Voodoo Eyes (42 page)

Santiago de Cuba had had its lustre washed clean away. It was waterlogged. Trapped rain shook loose from every branch and leaf, droplets hung from telegraph poles like empty chrysalises, rooftops dribbled at the corners, windows and doors teared and sweated, brick walls were soaked right through. The Emilio Bacardi museum – in every postcard and brochure, a chalk-white grandiosity with Roman Imperial overtones, from its striated colonnades to the Latin spelling of its name across the façade – stood humbled and drab, the colour of cold cigarette ash. The huge angel perched above the entrance to the Asunción Cathedral, head peering over the ledge as if counting in the worshippers, seemed ready to topple over into the square below. Flags drip-dried on their poles, too soused to flap. Craters had flooded in every road and formed broad lakes, which would reform no matter how many cars drove through them, making great dirty wet swan wings as they passed. The waters would break apart but a little, only to flow back into one another, ready for the next disturbance. The streets slipped and slid with beached detritus and overflowed sewage, the mess sprinkled prettily here and there with bright, desiccated blossoms. People picked their way gingerly along the sidewalks, covering or holding their noses, looking where they trod.

Benny had taken a turn for the worse overnight. He sat huddled in his seat, shivering and sweating like a junkie at peak withdrawal. Max could hear his teeth chattering in between parched, overheated gasps. His wound had wilted like a malignant soufflé, the skin sucked inwards, the area from mouth to ear now a shade of blackened purple that completely camouflaged the stitches. Max rolled down the window to chase out the stink, but Benny begged him to close it, complaining first that he was freezing, then that the breeze was so hot it was making him boil.

‘Go to the marina and follow the pretty girls.’
That was how the manager of Discos del Loro had told Max he’d find the Lone Star. So that’s where he went, looking for girls.

He stopped the Firedome opposite a row of shuttered stores at the end of a sloping road. Despite his condition, Benny insisted on coming with him, preferring to be on the move instead of staying in the car. Better to be caught on his feet than on his ass, he said.

The marina was skirted by a long, wide boardwalk, the wooden planks browned and softened by the storm. Sailboats were moored alongside the half-dozen jetties that projected out into the sea. Deckhands were slopping out the hulls and wringing the sails. A few small kiosks sold coastal tours, scuba-diving lessons and fishing expeditions – all prices the same, state-capped and the profits state-flowing, competition extinct. There was no custom. Vendors sat bored in the booths, staring up at the sky, reading newspapers, gazing out across the bay at two boats approaching in the distance. The cleaners kicked or swept dead gulls and fish back into the sea, and brushed trash into soggy mounds, which they sifted for bottles and cans, depositing them into carrier bags. Rival variations of ‘Guantanamera’ played from speakers, the song’s air of crushed melancholia and resignation for once a wholly appropriate flavouring to the surroundings.

Benny coughed and swayed and walked with his arms locked around him in a tight embrace, as if holding his body together. Max had to wait for him to catch up. There were a few uniformed cops around, arms behind their backs, legs apart and stiff, a click away from snapping to attention, as if expecting a visiting dignitary. They weren’t looking at Max or Benny. Their eyes were focused on the sea.

Max looked across the bay. What he’d thought were two boats were really four: speedboats, close together, as if racing. He followed their intended course to an empty jetty further up the boardwalk, where there were no boats or kiosks or cops. A small group of women had gathered there.

They were in their early twenties – possibly younger – one prettier than the next, dressed and made up like they were going out partying, even though it wasn’t even midday. High heels, spray-on jeans, miniskirts, tight midriff-baring tops, navel piercings. They stood chatting and smoking and fanning themselves with magazines.

The boats pulled up either side of the jetty and the passengers disembarked. All men. Seven white guys, two blacks, one Asian. Ass-half-out jeans, khaki shorts, chinos, back-to-front caps or bandanas, sunglasses, tattoos, sneakers, crew cuts or shaved heads. They high-fived and fist-bumped. They laughed and joked as they swaggered down towards the girls. Their voices were loud, the accents unmistakable: Americans. And no matter how loose and fun-bound they seemed, they all had the chiming, measured gait that said military.

Max heard stuttering attempts at Spanish met with fluent Spanish-tilted English. Then some names – Rusty, Evander, Bill, Travis. Hands were shaken or kissed.
Mucho gusto,
said the girls, one curtseying, a few giggling, all swooning.

