Voodoo Eyes (30 page)

‘Sounds like a real respectable joint.’

‘You come with me?’

He’d been here before – a crossroads moment, with a right way and a wrong way, the paths impossible to tell apart. He wouldn’t know which he’d taken until things either turned out fine or it was too late to turn back.

He didn’t trust Benny. Nothing to do with him being a transvestite, but everything to do with his wearing a disguise. Benny was good at being two people. But hadn’t Gwenver and Pinel told him that this was the way of the country, that seeing was not believing? Miami rules didn’t apply here.

‘After you,’ said Max.

36

Benny Ramirez lived on the second floor of a high-rise called the Erich Mielke Tower, designed and built by East German architects in the late sixties to house visiting factory technicians and planners, as well as high-ranking members of the Stasi, who had schooled their Cuban counterparts in the finer points of surveillance, interrogation and torture. Everything in the building was labelled in German, from the ground plan to the fire escapes.

The apartment itself was a surprise. Max had been expecting utilitarian grimness, but walked into quarters that must have once been assigned to someone of high rank. The place had the whiff of privilege about it, with parquet flooring, high ceilings, decorative cornices and panelled doors.

Benny showed him his room. A lifesize cardboard cutout of Salma Hayek wearing a bikini, a headdress and an albino boa constrictor caught the eye and drew it deep into a budget boudoir with glossy dark-blue woodchip walls and a small bedside lamp in each corner, red muslin cloths draped over the shades. When Benny turned on the lights, hazy red bounced off the blue and gave the space a thick mauve tinge. Salma was propped up next to a dresser complete with a theatre mirror, an abundance of make-up, creams and perfume, a hairdryer and four wig stands, one bare. Half a dozen short sequinned dresses of different colours, each covered in clear plastic, hung from a clothes rail on wheels.

Max went to the bathroom and washed the dried blood off his hands and arms, neck and face. The water was tepid going on cold. He noted the Che Guevara portrait on the wall, hanging upside down by the toilet.

When he was done, Benny sat him down at a table in the living room. He offered Max a choice of Jack Daniels, rum, coffee or orange juice. Max chose the juice. Benny disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a glass of liquid that had the colour and consistency of cartoon egg yolk, before locking himself in the bathroom, where he took a shower.

He emerged half an hour later, wrapped in a yellow towel. He had the body of a prematurely tall but underdeveloped teenager: hairless, bony, lacking any kind of muscle tone and very pale, a creature of the night, the colour of a ghost. His face, however, was that of someone who’d known more rainy days than sunny ones, and those rainy days had brought deluges rather than passing showers. Max guessed he was in his early thirties. Age had already drawn a thin crease around his slender neck and scratched at the corners of his slightly slanted, sharp green eyes. Like the best-looking Cuban women Max had seen, Benny was prettiness personified in flint.

They made small talk at first. Max told him he was a tourist from Miami. Benny asked him a few cursory questions about Miami, whether it was anything like
Scarface,
which he owned on pirate DVD. In fact all the films stacked neatly near the TV in the corner had a Miami connection, from thrillers to romantic comedies, to most episodes of
Miami Vice
and something called
Dexter.

‘Who was the man who attacked you?’ asked Max, when the conversation had edged beyond the casual and cursory.

‘I no’ know.’ Benny shrugged.

‘You were talking to him long enough.’

‘I no’ know him. He come to me, drunk, start talk. Then he realise I no’ lady, he hit me. Then he try kill me. Then you come and stop him.’

That didn’t sound right. The man hadn’t looked drunk at all, just pissed off.

‘He was arguing with you,’ said Max.

‘He was argue with himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He know I no’ woman. He know.’ Benny tapped his head. ‘But he still want me. And that drive him crazy.’

‘OK,’ said Max. Best to let it go. What did he care? It wasn’t his business and he was out of this slice of life in a few hours.

‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Are you like a – a woman trapped in a man’s body or something?’

‘I no’
transsexual.’
Benny shook his head. ‘That
no’
me. I no’ want cut off my
pinga
to make
papaya.
And I no’
travestido.’

‘You’re
not
a transvestite?’ Max frowned.

