The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  It had taken divers nearly thirty minutes to free Alberto’s body from the floating wreckage and hoist it on a litter up to the helicopter hovering over them.

  The only thing that showed above the surface when the Coast Guard helicopter first arrived at the crash scene had been the top of the wings and the vertical stabilizer.

  The wreckage had rolled and pitched unsteadily in the swells, making the work of the divers difficult. As they pulled the body from the swaying airplane, the divers had to be careful not to puncture the fuel tanks in the wings, which were empty and the only thing keeping the aircraft barely afloat.

  After they brought the body aboard, the helicopter continued to hover over the wreckage until a boat arrived to tow it back to the base, where it would be taken apart by investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause of the crash.

  Newspaper and television reporters were already at the Coast Guard station awaiting the helicopter. Earlier, when they first got there, Vivian had radioed the pilot and reminded him to have the body fully covered and to instruct his crew to disembark with appropriate military decorum. “Remember the image of the Guard,” she had said. But the pilot knew his commanding officer well and knew that although her dedication to the Coast Guard and her professionalism were second to none, this time her concern went beyond “the image of the Guard” and he respected it.

  Vivian followed the blinking lights of the helicopter as it circled west and turned into the wind for its final approach. It then hovered for a few moments over the helipad and touched down precisely at the center of the circle painted on the concrete. Vivian waited until the engines were shut off and then marched slowly toward the open hatch, still holding her cap. The pilot and crew disembarked and smartly saluted their commander. Vivian returned the salute and stood ramrod-straight as they brought the litter out of the helicopter, then helped them carry it into the hangar, where it would remain until the medical examiner arrived.

  That night Vivian took care of every detail personally, with her customary efficiency. She spoke with the medical examiner, filled out all the paperwork, dictated several reports, and made the necessary telephone calls.

  Alberto had no children, and his wife had died ten years ago. Vivian did not think he had any living relatives in the United States, but she knew he had many friends. Some of them were mutual friends, and she called as many of those as she could remember to spare them the unpleasantness of finding out about it from the morning paper. The call to Margarita was the last one, the hardest one.

  By the time Vivian got home, it was almost three in the morning. She took off her uniform and hung it neatly in the closet. Then she sat down on a chair, pulled off her shoes, wiped them with a towel, placed them on the shoe rack beneath her uniform, and stood in the closet for a few moments staring blankly at the floor. She then turned off the closet light, walked across the bedroom, and turned off the lamp on the night table. In the darkness she removed her half-slip, her bra, her pantyhose and her panties, and, feeling too drained to look for her nightgown, she crawled naked into her bed and cried for a long time.

  Ninety miles south of Miami, Juan was awake in his room at Fisherman’s Hospital. In the gray half-light that filtered through the crack in the curtains, he was looking at an intravenous tube taped to the back of his hand.

  Carmen was asleep on an easy chair in the corner of the room. Her body was curled, leaning on the armrest, and her legs were drawn up with the calves tucked against the back of her thighs, exaggerating the curve of her hips.

  He would tell her in the morning, but first he had to sort it out in his mind. And now he was following the scent, the subtle essence of what he had lost. It smelled of leather and tasted of distant, endless fields of sugarcane swaying beyond the iridescent, blossom-laden canopies of the framboyán trees.

  It had been normal, he thought at first, to give part of his life, part of himself, to them so that the rest might be preserved. Surely everyone did this. Everyone lied, everyone was deceitful and servile in difficult times: pretending, accommodating. Even in normal times, in normal places, some people take on the face of a slave, he thought. And revolutionary Cuba could not be considered a normal place, a normal time. No one would ever think or pretend it was. He had understood that from the very beginning. In a perverse way his understanding had been the pretext for his degradation. He had thought early on, Well, I can lie, I can degrade myself. It is nothing to me. And my lies will be the greatest lies of all, I will excel in my lies. My lies will tower over theirs. So he invented a new father, a new mother, he invented a new self and everything else. What were a few more lies in a country of liars? They were nothing. They meant nothing.

  Perhaps, he had thought wryly, this was the true meaning of the “New Socialist Man.” But none of this was significant or central. What was central was the blackness, the negrura sofocante, the negrura impenetrable. Because, in his case, the first time he had peered into the abyss, it was as if a gate had been opened that he could not close. And everything rushed out, everything was squeezed from him, leaving nothing there, nothing to preserve.

