Queen of the underworld, p.23
Queen of the Underworld, page 23
“How did Don Waldo happen to be Lídia’s father-in-law?”
“She eloped with his son, Jorge, when she was sixteen. Abuelito got it annulled and Jorge entered the Jesuits.”
“Now wait, was this the same Jesuit who taught Castro and became his friend and supporter?”
“You remember everything, Emma. Yes, that is Jorge, but Don Waldo was telling us tonight that Fidel is now beginning to turn a cold eye on all priests and nuns, even those who were his dear friends. Poor Don Waldo is going blind. His wife had to sign the register.”
THE POOLSIDE party I walked away from three hours earlier had undergone changes of tempo, set, casting, and even lighting. The little orchestra Lídia had hired off the street was playing a slow, romantic dance tune. A singer had been found from somewhere and he was crooning a song many of the guests sang or nodded along with. I picked out the words “dos gardenias,” “te quiero,” “te adoro,” “mi vida,” “corazón,” “calor,” and “beso”—all of which suddenly recalled to me that my own corazón, Paul of the Roses, would be with me as soon as tomorrow. A few couples danced; the other guests chattered in Spanish around the wrought-iron tables that Wednesday’s tornado had sent shrieking across the concrete. Waiters (from where? La Bodega?) served drinks on trays.
But all this was background, the guests (who appeared to be a fresh batch) relegated to the role of extras hired to provide ambience for the center-stage pageant.
NEAR THE entrance to the pool, two floor lamps with fringed shades had been brought outside and hooked up to extension cords to illuminate the wondrous-strange proceedings. Within the twin circles of golden lamplight were gathered what first appeared to be three seamstresses bent over their work: Marisa Ocampo, her daughter Luisa, and the tall young mulatto woman who was Don Waldo Navarro’s bride. Flanking them and facing each other in matching wing chairs dragged out from the lobby were portly Don Waldo, cheerfully puffing a cigar, and Lídia, arranged like a compliant schoolgirl, ankles crossed demurely below the flounces of her red flamenco skirt, head modestly lowered, reading aloud the topmost note card from the stack in her lap.
“Cuando no puede vestirse de piel de león, vístase en la de vulpeja.” When you cannot dress yourself in the something-or-other of the lion, dress in that of . . . Damn it, what was a vulpeja?
Appreciative nods and murmurs. A sweet little twitch of Luisa Ocampo’s mouth.
“Saber ceder al tiempo es exceder . . .” To know blank of the time is to . . . what? ¡Mierda! Poor show, Emma.
The voluminous taffeta traveling dress was spread across the laps of the three who were intently picking out its seams, squeezing out one after another the contraband note cards of Don Waldo’s memoirs, and handing them over to Lídia, who all of a sudden became aware of Alex and me observing their tableau from the sidelines.
“Niños, come and join us! Don Waldo, this is our young periodista I was telling you about, Emma Gant, who writes for the Miami Star. Emma, querida, may I present my dear cousin and mentor, Don Waldo Navarro, one of our great men of letters.”
Gripping the arms of the wing chair, Don Waldo with a rolling motion of his rotund belly was making ready to rise.
“Oh, please don’t get up,” I said.
But already he had nimbly sprung himself to full towering height. “Why not?” demanded the jovial sepulchral voice. “I am still a vertical animal.”
He laughed and grasped my hand in both of his, as Hector Rodriguez had done earlier. A Cuban masculine thing?
“Encantado, señorita Gant.”
Though Alex had said Don Waldo was almost blind, the old man appeared to be taking me in with the full advantage of twenty-twenty vision in its prime.
“They tell me you have been working late at the paper, señorita.”
“Yes, a good friend just died. I wrote her obituary.”
“Ah, I doubt I shall have such good fortune.”
“Sir?”
“I mean that a good friend will write my necrología. It is especially unlikely in Cuba now. Certainly not in Granma.”
Delighted laughter from his adoring circle, except for his wife Altagracia, who simply kept on picking out stitches from her amazing traveling dress. Perhaps she knew little or no English.
“The official newspaper of the Revolution,” Don Waldo explained to me. “Granma was the name of Castro’s sailing vessel in his botched attempt to bring down Batista in 1956.”
