The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  “Cederistas?”

  “Loyal revolutionaries. In Canada, we’d call them snitches; in Germany, they’d be Stasi. You’d be surprised how many tourists get into trouble because of them. I heard of two backpackers who made the mistake of paying a farmer a few pesos to stay in his home one night after they forgot their tent on a tour bus. The Cuban National Revolutionary Police broke down the door in the middle of the night and arrested everyone. It’s a crime against the state to rent a private room, even to a foreigner with nowhere else to stay. Even kindness is considered economically destabilizing these days. Please, Celia, be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine, Alex.” She stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him tight. “You worry too much. I’ve been trained to kill, remember? The worst thing that will happen to me in Havana is a sunburn.”

  Alex shook his head, worried. Behind her bravado, Jones was worried too, but for a different reason. She’d arrive in Havana around midnight Tuesday. That gave her just over a day in Cuba to get Mike Ellis out of there alive. There was no way she had enough time.

  TWENTY - SIX

  Inspector Ramirez dragged his weary body up the stairs to his apartment. He had worked more than fourteen hours. And there was no such thing as paid overtime in Cuba.

  He was worried. If his instincts were right, Michael Ellis’s accomplice was still at large, and that meant all the children in Havana were at risk, including his own. He wondered how Sanchez had made out concerning car rentals and taxis and made a mental note to discuss it with him in the morning.

  Ramirez ran his hands through his short dark hair. He needed some time alone to recharge his batteries. He looked at the dead man, who smiled back, cupped his hat to his heart, and rejoined the shadows. Ramirez opened the front door and walked into the warmth of his family.

  Edel, the shy one, poked his head around the corner. He held a worn soccer ball tightly to his small chest, Ramirez’s gift to him that Christmas. Ramirez would try to find the time, and energy, later that night to kick the ball around outside with his son. Other boys would run to join them once they heard the thwack of a real ball.

  “Papi!” Estella squealed and ran into his arms. He scooped her up and gave her a buzzing kiss, rubbing his light beard across her cheeks until she squirmed away. She gripped her new plastic doll by the neck. Once again, Ramirez was grateful for the exhibit room.

  His aged father and mother sat together on the couch. His father held a glass of rum; his mother sipped a coffee. She greeted him in Spanish. An American once, now Cuban in every respect. Ramirez kissed both of them on their soft, lined cheeks. They would be devastated when he died. Their only son. A parent’s worst nightmare, to outlive a child. Rita Montenegro had outlived two of them.

  Ramirez smelled something good cooking. He stopped to inhale the fragrant scent of sofrito, the mixture of onions, green peppers, garlic, and bay leaves that Francesca cooked in a hot pan along with the fricase de pollo. His relatives crowded the small kitchen. His sister, Conchita; his brother’s wife, her teenage daughter. Everyone, it seemed, was helping Francesca with dinner. Conchita stirred something else on the stove. His stomach complained: he realized he hadn’t eaten all day.

  Francesca walked into the living room, beamed at him, and wiped her hands on a worn tea towel. She hugged him and ran her fingers over the etched lines in his brow. He knew she worried about him, about the nights he couldn’t sleep, the times she heard him talking when no one was there, the twitches and tremors in his legs and arms.

  How much longer could he deceive her? Francesca was astute. She knew something was wrong, just not what. For now, they pretended things were normal.

  “I am so glad you came home to join us for dinner. Let me get you a drink. You have had such a long day. What kind of case took you away from us?”

  She walked back into the tiny kitchen and opened a cupboard, took out a glass. Poured him a glass of rum, squeezed a slice of lime into it. “We have no ice,” she apologized. The refrigerator was warm; the power had been out until the late afternoon. It was back on now, more or less.

  “I will tell you about it later, my love. Not now. But I will say this, today was hard. I am so lucky to have all of you. I am very glad to be home.” His voice caught in his throat and he stopped talking, not wanting her to see him this emotional.

