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He was too tense for this congregation. He stomped outside and waved his followers away. He wanted a moment's solitude, which wasn't such a selfish desire in a life that had not been his own since 1959. For thirty years he'd been public property, as much nationalised as the sugar industry, or the tobacco companies, or the banks. He was very tired and growing old; he knew that the young people of Cuba referred to him as El Viejo, the old one. Where was the stamina of yesterday? where the legendary strength?

In his starched garberdine fatigues he strutted across the patio. He tore a chunk of flesh from the hot pig and thrust it into his mouth. It had the taste of a highly spiced automobile tyre. He spat it out. The piano began to play again, and there was a round of quiet laughter, more of relief than genuine pleasure. He created a black hole wherever he went tonight; his absence from the main room allowed the guests to relax. He sat slumped in a chair and looked absently at a plate of scorched pig skin, left-overs. In an ill-temper he pushed the plate aside and it clattered to the tiles, where it broke, scattering the discarded food. Nobody turned to look. When El Jefe (as he was also called) broke anything, whether a plate or a law, no voices were raised in criticism.

There wasn't enough food on the island. Every day shortages grew worse. Every day brought some new complaint. Once the criticism had centred around ideology: people asked him questions about the urgency behind universal literacy when reading material was restricted, or why Cuba had aligned itself with the Soviet bloc. Nowadays, ideology wasn't uppermost in the minds of Cubans; they wanted better food, better consumer goods. They heard US radio broadcasts and saw smuggled movies, videotapes, outlawed magazines, and they felt deprived. Ninety miles away in the USA people had everything. In Cuba stores had empty shelves and useless goods and clothing designed in such centres of
haute couture
as Varna, Bulgaria, or Brasov, Rumania.

For the first time in many years, the Lider Maximo was afraid.

He'd known fear before. In the Sierra Maestra in the late 1950s when he'd fought the armies of Batista with only a few men. In 1953, when he'd led an unsuccessful assault on the Moncada barracks in Santiago. Yes, he'd known
el temor
, but he'd never been cowardly. What had they always said about him in Cuba? Fidel, he has the largest
timbales
on the whole goddam island! But this was very different, another stratum of fear; it was as if he could hear the ship of this eight-hundred-mile-long island grind to a halt, the engine broken beyond repair, the fuel tanks empty.

Sometimes, too, the fear yielded to an odd panic. He became easily confused, and amnesiac, and caught himself in the midst of a sentence whose end he'd quite forgotten, or in the middle of an action whose purpose was a puzzle. Now and again he felt slight pains in his stomach, too inconsequential to have his physicians treat. On one occasion, a coldness had seized his heart like a gauntlet of frost, a disquieting sensation that had lasted perhaps for ten seconds. It was age, he thought. Eyesight and teeth went, so did the interior plumbing and the central pump. A man was no more than an intricate machine; and all the blueprints to explain his parts and repair them were incomplete because medicine was still a primitive quasi-science.

Perhaps fear was something else age brought in its merciless wake.

He tilted his head to one side, listening to the croaking of frogs in the distance, so many it was practically a roar. He gazed across the patio, seeing how his armed guards had taken up new positions in the shadows. Inside the house the piano was playing something composed by Silvio Rodriguez, considered a “safe” musician by the regime. The Lider Maximo knew that if he hadn't been present the pianist would have performed Cole Porter or Irving Berlin or some other Yanqui music. The Lider Maximo was deferred to, even revered. But he knew people carped behind his back and ran him down and accused him of bankrupting Cuba.

There was the sound of a car. He stood up, tugged at his beard. He saw headlights approach. At a point in the road where the concrete twisted toward the ocean, the car lights illuminated white surf. Then the motor died, and a door slammed. The Lider Maximo moved quickly across the patio to embrace the new arrival and whisk him away to a quiet upper room where they might talk, free from the noise of the party.

The room was small, containing only a desk and two chairs and piles of unsorted books. A green-shaded lamp provided the only light. The Lider Maximo said, “You're very late.”

“There were flight delays,” the visitor replied.

