“God knows!” the woman grimaced and opened a filing cabinet. “Nice to meet you, kid,” she added to Carlito over her shoulder. “Hope you’re enjoying your stay in Puerto Rico. There, that should show your compatriot that some of us have some manners!”
Gonzalo, who had meanwhile opened a desk drawer, rolled his eyes, and gave an awkward half-bow as he rummaged. “May I present Señora Jennifer Madera,” he said with mock formality. “Señora Madera, Señor Carlos --“ he paused, looking slightly embarrassed.
“Tejada,” Carlito supplied, holding back a giggle.
The old man’s head jerked up, and for a moment Carlito wondered if he was having a heart attack. “Tejada?” he repeated. The unattended desk drawer slid shut with a sharp click and Gonzalo cursed, yanking his hand free. “Goddamn! These things can pinch you like hell!” He waved one hand, and Carlito saw that the already rheumy eyes were perilously close to tearing.
“You want ice?” Jennifer paused, concerned.
“No, thanks. Shit. Carlos Tejada,” Gonzalo shook his head. “I’m going to head over to see how José’s doing. If you find his grandmother’s number will you give her a call?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you Saturday?” Carlito confirmed.
“What? Yes, sure. Saturday.” Gonzalo sounded preoccupied. “Nice to have met you.”
Carlito said farewell to Jennifer Madera, and let himself out, a little uncertain whether the trip had been a success or a failure. He had, he reminded himself, set up an interview. Now, if he could make it out of La Perla in one piece, the trip would be more or less a success. He found a narrow path that led up to a break in the fortifications of the old city, and then, recognizing his surroundings, ignored Gonzalo’s advice and found a bus stop. He waited in the piercing afternoon sun for the bus, sweating in the moist heat, and wondering how the natives stood it. He relaxed slightly on the air-conditioned trip back to the Condado, wondering a little who the Migra were, and why the unknown Dominican José required rescuing from them. The more he reviewed what he had learned the happier he was. Señor Llorente - Gonzalo, he corrected himself - was clearly a lively and intelligent man. He was likely to tell a very good story. Although he was generally sorry that his trip was ending, Carlito decided he was looking forward to Saturday evening.
*****
Saturday evening, Carlito showered carefully, although he doubted that it would do any good. He could feel the water from the shower turning into sweat as soon as he stepped out of the hotel’s air-conditioning into the humidity, so different from the clean desert heat he knew. The address the veteran had given him was in Santurce, and after some consideration (and some consultation with the desk staff at the hotel) Carlito decided to take another taxi. His destination raised no eyebrows this time, and a little after sunset he was dropped off in a residential neighborhood, of one story concrete houses, most with elaborate front porches, and bougainvillea climbing wildly over the fences. A car rumbled by, the bass in its radio thumping loudly over its faulty mufflers. As the salsa faded in the distance, Carlos became aware of a rhythmic chirping. Co-quí, co-quí. The little tree-frog whose likeness had greeted him at the airport was apparently more than a local myth.
Carlos rang the bell at the gate, wondering a little at the lonely isolation of each house. At home (he stifled an unexpected wave of nostalgia) the houses shared walls, like friends. Here each stood apart in its own yard, as if touching each other in this damp heat would have been unpleasant. He wondered why people chose to live like this. It could not be for privacy. Sounds, lights, and smells, filtered clearly through the metal louvers that served as windows: meat frying in oil for the early dinner, the flickering lights of a television set, and the mournful song playing on a stereo next door. “Cambia, todo cambia....”
The door to the little house opened, and a figure appeared, silhouetted against the light. He stepped out into the dusk, and became an old man, balding, with a pronounced stoop, who kept one hand on a large dog of indeterminate breed. “Who’s there?”
“Señor Llorente?” the man’s voice had reassured Carlos, but the dog’s low growling did not.
“Carlos Tejada?”
“Yes, sir. Gonzalo.”
“Come in, come in. Sit, you idiot.” As the last comment was clearly addressed to the dog, Carlito advanced, and found his hand being shaken. “Don’t pay any mind to Leo,” Gonzalo added. “He looks tough, but about the worst he could do would be to slobber an intruder to death.” He shepherded the boy towards the house as they spoke, and held the screen door for him.
