Eccentric Neighborhood (21 page)

I am working very hard for different haciendas near La Concordia, but this work is not new to me. You know how I struggled to learn to be a mechanic in several sugarcane
centrales
in Cuba when I was a mere boy of fourteen, and for a few months I even worked in a phosphate mine, where I carried ten-pound salt bags on my back to the cane fields
t
hat needed fertilizing. Even so, I wouldn’t have left my country if it hadn’t been for the dirty trick you played on me.

I want you to know that on this island, which is poor and meager in size compared with our beautiful Cuba, I’ve learned a lesson I never understood while I was living at home: the need to respect other people’s right to live as they wish. Even you, Mother, became influenced by General Valeriano Weyler’s despotic methods when you had me put aboard the
Alicia Contreras
in the shameful way you did.

Since the Americans landed here, I have become an admirer of the United States. Religious tolerance and political compromise are the virtues that make democracy possible. Only by following the example of the United States will Cuba be able to rid itself of absolutism and Catholicism
—
the two millstones inherited from Spain that hang around its neck.

I suppose the Americans’ arrival in Puerto Rico has been in all the Cuban newspapers, but I thought I’d give you a firsthand account of what happened. As a member of an elite Firemen’s Corps in La Concordia, I had the opportunity to take a distinguished part in the invasion, and you can be proud of the way I behaved myself.

It was an odd situation. Americans are candid in matters of war. The place where they would land was supposed to be a secret, but everybody knew it in advance. The date, time, and place had been published in all the local newspapers, and housewives all over the island had cleaned out the grocery stores as if a hurricane were approaching. General Nelson A. Miles’s fleet was expected to land in Fajardo, on the eastern coast, on the twenty-first of July. But when he got there, three regiments of Spanish troops were waiting for him, armed
to
the teeth. General Miles looks like an old walrus. I had the chance to meet him personally when he delivered a speech in La Concordia’s Plaza de las Delicias right after he disembarked. He has white whiskers pouring down his cheeks and is large-jowled and hefty. But he’s also a seasoned Indian fighter. A few years before he set sail for Puerto Rico, he defeated Crazy Horse, the Sioux chief who overwhelmed General Custer at Little Big Horn. So when he arrived at Fajardo and saw the warm reception awaiting him, he turned right around and sailed far out to sea again.

“If we could outfox the Sioux in Montana,” Miles told one of his aides and later bragged to a reporter a few days after the invasion, “we can outfox the Spaniards in Puerto Rico and win the support of the peaceful natives along the way.” Miles’s four battleships
—
the
Massachusetts,
the
Yale,
the
Dixie,
and the
Gloucester—
as well as ten transport ships carrying 3,415 men, sailed north, as far away from the coast of Puerto Rico as possible, rounded Mona Passage in the night, all lights out, and landed at Guánica, a secluded bay on the Caribbean coast, at 5:20 on the morning of July 25. He wasn’t expected at all there. Upon landing, he made a declaration to the people of Puerto Rico that was posted on fences all along the roads, on public buildings, and on school walls: “We have come not to wage war against the people of a country that has been oppressed for centuries but, on the contrary, to bring our protection to your citizens, as well as to your property.”

Guayamés, Sabana Verde, Hicacos
—
all the western towns
—
surrendered peacefully to General Miles. Bands played in the streets, women threw flowers to the soldiers from balconies, the hated Spanish flag was burned in the town squares. The Spaniards, greatly outnumbered, began a hasty retreat across the mountains toward San Juan. Miles’s fleet sailed victorious from Guánica to La Concordia, hugging the southern coast, and anchored in the bay. Then the ships, led by Commander Davis, aimed their cannons at the city.

Soon a United States army lieutenant bearing a white flag came galloping down the road from the harbor with an ultimatum from General Miles. If the Spanish troops didn’t surrender, the city would be razed to the ground, Lieutenant Meriam said. But General San Martín, who was in charge of the garrison in La Concordia, said that military regulations prevented his accepting the ultimatum and that it was up to General Macías, the captain general of the island in San Juan, to accept it. The lieutenant then gave the town half an hour to answer before the cannons began to bombard the city.

