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This novel is a tribute to many people and facts; also to certain places, and of course, to a city ... or perhaps to two. My gratitude goes to all those sources that inspired it, especially the composers of the boleros whose words form the title of every chapter. Nevertheless, one essential factor served.. as impetus for the plot: the desire to tell a story that would re-create

..the symbolic union of the three ethnicities that make up the Cuban nation, especially the Chinese, whose sociological impact on the island is greater than what many people suppose. From my desire to pay homage to those three roots, this novel was born.

Many books offered me valuable information about the different eras and social customs re-created here, but I must mention three that were essential to an understanding of the immigration patterns and adaptation of the Chinese who arrived in Cuba during the second half of the nineteenth century: La colonia china de Cuba (1930-1960) by Napoleon Seuc; Los chinos de Cuba: Apuntes etnograficos by Jose Baltar Rodriguez; and Los chinos en la historia de Cuba (1847-1930) by Juan Jimenez Pastrana.

Among my living sources of information, I would like to recognize the invaluable assistance of the Pong family, especially Alfredo Pong Eng and his mother, Matilde Eng, who shared with me their personal anecdotes and memories of that gigantic migratory journey that was common to those Chinese who emigrated from Canton to Havana more than one hundred and fifty years ago. Without their help, I would not have been able to reproduce the family atmosphere that appears in these pages.
THE   ISLAND  ./   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      315

and  could  barely recognize  her:  a  young,  adolescent  Amalia  was  dancing

with a boy who  looked like Miguel,  with slightly more Asian features.

"Beyond your lips, the sun and the stars, with you in the distance, my dar-ling, am I . . ."

Her dying Havana, haunted by so many phantoms scattered across the world.

''You learn to love the place where you've loved," she repeated to herself.

She looked up at Miguel and thought of the faces of those beloved dead who lodged in her memory. Her heart was somewhere halfway between Havana and Miami. At which point did her soul breathe?

"My soul beats in the  center of my heart,"  she told herself.

And her heart belonged to the living-near or absent-but also to the dead who remained with her.

"With you in the distance, my darling, am I. . . " intoned Cecilia, watching the image of her city on the screen.

Havana,  my beloved.

And, as she rested her head on Miguel's chest, Amalia's ghost turned to look at her, and smiled.
314      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

"cemetery"? Did it mean that the future of her island was a challenge, where everyone would have to decide between peace and death, between harmony and chaos?

"Not for one moment can I be apart from you, " sang the lady in the veils. "The world seems different when you're not bes£de me . . . "

The sweet, melancholy song seemed to calm her. "Do you feel better?"

"It was nothing." "Feel like dancing?" "I think so."

"There  £s  no lovely  melody where you  don't appear,  and I  don't want to  hear

£t ifyou're  not w£th  me  .  .  ."

The bolero  seemed meant for her city.  Or maybe it was  simply that she

couldn't hear a bolero without remembering Havana.

"It's just that you've  become a part of my soul .  .. "

Yes, her city, too, was a part of her, like breathing, like the nature of her visions. . . just like the one she must be having right now in the hazy atmosphere of the place: a crooked little man, dressed in a sort of cassock, rQ.cking himself absurdly on top of the piano.

"Miguel ... " "Yes?"

"Am I drunk on half a moj£to, or is there really a dwarf on top of the piano?"

He glanced over her shoulder.

"What are you talking about?"  he  began.  "I don't see  ... "

He hesitated. And when he lowered his eyes to her face, she could tell that he knew about the legend of Martinico and what it meant for her to see him, but neither of them said a word. There'd be time for explanations later. And there would be time to ask questions of the dead. Now she sus-pected she'd always have them nearby, because she had just discovered Amalia amid the smoke that swirled like the fog rising off the river.

Cecilia stopped dancing. "What's wrong?" Miguel asked.

"Nothing," she answered, trembling, as Amalia's shadow passed between them, leaving a sudden trail of cold.

But the girl ignored the chill. She only wanted to know what the woman was after with her fixed, mesmerizing gaze. She turned her head a little
\ ,

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THE  ISLAND.I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      313

The familiar black stone, mounted in its little golden hand, hung from the chain around his neck. It looked like a very delicate jewel, barely visi-ble on the young, strong chest. Cecilia closed her eyes. She didn't know how to tell him.... She tried to follow the rhythm of the melody.

"And when will she show up here?" "Who?"

