Havana Year Zero

by Karla Suárez

  That night, we sat on the balcony, waiting for the power to return because, what with the heat and the mosquitoes, staying indoors was torture. Ángel was very loving. We were sitting on the floor, him propped up against the wall and me leaning against him, feeling his body and hearing his voice softly crooning: ‘A soul that gazes at me unspeaking, says everything with its eyes.’ I was feeling sorry for Leonardo because his novel was never going to be perfect. Do you know what I’ve been thinking? I asked Ángel. And he said he hadn’t a clue because there was no way of knowing what went on in my head. I’ve been thinking that I might be able to help you get the legacy back. Euclid is a friend of mine, so maybe I can do something. He turned me around to look into my eyes and asked if I really would do that for him. I nodded and we kissed, long and slow.

  12

  What followed were lovely, in some way really fun days. As I said, I was feeling like a puppeteer, up above, moving the strings without harming anyone, just deftly tweaking them to get the best out of each marionette. It’s an odd but pleasant sensation. Don’t you think so?

  With Ángel, everything was going smoothly. That night on the balcony, we’d made a pact: I’d remove the legacy from Euclid’s home and he’d return it to Margaritatheseaisbeautifulandthewind with a note saying ‘goodbye’. He was so happy that he laughed aloud and embraced me, calling me a goddess, his dearest darling, a woman with a huge heart. He went on to say that he was well aware that what he wanted to do might seem a bit peculiar, he knew I thought it would be better to just tell all those ghosts to get lost, but he simply couldn’t do that; he’d always been a mass of manias and weird rituals whose aim was to prevent life becoming a tangled mess. He wished he could be like me and exist in the perfect order of numbers, but he wasn’t cut out for it. And he was right there: Ángel and I were very different. Maybe that’s what attracted me; that and a warm feeling at the sight of his long, untidy hair, his smile and that look of a child who’s just been given a huge sweet. It didn’t occur to him to ask why I’d decided to help him instead of my friend, he was so happy that the question can’t have passed through his mind, and I preferred not to mention the article published under Euclid’s name that he’d shown me a few days before. What was the point? And neither was there any point in badmouthing my former tutor; the article was our own unsettled business. It had nothing to do with Ángel. He laughed, put his arms around me, and with all that fondling he soon began to undress me and we ended up making love. There’s something wonderful about having sex on a balcony, at night, when the lights are out, there’s no traffic passing along the avenue, no televisions or music blaring out and not the slightest breeze, just the mosquitoes and our naked bodies breaking all those silences.

  That was the night Ángel shared one of his rituals with me. How could I forget it? After making love, we went inside on all fours, helpless with laughter, like children crawling around in nursery school, unworried by the idea of having no clothes on. We washed by candlelight, using up what little water was left in the drum. Then, after putting our clothes on, we returned to the balcony to contemplate the night sky and laugh at it until the power came back. My angel was in such a good mood that he looked into my eyes, said he wanted to show me something, took my hand, led me to the living room and asked me to sit on the sofa. I did as requested, and he went to the dresser. Then he said that I might think it odd, but he wanted to introduce me to his unknown favourite, the owner of the videotapes he’d found in the mistaken knapsack in São Paulo. I don’t quite know why, but I was strangely happy. Talk about dumb, right? Ángel put one of the tapes into the video player and sat down next to me. There was nothing very interesting about the clips, in fact they were pretty boring. A little girl with a cone-shaped paper hat blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. The same child holding the cord of a piñata, surrounded by other boys and girls, also with paper cones on their heads and cords in their hands. All in black and white. No sound. Snatches of life, faces that must mean something to the owner of the video, but left me cold. Just blurry images that, with time, would disappear. What did have great significance was that Ángel was opening that door, allowing me to sit beside him and accompany him in the ritual. Do you see? I was entering an all-too-private place, a place no one else had access to, and that was a big deal. Too big a deal.

