Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (14 page)

Colonel Barreras was telling the news people at La Marea del Portillo about the Batista government’s generosity toward a family of six, and reporters followed him into a rebuilt shack. Quinn walked toward a peasant in tattered clothes who was sitting crosslegged in front of his house, a
bohío
with thatched roof, earthen floor and two chickens visible inside; and Quinn read in the man’s face something other than gratitude to the army. This house had not been rebuilt. Behind the man sat a near-toothless crone holding a child with what Quinn took to be rickets. The child was drinking water out of a tin can.

“
Hola, amigos,
” Quinn said to the peasant and his woman. “What did the army do for you?” He spoke in Spanish.

“They gave me beans and rice.”

“What work do you do up here?”

“There is no work.”

“How do you earn money?”

“There is no money.”

“How do you live, how do you eat?”

“I eat what grows. I cut cane last year and I drove a cane truck, worked in the coffee harvest last year, but not this year.”

“I have a relative who drives a truck up here,” Quinn said. “Arsenio Zamora. Do you know him?”

The man cocked an eye with surprise in it, but said nothing.

“Arsenio Zamora is my wife’s cousin. Renata Rivero from Holguín. Her brother is Alfie Rivero. Renata has not seen Arsenio in two years. She very much wants to see him. They are cousins.”

“Arsenio Zamora has five thousand cousins.”

“My wife would stand out among ten thousand. She is called Renata. She is beautiful and Arsenio will remember her. He has an eye for women. If anybody sees Arsenio please tell him Renata, the sister of Alfie Rivero, wants to see him.”

“I do not know people who see Arsenio.”

“If you do, tell them Renata married a reporter from the
Miami Herald
.”

“What is reporter?”

“Newpaper man. A writer. Miami newspaper.”

“Newspaper?”

“Okay,
olvídalo
. My wife is a cousin of Alfie Rivera.
Se llama Renata. Prima de Arsenio. ¿Entiende?
”

“
Prima.
She want to see Arsenio?”

“
Exactamente.
Renata. Cousin of Arsenio.”

Lieutenant Cordero came over to them and asked the man, “What are you telling him?”

“He’s telling me,” Quinn said, “how he cuts sugar cane and harvests coffee for a living, but he didn’t work this month because the army helped him and gave him free food.
Él está muy feliz,
very happy,
verdad, señor?
”

The man shrugged an ambiguous yes.

“He is very grateful to the army,” Quinn said.

“We’re moving on,” the lieutenant said to Quinn.

Quinn saluted the cross-legged man and went with the lieutenant.

In the forest El Quin and the brown rebel, both on foot, chopped vines and briars with their machetes as they moved, the horse moving with them. They rested in a dry streambed, faces bloody with scratches from trees and thorny overgrowth, and ate berries they had picked. El Quin sipped from his canteen and asked the rebel why he had joined Céspedes as a Mambí warrior. He said if he had not become a warrior he would still be a slave. Whether warrior or slave he would die, but it was better to die as a killer of Spaniards than to let the slave drivers kill you. Quinn wanted to tell the man he had lunch with three slave drivers in a sugar mill at Villa Clara, pretending to seek work as one of them. But then he decided that the warrior might misunderstand his ruse and would only hear this stranger saying he wanted to be a slave driver. He would then swing his machete and slice off Quinn’s head.

Renata heard the drum in a dream, a Santeria drum, and was moved by it. She opened her eyes and the drum was not a dream. She opened the window of her hotel room and as she listened she moved to its beat without willing the movement. It entered her, took charge, and reminded her of her mother dancing at the Biltmore Yacht Club, moving in a way that she herself had never moved, nor wanted to; but the beat was as old as Cuba. She had heard the Santeria drum so often, but this seemed new, and she was dancing. She looked out to find the source of the drum but saw only a few army cars parked on the empty edges of Céspedes Park. Then she saw women in black dresses, dozens of them streaming out of the cathedral in what was clearly a planned demonstration. They immediately raised placards, CESEN LOS ASESINATOS DE NUESTROS HIJOS—MADRES CUBANAS—Stop killing our children—and walked from the cathedral to the park; but a dozen soldiers with rifles blocked their way and more soldiers moved across the park as backup. The women took a new direction and the troops followed them in a moving blockade. A military car stopped on the edge of the park near San Pedro and an army lieutenant colonel stepped out to watch what was unfolding.

Renata was dressed for driving, flared gray skirt, powder blue blouse with buttons. She put on her blond wig and pinned it, pushed into her shoes. She found a black scarf and put it in her skirt pocket. She went down the stairs to the lobby, crossed the park to where the women, three dozen at least, had been halted. She spoke to a heavy woman at mid-throng, but with only partial knowledge of the reason for this protest. She had heard on the radio that two bloodied bodies of young men who had disappeared from their homes or cars in recent nights had been found on the beach horribly abused; but she was not yet aware of the official madness of the past three nights, a terror unleashed against the people of Santiago, none of it reported on the radio.

“Did you lose someone?” she asked the heavy woman.

“The son of my sister.”

“I lost my greatest friend.”

“Here?”

“In Havana.”

“Everybody is losing,” the woman said. “The disease. I am old enough to remember Machado when I lost two uncles, and my mother remembers the war with Spain when the beast Weyler killed whole villages.”

“My father was shot in Machado’s time,” Renata said.

“The soldiers will come after us now,” the woman said. “They will beat and rape us.”

“Do you want to kill them?”

