Castro leaned forward, eyes gleaming above his dark beard: ‘A disaster?’
‘Worse. In New York it’s all Puerto Ricans, and they have their own agenda, which is unique. I could hardly speak to them, and they certainly did not look to me for guidance. They were quite capable of providing their own.’
‘California?’
‘I don’t want to insult you, Señor Presidente, but out there those red-hot Mexicans hardly know that you’re in command in Cuba. Couldn’t care less, because they have their own problems with Mexico. My ideas of politics and theirs are as different as night and day. It was a total flop.’
‘Texas?’
‘On the surface the same as California, but fundamentally a much different set of Mexicans. Especially in Los Angeles they’re more sophisticated, have more political power. In Texas they’re more the peasant type. About two generations behind the Californians, I’d say.’
They spent a long time exploring the differences among the four basic Hispanic groups as Estéfano defined them: the Cubanos of Miami, the Puerto Ricans of New York, the sophisticated Mexicans of California and the sturdy peasants of Texas, and at the end Estéfano hammered home one basic point: ‘Anyone who thinks he can lump them all together and form a cohesive Hispanic minority that he can shift this way or that is out of his mind.’ Here he stared hard at Castro and said: ‘Don’t even try to go down that road. It won’t work.’
‘All strongly Catholic?’
‘Yes.’
‘All Republican?’
‘I’m not sure about the Californians and Texans, but probably even them.’ Then he added a salient point: ‘Bear in mind one thing, Señor Presidente. The Cubanos you sent to Miami in that first batch were all educated, well-to-do, middle-of-the-road people. They’ve adjusted easily to American life. None were illiterate peasants.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘Sometimes in California and Texas, I found it difficult to believe that these people were Hispanics at all. They weren’t like anyone I’ve ever known either here as a young man or in Florida later on.’
It was now well past three in the morning, and Estéfano kept reminding himself that he must resist the blandishments of this extraordinary man: He’s the man who stole my country, who murdered many of my friends, who kept others in hideous jails, and who has done everything possible to embarrass the United States and support her enemy, the Soviet Union. He had no love for Castro, nor even much respect, but he could feel the immense power of his charisma, and at one point when the dictator was being especially persuasive about never having had animosity toward the States, Calderon thought: Now I know how a bird feels when the cobra weaves its spell. This son-of-a-bitch is mesmerizing.
Then, at the end of a long oration about how the United States should conduct itself in Central America, Castro leaned forward, studied his guest, and asked in the most amiable voice possible: ‘Dr. Calderón, why did you feel that you, the son of patriots, had to leave Cuba?’ and after a frank discussion of mixed signals and lost opportunities, Castro asked, at a quarter of four: ‘Under what terms would you come back?’ and now Estéfano felt both free and obligated to make several points: ‘With a great-grandfather like old Baltazar Calderón, I will always love and cherish Cuba. It’s in my blood. The fact that I fled proves I wasn’t enthusiastic about your takeover, but as you probably know from the reports of your consuls, I’ve never been a rabid anti-Castroite. And I’m convinced that because your island is so close to the States, some kind of reconciliation must be reestablished, probably before the end of this century.’
‘Does anyone else in your country think so?’
‘Some of my more sensible friends in Washington … the ones I worked with on Reagan’s campaigns.’
Castro, realizing from this one sentence the reason Calderon had been sent south, looked up at the ceiling and started waving his cigar. Then he said as if he hadn’t heard what Estéfano had just revealed: ‘The doctors told me: “If you stop smoking these things, you could live to see the end of the century.’
‘When were you born?’
‘Nineteen twenty-seven.’
‘You’re only five years older than I am, and I certainly expect to see it.’
‘So you do come here speaking for someone, Dr. Calderón?’
‘My wife came here to visit with her twin sister. Emotional meeting, I can tell you.’
