Havana Lunar (12 page)

12 August 1979

T
en candles on a cake, right in front of my face. Chocolate: my favorite. The cake was small but special. It was not from the panadería or the lady down the street, who made the same cake for all the boys and girls. Mamá had made this one herself. She was strangely cheerful, singing, and Machado was dancing on his back legs. Spinning the cake, Mamá lit each candle with a straw she held in a trembling hand. While the cake went around I counted to ten, but I couldn't remember if I had counted the first candle already. Singing “Las Mañanitas,” Mamá kept turning the plate, and I counted the candles on their second rotation:
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen …
If I kept counting, could I continue time traveling? Could I keep flying through the years from birthday to birthday? I blew out the flames, making a wish for Mamá to get better for good.

My mother cut the cake right in half and we ate off the same plate. We didn't even use forks. “It's your birthday, so we get to eat with our hands.” Under the chocolate there was a sour flavor that made my tongue curl up. “Isn't it good?” she asked. It wasn't very good. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I said yes and put a little more in my mouth. While Mamá shoveled the crumbs from the plate, I spit out most of my piece and let Machado quietly gulp the half-chewed offering.

Two hours later, my mother and I were lying side-by-side on stretchers. Terrible pain shot through my abdomen. Mamá was unconscious, and the doctor was trying to get me to speak. “¿Qué fue, niño? ¿Qué tomaron? ¿O fue algo que te dieron de comer?”

“Un pastelito.” Saying the words plunged knives into my gut.

“¿De qué era el pastelito?”

“Chocolate.”

“¿Quién lo preparó?”

“Mi Mamá.”

The doctor turned back on my mother and began pounding her chest. A nurse said, “The police told me that their dog was poisoned too.”

The doctor told the nurse to get an orderly to open Machado up and find out what was in the cake. He took a long tube like a yellow water snake and forced it into the back of my throat. I gagged and my esophagus began convulsing, emptying my stomach of Aurora's peanuts. My mother never woke up. She had crushed a full bottle of her chemotherapy pills and mixed them into the cake. My own mild overdose caused a severe hemorrhage beneath the right eye:
Havana Lunar
.

18 August 1992

“D
octor.” A voice, a man's, awakens me with a start. Eyes open on Tito, the younger of the two black brothers who worked for Alejandro. “Where is she hiding, feo?”

“No sé.”

“Liar.”

I dart a look around. We are in a narrow pocket between three tombs. Tito has me penned in.

“This is going to go a lot easier for you if you tell me where she is.”

“I don't know.”

Tito shows me what he's going to hit me with: an unvarnished nightstick. He steps forward and says, “Sueña con los angelitos, doctor.”

I cover my head and roll, but he catches the base of my skull. A rocket bursts and goes dark, then there goes the darkness: one blackout wrapped in another.

* * *

Awaken to blackness, pain pulsing from temple, pinned beneath a leathery sack. Paralyzed. Air humid, thick with noxious gas. Stench. Shallow breath. Salivating. No light. Blink. No light at all for eyes.

“¿Hola?” Echo high and hollow. Cold stone. Alone. Push. Sack shifts. One arm, another. Roll ragged thing to stone. Bones. Keep calm. Rise. Feel around, find a wall.

A blind, squatting back-and-forth across the stone floor, kicking and batting after something. A wrought-iron gate secured with a clunky Russian padlock. Find something metal to strike against it. Only dry leaves, brittle bones—quadriceps, femur, thigh bone—and mummified remains. I don't need the dim light that seeps down to the chamber during the day to know: the smell tells me, and so does the slab in the center of the chamber. This is the crypt where Alejandro initiated his jineteras.

“Julia?” Echo and no more. Touch top of head: a substantial swelling, pain. Lie down again. Search pocket. Money and Julia's note still there. Tito never checked.

The stairs take on a violet glow in daytime, reflecting light from the glass-walled antechamber to the top of the landing. I needed water before I came here, but now my mouth is dry like cotton. I rattle the bars, stop to listen, cry, “¡Socorro!” I hear bus brakes and airplanes above, sometimes a distant shout echoing off the stones, but my cries provoke no response. Planning to meet here was stupid.
Medianoche, puerto.
I have to get out before midnight. Have to get someone's attention. Dry leaves scattered on the floor. I'd give all the money in my pocket to have my father's lighter back.

