Yankee Come Home

by William Craig

  We need power.

  We need Changó.

  There are as many Changó stories as there are variants on the Santa Barbara legend, but they all agree that he was once a Yoruban king. Handsome and strong, he also was impetuous and drawn to the power of the magic arts. He learned to create a lightning storm, but not how to control it; the tempest struck his own palace, killing his family and servants. The grieving king hanged himself. Unworthy successors mocked his name, but the thunder and lightning returned to punish them. Vengeful storms pursued his enemies and smashed their city.

  The mortal king had become an immortal orisha, a saint of powers—lightning, fire, anger, desire—which can be creative or destructive. His symbol is a double-headed ax, a weapon that cuts both ways. Respect Changó, understand what his stories are trying to tell you, and he’ll help you; misuse the powers he represents and you will suffer.

  This is the super-masculine orisha who often appears in the guise of the virgin martyr St. Barbara. Santería doesn’t see one, single side to any principle. Santa Barbara isn’t just a disguise; her tremendous will and determination are quintessentially Changó’s. She brings righteous lightning by confronting evil and insisting on what is right.

  Ubiquitous as Our Lady of Charity is in Cuba (and wherever else cubanos live), her lover Changó seems almost as omnipresent. Look for the little Santa Barbaras on tabletops and ledges. Look for red and white, the colors of fire and flash, around images of Che. Find him in the lightning bolts on that motorcycle cop’s long fingernails.

  If Our Lady is Cuba’s feminine principle, Changó is Mr. Cuba.

  My new friend Bárbaro told me that his friends and family—and most of the people here in the station—were heading home to Santiago for the feast of Santa Barbara. For the orisha’s devotees, his “children,” it’s a day of worship and reckoning. Their spiritual teachers—padrinos, santeros, babalawos—lead them in honoring the demigod-king, and Changó speaks to his children about the year to come.

  In santería, feast days are crucial opportunities to get right with the spirits and to reap the advantages of a close relationship with the orisha to whom you belong. Children of Changó will receive hints of good things to come and warnings of problems ahead.

  Of course, Changó being Changó, the feast day is also an ecstatic party. Changó loves music, exults in the driving power of the drums; he loves rum and good food and the fire between women and men.

  No wonder the train station was packed! Bárbaro introduced me to friends all around. The lisping giant was shepherding a subset of the mob, a community of Havana-based santiagueros returning to the old neighborhood. There was something proprietary in his affection for them all, and I began to suspect that he was their santero. He invited me to join them the next night and gave me a card with his address.

  Bárbaro introduced me to the young woman with the toffee skin, vermillion cornrows, and backlit blue eyes: his daughter, Mudanka. Then he joined another conversation and left me alone with her, alone in a crowd pressing us so close that her bare midriff was flush against my hip. She was short, and I could see over her shoulder, down to the brilliant tattoo spread across the small of her back. I tried to answer her where-you-from? questions, but she caught me peeking and turned around to give me a good look.

  Elaborate red and blue calligraphy used to declare that she belonged to a young man whose name began with M and ended with n. But the name had recently been crossed over and out with still more elaborate abstract designs—so recently, in fact, that the tat was still a little scabby here and there. Which did nothing, alas, to diminish the attractive power of her figure. Nothing at all.

  She told me that she’d just broken up with her longtime boyfriend.

  “Qué lástima.” “What a shame,” I offered.

  But Mudanka wasn’t visibly grieving. She was excited about the trip, the holiday, and, apparently, about meeting old-enough-to-be-her-father me. She leaned in a little closer and asked, “¿Te gustan las mulatas?” Do I like women with toffee-colored skin?

  I realized I’d been on the road a long time.

  I was tired and lonely. Guy-style lonely. Two weeks alone in the sexiest country on Earth can feel like two years. It caught up with me at that moment, when this lovely twentysomething asked if I like girls like her, girls with skin like dark honey poured in bright sunlight. “¿Te gustan las mulatas?”

  The cult of the mulata is a mighty Latin American fetish with a history as old as New World slavery. Its cultural kink is knotted too tight for any New England white-boy feminist to unravel. Is it rooted in taboo? La mulata’s color testified—and in some minds may yet testify—to transgression. But perhaps the mulata mystique derived from familiarity: the in-between color bridges the racial divide, making the Other more like You. Whatever the racial semiotics, sexual folklore endowed mulatas with charms and desires transcending those of black or white women.

