The German Girl (32 page)

I felt safe with Esperanza and Rafael, at a healthy distance from my mother’s increasing bitterness and pain. She had lost Papa, was trapped in a country she loathed, and had lost control of her son, Gustavo. She regarded the pharmacy as my attempt to be happy, and that was too much for her: she was certain that, for the Rosenthals, happiness would always prove unattainable. Premature death was an essential part of us. There was no point pretending anything else.

Leaving home also implied risks. Ghosts could take me by surprise on any corner. That was why I put Esperanza at the counter: I knew that if I waited on the customers myself, at some moment or other, somebody like me would have appeared, recognized me, and tried to enter into a dialogue that until then I had managed to avoid.

Rafael went with me to the warehouses to pick up any bulky packages. On the way, I tried not to establish visual contact with any passerby. If anyone came too close, or if there was a group of youngsters on a corner, I would lower my eyes. If I saw an old woman, I would cross to the opposite sidewalk. I was convinced I was bound to meet one of
them
somewhere. That was my greatest fear.

One Tuesday we were walking down Calle I to Línea, when we came across a garden. I began to admire the roses growing on both sides of the main entrance. Looking up, I saw a modern-looking building that
had ancient inscriptions over the door, inscriptions I had not seen for years but recognized immediately. Three girls dressed in white came out of the building. I was paralyzed: there was no doubt they had recognized me. Yet again, the ghosts had found a way to catch up with me. I began to perspire like mad.

Rafael, who had no idea what was going on, held me up. I looked away, trying to ignore them, but when I glanced back, I saw ironic smiles on their faces—a look of perverse satisfaction. They had found me; there was no way I could hide. We were the same breed: refugees on an island. We had fled from the same thing, but there was no way out for us.

Rafael looked at me, uncomprehending.

“It’s the Polack church,” he told me, as if I didn’t know, and without realizing that, in fact, I would have preferred not to know.

On our way back from the warehouse, we took another route. From that day on, for me, that street no longer existed.

Most evenings, before we closed the pharmacy doors, Esperanza, Rafael, and I would sit down to chat for a while. We turned down the light to avoid anybody coming in and interrupting our conversations about the old grouch who lived above the store and counted out every pill he got in his prescription, or the woman who received her ampules and asked Rafael to inject them for her, or the man who each time he picked up medicine for his wife warned my employee he had absolutely no interest in hearing anything about God. Sometimes I stayed on my own for hours, watching the blades of the noisy fan go around and around. It hung so low that if I raised my arm, I almost brushed against it.

Often in the evening, the three of us listened to music: Esperanza would search the radio dial for a station that played boleros. We delighted in songs about impossible loves, ships without destinations, abandonments, obsessions, sorrows, forgiveness, moons like dangling earrings, rustling palms, stolen embraces, and sleepless nights. These
sung melodramas mingled with the sweet smell of the potions, camphor, menthol, ether, Vichy salts, and alcohol to reduce fever, which in those days was what sold the most.

We would laugh together. Esperanza sang to the rhythm of the boleros as we rested after a long day. Then they would go home, while I had to go back to the dark Petit Trianon.

Hortensia could not thank me enough for giving her sister and nephew work. She never could have understood that I was the one who was grateful. It would have been very hard for me to find employees I could trust for my pharmacy, which according to Mother was condemned to fail because it had been opened on a Saturday.

A few years later, Gustavo began to study at law school and came back to sleep less often. We never dared ask him with whom or where he stayed, but we were afraid for him. According to Hortensia, a wave of violence had been unleashed on the streets of Havana, but after all we had been through in Berlin, nothing kept Mother and me awake at night. To me, the city was the same as ever: the invasive noise, heat, humidity, drizzle, and dust never changed.

One night, after we had all gone to bed, Gustavo arrived home unexpectedly with his shirt torn. He was dirty and had been beaten up. Hortensia took him to her room so that we wouldn’t be scared, but we managed to see him from the half-open window of my bedroom. Mother did not flinch.

After washing and changing, Gustavo went up to his own room and did not leave the house for a week. We had no idea if he was running away, if the police were searching for him to arrest him, or if he had been expelled from the university, where we continued to pay the fees punctually. Mother’s answer was always the same:

“He’s an adult. He knows what he’s doing.”

At the end of the week, he told us the news over dinner: a student leader had been murdered; the University of Havana was closed. I couldn’t help thinking of Julian at the foot of the staircase. “Ana-with-a-
J
,” I could hear quite clearly, and imagined him coming out of the Law School.
Where did you go, Julian? Why didn’t you look for me again?

The smell of the chicken fricassee Gustavo was wolfing down brought me back to the present. His voice full of passion, my brother was waving his arms about as he spoke of deaths, dictatorships, oppression, and inequality. Hortensia had placed a gauze bandage over his temple; I couldn’t stop looking at it as his face reddened with fury and impotence. Though he raised his voice, I responded in a whisper. He was growing desperate, trying futilely to stir me with his words. Hortensia came and went nervously, clearing away our plates, pouring water, and, finally, bringing in the dessert with a great sense of relief. She thought that meant dinner was coming to an end, that the argument would be over, and the two of us would go up to our rooms.

At a certain moment, I saw a red blotch appear on Gustavo’s bandage. It started as a small dot that the others did not see; then it spread until a thin trickle of blood began to run down to his ear.

I came to on the floor between Hortensia and Gustavo. He had a fresh bandage around his head, with no trace of blood. I felt warmth flowing back into my body. Hortensia was smiling.

