The Ramos
Brothers
Trust
Castro and
Kennedy
a novel
Roger DeBlanck
CreateSpace
Copyright © 2011, 2016 by Roger DeBlanck
All rights reserved.
Print Version ISBN: 1467937835
Print Version ISBN-13: 978-1467937832
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real-life people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to businesses, companies, events, locales, or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Also by Roger DeBlanck
Empire of the Mind
The Sky Buries All Sorrow
Para mi padre and mi tío.
For my father and my uncle.
History will absolve me.
—Fidel Castro
Trial, 16 October 1953
History teaches us that enmities between nations . . .
do not last forever.
—John F. Kennedy
Speech, 10 June 1963
Part I: Cuba
Chapter 1
The Caribbean summer sun turned the homes bronze in the upper-class neighborhood of La Vibora near central Havana. Located outside the maze of congested buildings and narrow alleyways at the heart of the old city, each home in La Vibora was one story with an expansive layout of six or more rooms. Likewise, the properties of each residence were sprawled out as if posing for a snapshot on a postcard. Royal palm trees that grew higher than anyone dared to climb lined the wide streets, and slithery green lizards could be glimpsed scampering up the scaly bark of the trees’ long trunks or along the cement block walls that separated the large yards of the properties.
Besides having plenty of space between them, the palatial homes in the affluent neighborhood of La Vibora had a half-dozen platform steps that alighted up to a porch partially shaded by slats of rosewood that crisscrossed and formed a latticed awning over the double-door entrance. Sunlight slanted through the diamond shapes in the latticework and made a checkerboard out of the concrete porch. The awnings themselves were held up by columns, a favorite feature of Cubano architecture. Although thinner and made of wood and, therefore, less grandiose than the massive stone pillars of famed palaces located in other districts in Havana, the columns of the awnings in La Vibora were painted vibrant colors, the same as the rest of the house. Houses painted in the purest blues, greens, oranges, or purples alternated from one neighbor to the next down the block. The deepness of their hues was radiant even in the shade of midsummer.
During those blistering summer months, often to ebb his anger at his mother, nine-year old Juan Ramos would run into the field-sized backyard of his family’s home in La Vibora and stand in the middle of the parched grass. Surrounded by ceiba and rosewood trees, he would squint up through the sinews of the twisting branches, their leaves shiny as coins, and watch the tropic sun rise like a ripe mango to the center of the sky and then cast down rays of heat that penetrated the glowing paint of the houses in the neighborhood. He’d often catch sight of the bright orange of an oriole or the radiant white underbelly of a belted kingfisher soaring across the blazing circumference of the sun. And then suddenly the birds would appear to turn bronze. The intensity of the sun seemingly turned every vivid color into a midday haze of bronze, the entire neighborhood transforming into a brilliant mirage of shimmering yellow. Juan too felt as though he’d turned into a slab of bronze as he stood alone among the trees under the sun, the anger in his gut towards his mother disappearing. He held back his sobs and was overtaken by an inborn tranquility, which he knew could help him endure his indignation. There, in the backyard, not a single soul could disturb him as the heat caused lines of sweat to trickle down his sedentary face, his clothes beginning to dampen with perspiration.
If he could learn to control his anger at his mother through those toughest stretches of the maddening summer, why couldn’t she do the same towards him? Why couldn’t his mother find a way to cope with the heat, instead of letting the summer bring her to tantrums? And why didn’t she love him, he thought?
Lucretia Ramos was irritable again that Sunday afternoon in July of 1950 because the heat and its humidity had caused her styled hair to wilt while also producing beads of sweat on her pampered face. Every year at this juncture, she blamed the heat for spoiling her beauty. With wilting hair and smearing blush and eyeliner, she felt cheated and angered that the heat wave of July prevented her from displaying her best self every Sunday at church, at La Iglesia de Jesus de Miramar. That afternoon she was even more incensed when she absorbed the surgical edge of her oldest son Juan’s slicing words questioning her love.
