Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (7 page)

That is my secret, Esme always says.

It is no secret, Renata always says.

Esme came into the room four steps ahead of Moncho. She kissed and embraced her sister, greeted Quinn with an odd gesture of elevated fingers and pursed lips, with her breasts rising from excited inbreathing, a gesture of concern.

“So, you’re alive,” Esme said. “Mother called me five times. All that shooting she thought you were dead.”

“I called her from the museum,” Renata said. “All afternoon you could not use a telephone. If you stood up you’d be shot.”

Esme looked to Quinn, and Moncho offered him a handshake. “Ramón Quevedo,” he said.

“Daniel Quinn,” said Quinn. “A pleasure to meet you. I understand you don’t live here.”

“Only historically,” Moncho said. “It is not possible to separate from Esme. No husband should be asked such a thing.”

“Husbands seem to play a peculiar role in Cuba,” Quinn said.

“Husbands are extinct,” said Moncho. “Wives are eternal.”

“I may refuse to become a Cuban husband,” Quinn said. “I’ve already proposed to Renata, but maybe I’ll postpone the wedding.”

“You proposed?” said Esme. “When?”

“This morning.”

“When did you meet?”

“Last night.”

“What took you so long?” Moncho asked.

“Daniel rescued me after the attack,” Renata said. “He found a taxi to bring us here when no one else could. He’s a reporter and Max just hired him to write for the
Post.
He was near the Palace all during the attack.”

“How intrepid,” Esme said, and she sat in the Peacock cane chair in front of her portrait. “You really proposed?” she said to Quinn.

“He suggested the possibility,” Renata said. “He wrote the story of the Palace attack for Max.”

“A pity they did not kill the
puta,
” Moncho said.

“Be quiet or they’ll arrest you,” Esme said. “Did you see the shooting, Daniel?”

“I did, but my luck seems to be running,” Quinn said. “I didn’t get shot and I found the gorgeous Renata when the shooting stopped.”

“You can do two things at once,” said Esme.

“I do covet beauty,” Quinn said. “That portrait of you is very beautiful, and it does you justice.”

“The artist said he made me too beautiful,” Esme said.

“There is no such thing. An artist can only imitate the exquisite beauty that runs in your family.”

“Such a charmer. Please sit down, Daniel. Would you like a drink?”

“As my uncle once said, the last time I refused a drink I didn’t understand the question.”

Moncho exploded with laughter. “I understand the question and I will make you a drink,” he said, and he left the room.

“Very droll,” Esme said. And she asked Renata, “Nena, what brings you here on such a day?”

“I need a car. After today I absolutely must go away, anyplace, Cárdenas, perhaps, but I can’t take Mother’s car from her. You don’t know, Esme, you don’t know.”

“Of course I know, dear. Take the Buick. Those hateful people trying to kill the president, shooting all over the city, nobody is safe anywhere, what’s wrong with them? They’re all insane and lower class. As soon as I heard the news I tried to get a flight to New York, but they closed the airport. Americans will be afraid to come to Havana now.”

“Soldiers killed an American tourist,” Quinn said. “I was in his suite at the Regis Hotel when they shot him.”

“You weren’t.”

“An armored truck and a foot soldier both fired at us. I saved another man by pulling him to the floor when the shooting started.”

“You saved someone? You are a clever person. What are you doing in Cuba?”

“I’m trying to figure that out. My grandfather wrote a book about the Mambí revolution and he put Cuba into my head. Now you’ve got another revolution going and it pulled me in.”

“Did you come to write about Castro?” Renata asked.

“He’s a good subject, don’t you think?”

“Batista says Castro is dead or gone away,” Esme said. “Batista should know.”

“Of course,” Renata said. “Batista knows everything.”

“He knows nothing, he knows less than nothing,” Moncho said, reentering the room. Oliva, a housemaid, followed him in, wheeling a serving cart with a bottle of white rum, a bucket brimming with ice, a bowl of powdered sugar, a plate of cut limes, four cocktail glasses and a silver shaker. When Oliva left the room, Esme said, “If the servants repeat what you say you’ll be shot.”

“She is right,” Renata said.

“Of course she’s right. Tell the truth they shoot you.” Moncho squeezed the limes. “Batista’s planes bomb the Sierra and kill
guajiros
but they find no rebel corpses. Fidel is not gone.”

“Where is he?” Quinn asked.

“In the Sierra.”

“How do you get to see him?”

“By invitation,” Moncho said. “Without invitation they will shoot you as a spy.”

“How do you get an invitation?”

“No one knows.”

Moncho poured a cascade of rum into the shaker, added sugar and the lime juice. “I was in law school at the University with Fidel. He was a wild schemer with the political gangs, never went to class. But he learned something. He’s outthinking Batista’s army.”

“We will change the
subject
, Moncho,” Esme said. “Daniel’s grandfather wrote a book about Cuba.”

“Ah,” said Moncho, shaking the shaker.

“He came looking for Céspedes, the revolutionary, and he found him.”

“Céspedes!” Moncho said. “In 1948 I went to Manzanillo with Fidel to get the Demajagua bell, the one Céspedes rang to start the revolution. Like your Liberty Bell, Señor Quinn, a three-hundred-pound symbol of our rebellion.”

“I know the bell,” Quinn said.

Moncho poured daiquiris from the shaker and passed them around.

