Letters from Cuba

by Ruth Behar

  “I know, Mama. There is so much evil in the world. But there are good people here, Mama. Most Cubans are so nice and eager to be friends.”

  “I hope so, Esther, I hope so.” She pointed to the open balcony, from where the light streamed into the room. “I have to say that this warm sunshine in the middle of winter is very soothing.”

  She smiled at me again, quickly covering her mouth out of embarrassment.

  “Mama, what happened to your tooth?”

  “That terrible day when Bubbe announced she wouldn’t travel with us, I was carrying a load of firewood and I tripped and fell and broke off my front tooth. I feel I’ve aged a hundred years.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama. We’ll go to a dentist soon and get it fixed, and then you’ll be as beautiful as ever.”

  Mama kissed my forehead a second time, and then we made dinner together and talked about how we would tidy up the store.

  You were too tired to join us for dinner again, Malka, and only wanted to stay in bed and sleep, as if you’d rather live with your eyes closed than be awake.

  I know you are suffering. I know you miss Govorovo. I know it hurts to not have Bubbe with us. But I worry you will wither away if you don’t let go of your sadness.

  With my love forever,

  ESTHER

  HAVANA

  February 4, 1939

  Dear Malka,

  Today was such a happy day. You woke up hungry, went to the kitchen, and got yourself a thick slice of challah slathered with butter and sprinkles of sweet Cuban sugar.

  Until today you refused to wear anything but your woolen dresses from Poland. But after breakfast, you put on the green dress I made for you. And you slipped on the sandals from Zvi Mandelbaum, sandals like mine, with all your toes showing.

  It was Shabbos. Papa and Mama and our brothers had gone to shul for an early-morning service before coming back to open the store. I was on the balcony watering the plants, and you came and said, “Look at me!”

  “Malka, you look so beautiful! The dress fits you perfectly and it really does match the color of your green eyes!”

  “You sewed this dress yourself?” you asked.

  I could see how you enjoyed the way the dress swirled as you moved.

  “I did,” I replied. “I designed it and I sewed it.”

  “You are good. No wonder Mama is proud of you.”

  “Thank you, Malka.”

  Then you said, “Maybe I can help. Bubbe taught me to embroider flowers. I could embroider flowers on the dresses.”

  “What a great idea! Those can be our special dresses!”

  We hugged each other, and although you were still light as air, your feet stood firmly on the ground now. We were becoming real sisters again, the way we had been in Poland.

  “Esther, I want to start reading the letters you wrote to me.”

  “That’s so wonderful, Malka! Let me get them for you.”

  I ran to our bedroom and brought out the old accounting notebook from Poland where I’d been writing my letters to you.

  “How about if I read a letter aloud, then you read a letter aloud?”

  “Yes, Malka! Yes!”

  After we read the first two, you turned to me and said, “Sister, you wrote all these letters just for me?”

  “Yes, I did. I missed you so much. And writing was a comfort for me too. I felt like I was talking to you across the distance and preserving new memories. It was like gathering seashells along the shore to keep them from being washed away.”

  We went back to reading the letters and were so entertained sitting in the rocking chairs and reading aloud to each other that we didn’t notice when the key turned in the lock and Mama and Papa and our brothers returned home.

  “Good Shabbos!” they called out from the entryway.

  I quickly closed the notebook and hid it under my seat, since we both wanted to keep our letters secret. “Good Shabbos!” we called back. “We’re sitting here by the balcony!”

  Papa’s eyes shone when he saw you sitting with me, and Mama said how nice you looked in the green dress and the sandals.

  Then I said to Papa, “We’re going to need embroidery thread in every color. Malka is going to make special embroideries for our dresses.”

  “That is good, very good,” Papa said. “I will give you all the thread you want, happily.”

  For the first time in days, Papa’s furrowed brow relaxed and I heard him utter a prayer of thanks under his breath.

  With all the love a sister can give,

  ESTHER

  HAVANA

  February 5, 1939

  Dear Malka,

  Last night, after our Shabbos dinner, I made sour cherry tea for all of us. The tea cheered us up and made us think Poland wasn’t so far away.

