The Lazarus Rumba (58 page)

He wore the same dirty poncho and ragged shorts and was shoeless. He opened the sack and put out a set of tarnished silverware and a tin of rice and beans, still steaming, and a tin of meat strips and green peppers and a jug of water. He said that his mother had cooked for her today, but not to expect her to do it every night. He said that she would not want to be eating his mother's cooking for too long anyway, for sometimes when she could not get enough real meat from outside the valley, she slaughtered his friends, the rats, and with their sinews and insides made a godawful stew, which she served at the meetings of el Comité, and her poor friends there, not wanting to offend their chief, forced it down gulp by gulp. “She has murdered twenty-one of my friends in the last three years, from Genesis on down. Only two were spared, the one named after me, Joshua Dos (because she thought it would bring her ill favors from the gods to slaughter a beast named as her son) and Song of Solomon, who clawed his way out from under her knife and fled, never to be seen again. Perhaps Song of Solomon roams these valleys still. Twenty-one of my friends she has murdered for the sake of her friends who hate her stew anyway and eat it only because they are afraid of her, but she is afraid of
you.
Vaya, not because she believed you murdered anyone, but because she thinks my father sent you here to embarrass her.”

“Your father? Who is your father?”

“My father is the one who owns this valley, this whole island; that is why ours is the only bohío with electricity, the only one with a television. I thought they might have told you about my father when they brought you here; they tell others, pero se hacen los bobos. I'll tell you the whole story one day, my father does not want to embarrass
me.
I am almost eighteen; soon he will need me to run his lands. That's what he says in the letters mamá hides in the thatching of our bohío. Soon the invisible black birds will work for me.”

“I was told nothing of your father, or for that matter of your mother or of you.”

“Bueno, it doesn't matter anyway. Come and eat, you must be hungry.”

Alicia had moved back to her bed. “I want to be alone.”

“Señora, no one is alone on this island, especially in this valley,
that
my mother and all her friends will surely teach you, that this wish to be left alone is the first vice of the counterrevolutionary criminal, that this wish, even without being acted on, is already a sin against the community of la Revolución.”

“You speak very eloquently for a boy.”

Joshua knitted his brow. He passed his hand through his hair and tightened his ponytail. With the same hand, he puffed up the meager patches of his beard. “I am almost eighteen, y además, I can't help but talk the way I do sometimes. Mamá and her friends never shut up!”

“Then you do not really believe what you say, you're just parroting your mother.”

“No, I do believe, most of the times. I believe in mamá and her friends (most of them anyway). You will like them, I think; vaya, a veces me joden mucho, but they mean only good. And mamá believes in me, she trusts me, and so will my father soon. Pero mira, come and eat, your food is getting cold. I'll leave you alone as you wish, I'm just telling you what mamá thinks about such wishes from newcomers. … Do you know when I like to be alone? When I run. Some days I do it right before the sun comes up, some days right before it falls, some days both, depending on when mamá needs me. The black birds are too busy then, settling into their nests for the day or preparing for their night travels, to care about a solitary runner.” He moved towards the door. “So I know what it feels like to want to be alone. I'll go now. But eat before your food gets cold. It's real meat. She can't murder my friends for now. I stole her blade and she hasn't been able to find a new one. Eat. You'll need strength for when you meet my mother's friends tomorrow.” He stepped outside and shut the door slowly. Through a crack in the wooden window shutter, Alicia watched his torchlight bounce softly away.

