Caribbean (129 page)

ESTÉFANO
: What about the huge number of political prisoners Castro keeps in his jails?

ROBERTO
: The United States and South Africa are the only so-called civilized nations that still execute people for minor offenses.

ESTÉFANO
: When I left Cuba, there were half a dozen wonderful publications like the weekly
Bohemia
and the daily
Marina
, but now I can find only grubby communist propaganda sheets like
Granma
.

ROBERTO
: We know the press in America is the tool of Wall Street,
but we don’t allow anything like that in Cuba. We revere free speech … to safeguard the revolution.

After a score of such inconclusive exchanges, the Miami couple returned to their rooms, where Estéfano said: “Boy, he’s really swallowed the Castro line,” and Caterina replied: “Maybe in this country that’s the smart thing to do,” but then she added: “I still like it here. This isn’t Lower Slobovia, like our papers sometimes claim.”

Some days later, during a picnic on a hillside overlooking La Habana, the two Calderón men became engaged in a discussion of America’s protracted role in Cuban affairs, and Estéfano said: “When the Spanish were driven out of Cuba in the 1898 war, our grandfathers were divided. My grandfather wanted Cuba to become a state in the American union, yours became a fierce Cuban patriot.”

“Like you and me today,” Roberto said, and Estéfano agreed: “More or less, yes. I don’t want Cuba to become one of our states, but I do want her to participate in American leadership in the Caribbean.”

Suddenly Roberto began to laugh, and when Caterina asked: “What’s so funny about that idea?” he explained: “I was remembering what your victorious general, Leonard Wood, who became provisional governor of Cuba, told us: ‘Cuba can be made a vital part of the United States if it makes those changes that will produce a stable society. Old Spanish ways will have to be forsworn and honest American patterns adopted.’ ”

Estéfano said: “Don’t laugh. I can remember being told that my grandfather said in 1929: ‘Look around the Caribbean. Everybody with any sense wants to join the United States. We do. Santo Domingo does. A few people on Barbados have always wanted to and even the Mexicans in Yucatán have begged the Yankees to take over.’ He said he was perplexed by America’s reluctance to take command of the area, and when someone pointed out that the French islands might have something to say about that, he fumed: ‘They don’t matter.’ ”

Roberto, falling back on his fervid patriotism, declared: “Cuba is free and will always remain aloof from the United States. We’re building a new world with new hopes. Estéfano! You would complete your life if you came down to help us.”

The two men agreed to differ on such matters, and they applauded the way their beautiful wives reestablished the warm, laughing companionship they had shared as twins in the years prior to Caterina’s flight.

One morning Plácida suggested: “You men go about your business. Caterina and I are heading into town.” It was a trip into nostalgia, for the two women walked along the narrow streets they had known as schoolgirls, looking in windows as they had done then, coming suddenly upon this corner shop or that which they had patronized together a quarter of a century earlier, and in some fortunate cases even meeting personnel who had waited on them in the past. But what Caterina appreciated most were the unique smells of La Habana: roasting chicory, pineapples, the odor coming from a corner coffeeshop, the aroma of newly baked bread and the indescribable, friendly scent of the plain little drapery shop that sold cloth and needles. They were, she told her sister, smells to torment memory, and she was delighted to be recovering them.

As they moved rapidly through the familiar corridors of the old city where buildings seemed to meet overhead, pinching in the narrowed streets below, Caterina got the impression that the Cuba she had really known, the one that mattered, had changed in no important respect, except for the failure to repaint, and she was relieved to see this, because it testified to the endurance of human values regardless of the political structure in which they operated. But then she began to notice the changes which Castro had imposed upon his island: one newspaper where there used to be half a dozen, each of a different persuasion; bookstores with none of the American books one would normally have seen—they were replaced by books of Russian authorship and Russian concerns. The old levity of La Habana was gone, but so were the beggars and the hideously deformed cripples preying on public sympathy. The sense of relaxation was absent too, for Cuba was now an intense society. But what she missed most in the center of town were the concentrations of Americans who used to flood it when La Habana was known worldwide as a brothel for tourists, and in one narrow street which Caterina did not remember, Plácida said: “Before Castro, one unbroken chain of red-light houses,” and Caterina asked: “What became of the girls?” and Plácida said: “Working in factories or driving worn-out tractors.”