  “Well, my goodness, you are serious.” She slid her arm around her husband and pulled him close. “But you are truly a lucky man. Yes, indeed. We are all lucky. She was a big chicken I found, generous enough to feed all of us already, and she will do so again tonight. We’re making your favourite, yuca con mojo. Finish your drink and then you can help me to set the table. There are nine of us again tonight.”

  Yuca con mojo was a popular dish, made with slow-cooked yucca, lemons, onions, olive oil, and lots of garlic. Ramirez smelled the garlic cooking in the kitchen.

  “Conchita will fry some plantains and then we should be done. The rice is ready and so are the beans.”

  “Fantastic,” Ramirez said and forced his tired lips into a smile. “I knew there was a reason I married you.” He squeezed her close, tried to reassure her with a hug and a kiss.

  She dropped her arm and pinched his backside. “I would like to think there were a few,” she whispered, but Ramirez heard the undercurrent of strain in her voice.

  She was afraid, and he understood completely. He felt exactly the same way.

  TWENTY - SEVEN

  The damp, filthy cell they put Ellis in had two toilets. One was used for the usual purpose, the other as a sink. The small room reeked of urine and feces.

  The authorities planned to transfer him from the holding cell at police headquarters to the Combinado del Este prison later that week. It was the largest prison in Cuba, twenty kilometres east of Havana, but too overcrowded, too stuffed with political prisoners, to hold even one more person at the moment. Ellis wondered who would be released — or worse — to make a space for him.

  Two other prisoners sat on the bed in the already cramped space. They examined Ellis closely as the guard pushed him inside. His scars might protect him for a little while: he looked dangerous. He wondered what other killers shared his cell.

  One moved over so Ellis could sit down. The man said “Hola” to him nervously, then Spanish words he didn’t understand.

  “I’m Canadian,” Ellis said. “I don’t speak Spanish.” With his fear, it came out as a snarl. The men looked away.

  Their evening meal was bread and rice, beans. The beans on his plate floated in murky grey water. He put the plate on the floor, untouched. One of the inmates looked at him and raised his eyebrows, clearly hungry. Ellis nodded and the man took it gratefully. The breaking of bread broke the ice. Both men spoke English, as it turned out.

  The older of the two leaned over. “Have you heard this joke, Señor? Castro gives a speech at Revolution Square and says, ‘Comrades, God willing, this year we will have eggs for everyone.’ An army general says to Castro, worried, ‘But Presidente, we are communists; there is no such thing as God.’ And Castro says, ‘I know. But there are no eggs either.’”

  The younger man laughed, slapping his knee.

  Victor Chavez was in his sixties. A journalist and self-described political dissident, he’d been sentenced to six months in jail for hoarding. The police had taken away the toys he planned to give to poor children for Christmas, paid for by Cuban exiles in Florida. Chavez was convinced that the children of Cuban policemen were enjoying them now.

  “Two hundred used soccer balls,” he complained bitterly. “Skipping ropes and a few dolls. For trying to be Santa Claus, I am a criminal in my own country.”

  “Do people believe in Santa Claus here?”

  “Not officially. All saints, even your North American commercial ones, are discouraged. Christmas was illegal for a long time. It was one of Castro’s first prohibitions after the revolution. The government newspaper, Granma, warned us then that Santa Claus was
a symbol of American mercantilism, inappropriate in a socialist state. We were encouraged to spend our Christmas gatherings eating pork and drinking rum and beer. To amuse ourselves by telling jokes. It came close to an edict, but it was unenforceable. There was no pork.”

  Ellis shook his head. Cuba was madness. The other inmate, Ernesto Zedillo, a slight man with a lisp, was charged with insulting Castro and public drunkenness.

  “How can insulting someone be a crime?” asked Ellis, but he was starting to understand that in Cuba anything could be a crime if it served the government’s objectives.

  “Look what happened to Oscar Biscet,” said Zedillo. “He was a Cuban doctor. He was sentenced to three years in jail for hanging a Cuban flag upside down. Insulting officials in public is a crime here. We can make fun of Castro but must be careful. I cannot tell you what I said, or the guards may report me, only that it involved a horse and Castro’s mother. I may be charged with two offences, since my comments could be interpreted as applying equally to Raúl Castro as well.”

