Telex From Cuba Read online

  Did the company care that Hatch had killed a man? They knew about his murder rap. At the end there was a lot of talk of where the Allains would go because they couldn’t go back to the States. The company hired Hatch because he knew how to handle black people. “Take care of niggers” is what Daddy said. But what if the company hired him because he was a murderer? There was a Rural Guard in Oriente, a special army that patrolled the countryside to protect landowners. One of the captains, Sosa Blanco, had been in prison for murder. Near the end, he torched the workers’ shanties in Nicaro and was stringing the blacks up in trees around Mayarí. He was a monster who was useful to Batista and his military cronies, perfect for scaring the hell out of everybody and ruling with an iron hand. That’s what people said about Hatch—that he ruled with an iron hand. Then again they said it about Daddy, and Daddy wasn’t escaping any murder rap. Daddy was an upstanding citizen, a Mississippi gentleman in a white duck suit. His father owned a country store and most of the land in the county where Daddy was from. But the workers were scared of Daddy, and so was I. And maybe like with Hatch, what was scary about him was part of what made him a good jefe.

  I don’t like to think of Hatch Allain as any kind of monster. You could feel his power, but he was nothing but kind to me. I beat up his kid and knocked him off a second-story balcony, and Hatch wasn’t angry about it. In the hospital waiting room, worried as hell about Curtis, Hatch was joking around and calling me “slugger.” In a lot of ways he was gentler with me than my own father. When I was six years old, Daddy dragged me out into the yard, by the servants’ quarters and the garage where we kept the two Buick limousines. There was a pig tied up back there, a gift from some of the sugar mill workers. At Christmas, the employees who got on well with Daddy would bring him a pig. Daddy hit the pig with a hammer. The poor animal squealed something horrible. I was just a little kid and I hadn’t seen anything so rough before. I started crying and begging him to stop. He had a grim expression, and he hit the pig with the hammer again, and again. There was blood everywhere. The obvious lesson is that pigs are food and not pets, and it’s a father’s duty to make his child understand this. But I think Daddy also wanted me to understand that life is violent and arbitrary and unfair—that it’s not easy, like a child might think, especially a child like me, living in a paradise, coddled by Mother and by Annie, no worries, always having a ball. He beat that pig to death with a hammer in our backyard, and he made me watch.

  While Curtis was in the hospital that week, more Nicaro people arrived. The rains didn’t let up, and the Levisa River flooded the road up to Nicaro, so everybody had to come into Preston instead. They stayed at the company hotel and waited to be taken over to Nicaro in launches. These people and their kids were on the town square, they were at the almacén, at the Pan-American Club. Mother entertained some of them. Daddy was still in Havana, ironing things out with Batista and his new ministers. That’s when the Mackeys first came to our house. The Mackeys’ son, Phillip, was Del’s age, and those two hit it off immediately. Phillip was a class clown, an instant ringleader. We all went to the movies in a big group, and Phillip stood up in front of the screen, cutting into the projector’s beam and doing hand puppets. Someone threw a hot dog at him. He caught it with one hand and took a bite out of it. Everybody’s personality was on display, the talent show that happens when there are a lot of kids, and it became immediately apparent who was going to be most popular. Like at summer camp, there was a mad grab, social cliques forming, but Curtis wasn’t part of it. Eventually he and I made peace, but for a while the Nicaro kids were the new thing. A bunch of them, Phillip Mackey, the Lederer girls, and some others came to Preston every weekend. The boys would all go fishing, or we’d have cookouts at the swimming pool.

