Havana Best Friends (33 page)

Pena mulled this over, smoking in silence. He crushed the butt in the ashtray before speaking. Trujillo flipped his out of the window.

“I’ll go back to the unit,” the major began, “call Tourism, ask if these two checked into some other hotel. I will also ask Immigration if they flew out today. You stay here. When the people from the rental agency arrive, check the trunk and the back seat, see if they ran out of gas. If you find nothing suspicious, go home and rest awhile. Meet me at my office at nine sharp tonight. By then I should have reports from Tourism and Immigration and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“Okay.” Trujillo opened the door.

“Take care.”

“Sure.”

Pena turned the ignition and pulled away. Trujillo spent the next twenty minutes sneezing, watching pedestrians, and waiting for the rental agency’s tow truck. When it finally arrived, he searched the Hyundai. There was nothing in its back seat or trunk;
the gas tank was three-quarters full. Once the car was towed away, the captain considered returning to Elena’s to see if she was back, then decided against it; he needed a few hours in bed. He kicked the pedal repeatedly; the Ural refused to start. After fumbling for several minutes with the carburetor and the spark plug, the piece of junk finally came to life and he was able to ride home.

The Vía Azul bus depot, on the corner of 26th and Santa Teresa Street, just across from the Havana Zoo, shares its fifty-year-old, three-storey building with a convenience store and a car-rental agency. The state owns lock, stock, and barrel.

At 3:50 p.m. a red taxi dropped off Marina Leucci and Elena Miranda at the asphalted lot where a few clean rentals waited for customers. The cabbie, smiling contentedly following a $1.55 tip, opened the trunk and unloaded two black carry-ons and a duffel bag. Elena pulled the retractable handle, supported herself on the cane, and got ready to hobble into the waiting room. Marina grabbed her own carry-on and duffel bag before glancing questioningly at the teacher, who tilted her head to the right. Marina went in and held the door open for her shuffling friend.

Before leaving the Deauville’s room, Marina warned Elena that she had to play the deaf-mute consistently. She couldn’t whisper a word to her in public. If she wanted to have a glass of water or an espresso, should she need to wash her hands or go for a pee, she must find a way to communicate without uttering a word. Elena explained she didn’t have a problem with sign language; Marina did. Her training as a special-needs teacher included learning the rudiments of signing and she remembered enough of it to express simple ideas. Marina said this was perfect,
it made her acting more credible, but Elena should bear in mind that she didn’t know the first thing about it. She would have to guess, so would Elena keep it simple? Add some extra facial expressions?

It had not been difficult to do this while focusing on escape and survival: while walking the streets, shopping, traversing hotel lobbies, riding taxis. But now, sitting in the departure lounge waiting to board the bus, watching two couples discuss plans for the world-renowned beach resort, they found themselves prevented from giving vent to the memories of death and fear that haunted them, from confiding to each other their hopes and worries.

Half an hour later, a porter pointed at the new, air-conditioned, forty-five-passenger Mercedes-Benz bus with reclining seats and curtained windows that had just hissed to a stop in the lot. All six passengers chose to store their luggage in the overhead compartments, so the porter didn’t make a dime. Marina asked the conductor whether she and her friend could take any seats they liked and the man nodded. They followed the aisle all the way to the rear and stored the carry-ons in the overhead compartment above the penultimate row of seats. With a flourish Marina invited Elena to take the window seat; Elena insisted that Marina take it. They spent a few moments grinning and bowing their heads rather foolishly, until Marina, using the headrest for support, swung herself round and plopped into the window seat. Elena took the aisle seat and rested the cane between her legs. Gradually their smiles vanished; both relaxed. At 4:30 sharp the bus set off.

Elena stared at the lifesized bronze sculpture near the zoo’s entrance, one of the unpretentious pieces by Rita Longa. A family
of deer climbing a cliff: The buck, its head raised, antlers challenging potential enemies, sniffed the air, making sure there was no danger. The doe seemed uncertain whether she should follow the male or look after her calf, torn between maternal duty and her own desires. The young one was still discovering fragrances and tastes, helpless and dependent. How many times had she stood before the deer in fascinated admiration? Hundreds of times. Would she ever see it again?

As the bus drove first to the national bus terminal to pick up five new passengers, and next to the Hotel Nacional for five more, Elena’s worries became tinged with sadness as she realized that even a small country like Cuba was too much for an ordinary person to know and comprehend. The citizens of the world, those jet-lagged business tycoons, diplomats, salespeople, journalists, consultants, technicians, and so forth were citizens of nowhere. Her country – her world – was Havana. Not even that. There were whole neighbourhoods in the Cuban capital she had never set foot in and knew merely by name – Juanelo, Parcelación Moderna, Diezmero, so many others.

She had been to the provinces, had seen the meadows and the sugar-cane and tobacco plantations and the royal palms and small colourful houses when visiting her grandparents in Zulueta; she had also spent months working in Pinar del Río, arm in arm with other high-school and university students. But she belonged to Havana. And now she was leaving. Elena sighed. It was a matter of self-preservation after the way things had turned out. And whether she was locked in a prison cell or thousands of miles away, she would never again walk the streets of her city. A case of Hobson’s choice, she thought. The farther she got from Havana, the stronger grew her conviction that she would never return.

