Havana Lunar (4 page)

“No, señor directór, I'd rather not go.” There's a saying:
Que no van lejos los de alante si los de atrás corren bien.
Repeating this—
Don't go too much farther if the ones behind work harder
—has occasionally brought me into conflict with those in charge. Today I see medical tourism as a government machine like any other. El Comandante ulimately reaps the spoils of each physician's exploited specialty, making doctoring no different from the vocation of the reckless Panataxi driver or the indifferent waiter at the Habana Libre cafeteria, his left cuff caked with dried egg yolk.

Director González said, “If this has to do with getting passed over for South Africa last year, forget about it. That was regrettable. If I'd been on the committee, you never would have had any problem. The Revolution is much more integrated today. Talent is not wasted on account of a nuance of ideology. If you work hard and you work well, you'll get the promotions you deserve. The choice is yours, but if you ask me you're wasting your talent.”

“Wasting it on the children of Cuba?”

“Noble response, Doctor Rodriguez. Let me put it this way: You're wasting the
Revolution's
talent. Anybody can fix a sprained wrist. But you have extraordinary gifts. The income you could generate for the Revolution would help many more Cubans—adult, elderly, and children.”

“And the common people of Havana would end up swallowing the sacrifice.”

“The pediátrico would find a replacement.”

“Either an inferior intern or someone else who will eventually be invited to cross over. Besides, people in my neighborhood have come to depend on me at the clinic.”

“There are other clinics. Vedado would get along without you.” Seeing me to the door, Director González said, “Take some chocolate, Rodriguez. It's Belgian, the best chocolate in the world.”

“No, gracias. I'm allergic to chocolate.”

“¡Qué raro! Y desafortunado …” Director González made me take the chocolate anyway, as well as a little leftover salami and a half-bottle of wine. “For a girlfriend. You should get yourself another lady, Rodriguez. You can imagine how parties like these, a little bit of rum and some sandwiches, are useful for heating up a courtship. They have a staff party every month at the institute in Sancti Spíritus. You could probably land yourself a rubiecita, if whites are what you like.”

I walked up La Rampa, where only turistaxis sped by at that hour. There was a foot-cop on every block, but I walked with enough purpose not to arouse their sixth sense of paranoia. I was so hungry I could have eaten the salami there on the sidewalk, but I didn't, because I did have another lady now, didn't I? I couldn't fool myself anymore about Carlota being a creature comfort in the aftermath of Elena.

At the top of La Rampa, I remembered that there was a dollar in my pocket, so I headed to the Habana Libre to buy myself a café, a strong black one so that I could stave off the headache. I used to drink café the night before medical exams, and I aced most of those with ease. Then why was I shaking on this night, as if convinced I was fated to flunk the latest test of just one question and the best-odds option of answer: yes or no?

I raised a finger for service. “Compañero.” The waiter stood at a distance and glowered, looking from my lunar to my cheap Chinese tennis shoes. I was not supposed to be in here. I was no longer his compañero. With his arrogant stare, the waiter impelled me out the door and back onto the street without my café.

I took the long way home on Carlos III, an avenue that has been darker than ever since the beginning of the Special Period. This is the spine of Havana, and inside a thousand shuttered houses from el Monumento de la Revolucíon all the way up to el Capitolio, the city was starving. She was sleeping, but it mitigated none of her hunger as she briefly dreamed, sometimes of pollos, lechones, tortas, empanadas, sometimes of adventures in America, sometimes of her own hunger. She would awaken to the same privations, each day collapsing into a heap of unnumbered others of scarcity and emptiness, and there was no practical guess at how many more would have to drop on this pile before she starved to death or was otherwise redeemed.

I walked past the pediátrico. The neon sign outside admitting reads:

VALE, PERO MILLONES DE VECES MAS, LA VIDA DE
UN SOLO SER HUMANO QUE TODAS LAS PROPRIEDADES
DEL HOMBRE MÁS RICO DE LA TIERRA.

El Ché's quotation, burning like that on the wall of the hospital, was dated before the workers even flipped the switch. Now half the neon is out, and doctors joke that it really reads:

THE TALENT OF A SINGLE JINETERA IS WORTH A
MILLION TIMES MORE THAN ALL THE POOR DOCTORS
OF HAVANA.

2 August 1992

O
n Sunday afternoon I closed up the clinic and put the liter of gas in the Lada to drive out to Carlota's. It was Pablo's birthday and Carlota intercepted me at the curb. “Tell him we're going for a little birthday drive pa' tomar aire, then let me duck into Tío Tirso's on a pretense.” Carlota told me there was a rumor going around Marianao of bread—fluffy white flour rolls, not tough pan integral, and fresh, made the day before. But she didn't want to disappoint Pablito. We would keep it a suprise in case the lead turned out to be false, or if they were just the usual sawdust-textured cakes made of harina integral.

