Raining over Havana

Epigraph

He will spend his days like a shadow.

—Ecclesiastes, 6:12

There was like a big laugh, and this they called History.

—Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch

There is weeping in my heart

like the rain falling on the city

—Paul Verlaine, Romances without Words

I

It was raining hard, as it rains in Havana during the rainy season, with violence and rapidity, in heavy drops that drummed on rooftops and streets, but suddenly the rain ceased and everything was calm and quiet, without any noise reaching me from outside.

My wall clock also stopped, one minute before twelve on that night in May 1992, a sign of bad portent; and then Mónica appeared.

Finally, the mystery of her disappearance was revealed.

She came and told me, I’m going to die.

Morir, fallecer, expirar, fenecer, finar, perecer, muri, mourir, morire, morir; to die many, many words, in Spanish and all languages, indicating the same event, singular and universal, personal and general, the same and distinct, preceding human beings, preceding the earth, the galaxy; loss of energy, entropy, cessation of movement, end and beginning.

We’re going to die. Me first, you later. When? Maybe in a year or two, a few more, but sooner or later it will happen. Always accompanied by pain and suffering.

I was very frightened, not so much of the pain, but of that moment when breathing stops, oxygen ceases to flow and one’s mind darkens, like when we enter a movie theater and suddenly the darkness blinds us.

What will happen?

And it’s all my fault, she said, weeping, embracing me.

Was it her fault? I gently kissed her cheek. Despite my own terror, I had to infuse a little bravery and calm into her.

You know, she said tearfully, still resistant to loving; in other words, living, when the pain comes, I’ll kill myself.

I will kill myself, you will kill yourself, we will kill ourselves when the pain comes, tomorrow, within a year, two, who knows how many, I thought, melodramatically. It was not the moment for such thoughts.

I will die too. I shall die with you, I said and, taking her head into my hands, I looked into her eyes which, veiled by tears, were more beautiful than ever.

Swear to me that you won’t leave me even if I turn into a hag, even if my skin falls off and my hair falls out. Swear it.

I swear, I replied and kissed her again. I swear it to you, my love.

Since then the hands of the clock have gone around many times. That old wall clock, my faithful lifetime companion, previously hung in my parents’ house and before that in that of my grandparents and great-grandparents and even my great-great-grandparents, possibly bought by Felipe Valle, the oldest known ancestor of our family, and passed down from generation to generation, and whose little wooden doors open every half hour to admit a laborious and punctual cuckoo which, that night, did not want to leave its nest, perhaps tired of its eternal mission as the announcer of the hours.

Now the cuckoo sleeps immobile after singing and I remember Mónica, my friend, my woman, my lover, my love.

This is her story and mine, our story. It is a story in which Mónica will disappear, lost, hidden in Havana, a beautiful, ugly, dirty, vociferous city. I shall look for her, but will not find her. In her time, she will appear, but then there will be no time to love and live, just enough to relate what happened.

The cuckoo sang nine times and, as usual, I left for my long nocturnal walk. Before, when I had a real house, I liked to stay in reading. My daughters, twins, sleeping; my wife Baby watching television. I have never liked that box of images. Sometimes, if there was no power or the television was broadcasting some boring program, we talked. I read a lot during that period.

It was when I met Mónica that I preferred to go out for long nocturnal strolls. You could get assaulted, they told me, but I was not going to renounce the pleasure, one of the few left to me, of walking in the night, in the sweet Havana night. Was it sweet?

For me, however unpleasant the environment, there was always a special charm in the atmosphere, above all beside the sea. I walked without thinking about anything in particular and without any plan, letting myself be borne along unconsciously, sometimes in the track of a street dog, or even a cat, pausing before a beautiful early-century house, one of those that Havana’s bourgeoisie had constructed with so much care and in whose garden, oh, unusual Cuban miracle, red roses were growing. How marvelous to know that someone liked roses, someone who watered them with love in the mornings.

Who? An old lady? A beautiful woman? A child? I liked to imagine that we were both watering them.

Frequently the streets were dark, with potholes, and the mansion was flanked by one of those latest buildings, box-style with holes, the supreme exponent of bad taste, and my admiration grew in the face of the incredible relation between the beautiful and the grotesque. How could they coexist? the Beauty and the Beast, yin and yang, the two faces of Janus. And there was I, I alone to confirm the deed, to commit it to memory, I, the Roman patrician of the century, contemplating the Barbarian mounts facing the fountains of Rome. I liked all those personal and trivial comparisons, imagining myself in the body of Saint Augustine, feeling myself at a far remove from the Havana-born man that in reality I was and am.

