Havana Twist

by Lia Matera

  “It’s almost as if someone else asked about it recently,” Cindy mused. “Maybe got the usual denial, then went and checked it out anyway. Like he was afraid the boilerplate would be useless.”

  I sat forward. I’d made a fuss about this very poet in front of Mother’s friends. Had she inquired about it when she got here? Had she gone in search of Lidia Gomez, determined, as usual, to prove me wrong?

  Dennis took a left into a neighborhood of unpainted houses, their plaster walls showing ghosts of former colors. “Let’s see what they’ve got in front of her house right now.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Do you mind a detour?”

  “Not at all.”

  Cindy shifted in her seat to get a look at me. As if reading my mind, she said, “I should just tell you: We know about your mother.”

  I sat there, the humid breeze from her open window whipping my hair back.

  “The boys down at the Malecon were excited about a missing American woman. They think there’s a hundred dollar reward if they find her.” She smiled. “You talked to one of them and showed him a blond woman’s picture. That is, we assumed it was you. You’re blond. And you mentioned your mother having come here.”

  I didn’t know whether or not to admit it.

  “Here,” she said, digging in her handbag. She handed me her wallet. “Take a look—driver’s license, AP card. I’m not a Cuban spy or anything. Just a reporter.”

  Her driver’s license read Cindy Corlett, with an address in Houston. Dennis said, “We’re really here to try to get a look inside the tunnels.”

  “Tunnels?”

  “Our last two visits, our contacts kept telling us about underground explosions, even an occasional sink hole. We did some snooping around, saw guards at an entrance on the outskirts of town.”

  Cindy looked excited. “The word is that they’re building a labyrinth beneath Havana. The Cuban version of Vietcong tunnels, we assume. They’re gearing up for an attack by America, either by the government, the Mafia—they want their casinos back—or the Cuban expatriates.”

  “You think if Cuba’s invaded, Castro will go underground?”

  “We think he’s preparing to fight another guerrilla war,” Dennis confirmed. “Vietnam style. Because we just don’t have a track record of winning that kind of war.”

  “Slow down,” Cindy said. “Better turn here so they don’t see us.” She was looking through binoculars now.

  Dennis turned the corner and pulled over.

  “Chinese soldiers out front,” Cindy said. “She’s still at home.”

  “That’s good, right? Versus prison?” I hazarded a guess.

  “It might be good. Or it might mean she’s in bad shape and they don’t want her seen. Castro rarely has anyone taken away by soldiers—it looks too banana republic. Instead the CDRs—the neighborhood committees—round up mobs for ‘repudiation acts.’ That’s supposed to make it look more grass roots. Of course, if you refuse to take part, they mark it down. It’s not illegal, just like attending church isn’t illegal. But you won’t get a job if you do it.”

  “You said Lidia Gomez was dragged through the streets and beaten?”

  “We heard the repudiation acts lasted three days, that she was kicked and beaten with rocks and sticks, and that her poetry was stuffed down her throat.”

  “If my mother went there to check”—Cindy turned, looking startled—”if she did something like that for some reason, what would happen to her?”

  “Why would your mother do that? Who are you?” Cindy’s tone was sharp.

  “It’s not who I am, it’s who she is. She’s a lifelong activist, she came here with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. But I …” I ran my hands over my face, wiping away sweat. “I was trying to inject a note of realism into her revolutionary fervor. I’d just read an article about this poet and so I asked her WILPF group about it. They got very hot denying it. And I guess I’m wondering whether my mother wanted to prove I’d been taken in by capitalist propaganda.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “The rest of her group got home day before yesterday. She wasn’t on the plane.”

  “You haven’t asked any Cuban officials about her?”

  “No.”

  Cindy nodded. “Just as well. You wouldn’t get any information, and you could cause a lot of trouble.”

  Even Dennis was looking sweaty now. The afternoon heat was as wet as a steam bath. The streets were virtually empty. Our cheap Russian car smelled of inferior vinyl and encrusted dirt.

  “Just as well,” she repeated. “Cuba modeled its security forces on the very best, the USSR’s, so you can bet they already know about this. But if you approach them, you make it official, you make it public. And you can’t be sure what they’ll do with it then. Relations between the U.S. and Cuba being what they are, it might suit them to accuse her of spying.” Cindy must have seen the horror on my face. “That’s if they have to come out into the open—I’m sure they’d just as soon not. I would really avoid discussing this with anyone else. That includes phone calls to the U.S.—they’re always monitored by both governments.”

  So much for trying to reach my father. “What if my mother did go see the poet? Would she have been arrested?”

  “More likely she’d have been turned away. Unless she really got into their hair.”

  My mother had racked up seventeen arrests for getting in American cops’ hair. I hoped her regard for her foreign hosts meant she’d be more respectful here.

  “Lidia Gomez might know,” Dennis mused. “We’re determined to try and see her—journalists are absolutely panting to turn her into another Aung San Suu Kyi.” Burma’s famous political heroine, under house arrest for many years. “But the car’s going to attract attention. I think we’d better take it back to the hotel—the tourist police are probably keeping an eye on it. We’ll have to set out on foot. Quite a trek, unfortunately.”

