by Amanda Hale
Godo laughs. ‘What would I do with a puppy, niño? I’m on the street all day.’
‘How about a kitten,’ the boy suggests. ‘We have plenty of puppies and kittens in our house.’ He points to a rickety cabin overlooking the graveyard. ‘Only five Cuban pesos for the best one.’
‘No, chico, no,’ Godo says. ‘But I’ll give you five pesos if you come to Novedades with me.’ Godo has been thinking about the twenty convertible pesos that Heike gave him, and he has decided to buy a pair of shoes. Novedades is the most popular store in Baracoa and the only customers who can get in without lining up in the hot sun for half an hour are pensioners, war veterans, or anyone accompanied by a child. Pablito has had his own exciting shoe store experience and is only too happy to go with Godo. He runs into the house to put on his big running shoes for the expedition.
They make compatibly slow progress as Pablito hops along in frog mode, leaping from stone to broken stone on his haunches, skinny legs extending with each leap, while Godo limps along steadily with his characteristic gait. They are greeted by several folk they encounter on the way, as well as by occasional customers who reach into their pockets when they see el manisero coming.
‘Do your call,’ Pablito squeaks, ‘You’ll sell more peanuts.’
‘¡Maní maní maní!’ Godo shouts in a piercingly nasal tone which, as predicted, does bring more custom, even some people emerging from their houses to buy a handful of cones.
‘¡Maní maní maní!’ parrots Pablito, running with a sudden burst of energy down the street and back again, grinning at Godo.
When they reach Calle José Martí Godo sees that in fact there is no lineup at the door of Novedades. Of course, it’s January. After Christmas and New Year the stores are always empty. No-one has money except the tourists, and in any case the shelves and freezers are virtually empty after the holiday rush. There are only bored sales girls standing around examining their nails and gossiping in the frigidly air-conditioned store. But Godo is glad of the boy’s company as Pablito leads him to the back of Novedades where he’d come with his mama to purchase those big sneakers. He makes Godo sit down while he hunts for the right shoes. First he brings him a leather pair made in China with long brown laces. ‘Try these, manisero,’ he says. But Godo cannot fit his twisted right foot into a closed shoe. ‘I want chancletas, Pablito,’ he says. ‘For the house?’ the child asks, surprised. ‘For the street,’ Godo replies. ‘Leather sandals, strong ones. My feet won’t be able to breathe properly in those shoes.’
‘Your feet can breathe!’ Pablito exclaims. And he lies on the floor with his ear to Godo’s feet. When Godo explains about the breathing capacity of skin, which is the largest human organ, Pablito’s eyes grow bigger than ever in his solemn face. Then he skips off to hunt for sandals and comes back with a perfect pair made of sturdy brown leather, again in China, and this time Godo’s foot slides in effortlessly and finds comfort there.
In the time it’s taken to select his shoes the store seems to have filled up. Apparently a shipment of beer and toilet paper has arrived and all the B & B owners are there to buy, as well as a number of foreigners, some with their Cuban girls in tow. Everyone is sweating now because there’s a power cut and the cold air has quickly escaped through frequent opening of the door. Godo notices as he makes his slow way to the checkout that all the prices are duplicated. Novedades used to be a “dollar” store where you had to have convertible pesos to shop, but now it seems that you can make purchases in Cuban pesos. His own price tag says 18.75 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos), and underneath is written the conversion in Cuban pesos, 456 MN (moneda nacional). He wonders what the government is up to now. It had been announced more than a year ago that the CUC was to be eliminated by gradually merging it with the lower value Cuban peso, but no-one understood exactly how that would work. You’d have to be an economist to understand their thinking, Romero has said. But now, standing in front of a rack of jeans in the sweltering store, Godo has a new insight. He remembers when US dollars were eliminated in November 2004 and the CUC put in its place. There had been no warning and many of the people who had hoarded US dollars lost their savings when the currency was no longer negotiable. ‘It’s going to be the same deal,’ Godo says aloud, as he realizes that the double price tag on each pair of jeans is in fact a warning. There will be no gradual merging, he thinks. No no no! One day you will go to the bank with a handful of convertible pesos and the teller will say, this currency is no longer negotiable. And all those pesos will be gathered in at huge loss to the hoarders, and who will benefit? — the Government. Raúl’s baby, Gaviota, the army-run tourist agency, will swallow all those convertibles, yes! Godo’s mouth hardens and then relaxes into a grin as he realizes the perfection of it. La Gaviota — the seagull, a bird with a voracious appetite, a creature that will swallow anything, even the tough unwieldy starfish that it manages to digest with its strong gastric acid.
