Getting up furiously from the table, Gustavo flung his plate of dessert to the corner of the dining room. Hortensia ran to clean the stain it had left on the wall. She gave me a pleading look to say no more.
“Leave him, he’ll soon get over it,” she begged me in a whisper, like a mother protecting her son from his own mistakes.
She was the one who suffered most from the chasm opening between Gustavo and us. She was worried that her adored child would get into trouble.
“Who would defend him if anything happened to him? Three women shut up in a mansion like this?” she muttered.
That night, Gustavo went up to his room, slamming the door. He threw things onto the floor and paced back and forth, talking to himself. Then he switched on his radio, forcing us to listen to a guaracha at full blast. A half hour later, he came down again, carrying a suitcase. He slammed the front door behind him and disappeared.
We heard nothing more from him until after a turbulent year’s end, when everything changed radically. That morning, Mother predicted that before long we would be living in a state of terror once again.
Anna
2014
Mom and Aunt Hannah now have a project. They’re busy emptying the rooms of a family that no longer exists. I catch them whispering together like they’ve known each other all their lives.
Aunt Hannah has a hard time opening an old drawer and then takes out a bunch of woolen scarves of different colors. Mom is surprised to see them: Scarves in this tropical heat?
“Bring them with you to New York,” says my aunt, wrapping them around my neck one by one.
She also takes out her knitting needles and a ball of yarn. This time I’m the one who’s surprised, trying to understand what sense there is knitting things no one will ever wear.
“It helps my arthritis,” Aunt Hannah explains, starting down the stairs while leaning on Mom’s arm.
I leave this new collection of scarves on my bed—the last gift I expected to find in Cuba—and tell them I am going out with Diego. His mother has asked us to lunch, and he has come to get me.
Diego’s house, which used to be white, has a solid wooden door that seems like it’s been through a lot over the years. On the right-hand side of the doorframe is a small object you can hardly see because it’s covered with coats of paint. Diego can’t understand why I’ve stopped there. When I get close, I see it’s a mezuzah. A mezuzah! I can’t believe my eyes.
Inside the house, there are boxes everywhere, like they’re about to move. Diego explains they use them to store things in.
“Like what?” I ask him.
“Things,” he says, slightly surprised at my curiosity.
In the dining room, the table is set. It’s covered by a vinyl tablecloth. Diego’s mother comes in, smiles without introducing herself, and gives me a kiss. She is as thin as he is, with black, curly hair, a long neck, and droopy breasts. Her stomach also looks huge in a very tight dress. Before we sit down, Diego quickly explains to her that my mother is a Spanish teacher and that is why I speak Spanish, that I’m not German, that I live in New York, and that we’re close in age. I smile at her without saying a word.
His mother brings in a steaming bowl of white rice, a dark-looking soup, and a colorful plate of scrambled eggs. I glance at this quickly to see if it has sausage, vegetables, or tomatoes in it, but it is impossible to tell what the yellow and green strips are.
I serve myself as little as possible so I won’t upset them if I don’t like it. While we’re eating, I look at the family photos on the walls, trying to see if any of the people look like my Cuban friend or his mother. Maybe they’re his grandparents or great-grandparents.
I discover something else: on the sideboard, there is a menorah, its seven branches covered in candle wax. Surprised and intrigued, I stop eating. Diego’s mother notices:
“Don’t worry, we probably won’t have a power outage today. We don’t have any candles left. Last month they cut the electricity several times—they do it to save power. Eat, my girl, eat.”
First the mezuzah, now the menorah. And the portraits of their ancestors. I decide it’s best to ask. I choose one of the portraits showing a couple.
“Are they your parents?”
Diego’s mother can’t help laughing out loud, her mouth full of rice and beans. Raising her hand to her mouth, she chews rapidly so that she can reply before I go on.
“They’re photos of the family that used to live here. We were given their house a few days after they left the country. I was your age at the time.”
I can’t understand how that family’s possessions came to belong to this other one. Apparently they moved into an abandoned house.
“Over thirty years ago, there was a crisis, and the government allowed lots of people to leave. They crossed the sea in boats their relatives sent from the United States,” Diego’s mother starts to explain. “Those were terrible months. The newspapers said that those who were leaving were enemies of the people. They called them scum or traitors. ‘Good riddance!’ read the headlines. I remember that the day the family who were living here were leaving, the neighbors waited outside to insult them in what used to be called ‘an act of repudiation.’ ”
She doesn’t stop eating while she is talking. I guess so many years have passed since then that it doesn’t upset her as much.
“They spat at them and shouted, ‘Get out of here, you worms!’ ” she continues. “The girl from this family used to go to school with me. I couldn’t understand what crime they had committed to be treated like that, or why on earth they would call a twelve-year-old girl a ‘worm.’ I still remember the way she looked at me from the car as they drove away.”
I try to see if the girl is in any of the photographs on the wall but can’t find her.
