Voodoo Eyes (32 page)

They rolled under bridges. They passed a farmer driving a herd of goats. They passed bus stops with small crowds waiting in the baking heat. They drove through sugar cane fields, tobacco fields, coffee fields. Max saw signs for Playa Girón – the Bay of Pigs – 110 miles, Cienfuegos 115 miles, Trinidad 132 miles. He saw more state billboards hailing the revolution and pumping propaganda in red, blue and white capitals:

Socialismo o muerte! Patria o muerte!

Max carried on punching a finger at the radio. He got frequent bursts of static, music fading in and out, in between, crystal-clear speeches and peals of laughter.

Benny looked over and managed a meagre smile.

‘You look ugly as woman.’

‘Fuck you. It’s your damn wig.’

Benny laughed a little.

‘You sorry you help me?’

‘We’re way past that,’ said Max.

‘OK. I say again. You
regret
you help me?’

‘Maybe we’ll both regret it.’

Max worked the radio, getting nothing.

‘What you look for?’

‘News.’

‘What is time?’

Max showed him his watch: 1.10 p.m.

‘You miss. Go back.’

He went back along the dial. Chatter. Jazz. Samba. More chat. Then a snatch of a very familiar tune – the Mellotron intro to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

‘Stop!’ said Benny. ‘Is news now.’

‘That’s the Beatles,’ said Max.

‘Is news. Listen please.’

Max heard a woman’s voice speaking fast. He heard ‘Habana’ and ‘Malecón’ – or something close to it. He may even have caught ‘Urraca’. But he wasn’t sure because the words were circling his ears in a dissonant buzz, all starting or stopping in sharp ‘eh’ and ‘ay’ and ‘ah’ sounds. He listened for his name and Gwenver’s. He didn’t hear either.

Five minutes later, Benny switched off the radio.

‘You understand this?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘I thought I had some Spanish. I was wrong.’

‘Is like on TV. They find two dead peoples in Habana in one day,’ said Benny. ‘They look for me and
Americano.
They say to Cuban peoples to contact police if they see us.’

‘I didn’t hear our names.’

‘They give my name. No’ you.’

‘Have they said anything about the car?’

‘No,’ said Benny. ‘Who is the dead black man? They say him
exilio Americano. Pantera Negra.
Wanted for crime in Unite State.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You no’ tourist, no, Max?’

‘That was last night. This is a different day.’

‘Is the same day. Who you are? What you do here, in Cuba?’

‘Tell me about your friend – the one in Trinidad.’

‘What you want to know?’

‘Who he is, what he does, that kind of thing.’

‘Why?’

‘Just tell me,’ said Max.

‘I want to know what you do here.’

‘Don’t argue. I don’t owe you an explanation.’ Max gave him a sharp look. Benny tried to stare him down but couldn’t.

‘OK … Him name Nacho Savon. I know him long time.’

‘He a transvestite too?’

‘You no’ funny, Max. Him work for government, for Minister of Interior.’

‘
The Ministry of the Interior?
Isn’t that the secret police?’

‘Relax, is no’ what you think,’ said Benny. ‘Him work with computer. Him expert with internet and mobile telephone. Do all technology for listen in telephone. But that not all he do. He also sell telephone and computer
por la izquierda.
Is illegal, you know. Is how I get my DVD – from him.’

‘His colleagues at the Ministry know this?’

‘Sure, but they no’ care. He sell to them also. And he
expert
at job,’ said Benny. ‘He give you new telephone.’

‘I see,’ said Max. ‘Where does he get the contraband?’

Benny frowned. ‘Is like
contrabando?
Is same, yes?’

Max nodded.

‘He have contact.’

‘You mean the Abakuás? He buys from them?’

‘Everyone buy from Abakuá. Is like the mafia here.’

‘I know.’

‘Now
you
tell me about youself, Max.’

‘You know everything you need to know. Just drive.’

Benny muttered something under his breath. Max caught a mild whiff of rot, day-old bad meat. He guessed the heat and the stress had derailed the healing of the unbandaged wound. He rolled down the window.