But willful adventures into nostalgia run the risk of backfiring, because sooner or later, at arbitrary and unexpected points, veils are lifted to reveal present reality. This happened with Caterina when her sister led her into Galiano, a street she had loved to visit with her mother. It had been the heart of La Habana, a beautiful, crowded thoroughfare famous for the decoration of its sidewalks: wavy green
and yellow lines set permanently into the paving. Her mother used to protest: “Caterina, stop trying to follow the wavy lines! That way you bump into people coming the other way. Stay on your own side.”

With sorrow she saw that since the revolution these lines, so poetic and reminiscent of colonial times, had been paved over with cement so dull and colorless that she cried: “Oh, Plácida! The song has vanished!” And then, as she looked about her on this famous street, once so filled with gaiety and alluring windows that showed fine goods from all corners of the world, she began to realize how impoverished the new Habana had become: “Where are the little stores that used to crowd this street? Those shops filled with lovely things we used to dream about?”

They were gone. Galiano, once the proudest street in Latin America, unequaled even in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, was now so bleak and cheerless that Caterina, close to tears, said: “Let’s get away, Plácida. This emptiness tears at my heart,” and they hurried to the famous corner where Galiano intersected with San Rafael, down which they strolled, but it too had been deprived of its once glittering shops, and it became obvious that modern La Habana had cruelly little to offer its citizens in consumer goods. Shop after shop had only the bleakest selection, if any, and when exciting word flashed through the area that “Sanchez has shoes!” Caterina watched as women ran toward the shop, only to find themselves at the far end of a line which ran sixty yards down San Rafael. Plácida said: “And when we reach the shop, we find that only one kind of shoe has come in, and that one in only four sizes.”

“What do you do?” Caterina asked, and her sister replied: “We grab whatever’s left, and if we can’t wear them, too small, too large, we trade them with neighbors who may have something in our size.”

Caterina stopped opposite the middle of the long line and asked: “You mean, the only way to get shoes is to wait in lines like this?” and her sister replied: “We’re lucky that Sanchez has anything. If I had time, I’d get in line and buy whatever.”

“Is this the same with all goods?”

“Yes. Severe rationing. I’m authorized to buy one pair of shoes a year … coupons … must sign the register.” She hesitated, waited till Caterina had moved away from the line, and whispered: “For the past half-year, no toilet paper at all. No toothpaste. For two years, no women’s makeup.”

“But you’re wearing some.”

“We arrange for friends to smuggle it in when they visit us from Mexico. We hoard it. Cherish it.”

“But you have toilet paper in our bathroom. How?” and the same explanation: “Mexico. Smuggled.”

Caterina was so distressed by the speed at which these revelations were hitting her that she grasped her sister’s arm and cried: “Let’s get out of here!” and she darted across the street, with Plácida trying to keep up. Safe on the other side, the twins ducked into the huge store which had always been their favorite, Fin de Siglo—End of the Century—founded in the 1880s. But this, too, was a terrible mistake, for the great store, its several floors once crowded with booths and kiosks and counters stacked with merchandise from New York and London and Rio and Tokyo, now stood almost empty. Of the first twenty booths Caterina passed, sixteen were abandoned—absolutely nothing to sell—and each of the other four had only one item, of poor quality and in short supply.

“My God! What’s happened?” Caterina cried, and Plácida said: “It’s all like this,” and when they visited two of the other floors, walking up, since neither the elevators nor the escalators worked, they found a repetition of what they had seen at the shoestore: at the rare counters which had something to sell, long lines of women holding coupons.

As they came to a booth that had hanging in neat display three colorful dresses for girls aged ten or eleven, Caterina proposed to buy one for the daughter of the maid who worked at Plácida’s, but the saleslady rebuffed her doubly: “You cannot buy without a coupon, and anyway, these aren’t for sale.”

