An Innocent in Cuba by David McFadden

Author:David McFadden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2016-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

DAY EIGHTEEN

AN AFTERNOON AT THE BEACH

Tuesday, March 2, 2004. No spy would walk around the civic square whispering into his tape recorder. Only a totally innocent person, with nothing to hide, would be that stupid. And no terrorist or drug smuggler would drive the wrong way on a one-way street, then stop to ask a cop for directions to the nearest airport. So what’s to worry about?

One nice thing about my casa in Holguín – it has an actual reading lamp. The lamp sits on an elaborate cabinet formation constructed to fit snugly around the head of the bed, and there is a matching chest of drawers with a large mirror. Everything is coordinated in pale cream and brown, or, in ice-cream terms, vanilla and chocolate, or, in arts-and-crafts terms, like the carved whales Enmo and I were admiring yesterday. The reading lamp is an old Tiffany, and if you give it the slightest little touch it comes on, if you touch it again it becomes brighter, and it keeps on getting brighter as you touch it and then it goes out. The only problem – it sometimes goes on all by itself in the middle of the night, as if a moth might have landed on it. Also, on the average of three times out of ten, it will give you an electrical shock when you touch it. A big-enough buzz to kill a bug and startle a human.

Yoelkís and her husband have two sons. One is an engineer who develops air-conditioning systems, and the other is a professor of engineering at the local university in Holguín. They each earn about $20 a month.

On the front door, as you’re about to knock, there’s a picture of a family walking down the street, mama, papa, and two little kids, and standing between mommy and daddy is Jesus. You can see right through him but he’s there. And then on their dining-room wall, over the dinner table, is a large reproduction of the Last Supper. Below that is a small framed reproduction of the same painting, as if they couldn’t bear to get rid of the small one when they came into possession of the large one. Also there’s a ceramic piece about fourteen inches high, which depicts a drunken black man all dressed in a black tuxedo with bow tie askew, and a bottle in his hand, and leaning against a lamppost. And many plastic flowers, such as a splendid bouquet of orange roses with little artificial drops of dew, unnaturally tiny, on each and every petal.

—

Not to be forgotten is that last night at the parque: with the great Máximo Calixto looking down at them with no amusement on his face at all, there were three men sitting together on a bench, talking, laughing. Suddenly one man got up and he started to strut like a stripper on stage, then he pulled a black brassiere out of his pocket and put it on over his shirt, while his friends got up and started laughing helplessly.

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