We were all horrified! The message would have to be relayed to General Macías by telegram; nothing could be done in half an hour. You should have seen the chaos that ensued. Everybody ran here and there all over town, throwing their possessions into mule carts and trying to save whatever was portable. People began to leave the city by the hundreds, heading out toward the hills behind the town.

My firemen friends and I put on our helmets and joined a commission of foreign consuls and other respectable citizens, and we all rode together out to the harbor to try to negotiate a surrender. An hour had gone by already and the
Dixie,
the
Annapolis,
and the
Wasp
still hadn’t fired their cannons at us. We talked to Lieutenant Meriam, a seasoned, stocky soldier who was still awaiting instructions, and asked him to relay our message to Commander Davis. We needed at least twenty-four hours to get an answer from General Macías in San Juan.

At ten o’clock that night the message finally came through, and General Macías ordered General San Martín to surrender. We put on our firemen’s helmets again and drove our fire engine all the way to the Spanish encampment. As the city’s private civil corps, firemen were allowed into the army encampments without problems. Instead of a water hose, however, we took out a flamethrower when we arrived. We stood there for several hours making sure the Regimiento de Cazadores de la Patria followed San Martín’s orders and left the city. All through the night we had to make sure no riots broke out, and on several occasions we prevented the citizens from throwing stones and broken bottles at the retreating troops, so great was the hatred of Concordians for the Spaniards.

General Miles’s army entered La Concordia peacefully at ten o’clock in the morning, dressed in heavy black-and-blue wool uniforms and sweating copiously under the blazing sun. They marched up
to
the
alcaldía to
the strains of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which soon turned into “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” The Hunters of the Fatherland had had a good military band, and when they retreated to the mountains, they left behind a magnificent set of musical instruments
—
tubas, drums, French horns, saxophones, cymbals. When the American soldiers saw them, they picked them up and began to play in the middle of the plaza. Everybody began to dance.

I love you, Mother, but I’m not returning to Cuba. I’ve become an American, a free man. Also, I’m a Freemason now. I’m no longer a Catholic. Down with Spain! Down with the Catholic religion! Down with despotism! Long live the United States of America! Soon I’ll have enough money to send you a steamer ticket so you can join me here. The Vernets’ good-luck star is finally on the rise.

Your loving son,

Santiago

L
A CONCORDIA HAD A
small electric plant, which supplied electricity to a few private businesses. The streets were illuminated with gas lamps; people cooked on charcoal stoves. When the Americans arrived, Stone and Webster of Boston was contracted by the U.S. government to wire the entire town. The firm’s engineers built a large plant. Dozens of pine logs were shipped to the island from Montana, tarred from end to end like licorice sticks, and set up at every street corner. One morning Abuelo Chaguito saw the Americans setting up a log at the corner of Calle Fraternidad.

“You seem to have your hands full. Do you need help with the electrical part of the job?” Abuelo Chaguito asked one of the engineers from Boston.

“Do you know what the word
electricity
means, son?” the engineers asked, scoffing at him good-naturedly.

“Electricity is a force measured in volts, due to the presence and movement of electrons. It produces various physical phenomena, like attraction and repulsion, light and heating, or shock to the body. At least that’s what the manuals say. But nobody
really
knows what electricity is,” Chaguito said, leaning against a nearby fence.

“Who taught you that?” one of the Stone and Webster engineers asked in amazement.

“My father did,” Chaguito answered. “And he also taught me the meaning of
electromagnet
,
electrotype
, and
electrode
. But he never told me what electrocution was, which was a pity because if he had, I might have been able to help him and he might still be alive.”

“Your father was an electrician?” the man asked, wondering at Abuelo Chaguito’s strange remark.

“He was an electrical engineer, sir, just like you. Electricity was his great love,” Abuelo Chaguito answered. “Unfortunately, he’s dead.”

