The Mortifications (19 page)

Ulises awoke to a pounding at the door. He assumed it was a bellhop coming to tell him that the evacuation had begun. Instead, it was Simón, Orozco's cousin, who'd bribed the front desk for Ulises's room number so that the two of them might catch the last train leaving the city that morning. Simón looked very much like Orozco: short and broad, tan and dried out. He told Ulises to get dressed and to pack the smallest bag he had with money, two shirts, and all his papers. The rest they would have to leave behind.

Have you ever seen a city after a flood? Simón asked.

Ulises told him no.

It's a sloppy circus, he said. When we come back, the animals we forgot are desperate and loud. The streets sound like a domesticated jungle.

Thank you for coming, Ulises said.

Orozco is fond of you. But what's wrong with your face?

Sunburn. I got drunk and fell asleep.

Simón leaned closer to Ulises. I think in a short while you're going to be in a lot of pain.

The passenger car was choked with standing evacuees. Fighting their way through the crowd, Ulises and Simón found their bench between an older white couple—tourists—and a black mother with a young boy. Ulises watched as the mother calmed the child by gathering his small body into her arms and forcing the boy's face into her neck. Ulises remembered Soledad's scent as a mixture of cologne and hair spray. Her neck, the last time he had seen it, was gaunt, ravaged by chemotherapy.

What happens to the telephone lines when a hurricane hits? Ulises asked. My mother will think I'm dead.

The connections are worse than ever, Simón said.

She'll pass away, Ulises said. She has cancer. She could die, and I wouldn't know it.

Orozco told me your mother is strong. She'll hold on to the last. She won't go before she knows at least one of you is coming home from Cuba.

What can we do?

We'll see about a mail boat out west. We can send something to the Dominican Republic and from there, up north. How is your face?

It feels like a canvas sack, Ulises said.

Later, as the train lurched past the city limits, Ulises's stomach began to ache.

I have to throw up, he said.

People moved out of Ulises's way, and a ticket checker opened the door for him with a look of sympathy. On the platform Ulises tried to expel whatever was left in his stomach from dinner the night before, but he only managed to spit up a yellow sauce. The sun was rising, and a mist carpeted the rails. Ulises saw that they were nearing swampland, and in the distance he could see the high grass give way to wetter ground, turning into a river. He breathed deeply, and the sickness subsided, though his knees wobbled as he returned to the car.

My sister doesn't know anything about our mother's cancer, Ulises said to Simón. She's disappeared for more than half a year.

You'll tell her?

I hope to, but I'm afraid she might not care. I think she's been forgetting us for a long time now. I don't know if she's capable of hearing what I have to say.

Simón said, Orozco's mother lives with mine in a house in Ingla Solsta. He only visits once a year. His mother is shrinking—dying, really—but it's impossible for him to know how fast. He hugs her the moment he arrives, but he can't remember exactly how much she weighed the last time he was there. He can see that she's smaller, but the degree of which he has no clue.

That's terrible, Ulises said.

I have to tell him eventually, but I'm not sure he'll believe me. That's not something a person wants to know.

Ulises struggled to imagine the moment he'd tell Isabel why he'd come. He could hear her say,
I will pray for her,
and that was the same as,
Lord, take this from my hands.

The train rolled directly into the morning light as it headed east. Packed with bodies, the railcar was already hot, but soon the metal roofs were baking, and the cars filled with steam. Ulises began to sweat, the few hairs left on his head curling, his sunburn swelling. He felt a throbbing in his scalp and was certain he'd burned his scar even uglier. The throb became a tapping, and Ulises realized it was not the sunburn but a small finger poking the tissue. He turned and saw the little black boy who'd been asleep in his mother's arms, now standing on the seat. The woman slept. The boy seemed to want to smile, to see if perhaps Ulises would play a game with him. Ulises touched his scar, and it was tender, as though it were still an open wound.

The boy said,
Quemado
—burnt.

