Havana Best Friends

by Jose Latour

  “Okay.” Trujillo opened the door.

  “Take care.”

  “Sure.”

  Pena turned the ignition and pulled away. Trujillo spent the next twenty minutes sneezing, watching pedestrians, and waiting for the rental agency’s tow truck. When it finally arrived, he searched the Hyundai. There was nothing in its back seat or trunk; the gas tank was three-quarters full. Once the car was towed away, the captain considered returning to Elena’s to see if she was back, then decided against it; he needed a few hours in bed. He kicked the pedal repeatedly; the Ural refused to start. After fumbling for several minutes with the carburetor and the spark plug, the piece of junk finally came to life and he was able to ride home.

  The Vía Azul bus depot, on the corner of 26th and Santa Teresa Street, just across from the Havana Zoo, shares its fifty-year-old, three-storey building with a convenience store and a car-rental agency. The state owns lock, stock, and barrel.

  At 3:50 p.m. a red taxi dropped off Marina Leucci and Elena Miranda at the asphalted lot where a few clean rentals waited for customers. The cabbie, smiling contentedly following a $1.55 tip, opened the trunk and unloaded two black carry-ons and a duffel bag. Elena pulled the retractable handle, supported herself on the cane, and got ready to hobble into the waiting room. Marina grabbed her own carry-on and duffel bag before glancing questioningly at the teacher, who tilted her head to the right. Marina went in and held the door open for her shuffling friend.

  Before leaving the Deauville’s room, Marina warned Elena that she had to play the deaf-mute consistently. She couldn’t whisper a word to her in public. If she wanted to have a glass of water or an espresso, should she need to wash her hands or go for a pee, she must find a way to communicate without uttering a word. Elena explained she didn’t have a problem with sign language; Marina did. Her training as a special-needs teacher included learning the rudiments of signing and she remembered enough of it to express simple ideas. Marina said this was perfect, it made her acting more credible, but Elena should bear in mind that she didn’t know the first thing about it. She would have to guess, so would Elena keep it simple? Add some extra facial expressions?

  It had not been difficult to do this while focusing on escape and survival: while walking the streets, shopping, traversing hotel lobbies, riding taxis. But now, sitting in the departure lounge waiting to board the bus, watching two couples discuss plans for the world-renowned beach resort, they found themselves prevented from giving vent to the memories of death and fear that haunted them, from confiding to each other their hopes and worries.

  Half an hour later, a porter pointed at the new, air-conditioned, forty-five-passenger Mercedes-Benz bus with reclining seats and curtained windows that had just hissed to a stop in the lot. All six passengers chose to store their luggage in the overhead compartments, so the porter didn’t make a dime. Marina asked the conductor whether she and her friend could take any seats they liked and the man nodded. They followed the aisle all the way to the rear and stored the carry-ons in the overhead compartment above the penultimate row of seats. With a flourish Marina invited Elena to take the window seat; Elena insisted that Marina take it. They spent a few moments grinning and bowing their heads rather foolishly, until Marina, using the headrest for support, swung herself round and plopped into the window seat. Elena took the aisle seat and rested the cane between her legs. Gradually their smiles vanished; both relaxed. At 4:30 sharp the bus set off.

  Elena stared at the lifesized bronze sculpture near the zoo’s entrance, one of the unpretentious pieces by Rita Longa. A family of deer climbing a cliff: The buck, its head raised, antlers challenging potential enemies, sniffed the air, making sure there was no danger. The doe seemed uncertain whether she should follow the male or look after her calf, torn between maternal duty and her own desires. The young one was still discovering fragrances and tastes, helpless and dependent. How many times had she stood before the deer in fascinated admiration? Hundreds of times. Would she ever see it again?

  As the bus drove first to the national bus terminal to pick up five new passengers, and next to the Hotel Nacional for five more, Elena’s worries became tinged with sadness as she realized that even a small country like Cuba was too much for an ordinary person to know and comprehend. The citizens of the world, those jet-lagged business tycoons, diplomats, salespeople, journalists, consultants, technicians, and so forth were citizens of nowhere. Her country – her world – was Havana. Not even that. There were whole neighbourhoods in the Cuban capital she had never set foot in and knew merely by name – Juanelo, Parcelación Moderna, Diezmero, so many others.

