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©2004 Jeff Percifield Caribbean Writer 2004
ÁNGEL MORENO (EXCERPT) I was making mojitos when I first got in on the Plan. I had just negotiated a
profit with a fat German tourist who’d tried to give me Euros. "No Euros," I declared, “only
dollars.” He grunted, and slipped me a twenty. I crushed the mint in the bottom of the glass
with a fork, added brown sugar and lemon, ice, rum, and soda, handed him the
glass, then me and my friends Luis and Jacobo watched through a broken window
while the German porked Marisela, the skinny negrita jinetera1, on the back seat of a 1947 Impala. “He jumps like a
frog,” Luis said. It
was entertaining, and besides, we couldn’t watch TV as the power was out in
town again. I was seven years old, a black-market entrepreneur in Cuba, a
socialist paradise with an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. “Ángel Moreno!” I
turned and blinked: it was Senorita Montes, my mutton-faced teacher. “What filthy
children!” she snapped. What was she doing here? She carried a stick with
which she swiped at the others, who scrambled out of the way, although she
clipped Luis. “Look at you!”
she said. “What will become of such a child?” I tipped my chin
up defiantly. “I’m going to be a jinetero!”
I declared. She smacked! me across
the face. I hit her back but she grabbed
my wrist. “You must come
with me, Ángel,” she said firmly. “You
have a scholarship.” “Que?” I paled. In Cuba, to win a scholarship means an
appointment with State Security. What
had I done? Or rather, what hadn’t I
done? I lived with my
Aunt Trina, at least I think she was my aunt.
But I didn’t stay there much because of my hated cousins. Aunt Trina worked at the Department of
Revolutionary Metaphors and her boyfriend was a ‘tour guide,’ meaning he slept
with European tourists for hard currency.
I wanted to be a jinetero too
when I was a little bigger – say, ten – but right now I hung out with the
unemployed, AKA the Defenders of the Revolution. (That is, if the Revolution
failed, they would have to go to work.) I mixed drinks, ran bribes, informed,
stole dogs for the butcher, and hustled tourists for Marisela, although I hoped
to increase my staff. “I didn’t do
anything,” I insisted, as Senorita Montes hustled me along. “That’s the
problem, Ángel,” she said. Poor thing,
she was too ugly to be a jinetera, so
she had to work for pesos. You can’t eat
pesos. We
came to the school and I froze. Out front was a 1959 black Chevy – it really
was State Security, with two beefy mulatos
beside it. But what really worried me
was what was next to them – my father. “Hello my
shame,” he said. My mother I
hadn’t seen in over two years. I heard she lived in Santiago with her new baby
and boyfriend. I was left alone when my
brother Jesús set off for the States on a slab of Styrofoam. “Take me with
you!” I’d begged him. “You’re too
little,” he said, even though he was only twelve at the time. Now he lived in
America where he would be a baseball star like El Duque, and as soon as I
could, I would follow. My father showed up once or twice a year and Aunt Trina
would tell him horror stories about me. He’d beat me, give her some money, and
vanish. But he’d never come to school. “Gracias, Senorita,” he said with a leer
– always the playboy – then yanked!
me into the car. “Where are we
going?” I said as the mulatos drove
us away. “Listen to me,”
my father said, “you are not going to ruin this for me, escucha?” He took out a handkerchief and swiped his brow, as it was
humid. “You will do exactly as you are told, you little shit. Or I will break
you into pieces.” We bounced along
the steaming asphalt, ruts sprouting weeds and cornflowers, past the sepia
countryside, a snapshot frozen since 1959: shanties and naked children, burros,
bicycles, listing telephone poles. In Cuba, the modern world had passed us by;
if Columbus had pulled up in his caravel, he would have felt right at home. It
was a stucco of socialism smeared on a colonial frame, flaking away in the
Caribbean torpor. We had healthcare but
no medicine, education but no books, housing but no roofs, a glorious past but
no tomorrow. And now, it
seemed, I was in big trouble. “I didn’t do anything,” I announced. “You’re just
like your mother,” my father sneered, “completely worthless.” I looked at him.