‘Roberto Calderón’s a valuable man for us. Knows his way around.’ More cigar pirouettes, then: ‘You know, Doctor, if you ever wanted to come down here and start a really fine clinic—I’ve heard about the one you run in Miami—you’d be most welcome, and we’d provide the building.’
‘I’m honored.’
‘Tell me, if all restrictions were lifted tomorrow, and I mean all, what percentage of your Cubans would return to our island?’
‘Of my original group, to visit the old scenes they love, ninety-eight percent. To remain here permanently and give up all the good things they’ve acquired in Florida, two percent.’
‘Of the Mariel group?’
‘A larger percent, men eager to get back into the criminal action. But of course, you wouldn’t want their kind.’
‘And the children born there?’
‘Not one in ten thousand. High schools, television, their own crowd, shopping malls. Irresistible to young people.’
‘So they’re a lost generation … for us, that is.’
‘I think so.’
‘You never really answered me. Under what terms would you and your wife come back?’
Estéfano pondered how to answer this question without giving offense, and finally said: ‘When a man breaks a bone, at first it looks as if it could never be remedied. But you immobilize it in a splint, let it knit, and six weeks later, a miracle! It’s stronger than it was before, because the tiny bits of bone have interlocked with each other. It’s the same with émigrés. In the first six months away from the homeland, desolation of spirit. But then the knitting begins, and pretty soon the bond to the new land is overwhelmingly powerful.’
‘In your case, too strong to be broken again?’
‘Yes.’
Castro placed his arm on Estéfano’s shoulder and said, as he walked him to the door: ‘Tell the man who sent you that if amicable relations are ever reestablished between our countries, I’d be happy to have you as the first ambassador in La Habana.’
On their last evening in Cuba the Miami Calderons felt obligated to discuss the inevitable Hispanic problem, and Caterina broached the subject: ‘You know, if you two should ever wish to come to America, get away from these tensions, Estéfano and I will be prepared, even honored, to find a place for you to live … help you and your children get established. We’d enjoy having them about us.’
‘We couldn’t …’
Caterina broke into tears: ‘It’s been so wonderful, being together again. We’re a family, Plácida, and we should not be in separate places. Please, please, think about what I’ve just said. And remember, Estéfano feels the same way. You can stay with us … two years … three, until you get settled, isn’t that right, Estéfano?’
‘Roberto knows it is. We’d be overjoyed to have you with us again, and I don’t mean only you two. Your children could build great lives for themselves in America, and we’d help them.’
Plácida’s response, however, was not to her sister’s offer; instead, she placed her hand on Caterina’s arm and said with deep emotion: ‘Yes, we must stay together, now that we’ve seen how wonderful it can be … But we should be here, where we all belong. And Roberto’s been working on a few plans. We could easily let you have two of these little buildings, and El Lider Máximo stopped by my office today to confirm what he said the other night. You can have a clinic in downtown La Habana. Come back home, Estéfano, and join the building of your homeland.’
By the time the two couples parted it was obvious that neither of the families would ever move, but both were sincerely convinced that in extending their invitation
s, they were acting solely in the interest of their loved ones. Estéfano and Caterina were certain that the Cuban Calderóns could find real happiness in the Miami they knew, while Roberto and his wife were equally sure that any self-respecting Cubano could find lasting happiness only in coming home and working for the revolution. And with these mutual convictions they went to bed.
But no one fell easily to sleep, and as Estéfano lay awake, trying to assess what was said during his extraordinary visit with Castro, he became aware that Caterina was sobbing, and when he tried to comfort her, she said: ‘I should never have come down here. In Miami, I could ignore how much I was missing her … and Roberto … and the children … and the old mill … and let’s face it, Cuba.’ And then she added: ‘I’m a Cubana and I’m damned sick of supermarkets and television serials.’