“Mamá, mamá! Porqué no me amas?” he had cried at his mother as she lay crumbled on the carpeted floor of their home’s dining room in another of her wailing fits.
After he had yelled at her, she stopped with her bawling and the pounding of her fists on the carpet and propped herself up on her elbows. She located Juan’s face and seethed contempt at him with the bland emotion of her brown eyes before lifting her petite self off the floor and rushing over to confront him. That afternoon he did not run into the backyard and seek out the painful solace of the sun, nor did he plead for his mother’s leniency. Instead, he staked his ground, his hands at his side. He was an iron fencepost unyielding to the elements out in the flatlands of el valle. He had on his navy blue Sunday slacks and white-pressed button shirt with a clip tie. He glared up into his mother’s bitter face, her crocodile tears smearing her eyeliner like sidewalk cracks down her cheeks. Juan knew if she hadn’t been irate at him that second, she’d probably be fretting that the floral-patterned, linen dress she wore hadn’t been glamorous enough for the other parishioners at church to recognize her refined taste in fashion.
“Muchacho! What did you say?” she demanded.
“You heard me. Yo hablo, why don’t you love me?” Juan repeated.
“Who planted such nonsense in your head? Alberto does not say such cruel things to his mamá.”
“He doesn’t need to say anything to know you don’t love us!” shouted Juan, without fear of the consequences of his speaking up.
“Do not talk to me this way! No hable!”
“I’m only saying the truth . . .” he said, having calmed himself by visualizing the neighborhood as a singular bronzed portrait, all the houses finding a way to endure the same shimmering heat as he did.
Fueled with loathing, mother and son stared each other down. They were enemies squaring off before she gave in and stormed from el comedor to her bedroom. When Juan heard the door slam, his tears became little valley rivulets, translucent and pure. He then turned to his younger brother, Alberto, standing in the kitchen doorway watching the episode in the safety of the cool turquoise shadows descending over the eastern half of their home, the afternoon’s torrid heat beginning to wane. Alberto too had eyes that were glossed over. Juan blinked away his tears and stared at Alberto. His brother’s thick black hair was gelled and combed back, glistening in striations. His brother had not made a sound—his chin and cheekbones stoical, chiseled and sharp, the same as their father—but he had been on the verge of crying.
Alberto, two years younger, was thinner than his older brother, but almost as tall. His shoulder and calf muscles showed definition, also the same as their father. Alberto’s wiry physique often drew him comparisons with Cuba’s legendary poet of independence, the revered revolutionary, José Martí, who had died valiantly in battle against the
Spaniards in 1895. But Juan knew that he, as the older brother, possessed the penchant for words and rhetoric—the passions and actions they delivered, reminiscent of el rebel Martí. Juan curled his fingers to brush away his bangs from his brow. Straight and loosely-cast, his russet hair flopped across his forehead, unlike the slicked-back style of his brother and father. And the little flab on Juan’s cheeks, the indication of a slight double chin in his teens, was identical to his mother’s doughy features, pudgy in the upper arms and legs, chubby at the waist.
“She uses us, you know,” said Juan to his brother, as they both wiped at their teary eyes with the backs of their hands.
“You don’t have to be mean,” muttered Alberto.
“You’re still too young to understand.”
“She is mi mamá, also. También!”
“Sí, but she doesn’t act like una madre.”
“Maybe you don’t know?”
“I know what I feel,” said Juan, sniffling, his tears now evaporated.
“So do I,” countered his brother.
Alberto may have been more pensive about his feelings than his older brother’s formidable, often contentious displays of expression, a temperament which made Juan flinty as carbon at times. Alberto, however, did not lack daring and mettle, though his calmness around his mother stumped Juan about what his younger brother thought of her. Juan was convinced that Alberto needed only a couple more years of maturity before he, too, acknowledged what Juan already knew: that their mother never loved them.