  “It reminds me of Bubbe,” you whispered.

  And Papa said, “May it be God’s will that we see her again soon.”

  As I drank my tea in the beautiful teacup decorated with flowers and flying birds that was Francisco’s gift to me, I was filled with memories of Agramonte and my happy days there.

  Mama asked where I got the Polish tea, and I told her, “From our friends in Agramonte who have a store that sells foods from all over the world.”

  Then, Malka, you perked up and said, “The owner’s name is Juan Chang and his nephew’s name is Francisco Chang. And Esther made other friends too—Manuela, and her father, Mario José, and her grandmother Ma Felipa, and Doctor Pablo, who helped Papa when he was hurt, and Señora Graciela, who cries for her daughter, Emilia, who died.”

  “How do you know all this?” Mama asked with a puzzled look.

  “Esther told me about them. I wish I could meet them,” you said, and gave me a playful wink when nobody was looking.

  Then I dared to ask our father something I didn’t dream he would agree to. “Papa, would you let me take Malka to Agramonte tomorrow? It will be Sunday, so I won’t miss school.”

  “By yourselves you’ll go?”

  “I know the route. We went many times, Papa. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember. How could I forget?” He smiled and looked at you tenderly. “Would you like to go, Malka? Maybe you will enjoy the fresh air.”

  “Yes, I want to go!” you replied, with such enthusiasm, we were shocked.

  Mama became concerned. “Is it safe for the girls to go on the train?”

  Papa told her, “Our girls will be safe, I have no doubt.”

  This morning you held my hand, and together we rushed to the train station and arrived in enough time to grab two seats right next to the window. You kept your face pressed against the glass the whole way. You seemed to want to memorize the Cuban countryside and bring it inside you.

  You pointed to the tall trees brushing the sky and asked, “Are those the Cuban palm trees?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They are palmas.”

  “How beautiful they are,” you replied, and for the first time in days, you smiled.

  When we arrived in Agramonte, you took a deep breath, and I said to you, “It smells sweet, doesn’t it?”

  You said, “I have never smelled anything so sweet.”

  “That’s the smell of sugar. Azúcar. They grow a lot of sugar here.”

  “The work is bitter, but the result is sweet,” you said.

  “Malka! You remember those words from my letters!”

  You smiled. “Yes, I do. Those were Papa’s words. Now they’re my words.”

  “Come,” I told you. “Let’s visit everyone.”

  We crossed into town and right away bumped into Señora Graciela. She was wearing the dark blue dress I had sewn for her.

  “Am I imagining things?” she said in a merry voice. “Esther, what brings you here? And who is this pretty girl with you?”


  “This is my sister, Malka,” I told her. “We came so she could see Agramonte.”

  Señora Graciela was so happy. She insisted we go to her house right away. There was Doctor Pablo, reading the newspaper as always. “Terrible news, terrible news,” he muttered. He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose, smiled at us, and said, “Esther, you grace us with your presence again.”

  Señora Graciela told him, “And this pretty girl is her sister.”

  They asked us to sit on the sofa under the portrait of their daughter, Emilia. On a big silver tray, Señora Graciela brought us sweet pineapple juice and toasted bread with mango jam and thick slices of cheese. You ate with gusto, dear Malka. That was a delight after all the days you’ve forced yourself to swallow your food.

  I took you across the street and showed you where Papa and I lived during the year we were saving up enough money to bring all of you to Cuba. Then I led you to the store and there, as usual, was Juan Chang sitting behind the counter, waiting for customers. Francisco was sketching in his notebook.

  “You haven’t forgotten about us!” Juan Chang said. He asked about Papa, and I told him he was well and that Mama and our brothers had arrived safely.

  Francisco smiled and turned his notebook around so we could see what he had been drawing. It was a ship at sea filled with people. “I hope refugees will always be able to come to Cuba and find a new home,” he said.

  “I hope so too,” I said.

  I told him I liked his sketch, and he gave it to me. “Take it, Esther, but promise you’ll come visit us again.”

