by Anthony Hyde
“Do you like our church?”
“Yes, very much. Murray used to talk about it. Now I see what he meant. The light and the quiet.”
“He was a quiet man.”
“He had great respect for you, Father. Your understanding . . . of who he was.”
“That he was gay, you mean?” He shrugged. “I love Jesus. Jesus is a man. What does that make me?”
“Well, I told you about Almado—”
“I remember him, of course, but I can’t tell you much about him. We hadn’t got that far. I have no idea where he is.”
“His family?”
He shook his head. “No. As I say . . . I’m sorry.”
On the phone, he’d been friendly, but now she sensed reluctance, as if he was regretting his offer to help. “You don’t think I should go ahead, do you?”
“Well, I wonder. A young man like Almado . . . Murray, getting him to Canada, that was one thing. But all that money. Here. What will he do with it?”
“Live.”
“But what does that mean?”
He looked at her: his eyes were very blue and twinkling. And she returned his gaze, trying to guess its meaning. Perhaps it was simply that she shouldn’t meddle in places she didn’t understand. . . . She said, “Father, I’m going to put you on the spot. This is a promise. If, after my best efforts, I fail to find Almado, I’ll see that your church gets Murray’s money.”
It took him a moment, but then he grasped this and smiled. “I see. How ingenious. Your good conscience is dependent on mine. All right, then. Come along, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Calle K was as empty and hot and dusty as it had been the previous morning, with the crumbling ruins of the old houses lost in their over-run gardens; but with the priest striding beside her it was no longer menacing. Despite his stockiness, Lorraine had to work to keep up with him; and he was not very talkative.
“These must have once been very fine houses,” she said.
“It was a neighbourhood of possibly not the wealthiest people, but everyone here had some money. This is where the Americans lived.”
“Is that why the church is where it is?”
“I was born in 1971, Mrs. Stowe. I know nothing about that.”
He had lived all his life under Castro. She concentrated on that, and on keeping up, until the priest turned between the two pillars of the crumbling wall. The door was reassuringly closed. The priest knocked—three precise knocks—then stepped back, his hands clasped behind his back. The older of the two black women, the mother if she’d understood the drama of the previous morning, opened the door. The priest spoke quickly, turning once to Lorraine who guessed what he wanted before he spoke: “Enrique,” she supplied. The black woman nodded. She closed the door but they could hear her calling. Lorraine said, “He lives upstairs.”
The priest nodded. “He will come down.”
He appeared a moment later. He was even shorter than the priest, though somehow the stockiness of the one reinforced that of the other: so that Lorraine, recalling her impression of a bantamweight-boxer, saw them as opponents in the ring. Enrique, though, was now fully dressed—a blue shirt with yellow flowers hid his chains— though the tautness of his body was still apparent, for his white trousers were tight and had a slightly nautical air, cut off at mid-calf; and today he was wearing flip-flops. Only once, as Father Rodriguez presumably introduced them, did Enrique show any sign of recognizing her—a smile, “Sí, sí”—but that was when he swung the door fully open and invited them in.
They stepped into a hall. To the left and right were doorways, though both were covered with curtains; at the back, a staircase. Most of the space was taken up by a large motorcycle (missing one wheel) and two refrigerators. Enrique and the priest talked for several minutes, Father Rodriguez eventually condensing this discourse to “He has no idea where this man is. None.”
“When did he last see him?”
An exchange produced: “The end of March.”
“Where was he going then?”
This question sparked something of the passion of the previous morning, and the priest finally held up his hand and turned to Lorraine. “This man—Enrique—threw the other one out of the house.”
“Almado?”
“Almado. Yes. He has no idea where he went. It was, you know, a lovers’ quarrel.”
“Where is his family?”
Enrique understood this on his own. “Matanzas,” he said to her; but then, turning to the priest, he elaborated.
“He was from Matanzas,” Father Rodriguez explained, “and at least once he visited there. He has a sister.”
“Well, does he have an address?”
In fact, he didn’t: moreover, it was likely that the sister was now in Santiago. And Lorraine was already deciding that excursions outside Havana were above and beyond the call of duty.
“Please ask him where he met Almado, in the first place.”
Lorraine guessed that the question was embarrassing: Enrique spoke quickly, almost under his breath, and his gaze shifted to some point beyond the priest’s shoulder.
“The Yara. Outside it. The Yara is a movie theatre not far from here . . . these people often find each other there. In the night.”
“Did Almado like to go anywhere else?”
Enrique, with a glance at Lorraine, responded with obvious impatience and by the time he finished, the priest was frowning. “There is a special club, Verano’s, where he liked to go—but he says he told all of this to the other man.” The priest frowned. “Do you know what he means—this other man?”
It took an instant for Lorraine to remember. “Ask if this other man looked like Almado?”
Enrique turned to her with a smile as he replied, and she almost understood what he was saying before the priest told her. “Yes, he looked like Almado. He says he thought at first that Almado had come back, but he says that the man was also a Canadian who was looking for him on his own.”
