Tropical Secrets (4 page)

 

I learn how to play
a big conga drum

 

and a set of two small
bongo drums

 

and the square rumba drums
made from codfish boxes—

 

hollow drums played
by the dockworkers

 

who unload cargo
from the ships
while they sing.

 

 

When I realize that Summer Carnival
is a religious festival,

 

I almost change my mind
about dancing.

 

My parents would not approve
of celebrating a Catholic saint's birthday,

 

but David explains that Carnival
also marks the end of a year's
long, exhausting sugar harvest,

 

and seasons, he assures me,
are a miracle even city people
can understand
all over the world.

 

 

Once I decide to dance,
I put my heart into the movements
and the sounds. . . .

 

I study the rhythms
of polished sticks called claves
and rattles of all sorts

 

and the güiro,
a gourd carved with grooves
that are scraped
with a stiff wire,

 

and I study
la quijada
,
the sun-bleached jawbone
of a long-dead mule
with loose teeth that chatter

 

each time I shake
the musical skull.

 

I feel like a troubled ghost
from one of my grandfather's
funny stories.

 

 

The rumba
is a wild dance,

 

the conga
is a festive dance,

 

and the
son
has a more wistful style

 

the sort of music I think of
as a danceable sorrow.

 

 

Today, all the singing vendors
seem to be saying,
“Hurry! hurry! Taste this moment
before the sunlight
slips away.”

 

“Hurry! hurry! Taste these wonders
before I go on my way,
far away.”

 

So I taste the sweetness of a guava
that smells like a forest,
and a coconut
with its scent of beach

 

and the sugarcane juice
called
guarapo
, a syrup pressed
from towering green shoots
deeply rooted
in muddy
red soil.

 

 

Acrobats leap
twirling long machetes.
I think of my mother
chopping onions.

 

Men dance in capes,
pretending to fight cardboard bulls.
I remember my father
dressed up for his job as a pianist.

 

Women dance with lanterns
balanced on their heads.
I see our flickering fireplace
on a shivery winter night.

 

Paloma dances on her stilts.
I think of Black Forest trees
swayed by wind.

 

Each time I picture my parents
dancing a waltz, or my grandfather
hopping, clowning around,

I feel like two people—
the young man who makes music
out of odds and ends
of wood and bone

 

and this other person,
the boy lost somewhere
between the torment of memory
and a few fragile shards
of hope.

 

 

The streets are decorated
with strands of colored paper
cut into the shapes
of lightbulbs and flags.

 

I dance on stilts,
smiling down at my feet
far below—
like Alicita in Wonderland
when she was tall.

 

I feel like many people—
the little girl who had a mother
and the one who hides with doves
and the one who obeys her father

 

and this once-a-year
young woman
who knows how to dance
in midair.

 

 

Carnival only lasts
for a few days and nights,
and then I will need
to dream up new ways
to make money for helping
the sad people
who still come
on more and more ships,
even though that one ship
was sent away
by my father,
El Gordo, “the Fat Man.”

 

Papá is actually not fat at all.
He is a tall, lean man
who keeps dreaming up ways
to make his fat wallet
even fatter.

 

 

 

Lottery vendors sing about tickets,
so I buy them, based on my dreams—
a Cuban custom.

 

If I've dreamed about tigers,
I buy number fourteen.

 

Horse dreams are one,
and death is either eight,
if the person who died in the dream
is a commoner,

 

or sixty-four,
if the dead man in the dream
is a king.

 

Dreams of a woman
who is kind and gentle
are number twelve,

 

so I buy a few of those tickets
even though I have not seen Mamá
in my dreams
for a long time,

 

and now, when I do see her,
we usually meet
in a nightmare.

 

 

Today, Paloma and I
traded secrets.

 

She told me she longs
to be a dancer like her mother.

 

I admitted that I find it hard to believe
I will ever have the chance
to grow old, playing the piano
like my father.

 

His life as a musician
made him happy.

 

I always imagined that I
would be happy too,
but now, each night
I dream that German soldiers find me.

 

I hear the crash of windows falling
and people screaming
and the boots, so many pounding,
drumming boots. . . .

 

In the morning, I have to struggle
to convince myself that the Nazis
are not here.

 

Will I ever feel
truly safe?

 

 

I sit on the beach.
I play drums
for the sea.

 

Waves are my audience.
The shorebirds do not listen.
They are too busy
making a music

all their own,

 

a dance of wings
and stiltlike legs,

 

each feather
an instrument played
by wind.

 

 

Islands belong to the sea,
not the earth.

 

All around me
the world is blue.

