Havana Lunar (10 page)
O
n Tuesday I left the pediátrico and picked up a couple of cucumbers at the mercado libre. I rinsed them in the kitchen and asked Julia, “Do you know where the scalpel is?”
“I was using it to cut some pictures out of a magazine.” She rose from the cushions. Before I realized what was happening, she stepped up behind me, pressed her lips to the back of my neck, and whispered, “Oye, hijo de puta, don't you want to fuck me?” I finally gave in.
We were dreaming awake, and it was only a moment until I was stiff as a rail and putting on a condom and pulling her up by her shoulders, lifting her up on top of me, no time to take underwear offâshe tugged the fabric aside and looked me in the eyes. Her face concealed none of her avaricious ambition. There was no fight in me, and she didn't have to prey with such ferocity, yet I was touched by that look, a reminder that I was desirable, not just a creature of habit going through autoerotic motions with expert manipulations. She was generous and omnivorous. My eyes rolled back in my head. Her eyelids fluttered and I caught a glimpse of her expression, spontaneously contented. It was the slightest contraction of her cervix that reawakened my heart to what zealous youth can do.
I tried to keep from coming. I thought of baseball, of the European Common Market, of histology. I thought of Fidel; I thought of a hall full of agronomists falling asleep during El Comandante's speech on cucumber production, and nevertheless I succumbed. When I finished she kept going. Beneath her I felt like a dead thing, like I had gotten the life sucked out of me. There was something terrible about the way she kept moving.
When it was done, I could see she was weary and remote, and a tide of guilt washed over me. “I wasn't after sex. I just wanted to help you.”
“Don't be so stuck,” she said, with a swat to my lunar. “You should have several girlfriends.”
Julia and I settled into the pile of cushions and blankets on the floor and stayed up all night. Each time she rose to go to the bathroom, the arc of her naked butt swung overhead like a churchbell. Each time I lit a cigarette, I lit one for her too. We made up a game called
Imagináriamericanos
.
“If we were Americans, I'd have my own apartment,” she said. “Your turn.”
“If we were Americans, I'd practice medicine in a clean hospital.”
“I'd just show up with the money, and the landlord would let me move right in.”
“A sparkling, sanitized hospital, walls and floors that haven't even heard of bacteria.”
“If we were Americans, I'd invite you over for coffee, and you'd bring flowers.”
“If we were Americans, I'd drive to and from the hospital, and the gas tank would always be full.”
“There wouldn't be any monotony. There would always be a choice.”
“If we were Americans, I'd save my money and buy a coffee plantation.”
We lay on the cushions silently for several minutes with heads touching, El Ché's beard and mouth, upside-down, looking like a black mountain looming above a dark lake. What they don't tell you about when you cheat on someone, even someone you don't like very much: For a long time afterwards the guilt can be like a dead body you carry alongside you. And when she finally leaves, the body becomes her, her memory.
Julia said, “You feel a ghost, I know.”
“How can you tell?”
“You think I haven't felt her too?”
I lit a cigarette and lay awake a long time, awkward in my underwear, listening to her breath and watching my fingers twitch at my side.
W
ednesday after my shift I told Julia, “Come with me to the necropolis.”
“Why?”
“I want to show you something.”
“I hate that place. I hate all cemeteries.”
I said, “Today's my birthday.”
Julia frowned. “All right, I'll go.”
En Cemeterio Colón, workers with mops and buckets cleaned the stones on the main road. I took Julia to my mother's tomb at the corner of H y 8. The sounds of cars and trucks so far away, we stood for a minute without speaking. Nearby, an old woman swept leaves off her husband's slab.
I told Julia, “It was on my birthday that I got this lunar on my face.”
“I thought it was a birthmark.”
“That's the little lie I tell grown-ups, but birth-marks occur at birth. My mark was born of a small hemorrhage I survived as a child.”
“What's the lie you tell children?”
“That a bird dropped it on me.”