"Your grandmother."

Miguel looked at her with a strange glow in his eyes. "My grandmother died."

Cecilia stopped moving. "What?"

"A year ago."

He tried to keep dancing, but Cecilia was nailed to the floor. "Didn't you say she told you about the bar?"

"In a dream. She told me to come here and ... Are you okay?" "I have to sit down."
Her head was  spinning.

"How  did  you  get  that  amulet  of hers?"  she  managed  to  ask  as  she

.r~gained her composure.

"She gave it to a friend to give to me. I've had it since last night. Maybe that's why I dreamed about her."

Then Cecilia remembered the first set of clues: tavern, vision, illumina-tions. How could she not have realized it before? Tavern: that's what they called bars in Amalia's day. That was what the woman had meant to tell her: she was a vision in a bar, someone who was there in order to be illu-minated. She thought about Amalia's words: "Their combination will show you who you are and what you can expect of yourself." She had no further doubts: she, too, was a visionary, someone who could talk to spir-its. That's why she carried within her a house inhabited by the souls of her loved ones. Now she was sure she had inherited her grandmother Delfina's gifts. Even Claudia had told her so: "You walk among the dead." But she had been blind.

But there was still the second set of clues. What could the "challenge" be that was related to the future? Amalia had warned her that the oracles were intuitive, that she should look for associations. Fine. The "dove" was a peace symbol. But how could she associate it with the image of a
312      •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

"A mojito,"  said  Cecilia unhesitatingly.

"I thought you: didn't drink with strangers," he said when the waitress walked away, smiling for the first time.

They studied each other for a few seconds. The darkness no longer impeded her vision, and Cecilia could distinguish the light coming from his eyes.

"When did you arrive from Cuba?" "Two days ago."

Cecilia thought she had misheard_him. "Only two days?"

And, as he didn't respond, she ventured another question: "Who told you about this place?"

The waitress arrived with their drinks. When she had left again, Miguel leaned over the table.

"I don't know what you'll think if 1 tell you something a little strange."

"Try me," she silently challenged, but aloud she said: "I won't think anything. "

f "I came on account of my grandmother. She's the one who told me -about this bar."

Cecilia froze.

A woman draped in a shawl went out to the dance floor, opened her arms as if she were about to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils, and crooned in her soothing voice, a voice made for boleros:

"How could it be? I can't tell you how, I can't explain it, but I fell in love withyou. ... "

"Let's go," Miguel said, tugging her toward the dance floor once again.

How hard it was  to  talk under those  conditions.

"How long has your grandmother lived in Miami?" the girl asked, not daring to pronounce the name that was about to spring from her tongue.

"She was in Cuba, waiting several years for them to give her and my grandfather permission to leave. They finally gave it to her after he died. Then she came here alone, thinking that my mother and 1 would join her right away, but they didn't let us travel until recently. Look," he said, reaching under his shirt, "this is hers."
THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      311

"She wasn't." Cecilia bit her lip.

"And I met Gaia because she worked in my office for a while after she left the university. She always went around with a frightened look, like she wanted to run away from everything. I tried to take her to a psychologist, but I never managed to get her to see him because she left for Miami."
"I don't think Gaia is  sick."

The  screen lit up  Miguel's face.  Now his eyes looked green.

"Maybe this city's cured her," he speculated. ''I've been told that Miami has that power over Cubans. Melisa was seeing a psychiatrist, too, and now just look at her. Although I never thought she had any problem. It was a mysterious business.... "

The bolero ended and they returned to their table. The girls sat down at another table with a group of friends. Claudia motioned them over to join them, but Cecilia wasn't ready to lose sight of her comer.

"I don't want to move from here," she confessed. "Neither do I."

They rejected the invitation with a gesture.

• "What did you study?" "I'm a sociologist."

"And what were you doing there?" There meant the island.

"I  was  working  in  hospitals,  helping  with  group  therapy,  but  I  never

told anyone about my real dream." Cecilia listened without comment.

"For a while I've been making notes for a book." "Are you a writer?"

"No, I'm just researching." "Researching what?"

"Chinese contributions to Cuban culture." She looked at him, surprised.

"Hardly anyone ever mentions the Chinese," he continued, "although according to the history and sociology texts, they're the third link in our culture."

A waitress approached the table. "Would you like to order anything?"
. /
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310       •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

"Miguel?"  she  sputtered.