Try to sleep but the slab is very cold. Want a blanket but there are only bones. Spend the dark day at the edge of hallucination. Line up thoughts. Piece it back together. Find a way out. Out of this hell.

* * *

I am shocked awake by the flick of a lighter, the sudden appearance of Tito at the bottom of the stone stairway. I sit up with a start and shield my eyes from the bright flame. “You don't have to tire yourself out with shouting. There's a glass wall at the top of the stairs. Nobody will even hear a scream.” Tito lets the lighter go out and stands smoking a cigarette on the other side of the gate. “Where is she hiding?”

“I don't know.”

“¿Quizás en Miramar? Near Quinta Avenida? A friend of mine was working the neighborhood around the tunnel last night, and when he recognized that hideous mark on your face he followed you here.” Tito takes a long drag of the cigarette. “But first he saw you throwing something in the ocean. What was in the box, doctor? Alejandro's head?”

“I didn't have anything to do with it and neither did Julia.”

“Is that the name she gave you?”

“I need water.”

“No water.”

Throat is dry. Dry leaves. Thinking:
Medianoche, puerto.
“Can I have a cigarette?”

Tito lights one for me and passes it through the bars: mentholated Popular. “I'm going to watch you put it out when you're done. In fact, you're going to hand me the butt. If I have to come in there to get it, I'll crack your skull in half.”

When it's down to the butt smoldering between pinched fingertips, I pass it back through the bars. Tito spits into the palm of his hand and puts it out. “Good doctor.”

“I can give you money—dollars.”

“You're a doctor; you don't have any money. Hasta mañana, feo.” He climbs the dark stairs and calls from the top, “Or maybe pasado mañana.”

* * *

When I lie very still on the slab in the center of the room, the flies begin landing on me, crawling over my face. I part my lips gently and a fly tests the crust at the corners of my mouth. I clamp my mouth shut and the flies scatter.

The light ebbs. The landing is lost in darkness. My clothes are damp with sweat and I feel cold. I anticipate each new stage of dehydration: a hangover headache, familiar enough, but aggravated by the lingering concussion. Sensitivity to hypothermia, orthostatic hypotension, severe dizziness each time I rise from the slab. Nothing to eat or drink and the migraine arrives. Think pleasant thoughts.

Eyes. An attempt at conjuring eyes. Only three or four women have really looked me in the eye. I'd like to be able to say
not counting Mamá,
but it wouldn't be true. Submerged deep in her room, her drugs, she never looked into anyone's eyes. Pero Aurora, sí. Even after the suicide. But her love was different. And then came Ojitos Lindos. I am sure she had experienced the connection before, but for me it was the first time. People rarely ever dared to look.

Agonizing hours pass. Midnight goes unmarked. Julia will think I stood her up. If I can get out of here she might come again tomorrow. I hold my last urine and struggle to resist the diarrhea. Keep alive. Keep alive long enough for someone to find me. Cold, clammy, no blanket, no jacket. The only way to sleep on this slab is like a corpse.

* * *

The stairs glow violet again and I begin to really thirst. Twenty-four hours. People should be wondering. Carlota? Not anymore. And Yorki will think I'm angry about her. Beatrice? Carajo … But I'm missing the second shift in two days at the pediátrico. The staff nurse will tell Director González that I didn't report. The director will tell the staff nurse to hold someone over. Then what? Back to his desk, his Marlboros and Belgian chocolate? Will he ask himself why Rodriguez, who hasn't missed a shift in more than a year, failed to call in?

The stone wall sweats with condensation. I try licking it. It is an unwholesome liquid, thick and alkaline, impregnated with the foul flavor of humus, but when my swollen tongue touches it the wetness is cool, comforting. The spongy papillae will absorb what water they can. Between licks I scrape the filth from my lips.

I walk around in circles to forestall atrophy. The pain in my bowels bends me double. I can't hold it any longer and go in the corner near the gate. Burning, bladder empties its last liquid. Mouth caked with thick detritus. Tongue swollen. Lips parched. Skin cracking. Eyes sunken in orbits. Nasal passages crusted with blood. Skin scaly. I cry, “Water!” But nobody is listening.

Two flies bother each other on the edge of the stone slab. I wait until they begin mating, swat them in their moment of distraction. I scrape my hand across my teeth and swallow drily without chewing. My throat catches but I suppress the rising bile. I lick what's left of the meal from my palm. A dry irritation remains. My throat burns.

