The Lazarus Rumba (50 page)

“I have no prisoner! I have rather orders, personal orders from el Comandante-en-Jefe, in a letter which I will show you if you so need, to guide this
citizen
of ours safely home, to his wife, and from what I see, que Dios lo proteja, to his townspeople.”

“Señora Delgado, your tone is unnecessary.”

“Capitán Suarez, your great ignorance is unnecessary. Como carajo you rose to your esteemed position will forever be a mystery to me. I wonder if Fidel knows about you. Lo dudo. Is this why my grandchildren risked their lives in the Sierra? Is this why I have dedicated almost a whole century to the struggle for liberty, so that thugs like you, nalgones como tú, would inherit the power? Now get your men out of the way, and get your mutt's wide ass and your own wide ass out of the way, before I pull out my pistol and get you out of the way myself, one by one! I am a sick woman. I do not have time for you or your mariconerías.”

El Rubio stood still, stunned, wordless; sweat droplets sprouted on his shiny tanned brow and stuck there. Father Gonzalo forcefully gathered his growing congregation and moved them closer to the church entrance. I finally saw doña Adela; I saw her try to make her way towards us and I saw Father Gonzalo physically restrain her with the help of other worshippers. Unnoticed, the group of children had snuck behind the wall of policemen. A small rock came flying from there and struck el Rubio square on the cheek and he let go of Tomás de Aquino and covered his head with one hand and pulled out his pistol with the other and shot it in the air.

After the ensuing melee, sixteen children, three of the other old-women CDR officers in our caravan, Brother Joaquín, and I were all arrested. Father Gonzalo was taken in and questioned and released with a warning that if his parish was in any way involved in any further disturbances, all further religious services would be considered counterrevolutionary in spirit and therefore prohibited. Two children were wounded by bullets and taken to the city hospital. One was struck with a bullet in the abdomen. He died two days later.

El Rubio confiscated all the mules and all the carts and la Vieja's cigar box but said he would not charge her with any crimes for there were no bullets in her rust-impaired pistol. La Vieja visited me in my cell and told me he did not dare charge her with any crimes because he must have perused some of the letters that were inside the box. She promised me that she would have the entire Central Committee descend upon Guantánamo and that soon we would see el Rubio dangling from a rope for his murder of one of her grandchildren. I protested that Felipe and Guillermo were unharmed, that I had seen them inside one of the cells in the Department of State Security. She answered that all children were her grandchildren and that one of them had been murdered and that the blond marica with the woman's ass would pay for it.

Alicia visited me in my cell a few days later. She tried to act strong, but I could see that she could barely summon enough strength to stand. Her cousin Héctor came with her and held her up by the arm. They both kissed me softly on the lips, for which the guards taunted Héctor and taunted me and told Alicia that maybe she ought to leave us alone. They visited me every other day, taking turns with la Vieja, for I was only allowed one visit per day.

I had one other visitor though. One of el Rubio's men came in with a pan of water and fit it under my chin and shaved me every day. A beard, el Rubio proclaimed to me, was a badge of honor I did not deserve to wear. I said I could shave myself. He answered that it was more proper to let someone else strip me of my honor. I convinced him then to let Alicia shave me (which fit his twisted system of derogation just fine, more proper that I should be stripped of my dignity by a loved one), but Alicia did not have the strength, her hand shook and she cut me, so from then on, her cousin Héctor did it, his hand steady, his voice soothing, as if I were on my deathbed and had no strength to do the task myself.

Because, after two weeks, sixteen children still had not been released, and la Vieja still had not been able to assert her legendary influence on anyone in the capital, though she secretly wrote letters every day (which she sent out through factions of the local CDR who had turned against el Rubio after the child's death), Father Gonzalo went on a hunger strike. One morning, after the sparse-attended Mass, when Anita had set for him his cup of cafecito negro and his eggs lightly scrambled and his buttered and sugared toast, he pushed them back and said he would not eat till the sixteen children and the Marist brother and comandante Julio César Cruz were freed. And so he stood and walked to the Department of State Security and informed el Rubio that except for the taking of holy Communion, he was fasting in protest of the illegal imprisonment. El Rubio put out his cigar with a pronounced grimace and pulled out a chocolate bar from one of the drawers and took a bite and offered Father Gonzalo a piece and said that it was fine, that if he wanted to be
un santico y un mártir
on behalf of traitors that was his business, that he could not eat all he wanted, but to remember,
mi padrecito, that it is against the revolutionary laws to refer to that traitor by his former title.