  “How about that Trader Vic’s-looking restaurant by the water, the one where we saw Fidel last year?” Cindy offered. “Let’s park there tonight—it’s closer. They’ll assume we’re taking an after-dinner stroll on the beach. We’ll see how near the back of Gomez’s house we can get.”

  Dennis glanced at me.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. And God knew, I needed one.

  6

  The restaurant was a tourist fantasy of thatched roofs and plank tables, more like a theme-based mall chain than a slice of the tropics. But twilight did its best to fill the air with magical colors, and the ocean whispered over the sand. An Afro-Cuban jazz troupe

  drummed and danced its heart out, ruffled taffeta swirling.

  They were the only Cubans in the place, since it was “dollars only.” Every diner was pale, and every accent European.

  After dinner, Cindy, Dennis, and I strolled along the beach until we were certain of being out of the public eye. Then we commenced something more akin to a power walk. Dennis was so fast that, at times, in the sticky night heat, it seemed more like a death march.

  We cut through neighborhoods filled with dark houses, their doors open. There was no electricity right now. Nor did we see much candlelight—apparently candles were scarce. Occasionally we saw the glow of coal or wood burning in stoves. And here and there, bonfires were ringed with people talking and laughing, taking shots of rum.

  Judging from the sounds emanating from many a dark household, there were plenty of babies being made, and also quite a few arguments in progress, especially among children.

  Long after I’d had my fill of walking, Dennis motioned to us to stop. A light was visible in a corner building whose windows were plastered with “Socialism or Death” posters.

  “La vigilancia, revolutionary watch committee,” Dennis whispered. Inside, a man with a T-shirt and Fidel beard gesticulated to a Ch
inese man in an olive People’s Republic uniform. “Her house is around the corner. Looks like they’re keeping an eye on things.”

  He motioned us down an alleyway. Garbage was piled high on either end.

  We walked along, trying to be silent, listening to snippets of conversations through unshuttered windows: Were you able to get milk today? Did the school find a soccer ball for the kids? Did the doctor say the cut would heal without a scar?

  Finally, Cindy whispered, “That one. Over there.”

  The house was a modest two-story colonial, with bas-relief flourishes crumbling off its unpainted walls. There was no one stirring inside, no sound through window frames that were empty of glass but covered with chain-link mesh. Though there might be soldiers on the front porch or inside the house, none were apparent in the back. But the entrance was nailed over with boards.

  While I gazed through chain link into what appeared to be a storage room piled with broken furniture and picture frames, Cindy and Dennis conferred in some kind of couples shorthand.

  “I’m lighter, but are you tall enough?” she whispered.

  “We can always try the Brementown Musicians bit,” Dennis replied.

  The next thing I knew, Cindy was hoisting herself onto Dennis’s shoulders. It can’t have been easy or comfortable, but I was impressed by how noiseless they were. Did AP reporters routinely do circus stunts to get stories?

  A moment later, Cindy slid down Dennis as if he were a fence post. She motioned me over. “Dennis is going down on all fours and I’m going to stand on his back. You’re the smallest. I need you to climb on Dennis’s back right behind me and get up on my shoulders. We’re just a foot shy of seeing into the window. Can you do it?”

  I wanted to tell her no, I am the least athletic person I have ever met, of course I can’t do it. But Dennis dropped to his knees, and Cindy gingerly climbed aboard. Talk about peer group pressure.

  Poor Dennis. I could feel the sharp bones of his hips. And poor Cindy, I almost strangled her as I hoisted myself up, using her cupped hands as footholds.

  When I reached the point that I could look inside, I knew we were too precarious for me to spend more than a minute or two in this position. I tried to grab the chain-link window covering and steady myself.

  The room was dark and quiet. There was a bed and little else inside. At first I thought the bed was empty and that the blankets were rumpled. Then I realized that a very small person lay there.

  “She’s here,” I murmured to Cindy.

  “Ask her if she’s okay.”

  I stage-whispered the question in my best Spanish.

  The person in the bed stirred.

  I repeated my question.

  The person sat partially up. I could see loose bandages around her head covering one eye.

  “Are you okay?” I repeated. “We’re friends. Are you okay?”

  “Getting better,” she said. Her speech was slurred, she sounded drugged. She seemed to struggle with the blankets as if too weak to push them aside. “Can you come inside?”

  “We can’t, I’m sorry. Have you had a visit from an American lady, gray-blond, very pale?”

  “No. No one has been upstairs to see me. I think there must be soldiers below.”

  I could feel Cindy collapsing under my weight. “Tunnels,” she whispered.

  “What about the tunnels?” I asked quickly.

  I heard her breathing grow agitated. “I don’t know about any tunnels.” But she sounded scared.

  “Ask her about Myra Wilson,” Cindy said urgently. “In the women’s prison.”

  I did. But there was no reply. I repeated the question.

  Cindy tugged me, letting me know collapse was imminent. When I got down on the ground, she had a whispered conference with Dennis while he held his back.

