Next Year in Havana Page 11

  “Things seem pretty serious between her and Alberto.”

  “Your mother is going to have a fit.”

  My mother has all sorts of problems with her daughters—one is in love with a rebel, the other is dating someone who doesn’t have the right last name, and Beatriz is, well, Beatriz. At this rate, Maria’s the only one who won’t turn out to be a massive disappointment, although she still has a few years in which to change that.

  I make a face. “Probably. Although, if one of us—”

  The square explodes into a fury of noise.

  Rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat.

  I freeze, my fingers closed tightly around my fork, my hand in midair. It takes a moment for my brain to reconcile those noises—firecrackers, cars backfiring, gunshots . . .

  “Get down,” Ana shouts, pushing me out of my stupor. Around us people yell and scream, the sound of crying filling the square.

  Rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat-rat-tat-tat.

  I huddle under the table, my arms around Ana, praying one of the stray bullets won’t hit us, that they won’t come over here and shoot us.

  What has happened to our city?

  As quickly as it begins, it stops, a deathly silence descending over the block. My body quaking, I look out from under the table. My stomach clenches. People are on the floor, hiding behind cars. Food has spilled from the tables, a stray piece of crusty bread lying on the ground near my face, wine staining the pavement in a deep red. The busy city has stilled; there is no sign of the gunmen. I fight the impulse to run, my gaze still searching.

  Will the police come and tell us it’s all clear?

  Slowly, as if released from a spell, people begin to stand, shouting and gesturing. Ana and I rise from the ground. My legs shake, knees buckling as I grab the table for support. There’s a gash on my palm from where I hit the ground, gravel embedded in my skin. The splatter of overturned black beans mars my hand. I wipe it on the linen napkin clutched in my white-knuckle fist. My fingers tremble as a new kind of worry fills me.

  It’s a strange sensation to feel tethered to violence—to know that somewhere in the city, this explosion of gunfire might have touched someone close to me, either perpetrator or victim—my brother or Pablo.

  We drop money on the table for the meal, fleeing the restaurant. Around us people swarm the street, shopkeepers and restaurant owners emerging from their businesses, their voices carrying.

  It was the rebels.

  No, it was the mob.

  Please, anyone could see they were Batista’s men. The rebels are making progress in the mountains; what do you expect?

  Batista’s men? They were common criminals. The crime in this neighborhood gets worse each year. My niece was walking through the neighborhood the other night . . .

  “Come on.” I link arms with Ana, turning down the street, heading toward the car, panic filling my limbs, my head, my heart.

  I stop in my tracks.

  Two men lie facedown on the ground in front of us less than one hundred feet away, blood pooling beneath their bodies, their lifeless eyes staring back at me.

  How can I not look?

  Relief fills me—swift and decisive—

  It isn’t them.

  * * *

  • • •

  We’re quiet on the drive back to Miramar. Ana’s behind the wheel—a good thing considering how rattled I am by this afternoon’s events. I sit in the passenger seat, my face tilted toward the open window, the breeze, the hint of salt in the air. Anything to get the scent and sight of blood from my mind. Nausea rolls around in my stomach.

  Ana breaks the silence first.

  “Do you think it will ever end?”

  The hopelessness in her voice breaks my heart. We don’t talk about the violence, the madness in the city, but it’s clear how much it has affected her, too.

  “I don’t know,” I answer.

  Batista has been in power for over half my life. His first term they say he was somewhat progressive—he gave us the 1940 Constitution we aspire to now, which among other things protected women from discrimination based on their gender and gave them the right to demand equal pay. When he returned to the presidency years later, he became a dictator, populist government eschewed for corruption, a hero transformed to a villain. The American mafia runs Cuba now—tourists swarm our beaches, fill hotels Cubans cannot stay in, gamble in casinos built by avarice.

  For those of us who have known little else, it’s hard to imagine a different version of Cuba, as though we can somehow turn back time and undo the changes his regime has implemented. And at the same time, I can’t envision a future when the island isn’t as fractured as it currently is.

  Ana turns onto our street, the sight of those swaying palm trees calming my nerves a bit. My gaze drifts and settles on a man standing next to a bright blue convertible.

  My heartbeat kicks up.

  Pablo is dressed casually today, smoking a cigar, far enough away from the house to keep it from appearing as though he’s here for me, but close enough that I have no doubt he is.

  What is he doing here?

  I get out of the car, pleading a headache when Ana asks me if I want to come in for coffee. I keep my gaze peeled for anyone I know as I pass our house, walking toward Pablo. Thankfully, none of our neighbors are out, but one of the gardeners casts a curious glance my way.

  I stop a few feet away from Pablo, wanting more than anything to close the distance between us, to relax into his embrace, even when reason dictates I cannot.

  “Hello,” I say, keeping my voice low.

  His smile sends a flash of heat through me, the fire of it instantly banked by the worry tingeing his expression.

  “I’m sorry to come. I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but I didn’t want to leave without seeing you one last time.”

