Angela of the Stones Read online

  After the band’s last song, “Eternamente Yolanda” — requested by Sandy who’d heard it in La Trova the previous night — after the last piece of cake has been carried across the street, after the agua de coco has been drained and all the dishes washed up by a team of Pentecostal ladies, Clara bids her guests farewell, her face still beaming and her cheeks flushed with success, then she kisses Wayne and wishes him a final Happy Birthday, and flops into bed beside Yuli who is already asleep. Only then does she drop her mask and shed a few tears for her Ronald who has left her so suddenly and unceremoniously. They are quiet tears for she is of necessity a practical woman, a thoughtful woman who cannot afford to wake her hard-working daughter who has to be up and out of the house early next morning. Clara had known from the beginning that she would be alone someday, for Ronald had been considerably older than her, and not a healthy man. But she had taken the risk. She had stepped out of her confined life and into a new life of adventure and possibility, though Ronald had kept her fettered for so long that she had quite lost face on her street. But that will change after tonight. She holds her newly plump cheeks in her hands and imagines they are Ronald’s hands with that aroma of after-shave clinging, and just a hint of cigar smoke. She falls asleep like that, her cupped face resting on the damp pillow.

  DANIELA’S CONDITION

  On the afternoon of February 14th Daniela climbed five flights of stairs to the rooftop of her apartment building where lines of laundry were flapping in the wind. But that didn’t concern her today — it was Saturday and she did her laundry on a Monday. Nevertheless, as she walked across the hot tarmac she couldn’t help recognizing her neighbour’s red dress, and the threadbare sheets and towels Kirenia was slowly washing to death.

  Daniela had been at the school that afternoon, for the Valentine’s Day presentation — Día de los Enamorados — a day second only to New Year’s Eve when the entire nation celebrates the triumph of the Revolution. Iri and Eli had made special cards featuring big red hearts pierced by arrows. They had presented their cards, prompted by their teacher, after the children’s singing was done. Daniela caught the look her husband had exchanged with Señorita Suárez. She knew that look. He’s fucking her, she thought. The bastard. And Suárez wasn’t the first one. How many times had he promised? Nunca jamás, mi amor. Never again, it meant nothing, you are my number one. Well, he had seven children with five different women, what kind of fool was she? Number one? No! Number five and still counting. Daniela had turned suddenly and left the celebration, telling Armando she had a headache. She was indeed giddy with the beer she’d drunk, but she had no headache. She simply couldn’t bear to stay there a minute longer, watching him with her own children’s teacher. The strange thing was that not a thought had passed through her head, no decision, no plan, she had simply turned and left as though some force from outside was guiding her. It felt good. She’d felt powerful.

  Standing now on the rooftop, holding the cards with their pierced hearts, she sang quietly to herself, the love song that Iri and Eli had sung before the presentation. Un corazón, otro corazón, a mi familia la quiero yo, un corazón, otro corazón . . . She had worried so long about Iri’s chronic shyness. Daniela had always been a shy girl herself so she understood how her daughter suffered, and she felt responsible for passing on that trait. She threw back her head and gazed into the sky. Ah, everything would soon change. Iri was on the verge of womanhood, and anyway, Eli had enough spark for both of them with her impish grin and adventurous spirit. She would look after her big sister. Daniela heard them in the distance, coming home along the narrow muddy path from the school — Armando singing in his husky voice, the girls chirping along with him. Eli shouted when she saw her mami, but Daniela just laughed and waved her arms. A couple of minutes later she heard their shoes clattering on the stairs, and then they were on the rooftop running towards her, Armando shouting, ‘Daniela, Ven acá, come away from the edge! It’s dangerous!’ In that moment she took flight, without thought, her arms spread, her face turned to the blue sky as she plummeted. There was an instant of flurry as though wings were fluttering frantically to carry her, then a moment of blinding pain as something huge and invisible hit her full on and passed right through her body before she disappeared into an impenetrable darkness, as irresistible as the moment when they had placed the mask over her face for Iri’s delivery.