“Follow me,” Julia said. “There's something I want to show you.” She took me to a corner of the necropolis where I'd never been. J y 14, a communal crypt inscribed:
Asociación de Reporteros de la Habana
. At the back of the antechamber was a wall of glass, still intact, two inches thick. A door of the same glass, hanging on rust-blackened hinges, led to a dark stairway. It took all my strength to pry the door open. We followed the glow of my father's lighter down the stone stairs. At the bottom, Julia pushed open a wrought-iron gate. The subterranean chamber was cold and lightless. Cracks in the walls let a noxious miasma seep in. Strong odors of clay and decay made me breathe through my mouth.
The floor was strewn with femurs, ribs, pelvisesâeverything but skulls, which fetch a decent price among practitioners of Palo Monte. Shreds of decomposing clothing matted to brown bones. Graffiti:
ME CAGO EN DIOS. WELCOM TU DE MACHIN
. In a hole in the stone floor lay a headless skeleton. At the center of the room three feet off the floor was a slab three feet wide, seven feet long. This is where they would rest the coffin while readying the appropriate tomb, a waystation making it easier on the pallbearers' backs and less upsetting to the family if there was any kind of delay. There is something terrible about laying a coffin on the floor. Footstones, stacked five wide by four tall, covered most of the west wall. The north and east walls would probably have fit forty more corpses, but the cement had never been broken, probably because Fidel came along and the Asociación de Reporteros de la Habana was disbanded shortly thereafter. The dead that would have filled this monument went into exile.
“When I joined Alejandro's crew they brought me here,” Julia said.
“What for?”
“Initiation. First they get you high on stolen painkillers, gasoline vapors, even livestock tranquilizers.” She told me a story.
They blindfold you and lead you down a long stairway. All you can sense is the unwholesome thickness to the air, a sulfuric moisture that makes you gag. From the corners, the stale stink of many years of urine. And the damp cold. They make you sit on the slab. Here is your fiancé. He's wearing a glove. Hold his hand. You smell the wax of candle flames. Do you take this man to be your husband? Say I do or they will hit you. They won't let you in. They will kill the little dog you like so much. I do. Come lie down beside him. You feel his hard shoulder against yours. He still hasn't said anything. Turn and kiss him. His leathery lips don't kiss back. The stifled laughter of the others in your crew echoes hollowly off the walls. I now pronounce you husband and wife. The blindfold is snapped off your face and the other girls, your new sisters, all laugh. They hold candles, and by their light you see your betrothed. A moan of revulsion catches in your throat, taps bile. You vomit once violently, gasp, vomit again. This air is not for breathing. Now you know why it is foul. Your new family's cruel laughter echoes off the stone walls, and your priest, the pimp, cries, “Casados hasta que la muerte los separe.” Again you vomit. Someone pushes your face to his and your arms flail. Your husband's skull rolls off the slab away from the mummified cadaver and across a floor strewn with condoms, bottles, syringes, feces, and bones. When it's time to leave, the chulo takes the skull away with him. It never belonged to the mummy in the first place.
“This place is horrible, Julia. Let's get out of here.”
By the time we were back at the attic, Julia was crying in my face: “¿Porqué quieres que esté aquÃ?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't have to stay, you know. I can go. Please tell me, Mano: Why are you letting me stay here?”
“I don't know why,” I told her, “but I don't want you to go away.”
“You've got your hand inside me, clutched around my heart. Now you're ripping it out. You monster!”
Julia picked up a porcelain ashtray and threw it at my head. It bounced off the wall and broke in pieces on the floor. I was still recovering from the surprise when she rushed toward me. I thought: She's just a child; she must be coming to apologize. But before I realized what was happening Julia picked up a jagged chunk of the ashtray from the floor and slashed at my face, crying, “¡Hijo de puta!” My hand shot up in reflex and I received a gash down the length of my forearm. I grabbed her arms and she shrieked, her face disfigured in a mask of bitter hatred. Kicking and spitting she tried to break free. Air caught in her larynx, contorting her scream into a grotesque, primal howl and transforming the sound into a sob as she collapsed to the floor in tears, bringing me to my knees beside her, my hands still clutching her wrists. I held her in a close embrace. She was sobbing, saying, “I'm sorry, Mano ⦠Tu cumpleaños ⦔ With whispered entreaties for measured breaths, I coaxed Julia back from the edge of hyperventilation. I cleaned and dressed the wound on my arm, and Julia fell asleep in my embrace.
