The Cuban Comedy

by Pablo Medina

  Daniel and Elena’s troubles with the state began almost immediately after their wedding. Daniel published reviews favoring writers who were disgraced, including several who had gone into exile. He gave readings of provocative poems; he met regularly with foreign intellectuals outside official functions; and he published literary essays overseas without the approval of the Writers’ Union. The minister of culture, an old friend from their days in the underground, called Daniel again to his office. The warning was unequivocal. There was already talk in the highest circles that he was undermining his role as a revolutionary writer; he’d become too independent, thereby providing ammunition to the Revolution’s enemies. “I assured them that you were firmly committed to the process,” the minister had said. “But if you don’t embrace the spirit of this movement, there is little I can do. This is not the time to be writing those poems.”

  “If I cannot be free with my writing,” he told Elena when he got home that day, “I cannot be free at all.”

  “Maybe,” Elena said. She was angry too, but there would be consequences for not submitting to the demands of the minister. “He’s not falling on his sword for your sake, or mine. Write about the sea, about flowers, about love. Stay away from those inflammations. They’ll only get you put in jail.”

  It was a suggestion she regretted as soon as she said it since she herself would be hard-pressed to follow it. His poetry was frontal, unadorned, pure. If he censored himself one way, he would censor himself in every way. Silence was the ultimate result.

  Still, he tried. Over the next three years he wrote articles on agrarian reform and the importance of the literacy campaign, which were well received by the authorities. He wrote about porcine husbandry; about the potato blight unleashed by the CIA; about the endocrinological benefits of eating pickled beets. He still composed his incendiary poems, which he kept in a folder deep in his file cabinet, slowly gathering them into a secret manuscript he hoped to publish someday. For now he published only the innocuous uplifting ones in praise of historical and literary figures, as well as poems about spring, the eternal snows of Siberia, and a long poem in imitation of Pablo Neruda about the purity of the proletarian spirit. After he finished that one, he became physically ill, drank a substantial amount of vodka, and missed an important meeting during which he was to talk about the subservience of the artist to social goals. His absence was duly noted. Nevertheless, he was promoted to the directorship of the Bureau of Cultural Exchange. The job assuaged his infelicity for a time. There were parties to attend and foreign visitors to entertain, as well as certain unofficial benefits that allowed them to move to a larger apartment with two bedrooms, an exposed hallway where Elena placed flowering plants in big clay pots, and enough room for their books and many of her own paintings that she hung on the walls. She was much improved as an artist as she copied and recopied Velázquez’s figures, learning from the master even as she added wild colors and contemporary clothing to them. In addition, she began to feed stray cats, which came and went at will through the open windows. Thus she gave herself to the normalcy of domestic life. Those were times of comfort, as they gained a measure of social status in the city, which grew in beauty even as it crumbled.

  One day, when Daniel couldn’t hide the poems any longer because he felt he would die of calcification, he handed Elena his secret manuscript, which he titled “From the Margins.” As she read it she realized it contained the strongest poems he’d ever written. They also happened to be the most dangerous: poems about the individual standing firmly against the state; poems about the ruins that grew as dreams died; poems about the despot singing to himself as an old decrepit man without teeth; poems about living in a country of many sheep and one wolf.

  At that time the jury for the National Poetry Prize, comprising writers from four different countries, was about to start reading five preselected finalists. Daniel asked Elena to sneak into Ferrante’s office at the Writers’ Union and place “From the Margins” among them. It was a way of circumventing the censors, who surely would have voided his collection, given its content. In a month’s time the results were announced. “From the Margins” was awarded the prize unanimously. In their final report the four members of the jury compared the manuscript favorably with the work of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Antonio Machado, and Miguel Hernández, marked nevertheless with a distinct voice that resounded with tropical rhythms.

  The next day the four foreign writers were rounded up and put on airplanes heading out of the country. An article appeared in the official state newspaper attacking the jury’s decision, calling them disaffected bourgeois intellectuals and urging that they be barred from the island for life. The leadership of the Writers’ Union disavowed the jury’s decision and demanded it be revoked. It was an empty demand since the decision couldn’t be changed without the direct intervention of the jury, which had already been sent to their countries of origin.

  Daniel and Elena’s phone rang incessantly, but Daniel insisted they not answer.

  “It can’t be our friends,” he told her. “They wouldn’t dare call.”

  Elena took to cleaning the house daily, beginning with the kitchen in the back and working her way toward the living room, where Daniel sat reading classic novels. It was her way of dealing with anxiety. One afternoon when she was almost finished dusting the bookshelves, there was a knock at the door.

  Daniel sat unmoving, as if he’d heard nothing. Elena stopped cleaning and looked him.

  “Aren’t you going to see who it is?” she asked him, fully aware of how much he hated answering the phone or a knock at the door, even in the best of times.