The Lider Maximo waved a hand impatiently. “Speak to me. Tell me the outcome.”

The visitor said, “It's just as we feared. The well's running dry.”

The Lider Maximo tossed his head back and looked up at the ceiling where a large motionless fan threw a cross-like shadow; it was possible to see, through the hairs of his beard, the thick double chin. “They want me out, am I right? They want me to step aside.”

“No, Commandante. They expressed no such desire.”

The Lider Maximo scoffed. “They wouldn't tell you to your face. The Russians don't operate that way. They smile at you, toast you, and after ten vodkas they hug you. Best of friends. Comrades! Only later do you realise you've been lied to and cheated. Make no mistake,
compañero
, they want me out. I'm too disobedient. Too unruly. They can't always control me the way they would like. If they had a weak man in my position, they might open their purses more generously to Cuba.”

The visitor said, “I don't think it has anything to do with you, Commandante. They say they'll no longer invest money in Cuba at the levels we've come to expect. The new Politburo has more on its collective mind than Cuba. They'll continue to buy sugar –”

“Oh, this makes my heart glad.” The Lider Maximo's sarcasm was too grim to be amusing. Besides, his sense of humour was always slightly skewed and too heavy-handed to cause much mirth. The charm for which he'd been famous earlier in life had deserted him to a large extent. The world had eroded it.

“– at the present prices. But there will be severe cutbacks in technological help. As many as three hundred advisors will be withdrawn. Joint construction projects already under way, such as the nuclear generating plant at Jurugua, will be halted. No new ones will be started. We can no longer expect – and I quote – favoured treatment.”

The Lider Maximo was angry. “Favoured treatment!” He spluttered. “We've always had a special arrangement with them!”

“The Soviets are economising worldwide, Commandante. It's really that simple. They face economic chaos at home. Their whole economy is rotten and cumbersome. The cost of Afghanistan was too high. Now they're turning inward. They're no longer enthusiastic about the spread of Communism in Central America. We're seeing a new era. The Soviet priority is to look after themselves. Their own people are complaining bitterly about the quality of life in Russia.”

“And the
rusos
throw their old allies to the dogs?”

“There will be a bone or two. But that's all. We can't look forward to a continuation of generous past policies.”

“
Cochinos
! Perhaps I should make the trip to Moscow myself.”

“It may make no difference.”

The Lider Maximo was too proud to go cap in hand before the Russians. The begging-bowl held out for scraps! Never! Besides, he had no fondness for the General Secretary, whom he considered a capitalist. He had entertained the man during the Secretary's visit to Havana last spring. Serious talks had taken place on the subject of solving Cuba's indebtedness to the Soviet Union, and there had been a great deal of smiling camaraderie for the benefit of the world's press. But now, when the Lider Maximo needed some extra credits, when he needed cash, when he saw his Revolution founder in an ocean of debt and despair, the Soviets had abandoned him.

Nothing was said for a long time. Faintly, the piano could be heard from the lower part of the house. Outside, the breeze picked up, driving the tide a little harder on to the beach. From the courtyard came the sound of a guard sliding a clip inside his automatic rifle. They were always prepared, always checking their weapons. The Lider Maximo put on a pair of glasses and walked to his desk, where he scanned a batch of papers.

“Do you know what these are,
compañero
? Projections prepared by our finest economists. Graphs and numbers and scientific notations. They were prepared by people in your own Ministry. They forecast continued shortages in basic items. Beef. Fish. Milk. Shoes. Medical supplies. These might be alleviated by an infusion of hard currency. But where is it to come from? Without hard currency, how do we import goods? The shortages will get worse. And our soldiers returning from Angola – how are they to be absorbed into a work force that has no work for them?”

He crunched the sheets in his hands and tossed them up in the air, swatting at them like shuttlecocks as they floated back down. He picked up those that had fallen, balled them even more tightly in his fists and threw them from the window, where they were carried briefly by the breeze.
Papeleo
, he kept saying with contempt.
Papeleo
– red tape. Those sheets he didn't pick up he crumpled underfoot, wiping them back and forth on the floorboards as if they were dogshit that adhered to his soles. Then, his energy spent on this extraordinary display, he sat down at his desk.

