Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (12 page)

“Why do you want to write about war?”

“To tell something to myself, and to keep myself from boredom.”

“Do not get my daughter into this.”

“It’s the last thing on my mind. I want to save her from everything.”

“You are impetuous, asking to marry her so soon.”

“It’s the sanest judgment I’ve ever made.”

“Daniel is a new friend but a great friend,” Renata said, taking Quinn’s hand. “I don’t know how it happened so fast but it is very real.”

“All her life she was an incredibly loving child,” Celia said. “Everyone loves her.”

“I’m finding that out,” said Quinn.

“We have to go,” Renata said. “The police may return.”

“I’m sorry to leave,” Quinn said. “I wanted to talk about your dancing. Renata said you won prizes.”

“You want to talk about my dancing?”

“My father won prizes for his dancing. He was a prize waltzer. You were too, no?”

“I was.”

“You see? Another stroke of fate—Renata and I, children of prize waltzers.”

“You are as strange as my daughter. Another time we will talk about dancing. Protect this child of mine.”

“With my life,” said Quinn.

He remembered that his grandfather wrote about Céspedes’ child—his son Oscar. The Spaniards captured Oscar in battle and threatened to kill him if Céspedes and his followers did not surrender. Céspedes told the Spaniards Oscar was not his only son, that he was the father of all Cubans who died for their country. A firing squad then executed his son.

They went to the Ali Bar, where Renata called her contact number and spoke with a voice she recognized, and said have Pedrito call me here. They drank mojitos because she always drank them here for breakfast after all-nighters.

“Beny Moré sang to me here one night,” she said. “He comes all the time. Everybody comes here. Gary Cooper sat right there.”

“Do you see anyone who knows you?” Quinn asked.

“Nobody would know me with my blond wig.”

“I’d recognize your mouth no matter what color hair you had.”

They drank their mojitos and in twenty minutes Aurelio called. Renata told him Alfie could bring out
las cosas
from the Vedado apartment because he is shrewd and fearless and she trusts him and will pay him herself to do it. Aurelio said he’d call Alfie.

“I will go see Alfie now,” she said, “but you must do the rest because I’m going to Santiago.”

It was dawn when they left the Ali Bar and Quinn considered calling Hemingway about the Cooney challenge. He would be up and writing. He gets up with the birds. But does he answer the phone during birdsong? So they woke up Alfie and he met them on the Nacional’s patio, which was empty of people. They walked down the garden path and stood under a royal palm with their backs to the hotel and Renata told him of the guns. He said he’d think about it after he talked to Pedrito, who, she admitted, was really Aurelio. But if the police were watching that apartment it would be dangerous.

“I will give you five hundred dollars now and another five hundred when I get back from Santiago. Is that enough? We are not buying these weapons, just reclaiming them,” she said.

“These are Directorio guns?”

“Yes, but they will go to Fidel now.”

“Is this Fidel’s money?”

“No, it is mine.”

“You’re the new Directorio, all by yourself?”

“I worry the police will take the guns I put there. Fidel needs them badly.”

“How will you get them to Fidel?”

“Maybe by yacht, or truck, maybe airplane. A car is impossible, there are too many guns. Aurelio will figure a way. Maybe you can help him. I won’t be here.” She handed him five of the six hundred dollars her mother had given her.

“Keep your money,” he said. “Wait till I get the guns.”

“You don’t behave like a gangster. Gangsters like money.”

“You don’t behave like a debutante. Debutantes don’t know anything about money.”

“Fidel will be pleased if you get him these guns.”

“I think I knew that.”

“We’ll be staying at the Casa Granda hotel in Santiago,” Quinn said. “I’m covering an army press conference about Fidel.”

“Are you going into the Sierra?”

“If I’m invited.”

“If you see my cousin, drop my name.”

“Who’s your cousin?”

“Arsenio Zamora. Quesada murdered two of his boys. He is close to Fidel.”

What Quinn said when he telephoned Hemingway was, “Max took a call from somebody asking for me and he thought he recognized your voice.”

“Max’s ear is working,” Hemingway said. “There may be hope for him as a spy. I read your story about the killing of Cooney’s friend.”

“Cooney just missed getting it and so did I. Pretty hairy.”

“I’ll pick up Cooney’s doctor bills. Maybe you could work that out. But don’t connect me to it.”

“It’ll go into the archive of lost history. Actually Cooney wants to reach you. He wrote me a letter. You know about this?”

“No.”

“I should give you his letter in person.”

“Sounds like top secret.”

“I’ll meet you if you come to Havana. Or I can bring it to you.”

“Does this go into your novel?”

“Chapter seven.”

“I’m here, but right now I’ve got a funeral to go to.”

“Who died?”

“My dog.”