I left the house behind and continued walking, scrutinizing the shadows, looking at windows, talking to myself; yet another madman in a city of madmen and neurotics, wondering what the people inside their houses were doing at that moment, watching bands of young people on bicycles moving along the avenues like rackety birds, loving couples making love in dark corners. My tour almost always ended on the Malecón, facing the sea. I like the sea. I like observing the movement of the tide, ebbing and flowing eternally, without rest, indifferent to everything other than its eternal task of licking the coast, boring through the rocks. A tide that has always and will always be there, long after all of us. Our lives are like the tide, with high moments and low moments. High tide and low tide; happy life, unhappy life. Years ago, like now, low tide enveloped me.

One night after my walk, I was smoking facing the sea near Hotel Nacional when a young woman, beautiful, stunning, approached me and I said to myself that she was the most beautiful and sensual woman in the world. She stopped to light a cigarette, but couldn’t. The wind, mischievously, playfully, blew out every match she lit. I went up to her and lit her cigarette with my lighter, whose flame flickered for an instant.

Thanks, she said.

Don’t mention it, I answered and she turned toward me.

Her breasts resembled two apricots and I would willingly have bitten into them there and then. She had green eyes and everything about her reminded me of my wife Baby twenty years ago.

Given her clothing and way of dolling herself up, I understood that she was not a woman for Cuban men. She definitely went out with foreigners.

I mistook you for a foreigner, she said in a low voice.

Yes, I’m usually taken for a Sephardic Jew, born in Singapore and raised in Strohausen.

It was a sardonic reply and really stupid on my part, not at all appropriate for getting into the conversation that I wanted to have with that beautiful woman, much younger than me and who, probably, would immediately walk off, leaving me with the intoxication provoked by her body.

I thought you were a Hindu from Brahmaputra, she said very seriously, in a voice that was now louder.

Was she mocking me in return?

For a couple of seconds we smoked in silence, looking out to sea. She seemed tense and was smoking fast, as if she wanted to finish her cigarette as rapidly as possible. Perhaps she was going through a bad time.

Are you all right? I asked, expecting her to reply: What’s it to you? or Leave me alone. But no. She answered me very politely.

Yes, thank you.

What’s your name?

Mónica, Mónica Estrada Palma.

Some time ago I had met a granddaughter of the first president of the Republic. Perhaps she was a great-granddaughter or something like that.

A descendent of the president?

What president?

Don Tomás Estrada Palma.

She had heard of Tomás Estrada Palma, but didn’t exactly know when he had been president. Neither did she know of other presidents after 1906. She didn’t know them and neither was she interested in knowing them.

What was her knowledge of Cuban history?

Later on I discovered that she knew who Martí, Gómez and Maceo were, but not much more than that. Was I talking with an illiterate? It didn’t seem so.

Didn’t they tell you about Cuba’s presidents in school? I said.

I don’t think so, but I was never interested in history.

Mónica smiled for the first time, while a gentle breeze came off the sea and ruffled her hair.

What’s your name? she asked me, and when I replied she asked me the inevitable question. What’s your job?

Housing.

An architect?

Something along those lines, I lied barefacedly. And what do you do?

I’m involved in international relations.

The breeze grew stronger and I threw my cigarette butt into the water. It probably floated for a few seconds before dissolving.

I didn’t ask her what kind of relations. In these times discretion is golden.

A peanut vendor walked past us, hawking his peanuts, and his cry was like the litany of a procession. Peanuts, peanuts, good and hot peanuts, he repeated as he moved off into the distance.

I worked in international affairs once, I said.

She too was discreet and didn’t want to know what kind of affairs.

And are you doing all right? I turned my eyes onto her breasts again.

Can’t complain.

You wouldn’t want to establish national relations with me, would you, I asked, and my smile was captivating and insinuating. My experience with women tells me that, sometimes, you have to be bold and totally risk yourself if you don’t want to waste time uselessly.

For a second she looked me up and down.

Why not? Maybe it would be good to know you.

That young woman was direct and precise, like an arrow that flies to its target. People like that are not plentiful.

Great! I exclaimed. Why don’t we go for a drink or two?

That invitation was very daring on my part because I didn’t have enough dollars to take her to a fancy bar, as she deserved. The only place where we could have drunk was in my bedroom or in any slow-death hole.

What’s the time?

I consulted my antiquated Soviet watch, a present from my daughters.

My watch has stopped, I replied, but it must be around ten.

Another time. Today I want to talk with somebody, just talk and nothing more. We could walk for a while.

If you want to. Let’s walk, that’s what I’ve been doing lately, walking.