There was a hesitation, and almost immediately thereafter a sort ofearth-quake. The silhouettes that followed behind Gaia rushed to the table.

"Is that you, Miguel?" "What a surprise!" "When'd you get here?"

"Claudia, I'd never have guessed! Melisa, it's been so long!" he said, laughing. "God, what a coincidence!"

And they ran their hands through his hair, laughing and hugging him, like people who had found a lost family member.

"Where do you know each other from?" Cecilia asked. "From Havana ..." he replied vaguely.

"Has anyone seen Lisa?" Gaia asked. "She's the one who suggested we meet here, but I don't see her."

Lisa hadn't arrived.

"We have a couple of tables reserved," Claudia said. "If you'd like to join us ... "

Cecilia  said she was  waiting for  someone,  and they both stayed there.

•   "Ah,  Beny,"  murmured Miguel.

The  Great Sonero  of Cuba appeared on the  screen.

"Today,  as yesterday,  I  go  on  loving you,  my darling .  .. "

"Would you like to dance?" the man asked, taking her by the hand. And without giving her time to reply, he led her to the dance floor. "Too bad you don't know anybody here," she scolded him. He seemed

more familiar  after the warm reception her friends  had given him.

"I never heard a word from any of them again," he whispered, as if he were afraid of being overheard. "I helped them at different points in their lives. "

Cecilia observed him suspiciously and resolved not to let herself be taken in by those pure, translucent eyes.

"Helped them how?"

"A friend of mine introduced me to Claudia when she was working in a pizzeria," he explained, "which was kind of strange, because she has a degree in art history. It turned out she had a political problem. I gave her some money when I found out she had a little boy."

''1 didn't know she was  married."
THE  ISLAND"   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      309

but they were nearly all full, obliging her to choose one close to the dance floor. She was anxious to speak to Amalia and tell her that she had given up on the puzzle. Although she had found out the meaning of the six fig-ures, she still understood nothing. The first riddle, which was connected to her, was still a mystery. Tavern, vision, and illuminations were the words that corresponded to the numbers, but she didn't have the slightest idea what they might signify. The same thing happened with the second group. She couldn't figure out what to do with a challenge, a dove, and a large cemetery.

She looked up and saw the landscape that filled the entire screen. There it was again: in Miami, Cuba was more omnipresent than Coca-Cola. She tried to see the table where she and Amalia used to meet, but it was too far away and the bar was very dark. Even if Amalia were to come in now, she wouldn't see her, and if she found that stranger in her place, she might even leave. Taking a deep breath, she approached the young man once more.

"My friends will be arriving any minute," she said, in order to justify her boldness. "May 1 wait for them here for a few minutes? We always meet in this comer."

..."Of course. Do you want something to drink?" "No, thank you."

She looked away.

"My name's Miguel," he said, extending his hand. She hesitated for a moment before replying. "Cecilia. "

A flicker of light allowed her to examine his face. He was more or less the same age as she, but his features were so exotic that they struck her as almost otherworldly.

"Do you come here often?" he asked. "Pretty often."

"This is my first time," he admitted. "Do you know if ... ?" Several people passed by, tripping over some chairs. "Gaia!" Cecilia called.

The figure in front stopped short and the others followed, tumbling over one another like a deck of cards.

"Hi! How are you?" the new arrival asked. "Look who came ..." But she didn't finish the sentence.

"Gaia!"  the young man  exclaimed.  "I didn't  know you were here."












TODAY,    AS    YESTERDAY








It was so early that the sky still showed some traces of violet, but the bar seemed darker than usual. Guided by memory more than by sight, Cecilia approached the corner where Amalia always sat. She didn't think she'd find her there, but that's where she preferred to wait. When she n,pticed a shadow moving in the chair, she stopped short. The shadow
. belonged to  a  man.

"Excuse me," she said, drawing back. "I thought you were someone else."

"Couldn't you stay for a while?" he asked. "I don't know anybody here."

''No,  thanks,"  she  responded  frostily.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I've just arrived from Cuba, and I don't know the customs here."

Cecilia paused.

"The same as anywhere else," she said, irritated without knowing why. "No woman with even half a brain would sit down at a bar with a stranger. "

"Yes ... of course," he admitted, stammering so sincerely that Cecilia almost felt sorry for him.

At once she understood why she had been annoyed. It wasn't because of the invitation, but rather because the intruder had invaded the hide-away she and Amalia had shared for so many nights.

