Waiting for Snow in Havana

by Carlos Eire

  This happened so many times I lost count.

  Funny thing, whenever Jesus appeared, I was sitting in my father’s usual spot at the table, facing the window that looked out on the house with the breadfruit tree. When awake, I sat at the other end, facing the window that looked out on the house with the bitter-orange tree. Chachi’s house.

  Chachi was a girl my age. Her father was in the cigar business, and she was an only child. I don’t know what her real name was; all I can remember is her nickname, Chachi. All of the adults in my house used to tease me constantly: “Chachi is so cute; she’ll be your girlfriend someday.” Tu novia. Novia means both “girlfriend” and “bride” in Spanish. It’s that kind of language, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Te quiero means both “I love you” and “I want you.” They were merciless, relentless, my elders: “Wait and see: you’ll grow up to marry Chachi.” “You’ll marry her someday.” “What a cute couple you two will make.”

  How I hated her stupid lipstick. And what the hell was she doing wearing lipstick at the age of six anyway?

  Knowing that your future is sealed is an awful thing when you’re a child. I didn’t know which was the worse window to face: the one where I could expect to see Jesus with His cross or the one where I knew I would see Chachi with her lipstick. Jesus let me know my future clearly: I was going to get one of those giant crosses and a crown of thorns. My family also predicted my future: I was going to marry Chachi and be smeared with her stupid lipstick for the rest of my life. Which was worse?

  Both were frightening prospects. But there was a huge difference between these two beings, and their place in my life.

  One was God, the other was not.

  And there was another difference too: I saw Jesus only in dreams; I saw Chachi in the flesh just about every single day. And I heard her voice all the time, drifting over the wall that separated our houses.

  If my family had not soured my relationship with Chachi, we might have become good friends. I suspect her family also teased her about me constantly, in the same way. Cubans like to do things like that. I suspect that many Cuban mothers begin planning their children’s weddings and arranging relationships for them before they even get married themselves. Anyway, whenever Chachi and I played outside at the same time, or even saw each other, we were like two positively charged magnets: a force field pushed us away from each other. I don’t think we ever had a single conversation.

  The closest we came was the time I got drunk at her aunt’s wedding reception.

  It was a nice party. Everyone was all dressed up, and Chachi was wearing more lipstick and makeup than usual. We must have been about eight years old. I was spending my time with Chachi’s cousins Jorge and Julio, who were both younger than me. It was great to be the oldest one in a friendship rather than the youngest. And Jorge was very funny, and I liked him, despite the fact that Chachi was his cousin. Julio was too young to be funny, but I liked him too.

  The party was being held two doors down from my house, at the home of Chachi’s and Jorge’s and Julio’s grandmother. You see, Chachi’s dad lived next door to his mother and father. This was not at all unusual. Jorge and Julio lived with their grandmother most of the time, and I never bothered to ask why. This, too, was common. Anyway, they were serving champagne at this big table and it looked good to Jorge and me. The thin-stemmed glasses were all set up, full to the brim, there for the taking. We didn’t have to ask anyone to fill them. So we drank and drank and drank. It tasted so good, and those tiny bubbles were unlike those in any soda drink: they exploded in your mouth like a thousand microscopic firecrackers.

  Chachi was there, weaving in and out of the crowd. I remember staring at her bright red lips and thinking that maybe they were not so scary after all. Even her black patent leather shoes no longer looked scary or incomprehensible.

  Suddenly everything looked different at that wedding feast. I was so happy, so so happy. Jorge was happy too. We laughed and laughed at God knows what, not knowing we were drunk. And we got drunker and drunker. I remember asking myself: Why does the world seem so much nicer all of a sudden? Why has Jorge held back on all these great jokes? As I was puzzling over all of this, I said something Jorge must have found hilarious, for he laughed so hard that the champagne he was drinking came shooting out of his nostrils.

  Two thin yellow streams, symmetrical and seemingly endless.