“There was so much hatred and pain in her eyes,” says Diego’s mother. She seems serious now and doesn’t have food in her mouth anymore. “Nowadays those ‘worms’ have suddenly turned into butterflies, and we receive them with open arms,” she says, and then laughs again. “Everything changes with the years. Or with our needs.”
She goes on with her story, and I try to understand, but it’s hard to follow.
“The government handed over the property to my parents. They had been on the waiting list for a house ever since a hurricane blew the roof off ours.”
I imagine Diego’s mother in the room that once belonged to the girl who looked at her with such contempt. Her clothes, her toys, became hers. She had become an impostor.
“At first, I couldn’t sleep in that huge room full of drapes, but little by little I got used to it.”
She breaks off, goes into the kitchen, and then returns with a vanilla pudding in a syrup that tastes a little like licorice.
“My parents kept the house exactly as it was,” she says after serving the dessert. She eats it quickly, as if afraid it might suddenly vanish. “They left the portraits, the furniture—everything—where it had been before.”
The dessert and the house’s history are done. With a smile, Diego’s mother starts to clear the table. I go over to a dusty bookcase and stop in front of an antique book with a leather binding. It has an English title—the longest I’ve ever seen: The Life, and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by himself.
I turn to Diego.
“I can almost recite this book by heart,” I tell him. “To me, my father was Robinson, and I was jealous of Friday.”
Diego looks at me, clueless. He doesn’t understand a thing.
I turn back and start looking through the book. Just like Robinson, some nights I used to write down all the good and bad things that happened to me. I still remember many of
my notes: “Bad: I never knew my father. Good: I have his photo and talk with him every day. I know he’s with me and is protecting me.” Or the first page of my diary, imitating Robinson, on my seventh birthday: “May 12, 2009. I, the poor and wretched Anna Rosen, having been orphaned of my father in the middle of an island during a terrible attack, have reached this shore all alone.” I say this out loud in English, forgetting that Diego can’t understand me.
My friend looks at me as though I’m crazy and starts laughing.
“Can I take the book from the shelf?” I ask.
“Of course, and you can take it with you if you want. Nobody reads in this house.”
The edition is from 1939, and on the first page is a dedication in Hebrew: “To the girl who is the apple of my eye.”
It is signed: “Papa.”
Hannah
1959–1963
On this turbulent island, new years always bring great upheavals. Everything can change drastically overnight. You go to bed, fall asleep, and wake up in a different, completely uncertain world. Typical of the tropics, Mother used to say.
On New Year’s Eve, Hortensia had filled the house with the scent of rosemary. We had planted it on the patio, and were amazed how well it grew. We picked it at the end of summer and dried the leaves, which Hortensia kept in a cardboard box; in the autumn, she had prepared infusions for us, and as we sipped, she’d regale us with the herb’s magic properties. On the last night of 1958, my hands, my hair, and even my sheets smelled of rosemary.
The next morning, Hortensia seemed anxious to bring us up to date in her usual doomsday fashion. She had become our only contact with the outside world. We learned about everything that happened there through the filter of a woman who felt that the island was falling to pieces, and tinged every event with her alarmist vision. To her, we were drawing ever closer to the apocalypse, to Armageddon; we were living the last days; the end of the world was nigh. We always discreetly ignored her harangues about the coming of the longed-for Kingdom of God.
“It’s war! There’s no government!” she shrieked when she saw us come into the dining room, even more worked up than usual.
Even though she was in the habit of addressing us without pausing in her domestic chores—sometimes, if she was busy, with her back to us, we found it hard to understand her—this time she sat down at the table and lowered her voice. We quickly joined her; I could see that Mother was becoming agitated.
“They left in an airplane, after midnight.”
“Who left?” I interrupted her.
Oh, the way Hortensia spoke! She always assumed we already knew what was going on.
“The one who always used to wish us good health at the end of his speeches. Now we can wish him the same,” she explained.
I imagined that the joy, perhaps clouded by the fear of what might come next, would be felt throughout the island, especially in Havana. But we lived on another island within this island, shut up in the Petit Trianon, and so we had no reason to celebrate.
That New Year’s Day 1959, very few people in our neighborhood were celebrating. Most of the excitement was around the hotels and the city’s main thoroughfares. Our noisy neighbor had been very cautious: she didn’t open her bottle of champagne at midnight. Only a few people threw buckets full of icy water into the street. Uncertainty reigned.
Gustavo flung open the front door without knocking. He had on a uniform that we didn’t recognize. When we saw him come in wearing his olive-green fatigues with a red-black–and-white armband—that fateful combination of colors—Mother closed her eyes. History was repeating itself. She regarded it as her punishment.
Gustavo went up to her and kissed her, a broad smile on his face. He grabbed me by the waist and called out to Hortensia, who came running from the kitchen as soon as she heard his voice, without even stopping to dry her hands. Behind him, a young woman, also in uniform, appeared in the doorway.
“This is Viera, my wife,” he said. When she heard this, Mother was thunderstruck. She quickly surveyed the newcomer from head to toe, studying her build, her features, her profile, her teeth, the texture of her chestnut hair, the yellowy-green of her eyes.
