The Lazarus Rumba (86 page)

Triste laughed. He stretched his long body over backwards like some creature that was both cat and serpent and reached out a rum bottle to Josefa. “Vaya negra, maybe it will do you some good, relax you a bit. Offer it to Elegua if you can't have it yourself. Coño, even orishas enjoy a good swig now and then, I don't see why you shouldn't.”

“Okay, señores y señoras, basta, don't start,” Marcos stepped between them. He grabbed the rum bottle and set it down on the wooden table. “I am worried. Alicia should have been back by now. It is almost dark.”

Josefa was agitated. She knitted in furious sharp little gestures, as if her needles were pens, and she were scribbling, with both hands, backwards and forwards, in an alien script. “Maybe she is at the Complex, waiting for the arrival of the Newer Man, waiting to make those
Granma
stories come true.”

“Coño, por favor, Josefa … y tú también, Triste, let's not turn one against the other.”

“I say only what my shells tell me. Voy y repito, my shells say his horse is the color of Marti's and his heart the color of his father's.”

“It must be black indeed,” Triste said, “… the heart, not the horse.”

Marcos went to the door and opened it and stood looking out. The nightingales had begun their chatter though there was still a thick glob of orange and violet bleeding over the sharp ridges of the western valley walls. It was Wednesday. Marcos had gone to the weekly meeting in Maruja's bohío. She had announced in a blubbery speech the return of her son from a prison in the capital. It was the first time she had said his name in over a year. She had finished the announcement by reading a passage from one of Hemingway's novels, a passage that reminded all present, in typical Hemingway fashion, of how this world breaks everyone, but that some become stronger at the broken places, a passage that made it obvious why the author had so much loved this Island of broken souls. There had been no mention of a horse, although rumors among the native guajiros and within the chance of Josefa's shells were that it already roamed the valley, grazing at night in the alfalfa fields and sleeping during the days in the cavern of the limestone masses that surrounded the valley, that it was of long blond mane, and sixteen hands tall and white as Fidel's ass, with a streak of brown along its broad chest, that its wings were already shriveling and they would never be able to lift him away from the valley, and that it was destined to be ridden by only one man. Some of the guajiros had drawn the unseen horse on their spread bedsheets and colored the figure with pigments derived from lime in the valley walls and colored the landscape with pigments from the very grasses and earth and trees that were represented. Some gave the horse wings, as it was believed necessary of any animal of such size that was to come into their valley. None, as of yet, painted a rider on the horse. They flew their creations on beams outside their bohíos like banners. The soldiers from the capital, in turn, sunk giant poles in front of their bohíos at the Complex and flew the national emblem, but they did nothing to discourage the natives from flying their own homemade colors.

None remembered how the phrase the
Newer Man
came into common usage. Maybe it was a reaction to all the rhetoric of the soldiers from the capital about the New Socialist Man, maybe, in fact, the phrase itself was a part of the foreign rhetoric, repeated to the natives in hesitant susurrations and into cupped ears, to cast on it a shadow of insurgence, taint it with the bold streak of revolt, to make the natives believe it was of their own making. But in the whole year of Joshua's absence, there was no doubt, neither among the natives nor the foreign invaders from the capital, who would most certainly be cast in the role, who, and only who, was deemed to ride the unseen horse.

