Havana Noir

by Achy Obejas

  Eladio, of course, had heard the stories for years. “Señor Luis, what is this big favor you want to ask of me?” Even though he was fearful of the answer, he felt he had no choice but to ask.

  “Eladio, as you know, I’ve been giving the situation a lot of thought, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve exhausted all my options. There is no seafood in all of Havana—in Cuba, for that matter—for my meal. And with the celebration only two days away, we’re unlikely to find any.”

  Eladio shook his head. “Señor Luis, no, don’t give up, I can try again. We can all try—you, Señora María Eugenia, me.”

  Luis smiled. “No, Eladio, you’re wrong. The only way I can get through this predicament—the only way I can free myself from my obligation—is by dying.”

  “No, Señor Luis, no!” Eladio was horrifled. “No! What you serve at the dinner is not what matters. The important thing is that you get together with your friends. They want to be with you. You can serve something else, anything! They don’t care what they eat. Or cancel the meal.”

  “You’re wrong again, Eladio,” Luis said. “This dinner is that important. It is the reminder of what I once was! Not to do it and do it well would negate everything that my life was. I can’t control the events around me, but this—this is the one thing I can control.” Luis took a deep breath and let go of Eladio’s shoulder. “No, Eladio, this dinner—doing it right—is more important than what remains of my life.”

  “Señor Luis, please, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you are not thinking clearly,” Eladio ventured. “The other señores, they will understand—everyone understands—life is so difficult now for everyone. Your friends, they just want to be with you.”

  “That may be so, Eladio, but it’s not the way I think.” Luis spoke in a calm, measured voice. “I know what has to be done. The only way to resolve this situation with honor is for the dinner to be canceled because of my death.”

  “Your death? No, there has to be another way.” Eladio was close to tears. “Señor Luis, with all respect, I don’t think you’re well. I’m going to fetch Señora María Eugenia.”

  With unexpected strength, Luis grabbed Eladio and pulled him close. “No, you are not going to do that—she cannot be involved.”

  “Señor Luis, please let me go and get the señora.” Now in tears, Eladio was pleading with his employer. “You are sick. She can help you.”

  “Eladio, listen, you have to do this for me. I’ve watched you, I’ve seen how you’ve killed chickens, pigeons, that suckling pig we had for Christmas years ago. You twist their necks—you do it quickly and without the animals feeling pain. It’s fast and painless.”

  “You want me to kill you? Señor Luis, are you crazy?” The two men stood by the wall in the garden facing each other for what seemed like hours. Each was desperate—Luis needed Eladio to follow his final orders, and Eladio, who for the last four-plus decades had always done as his employer asked, for the first time ever, would be defying him.

  It was Luis who broke the silence. He knew his window of opportunity was closing fast, and he had to convince Eladio to do his bidding, otherwise his plan would not work. “Eladio, it’s the only way, trust me. I know that I am asking a lot of you—it’s not right, and it’s not fair. If there were another way, I would not ask this of you. But I’m seventy years old, I’ve lived a full life, and this is the way I want it to end—with honor, without shame, not a failure because I could not deliver the meal to my friends. But to do it, I need your help.”

  “No, Señor Luis, I cannot do it.” Eladio looked down at the ground. “I understand what you’re saying, but it doesn’t matter. I still cannot grant you your request. I cannot. It’s not right. No meal is worth your life.”

  By then, it was close to midmorning and the August sun beat down on them, making the air sizzle with tropical heat. Luis decided that the only way to get Eladio to do as he asked was to act in an authoritative manner. Decades of following orders would take over, he was sure of that.

  “This is what you are doing to do. Right now, right here, you are going to twist my neck—the way you do the animals. Quick and painless. I’ve already been to see Father Antonio, and I’ve confessed my sins to him and asked for his blessing. Of course, I didn’t tell him what I was going to do—he wouldn’t allow it. The Catholic Church condemns suicide—I couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, which would kill the señora. So my confession omitted this one matter. Afterward, I stayed in the church and prayed for forgiveness, and prayed for you, what I’m asking you to do.”