  It was as if his nose had turned into a garden hose or he had become an elephant. I had seen elephants do this in Tarzan movies. The champagne streamed to the marble floor and made a yellow fizzy puddle at my feet. I laughed so loudly at the sight of this that my whole body shook and my eyes watered. Jorge stared at the puddle in disbelief, feeling the lingering droplets on his nose with his fingers, and his entire body convulsed, just like mine.

  A large fat hand appeared from somewhere. This hand grabbed me by the shoulder. Then another hand appeared from somewhere else and grabbed Jorge the same way. My feet left the floor and all of a sudden I was horizontal. The last thing I remember was my father whisking me out of the wedding feast in his arms. Then I sank into a deep, dark, bottomless void. I don’t remember being carried home, two doors down, or getting into bed, or undressing. But the next morning I woke up in my bed, wearing pajamas. I stared at the dust particles whirling in the shafts of sunlight, as I always did upon waking. Something was different that morning, though. I remember being disappointed by the fact that the world was no longer so nice and funny, and wondering why it couldn’t always be that way.

  Later that day, my parents explained inebriation to me. I didn’t really understand what they said, all I could grasp is that I had gotten drunk at the wedding feast. Emborrachado. I did understand, clearly, that I had committed a sin, and that I should never, ever do it again. Dying drunk could land you in hell. What if you expelled so much champagne through your nose that you choked to death before you had a chance to confess the sin? And what if, on top of that, a chauffeur threw a dirty magazine and it landed, open, on your face, just before your heart stopped beating? Pretty scary. But not as scary as Chachi’s lipstick. I resolved to stay away from alcohol for the time being, but I felt proud of having experienced something reserved for adults, and even prouder of having made Jorge’s champagne shoot out through his nostrils.

  Jorge and I talked about this for years, until I went away. We’d probably still be talking about it if it weren’t for Fidel and his infernal Revolution.

  Jesus, however, kept coming back again and again, all through my childhood, until I went away and became a man overnight at the age of eleven. He would show up unexpectedly. Right in the middle of other dreams, there I’d be at the table, facing the wrong window, in my father’s seat, begging Jesus to go away. Every time I had one of those dreams, it shook me to the very core of my soul. He didn’t so much read my mind as reveal to me what was there already. These dreams were the opposite pole from Chachi’s aunt’s joyous wedding feast: fear, terror, trembling.

  I had no idea He was there to save me. Save me from what? Lipstick? Lizards? Bullies? Myself? The voodoo brujeros and their demons? I didn’t know what to make of the cross, the crown of thorns, the blood, and the frightening message, “Come, follow Me.” Why couldn’t it have been Eye Jesus at the window, with his blue eyes? He was just a head on a plate. No cross, no crown of thorns, no blood, just a neat trick with His eyes. Now that I think about it, why couldn’t it have been Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana, with His mother the Virgin Mary at His side, nudging Him, bossing Him around? Why couldn’t He have come to turn my water into wine? Or into champagne?

  It seems that Bloody Jesus had something to tell me no one else could.

  My dad, Louis XVI, said you never passed the test in one lifetime. So much to learn, so many mistakes, so much to pay for. You had to keep coming back. You had to pay and pay, and learn ever so slowly, so painfully. A billion revolutions, a billion guillotines, a billion blades slicing off a billion of your heads would not
suffice. Oceans of blood would not suffice.

  Sometimes I think Jesus stopped by the window to tell me, as I sat in the place reserved for my dad, that this man who believed in reincarnation, this self-professed former King of France, was wrong. Dead wrong.

  “Turn around. Follow Me, not him.”

  My mother, who never actually claimed to be Marie Antoinette until a drug reaction made her lose her mind for two days at the age of seventy-nine, didn’t have much to offer in the way of lessons, especially in metaphysics and eschatology. She simply offered unconditional love. Sometimes I think Jesus stopped at my dining room window because He wanted to point her out to me.

  “Behold your mother.”

  Or maybe He wanted to join us for dinner. I’m sure that fried plantains, carne asada, and malanga taste much better than plain broiled fish from the Sea of Galilee. Sí, claro. Yes, surely, Jesus was not just looking at me. He was staring at our food and smelling it.

  Inhaling deeply.

