Cuba and the Night (32 page)

The other letter, on the same blue paper, was very short.

There were still three days before the flight. Three days to wonder why I’d done it: did I go with Cari in order to get the pictures, or did I get the pictures in order to go with Cari? Was it release or revenge—or both? Had it been because Cari was waiting for me? Or only because I couldn’t wait for Lula? I had three days to go through all the possibilities, and none of them was flattering.

•   •   •

I
t was raining—of course—when the plane touched down, and the Tube into town took us past rows and rows of tired, washed-out houses, with overgrown weeds in their gardens, and dirty lines of clothes. The Industrial Revolution had never died here; it hadn’t even grown up. I got out at Victoria, and found myself a bed-and-breakfast near the station, one of those rock-bottom places full of Eurailpassers, and Japan Travel Bureau types who’ve paid two months in advance, and girls who didn’t even make sure the toilets flushed. Just a place for the night, to freshen up and get some sleep before I met her.

When I woke up, late at night, out of sync, I went out to a phone booth and made a reservation for two at the Dorchester. Called Virgin too, to get another seat next to mine, on the seventeenth; bought some flowers at Covent Garden. One time I even tried their number, just to hear her voice. “Eight-double one, four-nine-three,” she answered, and I could hear his voice in hers as I hung up.

I didn’t want to sleep—it’d only be worse if I slept and dreamed, or tossed and turned all night—so I found an all-night café and filled myself with milky tea until it was light, and I thought of all the things I’d say to her. I had a few lines of Martí prepared—the ones she’d taught me on the beach—and I thought I’d tell her she could use her voucher now. We had a room, I would say, we had two seats on the Tuesday flight to New York.

Then I went to Waterloo and bought a day return to Winchester. I made the 9:05, got off at a sleepy country station—as mild and motionless as all those British places—and then I walked down the hill toward the school. Winchester’s not a big place, and it wasn’t too crowded. All the signs show you how to get to the “College.”

I walked down the pedestrians-only thoroughfare, the medieval areas, past the kind of buildings that must have made her think she’d never left Old Havana. I looked out for the Wykeham Arms, and tried to guess which shops she’d use. One time I thought I saw her, but it was just an au pair, laughing as she came out of an off-license.

I imagined her walking the aisles in Sainsbury’s, sipping rum in the pubs, going for runs across the playing fields at dusk.

Under the arches, everything became much quieter. The college had a secluded air, as if it belonged to another century. Not many visitors were around. The little lanes were generic English quaint. A few candy stores. A post office. Some little houses with pots of flowers on their windowsills.

I threaded my way through lanes and streets, and followed Kingsgate down Canon Street to Culver Road. I looked around for a phone booth: I thought he’d be out now, so I could invite her for a drink, or even get myself inside. Just long enough to show her the ticket and give her the flowers and tell her the lines from Martí. No problem with the visa, I’d explain: now she was English, she could go anywhere she wanted.

And then, as I walked past number 18, I saw them, through the window. Hugo was sitting at a piano, in the same sweater he’d been wearing in the bar that first night, but something in him had changed. He was singing along, for one thing, sort of quietly, and when he played, it sounded nothing like the kid’s tinkling I’d expected. Nothing fancy, to be sure, but it had the sound of someone who knew what he was doing, and wasn’t shy.

Lula was sitting in a chair across the room, a stuffy kind of professor’s room with framed pictures of cathedrals and even one of a soccer team. On the coffee table, there was a picture of the two of them together, at their wedding, the one I’d taken to keep the witnesses happy. Her eyes were bright, and she was smiling as he played. Her skin had lost something of its healthy color, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her clothes were as drab as the English designers could make them. But she looked calm, and settled.

Then he stopped his playing, and looked over at her like a man who’d just come out of church, and she looked back at him and smiled. It wasn’t much, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was a different smile from any I’d seen in her before. Not the one I’d caught in the hotel that night, not the one I’d taken in the plane. Not any kind of smile I could have gotten in my lens.

She leaned down to pick up a book from the table. From where I stood, it looked to be Martí.

“Pico Iyer’s remarkable talent is enough justification for going anywhere in the world he fancies.”

—
Washington Post Book World

FALLING OFF THE MAP
Some Lonely Places of the World

What does the elegant nostalgia of Argentina have in common with the raffish nonchalance of Australia? And what do both these counties have in common with North Korea? They are all “lonely places,” cut off from the rest of the world by geography, ideology, or sheer weirdness.

Travel / Adventure / 0-679-74612-9

THE LADY AND THE MONK

In Kyoto, Pico Iyer sets out to find Japan’s traditional world. Along the way, he meets a vivacious, thoroughly educated wife of a Japanese “salaryman” who seldom leaves work before 10 p.m. From their relationship, Iyer fashions a book that is a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old and very new Japan.

Travel / Adventure / 0-679-73834-7

VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU

Mohawk haircuts in Bali, Yuppies in Hong Kong. In Bombay, not one but five
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Adventure / Travel / 0-679-72216-5

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