJAE. Maybe in other parts of the world that would just mean a longish commute, but in the Havana of those years, it was almost a safari.

  I made my mind up one morning in 1991. I’d finished a class and had gone to the toilets, but just before coming out of the cubicle I heard two students enter and mention my name. I stayed in the cubicle to listen. There was no way they could know I was there. One of them said it was true, I was grouchy, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when the other replied that everyone was saying I was starved of it; that’s to say, according to my students, I was not only grouchy but wasn’t getting any sex either. At that time I was seeing a physics professor, but my dumb students were trying to make me a laughing stock. Maybe you think it wasn’t such a big deal, but the thing is that I was fed up, my whole life seemed to be mocking me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Enough was enough! Those people weren’t worth the effort. There and then, I made my mind up to leave my job, and that’s just what I did at the end of the year. And where was I going to find work? I ask you, just what the hell does a mathematician do in a country that’s in crisis? Fuck all. I had no option but to accept anything that would at least cut down my daily commute. Through a colleague, I found a post at the technical college in El Vedado, right in the centre of Havana. After teaching undergraduate classes, it was a comedown, but times were hard and my choices limited. I thought of it as something to tide me over. The situation would change, I told myself, and I’d regain my former status.

  And it’s true, the situation did change: for the worse. So in 1993 I was still there, telling myself to be patient, trying to explain basic formulae to kids who had absolutely no interest in anything.

  So, when Euclid told me about Meucci and the unpublished document he wanted to find, I immediately felt that things were looking up. My former tutor was pacing back and forth across his bedroom, telling his story, while I looked on, enthralled. An original scientific document. That was definitely something to hang on to, the lever capable of moving our small world, as Archimedes would put it. I was at a loss for words. But then I too stood up and began to think aloud. Something like that couldn’t be left in just anyone’s hands, the document was a piece of scientific heritage and belonged to mankind. But are you sure it’s genuine, Euclid? Yes, he said, it was signed, and the woman had proof that a member of her family had worked in the Teatro Tacón at the same time as Meucci. It’s authentic, Julia, I swear on my grandmother’s grave. I’d never in my life seen an original scientific document, but now it felt like it was there before my eyes. Have you any idea what this means, Julia? Euclid asked. And I began to have ideas. The document was a tangible, material reality; it was a sheet of paper with a particular significance. It could be offered as proof of a forgotten truth and so vindicate a great inventor. And what’s more, whoever succeeded in doing that would go down in history. And that person could publish an article in a prestigious scientific journal, give interviews on foreign TV channels, speak at international conferences and acquire a reputation in her or his field. That simple piece of paper might have the power to raise us out of anonymity and give meaning to each day of that Year Zero.

  Something has to be done, Euclid, I eventually said, and he smiled, confirming that something indeed had to be done because who knows what might happen to that document if it fell into the hands of some idiot, especially now, when we were all suffering hardship. Here in Cuba, Julia, there are people capable of selling their own mother given half the chance. He was right; it was just that I didn’t know where to start the search. He said he had a few vague ideas he needed to think through, but for the moment the main thing was not to mention the subject to anyone. The fewer people who knew about the document the better. Euclid put a finger to his lips and I did the same. We smiled. Once again, we were sharing a secret. We could work out what to do later, but that evening I was certain that something did have to be done. It was our duty as scientists.

  2

  I believe that everyone in this country remembers 1993 because it was the most difficult year of the so-called Special Period, when the economic crisis was at its worst. It was as if we’d reached the minimum critical point of a mathematical curve. Imagine a parabola. Zero point down, at the bottom of an abyss. That’s how low we sank. There was even talk of the Zero Option, having to subsist on the absolute minimum, or even less. A Year Zero. Living in Havana was like being inside a mathematical series that never ever converges on any point. A succession of minutes going nowhere. It was like waking up each morning on the same day, a day that branched out and became small portions replicating the whole. Hours without electricity. Food shortages. Rice and split peas every day. And soya. Soya hash. Soya milk. In Europe that might have been some kind of fancy dietary choice, but here it was our daily bread: and we were only allowed one stick of bread a day. It was awful. The split between dollars and local currency. The streets empty at night, bicycles replacing cars, shuttered shops, mountains of trash. It was also the year of the ‘storm of the century’, when the sea reached so far into the city that in some areas people used snorkels to fish for goods the water had washed from hotel storerooms. Manic! And then the calm. The country devastated, but at least calm. The return to the feeling of going nowhere, our trusty sun beating down like a punishment on the backs of people getting up each day, trying to live life as normal.