She  looked  for  a  table  where  she  could  watch  for  her  friend's  arrival,
THE   ISLAND  "~I ETERNAL  LOVE      •      307

The old man sat down at his side and placed his ann around his shoul-der, as he had done when Pag Li was a little boy, when he would lean against his grandfather's chest and listen to the deeds of those legendary heroes.

"Do you remember how I met the apak Marti?" he asked him. "I remember," he replied, drying his tears, "but tell me again."

And Pag Li closed his eyes, allowing his memory to fill with the images and cries of those forgotten battles. And little by little, embracing his great-grandfather's shadow, he stop~dfeeling hungry.












...



































•1
306       •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

how much we loved our grandparents, how much they were able to give us, and what we, in oUr innocent ignorance, didn't know how to receive. But the mark of that experience is undying. It remains with us somehow...."

He enjoyed indulging in such monologues. It was like conversing with the old mambi again.
The wind whisded with a ghosdy voice. Instinctively he raised his eyes: the stars were turning pirouettes among the clouds. He looked more closely. The points of light drew closer or faded; they joined in clusters and seemed to dance in a circle; th~ they connected into a single body and suddenly shot out in all directions like fireworks .... But they weren't fireworks.

''Akun, " he called silendy.

The stars moved, forming whimsical figures: an animal ... maybe a horse. And, riding on it, a man; a warrior.

''Akun. "

And he heard the murmured reply: "Pag Li . . . Lou-fu-chai . . ."

The pale vision stirred in the shadows . •Pablo smiled.
''Akun  .  .. "

An eyelid of clouds half-opened, revealing a sliver of moon, whose light spilled over the spirits that walked among the living. From the earth there rose that fragrance of home: it was an aroma like the soups his mother used to make, like the talcum his father used to dust himself with after his bath, like his great-grandfather's wrinkled hands .... The night was falter-ing like the soul of a man condemned to death, but Pag Li felt a new, ecstatic happiness.

The silhouette approached and, for a few seconds, regarded him with an infinite tenderness that even his years as a dead man had not extin-guished. With his icy hands, he stroked his cheeks. He leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

''Akun, "Pag Li sobbed, feeling all of a sudden like the most abandoned being in the universe. "Don't go; don't leave me alone."

And he clung to his great-grandfather's lap. "Don't cry, little one. I'm here."

He rocked him gendy, cradling the Little Tiger sweedy against himself. "I'm afraid, Grandfather. I don't know why I'm so afraid."
THE  ISLAND,.f  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      305

nun held a little piece of paper the prostitute had given her before walking away. Then she did something even more peculiar: she glanced at a pile of rubble and crossed herself. Immediately she appeared to blush and, almost angrily, made the sign of the cross in the direction of the trash bins before continuing on her way.

My God,  what a strange place the island had become.



Warm days and rainy nights l!rrived. New slogans were invented and others were forbidden. There were demonstrations organized by the government and silent protests inside people's homes. Rumors of upris-ings circulated, as well as speeches denying them. In time, Pablo forgot everything. He forgot his first years on the island, his struggles to under-stand its language, the endless afternoons of lugging clothing back and forth. He forgot his years at the university when he moved among three existences: studying medicine, secretly seeing Amalia, and fighting for the underground; he forgot that he had once tried to leave a country he'd come to love; he forgot the documents that were growing mildewed in a ’awer somewhere.... But he never forgot his rage.

On the darkest nights, his breast moaned with an ancient pain. Hurri-canes, droughts, floods: he had witnessed it all during those years when his life had less and less meaning. Now the country was going through a new stage that, unlike the others, seemed planned because it even had an official name: Special Period of War in Peacetime. A stupid, pedantic name, Pablo thought, trying to silence his insides, which cried out with loneliness. Never before had he felt such fierce hunger, so absolute, so all-encompassing. Could that be why they had never let him leave the coun-try? So they might kill him slowly?

He opened the door and sat down in the doorway. The neighborhood was dark, plunged again into one of its interminable blackouts. A light breeze blew down the street, carrying with it the muffled sound of the palm trees that whispered in Parque Central. Luminous shadows half-covered the disk of the moon, transforming it in smudged spirals. For some reason he thought of Yuang. He'd been thinking of him quite a bit lately-perhaps because with the years, he'd come to value his wisdom.

