Havana Lunar

by Robert Arellano

  We were dreaming awake, and it was only a moment until I was stiff as a rail and putting on a condom and pulling her up by her shoulders, lifting her up on top of me, no time to take underwear off—she tugged the fabric aside and looked me in the eyes. Her face concealed none of her avaricious ambition. There was no fight in me, and she didn’t have to prey with such ferocity, yet I was touched by that look, a reminder that I was desirable, not just a creature of habit going through autoerotic motions with expert manipulations. She was generous and omnivorous. My eyes rolled back in my head. Her eyelids fluttered and I caught a glimpse of her expression, spontaneously contented. It was the slightest contraction of her cervix that reawakened my heart to what zealous youth can do.

  I tried to keep from coming. I thought of baseball, of the European Common Market, of histology. I thought of Fidel; I thought of a hall full of agronomists falling asleep during El Comandante’s speech on cucumber production, and nevertheless I succumbed. When I finished she kept going. Beneath her I felt like a dead thing, like I had gotten the life sucked out of me. There was something terrible about the way she kept moving.

  When it was done, I could see she was weary and remote, and a tide of guilt washed over me. “I wasn’t after sex. I just wanted to help you.”

  “Don’t be so stuck,” she said, with a swat to my lunar. “You should have several girlfriends.”

  Julia and I settled into the pile of cushions and blankets on the floor and stayed up all night. Each time she rose to go to the bathroom, the arc of her naked butt swung overhead like a churchbell. Each time I lit a cigarette, I lit one for her too. We made up a game called Imagináriamericanos.

  “If we were Americans, I’d have my own apartment,” she said. “Your turn.”

  “If we were Americans, I’d practice medicine in a clean hospital.”

  “I’d just show up with the money, and the landlord would let me move right in.”

  “A sparkling, sanitized hospital, walls and floors that haven’t even heard of bacteria.”

  “If we were Americans, I’d invite you over for coffee, and you’d bring flowers.”

  “If we were Americans, I’d drive to and from the hospital, and the gas tank would always be full.”

  “There wouldn’t be any monotony. There would always be a choice.”

  “If we were Americans, I’d save my money and buy a coffee plantation.”

  We lay on the cushions silently for several minutes with heads touching, El Ché’s beard and mouth, upside-down, looking like a black mountain looming above a dark lake. What they don’t tell you about when you cheat on someone, even someone you don’t like very much: For a long time afterwards the guilt can be like a dead body you carry alongside you. And when she finally leaves, the body becomes her, her memory.

  Julia said, “You feel a ghost, I know.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You think I haven’t felt her too?”

  I lit a cigarette and lay awake a long time, awkward in my underwear, listening to her breath and watching my fingers twitch at my side.

  12 August 1992

  Wednesday after my shift I told Julia, “Come with me to the necropolis.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  “I hate that place. I hate all cemeteries.”

  I said, “Today’s my birthday.”

  Julia frowned. “All right, I’ll go.”

  En Cemeterio Colón, workers with mops and buckets cleaned the stones on the main road. I took Julia to my mother’s tomb at the corner of H y 8. The sounds of cars and trucks so far away, we stood for a minute without speaking. Nearby, an old woman swept leaves off her husband’s slab.

  I told Julia, “It was on my birthday that I got this lunar on my face.”

  “I thought it was a birthmark.”

  “That’s the little lie I tell grown-ups, but birth-marks occur at birth. My mark was born of a small hemorrhage I survived as a child.”

  “What’s the lie you tell children?”

  “That a bird dropped it on me.”

  “Follow me,” Julia said. “There’s something I want to show you.” She took me to a corner of the necropolis where I’d never been. J y 14, a communal crypt inscribed: Asociación de Reporteros de la Habana. At the back of the antechamber was a wall of glass, still intact, two inches thick. A door of the same glass, hanging on rust-blackened hinges, led to a dark stairway. It took all my strength to pry the door open. We followed the glow of my father’s lighter down the stone stairs. At the bottom, Julia pushed open a wrought-iron gate. The subterranean chamber was cold and lightless. Cracks in the walls let a noxious miasma seep in. Strong odors of clay and decay made me breathe through my mouth.