  From the first, he had plunged into the tunnel and had spent his life running, hearing footsteps close behind and the breath of the pursuer in his hair. And after that there had been nothing else, day to day, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. His lies, after all, had been inevitable and were nothing more than that: lies. Spoken in panic, repeated in degradation.

  And what were they protecting? Whom did they serve? What was at the heart of this ridiculous, elaborate wall of deceit?

  He could think of nothing, he could see nothing beyond the familiar negrura, nothing worth protecting. And he was too tired to think about this now anyway, too terribly tired. So he pushed everything out of his mind until it became a complete blank, as he always did, and fell asleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the shadow of Miami’s skyscrapers, on a finger of land jutting into Biscayne Bay, sits a small circular chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. The image of the Virgin faces south. Her eyes are level, looking across the water, beyond the Straits. Lush rosebushes, with blooms of many colors, are planted on the grounds around the chapel up to the edge of the water, filling the air with their fragrance. And everything about the place, inside and outside, is bright and immaculate.

  It is said in the legend that Our Lady of Cobre appeared to three desperate fishermen in an open boat during a sudden, violent storm off the coast of Oriente Province. When the Virgin appeared, the wind died, the waters were calmed, and the men were saved. After the investigation and paperwork appropriate in such cases, Pope Benedict XV declared Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre the official protectress of the people of Cuba.

  The little chapel is a symbol and a gathering place of the Cuban exile community in Miami. On patriotic days the grounds are a sea of red, white, and blue, with American and Cuban flags fluttering together in the breeze that blows off the bay.

  Sunday the wind came from the north, strong and steady, stirring the leaves of the rosebushes, carrying loose petals over the seawall into the waters of the bay, and bringing an edge of fall to the air.

  There was a good crowd, filling the chapel and spilling out the open doors into the sunlight. Alberto’s casket, draped in the Cuban flag, was set before the simple altar.

  His friends, many of them graying veterans of Playa Girón, were up front, standing in a solemn semicircle around the casket. But most people there had never known Alberto. They came because that morning a beautiful piece about him had appeared in the Spanish-language section of the paper and, reading it, their hearts had swelled with an emotion beyond pride and grief, deeper and broader than understanding. There is no word for this feeling, in English or in Spanish. So they came bearing flags and flowers, not out of obligation or to pay their respects, as they told themselves, but because something in them, which they did not understand, read the words and made them c
ome.

  The author, Alberto’s journalist friend, delivered the eulogy:

  “I feel no tragedy here,” he told them, touching his breast. “There is no darkness in my heart. Today my soul is brighter than the sky and as hopeful as the wind that blows so strongly over the water.”

  The journalist paused for a moment to look across the bay, then continued, “Alberto was the happiest man I ever met. He taught me, without saying a word, that happiness”—he used the word alegria, which sounds more of bliss than of happiness—“like freedom and love and other things that truly matter, comes from here.” And he again touched his breast with the tips of his fingers, pressing the surface with great care, so as not to disturb sacred things. “They come from a secret place, deep inside the soul, that no one can reach. And nothing outside of us, nada en el mundo, nothing in the world, can put those things there or take them away…”

  Juan, standing with Carmen and Vivian, had been leaning unsteadily against the doorframe, looking inside the chapel. Listening, drinking in this new world, so alien and so familiar, the same way dreams are alien and familiar, without contradiction.

  He stepped back now, out of the way, on the edge of the doorstep, as gray, wrinkled men with bright eyes carried the casket over the threshold and down the narrow, rose-lined walk toward the impatient hearse.

  Still wincing from the pain of the jellyfish stings, Juan limped as Vivian and Carmen helped him make his way to the parking lot and into Carmen’s car. Vivian left her car at the chapel and rode with them, sitting in front, while Juan sat quietly in the back, looking out the window at the traffic, as they followed the procession to the cemetery.

  It occurred to him that this was the first funeral he had ever attended. What’s the point of funerals? What’s the point of the whole thing? he would ask himself every time someone died. Mi padre, my father, he would say to himself, never had a funeral. Then he would feel a sharp pain, like a stabbing in his chest, and push the whole thought out of his mind.