  I think that, after that night, I was even more convinced of the justice of taking the legacy from Euclid and giving it to Ángel. So you can imagine, I was naturally very curious about the document; all the more so given the information I now had about Meucci. But whichever way things panned out, I’d get to see the paper because it was part of the legacy. It even occurred to me that, once we’d recovered that legacy, I might somehow be able to persuade Ángel of the scientific importance of the drawings and we could hang on to the manuscript. It was a thought. Whatever, that decision was further down the line right now the main thing was to recover the legacy intact. Ángel had last seen it in a wooden chest that had belonged to some member of the family. For a while we entertained ourselves inventing strategies I could implement in Euclid’s apartment. Ángel had never been there, so I drew a ground plan and we added drawing pins to represent each of the people present: Euclid, his mother, Blot and I. He moved the drawing pins around like someone planning a bank robbery.

  Things seemed to return to normal in my relationship with Euclid. He said he’d felt bad when I missed the meeting of our science group because he knew me too well to believe that story about period pains. Women, he claimed, always use the same excuses. I nodded. Yes, I’d missed the meeting because I was feeling bad too, but that was behind us now. From then onwards, I began to increase the frequency of my visits to his home and I believe that made all the difference: there was no way Euclid could be aware of the pact made behind his back, and so he firmly believed in my forgiveness and our continued alliance.

  It was fun to be in his apartment because I again felt like Agent 007. I first decided to make a general inspection. As if my mind was on other things, I began to look carefully at each object. It wasn’t my friend’s home but his mother’s, so the majority of the things in it were arranged to her taste and that was, to some extent, an advantage. Let me explain: in the living room/diner there were no large pieces of furniture where things could be stowed away, just a sideboard with a few drawers in which it seemed to me unlikely that Euclid would have been able to store anything. And neither did the other shared areas – the kitchen, bathroom and hall – appear to have any means of secreting something so precious. That left his mum’s bedroom, to which I had no access, but then it didn’t seem an ideal hiding place either; and, of course, there was Euclid’s room, which I thought was my best bet. You could have hidden anything in there. There was a bookcase, a wardrobe, a bedside table and even a number of cardboard boxes under the bed. If I’m going to be honest, searching other people’s rooms isn’t exactly my favourite task in life. OK? But I had no choice. I knew that Euclid kept the folder with all his notes and newspaper cuttings about Meucci in the wardrobe because he’d openly taken it out to show me. Naturally, given the importance of the document and the rest of the legacy, it was no surprise that he wouldn’t have it in full view where anyone could see it, and that’s why I thought the boxes under the bed might be a good place to start. But exactly how was I going to get those boxes out from under my friend’s bed? It even occurred to me to try to flood the apartment. That wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. The water came on every other day, and then the storage drums had to be filled, so Euclid’s mum used to put hosepipes inside them in the morning and leave the taps open, waiting for the moment when the water began to run through the pipes. It often happens here in Cuba that the water returns unexpectedly and if no one is home, the drums overflow. I thought up ways of distracting everyone: for example, persuading Euclid to take Blot out for a walk with me while his mother was doing the shopping, just at the moment when the water came back and so flooded Euclid’s room. Then
it would simply be a matter of returning to discover the disaster and volunteering to help clear up. And, of course, the first thing to do would be to salvage the boxes under the bed. Not such a bad plan, right? Nevertheless, I decided not to try it for the time being as it was too dependent on chance, and there was always the possibility that the water might damage the document. The last thing I wanted!

  So I began by searching for the wooden chest in the most accessible areas of the room: the bookcase, the wardrobe and the bedside table. It wasn’t in any of those places. I then moved to a smaller scale. For Euclid, the important part of the legacy was the document. Could he have thrown out the rest of it, only retaining that? I believed him capable of such an act, but it was also possible that he’d stored the other things separately. In that case, what I had to do was concentrate on the document: I could look for the family tree and all the other stuff later.

  During those days, Meucci became almost our only topic of conversation. Anything else seemed to cause disagreements. Even the fractals that we’d been so enthusiastic about in the early days of the study group were a reason for disputes because Euclid had finished reading Mandelbrot’s The Fractal Geometry of Nature and had a great many objections and reservations. So many that the moment he started out on them, I found ways to change the subject. Our only point of harmony was the invention of the telephone. And that was all I wanted to talk about.