Alicia did not return till after the nightingales were well into the second movement of their symphony (the casual adagio of the middle evening hours), after the moon had begun its fall, after Triste and Josefa had declared a pact in their bickering, she almost run out of yarn, he almost run out of rum. And the way Alicia walked into her bohío, moving with slow weighted gestures, as if she were the only creature awake during the siesta hour, the careless manner in which she threw down her straw bag (empty but for a pair of two overripe mangoes that instantly perfumed the air with their sweet and sour effluvience) by the doorway and passed both her hands through her too quickly graying hair, carelessly revealing the fuzz under her armpits, the way the sweat clung to her upper lip and glimmered with the light of the gaslamp like beadlets of liquid silver, the way she casually grabbed the rum bottle from Triste and swallowed the last gulp (no one had ever seen Alicia drink rum), the way she lit an unremarkable fire within the iron stove, and set the big heating kettle atop it, and filled it with three bucketfuls from the stream in the back, making three separate trips, the way she refused Triste's offer for help to lower the kettle from the stove and take it out the back door by shooing him away with a flick of her hand, the way she heard none of the small questions that Marcos posed her and said nothing, not that she was tired and she was going to have a bath, not that there was a reason why she was three hours late for their nightly meeting, not that she was hungry and had they saved her a plate of food, not to leave her alone to get out, but nothing, not a grunt, not a sigh, gracefully nothing, they knew instantly that she had seen him, that the one who would ride the unseen horse had been mercifully returned to his mother, just like the foreigners from the capital had so many times whispered in Triste's ear, they knew it as surely as if she had walked into her bohío and proclaimed with open arms: “I have seen him!”

When he appeared to her again, two weeks later, Alicia still had not uttered a word, and for all anyone knew she had not heard a word, had been deaf to the thousand rumors flittering about every native's ear, infinite and restless as black flies before the rainy season, fashioning truths through the sheer force of their numbers. And it was these very flies that established for all that there was a studied purpose to Alicia's newfound dumbness, that the old Alicia, the traitor's widow, la contestona contrarevolucionaria, the convicted wordeater and murderess, la santera, la Católica Apostólica, the most famous dissident on the Island, would not do in this inchoate colony of the Newer Man, this valley-state to be ruled by a son pardoned for the greatest sin. This and more the multitude of flies buzzed for all to hear.

When he appeared to her again, it was a Wednesday. Joshua's mother and the other Comité chiefs were busy with their weekly meeting. The workers were bathing in the falls and Alicia remained alone in the fields as was her habit. Joshua rode his white horse to the bottom of a hill at the edge of the coffee field. He had named the horse Obadiah 5 and it would be the last name he would pilfer from the holy book, for he had stopped trapping jutías and baptizing them. These were games of his youth. Obadiah 5 did not have wings; but he did have two pale bowlike streaks on each flank, from his withers down to his thighs, where, the flies buzzed, his wings had once been before they withered. Joshua dismounted and wrapped the reins around the trunk of a young palm. He rubbed Obadiah 5 on the brown stain of his breast. The horse nodded and pressed his large head into Joshua's shoulder. A government soldier was watching from nearby, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his hands on his hips, his large straw hat the only discordance in his military garb. Joshua dismissed him with a wave of his hand and waded through the bushes into the field in Alicia's direction. He too wore a straw hat and a loose clay-colored work shirt, unbuttoned down to his belly, and heavy work pants.

Alicia did not look up from her tasks till Joshua had reached her and extended his hand down to help her pick some berries. She noticed that two-thirds of his pinky was missing and as he helped her pick the fruit, the stump, like the phantom of an epicure's pinky, stood erect and apart and motionless as if it had forgotten how to cooperate with the other fingers in the labor of the hand. He knelt by her and leaned into her till the brims of their hats touched. He spoke to her softly, certain that she could hear. “My father says that some of the most beautiful of the Greek and Roman statues have certain digits of their hands and feet missing.” He laughed nervously and grabbed her arm with his mutilated hand. “I know you can hear me, Alicia.”

She had to look up at him, but she did it as if she had never known who he was, with a thin smile spread like a see-through veil over her face. She took up his other hand and examined it, and counted out loud the joints of each finger.

“What I did,” he said, “I did for all of us. I did for my mother, I did for you, I did for the negrón who saved me in Guantánamo.”

“Uno, dos, tres. Uno, dos, tres … Sí, todos están. Your other hand is fine. But your father is right. He is after all a very cultured man. Take off those boots. Let me see your feet.”

Joshua put his hand under her armpit and lifted her. She had grown light as a girl.

“Vamos, Alicia, vamos. You are overworked that is all. Our sun will do wicked things if you don't pay it its due respect.”