  Who knows what might have happened if God had become incarnate in a place with really tasty cuisine, such as Cuba? Questions like that have made me realize that Jesus was there in my dreams to say an infinite number of things. Messages too vast in number to be understood all at once, or even in a whole lifetime on earth. Vital messages such as:

  “Behold your mother.”

  “Lipstick is wonderful.”

  “Lizards are beautiful.”

  “Demons are doomed to fail: I have defeated evil, and so shall you.”

  “Fear not death: You shall live forever, in a wondrous body, just like Mine.”

  “Drink champagne, and blow it out your nose.”

  When I think back to the Jesus of my dreams I always remember the curly-haired, desperate man we wouldn’t rescue during the shoot-out, and I recall my father’s challenge to all those brought face to face with his Eye Jesus plate: “I dare you: see if you can get away from His gaze.”

  Weird memories, even by Cuban standards. But useful, because the world is weirder than we can imagine, even in our dreams. Among the infinite messages conveyed by Jesus at my window in Havana, one stands above the rest in times of trial, those harsh, soul-crushing times none of us can escape. I didn’t hear this back then, in my dreams, but I have heard it many times since, and hear it still.

  “This pain, this cross, shall vanish as quickly as I did in your dreams; these stains on your soul shall be wiped clean, just like that lipstick smudge you once had on your cheek, that smudge you never saw, from the kiss you never felt, you drunken fool.”

  7

  Siete

  Blackie the chimp was on the loose again. Running amok in Miramar, swinging from tree to tree, screaming loudly, scaring people.

  This time he was dressed in olive green lederhosen. Yes, this fine African chimpanzee was dressed in Bavarian lederhosen, those stupid-looking embroidered leather overalls with short pants, running away from his prison in suburban Havana. Leaping from tree to tree, so far from his real home in the African rain forest, saddled with an English name in a Spanish-speaking country, seeking freedom.

  His owner followed him closely on foot, along with a small retinue of servants, watching the chimp’s every move, making sure he wouldn’t get away for good. I saw Blackie in our ficus tree, out on the sidewalk, and his owner looking up anxiously at the branches, pleading with the chimp to come down, holding Blackie’s Alpine hat in his hand. The hat was part of the outfit that must have fallen off, or been tossed away, by the runaway chimp. How vividly I still remember the colored feathers that poked out of the hat band. One red, one gold, one bright green. Blackie screamed loudly from his sanctuary, sounding just like Cheetah in Tarzan movies. Blackie also looked a lot like Cheetah but was a touch neurotic. Even a child could tell this chimp was not quite right in the head.

  But you’d be neurotic too if you were as smart as a chimp and you lived in a little house, about ten feet by six feet, perched on a platform slightly larger than your dwelling, about eight feet off the ground, with a six-foot length of chain connecting your ankle to the platform floor. It looked a lot like Tarzan’s tree house, come to think of it. The concrete supports that held up the platform had been carefully designed to resemble tree branches. They even had a rough barklike surface etched onto them, and truncated pruned limbs poking out helter-skelter. How I stared at those fake branch stumps when I played in that zoo garden. So much work to make something look natural. All for a chimp and its owner.

  And you’d be even more neurotic than Blackie if you also had a bunch of snotty kids taunting you all the time, and throwing hard objects at you and your little house. Among all of those terrible things my friends and I used to do in the neighborhood, I glossed over our treatment of Blackie.

  Poor Blackie, chained to his platform. How we loved to anger him. How we loved to yell at him and imitate his cries, or throw stuff at him. We always thought it was so funny when he yanked on his chain violently and threw around his brightly colored aluminum cup. How we loved it when he threw that blue cup at us, his only possession other than the chain. Hard to tell, then or now, whether the chain belonged to him, or he to the chain. The costumes were also his, I suppose. But he wore them only on special occasions.

  Sometimes, if we made him really angry, he would defecate in his hand and throw turds at us. You can imagine how much a bunch of boys loved this, how we tried to shove one another in the path of those incoming missiles. Whoa, watch it! “Oye, Cuidado!” “Prepárate!” Get ready! We looked forward to the worst: would anyone get smeared with Blackie’s stool? No one ever did, much to our collective chagrin.