“Up you go, my girl. Eat your pudding. Are you going to faint over a little drop of blood?”

Mother had not moved from the table. I saw her slowly raising a spoonful of rice pudding with cinnamon to her mouth. As I stood up, she excused herself and went up to her room.

My fainting had not alarmed her: what disturbed her was that Gustavo had involved Hortensia in a family conflict, and also that he might in some way be linked to that murder, whether on the side of the criminals or the victim. She found either option unacceptable, because she had made the decision to survive on the island without drawing attention to herself. After making so many sacrifices to erase the stain she had brought him into the world with, she now saw him mixed up in conflicts that could prove fatal for the Rosens.

Gustavo could not understand how we could be so cold, not reacting to injustices in a country that he saw as his; how we could live so isolated from everything going on around us. He asked me why, but by then I did not have the energy to continue a dialogue that would not get
us anywhere. I had a mother who could lose her mind overnight and a pharmacy to run, I kept telling myself endlessly.

In his usual passionate way, Gustavo harangued me about social rights, tyrants, corrupt governments. I felt like saying to him, “What do you know about tyrannies?” but my brother was born with the need to confront power and to change the established order. The passion he put into his speech, his aggressive gestures, and the intensity of his voice left Hortensia and me in a state of panic. We felt that one day he might wake up, go out into the street in a fury, and organize a national revolt. He no longer believed in the laws or the order of a country that, in his opinion, was falling to pieces.

“You were born in New York and are an American citizen. You can leave here without a problem,” I reminded him, trying to offer my brother an alternative. To him, this was like a slap in the face.

“Not one of you understands me! Don’t you have any blood in your veins?” he shouted at me in exasperation, clutching his head in his hands.

Getting up furiously from the table, Gustavo flung his plate of dessert to the corner of the dining room. Hortensia ran to clean the stain it had left on the wall. She gave me a pleading look to say no more.

“Leave him, he’ll soon get over it,” she begged me in a whisper, like a mother protecting her son from his own mistakes.

She was the one who suffered most from the chasm opening between Gustavo and us. She was worried that her adored child would get into trouble.

“Who would defend him if anything happened to him? Three women shut up in a mansion like this?” she muttered.

That night, Gustavo went up to his room, slamming the door. He threw things onto the floor and paced back and forth, talking to himself. Then he switched on his radio, forcing us to listen to a
guaracha
at full blast. A half hour later, he came down again, carrying a suitcase. He slammed the front door behind him and disappeared.

We heard nothing more from him until after a turbulent year’s end, when everything changed radically. That morning, Mother predicted that before long we would be living in a state of terror once again.

M
om and Aunt Hannah now have a project. They’re busy emptying the rooms of a family that no longer exists. I catch them whispering together like they’ve known each other all their lives.

Aunt Hannah has a hard time opening an old drawer and then takes out a bunch of woolen scarves of different colors. Mom is surprised to see them: Scarves in this tropical heat?

“Bring them with you to New York,” says my aunt, wrapping them around my neck one by one.

She also takes out her knitting needles and a ball of yarn. This time I’m the one who’s surprised, trying to understand what sense there is knitting things no one will ever wear.

“It helps my arthritis,” Aunt Hannah explains, starting down the stairs while leaning on Mom’s arm.

I leave this new collection of scarves on my bed—the last gift I expected to find in Cuba—and tell them I am going out with Diego. His mother has asked us to lunch, and he has come to get me.

Diego’s house, which used to be white, has a solid wooden door that seems like it’s been through a lot over the years. On the right-hand side of the doorframe is a small object you can hardly see because it’s covered with coats of paint. Diego can’t understand why I’ve stopped there. When I get close, I see it’s a mezuzah. A mezuzah! I can’t believe my eyes.

Inside the house, there are boxes everywhere, like they’re about to move. Diego explains they use them to store things in.

“Like what?” I ask him.

“Things,” he says, slightly surprised at my curiosity.

In the dining room, the table is set. It’s covered by a vinyl tablecloth. Diego’s mother comes in, smiles without introducing herself, and gives me a kiss. She is as thin as he is, with black, curly hair, a long neck, and droopy breasts. Her stomach also looks huge in a very tight dress. Before we sit down, Diego quickly explains to her that my mother is a Spanish teacher and that is why I speak Spanish, that I’m not German, that I live in New York, and that we’re close in age. I smile at her without saying a word.

His mother brings in a steaming bowl of white rice, a dark-looking soup, and a colorful plate of scrambled eggs. I glance at this quickly to see if it has sausage, vegetables, or tomatoes in it, but it is impossible to tell what the yellow and green strips are.

I serve myself as little as possible so I won’t upset them if I don’t like it. While we’re eating, I look at the family photos on the walls, trying to see if any of the people look like my Cuban friend or his mother. Maybe they’re his grandparents or great-grandparents.

I discover something else: on the sideboard, there is a menorah, its seven branches covered in candle wax. Surprised and intrigued, I stop eating. Diego’s mother notices:

“Don’t worry, we probably won’t have a power outage today. We don’t have any candles left. Last month they cut the electricity several times—they do it to save power. Eat, my girl, eat.”

First the mezuzah, now the menorah. And the portraits of their ancestors. I decide it’s best to ask. I choose one of the portraits showing a couple.

“Are they your parents?”

Diego’s mother can’t help laughing out loud, her mouth full of rice and beans. Raising her hand to her mouth, she chews rapidly so that she can reply before I go on.

“They’re photos of the family that used to live here. We were given their house a few days after they left the country. I was your age at the time.”