The officer gave her a moment to settle in. She looked at him and recognized him. He waited until the two guards had departed and closed the door.
“Hello,” he said in extremely good English. “Welcome to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Cuba. What a pleasure. We meet for the third and final time. I am Major Ivar Mejias of the Cuban National Militia.”
She processed his name and face immediately. He was the commander who had headed the reception committee on the beach and the officer who had examined her passport in the lobby of the Ambos Mundos.
She tried Spanish. “Mi llama Anna Marie Tavares y soy ciudana mexicana,” she said. She then took it a step further and requested a lawyer.
With no smile whatsoever, he shook his head.
“No, no,” he said, remaining in English. “No lawyers. Not necessary. A trial is not even necessary. You’re an American criminal and counterrevolutionary,” he said. “And you’ve had the misfortune to be captured. Ten years in prison? Twenty?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be you. Your luck has run out. Unless you cooperate with us, your freedom is gone forever.”
SIXTY
Alex was sweating profusely. The white dust from the prison had formed in patches on her skin. It itched and was beginning to cause a rash. Now her heart was jumping too. She knew the man in front of her not only had been on her trail since the moment she arrived, but he was a professional interrogator.
Several seconds passed. They looked eye to eye. Nothing from Alex.
“I have a theory,” Major Mejias continued in Spanish. “It’s my own theory but I’m proud of it. It goes this way: each one of us has only a certain limited amount of deception in us. We can waste it incrementally on the small things, or we can blow the whole bundle on one big life-size lie. Either way, it runs out eventually, our supply, and what we’re left with then is the truth.” He paused. “What do you think?”
She blinked, stared at him, and said nothing.
“All right. Let me put another question to you,” he said. “You would seem to be an educated woman. Cultured. Not what we normally process here. Are you familiar with a film director named Luis Bunuel? He was a Mexican citizen, though born in Spain. Went to university with Dali and Lorca, the painter and the poet. It was said they were all Communists together in the 1930s.” He lapsed into Spanish. “Bunuel. The director. You know of him?”
She made a decision. She would try to follow his conversation, to see at least where he was leading. “Yes, I know who Bunuel was,” she answered in Spanish.
“Good. What was he known for?”
“Films,” she said.
“What sort of films?”
“Enigmatic ones,” she said. “Bunuel’s films were famous for their vibrant and distorted imagery.”
“Very good,” the major answered. “There were scenes where noble young men who aspired to sainthood were tempted by prostitutes. There were women with beards, bears in living rooms, and chickens populating nightmares. He was also well-known for his atheism. Bunuel once made a film in Mexico about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. Yet the place was happy because no one suffered from guilt. ‘It’s guilt we must escape from, not God,’ Bunuel once said. He also once said, ‘Thank God, I’m an atheist.’ Now. Talk to me, mi amiga. What do you think of all that?”
“I don’t think anything about it because I haven’t thought much about it,” Alex answered.
They had worn her down physically. Alex now knew they were starting the mind-twisting games. Mejias wasn’t even taking notes. She assumed that, somewhere, others were listening and that a recording was being made. She held by her cover story, that she was a Mexican citizen and had come into the country legally on the twenty-fourth of May. At this point, she was praying they were plain stupid, or inefficient.
“I’m going to ask you several more questions,” Major Mejias continued in English. “You would be wise to cooperate. If you answer all of our questions, we can afford to be extraordinarily generous. We might even send you back home after a short time. Home is America, isn’t it? Now, why don’t you begin by telling me your real name?”
“Anna Tavares,” Alex said again. The major steepled his fingers.
“Very well,” Mejias said, adding in English, “let’s try another. En realidad, let’s try this again from the beginning. Why are you in Cuba, and why did you enter the country illegally?”
“Hablo espanol,” Alex said.
“Yes. Of course you do,” Major Mejias said. “But you also speak English,” he said, switching back to Spanish. “We all know this. How is my English, by the way? I think I speak it reasonably well. I spent two years at the University of Toronto. Have you been there? It’s quite a beautiful institution. Beautiful city also. But they only have two seasons – winter and July.”
“Hablo espanol,” Alex said again.
“I’d like to see your hands,” Major Mejias said.
Alex didn’t make a move. Her hands were already on the table out in front of her.
“Sus manos,” he said.
He reached to Alex’s hands and turned them palms up. She did not resist. A condemned feeling started to creep up on Alex, one that went with her sense of panic. It wasn’t just the situation, the filth, the danger; it was also the unrelenting isolation. The heat continued to assail her as well. She could even hear the occasional tick of her own sweat hitting the floor. And there was a stench in this office, even worse than the stench of backed-up plumbing in the jail. At least the bugs were gone, for now.
Major Mejias examined the interior of Alex’s hands, paying special attention to the palms and fingers.
“Interesting,” he said in English. “It is amazing how much one can tell about a woman by her hands. You have very nice hands. The hands of a wealthy woman perhaps. No scars, no nicks, no calluses. You work for a living as something professional, such as a lawyer or an accountant or a businesswoman. Or you don’t work at all, which means you’re married to a man who is highly affluent.”
He pulled his own hands away and gave Alex’s back to her.
“I’m told that you insist that you are Mexican,” he said. “But a Mexican lady of your social status would speak passable English. At least that’s my experience. Yet you refuse to speak to me in English or acknowledge my efforts. That tells me you’re hiding something.” He paused. “You already owe me one enormous favor,” Mejias continued. “You were in line for some of the more brutish inquisitors, people who have trained against the drug traffickers and who use unspeakable physical means to obtain answers. In some rare cases, yours being one, I am allowed to intercede when we have a more sophisticated prisoner. So I have limited time with you. How limited, even I do not know. I will need to leave today with something, or the more thuggish in my trade will take over. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Hablo espanol, no hablo ingles,” Alex said.
“Let’s cut the charade, shall we? How are you feeling?” he asked in Spanish. “Have you been treated well?”
“No,” she said.
“Good,” he answered. “This is a prison. That’s the way prisons should be. Prisons are the sewers of civilization. Do you wish to spend the rest of your life in a sewer, maybe die there, too?”
He again took her hands, gently, not roughly, but as a physician might.
“Look at this white powder, for example. It’s from the jail cell, isn’t it? I’m told that there is a microscopic bacteria in it that infects the flesh. A small parasite perhaps. Hydrocortisone cream soothes it. Perhaps you’d like to see a doctor after you start to speak with me.”