Angela of the Stones Page 13

  Godo sometimes goes to the Pentecostal service on a Sunday morning when there’s no business on the street with everyone either in church or sleeping after a night of fiesta and amor, raising their heavy heads only to blink at the light seeping in through the blinds, then rolling over for another half hour of shut-eye. Last Sunday, after a couple of rousing hymns accompanied by the Pentecostal band, with drums, saxophone, guitar and keyboards, the pastor had delivered an hour and a half of Biblical instruction. After listening intently Godo had come to the conclusion that the pastor was rather full of himself. He had created an argument with Immanuel Kant on the subject of egoism and identity, accompanied by a slide show operated by a boy with a laptop computer, while Clara’s daughter Yuli signed energetically and expressively for the deaf members of the congregation. The pastor had explained that the “I” is a false premise. To say “I confess,” “I believe,” “I intend,” is wrong. ‘¡Solo dios!’ he bellowed with sudden emphasis. ‘Si Diós quiere, si Diós intenta, si Diós crea . . . ’ And Godo had realized in that moment, after listening to this grammatical evidence, that Pentecostalism was in fact a socialist doctrine. He knew from previous sermons that Pentecostalism flourished all over the world, and particularly in Latin American countries such as Guatemala and Honduras where the message had been carried by missionaries. But strangely they were countries where socialism had been repressed. Godo had wondered at this basic contradiction. Of course, if people were gathered in worship every evening they wouldn’t have the opportunity to . . . Ah well. He’d swatted at the flies clustering on his ankle as though it were still an open wound. The instincts of creatures without a brain to speak of were quite remarkable, he’d mused.

  When Godo tuned in again the pastor had moved on to the topic of Israel, ‘The city of God,’ he claimed. Godo had caught something about war and thought that the pastor was going to address the topic of the Israeli war against the Palestinians, of which he had read in Granma. Cuba of course aligned itself with the Palestinians because the USA was heavily in support of Israel and, as everyone knows, your enemy’s friend is your enemy. Apart from that, Baracoans are particularly sensitive to the plight of Palestinians because they themselves are dubbed ‘Palestinos’ by the sophisticated folk of La Habana who have strong opinions about the folk in Oriente despite, in most cases, never having ventured there. Godo had realized after listening further that the pastor spoke only of the past, and of Israel as a Biblical place. He’d closed his eyes then and drifted off.

  He was woken by the piercing voices of the children’s choir. Ah yes, there was Pablito in the front row, singing lustily and hopping from side to side on those big shoes as though he needed the toilet. Everyone around Godo had been wiggling their legs to keep the flies off, the entire Church a hive of perpetual motion. After the children’s songs and poems came the lady pastor for a final oration and a hymn. She was a large woman and quite shapeless, Godo had noted, aside from her enormous breasts which sagged under their own weight. She’d stood with her legs apart, gripping a large microphone, and sung into it, her ecstatic face flushed with a blotchy rush of blood. ‘¡Gloria Diós!’ shouted the congregation, one by one raising their right hand in testimony to the existence of the Lord. And there was the idiot boy, shouting louder than any of them, drooping his head down to pick his teeth with the crucifix that hung around his neck. He was a mature man now with his mamá long since dead, but everyone called him muchacho, which made him grin and nod in agreement. Lord knows how he survives, Godo had thought, watching him picking away with great concentration and pleasure, prodding his gums until he’d begun to drool bloody saliva.

  Godo is almost home now, rounding the corner at Museo Matachín, past the CUPET gas station, only one more street over to # 35 Raúl Cepero Bonilla where he has lived all his life and expects to live until he dies. He enters the tiny house and goes immediately to his bedroom and turns on the radio. A broad smile spreads on his face when he hears the theme music from “The Piano,” a film he saw years ago at Cine Encanto — about a beautiful woman who has been struck dumb and who speaks only with her hands — small hands flashing back and forth, writing words in the air; and her child who reads those hands and translates her mother’s words to the world. But her real manner of speaking is through music. She has a piano and she plays it passionately, the notes cascading with a turbulence of feeling that Godo understands and which makes him feel less alone in the world. As the music ends he continues standing, feeling the resonance in his body, tired and dusty from the street, but oh so full of the day.