"It's a shame I never took more advantage of it when he was alive," he said to himself, "but that must happen to lots ofpeople. We realize too late
.:;,..~';:;>.•
....,  ..

-~.

304       •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

The day I left Havana, I didn't tell a soul;

The only one who followed me was a little Chinese dog.

Since he was just a Chinese mutt, a man who thought him cute bought him for half a peso

and a pair of leather boots. The money, well, I spent it, and the boots soon fell apart. Ay, doggy of my sorrows! Ay, doggy of my heart!

He glanced around, as if expecting to hear the Chinaman Julio's bells, announcing his coconut, guanabana, and French vanilla ice cream, the best in the neighborhood, but all he could see on the street were three half-naked children playing, and they soon grew bored and disappeared inside a house.

•_As  he  was  about  to  leave,  he  noticed  the  face  of a  little  girl  looking  at - something  around  the  comer,  outside  his  field  of vision.  He  craned  his neck  a little,  without revealing himself to  her,  and saw two  young women talking spiritedly next to  some trash cans. He immediately recognized that one  of them  was  a  prostitute.  Her  clothing  and  makeup  gave  her away-a  pity,  because  she  had  lovely,  delicate  features  and  a  very  distinguished air.  The other was  a nun, but she didn't seem to be delivering a sermon to the  wayward  one.  On  the  contrary,  both  of them  were  chatting  like  old

friends.

The prostitute had  a  sweet,  mischievous laugh.

"I can imagine the expression on your confessor's face if you told him you talk to the spirit of an African slave," she joked.

"Don't say that, Claudia," the nun replied. "You don't know how bad that makes me feel."

What were those women talking about? He looked around. There was no one else in sight except the little girl, still sitting in the doorway.

The three boys who had been playing on the sidewalk earlier came out again, whooping and striking machete blows against the Spanish conquer-ors. Pablo couldn't hear the rest of the conversation. He only saw that the
THE   ISLAND"   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      303

it, following the success of a certain soap opera in which a slave woman spent more than one hundred episodes waiting for that document. All those with travel visas had to live through a similar soap opera: unless that card arrived, they could never leave.

The first months were full of hope. When the first year had passed, hope turned to anxiety. After the third year, anxiety became despair. And after the fourth, Amalia was convinced they'd never let them leave. Maybe they thought twenty years of prison weren't enough.

She took comfort in watching her ~andsongrow: he was as beautiful and

. sweet a boy as her Pablo had been in the days when they had met. Amalia noted how he took pains to please his grandpa. He always found ways to be near him, as if the threat of separation made him treasure each minute they spent together. The boy's fear seemed increasingly unreal, because time passed, and Pablo remained living in a different prison: the island itself.

Although he still alarmed people with his bold speeches, he never returned to jail. Perhaps the secret police had decided he was a harmless old man after all. In any case, no matter what he said, he couldn't actually take action.

".Deprivation is the most effective weapon for containing rebellion. With 'the exception of a few signs on walls and in certain public restrooms, noth-ing appeared to be happening. There was no one to conspire with, either. It was the fault of that epidemic that had stuck to everyone's skin like a parasite: fear. Nobody dared do anything. Well, perhaps a few had tried, but they were already in prison. They went in and out of jail regularly, without inciting anything besides protest or denunciation. They were younger men and women than Pablo, as brave as he, although without the means to obtain anything more than what Pablo himself had achieved.

Pablo had no choice but to watch: watch, and try to understand a coun-try that grew stranger by the minute. One day, for example, he went out for a walk very early in the morning and found himself at the Mengs' old inn, now a storage place for folders belonging to the Young Communists' Union. He lifted his face to a cloud-dappled sky, wishing for a little rain, the blessings of his great-grandfather. A mangy, nearly hairless dog passed by, the kind that used to be known as "Chinese dogs" because of their lack of fur. The animal regarded him with fear and hope. Pablo squatted to pet him, thinking of a song from his childhood:
302       •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

former political prisoner, although he didn't really understand what it all meant. He only knew that he mustn't mention it at school, especially after the stigma of his parents' divorce.

"When are you leaving?"  asked Isabel.

"You mean when are we leaving. You and the boy also have a visa." "Arturo will never give me permission to take him out of the country." "I thought you'd already spoken with him."

"He  doesn't care,  but he  can't okay it.  He'd lose his  job."