‘What are you dreaming about, manisero?’ Pablito tugs at Godo’s sleeve. ‘Vamos. We have to pay for your shoes.’
Godo ambles over to join the lineup at the checkout while Pablito continues his play, hopping up and down the aisles on his haunches. It’s a long wait because of the power cut which has slowed everyone down to a más lento que la melaza pace, and the cashier is laboriously writing out each purchase in a ledger because the cash register isn’t working. Godo stands behind a muchacha accompanied by her elderly gringo. They have a six pack of beer and a bottle of rum as well as their share of precious toilet paper. The couple do not speak to each other. He is thin-lipped and expressionless. She is passive and emotionless, with beads of perspiration breaking out on her forehead and neck. Godo watches her in profile, a girl who is almost beautiful, but something in her is lost. He longs to bring her to life, to ignite some spark in her tired flesh which though smooth and unblemished on the surface betrays some deep misgiving. She fusses with her hair which is piled on top of her head with dark curls escaping onto her neck. She rearranges it carefully with her soft hands, the long red nails like cat’s claws. Suddenly, without thinking, Godo blows on her neck, a cool stream of air through his pursed lips, and she turns, surprised for a moment before her face breaks into a smile, and Godo smiles back with a slight shrug as if to say, I couldn’t help it. Just then Pablito comes leaping through the thick air and lands neatly at Godo’s feet.
‘¡Manisero!’ he exclaims, ‘I am your frog.’
The next time he sees Heike she’s walking arm in arm with the Spanish girl. They’re draped around each other in what Godo feels, with a sense of discomfort, is an overly friendly manner. He’s seen the Cuban chicas walk like this but the foreign tourists usually have a different comportment. They should watch out, he thinks as Sofía hoists herself up onto the parapet fronting the Malecón and beckons Heike to join her. They’re sitting right where the waves splash up onto the street. He glances at the ocean and sees that it is deceptively calm. He knows the sea in all its ways; how a strong wave can come rolling in from miles out and inundate the passersby. Sofía is drumming her heels against the wall, still wearing her sturdy hiking boots despite the gathering heat of mid-morning. As he draws near, Godo can see that the girls look sleepy, as though they’ve just woken and tumbled out into the sun to lounge like lizards on the warm stone of the parapet. He is still approaching when something stops him, some instinct to hang back and watch. Just then Sofía leans over and kisses Heike. On her mouth. Long and slow. Godo cannot believe it. He pulls back into the thick leaves of an uva de playa and sends a spider scuttling as his neck becomes entangled with its web. He swipes at the back of his head to remove the sticky threads, then settles in stillness to watch the girls, who are entwined but not in the way he is accustomed to seeing with couples on the streets of Baracoa. There is something soft and sensual about their draped arms and the languid movements of their necks; Heike’s neck is laid upon Sofía’s shoulder.
He has heard Mariela Castro on television, talking about her Centro
Nacional de Educación Sexual and her support for maricones. Godo has supposed it natural that they should concern themselves with such things in La Habana where they are only 357 kilometres from Miami and therefore more or less subject to those influences. He knows a few maricones in Baracoa. There’s Mario the hairdresser who goes to the ladies’ houses to cut and dress their hair; there’s Madonna who was in prison for five years after a sexual encounter with an Italian tourist; there is Jordanis who choreographs the dancers for the shows on the rooftop of La Terraza, and Pupi who teaches salsa dancing at the Casa Cultura. But women? What do you even call them? Lesbianas, he thinks, blushing at the very word as he unwittingly answers his own question.
What perturbs Godo is that Heike is his good friend. He is accustomed to their conversations about Adolfo and the trials of his demands and shortcomings. That is normal. That is very Cuban. He knows how to quiet it in his mind, but now he is seeing Heike in a different light and he doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge. He can’t sneak away without talking to her. What if she sees him turning and limping down the Malecón, though she looks so absorbed with Sofía that perhaps she wouldn’t notice. He feels caught and it is an uncomfortable, slightly shameful feeling.
‘Buenos días, Heike,’ Godo says as he approaches impulsively. She turns to him, as though in a dream, then her whole face lights up with recognition, as though she is just coming back from a long journey. ‘Where have you been?’ Godo asks. ‘I haven’t seen you on the street since Año Nuevo.’