“Alejandro!” Lídia called sharply just as Alex was edging away. “Una silla for Emma, por favor.”
Alex turned on his heel. “En seguida, Doña Lídia,” he replied dryly, executing a curt bow.
“And—and bring a chair for yourself, too, of course,” Lídia called after him, a mollifier he gave no sign of having heard.
“Tell me, señorita Gant, how do you find living among this hotbed of exiles?”
“It has given me a taste of being an exile myself.”
“¿De verdad? I am curious to hear more.”
“Language, for a start. I guess it’s mostly about language.”
“Please continue!”
“Well, here I am among people who speak a language I have studied in school and still I can understand only about one word in every five, if that. But the situation could be much worse. What if the Julia Tuttle were a hotel filling up with Polish exiles or . . . or Swahili exiles?”
“Then both of us would be in trouble,” remarked Don Waldo, with his basso profundo laugh. “But please, go on!”
“And then, looking at it from the other side,” I continued, aware that I had captured his interest, “these people . . . I don’t mean like yourself or . . . or Marisa Ocampo, who went to an American school . . . but many of the people here find themselves having to start all over with little or no English. And it’s demeaning. You lose your graces. Being bereft of your native language even affects your posture.” (I was thinking of the gesturings that accompanied the Spanglish hash of handsome Enrique Ocampo, whom Alex and I had just glimpsed hunched at the switchboard, waving his hands wildly in an attempt to make himself understood to the party on the other end of the line.)
“A very perceptive observation, señorita Gant.”
“I wish you would call me Emma, Don Waldo.”
“With pleasure . . . Emma. One of my favorite heroines. We are on our way to Princeton, where I will deliver a lecture titled ‘The Journey from Delusion to Reality in the Novels of Jane Austen.’ With particular emphasis on Emma, and, to a lesser degree, Pride and Prejudice.”
Don Waldo’s fluent British English was lavishly colored with Spanish intonations, and his Spanish s’s and z’s thick with the castellano lisp. “Providential for Altagracia and me, the Princeton engagement was confirmed eighteen months ago. It afforded us the perfect opportunity to vamoose.
“ ‘You are traveling light, compañeros,’ they said while pawing through our things at José Martí Airport today.
“ ‘Ah, sí, compañeros, only these lecture notes on Regency literature you have examined from my briefcase, a change of shirts, an extra pair of eyeglasses, a change of outfit for my wife—pasamos la luna de miel, we are making a short honeymoon out of my lecture obligation before we return home.’
“ ‘Ah, felicidades, compañeros. Buen viaje. ¡Hasta pronto! ¡Viva la Revolución!’
“ ‘¡Viva la Revolución, compañeros—hasta pronto!’ ” Don Waldo lowered his voice to a throaty whisper. “¡Pero no aguantes la respiración, compañeros! Or as we say in English, don’t hold your breath! Then, very calmly, with deliberation, I replaced the lecture notes into their little hammock where they ride in my portafolio, I closed it with a smart click-click, and then, very calmly and with majesty, Altagracia took my arm and she and her whispering skirts swept us through the last barrier into the departure lounge, which we call la pecera, the fishbowl, because it is enclosed by glass.”
“And nobody suspected the whispering skirts?”
“Por Dios, nobody. Again providential that susurrating skirts are in fashion.”
I was racking my brain for a half-remembered line of poetry, the susurration of the pines, something like that—Poe? Whitman? Milton?—to keep up my end in response to Don Waldo’s agile parlance, when Enrique Ocampo brought out “my” chair. He was placing it according to Lídia’s instructions—next to her, not to the great man of letters—when the musicians struck up a jaunty little number that elicited a roar of joy from Don Waldo.
“Ay, ‘Bonito y Sabroso’! Who can resist? Emma, may an old man have the honor of this dance?”
Having acquired the rudiments of Latin dancing under Bev Nightingale’s tutelage, I accompanied Don Waldo more or less confidently to the dance floor. The music was fast, but hadn’t I cha-cha’d successfully with Tess’s precise and sinuous Hector Rodriguez earlier this evening?
