Hostage in Havana

“Alex,” he said, “I can poke gaping holes in my uncle’s Marxist-socialist values the same way he can poke holes in my Western capitalist ones. So what? At some point a man gets tired of looking for the weaknesses in everyone else’s system. I know I do. What did I say a moment ago?” he said amiably. “In the end, it’s just people. It’s family.”

“Did your father stay in touch with his uncles in Cuba over the years?” she asked.

“No. They hated each other for what they believed in. Never spoke again. Never in their lives.”

“So what this trip is about, for you, is reconciliation, of sorts,” she said. “Setting things right. History. Family.”

“You could say that.”

“And no hard feelings?”

“On my part? To whom? No, of course not, none.”

Thea’s voice, calling from the main building, interrupted them. They turned. She walked to them. “Everything okay?”

“Just fine,” Alex said. She liked Thea.

“Senor Johnny’s awake. My boys are helping him. I have two sons – Manolo, who’s ten, and Willie, who’s eight.”

“Wonderful,” Alex said. She made no mention of a husband or father, and Alex knew better than to ask.

“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Thea said. “Alex, let me show you something first.” She took Alex by the hand and led her to a small farm that they kept at a low plateau that ran down toward the beach. They continued to speak Spanish. “We keep chickens and rabbits back here.” She indicated chickens in a fenced-in yard and the rabbits in various hutches. “We trade with the people in the town. It all works out very well. Over there in that field, we raise potatoes, carrots, and onions.”

“No cash?” asked Alex, intrigued.

“Do we raise cash?” she laughed.

“No. You don’t use cash for your transactions?”

Thea shook her head. “Money is scarce. Troquamos,” she said. Barter. She indicated a small inlet that ran up against their land. The water seemed shallow, forming a small tidal basin that was alternately blue and reddish in the light from the setting sun.

“In the evening, crabs and eels come into that little cove to feed on minnows,” she said. “I go out to where the water comes in and we catch them. Do you like eel?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever had it,” Alex answered. “Maybe once. Pickled.”

“You liked?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You should try fresh,” she said.

“Algun dia.”

“Yes, someday,” Thea agreed. “Tomorrow is made up entirely of somedays. I wish you could stay longer. I’d catch and cook eel tomorrow.”

“Someday,” Alex said again.

A screen door slammed up at the cottage. “Ah. Here’s my father,” Thea said.

A trim, tanned Cuban stepped out. Alex looked at him. His appearance was so similar to an elderly version of Paul Guarneri that it was frightening. For a split second she thought she was seeing his father back from the dead. But this was Senor Johnny.

A smile creased his lined face. He lifted his left hand and waved to them. He walked forward a few paces with a shuffling gate, the result of the minor stroke he had suffered a few months earlier.

He waited till his guests had walked up the path to his home. Then he greeted Alex warmly, placed a hand on her shoulder, and welcomed her into his home. It was in that instant that Alex completely understood how Paul had been so easily made to feel like family by people who had lived in a different world than his own.

FIFTY-THREE

They sat in a small dining room, Johnny, Paul, and Alex seated at a table for six. Thea moved in and out of the cottage, completing her dinner preparations. Her boys helped, briskly going in and out of the house with slams of the screen door. Paul and his uncle sat and talked quietly in Spanish over a shot apiece of calambuco, a local moonshine rum. The drink was dark and thick. When they offered her some, Alex declined.

Thea cooked a dinner of chicken and rice, plain but delicious. The chicken was freshly killed and grilled over driftwood on an open-air grill on the north side the house. The rice had been cooked in a pot that boiled on the same grill. Thea added greens from her garden and served. Paul’s uncle chatted and rambled, his cane leaning against the table near where he sat. He told a story about an abandoned building that had recently collapsed in Santiago. The fall of the building had killed three men and two women who lived on the first floor. Like much else in Cuba, he remarked, the building was a paradox. If the building were abandoned, why were there people in it when it collapsed?

“The reason they were there was because they were stealing bricks from the support pillars of the building,” Johnny explained to Alex. “But it wouldn’t have collapsed if it had been completely abandoned. That’s Cuba today.” For some reason, Uncle Johnny thought this was funny, or at least ironic. He tossed back his head and laughed. The old Marxist retained a twinkle in his eye. He treated Alex and Paul as a couple.

“You two, who do not live on this island,” he said toward the end of dinner. “Perhaps you do not know things politically. Can you tell me the difference between a Cuban socialist, a Cuban Marxist, and a fascist?”

Paul shrugged.

“Digame,” Alex answered. Tell me.

“A Cuban socialist has two cows. The government takes one and gives it to his neighbor. A Cuban Marxist has two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. A counterrevolutionary fascist has two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.” He turned to Paul. “How does it work in America?” he asked.

“We have two political parties,” Paul said, “who do things differently.”

“?Como?” Johnny asked.

“An American Republican has two pigs. His neighbor has none. ‘So what?’ the Republican says. An American Democrat has two pigs. His neighbor has none. So he feels guilty. He votes people into office who tax the pigs, forcing him to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people he votes for take the tax money, buy a pig, and give it to his neighbor. He feels righteous.”

Paul’s uncle laughed and so did Thea. Then conversation drifted.

Afterward, they wandered into a sitting room next to the screened porch on the back of the house. The sound of the surf punctuated the night. As promised, there were pictures on the walls, old black-and-whites in frames that didn’t appear to have changed from the 1960s or ‘70s. In each, in varying poses and places, Alex spotted Johnny as a young man, often in his military uniform in the revolutionary army.

Johnny lagged behind. Paul gave Alex a walk-through of the photographs.

“My Uncle Johnny left university in 1957 and served in Castro’s regiment in the Sierra Maestra mountains,” Paul said. “He rose in the ranks. Then Castro’s rebel army split in half and a second division was formed. Uncle Johnny was a major under General Guevara. Johnny knew Che personally. Very well, in fact.”

They arrived at a wall photo that evidenced what Paul was saying. Several revolutionaries huddled together under tree branches, a setting that appeared to be jungle. Paul indicated his uncle with an arm around a thirtyish Guevara.

“As the war continued in 1958,” Paul continued, “Guevara led his divisions west for the push into Havana. They traveled by foot for seven weeks, entirely at night to avoid ambush. Sometimes they didn’t eat for several days. In the final days of 1958, my uncle was promoted again to take the place of revolutionary officers who had fallen. He became part of the high command with Guevara. The rebels cut the island in half with an attack on Santa Clara, the capital of the La Villas province. Santa Clara was the final military victory of the revolution. Johnny was