  La mulata suffered objectification as a spicy exotic, a commodity with out-of-control passions. But she also was cherished by cubanos y cubanas who saw themselves reflected in her: a New World person, independent, persevering, and, yes, sexy as all hell. Ask a Cuban what the country’s greatest invention is and he—or even she—is likely to say “la mulata.”

  “¿Te gustan las mulatas?” Mudanka asked. She seemed to be offering some carnal fun, a long train ride’s pleasant pastime.

  Was there a safe answer to this question? I settled for empty gallantry. “All women are so beautiful, who could choose?”

  She raised an eyebrow and one corner of her saucy mouth, clearly undeterred. “You’re funny,” she said, slapping my arm with an adorably plump hand.

  I countered with my standard, “Yes, I hear that from my lovely and faithful wife in Vermont.” Unfortunately, this seems to mean nothing to anyone in Cuba. When cubanos talking chicas asked whether I was getting any on-island, I mentioned my married state. I tried it on the working girls waiting outside the Casa de la Trova. I told the nice, flirty, more-my-age lady behind the bakery counter. I tried it on moms and old ladies. All the guys, all the working girls, and eight out of ten everybodys offered the same response: “Yes, but do you have a girlfriend here?”

  And that’s just what Mudanka wanted to know.

  Before I could answer, she asked whether I was traveling first or second class.

  Segundo, I admitted. The Luceros warned me to buy first, but I worried about how little cash I had left to last the coming week. Mudanka looked at me like I’d been a bad boy, then dragged Bárbaro over. Their Spanish sped up beyond my comprehension, then slowed as they faced me like stern parents, explaining in uncompromising terms that I would not like second class, that I would pass seventeen sleepless hours standing up or sitting on seats like rocks and that everything I had would be stolen. Then Bárbaro reached down for my bicep and marched me right through the crowd, up to the great iron gate.

  The concrete apron on the other side was empty except for the occasional conductor fast-walking by in the train cadre’s handsome gray suits. The crew rushed to and fro, fetching from offices and storerooms invisible off to the left, delivering to the huge trains under the great shed that stretched into infinity, stage right. Bárbaro spotted the man he wanted to see. One wave from my friend and the busy conductor zoomed right over. Bárbaro introduced me to Orlando, and as we shook hands, I saw the red-and-white beads on the conductor’s wrist. ¡Qué viva Chángo!

  Orlando was a dandy. A big, handsome man, he obviously had his Ferrotur uniform tailored to flatter his slim hips and workout shoulders. His ebony skin had that rare gleam, the glow on a guy who starts using some kind of moisturizer a decade before his first wrinkle. His fingernails were French-polished; his silver tie clip was an inch-high dollar sign.

  Bárbaro explained my problem and wondered whether Orlando could suggest a solution. Orlando wondered, in the most diplomatic way, who I might be. I told him where I was from, what I was doing in Cuba, and finally that my grandfather Edwar
d became a train conductor after losing his job when el republicano reaccionario Calvin Coolidge used the National Guard to break up la huelga de policias en Boston, the 1919 Boston Police Strike.

  That did it. Orlando would wait for me on the other side of the gate, but not too obviously. When the gates opened, I should hurry to him, and he would convey me to a first-class seat. There would, of course, be a differential to pay, in pesos convertibles; I professed myself eager to pay it, even as I felt sure the fee was not going straight to state coffers.

  Our alliance was made just in time. As I thanked Bárbaro and Mudanka, the crowd scrunched mightily against the gate, which opened with a tremendous rattle. I raced through, heading for a cluster of gray suits. Orlando wasn’t with them—but I found him a few sprinted yards farther on. He put his hand on my shoulder, steering me through the tidal bore of people surging down the narrow platform. Along the way, he began introducing me to fellow conductors: “This is my cousin, Guillermo.” All his colleagues were likewise tailored and tucked, looking sharp; they all wore red-and-white beads. Apparently the conductors’ guild is a closed shop, reserved for Chángo’s children.