“We’ve just got married. Viera is pregnant, so there’s another Rosen on the way!”
When I looked at my mother’s face, I could tell what she was thinking: We mustn’t lose this child. Look what we’ve done to Gustavo after fleeing here, by constantly thinking of those who remained on the far side of the Atlantic, by never really settling on this island where we had to remain. This baby would now be the family’s salvation, the only one who would not have to bear our burden of guilt. She got up from her armchair, ignoring Gustavo, and went over to embrace Viera.
Delighted, she placed her hand on the still-flat stomach of this stranger who was going to bring into the world a longed-for baby, her first grandchild. Although Viera seemed startled, she let herself be patted by this old woman whom her husband had told her lived in the past, turning her back on the country where she now lived.
Alma did not know whether to celebrate or lament that her son—whom she had not had circumcised and whom she had sent to a school where they would do all they could to erase any trace that might incriminate him—had ended up marrying an impure woman, someone as impure as we were. She was sure of it. Who knew where Viera’s family had come from, or how she had integrated into life on the island. Alma did not dare ask her family name. What was the point? The damage was already done.
That new year, we also lost Eulogio. He decided it was time to start his life beyond the control of a family that was not his. Overnight, he went from being a driver to becoming a worker, and felt for the first time he was a free man in the midst of a revolution that was just beginning. At last, he told Hortensia, we were all equal in this country, without regard to the amount of money we had or what family we were born into. He soon packed his bags and left without saying good-bye.
Hortensia never forgave him, but for Mother, his departure had a positive aspect: it was one less salary to pay.
In the coming days, the streets began to fill with bearded, long-haired soldiers, all of whom wore the armband that was impossible to ignore. The neighbors went out to cheer them; women threw themselves in their arms; some even kissed them. Paseo became a military thoroughfare. Crowds marched alongside them, heading for the main square, where they listened to revolutionary speeches that could last an entire night from a young leader who evidently loved the sound of his own voice. Hortensia told us proudly that Gustavo was up on the podium near the man who had seized power by force of arms. Mother listened to her, horrified, but did not shed a single tear. She had none left.
One afternoon in October, Viera got out of a car with a baby in her arms. Gustavo stayed alongside the driver. When Viera saw us, she didn’t say hello but announced straight out:
“This is Louis.” She said it in a whisper, so as not to wake him.
We looked at one another in consternation: Louis? Gustavo never ceased surprising us. Mother held the baby in her arms, and then Hortensia. I kissed him on the forehead, thinking he looked more like Papa’s side of the family. He was born with a mop of dark hair.
Viera did not want anything to drink; she wouldn’t even sit down.
“Gustavo is waiting for me in the car, and he gets impatient. I don’t want to upset him,” she said. The two drove off in a hurry.
Hortensia had busied herself finding out “where Viera had come from,” even though, in the end, it was completely unimportant, because from the very first day, Mother had been convinced that Viera was one of us. One evening Hortensia confirmed the news:
“Viera is a Polack. She was born in Germany like you, and at the age of five was sent on a ship to Cuba to live with an uncle who had arrived earlier. Apparently she lost all her family in the war.”
Mother’s eyes opened wide, and it seemed as if she was trying to catch her breath.
“Her uncle, an older man with liberal ideas, is li
nked to the new people in power on the island,” explained Hortensia. “His real name is Abraham, but he changed it to Fabius when he reached Cuba.”
I left for the pharmacy delighted with the arrival of this new Rosen and refused to let Hortensia’s news worry me. When I got there, I saw Esperanza in the doorway talking animatedly with a tall man. I couldn’t tell whether they were arguing or chatting. When she saw me, Esperanza smiled. The man turned toward me as Esperanza went back inside.
From where I stood, the man was in shadow, and the bright sunlight prevented me from making out who it was. All I could see was that he was wearing a beige suit and that he had broad shoulders. Then I saw his hands. And recognized them.
It was Julian. Without his curls, with a broader, squarer jaw, a strong neck, and thick eyebrows that divided his face in two. We smiled: his eyes narrowed just as they used to. His mouth was the same, and so was his mischievous look.
“My dear Ana-with-a-J. Did you think I’d forgotten you? I like your Farmacia Rosen!”
Without thinking, I embraced him. He looked surprised, but responded with a laugh and said my name again.
“Ana-with-a-J,” he whispered this time. “You must have so much to tell me.”
I took him by the arm, and we crossed the street to sit under the flame trees in the park.
He told me that, during the crisis at the university, his family had decided to send him to study in the United States.
“I finished my law studies, and now I’ve just come back to help my father in his practice . . . only to find the city full of soldiers.”
While he was speaking, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Julian was no longer a young university student.
“I thought of you the whole time,” he said, looking down in embarrassment.
I had always been a stranger in this city. Now he was one, too, and that united us. For the first time, I felt hopeful. Perhaps a circle would close for me.
The German Girl Page 24