‘I dress like woman for job. Is all. I do this for job. For money.
Travestido,
they do it for fun. Job is no’ for fun, yes? Job is for money. Dress, wig, the shoes is my uniform. Cop or soldier wear uniform –
I
wear uniform.’

‘But why dress as a woman?’

‘When I start, I dress like man. I no’ make much money, because homosexual is minority. Only homosexual man go with me. If I look like woman, then
hetero
sexual man go with me. Some time they make mistake – they drunk, they no’ see very well. Some time for them is experiment. They want to try sex with man, but they no’ want man to look like man.’ He glared at Max, daring him to debate this rationale. Benny’s serious expression was undone by the furry half-smile snaking up towards his ear.

‘You make a lot of money?’

‘Is more than the doctor do my face.’

Max chuckled at that.

‘Is good place for homosexual, Meeyami?’

‘It’s open-minded, sure. Anything goes and no one cares, as long as you’re not bothering them. What’s it like, being gay in Cuba?’

‘Is no’ easy, is no’ fun. You know Fidel?’ Benny mimed spitting on the floor. ‘He no’ like homosexual. The Cuban people, many, they no’ accept. Cuba is small country, with small idea. They think we have medical problem. They think we disgusting. They think we pervert.’

‘Many parts of America are like that too,’ said Max.

‘You have homosexual friend?’

‘No.’ Max thought back. He’d never come close to having a gay friend. He’d been a regular homophobe in his youth. Not that it was called that then, pre-political correctness. Faggot this, faggot that. Castro was the name of the gay area in San Francisco. He hadn’t had an active dislike of gays. He’d never insulted them to their faces or beaten them up, and the sight of two men holding hands or kissing had never repulsed him, but he’d always laughed at gay jokes and told plenty himself. Locker-room talk. None of his friends had been any different. It was only when he started going to discos and getting into the music in the mid-seventies that his attitude changed from passive intolerance to vague, inactive acceptance. Forget the bullshit sixties and the hippies talking peace and love because they were too stoned to stand up and put their clothes on, the disco era was the only time when racial and sexual boundaries broke down: black, white, gay and straight had danced to the same music, side by side. It hadn’t lasted.

‘You know, when I was fifteen, I was – how you say? –
afem-inado?’

‘Effeminate? A man that’s like a woman?’

‘Exactamente.
You know what they do to me? The government? They send me to place in the Sierra Maestra. The mountain. It was concentration camp for homosexual. They think they can change homosexual into macho heterosexual man.
Pendejo estupido!
You know what they do to me, to make me
hetero
sexual? First: they talk-talk-talk-talk-talk-talk.
La homosexualidad es una perversión burguesa. La homosexualidad está contra La Revolución. La homosexualidad es una invención Imperialista.
Then they give me electronic shock in my head, like what they do for the crazy people. For two month, electronic shock in the brain and the talk-talk-talk in my ear.’

Max wasn’t surprised. That had happened in America too – and still did. ‘How many were there?’

‘Many peoples, men, womens, boys, girls. Fifty, sixty peoples,’ said Benny. ‘They make me cut tree with axe and carry rock. All the time, every day.
Heterosexual
man with fifteen children can no’ carry the rock they make me carry! But
I
carry the rock. Because I
hate
them. Hate make me
strong.
But I stay
homosexual.
Fidel, he no’ understand. He think he can change nature. He think him God. He think him can make sea go back. He focking idiot.’

‘How did they know you were “cured”?’

Benny tried to laugh, but winced in pain. ‘You know, they so stupid. They make the homosexual man and the lesbian woman fock each other. And they film this. Fidel make porno. And the man in charge of the camp say, “You are both heterosexual! Congratulation!
Viva Fidel!
”

‘After I get out, I lead “normal life”. I get job. I was cook in hotel. And I get marry.’

‘Married?’

‘Si.
Normal life, you know. Like you life. My wife, she name Pilar. She was lesbian I fock in camp. We have arrangement. She do her thing in secret, I do my thing in secret. Lot of secret sex. Is OK, in secret.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She leave Cuba in 2000. Pilar was dance instructor. They travel to Nicaragua for show. She leave Nicaragua, go to Unite State. She live now in England. In England homosexual can be marry. Is legal.
País civilizado.’