  In the middle of all that, Meucci’s story had come to me like a glimmer of light in the darkness, so that evening, when I left Euclid’s, I was turning over the whole thing in my mind as I walked. I couldn’t make sense of that woman giving away something so unique after guarding it jealously for years. It was clear that she’d sold the document at a high price when things began to go downhill, because my friend wouldn’t have been able to offer much. I had no idea what we’d do if we were lucky enough to find the new owner since neither of us had two cents to rub together. But we could cross that bridge when we came to it. What mattered to me was that I was walking along, feeling like a new person. I scanned the faces of the passers-by, wondering if one of them had the document. Maybe even had it in their pocket. Would they suspect that I also knew about it? I can tell you, it was a weird feeling. Have you ever seen a hologram? Those three-dimensional pictures recorded using lasers? When I was having an affair with the physics professor, we used to meet secretly in his lab and he once showed me a hologram. There was a photograph illuminated by a beam and the image rose into three dimensions before our eyes, like any physical body occupying space. It was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist the temptation to move closer and touch the image, but my hand passed through the projected body and I was unable to grasp it because, of course, it didn’t exist. It was right there in front of me, but it didn’t exist. I’d often felt that way in the Havana of 1993, like a hologram, a projection of myself, and I sometimes feared that if anyone reached out their hand to my body, they’d discover I didn’t exist. However, the day I learned about Meucci, it suddenly seemed like other people, the ones walking along the street around me, were the holograms.

  Do you get it? I knew a story that would interest the whole scientific community, people from other countries, and that made me solid, in some way important. It really did. A week before, nothing much had been happening in my life. But things began to change on the day I first heard the name Meucci in the conversation I recounted to Euclid. Why was I at there? I’ll make it short.

  Not long before the dinner I met the second variable in this story. Let’s call him... Ángel. Yes, that’s perfect. Everything always happened by pure chance with him. I was walking down Calle 23 one evening after work when suddenly an extremely strong motive force knocked me to the ground
. I was dazed, only able to watch the wretched cyclist disappear with my briefcase. Then I heard a voice behind me and discovered my guardian angel. He helped me to my feet, gathered up my belongings, told me he lived nearby and kindly asked if I wanted to clean my scratches.

  That damned cyclist would never know how grateful I was for his act of aggression. Although I must have seen Ángel hundreds of times, I’d never actually met him before. And he was so beautiful. Slim, but with clearly defined muscles. Fair-skinned but with a nice tan. And he wore his hair long. There’s no denying it: I love guys with long hair. I used to see him around there, always walking with a sort of weary gait, as if his head were full of things that weighed him down. When I was a child, Mum used to say that Anthony Perkins looked like he was walking on eggshells. I never understood that phrase, but in my mind Anthony Perkins became the eggshell man. And the truth is that when I came to analyse Ángel, I realised that he walked on eggshells too. He walked slowly. Cautiously. I went back to his apartment that day. There was no one else there, so I was able to take my time washing my hands and knees. Before I left, just to keep the door ajar, I told him that if he dropped by to see me at work, I’d buy him a coffee. He also assured me that I could call around any time. Bye, bye.

  I spent the following days on the lookout for him at work. Euclid was amused to see me so anxious, but insisted that a woman had no business getting herself into a strange man’s home. According to him, it was the man who should take the initiative. That’s what he said until the three of us met by chance in the street. Euclid and I were chatting as we went along, and when I raised my eyes I saw Ángel walking towards us; there was no time to warn my friend. Ángel smiled in recognition. I did the same. But when we stopped, I had a surprise. Ángel commented on the coincidence. He kissed my cheek and held his hand out to my friend, saying, Euclid, how are you? Euclid reciprocated the gesture. I looked at them in confusion. You two know each other? Ángel nodded and Euclid explained that he was a friend of one of his children. When we parted, Ángel promised to come and see me at work.

