“Can we go, Papi?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel well. I think maybe it’s seeing those people bleeding in the street.”
“Of course.” He kissed me on the forehead and hugged me. I felt like such a bitch for lying to him. He went back into the room and came out again moments later, then put an arm around me and led me outside. He made our apologies to Señora Macheda and guided me to the car.
Luis was waiting. He stubbed out his cigarette on the gravel and opened the door for me.
“I’ll be one minute, no more,” Papi said. .
“Where are you going?”
“I left my cigar case behind,” he said.
I got into the Bel Air, closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. The leather burned my bare shoulders.
How could Angel do this to me? Wasn’t I the most beautiful girl in Havana?
How could he say those other horrible things? It was just an act, wasn’t it? He said them because he had to.
Acting or not, he had betrayed me.
“Magdalena!”
I opened my eyes. Angel was at the window, tapping on the glass. I reached forward and locked the door.
He pressed his face against the window. “Magdalena, please. I have to talk to you!”
I shook my head.
“Please. Where are you going?”
“Home!”
“Talk to me. Just for a minute. Please!”
I hesitated. Luis turned around and gave me a look. He wanted to throw him in the bushes. I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. I wound the window down a fraction.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“You told me you loved me!”
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” he whispered. “I have to marry her, Magdalena. You have to understand, my father gave me no choice!”
“I heard what you said to her. “
“What?”
“I was there, in the garden! You told her no one does things to you like she does. I heard you with my own ears!” I started to wind up the window again and he put his hand inside the jamb, like a fool, trying to stop me. The window trapped his fingers. He gasped. I pressed down hard on the handle while he begged me to let his fingers loose. He was in a lot of pain.
If I leaned on the handle with both hands it seemed the pain got worse. He had his mouth open and it looked like he would scream.
Good.
“Please, what do, what do...stop it, stop it, what did you...don’t...expect me to...oh, Dios mio, my fingers...expect me to say?”
I saw my father walking across the lawn. I let the handle up an inch and Angel pulled his fingers free. He stood there with his hand between his knees sobbing like a baby. “What do you expect me to say?” he hissed at me. “She’s jealous of you! I don’t have any choice! “
Then he saw my father coming and loped off, his hand still cradled under his arm. What a baby.
Luis got out to open the door for my papi. He climbed into the back seat beside me. “Was that Angel?
“He came to see if I needed a hand.”
“Really? That was nice of him.” Papi stared at me. He couldn’t make sense of this. “You don’t look well.”
“I just need to lie down, Papi.”
“We’ll get you home then,” he said. He nodded to Luis and we drove away.
Chapter 9
“Who was that man at the party?”
Papi was having breakfast on the patio and reading a week-old edition of the Miami Herald. He looked up, distracted.
“What’s that, cariña?”
“Yesterday at Angel’s party. There was a man called Reyes something or other. He wore sunglasses even inside the house. American.”
“Reyes Garcia,” he said without expression.
“Do you know him?”
“Did you talk to him?”
Something in his tone alarmed me. “Of course not.”
“Good. Stay away from him.”
“Papi, he’s too old for me.”
“He’s may be a dozen or so years older than you, and that may seem like a lot right now, but believe me that’s not so much to a man like Reyes.”
“What’s he doing in Havana?”
“I don’t know. I heard he runs guns for the CIA, but then other people says he’s a spy for the Fidelistas. But I also heard he has dinner every Sunday night with Batista’s chief of police. No one trusts him and everyone needs him. He’s a dangerous man, so don’t get any ideas.”
“I don’t have any ideas. He’s not even good-looking. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Well it doesn’t pay to be curious.” Papi didn’t snap at me very often. I wondered what had made him so disagreeable now.
“Is everything all right, Papi?”
“Everything’s fine.” He tapped on the arm of his chair with his ring finger. He had never taken off his wedding ring, and Mama had been gone now these seven years. I wished a man would love me that much one day, though I also hoped God would be a little kinder than He was to my mama and let me live long enough to enjoy it.
“The doctor was here this morning,” I said.
“How did you know that?”
“Maria told me.”
“Servants! They talk too much. In the old days we used to have them horsewhipped for telling tales about us.”
“Why was he here?”
“Nothing. Just indigestion.”
He was such a bad liar, my father. Doctor Mendes didn’t make house calls for indigestion.
“Look, I got a little short of breath, that’s all,” Papi said finally, wilting under my stare. “Okay. Okay? I had Maria call him just to check me over. He said there was nothing wrong and he gave me some tablets to help me sleep.”
“You already have tablets to help you sleep, Papi.”
“Well he gave me some more.”
“What time was this?”
“You were still asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“If there was something going on you would tell me?”
“There’s nothing going on. Why would there be something going on? It’s nothing. He gave me some pills and said it would all settle down in a couple of days.” He took out his cigar case and lit one of his favourite Cohibas.