Ulises told him yes and no. He said the sun made his scalp so red, but it was an accident that first cut him. The boy's hand wavered, and Ulises nodded. The boy put his thumb on the scar and turned it in circles.

Be gentle, Ulises said. But the boy pressed his finger into the scar, which made Ulises yell. The mother woke and grabbed at her son. She spoke too fast for Ulises, and Simón turned to help, but before he could explain, the mother and her son were pushing toward the rear of the car. Ulises called out his apologies.

What were you doing? Simón asked.

The kid wanted to touch my head, Ulises said. It seemed harmless. Do you think she's going to stand the rest of the way?

Her choice, Simón said.

Ulises stood and tried to find the faces of the mother and son in the mass of upright passengers, but he could not. I didn't imagine them, Ulises said.

Sit down, Simón said. You're going to make people nervous.

I remember that boy from somewhere, Ulises said.

Impossible.

Suddenly, the train was slowing. It came to a stop, and a conductor walked through the cars, instructing the passengers to disembark. The train, he said, was headed back to Havana for another shipment of supplies before the storm hit.

Out on the platform, Ulises and Simón discovered they'd only made it as far as Santa Clara. Simón asked around, and miraculously he found a squad of soldiers headed as far east as Las Tunas. He and Ulises could join them if they didn't mind a hot, bumpy ride in the back of a transport truck.

In the cargo hold a soldier brought out a guitar and began to play while the rest of the men smoked cigarettes and chatted as best they could over the grinding engine. Some soldiers requested songs, and the musician asked Ulises and Simón if he could play something for them, but Ulises's stomach churned, and he shut his eyes after saying no thanks. A young soldier slid over to Ulises's side and pushed a cigarette into his hand.

The nicotine is good for the nausea, the young soldier said. He asked Ulises what he and Simón were doing that they had to travel during a hurricane.

Visiting family out east, Ulises said.

A visit? the soldier asked. Come on, man. I'm not the CDR. I'm just talking.

The CDR, Ulises said. I remember them. Neighborhood watch?

And I thought you were a tourist, the soldier said. I should have guessed otherwise since your Cuban is so good. Yes, neighborhood watch, or something like that. Mostly they tell on you when you say shit about the government. Committee to Defend the Glorious Revolution and whatnot.

My sister is missing, Ulises said. We think she's in Buey Arriba. I've come to take her home.

What's his name? the soldier asked.

Whose? Ulises asked.

The guy your sister ran off with. The macho who thinks he's got her away from you.

Our father, Ulises told him.

Fuck, the soldier said.

It's not like that.

Still, the young man said. My Nicanora, she's older than me, but she tried scooting off to Jaronu with this black guy who's about thirty kilos bigger than me. What could I do? I joined the army. Four weeks' training, then I was assigned. First break, and I got my whole platoon to go to Jaronu. We beat the crap out of the guy and then took a nice dip in the ocean. Brought my sister with us to Playa Santa Lucia. Beautiful beaches. Then she fucked one of my buddies there. I told them to get married, and they did. Three kids, and they're all right, because he made sergeant. You got an army with you or just that guy?

Just me, Ulises said.

I hope your papa's ill, the soldier said. Girls love their daddies.

He stopped talking to light himself a cigarette, and Ulises watched how he held the stick in the corner of his mouth, just like Willems, who could buoy a cigar with just his bottom lip.

What did you do before the army? Ulises asked.

Cut cane.

Do you like it?

Cutting cane?

No, riding in these trucks and building barracks and wearing fatigues, Ulises said.

It's all right, the soldier said. We have more time off than most. I meet a lot of women around the island. A lot of cheap smokes.

I grow tobacco in the States, Ulises said.

No shit, the soldier said. How do you like our cigarettes?

You don't toast the leaves long enough. They're chalky because of it. Ulises looked at his cigarette, which had gone out, and then he asked, What did you say to your sister? To get her home?

Nothing, the soldier said. I told you, we beat the shit out of that black
coño.
You don't ask the girl; you just take away all her reasons for staying.

