King of Cuba (29 page)
El Comandante and Goyo proceeded, almost simultaneously, into the gilded chambers of the General Assembly. It was the first day of its fall session, when even the laggardly diplomats appeared in their dazzling national costumes, eager to swap the summer’s gossip. The tyrant moved through the crowd with ease as Goyo took a seat behind the Trinidadian delegation. Its ambassador, corpulent and jet-black in a wide-lapel suit, turned and smiled at him. Goyo recognized the ambassador—he used to order the cottage cheese in a half pineapple special—and this made him uneasy, as if el negro could read his mind, or X-ray the pistol tucked inside his jacket. Nonsense; Goyo tried to calm down. He reminded himself that he looked like any other distinguished emissary from the tropics. Even those who’d known him as a purveyor of fine sandwiches probably couldn’t have identified him out of context.
Goyo’s nerves fired furiously as he watched his nemesis make a show of walking to the podium without assistance. The Turkish foreign minister, with his movie-star mustache, rose to his feet, and the rest of the delegates followed suit, giving El Comandante a standing ovation. Hadn’t the Jesuits warned everyone about demonolatry? Goyo looked around and spied Fernando in his executioner’s uniform to the right of the platform. Soon he, too, would know Goyo Herrera’s name. This wasn’t pity, the tyrant reassured himself, but an outpouring of gratitude for a lifetime of heroism. The applause was pure music, a balm, redemption itself. Goyo couldn’t endure the welcome the bastard was getting. He
refused to stand, though he knew he was calling attention to himself. There he was, the monster himself, waving like the fucking Queen of England. Even with the best doctors that stolen money could buy, the son of a bitch looked a wreck, if a defiant one. Goyo thought himself to be in much better shape, and this flooded him with unreasonable pride.
El Comandante couldn’t get enough of the hero worship. Reluctantly, he lifted both arms to call for silence, but the diplomats were in no hurry to end the flattery. He felt a rising frenzy to talk, to dazzle them one last time. A part of him was tempted to cause a scandal and drop his pants, show his detractors that he was still the man they feared. Goyo was sickened by the farce, by the tyrant’s fatal deceptions. He recalled Adelina’s delicate wrists as she played Schubert’s piano sonata in A major; imagined her looping the deadly rope through her parents’ chandelier. El Comandante began with an old joke, saying that reports of his death had been highly exaggerated. The delegates clapped and screeched like monkeys. Impostor. Creator of ruins. The bastard had turned their island paradise into a fucking cemetery. How dare he perfume the weeds?
Goyo reached into his jacket pocket. The metal was already warm from his body heat. Six seconds. Six seconds was all it would take. El Comandante thanked his many supporters and allies. The list was long, the names and places mellifluous. That fiend could sneeze and lie at the same time. Goyo gripped his pistol and in one fluid motion took aim. A riptide of pain surged through his chest, numbing his arms. Carajo, his heart was giving out again, the blood bursting its chambers, but he managed to pull the trigger. El Comandante collapsed onstage, cracking his head against the marble floor. His breath escaped as if from a vacuum. His body rolled slightly to the left. Whoever the hell had shot at him had missed. Instead the bullet hit the pillar behind him and bounced
who knew where. If he hadn’t turned at that exact moment to salute the Canadian delegation, he might’ve welcomed the bullet straight to his heart. He tried to get a glimpse of the gunman. From the corner of his eye, he spied a Panama hat, a linen suit, the stubby physique of what had to be a no-account gusano. Infamy would be his for all of an hour.
The tyrant fumbled for his gun, but it skittered a million miles away. Voices floated around him in a dozen languages, a chorus of dissonant bells. “Don’t leave us!” “Have courage, Jefe!” But the tyrant kept on dying. He wandered through a vast palace, the furnishings covered with sheets, the dust inches thick, a lonely view of clouds through the windows. Ash blew on the wind. It was over. He’d done it. He, Goyo Herrera, had shot the son of a bitch dead. Let his heart stop, let the heavens fall down on his head, but he’d accomplished his mission. He’d come face-to-face with his destiny and pulled the trigger. Soon his countrymen would be chanting his name in the streets. There would be trumpets and merrymaking, congueros banging their drums round the clock. And his beloved Adelina, arms outstretched, would greet him in heaven with wild, white lilies. Goyo slumped over a row of empty seats, his face as radiant as his agony. He heard the commotion, but none of it mattered. Death, insistent, touched his brow. An ellipse of darkness engulfed him. Beyond it were vague shapes, a fading chaos. A hero. Sí, he would die a hero . . .
Where the hell was Fernando? The pain in his chest was unbearable. A knife thrust to his heart. Damn it, he should’ve taken the fucking bullet. He’d wanted to die in battle, on horseback, like the great Martí. Or like Caesar, looking his killers in the eye, the blood between them the last word. Too many years of surviving hadn’t prepared him to die opportunely. It infuriated him to succumb to something as mundane as a heart attack, or whatever the fuck was happening to him. He refused to surrender, to accept this as
the story of his death. With a last surge of energy, El Comandante lifted his head and called for his brother. His inner voice diminished to the faintest of breaths. A slow roar surged inside him, but it, too, faded away. A dirigible floated on the horizon, its flesh-toned snout tilted toward the sun. An inexplicable joy overcame him. The tyrant imagined flying high over the Sierra Maestra, over Pico Turquino, which he’d scaled as a young man. Then he felt himself rapidly sinking, a leaky dinghy, deep into the Caribbean Sea without the prerogatives due him at death. Cojones, not like this!
Around him, loved ones began to gather: Mamá, her apron filled with silky rose petals; Miriam, beckoning to him in her wedding gown; his naked father, prodigious balls quivering, shouting: “Get up! Get up!”
“You’re very brave, mijo,” his mother whispered. “You are my bold boy.”
“Sí, Mami, lo soy,” the tyrant sang back, and then he, too, was gone.
Many thanks to my dear friends, near and far, who generously read this novel and made excellent suggestions, especially Alfredo Franco (gracias, hermanito), Scott Brown, Evelina Galang, and Dean Rader. Special thanks to my daughter, Pilar García-Brown, and to Elizabeth Frietsch for their editorial assistance; to La Madonna di Cosimo and Jill Patterson for extraordinary kindness; to my incomparable agent, Ellen Levine; to Alexis Gargagliano, editor extraordinaire; and to Walter Kiechel for his fount of humor and title ideas. My deep gratitude to Tom Grimes and the English Department at Texas State University–San Marcos for generous support and the gift of time. Finally, mil gracias to Las Dos Brujas family—Denise Chávez, Chris Abani, Katie Blackburn, Kimiko Hahn, Juan Felipe Herrera, and all our participants—for extraordinary community.
© ISABELLE SELBY
CRISTINA GARCÍA
is the author of six novels, including the National Book Award finalist
Dreaming in Cuban
; children’s books; anthologies; and poetry. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages, and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers’ Award, among other honors. She has taught literature and writing at numerous universities, and is currently University Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University–San Marcos.
Visit her website at
CristinaGarciaNovelist.com.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
ALSO BY CRISTINA GARCÍA
Novels
The Lady Matador’s Hotel
A Handbook to Luck
Monkey Hunting
The Agüero Sisters
Dreaming in Cuban
Anthologies
Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary
Mexican and Chicano/a Literature
¡Cubanísimo!: The Vintage Book of Contemporary
Cuban Literature
Books for Young Readers
Dreams of Significant Girls
I Wanna Be Your Shoebox
The Dog Who Loved the Moon
Poetry
The Lesser Tragedy of Death
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012037553
ISBN 978-1-4767-1024-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-1453-0 (ebook)
