Waiting for Snow in Havana (28 page)

Love hurts. It never stops hurting. God is love, God is pain. Pain and joy are one and the same. Life is longing. Pure longing. Nothing but unrequited love.

Blame it on the sun, and the sunlight. It makes as much sense as anything. With all that light, Cubans have a hard time letting go. Even if they only lived in the place for one day before being whisked away, the sunlight is forever trapped in their blood. We love much too deeply. I see this trait in my half-Cuban children, full-blown at times, and they haven't even been to Miami yet.

Time to think Nordic once again. Which is what I tried to do as a child, mindful of the effect that sunlight was having on me.

I would look at maps of the world and long for northern latitudes. I actually used to think that the farther north you went on the globe, the purer things became. I remember stretching out on the cold, white marble floor of my house, the closest I could get to ice, and staring at maps for hours and hours, wondering what it would be like anywhere north of Cuba, and especially above latitude forty-five degrees North. Or even better, fifty degrees North, no, eighty degrees North. How I wanted to live in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Yukon, Baffin Island. The North Pole. All that white ice, all that snow and cold air. So pure, so good. Snow was grace itself, falling from heaven; it didn't simply hide evil, but vanquished it. And I longed for it, fervently, there in Havana.

The very thought of darkness for twenty-three hours a day also seemed so inviting. Wasn't the Miramar Theater always dark and cold? How nice it was, so different from the blinding sunlight outside and the heat that came with it.

Plus, didn't Santa Claus live at the North Pole? He must know what he is doing. He is, after all, the nicest guy on earth. Wouldn't the nicest guy live in the nicest place?

I had it all figured out, and
The Vikings
helped me put it all into place in air-conditioned darkness. Northern was better. Definitely. Greater tolerance for pain, greater valor, and no lizards on top of it. Axes. Big axes flying through the air. Arrows and battering rams. Swords. Sword stumps, even. No firing squads, no cowardly shooting at men in soiled pants who were tied up and couldn't defend themselves. If you had a score to settle, you fought hand-to-hand and you gave your opponent a chance. You didn't just round up those who didn't like you and shoot them dead by the thousands.

And you could still love up North. Burn like a bleedin' volcano, you could, like one-eyed Kirk. But you could also achieve
gelassenheit,
if you so wished.

That's what happened to one-eyed Kirk at the end of the movie, you know. Just as he gained the upper hand against his own half brother, just as he was about to win the object of his affections, he decided to let go. He stood there, dumbstruck and scared at the prospect of winning, of being attached. He thought of Janet Leigh's blue eyes, thought of the deep blue northern sea, and he let go. I bet he prayed to Odin: “Help me let go, Odin, grant me
gelassenheit.
Rid me of desire, rid me of passion.”

How I envy Kirk. Odin heard him, in Valhalla, and Kirk was saved from himself. Rescued from burning passion. No such luck for me.

I yam what I yam.
Soy Cubano. Cubanus sum.

And even in New England I wait for snow.

T
he fireflies were out that night.
Cocuyos.
They came out of the shrubs, and the trees, and the lawns, and they blinked with abandon, flashing green when you least expected it. They zigged and zagged, hovered and rose and descended, and made your heart skip a beat. Kids all over the island chased them down and trapped them in jars with metal lids that had holes punched into them with a hammer and a nail.

Never mind the new world in the making. On hot tropical nights like that there were too many parties to count. Rum, limes, beer, loud music that unmasked veiled mysteries, and far too many cigarettes. Shouting, sweating, dancing, whispering, and far too many hands, hips, and lips on forbidden places.

And prayers, too. Always. Some blasphemous, some devout.

We walked down Fifth Avenue with large candles in our hands, our lights shining like giant fireflies in the night. Hundreds of human fireflies: insects challenging the gloom of night on the feast of Saint Anne, which also happened to be the sacred anniversary of the Revolution. Well-to-do insects, for the most part, out for a transcendent stroll on a hot night in late July, just a hair or two south of the Tropic of Cancer.

It was a grand procession, on the grandest of avenues. We had filed out of the Church of Jesús de Miramar, that temple to wealth and privilege, and made a circle up one side of the elegant boulevard for a few blocks and back down the other side to the church.
Quinta Avenida
had such a beautiful park right in the middle, all along its median strip. It stretched for miles.

What a church that was, so full of murals depicting the passion of Jesus of Nazareth. Huge, colorful murals, most of them densely packed with crowds and people. The oddest thing was that many of those who had paid for the murals had been included in these crowd scenes. Louis XVI loved pointing out to me people that he knew, and, even more, fingering people who were there in church, a few pews away.