I'm not going to beat up my old man, Ulises said, but he was quiet then, because he'd not called Uxbal his old man in a long time, not since he was a boy on the island and there were other friends he ran with who had their own old men to watch out for. I haven't seen him in years, he said.

The soldier could barely pinch what was left of his cigarette.

Better for you, he said. No love lost. You just go and tell him straight up. He's probably got some gray on him now. A man starts to weaken after thirty-five, so you've got him there. They teach you that in the army to remind you how few years you've got to be a strong soldier. They'd prefer it if we were smart soldiers, but who's going to listen to that when they're eighteen and feeling fine?

How old are you? Ulises asked.

Twenty-three. The soldier laughed but then stopped and said, You've got to do the talking, man. Don't let your father start. Fathers know.

Know what?

They know all the mistakes you've ever made, because they made them first.

My father used to be a rebel, Ulises said. But that was years ago.

Rebel for what?

I'm not sure. He didn't love the revolution. I think he thought the island would turn out differently. Can I have another smoke?

The soldier gave Ulises another cigarette and then lit one for himself. The two of them watched the road from out of the back of the truck. It was wet. The soldier said it was supposed to be a highway, but this stretch no one had ever finished. It had rained that morning, and so the dirt was mud, and the tires spun out every hundred feet or so as the driver tried to pick up speed. The sun was way up high, and though the morning steam had burned off, it was replaced with the sweat from the soldiers and the Caribbean humidity that never went away despite the winds coming from the gulf.

Are there rebels still? Ulises asked.

Some, the soldier said. But they're crazies. They live alone and steal food. They don't talk to nobody. Mostly they think the army is going to revolt against the
Líder,
and they'll join when it happens. Bunch of stupids waiting for something to come that already came. Missed the boat, you know?

My mother said the army used to raid the hills once a month. Like checking for mice in the walls. They'd set some fires and smoke out the rebels. She said it was how they cleared the cane fields of snakes.

Not anymore, the soldier said. The CDR finds rebels, if there are rebels to be found, then they call us, and we pick them up. We don't go hunting for them anymore.

If my father is still a rebel, I could turn him in, Ulises said.

The soldier threw his butt out the back of the truck and shook his head.

That would be bad, man.

What happens to rebels? Ulises asked.

They go to rehabilitation camps for two years. Then they go to work in the cane fields. Between cuttings they build roads.

My father grew tomatoes when we were young, Ulises said. He could work in a field.

The soldier shook his head. After five years they would execute him. They would wait five years to try him in court, and when he was beaten down and done, then they'd put him in front of a judge. He would confess on paper, if you know what I mean, and then they'd take him out back of somewhere and shoot him. You don't want that for your papi. You'd go crazy yourself knowing what you did, maybe kill yourself after a while. Or you'd get some dumb idea in your head that you could make up for what you did. You could start your own revolution in your father's name. Then you're just another
coño
waiting to be picked up by the CDR. Then you're just as bad as your pops.

The day after Isabel took Guillermo, Uxbal denounced his daughter during his bath.

Those men are disgusting and probably sick, he said. You shouldn't touch them. Who knows what diseases?

Upright on his cot, he smelled not only of body odor, but also of weeds, an aroma Isabel was never able to wash completely from his skin. She was kneeling at his side and scrubbing the rough gray surface of his kneecaps when he started chastising her. His tone was suddenly like that of his preaching days: caustic, sharp, arrogant, and bullying. It put a fire on her tongue.

Is anyone among you sick?
Isabel asked.
Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Uxbal didn't answer, but he reached out and gripped the hand in which she held the washcloth.

Your voice, he said, and he closed his eyes. He could not look at her and hear her at the same time. He shook, but Isabel thought it was only the cold water on his knees. She took her hand out of his and let Uxbal slump back onto his bed, half-washed, half-covered in soap.

Why did you put me up on a crate when I was a kid? Isabel asked. Were you really interested in the future of Cuba? Or were you scared that Ma was already leaving you? Were you scared of being alone, so you asked me to do something that might bring me back? Aren't these the things you asked for?