"It was always a place of death. Forty-seven years ago, when I was sixteen," Fuentes said, "a patriot by the name of Narcisso Lopez came with four hundred men to join with insurgents already fighting the Spanish." He said to Amelia, "You've heard of an American patriot by the name of Crittenden?" She said she wasn't sure and Fuentes said, "He came with Narcisso Lopez as the second in command, as half the men with them were Americans. But they had very bad luck. They landed at Mariel during a storm, so all their powder was wet when the Spanish attack them and Crittenden and fifty of his men were brought here. You see the drawbridge? Crittenden was crossing it to enter the fort and the Spanish soldiers couldn't wait any longer, they shot him down on the bridge. His men were taken to the field, chained together in three groups and they were shot down. I was sixteen years old."
Amelia turned to Fuentes, an old man in a white suit holding the umbrella between his knees.
"You were here?"
"I was with Narcisso Lopez. Not on the boat, but with the ones already here, and I was with them when the Spanish came and we had no dry powder to use. Narcisso Lopez was taken to the Morro and made to perish by the garrote, strangle to death, God rest his soul. One hundred were sent to Spanish dungeons in Africa and some of us were kept here to wait to be tortured. I think of it that way, because to wait makes it worse. The Spanish hung us on a wall, the iron ring twelve feet from the floor, sometime upside-down, and beat us with cane, our wrists bound so tight our hands swell to twice their size," Fuentes said, showing Amelia his hands with their yellowed, cracked nails. "Others were seated in the chair with the iron collar, the garrote; a single turn of the screw from behind will strangle the person, crushing his neck. They like to break legs, too, and leave the person to perish from starvation.
I was taken to the parade ground, all open, and put in stocks. You know what I mean by stocks? They hold you by the neck and the wrists, like in the old pictures you see of your Puritans. But this one they put you in face-up to the sun and leave you there all day. They said it was worse than the garrote, looking at the sun like that, and always the person couldn't stand it and became blind and insane. I shut my eyes as tight as I could squeeze them shut and still I could see the brightness of the sun through my eyelids. So I prayed to St. Francis of Assisi, because I remember from when I was a boy, a priest telling me St. Francis was a friend of Brother Sun, he called it, and Sister Moon. He liked all the animals, birds rested on his shoulders and he never stepped on insects. You know of St. Francis?" Amelia told him yes, of course, and Fuentes said, "I prayed to him, asking if he had any friends that were clouds, and you know what happened?"
"It rained," Amelia said.
"Listen, it rained for six days and six nights," Fuentes told her, "in the spring, before the big season of rain. It rained so much they put me in a cell and forgot about me for three years, when they said that was enough and gave me a pardon."
They were approaching the drawbridge now. It was down and the sally port was open to show the parade grounds inside and a Guardia with a carbine slung from his shoulder.
"In there, straight across the grounds," Fuentes said, "are the torture rooms. To the right, past an outside stairway, is the entrance to the dungeons they use. Rudi Calvo say the Guardias released some people, reconcentrados, and told him now they the only ones, a squad of Guardias. Rudi Calvo thinks eight of them on duty to guard the three prisoners;
Tyler, the United States marine and the officer from El Morro, Lieutenant Molina. They took his uniform away from him."
"I liked him," Amelia said. "Maybe that's why I'm not surprised he's here."
"Rudi Calvo thinks they'll send him to Africa."
Amelia said, "Victor," and then waited as she heard him speaking to the coachman, who brought the team around in the cobblestone road to start back to Havana. "Do you still pray to St. Francis?"
"I don't believe in God anymore," Fuentes said. "Well, sometimes, but not always. I do believe in St. Francis, but I don't use him anytime I want or for small favors. No, I pray to him only when it becomes life or death."
"Do you remember a year ago," Amelia said, "the train station at Benavides, the Guardia and the two men on the platform?"
Fuentes began to nod. "Wanting to hang the two cane cutters, but could find nothing for them to stand on. Yes, of course I remember. So the Guardia shot them."
"That time, did you pray to St. Francis?"
Fuentes said, "No, I didn't," and seemed surprised. "I didn't think of it and I don't know why." He seemed to be thinking a]out it now, squinting his eyes to look back on that time at Benavides. "No, I believe what I imagined doing was shooting Tavalera and then seeing his men shoot me to pieces. All that instead of praying for the two men to be saved. But there you are. If there is no prayer to answer, what's St. Francis suppose to do?"
"When the Vizcaya arrived," Palenzuela said to Rudi Calvo, "I was in the party that went out to greet the ship. There were small boats everywhere, people shouting "Long live Spain! Long live our navy!" People on the wharf shouting it, people on the ferry from Regla, everyone taking pride in who we are, and not offering one word of anti-American sentiment. The launch passed within ten meters of what can be seen of the Maine and there were no cheers, as I've heard before, or expressions of approval. Aboard the Vizcaya, an armored cruiser heavy with guns, I heard nothing discussed that would resemble a feeling of hostility."
They rode in the chief's personal carriage, two bodyguards up on the box acting as coachmen, his matched pair of palominos in harness. The route they took from police headquarters, near the channel, followed San Lfizaro along the north shore to the outskirts of Vedado and the home occupied by Palenzuela's mistress, Lorraine.
"It doesn't matter," Rudi Calvo said, "what you feel or what you want or don't want, there's going to be a war. All you have to do is read the American newspapers."
"Yes, but everything they write is inflammatory."
"Of course, because they want war."
Rudi speaking bluntly to his boss, without choosing his words, something he had never done before.
"Did you see," Palenzuela said, "Pope Leo is thinking of requesting an armistice?"
Rudi felt like suggesting to his boss, Oh, for God's sake, use your head. But he resumed his place again and what he said was, "Excuse me, but do you think an American president is going to follow the wishes of the Catholic Church?"
They rode past soldiers in summer uniforms along the avenue, Rudi seeing them as boys away from home for the first time, enjoying themselves for now, having adventures in a strange city, experiencing the offer of exotic sins. In a few months some of them would be dead, some would be in hospitals burning with fever. But if you told them this they wouldn't believe you. Their mothers would. Rudi Calvo had one child left out of four, a boy who had survived his mother's death at his birth and made it through early childhood, the boy now ten, a gift Rudi was determined not to lose. His sister took care of the boy when he was absent, away on police business. He gave his sister money and told her, "If you don't see me again, please take care of the boy as you would your own." His sister didn't say anything, but he could see in her eyes she understood. Later, when she would have time to be herself, she would allow herself to cry.
"It crept up on us during the forty days of Lent," the police chief said, "when we weren't looking." He said, "What can hold back the tide of war?"
He might have made that up, or thought he did.
"Nothing can," Rudi said.
"I told Lorraine it won't last long. I told her if she remained in Vedado she might not even notice the war. Still, being an American citizen she would be viewed by some as an enemy of this land and her life here could be made intolerable, subject to vile insults, if not placed in grave danger."