  A few days later, I found him waiting for me outside the Tech, and that was the beginning of the very slow process of getting closer to one another. Euclid had told me that Ángel often used to drop by his home in the days when he still had a family. He said that Ángel was a good sort and what’s more... I remember that he paused there and looked at me with a mischievous smile before adding that, as far as he knew, he lived alone and maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to visit him. That bastard Euclid was perfectly well aware of my housing problems and, while I liked Ángel from the first, I can’t deny that the lack of a flatmate was another point in his favour. And not only did he live alone, but also in El Vedado, in a marvellous apartment with a balcony overlooking Calle 23 – a street I love – and a huge living room containing books, paintings, a television set and even a video player. In this country, especially at that time, having a video player set you in a class above everyone else. That stuff about us all being equal just means that we have to mark the differences in small ways. You can take it from me.

  As I said, my relationship with Ángel developed slowly. He was a complicated sort of man, but I’ll get on to that later. What’s relevant now is how I discovered all the variables, and it was in his house that I met one of them. Ángel and I had seen each other a few times and, although I thought he was great, we hadn’t got any further than little glances and smiles. One night we’d arranged to go out together. I was in his living room having a drink, waiting for him finish dressing or something like that. So I was alone when the doorbell rang. I opened the door and saw a bespectacled mixed-race man whom I’m going to call Leonardo. That’s right, like Leonardo da Vinci.

  I have to admit that the first time I saw Leonardo, while he didn’t strike me as exactly ridiculous, I couldn’t help but laugh. I can tell you don’t know him. He was so polite, apologising for turning up unexpectedly, as if anyone in this country ever announced their intention of calling around in advance, but as soon as he spotted the bottle on the table, he said: Shit, Havana Club. Brilliant! After I’d poured him a couple of fingers, he sat down in the armchair, sipped his drink and started babbling all sorts of rubbish about the nectar of the gods and what have you. It was clearly some time since the poor guy had seen a bottle of real rum; in those days, you could only buy it with dollars, and dollars were still prohibited. I discovered that he was an author, had published a number of books and had a lot of projects in the pipeline.

  By the time Ángel appeared in the living room, Leonardo was on his second or third drink and I remember that he got to his feet, explaining that I’d been very kind, but that he needed to talk to Ángel about something. Ángel replied straight out that it wouldn’t be possible right then. I wasn’t sure if I’d put my foot in it by letting him enter; Ángel must have noticed my concern, because the expression on his face softened and he said they could talk some other time. They clinked glasses. When the author left, Ángel apologised, explaining that people who turned up out of the blue and never left until they’d finished the bottle drove him crazy. He gently stroked one finger along my cheek and then I believed him.

  I didn’t see the author again until the night I met the next variable. It’s like one led me to the next, isn’t it? Ángel had invited me to a party in the house of an artisan friend. He knew a lot of people there, I knew nobody, and that’s why it cheered me a little to spot Leonardo. Ángel was chatting with our host when a hand rested on his shoulder, and there was the author: a familiar face. The artisan smiled at Leonardo and raised the bottle he was holding, saying: Make yourself at home, you fools of the shadows. Then he left us. Leonardo turned slightly to allow the woman standing behind him through, and then, with a flourish, he introduced the penultimate variable in this story. Barbara Gattorno said ciao with a grin that wasn’t just ear to ear but stretched all around her head, taking in on its path her whole body, and perhaps, while it was at it, even managed to squeeze her boobs into her bra, because that was definitely at least one size too small. She’s an Italian friend, but speaks perfect Spanish, Leonardo informed us.

  That night we all drank, smoked, talked and danced. Ángel and Leonardo disappeared for a while and I was left chatting with Barbara, one of those women who exude self-confidence and seem to have an opinion about everything. She said that it was her first time on the island, that she was a journalist, writing about Cuban literature, that she’d only just started reading Leonardo’s stuff but it was an experience, Cuba was an experience, the smells, the people, the way they look at you and express themselves, she was dying to read all his manuscripts and live through all those stories. Leonardo was right, she did speak Spanish well; with a comical accent, but well.

