Ruins (4 page)

Lidia handed him a tiny cup of coffee with a head of brown froth. Luckily, she’d drowned the bitterness with enough sugar. “Rosita across the courtyard had a little meat, a little steak she shared with me, in exchange for, you know, the ironing I did for her,” Lidia said apologetically.

Often, because Lidia was one of the few people in the world these days with a working iron, they could earn a few extra pesos that way, or barter for goods. The ironing never produced dollars because tourists had their ironing, if any, done at the hotels, and, frankly, neither Usnavy nor Lidia would have known how to approach them anyway.

Now Lidia was fidgeting with the refrigerator, rearranging its meager contents. She was a lean, sienna-skinned woman with narrow hips, younger than Usnavy by a decade, but more fragile. Since Nena’s birth, after twenty-two hours in labor, she’d become even shyer than when Usnavy had first met her. Communication seemed like such an effort to her that, as far as Usnavy was concerned, the mere fact that she wanted to explain something made it instantly forgivable, whatever it was. He could barely stand the thought of her discomfort. He sipped his coffee—it was sickly sweet—and handed the cup back to her.

“I thought it was best to give the meat to Nena, but it wasn’t very much,” Lidia continued. “There really wasn’t enough, I didn’t even have any myself, just a taste.”

Usnavy sat on the bed, quietly tossing his underwear from one hand to the other, like pizza dough. The light from the lamp above them was too bright, the feline eyes like sapphires embedded in their yellow sockets. He noticed a small puddle on the floor, the result of a barely visible but rusty streak that now ran down the wall.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, embarrassed for both of them. “Don’t worry about it.”

It was he who was worried, however. He now realized what his little girl had just eaten. Lidia probably wasn’t aware that the sandwich she’d bought—he was sure it was not a gift, not an exchange—did not have any meat at all. Most people hadn’t figured out the scheme yet but Usnavy was sure he knew the secret behind those tasty treats.

The week before, Rosita had been selling those very sandwiches on the street—she’d even offered him one. But no sooner had Usnavy pulled up the bread and seen the flat layer of pith covered in seasoning, than he recognized its true provenance: These were pieces of a blanket normally used for mopping floors which Rosita had beaten and marinated in spices and a little beef broth. The texture of the wool had been transformed into what they all imagined steak was like, something tender and chewy. The success of her enterprise had come as much from her ingenuity as from the tricks memory plays.

Needless to say, Rosita had sold out of the sandwiches and quickly come back to the bodega to get the blanket due on her mother’s ration book. Rosita’s excitement that day, he knew, didn’t have anything to do with the potential gleam of her floor. Still, he didn’t say anything to anyone. Who would believe him anyway? Who would admit they’d been fooled by the sheer force of their desire?

If the enterprise went well enough, he presumed, she’d soon vanish from the bodega’s line, acquiring a limitless supply of blankets and dressing from god knows where …

The ingredients for the tangy sauce must have been illicitly acquired, Usnavy mused after a minute—and his daughter had just eaten it with pieces of wool. At least it wasn’t cat meat, he thought.

Then he bowed his head in dismay and disbelief.

A few nights later, Usnavy and his family were startled by a thunderous rapping on the door of their room. Both Lidia and Nena shot up, Nena reaching with her foot to the cot where her father lay to poke him awake. His mattress was thin and spread on top of a layer of old
Granma
newspapers that crinkled when he moved (
Granma
, in English, after the boat the rebels took from Mexico to Cuba to spark the Revolution).

“Usnavy,” came the hoarse whisper from outside. “Usnavy, please, I need your help.”

Usnavy felt his way to the door in the darkness, cracking it open a sliver. Outside, there were only shadows but he recognized the tight curls on the head of his friend Obdulio, squat and solid, standing there nervously.

“Usnavy, you’ve got to help me,” Obdulio said.

“What happened?”

“Everybody’s leaving,” he said.

Last spring, a few people had jumped the fence at the Belgian embassy and Obdulio had said the same thing:
Everybody’s leaving
—but it wasn’t to be. And then in a matter of weeks, there were nearly a dozen Cubans in the Chilean embassy and a bunch who smashed through the fence with a truck at the German mission, all waiting for the authorities to relent and give them a way out of Cuba. But after weeks of delays, they all trickled back to the streets of Havana, hungrier and more distraught than ever. And in spite of the risks and the drama, nobody left.