"That ..." Amalia began, but _s~ held back on seeing her grandson's expression. "He only thinks of himself. "

"I won't be  able  to  do  anything until  the boy is  older."

"Yes, and when he turns fifteen, he'll be old enough for military service, and then they won't let him leave."

The child listened in fear to the battle between his mother and his grandmother.

"I haven't waited twenty years for your father only to lose my daughter and grandson."

"You won't lose  us-we'll  be reunited,"  she  assured  her,  furtively  eye-

.i~g her father, who hadn't said a word, immersed in who-knew-what kind - of thoughts. "You're the ones who mustn't wait."

"At least,  try to  talk to Arturo.  Or would you rather I  do  it?"

''We'll see," she whispered without much conviction. "It's late. We really should go.... Say good night, sweetheart."

The little boy kissed his grandparents and hopped out to the sidewalk. There he remained standing on one foot until his mother took his hand and walked him away.

Amalia looked out the window to watch them, and she felt her heart ache as much as it did the day she watched her father die. How could she leave them behind? Not to see her grandson grow up, never to embrace her daughter again: this was just half her fear. The other half was to lose Pablo again, and that was what would happen if she didn't get them out of there.




For that reason, she anxiously awaited the exit permit from the gov-ernment: the famous white card. Or the "freedom card," as Cubans called
,"

















YOU     GOT     ME     IN    THE     HABIT








It was as if Yuang's rainy message had reawakened that rebellious, adventurous spirit that characterized his sign. The rain strengthened the spirit he had never lost. His tears on being released from prison hadn't been a sign ofdefeat, as Amalia had thought, but one ofrage. No sooner had ?e returned to nonnal life than he recovered his inner voice, the one that demanded justice above all else. He continued to speak his mind, as if he had no inkling that it might earn him a beating or even another stint in jail. In his heart he still felt like a tiger, old and caged, but a tiger nonetheless.

Amalia, on the other hand, feared for him and for her family on that island of draconian justice. And so she began to negotiate-papers passing back and forth; certificates and stamps; interviews and documents-the only possibility if all of them were to stay alive.

One day she came home from running around and stopped in the doorway, trying to catch her breath. She looked at Pablo, her daughter, and her grandson, who was coloring the paper boats his grandfather placed on the table.

''We're leaving," she announced. ''Where to?" Isabel asked.

Amalia heaved an impatient sigh. As if there were any other place one could go!

"Up north.  They gave Pablo his visa."

The child turned away from his boats. He had been hearing about the visa for months. He knew it had to do with his grandfather, who was a
300       •       DAINA   CHAVIANO

arrived by sea on a raft, gliding over the waves, the first account of surfing in history. It was no surprise, then, that this same Virgin, whom the pope had crowned queen of Cuba, struck such a resemblance to the goddess of love that the slaves worshipped, dressed in yellow like the African deity, and had her sanctuary in EI Cobre, a place from which the metal devoted to the oriska was extracted. Ah, her radiant mestiza island, innocent and pure as Eden.

She recalled the drizzle that had accompanied the pope as he left the sanctuary of San Uzaro-a healing .E.ain, delicate as filigree, spilling over

. the tropical night-and she remembered the cloudless rain that fell on Pablo before the black marble monument. But by some fluke of memory, she also thought of Roberto .... Ay, her ill-fated lover, as beautiful and as distant as her island. In her mind, she blew him a kiss and wished him luck.







..
\,.,

\


THE  ISLAND  _I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      299

"It's true." Demetrio sighed. "She'll find out all by herself. The impor-tant thing is that we're here for her."

And they chatted for  a long while,  until twilight filled the house.

One hour later, night had fallen over the city. La16 bade farewell to her guests, who now had to hurry off to errands more compatible with their present state.

The clock struck nine. When the old lady headed to the kitchen, she noticed that for some time now the apartment had been disturbingly silent. The parrot seemed asleep in her cage. So early? She went to the dining room and poked a hand through the bars, but the little creature didn't move. She had a premonition and opened the cage door in order to feel her feathers. The flesh, stiff and still warm, was rapidly growing cold. She walked around the cage to look at her from a different angle. Fidelina had died with her eyes open.

She felt sorry for the poor parrot and was about to say a prayer for her soul. But-what the devil-that damn bird had driven her, her neighbors, and half of humanity out of their minds. No prayers for Fidelina. Better just to make her disappear-something, she thought regretfully, she should qllve done long ago, when the beast was still alive. Why didn't she try it

.. earlier? A heavenly design, some inescapable karma. Who knows? But no more. She had freed herself of that miserable wretch and she swore never again to allow anything like it to appear in her life.

