Hard Currency

face, combed her hair, and hurried down the stairs without waiting for the elevator, which she had already discovered suffered from chronic malaise.

When she arrived at the pool, Rostnikov was drinking something from a tall glass. Next to him sat a little man in thick glasses who was leaning forward and talking emotionally in barely passable English.

“I risk my job, maybe my life to talk to you,” the little man was saying as Elena approached. “But I must, Rosenikow.”

The man sensed Elena beside him, went silent, and turned his head to see her. His eyes were hilariously magnified behind the thick lenses. He was older than he had first appeared, maybe sixty, possibly even older.

“Señor Rodriguez,” Rostnikov said in English. “This is my colleague, Investigator Timofeyeva.”

The little man rose from his chair and took Elena’s hand. She was five-foot-five. The man barely came to her shoulder. He wore a disheveled, slightly oversize Madras jacket over a faded blue shirt and dark baggy pants.

“Mucho gusto,” she said.

“Servidor de usted,” he replied. “Habla español?”

“Si,” she said. “Pero es mejor si habla un poco despacio.”

“She speaks Spanish, Rosenikow,” Rodriguez said to Rostnikov.

“I observed,” said Rostnikov in English. “Please sit, Elena Timofeyeva. Señor Rodriguez is a journalist and a novelist. He is with that group at the other table, all writers here for a week of meetings. They have been drinking.”

“We have been drinking too much,” Rodriguez expanded.

“Too much,” said Rostnikov.

“I see,” said Elena. She placed her notebook on the table and sat down. The four men at the table across the pool reached a crescendo of Spanish-English argument.

“In the interest of international brotherhood,” Rodriguez said, “we meet every year and fight about nothing with great passion.”

A waiter appeared, a man in his thirties in black slacks and a white shirt.

“I suggest you have a rum drink and a hamburger,” said Rostnikov.

“I …” Elena began.

“It is all right,” Rostnikov said. “I have an adequate supply of Canadian dollars.”

Rodriguez nodded in agreement. Elena ordered and the waiter moved on.

“Señor Rodriguez …” Rostnikov began.

“Antonio,” said the little man. He placed his right hand on his chest as if he were about to make a sacred vow. “Por favor, Antonio.”

“Antonio and I have made an exchange,” said Rostnikov. “I have given him my four rolls of toilet paper, three bars of soap, my Bulgarian pen, and the promise of a shipment of paint from Moscow in exchange for four hundred Canadian dollars.”

Antonio Rodriguez shrugged and whispered, “I cannot spend foreign currency. It is against the law for Cubans. So what good does this money do me? What good does it do my country? You want to know how I got Canadian dollars? No, better for me you don’t know. Let me tell you somethin’.”

From the bar behind them came the smell of grilling burger and the sound of a Mexican mariachi band on the radio. Antonio was forced to raise his voice.

“I love my country. I would never leave Cuba. If we were attacked by the Americans or the Cuban exiles in America, I would fight them. I say you this knowing what I risk. I say you this knowing I’m a lot drunken. Fidel doesn’t know what to do. He mus’ step down, Rosenikow, you know?”

Rostnikov nodded and drank.

“But this you do not care,” Antonio continued. “You want only to save one fool of a Russian. I want to save my country, my people. I don’t hate Russians.”

Antonio Rodriguez was looking at Elena, so she replied, “I am pleased.”

“Pleased,” Rodriguez said with disgust. “The Soviet Union looked at us like some kind of troublesome peon colony. They found Fidel an annoyance. But when they needed good medical care, your leaders, where did they go? Right here, to Cuba. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

“Good,” said Rodriguez, looking at each of the Russians. “Good.”

“What do you know about the Santería?” Elena asked.

“More than any man alive who is no a Santería,” Antonio Rodriguez said with a satisfied smile. He adjusted his heavy glasses on his rather small nose. “I have written of them, gotten to know them. Most of what you hear is crap shit. Despiénseme, but I hear so much garbage, it would make me to laugh if I wasn’t so fretting about my country.”

Elena looked at Rostnikov, who put down his drink and gave her a very small nod of understanding.

“Antonio,” he said, “the Santería are a subject of great interest to Russians-a curious alien thing. It is something like the interest the English had in American Indians in the eighteenth century or …”

“I’m no a fool, Rosenikow. Hey, you want to be my friend, my amigo, my tovarich? See, I speak few words Russian.”

Rodriguez laughed and removed his glasses to wipe his eyes with the backs of his hands. With his glasses off, he looked to Rostnikov like a small mole.

“This Santería question, it has something to do with your Russian in jail, verdad? I’m a journalist, remember?”

“Yes, perhaps,” said Elena, wondering whether Rostnikov disapproved of her pursuing this before she discussed it with him.

Antonio Rodriguez put his glasses back on and clapped his hands. “Then,” he said, “I speak.”

The radio was now playing a loud Spanish version of a song Elena had heard in the United States. It was something about virgins.

“The Santería are the biggest religion in Cuba, bigger than Catholics,” Antonio said, holding his hands out to show how big they were. “But they got no pope, nothing like that, just branches, groups, dozens, maybe hundreds, big, small, each with its own babalau who leads his group like a family.”

“Are they violent?” asked Elena.

“Violent,” he repeated, shaking his head and looking at the sky. “Who isn’t violent? Some of them they are. Most of them are no violent. There are stories yes of spells, sacrifices, all kinds of stupid stuff. Most of the Santería are Negroes. They brought their religion from Africa and had to hide it even before the revolution. They hid their gods, giving them the names of Catholic saints, celebrating them on the Catholic saints’ days, but hiding their saints in jars, turning desks into altars. They are powerful, here, all through the islands, New York, Miami, but not organized. Now you tell me, Rosenikow, why you want to know these things?”

Rostnikov turned his eyes to Elena. She opened her notebook and slid it in front of Rostnikov, who shifted in his seat and read the notes by the quickly fading light of the setting sun.

Antonio Rodriguez looked at the notebook in Rostnikov’s hands and then over at his fellow writers, who seemed to be getting along quite badly enough without him.

Rostnikov took his time going over all of Elena’s notes. Her handwriting was firm and flowing, and the notes were a combination of data and personal impressions. Karpo’s notes, which Porfiry Petrovich had grown accustomed to, were, in contrast, printed in small, efficient block letters, easy to read and with no personal impressions.

Satisfied, Rostnikov closed the notebook and returned it to Elena. It was only then that he realized that he had been sitting in nearly the same position for a long time. The drink, the sounds of the sea, and the lights around the pool had lulled him into forgetting his leg. Now, suddenly, this rebellious appendage had gnawed into him and brought him to consciousness. Porfiry Petrovich had no choice but to stand, holding the edge of the table;