She stared at his boots. “Vamos, muchacho, no tengas pena. Let me see your feet. I will count those two.” Joshua led her down the hill to the horse and found a canteen in the saddlebag and held it to her lips as she drank. He pulled out a small cloth from one of his pockets and soaked it with the canteen water and washed the dirt and the tiny dead insects from her face.

He lifted her onto the saddle and climbed behind her. “No!” she screamed. “No! Take off those boots. Let me count your feet!”

He grabbed the reins with his right hand, cupped his left hand over her mouth, kicked Obadiah 5 on the flank with the back of his boots and they dashed away from the coffee fields towards Alicia's bohío. She yelled out a few more muffled cries and then, as Obadiah 5 sped to a full run across a wide meadow, her small body went slack and leaned back into his and she took the stump of his pinky and put it into her mouth.

“Así,” he whispered in her ear, “calmadita. It's all right now. Those days are passed. I have made peace with him … as must we all. I have made peace with all my demons. I'll let you count my feet all you want.”

The Ghost in the Yellow Scarf

She returned to Guantánamo for the first time, six years later. The place was no longer home to her. She returned to Guantánamo as visitor. She was accompanied by Joshua and Triste. This time, Joshua joked before their departure, they should take the train, though perhaps it was less reliable than hitting the road. One thing the main Island's revolution had surely accomplished is that trains would never run on time, as they do in fascist countries. When they reached Adela's house on the corner of Maceo and Narciso López Streets, a whole day behind schedule, Triste and Joshua waited on the steps below the porch. They were both dressed in the clay-colored field wear that was the new uniform of most all the residents of the Colony of the Newer Man. Alicia wore a loose-fitting white cotton dress and leather sandals. She knocked once and the door unbolted and opened on its own, a slow and cautious swing, as if an invisible servant had been standing on the other side waiting for her knock. She entered her mother's home alone. There were four suitcases by the door, one, her mother explained in a whisper, was the girl's, two were hers, and one was Father Gonzalo's. Though the monsignor didn't know. He was being stubborn. He had sworn to her, on his medallion of la Milagrosa, that he was not leaving, that he was the servant to the misery of his flock.
Así mismo dice, el pobre.
The suitcases had been by the door, stacked next to the chipped wooden console of the black and white television set, for almost four years. Adela passed her hand through her hair, which was greasy and knotty and receded halfway up her skull, like the tide of a dirty inlet. She had shrunk almost half a foot and walked with a wary shuffle, her feet never leaving the floor and leaning with one hand either on the spare furniture or the wall. She wore a loose-fitting faded blue housedress and pair of anklet stockings that bunched up at her swollen ankles. The skin on her face was spotted and pallid and gathered underneath her chin just like the ankle stockings. Her eyes were so bruised with grief and sleeplessness it seemed she wore a carnival mask behind her eyeglasses, which she did not use, but let rest low on her nose so that she could peer over them.

Alicia reached out both hands to her. “Mamá,” she said. But the old woman treated her as if indeed she were nothing more than a casual visit.

“Así,” she said, and did not grab Alicia's hand.

“We are waiting for permission,” the girl explained. “Abuelita, why aren't you wearing your shoes?”

The old woman did not answer.

The girl pointed to the suitcases. She looked at her grandmother as she spoke to the visitor. She had come into the living room unheard, wandered in from one of the back rooms. Or maybe, Alicia thought, she had been lurking in some corner unnoticed. She wore a pair of faded American jeans cut off just above the knees and a simple white threadbare T-shirt that took no care in concealing the richness of her dark nipples. She had grown very tall, but the curves of womanhood had only begun to mold her and her gestures were still those of the child she had not seen in so long. Her hair was long and tied back, black curls tucked behind her ears and falling down her shoulders. She wore leather sandals and on her left foot a braided ankle bracelet made of black hair. Alicia found it strange that though she wore no make-up and no paint on her fingernails, her tiny toenails were coated with a thick coat of beet-colored gloss.

She pointed again to the stack of suitcases, as if directing the visitor's persistent attention away from her.

“… though we had to empty mine, for tonight I have to change my clothes fifteen times. Abuelita says that's the tradition. And all in all, even counting the dresses that were packed away, I only have nine.”