As the bus rolled on, after the conductor had completed his rounds, tearing slips along the tickets’ perforated lines, when the TV screens began showing a lousy American film and to the left of the bus the shoreline sparkled in blues and whites and greens and ochres, Elena’s thoughts returned to experienced travellers. What did they know? Nothing. All they did was look. The way she, right now, was looking. What did she know about the joys and sorrows of the people living in that little house over there? It was so arrogant to say: “I know Cuba. I’ve been there on six occasions in the last three years. Nine weeks in all.” Yes, staying at nice hotels, driving rentals, swimming, partying, having a great time. The same people who claim to know Spain, France, Mexico, and forty-seven other countries. They’ve seen fifty countries, know none.

And now she would become a traveller. Where would she go? Supposing she made it to Canada, what then? Marina was an American, she surely had a passport stashed away somewhere with which she could return to the United States. What about her? What could she do? She gripped the cane tighter. The diamonds were her passport. Now that they were all mixed together again, they would have to be split afresh. If Marina suggested going alone to some big American city to offer the whole lot for sale, promising to return to Canada with her money, she would refuse. Politely. She had to rehearse the line: “Dear Marina, I really appreciate your help, but I’ll keep my diamonds with me.” To which Marina would probably reply: “Don’t you trust me, Elena? After all we’ve been through?” “No! I trust you 100 per cent! It’s just that I …” Well, it would come to her. She had other hurdles to overcome before clearing that one. Elena now felt calmly resigned to her fate, and a little optimistic. What would
happen, would happen. Some people call it destiny, others the will of God, fortune, luck, whatever. It all boiled down to the fact there’s only so much you can do for yourself; from a certain point on, it’s in somebody else’s hands.

She stole a glance at Marina and found her slack-jawed, eyes closed, sleeping soundly. Perfectly natural: Sudden relaxation, comfort, the impossibility of chatting the trip away, nothing to do for three hours. So why didn’t she fall asleep, as well? Probably because she was saying goodbye to her past.

Major Pena took off his reading glasses and massaged his forehead, pressing the palm of his right hand against it before rubbing his eyelids with his fists. Next he released a tremendous yawn and stretched his arms and legs. Pena felt close to exhaustion, so he lit up. The realization that he couldn’t keep up with younger men kept growing. Time, the unforgiving dimension, plus thirty or forty cigarettes a day, plus forty pounds of excess weight, plus the perception that they were losing the battle. More thefts, armed robberies, rapes, beatings, drugs, and homicides with each passing day, more cops on the take than ever. And people didn’t know. No statistics on crime were published, the number of police officers imprisoned for corruption was anybody’s guess. The mammoth propaganda machine was focused on making Cubans believe that their country was a paradigm of a nation, a country that – unwillingly, modestly, and much to its surprise – had become the last bastion of lofty ideals, the world repository of morality, the cradle of human decency, the new Sparta.

The divorce between theory and reality was the cause of widespread apathy, Pena mused. Since those who denounced political
doublespeak were disciplined, the silent majority protected itself under a cloak of cynicism. You go to the Party meeting, it’s compulsory. Mostly it’s the same stories and arguments you’ve heard a hundred times since you were a kid. Why a certain battle that happened forty-odd years earlier was won (or lost); why the present world economic order is wrong (adopt ours, it’s the best); why Cubans risk their lives to flee to the United States (the Cuban Adjustment Act is to blame); the dangers of dollarization in Latin America (not in Cuba). Then, on the way out of the meeting, you glance at a buddy – a guy you’ve known all your adult life – and roll your eyes, and he rolls his, and there all opposition to such a state of affairs ends.

Pena stubbed out the cigarette, wondering, one more time, if the whole nation was resigned to such a fate. He knew why he was resigned. In one word: fear. Fear of what a new, capitalist government might do. He was old enough to remember that democracy, ideological diversity, freedom of expression, free elections, and free enterprise were meaningless abstractions if you didn’t have a job. Even if you did, rent was 60 per cent of your salary, high utility bills sucked another 15 per cent, school tuition shaved another 10 per cent, travel 5 more. You were left with 10 per cent of what you made to cover food, clothing, doctor’s bills, medicines, taxes, and the unexpected. He was particularly afraid that a new government would try to balance the budget by axing social security, education, and health care.

Also, he wondered, what would happen to crime here if the government changed? He had read about the Mafia in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s, the leverage it had had with government officials, its influence on American tourism and the gaming industry. It wasn’t some Coppola-Puzo fictional story. It had happened.
Fifty years later, the problem could be a lot worse: Colombian drug cartels would try to gain a foothold, open cocaine-processing labs, use Cuba as a better springboard to reach American junkies. And then you had the Russian Mafia, the Jamaicans, the Mexicans, all now held at bay by a no-nonsense anti-drug policy that, if the worst came to the worst, didn’t stop short of a firing squad. Would a democratic government keep the screws tightened? Or would it, like in some other places, succumb to the almighty power of money?

Fear of repression was his number-three worry. Not the brutal repression so frequently found in Latin America: hands tied behind the back, a shot in the head, no. In “the first free territory of America” peaceful political dissenters are simply sent to jail for a few years. No lives are at stake. The problem is that from the moment you are labelled a peaceful dissenter you become a nobody for the rest of your life. Even the people who secretly admire your courage will give you the cold shoulder, and among the few who dare talk to you, there will be snitches. Pena dreaded seeing himself blackballed for the rest of his life.