  At the graveside there were fewer people. And it was quiet and somber. Someone whispered that the shadows seemed longer than they had been at the chapel, but most people were silent, respecting the authority of the place.

  During the ceremony a mysterious, beautiful woman in her sixties sat alone on a white bench, back in the shade, away from the gathering around Alberto’s grave, with distant eyes fixed on the brilliant sky showing above a high garden wall covered with bougainvillaea.

  After it was over, Vivian decided to go back to the chapel with one of Alberto’s friends to pick up her car, and now Carmen was leaning against the car door, her head partially in the window, saying good-bye to Vivian, while Juan sat in Carmen’s car, waiting. He was looking at a piece of paper with an address he had scribbled when he was in the hospital: Campos Chevron 11791 S.W. 8th Street. A nurse who came out through Mariel had helped him find it. CAMPOS CHEVRON, the Yellow Pages advertisement had read, ALL MINOR AND MAJOR REPAIR WORK—SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. Then, under that, in big red letters, ALL REPAIR WORK GUARANTEED. And under that, again in black letters, JOSE ANTONIO CAMPOS, OWNER. The word Owner was in fancy script, proudly appended to the name.

  José Antonio Campos. It had to be him, he thought. There was no other Campos listed in connection with a gas station. He had thought of calling, but could not bring himself to do it. Just as he had not been able to tell Carmen the things he wanted to tell her.

  “Can we go here now?” he asked her, handing her the piece of paper as she slid behind the wheel.

  “Why? What’s here?”

  “I think that’s Raúl’s brother’s place.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this now?”

  “Yes.”

  They passed under a great arched gateway of coquina and drove along the water for a while, past bright images of floating buildings, like anchored balloons, threatening to break their moorings at any moment and drift south across the bay.

  Then they turned inland and drove through glaring, shop-lined streets with colorful signs all ending in -ía: MUEBLERÍA, PANADERÍA, DULCERÍA, JOYERÍA, FARMACÍA, LIBRERÍA, CARNICERÍA, JUGUETERÍA, FERRETERÍA, GALERÍA, PELETERÍA, every imaginable -ía. On and on and on, across miles of endless strips of furniture stores, bakeries, jewelers, pharmacies, butcher shops, hardware stores, bookstores, galleries, toy stores, shoe stores. And, as far as Juan could see, every blaring sign, every shouting notice of sale, every “help wanted” advertisement, was in Spanish.

  He smelled the air, luscious with the rich aromas drifting out of sidewalk cafés: puerco asado, roast pork, fresh baked bread, black beans, tropical viands, yucca, malanga, platanos maduros. But the dominant aroma that reached him now was of coffee, dark-roasted, sweet, ubiquitous.

  And everywhere, exuberant men in white guayaberas were leaning with curvaceous, dark-haired women against counters that jutted out into the sidewalks, drinking thick espresso in tiny plastic cups, laughing, slapping each other’s backs, carrying on a constant, rapid-fire banter in Spanish.

  Juan was struck—shocked, actually—by the extent and vitality of the Cuban presence in Miami. Carmen had spoken of it during their telephone conversations, but the reality truly surprised and overwhelmed him. It was as if the Stream with its awesome force had torn off huge chunks of the island as it swept past and deposited them here, bringing all the colors, all the flavors, all the fragrances, the very air itself, together with the people who happened to be standing on these clumps of la Patria at the moment of disengagement. And, in the passage, nothing was broken, nothing was changed, there was not even a pause in the conversations. Or, he thought, this was like those improbable stories one hears where tornadoes pick up houses and deposit them down the road leaving every cup, every plate, every saucer in the china cabinet undisturbed.

  It was as if he were looking through a fantastic window at a street that had been preserved from the Cuba of his youth, before everything changed. He wanted to get out of the car and walk the streets, go into the timbiriches and become lost in this mass of warm, wild, gesticulating cubaneria, where no one looked over his shoulder, where no one seemed afraid. But first he had to see José Antonio Campos—before eating, before drinking, before anything. Going to that service station now became an obsession, like the thing he had with the warm place in the water, Raúl’s place in the water, after Raúl was devoured by the shark.