No one was following them. Cars were overtaking them regularly. They were barely doing fifty. He doubted the car could do more. If it was a race between the Chevy and another vehicle, the Chevy would finish fourth.

Max searched the sky for helicopters. All he saw were vultures circling and scenting, small ragged t-shapes floating among the clouds, looking for death.

Up ahead, two small crowds had gathered on either side of the road, shepherded by men in yellow shirts, khakis and caps, holding clipboards. One of the men stepped out into the road in front of the car. He started waving.

He was flagging them down, getting them to stop.

‘That a
cop?’
said Max. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Is hitch-hike official.’

‘A
what?’

‘Here is law to pick up hitch-hiker,’ said Benny. ‘If man with yellow shirt tell you stop, you must stop.’

They were getting closer, the people all looking expectantly at the car.

Benny suddenly lost whatever defiant confidence he’d had. His shoulders slumped, his arms drooped, his hands slackened around the wheel. He was on state-controlled auto-pilot, doing what he was told without thinking.

The car got down to a crawl. Max felt his heart racing. He scoped the crowd: ageing to old men and women, and beautiful young girls, in tight jeans and tighter crop tops, heavily made-up, crowding the official, flirting with him, competing for his attention.

The official – with a blossoming paunch and a thin moustache – had big eyes for a pair of shapely
mulattas
carrying rucksacks. The adults hung back, looking at the girls and especially the official with silent disgust.

Benny turned to Max. ‘Let me do this, OK?’ he said. He was calm and resolved, a doctor quietening a patient against the inevitable.

The official came towards them, writing something on his clipboard. Benny wound down the window. Max lowered his head and pretended to doze.

The man greeted Benny and then retreated a step when he saw his face.

‘Accidente,’
said Benny.

The official asked his name and where they were coming from. José Yero, Benny replied to the first question, Havana to the second.

The official wrote it down. He asked where they were going. He was brusque, but non-aggressive, trying to move things along. Benny said Sancti Spiritus.

Could they take two people to Cabaiguán?

Yes, sure, said Benny. It was on the way. No problem.

The official thanked him for doing his duty for the country and the revolution.
De nada,
said Benny. The man called out two names. The
mulattas
came forward. Some of the waiting women gave the girls the finger and mouthed obscenities.

Max tensed in his seat.

Benny glanced at him, panicked.

One of the girls leaned in the window and said,
‘Hola.’
Her open expression and friendly smile froze into a frightened grimace as her eyes went from Benny’s face to Max, scowling under his wig.

He had a flash of inspiration. He locked eyes with the girl, licked his lips and blew her a kiss.

The girl stepped away from the car in disgust. She said something to her friend. From the sound of things, and her body language, she didn’t like the look of either her prospective driver or his passenger.

As the official came back towards them, suddenly there was a loud cheer from the crowd. They were all looking past the car up the road, from where a
camello
was coming. The bus indicated and pulled in. People started moving towards it.

The official waved Benny on. They could go, he said.

As Benny started up the car, Max saw people still standing at the stop: two young uniformed cops talking to a pair of older men in white
guayabera
shirts, aviator shades and shoulder holsters. The men were leaning against a black Mercedes with tinted windows. They weren’t looking at the cops.

They were looking straight at the Chevy.

Benny pulled the car out on to the road, letting out a sigh of relief.

‘How much further to Trinidad?’ asked Max.

‘Thirty miles.’

‘Any more hitch-hiking stops?’

‘Maybe,’ said Benny. ‘The law start in the Special Period, when we have fuel shortage and the Russian stop sending new bus. Private transport become public transport.’

‘Couldn’t work in America,’ said Max. ‘Too many sick fucks out there.’

He tore off the wig and threw it out the window. It disappeared under the wheels of the oncoming bus.

38

They reached Trinidad in the late afternoon. The town was timewarp-jammed somewhere south of 1890, a living, lived-in monument to Cuba’s Spanish colonial past. Cobblestone streets, the colour and texture of filthy ice, ran between bright, colourful, terracotta-roofed houses, whose every doorway and window was encased in white metal grilles. There were barely any cars around. The town was too small and its inhabitants way too poor to afford to run them. They got to where they were going on foot, on rickety bicycles, on the backs of donkeys or crammed into horsedrawn carts. There was no state propaganda to be seen anywhere, no hectoring reminders of the present to wreck allusions to the past.

