by Cuba (lit)
and the missiles under the wings.
Carlos was lucky he had this hunk of hot
Russian iron to fly, technical generations ahead
of the MiGo-19's and 21's that equipped the bulk
of Cuba's tactical squadrons, and he damn
well knew it. Cuba owned three dozen
MiGo-29's and had precisely one operationalthis
onewhich Corrado kept flying by the simple
expedient of cannibalizing parts from the others.
He checked his fuel. He had enough, just enough,
to get home. Sure, he had no business being out
here over the ocean, but he wanted to fly today and the
Cuban ground control intercept (Gci)
controller said the American was here. One thing
led to another and here he was.
Now Carlos Corrado was on course to return
to his base near the city of Cienfuegos, on
Cuba's southern coast. He checked the compass, the
engine instruments, then turned back to studying the
American plane, which hung there on the end of his wing
as if it were painted on the sky.
A minute went by, then the man in the front seat
of the American plane raised his hand and waved.
Carlos returned the gesture as the big American
fighter turned away to the right and immediately began
falling behind. Carlos twisted his body in his seat
to keep the F-14 in sight for as long as possible.
Big as it was, the F-14 disappeared into the
eastern sky with startling rapidity.
Carlos Corrado turned in his seat and eased the
position of his butt.
The Americans were two or three technical
generations beyond the Cubans, so far ahead that most
Cuban military men regarded American
capabilities as almost superhuman. They had read
of the Gulf War, of the satellites and com-
puters and smart weapons. Unlike his
colleagues, Corrado was not frightened by the
Americans. Impressed by their military
capability, but not frightened.
If I were smarter,
he thought now, still
would be frightened.
But the Americans and Cubans would never fight.
They had not fought since the Bay of Pigs and
doubtless never would. Castro would soon be gone and a
new government would take over and Cuba would become
a new American suburb, another little beach island
baking in the sun south of Miami, Key Cuba.
When that happy day came, Carlos Corrado
told himself, he was going to America and get a
decent flying job that paid real money.
Dona Maria Vieuda de Sedano's daughters
arrived first, in the early afternoon, tocom tidy up and do
the cooking for the guests. They had married local men
who worked the sugarcane and saw her every day. In
truth, they looked after her, helped her dress,
prepared her meals, cleaned and washed the clothes.
It was infuriating to be disabled, to be unable to
do backslash
The arthritis that crippled her hands and feet made
even simple tasks difficult and complex tasks
out of the question.
Dona Maria managed to shuffle to her favorite
chair on the tiny porch without help. Her small
house sat on the western edge of the village. From the
porch she could see several of her neighbors"
houses and a wide sweep of the road. Across the road
was a huge field of cane. A canecooking
factory stood about a half mile farther west.
When the harvest began, the stacks belched smoke and the
fumes of cooking sugar drifted for miles on the
wind.-
Beyond all this, almost lost in the'distance, was the blue
of the ocean, a thin line just below the horizon, bluer
than the distant sky. The wind coming in off the sea
kept the temperature down and prevented insects from
becoming a major nuisance.
The porch was the only thing Dona Maria really
liked about the house, though after fifty-two years in
residence
God knows she had some memories. Small, just
four rooms, with a palm-leaf roof, this house had
been the center of her adult life. Here she moved
as a young bride with her husband, bore her children,
raised them, cried and laughed with them, buried two
of the ten, watched the others grow up and marry and move
away. And here she watched her husband die
of cancer.
He had died... sixteen years ago, sixteen
years in November.
You never think about outliving your spouse when you are
young. Never think about what comes afterward, after happiness,
after love. Then, too soon, the never-thoughtab
future arrives.
She sat on the porch and looked at the clouds
floating above the distant ocean, almost like ships,
sailing someplace. ...
She had lived her whole life upon this island, every day
of it, had never been farther from this house than
Havana, and that on just two occasions: once when she
was a teenage girl, on a marvelous expedition with
her older sister, and once when her son Maximo was
sworn in as the minister of finance.
She had met Fidel Castro on that visit to the
capital, felt the power of his personality, like a
fire that warmed everyone within range. Oh, what a
man he was, tall, virile, comfull of life.
No wonder Maximo orbited Fidel's star. His
brother Jorge, her eldest, had been one of
Castro's most dedicated disciples, espousing
Marxism and Cuban nationalism, refusing to listen
to the slightest criticism of his hero.