  He stood and moved slowly toward it. When he opened it, he saw Carlos Vega, a friend of theirs who had a minor position in the ministry and who’d been in and out of trouble because he was gay. He’d been to their apartment on a few occasions, and both Daniel and Elena felt a deep affection for him. After greeting one another casually, he entered and Daniel shut the door behind him.

  “The ministry is going out of orbit,” he said. “Ferrante met with the minister, and he agreed with all the minister’s demands, who said they were coming from the highest levels.”

  “What were the orders?” Daniel asked.

  “That you be called in and confronted,” Carlos said. “They’re reluctant to charge you officially. That would bring too much attention. They don’t want you becoming a martyr of the free-speech movement. The book will be published with a preface from the Writers’ Union disclaiming the jury’s decision. They’re convinced they can turn this whole affair around and use it in their favor. They will suggest that you’re a troublemaker in collusion with the imperialists, but they’ll stop short of saying you’re a CIA agent. They won’t play that card yet.”

  Elena offered him coffee. Carlos declined and said he had enough troubles of his own without being seen going in and out of their house. He left soon after.

  “Do you think he came of his own accord, or was he sent by the ministry?” she asked Daniel.

  “It doesn’t matter. Either way the message was delivered.”

  She finished dusting the bookshelves and sat down on the couch next to her husband. They held hands for a time, looking through the balcony at the clouds gathering on the horizon.

  “Is this it?” she asked him.

  “The circle around us is tightening. There is nothing we can do.”

  How many times had Elena heard him use that phrase, fatalist that he was? She became agitated, getting up off the sofa and insisting they plan their escape to some remote place.

  “The cursed condition of water on all sides,” he said, quoting a poem by one of their friends. “No matter where we go, they’ll find us.”

  “Then let’s seek asylum at an embassy.”

  Daniel shook his head slowly. He knew the workings of the state better than she. “Go to the balcony,” he told her. “Look down to the street. You’ll see a nondescript car, a Lada probably, and two men inside. One migh
t even have left the car and is standing next to it smoking a cigarette.”

  She obeyed, convinced that she would see none of what Daniel had described, but the car was there, as well as the man with the cigarette.

  “They will follow us wherever we go. The moment we get close to an embassy, they will detain us. By doing a forbidden thing we’ll make it easy for them. Think of it as a chess game. Except we’re on the losing side.”

  “Then we’ll go to the U.S. by boat.”

  Daniel reminded her she was terrified of the water. Furthermore, getting a boat and someone to man it would be as difficult as sneaking into an embassy. Another bad move.

  “So then we wait until they come for us?”

  He shrugged his shoulders in response. “We’ve already crossed the Rubicon, or I have and thus implicated you, but that doesn’t mean we have to facilitate their job by doing something stupid.”

  How does darkness feel when it is physical? Like dense, burning tar just under the skin or like the deepest place of your sleep where nightmares grow. That’s how she felt right then. She dropped down on the couch next to her husband and their silences joined.

  For two weeks Daniel and Elena left the apartment only when they had to, barely speaking to any of their neighbors and receiving few friends at their home. Daniel, ardent Russophile that he was, worked on an essay about the poet Osip Mandelstam. Elena struggled with her poetry, painted feverishly, and took care of the ten street cats that came regularly to be fed and that she named after the figures in Las Meninas. The cats wandered around the apartment with the insouciance given only to them, looking for places to rest or urinate. One day the gray tom she had named after Diego Velázquez had the audacity to defecate on Daniel’s prized typewriter. He became so irate that he picked up Diego by the scruff of the neck and hurled him across the room. The cat bounced off the wall and landed on all fours, licking himself a few times before walking away as if nothing had happened.

  The knock at their door came just before dawn the morning after Daniel’s forty-fifth birthday, which they had celebrated with a small group of friends and neighbors. Elena threw on a bathrobe and rushed to the living room while Daniel fumbled with his pants in the bedroom. When she opened the door, she faced three men wearing short-sleeved guayaberas. The heat in the hallway was already oppressive and sweat was beading on the forehead of the short one, who was barely taller than she. He had liver-colored skin and dead bulging eyes, a creole Peter Lorre. Daniel came out to the living room and stood behind Elena. The man’s eyes blinked slowly and fixed on him. In a soft, courteous voice he identified himself and asked Daniel and Elena to accompany them.

  “Why? What have we done?” she said, already defensive. She could feel her jaw beginning to tremble.

  “I cannot say,” the small man said. “I have my orders. Reinaldo”—he motioned to an eager young man next to him—“will remain behind and stand guard.”

  The young man smiled and raised his chin.

  “Over what?” Elena said. Her question sounded insolent and went unanswered.

  Somehow the three men had slipped inside and were now standing uncomfortably close to Elena and Daniel in the living room, as if they’d always belonged. The small man eyed the bookcases from top to bottom.

  “You have no right to come in without our permission,” Elena said.