  The week the Nicaro people were arriving in Preston, Mother invited the Lederers over for lunch. Annie made arroz con pollo, and the three Lederer girls wolfed it down and asked for seconds. Their mother said she was surprised they would eat anything besides a hamburger. After lunch, we all sat in the parlor, and Everly Lederer played piano. I remember that there was a tussle between her and her mother; maybe Everly didn’t want to play. What she played sounded nice, different from what Mother played on the piano. Mother played old show tunes, Tin Pan Alley—not classical music. I was enjoying it, and amused at this little girl who was so serious and dramatic, bent over the keys. But then she hit a wrong note, and then another, and got frustrated and stopped playing. She banged the keyboard with the side of her hand and ran out of the room. Mrs. Lederer said she had a temper, and that she was awfully sorry for the behavior. Mother ran after her. She told Everly Lederer that it was our old stupid piano, that it was out of tune. It was so humid in Oriente that the piano tuner would come, and by the next day the piano was out of tune and he had to come back again. “It’s the piano,” Mother said, “it’s not you.”

  Afterward I took Everly and Stevie on a tour; that was my job with all the new Nicaro kids that week. I was going to just take a loop around town, show them the movie theater, the swimming pool, the mill, our school. But when we passed near Daddy’s Pullman car, I decided to take them inside. I showed the Lederer girls where Daddy slept, and the compartment where I slept when I went with him on trips, the little transom window that I could slide open above my single bed to get a breeze going if I wanted one, the worktable with flip-down seats where I did my homework, Daddy sitting across from me running company numbers. I told them how a porter would come in and bring me a cherry cola, serve Daddy his demi-demi. And how the porter never spilled anything no matter what, even when the train was rounding a bend and leaning over to one side. Daddy’s Pullman car was special to me. It felt like I was showing them something private—my own bedroom, or some other bedroom, almost more private than my real one, which I only wished for and thought about. The older girl, Stevie, was unimpressed. But Everly seemed to understand that it was a kid’s fort on wheels, a place where you could sit and enjoy the green landscape rolling past, and daydream.

  Mother was gentle with all children, but she had a soft spot for Everly Lederer. I think I did, too, although I didn’t quite realize it at the time. I was nine years old, and at that age you’re not so aware, or reflective, when you’re drawn to someone. I think Everly was about eight, cross-eyed, with these thick glasses, fire-red hair, couldn’t be in the sun for thirty seconds before she burned pink as a boiled lobster, and feisty. At a kids’ pool party the next weekend, she saw me and Del and Phillip Mackey going off the high dive and insisted on doing the same. She landed flat on her belly—you could hear it when she hit the water. That poor girl. It must have hurt like hell, but she pretended everything was fine. Got out of the pool and limped over to her towel and wouldn’t let anyone come near her.

  7

  Everly had fibbed to some of the kids in Oak Ridge that she’d be getting a pet monkey in Cuba, but someone in Preston really did have a monkey.

  Its name was Poncho and it belonged to Mr. and Mrs. LaDue. Everly’s mother said the LaDues were “empty nesters” and that Mrs. LaDue believed that the monkey was her child. But no one would keep a child in a big cage out in the yard, and especially not at midday, when the child would have nowhere to hide from the blazing sun. The LaDues had peacocks that were allowed to wander free, waddling and preening under the shade of the LaDues’ tree ferns, while Poncho hung from the bars on the roof of his metal cage, looking at Everly. He blinked just like people blinked, and let her know with his bloodshot eyes that he was suffering from boredom, like a person might suffer from boredom. His look was passive—as though he accepted his fate, a life of hanging from the roof of a cage—but also questioning. He was trying to figure out if Everly might be sympathetic, though whether or not he wanted sympathy, she wasn’t sure. He was bored and passive and questioning, but he seemed to know that he and Everly were different types of beings, and he wasn’t planning on letting the matter go.

  Her family had arrived in Preston late the night before. Af
ter three days of dark country roads, they were suddenly on an avenue lined with old-fashioned streetlamps, frosted white globes arranged in clusters like grapes, huge homes with yellow-lit windows. They spent the night at the United Fruit Company hotel, in a large suite with old-fashioned four-poster beds that creaked when you got into them, and heavy cotton sheets that had been ironed, her mother pointed out approvingly, adding that the place was remarkably fancy for a company hotel. “It’s the United FRUIT Company,” Duffy shouted, “and there are pineapples on the bedposts!” “Last call for alcohol,” George Lederer said, picking up Duffy, who screamed and kicked her legs. “Last call” meant Duffy was in that crazed state just before passing out.

