The transparency of time.., p.15
The Transparency of Time--A Novel, page 15
“I’m going to travel, Conde,” his friend began. “I’m gonna try to, at least.”
Conde sighed, relieved. Was that all? Nobody was dying, everyone’s prostates and livers continued on?
“Well, you’re going to travel! That’s great, I’m happy for you and … Nowadays, everyone travels…”
“I don’t know if I’m going to come back.”
Conde felt like he’d been hit. His friend was leaving? Another one? But Rabbit was one of them, the persistent ones, determined, a fellow survivor—and now he was thinking of leaving them, too? Who would turn out the light at el Morro when there was no one left?
“What are you talking about, brother?”
Rabbit looked at him unblinkingly.
“My daughter did the paperwork for me. Andrés is going to cover the costs. If they give me a visa, I’m going to Miami for a while. And there, I’ll decide whether or not I’m going to stay. Esmé and Andrés say they’ll help me. But I’m scared. Scared of going and not coming back. Scared of coming back and…”
Conde felt on the verge of crumbling.
“How long? You, Andrés, Skinny, Esmé, Josefina—everyone and their mothers! How long have you all been planning this?”
“I don’t know. Two, maybe three months.”
“So why didn’t you say anything to me, Rabbit?”
“Because I’m scared,” his friend admitted.
“Look, Conde,” Carlos interjected, but Conde stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“Scared of what, Rabbit?”
“Of everything. Of traveling, of staying there, of preferring to return,” Rabbit said. “Of you being pissed at me.”
“Why did you think I’d be pissed?”
Rabbit looked at Skinny Carlos again, and it was Skinny who responded.
“Because we know what you’re like, Beast … Because we love you. Because you’re already pissed, aren’t you?”
What Carlos had said was regrettable, but true: this felt to Conde like a question of love, and at that moment he felt like a groom about to be jilted at the altar. Nevertheless, he tried to overcome his ego, his instinct to preserve his tribe, the awakened sense of loss announcing itself on the horizon.
“What the hell are you going to do in Miami? You’re sixty years old. Here, it’s a miracle that we get by, but we do get by…”
“People also get by over there. Things here are getting uglier every day and seem to be headed for worse. Anyway, I really don’t know if I’m going to stay there, Conde. I don’t even know if I’m going to get to make the trip, if my wife and I will be able to get visas … But what I want is to try. At least that. And, if they let me leave this island, I want the opportunity to choose for myself whether I stay in Miami or come back. Once I get there, I’ll do the math and figure out if I was wrong to come … It’s not really that I want to live in Miami. It’s that for people like us, we’ve never been able to choose, and to choose wrong. We had that right taken away from us.”
Conde nodded. He knew that any argument he could make wouldn’t work against the sound logic of his friend’s lived experience. His desires for the privilege to be able to choose, and be proven wrong … perhaps even proven right. But Conde’s discomfort had nothing to do with logic, but with his feelings. If they kept losing friends like this, what kind of solitude would await them at the end? In what swamp would they drown? In what state would their naked souls reach their final destination? Feeling uneasy, he lifted his gaze and once again contemplated the avocado tree that had nourished them so many times, their bellies and their spirits. The tree, at least, remained. The tree was still there.
“You’re right, Rabbit,” he said at last. “Yes, you should try, and be wrong as many times as you want. That’s how we know we’re still alive, right? Ah, and if I find that Blessed Virgin and Bobby pays me, you can count on that money for whatever you need. With what’s left over, Skinny and I will go get drunk forty times over and tell the same stories again and again until we burst like fireworks … Or until you come back and tell us whether or not you were wrong about what you decided for yourself, about whatever the hell you did because you fucking felt like it. But you know what? I’m not gonna save any avocados for you. I’m gonna eat them all, till I have avocados coming out of my ears.”