“We brought it to Havana to confront Grau, the president,” he said, “but the police stole it from us. Fidel made a speech at the University about the bell and about Grau betraying the revolution he promised the people, and thousands came. He repeated Céspedes’ words the day he rang the bell to summon his slaves—Céspedes called them citizens and said they had been his slaves until today but now you are as free as I am. He was launching the revolution and said the slaves could join him in the fight or go wherever they wanted, but all were free. Fidel knew how to use these words. He was very powerful. He lit a fire in their minds.”

“They will put us
all
in jail if you don’t shut up,” Esme said.

Moncho raised his daiquiri glass.

“I drink to Fidel.”

“You will be a prisoner,” Esme said.

Quinn drank and Renata crossed the room and turned on the radio to a news broadcast. The Palace was circled with tanks and a newsman was saying that scores were dead and Batista had survived the attack on the third floor of the Palace with his wife, their ten-year-old son, forty soldiers, and an army colonel with a Tommy gun. The president rode out the attack with a pistol in one hand and a telephone in the other. The attackers never reached the third floor. The camera showed shooting, then the corpses piled in the street and the park. Corpses, corpses. Renata tried to hide her weeping. Batista praised his courageous soldiers and blamed Prío for the attack. Not Castro? asked a newsman. No, said the president, Castro is nothing, of no significance.

The bell on the entrance gates rang. Oliva came into the room and whispered to Esme, who then went to the door. She came back to say that the police were asking about a car abandoned nearby. “They want to know if anyone here has seen strangers coming or going.”

“What did you tell them?” Renata asked.

“I said I saw no strangers, today or yesterday. Did you see anyone when you came in your taxi?”

“There was a man hiding behind a tree,” Renata said. “He looked like Fidel Castro.”

“Don’t joke about such a thing,” Esme said. “They will arrest you.”

Renata drove Esme’s Buick in a way that Quinn decided was more dangerous than traveling with machine guns in the trunk, and more liable to get them arrested on this day of assassins on wheels.

“Let me drive,” he said. “You’re too distracted.”

“I am not distracted.”

“You’re speeding.”

“They’re not arresting speeders today.”

“Let me drive.”

“Later.”

“Later we’ll be at your house.”

“I can’t park this car at my house.”

“Are you saying we have another parking problem?”

“I cannot do anything strange that will attract the police.”

“Everything you do is strange. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I’m falling in love with you because of your bizarre turn of mind.”

“Thank you, Daniel.”

“Thank me? For falling in love?”

“I love it when men love me.”

“You have so many. How many is enough?”

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“How do you think of it?”

“I can’t think of it. I have Diego in my mind. I can’t think of other people’s love.”

“I don’t want to be considered other people.”

“Diego was my love.”

“He was one of them. You can lose two or three and still have loves to spare.”

“I don’t like your attitude.”

“I’m sorry for Diego but I can’t grieve as you do. He was a very, very brave man and I’m sad a warrior of the revolution was killed. Yours is another kind of sorrow from mine.”

“You must stop talking or I’ll start to hate you and I don’t want to hate someone who is falling in love with me.”

“What are you going to do with this car?”

“Esme will tell my mother I have it. But if I park at my house and the police come, Esme will be involved.”

“She’s already involved. The police came to see her. They may even think she parked Diego’s car.”

“Never. She is too close to Batista.”

“I can park it someplace.”

“Yes, you can, can’t you.”

“I can park it by my apartment.”

“Where is your apartment?”

“In the Vedado. Near the Nacional. I could even leave the car in the hotel parking lot.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Take me home—Twenty-second Street.” She stopped the car and changed seats with Quinn. They were on Fifth Avenue in Miramar.

“Did your parents know Diego?”

“They heard his name, but they can’t keep track of my life. I tell so many lies I can’t keep track myself.”

“I would like to meet them without lies.”

“They will like it that you’re an Americano. They will assume you have money. Do you?”

“I can pay my rent and still have some left over for the laundry.”

“
Pobrecito.
”

On Twenty-second Street Renata said her house was on the right. Two Oldsmobile sedans, nobody in either one, were parked in front and every light in the house seemed to be lit.

“Keep going,” she said. “Those cars are the SIM. They’re probably talking to my parents. God, how my father will hate this. He hates all politics since Machado. My mother will be dying of anxiety.”

“Which way do we go?”

“I have to talk to somebody. I know nothing. I want to see Diego.”

“Diego can’t help you. What about Max? He’ll know what’s happening.”

“Max knows nothing I want to know. But I can use his telephone, yes, good. I so want to go to Diego.”

Renata wanted to love a dead man. The living man next to her would not do. She needed love that was no longer available and she needed it now. Maybe they could find a dead man somewhere. There were many in Havana today. It impressed him that she was broiling at organ central, a woman questing to love death. If I take her to the morgue she will fall on the corpse. Usually you don’t need to die to get laid in Cuba, but tonight it would help. She’s from another dimension, perhaps nature itself, equally ready for life or death.

In the city room Max was in his cubicle, his shirt wilted. He looked weary, and bored with whoever was on the other end of the telephone. Quinn watched him stare at Renata who was sitting at a desk in a far corner, next to a tall black man he’d seen on his first visit and who now was making up pages for the next edition. Renata was on the phone. She’s close to Max and he’s red hot for her and she likes it. She likes it hot. Max would, beyond hotness, also be gallant and suave with women. Quinn didn’t trust him.