The warm light dispelled the tropical shadows. Something was frying in the kitchen. The music from next door floated in through the windows here too, somewhere between kitschy and haunting. “Cambia el clima con los años, cambia el pastor su rebaño, así como todo cambia, que yo cambie no es extraño...” Gonzalo ushered his guest into a small living room, and pointed to a seat on the couch, as Leo hovered around them, in a frenzy of tail-wagging. “My wife has been cooking non-stop since she found out we were having a visitor,” he said, smiling a little. “She’s convinced that you can’t understand the history of our young people until you’ve tasted our food.”
“A fine idea he’s giving you of me!” A woman with beautifully coiffed black hair came through an arched opening that led to the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. She was pretty, Carlito thought with surprise, although her manners seemed more like a mother’s, or even a grandmother’s. Then again, given Llorente’s age, she must be at least his own mother’s age, if not considerably older. It was hard to guess people’s ages when they didn’t act and dress them, the boy thought. “You forgot to mention the time I spend embroidering altar-cloths!” the woman shook her head at her husband in mock exasperation, and then turned to Carlito, and embraced him, smiling. “I’m Lydia Llorente. You’re the young man Gonzalo mentioned? From Madrid?”
“Yes,” Carlito smiled. “And I’ve tasted a good deal of Puerto Rican food already.”
“Sorullitos?” she demanded, her grandmotherly expression at odds with her expert makeup and still attractive face. “Tostones? Plátanos amarillos?”
“I don’t think tostones are vital to an understanding of the Latin Kings, dear,” Gonzalo protested mildly.
“But you’d eaten them already by the time you met any!” his wife retorted.
Carlito laughed, but seized the opportunity to dispel the misunderstanding. “”Actually I was more interested in Señor Llorente’s life story,” he explained, a little apologetically. “In Spain, especially. That is, I’m writing a thesis about the war, and I’m interested in doing oral histories...” He trailed off, watching the old man’s face close like the metal louvers that served as the windows in his adopted homeland. “As I told you before, your niece, Alejandra, suggested that since I was coming to Puerto Rico anyway-” he stopped again, recognizing the expression on Gonzalo Llorente’s face, and connecting him for the first time to the other veterans he had interviewed.
The old man sighed. Carlito recognized the sigh too. All of his interviewees had given it. “It’s not really the most interesting part of my life,” he said quietly.
“Please,” Carlito said quietly. “It’s important. Because we’re both madrileños.”
Gonzalo sank into a chair without speaking, and looked at his hands. They were large, strong hands, the fingers knobbled and spotted with age. The only sound was the distant music. “...pero no cambia mi amor, por más lejos que me encuentre, ni el recuerdo ni el dolor, de mi pueblo y de mi gente....” “Please,” Carlito repeated.
Unexpectedly, Lydia backed him up. “You should tell him, Gonzalo. It’s a good story. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” the veteran shrugged away the suggestion. “But it was all a long time ago. Before tostones,” he smiled briefly.
“How did you come to end up in Puerto Rico, anyway?” Carlito asked, sensing an opening.
Gonzalo met the boy’s
eyes squarely, looking amused. “I’m a social worker, you know. I know when someone is trying to discreetly ask me questions.” Then, as Carlito flushed and mumbled an apology. “And I might add that you’re very good at it.” His mouth twisted suddenly. “Perhaps getting answers is a family talent?”
“What?” Carlito looked involuntarily to Lydia. But her face, though benevolent, was puzzled.
The veteran sighed again. “Will you answer one question for me?”
“Of course.”
“Does Captain Tejada know you’re here?”
Carlito blinked. “Yes,” he said, too startled to do anything more than answer the question. “That is, he knows I’m in Puerto Rico. I didn’t mention that I was going to interview you because…because...”
“He disapproves of this project,” Gonzalo’s voice was flat.
“No!” Carlito hurried to clear his grandfather of what he felt to be an aspersion. “No, he talked to me. And even found a few other people for me to talk to. But my grandmother, and your niece said maybe he wouldn’t approve of my bothering you and...and how do you know him exactly, anyway? They wouldn’t tell me.”