  We ducked into the train far down its long chain of cars. It was indeed a fabled tren francés, made in France at least three long, hard decades ago. The burnt-orange upholstery said ’70s, maybe early ’80s, and was orange only where hundreds of thousands of sweaty heads, hands, and derrieres hadn’t worn it a deep mud-brown. The windows were dirty inside and out. The air was suffused with dust, tinted pink by the glowering fluorescents.

  Orlando showed me the car’s number one seat, right by the entry and bathroom doors. We chatted a bit as I tried to free up my money without flashing cash. The unofficial upgrade to primera especial cost 12 convertibles, about $13.50.

  One of Orlando’s colleagues stopped by. Like all the lady conductors I’ll meet, Tanya was stout and styling, wearing cut-to-snug culottes and fabulous black stockings: hers were wide-mesh net, with butterflies flapping on her thighs. Red-and-white beads peeked from her low-buttoned blouse. Tanya shook hands with Orlando’s cousin, then rapid-fired something that caused Orlando to shift me a few seats deeper into the coach. Moving away from the doors, I realized I was fleeing a septic twang that had just begun to register. My new spot was on the single-seat side of the aisle, with a facing chair for a footrest. Orlando’s departing handshake was firm. He never even looked at my ticket.

  The car was just this side of meat-locker cold. The family in the three-by-three seats across the aisle, a middle-aged couple and their college-age daughter, huddled like baby chicks in a draft. People were using towels for shawls and blankets. I wanted to dig my thermal shirt and ski cap out of the roller bag, so I laid it across the arms of my extra seat.

  Cockroaches swarmed out of the cushions, skittering over the headrest and seat, crawling toward the roller bag. I grabbed my warm clothes and zipped the bag shut, brushing roaches away. I needed to tuck my luggage under my seat, for security. The floor was a cockroach Serengeti. I looked around to see how my fellow passengers were dealing with the wildlife. They were too busy shivering to care. The father in the three-by caught my eye and shrugged mild sympathy.

  The train started rolling. With my warm things on, I steeled myself to sit down. Perhaps I squashed half the population in the seat cushion. The little ones that crawled out seemed to mind their own business. The big ones clambered right over me. I tucked my cuffs into my socks.

  Darkness dropped onto our train like a leopard out of a tree, pouncing just as soon as we rolled out of Havana’s suburbs and into the first scrubby miles of la manigua, the eternal Cuban bush.

  Before too long, I was chatting with my neighbors, with the family across the way and a number of young and middle-aged men in the seats beyond, all heading home for the festival. The men passed a rum bottle around, discreetly, but their voices rose as the night deepened. They wanted the skinny on Bush. Would the United States invade Cuba? Where are the Americans who should be protesting all this War on Terror craziness? I wished I could tell them.

  I dropped out of the conversation, looked out the window, and rested my eyes on the night. Towns were few, far between, and mostly too small to have more than a couple of streetlamps. The train’s grimy windows, impregnated with some kind of polarizing filter, rendered these streetscapes in an eerie blue like the electronic moonglow of smart-bomb and nightscope video.

  Tired and grungy, I made a trip to the bathroom, hoping to wash up. First-class hygiene on the tren especial turned out to be surprisingly primitive. The toilet was an armless, backless seat over a hole, delivering piss and shit directly to the howling track. The floor for a meter around the filthy throne was covered in the wastes of those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get closer. I brushed my teeth with bottled water, wondering how long ago I’d boosted my hepatitis vaccine.

  A little after midnight, I stretched my legs from seat to seat, got as comfortable as I could, and fell asleep.

  We pulled into Camagüey a little before five.

  “The train is very nice,” Yolanda had said back in Havana. “But watch out for your things in Camagüey.”

  The carriage was barely lit, the morning no longer black but still far from dawn. And sure enough, suddenly there were shadows slipping up and down the aisle, people who didn’t seem to be selling any bocaditos—sandwiches—though now and again one murmured the word, the way people will whisper nonsense to hush a baby. One of the rum drinkers called softly, “Guillermo, look out for your bags!”

  A dreadlocked guy got on with a lit cigar and an attitude, making a lot of self-congratulatory talk as he flicked his lighter over people’s heads.

  “¿Que quieres?” I asked. “What do you want?”

  “The seat number.”

  I counted off the ones around us. He seemed to be bluffing, scoping us out, but what for? I expected him to grab something and bolt, but he finally found a seat several rows down. He made everybody nervous.