She felt tired and she lay on the bed again and slept. She dreamt of a young man dressed like Joshua in ragged shorts and a dirty poncho, and his face was that of Joshua and of many other young men, and at times Alicia thought she was near her husband as he had been when he was fighting in the mountains, and at times she thought she spoke to her cousin through the chain-link fence of a labor camp, and at times she was in the presence of unbathed young men with shaved heads that she had never known, who spoke with the sureness of the blessed and moved with the abandon of the possessed. When she awoke the oil in the lamp had been all but fully consumed and the flame gave out only a meager halo of light. It made Alicia think of saints not yet canonized. Almost without giving notice to the hollow ache in her belly, she stood from the bed, sat at the table, and ate the cold food as a hungry animal might have, without pause to drink from the water jug or ponder on the flavors. When she was finished she pushed the empty tins away from her. She went to the bed and tried to sleep again but she could not. She remembered that after her first night on the island they had taken her watch and never returned it, but in the darkness she made the motion of looking at her wrist anyway, a gesture that pleased her for it made evident that though they could take from her her husband and her cousin and her mother and her daughter and all her earthly loves and all her earthly possessions, they could not steal from her her habits and her thoughts and therefore could not steal from her her last and truest life. She let her hand rest on the bed, for all her complacency still ignorant of how long she must wait till morning.

More than an hour must have passed, though it was difficult to tell. The darkness inside the bohío had only changed because now the flame in the lamp had completely died. She felt thirsty. She began to taste the sourness of the cold food she had eaten. And now she did what she had not done during her meal, she paused to ponder on its texture and on its flavors. The rice was old and salty and many of the grains hard like sun-dried larva. The beans were lumpy and mushy and tasteless except for a certain cheesy sharpness. The meat was stringy, its natural sweetness hidden too well by gobs of gelatinized grease, and the peppers soppy and overripe.

Alicia tried to remain in bed, but she felt her heart crawl down to her belly and beat down there, demanding she do something. She went to the table and fumbled for the jug of water. She drank from it twice, but could not wash away the surging memory of her meal. She drank again but the water seemed to slosh inside her and she became as if seasick and fell, losing consciousness for what seemed no more than a few minutes. When she was able to stand again, she stumbled to the back door of the bohío. Her right arm had broken the fall and her wrist was numb. She passed through a narrow wooden unroofed passageway to the outhouse. She knelt over the makeshift tin toilet and vomited till the muscles in her belly could squeeze out only inclement gasps of air. She moved away from the toilet and crouched in the opposite corner of the outhouse, her back to a tin tub no bigger than a newborn's basin, and stayed there till she saw the sky gray and then brighten through the holes in the threadbare thatch roof. She did not move when she heard someone knock on the front door and did not move when she heard Joshua call out for her. He seemed more embarrassed for himself than for her when he found her, still crouched where she was. He apologized and said he was afraid something might have happened to her, said that he would bring her fresh water from a nearby brook so she could wash up. Alicia nodded. He returned some moments later with a pair of washcloths and two buckets of water and a crude piece of soap. With one bucket and cloth he cleaned the remnants of vomit from the toilet. Alicia made no protest. As he scrubbed, he laughed and told her that he too had little tolerance for his mother's food. He set the other bucket and cloth and the soap by her. He told her she should clean up a little bit for she was going to be meeting his mother's friends later on that morning. Alicia thanked him and asked him to bring her toiletry bag from her suitcase. She did not mention the soreness of her wrist. He brought her back the whole suitcase instead and set it by her.

“I dreamt of your friends,” Alicia said before he stepped out again. “They were young and guapo like you. I hope your mother never gets to them.”

Joshua lowered his eyes. “She will,” he said. “But I'll find others to tame and shave. There are many books in the Bible. One day I'll show you how I trap them and tame them.” He left Alicia alone again.

He was waiting for her inside the bohío seated at the table. He stood and poured some coffee from a thermos into a small ceramic cup. He complimented her on her choice of clothing, a plain off-white summer dress. She had tied her hair back in a ponytail like his. He said she looked like a new woman. He handed her the coffee. “This will make you feel better. Besides you're going to need plenty of it to stay awake during the meeting. They tend to run awfully long, especially when they first meet a new resident. Sometimes I have to force my mother to throw everybody out because it's already time to watch my muñequitos. It's even worse on Sundays. But you'll see.”

After Alicia drank her coffee, he took the chair that she had been sitting on and threw it over his shoulder. “Everyone brings their own,” he explained. “There's not enough room in mamá's house to keep all those chairs. Don't let mamá know I carried it for you.”

“Why? She would not like that her son is a gentleman? ¿Cómo que no?”