Lorraine explained to the priest: “He was a young man I came across yesterday, after I’d been here. I thought he was Almado, too— he looks very much the same. I had to tell him—I had to explain— and he offered to help.”
“So, it seems he came here,” said the priest. “He asked these questions too.”
“Look, please tell Enrique that I understand he is angry with Almado but that it’s very important that I find him.” Then she added, “Should I offer him something?”
“If you like. But then he might lie.”
“I don’t want that.”
The priest, apparently with eloquence, made this general appeal, and Enrique seemed to respond positively, replying at length and turning repeatedly toward Lorraine with a friendly smile.
Father Rodriguez said, “He says he knows nothing . . . he is sorry. He understands it is important. The other man explained to him a little, but there was nothing he could tell him that he hasn’t told us. If he hears anything of Almado, he will come to me at the church. Then I can get in touch with you.”
Lorraine wasn’t sure about this; she would have preferred to leave the address of the hotel. But then, as they stepped outside—the blinding sun, the wild growth of the garden, the busy white hen—she reflected that Father Rodriguez might hear something after she’d returned to Canada and she quickly wrote her address on a page of her Filofax and passed it to him. “Thank you, Father, you’ve been such a great help.”
He smiled. “I don’t think so.”
“As I told you, this is a practical problem, but then there’s the question of conscience. . . . My best efforts.”
“So I must think of mine!”
“Your conscience should be perfectly clear. And I will remember what I said. I don’t think Murray would be in the least unhappy. He wasn’t unreasonable, was he? You have done your best, and I’m doing mine. That’s all he would have wanted.”
When she held out her hand, the priest took it with a smile . . . which faded into a more serious exp
ression. “We have a deal, then?”
His handshake was firm. Then, with a nod, he turned down the street, striding along in his brisk, businesslike way. Lorraine headed in the opposite direction. What had seemed a long, hot, difficult walk the day before was a pleasant outing today. She knew where she was, she knew where she was going; she enjoyed the small pleasures of recognition. She decided against ice cream—she didn’t want to spoil the lunch she had promised herself—but she walked through the grounds of Coppelia on the chance that she might see Hugo again. With the priest, she hadn’t remembered his name; but it had all come back to her. He seemed to have carried through on his promise, which was nice. But there didn’t seem much hope. She went along La Rampa to the Yara, which she’d also noticed the day before. It presented a high, purplish concrete facade to the street, presumably the back of the screen. Kill Bill was still advertised on the plastic marquee, but it was all rather shabby, and there weren’t any posters; all the entrances were closed. She looked around. Along the sides of the building were alleys, shrouded in the usual jungly undergrowth. At the back was a dusty car park— mostly bicycles, actually—with a few ramshackle garages. By the entrance here, a man with a cigarette dangling from his lip had spread out second-hand books on a table. A few customers unenthusiastically perused his wares. Lorraine knew the word “cruising” from Murray. Now she imagined this place at night, after the crowds had thinned out. People would linger. Laughter would come from the shadows. Cigarettes would glow in the dark and greetings would be called. At night, it would be a market of a different kind. She wondered if Murray had found Almado here, and if he had purchased him. She closed her eyes: in pain. Or was she being superior? moralistic? Murray had always been so eager as he set out on his trips. Had he loved Almado? She recalled what she’d said to the French woman that morning: “Almado represents all that I love but I’m not sure I love him.” Had this been Murray’s way of saying that he loved only himself? He’d feared that, certainly. She’d remembered this, in the church, as she’d prayed. Murray so longed for something “out there,” beyond himself. Had he found that in Almado—or had he finally given up looking? These questions were unresolvable, but again she decided that any investigations here, of a nocturnal nature, were more than her conscience could ask. She crossed the road to the taxi rank. Coco-taxis, she’d discovered, were scooters enclosed in a yellow fibreglass shell. Lorraine had not previously braved one. Now she felt bold enough. “Parque Central,” she said, as the young man revved his engine. “The Inglaterra.” According to her guidebook, it had once been Havana’s finest hotel, whose distinguished guests dined in a grand room with great arches and a glorious ceramic ceiling. So she would be a lady of a certain age, from a different time, and enjoy a wonderful—no, a splendid—lunch.
3
After the sun and dust of O’Reilly Street, Mathilde blinked in the darkness of the café; but then she got her bearings and ascended, as instructed, the shaky circular staircase that carried her to the upper floor.
Emerging, she discovered a dark room jammed with crude furniture, upright chairs with leather backs and heavy, clumsy tables. It all looked very uncomfortable; and no one was sitting there—she’d come early, deliberately. The only customers, Australians to judge by their voices, were sitting on a balcony that overlooked the street. Stepping through an opening that must once have been a window, she went to the opposite end, and stood, shading her eyes against the sun. Across the way, a balcony flew the unofficial national flag, drying laundry, and in the street a group of street musicians had gathered, banging trash can cymbals, strumming a washboard and guitars, clicking castanets, while the hat was passed among the tourists. The lady of the Australian couple leaned over the edge of the balcony and snapped pictures with her digital camera; meanwhile, Coto, the house cartoonist, was sketching her husband—paper, Magic Marker, a clipboard. Examples of his work were hung along the top of the walls in the other room: Mathilde recognized Pelé, quite possibly Chirac. Watching all this, she tried to work out the complexities of the transactions involved: the street musicians claiming their bounty from the tourists while the Australian lady stole their images, even as Coto appropriated hers.