  My stomach lurches. “You’re leaving?”

  I’ve only seen him once since he’s been back in the city this trip. He comes and goes so frequently that it is difficult to settle into a routine of seeing each other, the parting and subsequent reunions granting all of our interactions with a sense of urgency.

  “My plans have changed,” Pablo replies, his voice laced with regret. He reaches out, surreptitiously capturing a strand of my hair and wrapping it around his fingers before releasing me with a sigh. “I have to leave Havana tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  I knew this was coming, knew he would have to leave again eventually, but there’s still a wave of sadness and a sense of foreboding. When will we see each other again? Will we see each other again? The image of those dead men enters my mind once more, sending a shudder through my body.

  “Will you take me somewhere? Anywhere? I need to get out of the city for a moment.” I take a deep breath, the pounding in my chest growing more urgent, more insistent with each beat. “I was at lunch with my friend Ana. There was a shooting.” My voice shakes as I say the rest of it and breaks over the part I cannot say aloud.

  I worried it was you lying dead on the ground.

  Pablo’s eyes close once I’ve finished, and he wraps his arms around me, reason be damned, pulling me into his embrace. The top of my head fits perfectly beneath his chin; his lips brush my hair. I lack the energy to worry about who will see us. He’s silent for a long time, and then he pulls back and takes my hand without a word. He walks to the passenger side, holding the door open for me while I slide into the seat. In this moment, I’d follow him anywhere.

  We drive to the beach, to Celimar, in his borrowed car. He drapes his arm around my shoulders, my body pressed against his. With each moment we spend together the knot inside my chest unravels a bit more, the nerves calming. I never imagined it would be like this; I envisioned pretty words and poetry, not this raw, primal thing that affects me now. Love is a remarkably physical entity—the beat of his pulse at his wr
ist, the heaving of his chest with each breath, the fluttering of lashes, the line of his jaw. I want to press my lips there, want to know every inch of his body, every movement, want the parts of him no one else sees. There’s a greediness to love that I didn’t anticipate, either.

  When we reach the water, Pablo parks the car and we walk onto the beach. I reach down, removing my sandals and carrying them in my free hand, the other clasped in his. My toes sink in the sand as I walk to the shore, the waves lapping at my feet as I stare out to the sea.

  “Was it you today? Your group that shot those men?”

  I can’t look at him, am not prepared to see the unvarnished truth in his eyes.

  “No.”

  I swallow.

  “Has it been your group other times?”

  It’s a moment before he answers me, his gaze cast out to sea.

  “Yes.”

  I can’t decide if I’m grateful for his honesty or if I wish he’d lied instead. I look down at his hands, at the nicks and scrapes that once attracted me, so different from the men of my acquaintance. Now I see blood there, the same shadow of it that lingers on my brother’s skin.

  How can you love someone who has taken a life?

  And yet—

  Are they really different from the men who give orders behind desks, who are equally responsible for the bloodshed even if the violence is carried out on their authority and not by their neatly manicured hands? Where do matters of right and wrong fall in times of war? Are my brother and Pablo soldiers even if they aren’t in uniform, or are they the criminals my father believes them to be?

  I fear I’m not equipped for these judgments, for the moral equivocacy war creates. More than anything, I wish the conflict would end.

  “We’re to have elections soon. Isn’t that what you wanted?” I ask. “A chance for the people’s voice to be heard?”

  My voice sounds so very young, even to my own ears. What do I know of the emotions running through me, or of the things of which we speak? It’s not merely gender or age that separates us; it’s life experience. He has seen horrors I cannot fathom, possesses ambitions I cannot imagine.

  “The elections only serve Batista,” Pablo replies. “He’s not a stupid man. Havana is on the brink of revolt; he’s fighting a losing battle in the countryside. These elections are Batista’s attempt to appease the masses, creating the false appearance of democracy while pulling the strings for his puppet behind the scenes. Agüero’s name is on the ballot, but Batista will call the shots if he’s elected.”

  Comprehension dawns, bringing with it a fresh new horror.

  “Is that why you’re in the city? The election?”

  The revolutionaries have been doing everything in their power to disrupt the election for months now.

  Pablo dodges my question. “Batista might hold Havana, but his control over the rest of the island is rapidly dwindling. There are places even he can’t send his candidate for fear of what will happen,” he boasts.

  Fidel Castro’s infamous threat to attack polling places has left many Cubans afraid to vote. His threats to jail and execute any candidate have left few men willing to run.

  “And you support this? You agree with Fidel’s actions? You call for democracy, and yet, what is this if not standing in the way of democracy?”

  “It’s preventing Batista from rigging another election.”

  “By what, rigging it before he can?”

  “No.” Frustration fills his voice. “I’m not saying I agree with the threats, with the calls for violence, the attempts to suppress the election, but at the same time, Batista must be stopped. There’s no clear answer here. He has all the power at his disposal, and unless we do something to wrest it away from him, this will never end.

