Waiting for Snow in Havana (35 page)

No.

Just the opposite.

The memories are there.

And you wish you could make them go away.

You wish they didn't exist at all.

Ugly as hell.

Hell itself.

The very essence of pain.

You can't assign numbers to these chapters.

Not even zero.

Not even a zero ringed with thorns.

You can't write them the same way as all the others.

They can't look the same either.

No.

If you were to write them, you could only begin to do it at 2:30 a.m., after a horrible day.

Only when your every nerve is on the point of exploding.

Only on a day in which, several times, you thought you'd be better off dead.

Only on a day in which you spoke out loud to the Prince of Darkness in your basement, and told him to stay in hell and leave you alone.

Only after a day in which you were so lucid about your own plight that it hurt to look at your own hands.

Only after a day in which your powers of denial were at their weakest.

This is one of those chapters.

It's about Ernesto.

It is about the boy I can hardly mention.

The boy I can only hint at.

The boy my father brought into our house.

The boy no one liked but my father.

The boy whose soul was twisted beyond belief.

The boy whose own childhood must have been hell.

The boy who came from a very poor family.

The boy who sold lottery tickets all day long instead of going to school.

The boy who saw my father trip over a curb and lose his eyeglasses.

The boy who picked up Louis XVI's glasses and handed them back to him.

The boy my father instantly recognized as his son in a previous life.

The heir to the French throne.

The Dauphin.

The Dauphin, selling lottery tickets on the streets of Havana.

The Dauphin with the blue eyes.

The blue eyes that matched those of Eye Jesus in color.

The blue eyes that always looked so unlike those of Eye Jesus.

The blue eyes in which danced the flames of hell.

He continually betrayed my father's trust of him, unseen.

He was sly and deceitful, and full of rage against all of us.

But I saw, I knew.

Pervert.

He tried.

Repeatedly, for a while.

He tried to hug me the wrong way.

Even when I was so young I didn't understand what he was up to.

Just a few inches away from Eye Jesus.

Jesus H. All-seeing Christ!

Thank you, Eye Jesus, for keeping an eye on me.

You did not allow the worst to happen.

I fought him off, many times.

And he wouldn't stop trying.

Until I got big enough to punch him hard enough.

I remember the day he stopped.

I remember punching and kicking so hard that it hurt me, too.

But just the fact that I had to do that brought me down to hell with him.

He was evil, through and through.

Evil, say the Platonists, is simply the absence of good.

Wrong.

Evil is a presence, real and cunning.

Evil is a spiteful wretch in your own house.

A clever pervert who could twist everything around if you were to speak out.

A pervert smart enough to know that what he was doing could make you look awful.

A pervert you know is capable of poisoning your relationship with your father.

A pervert who knows your mother would believe you, but your father might not.

A pervert smart enough to know that his lies could drive a wedge between your parents.

This is how he paid back my father for all his kindness.

If only I'd trusted in my father more, and in my mother.

If only I hadn't been so awfully young, and so afraid of having my father believe him.

I know now he'd have been kicked out of the house faster than the shoe Tony slid down the hall at me—the one that bounced off my toe and landed in the cup.

The one that earned me such an unjust beating.

I know that now.

I know King Louis would have believed me and sent him back to selling lottery tickets.

Too late, too bad.

I was just a dumb kid, who didn't have a good track record of being believed.

Worst thing of all was that I didn't know the full extent of his perversity.

Tony had to fight him off, too.

I had no idea.

He was very clever, the pervert.

I didn't find out about the full horror until I was forty years old.

Tony was afraid to tell, too.

Jesus H. All-forgiving Christ.

He repaid our father for all his kindness by betraying him thoroughly in secret.

Perhaps he did even worse things I still don't know about.

And our father had to go and adopt him.

Dark day when Louis XVI broke the news to us.

Dark, dark day.

He never asked for our opinion.

He didn't even warn us it was going to happen.

One day he simply said something I never thought I'd hear.

“You know, from this day forward Ernesto will be your brother.”

“His surname is now the same as yours.”