“My mother is beautiful,” I said. He
looked at me and turned away. Actually I
didn’t even have a picture of my mother, and, sadly, could not recall what
she’d looked like, only that she was beautiful. Every time I saw a pretty
soft-drink model, or a lovely tourist from Madrid or Buenos Aires, I’d think,
she looks just like my mother! With
some excitement, I watched as we turned towards Havana. Havana, city of ruins,
tumbling into the sea! She was a stained
etching in charcoal and faded glory, empty plazas, walls canting every which
way as if they did not know that Modern Art was subversive. She was a tropical beauty who cast off her
dour Soviet babushka and now tarted it up in hot pants and pumps, trolling for
dollars, but she didn’t pay her bills so they turned off the electricity. Across the
rooftops, as far as the eye could see, an armada of waving laundry, dirty white
flags of underwear: we surrender! I
leaned out the window, smelled frying fish and plantains, whistled at a jinetera with a nose like a toucan, and
my father pulled me roughly back. His hair was sweating; I had never seen him
this nervous, but then I saw why. We were going up the hill to the mysterious
and much-feared Directorate of Democracy. They waved us
through the triple-guarded gates, we drew up in front of a crumbling staircase
embroidered with moss, and the mulato goons
ushered us out. Inside, guards marched
us through a maze of shadows and obfuscations, past pillars of lies upholding a
framework of failure, iron ramparts of suffering and oppression reared into a
tottering tower of ego, corruption, and ruin. We passed wheezing generators
laboring in the heat, an empty swimming pool shaped like an alligator,
shuttered Departments and Compartments and Retrenchments, and finally swept
into a grand chamber wallpapered with armed soldiers. There sat the Council of Ministers, looking
darkly at us. My father held my hand
tight in his. No one spoke. Then in strode the Maximum Leader. The Ministers
all jumped to their feet. I couldn’t believe it, it was our Supreme Leader
himself, AKA El Comandante, El Presidente-for-Life, the Beard, El Loco Supremo,
and You-Know-Who, in trademark rumpled fatigues and bristle-brush beard. He saluted listlessly, motioned for the
Council to sit, then turned. “Behold!” he
bellowed, with a sweep of his long arm, “here is the future of Cuba!” He was pointing to me. My father could
not suppress a spasm. “There are those
who say Cuba is falling behind,” the Beard said. The Ministers all became preoccupied with
their buttons. “But I tell you, we are forging ahead along the path to Socialism!” I
could think of a great many Russians who would say the path led right off a
cliff, but kept it to myself. “You see,” said
the Beard, “it is all part of the Plan. Tell
me Ángel,” he said, swiveling to face me, “why do you think there is no opposition
press in Cuba, hmmm? Because there is
no paper! Brilliant, no?!” He
grinned hugely, then glowered under his bushy brows until his Ministers
applauded tepidly. He lit a cigar and blew a wraith of blue smoke; it looked
vaguely like the Virgin de la Caridad,
and he frowned. “You see,
Ángel,” he continued, “we could be
rich, if we wanted to. We could be Miami.” I must have
looked skeptical. “Well, we could
be Tampa,” he said. “We could be Vegas, for Christ’s sake!” “We could?” I
said, and my father whapped! me on
the head. “We could,” the
Beard repeated, “but we don’t want to. And why? Because of the Mafia,” he
said. “It took the Revolution to drive
the Mafia out of Cuba, and do you know what it would take to bring it back? The
Disney Channel. That’s all it would take.” He blew another
cloud of smoke, this time Christ on the cross, and angrily waved it away. “Comrades!” he
thundered, spreading his arms. “We aim for another record in sugar production!”
(Meaning, the crop sucked again.) “The children of
Cuba will have new school uniforms this year!”
(Meaning, shorter pants to save fabric; if mine got any shorter, I’d be
wearing a bib.) “I am unveiling
a new, streamlined, Five Year Plan!” He pulled out a scroll, one end of which
dropped to the floor, rolled down the center of the hall, down the steps, and
out the door. The Beard began to recite. Several hours
later, he was still going strong. “Point
nine hundred and ninety-nine,” he read, “in order to increase production, we
will set the clocks back every night, thus adding additional days to the month.
Socialism triumphs over time!” The Ministers
had all fallen asleep. The soldiers, too, were dozing, some snoring. My father
had dozed off too, right where he stood, weaving slightly. I was sitting on the floor, drawing a
dinosaur with a bit of chalk. Even the
flies were sleepy; one of them buzzed lazily, then dropped onto my drawing with
a tiny snore. I brushed it aside. “…pass what my pass, fall who may fall, die who may DIE!” I
looked up. The Beard was posed like a statue, one arm raised, staring defiantly
into eternity. His beetling eyes slid
sideways, aware for the first time that the room was not quite rapt. I quickly raised my hand. “Question? Yes?” “Por favor,” I said, “when are we going
to crush the Yanqi dogs?” He smiled like a
cat. “Soon, Ángel,” he purred, “but we
need a little help.” (Aside from food, shelter, and electricity, we seemed to
be doing just fine.) “We need a teensy weensy bit of assistance, Ángel,” he
continued, “and you can help us.” “Me?” He raised an
eyebrow. “You do recall Elián?” Elián. That
little shit, of course I remembered him.
Elián, in the land of milk and Pepsi, we all envied the brat, who could
believe he’d want to return to this roofless, decaying No-Fun Zone. Elián! It
was all we heard for months. El Loco would close the schools and we’d have to
march in the heat chanting Devuelvan a
Elián! Send him home! (But we didn’t, we made up our own chants,
such as Elián, amigo, mandame un abrigo! Elián, buddy, send me a coat!) “Elián was the
best thing to happen to me since Khrushchev,” the Beard sighed. “Too bad about the mother though.” He swatted!
at a pesky fly, then turned to me. “But that’s where you come in.” He reached
behind his chair, swept up an inner tube (!) and threw it down in front of me, whap! like a gauntlet. Everyone jumped. “You’re going to
Florida, my boy!” he grinned, and lit a cigar. “Oh boy!” I
said. His face
darkened like blood pudding. He took
several enormous strides towards me and leaned forwards, the awful history of
his face just inches from mine. “Only – for – a while,” he said. He
clicked his heels together, spun round, and painted us all a vision of the
Plan. “You will be plucked from the sea by Brothers to the Rescue! You will
tell them your mother and the rest of your sorry balseros2 drowned! The exiles will try to keep you, and
play right into my hands! Your anguished
father will appear on TV, begging for your return!” I looked up at
my father; he curled his lip. “And in the
end,” the Beard finished, “you come home, and I get the kind of publicity you
just can’t buy. It’s a win/win thing:
you get a trip to Disney World, I get a puff piece with Barbara Walters.” It
all was too amazing! But something
confused me. “Where is my mother?” I
said. “Is she coming with me?” My father looked
away. The Beard knelt down in front of
me. “Don’t worry, Angelito,” he said,
“your mother will be waiting for you when you return. She’s in on the Plan.”
And
then, just in case I didn’t understand, he leaned forward and whispered what he
would do to me if I failed at any point. Continued… 1i.e., a carnal entrepreneur 2i.e., one
who leaves Cuba on a raft, or balsa |