  “It is not enough to control the countryside; we need to control the entire country, including the government. We must drive him from Havana and show the people they no longer need to fear him and his firing squads, his secret police. We must give them the power to determine their own future, to decide the direction the country will take, but it’s impossible to achieve that under the current system.”

  “It sounds as though you’re willing to play the villain in order to defeat one.”

  “Please don’t think that I have become as bad as Batista, that I am driven by the same power and greed that fuels him.”

  I’m afraid, and that thread of doubt threatens to unravel whatever relationship exists between us. I worry I’m surrounded by madmen who desire to burn the world down without thought for the consequences of their actions, without regard for all the innocent lives that will be charred by the flames.

  “Please don’t look at me like that.” There’s a plea in Pablo’s voice I haven’t heard before and a hopelessness in his gaze.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I repulse you. As if I’m a monster like Batista and his cohorts. Please, Elisa.”

  I want to believe he’s different, but right now both sides blur before my eyes, each claiming to possess the answer to Cuba’s future and willing to do abominable things in order to bring that future about.

  “I don’t understand. I’m trying, but it’s difficult. Doesn’t the violence wear on you? The killing?”

  “How can I not fight for my country? Nothing changes. If we continue on, if we don’t alter our strategy, if we don’t give them a war, then Cuba’s current state, the government’s failure, is our responsibility.

  “Look at what Batista has turned us into. Look at what he has brought into the country. Gangsters and drugs—that is Batista’s legacy. Not to mention the casinos, the brothels. He has handed our country over to the Americans. They have more power here in a foreign land than we have in our own home. And in turn they give Batista military aid, weapons he uses against his people to maintain an iron grip on the country. The Americans preach liberty, and freedom, and democracy at home, and practice tyranny throughout the rest of the world. Batista is a despot. You know this.”

  He’s right; but my father was one of the men who donated large sums of money to Batista’s presidential campaign years ago, is frequently welcomed at the Presidential Palace. How can I condemn my own family, my parents? That’s the difference between me and my brother—for better or worse, I am a Perez before I am a Cuban.

  “Batista is bleeding us dry,” Pablo continues. “But because he is in bed with the Americans, he is untouchable. He has slaughtered tens of thousands of Cubans, and still he remains in power. We’ve endured his cruelty for far too long and look where it has left us.”

  “And yet you think you and your friends can defeat him.”

  The hubris in his words terrifies me; they are tempting God and the rules of nature to think that such a small group of men can do such a thing.

  “Yes.”

  “And the Americans?”

  “If we are loud enough, if our voice is one, if we are successful in defeating him, then what can they do? They will accept us eventually.”

  I’m not so sure about that. It all sounds so easy when he puts it that way. But if it is so easy, why has Batista held such power over the island for so long?

  “And if you aren’t successful?”

  “Then at least I will have spent my life serving a cause I believe in, a cause greater than myself.”

  “You think it’s worth dying for.”

  I try to imagine loving something so much that I would die for it. I would die for my family. For my child. For the man I loved. But a country?

  “I cannot imagine anything more sacred than the willingness to give one’s life for one’s country,” he answers, his voice solemn.

  Those are a martyr’s words, and perhaps one day they will honor him in the annals of Cuban history, but I don’t want to love a martyr. I don’t want this war or bloodshed to touch my corner of the island more than it alrea
dy has. I don’t want to lose him. And suddenly, I feel young and foolish, impossibly coddled. He speaks of revolution, and I worry over my heart.

  “Then you are to sacrifice your life for Cuba?”

  Pablo attempts a smile. “Hopefully, not. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

  “And if it does?”

  He wraps his arm around me, his forehead resting against mine, his lips inches from my mouth.

  “At the end of the day, the only thing you have left is what you stand for. If I said nothing, if I did nothing, I could not live with myself. I would not be a man. This is the position I choose to take, and for better or worse, I will accept the consequences of my actions.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Will I see you again?” A tear trickles down my face. “This feels like the end.”

  Pablo kisses me, his arms wrapped around my waist, his body against mine.

  “Have faith, Elisa.”

  “Will you come back when it’s all over?”

  “Yes.”

  chapter nine

  Marisol

  I place the last letter in the box, momentarily speechless. After all the times I asked my grandmother about her life in Cuba, why didn’t she tell me she fell in love? What happened between them? Were they separated by the revolution? Did she forget him when she met my grandfather?

  My grandmother loved a revolutionary. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.

  My grandmother spent her days decrying Castro’s regime, volunteering with groups speaking out against Cuba’s government, donating money to causes designed to remove Fidel from power. She went to Mass every Sunday, yet never took Communion because she said her heart was too filled with hatred for Fidel, for the men who stole her country from her. But she loved one.

  Did he come back to her?

  The letters in my hand fill me with questions, offering little in the way of answers. I have half of their romance—his letters to her—letters my grandmother clearly thought were precious enough to save, but what of her words to him? Did she love him? And if so, why did they part?