However, I was no terpsichorean match for Don Waldo. At first I tried to follow, always a half beat or more out of time with his confident, high-bellied prancings. We were doing, as it turned out, the mambo, a much faster and more syncopated cousin to the rumba and the cha-cha. Every time I tripped over one of his sudden dips or pivots I apologized profusely, but he gamboled blithely on, singing the words to “Bonito y Sabroso” along with the vocalist, smiling as though he had Isadora Duncan in his arms. He was astonishingly dainty for a man of his height and girth. When I finally went limp and let him take over, it worked better. Several times he literally swept me off my feet.
Once the ordeal was over, I expected to be led back to my appointed chair next to Lídia, after which he would select a more competent partner—his lovely young wife, for instance, or Marisa Ocampo, or Lídia herself, who had shot several disapproving looks my way.
But the next song was “El Manisero,” which Pepe Iglesias and I had danced to at St. Clothilde’s. Pepe had brought his very own 45 single of “El Manisero” to a tea dance and Mother Patton had allowed it on the turntable—“A simple Cuban folk melody about a peanut vendor,” she had announced. (She also endorsed the rumba, with its arm’s-length requirement for good form.) With no part of our torsos touching, Pepe took gloating pleasure in coaching me in the song’s double entendre lyrics. “Here, listen: in this passage, the manisero, the peanut vendor, is advising the housewives and young girls not to go to sleep without first tasting some of his hot nuts!”
With a rumba one could combine conversation. For half a second I was on the verge of sharing my Pepe and “El Manisero” story with Don Waldo, but I realized in time that the possible loss of respect from that gent was not worth the joke. I opted instead for safe Old World courtesy and congratulated him on his marriage.
“Muchas gracias, Emma. Altagracia has no need for an old rooster like me, but it is my good fortune that she desires to serve. I don’t mean like una criada, a servant, but like a religiosa. She has the soul of a nun. She offered to leave me and enter a convent, but I said, Wait! Enter my convent and see the world. She was raised in my house, her mother abandoned her to her grandmother, Altagracia, who was my ama de llaves, my housekeeper. When Altagracia died, the girl asked permission to take her grandmother’s name. Rosita, the name the girl was given by her unfortunate mother, did not match with her soul, she said. She was perfectly willing to leave Cuba with me as my ama de llaves, but I explained why she must go as my wife. In Cuba, you see, we are all shades of the rainbow. Batista himself was a mulatto, though he’d have you executed if you reminded him after he became dictator. Mulato lindo, that’s what they called him when he worked as a water boy on Enrique Ocampo’s father’s plantation, ‘the pretty mulatto.’
“ ‘We are going to the United States of America,’ I told Altagracia, ‘where people of color use separate baños and must sit in the rear of the guagua, the autobus. You must be Doña Altagracia Navarro in order to receive the respect to which you are entitled.’ ”
“What is the difference between calling someone señora and calling her doña, Don Waldo?”
“ ‘Don’ and ‘doña’ are marks of respect to a superior person—or else to a very old monument like myself. The use is dying out, however.”
Alex must really be vexed with his mother to have addressed her coldly as “Doña Lídia.” And she, who now regarded me none-too-warmly from the sidelines, had picked up on it, too.
The peanut vendor was urging the housewives and maidens to partake of his hot wares before they went to sleep, and I thought it prudent to cast my eyes down while knowing laughter rippled from the surrounding tables of Cubans.
“How long will this revolution of Castro’s last, do you think?” I asked Don Waldo, when we were back on safe ground.
“It is not easy to predict, Emma. Fidel insists that his revolution is as green as the palm trees. But there are those of us who have lived through previous revolutions who are saying this one begins to look more like a watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside. If Mother Russia does decide to play godmother, we may live to see some very strange fruits growing from Cuban soil.”
17.
“COME, EMMA,” BOOMS Don Waldo’s sepulchral voice.
“Where are we going, Don Waldo?”
“You are embarking on your journey. Tell me when you are ready.”
“Is it far?”
“Geographically, no. We need only cross the lobby of the Julia Tuttle.”