  He has purchased a mickey of street rum for 5 pesos cubanos and he takes it from his bolsa and goes with it to the corner by his front door where the coconut head of Elegguá is propped against the wall. Elegguá, King of the Santería orishas. He is the Guardian of the Crossroads, of all roads and doorways, and without His blessing nothing can proceed or succeed in the world. He is the power in the universe that allows people to move from place to place. Godo had prayed to Elegguá in the dark days, to allow him to rise from his wheelchair and move forward, to walk better and better, without a limp, to live his life with gratitude and grace. He unscrews the cap, takes a mouthful of rum and leans down with pursed lips and bulging cheeks to spray it over the empty coconut shell. He does this three times, unaware of the glistening drops of spirit that catch the fading light and create a halo around his own head. Then he smiles with a feeling of great contentment and takes a fourth swig and swallows.

  FIDEL’S SILENCE

  December 31, 2014

  The end of another year in Baracoa, and the streets are packed with Cubans and tourists alike, the locals parading new outfits or segundo mano clothing as though it were a fashion show. A stage has been set up on the boulevard and musicians are gathering there, along with teenage contestants in the Polo Montañez karaoke contest. Ángela and her old man shuffle by with their plastic sacks, rifling through the garbage cans. Eugenia’s grin is broader than ever as she tugs the tourists’ sleeves with her free hand, the other swollen with a bunch of cucuruchu cones she holds like a sweet bouquet. She has a bag of chocolate bars on her arm too, fresh from the Che Guevara factory, all the way out on the road to Mabujabu.

  El manisero sits on his usual bench outside the barber shop on the boulevard. He’s had a haircut and a shave for the new year. He runs his hand over the smoothness of his jaw and tosses his head proudly, feeling young and fresh after the attention of the barber’s deft hands. He spots Heike across the street and waves to her. ‘Godofredo!’ she calls and comes hurrying across, accompanied by a leggy, booted, mini-skirted girl with partly shaven hair in a mass of coppery curls with blonde and brown streaks. ‘This is mein Freund Sofía,’ says Heike. ‘Mucho gusto,’says Sofía in a sleepy voice, offering her soft brown hand. She is from ‘Barthelona’ she says, on an exchange program, studying at the university in Havana. ‘But Baracoa is a long way from La Habana,’ Godo says, offering a cone of peanuts. ‘I came here to study with Osiris Rivero,’ Sofía explains. ‘He is most respected in my country as an archaeologist.’ She has mulatta skin and deep brown eyes. She could almost pass as a Cuban, Godo thinks, though there is something slightly different about her — perhaps it is her clothing or her gestures that mark her as a foreigner. And that lisp of course, that Spanish lisp.

  ‘Yesterday I travelled by jeep with Rivero on curving roads slick with red mud, all the way to El Faro, the lighthouse.’

  Godo nods, though he’s never seen El Faro. It is far away, past Cabacú and Jamal, all the way to Maisí on the southern-most tip of Cuba.

  ‘I stood on the beach and waved across the water to my papá in Haití,’ she says dramatically. ‘Papá went back to his country when I was a child.’ She pulls a cigarette from a crumpled packet and offers one to Godo. He shakes his finger, but Heike takes one and the girls light up and blow plumes of smoke into the night air. ‘We saw cave drawings,’ Sofía whispers. ‘Rivero took us into a cave lit only by a flaming torch, and we saw t
he drawings by that flickering light, animals and hunters running with their weapons in pursuit of food. Imagine!’ she exclaims.

  ‘And she saw bones too,’ Heike says. ‘In a clearing outside the cave,’ Sofía cuts in. ‘I knelt and uncovered a patch of earth with my fingers and I found bones, small bones, perhaps from a finger or a toe.’

  The voice of the first Polo Montañez contestant crackles through the loudspeakers on either side of the improvised stage, and they all turn to watch the teenage boy singing bravely from beneath a huge sombrero, clutching his microphone in a sweaty hand, while the other contestants wait nervously on the street, shifting from foot to foot. One of them is wearing a T-shirt with the union jack emblazoned on the front.

