Tropical Secrets (7 page)

 

According to legend,
anyone who drinks
those forgetful waters
will fall in love
with this island
and will never
want to leave.

 

I remember that the river
was streaked with sun and shade.

 

I drank from a pool of sunlight.
My mother must have swallowed
deep shadows.

 

Daniel has agreed
to go there someday.

 

Davíd does not need to.
He already belongs
to his memories of Cuba.

 

 

I was taught that any story sounds true
until an eyewitness comes forward
to set the record straight.

 

This is why I encourage the young people
to write their tale of these years in Cuba,
even if they write it in verse, in song. . . .

 

The time of secrecy is over.
Truth is ready
to sing. . . .

 

 

On the ship, German sailors
sang songs about killing Jews.

 

When we finally came ashore,
they gave all the passengers
postcards of the vessel
to remind us of our journey
and our fears.

 

I tossed my postcard
into the sea,
a paper ship
made of memory,
floating away
so that I could feel free,

 

but, until now, that freedom
did not seem real.

 

 

I have nothing to give
my namesake,
nothing but time
and hope—
the same simple gifts
I have received
from those who helped me—

 

so I take him swimming
at the beach, in the evening
when flying fish soar
and the water glows
with red algae.

 

Together, we watch fish
cross the sky, surrounded
by stars . . .

 

and we listen to the rhythm
of waves and wind,
this narrow island's
musical breath.

 

 

Daniel and I are still friends,
maybe more.
The secrets have been exposed
and forgiven.

 

Now we are all free
to tell what we know.
Daniel is putting our tale
into a long ballad, a story-song.

 

I bring him a flamenco guitar
to help him find the right words.

 

On the beach
guitar music sounds like a part
of the natural world.

 

 

The strings
of the Spanish guitar
help my fingers dance
through our story.

 

Singing in a world
where my parents have disappeared
is not a betrayal.

 

I am singing
their story too.

 

 

I talk to the younger Daniel
about Carnival
and Cuba's magical
abundance of oranges.

 

I discover that this other Daniel
loves music, so I show him
how to make a flute
from a piece of wild bamboo,
and a turtle-shell rattle
filled with beach sand
and decorated with seashells.

 

Together, we make up songs
in the Cuban style,
improvised
décimas
that change as they go along
with words added or altered
each time we remember
sorrows and joys,

 

bitter losses,
and sweet survival—

 

any part of life
that seems worthy
of music.

 

 

 

 

 

Historical Note

 

 

The situations and major events in this book are factual.

The characters are entirely imaginary.

In 1939, Germany's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, sent fourteen Nazi agents to Cuba to stir up anti-Semitism. A massive newspaper and radio campaign resulted. The goal of this secret plan was to show the world that even a small, impoverished, racially mixed tropical island wanted nothing to do with Jews. Any ship turned away from Havana Harbor had already been rejected by the United States and Canada. Passengers rejected by Cuba were returned to Europe, where many were transported to concentration camps. The Nazi propaganda campaign had met its goal.

In December 1941, non-Jewish Germans were arrested and held at the prison in Isla de Pinos, a
remote island off the southern coast of Cuba. Christians married to Jewish refugees dreaded being forced to share cells with Nazi spies, in a prison where inmates were known to make their own rules.

Throughout the war years, corrupt Cuban officials demanded huge bribes for landing permits and entry visas. Despite tragedies and scandals, Cuba accepted 65,000 Jewish refugees from 1938 to 1939, the same number that was taken in by the much larger United States during the same period. Overall, Cuba accepted more Jewish refugees than any other Latin American nation.

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

 

 

A few years before World War I, my father's Ukrainian Jewish parents fled the anti-Semitic violence that destroyed their villages near Kiev. When they found safe passage on ships to “the Americas,” they arrived in the United States, learned English, and became Americans. Some of their relatives who took other ships to the Americas ended up in South America, where they learned Spanish and became Chileans.

My father was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After World War II, he traveled to Cuba, where he met my Cuban Catholic mother. My parents were not raised in the same culture or the same faith. They did not speak the same language. As artists, they communicated with drawings instead of words. More than sixty years later, they are still married.

I was raised agnostic, but I chose to become a nondenominational Protestant. Even though I did not follow the faiths of either of my parents, I hope I have taught my children to be the kind of people who will help refugees of any faith in times of need.

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgments

 

 

I am grateful to God for safe harbors and the kindness of strangers.

Many thanks to my parents, who taught me tolerance, and to my husband, Curtis; our son, Victor; and our daughter, Nicole, for tolerating my long solitary hours of scribbling.

Special thanks to Reka Simonsen for editorial wonders, and to Robin Tordini, Timothy Jones, Laura Godwin, Meredith Pratt, my copy editor, Deirdre Hare Jacobson, and all the other dedicated book angels at Henry Holt and Company.

For historical facts, I am deeply indebted to Robert M. Levine's remarkable study,
Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba
(University of Florida Press, 1993).