Pablo climbed in back and I told him, “Feliz cumpleaños, viejo.”

We cruised across Puente de la Lisa over the trash-strewn riverbed, where ancient trees born before José Martí breathe new oxygen on the breeze. I pulled up at Tirso's and Carlota climbed out with an armful of magazines and her awful poker face. “I'll just be a minute. I'm loaning Manuela some old Mexican
TV Guides
to reread.”

“¿Qué pasa aquí?” Pablito protested from the backseat, only six but already wise to a woman's engaño. “Why is my mother acting so strangely?”

“It takes two hands to count your age now. You figure it out.”

Eyes twinkling, Pablo said, “I could use toes too.”

A minute later Carlota emerged with a grin on her face and her bag bulging, but she wanted to keep it a surprise a little longer. “Let's make it a short drive. How about we turn around at the edge of La Coronela?”

Pablo cried, “Oh, that's no birthday drive at all!”

“I know, but I forgot to turn off the water and Tirso and Manuela are coming over.”

“¿Por qué?”

“Because I brought them the wrong magazines.”

Pablo said, “Algo muy raro está pasando aquí.”

Back at the house, Carlota bustled in the kitchen. She had managed to get some cheese and, together with the bread and the salami española that Director González had let me take home from his cocktail party, that meant real bocadillos. Manuela arrived and helped lay it all out in the comedor. I distracted Pablito on the solarium by blowing up surgical gloves into five-fingered balloons.

When the sandwiches were ready, Carlota called, “Pablo, ven para tu congrís.” Rice and beans. He pretended not to hear. Pablito was past complaining.

“¿No oíste?” I said.

Pablo ignored the question. “Show me how to make a knot so the air doesn't escape.”

“¡Pablo, ven! ¡Pab-LO!”

Pablo went into the dining room and saw what was really for lunch. “¡Mami! ¡Pan!”

“¡Feliz cumpleaños!”

Pablo was ecstatic: bread for his birthday. But it was like a bad movie on El Cine de las Ocho when Tirso rushed in seconds before we could sink our teeth into those beautiful sandwiches. “¡No! ¡Echaron vidrios en la harina!” I slapped Pablo's hand before the sandwich could get to his lips. Pablo saw real fear in my eyes and began to cry.

“Please, Pablito. There might be glass in the bread. There are bad people out there.”

Tirso said, “The government did it to sabotage the black market.”

Biting his lower lip, Pablo proposed, “We can try it, and if we feel something in our mouths we can spit it out.”

“You don't feel it, Pablito. And it's not your mouth you have to worry about.” I tied the bread in a plastic sack and put it in a metal trash can to keep the dogs from getting at it. We rinsed off the crumbs and rationed the salami and cheese in silence.

3 August 1992

A
t the beginning of my Monday shift I stopped by the lab to drop off the jinetera's blood sample. When I picked up the report at the end of the day, I was relieved to see that the results were negative.

Back at the attic El Ché complained of his nephew, who had been profiled in an enemy magazine for playing in a rock 'n' roll band that criticizes the Revolution. In the photo, the young Guevara had pasted a dollar bill on the front of his guitar. “¡Descarado! I appreciate his spunk, but did he have to blow it on a cheap pander to the Americans by prostituting himself to the
Time
photographer? If I were around I'd break that guitar in half.”

“If I ever bump into him, I'll do it for you.” There was a buzz from down in front and I opened the French doors. The jinetera looked up from the side-walk. “Hold on.” I came inside and got the spare key.

“Who's that?” El Ché asked.

“You'll see soon enough.” I went back out on the balcony and dropped the key.

The girl climbed the stairs to the attic and sat on the small sofa. “You live here all alone?”

“Sí.”

“What business does a man have living alone with such a beautiful balcony?”

“Do you find it counterrevolutionary?”

She gave me a sly smile. “I find it misogynist. You are depriving some good woman of a lovely view.” Fidgeting, she gestured at the table. “Is this your examining slab?”

“It's just a coffee table. A sad joke, as there's no coffee.” I sat beside her. “I have good news: The test was negative.”

“I knew it.” She reached for her purse and took out a box of Marlboros—empty. “Will you give me a cigarette?”

She pulled a Popular from my pack and I lit it for her. “I don't recommend becoming a regular smoker—for what it's worth.”

“Very little.” She exhaled in my face. Her eyes remained riveted to mine. “Let me ask you this, doctor: Are you a man?”

“Of course.”

“Do you find me attractive?”

“You're a lovely girl.”

“If you find me attractive and you're a man, why don't you sleep with me? What's keeping you? It could be a lot of fun.”

“That's not the way I do things.”

“How do you do things?”

“I wait until girls have had their quince, at least.”

“That includes me. I'm sixteen.”

“I don't even know your name.”

“But now you know I'm clean.”

