Havana Lunar (5 page)
O
n my twentieth birthday I posed on the steps of el Capitolio, a forced grin frozen on my face. “Do you want me to superimpose the dome in the background?” the photographer asked.
“What do you mean?”
“This lens takes a good headshot, but otherwise only the steps of the Capitol show up. I can add the dome in the printing process.”
“No. Just the portrait.”
“Not even
Recuerdo de Cuba?”
“I'm not a tourist. I was born here.”
“Why didn't you say so? Special price for you. Two prints for ten pesos.”
“One will be fine.” Unlike the clinical photographers I had known in my youth who only wanted close-ups of the blemish beneath my right eye, this one touched tobacco-stained fingertips under my chin, giving it a forty-five-degree turn to the right to hide the mark. I turned back. “No. She would want it to show.”
“For your lady?”
“Yes.”
“Five pesos then. And you can keep the reversepositive.”
In the reverse-positive, my lunar showed up white like a crescent moon. Elena framed it side-by-side with the print and hung them above her vanity, the dark and light sides of me.
After I had started dating Elena, I told Carlotaâwho always said that she and I were “a sex thing”âno more sex. Elena and I made it through medical school together and both graduated Plan G. It's a little preposterous that they tell you G stands for genius. When the faculty nominated both of us for a four-year residency program in South Africa, Elena was happier than I had ever seen her. There would be English instruction as well as training in cutting-edge technology and techniques. We would be salaried while abroad. Anticipation for the adventure sparked her passion, and for the next few months I had the feeling that the residencies in South Africa might pull us through, be our escape.
In the fall I married Elena at the Palacio and we were given a cake and a voucher for a hotel in Varadero. We watched the Wall go down on the television in our roomâBerliners chiseling chunks of concrete to sell to American collectors ⦠and everything that image carried in its wake. “
Compañeros, señores y señoras, this lapse in Eastern Europe affirms the need for Latin Americans to continue the fight against imperialism ⦔
“What does this mean?” Elena asked.
“Capitalism has won.”
“Won what?”
“We shall stay on the road of Socialism with the help of our Soviet comrades. Hasta la victoria siempre. ¡Venceremos!”
But all attempts at sterilization by all the propagandists at the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión couldn't stop the spread of this virus. It would be a slow death. Over the next eighteen months, we watched as the Soviet Union collapsed and then COMECON dried up. First gasoline became scarce and the camellos started stinking up the streets with diesel. Then the blackouts began, up to eighteen hours some days. Then the meat and the cheese disappeared. By the summer of 1991 everything stopped. Fidel called it the Special Period. Nobody knew how long it would last or how bad it was going to get.
Before the final paperwork for Africa could be processed, the secretary of the Partido Comunista de Cuba recalled my exit visa. Although I had been active in the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas as a teenager, I had decided not to campaign for membership in the PCC when I realized how much indolence existed among the nucleus of the party. Now that the time had come to stamp my visa for South Africa, the secretary was taking his revenge. He cynically pretended indifference toward my nonaffiliation. Instead he alleged that my father's exile to the U.S. was grounds for concern about my possible desertion. Elena's visa arrived early, in the fall, although she wasn't scheduled to leave for South Africa until January.
I got depressed about the visa trouble, and Elena became distant and irritable. “I hear you speaking to that stupid poster,” she said one day.
“He may be stupid, but don't call El Ché a poster.”
“Will you please get rid of it? At least move it somewhere else. That's not the kind of thing that should be hanging in the middle of our living room. We're not del Comité.”
“Believe me, I can't possibly move El Ché, y no te atreves tú.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are no thumbtacks left.” I knew she would ridicule me, so I told the truth only in my head:
Because it might break the spell. He might never speak to me again.
I believed this. I doubted I would hear El Ché very well if not for his charmed placement over the back of the sofa. Move just one of the tacks that hold his corners, just one inch, and next time I needed someone to talk to, El Ché would be mute.
Elena said, “What will you do while I'm gone?”
Raising my glass I said, “I will wait with the grape until you return.”
“What if I never come back?”
I didn't answer. I didn't want to get into a fight. That would have meant definitely no sex later. Reading my thoughts, El Ché said, “It's already probably no sex.”
After dinner I sat on the edge of the bed looking at my wife. Elena lay naked on the bedspread. She was almost asleep. She should have been under the covers. I moved to touch her.
“I'm tired, Mano.”
“Yes, you're always tired.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“I'm talking about the problem.”
“There's no problem. You talking about it
is
the problem. You could start by just gently kissing my neck. Why don't you rub my shoulders or caress my back?”
“Just so you can fall asleep?”
“Well, if I fall asleep you can do whatever you want.” Her eyes may not have betrayed the slightest glimmer of malice, but the air above her head was black with a greater menace: no-sex equals death.
Elena was in the final training course for South Africa when Carlota called. “How have you been, Mano?”
“Bien. ¿Y tú?”
“Bien. How are things with Elena?”
“Fine.” Something about Carlota's call made me believe she was clairvoyant. Of course things weren't fine. I had made a mistake, many mistakes. I wanted to back up. I wondered whether I could regain my spark. “How are you?”
“My stupid cat's stuck up the stupid tree ⦠again.”