  ‘¿Qué es esto?’ Sofía asks. Heike explains the contest while reaching into her purse for a twenty. ‘¡Feliz Año Nuevo!’ she says to Godo, pressing the note into his hand. He cannot help himself. He embraces her with force, holding onto her, thanking her effusively before she can run after Sofía who is already dancing in the street with the gathering crowd. No need to sell tonight, he tells himself with a smile as he stashes the precious note in his bolsa. He finds an empty bench and sits with his arm resting along the back. Almost immediately he feels a tap on his shoulder. Yoendri Romero, he thinks even before he turns, for this is the painter’s signature greeting. Romero likes to surprise his friends and he laughs as Godo turns and mimes a shocked expression. ‘Closed my studio tonight,’ Romero says, ‘No-one buying on Nochevieja.’ The painters of Baracoa usually work through the evening in their open-door studios so that the strolling tourists can come in and browse. Often a customer will buy simply because he’s seen the painter at work and can take an original home with a story of “watching the artist create it.” Romero pulls on a tiny flask and offers it to the peanut vendor. ‘No no no,’ Godo says, wagging his finger, ‘I don’t drink.’ This is their ritual. The painter drinks steadily throughout the day and, like any drinker, he enjoys company, so the offering and the refusal have become a kind of complicity between them.

  ‘Ah, the power of silence,’ the painter says, leaning back. ‘What is he thinking?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s remembering all the words he’s said for all these years. He’s earned his silence,’ the peanut vendor says. And in the silence that follows as Romero ponders his friend’s reply Godo imagines Fidel lying in an old man’s bed, narrow, monkish, raising a trembling finger as he opens his mouth to speak.

  ‘No more fishing trips,’ the painter says.

  ‘No more diving into the waves,’ the peanut vendor replies.

  ‘He beat Hemingway at golf,’ the painter says, dragging on a freshly lit cigarette.

  ‘He drove the Mafia out of La Habana,’ the peanut vendor says.

  ‘It was Celia who swore to protect our girls.’

  ‘He always listened to Celia,’ Godo nods.

  ‘It was only after she died that he began to talk about refrigerators . . . ’

  ‘Tractors, rice cookers,’ the peanut vendor interjects, ‘For hours on end he’d talk.’

  ‘And we all listened, my friend,’ the painter says, shouting over the ear-splitting music.

  ‘He’s made his mark,’ the peanut vendor says, ‘He’s as grand as Hernán Cortés, Diego Velasquez, the Pope himself.’

  ‘All reduced now, like a good soup, to this strong silence,’ the painter says, taking another swig from his flask. ‘But what is he thinking, my friend? Everyone in the country is sitting in front of his television asking, Where is Fidel? Why do we not see him? Why is he silent?’

  ‘He’s stopped writing his Reflexiones in Granma.’

  ‘Precisely, this is my point,’ says the painter. ‘Is he ill? Is he dead? Is he angry?’

  ‘He’s waiting for the right moment.’

  ‘Perhaps his mind is gone.’

  Godo wags his finger. ‘He’s making the silence speak. With this silence he draws more attention than his brother.’

  ‘Ah, Raúl,’ the painter says, ‘The little brother with the cruel streak. Our Comandante nurtured that weakness when he made him Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Remember the executions after the Revolution?’

  The peanut vendor shrugs.

  ‘No, you were too young. But tell me, Godofredo, why did he not speak when his old friend Gabriel García Márquez died? Why did he not speak when the CELAC summit convened in La Habana? When our Tres Heroes were released only two weeks ago? When Obama spoke? How could he remain silent through all that?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s run out of words,’ Godo says ominously, and they both collapse with laughter, slapping their knees, laughing till tears run down their cheeks.

  ‘But seriously,’ Romero says, which causes them both to burst into a fresh bout of laughter. ‘No, really,’ he says, gasping for breath, ‘This business about ending the embargo . . . ’ He turns to Godo whose hands are raised in a gesture of surrender. ‘No, no, my friend,’ he continues, ‘We want to know what’s going on in the world, but believe me, the internet is full of propaganda.’