  She had been to the provinces, had seen the meadows and the sugar-cane and tobacco plantations and the royal palms and small colourful houses when visiting her grandparents in Zulueta; she had also spent months working in Pinar del Río, arm in arm with other high-school and university students. But she belonged to Havana. And now she was leaving. Elena sighed. It was a matter of self-preservation after the way things had turned out. And whether she was locked in a prison cell or thousands of miles away, she would never again walk the streets of her city. A case of Hobson’s choice, she thought. The farther she got from Havana, the stronger grew her conviction that she would never return.

  As the bus rolled on, after the conductor had completed his rounds, tearing slips along the tickets’ perforated lines, when the TV screens began showing a lousy American film and to the left of the bus the shoreline sparkled in blues and whites and greens and ochres, Elena’s thoughts returned to experienced travellers. What did they know? Nothing. All they did was look. The way she, right now, was looking. What did she know about the joys and sorrows of the people living in that little house over there? It was so arrogant to say: “I know Cuba. I’ve been there on six occasions in the last three years. Nine weeks in all.” Yes, staying at nice hotels, driving rentals, swimming, partying, having a great time. The same people who claim to know Spain, France, Mexico, and forty-seven other countries. They’ve seen fifty countries, know none.

  And now she would become a traveller. Where would she go? Supposing she made it to Canada, what then? Marina was an American, she surely had a passport stashed away somewhere with which she could return to the United States. What about her? What could she do? She gripped the cane tighter. The diamonds were her passport. Now that they were all mixed together again, they would have to be split afresh. If Marina suggested going alone to some big American city to offer the whole lot for sale, promising to return to Canada with her money, she would refuse. Politely. She had to rehearse the line: “Dear Marina, I really appreciate your help, but I’ll keep my diamonds with me.” To which Marina would probably reply: “Don’t you trust me, Elena? After all we’ve been through?” “No! I trust you 100 per cent! It’s just that I …” Well, it would come to her. She had other hurdles to overcome before clearing that one. Elena now felt calmly resigned to her fate, and a little optimistic. What would happen, would happen. Some people call it destiny, others the will of God, fortune, luck, whatever. It all boiled down to the fact there’s only so much you can do for yourself; from a certain point on, it’s in somebody else’s hands.

  She stole a glance at Marina and found her slack-jawed, eyes closed, sleeping soundly. Perfectly natural: Sudden relaxation, comfort, the impossibility of chatting the trip away, nothing to do for three hours. So why didn’t she fall asleep, as well? Probably because she was saying goodbye to her past.

  Major Pena took off his reading glasses and massaged his forehead, pressing the palm of his right hand against it before rubbing his eyelids with his fists. Next he released a tremendous yawn and stretched his arms and legs. Pena felt close to exhaustion, so he lit up. The realization that he couldn’t keep up with younger men kept growing. Time, the unforgiving dimension, plus thirty or forty cigarettes a day, plus forty pounds of excess weight, plus the perception that they were losing the battle. More thefts, armed robberies, rapes, beatings, drugs, and homicides with each pas
sing day, more cops on the take than ever. And people didn’t know. No statistics on crime were published, the number of police officers imprisoned for corruption was anybody’s guess. The mammoth propaganda machine was focused on making Cubans believe that their country was a paradigm of a nation, a country that – unwillingly, modestly, and much to its surprise – had become the last bastion of lofty ideals, the world repository of morality, the cradle of human decency, the new Sparta.