“You don't know mamá yet. Vamos. I'll hand it to you just as we approach. Vamos. There's breakfast there if you're hungry. … Don't worry, mamá doesn't cook too often for el Comité. They beg her not to trouble herself. One of the other ladies usually makes breakfast for the meetings. Her cooking will sit much better in your stomach. Vamos. They are eagerly awaiting the new resident of the valley. No one was late this morning.”

An Odd Request

Near the end of the long meeting around Maruja's kitchen table, the eight other members and Maruja seated in their own chairs, Joshua seated crossed-legged on the floor beside his mother, Maruja informed Alicia that it was a tradition that a new resident could make any request at all and if it was in any way under the power of el Comité to fulfill it, no matter how outlandish (as long as it fell under the code of rehabilitation), it would.

Alicia asked that her daughter be brought to live with her.

“Impossible, mi vida,” Maruja said immediately. “It is you who were convicted of crimes against la Revolución, why place that burden on your daughter as well. Besides, no seas loca, such a request is not within our powers to fulfill.”

Alicia was silent.

“Something else, chica. Vaya, something more simple.”

“My husband's bathtub.”

“¿Cómo? A bathtub?”

“My husband's bathtub.”

The other members of el Comité, seven in all, six elderly women and a youthful-looking middle-aged man, began to confer in whispers, leaning their heads one to the other. Maruja looked hard at Alicia, as she reminded her comembers that it was not only impolite to conduct any of the business of the meeting in whispers, but that it was strictly against conduct regulations, that they must shed, once and for all, this habit of their former lives.

“Pues, what do we think of this request from our new resident?”

“Where is your daughter?” Joshua said. “How old is she?”

“Niño, por favor,” his mother tapped him on the head. “We've moved on from that subject. Is la jefa's son going to ignore regulations as well? The bathtub. The husband's bathtub. What do we think? Is it within our powers? Is it proper?”

“Esto, I did not find it proper to say this when I introduced myself to you, señora, but I knew your husband.” The middle-aged man spoke. He was seated next to Maruja. His name was Marcos and he was fair-skinned, though his arms and face were burned by the valley sun. He had light-brown hair with streaks of gray on the sides and in some curls that fell on his brow. His looks were enhanced by a long thin scar that ran along the right side of his jawline and by his womanly lips and his thick eyebrows a few tinges darker than his hair. His voice was low and soft and somewhat ungrounded to his appearance. “I fought in the mountains, and although I did not serve under your husband's command, I knew him, knew him well. We became disillusioned with the progress of la Revolución at about the same time, about the summer of ‘62, just before his trip to Berlin; by then I was serving in the Ministry of the Interior in La Habana and had lost touch with him. Vaya, as you must know, your husband was not a politician, claramente, or he would not have turned down all the offers for high-ranking offices in the capital. He was not much of a diplomat either, though he attempted that briefly after the War. I imagine that he did not return to his finca near Bayamo partly because he fell in love with you, but I imagine that mostly he did not return because he saw it as an absurd thing for one of the heroes of the War against the landowners to remain a landowner himself. His lands he donated to the State a long time before the Agrarian Reform Acts. He became simply a retired warrior, living on a pension. And no being grows disillusioned more quickly than a warrior without a war. That's why most of them turn to politics. Y esto, without meaning to offend anyone, or breach any regulations, I think that's why Fidel has remained a politician for so long, why he has been unwilling … bueno, let's say, why the people have not let him, relinquish power.”

“Marcos is one of our more recently titled neighborhood chiefs, Alicia,” Maruja said, her voice easily overcoming his. “He has been in the valley for less than a year. Imagínate, and already a chief. He has made quite a comeback since his days at el Boniato prison, has caused quite a stir among our valley folk, oye, y no te vayas a pensar, not only because of his looks. His people chose him because they know he will represent them well, is not afraid to speak his mind, to stand up for them when he has to.” She tapped Marcos playfully on the thigh. “The future of our country depends more on men like him than on any other, on our thousands and thousands of prodigal sons … and daughters, claro.”