  Chavez chimed in. “We actually insult Castro all the time, but only in jest. Have you heard this joke? A drunk man is at one of Havana’s main street corners and shouts, ‘You bastard, you murderer, you are starving us to death.’ A policía runs over and beats the shit out of him. The drunk says, ‘Why are you punishing me? I could be talking about anyone.’ And the police officer says, ‘Maybe so, but the description fits only Fidel Castro.’”

  Zedillo laughed uneasily but kept his eyes cautiously on the guards.

  “It’s okay,” Chavez said, shrugging. “They don’t speak much English. They come here from the country, most of them, for work. Barely literate. Ironic, isn’t it, that the well-educated Cubans are in jails and the uneducated ones are guarding them. If you ask me, that’s the crime.”

  “Speaking of crime, what are you charged with?” Zedillo asked Ellis.

  “Rape,” Ellis said and watched the men back away from him, to the extent they could in the small cell. “But I was framed. The police searched my room illegally. Someone planted evidence there.”

  They inched back towards him. Rape was bad, they agreed. But the police were much worse.

  TWENTY - EIGHT

  Ellis didn’t tell the other prisoners what he did for a living. He was sure he’d quickly lose their sympathies. There wasn’t enough room for them to sleep on the floor or the cot, so they talked through the night about the political situation in Cuba.

  “We worry a bit,” Victor Chavez joked, “that when Castro dies, someone corrupt will take power and destroy our economy.” He laughed viciously. “Here is a good one: a teacher shows her class a billboard on the road with George Bush’s face on it. She says, ‘Look at him. This is the man who has caused all our problems.’ And a student says, ‘Oh, I didn’t recognize El Comandante without the beard and the camouflage jacket.’”

  They chuckled but were careful to keep their voices low. Chavez said jail was the only safe place to talk politics: no cederistas.

  Ernesto Zedillo seemed less sure. He was worried about his transfer later in the day to another prison. He was convinced he would be beaten there, if not by the other inmates, then by the guards.

  “Why?” Ellis asked. “The jails seem safe enough.”

  “Only here, not in the country. Things are different there. Besides, I am a gay man,” said Zedillo. “Aren’t you? I assumed everyone in this cell was gay. This is where they hold us before they transfer us elsewhere. They try to keep us apart from the others.”

  “Is it bad in Cuba? Being gay?” Ellis asked, evading the question. He considered telling them the truth but knew it was unsafe.

  “Of course,” said Zedillo. “But it’s improving. We have a soap opera on television, the most popular one in our country. Last year, a married man, one of the characters, fell in love with another man. And Cuba is soon going to pass laws to recognize legal status for same-sex marriages. Even so, we are often singled out by the police and beaten because of our sexuality. Just not arrested as frequently as before.”

  “It is because we are socialists,” Chavez agreed. “Socialism is not supposed to exclude anyone; it is based on concepts of equality. That means equal mistreatment for all of us. We all starve equally. Which proves that Marxism works.”

  “One of the strongest advocates for equal rights for gay people is Mariela Castro, Raúl’s daughter. That’s Fidel Castro’s niece,” Zedillo explained. “She is even pushing for rights for transgendered people like me. For the state to pay for the cost of our surgery. You want it done now, you have to pay for it. Imagine, they stopped halfway when I ran out of money. They left me stranded: half in, half out. I’m like a mermaid. I never know which washroom I’m supposed to use.”

  “I guess in this cell, that’s not a problem,” said Ellis, surprised that he hadn’t identified Zedillo as transgendered. Chavez laughed; Zedillo clapped his hands. “Is the surgery painful?”

  “Incredibly,” Zedillo said. “But if I had the money, I would do it. You have to be true to who you are, to your emotions, or what’s the point of living?”

  Ellis nodded doubtfully. He’d never been honest about his feelings for Hillary until he was partnered up with Steve Sloan. And look what happened then.