  The floor was strewn with femurs, ribs, pelvises—everything but skulls, which fetch a decent price among practitioners of Palo Monte. Shreds of decomposing clothing matted to brown bones. Graffiti: ME CAGO EN DIOS. WELCOM TU DE MACHIN. In a hole in the stone floor lay a headless skeleton. At the center of the room three feet off the floor was a slab three feet wide, seven feet long. This is where they would rest the coffin while readying the appropriate tomb, a waystation making it easier on the pallbearers’ backs and less upsetting to the family if there was any kind of delay. There is something terrible about laying a coffin on the floor. Footstones, stacked five wide by four tall, covered most of the west wall. The north and east walls would probably have fit forty more corpses, but the cement had never been broken, probably because Fidel came along and the Asociación de Reporteros de la Habana was disbanded shortly thereafter. The dead that would have filled this monument went into exile.

  “When I joined Alejandro’s crew they brought me here,” Julia said.

  “What for?”

  “Initiation. First they get you high on stolen painkillers, gasoline vapors, even livestock tranquilizers.” She told me a story.

  They blindfold you and lead you down a long stairway. All you can sense is the unwholesome thickness to the air, a sulfuric moisture that makes you gag. From the corners, the stale stink of many years of urine. And the damp cold. They make you sit on the slab. Here is your fiancé. He’s wearing a glove. Hold his hand. You smell the wax of candle flames. Do you take this man to be your husband? Say I do or they will hit you. They won’t let you in. They will kill the little dog you like so much. I do. Come lie down beside him. You feel his hard shoulder against yours. He still hasn’t said anything. Turn and kiss him. His leathery lips don’t kiss back. The stifled laughter of the others in your crew echoes hollowly off the walls. I now pronounce you husband and wife. The blindfold is snapped off your face and the other girls, your new sisters, all laugh. They hold candles, and by their light you see your betrothed. A moan of revulsion catches in your throat, taps bile. You vomit once violently, gasp, vomit again. This air is not for breathing. Now you know why it is foul. Your new family’s cruel laughter echoes off the stone walls, and your priest, the pimp, cries, “Casados hasta que la muerte los separe.” Again you vomit. Someone pushes your face to his and your arms flail. Your husband’s skull rolls off the slab away from the mummified cadaver and across a floor strewn with condoms, bottles, syringes, feces, and bones. When it’s time to leave, the chulo takes the skull away with him. It never belonged to the mummy in the first place.

  “This place is horrible, Julia. Let’s get out of here.”

  By the time we were back at the attic, Julia was crying in my face: “¿Porqué quieres que esté aquí?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t have to stay, you know. I can go. Please tell me, Mano: Why are you letting me stay here?”

  “I don’t know why,” I told her, “but I don’t want you to go away.”

  “You’ve got your hand inside me, clutched around my heart. Now you’re ripping it out. You monster!”

  Julia picked up a porcelain ashtray and threw it at my head. It bounced off the wall and broke in pieces on the floor. I was still
recovering from the surprise when she rushed toward me. I thought: She’s just a child; she must be coming to apologize. But before I realized what was happening Julia picked up a jagged chunk of the ashtray from the floor and slashed at my face, crying, “¡Hijo de puta!” My hand shot up in reflex and I received a gash down the length of my forearm. I grabbed her arms and she shrieked, her face disfigured in a mask of bitter hatred. Kicking and spitting she tried to break free. Air caught in her larynx, contorting her scream into a grotesque, primal howl and transforming the sound into a sob as she collapsed to the floor in tears, bringing me to my knees beside her, my hands still clutching her wrists. I held her in a close embrace. She was sobbing, saying, “I’m sorry, Mano … Tu cumpleaños …” With whispered entreaties for measured breaths, I coaxed Julia back from the edge of hyperventilation. I cleaned and dressed the wound on my arm, and Julia fell asleep in my embrace.