It took less than a second for me to go from feeling like a loser to feeling like a hunter. “Do you need a hand?”
“Don't bother, Mano. I can get someone around here to help me.”
“It's no bother. I was just heading out to the pediátrico. I can stop by on the way.”
“If you feel like it.”
“I'll be there in about an hour, okay?”
“That depends on the buses.”
“Not for me. I walk these days.”
“Wow. They must give doctors better shoes than those Chinese rat traps the state stores are calling sandals.”
“See you in an hour. Don't let that cat fall.”
I dressed in a hurry. My hands shook so bad I had trouble with the buttons of my shirt. The nerves were not because I believed Elena might find out. It was excitement for Carlota, an arousal and suspense that I hadn't experienced since school days.
I spotted the cat about twelve meters up. She was perched like a loaf of bread near the end of one of the branches, waiting for it to grow below her and bridge the two meters of air between her paws and the high windowsill. She might have been able to survive the fall, but it would have left a man pretty messed up. I rang the third floor and Carlota came down. “What's up, Mano?”
“Hello, Carlota.” I resisted the reflex to say, “You look nice.” In a loose pullover and drooping jeans, she might not have looked nice to most men, but I knew what was in those pants. Just the shape of her skull made me want to run my fingers through her mousy brown hair. But first I would have to remove her glasses, the same wire-rimmed pair that always framed her cowish brown eyes. “I saw the cat.”
“It looks bad, doesn't it?”
“It won't be a simple grab. Has she been up there long?”
“I get up this morning and feed her in the kitchen. This afternoon I look out the window and see her floating there, looking in at me.”
I started to climb, but the middle branches of the mimosa got too wobbly and I had to give up before getting halfway. “We'll have to bait her down somehow.”
Carlota cooed, whistled, and blew kisses, but the cat didn't even look down. “She's cycloptic,” Carlota said. “This is going to take some strategizing. Do you have time for coffee?”
“You have coffee?”
We went upstairs. The apartment was crowded with the deco collections Carlota has hoarded ever since she was a girl: cameo ashtrays, Bakolite dishes, monogrammed swizzle sticks. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table ignoring the cat, who was out the window and just out of reach. The coffee was hot and good. Carlota's skin, light for a Criolla, showed dark circles under her eyes.
“How's Pablo?”
“He's fine, at school. Do you want a little something to eat? How about a glass of milk?”
“You have milk?”
“Pablo's ration.”
We took the center leaf from the kitchen table and extended it out the window with a little dish of Pablo's milk. The cat stepped right on. I pulled the board back in. “Isn't this how we got her down last time?”
Carlota smiled, disappeared into her bedroom, and emerged with her magic box. It was small and made of hardwood, with a hinged lid that had a hand-painted scene of Indian lovers kneeling on a rug and staring into each other's eyes, the woman handing the man a cup. “Shall we celebrate?”
I joined Carlota on silk cushions in front of her shrine to Santa Bárbara. She took her time pinching a Popular with a rolling motion, squeezing the tobacco out onto a copy of
Acuario
. Then she opened the top of her box, and a bouquet of marijuana filled the air between us. Carlota crushed the end off the bud and blended half Popular tobacco, half manà in the little machine from Holland. She always saved tampon wrappers for rolling papers. A perfect cigarette popped out. Carlota produced a pack of matches and paused before striking.
“If you're on the way to the pediátrico, you shouldn'tâ¿no?”
I grinned weaklyâweariness mixed with the intoxication of anticipation. “I wasn't on my way anywhere. I'm on vacation.”
I scissored the spliff between the index and middle fingers of my right hand. Carlota held the lit match while I puffed. Deep inhalation. Hold. I leaned toward Carlota's lips and exhaled slowly. We had to make the most of each toke. Our first kiss in more than two years was conscripted by the passage of aromatic smoke from my lungs to hers. Our mouths lingered. What began as practical puff-passing in an instant became lascivious as she slipped her tongue between my lips and put her palm on my khakis. I reached with my left hand and ran my fingers through Carlota's hair, clutching her skull and pressing our faces closer together. I caressed down her cheek and over the front of her shirtâher nipples popped awakeâthen underneath to her abdomen, where I fingered the hernia scar that had anchored me to Carlota over months of fantasies. I plunged my fist between her legs to stroke her rhythmically through the denim. Then I looked down at the spliff in my hand. I breathed. Carlota smoothed her hair. A conciliatory mist rose as materially as the first puff. It was a good roach we still had to finish. I passed it to Carlota and we touched fingers. Carlota took a deep puff and put the smoldering roach in an ashtray. At the edge of the knit rug, the roach singed a knot of sheep's wool, conjuring an unpleasant and arousing incense.
It was a cool November night when I realized Elena had taken down the photos. Winter had come early. Anticipating a numbing dinner together with our mutual disenchantmentâa malaise that had begun to take such definite shape in mind's eye that I set an imaginary place for it to my rightâI uncorked the sticky seconds of a Chilean Cabernet that Director González had found not quite to his taste. Elena and I sat in brooding camaraderie through our paltry, home-prepared dinner: arroz con mango, just like the joke. It spooked Elena that, for the better part of our two years together, the whole country had been going to shit. She was scheduled to leave for Africa at the start of the new year.