Kempner—Swimming With Fidel (pages 148-178)—1
26
Ruben left to find a pay phone and returned carrying Kraft paper and twine.
“Did you get a hold of your friend?” Antonio said.
“He’ll meet us at his gallery in half an hour,” Ruben said.
With a general strike in effect, with every bar, brothel, bodega and business closed—well, probably not the brothels—and with Ruben in unfamiliar territory, I couldn’t imagine how or where Ruben obtained the wrapping paper. And, he’d done it while talking an art dealer into opening his gallery to evaluate a stolen painting. The convincing part I could buy. Ruben’s excelled at getting people to do things they had yet to know they wanted to do.
Sounded exciting; I’d never been to an art gallery.
The oil painting was small, no more than eight by twelve, but the gilded, elaborate frame doubled its size. Ruben wrapped and tied it.
Antonio, who’d rushed to his room to make himself presentable, returned looking much the same, still unshaven, though he’d combed his hair and buttoned his shirt. He carried the painting into Ruben’s car and laid it on his lap.
Ruben walked around his car, turned his head toward us and asked, by raising his eyebrows. Ernesto and I begged off.
I’d changed my mind. Given the opportunity, I chose to stay out of it.
Ruben didn’t argue, confirming that his new scheme—there had to be a new scheme—hatched at the sight of a stolen painting, didn’t involve me. That was good news. The bad news was that he didn’t know Antonio.
I tried to take him aside and warn him about Ernesto’s brother unpredictable nature, but he brushed me off.
“Later. No time,” he said.
Ernesto and I watched Ruben’s blue and white Opel Kapitän approach the intersection, aoooga, aoooga its presence, and disappear around the corner.
We laughed. I didn’t know what Ernesto was laughing about; I did so out of relief. Antonio was Ruben’s problem, and I was off the hook with Batista’s gold phone.
Ten times out of ten I would have followed Ruben. I felt privileged to hang with him, to witness his escapades, to be considered one of his friends. It boosted my image though it came at a cost; Ruben kept me on edge, not because of what he might do, but for fear of failing him.
I slapped Ernesto’s back, and though it made no sense, he slapped me back.
We started to walk. Our friendship was rooted in walking, and talking, and then talking some more. Rather than go our separate ways after a party, or a movie, or even after visiting each other, we left together and walked, at random, with no other destination than the mid-point between our houses. Even then, even after reaching our logical parting point, we didn’t. We always had something else to talk about.
~~
Ernesto and I met in the boxing ring.
Neither of us wanted to be in that ring. Or fight. Señor Flores, the Physical Education instructor, ‘misread’ our verbal disagreement, dragged us into the locker room, stuck sixteen-ounce, red, Everlast gloves on our hands and shoved us into the ring. The bastard knew we hadn’t been fighting.
We were sophomores. By then, like all my fellow Vibora high school students, I’d witnessed a few of those unique, conflict-resolution, one-round bouts where the combatants couldn’t wait to go at each other. More often than not, I was part of the mob cheering them on, clamoring for more.
I didn’t want to climb into the ring. Neither did Ernesto. We’d assured Señor Flores we hadn’t been fighting. We’d been exchanging opposite views, and if we’d raised our voices was because, as Cubans, we have to speak loud, fast and without interruption or pausing between words, otherwise the other fellow could find an opening to enter the conversation. Even if both of us were speaking at the same time.
Once in the ring, Ernesto and I circled each other, wary eyes peering above pillow-size gloves held high, neither of us throwing a punch. Señor Flores, acting as the referee, demanded action, “we ain’t here to dance.”
I kept moving to my left. Ernesto kept moving to his left. We circled each other. He bounced on his toes. I danced on my toes.
“Coño, fight, fight. Throw a punch maricón,” Flores said.
Them are fighting words. Maricón is, in some ways the worst insult, second only to questioning one’s mother sexual proclivities.
The boxing ring was outdoors, between the blacktop volleyball and basketball courts. The presence of a complete boxing ring never struck me as peculiar until that day. Later, I discovered that Señor Flores’ brother was a boxing promoter.
If Flores was scouting for talent, he struck out. Less than half a dozen punches were thrown, less than half connected, none did any damage.
After our short, unexciting but exhausting three-minute bout, Flores addressed the dispersing, disappointed crowd of students.
“Fighting will not be tolerated in my class.”
As further punishment, Ernesto and I were dismissed and marked absent. Three absences meant one lower grade.
It was one of those bright, high sky, weightless days when going home felt like gliding downhill. If it weren’t for Ernesto; he too was walking down Vista Alegre street, on the opposite sidewalk. Was he following me? Why? He sure wasn’t being subtle about it.
After a block, he crossed the street.
I braced myself.
“That Flores is something, isn’t he?” Ernesto said, a chipped-tooth smile brightening his face.