‘Sofía und ich . . . we have been hanging out,’ she says dreamily.
‘What about Adolfo?’
Sofía laughs, a hoarse, husky sound, and Heike shrugs and giggles. ‘He’s out of the picture. He lost his big chance for his bathroom tiles.’
Godo doesn’t know what to make of this. Three years with her Cuban bandolero, everything for him, and now suddenly he’s “out of the picture?”
‘Is there a chance for me?’ he quips, then blushes furiously because his own words have surprised him. Sofía looks through him without expression, but Heike laughs so much she begins to shake, slapping her shapely thighs.
‘Oh, oh . . . I didn’t mean . . . ’ Godo begins.
‘No, no, it’s only a joke. I understand, Godofredo,’ says Heike, jumping down from the wall to kiss his cheek. ‘I will go to La Habana tomorrow with Sofía. She has classes at the university, and we will take tango lessons together at a studio on Calle Neptuno. So much more interesting than salsa at La Trova,’ she says dismissively. ‘The tango is from Argentina. Sofía has been in Argentina.’ She throws her head back in Sofía’s direction and reaches out to stroke her arm. ‘Perhaps we will travel there together and dance in Buenos Aires, yes?’ Sofía nods, smiling, pulls on her hand-rolled cigarette and throws back her head to exhale a plume of smoke.
‘So you’re leaving Baracoa?’ Godo says.
Heike pulls a sad face and shrugs. ‘I will miss you, Godofredo, but we will return one day, won’t we Sofía?’
The Spanish girl’s gesture is indeterminate.
‘To see Rivero,’ Godo reminds her.
‘Posiblemente,’ she drawls.
Godo offers a handful of peanut cones to Heike. ‘For your journey,’ he says.
‘You are my favourite man in all of Baracoa,’ Heike says, ‘un caballero,’ and she throws her arms around him and kisses his cheek. Godo feels Heike’s breasts pressing against his chest and he swings around as soon as she releases him, and starts limping forward to hide his confusion. When he has recovered his composure he turns to wave. ‘¡Vaya bien! Que Diós te bendiga.’ But Heike doesn’t hear him. She is once more entwined with Sofía.
Godo is preoccupied for the rest of the day. He does not do well with his peanut sales, and when Pablito comes leaping over on his way home from school and lands at Godo’s feet, he is brusque with the boy, which he immediately regrets, but Pablito is already gone, just like Heike. Romero passes on his way to the bar for his afternoon trago of rum and tells Godo that Aragón is now confined to a wheelchair in his house and will be making no more trips to Spain. The thought of Spain is an uneasy one for Godo right now and he frowns. ‘Yes, it is terrible news,’ says Romero, mistaking the frown for sympathetic concern for their obese Historiador de Baracoa, ‘But I heard that Rivero is coming back to Matachín to take over the museum he started all those years ago. Justicia poética, mi amigo. The museum is not wheelchair accessible.’
‘Nothing in Cuba is wheelchair accessible, surely!’ Godo exclaims angrily, remembering his own months of immobility. Romero laughs at the joke that his friend has missed, and waves to Godo as he continues on his way to Rumbo where he props himself up at the bar every afternoon for an hour before returning to the meticulous business of painting portraits of the Santería Orishas — not the standard images like the coconut-headed Elegguá with his cowrie shell eyes, but deeply sensual portraits of real people — negroes arrayed in ceremonial robes of brilliant colours set amidst birds, animals and foliage in the kingdoms over which they rule — curanderos, devils, saints and saviors. As fast as Romero can paint the tourists buy, peeling the paintings off their stretchers, rolling them up inside their suitcases and flying home to show them off in Italy, Portugal, Canada, Spain, France, Sweden, England, Japan . . . Yoendri Romero is an international man and this is what he does as he paints, he travels in his imagination to each country where his works might emigrate, and his fantasies somehow invest the paintings with the power to draw those who can transport them. All they require is certification from the office of the City Clerk.
For himself Romero is having trouble obtaining a passport for his next trip, which is to Brussels where he is to have an exhibition of twenty works. There is the matter of the missing “S” on his carné identidad which has held up the issuance of his passport for several weeks now. While his birth certificate clearly states that his name is Yoendris Romero, his identity card says Yoendri Romero, as have all his previous passports. No-one ever noticed until a particularly vigilant clerk in the passport office detected the error during Romero’s recent application for an exit visa and brought it to the attention of the powers that be. ‘But I’ve travelled to Europe many times,’ Romero had protested. ‘The missing “S” is testament only to the fact that we Cubans do not pronounce consonants unless absolutely necessary. What difference can it make?’ The clerk’s eyes had grown wide with horror. ‘What difference? It is a difference of identity, Señor Romero. You are not the man you claim to be.’
