The Lazarus Rumba (67 page)

He asked them where he might find a man named Father Gonzalo, and at this they grew serious and queried him on what he wanted with a harmless man like Father Gonzalo.

Joshua made no answer and moved away from them.

In the early afternoon, a wash of cinerous clouds spread over the sun and thickened over it, and all at once there began a downpour of rain that continued so for over an hour, not once catching its breath. At first, the heavy drops shattered like fine glass on the pavement of the park's paths, scattering pieces in all directions, and then when ponds and rivulets began to form, the heavy drops splashed into the gathering water with the carelessness of children at play, forming tiny circles of waves that ceaselessly clashed one into the other and merged the ponds and the rivulets so that soon the entire park was a tiny sea. Joshua sought refuge in the antechamber of the yellow church and some of the old men who had been playing chess joined him there, counting their black and white pieces to make sure they had not lost any in their flight from the deluge. A priest came out of the church and joined them. He was a short balding man, with indian skin and a kind smile. He wore a starched white guayabera and black trousers. He chided the old men that the only time he saw them inside the house of the Lord was when it rained and that in Genesis God had not seen it fit to save the unfaithful from the Great Flood. One of the rattiest-looking old men, drunker than the others, retorted that could his reverend grace not see by their barbaric appearance that they were not men but beasts, that this degeneration from man to beast was the ineluctable fate of any man unlucky enough not to have fled from this Island. At this, he put his arms around one of the other old men and wrapped one leg around him and began humping, and begged his reverend grace not to worry for the flood would soon subside and knights would mount upon bishops, and pawns creep like ivy upon rooks, and queens bestride over kings and all would be fruitful and multiply and be as abundant as flies on a donkey carcass. The priest, in an embarrassed effort to ignore him, walked up to Joshua and extended his hand. “I am Father Gonzalo, monsignor of this parish. I do not think I have met you, young man. Are you stationed nearby?”

“Beware of the Rubioistas!” the same drunk old man said and raised his arms and wiggled his fingers as if a goblin casting a spell. “He has been looking for you. He has been asking about the road to the paradise of tin roofs. Beware, beware of the demon come to hide in the house of God!” Some of the other men held him back and reprimanded him to show a little decency, not to mention common sense. They begged pardon of Father Gonzalo and of Joshua and explained with their thumbs tilted towards their mouths that he'd had a little bit too much.

Joshua took Father Gonzalo's hand and introduced himself. His hand was small and soft like a woman with servants, but his grip was strong. Joshua said he was in town doing some business for the revolutionary government; more specifically, for a former resident of the town. Father Gonzalo held on to Joshua's hand and put his other hand on Joshua's shoulder. He walked him past the old chess players, whom he nodded gravely at in an apparent gesture of forgiveness, and into the nave of the church. Once inside, he let go of Joshua, who stood in amazement within the temple, his eyes wide, his breath uneven, examining the stained-glass windows one by one, unable to make out the figures of angels and saints and apostles and Virgins and Christs (as Father Gonzalo pointed and named them) that had all been made indistinguishable by the darkness outside of the church, their beings pulled apart and transformed into a jagged puzzle. “I have never—” Joshua said and did not complete the phrase, opening his eyes wide and staring, providing his own light, as Father Gonzalo directed, and renewing his effort to solve the riddles of cut and colored glass. “I have never been inside a church,” he said when he dropped his eyes and his shoulders and relented. “This is the first.”

“It is one of our traditions that the first time inside a new church, you make three silent prayers, and out of these one would certainly be answered.”

“Three wishes? Like when you find a genie?”

Father Gonzalo laughed and said yes, like when you find a genie. Joshua sat on one of the pews and said he would wait to make his three wishes, for he did not want to hurry and forget something. He looked again at the stained glass. He pouted.

“I would not want to live in this town,” he said, as if involuntarily he had blurted out his first wish. “One cannot make out friends from enemies. That old woman Adela says she is your truest friend, but she said to me some things she should have not.”

“Sí, doña Adela, she came to confession this morning. We talked all morning. Her sins are brief but her grief is long.” Joshua smiled and thought that most likely el Rubio was right about the length of the old woman's tongue. “She is very relieved that her daughter is alive and well, that someone is caring for her.”

“Why wouldn't she be alive and well?”

“Many terrible things have happened to her family, to all of us in this town, since the triumph of la Revolución.”

