The Lazarus Rumba (2 page)

Camilo Suarez, el Rubio
, police chief of Guantánamo, gourmand

Triste
, contortionist at the gypsy circus, lover of Héctor

La Vieja
, leader of CDR in Los Baños

Sara Zimmerman
, a Jewish doctor

One Dance

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, before his coffee, as he murmured his morning prayers. She would do him spiders. First one and then two and then a few more and soon hundreds upon hundreds. (She was that good with spiders.) Up and down his back, up and down his hairless legs and especially around and around the hardened dried soles of his feet.

He had confessed to her the joy of spiders.

Spiders had begun long ago, in the days of the hepatitis epidemic, when he had been sedentary for so long that spiders were the only way to get his blood to circulate a bit. Spiders probably helped him survive, though the doctors in their summer linen suits would never admit that. Back in the days when his stool was white-on-white like the heavily sugar-powdered guava pastelitos, those overrich pastries that had always been his favorite, and his urine was the color of plum juice. Spiders had saved him then, so now he could not wake without them.

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, every morning daintily defying propriety. She would do him spiders.

What would his congregation say if they knew about spiders? What does the Lord say?—since He does know. It's only spiders. They saved him long ago. Where would he be without them? Where would they all be without them? Sheep without a pastor.

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, always nervous at the feel of his leatherback skin.

After the first time, the spiders had a tendency to disappear. They would jimjam and jitterbug flirtatiously up and around the bump in his lower nape and behind the ridge of his ear for a minute or two, and then as if yanked up and away by some resentful mother spider disappear until the next day or the day after when they would dance just a little bit longer than the time before—until he found he could almost command their presence.

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, more and more often, for longer and longer periods, till her hands tired and the spiders could no longer dance, for he would never ask her to stop.

Her sister had been the genius. She had invented spiders and saved her from her unthinkable thoughts of Francisco, the boy who worked the coffee fields shirtless, his field pants rolled up to his knees, the sap from the beans smudged on his belly. On a muggy pillow-shifting night they came in battalions to soothe her, the spiders her sister said were spiders from God's garden, dancing on her shivering back and bare butt and on her tickly soles. They had saved her the nights the ghost of Francisco's limber torso demanded her dreamy attention.

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, always telling him where they came from. She would do him spiders from God's garden. Because she had done it to her sister in the last days of her fevers, turned her own creation on her, done her spiders before she had gone forever to God's garden. That's how she paid farewell. Doing her spiders. And she never thought of spiders again until they had brought him home from the hospital—he insisting a man should die in his own bed, the doctors in their guayaberas (for it was a Sunday) insisting he wasn't going to die. She cared for him as always. She washed his listless limbs with a warm damp cloth, and even washed in and around his privates. He was too weak for shame. She wondered who would give him his last rites. He couldn't do it for himself, she was sure of that. The morning he prophesied would be his last, she remembered her sister's last morning and she remembered the spiders. How could she resist giving his poor bereaved soul one last bit of pleasure. Down came the spiders from God's garden. Up and down his back, scurrying on the fallen flesh of the too prominent ribcage, up and down his hairless legs, till the skin became bumpy, and especially around and around the hardened dried soles of his feet. She did him spiders for the first time. From then on he would hardly need to ask.

“Do me spiders.”

And she would, though it was months till she could work up the vigor with which she had done it that first time. Till it became a ritual like morning Mass. She would do him spiders.

BOOK ONE

A Widow's Grief: An Old Tale

 

The Rumbas in Beethoven's Violin Concerto

In the middle of morning Mass, as Father Gonzalo led the sparse congregation into the Apostles' Creed, fragments of memories, heavy and sudden as summer raindrops, began to tincture the familiar fabric of the prayer. He remembered the seawater that was green, its foamy crests soapsuds white. He remembered the riverwater that was brown, its ripply hiccups piss yellow. Sometimes the sea flows into the river. In the sea he is moved by the hands of the Lord. In the river he must swim. The river is crowded with barges. The revelers on the barges are dressed in elegant costumes. They are celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime victory. They dance a rumba. Their waste is flushed into the river. He swims by unnoticed, his lips pursed, trying not to taste the water.