Once again, the odd silence that was not silence, because it was broken by the sound of cars, fans, and the distant stereo. “...así, ¿cómo cambio yo, en estas tierras lejanas? Cambia, todo cambia...” Gonzalo turned deliberately to his wife. “Why don’t we have some of the plátanos if they’re ready. A shame to waste good food. And a Medalla. Do you want a drink, Carlos?”
Carlito was in fact thirsty, but he shook his head impatiently, unwilling to be distracted from his purpose.
Lydia cast a sharp glance at her husband, and then disappeared. She returned a moment later, carrying a platter with a plate of what Carlito recognized as fried sweet plantains, and a can of cold beer.
Gonzalo offered the platter to his guest. “I never thought I’d be doing this,” he said.
“Is the war so hard to talk about?” Carlito asked, sympathetic.
“I meant offering to eat with a grandson of Captain Tejada,” the old man said quietly. “But you’d better get out your tape recorder, if you’ve brought one.”
Carlito fumbled automatically in his bag. “You don’t mind being recorded?” he asked cautiously.
“I’ll tell you when to turn it off.” Without waiting for Carlito to set up or test his equipment, much less to be questioned, Gonzalo began talking. “I ended up in New York in ‘39. I had a friend there. In New Jersey, actually. Named Michael McCormick. He was a good boy. A man, I’d have called him then, but he never really got a chance to grow up. He died in the Pacific in ‘45. But my first place on my own was in New York. 214 East 116th Street,” he smiled. “Do you know New York?’
“No.”
“That’s what they call the barrio. The largest settlement of Puerto Ricans outside of San Juan. Even then it was Puerto Rican. It was easy for me because I didn’t have to learn English.” His wife coughed, and he added. “Well, I didn’t have to learn English to live there. It made it hard to get a job outside the barrio. Still, I picked up a few words, and I got by. This was 1940, 1941 and it was easy to find a job by then.”
“Easy to find a job?” Carlito echoed, dumbstruck.
The old man looked amused. “Those were good times in the U.S. No war, and lots of work. I picked up enough English to get a job at the docks during the war, but I lost it in ‘45. The GIs were coming home, and I wasn’t even a Union member. And then it was hard to find a job. I’d been an ironworker in Spain before the war, and I tried to get a job doing that, but who needed a Spanish refugee with no union card and no diploma, who couldn’t string together more than three words in English?” he paused, but it was a thoughtful pause, as he tried to order his thoughts, and Carlito was too wise to interrupt with another question. “What with one thing and another I decided I needed to learn English properly. I needed a job, and it looked like things weren’t going to change in Spain by then, so I was thinking about becoming a citizen. I finally got a job in a bodega on 116th Street and Lexington, pretty long hours, but flexible, so I could start early, and get off early enough to go to school nights. I did pretty well there, what with one thing and another.” Gonzalo broke off, to exchange an amused glance with his wife. “The owner of the bodega was a man named Rubén Ortíz - the most opinionated, prejudiced, hidebound jíbaro...”
“Be fair,” Lydia interrupted, smiling. “He’d come up to New York in ‘27, with nothing, and managed to do well, even in the midst of the depression...”
“And didn’t you know it!” her husband retorted. Seeing Carlito’s bewilderment he added. “This Ortíz was a real old-style Puerto Rican patriarch. Eight kids, and he raised them all to know the story of how he came up from San Juan with nothing and managed to do well, and so on, and so on.”
“How they didn’t know how easy they had it?” Carlito suggested with a slight smile, pleased that Gonzalo’s discomfort seemed to be falling away from him, and hoping that he could eventually be led gently back to the topic at hand.
“Exactly,” Gonzalo agreed. “And I will say that he sent all his kids through high school, even though the first five of them were girls, which was a dead loss as far as he was concerned. Catholic school, of course, but he was set in his ways, and the public schools probably weren’t too great. Well he didn’t think too much of me, and he thought even less of my politics, but he admitted I was a good worker, and he approved of my going to school. And he eventually approved enough to ask me to try to talk sense to his oldest girl, who had just finished school, and had all sorts of crazy ideas about going to college and moving out and generally becoming a scarlet woman. I can still see him sitting behind that register shaking his head,” Gonzalo shook his head and laughed, his accent altering as he imitated the storekeeper’s words. “’You, Llorente, you’re close to this generation. What’s the matter with them? It’s the war, isn’t it? They don’t respect their elders. You talk to Lydia. Tell her college is no place for a decent girl, who should be thinking about getting married.’ Of course, I told Lydia no such thing.”