“And it's up to you to stay that way.” I stood up. “You'll have to pardon me, but I need to meet someone. Good luck, and please keep discreet about the testing at my clinic.”

“Buenas noches, doctor.”

When the girl was gone I lit a cigarette. El Ché annotated, “So, doctor, this is how you serve the Revolution, by taking in jineteras for private practice?”

“¡Cállate la boca!”

“Why are you bringing trouble into our home?”

That night Carlota left Pablo with Tirso and Manuela, and I took her to a paladar in Vedado. There was food for a change, more than just rice and beans: collard greens, with the tiniest bits of pork. Afterwards we parked at the docks and took the passenger ferry to Morro Castle. We made a picnic inside a giant magnolia with a half-f bottle of Mexican brandy left behind in the bush by a tourist. There was condensation at the top of the bottle, and the warm liquor had fermented a little extra in the heat and sun. A used rubber dangled from a branch, but I flicked it off with the end of a stick before Carlota could see it. We swigged straight from the bottle. “Nuestro vino es agrio,” I told Carlota, “pero es nuestro vino.” We were both empty-stomached enough that it was less than three minutes before we were giddy and flushed with the effect.

“Carlota, why do you go out with me?”

“¡Ai, Mano! We're here. We have wine. We're having a good time. Don't get philosophical.”

“Why do you like having sex with me? I guess that's what I mean.”

“That's easy. You're good.”

“¿Y qué—?”

“Narciso! You want to know what makes you good? I'll tell you. It's not the thickness of the thing. A lot of men, at least Cubanos, got that.”

“Carlota, no seas caprichosa.”

“Well, it's true. What sets you apart is that you wait. And you wait and wait and wait. It's very considerate for a man.”

“It's more fun.”

“Well, most guys don't. Or they can't.”

“Are you ever worried we'll fall in love?”

“I assure you: I love you only for your body—” Suddenly a bright flash and an explosion. “¡Dios mío! ¿Qué coño fué eso?” The distant patter of applause alerted us: el cañonazo de las nueve; every night at 9:00, a dozen Havanatur flunkies don colonial garb and shoot a blank cannon charge.

Back at the attic Carlota and I were settling into a smoke when Beatrice called up the stairs, “¡Manolo! ¡Teléfono!”

¡Coño! Who could it be?” I left Carlota fuming on the sofa.

Beatrice was in curlers and a housecoat, arms crossed on the landing. “It's a woman, a girl more likely. She already called twice while you were out.”

I took the phone. “¿Qué hay?”

“It's me.” The connection was crackly, but I knew who it was. “Can I come over?”

“Right now?”

“I need to go somewhere.”

A clear, cruel misgiving made me blurt, “Not with a man, I hope.”

“No, sinvergüenza. I'm alone, but I don't feel safe.”

“I'm going to have to step out for a while.”

“I don't care if you'll be there or not. I just need somewhere to go.”

“Okay. I'll leave the spare key under the mat.” I hung up and left Beatrice shaking her head. Back upstairs I told Carlota, “Let's go for a walk by the river.”

“Bien,” Carlota said with a sour note that belied a canny, feminine clairvoyance.

El Rio Almendares runs polluted as a sewage pipe, but it's the coolest place in the neighborhood. I sat on a stump and lit a cigarette. “I have a patient who is coming by the house in a little while.”

“¿Y?”

“Y … es jinetera.”

Carlota's voice went throaty: “Now you're going around with jineteras?”

“Just one jinetera.”

“What does this have to do with me? We've always had an understanding that this isn't about love or marriage. Do whatever you want, but why kick me out of your apartment? That's not normal.”

“No sé, Carlota, no sé …”

“You know what your problem is, Mano?”

“No sé.”

“I'll tell you, even though it might not be a good idea. Do you want to know?”

“I want you to tell me.”

“Then I'll tell you. Your problem is that even
you
don't know what you want.”

“I'm sorry, Carlota.”

She shook her head. “No. I shouldn't have told you. I shouldn't have told you anything.”

“Let me drive you home.”

“I can take care of myself. There's a girl who needs you. Go be with her.”

Up in the attic the jinetera sat on the sofa, the spare key on the table. Her cheeks were tear-streaked, and the skin was red and swollen around her eyes. “I'm sorry to bother you like this, doctor.”

I sat in the rocking chair and lit a cigarette. “¿Qué te pasó?”

“Alejandro is angry.”

“Who?”

“My boyfriend. He's jealous.”

“Jealous of what?”

“Of us.”

“What do you mean? What did you tell him?”

“That I'm falling for you.”

“Look, you stay up here tonight if you'd like. I'm going down to sleep in the basement.”

“Doctor,” she looked at me with piercing dark eyes, “you are denying your heart.”

“Don't be so sure.”

I went down to the clinic and stretched out on a cot. I hadn't slept down here since near the end with Elena.