“Look, there's Saint Peter, and there's Saint John. Look, there's Mary Magdalen. Look, there's Joseph of Arimathea, and Veronica. Look, there's Longinus, the Roman centurion.”

And, sure enough, there they were. They looked a little older, all of them, but the artist was so good, he had captured their likenesses perfectly, almost as well as in a photograph.

What a great deal. Your face preserved on a church wall, for all to see, until Doomsday, portraying a character from the Bible. Imagine that.

“Hey, why aren't any of us up there?”

“It costs too much money.” A simple and honest reply from the former King of France. He preferred to spend his money collecting art: better to own a painting than to be in a painting.

“Is Judas here today?”

“No. Think about it. Would anyone pay to be Judas?”

“What about that guy with the funny hat?”

“The High Priest Caiphas? No, he's as bad as Judas.”

“What about Pilate?”

“Yes, he's here today. Look, over there, in the third pew.”

And there was Pilate. Wow.

I still see that man's face every time Pilate's name comes up in the Creed, or the gospel readings during Holy Week. It's the only face Pilate will ever have, or could ever have.

“He's a judge, you know. We went to law school together. He's just like me, except he's a magistrate and earns a lot more.”

“But wasn't Pilate a bad guy, like Judas? Didn't he condemn Jesus to death?”

“No, he wasn't bad, really. He was just doing his job…and he washed his hands…and he repented later and became a Christian before he died. I think he might even be a saint. It's not easy to be a judge, you know. It's a great honor to be Pilate in these murals. I wish I could have afforded it.”

Pilate, like all the other males in that church, had to take the heat like a man. Out came the white handkerchief now and then to wipe the brow and dab the upper lip and chin and neck. But no fanning. Real
machos
knew how to take the heat without removing their jackets.

Women got to cool themselves off and, sometimes, their little children. Mary Magdalen really knew how to whip out that fan. She was the best of them all, the one who set the rhythm for all the other women, and determined the appropriate number of fannings between the opening and closing of those instruments of femininity.

The delicate, lacy veils the women had to wear over their heads would dance a little, fluttering in the self-made breeze.

Oremus.

“Hey,
mami,
could you fan me a little? It's so hot in here.”

Swishhh, snap, fan, fan, fan, fan, fan, fan, fan, swishh, SNAP!

“Is that it? Keep going, please…It's so hot in here.”

“Shhh, pay attention to the Mass. Offer the heat up as a sacrifice. It's a good penance.”

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

How I hated that word
sacrificio
. How I hate it still.

It's the same with “patience.” What a hateful word. It may earn you salvation to be self-sacrificing and patient, but there's no denying the fact that it's a pain in the here and now to put up with unpleasant things. Like the heat in church. Or like waiting for your mother to buy fabric in one of those infinitely boring stores on
Calle Muralla,
owned by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who prefer to call themselves Poles, rather than Jews.

Rumor had it that the artist who painted the passion murals had used a young
Polaco
from
Calle Muralla
as his model for Jesus. But it was just a rumor, fueled by the fact that no one at that church came close to looking like the Jesus in the murals. My dad didn't know for sure. But he did know he had seen a few Jewish guys who looked just like Jesus.

Of course, he remembered what Jesus looked like from one of his previous lives.

Anyway, I couldn't decide what I hated more, a hot church or a fabric store. Both required patience and self-sacrifice. Could there be anything more boring than Mass or a store full of nothing but bolts of cloth?

“Are you done yet? When will Mass end? How much longer?”

“Be patient.”

“And why can't you fan me some more?”

“Offer it up as a sacrifice.”

The legless black woman who was always outside, sitting on the steps that led to the parking lot, certainly had a lot of patience. She just sat there Sunday after Sunday, her stumps on display, her little drooling boy stretched across her lap, her hand outstretched for alms. Oh, I think I forgot to tell you about the drooling boy before, when I mentioned this woman.

Yes, she had a little boy about my age who could do nothing but drool and stare into space with empty eyes. He was so thin he looked more like a skeleton than a living, breathing boy.

I don't know how she managed to get herself to church every Sunday, along with her boy, without legs and without a car. But there she was, every Sunday, on the church steps, following us, it seemed. If not at Jesús de Miramar, then at Santa Rita, near that park where the firecracker blew up in my hand, or at San Antonio, where I took my first communion.

And she smelled so bad, this beggar who sat in the bright sun every Sunday morning. It was a stench like no other. Very different from the awful smell of butcher shops, but definitely in the same league. She made me close my eyes and hold my breath as I walked out of church every Sunday morning. But sometimes she caught my eye. And that was such an awful thing, when she stared right at me and held her hand out close to my face. I had no tolerance for her pain, or her neediness, or her drooling boy.

“Why is this woman here all the time? Why does she have to beg for money?”