  In the days that followed there was talk in the neighbourhood of Armando’s womanizing, of Daniela’s timidity and bad housekeeping. Everyone felt sorry for the girls and fussed over them. Kirenia from next door, resplendent in her freshly washed red dress, greeted the children when they came home from school, and Armando’s mother arrived to cook dinner each afternoon. Iri hid behind the solemn gaze of her brown eyes, but Eli, though her spirit was dampened, could still be enticed into a giggle, her wiry little body squirming with the unaccustomed attention. Kirenia took over the laundry while Aunt Laura cleaned the apartment top to bottom, clearing out the dirt and dust of years, grumbling all the while about Daniela’s slovenly ways. Laura agreed to sleep over with the girls while Armando stayed at the hospital watching over his wife.

  Daniela was a strong woman. Despite the shattering of her legs and pelvis and part of her spine she had survived, and she was not surprised to find herself alive for she had never planned her death. She had simply stepped off the edge in a moment of spontaneous freedom. When she opened her eyes for the first time and stared up at Armando from her hospital bed, she was confused to find herself encased in plaster from breast to toe. Only when she saw the cast did the pain of her shattered body begin to register.

  Daniela’s strange flight was the talk of Baracoa for weeks, stretching into months. At first the general opinion was that she had attempted suicide.

  ‘How could she do that in front of her daughters?’

  ‘God knows, she’s suffered.’

  ‘Aiee chica, but all men are the same. Whoring is no reason to jump off the roof.’

  It seemed to some a cruel act of vengeance, coming as it did on Valentine’s Day. ‘A clear message if ever I heard one,’ Armando’s sister Laura said to their mother. The family sided with him. They had never warmed to Daniela, thinking her too silent and withdrawn — traits that they interpreted as her having an exaggerated opinion of herself — and she a mere campesina! She was his fifth wife, but their hearts were still with Mirian, the first wife and a woman of undeniable beauty and personality who was still very much part of the family. She lived beside the funeral parlour, round the corner from her ex-mother-in-law, and entertained a steady stream of lovers.

  Armando insisted that his wife’s fall had been an accident, that she had turned to him and the girls as they had burst onto the roof, and had somehow lost her balance and tumbled backwards. ‘Gracias a Dios her fall was broken by the branches of a plátano,’ he said, ‘She would have been dead for sure if she’d landed directly on the ground, especially with all that broken concrete in front of our building.’ In those first days Armando had a strange light in his eyes, and he talked like a madman, repeating himself over and over, talking to anyone on the street who would listen. People thought he might wash his hands of it all when the shock wore off but, surprisingly, the accident brought out in him a gravity and compassion that no-one had ever guessed at. The miracle of Daniela’s survival inspired in him a reverence that spurred him on in his efforts towards her recovery. To have been touched by death, to have survived that fall, his own wife! His energy surged as he rose early to make the girls’ lunches and walk them to school, then he would go straight to the hospital to see Daniela and kiss her poor trembling hands, after which he would swing onto his bicycle and begin his daily tour of the town’s schools where he was employed by the government as chief electrician. After work he would spend the evening at Daniela’s side while family and neighbours took care of his daughters. Señorita Suárez received no more visits, no more secret messages or lustful glances from Armando as he checked the wiring of h
er classroom. It wasn’t a matter of guilt, he just hadn’t the time.

  During her days in the hospital Daniela sought refuge in sleep, her body dragging her down to that dark place where the invisible force continued to collide with her, over and over, plowing through her body until she was hollowed out. Then the dreams stopped and she slept easily, breathing softly like a baby. Ten months passed before she was released, and by then Armando had learned from the nurses how to massage her feet and legs, how to insert a catheter, how to change her diaper, to handle her injections and pain medications, to bathe her and wash her hair as she lay prone on her bed. He set up for her a narrow cot under the window so that she could stare into the blueness of the sky and, when darkness fell suddenly as it does on the equator, bathe in the light of the stars, and of the moon as it reached its fullness.

  On the day that Daniela arrived home and was carried on her stretcher up the four flights to their apartment, Armando felt transported, as though he were bringing home a bride, his sixth wife, an angel dropped from the heavens. Her passivity was thought normal at first but, as she emerged from her shroud of pain into an attention span long enough to watch a half hour episode of her favourite weekly novela, the family began to expect more of her.