“Well, see if you can fix this piece of junk,” the man said as he kicked a broken-down generator that was lying on the ground. Chaguito squatted and looked at it. “All you need is a new conductor coil; this one is all rusted. If you wait a minute, I’ll run to the junkyard and get one.”

“Bring it over tomorrow. And if you want to work for us, you’re hired,” the engineer from Boston said.

Chaguito went back the next day. He had an incredible ability with all things mechanical and could fix practically any type of motor. He was also very agile and, with spikes strapped to his heels, climbed the wooden lampposts to wire them for electrical power, a leather belt holding him to the post by the waist. The engineers from Boston were very pleased and invited him to come stay with them in the military camp outside La Concordia where all the government people lived.

And so Chaguito began to work for the Stone and Webster Electric Company and saved every penny he could. Someday he planned to open his own foundry.

One morning he was wiring a lamppost in front of an elementary school in Barrio Tibes when he saw a curious sign over its door: “The Good Luck School.” An old man dressed in a faded black jacket and pants sat on the school’s front stoop. He was obviously blind: his eyes were clouded as if someone had spilled boiled egg white in them. He kept tapping the ground with his cane to the rhythm of the multiplication tables the schoolboys were reciting inside. Chaguito could hear them perfectly through the school’s open windows. The blind man held a sheet of lottery tickets in his lap, and when someone walked by he cried, “One thousand dollars for a quarter! Ten thousand for a dollar! This may be your last chance to buy a ticket to paradise!”

Chaguito thought it was an unlikely place for a lottery vendor to conduct his business, but he gave the old man a dollar and bought a ticket, number 202. Now the schoolboys were repeating the alphabet and he craned his neck to look in through the window. The schoolteacher was an imposing figure. She was six feet tall and her chest was as wide as an ocean liner. Dressed in a white blouse and a long madras skirt, she wore thick-heeled, no-nonsense shoes. Her hair was carefully combed into a starched bun.

Chaguito dug his spikes deeper into the lamppost and climbed a bit higher to observe what was going on. The teacher was strict with the boys; she held a long twig of hawthorn in her hand, and every time one of them lagged or made a mistake, she’d use her switch. Chaguito told himself she would make a wonderful mother. Boys were a good investment, especially when they worked for the family.

He spiked his way down the pole, walked to Agapito’s Place, the cantina on the corner, and asked the bartender the name of the teacher. “It’s Miss Adela,” the bartender said. Chaguito went back to the Good Luck School at around four that afternoon. Miss Adela was just closing the door, and he waited for her at the bottom of the steps. The lottery vendor was still sitting there, sound asleep. The carriages that rolled down the street whipped up the dry mud on the pavement, and his black suit was covered with dust.

“Good afternoon, Miss Adela,” Chaguito said, looking up at her. She was eight inches taller than he. “You certainly had your hands full today, teaching all those lads. And yet you look as fresh as if you’d just started. You remind me of a French rose!” Adela Mercedes Pasamontes had a very pink complexion, the only feminine thing about her, but it was the first time anyone had ever called her a rose. Men never said flattering things to her, and she didn’t give a hoot. She was amazed when she heard what Chaguito said.

“I saw you this morning through the window,” she said. “You looked like a monkey hanging from the lamppost. Aren’t you afraid of those power lines?”

“Electricity
is
very dangerous, Miss Adela. The modern world begins and ends with it. But the law of probability is in my favor because it’s already killed my father,” Chaguito answered.

“I’m sorry to hear that. My mother died and Father is still alive, but he’s blind,” Adela said. And she stopped at the door to help the lottery vendor up from his chair.

“This is my father,” she said, “Don Félix Pasamontes.”

Chaguito felt less overwhelmed by Adela’s size and self-assurance when she said that. At least they had one thing in common: they had each lost a parent.

“Have you been to France, young man?” Don Félix asked Chaguito. He liked to pop unexpected questions like that at strangers.

“
La France est un jardin, Monsieur. C’est le plus beau pays de l’Europe
,” Chaguito answered in perfect French, without the shadow of an accent.

Adela looked at Chaguito with curiosity. He was twenty-one years old but his easy smile and slight frame made him look younger.