Louis XVI was able to do this without my mother's consent because he was a judge.

And a judge in Cuba could do just about anything he wanted.

It was legal.

Things were never the same.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette didn't get along too well after that.

My brother and I trusted our father a lot less after that.

Ernesto seemed very pleased with himself after that.

Pervert.

Canalla.

Sinvergüenza.

Lizard.

I expect you to call me a liar and to twist everything until the day you die.

Chances are when this is all in print, you will lie and lie and lie.

But I know the truth, and so does God.

I won't send you to hell, though, where you sent me.

Hell is too good for you.

I was just there today, checking it out.

Nope.

Won't do.

I've toyed with the idea of sending you to the same corner of heaven as Immanuel Kant and Mel Blanc and Airport guy, but that's too good for you, too.

Besides, I couldn't do that to Immanuel, no matter how deep his faults.

You might try to hug Kant the wrong way and turn heaven into hell for him.

Instead, I'll send you to another spot in heaven.

The very best spot.

I think you should go straight before the throne of Jesus and spend eternity under his gaze.

I think you should see him staring at you forever.

Staring with rainbow eyes into your blue eyes.

Forgiving you over and over and over.

Embracing you.

Eternally.

T
hunder, in my dream. It's a rumble that comes from deep within the earth and also from the sky at the same time. Weird thunder, like I've never heard before. My bed is shaking, and I can see the sound, in my dream. It looks like a giant cloud, big and black, expanding over my house. It gets bigger and bigger, and louder and louder, and darker and darker. And I see flashes of lightning, too. But these aren't real lightning bolts, all snaky and wiggly and forking and diamond white. No. These bolts of lightning look just like the ones in comic books. They zigzag in nice, straight angles, and they're thick and sulphur yellow.

So very odd this thunder. It makes my whole body shake and vibrate.

Am I awake?

No. I don't think so. Wait, maybe I am. Maybe. And what's that rumble within the thunder, the rumble that comes from the giant black cloud? It's more of a whirring than a rumble.

Airplanes. Airplanes, and I'm awake, for sure. Where did these planes come from and why are they flying so low in the middle of the night? Why are they buzzing our house? Are they flying low to escape the lightning?

Booooooomm! Ka-boooooom! Boooom-baroooom! Ka-boooooom-boooom!

Whoa, that thunder is so loud! It's even drowning out my mother's voice as she approaches down the hallway. And she's screaming. Yes, she's burst into our room, still dressed in her nightgown, and she's screaming louder than I thought it possible for her to scream.

And I still have some trouble hearing her over the roar of the thunder.

“
Ay Dios mío!
Oh, my God, they're going to kill us all! We're all going to die!
Ay, Dios mío, ay Dios mío!
We're going to die! Quick, get under your beds! Now!”

“What's happening, Mom? It's just a thunderstorm.”

“Yeah, Mom, we never have to get under our beds for thunderstorms—”

Booooooomm! Kla-boooooom! Boooom-Bar-oooom-Boom! Ka-booom-ba-boooom!

“Oh my God, it's not thunder, kids! We're being bombed! The planes are dropping bombs all around us! And we're all going to die, we're all going to die!
Ay Dios mío!
Under your beds, NOW!
Nos vamos a morir!
We're going to die, we're going to die, We're going to die! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!”

The noise outside is deafening. My entire body feels the sound waves, along with the house and everything in it. And it's so dark, outside and inside.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy! We're going to die! Aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!”

Bombs falling from the sky! I'm finally inside a war movie. But wait, I don't have a helmet or a weapon. Wait a minute, I'm one of those stupid civilians. A child, in a war movie. And what happens to kids in war movies? Hey, I don't like this. The kids often get shot or blown to pieces or turned into very dirty, ragged orphans. They're just there to add pathos to a tragic story. Pathetic props, that's all.

KaarrroooomBoooomBabooom! Booooom! Kaaboooooom!

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy, Dios mío!”

Louis XVI enters the room, still in his boxer shorts, which are as baggy as his trousers. I've never seen him put them on, but I bet that sometimes he puts on his shoes first.