  Juan Chang didn’t want you to leave empty-handed, dear Malka, and he reached around to the shelf behind him and pulled down a tin of the sour cherry tea. I was embarrassed to accept this generous gift again, as much as we all loved it, but he insisted we bring it home to Mama and Papa and our brothers.

  And then, for the first time, Malka, you uttered a word aloud in Spanish. You said, “Gracias,” and it sounded so beautiful coming from you.

  We went on to Ma Felipa’s house. Manuela was putting the laundry out to dry on the clothesline. I saw that she was hanging up the dresses I had sewn for her and Ma Felipa. I called to her, “Manuela!”

  “Esther, you’re back! And that must be your sister!”

  She rushed over and hugged us both. And, Malka, that was when you said your second word in Spanish. “Hola,” you said. It was pure happiness to hear it.

  “Guess what?” Manuela said to me cheerfully. “I’m going to secondary school in Jagüey Grande! I am learning so much.”

  I could imagine her a few years from now teaching the schoolchildren in Agramonte. How wonderful that would be!

  Manuela brought us inside, and Ma Felipa embraced us with warm hugs.

  After giving us each a glass of cool water from Yemayá’s fountain, Ma Felipa offered us the coconut treats she makes. “This is delicious,” you whispered to me.

  Mario José was nearby in the fields, and Manuela ran to get him. He brought sugarcane for you to taste, Malka. You bit into it and smiled. “Azúcar,” you said.

  Outside in the yard, you saw the ceiba tree and you went and threw your arms around its wide bark, and you began to cry.

  I explained to Ma Felipa about your sadness. “Triste, muy triste, mi hermana,” I said, and I didn’t need to say anything more.

  Ma Felipa and Manuela sang softly, “Yemayá Asesu, Asesu Yemayá,” while Mario José gently tapped out the soul of the tune on his large batá drum.

  After a while, you stopped crying. The sadness lifted and your green eyes glowed again.

  “Esther, I am here,” you said.

  “I’ve missed you, Malka. I’m glad you made it.”

  On the train ride back to Havana, you looked at me with eyes still glowing and said, “I want to read the rest of your letters. Can I read them tonight, dear sister?”

  “They are for you,” I replied. “Welcome to Cuba.”

  From ESTHER,

  with love

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  THE MORNING Of Friday, August 31, 1939, was an ordinary market day in Govorovo, Poland. The sun shone on the cobblestones. Children played tag, enjoying the late-summer warmth. Peasants from the surrounding villages arrived with wagons filled with grains and livestock, while Jewish residents had boots, clothes, and hats to sell. But there was tension in the air. Soon they’d know why.

  The next day, September 1, 1939, a German bomb fell on Govorovo. The war had begun. Some of the Jews fled to Russia. Those who stayed were awoken eight days later by German soldiers shooting Jews who refused to come out of their houses. It was a Saturday. They shoved the Jews into their old wooden synagogue, telling them, “It is your Shabbos, go!” and set the shul aflame. Several managed to escape and survive. Nearly all who remained in Govorovo would later perish in the Holocaust.

  I didn’t know this history when I was a young Cuban immigrant girl growing up in New York a few decades later. But I was very close to my maternal grandmother, Esther, who was born in Govorovo. She had been an immigrant twice—to Cuba and then to the United States. We communicated in Spanish with a sprinkling of English, though Baba’s mother tongue was Yiddish, of which she’d only passed on a few words to me.

  I had noticed that Baba kept a black-and-white photograph on the wall of an old woman with a faraway gaze. One day I asked who she was.

  “That was my grandmother,” Baba told me. “She refused to come to Cuba with the family. She was very religious and was afraid she’d have to give up her traditions in Cuba. Instead she perished in the Holocaust.”

  Baba told me nothing more, but I will never forget that moment. This book was born then, though I didn’t sit down to write it until many years later. And although much of Esther’s story and her letters are fictional, many of the facts surrounding her are based on my family history.