“What do you mean?” asked a groggy Usnavy. He was shirtless, standing in the doorway in his underwear. The floor was wet and slippery and the sour smell of the tenement invaded his nostrils. By now both Lidia and Nena were beside him wrapped in the bed sheet.

“In Cojímar, it’s like Mariel,” Obdulio said, swallowing hard.

Usnavy felt both Lidia and Nena tense up next to him. “What does that have to do with me?” he asked wearily.

Not again, he thought, not again. Back in 1980, during the leakage from Mariel harbor, how many had left? How many had disappeared? How many had never been heard from again?

“I’m leaving,” Obdulio said. “My family and I, we’re leaving. We’re building a raft right now, my daughter and my nephews. They’re already there, on the beach.”

“You’ve thought about this?” asked Usnavy, turning in to his family’s room.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Obdulio said. He pushed his way inside, forcing Nena to scramble up on the bed to make room. “Look, Usnavy, you need to think about it too. What are you doing here, my friend?”

“What would I do
there
?” he asked.

“Anything!” said Obdulio. “Anything’s better than here! You don’t have to be salao forever.”

Usnavy reached up for the cord to turn on the magnificent lamp. There in the flood of light was an anxious, blinking Lidia and an eager Nena, both staring at him.

“Usnavy, we have room, we have room for all of you,” Obdulio said.

Usnavy shook his head. “I like it here.”

“You like it here? Usnavy, this is me you’re talking to!” Obdulio implored. “Usnavy, people are leaving on any piece of plastic that’ll float. Remember the guy who flew the crop duster all the way to Key West? Or—wait!—when all those American pastors came, the people near the harbor trying to get a little box of crackers or a can of soup? What do you think that was about, my friend? You think you’re immune?”

“Those people, they were a disgrace, begging like that!” Usnavy insisted. As he spoke, he couldn’t help but notice how Lidia’s thin shoulders dropped and how Nena quietly curled into a ball on the bed and turned her face to the wall. She held on to the corner of the sheet, smudged and sopping from the floor now, which barely covered her.

“They were a disgrace,” he repeated, hoping to elicit a different reaction from his wife and daughter.

“Lidia, talk to him,” Obdulio pleaded.

Lidia nodded, standing there with the rest of the bed sheet around her, but kept her silence.

“I’m sorry,” Usnavy said. “I’m grateful to you for thinking of us, for your good intentions, but …”

Obdulio abruptly grabbed the door and slammed it shut. “Okay, fine, stay,” he said. “Rot if you like.”

Usnavy shrugged. “Look, you’re doing better than most, with all those dollars you’re getting from your brother, and the ones you’re making here doing whatever …”

“I’ll make more there,” Obdulio said.

Usnavy nodded. “Probably, probably.”

“Look, stay or go, you have to help me anyway, you have to get me some supplies. I need rope, I need some powdered milk.”

“Obdulio …I …”

“What? You can’t get me some lousy rope and milk? My daughter is taking the baby!” Obdulio was getting agitated.

Usnavy looked around the room, at his frightened wife and daughter. “I’m not going to discuss this here, Obdulio,” he said, pushing his friend out the door.

Then he pulled on his trousers and a T-shirt, grabbed his bike, and followed Obdulio out into the night.

The two men arrived in Cojímar hours later but while it was still dark. They’d ridden to the beach on their Flying Pigeon bikes, manual and heavy, made in China in spite of the English name.

“The Chinese can divine the future but they can’t make a lightweight bike?” a gasping Obdulio muttered, the curls on his head uncoiling in the breeze, looking now like loose pieces of a dirty sponge.

The ride to Cojímar was always against the wind. Usnavy kept pedaling. Because there was no transportation in the middle of the night—the bus that ferried bikes to the city stopped sometime after dusk—and because non-motorized vehicles were strictly prohibited through the Havana Tunnel, they’d had to go around the bay, adding even more time to their journey. Usnavy wore a lock and chain around his waist to tie his bike but Obdulio had clipped to his a nifty, lightweight U-shaped lock, solid steel and made in the U.S., guaranteed theft-proof. (No doubt a gift from his exiled brother, Usnavy figured.)