  Blackie belonged to one of our neighbors, the nickel mine magnate, the man with the Cadillac and the chauffeur who drove us to school. Gerardo Aulet, our neighbor, had turned his gardens into a zoo, just around the corner from us. A lion, a tiger, a panther, a chimp, some monkeys, other small mammals, and birds. All sorts of birds. Beautiful, exotic birds, held captive in cages large and small. Some of the cages were so large that later, after the world changed and poor people took over this zoo, some of them turned the cages into their dwellings.

  Would that be a sign of progress or one of the saddest things on earth? You tell me. I still don’t know.

  All I know is that it happened to my birthplace and my people, and that my own memories are clouded by passion. As much as I have tried to escape, to obliterate what I was and ceased to be, I’ve been as successful at that as I’ve been at turning myself into a corn-fed, redheaded, freckled, Scotch-Irish farm boy from Indiana. Or Michael Jordan defying gravity. Or Captain James Tiberius Kirk commanding the starship Enterprise at warp speed, wooing every good-looking female that crossed his stellar path, human or alien. And speaking of fictional characters, Popeye might have been the wisest of all time, for he knew instinctively what it has taken me a lifetime to realize. “I am what I am,” or as Popeye put it, “I yam what I yam.”

  I yam Cuban.

  God-damned place where I was born, that God-damned place where everything I knew was destroyed. Wrecked in the name of fairness. In the name of progress. In the name of the oppressed, and of love for the gods Marx and Lenin.

  Utterly wrecked.

  I have pictures to prove it, from twenty years ago, when my mother went back to visit for one week, packing a Kodak Instamatic camera. Everything was already so thoroughly ruined then as to be barely recognizable. The entire neighborhood went to ruin, just like ancient Rome, only more quickly and without the help of German barbarians. The entire city. The entire country, from end to end. Rumor has it that our house collapsed about two years ago and Ernesto, the adopted one, had to move out. But we have no way of finding out. My mother, brother, and I haven’t spoken with Ernesto in more than twenty years. On top of that, Havana might as well be on the other side of the moon, or on Pluto, or the planet Mongo, home of Ming the Merciless, or the outer fringe of the universe, where it’s not houses, but time and space that collapse.

  Anyway, I really don
’t give a damn about that house anymore. If it did indeed fall down under its own rotten weight, good riddance. If it didn’t, the first thing I’ll do when I return to Havana is rent a bulldozer and raze it to the ground all by myself. Or better yet, I’ll stuff the house full of dynamite and blow it up. My final firecracker surprise for the old neighborhood, in remembrance of pranks past. I have a neighbor here in town who could teach me how to do it right and without casualties. He blows up things for a living, and his children play with mine. Such a nice guy. So expert with dynamite.

  Would this make my current neighbors ordinary or extraordinary in comparison to those I had as a child?

  Sorry, I digress. Back to my old neighborhood and Blackie’s story: Aulet’s son, also named Gerardo, was our friend. He was such a nice guy, Gerardito. If he hadn’t suffered from severe asthma, he would have become a member of our gang, the sixth apostle of mischief. Such a funny guy, and always so frail, so sick, so pampered. We could play with him only at his own house, and in his own zoological garden.

  Gerardito went to school with Tony and me and shared that perilous Cadillac ride with us every day. He never seemed scared of his chauffeur, though. They seemed to be buddies of sorts, if one could ever conceive of a rich white boy and a poor black man as buddies. They shared dirty jokes, even. And they both freely uttered bad words. But this made sense: bad words and the Aulet house went together.

  On one of his rear terraces, Aulet had a mynah bird. A very special creature, this bird, a worthy competitor to the Empress Maria Theresa. He knew every swear word ever uttered in Cuba. And he screamed out these expletives so loudly you could hear him nearly a block away. “Coño, coño, coño!” “Hijo de puta. Puta. Hijo de puta!” “Puta, puta!” “Carajo, carajo, qué mierda. Qué mierda! Mierda!” “Me cago en tu puta madre. Cago, me cago. Puta madre!” “Culo grande, culo grande y gordo. Culo, culo feo.”