W
hen I got back from the pediátrico on Thursday, Julia was gone. “Where did she go?” I asked aloud, but El Ché had stopped speaking to me. I waited up all night, but she didn't come. The next day before work I walked to the cinderblock complex named after Máximo Gómez and asked the block captain about Tonia and her family. “The girl with the abscess?” She pointed me to their apartment.
“Hola, señora. Do you remember me?”
“Como no, doctor: You saved my daughter's life. My husband and I have wanted to come to the hospital to thank you. We owe you our lives, and I'm sorry I haven't come see you yet. Life gets so busy.”
“Please don't worry about it. How is your daughter doing?”
“All well, gracias a Dios. Please come in. There's no coffee, but I can offer you chamomile tea.”
“I appreciate the offer, but in fact I have very little time. I want to ask whether you can help me find someone.”
“I hope I can help.”
“That night at the hospital, after the surgery, your niece came in to thank me.”
“My niece?”
“Yes. She brought me a sandwich and told me your daughter was her favorite cousin.”
“That's strange, because my husband and I have no niece.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps we should report this to the vigilance committee.”
“I wouldn't bother. It was probably just a friend from school who loves your daughter like a cousin.”
“Maybe. What was her name?”
“Julia, about sixteen years old.”
“Doesn't sound familiar, but I can ask Tonia when she wakes up.”
“Don't bother. It was probably just a mix-up.”
“I'm sorry I couldn't be of help, doctor.”
I waited up all night, but Julia didn't come.
After my Friday shift at the pediátrico, I walked to Yorki's apartment. My knock woke him from a nap. “¡Coño, Mano! I was dreaming about food.” He pulled his pants on and donned his sunglasses. “You're not going to believe this. Last night a guy I haven't seen before comes around and whispers to me, âOye, compañero, aquà tengo unas exquisitas chuletas empanizadas.' Of course I don't believe him, but he shows one to me and my mouth starts watering. There it is, still frozenâa breaded steak! He says they were stolen from the kitchen at the CohÃba. So I buy two: ¡Coño! Ten fucking dollars! When I get them into the kitchen and start frying them up with an old onion rind, something doesn't smell right.”
“No me digas ⦔
“¡Empanadas de toalla! ¡Carajo! A hard day's hustles wasted on a couple of breaded dishtowels!”
“These thieves have gone too far. And the vigilantes of the CDR are no better, spreading rumors about ground glass in the black-market bread. Kids are starving while they mess with our heads.”
“¡Bajo! ¡Bajito!” Yorki whispered, then asked, “What's eating you, Mano?”
“The jinetera I helped outâshe took off yesterday.”
“She's probably in some kind of trouble, and then it's probably best that she split. I wouldn't give her another thought if I were you, Mano. The important thing is that you got laid. You did fuck her, didn't you?” I said nothing. “Don't tell me you didn't get it while you had the chance ⦠Just remember, it's you who did the fucking and she who got fucked.”
“Oye, Yorki, can I borrow your moped for a few hours?”
“I need it tonight, but you can use it tomorrow as long as you put some gas in it.”
“I'll siphon a liter out of the Lada.”
“I'll leave it parked in the alley. Remember to pretend to use a key in case any of the neighborhood kids are watching. I don't want them to catch on and steal it.”
When I got back to the attic I found that Julia still hadn't returned, so I went down to the clinic to lie on a cot. A brief thundershower came and went, and then I heard a crack of glass. I peered around the curtain and saw the broken window pane, the overcoat sleeve, and the glove belonging to Detective Perez, chief homicide investigator of the PNR, he of the exquisite manicure.