  The lights popped on again as we pulled out. The roaches were caught in the open, dozens upon dozens of them. I whipped off a shoe and tagged three before they scattered. The father across the way shook his head.

  The sun came up over the open country around Holguin. Dawn painted bullocks and goats from horns down to hooves, the animals glowing ruddy gold while the flat fields were still in shadow. An egret rose from a misty ditch and caught fire, reminding me to say my prayers.

  I shared my stash of galletas with my neighbors, and we make a breakfast of the little cookies and sips from someone’s thermos of mud-rich coffee.

  Mile upon mile of cane fields, and I couldn’t stop thinking about war, about the rum drinkers’ fear of invasion, Professor Pérez’s warning of a preplanned insurgency. Horizon-to-horizon fields of man-hiding cane: napalm, herbicides, and armored bulldozers to clear your fields of fire. Cubans asking about invasion because that’s what the War on Terror looked like from there. That was the message of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba: Surrender … or else. The same message sent to Saddam. It was anyone’s guess whether the Bush administration was really crazy enough to mean it, but after Iraq, Cuba couldn’t presume upon our sanity.

  At last the land began to roll in long, oceanic swales. The track sometimes cut right through, and we tunneled between high walls of cane. Fingers of the sierra reached out to lift us up and over their backs. We rose from cane fields to mountain orchards, trees studded with huge mangoes like Indian goddesses with countless breasts.

  The tren especial pulled into Santiago at midmorning, just a couple of hours late. The station is a great shed, walled in beautiful diagonals of latticed steel. I took a long walk up from the bay to the old town in the company of Andres, a fellow traveler who spoke a little English. Orlando had given me the card of a casa particular in Reparto Sueño, convenient to the Hotel Melía, the only place I could hope to receive a fax from the Reverend Esau with my OFAC license extension. But I wanted easy walking to the old city’s
archives and museums, the cathedral, and the Parque Cespedes. Andres lived up that way, and as we neared his house on Calle Heredia, he took me to the iron-gated door of the Casa de Irma on Calle Santa Lucia.

  St. Lucy is the patron saint of writers, usually depicted as a lovely virgin with a quill pen in one hand and, upheld on the other, a little plate bearing her eyeballs—the original pair, torn out by pagan torturers. God rewarded her faith with a fresh pair of eyes, which is all any writer can ask.

  I liked that omen, and the fact that the Casa de Irma is directly opposite the Conservatorio Estaban Salas, Oriente’s music academy. As we rang the casa’s bell, trumpets and trombones blew fanfares at our backs.

  Irma looked skeptical. A very Spanish older lady, she seemed to suspect Andres, a very black young man, of being a jinitero—a hustler—angling for a commission. Jiniteros are everywhere, but Andres was simply being kind; he showed Irma his best manners and headed home.

  The Casa de Irma is a classic Santiago town house, with big, high-ceilinged front parlors leading to more intimate rooms arranged around a two-story atrium. As Irma talked money and rules, I stood surrounded by her Felliniesque collection of porcelain creatures: rabbits, turtles, doves, cats, lambs, children. There were dozens and dozens in this room alone, staring down from shelves, grazing on tabletops, seated on the couch. We walked deeper into the house, past an atrium populated by a family of life-size clay Taino Indians. They were almost caricatures, and I didn’t dare guess whether they represented sylvan innocence, orishas, or racial condescension.

  The room Irma showed me was dark but the bed was big. I was beat and the location was perfect. I signed on for the night.

  After settling in, I walked up to the Parque Cespedes, just two blocks from Irma’s, and called Isolina from the Casagrande Hotel. A dance instructor and performer, Isolina had befriended Kathy and me on our 2001 trip. Smart, sardonic, and unfailingly kind, Isolina would gladly have found me a casa particular, but her neighborhood is a long way from the city center. She was appalled by my plan to attend that night’s Santa Barbara festivities in Bárbaro’s reparto, far out of town on the Cobre road. I wouldn’t know how to find him in that iffy barrio, she said, and neither would the taxi driver, who would charge much more than I was paying for my night’s lodging. What’s more, she didn’t know this Bárbaro, and she’d be worried about me all night long. No. If I wanted to celebrate Santa Barbara, then Isolina would take me to a padrino she trusted, in a neighborhood where she knew people and was known.