FIFTEEN
Uardias had been watching the doctor's home in Cerro, the doctor a Creole, on the side of the insurrection. They came in while the doctor was examining Yaro Ruiz's gunshot wound. They shot the doctor and took Yaro, bleeding, by this time unconscious, and Rudi Calvo to the old prison, Recogidas, where they questioned Rudi.
"Who was with you at Ataros this morning?"
"I wasn't there."
They broke his right leg beneath the knee with a baseball bat.
"Who was with you at Atars this morning?"
"I wasn't there."
They broke his left leg the same way.
Rudi listened to them talking. One of them saying, "Yaro Ruiz is of no use to us, he's close to death." And another one said, "Leave him."
The next part was very painful, riding in the military ambulance and trying not to scream, loaded and unloaded and dragged between two Guardias into a building that smelled like a hospital, then seeing enough of it to know it was, it was San Ambrosio. Rudi was brought to a room and heaved onto a cot. A doctor came in, he looked at Rudi and asked if he had suffered an accident. One of the Guardia said yes, he fell down. The Guardia told the doctor not to be concerned with this one, he would be cared for.
A man was brought into the room and dropped on another cot. After a little while the Guardias left. Rudi heard the man groaning, turned his head and saw it was Lieutenant Molina from the Morro, his face and clothes covered with blood. Rudi asked what they did to him. Lieutenant Molina said they came in his cell to question him about the cowboy and the marine: Who was it helped them escape, the ones who visited them in the Morro? What was their plan? Where did they go? Questions he could not answer since he didn't know, so they beat him with chains. He said when he spoke it was very hard to breathe. He said, "They bring me here to mend my broken bones so they can send me to Africa. I'm sure of it."
Rudi said, "I don't think I'm going anywhere."
The Guardias who brought them here returned with Lionel Tavaler. He approached Rudi Calvo drawing his saber and touched Rudi's right leg with the point. Rudi gasped.
"Oh, does that hurt? It must be gangrene has already set in." He poked the left leg with the saber and when Rudi cried out, Tavalera said, "Oh, in that leg too. I think both your legs will have to be amputated."
As he was touching Rudi's legs and saying this, two doctors in white coats came in the room, the one who was here before and another doctor, this one with an air of authority as he said to Tavalera, "Excuse me, are you a doctor? What are you talking about, amputate the legs? Anyone can see the legs are fractured and need to be set."
Tavalera turned to the doctors with his saber, not in a threatening way; still, it was in his hand. He said, "We won't bother you, sir. The surgeon of my corps is on his way. These men will be in his care."
The doctor with the air of authority said, "There is no need for amputation. When your surgeon arrives, have him see me."
Tavalera said, "Of course," nodding. As soon as the doctors were out of the room he turned again to Rudi, Rudi looking up at him from the hospital cot.
"Eight of my men were murdered, two of them cut down with the machete. I would point out the one taken from you in Cerro has fresh blood on it, the blood of at least one of my men. I know you were at Ataros. Now tell me who was with you."
Rudi closed his eyes.
Tavalera pressed the point of his saber against Rudi's leg and Rudi gasped, trying hard not to cry out.
"Right there is where they would cut. Who was with you? Tell me and your legs will be set and placed in casts. Refuse, your legs will be chopped off with your own machete, the weapon of peasants, without anesthetic, without a stick to bite on, without hope for the rest of your life. Does that tempt you to speak?"
Rudi saw himself on a street in Old Havana, a legless beggar sitting against the wall of a building. Now he saw his son with him, people walking by, his little son offering a cup. He was thinking, No, his son wouldn't be there… As Tavalera was saying, "We could be wrong about you.
Perhaps the idea of rebellion runs in your family and it was your son who was at Ataros."
Rudi felt himself trying to push up on his hands, his elbows, the shock of this man's words lifting him, the man a sorcerer who could see into his mind, the man raising the saber to rest the point against Rudi's breastbone and he sank back on the cot.
"What do you call the boy," Tavalera said, "Tonio? What if little Tonio falls down and breaks his legs and they have to be amputated? Where is he, still with your sister?"
Rudi felt his strength drain, all of it; he was unable to move. He stared up at this Guardia with the sword and the mustache covering his mouth, his expression, a man made of stone with marble eyes.
Tavalera raised the saber and touched the point to the tip of Rudi's nose in almost a playful gesture.
"Rudi? Who was with you at Ataros this morning?"
Novis Crowe didn't know where he was till he heard that tinny band music playing and realized, hell, he was back in Havana, not too far from the park that ran past the hotel. The greasers had brought him in a wagon lying under a pile of sacks that smelled of coffee, his head in a sack and his hands tied behind him with twine-hours under there till the greasers stopped and hauled him off the wagon. He said to them, "Where'n the hell am I?" They didn't tell him nothing, not a word, and left him there, the wagon moving off. Pretty soon he heard voices, he believed people talking about him. Novis said, "Will somebody cut me loose?" and they stopped talking. But then the band started up, not too far away, and it gave him an idea where he was. He started toward the sound, walking on cobblestones, then must've got off course, for he banged into a chair, heard it scrape on the pavement and could see light now through the gunnysack. Somebody with nerve-it turned out to be a waiter-pulled the sack from his head and Novis was looking at an outdoor cafe full of empty tables. He said to the waiter, "Well, now you had a good look, how about cutting me loose?" Jesus Christ, but greasers were slow to move.
Something was different. It was the same soldier band playing, but there were hardly any people here listening, the rows of chairs empty. The people he did see all looked to be in a hurry, wherever they were going, people coming out of the hotel with their grips and getting into coaches. In the Inglaterra lobby it looked like the same confusion, people bumping into each other, Novis not sure if they were checking in or out, grips and steamer trunks lined up by the entrance.
Upstairs he had to bang on the door a half dozen times before Mr. Boudreaux opened it, his boss in shirtsleeves holding a pair of binoculars. The first thing he said, right away, was, "Where's Amelia?"
"They got her, the mambis."
"Where?"
"I don't know where. They held me a couple of days and turned me loose."
"You were with her?"
"You mean after?"
"For Christ sake, tell me what happened."
"They waylaid us-from then on I had a sack over my head except when I et." Mr. Boudreaux turned away from him and crossed the room to a window where the drapes were pulled back and the shutters open. Novis said after him, "What in the hell's going on?"
Mr. Boudreaux stood at the window now looking off through the binoculars as Novis approached him.
"Sir, what's going on?"