  The divorce between theory and reality was the cause of widespread apathy, Pena mused. Since those who denounced political doublespeak were disciplined, the silent majority protected itself under a cloak of cynicism. You go to the Party meeting, it’s compulsory. Mostly it’s the same stories and arguments you’ve heard a hundred times since you were a kid. Why a certain battle that happened forty-odd years earlier was won (or lost); why the present world economic order is wrong (adopt ours, it’s the best); why Cubans risk their lives to flee to the United States (the Cuban Adjustment Act is to blame); the dangers of dollarization in Latin America (not in Cuba). Then, on the way out of the meeting, you glance at a buddy – a guy you’ve known all your adult life – and roll your eyes, and he rolls his, and there all opposition to such a state of affairs ends.

  Pena stubbed out the cigarette, wondering, one more time, if the whole nation was resigned to such a fate. He knew why he was resigned. In one word: fear. Fear of what a new, capitalist government might do. He was old enough to remember that democracy, ideological diversity, freedom of expression, free elections, and free enterprise were meaningless abstractions if you didn’t have a job. Even if you did, rent was 60 per cent of your salary, high utility bills sucked another 15 per cent, school tuition shaved another 10 per cent, travel 5 more. You were left with 10 per cent of what you made to cover food, clothing, doctor’s bills, medicines, taxes, and the unexpected. He was particularly afraid that a new government would try to balance the budget by axing social security, education, and health care.

  Also, he wondered, what would happen to crime here if the government changed? He had read about the Mafia in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s, the leverage it had had with government officials, its influence on American tourism and the gaming industry. It wasn’t some Coppola-Puzo fictional story. It had happened. Fifty years later, the problem could be a lot worse: Colombian drug cartels would try to gain a foothold, open cocaine-processing labs, use Cuba as a better springboard to reach American junkies. And then you had the Russian Mafia, the Jamaicans, the Mexicans, all now held at bay by a no-nonsense anti-drug policy that, if the worst came to the worst, didn’t stop short of a firing squad. Would a democratic government keep the screws tightened? Or would it, like in some other places, succumb to the almighty power of money?

  Fear of repression was his number-three worry. Not the brutal repression so frequently found in Latin America: hands tied behind the back, a shot in the head, no. In “the first free territory of America” peaceful political dissenters are simply sent to jail for a few years. No lives are at stake. The problem is that from the moment you are labelled a peaceful dissenter you become a nobody for the rest of your life. Even the people who secretly admire your courage will give you the cold shoulder, and among the few who dare talk to you, there will be snitches. Pena dreaded seeing himself blackballed for the rest of his life.

  Okay, he was out of the game, had given up, No-Balls Pena. The major rested his feet on top of his desk and closed his eyes. Fucking circulation. But he had faith in young people. They didn’t know how closely he studied them, day in, day out. Guys like Trujillo, Pichardo, Martinez. Better educated and brighter, they suspected they had been duped at school when they were taught that everything was bad before the Revolution. They didn’t seem to dread a return to the ways of the past (or a boat trip to Miami) as much as he and people his age did.

  The guys who would take the reins in the twenty-first century studied closely the young Europeans doing business in Cuba, mostly men their age, in their late thirties or early forties, making a lot of money, attracting the best broads, jetting in and out. They also carefully observed the friends of the Revolution: idealists who sincerely believed Cuba was the Last Paradise. Communists, socialists, followers of Trotsky and Ché, some Christians who were allowed to travel abroad whenever they wanted, had hundreds of dollars to pay for round-trip airfares, were free to proclaim their political ideas, publish newspapers and magazines, strike, organize public demonstrations against nearly anything or anyone, demand amnesty for political prisoners. They could even set up barricades and stone the police, for Christ’s sake! But Pena suspected that this generation kept their views to themselves. Their reasoning might be something like: You don’t argue with the old guard. Just say, “Yes, sure.” Let them believe we are in full agreement. They can’t understand us. They don’t know the meaning of the word dialogue, of the term generation gap. Just let them be. Our time will come.

  In his mind’s eye Pena could see Trujillo and Pichardo by the door of his office, whispering, stealing looks at him. He was getting to his feet now, approaching the young stallions to give them a tongue-lashing. He hadn’t always been No-Balls Pena, he yelled. He had fought in the mountains of Escambray from 1963–65; he had been in Ethiopia with Ochotorena, the most cojonudo of all cojonudos …

  “Chief …?”