  ‘Leave her,’ Armando said, ‘No la molestes. She almost died.’

  His mother pursed her lips, but as time went on with no change in Daniela’s condition the old lady spoke out, ‘Mira! She must do her part, Armandito. It’s been more than a year. Tell her, she has to exercise her arms and legs and make an effort if she is to get better. How will she handle a wheelchair with her arms all floppy from inactivity?’ But Armando continued to defend his wife, and to minister to her needs which were constant and copious, and which became more demanding with the progress of her long recovery.

  It was Kirenia who noticed the blossoming of Daniela. A woman dressed in red notices such things. ‘Qué linda! She’s beautiful like never before!’ Kirenia told the neighbours. ‘Go see for yourself. She’s plump and happy, her skin is shining, I tell you, she’s a different woman, as though she was lit up from the inside.’

  It was true. All that had been gathered within Daniela, suspended for a happier day, was now released. She had become a force like Mirian and all her other predecessors.

  ‘What does he do now for sex?’ Kirenia wondered aloud to the downstairs neighbour.

  ‘¡Dios mio! Surely he’s too tired to think of that with all this work on his hands?’

  ‘But the way she looks at him,’ Kirenia said, rolling her eyes suggestively.

  The truth of it was that Daniela had found in her condition that which she had lacked — the ability to draw the full attention and devotion of her husband. She didn’t mind when Laura and the mother came around nagging and criticizing, because Armando sprang to her defence, more devoted than ever. She no longer felt passive. She had learned to control him by her will, a force acquired in that moment of flight when she had let go of everything. How could she have guessed at such a twist of fate? And at how easily Iri and Eli would accustom themselves to Mami’s new situation. They sat on Daniela’s bed, Iri combing her hair while Eli chattered about her day at school, and when Armando came home she shooed the girls away and drew him to her with the power of her newly found will. ‘¿Mi amor, como estas?’ he would ask. And she would raise her arms to cup his face, and pull him down to kiss her.

  ‘I’ve ordered a wheelchair for you,’ Armando said one Friday evening. ‘It will be here next week.’

  Daniela burst out laughing and threw her arms into the air. ‘¡Vamos a bailar!’ she cried. ‘You will dance me around the apartment in my new wheelchair!’

  Armando began to laugh with her, though his was a husky broken sound, as he took hold of Daniela’s hands and swayed her arms back and forth. Iri and Eli heard the laughter and came running into their parents’ bedroom turning circles inside each other’s arms, faster and faster until they were all spinning and laughing, and Eli began to sing — ‘Un corazón, otro corazón’ . . . and Iri joined in — ‘A mi familia la quiero yo.’ It is April in Baracoa, the month when the winter gush of tourists slows to a trickle. Four years have passed since the accident, and Daniela’s wheelchair rests in the corner of the bedroom a few feet behind her head where she cannot see it. The green plastic seat is covered with a thick layer of dust and grit which enters through the open window when the wind whips up, causing the plátano trees to sway and dance against a threatening sky.

  Four more Valentine’s Days have passed, and the girls are in a different school now. They are growing up and their father has aged beyond belief. His hair is grey and his back is stooped with the years of bending and lifting. Daniela on the other hand is flourishing, her skin smooth and plumped, her eyes sparkling, and on her moist lips always a radiant smile when he enters their room.

  ‘Mira, escuchame, she must do her part, Armandito,’ the mother says, like a broken CD, skipping and repeating endlessly.

  ‘You must put her into an institution,’ Laura says. ‘She needs professional care.’

  ‘In Baracoa? There is none,’ Armando says wearily.

  ‘In Guantánamo,’ Laura insists.

  He shakes his head sadly, ‘I would miss her too much.’

  ‘¿Qué pasará con tu hermano?’ the old lady asks in a tremulous voice as she and Laura ride home in a bicitaxi. ‘What if your brother has a heart attack with all this stress?’