  13 August 1992

  When I got back from the pediátrico on Thursday, Julia was gone. “Where did she go?” I asked aloud, but El Ché had stopped speaking to me. I waited up all night, but she didn’t come. The next day before work I walked to the cinderblock complex named after Máximo Gómez and asked the block captain about Tonia and her family. “The girl with the abscess?” She pointed me to their apartment.

  “Hola, señora. Do you remember me?”

  “Como no, doctor: You saved my daughter’s life. My husband and I have wanted to come to the hospital to thank you. We owe you our lives, and I’m sorry I haven’t come see you yet. Life gets so busy.”

  “Please don’t worry about it. How is your daughter doing?”

  “All well, gracias a Dios. Please come in. There’s no coffee, but I can offer you chamomile tea.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but in fact I have very little time. I want to ask whether you can help me find someone.”

  “I hope I can help.”

  “That night at the hospital, after the surgery, your niece came in to thank me.”

  “My niece?”

  “Yes. She brought me a sandwich and told me your daughter was her favorite cousin.”

  “That’s strange, because my husband and I have no niece.”

  “I see.”

  “Perhaps we should report this to the vigilance committee.”

  “I wouldn’t bother. It was probably just a friend from school who loves your daughter like a cousin.”

  “Maybe. What was her name?”

  “Julia, about sixteen years old.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar, but I can ask Tonia when she wakes up.”

  “Don’t bother. It was probably just a mix-up.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help, doctor.”

  I waited up all night, but Julia didn’t come.

  After my Friday shift at the pediátrico, I walked to Yorki’s apartment. My knock woke him from a nap. “¡Coño, Mano! I was dreaming about food.” He pulled his pants on and donned his sunglasses. “You’re not going to believe this. Last night a guy I haven’t seen before comes around and whispers to me, ‘Oye, compañero, aquí tengo unas exquisitas chuletas empanizadas.’ Of course I don’t believe him, but he shows one to me and my mouth starts watering. There it is, still frozen—a breaded steak! He says they were stolen from the kitchen at the Cohíba. So I buy two: ¡Coño! Ten fucking dollars! When I get them into the kitchen and start frying them up with an old onion rind, something doesn’t smell right.”

  “No me digas …”

  “¡Empanadas de toalla! ¡Carajo! A hard day’s hustles wasted on a couple of breaded dishtowels!”

  “These thieves have gone too far. And the vigilantes of the CDR are no better, spreading rumors about ground glass in the black-market bread. Kids are starving while they mess with our heads.”

  “¡Bajo! ¡Bajito!” Yorki whispered, then asked, “What’s eating you, Mano?”

  “The jinetera I helped out—she took off yesterday.”

  “She’s probably in some kind of trouble, and then it’s probably best that she split. I wouldn’t give her another thought if I were you, Mano. The important thing is that you got laid. You did fuck her, didn’t you?” I said nothing. “Don’t tell me you didn’t get it while you had the chance … Just remember, it’s you who did the fucking and she who got fucked.”

  “Oye, Yorki, can I borrow your moped for a few hours?”

  “I need it tonight, but you can use it tomorrow as long as you put some gas in it.”

  “I’ll siphon a liter out of the Lada.”

  “I’ll leave it parked in the alley. Remember to pretend to use a key in case any of the neighborhood kids are watching. I don’t want them to catch on and steal it.”

  When I got back to the attic I found that Julia still hadn’t returned, so I went down to the clinic to lie on a cot. A brief thundershower came and went, and then I heard a crack of glass. I peered around the curtain and saw the broken window pane, the overcoat sleeve, and the glove belonging to Detective Perez, chief homicide investigator of the PNR, he of the exquisite manicure.