Although the brothers differed in how they demonstrated their emotions, they were both extremely bright and capable of responsibility. They did well in school and made friends easily. While Juan developed a stronger intellect, Alberto had a knack for good instinct. Together, they knew how to maneuver around trouble while at the same time learning the nuance of how to undermine a situation. Juan was more willing to speak his mind, whereas Alberto brooded over decisions, believing that thinking things out was the best measure of discretion, patience before letting emotions run away with you.
“She’s incapable of love,” Juan told his brother that afternoon.
As if thinking over what to say, Alberto chose instead not to reply.
The Ramos brothers’ father, Florencio, had not accompanied his family to la iglesia that intensely-humid Sunday in July. As an accountant for one of Cuba’s major sugar companies, Andurra Azúcar, he had a backload of finances he needed to balance and checks he had to cut for the upcoming week, so instead of going to church with his familia he went to his office in the Royal Bank building in the Vedado District. He hoped his early-morning efforts would leave him the afternoon to spend with Juan and Alberto. Maybe he’d throw them batting practice in el Parque Central, not far from the Capitolio Nacional. With its white dome and its columned rotunda, the Cubano capital building was an identical of the famous one in Washington. The boys enjoyed playing baseball in their adolescence, and Florencio took pride in showing them how to choke up on the bat to gain a better handle on their swings. Young Alberto demonstrated quite an arm for pitching. Perhaps he’d be on the national team someday, pondered Florencio.
Upon leaving his office that afternoon, thoughts of his boys filled his mind. He cared for them deeply, but only wished he had more time with them. As had happened with Huberto, his own father, Florencio always seemed to be working and never having enough time at home. His absenteeism in his boys’ lives bothered him as did Lucretia’s strange motherly habits. He believed as the boys grew older, she would be less resistant to a role in their lives. When they were babies, he forgave her for not wanting to change diapers and bathe them. He and Lucretia could afford a nanny, and they were blessed to have found Cuca Rivera. But as the boys needed their mother’s attention in their adolescence, Lucretia pulled away into her own world of self-centered isolation. Having the two boys seemed part of an image she strove to uphold for others to see: that she could juggle both work and motherhood. It was as though she endured the throes of labor only to turn the boys over to Cuca to raise.
Arriving home before two o’clock that Sunday afternoon, Florencio hopped up the front entrance steps of the porch and felt the latticed light through the awning dapple him with bronze spots. He opened the oaken double doors to the house and entered to a discomfiting silence. The boys usually played catch in the backyard or Juan studied his atlases while Alberto strummed his banjo, but that afternoon they both slouched on the furniture in la saleta. Crunched up in the corner of the couch, Juan had an angry scowl etched on his face, anger apparent in the faint throbbing vermilion on his chubby cheeks. Alberto, similarly, had curled up in the love seat, about three arm-lengths from his older brother on the couch. Neither looked at each other or at their father as he entered, his alligator-skin briefcase in his left hand. Lucretia usually fretted at him about something the minute he walked in the door, but today she was nowhere in sight.
“What’s the matter aquí?” asked their father.
The brothers made no effort to respond, each staring into space as though resigned to the solemnity of the expiring day.
“Hijos, me escuchen. I asked you both a question. What is going on here?”
Alberto finally sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Alberto?” insisted their father
“Juan said it.”
Florencio turned to Juan. “Donde está tu madre?”
“Why do you care?”
“Coño. Stop it, Juan!”
“Pegale!” he cried. “I want you to hit her.”
“Juan, I will take care of this,” said their father, his voice calmed to conversational.
Florencio went to the glass dining table in el comedor and slapped down his briefcase before heading towards the master bedroom. Within seconds, the curses began, voices raised and accusatory, but the boys heard no violence. Their father was not that type of man. The fact that he tried to take a stand said enough.
“He knows she’s loca,” said Juan to his brother.
Alberto kept his mouth shut, only tears glazing his cobalt eyes.
