The Book of Lost Saints

by Daniel José Older

  “You don’t want to join us partway? What part of town you going to?”

  “It’s fine,” Adina says, almost sharply. “It’s fine.”

  Kacique shrugs, looks at Ramón and Aliceana. “¿Listos? You guys look like perfect tourists.”

  “Thanks,” Ramón says. They hop into the same old taxi from the day before and rumble off through the dusty Miramar streets toward Vedado.

  “This is your aunt we’re meeting with?” Ramón asks.

  “Yes,” Kacique mutters. “My aunt.” His sarcasm is barely concealed. Everybody is everybody’s aunt here, I almost forgot.

  Old Havana. Crumbling colonial facades and faded murals. Scruffy street dogs roam around in packs, scatter at the slightest hint of trouble. Puddles pockmark the uneven streets; a little kid pees on the curb while his mom looks away. The taxi pulls to a halt. Ramón pays and then Kacique leads them through a huge wooden door to a shadowy atrium inside an ancient row house.

  “It’s called a solar,” Kacique says. “This design with the balconies around an inner open area, yes? People who grow up in these apartments all know each other, they are each other’s families, both literally and because they share a space together.”

  Aliceana and Ramón nod. “Which one does your aunt live in?” Aliceana asks.

  “Oh, she doesn’t live here.”

  “But—”

  “Shh.”

  They stand still for a few minutes. The quiet churn of the city comes and goes like breath, the plants around them stir gently. Somewhere, a baby cries and a woman yells for Mercedes to get the milk off the stove, ya. There is a constant drip-dripping, the shuffle of feet, and the soft murmur of a radio announcer, punctuated by rhythmic bleats marking the passage of time. Somewhere not far away, a rooster calls.

  “Okay,” Kacique says. “Vámonos.”

  They step back out into the open sunlight and proceed up a narrow side street. “It’s about a ten-minute walk from here.”

  “Why didn’t we just—” Ramón starts.

  “Because then the taxi guy’d know where we’re going, man,” Aliceana says.

  “Ah,” Ramón says. “But, if you don’t trust the cabbie, why hire him twice in a row?”

  “Because I don’t trust anybody, but I still need transportation to get my friends the yanquis places, no? And Chano is mostly deaf and entirely stupid and very horny. I know how to keep him happy and confused.”

  Aliceana’s eyes go wide. “You mean you—”

  “¡No, coño! ¡Ay, qué horror! No, I buy him how do you say? Magazines? Girly? Girly magazines?”

  “Ohhh!”

  “They’re very hard to come by, you know.” It’s true: All along the mercados and causeways of Havana, old books and the state-run newspapers glare out, but there is not a bikini-clad woman in sight.

  “Up this way.” Kacique leads them up a stairwell between two buildings that look like they’ve been collapsing in slow motion for at least a century. Maps of peeling paint savage the sun-soaked stucco walls.

  Kacique pokes his head out into the street at the top. It is empty. He motions them briskly to a gated entranceway and hits the buzzer. A kid opens the door—alright, maybe he’s twenty-one or -two? He has a bright, wide-open face and a gray Mets T-shirt that is way too big for his lanky frame. When he sees Kacique he grins with half his mouth and narrows his eyes in a way that seems somehow self-effacing and sarcastic.

  “¿Los yanquis?” the boy says.

  “Cállate, coño, Catabalas, and open the damn gate, before the whole of La Habana gets to be in on our conversation.”

  Catabalas smirks and rolls his eyes, fumbling with the metal lock, and then makes an exaggerated welcoming gesture. Kacique waits until the massive wooden door is shut before making introductions. “Ramón, Aliceana, this is Catabalas. Besides knowing much more than anyone ever should about computers and things, he is perhaps the biggest pain in the ass the Cuban government has ever known.”

  Catabalas cheek kisses Aliceana and gives Ramón a pound. “It is an honor to meet you, Ramón. Your song ‘Mechadrome’? I play it while I watch the pirated German pornography and listen: perfection. Understand? It’s like you were in the room when they were making the films and matched each beat to a thrust.”