I felt disappointed. The vision of her apricot breasts had whetted my appetite and I saw myself with them in my mouth. Suddenly everything was going to be reduced to a conversation, perhaps with a jinetera, and my opinion of their education and intelligence wasn’t very high. However, that night I had nothing better to do.

Unhurriedly, we walked along the Malecón and then up La Rampa, talking animatedly. When we reached M Street, she extended her hand.

This is where I live, she signaled with her head to the building on one side of us.

When can I see you again? I asked anxiously. It was the big moment for knowing whether she liked me or not.

On Monday. Is ten all right by you?

Where?

Around here, on La Rampa. Well, see you, she said and walked toward the door of the building.

You know, I almost shouted as she walked away, you are the prettiest woman in the world!

She turned back, smiling and waved me goodbye with her hand.

Living is difficult, but living in Cuba and being a jinetera is even more so. However, it has its attractions, like frequenting hotels, beaches, discos and other luxurious places, and getting hold of dollars with which to buy more and better food, dress well, acquire electro-domestic goods—a twenty-one-inch Sony television, a tape recorder, compact discs.

Prostitution and prostitutes are millenary words, more or less accepted by everyone. On the other hand, usage of the word jinetera is confined to the island of Cuba. The twenty-second edition of the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, 2001, enters it as follows: jinetera f. Cuba. A prostitute who seeks her clients among foreigners. Correct, but not exact, because the word can also be masculine; in other words, male prostitutes, jineteros, as much with the opposite sex as with their own.

The reason why jineteras seek out foreigners is simple and well-known: Cuban men do not have enough dollars to buy their services.

But at this point jineteras in their totality do not concern us; one in particular does, Mónica. Later, another one, Malú, will as well.

We are being unjust and rather imprecise in describing Mónica as a jinetera. For a Cuban, a jinetera is a woman who goes out into the streets and stops somewhere frequented by foreigners, hoping that somebody will proposition her. As opposed to others, Mónica does not walk the streets. She has had foreign lovers whom she met in a disco or who were introduced to her by Cuban procurers. She was usually maintained by men who were temporarily resident in Cuba and paid her in return for favors. They visited her in her apartment or took her to their houses or a hotel. We could say that she is a classy jinetera, an exclusive jinetera who at present is not in a relationship with anybody. Why? She does not want to go back to the subjection of the tastes and caprices of some foreigner which at times can be humiliating or even degrading. She wants to have a break, rest, and then see. In any case, she has some money saved and that allows her to live comfortably, to an extent.

Él has just met her in the vicinity of a famous Havana hotel that holds old stories of loves and revolutions. He helps her to light a cigarette and looks at her lustfully, because Mónica’s breasts, although small, are firm and very erect, just as he likes them. Afterward, they have talked and have gone walking along the Malecón, which is beautiful, despite its unlit streetlamps, illuminated by a round and satisfied moon resembling a large yellow squash, with that view of the sea and the waves breaking against the reefs. They talk a little about everything and say goodbye like old friends, and Él is left wondering what she is. He thinks that she is a jinetera, but he wants to know a lot more and, of course, go to bed with her.

We are talking of a woman who says that her name is Mónica, but there are also things to be discovered about Él. His life might be very interesting or very unfortunate, although when it comes to misfortunes it is difficult to decide who carries the greater burden in this world. So far, we know that he wants to tell us her story. Is he capable of doing so?

They called me house-swapper but the most appropriate term for my activity is runner, as I work for people wanting to exchange or buy houses. Just as in other countries there are runners for business, real estate, stocks, I was a runner for house swaps.

And what exactly does a house-runner do? inquired an elderly lady who, seemingly, wasn’t abreast of the situation in the country. Perhaps the lady had been asleep for thirty years, perhaps she hibernated; probably, simply, she had never left her house or her sclerosis was advancing rapidly.

Very didactically, I explained to her that, given that it was prohibited under existing regulations to buy a house, one of the few ways of obtaining a new home was by exchanging one for your own, and that is where I came in, in the capacity of an intermediary. You have a two-bedroom apartment and want a three-bedroom one, like that of the gentleman who wants a smaller home, so I put you both in contact and, finally, you both pay me for my services. Not much. Just enough to subsist.

Before that I had a more lucrative activity, a money-changer; in other words, changing pesos for dollars and vice-versa. The dollar is at seven pesos, or ten, twenty, fifty; I buy, buy. It goes up to seventy; thousands of people leave the country on truck tires; the peso drops, the dollar continues rising, to 100, 120; I buy. The dollar goes down, the peso goes up; I sell. The government proclaims economic recovery; I sell, I buy.

That was my work until the police arrested my partner and I had to suspend such an interesting illegal activity.