We made fun of the fight, dismissed the inciting incident but, most of all, ridiculed Flores. We congratulated each other on our boxing prowess, discovered we lived two blocks from each other, and agreed to walk to and from school together.
He liked to talk. I liked to talk. Our endless conversations started on the way to school and ended hours later, on our way home.
Other than being similar in size, five seven and one hundred and thirty pounds or so, Ernesto and I were complete opposites.
Like ninety-five percent of Cubans, he was raised Catholic. Like twenty percent of Cubans, he had dark skin. Like almost no one I knew, he excelled at abstract thinking. I was a white Jew adept at practical solutions.
He was also older than me. Two years was a big age difference when we were sophomores. I’d skipped seventh and eighth grade; he hadn’t.
That didn’t make me smarter: El Centro Israelita’s curriculumextended only as far as the sixth grade, so all the Jewish kids took a high school entrance exam to skip those two grades. I hadn’t even known I could have transferred to a public school and avoided a whole summer of intense study in preparation for the entrance exam.
Ernesto was the studious sort, the kind who did his homework and read the assigned chapters. I meant to, but the park across the street beckoned—I liked to play ball, any ball—which in no time trapped me in the vicious cycle of always needing to cram for the next test. I never found time for homework.
Except for one type of geometry problems, the sort requiring us to calculate the size of an irregular area by using known, inscribed areas. Those problems were such fun, like puzzles, that I exceeded the assignment and solved every problem in the textbook.
All but one, the last one. It stumped me. Ernesto and I worked on it together for a long time before we gave up. Even as a team, we couldn’t crack it.
Days later, sitting at home, on a rainy, Saturday afternoon, thinking of nothing, the answer popped into my head. I ran out to tell Ernesto.
The intermittent drizzle had driven everyone from the park. We met in the middle. He too had run out to tell me that the answer had come to him out of nowhere. At the very same time. We couldn’t figure out who thought of the solution and transmitted it to the other by telepathic means.
“Is it possible that we both solved it?” Ernesto said.
“At the same time? Impossible,” I said.
“I guess we’ll never know.”
By then I could feel the soft rain permeating my clothing and wetting my skin.
“Well, at least we know it was one of us unless…it was neither of us,” I said.
“Uh?”
“Yeah, what if some other kid figured it out and we picked it up from him?”
Ernesto exploded into his trademark contagious, loud laughter. “Who’d be crazy enough to work on unassigned homework?”
By then, we’d become best friends.
27
The two rebels on the corner jumped when they heard the Opel sound its ‘aooga, aooga.’ They pointed at the car and watched, transfixed. By the time Ernesto and I reached the corner, Ruben’s car was out of sight.
“It’s a submarine horn,” Ernesto said to the rebels. “A warning that the submarine is about to dive?”
The rebels looked at each other.
“Like in the movies? The American war movies?” Ernesto said.
They considered Ernesto with solemn eyes, as if he was speaking a sophisticated, foreign language, as if they’d never heard of a submarine. Or the movies.
Ernesto asked them how they liked Havana, how much of it had they seen, how were they were making out, and pretty soon he had them at ease and engaged in conversation,
Both rebels were young, one of them lacking even the hint of a five o’clock shadow. He’d joined Camilo Cienfuegos’ troops five days earlier, along with many others swelling the ranks of the advancing rebel armies. He’d seen his first and only battle at Yaguajay, a prelude to the battle of Santa Clara.
“Where are you from?” I said.
After Ernesto led the way, I participated. That was our usual modus operandi. I couldn’t do what Ernesto did. I couldn’t start a conversation with strangers, always needing some sort of introduction—it was even worse with girls. Ernesto was an invaluable wingman with them as well, though once introduced, I could talk about anything.
The rebel, a slender, short, young man, no older than me, cast his eyes down.
“He is from nowhere, from a place with no name,” the other rebel said.
“How is that possible?” I said.
The young rebel glanced at his companion before answering. “The closest town is a ways away. I live in a thatched-roof bohio, a stone throw from another bohio, and that’s it. We live in the thick of the forest,” the young soldier said.
“If that isn’t the middle of nowhere…” the other rebel said.
Ernesto bellowed his contagious laugh.
“The best part,” the second rebel said, “is that there are only two families and they are enemies.”
“No, no, not true,” the young soldier said, replying to the astonishment on my face. “My Mom and her sister don’t talk to each other. The rest of us get along fine, we have to, we work together as carboneros, charcoal makers. Mom and her sister married two cousins, so we are all family.”
“What happened between them?” I said, as usual, without thinking.
“No one knows,” he said, a shy smile on his face—one of his front teeth was missing—hesitating, sneaking glances at his fellow rebel, uncomfortable sharing family secrets, too shy to say ‘none of your business’ to us city slickers.