Hemingway’s home, Finca Vigía, was twenty minutes southeast of the Floridita, a long, formidably handsome one-story white limestone Spanish Colonial built in 1882, uphill from the town of San Francisco de Paula. From an adjacent four-story white tower where Hemingway famously wrote and kept his cats, there is a distant view of the sea he made famous. Since he moved into the Finca in 1939 it had become a place where the grand and the great among writers, generals, movie stars, journalists, baseball players, sailors, drinkers, and women queued on the front steps to talk, swim, party, flirt with, or just shimmer in the waves of mythic glow that emanated from this maestro of the word, the hunt, the deep sea, the saloon, the bull-ring, the wars, the self. The crowd pilgrimaged to this American hero in the way Lázaro’s throng of beseechers crawl on their backs to him. Renata said she’d rather stay in the Buick.

“Nonsense,” Quinn said. “He’ll be good to talk to. He’s already sorry about Cooney. There’s a whole lot more to him than you saw at the bar.”

“I dislike him.”

“You said that. Try again.”

“I have no reason to try.”

“How about his link to Santeria? He gave his Nobel medal to the Virgen del Cobre—in Santiago.”

“He gave the medal to
la Virgen
? Why?”

“He didn’t trust Batista and his thieves, so he gave it to the Cuban people through their patron saint.”

A great and ancient ceiba tree spreading itself magnificently at the front entrance welcomed Quinn and Renata to the Finca, and a middle-aged Cuban woman opened the door and said
el señor
was on the porch. She walked them toward Hemingway, who was sitting in a wooden Adirondack chair, wearing a long sport shirt, shorts, sandals, and making notes on a pad. He stood up.

“Mr. Quinn. Señorita Suárez. I’m sorry I frightened you the other night.”

“You didn’t frighten me,” Renata said.

“I upset you.”

“You were cruel to Mr. Cooney.”

“I wasn’t in my best form. I apologize.”

“You should apologize to Mr. Cooney.”

“Did you go to your dog’s funeral?” Quinn asked.

“I was the funeral,” Hemingway said.

“An old dog?”

“Not so old, still full of hell. Black Dog. One of Batista’s goons bashed in his head with a rifle butt. They were chasing a rebel they thought had guns hidden near my pool. Black Dog didn’t like the soldiers and bit one on the thigh, going for the money. Smartest damn dog in the western hemisphere and he’s dead, a casualty of the revolution. Let’s go inside.”

He led them to the living room and gestured them to the sofa, then sat in an overstuffed armchair. The room had full bookcases on every wall and two hunting trophies, the mounted heads of a black-horned gazelle and a seven-point red deer. Rum, gin, bourbon and scotch bottles clustered on a table by his chair. “Too early to drink,” he said, “and my doctor won’t let me have a goddamn thing.”

“I thought I detected you drinking daiquiris the other night.”

“I was on shore leave.”

“Did the soldiers find those guns by your pool?” Renata asked.

“I hope not.”

“Do you know the rebels?”

“I fish with them.”

“Are they with the Twenty-sixth?”

“I wouldn’t ask them that question.”

“I ask because I had friends killed in the Palace attack,” Renata said.

“So did I,” said Hemingway.

“We were at the Montmartre last night,” Quinn said. “Ten minutes after we left they killed an army colonel at the casino, Fermín Quesada.”

“You people know where the action is.”

“We’re heading for Oriente,” Quinn said. “Climb the hills and see Fidel. I know your friend Matthews just did that, but Fidel is worth another interview, don’t you think? Batista’s people kill him every day in the papers.”

“Batista’s finished. Those Directorio kids at the Palace proved that. When fifty or sixty of the best young people in the country give up their lives to kill you, you’re all done. Can you get to Fidel?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You have to get past the army and their barricades. They’re mean sonsabitches.”

“There’s an army press conference tomorrow in La Plata. I’m going.”

“You ever cover a war?”

“The cold war in Germany, Fourth Division, your old outfit.”

“Did they teach you how to climb mountains in a tropical rain forest when you’re dodging hostile fire?”

“I missed that lecture. I’ll have to wing it. I was writing sports for the Division weekly. But my grandfather came down here to find Céspedes during the Mambí war and wrote a book about it. He called it
Going to Meet the Hero
. Ever hear of it?”

“I read hundreds of books for a war anthology I edited, and I remember some Americans wrote well about Cuba back then. What was his name?”

“Daniel Quinn.”

“Ah. Recycling family history.”

“Why not? He covered the Civil War for the
Herald
, and rode with the Fenians when they invaded Canada. He got around. But his book on going to see Céspedes got to me. He walked the swamps, the jungle, and the mountains in Oriente, and he got to his man. The Spaniards starved him in jail and he damn near died, but he got out and wrote the story and then wrote the book.”

“Now
you’re
looking for jail time.”

“I was in a saloon in Greenwich Village with a friend of mine who thinks his fame is just around the corner, either as a writer or an artist. He pointed to a Lindbergh poster behind the bar and said, ‘Quinn, when are you making your solo to Paris?’ I told him, ‘I’ve got a train ticket to Albany.’ Actually I took a job in Miami, and then Havana was just a short hop.”

“Is your friend famous yet?”

“He’s still in the saloon, monitoring Lindbergh.”

Hemingway smiled, but somberly. He breathed deeply, then again, and his torso seemed to deflate. That exuberance and assurance, so in evidence at the Floridita, was missing.