“Calm down! We'll be okay. But get under your beds, anyway.”

So I dive under my bed, and I see Tony do the same. Neither one of us says a word.

The planes buzz overhead, flying very low. I don't remember ever hearing airplane engines that near. Are they grazing our roof? Maybe.

Ka-blam, ka-blam, ka-blam, ka-blam
…

Wait, what's that? Gunfire. Very close, too. Gunfire next door, where Chachi used to live, now home to the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. It's hard to make it out through the sound of the explosions, but it's unmistakable. Our new next-door neighbor, the government informant and spy for the entire block, has gone up onto his flat roof and started firing at the low-flying planes.

What if Marie Antoinette is right? What if one of the bombs lands on our house? These explosions are so awesome, and they sound so close. Naaah. Won't happen. Or maybe it will. Funny, I don't hear the bombs whistling when they hurtle towards earth, as they do in war movies. But what if a bomb falls on us?

I start to shake and I plug up my ears with my index fingers. It's not the bombs but the sounds being made by my mom that I'm trying to block out.
Stop it, Mom. You're scaring me.
I don't say this out loud, of course. I'm shaking too much to talk. This fear, what is it? Is that death out there, calling me, calling all of us? I thought I'd live longer than this. No it can't be.

Why can't I stop shaking? Am I really crying? How can I cry about explosions?

Because we're all going to die, that's why. My mother is never wrong. And listen to her.

“Aaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

The noise begins to die down outside the house. I can hear the sound of the engines receding. No more bombs, no more explosions, no more gunfire from next door. Inside the house, it's another story. Marie Antoinette can't stop screaming and crying.

I come out from under my bed and Tony comes out from under his. I'm shaking like some kind of possessed voodoo guy.

Louis XVI is actually hugging Marie Antoinette, something I've never seen before. Now I know for sure that this must have been something really bad.

Two days later we get an even bigger surprise. The Invasion has begun. Armed exiles from Florida have come back to reclaim the island. They've landed in an unlikely place, the Bay of Pigs, which borders the largest swamp in Cuba. And all of us watch this war live on television. We find out about the bombing. It was the prelude to this Invasion. Airplanes piloted by Cuban exiles—some of them Fernando's friends—tried to bomb and strafe Fidel's planes at the Columbia military airfield, not far from my house. Aircraft from the United States, provided by the Central Intelligence Agency, carefully disguised as Cuban Air Force planes. Their goal was to cripple Fidel's air force, so that when the men landed, there would be no planes left to bomb them on the beaches. No such luck. God willed differently that morning and for the next week or so.

The men landed. Around one thousand five hundred of them. And they failed.

They were mowed down like wheat in a sickle's arc, pinned down like bug samples in an entomologist's lab, blown up like lizards in the hands of boys with firecrackers, herded into prisons like cattle at the Chicago stock-yards. Many died fighting. Most of them surrendered.

They had no choice. Their backs to the sea, nothing but swamps all around them. No artillery. No air cover. No tanks. And outnumbered, with Fidel's planes bombing the hell out of them.

We saw it all on television, in living black-and-white. The exiles on the beaches, where they were dumped without the air cover they'd been promised. The exiles in the swamps, where they were unloaded by mistake. Fidel's army descending upon them. Fidel's planes, intact, strafing them on the beaches. Fidel firing a cannon at them, smiling, laughing, patting his soldiers on the back, waving his cigar like a scepter, tapping his olive green cap as if it were a crown. Fidel giving speeches for days on end. Speeches in which he used his arms as much as his tongue. He was so excited, the Maximum Leader of the Revolution.

We also saw the exile invaders surrendering in droves, their hands behind their heads.

It took only three days: April 17, April 18, and April 19. The future—my future—defeated, captured. All hope lost.

We couldn't believe it. Couldn't understand how it could all go so wrong.

In the meantime, the uprising that was supposed to happen never did. Fidel acted quickly to make sure there would be no support for the invaders. From end to end of the island, men and women were rounded up by the thousands and herded into theaters, stadiums, military bases, and any place that could hold them. Anyone who had been fingered by the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, anyone who looked the least bit suspicious—all of them, rounded up, before they could do anything. Anyone with a son in prison, too.