  Eladio stood speechless. All that was sinking into his brain was that he was supposed to kill Señor Luis—in this moment, to put his hands around that neck and head. It was too much for a simple man to understand.

  Luis continued outlining his plan. “After you kill me, you will go to see the señora and tell her that we were out in the garden getting some herbs for the dinner, and that I collapsed, I fell down on the ground, but I did not want you to leave me to run to get help. I dropped dead—you think it’s a stroke; maybe the heat brought it on, maybe the stress about the dinner, but my last words were for her not to notify the authorities of my death, so they would not take the house or move strangers here to live with you. Everything has to stay the way it is, for the future, when, God hopes, this madness will stop. She knows how important this house is to me—so she’ll agree to that. Tell her also that I asked you to bury me in the back, by the wall, so that no one knows I’m gone.”

  “Señor, no, please! Please, I beg you, don’t talk like that!” Eladio put his hands over his ears so he would not have to hear what Luis was saying. Luis, ignoring him, started laughing, not in his normal way, but manic laughter—the sound frightened Eladio even more.

  “Listen to me, Eladio. So that all is not lost, you can use my body for fertilizer. You’re always looking for compost for your garden—at least I can help you out some.” Luis smiled at his own feeble joke. Then, seeing the stricken look on Eladio’s face, he shook his head slowly, raised his arms, and reached over, removing his employee’s hands from his ears. “Eladio, whether you help me or not, I will still take my life. I promise you that.” He took a step closer. “You know that we Cubans have the highest suicide rate in the Americas, don’t you?”

  Eladio’s eyes grew so large that for a moment it looked like they might pop out of his face.

  “Yes, well, that’s true,” Luis said, laughing bitterly, “it’s the one thing we can do correctly: kill ourselves. But you wouldn’t want to see me add to that statistic, would you, Eladio—make that number grow by one? You don’t want to see if I can kill myself correctly, do you? And if I botch it and end up with bigger problems than I have now?” Luis got a cunning look in his eyes, an expression that Eladio had seen on a couple of previous unpleasant occasions, which meant that his employer was going to use an argument he knew would win. “And after I kill myself, how would you explain a suicide to the señora? How do you think she would feel if she knew I killed myself?”

  “No! No! Señor Luis!” Eladio was babbling in an almost incoherent manner. Sweat was pouring down him, dripping off his body in such copious amounts that soon he would be completely dehydrated.

  Luis continued giving instructions, so that there would be no mistakes, no unforeseen eventualities. “Tell her I asked you to contact my friends to cancel the dinner—that’s important, you cannot forget that part.” Then Luis added, smiling, almost as an afterthought, “Tell the señora also that I love her—those were my last words.”

  “Señor Luis, please, don’t make me do that, please.”

  At this moment, Luis knew that Eladio would do as he asked. And Eladio knew Luis well enough to be certain that if he, Eladio, did not do as ordered, his employer would do as he threatened and find another way to end his life. But Señor Luis was clumsy with tools and his method wouldn’t be as quick or as painless as what Eladio could deliver.

  With much reluctance, Eladio crossed hi
mself several times and prepared himself to carry out his employer’s wishes. He kissed Señor Luis on both cheeks, then knelt on the ground, head bowed, and asked for Luis’s blessing.

  At his advanced age, Luis Rodríguez-López was so frail and thin that twisting his neck was as easily and quickly accomplished as with the chickens, maybe even easier. Blinking back the tears that were flowing down his cheeks, Eladio looked at his employer lying at his feet and realized for the first time: He had really loved the man.

  As Eladio stared at the body of the man who had meant so much to him, he could feel in his own heart the reason that Luis had asked him to end his life—not just because he could not serve his friends a proper meal, but because he had become tired of living. Luis had felt it was his time to leave this earth, and he had wanted to do it on his own terms. He needed to be able to control something, and the end of his life was the only thing left. And Eladio was the only person he trusted to do the job properly.