“You shouldn’t smoke if you’re not feeling well.”
“What are you, my mother?”
I put down my napkin and excused myself. As I went past him he put out his hand and caught my wrist, pulled me back. “I’m sorry. I...I didn’t mean to snap at you. I have things on my mind. Business things.”
“Talk to me then, Papi.”
“It’s nothing. It will all sort itself out.”
I put my arms around his neck. “Please take care of yourself.”
“I’ll be all right.”
He didn’t understand, he was all I had now Mama was gone. What would I do without him? He was hiding something from me, I knew that. But then, didn’t I hide things from him as well?
A few days later Papi and I got home from shopping in the city and found a large gift wrapped box on the table in the hallway. It was addressed to me. Papi asked Maria who had brought it, she said she didn’t know, a man in a black Plymouth had delivered it, he didn’t leave any message.
I opened it. Inside was a mink coat and a diamond bracelet.
At first I thought it might be from Angel, a token to make up for what had happened. If that was what it was, it was too much and not nearly enough. When I couldn’t find a note I wondered if it might be from Reyes Garcia, he seemed like a man fond of extravagant gestures.
But when Papi saw what it was, he was furious.
He grabbed the coat from me and crammed it back into its box. “Papi?”
“You are not to accept this!” he shouted at me.
“I don’t understand.”
He threw the box across the hall. I heard him shouting down the telephone at someone, telling them to come and f
etch their damned coat right now. He slammed the handset down on its cradle so hard I thought it would crack.
When he saw me crying he came over and wrapped his arms around me, stroked my hair, said he was sorry for losing his temper, whispered “sorry” over and over while he stroked my hair.
I had never owned a mink coat.
“Who was it from?” I asked him.
“Lansky,” he said.
Chapter 9
Our white Bel Air turned off the Paseo and onto the Malecón, skirting the harbour, heading towards the yacht clubs and palaces out at Miramar. The sea was tranquil, edged in gold by the late afternoon sun. A cruise ship was leaving the harbour, slipping past El Morro, the colonial fortress that guarded the entrance, bound for Kingston perhaps, or Port-au-Prince. I could see couples leaning over the rails and it stirred an ache inside me.
Luis had the radio on: Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool.” I guess that’s me, I thought. We passed Calle San Lorenzo and I looked back for a glimpse of the apartment. Why, I don’t know.
Over there was the Parque de Los Enamorados, Lover’s Park, a cobblestone plaza with plane trees and a fountain, vendors selling peanuts, couples walking hand in hand. All I could think about was Angel.
The city--the whole country--was falling apart, but he was all that mattered to me.
I closed my eyes, spent the rest of the journey over to Miramar in misery.
Inocencia lived in a flat on Third Street, in one of the best quarters. Nothing like the mansion Angel lived in, of course, but better than most Cubans could afford.
She was one of my papi's boleristas at the Left Bank. Ah, the bolero. It wasn’t just any kind of song, and to be a bolero singer you had to feel the song, own it, make it part of your soul. Inocencia Velasquez was one of the best. Whenever she sang she put whole lifetimes of heartache and longing into every song. She was mesmerizing to look at and to listen to, coffee-skinned, black-eyed and a voice like she had swallowed razors.
She was also an accomplished musician, and Papi had persuaded her to teach me piano. I would have preferred that she showed me how to sing, but a respectable girl didn’t do that. Papi wanted me to be Aryan; in my heart I was mestizo.
She tried as hard to play her part as I did. Here she sat at the piano, her hair tied back like a schoolmistress and her legs crossed, as if she was to give me religious instruction. The hem of her dress was down past her knee. There was sheet music open on the piano, Bach’s prelude in C major.
I played it, note for note. I had practised endlessly through the week until I had driven my father and Maria mad with it. But at last I had it, note perfect.
When I finished I sat back and waited for compliments. Inocencia shook her head and sighed. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You are not hammering nails. You are not beating the man who defiled your children. You are playing music.”
“I did not miss a note.”
“Music is not about notes! Music is about the soul. I could train a monkey to learn notes! You must let the music to live through you, speak through you! Music is like making...well, it’s not like mathematics. It’s not right and wrong answers. You have to live it, you have to feel it.” Inocencia took off her glasses. “What is it you feel right now, Magdalena?”
“I feel it’s time I went home.”
“Is it a boy?”
I couldn’t look at her. How do people know these things about you when you do your best to hide them? “Perhaps.”
“Is that...that whatever it is you played...is that what you feel when you think about this boy?”
I shook my head.
“Then why can’t you play what you feel?”
“I don’t want anyone to know.”
“If no one knows how you feel, who you are, then who are they going to fall in love with? This pretty little picture? Perhaps your papi thinks that is the real you, but your eyes give you away. Or perhaps even you do not know the real Magdalena. Here, try again.”