* * *
Shortly before 8:00 p.m., Conde was posted on the side of Parque Central next to the run-down Cine Payret. With the noise of Rabbit’s decision still buzzing in his head, he studied his surroundings, which seemed not to change, until the setting of the sun. And not for the better. He saw that many of the policemen patrolling the area had German shepherds and were armed as if they were in Star Wars. It was soon obvious to Conde that with the arrival of twilight, the stunned masses that frequented this place in the light of day had been replaced by shifty, shadowy characters, looking for their fix: money, sex, amusement, or all of the above, by any sordid means necessary. It was cockroach time. For not the first time, he was happy that he wasn’t a cop anymore, that he had the option of watching this scene from the sidelines as a simple shocked onlooker before the spectacle of a bubbling, growing world—one that hadn’t existed back during his days as a cop.
The Bat appeared half an hour later. It seemed that he’d bathed, because he didn’t stink like he had the day before. He was wearing a shirt with silver sequins and his eyes looked almost normal, perhaps a little smaller than they should be. Was that because of his defect, or just the effects of marijuana?
“What’s up?” Conde asked as the kid sat down on a bench.
“You’ve had me working like a madman, compadre.”
“Don’t make stuff up, Yuniesky. Did you buy yourself that shirt with the money I gave you?”
“Yeah,” the young man smiled. “It’s hot, right?”
“Really nice,” Conde confirmed. “Now spill it. What’d you find out about your buddy Raydel?”
The Bat hesitated, then decided to go on.
“The Albino spotted him recently in San Miguel del Padrón, in that ‘settlement’ where all those Easterners stay. He has a cousin there named Ramiro.”
“Ah, I’ve heard of him. Ramiro what?”
“Ramiro the Cloak. I don’t know his last name. But they call him the Cloak, so he must be one hell of a guy, right?”
“How’d you find that out? This cousin, did he do the hit on that gay guy’s place with you and Raydel?”
“Listen, you’re asking a lot for someone paying so little!” It was clear from his reaction that Conde had hit the nail on the head. “I already told you what you wanted. I don’t know Ramiro. Be happy with what I’ve given you and pay up.”
Conde looked at him like he didn’t know him.
“Your cut comes later, if I get to do business with Raydel.”
The Bat nodded. He seemed relieved. “Shall I tell you something that’s worth five big ones?” asked the Bat. Conde waited patiently. “Did you know that Raydel was not his real name?”
“Buddy, I’m the one who told you that yesterday.”
The Bat scratched his head, which was a fitting gesture for his namesake.
“Damn, that’s right. It was you. This stuff I’m smoking is really something. The other day I took a couple hits and that little guy over there”—he pointed behind him, at the statue of José Martí—“he told me about a monster that eats your insides…”
“So, do you know what Raydel’s real name is?”
“No, I don’t. Manduco doesn’t know, either—he’s the other partner he had in that underground beef business. The Albino was the one who told me where Raydel is. Apparently he’s owed him money for a while now. What a singao! That’s why he changed his name and everyone’s after him.”
Conde nodded. “I’m going to go out there and look for Raydel tomorrow. Do you want to come with me?”
The Bat opened his eyes, until they were almost a normal size. “You’re crazy!” Then, lowering his voice, “Nobody can find out I gave you the green light, not Raydel or the Cloak or anybody else. If they do, they’ll fuck me up.”
Conde nodded again. “So, when did the Albino find out that Raydel was with his cousin?”
“About a week ago. Raydel told him that as soon as he sold a few things, he would come see him and settle up his debt.”
“A week … So maybe he’s already flown the coop.”
“Where was he gonna go? Back to Oriente? Nah…” The Bat was thinking. “I swear, if Raydel is anywhere, it’s there, in that neighborhood. That’s like the pirate cave, where he keeps his booty.”
“But he can’t be keeping the stuff there. He’d be crazy to do that.”
The Bat scratched his head again. Maybe it itched from thinking too hard. “That’s true. But he couldn’t keep it in Santiago, either, right?”
Conde stood up. “Tomorrow, I’m going to San Miguel.”
“What about me? How do I get my cut?”