Benny drove through town and parked the car at the end of an empty road. Max stretched and shook the cramp from his legs, relieved and grateful to be out of that clanking, asphyxiating sweatbox on wheels, his curiosity about Cuba’s legendary mode of transport bludgeoned right out of him.

They started walking. It was hotter and drier here, on the Caribbean coast; the sun brighter and rawer than in Havana, zeroing in on them like they were ants caught in the crossbeams of a sadistic child’s magnifying glass. The breeze, blowing down from the surrounding Escambray Mountains, stirred sandy dust loose from in between the cobblestones and carried with it a rank taint of old damp shoes – in reality, the fumes wafting from the local tobacco-processing plants and cigar factories.

The dismal stores were poorly stocked and sparsely lit, selling basic necessities to townsfolk and state tourist tat to foreign visitors. Of whom there were plenty: busloads of three-hour itinerants mass-doddering behind a tour guide in a bright-red polo shirt, poking around the churches, taking pictures of the pretty town centre and glancing around the museums, before being corralled into one of the local taverns. Here the patrons drank out of earthenware goblets, and the only drink on sale was canchánchara – a local brew of water, honey, lime and Santero rum. According to Benny, it tasted like cold tea spiked with flu remedy. It went down mild and harmless but had a hard rebound. It didn’t make the tourists too drunk to walk back to their transport, but it did induce an almost beatific sense of well-being and benevolence in even the most jaded box-ticking globetrotter.

As the visitors were ushered out to their parked buses, they’d be surrounded by some of the town’s hard-faced children – dirty, bony-torsoed, camera-ready charity beacons begging for convertible pesos. If they received their alms in standard currency, they’d throw it on the ground, spit on it and curse their benefactor. Then they’d ask for
real
money. After the tourists had gone, the kids would pool their takings and divvy up among themselves, while they waited for the next bus.

Max and Benny passed a circle of them sharing out a pile of coins in the street. One for you, one for me. Everyone equal. No squabbles. No complaints. State socialism made simple. State socialism without the politics. What would become of them, Max wondered, when the regime died or changed or fell? Would they still hold on to those egalitarian principles or would they learn to trample on each other in the lifelong race for the runaway buck? He knew the answer. It was the same everywhere.

Nacho Savon didn’t look too pleased to see Benny. He body-blocked the entrance and glowered at his friend, while moving the door back and forth, the hinges squeaking and grinding lightly – in time, it seemed, with his indecision. He was a stout-legged, square-torsoed little man with an explosion of wild, thick, unkempt greying hair that stood completely upright, as if he’d shoved his finger in an electric socket to get the dirty-mop-caught-in-a-wind-tunnel look just right.

The two faced each other silently, gawking at one another, waiting for the other to make some kind of first move. Benny smiled as much as his stitches allowed. Savon’s expression wavered somewhere between hostility and sadness. Max speculated on what had happened between them. Benny’s body language said he was the good-for-nothing lover who never called or showed when he said he would, disappeared for months on end, and only returned when he was in serious trouble, tail between his legs and repentance on his breath, swearing it was the last transgression. All he was missing was a handful of cheap flowers wrapped in plastic and he’d get the part. Savon was the idiot who always took him back, vowing it was the last time … until the next time.

Savon finally broke the face-off to look at Max, noticing him for the first time. His eyes were small, bulging and almost completely black. He had a ruddy complexion. Max thought he bore a passing resemblance to an irate cooked shrimp casting one final pissed-off look at the top of the food chain from the end of a fork. He was wearing a brown cotton shirt, calf-length khaki shorts, white socks and black Reeboks whose thick, air-cushioned soles made his feet look like small hovercrafts. His shorts rode halfway down his groin and his shoelaces were undone. Max was usually contemptuous of men who dressed half their age, suspecting them of being immature narcissists or narcissistic chickenhawks.

‘Quién es el?’
Savon asked Benny.

‘Le
llaman “Max”.’