  Daniel put his hand on her arm. In a better world, of course, the three men had no right, but in this one, they had every right, while Elena and Daniel had none.

  “If you’ll allow us a few minutes,” Daniel said. “We need to gather our things.”

  “You won’t be needing much where you’re going,” the young man said, still smiling.

  The small man gave him a sharp look that let him know he was speaking out of turn. Then he turned to Daniel and Elena and said all they would need were their identity cards. “And hurry, please.”

  That early-morning ride, with the car windows down and the damp air blowing in, was among the most pleasant Elena had experienced, and she almost forgot they were on their way to State Security headquarters. She made mention of the beauty of the morning, but none of the men responded, not even Daniel, who sat gloomily next to her. The third man, who had not spoken a word since appearing at their door and looked very unhappy, did the driving. The small man sat next to him, staring straight ahead. The buildings were gaining color, a pink hue that gave the city the feel of paradise, or what one imagines paradise might look like if it were a city and God had placed it on an island in the Caribbean. In fifteen minutes they reached the entrance of the old Catholic school that now served as the central offices of State Security. They parked and the men led them inside through a side door to a large open office, which was, at that hour, empty of employees.

  Elena was asked to sit on a wooden bench that had accommodated the haunches of the religious brothers who once ran the school, and Daniel was led through a set of gray metal doors. He looked back at her, and she couldn’t decipher what was in his eyes—fear or resignation or combativeness or all those emotions mixed up together into a ball of unknowing. She waited three hours until the office began to fill with clerks arriving for work, none of whom acknowledged her presence. Finally, as she was dozing off, a woman came to her and told her she could go home. Elena asked about her husband.

  “Who?” the woman said.

  “Daniel Arcilla,” Elena replied, “the poet,” hoping the woman might recognize the name.

  And the woman nodded and said that he would remain for some time.

  “How long?” Elena asked.

  The woman said she didn’t know.

  “I’d like to see him,” Elena said.

  The woman responded coldly that that was not possible. “Best if you go home,” she said.

  “Why was I brought here, then?”

  The woman said she didn’t know.

  “Is it not your business to know?” Elena said.

  “It is not,” the woman replied.

  Elena’s anger, which had burned in her all morning, was doused by the woman’s attitude. She knew enough to realize that she couldn’t confront State Security directly, no one could. She stood, slung her purse over her shoulder, and walked out.

  She got home at midmorning, expecting to find the young State Security agent still keeping guard, but the apartment was vacant. The books had been thrown off the shelves, the dressers ransacked. Curiously, her notebooks and papers lay untouched on the small work desk she kept in a corner of the dining room. She stepped over the books and the sofa cushions to the kitchen, where she made herself coffee and began the process of putting things back in their proper place. When she was done, she called Roberto Ferrante, who urged her not to leave her home until he got there. After a breakfast of a boiled egg and lard crackers, she sat on the couch to record in her notebook all that had transpired, and halfway through her note-taking she fell asleep. At two in the afternoon she awoke from a dream in which three magistrates in judges’ robes found her guilty of ten unstipulated crimes. “What are they?” she asked the magistrates. “We cannot tell you. They’re unstipulated.” A knock at her door woke her. Without waiting for her to open it, Roberto entered the apartment in a flurry of concern. It had been four hours since she’d called him.

  “I made some phone calls,” he told her, assuring her that he would do everything in his power to get Daniel released. “No one knows where he is at the moment.”

  “I can tell you,” she said. “He’s at the State Security headquarters. What’s he done to deserve this, Roberto?”

  “These are dangerous times. The poems he’s been writing were most damaging, you must admit.”

  She was convinced that Roberto had had a hand in Daniel’s arrest, but she would eventually learn that the orders came from the highest level. Coward that he was, Roberto was merely acquiescing.

  “Good poems,” she said. “Important ones.”

  “You have to be careful yourself,” he told her.


  She didn’t need his paternalism; she needed an ally who might help get her husband out of the hands of State Security.

  “Will you speak with Carlos?” She was referring to Carlos Cao, the minister of culture, an old guard revolutionary who’d been Daniel’s comrade in the underground.

  “He’s aware of the situation,” Roberto said. “It seems Daniel’s fate is in the hands of the prime minister himself.”

  Of course it was, Elena thought. Everything is. Placing Daniel’s manuscript among the pile of finalists was a forgivable affront; the critique of the Revolution the poems embodied was not. “Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing.” Wasn’t that what the despot had made clear in one of his speeches?

  “Why don’t you come and stay at my place while all this is sorted out?” he said. “It won’t do you any good to be here alone.”

  She declined the offer, convinced it was a trap, and told him that she was fine in her home, which was true. It was where she felt most secure, where she could paint and write and wait forever if she had to.

  “Take some time off then, as much as you need. Your job at the Writers’ Union is secure.” He excused himself then, saying he had a meeting on the other side of town.