  Although Euclid continued to express his conviction that the author had the document, he didn’t believe that Leonardo had sufficient scientific knowledge to interpret Meucci’s diagrams. That was too big an ask. In his view, Leonardo only knew what he’d read in those famous articles he talked about, articles I had to get my hands on before he finished his blessed novel. Euclid was adamant that we not only needed the document but also all the other information in Leonardo’s possession. And while I never said so, I understood perfectly how crucial my intervention was in obtaining the information he needed. That was when I became the puppeteer again. Just for the fun of it, I proposed attempting to find a way of getting Leo to show me the articles. Why not? I even said that, when the opportunity arose I’d search the author’s desk and bookshelves. Euclid was surprised by that offer; he giggled and claimed it would be burglary, but considering the situation... He asked if I’d be really capable of doing that and I smiled, saying: And you wouldn’t be capable of stealing something in the name of science? I know he didn’t understand the reference, but that didn’t matter; we agreed that any action was fair if it meant justice for Antonio Meucci. All in the name of science.

  As for Leonardo, I continued to meet him. There was no longer any need to invent specious errands at the Ministry of Education as I believe we were beginning to enjoy each other’s company. Naturally, Meucci was the main topic of conversation with him too. Leo used to say that I was becoming his notebook for the novel. To start with, I was a magnificent listener. What use is a story if there’s no one to hear it? None at all. And I listened, but not merely that – I wasn’t just a passive audience – I asked questions and always wanted to know more. Talking to me about Meucci, then, gave him space to think, to notice small details and organise his ideas. Speaking his ideas aloud, he told me, was like writing without the need to worry about the grammar. And I can tell you that I felt important, not merely an onlooker but a walking notebook. A nice thought, right?

  Of course, anyone would have enjoyed listening to him. Meucci’s life was the story of an unlucky genius. After the closure of the candle factory, thanks to the financial backing of a friend, Antonio was briefly able to earn a living manufacturing pianos and decorative objects; then he founded the Clifton Brewery, the first on Staten Island to produce lager. He was a gadfly, as they say, going from one thing to the next. But due to some shady business and a bad defence lawyer, in 1859 he had to resign the management of the brewery, which then passed into other hands, expanded and eventually became the great Bachman’s Clifton Brewery. Meucci had a talent for invention but business wasn’t his forte. In addition to losing the factory, his house ended up being auctioned, although the new owner did allow the couple to go on living there as tenants.

  Another example of his bad luck and the ways other people took advantage of his misfortune had to do with the candles. Despite having patented a number of his inventions in that area, Meucci was forced to work like a mule for a miserable wage in a company owned by William E. Rider, to whom he’d ceded the patents.

  Between 1860 and 1871, he was involved in a variety of different activities. He made improvements to the design of kerosene lamps, invented a special wick that produced a bright flame without black smoke, obtained patents for inventions related to paper production and manufactured hats and several forms of rope. Finally, he patented a way of treating petroleum and other oils to produce a new process for obtaining siccative oils for paint. Those oils were marketed and exported to Europe but, logically, not by Meucci. Who then? The Rider & Clark Company, created by someone called Clark and the same Rider involved in the candle patents.

  Returning to the instrument we’re interested in, he continued to perfect his design. During 1857 and 1858 he succeeded in producing a high-quality electromagnetic telephone that included almost all the characteristics of modern apparatuses, and even utilised two separate parts: one for speaking and the other for listening. A contemporary drawing made by the artist Nestore Corradi is still in existence. By 1860, the apparatus had been improved to the point where the sound transmission was perfect. Meucci then sought out possible investors in Italy, but that country was going through a pretty turbulent political period and no one was interested in the telephone. Never losing hope, Meucci continued to refine his invention.

  But calamity had evidently taken a liking to him. On June 30th 1871, the boiler of the Westfield, one of the ferries that ran between Staten Island and Manhattan, exploded. Many people were killed or injured, among them Meucci, who almost died from his burns. The months of convalescence were hard for the couple, whose precarious financial situation was only worsened by the additional medical expenses. Fortunately, they had an employee who assisted Ester. The two women were forced to sell many belongings in order to survive, including Meucci’s prototype for the telephone. It goes without saying that, after Antonio’s recovery, he was never able to recover the things that had been sold. It’s ironic that the telephone helped to save his life.