 

Above, more blue,
like a hot, melting star.

 

Music is the only part
of Cuba's heated air

 

that feels like something
I can breathe.

 

 

I feel like a King Midas of living things
instead of gold.

 

Everything I touch
turns into something that grows.

 

This morning, I heard
a trapped insect chirping
inside the wood of a table—
it must have hatched after
the tree was chopped down.

 

Last night, I tried to read Spanish stories
in a book marked by worm-eaten pages
and parallel grooves left by rats' teeth.

 

In the tropics
everything is eaten
by something else.

 

Trees lift the sidewalk,
vines swallow buildings,
and fence posts sprout leaves,
turning themselves into hedges.

 

Like King Midas, I am left with nothing
but this unreasonable hope
that, somehow, my strange life
and my lost family

 

will return
to normal.

 

 

Cubans eat pigs and shellfish.
Paloma buys crab fritters
and fried pork rinds
from vendors who sing
about the beauty
of beaches and farms.

 

She might as well offer me
spiders and mice.
She does not understand
our customs.
She expects us to dance
on the Sabbath,
on Friday night
and all day Saturday.

 

She keeps teaching me Spanish,
but what use do I have
for this island's singsong language?
I should be learning English.

 

Even if my parents
are no longer alive,
I must plan on somehow
reaching New York

 

in honor
of their memory,
their dream.

 

 

I was taught that there are four
kinds of people in the world—
wise, wicked, simple,
and those who do not yet know
how to ask questions.

 

I was taught that questions
are just as important as answers.

 

I was a child when I learned these things.
Now I am old, but I still know
that life's questions
outnumber life's answers.

 

Carnival joy is one of my questions—
where does it come from,
this season of musical contentment,
even though I have lived so long
and lost so much?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I have taught
the art of wondering
too thoroughly—

 

now, the young people ask
so many questions
that the lack of answers
makes me dizzy.

 

I cannot bear to speak
about my burning village,
my parents and sisters,

 

or my Cuban wife
who died too young

 

or our son
who moved away
to who-knows-where

 

and never visits,
never writes.

 

I have no wisdom to offer
when it comes to the art
of waiting for answers.

 

 

Waiting for a future
and an understanding
of the past

 

means waiting for an end
to a war, far away,

 

so instead of tormenting myself
with impatient questions
about Europe's suffering,

 

I find my escape
by playing
el sartén
,
a strangely simple
Cuban musical instrument
made by clashing
two frying pans together
like cymbals in an orchestra,
the sound of thunder
or hoofbeats,

 

the music
of running
and rage.

 

 

Paloma introduces me
to Ernesto Lecuona,
a great Cuban composer
whose father vanished
when Ernesto was only five.

 

To support his family,
the boy played piano
in those old-fashioned theaters
where silent-movie stars
danced on white screens.

 

Now, watching Lecuona's hands
as they dance on the piano,
I discover the secret
of his genius—

 

both hands are calm,
his hands are a team,

 

and so are his inspirations
as he blends the wistful melodies
of Spain
with hopeful rhythms
from Africa,

 

creating an entirely new
sort of music,
the sound of a future
dancing with the past.

 

 

The more I hear Lecuona's piano,
the more convinced I become

 

that improvising
is the music
for me.

 

Lecuona has captured
the tropical magic
of daydreams
and wishing.

 

All over Havana
shoeshine boys
and candy vendors
walk down the street,
changing old songs
into new ones.

 

Cubans call this skill
decimar
—
the art of inventing life
as it goes along.

 

 

Instead of answering my questions
about her mother's dancing
and her father's work,
Paloma walks with me
up and down the cobblestone streets
of Old Havana.

 

I understand her reluctance to talk
about painful memories,
so I let her be quiet.
Instead, we listen to the clip-clop
of a cow's hooves
as the
lechero
delivers fresh milk
from door to door, milking
into a clean pitcher
handed to him by each housewife.

 

When we listen to a mockingbird
singing from the top of a palm tree,
Paloma says the bird sings
like a Cuban,
inventing new melodies
each time his beak opens.

 

I tell her I know how the bird feels,
unwilling to be satisfied
with yesterday's song.

 

 

I have so much to say
about my mother's dancing
and my father's work,

 

but I do not know how to speak
of things that really matter,

 

so instead, I tell Daniel about my school
where I study math, reading, writing,
lacemaking, and saints' lives.

 

My favorite teacher is an old nun
with a sad smile.

 

My favorite saint is Francis
who spoke to birds and wolves.

 

Birds are so much easier
to understand
than people,

 

but I'm not so sure
about wolves
or saints.