Including my uncle Filo, Fernando's father.

They came in the night, pounded on the door, hauled him away, and he was gone. No one knew where he'd been taken, or what had happened to him.

I find out about my uncle's arrest while I'm watching the war on television with my favorite empress, as ever. She is silent, as she always is in the daytime. Her hand rests demurely on her breast. Tony is there, too. It just isn't as interesting as a war movie, to tell the truth. Much slower pace, no discernible plot, no heroes to identify with. And who ever heard of the good guys losing?

Anyway, there we are, sitting in our usual spots in the living room, guarded by Maria Theresa and Shepherd Boy Jesus, glued to the screen. And our mother and father rush through the room on their way to the front door, pausing briefly like sprinters out of breath. Marie Antoinette says to both of us:

“Your uncle Filo has just been arrested. They came and took him away last night, and the same thing might happen to us. So, if we don't return, or they come for us later, and you don't see us again for a while, don't worry. We'll be in prison. And don't worry, they're not arresting any children yet. Bye.”

Louis XVI tells us not to worry, too, and that's it.
Whoosh.
Out the front door they go, in a great rush. They close the door quietly, but it seems as if they're slamming it louder than ever.

Jesus H. Bomb-dropping Christ.

Tony and I look at each other. I suppose my face looks a lot like his. It's a weird look, one that will be hard to forget. I'll only see it a few more times in the next forty years or so, and I'll learn soon enough that it's never good news.

King Louis and Marie Antoinette zip down to Filo's house to comfort his wife and daughter, and to do whatever it is you do in a situation like that. But what
do
you do? There were no greeting cards for such occasions then, and there are none now. Imagine having to come up with the text for such a card:

And what would one do for an illustration? An empty armchair with a cigar still burning in the ashtray? A face with a huge question mark over it? An anxious-looking person sitting by a phone?

A few tense, doleful days pass. We hear nothing about Filo and don't know whether he's dead or alive. My mom and dad go to Filo's house every day and return home unharmed. They wait for their turn to be arrested, but no one comes to take them away. Maybe the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution next door is more lenient than we thought. Or more stupid.

The crushing defeat of the exile invaders is beyond belief. How could they fail so miserably? Was God asleep? Or infinitely angry?

We find out where Filo has been taken several days later, and my dad goes to visit his brother. No war movie I'd ever seen had a scene like the one painted by my dad that day when he returned.

“Filo is packed into an auditorium along with hundreds of others. They have nothing to eat, and no clean clothes to change into. The only water they have to drink is from the bathroom faucets. There are only a few toilets, which have clogged up from overuse, and no showers at all, so these hundreds of prisoners have to make do without them. The stench is unbearable and so is the heat. Some of the prisoners have gotten sick and receive no attention. There are some doctors in there, but they can't do much without medicines or equipment. There are people moaning and groaning, people crying and screaming madly. A few women seem to have lost their minds completely and they wail constantly. And the worst part of it is that the guards keep threatening to kill them all. No one in there knows what will happen next. They're all terrorized. The guards have already beat up quite a few people and hurt them badly.”

I ask the most important question: “If the toilets don't work, what do those people do?”

“They make do without them.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they have to use the floor…and also make do without toilet paper.”

“Yecchhh! How could you stand going there?” asks Tony.

“Hard to take, but I'm glad I got to see him. The guards told me I could bring Filo some food. It's the only way he'll get anything to eat.”

For a couple of weeks or so my dad brought food for his brother. Then, one day, Filo was taken from the auditorium to another prison in Havana, the Castillo del Príncipe. The same prison from which the man who begged us to help him a couple of years earlier had escaped. As it turned out, Filo's son Fernando was there, too.

I have no idea how long he was there. All I know is that we didn't have to bring him food anymore. I don't think there was any kind of trial or a hearing or anything like that. There were far too many suspects in the same fix, and those in power saw no need to try them anyway. They were guilty of being suspect, one of the worst crimes of all.