Formalities over, they headed up the boardwalk.

Max and Benny followed at a distance.

The boardwalk gradually petered out. First the guardrail stopped quite suddenly, then the walkway ceded, strip by strip, to sludgy sand, until all that remained of the original structure were two parallel wooden planks placed across the sloping earth and loose rocks that made up the shore. The ocean here was oilrainbowed and churning with mud, the lapping surf a caramelised ochre.

Up ahead they saw a long concrete pier, built up with warehouses, gasworks, mountains of stacked containers, and stationary cranes.

The group had by now splintered, the men and women paired off and separated. One of the black men had instigated it, moving to the side with a woman in a pleated blue skirt that barely covered her ass and a long ponytail that bounced up and down the length of her back. The others followed suit, one for all and all for one. When Max turned to look behind him, he saw another group of women starting to form at the jetty.

Their group climbed a short flight of steps, ambled along the pier and then turned and disappeared between two warehouses. It was the last Max and Benny saw of them.

The path was boxed in by the backs of adjacent warehouses and ended at a high sandstone wall topped with spikes and razor wire. In the middle of the wall was a thick brushed-metal door that opened from the inside.

Max walked up to it and knocked.

A metal shutter went back almost instantly. A pair of brown eyes set in frowning dusky skin appeared in the open rectangle.

‘Yeah?’ The voice was gruff and Latino-American.

‘Can I come in?’ asked Max.

‘Unit?’

‘Civilian.’

‘How you know ’bout this place?’

‘Bar talk.’

‘What bar?’

‘In town. Can’t remember the name. They all look and sound the damn same,’ quipped Max.

The man chuckled. The shutter closed with a slam. Max and Benny exchanged glances.

The shutter reopened.

‘Got ID?’ asked the man.

Max took out his passport, opened it and held it up.

The man studied the picture a moment and then eyed Benny.

‘Who’s that?’

‘He’s with me,’ said Max.

‘He looks sick.’

‘He’s getting better.’

Three bolts went back in quick succession.

Max was shocked and confused by what lay behind the door. Everything he saw was very familiar, yet completely out of place. Benny was awestruck. His fevered eyes blinked rapidly, his mouth hung open in a dazed smile, drool forming at both corners. They were both speechless, each processing their bewilderment. And for a moment, neither could move, because the place they’d just come to was unlike any they’d ever expected to find here.

At first glance it was a typical Cuban city street: opposing rows of one- or two-floor Spanish colonial buildings, with drab, unimaginative slabs of Soviet-inspired geometry breaking the flow. The cobbled road had been pedestrianised and was bustling with human traffic wandering up and down the main throughway and white-bordered sidewalks.

But suddenly the image cracked and fell apart. Halfway up the street, set on a tall grey pillar, were the glowing golden arches of McDonald’s. A single red pulsing neon arrow beneath them pointed right. A little further up, to the left, the cheery avuncular face of Colonel Sanders beamed out from an elevated red-and-white KFC sign.

Every single store, restaurant and coffee shop in the road was American. A Walmart occupied what might once have been the home of an upwardly mobile – now exiled – family. It was so well stocked that goods lay piled on the floor. A CVS pharmacy was doing brisk business out of a Cold War-vintage building with faded Russian lettering on the wall. There was a Starbucks, a Subway, a Johnny Rockets, a Chuck E. Cheese, a Domino’s Pizza and a Taco Bell.

They made their way down the street, threading through a loose, ambling crowd of off-duty American military, mostly young and male. Apart from Benny, the only Cubans were young women: walking hand in hand with soldiers, sitting on their laps outside bars, dancing on tables inside, leading them into houses that advertised hourly rates in the windows.

Every few feet of sidewalk stood a statue of a cartoon Castro – green fatigues and cap, black boots, a leering triangle of teeth clamping the end of a cigar, flashing a peace sign. Each one had been defaced in some way. Insults scrawled on the face or spray-canned on the body, and many festooned with Bush-Cheney or McCain-Palin election stickers.

The only cars were some of the same vintage bangers the Cubans drove, but in far better condition. The bodies sparkled with fresh coats of paint and wax, the chrome gleaming and the windows as good as mirrors.