  I often heard Baba proudly tell the story of how she’d convinced her father, my great-grandfather Abraham Levin, to let her be the first of her siblings to join him in Cuba. This tropical island had become a haven for numerous Jews fleeing Poland’s worsening economic situation and growing anti-Semitism on the eve of the war. It was thanks to Baba’s courage—crossing the ocean alone and starting anew in Cuba—that her mother and siblings were saved from the horror to come.

  Baba was older than Esther is in this book, but she still had to persuade her father that, though she was a girl, she could work as hard as her younger brother Moshe. She left Govorovo and arrived in Cuba in 1927 to find her father was working as a peddler. Peddling was a common way to make a living if you were starting from nothing, and my family started from nothing in Cuba.

  My grandmother Esther lived to be ninety-two and was lucid until the end. Throughout her life, she was haunted by the loss of the grandmother she couldn’t save. The framed photograph on the wall was a reminder of the sad fate of those who weren’t able to start a new life in a new land and perished in places they once called home.

  Baba never had any interest in going back to see Govorovo. Eventually I went on my own and tried to imagine Baba living there when she was young. But more than setting foot in Govorovo, what helped me to conjure the home she had to leave was the memorial book for Govorovo, also known as a Yizkor book. These books exist for many Jewish towns, or shtetls, that once were an integral part of the social landscape in Poland. They preserve the memory of Jews who lived there, refusing to let them fade into oblivion. Baba treasured the memorial book for Govorovo, which my great-grandfather helped edit. I learned about the destruction of the town in 1939 through the Yiddish reminiscences in the book.

  One of Baba’s younger sisters suffered from depression, though they didn’t use that word at the time. They knew she was sad, desperately sad. I thought about that great-aunt, whom I found to be so thoughtful and sensitive, and wondered what it would have been l
ike to move to Cuba as a young girl, knowing you were leaving behind your beloved grandmother. I gave Malka all those feelings, that trauma, to contrast her with the brave Esther, always ready for a challenge.

  We are all familiar with the immigrant stories of European Jews who passed through Ellis Island on their way to becoming Americans. I loved Karen Hesse’s Letters from Rifka and thought I would tell a parallel story about a Polish Jewish girl searching for her America in the Cuban countryside. I wanted readers to know about Jews like my grandmother who found refuge in the “other América.”

  My grandmother made Cuba her home because racist and anti-Semitic quotas set in motion by the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted Jewish immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States. There were Jews who stayed temporarily in Cuba, treating it as a stopover until they could somehow manage to get to the United States, the “real America.” But Jews like my grandmother fell in love with Cuba and hoped to stay forever. Then, in the 1960s, Baba, like many others, was disheartened to have to leave Cuba when the revolution turned Communist, and she lost all that she had worked for.

  Most Jews who settled in Cuba felt liberated from the anti-Semitism they had felt in Europe. Yet scholars and writers have focused on one particularly distressing chapter of Jewish-Cuban history—the tragedy of the St. Louis vessel. This luxury liner brought 934 German Jewish passengers to Cuba who sought refuge from the Nazis. But upon arriving on May 27, 1939, only a handful were allowed in. Due to a rising tide of Nazi sympathies among a powerful Cuban minority who used the press to advertise their hateful views, the ship was ordered out of Cuban waters. Refused entry to the United States and Canada, the SS St. Louis returned to Europe. About a third of the passengers found refuge in Britain. The rest were taken in by countries that soon found themselves under Nazi occupation, and some 254 of them died in concentration camps or at the hands of the Nazis.

  Even though Cuba wasn’t solely to blame for the tragedy, this “voyage of the damned” has loomed large in Cuban history. I believe this is because it seems so out of character for a country in which it is rare to encounter anti-Semitism. Cuba is a place of huge diversity, where people of different cultures and backgrounds coexist, and where Jews, in particular, have felt and continue to feel a sense of belonging. The St. Louis incident was a dark chapter in Cuba’s history. That is what makes it so disturbing. In writing this novel, I wanted to imagine what it was like for my grandmother and my other family members to have arrived in Cuba on the eve of the St. Louis and found refuge while others, Jews like them, were later turned away.