“They are out to get me,” he said. “Not just the Russians,
compañero
. But there are forces in Cuba that would like to see me dead. Outside Cuba, the CIA is still sniffing after my blood. I constantly hear tales of counter-revolutionary armies forming here and there in Central America. And the exile community in Miami – there are a great many who would murder me and feel joy.”

He was quiet. He was remembering the old days when La Revolutión had been his youthful mistress, the love of his heart, when she'd been bright and optimistic and constant. Now she was turning, as many loves do, into a nagging crone whose demands grew more preposterous daily. She'd become brittle, and her breasts sagged, and she was gaunt. She had all the light-hearted humour of a Greek chorus. And yet once, in the delight of her early years, those breasts had been full, and her belly smooth and tight. She had been a glory to behold. Lost inside La Revolutión, he had squandered the very best of his seed.

The Lider Maximo said, “I have few trusted friends. My brother, perhaps. But he's in Africa. My inner circle – but they're too ambitious for me to trust them wholeheartedly. My bodyguards, of course. But even guards have been known to turn. And you. My Minister of Finance. Can I trust you, Rosabal?”

There were rare moments when Rafael Rosabal glimpsed the ghost of a younger Fidel, not this curmudgeon who grew resentfully old but another Castro of flinty determination and irresistible charm. He'd once possessed magnetism enough to persuade men to embark on the frail overcrowded craft called the
Granma
and sail twelve hundred miles on a harsh sea from Mexico to Cuba, the gift of convincing them they could survive not only the voyage but the killing heat and cold and malarial mosquitoes in the inhospitable mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Triumph – you could still see that glint in Fidel's eyes when they weren't otherwise darkened by injuries and betrayals, many of them imagined.

Rosabal said, “I am on your side, Commandante. As always.”

The Lider Maximo looked thoughtful. “You see, the problem is simple, but not easy to correct. When we won the armed struggle against Batista, we faced a situation that was beyond our experience. What did soldiers know of the economy? Of government? They could fire rifles, but they couldn't administer the sugar industry, or the tobacco crop, or the mines. So mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. The wrong crops were planted –”

Rosabal thought:
You were personally responsible for those, Commandante. You were the laughing stock of Cuba for your bizarre horticultural ideas
.

“ – and essential machinery rotted on the docks in Havana because we didn't have the necessary moving equipment. And perhaps our agricultural reforms took the initiative away from small farmers. We brought capitalism to its knees, Rosabal. But what did we put in its place?”

Rosabal was very quiet. A quiet pulse beat at the side of his head. He knew this pulse, which was often the harbinger of a rage he couldn't always control, a dark sensation Castro often inspired in him. He maintained his poise with enormous difficulty, closing his eyes a moment, concentrating very hard on the black spaces inside his head. He made no answer to the Commandante's question, which had been rhetorical in any case.

The Lider Maximo said, “People live longer nowadays, and they are better educated, and they have brighter opportunities, but none of this is enough for them. Why?”

Rosabal felt the breeze come through the flyscreen and stir his hair. His bad moment passed; that sense of slippage was gone. He had control of himself again. His voice was relaxed. He said, “I wouldn't presume to know the answer, Commandante.” He thought:
Because life is drab, and people feel hopeless. And now not even the Russians will support you. You have driven Cuba into disaster and bankruptcy, you stupid old fucking clown in your idiotic gaberdine fatigues
.

Castro said, “The problem isn't in the system, Rosabal. Of course there are some inefficiencies. But the real problem is that the people are self-centred! They put themselves before the Revolution. If there is a failure, Rosabal, it's because we haven't
educated
the people as well as we might. We haven't educated selfishness out of them. They still don't understand that the Revolution requires extraordinary patience and endurance and self-denial. We've asked them for an enormous effort in the past, but we haven't asked for enough. Now we must demand even greater sacrifices.”