‘Of course I am, you know me, José, we were schoolboys together.’
‘I do not know you by this false identity card, no no no,’ José wagged his finger, ‘Not until you are issued a new identity card with the correct name bearing an “S,” the same as the name on your birth certificate, the original document of your existence and therefore the accurate one. Only then, with a passport to match, will you have permission to travel outside of Cuba.’
Daily visits continued, to the various offices and bureaucrats involved, of which there were many, each one shunting Romero on to the next, until he had begun to suffer the mounting tension of his imminent journey to Europe. ‘I must have my passport by the end of this week, Osniel!’ he had shouted finally, slapping the flat of his hand on the desk of yet another old schoolfriend. ‘I’ll do my best,’ Osniel had said, raising his hands as though at gunpoint, ‘But you know how it is, my friend. First the carne, then the new passport, then the exit visa. Take my advice and send the paintings ahead, just in case.’
Romero’s daily rum intake has doubled during the battle of the missing “S.” At first he had laughed it off and told the story at length in various bars around town. Then he’d grown uneasy and had sought out friends and acquaintances with similar names — Generation Y, he called them — Yoelvis, Yalineis, Yoanis, Yadinis, Yusleydis, Yordanis . . . there were many of them but no-one had yet encountered the problem of the missing “S” or even the additional “S” because not one of
them had occasion to travel outside of Cuba. Romero has sent the paintings ahead, rolled up, certified as bona fide original Cuban works, but he feels bereft without his creations. They’re accustomed to travelling together, he and his totemic Orishas. Romero has invested them with his own energy, and now he feels as though there are strings attached to his body, pulling at him as the paintings make their way to Havana by bus, to the airport, into cargo storage, onto the plane, landing in Brussels, collected by the gallery’s special delivery van, and finally to the gallery itself, which is in a pristine building with long white walls where the newly stretched Orishas are to be displayed. But by now they will be wan facsimiles of their original selves, depleted of their magical energy, separated from their master, their creator, who chews his fingernails and downs another trago at the Rumbo bar.
Godo has to fight with himself not to go to the bus terminal next day. He knows that Heike and Sofía will be on the bus because the plane flies out of Baracoa only twice a week and Wednesday is not a flight day. He longs to see Heike one more time. He has not felt like this before, not even with Mercedes before her departure for Guantánamo. The longing is in his body and it tortures and delights him in equal measure, but when he thinks of Sofía he flushes with anger and damns her booted Spanish feet. ‘A whole nation famous for their cruelty,’ he mutters to himself as he paces the streets of Baracoa, missing a dozen sales opportunities. Sometimes people don’t even know they’re hungry, that they need a little snack, a cone of peanuts. It takes the genius of el manisero to plant the idea in their heads, but today he is a man obsessed, a man in love with an unavailable woman who is moving steadily away from him, from his town, out of his life perhaps forever. This is not the first time, though it is the most intense, but perhaps that has more to do with him — his maturity and the depth of his longing — than with the woman in question. He still dreams of Mercedes and wonders if she will ever come back to Baracoa. She has two grown sons, he’s heard, and is beginning to show her age, but Godo wouldn’t care. He’d take her anyway. For him Mercedes will always be that dark-eyed girl, standing in the doorway, twisting her exquisitely boneless fingers, sneaking glances at him under her lashes. Surely her doctor husband might go away on a medical mission to Venezuela or Bolivia or Africa — the further the better — and fall in love with a young girl there. But no, he remembers now what Romero told him — that Raúl has doubled the salaries of the Salud Publica workers for the very purpose of discouraging medical missions. Cuba has been losing all her doctors, Romero told him between swigs and drags. And child mortality stats have risen alarmingly due to misdiagnosis, he had said, leering ominously at Godo. ‘Diagnosis! That’s the one thing you can’t learn in medical school. It is a matter of guidance from those who have the experience that has come with years of practice.’ Godo sometimes thinks Romero a frustrated orator, especially with the rum loosening his tongue and the tobacco furring it. Ah, but all those hours of painting alone in his studio — no wonder. One must have compassion, one must listen, Godo decides. But who will listen to me?