Homesick though they were, the Miami Calderons had to be cautious about their movements lest ill-wishers at home learn of Estéfano’s visit to Cuba; they arranged a flight to Mexico City and a quick transfer to a jet which would deposit them at Miami International in late afternoon. At the Havana airport four of the gloomiest people in Cuba said goodbye, each realizing that this might be the last time they would ever meet on this earth—so close geographically to one another in the twin cities of Miami and La Habana, so terribly far apart in politics and the interpretation of the future. The farewells were muted, the two men engaging in formalities, while their wives stood apart, shedding hot tears of regret. Suddenly Estéfano burst out: ‘My God! They’re a handsome pair of twins we married, Roberto,’ and the two men stared lovingly at these two women, so well preserved, so proud of their appearance and so similar in their attitudes toward family and social responsibilities. They were, Estéfano thought, two of the finest women of their age in the world and proof of what Cubanas could accomplish.
With tears in his own eyes, he kissed Plácida farewell, shook hands with Roberto, and said: ‘I hope we accomplished something,’ but he was not at all sure, and when the plane rose into the sky he hammered his right fist into the open palm of his other hand as he looked down upon that lovely land of Cuba, so abused by its Spanish colonial owners, so maltreated by that gang of thieving murderers who had presumed to govern it during its first half-century of independence, and so misled by the Castro revolution which inevitably followed. ‘Cuba! Cuba!’ he said as the island slowly vanished from sight. ‘You deserved so much more than what you’ve been allowed to be.’
While he was tormenting himself with such thoughts, Caterina kept staring down till the faint outline of the island vanished totally from view. Then she sighed, reached back to grip her husband’s arm, and whispered: ‘You were so right in insisting that we come. What a noble city and how grand that old mill was.’ But later in the day when Miami came into view, she pressed his hand and said: ‘This is better,’ and both of them knew that down below waited the world they really wanted.
From his window Steve admired the glorious skyline with its towering skyscrapers of imaginative design lining the bay, the islands and the inland waterways, making it one of the most beautiful cities in America. Leaning forward, he said: ‘I know how Augustus felt when he cried: “I found Rome a city of brick and shall leave it a city of marble.” We Cubanos found Miami a sleepy town of low, frightened buildings and we shall leave it a city of towers.’
Proudly he pointed to the buildings his bank had helped finance with money earned and deposited by his Cuban associates. ‘That one, those two, the one over there. All since 1959. Just thirty years. It’s been a miracle and I’m proud of it. Me leave Miami? Never,’ and Kate whispered: ‘Nor me.’ But then she added: ‘However, if things ever did open up, and George Bush felt grateful for your assistance this fall, it would be nice if he appointed you as his first American ambassador.’
The last words had scarcely been uttered when she felt Steve’s ironlike grip and heard his anguished whisper: ‘Don’t even think a thing like that. If people knew there was even a possibility …’
When the plane landed almost secretly at a remote corner of Miami International, an ashen-faced assistant to Dr. Calderon met him with miserable news, which he delivered in a trembling voice: ‘Your new clinic building, the one that’s half finished … they dynamited it last night … burned to the ground.’
And in the rush to Calle Ocho a suspicious car tailed them, pulled up beside them at a traffic light, and pumped four bullets directly at the Calderons. They missed the doctor but hit his wife three times, and before the car could speed to the nearest hospital, she was dead.
ON A BRIGHT January morning in 1989 the strands of Theresa Vaval’s life tangled together in riotous climax. She received her doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard; Wellesley confirmed that she had a professorial appointment there, with an implied promise of tenure track if she enhanced her scholarly reputation; her father, Hyacinthe Vaval, received notice that he and his family would be granted permanent residence in the United States, which they had entered seven years ago after temporary refuge in Canada; and Dennis Krey, professor of creative writing at Yale, had at last summoned up courage to inform his Concord, New Hampshire, parents that he and Tessa, as she was known to her college friends, were getting married. As if that wasn’t enough, the Swedish Lines had phoned, offering her an opportunity to teach a course aboard one of their cruise ships, the S.S. Galante, set to sail from Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, on 30 January. One hundred and thirty-seven students had signed up for the three-credit, fourteen-day course, entitled ‘Cruise-and-Muse in Paradise.’ ‘We’ll do the cruising, you do the musing,’ the Swedish Lines representative had joked, telling Theresa that she would be the most honored among six lecturers already signed up.