“The Mother of Miami. My aunt Tess’s grandmother sewed Julia’s dresses before her untimely death. Julia’s death, I mean, not Tess’s grandma’s. Julia worked too hard at her dream and now nobody knows who she was.”
“Granma in COO-bah is the official newspaper of the Revolution.”
“The Watermelon Revolution.”
“Very perceptive. May I offer you my arm? We will cross the lobby together.”
Our passage is sluggish, as though we are dragging through ankle-deep water. But there are the dry Mediterranean tiles below us, though for the first time I notice that each tile bears the face of a different primitive god. All of the faces are spiteful or malevolent.
Don Waldo stops to converse in Spanish with the dominoes players. I can follow the gist, though they rattle along at breakneck speed. Don Waldo is explaining that the American señorita understands more than she lets on. He tells them I am going on a journey.
“We will miss her,” says one.
I feel ashamed of not perceiving them as individuals. When will I learn to pay more attention?
Now we’re standing outside the Julia Tuttle, where the cars pull up.
“Any minute now,” says Don Waldo. “Ah, here they come.”
A sleek black Cadillac materializes out of the darkness and glides to a stop under the canopy. The chauffeur, in full livery, is Tess. In the backseat, head modestly bowed, is a woman whose face is obscured by a dense bridal veil. Next to her, looking heartbreakingly desirable, is Paul Nightingale in wedding clothes.
“It is a great match,” Don Waldo intones. “Beneficial to everyone! They are embarking on their honeymoon.”
“La luna de miel,” I translate, trying to hide my pain.
“You will be bilingual in no time, Emma. Aren’t you going to offer them your felicitaciónes?”
“They aren’t even looking at me, Don Waldo. I seem invisible to them, or are they under a spell?”
“The spell of el corazón, sí. But you are a young woman who started ahead of the game and will want to do the correct thing. Think of Jane Austen. Ay, niña, don’t let them see you cry!”
“I can’t—” I am dissolving.
“Then simply raise your hand in farewell, señorita. They are your compañeros primeros, the ones closest to you when you fall asleep.”
I make a supreme effort and lift my arm and flutter the fingers in a limp, childish way. Tess in her natty chauffeur’s cap continues to face front serenely, but Paul has seen my gesture. He gives me a cool, curious look—Who is that woman going to pieces outside the car?—then returns his attention to his bride. He lifts her veil and raptly contemplates his prize: Ginevra, Queen of the Underworld.
“They were made for each other,” booms Don Waldo. The front door of the Cadillac swings open and Don Waldo moves forward and without a glance at me folds his great bulk into the front seat, beside Tess. The black door swings shut and the four of them glide soundlessly off into the night.
Oh God, how did I not recognize it, when the signs were all over the place? Tess putting me off about getting together with Ginevra, Paul pretending to be up at the Inn in North Carolina, Bev offering the decoy of Aunt Stella’s death, Don Waldo keeping me dancing and chattering inanely to “El Manisero.” This was too much to bear, it must be a dream, any moment now I would wake up.
But it’s not a dream, a voice-over says, because didn’t you see the Cadillac sink when Don Waldo transferred his weight inside? That is a detail from reality. And here is Lídia in her red dress of the evening: more reality.
“Oh, there you are, Emma. I have been looking everywhere for you. We are going to need your help in the kitchen.”
“But Don Waldo said I’m going on a journey.”
“What journey? Nobody told me about a journey. Your journey is here with us. Look what I have done, to save you time.”
She unfolds an apron with something embroidered on it. “You like it, querida?”
She has cut my initials, Loney’s beautifully embroidered handwork, out of my new blouse and carelessly tacked them onto the apron, which she now attempts to tie around my waist.
“Hold still, Emma, there is much we must do. Dios mío, what is the matter now?”
YOU . . . YOU . . . HAD NO RIGHT . . .
Though my wail of outrage was enough to awaken me mid-cry, the malign residue of the experience hung thick in the room.
What was the purpose of these melodramas authored by the nether side of my own mind while I slept? Or was there any purpose? Assuming there was, then you either looked for omens—Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams—or you looked for a pattern in the story that pointed to something in your waking life that you needed to pay attention to.