  “Oh. Uh … thank you!”

  “No,” Catabalas says sincerely. “Thank you. Now come. Kacique here tells me we have business to discuss.”

  This place, it’s comfortable. The front room opens to an inner garden; two short palm trees keep watch over a menagerie of lilies and daffodils. The next room is shadowy, but the wide windows let the breeze in from the garden. Wind chimes glistening in the doorway sing out a constant shimmery tinkle like the flow of water. It takes me a moment to adjust and then a strange sense of home comes over me. Family portraits dot the cracked walls. There’s a small cabinet in the corner and a nightstand beside it. At the far end of the room, an old woman lies perfectly still in a wooden bed.

  The room breathes in and out with the garden breeze, the soft murmur of the wind chimes. The woman may as well be dead. Catabalas nods at her as they pass. “My tía, Adriana. She’s one of the famous Damas de Blanca you may have read about in the newspapers, eh? Or maybe not, I don’t know.”

  “Is she … okay?” Aliceana asks.

  She is, but only barely. I’m just inches from her sallow face. She’s not so old as I’d first thought, but her frail body is collapsing piece by piece.

  “She’s on a hunger strike,” Catabalas says. “To demand the release of my mom, Argelina Malcatrán? I don’t know if word gets out or not over there. We try to keep the international press informed, but there’s not much breaking news to someone being in prison for another year, so it usually gets buried underneath more important stories like Eddie Murphy getting divorced.”

  “Eddie Murphy got divorced?” Kacique blurts out. Catabalas punches him in the chest.

  “You okay, Tía?”

  Adriana nods ever so slightly. For a moment, we merge. Her life force pulses so languidly: a feverish, thready beat every now and then. A sorrow that I remember well drenches the emptiness between each pulse: loss. The uncertainty of one left behind, the urge to live mingled with the stench of regret. Starving brings physicality to the emotional loss.

  “How long?” Aliceana asks.

  “The fast? Twenty-one days now.”

  “But…” Aliceana struggles for the words, comes up empty.

  “I know,” Catabalas says. “I know.”

  “There are some Americans here, Tía. Cuban Americans. My favorite DJ is here.”

  “Bueno.” It’s a whisper, a croak really. “Mira, ver si quieren refresco.”

  Kacique rolls his eyes, flinching as Catabalas pops him again. “¡Hola, Tía Adriana!”

  “Ay, Kacique. Ten cuidado, mi amor, ¿okay?”

  “Okay, Tía.” They pass into the next room. “She says that every time,” Kacique mutters just before the door closes.

  I feel peaceful here. Adriana struggles between holding on and letting go; the room is tainted with her sorrow, but it is home to me somehow and I find myself dispersing into the empty space above her bed. I wonder if I knew her. She may be about my age, I think as I become thinner and thinner in the air. The family photos reveal no familiar faces, but I could imagine one of her people may have been in prison with me, no? Cuba is a small world; subversive Cuba even smaller. Claustrophobic even.

  It doesn’t matter. Something in this woman’s mourning is also mine. We have both lost a sister, even if hers is still alive. Or maybe she’s what I imagine Isabel would be like if she’d lived.

  I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave, but Kacique seems to think the Catabalas fellow has the key to finding out what my fate was. Particle by particle I reunite, then breathe a few moments. I can’t heal her—she is at war with herself. But still I radiate the best of myself with each breath, all the peaceful moments of my life I can find, a prayer made from memori
es, and then flutter off to find the others.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The light in Catabalas’s cramped hacker den is tinted green and shrouded over by various drapes dangling from the ceiling. Thrasher metal grinds out of a speaker system that seems to sprout out of every corner. Mostly naked, improbably busty cartoon women strike poses along the walls beside a glowering black light portrait of Malcolm X.

  “This is nice equipment,” Ramón says, running his finger along the soundboard.

  “Yeah, the CIA gave it to me.”

  Ramón’s eyes go wide.

  “I’m kidding. If the CIA were to give me one cup of coffee the dipshits upstairs would put me away for being an imperialist. Anyway, I hate those pigfuckers too.”

