King of Cuba (19 page)

When El Comandante awoke from his nap, he found his brother waiting at his bedside, eyes bloodshot from drinking.

“Cojones, help me to the crapper.” This was as close to an olive branch as the tyrant ever offered.

Fernando jumped to readiness and guided him to the toilet. “We’ve got a birthday rally at the Capitol,” he said, standing guard as the despot took a shit. “Everyone and their canaries will be singing you ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

El Comandante half-smiled.

“Of course, you’ll want to say a few words,” Fernando went on, encouraged. “Then we’re going to fly you to Cienfuegos for—”

“Pa’ carajo—”

“I brought Mejías here to give you assurances.”

“You what?” The tyrant reached for his bathrobe.

“Give him three minutes of your time. If you’re still against it, we’ll cancel the whole thing. But remember, people have come from all over the world to celebrate with you. The presidents of Mexico and Brazil are here, leaders of seven African nations, ambassadors and foreign ministers from another twenty-four. And there’s a big Hollywood contingent.”

“Who?” El Comandante couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“What’s her name? The one who rode that mechanical bull in—”

“That was years ago, Fernando.”

“Believe me, she still looks great. I saw her at a reception at the Hotel Nacional last night. She asked for you.”

“Everyone asks for me.”

“She used your first name.”

The tyrant softened. “How did it sound?”

“What?”

“My name. In her mouth.”

“Puro guarapo, hermano. Puro guarapo.”

They both laughed. Despite Fernando’s more straitlaced nature, the brothers had occasionally shared lovers in the early days of the Revolution. Their tastes overlapped just enough to have made these arrangements interesting. For a time, Fernando had been obsessed with Maria Callas. Poor bastard. He never worked up the courage to invite her to Cuba, much less try to seduce her. If the tyrant had felt the slightest attraction for that Greek diva, he would’ve shown Fernando how it could be done. No woman—not even the greatest soprano in the world—was out of his reach.

He rolled his eyes. “Bring in the fool then.”

Fernando retreated before his brother could change his mind and returned with Orestes Mejías. El Comandante took inventory of the man. So this was the faggot who’d dared defy him with his counterrevolutionary plays? Mejías’s face was pear-shaped and disfigured, no doubt from prison beatings, and his skin had a typhoid tinge. He wore baggy, checkered trousers and yellow shoes with rubber treads, obviously black-market purchases. His left eye was bruised shut, but the right one, a muddy green, looked around the room with anguish. It seemed to take in everything, down to the crooked straw in the tyrant’s watered-down orange juice.

It’d taken the island’s best detectives three weeks to track down Mejías, half starved and eaten alive by mosquitoes in the Zapata Swamp, a stone’s throw from the Bay of Pigs. The playwright had been surviving on crabs.
¹
He had cojones. That much the despot would give him. Not like the vast majority of maricones he’d had locked up in concentration camps in the sixties. Most of them had fucking died of melodrama. Not a single one ever changed his sexual orientation, no matter how many “reeducation” denials they’d signed.

Mejías said nothing at first, biting his knuckles until they bled. Then, as if electrically prodded, the playwright released a flood of words. The new musical, Mejías insisted, would be a showcase for both El Líder and the Revolution. Blah, blah, blah. The more he talked, the more the bastard’s confidence grew. Yet there was something wrathful in his expression that the tyrant mistrusted. Who would give a damn if one of Fernando’s bodyguards cracked the pervert’s head in two? What was the worst that could happen? If Mejías double-crossed them in the end, they could simply tie him up with dinner napkins and throw him to the sharks.

Gradually, the playwright wound down. His cheek twitched and his breath whiffled out wordlessly, like a mourning dove’s wing. Down below in the courtyard, the tyrant’s twin grandsons were coaxing their cat to walk on its hind legs. They’d taught Angola other tricks—offering its paw, sitting, rolling over. Delia
liked to joke that Angola had been a Doberman pinscher in a previous life. “And you were a fancy poodle,” El Comandante had teased his wife, to which she contested: “¿Y tú, mi amor? Definitely a sheepdog. Ay, you never stop bossing everyone around!” A crash of dishes erupted from the kitchen. Gusts of frying meat wafted through the open window.

Fernando opened his mouth to speak, but El Comandante cut him off with a papal gesture. “I’ve heard enough. You may proceed. But watch yourself, Mejías, or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes.” Then he turned to Fernando: “Let’s hope you’re not warming a serpent on your breast. Facilis descensus Averno.”

Goyo hadn’t forgotten how to shoot a gun—his skills were too ingrained for that—but he’d forgotten the visceral pleasure of pulling a trigger. As he aimed at the target, he imagined the tyrant at the business end of his barrel. This made it easy to shoot “him” in the heart fourteen times in a row. Over the years, Goyo had sharpened his skills with regular visits to shooting ranges in the suburbs. Once he’d taken Luisa to his regular range in Fort Lee—he’d wanted her to learn the basics in case something happened to him—but she’d left trembling and unable to fire a shot. Goyo knew he was capable of killing. If he ever came face-to-face with El Comandante, there’d be no discussion, no second thoughts, no mercy. He’d shoot the bastard dead.