* * *
Chapter 2
Havana saluted its visitors with the Caribbean’s regal entrance from the sea. Since the 16th century, the white-stone castles of El Morro and La Punta acted as if they were sentries that guarded their respective banks of the narrow mouth of Havana Bay. The lighthouse of El Faro stood lean and white-bearded as a sage who ignited his eternal torch for the galleons at sea each night to find the harbor. By morning the sun was a giant papaya, peeling back the gray from the tropic sky. With the first layer of dawn on the horizon, bakeries in the heart of the city stirred up fires in their brick ovens to bake fresh bread. The rich aroma from the bronze-colored loaves mixed with the smell of tobacco, coffee, leather, and cotton—each distinct scent emanating from the smokestacks of inner-city factories that hugged up next to one another along the curbs of los calles. The many smells twirled and ribboned together through the maze of streets in the old city and wafted out over the harbor where boats and ships threw down their anchors and seamen sought land for the first time in months.
On a steaming hot morning in July of 1916 Gabriel Stradford, Lucretia’s father, anchored his ship and disembarked onto the docks in Havana Harbor, the last stop on his escapade around the world before trekking the Atlantic back to his native England. He breathed in the hypnotic smell of bread mixed with tobacco and then dabbed with his handkerchief at the capsules of sweat dotting his receding hairline. He wished he had shaved the stubble of his reddish beard, which had begun to show streaks of platinum, because the unforgiving humidity clung to his facial hair like wet insects. He studied the riffle of haze at the horizon to the north where the U.S. lurked as both protector and menace over the crescent island. Then he turned back to the dock and caught sight of a woman with ample breasts the size of sugar bags and hips that swiveled, firm and fleshy as a horse’s hind side. On that July day Teresa Alvarez, Lucretia’s mother, wore a figure-fitting cotton dres
s that clung to her curvaceousness, a sight which stirred the heat in Gabriel’s loins.
As a newcomer to Havana, Gabriel’s imposing British shadow seemed to cast a navy blue aura, unlike the indomitable green most associated with the tropic shadows across Cuba. When he first approached her, the indistinct color of his silhouette startled la bonita, the beautiful Teresa. He knew not a word of Spanish, but luckily for him, she spoke English, the benefit of her privileged upbringing with foreign language serving as a subject she had studied since the age of five. Hearing Teresa speak English with her Spanish accent had Gabriel falling instantly in love.
Later that afternoon, he navigated Havana Vieja’s labyrinthine alleyways. He became a wanderer astray in a dream of buildings. He ambled past barococo cathedrals and colonial mansions with high-arched windows. He walked through cobblestone plazas and courtyards that had fountains and columned patios. He passed by colonnades painted vanilla white, ripe lime, and cascade blue until he arrived at one of the city’s major avenidas, which had a stretch of arcades where houses painted green had maroon doorways while the next house was painted blue with yellow doors, followed by a pink house with orange doors. Finally, he caught sight of the street sign that Teresa specified as her parents’ casa on 812 Calle Oro. He took a deep breath, sucked in the rich smell of bread and tobacco still thick in the air, and knocked at the door. At that hour he began his courtship of Teresa, the daughter of a wealthy tobacco businessman with roots traced back to Andalusia in Spain.
Although Gabriel never planned to stay in Cuba, he didn’t return to his native England until twenty years later. He had inherited a fortune from his English father, a railroad entrepreneur in Western Europe, and so after Gabriel and Teresa married, they quickly bought and settled into their own big house in the wealthy residential neighborhood of La Vibora in Havana. The front yard had a wild flourish of clustered-up begonias, poinsettias, and mimosa growing in the garden. The property had several beautiful ceiba trees with their millions of leaves that became tents of coolness to sit under. Much taller mahogany and rosewood trees gave additional shade to the place. In 1917, after a rough pregnancy, Teresa gave premature birth to her and Gabriel’s only child, Lucretia Anita Stradford.
The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy Page 1