“I don’t kill things,” the woman said. “I would make them disappear back up into the cursed stomachs of their mothers.”

“What are you doing here?”

“The new American ambassador, he is in the Ayuntamiento just there,” and she pointed toward City Hall where three cars and a limousine were parked. The lead women moved down Calle San Pedro but they did not get far. The troops held them back with rifles. “
Libertad,
” one woman yelled and many echoed her.

Renata wondered: Why am I talking with strangers under siege? Is it true I’m in love with death? Diego was in love with death and killed himself out of love. Am I a child of suicide? If I die the revolution loses a soldier. She tied the black scarf around her arm in solidarity with the women. She could still hear the drum but faintly, moving away, and she did not understand its source. But she felt the beat and still felt the impulse not only to dance but to dance well. This was strange and now she had the thought that all this came with Quinn, who is new and rare and a bit mad.

The women in front were arguing with the soldiers. Why can’t we go down San Pedro? A lieutenant said, nobody goes, an answer as arbitrary as the new military violence that had been terrorizing the city in recent nights—reprisal for work stoppages, for the growing public support of the Santiago underground and for Castro’s rebels. Three rebel bombs had gone off this week, one on the patio of navy headquarters. Military jeeps now patrolled the streets and the central highway, and the roads to Ciudamar, El Caney, El Morro, and the airport were all barricaded, with checkpoint guards stopping every car. Most businesses were closed, and pedestrians few.

Three nights earlier packs of army, navy, and police raiders invaded public plazas and parks, clubbed pedestrians with gun butts, slashed them with whips, overturned tables in cantinas, yanked people out of cars or off porches of their homes in random attacks against all classes of the population who might or might not be guilty of rebellion, or thinking about rebellion. The raiders picked up one youth who had grown a beard, which was the black flag of the revolutionaries, for Fidel wore a black beard. The raiders crucified the youth, spreadeagled him on top of a police car and drove him through the city with eight other police cars blowing their horns to show the town what happens to rebels who let their hair grow. People locked their doors and windows and stayed home. The count of men who had disappeared rose to seven, then to eighteen, but no one thought that was the end of it. Of these very new events Renata knew almost nothing when she started talking to the woman protester.

Renata felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Felipe Holtz with a great new shock of black hair, he had let it grow, and a substantial new mustache, well shaped and deep black, more handsome than ever. He wore a tan linen sport coat and she thought him very attractive; but she was not in love with him. She knew that immediately. She had loved many things about him for years. She did not think he would ever become involved with the rebel cause. He was smart and serious but he did not seem drawn to this danger like Diego. He seemed a man for whom danger was déclassé.

He said to her in English, “We’ll go now, my dear,” and squeezing her arm firmly he pulled her away from the woman and toward Calle Heredia that bordered the Hotel Casa Granda. He put his arm on Renata’s shoulder as they walked and with deft fingers untied the knot in her black scarf, pulled it off her arm and palmed it. Renata stopped to look back and saw the women yelling at the soldiers as two fire trucks and four police vans arrived. A lieutenant colonel was shouting orders to the fire trucks and troops. The women broke ranks and moved singly into the park and stood on sidewalks, watching City Hall. The troops separated to widen their blockade of the dispersed women.

Holtz led Renata into the open entrance walkway to an apartment building and said, “That is a wig you’re wearing, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Give it to me,” and he stuffed the wig flat under his shirt and buttoned his sport coat. He rolled her scarf into a ball and pushed it into a crevice in the brick wall of the walkway. Then he led her back to the street and made her walk ahead of him.

She had not expected to see him. She had left him messages and knew if he got them he would call and invite her to his home. She tried to tell him this but he said don’t talk, just walk, you must be a crazy person to stand in the middle of a protest with soldiers about to pounce.

“You are correct,” she said. “I am a crazy person.”

“That’s no excuse. Do you think you will get up to see Fidel by being arrested?”

“Why do you say I want to see Fidel?”

“Because everybody wants to see Fidel. I also talked to Moncho who talked to Max who talks to everybody. You’ll come to my house.”

“Of course I’ll come to your house. That’s why I’m here. Where is Moncho? I saw him at Esme’s house after the Palace attack.”

“He’s in Palma Soriano. You’ll see him. He thinks the SIM may be after him and it’s possible, but he also may be bragging.”

“Moncho is very beautiful when he is angry. His words are beautiful.”

“And you are more beautiful than ever,” Holtz said.

“Are you still in love with me?”

“No. I’ve known you too long and you live in Havana. Also you are too beautiful to love.”

“I’m traveling with an American who loves me.”

“I know. In spite of that we will bring him along.”

“Why are those soldiers surrounding the women?”

“The women are very important today. They have a message for the ambassador.”

“Am I in trouble for being with the women?”

“It’s possible. The military has big eyes. They trust no one. But at least you’re no longer a blonde.”

A woman screamed and as Renata turned she saw a soldier striking the screaming woman with the butt of his rifle. Other women broke through the ranks of soldiers and yelled things Renata could not understand as they ran toward the men coming out of City Hall. Firemen opened their hoses and the force of the water knocked down many of the women, drove them against buildings. Still they came running, and soldiers clubbed a few. Two women, both drenched, reached the limousine and were yelling to the man Renata took to be the ambassador, and they shook their flyers at him. The man took one flyer and waved his hands to the troops to stop the water cannons. He spoke inaudibly. Soldiers were dragging and pushing most of the women into vans. Renata counted two dozen arrested and saw the lieutenant colonel approaching the ambassador.