It was silent. The drone of the Creed had lifted and melted in the air like incense. He hurried the rest of the service. After Communion, he muttered for the faithful to go in peace and snuck out a side door near the altar. The congregation—less than twenty faithful—remained inside the church. Father Gonzalo knew they were not waiting for him. They always did this, extending their stay inside the cool dark home of the Lord to avoid the rainy-season mugginess.

He passed through a covered archway into the rectory. He removed his robes as he walked. Anita, his servant, had left the screen door to the rectory kitchen open again. Father Gonzalo slammed it shut and sat at the square wooden table set for one. She was at the stove, her back to him. She ignored the noise of the door. He scratched a mosquito bite on his neck.

“Los mosquitos nos comen,” he said. “I've told you to keep that door shut.”

Anita came to him, bent his head forward, and examined the bite. “I'll put something on it later. Eat your breakfast first.”

She placed a cup of cafecito negro in front of him first and then his eggs lightly scrambled with the buttered and sugared toast. Father Gonzalo ate quietly. Anita drank her coffee standing behind him.

“Don't forget you have to go see Doña Adela's daughter.”

“¡Sí, ya sé! How can I forget? It's early yet; I told her I'd be there at one.”

He finished breakfast and went upstairs to his room and removed all his clothes except for the pair of baggy cotton undergarments that covered half his slight, brown frame from above the navel to just below the knees. He washed his face in the basin by the window. He grabbed his cherry-wood rosary from the top drawer of his dresser, went to his bed, threw aside the tattered mosquitero and lay facedown with his hands crossed under his chin.

Anita knocked and without waiting for an answer entered his room. She sat by the bed.

“Ay, Virgencita, it looks like a demon was pricking you with his fingernails last night! Quédate ahí, I'll be right back.”

He did not notice her go and return.

She set a pan on his night table and wrung a cloth over it. She passed it over his upper back. It felt cool and soothing till she pressed it to one of the bites. He lost his place on the rosary and began anew with the second decade of Hail Marys.

“Magnesian salt,” she said. “It disinfects them.”

“Sí, ya sé,” he said. “Do me spiders.”

She pressed the cloth to a few more bites. He pinched hard, between his index finger and thumb, the fourth bead of the second decade of the rosary till it left its imprint on his flesh.

“Do me spiders,” he repeated.

She put down the cloth and did him spiders with both hands, all ten fingers wiggling and just barely grazing his flesh. The spiders danced nimbly around each bite, like celebrants around a fire, tickling the surrounding skin with their thready steps, then they moved downward on his back single file through the ridge on the right side, spreading again and dancing more freely on the soft field just north of his boxer waistband. As she moved down his legs, past his swollen ankles to the bottom of his tender toes, he felt an excruciating bliss that had nothing to do with the prayers he was murmuring; he sighed, he hummed to the joy of the spider dance and lost his place on the rosary again.

“I too have known sorrow,” doña Adela said to him as she let him into the parlor and took his thick-woven straw hat. She pressed her cheek to his and Father Gonzalo smelled her breath of desolation. She wore a loose printed housedress and slippers. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun so that the gray roots were accentuated and the many frizzled strands that had come loose set her face in a shadowy ruff apart from her small body, which moved in quick little bursts like a squirrel or a nervous child. Father Gonzalo followed a few steps behind her into the kitchen and doña Adela latched together the shuttered door and pushed open the window over the sink.

“Todo igual, coño. Its been two weeks and nothing has changed—all day locked in my room and wrapped in that musty old shawl she found the devil knows where. I think it was my mother's (la pobre, que en paz descanse). Y lo peor, now she has stopped eating altogether. She says the world smells too much of the dead and that it ruins her appetite. Imagínate, cosas de locos.”

She searched the pockets of her printed housedress, till she came across a folded envelope, worn with handling. She handed it to Father Gonzalo, informing him that the police captain had brought it to her the afternoon before. Father Gonzalo examined the contents of the envelope and shook his head and muttered that something had definitely gone awry when they could no longer properly bury their dead.

“A number. That is all the consolation we get for their murder … a number. ‘For obvious reasons, and in the interest of national security, the revolutionary authorities reserve the right to bury its traitors.' Imagínate, when was that law passed? I have not shown it to her. I can't.”