  That same year, while still convalescing, Meucci joined three compatriots to co-found the Telettrofono Company, with the aim of continuing his experiments on the transmission of the human voice. He managed to acquire a patent caveat for a well-developed model of the telephone. The reason why he didn’t apply for the full patent is simple: he couldn’t afford the $250 fee. The temporary caveat had to be renewed annually and its only value was to prevent a full patent being granted to a similar invention during the period of its validity. That model had already resolved a number of the problems faced by earlier inventors: how to announce a call; using copper cable to increase the quality of transmission; the so-called ‘local effect’, which is the echo of one’s own voice over that of the person on the other end of the line. He also proposed that the instrument should be used in a silent environment. Bell had to address all those issues too, but he didn’t begin the task until 1877.

  Meucci, as you well know, had genius on his side, but not good fortune. To continue the list of calamities, only a few months after forming the Telettrofono Company, one of his partners died. As a consequence, the two remaining partners decided to separate, one returning to Italy and the other moving to some other place. The company was dissolved and Meucci was again alone with his invention.

  All that seems simply too unjust, don’t you think? Here in Cuba, we’d say it was time for a ritual cleansing bath, but maybe it was right here that a lifelong curse was laid on him. I don’t know. The only certainty is that nothing went right for the poor man, Leonardo said. That was why his novel was nee
ded; so that Meucci would finally be recognised as a public figure and his genius never again trampled into the dirt by the shoes of the ignorant. I loved it when he said things like that. And I felt that the deeper I delved into Meucci’s history, the longer I continued my task as the author’s notebook, the more I came to identify with Meucci.

  13

  Haven’t you ever considered killing someone? I mean, haven’t you ever wanted to grab someone and wring their neck like a chicken. I’ve never done it, my stepfather took care of all that – with chickens, naturally. I think it’s hideous; I mean, when you come down to it, what harm have chickens ever done me? None, but people, certain people, have. That’s why I had the urge to kill. Just once. Of course I didn’t. My limits don’t tend towards infinity, they stop before reaching it, and in terms of committing murder, they get stuck on the mere formulation of a desire: I want to kill you.

  The day I felt like killing was a Monday. I remember that clearly. I’d spent almost the whole of Saturday with Euclid, first at the group meeting and then at his place. Ángel was busy at his father’s that weekend with family meals and the like, so I couldn’t see him, which is why I decided to give Saturday over to my former tutor. We discussed fractals and chaos, walked Blot, listened to Chichí’s stories, chatted to Euclid’s mum and dined on a delicious meal of rice and split peas, accompanied by pseudo minced beef made from banana skins. Almost a miracle in those days. When the moment came to retreat to his room and discuss our favourite subject, Euclid announced that he had a surprise; and boy did he surprise me. He told me that he’d made enquiries and now had the address of the Garibaldi Meucci Museum, which, according to him, was the house on Staten Island we should contact once we had the document. I was somewhere between astonished and disconcerted, but Euclid explained that, having given the matter serious thought, he’d come to the conclusion that the museum was the only place in the world where we’d find an audience who understood the importance of our discovery. It was Meucci’s house, his museum. Anywhere else, we’d have to start by explaining who Meucci was and then put up with the laughter of people who would no doubt believe we were crazy. Just imagine the scene, he said, and I imagined it. I saw us at the entrance to the Academy of Sciences, telling the doorman we had proof that the telephone had been invented in Havana by an Italian man. After the titters would come the look of pity for those poor guys – us – who so much rice and split peas, so much sun and so much Special Period had sent mad. They would then politely invite us to leave and we’d end up sitting on a wall in the sunshine, gazing at the document, with no idea what to do with it. No way. Euclid wanted to save us that bitter pill and go straight to the place where we could be sure of receiving a hearing. Once we’d got hold of the document, we had to contact the museum, and that was when things would begin to move. Of course, he added, we wouldn’t act like tame underdeveloped carrier pigeons, handing over our treasure to the first person who comes along. That wasn’t going to happen. Contacting the museum was simply the initial step towards our future, because our future, he stressed, was to become the scientists who would ensure international recognition of Meucci’s story.