The Lazarus Rumba by Ernesto Mestre

Author:Ernesto Mestre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2014-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

La Vieja remained alive to hear the end of Brother Joaquín’s story. And the story, I think, had served its purpose; for as I watched him relate it to her (watched him and watched her more than listened to the tale) I saw, in his untimely pauses, preceded by almost inaudibles, pues, deja ver … and followed by all but unhearables, ay sí, entonces, that Brother Joaquín was inventing this tale and with the same ease that a priest transforms wine to blood he had converted dirty riverwater in his fancy flask into the holy Virgin’s urine, one of the many props he would use to keep me alive on our journey homeward. I chided him the morning we left Camagüey, before la Vieja had mounted our carreta: “You don’t know the end of the story; that’s why you couldn’t finish it. You’re making it all up as you go along.”

“What’re you talking about, viejo? This story has been around for years. You, yourself, saw the naked statue. ¿Dónde está la Vieja?”

“She is still saying good-bye to all the doctors and the Party cronies.”

“She is right. They are parasites.”

When she came out a side door of the hospital, they were still following her, young doctors who wished she would stay just a few days more to make sure there would be no regression, journalists who needed a few quotes with which to pepper their article to give it the flavorful sting of verity, Party bureaucrats and CDR foot soldiers who forced little notes into her fists, lists of names and offenses, reporting every one from grandparents to teachers to garbagemen for counterrevolutionary activities, and other notes, careful, if politically hazardous, recordings of hardships not yet eased by Fidel. On our way out of Camagüey, la Vieja sat in the back of our carreta, one cigarette in mouth and one in hand, for they had not let her smoke at the hospital. She rubbed her cheeks with her palms and the healthy rosiness vanished and a gray pallor emerged from underneath. She explained that she had rubbed some of the lipstick on her face to convince the foolish young doctors that she was well enough to leave.

We continued travelling on the shoulder of the Central Highway, making the triangle from Las Tunas to Holguín to Bayamo, which we reached on the 25th of July, the eve of the tenth anniversary celebration of the rebels’ failed attack on the government armory there, the spark that would light the many future fires of la Revolución. There was a carnival atmosphere in the narrow streets that not even our ghastly caravan, nor its pale thin riders, could diminish. Naked-torsoed sweaty mambistas played their drums and barefoot children sang their songs of plenty, sang a comer judías todos los días.

Guillermo and Felipe jumped out of our carreta and joined these children and learned their words. La Vieja directed us to go on, assured us that they would be safe, to go on through though she

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