Havana Lunar (15 page)

24 August 1992

T
welve resounding clangs as the bell of the old Episcopalean church marks the forward march of hours—or is it tolling backwards?

“You got knocked out. What a mess!” Director González stands over me straightening the books on the shelf. He sizes up the small attic, shakes his head, and says, “This is a place where wine is drunk in swigs.”

“¿Qué?”

“Those empty bottles in piles by the door. They all have the corks plugged in them.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I just arrived. But the storm is almost twelve hours gone.” Director González reaches into his pocket for a metal flask. “Want some whiskey?”

“No. Not yet.”

He says, “Go ahead, Rodriguez,” and so I do. “Sorry about the awful trouble you went through. And now this …” Wet clothes, books, and papers are strewn all over the floor.

“What's the damage like down there?”

“What you'd expect: many trees and poles blown down, trash all over the streets, flooding along the Malecón. If you're feeling all right you should get downstairs. There are people waiting outside the clinic, many distressed and some with minor injuries. A few will need sedatives. Most just want ibuprofen. Get yourself some too.”

“The clinic doesn't have any of that.”

“It does now.”

“How?”

“Colonel Perez took care of it.” On his way out the door Director González says, “Get down there, Rodriguez. Vedado needs you.”

I head down and open the clinic. On the street everyone is talking about Andrés and its aftermath. All are glad to be outdoors. Nobody likes being trapped, even in his own home, even for one night. Radio Reloj says that Cuba was spared the worst. The eye tore right across Florida and Miami has been devastated. There is no way of knowing the total casualties at sea, but it would have been very hard for anyone out on the Florida Straits in a small craft.

* * *

For two straight days I see walk-ins at all hours and monitor trauma patients in the cots overnight. On the third day, a nurse spells me for a couple of hours and I walk through flooded streets along the Malecón. The houses and apartments of Vedado had already been in ruins—roofs corroding, balconies crumbling, unpainted walls riddled with cracks that sprout hideous branches and vines—and after a flood leaving behind only moderate additional damage, everything somehow looks more vibrant than before.

There's no contact allowed in the interview room at PNR headquarters. She wears a gray uniform, looking tired, drawn, nothing like the girl who brought me a ham sandwich from the Habana Libre.

“I didn't mean to kill Alejandro.”

“I know.” I light a cigarette and look over at the guard. He nods and I hand it to her. Her touch, briefly lingering, feels dead to me. I light another cigarette for myself.

“While you went to visit your family in Pinar, he sent another jinetera over to arrange a meeting at the bottom of the Malecón, where they dock the ships. I was supposed to pay him off. He wanted needles, pills, whatever I could get from your polyclinic. There wasn't anything, but I brought the scalpel—the one you used in the kitchen—to scare him and to protect myself. He said very cruel things and we fought. He laughed when I showed him the scalpel. I cut him just once in the neck. But the blood—it was awful.”

“Don't think about it.”

“I was starting to change. I could feel it changing in me, and he was dragging me back down.”

I don't contradict her. She's just a child. She's going to have to live with this a long time.

“Time's up,” says the guard.

“I love you, Mano. I know you don't believe me.”

Walking out of PNR headquarters onto Havana's flood-ravaged streets, maybe I do believe her. Alejandro wouldn't let her go. She was trapped in the world of the jinetera. So she clawed to get out, thrust the scalpel into him to break the lock.

Back in Vedado, Habaneros are drying rugs, towels, and papers on their patios. At least now, in the water's retreat, there's salt. In the flooded neighborhoods, they're scraping it off the walls. If it hadn't been for the storm, I might have remained the monster, the derelict, but now I'm becoming the doctor again. I return home to pick through the debris in my own attic. Beneath a pile of my scattered books I uncover the tattered poster of El Ché. That's where I find the photos Elena loaned her palero, hiding behind El Ché, taped to his back. The lunar is on my right cheek in the print, on my left in the reversepositive, white like a crescent moon. I walk them down to the Malecón. In Vedado, across from where the baseball fields used to be, that's where I take El Ché and the conflicted young man with the stain on his face. I cast them off to the Florida Straits and they float face-up on the surface of the water. The evening is bright and clear—a perfect night to walk along the Malecón.

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