  15 August 1992

  On Saturday afternoon when I close up the policlínico, there’s no sign of Julia and the black Toyota with tinted windows is still parked on Calle 23. The strangest thing about the unexpected interview with Perez is that it did not end in my arrest. The number-two man at the PNR has nothing to lose by locking up a Cuban doctor for a few days. And murder is not a common crime in this country. Although sudden bursts of violence, manslaughter by hit and run, and even accidental poisoning with homemade liquor occur with some frequency, the premeditated, plotted art of murder has been effectively suppressed by a government that doesn’t permit private ownership of firearms. The PNR investigates with zero tolerance to the most isolated act of homicide. There is no cold case. Unsolved murder in the first degree remains an aberration of the Yanquis to the north. Under the scrutiny of a nationwide neighborhood vigilance network, a militarized police force, and an army of forensics specialists trained by Cold War—era KGB experts, Cuba is an island of already-captive suspects. No matter how quickly a perpetrator might flee, there’s only so far to run and nowhere to hide. Anyone who would attempt exile is faced with a perilous passage over turbulent seas. Many criminals have served themselves justice—and saved Fidel the expense of their incarceration—by taking to makeshift rafts in treacherous swells. The sharks of the Florida Straits are famously well fed.

  I siphon a Tropicola bottle full of gas from the Lada and leave the house through the alley. The ignition on Yorki’s moped broke shortly after he bought it, but he bypassed a few wires and now it starts with just a kick. I pantomime the key routine and give it a running start down the street.

  I ride all over the city, crisscrossing the necropolis, cutting across Centro Habana and circling Coppelia, riding behind the Habana Libre and puttering up the hill between the fallout catacombs and the empty playing fields of the university. I descend La Rampa with glances down all the side streets. I turn right on Malecón, past the Oficina de Intereses, the Hotel Nacional, the pedestal where in ’59 the mobs tore down the American eagle and Picasso’s promised dove never nested. Night is falling when I near the end of the sea wall and turn up Paseo del Prado, climbing the hill past the bronze lions, the iron lampposts, the stone benches across from the Ministry of the Interior where people barter apartment swaps. My heart is beating hard when el Capitolio comes into view. The street across from the Capitol steps is empty but for a few parked turistaxis. At the Parque Central, I park the bike and sit for a minute on a bench. There are many lovely girls looking for a date, but Julia is not among them.

  From the crest of the hill I can see Morro Castle half-cloaked in silver and black clouds that promise rain but not before morning. I ride down Carlos III and take a shortcut through Quinta de los Molinos to avoid the military detachment at the Palacio de la Revolución. There are no lights on anywhere in the thicket behind La Madriguera, and the dwarf palms comb my hair as I ride through the urban jungle
of the park. I take Paseo over the hill back for another pass on Malecón, following the sea wall west this time. I ride through the tunnel to Miramar and search among the girls along Quinta Avenida. Turistaxis speed past me on their way to Marina Hemingway. Some slow to shine head-lights on small groups of jineteras, girls in shorts and Spandex who blaze briefly in the high beams and are extinguished like candle flames. I ride all the way out to the marina and then turn onto Primera, where I let the sea spray blow me back to Vedado.

  I park the moped in the alley behind Yorki’s apartment and go upstairs to let him know I’ve left a little gas in the tank. He claps his hands together and says, “Did you hear the one about Pepito? One day at school, the teacher asks all the students what they eat at home. Pepito says, ‘I eat rice and beans but my mother likes eating palitos.’ ‘Sticks? Are you sure, Pepito?’ ‘Sí, maestra … Every night I hear her in the bedroom telling my father, ‘¡Ai, qué palo tan rico!’” Yorki takes off his shades for a second to rub his eyes. “Mano, I’ve got to tell you something: Me caso.”

  “Now that’s a good one!”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m getting married.”

  “What? Just like that?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

  “What are you talking about? You used to tell me that you’d never let yourself get nailed.”

  Yorki grins. “That was last week.”

  “At least tell me it’s un casamiento jinetero: an Americana or something who’ll take you across with her.”

  “Why should it concern you? Just because we went fishing for pango doesn’t mean I’m a maricón.”

  “Quit talking so much shit. You think a wife is going to let you go out at night, even if it’s not to search for girlfriends?”

  “Don’t think that I won’t, although she might think she’s not letting me.”

  “Precisely my point. I know you too well, Yorki. We go out walking. We have a good time. But the moment you’re married you’re going to turn crazy trying to cheat on your wife. You’ll spend all your free time womanizing.”