20
Two hours later Jack and Sofia were in a rental car approaching the outskirts of Bejucal.
“You didn’t have to come,” said Jack.
“How were you planning to get around without me?” asked Sofia.
“My Spanish is fairly functional.”
“I’ve heard you speak, Jack. And while it’s very impressive that you were able to learn Spanish while you were a drainpipe, it probably wouldn’t get you very far in a small town.”
“A drainpipe? Is that what I said?”
She smiled. “It’s okay. Your Spanish is really pretty good.”
“How good?”
“Probably just good enough to get you beat up and ripped off. Which is why I came along.”
“Oh, so you’re here to protect me, are you?”
“No. I came to watch you get beat up and ripped off. Beats the heck out of Cuban television.”
Touche, he thought.
The actual driving time from Havana was only thirty minutes, and they reached Bejucal around dinnertime. Abuela had often told him that it was the prettiest town in all of Havana Province, and she was probably right. There were colonial facades everywhere, and just enough of them were freshly painted to allow the imagination to color in the rest. In the heart of town was a quaint little square with an ocher-colored colonial church. It was precious enough in its own right, but for Jack, just the sight of the old church took his breath away. His mother had been baptized there. The Cine Marti was nearby, and Jack wondered if his mother had ever gone there with her friends, or maybe even a boyfriend, dreaming of being an American movie star. Then his gaze drifted toward a billboard at the end of the square that read, SOCIALISMO O MUERTE (Socialism or death), and at once he understood Abuela’s comment about Bejucal: It was exactly as it was forty years ago; and it was totally different.
“You okay?” asked Sofia.
Jack had been unaware, but they’d spent that last few minutes stopped at an intersection for no apparent reason. He’d been absorbing it all. “Yeah,” he said, shaking it off. “Just spacing out a bit there.”
“You hungry? The Restaurante El Gallo looks pretty good.”
“Sure,” said Jack.
Jack parked the car, and they walked to the restaurant and took a table near the window. The house specialized in criollo dishes, so Jack ordered roasted chicken and platanos a punetazos. The waitress was extremely friendly, and naturally she recognized them as tourists. She insisted that they visit Plaza Marti, which she claimed was the setting for the movie Paradiso, based on the novel by Jose Lezama Lima. Jack didn’t know if that was true or not, but it made him smile to hear it, as if it had been his own small town featured in a motion picture. In a way, it was his town.
Dinner was pleasant enough, and their waitress brought them mango slices for dessert. She seemed to take a genuine interest in making sure that they enjoyed their visit to Bejucal, so Jack thought he’d push his luck.
“Have you ever heard of a woman named Celia Mendez?” he asked.
She scrunched her face, thinking. “I know a couple of Mendez families. But not a Celia Mendez. How old is she?”
Jack pulled the old photograph of his mother and Celia Mendez from his pocket. It made him nervous to play this hand. All these years, he’d figured that Celia Mendez, his mother’s best friend in Cuba, would be his best source of information about his mother. But what if it didn’t pan out?
He showed the snapshot to the waitress and said, “This was taken over forty years ago. So I’d guess she’s probably close to sixty.”
The waitress shook her head, no recognition. “Sorry. Can’t help you. But there is a Mendez who runs a casa particular over on Calle Marti. That family has lived in Bejucal for years. Why don’t you stop by there? Maybe they can help you.”
“Thanks. We’ll do that.”
She wrote down the address for them. Jack paid the bill in U.S. dollars, the only currency that seemed to matter in “communist” Cuba, and they left.
The literal translation of casa particular was “private home,” and for many travelers there was no better accommodation in Cuba than to rent a room from a Cuban family. It had been illegal to rent housing in Cuba after the revolution, but all that changed with the fall of the Soviet Union and the Cuban government’s need to find a new “super-power” (read: tourism) to prop up its failing economy. A new law in 1996 allowed Cubans to rent out one or two rooms in their homes, and soon afterward thousands of casas particulares popped up across the country, providing a hefty sum in tax revenues to a dictator who was clearly more interested in self-perpetuation than communist principle.
La Casa Mendez was a simple but tidy house facing a cobblestone street. A plump woman with dark skin and a bright yellow headband in her hair greeted them at the door. She was at most fifty, Jack surmised, too young to be his mother’s friend Celia. She introduced herself as Felicia Mendez Ortiz. Rather than diving into his detective role with a slew of questions about Celia Mendez, Jack decided to break the ice with a simple business inquiry.
“Do you have a room available?”
“Yes,” she said in a pleasant voice. “Just one.”
“May we see it, please?”
“Of course. Come in.”
The room was in the back of the house near the kitchen. There were two twin beds, a dresser, and an old rug on the floor. The annoying glow from a lamp with no shade was the only light in the room. They had walked past the living room and two other bedrooms to get there. Jack counted eleven people in the house, seven adults and four children. The Cuban woman explained that the big advantage of staying at a casa particular was that you get to live with a Cuban family, but the big disadvantage was that you get to live with a Cuban family.
“We’ll take it,” said Sofia.
“What?” said Jack.
She switched to English, for Jack’s ears only. “If you’re really good, I’ll let you push the beds together. But don’t count on it.”
He knew she was kidding. “I was only being polite when I asked to see the room. I wasn’t actually planning on staying here.”
“You want to give this nice family your money, or you want to go back to Hotel Nacional?”
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
“I had a male roommate all through law school. Nothing ever happened, and he was even cuter than you.”
Jack wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult, but it didn’t matter. “Okay. If you’re up for it, we’ll stay.” He looked at the woman and said in Spanish, “We’ll take it.”
She smiled and led them to the kitchen. They sat around the table, and she recorded their names and passport numbers. And, of course, she offered them something to eat. It was a genetic thing, Jack decided, this Cuban compulsion to offer food to a guest even when there was none in the house. Jack and Sofia declined, but they did take the cafe. It was hot and strong, and the smell of roasted beans reminded Jack of Abuela’s kitchen. Jack had just about finished his cup when he decided it was time to share the photograph.
He laid it on the table and asked, “Do you happen to know a woman named Celia Mendez?”
The woman set her cup on the table. A smile crept to her lips as she examined the photograph. “You know Celia?”
“No. My mother did.”
“Don’t tell me your mother was Ana,” she said.
Jack’s heart thumped. She knew! “Yes. Ana Maria Fuentes.”
She studied Jack’s face, then glanced back at the photograph. She brought a hand to her mouth, as if astonished that so much time had passed. “Now I see it. You look very much like your beautiful mother. Celia and she were the best, best of friends. It broke her heart when she heard that she passed away. Such a shame.” She shuddered, seemingly embarrassed by her own insensitivity. “Forgive me. I am sorry for your loss, as well, of course.”