  “Oh. How does everybody speak so freely here?” Aliceana asks. “Everywhere else we’ve been so far it’s all sign language and subterfuge.”

  Kacique puts an arm around Aliceana’s shoulder. “This is why I love your girlfriend, Ramón. She notices things. You should be grateful that I am a no-vagina zone.”

  “You can’t imagine how grateful. Along with all the other straight men of Cuba, I’m sure.”

  Catabalas shakes his head. “You don’t even know, hermano.”

  “Anyway.” Kacique squeezes Aliceana one time and then releases her. “Catabalas has rigged the place with antibugging devices, the most sophisticated there are. And he scans it every morning after his cafecito.”

  “Damn,” Ramón whispers into an exhale. “It’s really that deep here, huh.”

  “Correct.” Catabalas lights a cigarette, further murking up the already hazy air. “Sorry, I farted. Now, let’s talk business, eh?”

  As Kacique and Ramón run down the basic premise of the visit, I circle past the drapes to the ceiling. For all its physical clutter, the place is pleasantly free of other ghosts or unnecessary energies. There’s no spiritual mess clogging up the upper corners of the room, no lingering demons or echoes of nostalgia. I feel crisp here, fresh, and I suspect the young hacker keeps a babalawo around for regular cleansings.

  “This woman fought against the regime. She went to prison. She disappeared. Yes?”

  “From the best we can figure,” Ramón says a little sheepishly.

  “What are your sources?”

  “It’s, uh … complicated.”

  I suspect this boy wonder would be open to the dream narrative, but Ramón is too shy about it. It doesn’t matter; he has more pressing concerns. “But you said the very mention of this situation rattled the lady at the ministry of peepeecaca, yes?”

  “To the core,” Kacique says. “You know they don’t want any gusanos coming back looking for their long-lost rebel tías, come now. They were put out. Started throwing threats and paperwork around the office as per standard operating etc., etc.”

  “Mmm…” Catabalas pulls out a piece of paper.

  “So it irritates the hell out of the Cuban government.” He checks off a box. “Does it help out a committed ally or friend of the movement?”

  Kacique raises his eyebrows at his friend and cranes his neck forward.

  “Okay, then. Check. Is it a problem that can be feasibly tackled with the resources I have on hand? Well, obviously. And finally, does Catabalas come out somehow on top in the end?”

  Kacique snickers. “Well, that’s a whole other type of—”

  “No, of course, of course,” Ramón cuts in. He’s shuffling awkwardly through his pockets.

  “No,” Catabalas says. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Ramón frowns at him.

  “Well, I’ll take some of that too, but more importantly: Her name is Yaniris.”

  “Listen,” Ramón says, palms raised. “I don’t know what you heard…”

  “I just want a chance to talk to her. I … she doesn’t even know I exist.”

  “Why don’t you just—” Aliceana says.

  “And, you’re her favorite DJ, Ramón. She is crazy for it, every time we have an opportunity to pirate more of your music.”

  Ramón shrugs. “What do you want me to—”

  “She is so beautiful!” Catabalas spins around in his chair and starts clicking away at his desktop. “You see?” A girl’s face pops up on the screen. She looks alarmingly like Catabalas, even has the same wiry glasses, but her face is framed by long, curly hair that drapes down around her shoulders. She wears a wily smile and glares at the camera like it just said something slick about her. One of Ramón’s beats erupts from the sound system and a fluttering of animated doves bursts out over her face.

  “Whoa,” Ramón laughs. “You made a little digi-shrine for your love? That may not be the way to—”

  “I was going to show it to her, but…” Catabalas shuts off the music with a click and navigates to another page. “I got shy.”

  “She’s cute,” Aliceana says. “What do you want Ramón to do?”

  “Somehow, to give me a chance. That’s all. I don’t know how. You figure that part out. But this”—he clicks open an official-looking website with the Cuban flag on it—“I’ll do whatever I can to get information about your tía.”

  Kacique sighs. “I don’t think this is what Ché meant when he said all revolutionaries come from love.”

  “You shut up,” Catabalas snaps.