But then she glanced down the street: her eye had picked out the figure of a black man, striding along. He was of only average height, and he was no longer young, but his figure at once communicated physical force: a definition that set him out from the crowd. And she thought immediately, That is him. That was her first impression; he stood apart; and not because of any particular circumstance, or choice for that matter, but purely as a result of who he was . . . though she would later refine this to what he has become. For she was right; he turned in at the café and a moment later emerged through the trap door of the staircase. And he recognized her; he came right to her and there wasn’t the hint of a question in his voice, “Hello.”
On the telephone, she had addressed him by the African name he had taken at one time—as many Black Panthers had. He’d laughed at this. “I haven’t heard that in years.” And now she addressed him by the name, as he put it, “he answered to.” “Bailey?”
“Is this all right? I thought of it, since it’s close to your hotel. But we don’t have to sit in the sun.”
“I don’t mind, if it’s all right with you.”
“I’m used to it. I’ve been here a good long time.”
“I was thinking about that on Sunday, in the Plaza de la Revolución— it’s hard to believe Castro’s been in power for over forty years.”
“Martin Luther King’s been dead about that long. Saigon fell thirty years ago—a generation ago.”
“And you’re still here.”
“I’m still here. Though I’m surprised anyone cares. I guess I’m a curiosity. A freak?”
“That’s how you feel?”
“I don’t know about that. But it’s the way I’m seen, if I’m seen at all. As to how I feel . . .” He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
As he’d sat down opposite her, he’d hooked his thumbs underneath the table, spreading his fingers wide upon its surface; as if, perhaps, to demonstrate that he was unarmed, or possibly to restrain himself from coming across it toward her. All her first impressions of Bailey were like this: his energy, or, more exactly, his energy, contained. There was still a large potential there. He had self-confidence; that was the easiest formula for what she sensed. But an equally important part of this judgment was that he’d earned it. She knew he was sixty-three. She couldn’t make up her mind whether he looked that old. She had little experience of black faces, very little of black lives. There was some grey in his tightly curled Negroid hair. There were wrinkles around his eyes; but what she most noticed was the calm, slow way he had of blinking—he just kept looking at you. He had a flat nose and full lips—he was a black man—but what defined his face was the taut pull of the skin across his cheeks. Everything about him communicated force, physical force most definitely but mental too. His characteristic expression, with his face drawn slightly back—always attentive, but bordering on the quizzical—was a way of listening until he pounced, a hard assertion of himself. He knew his own mind, and he knew how to speak it. Some of this only gradually emerged, but a good deal was present at the start. He was older, more experienced; whatever she asked or said, he could trump her with his life. It annoyed her. He did nothing explicitly to provoke it, but Mathilde felt challenged. She was in charge, wasn’t she? This was an interview, not a conversation. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her digital recorder.
“You agreed that I could tape this.”
He looked at the little machine. “Where’s the tape?”
“It’s digital. There is no tape.”
He picked it up. “Like the cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Bear in mind, I remember hi-fi. I remember LPs. Records? Vinyl?”
She smiled. “My mother had them. But it’s as though you’ve been in prison. Coming out, you find the whole world’s chan
ged.”
“Well, that depends how you define the world.” He tapped the tiny metal case housing the machine. “That is not the world.”
She drew back. He was sensitive there. But she wasn’t quite ready for this, and turned in a different direction, running over the details of his life, which she’d essentially established by her research in France. He’d been born in Arkansas but had moved as a child to Oakland, with his mother. She’d worked in a defence plant—“That was one job, anyway”—and he barely saw her. A life of struggle: he’d ended up in jail. “You don’t know how important prison is to American black men. It’s what defines them. Even if they don’t go, staying out is what they’re doing. Black women go to church, black men go to jail—put it like that. I was in for stealing a car, and when the police caught me, I had a gun. So, you could say, I had some time on my hands. I read about the Panthers, what they were doing, how they used guns. That took the monkey off my back . . . and what I did was go to school. I always said I was a graduate of Eldridge Cleaver High.”
She nodded. She’d researched this name. “And then you joined the Panthers?”
“You know, it now seems to sum up my life, but I was a Panther for less than two years.”
“And then you shot the cop?”
“Well, it was a little more complicated than that.”
“Of course you were considered a criminal. But I assume you see what you did as a political act?”
He shrugged. “You understand, the policeman I killed wasn’t trying to arrest me—he was trying to kill me. If I hadn’t killed him, I would now be dead.”
“How did you feel, when you did it?”
“I’m not sure I felt anything. Does a soldier necessarily feel anything when he shoots a member of the enemy?”