House-runner, dollar exchange agent: two occupations far more agreeable than being a gravedigger or garbage collector. They proposed me those after sacking me from my last job, when my wife Baby and my daughters, the twins, were still real presences in my life.

Where are you going to work? said Baby and there was concern in her face.

In the cemetery or collecting garbage, I spoke slowly as if my mouth wasn’t working properly.

Gravedigger, garbage collector! The concern was replaced by shock. You, a brilliant journalist!

The guy from the Ministry of Labor doesn’t have anything else for me, I explained, disheartened, only that or cutting sugar cane in Camagüey.

What are you going to do? her preoccupation surfaced again. If you don’t have a job they can charge you under the Vagrancy Act, concern gave way to fear.

I won’t accept and they can do what they like, I said determinedly.

How are we going to live? We can’t manage on my wages, fear was replaced by desperation.

Something will turn up, I said, not very convincingly. I remembered Thomas, the doctor, a Milan Kundera character who, in Czechoslovakia, was forced to become a window cleaner. The doctor traverses Prague, leaving windows clean and getting to know beautiful women. I would have accepted a job like that willingly, but the man from the Ministry didn’t propose it, perhaps because in Havana business windows don’t get cleaned.

Something did turn up. Thanks to the good offices of my former boss, Alejandro Rojas, they sent me to an old books warehouse. There I didn’t meet beautiful women but abysmal African, Russian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz writers and other illustrious paper smudgers that I carried on my shoulder along with all possible equations, chemical and mathematical, in text books.

Disappointed by such superficial relations and in order to avoid the face of an ignorant administrator, the implacable judge of my reading during work and my acid comments on everyday life, I moved on to another job, then to others; each one as mediocre and irrelevant as the previous one and all of them as a state employee. Finally, tired of receiving orders from everybody and nobody, when Baby and the twins were already one more memory, I stopped being a government employee and became the aide to an old man who, in a self-employed capacity and together with his son, did removals in his dilapidated and antediluvian truck. An old man who transported furniture, refrigerators and televisions all over the city and who, on discovering my former profession, began to call me poet. Hey, poet, he used to shout from a fourth-floor balcony as I, puffing and panting, pushed an enormous four-legged oak table that little by little was raised from the ground. On its elevation, the table resembled an animal trapped in an eagle’s talons. Push, poet, repeated the old man, and between his son and me we carried, under a cruel and implacable sun, white-painted chairs which, hoisted in the air, reminded me of the sails of a boat. Hey, poet, don’t fall asleep, the old captain shouted at me from the command post, and I, stuttering, crushed under the mammoth weight of a Soviet refrigerator, heavy, hard, non-functional. Later, at night time, my bones creaked, my muscles creaked, my back creaked and I gave myself long liniment rubs to silence the complaints of my suffering body.

That heavy work was beneficial. It strengthened and prepared me for the long walks in search of houses. In those searches I didn’t only discover houses. Often an amiable lady, whose husband was too frequently absent, wanted something more than a house swap. So we engaged in a strong and intimate relationship that never went farther than two or three encounters, as that would risk getting used to the lady. A man like me mustn’t get used to anything. What is willingly repeated, what gives us pleasure and becomes a habit, is very painful when it’s lost.

Mónica was the exception to that rule and I am paying a high price for its confirmation.

On some occasions I had a bad time on unexpectedly finding that someone wanting to exchange his home was a former work comrade who had become a senior official, or an ex-disciple converted into an eminent doctor. Hell, they would say on seeing me, you, a house-runner? Of course, we all know that house-runners don’t figure very high on the Cuban social pyramid. They were—not anymore—on the level of street vendors and taxi drivers. I got used to such welcomes and replied, malignantly, Here I am, getting rich, while I thought, Go to hell, I’m free and you are subjected to a boss and fixed hours. Of course, that thought was sheer nonsense dictated by my arrogance. In real terms, I wasn’t free either and my former comrades had far better living standards—not anymore.

So, the day that I met Mónica, I slept until very late and woke up tired, depressed. To lift my spirits I drank a glass of rum and after grabbing any old thing to eat, went on my customary tour as a runner. First I visited a semi-ruined mansion on Línea Street, whose owner, an old man of indefinable age, invited me to sit down in a chair with a broken back.

Suddenly, it started to rain. It seemed that something was changing in the climate, because it was raining almost every day.

Look at the house, a marvel, see for yourself, he said and I went on a tour of the mansion.

Enormous cracks were opening in the bedroom ceilings, similar to murky cavities; the walls were like a leper’s skin; and the glass in the windows had been replaced by cardboard.

What do you think, eh? Terrific house. It belonged to the Marquise of Turiguanó, my grandmother, may she rest in peace,