  * * *

  I walked here. Both as a child and later, in much more troubled times, with fists clenched, praying I wouldn’t be noticed. Very little has changed. The Gran Teatro de La Habana is the same towering gray relic; still filthy and obtuse. Its pigeons and pigeon-shit-covered statues still loom over the park, where old men still tease each other about American sports teams and beautiful women.

  There are more tourists here, that’s all. Last time I passed this way it was only a year or two after the revolution. A few adventure seekers straggled through, but nothing like this hustle and bustle of pasty, flashing-camera desperation. Here’s a German family, crisp tight pants unrolled from cramped suitcases, having a minor fallout over whether to head to the Capitolio or call it a day. The late afternoon sky menaces more rain. There go some Spaniards, teenagers, wild and frothy on their first romp overseas. A middle-aged man in a suit strolls along the busy throughway arm in arm with a young Cuban girl. She’s maybe thirteen and reminds me, with a pang of sorrow, of Nilda; she has her eyes and that proud, defiant lift of her chin. They’re careful not to brush against a filthy beggar lurching past on crutches.

  And here comes Ramón, making his way through the crowds alongside Kacique. He’s his own peculiar brand of tourist: The jineteros and beggars aren’t sure what to make of him. He looks Cuban, yes? Certainly has that whatever it is that we see in each other, some nuance of his facial structure or a rhythmic tic invisible to the conscious eye. But his clothes are not quite right. The tall, unabashedly effeminate, perfect specimen of manhood that walks beside him gets stares for a whole other reason. They don’t blend in, but it doesn’t matter: Before anyone can ask too many questions they’ve ducked down a small stairwell along a side wall of the Gran Teatro and are gone.

  * * *

  “What is this place?”

  “The basement.” Kacique hits a switch and a splash of Technicolor lights blinks to life, chasing each other across a stage at the far end of the room.

  “They do shows down here?”

  “On Wednesdays and Fridays they have some old cha-cha-cha and danzón cats play and all the viejitos come out and swing around the dance floor a couple of times. It looks like they all crawled out of Colón cemetery and have to hurry back into their graves by midnight or they’ll turn to dust.”

  Ramón just stands at the doorway, speechless.

  I don’t know what’s so great about this place except it’s a big empty hall. You can barely see anything because the stage lighting only reaches so far into the darkness. I suppose for a DJ it’s all you really need, the music will do the rest, no?

  Ramón hasn’t moved. I’d launched into the great open middle are
a, but he’s still frozen with his mouth open. I return to him, first thinking he’s disappointed somehow, typical spoiled American, doesn’t realize what kind of massive wrangling it must’ve taken Kacique to secure a spot such as this.

  But then I pay attention. This place, at this moment, has always existed within Ramón. To come perform in some ancient hideaway, dusty and legendary, to be anxiously awaited by an adoring fanbase, to be in the midst of it all: the fluttering pigeons and bustle of the street, the whole world of it spinning madly around this central cathedral-like monument to music—he had imagined some form of his homecoming to the home he’d never been so many times, and this outshines them all.

  “It’s … it’s perfect.”

  I slide into his skin. What promise does an empty hall beneath the Gran Teatro de La Habana hold for this man-child? What secrets can he see here that even I can’t fathom?

  Joy. It’s the simplest kind—not sullied by uncertainty or fear—uncluttered joy. It radiates from his core in easy-moving waves, overtakes the darkness around us with flashes of what will be: bodies clustered together, moving as one to the music, the sweet swelling music. No, it’s not a vision of the future, I realize as I turn slow circles in the pulsating club scene of his imagination. Before I came along and interrupted his late nights, Ramón dreamed of this.

  What is mythical to me because of my own memory is a whole other kind of adventure to Ramón. He has heard stories all his life, he’s wondered, thought, doubted, and, of course, dreamed. And it hasn’t been real until this very moment: Kacique’s gift, this place.

  “Do the theater people mind that we’re using it?” Ramón asks, once he’s collected himself some.

  Kacique is on the other side of the room, fussing with some wiring. “To mind they would have to know, yes?” He hops up onto the stage and grins out at Ramón.