  Romero knows what he’s talking about. He’s travelled outside, exhibiting his paintings in European galleries. He has a son living in Sweden, and one in France — places where gigantic billboards display images of voluptuous girls with moist lips, and virile young men with bulging crotches; where television and computer screens are cluttered with commercial messages in a confusion of imagery and sound that have made him feel increasingly out of control with each visit. When he comes home it is to rest his spirit in the relative quiet. Of course, Cuba is noisy too, he acknowledges as the lyrics of Polo’s Guitarra mía blare through the overamped speakers. But it is a different quality of noise, one that does not penetrate his mind and rob him of his thoughts.

  ‘Do we want hotel developments all along our coastline like Miami Beach? Do we want foreigners extracting our natural resources?’

  Godo does not stir. He has heard these questions many times and knows them to be rhetorical.

  ‘This is how they wage war now,’ Romero continues, ‘Not with guns, Godofredo, but with commerce and industry, the new weapons. Look at Sherritt!’

  Godo has never seen the Canadian nickel mine in Moa, but he has heard about it from Heike, who sees it from the plane when she flies into Baracoa. ‘A scar on the beautiful jungle landscape,’ she’d said, ‘Die rote Erde zerkratzt und verwundet!’ — that was how she had described it in a moment of passion. Godo did not understand German, but he could tell from Heike’s face that Moa was a mess.

  ‘Believe me, Godo’ — Romero leans in conspiratorially — ‘What the United States offers is artificial and dangerous, and our young people will embrace it in their ignorance. They don’t know what it was like before the Revolution. They know only what they learn in school — José Martí’s philosophy, Fidel and Che’s slogans . . . ’ He pauses to tip back his flask for the last drop, then pockets it and lights up a cigarette.

  ‘We suffered more in the Special Period than we did before the Revolution,’ Godo says bitterly.

  ‘Bah! Our youth couldn’t care less about the Special Period!’ Romero scoffs. ‘They live in the moment and they want computers, cameras, clothing and shoes, lipstick and nail polish, motorbikes, cars . . . Raúl must block this move to end the embargo before they flood us with their new weapons. How can we resist? Es, es . . . un virus. This is what Fidel is thinking, this is the advice he is giving his brother. Tourism? We can deal with it. We already live off tourism, the harm is done.’

  Godo rests his chin on a curled fist and rocks his head back and forth, measuring and balancing Romero’s words, while the painter inhales deeply on the butt of his cigarette. They’ve hardly noticed the people parading past them on the boulevard, spilling from bars and restaurants, until their thoughts are shattered by a sudden roar from the crowd as the winner of the Polo Montañez contest is announced and a skinny youth leaps forward to receive his prize. The crowd surges forward cheering, and balloons are r
eleased into the darkened sky as though it were already midnight. Then the shouting begins — ‘¡Feliz Año Ñuevo, Feliz Año Ñuevo!’ — and Godo realizes how quickly the evening has passed. He turns to Romero and embraces him, slapping his friend on the back, which produces in Romero a coughing fit, so Godo has to smooth his back in circles until he is better. When Godo turns his attention back to the crowd he sees Heike and Sofía jumping up and down amidst the revellers, with their arms wrapped around each other, and he wonders where Heike’s boyfriend Adolfo is on this, the most important night of the year.

  As Godo leaves the old year behind and begins the long walk home with Romero’s words echoing in his mind, he is surprised to see something propped against a pillar outside Cine Encanto. As he moves closer and bends to touch the thing he realizes it is Ángela, covered in a white filmy cloth that gives her the appearance of a shrouded corpse. Godo resists the urge to touch her in case she wakes and starts shouting at him. There is a sack at her side, its twisted neck disappearing under the shroud where it must be held tightly in her hand as she sleeps. He walks on through the deserted streets anticipating with pleasure the thought of curling up in his own bed with the accumulation of dreams and reflections that is his life. The charm of going home alone to his private room with the tiny kitchen and the crumbling baño out back is cut only by the poignancy of missing Marisel; or even better, a woman with whom he might have shared the riches of his inner life. But she does not exist and his sister does, so he focuses on her.

  On January 3rd Godofredo climbs the hill to the cemetery with flowers for his parents’ grave. He makes two annual pilgrimages, one for his father who died on this day twenty-eight years ago, and again for his mother’s anniversary in August. On his way out, after cleaning the grave and placing his flowers in a mildewed vase, he is greeted by Pablito at the cemetery gate. ‘Hey, manisero, you want to buy a puppy?’