All these happenings simply could not be better, especially the one concerning her father, for he had been one of the fine men of Haiti, descendant of that General Vaval who had played such a major role in helping Toussaint L’Ouverture win Haiti’s independence back in the 1790s. From that time on, the Vavals, through all their generations, had been defenders of Haitian freedom, often at great risk, and some had been publicly executed, but their courage never flagged. When Papa Doc Duvalier, Haiti’s self-appointed President-for-Life, sent out his death squads, the Tontons Macoutes, to terrorize newspaper editors and writers in the 1970s, torturing many to death, Tessa remembered her father coming home and saying: ‘No hope. Last night they killed Editor Gambrelle. We’re slipping out on the next ship that makes a run for it.’
They had left Port-au-Prince in three different groups so as to escape notice by the deadly Macoutes, and reunited at the seaport of St.-Marc, where in what seemed to nine-year-old Thérèse, as she was then called in French, an insane decision, they boarded a small, leaky ship and in dark of night set out for the Atlantic. Those were days she wanted to forget but knew she must remember, for those experiences made Haitians unique. But her fiancé Dennis Krey had to probe many times before she was able to speak of them: ‘Four people crowded on deck where one should have been. Food and water gone. Those who died pitched overboard and we could see the sharks. My mother told me: “If you keep your hand in the water, the shark will take it on his next trip.” Each evening when darkness came I was terrified, but Father told us in reassuring tones that masked his own terror: “Remember that Vavak fled St. John in a rowboat lots smaller than this, and he made it.” We’d have fallen apart, all of us, except my father kept saying quietly: “We will live. It would be cowardly to die,” and we survived.
‘After eleven days on the water, a wonderful, beautiful Canadian ship picked us up, and it took us to Québec City, where everyone spoke French and there was food and hope.’
She wondered if Dennis had told his parents this story, and if it would make any difference to them. The Kreys were traditional New Englanders and Tessa, of course, was black. She was, however, one of those spectacular young Haitian women of light-tan complexion and exquisitely graceful carriage who seem as if they had dropped by a café on some Parisian boulevar
d. She was tall, slim, and blessed with a broad, even countenance that broke into smiles at any excuse. She had never worried about what might become of her in the cold lands of Canada, because young men persistently tried to date her, and once she moved to Boston, she had been among the most popular girls at Radcliffe. It did not surprise her that Krey had wanted to marry her; three or four other white young men had wanted to do the same, for against a New England background she was spectacular: tall, sinewy, with that glorious sunrise face and flashing white teeth.
But when Krey’s parents drove down to see her receive her graduate degree from Harvard and to attend their son’s engagement party, Tessa anticipated antagonism. She knew they must have had more exalted plans for their son than marriage to a Haitian, but she was not prepared for the subtle ways in which the elder Kreys manifested their displeasure. Judge Adolphus Krey, a tall, austere man in his sixties, looked at her as if he were thinking: Regardless of this terrible mistake Dennis is making, we shall not disown him, for he is, after all, our son. And the chill that fell over the rest of that day intensified, until Tessa muttered to herself: ‘The whole damned lake is freezing over.’
Mrs. Krey reacted somewhat differently. When she first saw Tessa she congealed so completely that she could scarcely thaw her lips for a limited smile, but when Dennis explained that Tessa’s father, Hyacinthe Vaval, would not be able to join them for lunch, she became enthralled by the reason her son gave: ‘He was summoned to Washington by President Bush. The new administration believes he might be just the man to serve as president of Haiti, if peace ever returns to that stricken island.’
‘As president?’ she asked, but Tessa dampened the emerging enthusiasm by saying: ‘He’d be crazy if he takes it. Probably be murdered like his great-great-grandfather who tried to govern in the last century.’