They entered the cozy fishing village as a silent parade of young men and women made a line to the shore. Carrying inner tubes and wooden planks, they looked like rows of giant ants hauling Lifesavers and toothpicks in the moonlight. Watching it all from the protected confines of elegant Las Terrazas—one of Ernest Hemingway’s old haunts—were foreign tourists, their giggles bubbling in the air, and journalists too, TV camera lights washing the landscape. (Also somewhere in the restaurant: Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s old boat captain, now practically mummified, propped up to play checkers or dominos for the tourists’ delight.)

Near the rocky shore—Cojímar is all dog’s teeth, a snarling bank of coral and junk—groups of people hammered away at their rafts, tying ropes around pieces of rubber, metal kegs, and plastic jugs for buoyancy. There were no surfboards anywhere, no windsurfers pretending science or recreation. This was all out in the open; the Revolution suspended.

A different group stood apart from the builders, waiting, not so much for the rafts to be built but for other, northern sailors: These folks, dressed for holiday travel—some carrying suitcases, umbrellas, a bowler hat or two, still others with plastic bags or bundles wrapped in newspapers, others nothing at all—gazed at the black waters, watching for the flicker of faraway flares, ready at a moment’s notice to leave behind even those very satchels that now seemed so precious, and leap onto whatever gleaming white yacht or slick flat cigarette boat kissed the shore. Although some had flashlights, and others hurricane lamps lit by who knows what for fuel, everyone was featureless except for their eyes: large white orbs, slightly startled by the sudden bursts of light.

On this night, different from every other night in Usnavy’s memory, the town sloped down to the sea but he labored to envision instead plateaus and rugged ranges. In his mind, he was somewhere else: Katanga or Shaba, an impenetrable forest full of wild geese and ostriches, buffalo, and lions. He imagined not rafters but fields of coffee and cotton; rubber trees, coconut, and plantain; timber from cedar, mahogany, iroko, and redwood. The staring eyes were the peacocks Usnavy had never seen, pelicans, herons, and other wild birds.

While the work continued on the beach, no one said a word except the local fishermen, who held tightly to their rolls of lines and gaffs, nets and tattered masts. Their own boats securely put away or anchored under guard, they sat vigilantly on the seawall, their arms across their chests, sucking on cigars and hand-rolled cigarettes, passing judgment on the work before them. One guy tapped a long hardwood stick on the ground, another held a machete against his hip in a not so subtle warning to potential thieves. Not far from them, a few boys rolled dice against the seawall, occasionally shouting with victory.

“That won’t go, no,” said an old man in a red cap, pointing to a particularly chancy-looking homemade dinghy. The others nodded agreement.

“That’s unbalanced too—look at that,” a second fisherman said as he singled out another one. “They’ll roll right into the water in that, you watch.”

“Quéva,” exclaimed yet another fellow, shaking his head in dismay at a throng of young men and women who were now lifting what looked like a white wooden kayak. They carried it to the water, where it swayed on the surface. As soon as one of the young men stepped into it, his weight took it down as if it were made of paper. A collective moan went up from the group, while they quickly scrambled to recover what they could from the ocean and start again. The fishermen laughed and laughed.

Some of the rafts, of course, did float. Some precariously, others effortlessly. Usnavy listened to the dip and push of their efforts as the moon sank from sight.

In a clearing, Usnavy finally saw the boat being crafted by Obdulio’s family, which was dependent on four large industrial inner tubes—Usnavy didn’t want to know where they’d gotten them. Obdulio’s nephews secured the craft tighter with the length of rope Usnavy had procured for them. Like the others, Obdulio’s nephews didn’t speak, only nodded their appreciation. Obdulio’s daughter thanked Usnavy for the powdered milk with a quick, timid peck on the cheek. The baby was fast asleep on her shoulder, undisturbed by the bustle of activity.

Usnavy moved quickly away from them. He did not want to look at the rope; he did not want to consider the powdered milk. Before he’d gathered them up, the rope had belonged to the workers of Cuba; the milk had been for the island’s children. (As crazy as it seemed, he really believed this; his heart twisted in anguish because he
so
believed this.) He let himself replay the scene at the bodega, watched himself as if he were someone else, carefully lifting the rope and powdered milk his dear friend needed, knowing he could not replace them, knowing that everything was wrong now, everything was ugly and sick.