  In the morning they went shopping at the United Fruit commissary. George Lederer said everybody could pick something, but it was like at Sears again, and what Everly chose wasn’t “acceptable.” Duffy got a toy six-shooter, though they took it away from her right outside the store because she wouldn’t stop pointing it at her own head. Stevie chose a Little Lady box set with eau de cologne, soaps, and powder. Everly wanted a pair of lazy tongs that were hanging on a nail behind the counter. “What on earth do you need those for?” her father asked. “Don’t you want a Little Lady box set like your sister?” She insisted on the lazy tongs, which turned out to be as much fun as she’d predicted, though later, when they had settled in Nicaro, they banned her from bringing them in the car after she used the tongs to pinch her father’s ear while he was driving. “I’m just reminding you I’m here,” Everly said. “Don’t be sassy,” her mother replied, “that was an accident.” They’d forgotten her at a gas station in Mayarí, on a trip into a town one Sunday for church services. She’d gone to use the bathroom as the attendant was filling their car. She didn’t really need to use the bathroom. She had a National Geographic and wanted a few minutes alone, reading her magazine on the toilet. She lost track of time, and when she came out, they were gone. “Are you scared?” the gas station attendant asked her in Spanish. “No,” she said, knowing the car would reappear in the station and that they’d be arguing in the front seat about whose fault it was, everyone rankled like it was she who’d done something wrong. The attendant gave her a cup of cane juice and let her sit in the office, but she’d barely begun to relax and enjoy herself when she saw the Studebaker pulling up.

  Preston was a whole day of visiting before they got on a boat for Nicaro in the early evening. Lunch at Mrs. Stites’s, and then afternoon tea at the LaDues, because Mr. LaDue’s cousin knew the pastor at the Lederers’ church in Oak Ridge. It seemed like her mother’s version of her father talking to strangers in line at the post office and the bakery. I was barefoot and I stepped right in it. They cut around my footprints and sold it anyway. But perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this. You might be buying cheesecake! The stranger’s shut-down look. Polite, but hoping not to encourage him. Her mother “networked.” Her father was “inappropriately friendly,” which was why her mother managed him in social situations, hovered close, and intervened if she didn’t like what he said.

  Mrs. Stites had a gentle manner and a pretty smile, and she smelled faintly like flowers. The Stiteses had a baby grand piano, and when her mother mentioned that Everly had taken lessons in Oak Ridge, Mrs. Stites asked if she would play them something. Everly was embarrassed and didn’t want to, but Mrs. Stites was so nice about it, it seemed like she actually wanted Everly to play. She agreed, and not because it was something her mother wanted her to do. She chose a Mozart piece she knew by heart, but she flubbed a difficult trill and then lost her place and couldn’t finish. Mrs. Stites acted as though nothing was wrong and Everly’s behavior was the most normal thing in the world. She told Everly she could come and play their piano anytime she wanted. Usually it was Stevie whom the adults took a shine to. But Mrs. Stites chose Everly, despite the tantrum she’d had right in the Stiteses’ living room. Everly figured there must have been some mistake. But Mrs. Stites was insistent and said to come back the next weekend, that they’d have lunch and play duets together.

  The boys, K.C. and Delmore, both had sun-bleached hair and tanned skin like they belonged on a Coppertone billboard. Delmore was about Stevie’s age, but he didn’t express much interest in talking to her. K.C. took them into his father’s private train car, red velvet drapes, red velvet-upholstered seats, and red carpeting. It looked like the inside of a mouth. Lining the walls above the windows were mirrors tinted a goldish-pink—champagne, Everly later learned, was the name of the color. K.C. said the mirrors were there so you could see the landscape twice—out the windows, and also in reflection. Why look at a mirror, Stevie asked, when you could just look at the real thing? But Everly liked the idea. Maybe you’d see something in the reflection that you’d missed in the landscape itself. And besides, it would be goldish-pink now. Even I look okay, she thought, in a gold-pink mirror.