"Rest in hell, Fidelina," she said, throwing a rag over the parrot's corpse.




As she drove back to her apartment with the solution to the mystery, Cecilia thought of her adolescence. In those happy times, her greatest adventure was to explore houses that had been barricaded by the govern-ment, like that mansion in Miramar, the one they called the Little Castle, where she and her friends used to meet and tell ghost stories on Halloween nights, even though the holiday wasn't celebrated on the island. Every year they would climb to the roof of the haunted house to invoke the spir-its of a crazy, sensual Havana, which nevertheless seemed free of sin.

The ocean, the rain, and the hurricanes provided a natural baptism that redeemed the children of the island's Virgin. According to legend, she had
298      •      DAINA   GRAVlANO

"I'm going to let you in on a secret," 1.016 said, sitting in a rocking chair. "After my husband died, may he rest in peace, Demetrio became my greatest support. We'd known each other since we were young. He was always in love with me, but he never told me so. That's why he came here, right after I left Cuba. You were Delfina's only granddaughter, and she never stopped sending us your photos and telling us about you. Your par-ents had been planning to come here when you were born, although your mother never made up her mind for sure. The truth is, she was afraid of change. Delfina died, but she ~pt on sending us news about you. Demetrio knew that I spoke with my dead sister, and he found it quite natural. So we kept up with your life, especially after your parents died. I was very worried, knowing you were so alone. It was then that Demetrio declared his love to me and said that ifyou came here, between the two of us, we would take care of you like the daughter we could never have. You don't know how obsessed he was with the idea. He dreamed of meeting you, going to your wedding, helping to raise his grandchildren ... because we spoke of your children as though they were our own grandchildren. Poor Demetrio! He would have been such a good father!"

,  While 1.016  spoke,  Cecilia's  knees  turned  to  stone.  That was  the  miss-

. ing connection. Demetrio had wanted to protect her. She would have been the daughter sent to him by Fate and his link to 1.016, the sweetheart of his dreams, with whom he couldn't part even in death. That's why he, too, traveled in the house together with her parents: to protect her, to take care of her....

"I've got to go,  tia,"  she muttered.

"Call me whenever you like," the old lady urged, surprised by her sud-den departure.

From the window she watched her climb into the car and pull away. What odd manners young people had! And why did she need to know the meaning of those numbers? She remembered how, when she was young, it had been fashionable to play guessing games with the puzzle. If this had been another time, she would have sworn Cecilia was solving some rid-dle. She bolted the door and turned around. There were Delfina and Demetrio, like every other afternoon, gently rocking in their chairs.

"You should have told her ..." Delfina mumbled. "Everything in due course," 1.016 said.
THE   ISLAND.I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      297

"Now all I need are the numbers from the Cuban puzzle," she reminded her.

"I've never used that one," Lol6 admitted. "The Chinese one was the most famous."

"Where can I find it?" The woman shrugged.

"Maybe ... " she began, but she stopped short, staring into space. "In which drawer?"

Cecilia's hair stood on end when she understood that her aunt was talk-

. ing to  the lamp.

"In the closet?" the old woman asked. "But I don't remember ..." Even though she knew she wouldn't see anyone, the girl turned around,

looking for the invisible speaker. ''Well, if you say so...."

Without any explanation, Lol6 rose from the sofa and went to her room. After a few, unidentifiable sounds, she reappeared with a little box in her hands.

"Let's see if it's true," the woman remarked, rummaging through the cQntainer filled with papers. ''Well, yes. Demetrio was right. I guess he's

.not  as  forgetful  as he  thinks."

She was referring to a newspaper article she had taken from the little box. It was so brittle that one of its comers flaked off when she tried to smooth it out. It was a copy of the Cuban puzzle.

"Will you lend it to  me?"  Cecilia asked.

The old lady lifted her face, and once more her gaze wandered off into the distance.

"Demetrio wants you to keep it. He says that if a young girl like you is interested in these relics, we've won the battle. And he says ..."

Cecilia folded the paper carefully to prevent it from crumbling further. "... he'd like to know you better," the old woman sighed.

The girl looked up. "Me? Why?"

