Havana Noir (12 page)

It took a lot of early morning hours of rowing practice, but not only did they win the medal, they did it in a shell—a boat—they had built themselves. In the years prior to the race, they’d endured the comments of others who made fun of them and their boat. But confident that one day they would prove their detractors wrong, they persevered—and they were vindicated one cloudless morning when, at the age of twentythree, they were awarded the medal.

They won not only because they were superb athletes but because they had faith in each other, and in their boat. That day, in the summer of 1950, when they came in first, was, and remained, the most important day of their long lives. They would never admit it to anyone else, but having won that race meant more to them than anything else—wives, children, family, professional successes. It had been a perfect day in an increasingly imperfect world.

Whenever they’d gotten together in the forty-two years since the race, Ricardo, Roberto, Eduardo, and Luis would relive that one glorious morning when they had defled all odds and set out in
La Milagrosa
—the boat they had lovingly, patiently, and reverently built with their own hands—and passed the finish line far ahead of those who’d laughed. That day, they had celebrated their victory by throwing a huge party at the Rodríguez-López house, feasting on seafood heaped on enormous platters: lobster, shrimp, Moro crabs—all of which they had caught themselves the day before. For, in addition to being outstanding rowers, the friends were exceptional fishermen.

Through the years, as often as time permitted, they would meet—early on weekend mornings, just as dawn was breaking—at the marina where their boats were docked, and jump onto whichever vessel was next in their rotation, and motor out to different diving spots. They would drop anchor and jump off the boat, emerging only when they were holding a lobster, or a crab, or a net full of shrimp.

Sometimes they wouldn’t wait to get back to land to eat their catch—usually the hapless lobsters were first choice. They would break out the bottles of rum, and then, properly lubricated, they would drop the live creatures into a big pot of boiling water they had prepared earlier. After eating the fresh lobster meat out on the rolling sea, they would return to Havana by 11 o’clock in the morning—happy, laughing, sunburned, and slightly drunk.

The race, with the celebratory meal that had followed it, was the one memory that had allowed them to survive all that they’d had to for the past half-century. The friends considered that day to be such an important milestone in their lives that each year for the forty-two years since they’d commemorated the occasion—come hell or high water—by getting together and eating the same exact meal: lobster, shrimp, and crabs. Afterwards, they would take out the album in which they’d chronicled their adventures, and look again and again at the photographs.

As time passed, and life in Cuba became ever so much more difficult, those once-a-year gatherings became the centerpiece of their lives. Their importance could never be overstated—in the hardest times, it gave them each a reason for living.

The items chosen for the menu now were the same they had always fished for in pre-Castro Cuba. That had been a happy time, a carefree time, a time of plenty, when the waters around their beloved island had not been overfished to produce a bounty—denied to its citizens—reserved for tourists. Eating the seafood was a luxury that transported them back to that time when they’d actually looked forward to a future. Castro may have taken everything else away from them, but he could not take away the memory of that glorious day.

At their yearly dinner, the old friends would take out their identical sets of photos—which Luis’s mother had given them—and examine each one, discussing the circumstances under which it had been taken, recalling every detail as clear as if it had just happened. Years ago they would disagree about some of the details, but they had long since arrived at a composite memory that satisfied them well. Instead of being four old men sitting in the dark in a decayed house crumbling around them, their too-loose clothing hanging on their skinny frames, they were the triumphant young men in the pictures, holding a trophy high over their heads, their boat clearly visible in the background.

As the years passed and their situation became worse—their health was deteriorating, food was scarce—putting on such a dinner became more and more difficult, not just physically, but emotionally as well. Although the subject was not discussed, it was apparent that soon not all of them would be around for the following year’s meal. As each get-together might be the last one for any of the four, the dinner took on even greater significance.

One of the only legal means of acquiring food under the system instituted in 1962 was through government-issued ration cards. But acquiring seafood—absent on the ration card—was close to impossible. With the celebration held annually, each man’s time to serve the meal came around every four years. For the host, making sure the dinner was as perfect as conditions would allow took on an almost supernatural charge: the sense that their future, the future of their families and their homes, was at stake.

For each one of them, bringing the meal to the table was what pride and manhood required. How else could they tolerate their situations and live with themselves?

The year before, when it was Ricardo’s turn, he had served white flakes of meat picked from the poorest sort of fish scraps, with barely a bite of lobster. The quantity was so meager that there had only been a few spoonfuls of food on each plate. His guests, of course, had left bits of food on their plates—even though they had been close to famished—insisting they were so full that they could not possibly eat another bite. The Special Period was consuming them slowly, and not just physically.

Since women were not allowed at the dinners, María Eugenia had to rely on Luis’s descriptions of what transpired on those special nights. For the first few dinners, the ones that took place in pre-Castro Cuba, the wives were miffed—after all, they were friends as well—but as the years passed and the items for the meal became scarcer and scarcer, they recognized it was best for all concerned that they not insist. And it wasn’t just the difficulty of acquiring food that stopped their asking; it was also sad to see their husbands drunk, reliving their glorious youth while looking at photos of themselves when they were handsome and vigorous. The women, sometimes more practical than their husbands, preferred to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on themselves—and that was a luxury they did not often have.

After the dinner the previous year at Ricardo’s house—as always, on August 10, the anniversary of the race—Luis told his wife that the host said he’d had trouble assembling all the seafood for the meal: Hell, for the first time in forty years there’d been just one tiny lobster served. María Eugenia became alarmed and made a few discreet inquiries as to what, exactly, Ricardo had had to do to acquire even the meager meal he’d served his friends. She was told that Ricardo had been forced to sell his beloved portrait of the great Cuban patriot, José Martí—a painting that had been in his family for generations—to get the money for the meal. This news had so upset her that she locked herself in her room and cried copiously, an indulgence she thought she had given up years ago. If María Eugenia had ever needed proof of how much the dinners meant to her husband and his friends, this sad event provided it.