“I’ll stop by your house. You have my word.”
“Your word?” the mulato asked, crestfallen. “Whose fucking word is worth anything in this world, big man?”
“Mine,” Conde said. “You’re going to believe it, because you’ll have no other choice once you see it with those bat eyes of yours. Yeah, your top is really nice…”
7.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2014,
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY
The unhealthy stench of poverty and overcrowding rose up to meet them, stunning them with its aggressive impact. It smelled of lost hope and the currents of dark waters flowing through uncovered gullies, of oil fried over and over again, of the putrid bins surrounded by millions of buzzing flies, of makeshift pens where pigs rolled around in mud and shit. It was a painful mixture.
The night before, as he was drinking with Skinny Carlos, Conde had planned this trip to the city’s catacombs as if he were storming Berlin. This hazardous embassy seemed to be the only place he was likely to find the Raydel impostor and Bobby’s strange Virgin of Regla. He had no choice but to follow this lead.
Candito the Red had succeeded in finding the name of an Adventist located in the “settlements” of San Miguel del Padrón, and had been willing to accompany him. Rabbit had also wanted in on the adventure. They’d finalized their plans and agreed to meet at nine in the morning in front of Red’s tenement building, where Conde picked them up. Despite Yoyi’s offer, Conde had opted not to include him and his shiny Bel Air in their risky voyage to an unknown world.
When they’d all climbed into the beaten-up but still functional Studebaker that Conde’s neighbor secretly and occasionally hired out, driver and all, the voyagers headed southeast down the Calzada de San Miguel del Padrón. Shortly before reaching San Francisco de Paula—the village where Hemingway had purchased his Finca Vigía and lived for twenty years, from which Conde had once stolen some panties that had known Ava Gardner’s most intimate intimacies—they veered left to a neighborhood on the side of a hill, which had been given the none-too-imaginative name of Lookout Heights. From there, one had a panoramic view of Northeast Havana, including part of the bay and the neighborhood that was home to the Virgin of Regla. From a distance, suspended above all its turbulence, they saw a city that seemed peaceful, perhaps even inviting.
Following directions they received from locals, they had driven through a maze of streets full of potholes, water pipes, people, and wandering dogs, until they reached the last navigable part and what had to be the limits of Western civilization. There, Conde, Candito, and Rabbit got out and took a dirt road toward the edges of the “settlements,” as its inhabitants insisted on calling it. The driver remained behind as guardian of his old Studebaker, which had provided him his livelihood and whose integrity he would stay to protect.
Barely three hundred feet from the once-paved street, the outsiders realized that they were entering another universe, as if they’d gone through a black hole and emerged in a dimension outside of time and space. They were approaching a territory that Conde called “the world of the invisible.” The alleyways, made of compacted dirt, grew narrower, windier, and more irregular in their shape, physically manifesting a state of instability and deprivation. On either side of the path, which featured ridges that made it impossible for any vehicle shy of a war tank to make its way through, rose dwellings that grew progressively derelict as Conde and his friends encountered what appeared to be the main drag of the “settlement.” Upon entering this shantytown, they saw some brick houses with concrete foundations, but soon enough the signs of privation and the sight of makeshift dwellings overtook all aspects of their surroundings. Improvised shelters erected using a few blocks and bricks, others made with rotting wood, still others with metal sheets in varying states of deterioration, and even some out of cardboard. They were covered in a wide range of materials, anything that could be tasked with protecting their inhabitants from the rain and sun: the tin and wooden roofs were shielded with waterproof paper, and the most precarious ones made use of tarpaulins or plastic bags, fixed in place with a rock or iron girder. The laws of urban planning, architecture, even gravity appeared to be unknown in that cluster of miserable dwellings, which resulted in a chaotic and suffocating sprawl.