  After taking the photographs from Luis’s hands, Eladio carefully laid the body down on the garden bench, arranging his employer’s features in such a way as to make him look as comfortable and peaceful as possible. He wanted María Eugenia to see her husband in the best way, so she would be assured he did not suffer in his last moments. He waited until he felt composed enough to get her and then, with one look back at Señor Luis, headed up to the house.

  “Señora María Eugenia!” Eladio called out as he ran toward the house. “Señora María Eugenia!” No response. He called her name again. Now he was frightened, his heart beating so fast he thought it would explode inside his chest.

  Eladio went into the main quarters of the house and looked everywhere, to no avail. The house was deserted. He went room to room again, this time searching more carefully. The only thing he noticed amiss was that the photo album was nowhere to be found. Had Luis taken it? He’d had only the three photographs with him in the garden. Where was the album?

  Not knowing what to do, he went back outside to the terrace and sat in Luis’s rocking chair. He did it as a reflex, an impulse: It was suddenly the right thing, to take this seat. He remained where he sat, in the chair that belonged to Señor Luis, for the better part of the day, with terrible thoughts coursing through his brain about what he had just done, and fears of what horrible fate could have befallen María Eugenia. Making matters much worse was the fact that the day was exceptionally hot, and knowing how heat affected corpses, he kept having visions of what was happening to Luis’s body.

  Rocking in the chair, he felt he was going mad from worry when, finally, he heard the familiar sound of the front gate. He jumped from the chair, ran over to the entrance of the house, and almost wept with joy when he saw María Eugenia slowly making her way up the path. He saw she was carrying the photo album.

  “Eladio, hola!” María Eugenia cheerfully waved to him. “I’m home!”

  It had been a long time since Eladio had seen María Eugenia in such good spirits. “Hola, señora,” Eladio replied. “I was worried about you, you left without letting us know you were going—you’ve been gone all day.” He knew it was not his place to scold his employer’s wife but he’d been so concerned about her that he was past caring about behaving in a proper way. This day had devastated him.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry, Eladio, but I had to run an errand. I needed to do something that I did not want Luis to know about, and I didn’t want to have to tell him a lie. So I slipped out of the house. I’m sure he’ll be happy when he sees what I’ve done.”

  María Eugenia stepped closer to Eladio and took one of his hands in hers. She looked so happy, with her eyes sparkling and a huge smile on her face. “You know how worried Luis has been that he can’t find the seafood to serve his friends?” she whispered in his ear, as if telling him a secret, and waved the photo album.

  Eladio thought he was going to pass out. It took all the self-control he could muster not to fall to the ground. How could he say to her that her husband was dead? Oh God! He wished it was him lying on the bench in the garden, not Señor Luis!

  “Yes, Señora María Eugenia,” he replied. How was he going to tell her? He couldn’t bring out the words; this was worse than what he’d already done. It was starting to get dark and Señor Luis had been lying outside on the garden terrace for close to ten hours.

  “Well, I wasn’t supposed to do it,” she said, “but knowing how important it was for Luis to make this dinner perfect, I sold my wedding ring! We were saving it for a time when we had nothing at all to eat. But I knew that this crisis was, for Luis, even worse than starvation. You want to know what I did with the money I got for the ring? It was worth more than I had thought—it was white gold, Eladio, not just regular gold. Luis never told me it was white gold!”

  María Eugenia held out the photo album and began turning the pages. “You see, Eladio, I’ve been thinking about the dinner, and all that seafood—the lobsters, the crabs, the shrimp—and how there is nothing to be found in Havana.” She began to laugh triumphantly. It was so strange to hear the señora laugh that all Eladio could do was watch her helplessly. He should have told her immediately, the moment he saw her. It was a mistake to wait. “Well,” she said, “I thought and thought about where Luis was going to get the seafood for the dinner. He would never consider serving anything else, he’s stubborn, we both know that, no?” She leaned over to Eladio and—looking around, as if to make sure she was not being overheard—whispered, “You know Ricardo had to sell his family’s painting of José Martí to pay for last year’s dinner?”

