The Aguero Sisters (14 page)

T
he Great War had been over for two years when I left Pinar del Río for the University of Havana. It was the days of the “Dance of the Millions,” when the price for sugar had soared so high that many Cubans became millionaires overnight. The rich erected marble palaces along the Paseo del Prado and other fashionable boulevards of the capital, and in the late afternoons, they could be seen cruising their fancy foreign cars up and down the Malecón
.

It was a time of unseemly extravagance, and it had little to do with me, a sixteen-year-old scholarship student from
el campo.
Few in Pinar del Río had benefited from the sugar boom. At El Cid, where my father continued to read at his lectern, half the cigar workers had lost their jobs to falling tobacco prices. Those who remained were fearful of losing them to the modern cigar-rolling machines from America
.

Papá, as usual, was involved in union policy and wrote
editorials for the
Boletín de Torcedor,
the cigar worker union's newspaper, extolling the glories of revolutionary Russia. What relation this had to the workers' daily concerns was unclear to me, and Papá and I argued frequently over what we considered each other's misguided politics
.

By then, Mamá had developed arthritis, which curtailed the hours she could teach flute, and I saw in her reddened joints the nascent disfigurements that would plague her last years. She grew more remote too, as if her inactivity enabled the sadness of her past, of her lost daughter, to finally overwhelm her
.

It was understood that I would work while I was at college, and within a few days I found a job that suited me perfectly: night usher in a movie house on Avenida Galiano. It was a garish theater, in keeping with the times, and I was required to wear a uniform festooned with enough braids and tassels to command an entire battalion. The work itself was easy, and the perpetual darkness accustomed me to working at night, an invaluable advantage when I began to research bats in earnest
.

Most nights, after guiding patrons to their seats, I joined the projectionist in his fetid cubicle, where I studied as best I could. The movies, mercifully, were silent in those days, although I still had to contend with the melodrama of the organ. Occasionally, I would peek through the projectionist's window when the music rose to a crescendo, but I never understood those who would choose to sit through this dark make-believe when the whole world was waiting outside
.

In the spring of my freshman year, the renowned biologist Dr. Samuel Forrest, of Harvard University, came to Havana to teach a course on tropical zoology. Word spread quickly of his need for a field assistant, and the best graduate students signed up for an interview. Although I hardly expected to capture such a coveted position, I, too, signed up to meet the great man
.

The next week, a dozen hopeful young men milled outside his office. For three hours we waited, as one shaken student after another emerged from his interrogation. “What does he want?” those of us who had remained outside asked. But the only clue came from one exceedingly frustrated student: “He wants your opinion on the universe!
”

“
Please sit down,” Dr. Forrest said wearily when it was finally my turn. He was quite obese, and his eyes, blue as a quail dove's feathers, were accentuated by a high, lineless forehead and woolly muttonchops
.

“
Could you tell me, please, Señor Agüero, which of our brethren in the animal kingdom you most admire?
”

I thought at first that I'd misheard Dr. Forrest, or that he was in a mood to test my humor. Why else would he ask me so facile a question? He looked up from his notes and blinked impassively
.

There were many creatures I was particularly fond of: the tree ducks that had saved my father's life; the regal hawks of Cuba, circling their inspiration beyond the mountaintops; and of course, my lovely leatherback, who one humid night on the Isle of Pines entrusted her eggs to my care. Instinctively, I knew not to mention her to Dr. Forrest, to hide my sentimentality at all costs
.

“
Parasites,” I offered
.

“
Parasites?” Dr. Forrest seemed surprised. He smiled tightly, whether out of amusement or disdain I was not yet certain
.

“
Yes, sir. I believe they are the most original of all animals
.”

“
Go on,” he said, serious now, as if he were trying to gauge my audacity
.

“
Consider intestinal worms, or beetles, or even fleas, for that matter.” I grew bolder. “A good parasite must exploit a
host that is larger, stronger, and faster than itself, with minimal disturbance. Every fiber, every function of its being, is inscribed with this necessity
—”

“—
of quiet boorishness.” Dr. Forrest smiled more broadly
.

“
Precisely.” I laughed
.

He leaned forward in his chair, tugging his left mutton-chop. I continued, encouraged by Dr. Forrest's unwavering attention
.

“
The difference between us and lower life forms, I believe, comes down to the fact that humans have developed a variety of receptacles and containers for their needs, and animals have not. It seems to me that building vases or suitcases or skillets indicates a unique human ability to plan for the future, to predict the behavior of matter in ways wholly distinct from animals. A bee, after all, has been constructing its same tiny/cell for one hundred million years
.”

“
Very interesting,” Dr. Forrest said. “And now a personal question, if you don't mind, Señor Agüero. Are you a Catholic?
”

“
No,” I answered quickly. In fact, I'd been trained by Papá to be suspicious of all organized religion. Only later did my father acknowledge that politics, too, could be a form of religion
in extremis.

Dr. Forrest stood up and thrust a plump hand toward mine. “This concludes our interview, Señor Agüero. It will be a pleasure working with you
.”

That night, I quit my job at the movie theater
.

For the next six months, I accompanied Dr. Forrest as he crisscrossed the island by boat and train and horseback. Everywhere we went, Dr. Forrest bemoaned the loss of Cuba's lowland forests. Although the island could not support the luxuriant
foresta real
of Central or South America, he said, its vast areas of calcareous soil once sustained a heavy and varied sylvan
growth. The only true forest remaining in Cuba was in the higher mountain ranges of Oriente province, to this day so steep and inaccessible as to offer refuge to many precious species
.

