Havana Bay

'There's Sergei and a dancer in this building, both out all the time. On one side is a private restaurant, they don't want the police visiting because it costs them a free dinner at the least. On the other side lives a santero and the police certainly don't want to bother him. His apartment is like a nuclear missile silo of African spirits.'

'A santeror

'As in Santeria.'

'He's a friend?'

'On this island a santero is a good friend to have.'

Arkady studied the picture of the Havana Yacht Club. There still was some message in it that he didn't understand. If he was going to be beaten over the head he wanted to know why.

'Who took the picture?'

'Someone passing by. You know,' Erasmo said, 'the first time I met Sergei, Mongo and I saw him standing next to his car on the side of the road, smoke pouring from the hood. Nobody stops for anyone with Russian plates, but I have a weak spot for old comrades, no? Pues, we repaired the car, only a matter of a new clamp on a hose, and as we talked I discovered how little of Cuba this man had seen. Cane fields, tractors, combines, yes. But no music, no dancing, no fun. He was like the walking dead. Frankly, I thought I'd never see him again. The very next day, though, I was on First Avenue in Miramar and I was fishing with a kite.'

'With a kite?'

'A most beautiful way to fish. And I became aware that this Russian, this human bear from the day before, was standing on the sidewalk and watching. So I showed him how. I have to tell you that we never saw Russians alone, they always moved in groups, watching each other. Sergei was different. In our conversation he mentioned how much he wanted a place on the Male-con. I had the rooms upstairs I certainly wasn't using and one thing led to another.' For a disabled man, Erasmo was constantly in motion. He rolled backward to a refrigerator and returned with two cold beers.» '51 Kelvinator, the Cadillac of refrigerators.'

'Thanks.'

'To Sergei,' Erasmo proposed. They drank and his eyes tabulated the damage on Arkady, 'That must have been a long flight of stairs. Nice coat. A little warm, no?'

'It's January in Moscow.'

'That explains it.'

'Your Russian is very good.'

'I was in Cuban army demolitions in Africa assigned to work with Russians. I can say in ten different ways in Russian, 'Don't step on that fucking land mine.' But Russian boys are always stubborn, so he blew himself into very small pieces and I lost both legs. As a living symbol of internationalist duty and in place of my limbs I was honored with my very own Lada. From that Lada came two Jeeps and, voila, I had a garage. I have Him to thank.'

'God?'

'El Comandante.' Erasmo gestured as if stroking his beard.

'Fidel?'

'You're getting it. Cuba is a big family with a wonderful, caring, paranoid papa. Maybe that describes God, too, who knows? Where did you serve?'

'Germany. Berlin.' For two years Arkady had monitored Allied radio transmissions from the roof of the Adlon Hotel.

'The rampart of socialism.'

'The crumbling dike.'

'Crumbled. Dust. Leaving nothing standing but poor Cuba, like a woman naked to the world.'

They drank to that, the first food Arkady had in a day, the beer's alcohol a mild anesthetic. He thought of the black fisherman that Olga Petrovna had seen with Pribluda. There was time to go to the embassy later and hide away.

'I'd like to meet Mongo.'

'Can't you hear him?' Erasmo turned the radio off and Arkady heard what could have been a rolling of stones in surf if stones shifted to a beat.

Walking in the santero's door, Arkady was unprepared. When Russians were taught about Cuba, all they read about was white men like Che and Fidel. What Russians learned about blacks were the Western crimes of imperialism and slavery. The only blacks they encountered in Moscow were the miserably cold African students imported to Patrice Lumumba University. The musicians in the santero's front room were different. They were black men with lined faces, dark glass and blackness wrapped around them, with little accent marks like white golf caps or dreadlocks or Mongo's green baseball cap, but with a mantle of shadow vibrant in the candlelight. The entire room floated in the watery light of forty or fifty candles placed on a side table and along the wainscoting. No more than settling in, a drummer lazily slapped the wooden boxes he sat on, two others cocked their heads to listen to tall, narrow drums as they tapped the heads and Mongo shook a gourd draped in seashells. Bells, sticks, rattles lay at his feet. He put the gourd down to pick up a metal plate that he hit with a steel rod to produce notes so fine and bright it took Arkady a while to recognize the instrument as the blade of a hoe. A tablecloth hung over a mirror. When Arkady tried to approach Mongo, a fat man in a cloud of cigar smoke chased him and Erasmo away.

'The santero,' Erasmo told Arkady.» Don't worry, they're just warming up.'

The mechanic had changed from his coveralls to a pleated white shirt he called a guayabera, 'the very height of Cuban formality,' but with telltale grease on his hands and his beard he looked like a corsair in a wheelchair. He pressed on through a kitchen and hallway until he led Arkady to a backyard where, under two spindly coconut palms crossed like an X, an old black woman in a white skirt and a Michael Jordan pullover stirred a cauldron simmering on coals. Her hair was gray and cropped as short as cotton.

Erasmo said, 'This is Abuelita. Abuelita is not only everyone's grandmother, she is also the CDR for our block. The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. Informers usually, but we are blessed with Abuelita, who dutifully watches from her window from six in the morning and sees nothing all day long.'

'Did she ever see Pribluda?'

'Ask her yourself, she speaks English.'

'From before the Revolution.' Her voice was young and whispery.» There were a lot of Americans and I was a very sinful girl.'

'Did you ever see the Russian here?'

'No. If I saw him, then I would have to report him for renting from a Cuban, which is against the law. But he was a nice man.'

A pig's head bobbed in the stew. A bottle came Erasmo's way; he took a long drink and shared it with Abuelita, who drank daintily and passed it to Arkady.

'What is it?' he asked her.

'Fighting rum.' Her eyes took in the tape on his head.» You need it, no?'

Arkady had expected that by now he would be safely tucked away in the embassy basement with maybe a cup of tea. This was only a minor detour. He drank and coughed.

'What's in it?'

'Rum, chilies, garlic, turtle testicles.'

More people arrived every minute, as many white as black. Arkady was used to the hushed assembly of the Russian Orthodox Church. Cubans pushed into the yard as if they were joining a party, a few with the somber devotion of worshipers, most with the bright anticipation of theatergoers. The only arrival without any expression was a pale, black-haired girl in jeans and a shirt that said 'Tournee de Ballet.' She was followed by a light-brown Cuban man with blue eyes, hair silver at the temples, in a formal, short-sleeved shirt.

'George Washington Walls,' Erasmo introduced him.» Arkady.'

Not Cuban. In fact, an American name that rang a bell. Behind Walls came a tourist with a maple-leaf pin and the last man Arkady wanted to see, Sergeant Luna. This was nightlife Luna, a splendid Luna in linen pants, white shoes and tank shirt that showed off the slabbed muscles of a triangular upper body. Arkady felt himself automatically cringe.

'My good friend, my very good friend, I didn't know you were feeling so good.' Luna put one bare arm around