Hostage in Havana

Chico Fernandez. Cuban. Used to come here with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the spring. So we changed the name on the death certificate and sent the body to a different mortician. It’s under the name C. Fernandez. That’s what I didn’t tell your husband till yesterday.” His eyes searched them back and forth. “C. Fernandez. Plot 234, Section SW4. Life is strange. So is death.” He eased back, as if a burden had been lifted. “Come along. It’s late,” he said. “You should go to the bedroom you will share tonight. Have you made love yet in Cuba?”

“No,” Alex said after a moment of mild astonishment at the old man’s candor. To her side, she could almost feel Paul suppressing a smirk.

“The moon will be upon your window, and the ocean will be in your ears and your soul,” the old fellow said. “You will have a wonderful night. If you make a baby, you must give the child a Cuban name.”

FIFTY-FOUR

In the late evening the old man woke up in the back of the cafe and ambled into Habana Vieja, the old section of Havana, for a final look. Live music was everywhere for the touristas, and hundreds of Habaneros were performing in bands, in shows, and at the restaurants in order to earn their daily convertible pesos, so that they could buy what they needed at the dollar stores. An armada of foreigners swept through the streets. He strolled quietly, keeping to himself and watching with amusement as the tourists were hustled by jineteras, the friendly, charming scam artists who specialized in swindling tourists.

Sometimes it was hard to love this country and its isolation. On occasion, back in the 1990s, the old man, significantly younger then, used to go out to the Jose Marti International airport on Sundays. It was moving to see the hundreds of people standing there in the morning waiting for their visiting families arriving from the U.S. Even though the man and his wife at the time were never expecting family to come, it was still emotional.

But he knew friends who had family.

They would all talk about the feeling they had when the plane was descending toward Cuba. The visitors could see the mountains and the rolling hills and everywhere the royal palm trees. They couldn’t believe how pretty the land was from the air, how fresh and unpolluted it seemed. It was a different world from the Cuban part of Miami that they were so used to, even though a less-glamorous reality waited on the ground.

Eventually, the old man found a table in another cafe. It was night now. He savored the smell of Cuban tobacco, which remained different from all other tobaccos in the world, and to his tastes finer. He bought a Bolivar cigar and began to smoke.

He ordered dinner. To him, it was still so wonderful how well a good cigar went with a Cuban evening, much like the Cuban coffee went with the local milk.

He looked around the square. The most amazing thing remained how old and untouched many of the modern things were. The cars. The colonial architecture, much of it crumbling, much of it still magnificent, even in ruin. He would have liked to have written a Valentine or a love poem to his adopted city. He had an idea where he might start such a letter.

Havana he might have described as an old diva who’d been forgotten by all her suitors but was still trying to look her best. Havana was frequently compared to her sister city, San Juan, Puerto Rico, which was modern, prosperous, and flourishing. Havana had been allowed to fall and deteriorate – physically but not spiritually.

The old man stayed in the cafe on the square till the music faded well after 11:00 p.m. He looked at his watch. He glanced down the block where his old acquaintance, Jean Antoine, the Frenchman, had his restaurant. He knew the Frenchman’s schedule, having observed it for years. The Frenchman would be in the back of his place, cleaning, setting up for the next day, and counting his receipts.

The old man stood. He took a stroll. He cut through a side street and an alley and came to the back door of Jean Antoine’s place. Sure enough, the place was closed and the staff had gone home. But there at a table, counting his money and credit card slips, was the Frenchman. The door was basically an iron grate.

“Perfecto,” muttered the old man. “Perfecto, perfecto, perfecto.”

The old man knocked. The sound startled Jean Antoine, who reached for a pistol, then stopped when he recognized the visitor.

They spoke Spanish. “Oh,” the Frenchman said. “It’s you.”

“Me,” said the old man. “Me, me, me.”

“What do you want?”

“Some company.”

“I’m busy.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re a pest.”

Jean Antoine finished with his cash and stashed it all in a strong box.

“I’m hungry,” the old man said again.

“You know how the lock works,” said the Frenchman.

“Ah. Yes. I do.”

The old man slipped his hand through the grate and undid a latch, which was obscured from the outside. But the old man had visited many times over the years. There had been friction between the two men, serious grievances going each way, but all had apparently been forgiven over the last few years.

The old man entered. He walked with difficulty.

“There’s food in the kitchen,” he said. “On the counter. Take what you want.”

“Thank you.”

Jean Antoine was busy with the credit card slips, working the calculator, trying to finish for the day.

“?Somos amigos, si?” the old man asked. “We’re friends, yes?”

Hardly paying attention, Jean Antoine answered. “We’re friends,” he said. “All is forgiven.”

“That’s good of you,” said the old man.

He passed behind the Frenchman and stopped. He reached into his left pants pocket and pulled out the pistol. Then he thought better about what he had come here to do. Gunshots were so noisy. He slipped the pistol back into his pocket. He went to the kitchen. There was some leftover bread on the counter and some containers of soup. Not far away from them was a cotton dish towel and a large carving knife.

The old man picked up the knife and hid it in the towel. He tucked the two into his belt behind his back. He stayed and enjoyed some soup, watching the Frenchman close out his accounts for the day. He finished his soup.

Without speaking, the old man walked to the back room and passed behind Jean Antoine again. He stopped. The Frenchman ignored him. The old man reached behind him and gripped the knife. He drew it out. With the towel around the handle of the knife, he lifted it high over his head and brought it down into the neck of the restaurant owner.

Jean Antoine screamed and tried to protect himself. But the attack was relentless and he fought back too late. The old man brought the knife down into the victim’s body five times, then a sixth. He left the weapon imbedded in the victim’s back and was on his way.

FIFTY-FIVE

The bedroom that Thea guided them to was a long chamber with a low ceiling. It had two old wooden dressers, one queensized bed, a couple of chairs, a mirror, and an overstuffed old sofa that stood against the north wall below a long window. The window opened onto the beach. A sea breeze blew through the thin gauzy curtain that hung by the window but was not drawn. And as the old man had promised, there was a moon, a three quarters one, bright yellow and brilliant, and it sat above the Caribbean as if a gifted artist had painted it there.

Alex and Paul entered together and closed the door.

“We can speak freely in English,” Paul said. “The old man doesn’t speak it, and Thea knows only a few words.