This year it was Luis’s turn to host the meal. For months, he had agonized about how and where he was going to find the seafood. Time was running out. With one week remaining before the dinner, the only item that Luis had been able to procure was rice. He wasn’t too worried about the eggs for the flan, as he had a neighbor who raised hens and sold eggs on the black market, so he could probably buy some from her.

As a longtime veteran of the ration system, Luis hadn’t been surprised that neither he nor María Eugenia nor Eladio had been successful in finding the other necessary items—scarcity was the norm and not the exception in the Special Period.

He had once heard that an American economist calculated that a ration book’s monthly allotment would last—that is, if all of the items were available, an event that was a rarity—between a week and ten days. This same economist had compared a citizen of Havana’s pre—Special Period monthly beef allotment, a half pound of meat, to a McDonald’s Big Mac. Now, three years after the Special Period had begun, even that meager amount seemed an overabundance. Few in Havana had tasted meat in three years—at least not from the ration book.

When the Rodríguez-López family had needed anything, they would sell some of their belongings: jewelry, furniture silver, clothes, etc. After forty years of doing that, they were out of things to sell, and had so few possessions left that they often worried how they could live out their lives.

Their old friends who were parents—those few who had chosen to stay in Cuba—were better off, as they had children who looked out for them. The fortunate ones were those who had sons and daughters outside Cuba to send them money—cash—which made all the difference. Roberto, Ricardo, and Eduardo were among these fortunate few, which was why—although they’d had difficulty giving the yearly party—they were still able to procure through the black market enough to make a minimal meal. But now, even they had trouble paying for seafood, as it was nearly impossible to find—and the fines for getting it illegally were exorbitant.

Luis had too much pride to let his friends know of his difficulty. Four years earlier, when it had been his turn to host, he’d been forced to sell his gold wedding ring—the last of his jewelry. The Patek Philippe watch that had belonged to his grandfather had been sold years before that. María Eugenia still had her wedding ring, but they had vowed that would only be sold if they were truly starving.

As the months passed and the date for the dinner approached, Luis supposed that he could either serve a different main course or cancel the dinner altogether. But being able to serve his lifelong friends the exact same meal they had been eating for the past forty-two years had become as important to him as breathing. And he did not want to be like Ricardo, who didn’t have enough food for his guests. It was all or nothing for Luis.

María Eugenia and Eladio watched helplessly as Luis descended into a deep depression. Nothing they said or did could pull him out of it. The situation had become so dire that now even María Eugenia, who seldom left the house, had ventured out and visited a couple of long lost friends and acquaintances to see if they might know of any source of seafood, even remnants of the cheapest of bottom fish. No one knew where to look, which couldn’t have been surprising to her, as everyone was in the same situation.

María Eugenia still had her gold wedding ring, but because of the pact that she and Luis had made, she could not sell it (though being a realist, she knew that day was not far off). Although it would have saddened her to part with it—she had sold her diamond engagement ring years before—she was so worried about Luis that she would have sold the gold band in a heartbeat. As the time for the dinner grew closer, María Eugenia repeatedly offered to do exactly that, but Luis would not even contemplate it. For him, selling the ring would be admitting there was no hope left, none at all. Castro would have essentially stolen the symbol of his marriage, and this was unacceptable to him.

Eladio scrambled to see what he could do to help his employer, and he too came up empty. Unlike the couple, he had no valuables to sell, but throughout the years he had made a bit of extra money here and there by working at odd jobs—running errands, fixing appliances, repairing old machines, so he had been able to contribute a small amount of cash to his keep. But now, because not even his considerable skills and ingenuity could keep forty-year-old machines running, even that little money had dried up.

However gifted a mechanic and handyman, his real skill was making a palatable meal out of the scarce and low-quality government-issue foodstuff available. With herbs he grew in the garden he lovingly cultivated in the rear of the Rodríguez-López property, he was somehow able to turn even the tasteless three-quarters of a pound of soy blend that was each individual’s monthly allotment into a succulent roast.

Although he had never received any formal training as a chef, he instinctively knew how to bring out the best in everything he was given to work with. Over the years, he’d developed such confidence in his abilities that he was able to successfully transform certain foods—items that conjured up repellent images in most people’s minds (chicken feet, fish cheeks, etc.)—into meals that people would not only eat, but which actually tasted delicious. Sadly, in spite of all his abilities, Eladio was not able to come up with the most important ingredient: seafood for the dinner.

In spite of not having received a salary in more than three decades of working full-time as butler, maid, handyman, and family cook, Eladio considered himself fortunate to have a roof over his head. He knew that he was considered a member of the family, so his fate was their fate.

And although life had been difficult for all three, by combining their resources they had managed. They had never really undergone the worst privations of the Special Period. Until now, that is—since this dinner was upsetting a very fragile equilibrium, bringing Luis close to a physical and mental breakdown.

The important day was now less than forty-eight hours away, and what should have been a happy occasion had turned into a dreaded event. It was obvious to María Eugenia and Eladio that Luis had totally forgotten the original reason for the dinner, and was instead fixated on what food he was going to serve his guests.

Early that morning, after eating what passed for breakfast—at this point, not even Eladio’s culinary inventions could hide the fact that they were always hungry—Luis told Eladio that he wanted to speak with him privately, away from María Eugenia’s hearing. They decided the best place for such a conversation would be at the back of the property, near Eladio’s herb garden. María Eugenia would not question them going there. It was part of their daily ritual.