The patient suffering dehydration can last as little as five days, as long as three weeks. I try to remember when Julia and I first met. The bar, the hospital, the basement clinic—it's all mixed up. When will I see her again?
Medianoche, puerto.
Don't let them get you, Julia.

A second night comes and goes. I weep, and with depraved satisfaction recognize the arrival of a bizarre symptom: crying without tears.

* * *

The third dawn lightens the stairs and I awaken with the oppressive sensation of a dead weight atop of me. I push it off and let out a scream, hoarse, harrowing, not my own. I climb down from the slab and feel around on the floor. There is no body, no weight, only the same scattered remains. Fever. Dry heaves. Lungs swelling.

“You stink, feo!” Always shocking me out of a shallow sleep. Throat swollen, parched. Thick secretions narrowing the respiratory tract. Difficulty breathing. Tito flicks his lighter and throws a white plastic bag with a green tourist store logo through the bars. “Brought you something to eat. I didn't have time to cook it, but I figured by now you could use the juices.”

At the bottom of the bag there is a dark, pulpy mass, like cascara de guayaba. It burns for me to speak. “¿Fruta?”

“No. Es carne. A little liver I got on the parallel market. It's delicious. I thought you'd prefer it fresh. I would have brought you some bread but there's another glass scare.”

I touch it. Cold.

The lighter goes out for a second and Tito flicks it again. “Pues, haz lo que te da la gana. But it's good meat. Stolen from the kitchen of the 1830. Ellos tienen las chuletas más ricas.” He lights a cigarette. “Why don't you tell me where she is?”

I say nothing.

“We just want to talk with her. You won't even have to wait around. Just show me the house, and once I've seen her, you go. Maybe you can clear some of this up before it gets out of control, doctor.”

“Agua.”

“No water.”

Esophagus contracts painfully and I can't supress a groan.

“You shouldn't complain, feo. At least it's nice and cool down here.” Tito looks me in the eye. He knows he could kill me. He doesn't have a materialist concept of death. It is an abstraction, someone else's problem. “I wouldn't break my balls for her sake, doctor. At first, me and my brother were in as much trouble as you. But yesterday, divers found a scalpel at the docks where Alejandro was pushed in. It had your fingerprints on the handle, doctor.”

“¿Cómo?”

“Now that nobody's seen you for a couple of days, there's quite a rumor developing around Vedado. They say you're a fag and the reason you're hiding is because you killed Alejandro in a jealous rage. Why don't you tell me where she is?”

“Hijo de—”

“All a person has to say is, ‘You know the doctor in Vedado, the one with the ugly birthmark?' The rest they practically supply themselves
—
buggery with surgical instruments, that kind of thing.” Tito climbs the stairs and calls from the top, “This is not my problem. I've given you something to eat. Understand?”

When he's gone, I consider the plastic bag, its contents. I touch it. I know there's something wrong with the meat. It's not liver, it's tough like the kidney of a pig. The size is right. Similar. I can't tell.

The scalpel: Perez could have slipped it in his overcoat the day he broke into the clinic. The black Toyota, the interview in the speakeasy—the only reason I wasn't arrested that night is because I'm bait for Julia. Perez needs us both. If I ever get out of this hell, I'll never let anyone lock me up again. Better death.

* * *

I dream of La Milagrosa and her stillborn child. She has awoken from the spell of death and found the infant nestled between her legs. Lying in the dark, she takes him and cradles him close to her breast.

“Where are we, mami?”

“What? You talking already?”

“What are those thuds, like our heartbeat but far off?”

“Shovels. Away, not overhead. Too muffled …”

“And that fuzzy feeling when I breathe, causing me to swallow hard?”

“It's the odor of our neighbors, the dead.”

“What's this fluttering above?”

“There's something called sight, but you were not born to use it.”

“And this bag in my hand?”

“My breast, long dry.”

“But what's this I feel inside, where we were connected?”

“That's nothing. That's just hunger. Now think pleasant thoughts, my baby. We're going to be here a long time.”

* * *

Another endless night drifting in and out of consciousness. I consider the raw meat, left untouched for hours. They are trying to get me to eat this. I will not. There is something wrong with it. I don't need it. I don't need it to live.