They walked along the cleanly raked beach, nearly empty in the mid-afternoon heat. Luis felt tensions being dissolved by the combination of hazy sunshine, a cool sea breeze, and the gentle rhythm of wavelets lapping the sand. He and José walked at the same pace, something they had started doing in adolescence, as soon as both had got their full growth and their legs were equally long. Liliana raced ahead of them and was soon out of sight.
“Celia certainly has her hands full with that little package,” José remarked. “Lucky she has you and Mamá.”
“That is one of Cuba’s strengths. A value system that puts family ahead of everything. But with tourism and this transition to the dollar economy, I don’t know.” Luis shook his head.
“Can’t keep ’em out down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree. Or should I say, ‘out in the cane field after they’ve seen Varadero?’”
“Probably not. It’s hard on the country, though. So many of our best and brightest, well-educated, multilingual kids being seduced by the glitter of places like this.”
“So how do you stop it?”
“That,” Luis replied with a deep sigh, “is a subject of endless debate.”
José pointed. Liliana was no longer on the beach but above them on the grounds of a large hotel. A band was playing poolside. Waving her arms in time to a salsa beat, she made exaggerated motions for them to come up. Luis felt some trepidation as they climbed the beach stairs of what he knew was a resort complex open only to registered guests. But he took his cue from José, who seemed perfectly at ease.
By the time they reached the pool area Liliana had disappeared. She wasn’t watching the band, nor in the crush of semi-nude men and women, most of them kilos overweight, clustered at the bar. Luis and José walked around the pool to where a larger crowd, likewise dressed in beach attire that exposed large areas of pale skin, moved in time with the music. With laughter that suggested alcoholic excess, couples cut in, switched partners, and called challenges to each other as they danced. Luis squinted into the noisy crowd. She had to be here somewhere.
Suddenly Liliana appeared, gyrating to the music. “Come dance with me!” She held out her arms to include them both. “Don’t give me that stiff look, Tío Luis. I know what a good dancer you are! Come on, Tío Joe. If you don’t know how, Tío Luis can teach you.”
The brothers looked at each other, grinned wolfishly, and moved in unison to dance with their niece. Liliana whirled and clapped her hands, her own daring egged on by José’s uninhibited, inventive style. At first Luis danced a bit apart, getting a feel for the music. Then he moved in to claim Liliana with a repertoire of steps that his brother couldn’t begin to match.
But José hung in there and gave Liliana a twirl or two when Luis passed her to him. Liliana played her role perfectly, so well, in fact, that Luis later wondered if she had sensed their competitiveness and deliberately set them up.
Whatever she might have guessed, one thing she could not fail to have noticed was that he, Luis, was the better dancer. It was him the crowd fell back to watch and applaud. The dance floor was one arena where he had never, not ever, played second fiddle to his brother.
THIRTEEN
CELIA scanned the crowd as the train, with a shrieking of brakes and a rattling of couplings, pulled into the Santiago station. Franci and Philip always insisted on meeting her and were always here, no matter how late the train. Today, thankfully, it was on time.
Celia and Franci had been best friends for twenty years, dating back to the time when, as coltish teenagers, they took a mutual pledge to stop chasing boys and make the grades necessary to get accepted into medical school. They frequently defaulted on the boy-chasing part, and if José had not left for the States when he did, Celia’s pledge might not have been enough to keep her focused on a medical career. Ultimately Celia’s academic achievements outshone Franci’s, but Franci’s love life fared better. Soon after graduation she had married Philip Morceau, then a young naval officer, now a harbour pilot responsible for moving great ships through the dangerously narrow entrance to Santiago’s harbour. Celia always stayed with them when she came to Santiago de Cuba, just as Franci stayed with her when she came to Habana.
Celia spotted them immediately. Even in Cuba, where mixed-race couples were commonplace, they stood out. Philip, close to two metres tall, cut a striking figure in the dark blue uniform. Franci was not much taller than Celia, but she had a style—high heels and a towering Afro hairdo—that gave her the appearance of being as tall as her husband.
Hugs and kisses exchanged, Celia was soon tucked into the back seat of their Fiat. As Philip manoeuvred smoothly through Santiago’s chaotic traffic of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, pedicabs, pedestrians, and horse-drawn carriages, Franci turned half-around to talk to Celia. “Good the train was on time. That gives you plenty of time for breakfast and a shower before heading over to the campus. How’s Liliana?”
“Healthy as can be, making good grades, lots of friends. I could not ask for more,” Celia told her proudly.
“And Luis?” Philip asked.
“Pretty high at the moment. Geology reports from the offshore area near Santa Cruz del Norte definitely show petroleum deposits.”
“Wouldn’t that just make Cuba’s future!” Philip exulted.
“How are Las Madres?” Celia asked.
Franci and Philip looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and laughed. Las Madres was a term they had adopted when they decided to invite their widowed mothers to live with them. The original idea was that the mothers would share a suite above the garage, but that proved unworkable from the start. The move had to be delayed until they could construct a tiny, one-room cottage in the backyard. Franci’s mother had opted for the cottage, leaving Philip’s to rule the roost above the garage.
Observing her friends from the back seat, Celia felt a twinge of envy for Philip and Franci’s intimate laughter. Did the humour derive from their closeness, or were they close because they had the capacity to turn often-stressful situations into private jokes?
Franci laid her arm across the seat, fingertips touching and caressing Philip’s shoulder, and said, “You go first.”
“My mother,” Philip began, “has been reincarnated as a French-Cuban version of Scarlett O’Hara.” He and Franci chuckled in unison.
“How is that?” Celia had read Gone with the Wind ; in fact, she and Franci read it together in their teens. She could not picture Philip’s wizened mother with her overpowdered face and pixie cap of dyed red hair in any way resembling its heroine.
“She is given to recalling the ‘gracious days’ when our family owned a coffee plantation in Guantánamo Province.”
“Wasn’t that a while ago?” Celia asked. “Like, uh—”
“Two hundred years ago,” Philip cut in. “But the way she talks, one would think she grew up in a plantation culture instead of a Guantánamo barrio. You know, I studied French in college but we never spoke a word of it at home. Now she affects a French accent, and if you let her, she’ll bore you out of your gourd talking about la culture française.”
“And servants,” Franci added. “She keeps reminding me that they had more than two hundred slaves.”
“No!” Celia gasped. “Surely she realizes—”
“That my ancestors were slaves? Apparently not.” Again Franci and Philip reached out to each other with sympathetic laughter.
“Then there is my mother.” Franci turned to look at Celia. “She has become a serious, and I might add much respected, Espiritista.”
“Santería?” Celia surmised.