Jorge, dead of heart failure at the age of
forty-two, another dreamer.
All the Sedanos were dreamers, she thought,
povertystricken dreamers trapped on this sun-washed
island in a sun-washed sea, isolated from the rest of
humankind,
the
rest of the species....
She thought of Jorge when she saw Mercedes, his
widow, climb from the car. The men in the car glanced
at her seated on the porch, didn't wave, merely
drove on, leaving Mercedes standing in the road.
"Hola, Mima."
Jorge, cheated of life with this woman, whom he
loved more than anything, more than Castro, more than his
parents, more than
anything,
for the Sedanos were also great lovers.
"Hola,
my pretty one. Come sit beside me."
As she stepped on the porch, Dona Maria said,
"Thank you for coming."
"It is nothing. We both loved Jorge...."
"Jorge..."
Mercedes looked at Maria's hands, took them in
her own, as if they weren't twisted and crippled.
She kissed the older woman, then sat on a bench
beside her and looked at the sea.
"It is still there. It never changes."
"Not like we do."
The emotions twisted Mercedes's insides, made
her eyes tear. Here in this place she had had so
much, then with no warning it was gone, as if a mighty
tide had swept awa
y all that she valued, leaving
only sand and rock.
Jorgeoh, what a man he was, a dreamer and
lover and believer in social justice. A true
believer, without a selfish bone in his body ... and of
course he had died young, before he realized how much
reality differed from his dreams.
He lived and died a crusader for justice and
Cuba and all of that... and left her to grow old
alone ... lonely in the night, looking for someone who
cared about something besides himself.
She bit her lip and looked down at Dona
Maria's hands, twisted and misshapen. On
impulse leaned across and kissed the older woman on
the cheek.
"God bless you, dear childea"...Dona Maria
said.
Ocho came walking along the road, trailed by four
of the neighborhood children who were skipping and laughing
and trying to make him smile. When he turned in at
his mother's gate, the children scampered away.
Everyone on the porch turned and looked at him,
called a greeting as he quickly covered the three or
four paces of the path. Ocho was the Greek god,
with the dark hair atop a perfect head1, a
perfect face, a perfect body ... tall, with
broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, he
moved like a cat. He dominated a room,
radiating masculinity like a beacon, drawing the
eyes of every woman mere. Even his mother couldn't take
her eyes from him, Mercedes noted, and grinned
wryly. This last childshe bore Ocho when she was
forty-foureven Dona Maria must wonder about the
combination of genes that produced him.
Normally an affable soul, Ocho had little to say this
evening. He grunted monosyllables to everyone,
kissed his mother and Mercedes and his sisters
perfunctorily, then found a corner of the porch in which
to sit.
Women threw themselves at Ocho, and he never seemed
to notice. It was almost as if he didn't
want the women who wanted him. He was
sufficiently different from most of the men Mercedes
knew that she found him intriguing. And perhaps, she
reflected, that was the essence of his charm.
Maximo Lui's Sedano's sedan braked to a
stop in a swirl of dust. He bounded from the car,
strode toward the porch, shouting names, a wide grin
on his face. He gently gathered his mother in his arms,
kissed her on both her cheeks and forehead, kissed
each hand, knelt to look into her face.
Mercedes didn't hear what he said; he spoke
only for his mother's ears. When she looked away from
Maximo and his mother she was surprised to see
Maximo's wife climbing the steps to the porch.
Maximo's wifejust what
was
her name"...ccdemned forever to be invisible in the glare of the
great man's spotlight.
Another dominant personalitythe Sedanos
certainly produced their share of thoseMaximo was a
prisoner of his birth. Cuba was far too small for
him. Amazingly, be-
cause life rarely works out just right, he had found
one of the few occupations in Castro's Cuba
that allowed him to travel, to play on a wider
field. As finance minister he routinely visited the
major capitals of Europe, Central and South
America.
Just now he gave his mother a gift, which he opened for
her as his sisters leaned forward expectantly, trying
to see.
French chocolates! He opened the box and let his
mother select one, then passed the rare delicacy
around to all.
The sisters stared at the box, rubbed their fingers across
the metallic paper, sniffed the- delicious scent,
then finally, reluctantly, selected one candy and
passed the box on.
One of the sisters' husbands whispered to the other, just
loud enough for Mercedes to overhear: "Would you look at
that? We ate potatoes and plantains last month,
all month, and were lucky to get them."
The other brother-in-law whispered back, "For
three days last week we had absolutely nothing.