“All great change is terrible in some way. Terrible things have happened to my mother as well, but this is not the fault of la Revolución, it is the fault of the nature of things. The old woman is almost delirious, she said I was an angel of God, or a demon disguised as an angel, she wasn't sure, after the dinner she spoke to me as if in a trance, she told me many things, perhaps some that she should have kept to herself—”

Father Gonzalo explained that doña Adela was on medication. She had fallen apart after Alicia had disappeared. Sometimes
los calmantes
did this to her, she spoke fantasies.

“Sí, the white pills, but she is not mad, she is not making up stuff, and I'm afraid that she is more a danger to her friends than to her very real enemies; pues, that is why I came to you, I cannot see her again, so tell her not to worry; her daughter is alive and well and will remain alive and well, away from this town, which is the worst place for her. Perhaps some time in the future, if we can convince my mother, Alicia can come back for a visit, to see her daughter. The police captain does not care for her, or for the memory of her dead husband. Did the old woman tell you I was going to see comandante Suarez?”

“Be careful with el Rubio.”

“Yo no soy bobo, padre. I know what I'm dealing with. I know corruption when I see it. That man can be charged with crimes ten times as serious as the murder of a drunk finquero. But my business is not to convene tribunals. I need to get what I came here to get.” He pulled out his mother's letter from a pocket of his fatigues. “It is by order of my mother's Comité. But this comandantecito, aside from being a pervert, has no respect for the process of la Revolución. He is no model revolutionary; but I suppose, for the time being, you are stuck with him.”

“Is it true what that old man said? Were you looking for me? Were you asking for the way to the yanqui base? Many young men pass through this town, in many disguises, with stories more absurd than yours, but with only one purpose in mind.”

Joshua stood, straightened his shirt-jacket with both hands and scooted past Father Gonzalo into the main aisle of the church. He looked at one of the bigger stained-glass windows behind the altar in one last effort to envision the shapes hidden there. He spoke to Father Gonzalo without looking at him. “Be careful, padre, I know you mean well, but be careful who you choose to proposition with your doubtful mode of salvation …
and
be thankful I am no
chivato.
Save your charity. I am not one of your runaway children. Those young men that pass through here looking for a better life, tell them that it is not in the land of the rich yanquis, tell them it is here“—he poked the left side of his breast—”in their Cuban hearts, in devotion to a cause that too many have foolishly abandoned. You are a priest, are you not? A good one, I imagine, from how much even the street bums admire you”—he pointed to the antechamber where the drunks were gathered—“so you must know the value of sacrifice, and the wickedness of the wealth that is the yanquis' only claim to holiness. La verdad es, I was looking for you to give this message to the old woman, that one day she will see her daughter alive and well, a productive citizen of la Revolución. My mother is good, she will help Alicia succeed where before she had failed.
And
, I was looking for the way to the yanqui base because I wanted to see what was so alluring, what indeed had bewitched Alicia's husband into the suicide mission that ruined the life of his family, what glory he saw, and others still see, in this barbed-wire encircled city where yanqui warships dock and the Cuban sun shines off the roofs of foreign houses.”

“Muchacho, I have put myself and my parish at risk too often to be afraid any longer. El Rubio knows everything about us there is to know … even the many things that can land me in jail for life and ruin this parish, those same things
that doña Adela should not have told you.
But he does not move against me for some reason, he turns his gorgeous mane the other way, perhaps because he knows the people need some form of consolation, or perhaps, as you say, because he is so steeped in corruption that he has lost his footing and has no way of distinguishing the shore from the horizon. Or, perhaps, a combination of both. So, muchacho, I am not afraid of you as
chivato
, for I have already made myself and all my others as vulnerable as possible. My duty is to the well-being of all the people in this town—even those who are just passing through.”

“How long will
you
stay and continue to perform this duty, padre? How long before you decide that the well-being of the generations that have not yet been born on this Island, who in the silence of their unmade wombs have never heard the rumors of a yanqui paradise, is not worth the sacrifice of the meager years left in you?”

Father Gonzalo was astonished at the loftiness that had in a moment transformed the boy into a man. It no longer sounded as if he was merely parroting the speeches he had heard. Father Gonzalo was too weak to match it. “I don't know how long. Estoy viejo y muy cansado.”

“El Rubio does not move against you because once la Revolución starts to work in this town, his power vanishes. Without counterrevolutionary agitation, without young men being sent to their deaths for the promise of a false paradise, he is out of a job.”

Joshua turned and walked down the aisle towards the exit.

