“Yes, I’m sure you’re correct.” Luis leaned back, resting his body against the bench, and closed his eyes. He sat motionless for so long that Eladio began to think he had fallen asleep. Suddenly, he opened his eyes and sat up. “Eladio, I’ve lived a long, long life — some of it good, some of it not so good. Now I’m close to the end of it.”
“Oh no, Señor Luis, don’t talk like that!” Eladio had never before heard his employer discuss his mortality. “You have many, many more happy years ahead with Señora María Eugenia. Things will get better, señor, they will improve. This Special Period is only temporary.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that, Eladio, that’s why I asked you to come out here, to have this talk with me.” Luis turned to look at him with a stern expression on his face. “I need your help with something — it’s a big favor.”
“Of course, Señor Luis, ask anything you want of me. As always, I am at your service.” Eladio struggled to speak in a normal tone of voice.
Luis waited for a few moments before speaking again. “You know how important the dinner — the dinner with my friends — is to me.” Eladio nodded. “Well, this favor I am going to ask of you has to do with that.”
During those years, Eladio had come to both love and hate the dinners. He loved them because they gave Luis something to look forward to. For weeks before the event, Señor Luis would discuss with great animation how wonderful it was that he would be getting together with his oldest and best friends, what a blessing it was that, although they were old, they were in reasonably good health and could still recall “the good old days” when they were young and had their lives ahead of them.
For weeks before that night, Eladio would watch as his employer took out the photo albums and pored over the pictures, searching each one for details he especially cherished — an expression in the eyes of Ricardo, the way the salt spray made Roberto’s hair coarse like a scrub brush. He studied them as a detective might examine a crime scene. Luis would always dwell longest on the same three photographs, the ones of him and his friends on his fishing boat, eating the seafood they had caught.
Eladio hated the dinner for the exact opposite reason that he loved them: the get-together with the childhood friends would remind Luis of the sadness, the hollowness, the despair of the lives they had led for the past forty years. The photographs were taken when Luis and his friends were in their early twenties, at the beginning of their lives. It was when looking at the photos in the season of each year’s dinner that Luis felt it most strongly: that all hope was gone, and suffering and indignities, hunger and old age were the only things ahead of them. None of their ambitions had been realized, and none were going to be. Their lives had been wasted. Now all they had to look forward to was more suffering.
This dinner was so much more than just a meal. Eladio was willing to do just about anything to make it as successful as it could be.
“Señor Luis, I am happy to go back out again to try to find the seafood.” Relieved to hear that the request from Señor Luis was nothing more serious than that, Eladio spoke quickly.
“No, Eladio, I’m not asking you to go look for any more lobster, crab, or shrimp. You’ve looked, María Eugenia has looked, I’ve looked.” Luis shook his head slowly. “There’s none to be found anywhere, we know that.” Luis stood up and took a few steps forward, until he was only a foot away from Eladio. “No, Eladio, the favor I am going to ask of you is much more serious, more important.” Luis put his hand on Eladio’s shoulder.
Eladio felt his body turn ice cold, and he began to shiver almost uncontrollably. Eladio could not recall a single time when his employer had touched him in all of their years together. “What is it, Señor Luis?”
“Eladio, I am going to ask that you do something for me that I have no right to ask of you, but I am going to ask it anyway, because I think you understand why I have no choice.” His grip on Eladio’s shoulder became so tight that it was starting to hurt. “If I cannot serve my guests a proper dinner, I cannot continue living. The shame will be such that my life will be over. For me, admitting that when it came to be my turn to host the dinner, I could not deliver what was expected of me — this is something I cannot contemplate. I can live with the humiliation of life as it is now — but shame is something I cannot accept, will never accept. I will not be the first one of my friends to fail to properly host the dinner when it was my turn. I cannot!” Luis took his eyes off Eladio and looked away into the distance. “The Rodríguez-López family is a proud one — 150 years ago, we fought for our freedom against the Spaniards, the bastards, and we paid dearly for that stand. So many young men died — but it was the only honorable choice we could make.”
Eladio, of course, had heard the stories for years. “Señor Luis, what is this big favor you want to ask of me?” Even though he was fearful of the answer, he felt he had no choice but to ask.
“Eladio, as you know, I’ve been giving the situation a lot of thought, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve exhausted all my options. There is no seafood in all of Havana — in Cuba, for that matter — for my meal. And with the celebration only two days away, we’re unlikely to find any.”
Eladio shook his head. “Señor Luis, no, don’t give up, I can try again. We can all try — you, Señora María Eugenia, me.”
Luis smiled. “No, Eladio, you’re wrong. The only way I can get through this predicament — the only way I can free myself from my obligation — is by dying.”
“No, Señor Luis, no!” Eladio was horrifled. “No! What you serve at the dinner is not what matters. The important thing is that you get together with your friends. They want to be with you. You can serve something else, anything! They don’t care what they eat. Or cancel the meal.”
“You’re wrong again, Eladio,” Luis said. “This dinner is that important. It is the reminder of what I once was! Not to do it and do it well would negate everything that my life was. I can’t control the events around me, but this — this is the one thing I can control.” Luis took a deep breath and let go of Eladio’s shoulder. “No, Eladio, this dinner — doing it right — is more important than what remains of my life.”
“Señor Luis, please, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you are not thinking clearly,” Eladio ventured. “The other señores, they will understand — everyone understands — life is so difficult now for everyone. Your friends, they just want to be with you.”
“That may be so, Eladio, but it’s not the way I think.” Luis spoke in a calm, measured voice. “I know what has to be done. The only way to resolve this situation with honor is for the dinner to be canceled because of my death.”
“Your death? No, there has to be another way.” Eladio was close to tears. “Señor Luis, with all respect, I don’t think you’re well. I’m going to fetch Señora María Eugenia.”
With unexpected strength, Luis grabbed Eladio and pulled him close. “No, you are not going to do that — she cannot be involved.”
“Señor Luis, please let me go and get the señora.” Now in tears, Eladio was pleading with his employer. “You are sick. She can help you.”
“Eladio, listen, you have to do this for me. I’ve watched you, I’ve seen how you’ve killed chickens, pigeons, that suckling pig we had for Christmas years ago. You twist their necks — you do it quickly and without the animals feeling pain. It’s fast and painless.”
“You want me to kill you? Señor Luis, are you crazy?” The two men stood by the wall in the garden facing each other for what seemed like hours. Each was desperate — Luis needed Eladio to follow his final orders, and Eladio, who for the last four-plus decades had always done as his employer asked, for the first time ever, would be defying him.