‘When did you become a prostitute?’

‘I do this long long time. When I work in hotel, I fock the guest. Lot of homosexual tourist come to Cuba. They no’ pay me cash, they buy me present, you know. But, when Pilar go, the government say no more job for me, no more house. They say I know she want to leave. I help her. Sure I know, but I no’ “help” her. Boolshit. So what I can do? I become sex for professional. I have no choice. I—’

He was interrupted when the front door opened and two statuesque black women walked in, carrying on an animated conversation for a few beats, until they saw Max sitting at the table. Their voices frizzled out abruptly, making a sound like mangled tape. Their faces creased with confusion and their bodies stiffened. And then they saw Benny and immediately loosened up, all beaming bright smiles as they came towards him, calling his name, throwing out their arms, as if they hadn’t seen him in years. Then they got a look at his cheek, and they both stopped and screeched at the same time. That was when Max noticed something he hadn’t fully processed when they walked in: the girls were identical twins. Their faces were exact reproductions of each other – thin, sharp looks, piercing dark eyes, wide, pouting mouths with the same mid-lip parting, showing a glimmer of front tooth. They had the same short afro hairstyle, wore the same baggy grey sweatpants with pink bands on the side of the leg, white Ellesse T-shirts, and a thin gold bracelet apiece on their left wrists. They smelled of cocoa butter and perfume, and had traces of glitter on their faces and arms.

Benny introduced them as Luana and Jia. Max wondered how he could tell them apart.

They chatted with Benny, fussing over him. Max couldn’t understand a word. Not that it mattered, as they ignored him completely, not even throwing him a glance when Benny demonstrated how Max had saved his life – standing up, punching at the air, shouting
‘Pow!
’ – and then cupping his stitched-up cheek in agony when the reenactment provoked the wound.

Max felt himself getting tired. His eyelids kept shutting and he blacked out for a few seconds.

Eventually, he laced his fingers together and used his hands as a cushion on the table. He tried to think of what he’d do in a few hours’ time, back at the hotel: shower, shave and go rent a car. He thought of a comfortable bed in an air-conditioned room. He thought of Sandra. He thought of their old home, of conversations with her in the kitchen. He thought of a parallel life where he hadn’t killed people.

And then, quietly and quickly, sleep stole him out of this place.

Max was shaken awake.

Roughly.

Benny stood over him, pale and goggle-eyed, sweat on his upper lip. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The TV was on, the volume loud.

Max sat up and blinked and rubbed his eyes. It was morning, broad bright daylight streaming through the window. The twins had gone. He checked his watch. It was after eleven. How long had he been out?

‘Look, look at this,’ said Benny, pointing at the TV screen.

Cuban station. Cuban news. Mild snow on the picture, the sound a tad distorted. A street with two parked police Ladas, an ambulance, cops keeping a crowd at bay. A reporter babbling over the image. Max couldn’t understand a word of it, but he could hear the excitement in the voice.

The camera panned to take in the whole view: fenced-off buildings, palm trees, trash in the gutters, the ocean in the background, cars passing on the Malecón. Then it stopped at a building.

Initially, Max didn’t recognise the place, because it looked so dingy and ordinary in the daylight, and so different on the screen. Then he noticed the Christmas trees either side of the entrance.

It was La Urraca.

The reporter was interviewing the barman, whose face looked redder and sourer and older and puffier on TV, as if an evil spirit had mistakenly taken possession of a rotting tomato.

‘That man who attack me?’ started Benny, and then paused to take a deep breath through his nose. He swallowed. Breathed out. ‘They … they find him in the street. He dead, Max. He
dead.’

Max stared at the screen, at the barman talking, not recognising the voice at all from the night before, not catching a damn word.

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said to the TV.

‘What you mean, it no’ you? You hit him.’

‘He was alive when
we
left him.’

‘The reporter say he dead.’

‘You saw it. I hit him. I knocked him out. Yes. But I didn’t kill him.’