  TWENTY - NINE

  Celia Jones sat on board an uncomfortable Air Ontario flight, drinking tepid water and eating tasteless sesame pretzel sticks. The airline no longer provided any food, not even on long flights. She leaned back in her seat, using her coat as a pillow. The airline had stopped providing those some years ago as well.

  It was her first trip to Cuba and Alex couldn’t come with her. He was afraid he’d be arrested for leaving Cuba illegally all those years before. He was terribly worried, but she was sure that the crappy service on the flight would be the worst part of the trip. After all, Havana was a tourist destination for thousands of Canadians every winter.

  She tried to remember everything she knew about Mike Ellis.

  A shooting incident earlier in the summer. Steve Sloan died. Ellis was hailed as a hero, a badly wounded man who nonetheless managed to kill the bad guy, even though it was too late for Sloan, who bled to death at the scene.

  The two had been as close as brothers. Best friends. The guys on Patrol used to tease them about it. After same-sex marriages were recognized, they joked that Ellis had married the wrong person. The same way Zelda Fitzgerald had accused Ernest Hemingway of being Scott Fitzgerald’s lover. Ellis had only recently returned to work, his face mutilated in the attack.

  That alone would screw a man up, she thought. Like looking in a broken mirror every day. And Mike had been a good-looking guy before all that happened: he took care of himself. Dressed well, kept fit.

  Chief O’Malley told her to assume nothing.

  “If the case is strong, do your best to get Michael home,” he said. “Try to convince the Cubans to let us take care of things. If it’s weak, do whatever it takes to persuade the Cuban police they have the wrong man.”

  She sighed. The old saw in police work was that people didn’t get charged unless they’d done something wrong. But when she was a police negotiator, she didn’t care what mistakes people had made, she just wanted to get them out safely. Someone else could deal with their guilt or innocence. Her job had been to protect the hostage and the hostage-taker.

  O’Malley saw Mike’s arrest as a kind of hostage-taking by the Cuban government, she realized. That’s why he’d sent her instead of someone else. Even though she’d given all that up years before, after she’d failed to protect either hostage or hostage-taker. When the man on the icy ledge jumped and nearly took her with him.

  The pilot announced that the flight had begun its descent into Havana. Jones closed the files she had downloaded and shut off her laptop. She looked out over the ocean, still acutely uncomfortable looking down, despite all the years that had passed.

  It was late and only parts of the city were lit up. Whole blocks had no lights at al
l. Power shortages and brownouts. Alex had warned her the power supply could be iffy.

  The Havana International Airport was a pleasant surprise. It was clean and spacious. A sign said it was built in 1998 in cooperation with the Canadian government.

  Jones showed her passport. A friendly beagle, escorted by a uniformed policeman, sniffed her baggage and her pant legs. She saw the sign for a currency exchange counter and walked over, but it was closed. Shit.

  She checked her billfold, worried she had so little money.

  Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t. She had her Visa card and just enough cash to pay for her meals, not enough for a bribe, if one was expected. Alex told her there were still a few honest officials in Cuba, ones who wouldn’t ask for money, but poverty had corrupted most of the others.

  She had hoped she could change her money at the Havana airport. Canadian banks were closed on Boxing Day. She had managed to find some U.S. dollars tucked away from a recent trip to New York. But Alex thought American money might be illegal again, the currency as on-and-off-again as the power. She didn’t want to be arrested for offering someone U.S. funds. O’Malley wouldn’t send someone else to get her out, she thought ruefully He considered lawyers interchangeable. And easily replaced.

  She wished Alex could be with her. Impossible, of course. She’d take lots of pictures, call him every day, keep her eyes open for gifts he might like. Later on, when she got home, she’d find a way to make up for lost time.

  Jones waved down a taxi. She told the driver she wanted to go to the Parque Ciudad Hotel. She hoped he accepted Visa.

  It was pitch black and there was only the occasional working street light. The road was lit mostly by headlights from the few cars and buses still in transit. She was surprised at how many people lined the streets this late at night; at how many more stood patiently in the centre of the road.