  ‘Claro, where will she be then? Who will look after her?’ says Laura in her I-told-you-so tone. Armando has tried and tried, but despite the fact that Daniela’s arms have developed remarkable strength from hoisting herself up and wheeling herself about the apartment, her damaged spinal column screamed with pain at each jolt and turn, so that in the end she’d said, ‘Take me back to bed, mi amor. I’m not ready for this chair. Put it in the sala. I don’t want it in here reminding me.’

  ‘There’s no room in the sala. I have my bicycle there,’ Armando had protested, and Daniela had smiled and shrugged, lifting her arms to him until he had leaned down and entered her strong embrace, lifting her slightly, pressed against him. Every time he touched her he felt that he was holding in his arms the miracle of life and death. He could not believe that she was still with him, the mother of his children, the woman who had flown through the sky to be with him. He was content to sleep alone in his bed, knowing that she was nearby, her brown face shining in the moonlight, her eyes open, vigilant, staring into the heavens.

  The neighbours no longer talk about Daniela and her family. They have their own problems. Kirenia’s red dress has become a cleaning rag with which she wipes the grease and grime from her broken two-ring burner. It is a mere scrap of cloth, so thin that she can hold it over her face like a skin graft and see every detail of her kitchen transformed by a rosy glow. She hasn’t visited Daniela and the girls in more than a year. Let them fend for themselves. She has enough to do looking after her own family now that her husband has left, that bastard, running off to Santiago with the schoolteacher. How will she cook for her kids? The rice cooker is on the blink and now the burner has only one functioning ring. Perhaps she will ask Armando to take a look at it. After all he’s an electrician. Neighbours must help one another.

  Daniela lies in her narrow bed enjoying a sense of perfect balance. Armando takes care of everything. He washes her and lifts her and cleans her. He massages her legs every night and dabs perfume on her wounded thighs, in the crooks of her elbows, and at her wrists where the veins cluster. She does not think of the future. Illness is a country without past or future. It is a condition that has claimed Daniela as its own and that holds her in the eternal moment. She does not see the fading of her husband’s definition, the paling and puckering of the skin around his eyes, the blurred dullness entering there. She has no fear for the future because it does not exist for her. She lies in her cot and gazes into that patch of blue sky glimpsed through the open window, where she has been hovering, a wingless bird, si
nce El Día de los Enamorados.

  BERTO’S KIDNEY

  He had always enjoyed good health. Even as a child when his siblings and schoolmates were falling sick around him with la gripe, la tos, dengue, ear infections, Alberto had been a tough little lad. He spent his time on the street with a raggle-taggle gang, playing baseball with a makeshift bat and a small stone for a ball. He was a loose-limbed cheerful boy, but soon after his seventh birthday Alberto woke to a sense of neglect. Mamá had no time for him. Fredy and the twin sisters demanded all of Libya Castro’s attention with their whining and snivelling. ‘Go on with you, off to school,’ she’d tell Berto as she hurried to the pharmacy to buy medicine for Fredy’s cough, or antibiotics for the twins’ gripe. It was a struggle with so little medicine available in Baracoa, always el ultimo, perched on the south-eastern tip of the island, far from the nation’s capital which, even though it was situated at the rear end of the grand alligator which is Cuba, managed to gobble up all of the resources. Life in Alberto’s household was a series of medical crises from which the healthy boy was excluded so he learned to take a back seat and help his mamá in small ways which she failed to notice, being in a chronic state of anxiety over the ill health of her children, and her own rising blood pressure, exacerbated by the philandering of a husband who rarely showed his face at home in the evenings.

  But as the years passed Fredy and the girls grew out of their childhood illnesses and began to enjoy good health, a state which proved however to be temporary for once the twins were married, within a month of each other, and then Fredy too — moving in with the family of a plain though well-endowed girl one street over — they began to reproduce and were weighed down with the responsibilities of raising their own sick children. There were bills to pay, hungry mouths to feed, clothes to wash and, in the case of the sisters, infidelities to weep over at the kitchen table. As for Fredy, whose wife was faithful, though insaciable en la cama, his aches and pains increased with the years, his blood pressure rose alarmingly, and he had to take frequent time off work for emergency visits to the polyclinic which was unhappily located next door to the funeraria.