  I remember that at some point I changed from rum to water because I’m not a big drinker; that Ángel and Barbara got into a debate about Italian cinema; that Leonardo and I chatted for a while. And that, late in the evening, Ángel came up to whisper a request in my ear: could I help get him out of there because the Italian woman talked nonstop. When we were making our departure, Barbara suggested that the four of us should have dinner in a paladar, one of the island’s homespun restaurants, the following evening. It would be on her, naturally.

  And that was how we arrived at the famous dinner and the moment when my life began to change, although of course I didn’t know that then. Paladares were still illegal in those days, so the restaurant kept a very low profile. We had a great night, eating well, laughing and drinking a lot of beer. Somewhere along the line Leonardo started to talk about his work. His most ambitious project, he told us, was a novel about Meucci, the inventor of the telephone. I immediately interrupted to say that Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone, but Barbara in turn interrupted me to insist that the true inventor was Meucci. Leonardo continued his account, adding that, as a mathematician, I should know things are only true until the contrary has been proved, and the contrary in this
case was that not only had Meucci invented the telephone, but had done it in Cuba. I didn’t have the first idea what they were talking about and, given the quantity of beer we’d consumed, I didn’t think they did either. Apparently Ángel shared my doubts, because he didn’t utter another word during the rest of the tale until, seemingly unable to bear any more, he rapped his can of beer on the table twice and said: Barbara, have you any idea how long it is since I’ve had a beer? She replied with a smile and ordered another round. In that way, the conversation moved to Ángel explaining our national shortages to Barbara, but the name Meucci had been spoken. And that was how I became the final variable in that story and, without realising it, found myself mixed up with them. The truth was that the only thing I was interested in around that time was Ángel: how to make him mine once and for all; how to break out of that circle of dead-end conversations and little glances.

  That night, when we left the paladar, a wind that presaged rain had sprung up. It was pleasant. Barbara proposed we go on somewhere else, but I had to work the next day so couldn’t. Ángel said he’d help me find a taxi. Leonardo looked at Barbara and said: If you want... We said goodnight. During the day, I’d usually try to hitch a ride home, but at night I preferred to go to Capitolio, where there were taxis that took local currency. As Ángel had decided to come with me, he chose the route. We started along Calle G. He made me laugh; every few minutes he stopped, opened his arms and his shirt billowed out. He said he was a balloon and that if I didn’t hold on tight to him, he’d float away. The streets of Havana are wonderful in the wind, they have a strange, magical, somehow angelic charm. He stopped once more, his arms open, and shouted: I can’t hold out any longer, I’m going. I laughed and he took my hand as if to continue walking, but instead pulled me tightly to him and looked deep into my eyes. Then he freed me and very slowly his hands reached my face, I felt the heat in my cheeks and heard that ‘I can’t hold out any longer’ whispered in a grave tone. I wasn’t laughing either. And the wind continued to blow and Ángel’s shirt continued to billow, the only difference was that he moved his lips close to mine and kissed me. And I kissed him back. We kissed. And the wind went on blowing, and I finally sunk my fingers into his long hair, and Ángel went on kissing me, my face between his hands, his tongue in my mouth, his hands passing from my cheeks to my neck, until one of my earrings fell out. That’s right, in the middle of all that I felt an earring fall out, but it was the sort of thing you don’t want to feel, but you do and you say: One of my earrings’s fallen out. At which point he diligently bent down to look for it. I told him not to bother, it was nothing special, but he insisted that he wasn’t going to let me lose an earring. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been longing for that kiss for over a month. I got the urge to put my hands round his throat, but what I did was to cry out: I’m the one who can’t hold out any longer. Then he straightened up, smiled idiotically and said: I’m an idiot, right? And he went on kissing me so the wind wouldn’t carry me away. Just after we got back to his apartment, it started to rain. Even though we scarcely slept, the next day my dense students seemed ultra-likeable and we had the most beautiful class of the whole year.