  “Yes, señora, I heard that,” Eladio muttered. “Very sad.”

  “Well, we don’t have anything like that—only my ring—so I had an idea.” María Eugenia opened up the photo album and looked up at him. “You know, there are three pictures missing—maybe Luis took them—I have to ask him about that when I see him.”

  Eladio jumped back as if the pictures he had slipped in his pocket earlier that day were burning a hole. “Yes, señora, I know those pictures,” he mumbled.

  María Eugenia looked so happy, so pleased with herself, that now Eladio felt suicidal. For a fleeting moment he wondered if it was possible to wring his own neck.

  “I decided,” she said, “that since Luis and his three friends were great fishermen, why couldn’t they fish for the seafood for the dinner themselves? I know it’s against the law for Cubans to fish for lobster, crab, and shrimp—but, Eladio, they know the waters around the coast of Havana like they know the backs of their hands. After all, that’s where they used to fish!

  They would be too smart to get caught!” María Eugenia was so thrilled with her solution to the dilemma of what to serve for the dinner that she was beside herself with joy. “Don’t you see, Eladio? Fishing for the meal is the perfect answer! They would feel young, happy, and resourceful! They could drink the rum you make—just like in the photos!”

  “But, Señora María Eugenia, what about your ring? You said you sold it for the dinner. I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, Eladio, you’re right—I’m sorry—I forgot to tell you the most important thing!” María Eugenia seemed years younger as she almost sprinted away. “I sold the ring and bought a small boat with the money—I went to the pier by the old Yacht Club, you remember, where the señores used to row? Luis told me there were old boats for sale there. I traded the ring for one of the boats, not a very big or fancy one, but it won’t sink—I made sure of that. It needs some work, but it’ll do!” María Eugenia placed the photo album on a table and began to walk away, the smile on her face making her look like the young girl Luis had married forty years before. “It’s the Special Period, you know, Eladio, everyone wants and needs something—everything anyone has is for sale—so it wasn’t very difficult to buy. And now all our problems are solved! The dinner—with seafood—will take place…I’m going to find Luis and tell him not to worry anymore.” She turned to Eladio. “Where is he?”

  He couldn’t answer. He only cou
ld shake his head as she walked past.

  He didn’t follow. Instead, he took his seat again in Luis’s chair, knotting and unknotting his hands. She would find his body. It was better that way, because if he spoke, she would know he was lying.

  But there was one more thing he would do for his employer of more than forty years. He would push out to sea in the little boat, dive for crab and lobsters, haul a net for shrimp until he had found all he needed and more. Then he would serve that dinner, and he would make it a feast. The three friends would eat his catch and drink his rum—they would drink and grieve—and they would toast the eternal honor of Señor Luis.

  JOHNNY VENTURA’S SEVENTH TRY

  BY PABLO MEDINA

  Jaimanitas

  for Gerardo Alfonso Piquera

  On September 23, 1995, Johnny Ventura settled into the bow of the Ana María, a fifteen-foot launch he built expressly for the voyage, and took his last look at the city of Havana, illuminated dimly by the first rays of dawn. It was Johnny’s seventh attempt at crossing the Straits of Florida, and having consulted a babalao in Arroyo Arenas, he was certain that the Ana María would land him in La Yuma, if not in Miami, then somewhere along the Florida Keys, where he could claim his right to political asylum. He had spent six months in jail after his previous attempt when the raft he’d put together in the back room of his mother’s house had fallen apart in rough water three miles from shore and he and his two companions had been forced to swim back, landing on the Malecón just as a patrulla drove by. If he failed again, he was certain the authorities would make him rot in jail. That is why he had been extra careful, consulting the babalao (not that he believed in any of that Santería nonsense) and paying a hefty amount, in fulas, for a Russian outboard motor that sputtered and smoked the two times he started it but otherwise ran beautifully.