Sadly, it was mostly in the cities and their environs that we could appreciate the charms of the island's tropical flora—the broad groves of royal palms, the great red-green mango trees, offering the densest of shades, and every variety of exotic flower. There continued to exist large areas of granitic and serpentine savanna lands in Cuba, but only because they were unfit for agriculture. With their groves of
jata
and
cana
palms, these regions were home to a relatively meager bird and animal population
.

I remember well our first trip into the heart of the Zapata Swamp, the relentless rustle and hum of its invisible creatures, the air thick as pudding in our lungs. I followed Dr. Forrest as he eased one foot in front of the other across the surface of saw grass and bulrushes, the formidable mass threatening to engulf us at any moment
.

On another trip, Dr. Forrest asked me to collect ordinary house bats at an abandoned cavalry barracks outside Matanzas. Dr. Forrest intended to preserve a series of their embryos so that he might study the early development of their teeth. Protected with heavy gloves, I managed to fill two sacks with live bats and returned to the Hotel El Mundo, where I left my restless cargo in the bathtub
.

“
After we have had our luncheon,” Dr. Forrest said in his proper, drawling Spanish, “we shall kill the bats and search for their embryos
.”

During our meal, Dr. Forrest was expounding on the finer implications of Freud's theories, when a terrible clattering and commotion came from the hotel kitchen. In an instant, the chef, two assistants, and a waiter came storming through the swinging doors, pursued by a swarm of
Molossus tropidorhynchus.
Dazed by the light, the bats buzzed and dropped over the banquet tables, splattering soup and sending the cutlery flying
.

“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,”
Dr. Forrest said, shrugging off the incident. He was fond of philosophizing in Latin
.

On another expedition, camping in the backcountry of Sancti Spíritus, Dr. Forrest was pleased to catch an iguana for our dinner. Now, I knew that in Central America, where Dr. Forrest had spent a considerable portion of his career, iguana meat was considered a delicacy. But I found my repugnance difficult to overcome. You see, when iguanas are hung to dry, a brown gurry like coffee grounds runs from their mouths, reminding me of my father's yellow-fever vomit
.

That night, Dr. Forrest roasted the iguana over a campfire and offered me a slab from its back, liberally sprinkled with salt. I could hardly refuse. I swallowed the meat whole, barely allowing it to slide down my throat. Then I excused myself, hid behind a white ixora, and disgorged my meal on its splendid snowball blossoms
.

Despite this and numerous other mishaps, Dr. Forrest always treated me as a friend and a competent colleague. In time, and with his patient encouragement, I became both. My debt to him is immeasurable. The modest successes I enjoyed under his guidance nurtured my confidence as a scientist
.

Dr. Forrest had begun his vocation in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when great scientific advances had kindled the enthusiasm of thousands: Darwin's theory of evolution; Mendel's law of heredity; the identification of light as an electromagnetic phenomenon; the law of the conservation of energy; and not least, the development of the spectroscope. When Dr. Forrest came of age, it was science, not politics or economics, that held the key to conquering the universe. Science was his mission, and soon enough, it became mine as well
.

Perhaps my most extraordinary discovery under Dr. Forrest's tutelage came toward the end of his stay in Cuba. It started one May evening at the University of Havana biology library, where I came across a page of field notes tucked inside a 1907 edition of
National Geographic
magazine. The notes, which had no date or name attached, were written in a clear, minuscule hand and stated that in the scrub between Morro Castle and the little fishing town of Cojímar, a deep pool could be found containing shrimp that “looked as if they had been boiled.” This struck me as curious, because all the cave shrimp I had studied with Dr. Forrest were pallid. Only deep-sea shrimp sported the dark-red color the notes described
.

The next day, I set off in search of the mysterious shrimp. The morning air was warm, and I walked briskly to hasten the adventure. I felt rather ridiculous relying on the anonymous notes, but Dr. Forrest had taught me that no expedition was ever futile. Over the years, he had happily followed many a
campesino—
he counted them among the finest observers of nature—with only a vague promise of observing something new. Dr. Forrest dismissed no clue or wild tale without first investigating the matter personally
.

I hurried to the harbor and hired a rowboat to take me across the bay to Morro Castle. I landed at the steps on the shore, near the Battery of the Twelve Apostles, then trudged through the coastal forest of beach-grape trees until I came to a broad area of bare rock. In the middle was an open basin of the purest water, where, it appeared, the roof of a cave had fallen in. The depth and crookedness of the channel made it difficult to see beyond a foot or two
.

I stirred the water with the long-handled net I had brought, and before long, tiny crimson shrimp came out of their hiding places and swam closer to the surface. The shrimp were striking, their wispy legs tipped in white, as if they had accidentally stepped in paint. Over and over, I dipped my net, but
the creatures were nearly impossible to catch. After several arduous hours, I finally secured twenty specimens
.

That evening, Dr. Forrest seemed impressed with my shrimp. He sent them off to a Miss Barbara J. Winthrop, an authority on Crustacea at the United States National Museum in Maryland. Before long she wrote back, identifying the shrimp as a new genus. She had also taken the liberty of suggesting a name for them
: Forrestia agueri.

ORIGINAL GEOGRAPHY
THE EVERGLADES
MAY
1991