Eight days passed and Father Gonzalo's hunger strike was abided only by Anita, who did not stop cooking his meals and placing them in front of him, after morning Mass and after his early afternoon confessions and before rosary time, meals that Father Gonzalo regularly pushed away, wiping his brow as he complained about the August mugginess and asked Anita for a glass of water with a squeeze of lime juice, just a simple
vacito de agua con jugo de lima, por favor, mi vida
, and then asked her to please stop wasting food, that it was a sin, a charge Anita ignored till the eighth day, before Saturday Mass, when she replied that he was the one in sin, that hunger should not be so mocked, that it was one of God's most serious scourges and that He would not have one of His servants toying with it, just like no wise father would let his child play with his loaded pistol, that there are millions of starving children all over the world (and many even here in our socialist
culicagao
paradise of an Island,
pues perdóname, padre, pero es que estoy bravísima con usted
, who have no choice
when
they can stop hungering),
mírate, mírate ya el tipo de atrofiado que tienes, con pellejos de vieja y cara de muerto
, that he should not forget that he had once been a very ill man and that God had saved him not so that he now go and murder himself, which is the greatest wrong, which would be a sweet victory for el Rubio and the rest of the
malditos comuñangas
who tyrannized our people. “And what are we to do then? What? What are we to do with you under the ground? Who are the people going to turn to, to open their hearts to the grace of our Virgin and of our Lord? No puedo verte más así. Y voy y te repito, con mucho perdón, padre, it is you who are sinning.” Father Gonzalo pushed aside the guava juice and the cup of dark black coffee she had prepared for him and protested: “If I am selfish, if I am sinning as you say, I am doing it with a sound heart and, more important, with sound mind. I have thought this out. They will not dare—”

“¡La mente es la loca de la casa!”

Father Gonzalo stopped; it was a phrase he had taught her and was wont as a young preacher to repeat, a phrase attributed to one of the mothers of the Church, Santa Teresa de Ávila, in a sermon where she railed against the Mind as the madwoman in the attic. Against his own teachings, Father Gonzalo further protested: “Es que no entiendes, mi vida, I am doing this for the guiltless children in that jail. I am doing this for Julio and for Alicia and for mi querida doña Adela. Please don't make it any harder than it already is.” He reached out and touched her.

“¡Siempre has tenido complejo de mártir! Pero si así es. But you will not do this alone. Every proper Christian then should hunger with you. Tell them, tell them all tonight to join you.”

“I have no right, Anita, I have no right to
demand
such sacrifices.”

Anita put down her own coffee and pushed aside her own plate. “Yes you do, Father. I will begin. I will not eat with you. Tell them tonight and they too will begin, those that still believe, those whose faith has not been tarnished.”

“I have no right, mi vida. Now go on, no seas boba, eat, eat, someone has to maintain this house, someone has to keep strength.”

Anita raised an eyebrow and, as she had for eight days previous, asked Father Gonzalo to say grace over their meal (which he did as he had for eight days previous with a reluctant and absurd prayer of thanksgiving for the food he was not going to eat and the cafecito he was not going to drink), then she cleared both their plates, and battling her conscience, scooped the blessed contents, of rice and black beans and ropa vieja and tostones, into the garbage. Then, suffering another pang of guilt, she poured the juices and the remaining coffee down the sink.

“I will begin now. Mejor, así no tengo que cocinar. Tell them tonight and they too will begin; tell them and if they are the truly golden souls you always proclaim them to be, they too will begin.” Anita began planning the great communal hunger strike with the same enthusiasm she reserved for her famous nochebuena meals for the hungry. “Imagine, imagínate bien, first your people fasting alongside you and then others who either are moved with pity or are fueled with a new rage against these malnacidos Fidelistas. Soon the yanquis in the base will take notice, and you know how they love spectacles!”

