A policeman asks me if I am ok.
“Fine. Too many people,” I tell him.
“You should have seen it last week, the holy day of Guadalupe is December twelfth.” He waves at the plaza. “There were two million out here.”
The subway.
Basilica to Martín Carrera to Consulado to the airport.
My plane is at four.
The airport. The special Cuban line. The ticket.
A delay. Newsstand. A headline in the December 18 Miami Herald: “Wire Service Report: Fidel Hints at Retirement.”
The plane. Cubana flight 131. Take off over the glittering city. Circle to gain altitude, and already the lights are lost beneath the nighttime haze; only the beacons on Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl peeking through the dark.
East across the forests of Yucatán.
I take out the image of the Virgin María. For a while we shared a name, you and I.
I rest my eyes, even sleep a little.
I feel the plane descend and a stewardess asks me to return my seat to the upright position.
I open the window shade.
When Columbus saw Cuba for the first time the landmass was so large that he knew he had made it to one of the islands of Japan. He landed near Gibara and brought the astonished Taino Indians gifts and respectful greetings for the Japanese emperor. When the shogun refused to show up, Columbus gave the Indians instead the cross and slavery and smallpox and death. Cortés took the cross from Cuba to Mexico. The old gods fell and the father god took their place. Wise Cuba threw off the shackles of all the religions, found truth in Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Fidel Castro. The very first thing we learned in school was that religion was the opium of the masses.
And yet.
I am copied in your eye, lady of Guadalupe, lady of the moon.
Accept this candle for another, blessed mother, generous to virgins…
Havana.
The bay surrounded by mist.
A pink sea.
The plane descends.
I put María in my pocket.
Dark when we took off and not quite morning when we land at José Martí.
Yawns, a smattering of applause.
The Jetway is broken and takes a long time to dock to the plane. I thank the pilot and the stewardess and walk down the ramp back into la patría.
As soon as I enter the terminal building and before I even make it to the metal detectors I spot Sergeant Menendez, the DGI spy in Hector’s office.
He nods to two men in blue suits.
“Chivato cabrón,” I say under my breath.
They arrest me.
“What’s the charge?” I ask them as they lead me outside into the dark, warm, drizzly Havana rain.
“Treason.”
Treason. Yes. The great catchall. And one of the many, many offenses in Cuba that carries the death penalty.
“Come on. Get in.”
I get in the car, a Russian police Lada.
The engine turns over.
The lights come on.
The engine dies.
“Everyone out,” the driver says.
The rain again.
A gun in my face.
“Help us push.”
“No.”
“Do it or I’ll shoot you.”
“You won’t shoot.”
The smell of earth. Fruit rotting in the fields. The sea.
“Forget it then.”
The men push, the car moves, the clutch slips, the engine catches, the men jump in, and, having no alternative, forward into the day we ride together.
21 FINCA VIGÍA
Cheap handcuffs. Cheap cologne. On either side of me cheap suits. The empty highway from the airport. Morning mist. Women with bundles on their heads, Africa style. Negros de pasas, blanquitos, all the same. In Cuba everybody walks. Kids carrying broken bicycles, old men pulling donkey carts, hitchhikers putting their hands down when they see it’s a cop car.
Where are we going?
Not the ministry. Not the meat-hook basements in the MININT building, ten floors below Che’s beard.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut up.”
The southern suburbs. Shanties, tin towns. Unmetaled roads, hurricane-fucked streets.
I don’t recognize this neighborhood at all. Is this where the DGI has its torture house?
A hill. A Spanish colonial village turned into slums. Pigs rooting in the street. Old men sleeping in gutters.
The beginning of sunrise.
Climbing.
This area a little more familiar.
“Is this San Francisco de Paula?”
“We told you to shut up.”
Four of us. A driver and these two DGI goons.
San Francisco de Paula. I haven’t been here for years.
A turn off a dirt road, the Lada slewing in mud. A big gated nineteenth-century hacienda on a hilltop.
G5 and DGSE guards at the gate, snoozing under bougainvillea.
The Lada honks its limp-dicked horn, and as if to compensate our bull-necked driver shouts obscenities through the window.
A soldier in green fatigues opens the gate.
A long driveway lined with jacarandas and mango trees. Parrots, tocororos, and yellow-necked finches roosting in the branches. And above them frigate birds with scimitar wings hanging eerily in the air.
The house is a one-story Spanish colonial. Outside the embassy area all these homes are falling to pieces, but this one has a new roof and a fresh lick of cream-colored paint. Parked outside is a black 1950s Chrysler New Yorker.
“What is this place?”
“Mira, chica, how many times do we have to tell you to shut up?”
The Lada stops. The driver helps me out. A young man in a blue uniform I don’t recognize approaches the car and puts a finger to his lips.
“What is all this?”
“Quiet. He’s still sleeping,” the young man says.
“Who?”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“What? Yes.”
I start to walk toward the house. The shutters are open and you can see through from one side to the other, and all the way to Havana.
“No, over here,” the young man says and leads me to a shack at the back of the house. Seven or eight tables. A half dozen MININT men drinking coffee.
“Alex, spare another cup, this one’s just got in from Mexico.”
Alex, an old guy with white hair, muy negro, produces a coffee cup and leads me to a table away from the MININT men.
He smiles at me, looks at them, and mutters “Vermin” under his breath.
He returns with a pot of coffee and a bowl of sugar.
“We’ve got nothing to eat, I’m sorry,” he says.
“That’s ok. Where are we?”
He looks at me in amazement for a moment. “Finca Vigía,” he says and walks off.
The name rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it. I pour coffee in the espresso cup and add a cube of white sugar. Before it’s fully dissolved I take a sip. Cuba does two things well, cigars and coffee. Local beans, local sugar, local water. And strong. The hit is instantaneous and even in this state of incipient panic I can’t help but smile.
My head feels clear for the first time in days. I lean back in the white plastic chair and breathe out.
Ok, Mercado, why don’t you try to figure out what’s going on?
We’re in some kind of garden. A beautiful one. Hibiscus, oleander, Indian laburnum, blossoming hydrangea. The scent heady and overpowering. Under the trees there are half a dozen species of orchid and a small scudding sea of Cuba’s national flower, the brilliant white mariposa. There are a score of security guards but that’s it, which means this is not Jefe’s house. The Beard’s gotten even more crazy as he’s gotten older and doesn’t go anywhere without half a battalion of soldiers surrounding him. One of the other ministers, perhaps, or an ambassador from the-
Inside the house a clock dings the hour six times.
I hear someone stir.