“Then why do you have them on display?” and the woman said: “To show you what we might have if a shipment ever comes in,” and to the amazement of both the saleslady and Plácida, Caterina burst into tears. When they tried to console her, she whimpered: “A little girl of eleven! She’s entitled to a pretty dress now and then. To remind her that she’s a girl … to help her mature properly,” and she covered her face for the little girls of Cuba who were being deprived of this essential experience.

However, the day was saved by Plácida, who said: “Let’s see what they’re doing in that store where Mama used to buy our dresses,” and when the twins entered the once-prosperous store an older saleswoman who had been alerted by Plácida hurried forward to cry: “The Céspedes twins! Haven’t seen you together for hens’ ages,” and
she started showing them the few dresses her seamstresses had been able to produce from the limited supply of cloth available.

Caterina had no intention of purchasing a new dress of any kind, but as the four lovely frocks drifted by, edged in lace, they produced a narcotic effect. The saleswoman then showed them the dress about which Plácida had inquired on the phone, a flimsy tropical creation in a fawn color replete with Spanish-style decorations. Caterina was enchanted by it, and when the woman unveiled an identical copy for Plácida, they both cried: “Let’s do it!” Like schoolgirls they hurried into dressing rooms, changed hastily, and came out looking like real twins. The dresses required only minor alterations, which the saleslady said could be completed in the time it would take them to have lunch, so they paid for the dresses and went off to a restaurant that they had first patronized when they were sixteen and on their own in the big city. Men had smiled at them that day, and also today—and the twins nodded graciously, accepting the compliments.

They had a lunch which reminded Caterina of her youth: a small bit of barbecued meat well roasted on one edge; a small helping of black beans and white rice; thick slices of plantain, the rough, sweet banana that is impossible to eat when raw, delicious when fried; a meager salad utilizing the few fruits available in Cuba and a Spanish flan rich in its topping of caramelized sugar.

“Ah!” Caterina sighed as the fine old flavors seduced her palate. “I wish I could lunch here every day,” and it was that admission which set her sister’s mind churning.

When they returned to the dress shop and tried on their new purchases, they stood before the mirror as almost identical images, and they seemed ten or fifteen years younger, even though each was the mother of three children and the grandmother of four, each an epitome of how delectable a Spanish woman could be when she aged gracefully and was illuminated by an elfin sense of humor. They were beautiful women in their new gowns, and they knew it.

Packing their purchases carefully, they returned to the mill, where it was arranged that at dinner Plácida would appear first in her new dress, and after it had been admired, Caterina would casually drift in, and they would stand together in the archway leading to one of the patios for their husbands’ approval, and the scheme worked so perfectly that for an instant in the old mill the Céspedes twins were again nineteen and their husbands twenty-four. It was an exquisite moment,
fully appreciated by all, and it paved the way for remarkable conversations that occurred in the two bedrooms that night, conversations which proved that one of the most persistent of Spanish traits still exerted its historic power.

In the bedroom of the Miami Calderons, Caterina said as she took off her new dress and hung it carefully on a hanger: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Plácida and Roberto could join us in Miami?” and she began plotting devices that might be useful in finding them a rent-free house, a position for Roberto, and jobs for their children. “In a pinch,” she said, “we could pay their way till Roberto landed something, and he’s so smart it wouldn’t take him long.”

In a normal American family, a proposal by a wife that her husband assume financial responsibility for her sister’s family could be relied upon to send the husband up the wall with the screaming-meemies, but Estéfano, trained in Spanish ways, accepted it as almost inevitable, for he appreciated how important it was to keep a family together or to reassemble it if it had become separated. So without hesitation, he volunteered: “We could afford to stake them for a couple of years. But it would be easier if he spoke English.”

In the bedroom of the Cuban Calderóns, at that moment Plácida was saying: “Roberto, it looks to me as if Estéfano, forget all his money, is homesick for Cuba. He’d like to come back, spend his last years with his family. I know Caterina would like it.”

“How do you know that?”