They passed a busy casino whose greeters were Cuban babes in tailcoats, bow ties and black basques. A Sinatra soundalike drowned out the noise of the slot machines and roulette wheels with a note-perfect rendition of ‘Pennies From Heaven’. Next came a seven-lane bowling alley, a toy shop and an air-rifle range with tin Castros, Guevaras and Bin Ladens as targets. First prize was a ‘genuine Cuban flag’.

Towards the end of the road they came across a store called Gitmo Gear selling souvenirs from Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The store peddled live iguanas – the base’s unofficial mascot – in cages, and two varieties of dead ones – stuffed whole or pickled in big glass bottles of formaldehyde. You could also buy iguana keyrings, pens and mugs, and his ’n’ hers fridge magnets, where the iguanas came dressed in Bermuda shorts or paisley bikinis. T-shirts were also on sale: ‘Welcome to the Taliban Towers – The Caribbean’s Newest Five Star Resort’, read one, the words printed over a silhouette of the base’s entrance, a manned watchtower overlooking a stretch of razor-wire-capped wall. Other designs included an orange Camp X-Ray number depicting a skeleton in a hijab and a grey muscle shirt with a cross-armed iguana set against Stars and Stripes – ‘Joint Task Force: Defenders of Freedom’. The T-shirts came in all shapes and sizes, from the XXXXXL elephantine to baby-wear.

As he was looking through the window, Max noticed something reflecting against the glass – a neon sign in the shape of a large five-pointed star, flashing red, white then blue.

He turned. It was coming from the largest house in this bizarre, hermetically sealed road: three floors high with balconies, shuttered windows and a Texan flag planted on a pole by the entrance.

The Lone Star.

50

A gloomy reddish light and a deep hit of pungent second-hand cigar smoke greeted them as they walked in. Then loud music, a rock-rap hybrid that must have been real popular back home because men were frugging away like saplings in a cross-wind – air-guitaring, devil-signing, headbanging, hip-thrusting – while the women around them were grooving along in states of arrested grace, their motion, like their good-time smiles, diplomatic, their eyes saying,
esta música es gringo caca.

The place was crowded but not packed. Along the sides and in corners sat large gatherings of soldiers and women talking and laughing, the women mere accoutrements, like the ashtrays, pitchers, shotglasses and sodden coasters covering the long tables.

On the floor men stood around in tight quintets, drinking their first beers, eyeing the clusters of women invariably positioned opposite, silent and available, a gap of open, navigable space between them. The bar was off to the right. It was well staffed and seemed to stretch to infinity, guaranteeing that every customer was served quick. It sold nothing but American beer, liquor and soda – plus the big fat Cuban cigars practically everyone seemed to be chugging on.

Waitresses carried drinks from bar to table and returned empties from tables to bar. They were tough-faced pretty and hard-bodied sexy in uniforms of bright-pink, green or orange PVC stetsons with flashing neon strips for bands, matching bras, thongs, boots, tasselled PVC chaps and a spray of gold glitter. Customers shoved tips down their G-strings and bras. If hands tried to go further they’d be discouraged by a glare from one of several bouncers prowling the joint – big guys in tight T-shirts and steel-capped boots, pepper spray and brass knuckles clipped to belts.

Max and Benny wound their way across the floor. Women tried to catch Max’s eye. Some tapped him and asked for the time or a light or simply said,
hola.
They all avoided Benny. A few held their noses as he passed.

Max stopped a waitress and asked where he could find Señor Dallas. He’d taken a wild guess. Dallas was the alias of one of the Texas Playboys. The waitress shrugged and pointed her finger upwards. When she saw he didn’t understand, she led him and Benny to a recess behind two tables and pointed to a staircase at the end. Max thanked her and offered a twenty-peso tip. She looked at the money contemptuously and walked off.

Upstairs it was a whole different scene. The theme from
Rocky
was playing, accompanied note for note by the large crowd gathered in the middle of the room, where a boxing ring stood lit up by three harsh white spotlights.

Two topless women were squaring off, in thongs instead of shorts and bright-red comedy boxing gloves, several sizes too big and soft like down pillows. They were both on rollerskates, punching and parrying while trying to remain upright, monitored by a female referee in a sheer black catsuit. She broke them apart when they clinched, urged them to get more aggressive when they moved too far apart. It was stupid instead of sexy, but the three of them were taking it seriously, the fighters unsmiling, throwing jabs, the ref screwing up her face in concentration.