  And, like all of his obsessions, this one had a metaphysical root. He was convinced (absurdly, even in his own mind) that the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, the completion of every circle was to be found, for the moment, at 11791 S.W. Eighth Street.

  He thought that this might be a good time to tell Carmen the truth about himself. But then he pulled back from the brink as soon as he opened his mouth, so that only the prefatory word “Carmen” escaped, clinging precariously for a few moments to the edge of the abyss, before tumbling into oblivion.

  Carmen said nothing and waited. And Juan knew that she would continue to wait quietly because she understood, in the way artists always understand, that the secret is not in probing but in waiting.

  So they moved silently through the treeless, throbbing streets, through the garish exaggeration of sunlight embracing everyone and everything, reflecting off the sidewalks, off the plate-glass windows, off the sweaty bald heads of old men walking earnestly with their packages.

  Farther west, the road widened and the conglomeration of nondescript little shops began to thin out. The Tamiami Canal, its surface the color and consistency of pea soup, with tall pines planted as a windbreak along the far bank, now came up on their right and disappeared into the distance as it cut across the heart of the Everglades.

  “Is that it?” Juan asked, pointing to a Chevron sign on their left.

  “No, it’s a little farther down the road. Past 117th Avenue.”

  For a moment Juan thought of asking Carmen to turn back. Maybe she was right, maybe he should wait. Besides, what was he going to say to Jos
é Antonio? What could he say to José Antonio? That it was his fault? That he had planned the whole thing and persuaded Raúl and Andrés to go along on an insane journey that cost them their lives?

  He remembered José Antonio as a little boy. Three? Four? He could not have been older than that—running barefoot around the yard of the great house, hugging dogs twice his size, chewing on chunks of peeled sugarcane. And in the evening he and Raúl and José Antonio filling a great earthenware pot with water and setting it out on the porch under a kerosene lantern and watching the beetles and moths that flew around the light and fell into the water, casting fantastic shadows on the bottom of the pot as they struggled to get out, to get back into the air and fly up toward the light. Or running through the yard in the darkness catching cocuyos, fireflies, putting them in glass jars with little holes punched in the lids and carrying the jars into the night like lanterns. And once, when José Antonio had said that he was going back to his house because his mother was calling him, Juan remembered replying grandly, with the stupid arrogance of childhood, that it was not José Antonio’s house but the Cabreras’ house because the Cabreras owned all the land as far as the eye could see. José Antonio, unconcerned with the niceties of proprietary rights, had looked at him wide-eyed and said, “Well, my mother’s there. So it’s my house.” And that ended it as far as the three of them were concerned.

  Then the revolution came and everything changed. No one owned anything. It was nobody’s house. Was it his fault? Was it his father’s fault? Or was it one great collective fault? Was fault even connected with it? ¿Quién sabe? Who knows? His grandfather, Don Francisco, had bought the estate during the Spanish-American war, around the turn of the century, when land in Cuba was cheap. He called it Finca Santa Cruz, Holy Cross Farm. It seemed like a smart and proper thing to do: to buy that land the day he bought it. It still seemed smart and proper the day he died, fifteen years before the revolution. His grandfather had never cared who was in power in Cuba as long as they left him alone to make money, which is what he cared about. Was it his grandfather’s fault? ¿Quién sabe? And what did he, Juan, care about? He cared about the things inside his mind that grew and flowered in secret. And the things outside? He had always regarded those with detachment, as if he were looking at them from a great distance, saying, “It’s all very interesting. But what does it have to do with me?” So he handled the world as a man who is not terribly interested in playing a board game, but feels social pressure to do so, would handle the game: “What are the damn rules? Okay, fine.” Then moves the pieces with sufficient skill so as not to call attention to himself, so the other players can’t say, “Well, he’s not being a good sport, he’s not paying attention.” But not with so much skill that it becomes a nuisance and interferes with important things. The trick, of course, was finding that line. Something he had usually been able to manage. What he could not manage was his demon, the negrura. And he was too intelligent to consider the negrura a creature from the outside. He knew the negrura grew in his secret universe, the way death grows from life. He could not lock the negrura out of his house because it was he, Juan, who lived in the house of the negrura. So he had spent his life running from room to room, fleeing the negrura. Because where can you run to when you live in such a house? That, of course, was his great problem, but it was a private problem.