  Pena’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “You were napping?”

  “Nah. Just resting my eyes a while. Hey, you look better.”

  “I feel better. Those caplets really work. And Mom’s bowl of soup made me sweat like a pig.”

  “Fine.”

  “You have news?”

  “Immigration in Boyeros say they haven’t left the country.” Pena paused to light a cigarette. “And Tourism say they haven’t checked in at any of the better-known hotels.”

  “Why only the better known?”

  “They need six hours to check on all Havana hotels. There are fifty-five, you know. So I asked, How long would it take to verify the best-known ones first: Nacional, Cohiba, Libre, Riviera, and Capri? Two hours, they said. And they delivered. Not there.”

  “So, when do we hear about them all?”

  Pena consulted his watch, “By 10:30.”

  Trujillo pulled up a chair and sat with his legs splayed out. “Maybe we should call Zoila, the president of Elena’s CDR. Find out if Elena is back, see if we can visit her tonight.”

  Pena agreed with a wave of his hand. Trujillo looked the number up and dialled it. He was especially courteous and polite. He regretted bothering her at this hour, but would she be so kind as to ask Elena if she could come to the phone? He lit a cigarette while Zoila went to see. He was crushing it in the ashtray when she returned. Nobody had answered the door in Apartment 1, all the lights were off. He thanked Comrade Zoila, then returned the receiver to its cradle.

  “This woman …,” Trujillo began, as though talking to himself.

  “What woman?”

  “Elena Miranda. She’s not the kind of woman who disappears.”

  “Disappear? Did you say disappear?”

  “Well … that’s stretching it a little.”

  “A little? She was seen this morning, Trujillo. With a man.”

  “I know.”

  “Didn’t you say she was a fine piece of ass?”

  “I did, but …”

  “But what, she doesn’t go out? Never goes to the movies? Never fucks?”

  Trujillo nodded, eyes half-closed. He knew he didn’t have a case, objectively speaking, but there was a nagging doubt at the back of his mind. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Wait till Tourism calls.”

  “Okay. How about a game of chess?”

  Five kilometres outside Matanzas something went wrong as the bus climbed a hill and fumes from an electrical fire began wafting through the bus’s ventilation system. The driver pulled over and radioed in the problem. A spare bus is kept in Matanzas for such an eventuality, but its driver could not b
e found. The man had told his wife he would be at the company garage playing dominoes with the mechanics on duty when in fact he was at a flophouse, scoring with a lady. By the time the conductor thumbed a lift to Matanzas and drove the spare to where the passengers waited, two and a half hours had elapsed.

  Keeping up the deaf-mute pretence all that time was hard. Passengers were asked to get out with their luggage and wait on the shoulder of the highway, where tall grass and a few stunted trees offered no shade. Luckily, the sun was low in the sky. After half an hour waiting, Marina approached the driver and asked him how long it would take to get them rolling again. The man said noncommittally, “A little while.” An hour later, as dusk fell and bats began to flit around, she approached the guy for a second time and asked how many minutes a Cuban “little while” consisted of. The man shrugged his shoulders and raised the palms of his hands. Fuming, she returned to where Elena was guarding their luggage.

  They wanted to chat, reassure one another, discuss alternatives, make plans, but both had exactly the same fear. What if one of the passengers was also getting off at the airport? What if he or she saw them talking and later spotted them lip-reading and signalling? So, Marina put on her lousy act and Elena pretended to understand, hoping that no real deaf, deaf-mute, or special-needs teacher wandered into the immediate vicinity.

  Elena wanted to say to the exasperated Marina, You find this upsetting? You find this unacceptable? Well, honey, you can’t imagine what people who pay their fare in Cuban pesos have to put up with to travel from an eastern province to a western province. Some spend two, sometimes three days at a terminal waiting in line for a bus or a train, sleeping on the floor, eating junk food, unable to wash. You don’t know! This is nothing! A bus will come in an hour or two and take us to Varadero because you paid for our tickets in dollars, because all these passengers are foreigners.