I did as she said and started over, but now I knew the notes were not enough, I did not know what to do. My fingers felt stiff and I fumbled through the first phrasings, when a moment ago I had been precise and assured. Inocencia stopped me. “Here, let me show you,” she said. We changed places. She sat down and started to play.
The first notes were a mere whisper. Inocencia closed her eyes as she played, her fingers barely brushing the keys. She started to sway and her breathing became still. The notes rose and fell like a heartbeat. They were the same notes I had played, and yet it might have been another song.
Her face twisted as if she was in pain. Then she started to hum, softly at first, matching cadence with the chords, picking blue notes that should not have been there. Somehow she turned Bach into Bolero. I imagined her in Papi's club, sweating under the lights, as her voice found a tremolo and hovered there. She found the last note and held it, high and plaintive, for what seemed like an eternity.
When she finished we both sat for a long time, not speaking. Then she opened her eyes. “You see. That’s how you play when you’re in love with a man.” She closed the piano lid. “I think that’s enough for today.”
I packed away my music books. Inocencia looked out of the window. She seemed so unutterably sad. I wondered if it was because the music had provoked some memory from the past, or if she had somehow glimpsed her own future.
I hesitated at the door, debating with myself if I should tell her about Angel. I needed to talk to someone. But I worried that she might tell Papi and so I just said thank you for the lesson, and walked out.
Chapter 10
When I got home I expected to find Papi sitting on the patio with his Santiago rum and Cohiba cigars, as always. But the cane chair under the avocado tree was empty. Old Rafa lay under the table alone. When he heard my footsteps his head shot up, but then when he saw it was only me he sighed and plopped his head back on the tiles with a look of studied disappointment.
The Miami Herald lay on the cane table, uncreased, unread.
I went looking for Maria and found her in the kitchen. She didn’t even have the radio on. Maria always listened to cubopop when she was cooking. The house was like a morgue. “Where’s Papi?” I asked her.
“He’s in bed, he’s not feeling so good.”
“Have you called Doctor Mendes?”
“He’s with him now,” she said.
My world was starting to crumble. This was just the start of it.
Doctor Mendes came out of Papi’s bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. He had been our family’s doctor for as long as I could remember. He looked more like a wrestler than a doctor, a big man with broad shoulders, huge hands and a blunt face. Some people said he bullied his patients into getting well.
When he saw me he put his finger to his lips and then took me by the arm, led me outside to the balcony that looked over our courtyard. He closed the French doors behind him.
He helped himself to a glass of rum, as if he owned the house. Then he settled down into a cane chair. One of the perquisites of house calls to rich patients, I supposed, was that you were allowed to drink their best rum and still charge your highest fees.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“He’s a tough old rooster your father,” he said, “but I’ve been telling him for years to take it easy and he won’t listen to me. What are we going to do with him?”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Tomorrow? Yes. Next week? Probably. But it’s what’s going to happen to him a year from now that I worry about.”
“You mean his ulcer?”
“Well, it’s not just his ulcer. He has a heart condition, too. You didn’t know about that?”
I shook my head.
“He’s had it for years. Swore me to secrecy about it, but now I’m going to break my word because if I don’t, I think he’s going to kill himself.”
“I’ve been telling hi
m to take it easy,” I said.
“It’s more than just taking it easy. He needs to retire.”
“Retire?”
“Sell the club. Forget about late nights and cigars and this...” He held up his glass of rum. “Take an interest in great literature and gardening if he wants to live to see his grandchildren.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Of course. The first time I told him was a year ago. You see what a difference it has made. A lifetime practising medicine and he screws up his nose at me and tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“He’s a stubborn man.”
“The cemetery is full of stubborn men. But if he won’t listen to me, perhaps he’ll listen to his daughter.”
After Doctor Mendes left I crept into Papi’s bedroom. The shutters were drawn and I wasn’t sure if he was asleep. I crept closer to the bed. “Papi?”
“Has that old fraud gone?”
He looked so pale in the half-light. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “He said you’ve got some health problems you’ve not been telling me about.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“He told me you said that, too. He also thinks you’ve been working too hard.”
“Working too hard! I told him - I drink, I smoke and I play cards until four in the morning. What’s so hard about that? He didn’t see the joke.
“Because it’s not funny anymore. How are you feeling?”
“Like I need a drink.” He sat up. “Where’s Maria? Tell her to get my pants pressed. And you, go and get dressed. We’re going to the club.”
Chapter 11
Nine o’clock every night they fired the cannon at Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, the colonial fortress on the other side of the harbour. Once, people set their clocks and wristwatches by the familiar boom of the gun. But now there was a new tradition: the rebelde would time their bombs to go off around the city shortly before or after the ceremonial sounding of the cannon so that it was impossible to set the correct time anymore. It was all part of the general mood of chaos.
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