  Two girls, an older and a younger one, poked their heads into the Pullman car. The younger one had a huge birthmark around her eye. She asked if they were going on a trip. “I forgot to tell you,” K.C. said to Everly and Stevie, “that this is actually Panda’s Pullman car.” “No, it isn’t!” the girl squealed, delighted by the idea that maybe it was.

  The two girls tagged along with them as they walked around town. Click click click click went the older girl’s shoes. They were tap-dancing shoes. “Why are you wearing those?” Stevie asked. “Because I feel like it,” the girl said. Later, Everly suspected they were the only shoes Giddle Allain had. But maybe it was how she got to be such a good tap dancer. She was already wearing the shoes and could practice at any moment. K.C. took them by the Allains’ and they met the whole family. They were each offered a piece of cut sugarcane, which Hatch Allain sent Mitty to retrieve from a cane car just beyond the house. Hatch showed them how to strip it and eat it.

  “We do not say ‘Chinaman,’” her mother scolded, when Everly and Stevie returned to the hotel.

  “But it’s his name! That’s what they call him!”

  Which only confirmed to Marjorie Lederer that the Allains were not just common but downright crude. “Roughnecks,” her father called them. Giddle Allain had invited Everly and Stevie to come back sometime to spend the night.

  “They can’t stay at your house!” Duffy blurted, when Giddle and Panda came to the dock to say good-bye as the Lederers were getting on the launch for Nicaro. “Mother won’t allow it!”

  “She just likes us to sleep at home,” Everly said as hurt rolled over Giddle’s face. Rolled over but then was gone. Giddle didn’t care what people thought. None of them did. Roughnecks or not, the Allains, as Everly got to know them, did not cry or complain. No one watched out for them and told them to clean up or wear a dress or do their homework. They dressed themselves and told themselves where to go and what to eat and who to hang around with. They didn’t sleep on ironed sheets. They didn’t have sheets. Everly saw the beds in the room the three girls shared—just mattresses, with the striped mattress ticking you weren’t supposed to see unless the maid was changing the bed. Panda was the only one who might have been the least bit delicate. Traipsing around in her nightgown, clutching a piece of foam rubber like it was a teddy bear. On the foam, which looked like a hunk of ceiling insulation, she’d written “Panda’s pillow” in magic marker, so no one else would use it.

  Marjorie Lederer took notes on everything she observed at the Stiteses’ and the LaDues’. She said these people had been living in Cuba for a long time and knew how to make a life in the jungle. She would pay attention. Everly had paid attention and took her own notes, like never to hold Poncho again if they were invited back to the LaDues’ house.

  “He doesn’t bite,” Mrs. LaDue had said, encouraging Everly to hold him. “Snuggle her baby” is how Mrs. LaDue had put it. And if he did bite, she added, it wouldn’t hurt because Poncho’s teeth had been removed. He didn’t scratch because his fingernails had been removed. And he wasn’t aggressive because he’d been “neutered.” Everly
held him and he really was like a baby, curled up against her, his long, thin fingers playing with the buttons on her shirt. Although he didn’t have nails, his fingers were as careful, deliberate, and wrinkly as human fingers. His eyes, as moist and expressive as human eyes.

  A human trapped inside a monkey trapped inside a cage. But when she tried to put him down, he screeched like a vicious animal.

  PART TWO

  8

  IN HAVANA AS IN PARIS…

  MADAME MASIGLI SHOPS AT JEAN PATOU.

  We’re proud to offer Her Excellency Masigli’s favorite scent, COLONY, celebrating the tropics since 1938. Available in perfume, cologne water, talcum, lotion, and soap.

  Visit our exclusive showroom, Prado 157 between Colón and Refugio, or purchase by mail order through El Encanto.

  Blythe Carrington closed the catalog and sat powdering her complexion, perspiring through the powder, then powdering again. It was useless. Sweat and humidity were turning her makeup to paste. She gave up and downed the last of her lukewarm stinger.