“Because she doesn't have any money,” said Marie Antoinette.

“Why not?”

“Because she is poor and crippled.”

“And why is her son like that? What's wrong with him?”

“Some people are born like that.”

“Why?”

Both of my parents spoke at the same time. “Because they led a very bad life in their prior incarnation,” King Louis replied. “Because God has a special role for them to play in this world. It's His will,” said Marie Antoinette.

I didn't like either answer. And I didn't like to see that woman and that boy at the end of a long, boring ritual.

Fortunately, the woman wasn't there on the night of our Saint Anne's procession. And come to think of it, she vanished completely around that same time. Suddenly, one Sunday, she wasn't there anymore. I rejoiced, of course, and put her out of my mind. I thought that my mind was better suited for other things. Finer things.

As I walked in that procession up the street and back, I wasn't thinking about the legless beggar, or her boy, or Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus. I wasn't thinking about Jesus, or even the candle I held. I was thinking of that new television show,
Bat Masterson,
and the way Gene Barry wielded his gold-handled walking stick.

Whack!
There goes the bad guy's gun, flying out of his vile hand. Justice served, the weak and helpless protected from thugs, once again, in the American Wild West. I pretended that my candle was a walking stick just like Bat Masterson's. Not at all like my mother's cane, no. That was just a cane, and its only purpose was to help my mother walk. Bat Masterson didn't need a cane. He was a hero, and way too cool. No cape, just a walking stick.

Elsewhere in Havana there were different celebrations, some honoring the seventh anniversary of Fidel's uprising against Batista, others marking the uniqueness of the passage of time in more personal ways. The new wig. The new baby. The wedding feast. The funeral. The new job. The new hubcaps for the Ford. The big favor granted by Saint Barbara. That first kiss. The visit from Grandma. The return of Grandma to her home in Santiago, after a two-month visit. That one hundred and thirty-fifth visit to the brothel. That lucky number for the
bolita
—the numbers racket, where every cipher had a name—the
mariposa,
the
jicotea,
the
mala mujer,
the
novia China.
The number, your number, your luck, your party. You name it. I'm sure there were at least a hundred thousand ways in which that night was special in a city of nearly one million people.

Good Catholics that we were, our party was a candlelight procession in honor of Jesus of Nazareth's grandmother. And we marked the occasion, and marked our territory, sanctified it by turning into fireflies.

Fireflies must seem so frivolous to ants and bees. What do they accomplish, glowing in the dark as they do, on summer nights? Where is their devotion to the community as a whole, their team spirit, their selfless dedication to the greater good?

Yet there we were, glowing, mating, reproducing, just like fireflies. And praying, too, unlike insects. Such pointless, criminal behavior. Praying for things to remain as they had always been, praying, in thanksgiving, for the privileges we enjoyed, and asking for more on top of that. Thanking God, beseeching Him through His human grandmother to smile upon us, to save us from lizards, and foul-mouthed empresses, and drooling boys, and bullies. Praying for love and health and a stay from executions. Praying fervently and absentmindedly, praying with Bat Masterson in mind.

The big man, Fidel, had big plans to turn us all into ants and bees. That night would be the last time we were allowed to be fireflies out on Fifth Avenue in Miramar, or anywhere in Cuba. No more public processions. No need for opium in a permanent Revolution. Who needs religion when you've got Agrarian Reform?

I didn't know what Agrarian Reform was, exactly. All I knew was that some landowners were being forced to give up some of their property, and I had to draw posters proclaiming the wonders of this. Yes, even the good Christian Brothers got into the act for a while, before Fidel kicked their cheek-turning butts out of the country. We all had to draw posters praising Agrarian Reform in fourth grade, in a Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers.

La Salle del Vedado.

No, I didn't make a mistake. In September 1959 our parents sent us to a different school, one that wasn't so obviously tainted with the aroma of Batista. This La Salle was run by the same order of monks, but it was in an older suburb and it was attended mostly by middle-class boys. And some other transfers from Miramar, like us, who were pretending not to be part of the elite.

The elite, you see, had a habit of getting into trouble by the end of1959.

Take Louis XVI, for example. King Louis drove a big, black 1956 Buick Special, with three nifty streamlined, chrome-plated holes along both sides of the hood and spectacular chrome fenders, front and rear. It was a beautiful car, with budding tail fins and a panoramic windshield, as Louis liked to call it: a single windshield, rather than the divided, two-panel windshields that cars used to have before the era of tail fins. It was a great car, but it wasn't exactly a luxury item, like a Cadillac. In fact, it was three years old and was missing one of its hubcaps. But that car, which wasn't even worth a second look to an American dentist or accountant, earned my father a lot of trouble.