“You told me to read the Communist Manifesto, which nearly convinced me that my father was right!” Lydia interjected. “Such stuff!” Turning to Carlito she added more seriously. “If you don’t mind my telling this part, Gonzalo is too modest. He actually encouraged me to keep on in school, and even talked my father into letting me try to go on. He walked me downtown when I had to register for classes on the first day. And I’ll tell you, it was so big, and no one spoke a word of Spanish...I was ready to turn around and go home and do you know he actually went up to the registrar and asked for directions? He couldn’t speak much English then, and there he was asking for directions for me, who’d been born and raised in the city. He shamed me into not quitting right then. And the whole time I was in school he told me to read, and asked about my classes, and treated my studying as if it were something more than a joke, which was the best that my family ever considered it.”
“You helped me with my English classes,” Gonzalo reminded his wife.
Lydia shook her head, eyes twinkling. “Not for any good reason. By that time I was head over ears in love with you. I used to tell my mother, ‘no, I can’t go out with so-and-so, I have to help Mr. Llorente study.’ Looking back, I think she must have been suspicious.”
“Why were you in love with him?” Carlito asked, enjoying the story tremendously, but unwilling to lose sight of his ultimate goal. “Did you know anything about his background?”
Gonzalo frowned, but Lydia replied easily. “I knew he was from Spain, of course, with that lovely accent. And I knew that he was different from any of the men I’d met before. Puerto Rican men are such terrible machistas that I remember thinking as a girl that I’d hate to marry any of them.”
“And Spaniards aren’t?” Carlito said, surprised.
“Oh, no, not in the same way. At least, not those that I’ve met.”
Unconsciously, Carlito lean
ed forward to check the little red light on his tape recorder devoutly hoping that Lydia’s words had been captured on tape to be replayed at the earliest opportunity to several girls of his acquaintance, most notably a certain damsel currently sharing his hotel room, who had once famously noted that the difference between Spanish men and gorillas was that at least male gorillas picked their own lice.
Oddly, Lydia’s words spurred her husband to speech. “No, that did have to do with what you’d call ‘my background.’ That was a conscious political decision of the Left in Spain, and whatever you may say about the Communists, their positions on women were ahead of their time.”
Lydia shrugged. “In any case, I was grateful for it.”
“When did you get married?” Carlito asked, willing to finish off the topic.
“It wasn’t really that simple,” Gonzalo explained. “Lydia was at Hunter - that’s a university in New York, a girls’ school at the time - and naturally she started wanting to go out to dances, and parties and things like that. She was too modern - too Americanized, we used to call it - to take a chaperone, and there was no way her father was letting a boy take her out. So I became a sort of unofficial date-cum-older brother. I’d sit by the wall feeling like I should have a fan and mantilla, and occasionally she’d invite me to dance out of pity.”
Lydia threw up her hands in exasperation. “Three years of the most shameless flirting I could manage, and he still talks about pity! He’s impossible! But to answer your question, Carlos, it started getting through his thick skull that I wasn’t just kidding him sometime around my last year of school. But by then Gonzalo was thinking about a degree in social work also, so we ended up waiting another two years, until my parents were finally afraid they would never get rid of me. They had quite a bit to say about my supporting him through school, but it was better than having their oldest daughter forever unmarried.” She laughed. “You know, Gonzalo finally asked me to marry him right after Commencement. May 1, 1950. And I’d been wanting him to for at least three years, and when he finally did I was standing there in a cap and gown and I said the first thing I thought, which was, “are you asking me this because you feel bad about forgetting to send roses?” And he said, “No, but I’ll do something else to make up the roses to you, if you like.” And I burst into tears. You know, I’d spent ages thinking he thought I was just a little schoolgirl, and I sometimes think he waited so long to propose because he wanted to make sure I was all grown up.”
What Happened When the War Was Over; further stories of Gonzalo Llorente and Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon Page 8