My brother brought us a fish."
"Well, the dons in government are doing all right.
That's the main thing."
Mercedes sat listening to the babble of voices, idly
comparing Maximo's clean, white hands to those
of the sisters' husbands, rough, callused,
work-hardened. If the men were different, the women
weren't. Maximo's wife wore a chic,
fashionable French dress as she sat now with Dona
Maria's daughters, whispering with them, but inside the
clothes she was still one of them in a way that Maximo
would never be again. He had traveled too far, grown
too big....
Mercedes was thinking these thoughts when Hector arrived,
walking along the road. Even Maximo stopped
talking to one of his brothers, the doctor, when he
saw Hector coming up the path to the porch.
"Happy birthday,
Mima."
Hector, Jesuit priest, politician,
revolutionary... he spoke softly to his mother,
kissed her cheek, shook Maximo's hand, looked
him in the eye as he ate a chocolate,
kissed each of his sisters and touched the arms and hands of
their husbands and his brothers, the doctor and the
automobile mechanic.
Ocho was watching Hector, waiting for him to reach for
his hand, his lips quivering.
Mercedes couldn't quite believe what she was seeing,
Hector hugging Ocho, holding him and
rocking back and forth, the young man near tears.v
Then the moment passed.
Hector refused to release his grip on his
brother, led him to Dona Maria, gently made him
sit at her feet and placed her hands in his.
Ah, yes. Hector Sedano. If anyone could,
it would be you.
"They do not appreciate youea"...Maximo's wife
told him as they rode back to Havana in his car.
"They are so ignorantea"...she added, slightly
embarrassed that she and her husband should'have to spend
an evening with peasants in such squalid surroundings.
Of course, they were his family and one had duties,
but still... He had worked so hard to earn his standing and
position, it was appalling that he should have to make a
pilgrimage back to such squalor.
And his relatives! The old woman, the sisters
... crippled, ignorant, dirty, uncouth ...
it was all a bit much.
And Hector, the priest who was a secret
politician! A man who used the Church for
counterrevolutionary treason.
"Surely he must know that you are aware of his
political activitiesea"...she remarked now to her
husband, who frowned at the shacks and
sugarcane fields they were driving past.
"He knowsea"...Maximo murmured.
"Europe was so niceea"...his wife said softly.
"I don't mean to be uncharitable, but truly it is
a shame that we must return to
this
l"
Maximo wasn't paying much attention.
"I keep hoping that someday we shall go to Europe and
never returnea"...she whispered. "I do love
Madrid so."
Maximo didn't hear that comment. He was wondering
about Hector and Alejo Vargas. He couldn't
imagine the two of them talking, but what if they had
been? What if those two combined to plot against him?
What could he do to guard against that possibility,
to protect himself?
Later that evening Hector and his sister-in-law,
Mercedes, rode a bus into Havana. "It was good
of you to stay for
Mima's
partyea"...Hector said.
"I wanted to see her. She makes me think of
Jorge."
"Do you still miss him?"
"I will miss him every day of my life."
"Me tooea"...Hector murmured.
"Vargas knows about youea"...she said, after glancing around
to make sure no one else could hear her words.
"What does he know?"
"That you organize and attend political meetings,
that you write to friends, that you speak to students, that most
of the priests in Cuba are loyal to you, that many people
all over this island look to you for leadership.... He
knows that much and probably more."
"It would be a miracle if none of that had reached the
ears of the secret police."
"He may arrest you."
"He will do nothing without Fidel's approval. He
is Fidel's dog."
"And you think Fidel approves of your
activities?"
"I think he tolerates them. The man isn't
immortal. Even he must wonder what will come after
him."
"You are playing with fire. Castro's hold on
Vargas is weakening. Castro's death will give him
a free hand. Do not underestimate him."
"I do not. Believe me. But Cuba is more
important than me, than Vargas, than
Castro. If this country is ever going to be
anything other than the barnyard of a tyrant, someone
must plant seeds that have a chance of growing. Every per-
son I talk to is a seed, an investment in the
future."
""Barnyard of a tyrant." What a pretty
phraseff"...Mercedes said acidly. The last few
years, living with Fidel, she had developed a
thick skin: people said the most vicious things about him and
she had learned to ignore most of it. Still, she
deeply admired Hector, so his words wounded her.
"I'm sorry if I"
She made sure her voice was under control, then
said, "Dear Hector, Cuba is also the