Conde, who daily kicked his way around Havana in search of used books, had thought he knew the most degraded parts of the city: the old proletarian and poverty-stricken neighborhoods similar to the one where he’d been born and raised. Now and again he’d had reason to visit a “settlement” of Eastern migrants close to where he lived, where an unofficial cluster of houses had arisen in an empty lot between two neighborhoods. There he had seen homes crowding one another, wall against wall, erected without any design or agreement, with unplastered walls … Still, one could call them houses. By his standards, that was poverty. But now, walking through San Miguel del Padrón, he was confirming the existence of a greater misery. The substrata of Havana: catacombs of the catacombs.
“What the hell is this, Conde?” Rabbit asked, as if he couldn’t believe what his eyes saw.
“A parallel life,” replied Conde. “It’s a different life, but just as real.”
“Can you really call this life?” Rabbit said, doubtfully.
“Yes, Rabbit, even if they are invisible,” said Conde. “I’ve told you: there’s always someone worse off. Even worse off than me…”
“But how is it that there are people doing this badly? Here, in this country? Now?” Rabbit was asking, alarmed. “It looks like Haiti or Africa … Or Hell. And I thought I was born in a shitty place. But, man, next to this, my house looks like the Taj Mahal.”
“You don’t know what poverty is, Rabbit,” Candido said, emerging finally from his watchful silence.
Later, these outsiders learned that the “settlements” had begun in the nineties, when a group of people from the east side of Cuba, looking for any solution to their misery, had migrated to the capital. These refugees had ended up in that unpopulated territory, a sort of no-man’s-land where they worked to establish themselves with the rocky determination that their reality necessitated: it was a question of life or death. With cardboard, wood, and tin, the pariahs had erected the first of these dwellings and ditches in which to dump their bodily refuse. Then, they began a silent battle for survival, ignored by the majority of the country’s inhabitants, since news outlets never covered this refugee crisis, as if these Easterners didn’t even warrant that kind of attention. Because it was an illegal occupation of state-owned land, various authorities, including the police, had begun to accost the occupants. But each time they were evicted, the displaced returned, accompanied by new, desperate families from all over the country. Overnight, they would revive their primitive houses in the very spot where the previous ones had been torn down. Some erected other, new dwellings in neighboring parcels and settled there like the conquistadors they were. Facing a cycle of eviction attempts, the dwellers of this nameless shantytown formed human barricades against the offense of legal authorities—links of children and women, even pregnant women, determined to impede the advance of police cars and the heartless bulldozers belonging to construction-cum-destruction deputations. This battle lasted several years, in the absence of other options for a people who were determined to survive, even without running water, sewers, electricity, or the ration books that guaranteed Cuban citizens minimum subsistence at subsidized prices. It was a battle in which there was no turning back and which required all of their efforts and energy. Through perseverance and desperation, the refugees achieved their Pyrrhic victory: incapable of offering them even a minimally dignified alternative, the powers that be decided to look the other way and let the refugees live out their precarious existence there, on the condition that they remain invisible. This truce began the era of “come and contribute,” as they came to call it. Under this strange arrangement, families were encouraged to take over a plot of land with enough space to build a dwelling, and a few additional feet to raise a pig or plant some plantains to contribute to their subsistence. With slight variations, this had been the origin story of several such “settlements,” which had multiplied like acne around the city’s periphery. It was only many years after the “settlements” were first established, when they were already too visible to ignore, that the public was conscious of them at all.
Instinctively Candito took the lead. He hadn’t forgotten the lexicon he’d acquired during his time as a street fighter; he had it ready as he approached some of the “settlement’s” many inhabitants wandering around the paths. After looking them over several times, one local finally deigned to indicate the way to the house of Oriol the Saintly, as the Adventist was known in these parts. They filed through a steep, narrow passageway alongside which ran an intermittent little stream of fetid water with children playing at its edge. By the looks of it, the entertainment of the season was a game of marbles, which in a few weeks would give way to tops, only to be substituted by the ability to fly kites, then finally abandoned for hopscotch fever, as happened every year. Such was the need to live, grow, and exist—even amid complete shit.