Father Gonzalo was going to tell her that naivete was in its own ways a peccadillo, but he refrained. He reached for his water glass and moistened his lips.

That evening, prefacing his sermon with a long apology and proclaiming that what he was going to ask he was going to ask against his judgment and that perhaps his hunger was beginning to drive him into dementia (at this point he laughed, throwing his head back, as if to act out his onsetting madness), and clearing his throat many times and even stopping once to beg of some water from one of the acolytes, Father Gonzalo recounted this entire conversation with his friend and servant and quietly asked all his parishioners to join him in his hunger strike, for the sake of the children and for the sake of comandante Julio César Cruz and his wife and his own dear friend doña Adela. At the end of the service that evening, in the gallery of the half-empty church, Anita played the shoddy organ as if it were a battle drum. She played and the congregation and Father Gonzalo sang “Tu reinaras, Reina y Madre” loudly enough, as they did always, to disguise the horribly untuned chords.

El Rubio attended the first service the following morning. He put out his cigar before he entered the church and respectfully removed his military beret. He sat in the third pew from the front in an aisle seat and nodded to Father Gonzalo as he and his celebrants walked up the aisle to the altar. He stood and sat and knelt accordingly during the service, following the lead of the worshippers in front of him. During the homily, Father Gonzalo again prefaced his request with an apology and joked, though less jokingly, about his onsetting dementia and asked the parishioners to join him in his hunger strike. His voice had by now lost most of its well-known stoutness and failed at times to rise to the boldness of his conviction and often only the first few syllables at the beginning or the end of a phrase were audible. So, from all accounts of those present there, it was unclear whether he outrightly referred (as he had in the night previous) to the children, or to me by my stripped and illegal title, or to my wife, or to his friend doña Adela, who was there, two rows behind the captain of the revolutionary police force. Father Gonzalo forcibly raised his quavery voice when he added that he would not ask such sacrifices if he did not think the cause was most just and proper and action urgent. Before the homily had ended, el Rubio had put on his beret and left. Careful eyes in still heads recorded his disrespectful failure to kneel at the aisle and keen-tuned ears heard him snap open the leather strap of his holster, and both eyes and ears traced his every step out.

Father Gonzalo later admitted to me that he was ready to join us in our imprisonment that day. He expected el Rubio to be waiting for him in the front churchyard, ready to charge him with the usual list of invented crimes against la Revolución. He said he was afraid, not of el Rubio or of jail or of his growing hunger and nausea, but of handcuffs, because as a child he had once been tied to a bedpost by a senile aunt and lost all feeling in his hands. But there was no one waiting to handcuff him. He walked out of the church and at the low end of the front steps turned to greet the worshipers, most of whom, as most had the night before, held tight to his outstretched hand and whispered to him words of endurance and assured him that he was first in their prayers and that it was a good idea to have others join him—
esa Anita es una brava, siempre lo ha sido
—and that they deeply regretted that presently they could not include themselves in his noble efforts, pues, because of age or failing health or family duties or job duties or, two or three women even had the heart to admit on behalf of their sons and husbands, simple lack of courage, it was impossible for now,
aunque claro, our hearts and souls are still with you.

“Sí, sí, ya entiendo,” Father Gonzalo said to each and every one of his parishioners who turned down his call to hunger, “es mejor así, someone has to keep the strength.” And then he added with a constrained smile, making sure Anita, standing a few steps from him, did not hear: “No apologies necessary. It is perhaps too much to ask.” Only one other hunger striker was recruited from their dangerous efforts that morning. She was the last one to exit the church, using a borrowed cane now, half her weight supported there and the other half on an acolyte's tensed arm.

“Estoy contigo,” she said, stopping two steps above him so that she could look into his eyes. “Nunca me ha caido bien la Iglesia ni los curas (not that I consider the question of God an outdated one, al contrario, I consider it one not broached often enough, and I hate to say the priests I've known have tended to make more ado about the cloth than about the soul), but I see that you are different. You have the true revolutionary zeal, not like this blond one, no como ese soquete con melena de yanqui, embarrado con el poder. I'm with you. They are my children and your friends. I have never fasted on purpose in my life, and I may be too old to learn new things, but al carajo, I'll try. I'm with you.”