A soft rain fell as Goyo drove through the Virginia countryside. He liked the distorting effects of the rain on his windshield, how everything appeared moist and magnified, like his best memories.
The rains here were nothing like the torrential autumn storms in Cuba, where the water sluiced through the streets like rivers. The tropics were defined by excess: too much light, too much rain, too many mosquitoes and caudillos, avalanches of grief. A convoy of refrigerated dairy trucks roared past him, most likely headed to New York. When he’d been a part of the city’s hurly-burly, he’d taken its wonders for granted. Miami was a village by comparison.

Goyo pulled off the interstate to a drive-through place and bought himself a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone. It would have to tide him over until he got to Arlington. He wanted to arrive before dark, after which it would become difficult for him to read the road signs. He’d programmed his GPS to take him to one of the better business hotels in the area. His days of staying on flimsy, spine-torturing mattresses were over. Lo barato sale caro. What’s cheap ends up expensive. His father had taught him that. Papá had also taught him to seize pleasure when it presented itself. Because the real juice in life was fleeting, he’d said, hallucinatory, essential for dispelling the long stretches of mundane.

A slate-gray storm obscured the sky. Lightning cleft the horizon. Goyo flipped through the radio stations again, stopping at a Metropolitan Opera recording of
Faust.
He pictured the twisted face of Mephistopheles booming: “Here comes eternal remorse and eternal anguish in everlasting night!” For a time in the seventies, Goyo had secretly taken singing lessons. It turned out that he had a decent baritone—alas, the most common voice—but he didn’t pursue it further. Another passion discarded in the name of security. He turned up the volume on the opera. If Mephistopheles were to appear before him now, would he do as Faust did and take the Devil’s deal?

A clock chimed inside the hotel’s oak-paneled lobby. The sounds of a fox-trot drifted in from the lounge, where the bartender, burly as a gorilla, refilled the equidistant bowls of nuts. Goyo settled on a leather banquette near the bar and ordered a crème de menthe on the rocks. Around him a bunch of ruddy road warriors, fat from expense accounts, drank or played billiards, the balls clacking sharply on the baize-covered table. Above the liquor bottles, a flat-screen television murmured the news. The Middle East was in a shambles. Another ethnic uprising was convulsing Rwanda. A tornado had torn through Kansas, just like in that movie Goyito and Alina had loved as children. Carajo, he’d forgotten it was El Comandante’s birthday. Footage showed celebrations all over the island—no doubt with people they’d forced to the events with threats of reprisals. This was ruining what was left of his day. Goyo swallowed a third of his drink. Not even his sister-in-law’s prayer circle of Miami accountants could hasten the tyrant’s demise. Every santero and babalawo in Miami also had been called upon to use their sorcery against him, but nothing had worked. The hijo de puta had become immortal.

A man in white robes walked into the bar looking like Lawrence of Arabia. Goyo must’ve stared at him a moment too long because the fellow sat down next to him and ordered a Corona with a twist of lime. The stranger removed his turban, and his curly, reddish hair sprang to life.

“You didn’t think I was really an Arab, did you?” he drawled.

“Are you in theater?” Goyo ventured.

“Working on a PhD in sociology.” He took a swig of his beer. “Where are you from, man?”

Goyo pointed to the TV screen, now showing a frenzied conga line weaving its way through the streets of Cienfuegos in anticipation of the tyrant’s arrival. “A cursed place, a place where treachery is the common currency.”

“You a poet?” Lawrence tossed a handful of cashews into his mouth.

“Oh, nothing so useful as that.” His back pain was flaring up, and his mending leg throbbed. “Are you going to ask me what you should do with your life?”

“How’d you know?”

“One learns more from being old than from being the Devil.” Goyo sighed. “What would you rather be doing?”

“Playing the trombone.”

“The trombone?” In every concert band he’d ever played in, Goyo had disliked the trombonists most.

“It’s a very underrated instrument.”

Goyo shrugged. “Then take off those ridiculous sheets and become a trombonist, young man. Now could you please help me up here?”

Look at me: eighty-three years old and still peddling straw hats on the streets. My wife makes them with the sewing machine I’ve kept working for her since 1952. Did I tell you that I’m on the waiting list for new dentures? The ones I have are too big for me and hurt my gums. Mira, the teeth are so huge, especially the incisors, that everyone—even my own great-grandchildren—calls me Dracula. Don’t think this doesn’t hurt my feelings. I am, above all, a sensitive man.

I cut sugarcane for many years, but today the fields are in ruins and we import food that nobody can afford. How can you live on a jar of olives? Even good olives from Spain. Everything, down to the bread on our tables, comes from abroad. That’s why I’m out here under the hot sun selling hats for a peso. Sometimes I change my price and tell a tourist the hats cost two pesos, not one. That’s two pesos convertible (CUC), or forty-eight pesos national money. Today, some fat cow from Miami fought me over the switch and bait, so I let her have the damn hat for one.

—Faustino Diliz, street vendor