“Muchacho,” Father Gonzalo called. Joshua paused. “I will give doña Adela your message.” Joshua nodded and continued on his way out. Father Gonzalo called again. “The way to the base is through the road southward that leads to the town of Caimanera, or go across town and follow the railroad tracks, that too will get you there. There is a hill beyond the alfalfa fields, from its zenith you can look down at the airport on one side of the bay and the tin roofs of the main yanqui town on the other … be careful, there are murderers perched in towers on our side … oh, and if you see small wooden half-buried boxes, do not step on them, they are mines.”

Joshua thanked him and left the church. The old men were spread on the cracked gray marble floor of the antechamber and had restarted their games. Joshua slipped past them unnoticed into the rain.

Dinner for the New Man

His clothes were still wet when he arrived for dinner at el Rubio's borrowed house on B. Street. During the storm he had roamed the empty streets of the city, crossing eastward till he found the railroad tracks and following them south. By the time the storm had passed he had crossed the Guantánamo city limits. He noticed it was later than he thought. The dusk light was spread thick with abandon over the whole western half of the gray dome sky (in soppy strokes of violets and globs of red and countless washes of orange) as if trying to redeem itself for the lost day. He turned back. The wrought-iron door at el Rubio's was ajar. Over the puddles of the brick-paved courtyard there stood a long table covered in crisp white cloth. Many white porcelain bowls of food were set out on the table. Their contents were all similar, mounds of mush, earth and wine colored; and Joshua thought that along with the insides of animals, the police captain also ate blood-soaked Cuban dirt. El Rubio sat at one end. The indian servant in a black gown was mopping the steps under the tile-roof awning that led into the open kitchen. She grumbled in low tones directed at the head of her mop. Joshua greeted her but she did not turn or raise her head to salute him. A lone chair and silver was set at the other end of the table.

“Bueno, Joshua,” el Rubio said, signaling to the blood-brown feast on the table “as you can see the woman has a very Gothic imagination. I asked her to prepare a simple dinner for two! For three, I meant, for she usually joins me at six, but as you can see she has not set a place for herself. She has grown peevish. She says there's too much cleaning up to do. The storm blew right into the front rooms. Blew out the flames under her pots and pans three times. Bad timing too, the woman had just waxed the floors. But look at this, she came through anyway, come, come, sit down, taste this—” He had already begun to eat and washed down his mouthfuls with a goblet of red wine and wiped his mouth with one or the other end of the tablecloth, leaving it streaked like soiled underpants. His dog sat by him, its tongue lolling out, its breath desperate. “Mmm, pork brains au beurre noir, the woman speaks no
francés
, but she can certainly cook it; mmmm, braised to perfection, see the trick is to poach them first (isn't that right, woman?), without peeling off the outer membrane, and then, before braising them in a cast-iron pan, mind you, not dropping them in till the butter is so hot it has begun to turn brown and black, to cover them lightly with spiced bread crumbs, for brainmeat on its own offers little in flavor; it is its texture that it is prized for—no other organ of the beast's body melts with such grace and delicacy in the human mouth. It is like tasting the fat of phantoms! Oh, and one other important secret, the brains must still be warm from the beast.” He turned his head and lifted his fork to the indian. “Was it yesterday or the day before that this pig was slaughtered?” The indian was bent over a bucket, wringing the mop with violent twists, her small hands all stretched and twisted fingers, and she did not answer him. He fed his dog with his own fork. “You see the brain is a very perishable thing, it has to be eaten on the very day the beast is slaughtered, or at the most the day after. With veal and lamb you can preserve it for a bit longer, but the swine's brain starts to poison itself almost immediately after death. This is why the Jews don't touch it”—he tapped his temple with the handle of his fork—“they are clever, esos judíos. A dead pig is as dangerous as a hungry tiger. Only the skin is safe, burned to a crisp. Ay,
el chicharrón
, that greatest of Cuban delicacies. But how can we, as the top of the food chain, belittle ourselves to eat the hide of such a base creature (it is our national bird, no?—the yanquis have the majestic eagle as their emblem, we have the mud-rolling pig!), with the little black hairs that haven't been singed off, erect on it, as if the beast were in the throes of lust? Urgh!” He tightened his lips and cringed. He patted the dog's great head. “But you, you love chicharrón. Don't you? Don't you, baby?” He let the beast lick his hand and then turned again to his servant. He raised his voice, as if to indicate she must not have heard him the first time. “Woman,
I said
, was it yesterday or today that this beast was slaughtered!” The india grumbled something that could as well have been yesterday or today or ten weeks ago.