“You ask my Mom and she’ll say ‘she knows damn well.’ Ask my Aunt, and she’ll say ask your mother,” prompting Ernesto, whose mother didn’t speak to her sister either, into another fit of laughter.
The other rebel came from a small hamlet in Oriente province. Both were awed by the big metropolis. The young man from the place without a name had never stepped on a paved street until five days earlier. He’d never been to school either. He’d only known trails kept open by feet and mule hoofs, ever since he’d been born in one of those two simple wood cabins, the two sisters acting as midwives for each other, never uttering a word.
A few blocks later we ran into another two of Fidel’s soldiers. Bearded, dusty rebels, were everywhere, rifles loosely held, as amazed to see us as we were to see them.
Each had their own reason for joining the rebel forces: for justice, for freedom, for a better future, to fight the dictatorship, to revenge a death, to escape a hardscrabble existence, to get away from his mother-in-law. One said he joined because his cousin did. Another shrugged and spat out his answer as if it were obvious: “la temporada muerta.” The ‘dead season,’ the six, seven or eight months of unemployment between the end of one sugar harvest and the start of the next one, the season of living in idleness and “a la cuenta,” on credit, on debts to be repaid when the next harvest started and the cycle that kept them forever broke, was repeated.
The length of their beards gave away their length of service though they dated it by their first taste of combat, “I joined before Las Mercedes,” or “I joined before La Plata.” Neither seniority nor rank mattered; all were a bit surprised it was over. All worshiped Fidel Castro.
A Jeep screamed past carrying half a dozen barbudos waving raised rifles, their barrels adorned with fluttering, small, red and black flags.
It was Friday, January the second, the second day of the Cuban revolution and the mood remained euphoric. It felt like a special, the first of its kind holiday, and with everything closed due to the strike, even more so.
Fidel’s orders to stay home were being interpreted as a suggestion. Ernesto and I weren’t the only ones ambling about. Plenty of others were too. Whether we waved or they waved, everyone waved back. We were all Cubans. We were happy. We were proud.
I spotted a perseguidora, a police car, the first one I’d seen in two days. The policeman in his blue uniform behind the wheel and the two armed barbudos in drab olive, one in front, one in the back seat, were all smiles; best of friends. A surprise. How did the rebels decide who among Batista’s old policemen merited their trust?
All our previous walks had taken place during Batista’s time; the dictator had been in power almost seven years, since I was ten. We’d been aware of the dangers: being blown up by a bomb or stopped by a policeman or turned-in by a chivato—an undercover informant paid $33.33 per grab—or worse, being found in the vicinity of a recent bomb explosion. But, we might also have been struck by lightning, or a bus—the bus offering the better odds.
Life goes on.
“Did you know Antonio was a Fidelista?” I lit a Partagas cigarette.
“Yes.”
“I mean, did you know he was setting off bombs? That he was in the underground?”
He didn’t answer. I turned my head and saw him nodding.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t. You know I couldn’t.”
I took a long drag. It would have helped to know which corners to avoid.
“Did your Mom know?”
“She warned me not to join, told me one per family was enough.”
“And your Dad?”
Ernesto shook his head. “Nobody else knew. Papi’s oldest brother was killed in `33, during Machado’s overthrow.”
“Machado. Funny, isn’t it? That guy is ancient history, from well before our time, and just like that, he’s relevant again. From what I’ve heard, Machado started as the good guy when he was elected president, then turned dictator. Then Batista came along as the good guy and kicked him out. And now Fidel; we are in constant need to be saved from our saviors.”
“Fidel is different. Mom thinks he’s like the second coming,” Ernesto said. “I don’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, but I have to agree with her. I think he’ll set everything right. I know it, I feel it in my bones.”
“I know, I know. This feels different, not like an election when only half the people are happy. Everyone believes this is the real thing, a new beginning.”
“Everybody but Batista’s esbirros,” Ernesto said.
~~
Fidel’s and Second Front rebels were rounding up ministers, army officers and other high officials stranded by Batista’s precipitous exit. The rebel soldiers I’d seen chasing the Olds 88 the night before, had all been Second Front. The checkpoint where the driver was shot had been manned by Fidel’s troops.
There were still firefights, but not as many.
Day two of the revolution was not as boisterous as day one. Street dancing had abated. Strangers weren’t hugging each other. Our general state of happiness remained unchanged and if we seemed more restrained was because nothing could match the excitement of day one.
The TV claimed that soldiers posted outside the homes of past regime officials were preventing looting. I didn’t spot anyone guarding the Gallardo’s front door when I left that morning.
The newly arrived, ample rebel presence was cementing the new reality. In contrast to the sense of unease I felt around Batista’s soldiers and policemen, these bearded heroes made us feel hopeful. They were innocents, matter of fact guys who, with the least prodding, talked about their war experiences and of life in the bush.