  He lurched down the alley, still slightly bent, while Cindy held his arm and motioned me to hurry. We dashed the rest of the way down the alley, turning the corner. For several blocks, we walked as fast as we could, ignoring groups lounging on dark porches. I described what I’d seen inside.

  We were several blocks away when, suddenly, lights came on in most of the houses. The din of televisions and radios filled the humid night air. From a dozen rooms, I could hear a cooking show describe how to make tomato jam.

  We picked up our pace, feeling spotlighted. But everyone had moved indoors to watch TV and listen to radio. We could see children writing under dim lamps with stubs of pencils. Adults were reading so intensely they seemed to be vacuuming words off pages. Men and women jockeyed for burners of vintage stoves.

  If anything, the electricity had made us less conspicuous. Still, we rushed.

  “Who’s Myra Wilson?” I asked them. “Why did you bring her up?”

  “We’ve been trying to get someone to talk about her, someone disaffected enough to tell us something,” Cindy explained. “Wilson’s an American woman, recently arrested and sentenced to seven years for smuggling drugs. Whenever foreign journalists ask to see her, they get a tour of a model prison and a ten-second glimpse of her, long enough for her to tell them she’s being well treated.”

  Dennis said, “Look, maybe we can help each other. We’ve got the Moskvich, we know the island—we’ll help you look for your mother, okay? And you can go see Myra Wilson for us.”

  “Me? How can I do that?”

  “They’re very intent on demonstrating they have nothing to hide. If you ask for it, they’ll offer you a tour. But we’re here on false pretenses, supposedly as tourists at the film festival. It won’t take them long to find out we’re journalists, and then it’ll be no dice. They’ll glue a minder to us.”

  “A minder?”

  “Every group that comes here is assigned some smiling young man or woman from the Foreign Relations Ministry to guide the tour bus and take care of them. Minders, to make sure they see only what they’re supposed to see: Old Havana, Moro Castle, Varadero Beach. And to keep them out of the neighborhoods and away from the prostitutes that supposedly disappeared after the revolution. And journalists, well, we can hardly take a leak without a minder beside us.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll have to start going to film festival events.” Cindy didn’t sound happy about it. “A day of non-tour sightseeing is one thing—we’ve been careful to keep up the right kind of chatter in our room. You do know all the rooms are bugged? But we can’t do this again without attracting attention.”

  Though it was my sincerest wish never to set eyes on the inside of a Cuban—or any other—prison, Mother’s group had gone there, too. It was as good a place as any to begin retracing her steps.

  “If you’d just go to the women’s prison for us, just try to talk to Myra Wilson …” Cindy put her hand on my forearm. “If we find your mother, we can try to get her back as part of our film festival group, you know.”

  “That’s right,” Dennis agreed. “Scoot her through customs with the rest of the crowd.”

  Wow, they really knew how to dangle a carrot. But did they also carry a stick?

  7

  I could hardly sleep for worrying, and my muscles ached from the long hike. I tossed and turned, finally sliding into a fitful doze. I dreamed I was trying to get my mother out of a Cuban prison that resembled the San Bruno jail, where I’d spent two horrible and traumatic months in my protest-era youth.

  I awakened with relief to intense daylight streaming through a gap in my mildewed curtains.

  I went downstairs and lingered over a breakfast of syrupy coffee—for which I was developing a penchant—and a strange array of tomato dishes. A poster on the dining room wall extolled the tomato, A special food for a special time. I assumed this meant, a food we have plenty of right now.

  Knowing Cindy and Dennis were putting in an appearance at the film festival, I decided to hit some of the other places on last week’s WILPF
itinerary, starting with the hospital and the school.

  It was a spectacular day. The sky was pale blue and the sun cast a light so silver it looked like super bright moonlight. I’d apparently slept through a cloudburst. The wet sidewalks glared, and vintage American cars gleamed like props on a movie set.

  At the end of the block, I saw the boy I’d encountered night before last, the one who’d promised to ask around about my mother. He motioned to me, then walked off toward the Malecon. I followed.

  Teenagers sat on the sea wall fishing with poles made of sticks. As I passed, they stared at my clothes.

  The boy’s eyes widened as I approached. “I waited for you yesterday.” He sounded excited. But he turned his back as if ignoring me.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw the ubiquitous tourist police approaching. I leaned against the wall, my face turned away from the boy.

  “You told the American couple about me,” I complained.

  “But they are your friends!” he protested.

  “Don’t assume anyone is my friend, okay?”

  I could hear him chuckling. “Ah, you are becoming a Cuban already. Isn’t it very beautiful?”

  “The ocean?”

  “All of Cuba, it is very beautiful. If only the tourists would come back. We need the tourists—without them there are no nightclubs, there is no fun. We need the dollars. Without dollars we have only what the island can produce, and all of that, we export. Except when the boats are late to pick it up. Like now—I am so tired of tomatoes!” He sighed. “Straight ahead and so close: Miami. I have relatives in Miami. We all have relatives in Miami. The sharks know this, and they wait for us. Only the sharks in Cuba have enough to eat. And if the patrol boats get you, well, there is a jail in the east, combinado del este, they call it bota la llave.” Throw away the key. “If you go there, you do not return.”

  “I was thinking of touring of a jail.”