"He was only able to see you once, the first day you came to visit me." "You've told me that before, but I can't remember."

Lol6  sighed.

"And to think how important you were to him!" "Me?"

























i
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296      •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

Cecilia remembered the  whitish cloud surrounding the plant.

"All I saw were illusions," she complained. "I'll never be like my grand-mother. I don't have a single drop of vision."

"It's possible," the old lady murmured, daintily sipping her coffee. "Neither Delfina nor I ever had to do anything unusual in order to speak with angels or with the dead, but things today just aren't like before."

Cecilia waited for the woman to finish her coffee.

"Tia,  do  you  know what the numbers  in the puzzle mean?"

The woman stared at her with a slightly foggy expression, as if trying to remember.

"It's been years since I heard anyone talk about that, although some-times I use them to play the lottery. And believe me, it works: I've won my little stash of cash. "
"And do  you play the  Chinese or the  Cuban puzzle?"

"Why are you so interested in those things? No one your age knows what the puzzle is. Who told you about it?"

"Some woman," she replied vaguely. "She gave me a few numbers to play, but I'd like to know what they mean."

..  "Which numbers?"

Cecilia extracted a little piece  of paper from her purse.

"Look: 24, 68, and 96 from the Chinese puzzle. And 40, 62, and 76 from the Cuban one."

The old woman scrutinized her niece, pondering whether or not to expose her lie. The Florida lottery didn't go up to 68 or 96. So no one in his right mind would want to play such high numbers. She was sure there must be some other reason for the girl's interest in those figures, but she decided to go along with her.

"I think I've got a list somewhere," she said, getting up and heading for the bedroom.

Cecilia stayed in the living room, going over her notes. She had always thought the oracles were elaborate, mysterious entities, with revelations that could produce ecstasy, not some amusement for a private eye. Should she pursue such games?

"I found it," said her aunt, emerging from the bedroom and placing a wrinkled paper on the mantel. "Let's see ... 24: dove ... 68: large ceme-tery ... 96: challenge."

Cecilia  jotted down the  words.
.

. '_,wo:
~.-:~..

THE   ISLAND.I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      295

mind paraded the megaliths of Malta, the abandoned city of the Anasazi, and the ancient, dark coast of Tintagel, plagued with nooks where the characters of the Arthurian legend wandered ... mysterious places where the echo of danger resounded and that were, of course, filled with ruins. In essence, that was her island.

She snapped back to reality. Cuba was still in its usual place, within her reach. Its glittering cities could be seen from Key West on the darkest nights. Her mission, for the moment, was something else: to untangle her immediate future. Or, at the very lea~t, to find a clue that would move her in the right direction.


The parrot's screeching was the first response to the door buzzer. A shadow blocked the peephole.

"Who is it?" "Juana the Mad." ''Who?''

Holy Virgin! Why did she insist on asking when she could see her? •. "It's me, tia ... Ceci ... "

There was the  sound of locks  sliding open.

"Goodness, what a surprise," the old woman said, opening the door as if she just now could see her.
"The people, united,  will never be defeated...."

"Fidelina! That damn parrot is going to give me a nervous breakdown." "It's your fault for not getting rid of her."

"I can't," Lo16 groaned. "Every night Demetrio begs me not to give her away to anyone else, because he can only see her through me."

Cecilia sighed, resigned to being part of a family that hovered between insanity and kindness.

"Do you want some coffee?" the woman asked, entering the kitchen. "I've just brewed some."

"No,  thanks."

The old woman returned a few seconds later with a demitasse in her hand.

"Did you find  out anything about the  house?"

"No," Cecilia lied, not able to rehash her newest discoveries. "And your exercises for seeing the aura?"












FREE     OF     SIN








Cecilia sped through the narrow streets of Coral Gables, streets dap-pled by trees that shed squalls of leaves over people and houses. Inexpli-cably, the landscape reminded her of certain hidden comers of Havana, but with its rough walls and Gothic gardens, damp with ivy, Coral Gables ,more closely resembled an enchanted village than the ruined city she had left behind. Perhaps the association was due to the two different kinds of decrepitude: one cloaked in sham elegance and the other a remnant of past glory. She glanced over the flower-dotted gardens and felt a wave of nostalgia. What an obsessive nature she had, still yearning for the roar of the waves against the coastline, the warmth of the sun over the dilapi-dated houses, and the fragrance escaping from a soil whose fertility rose to meet you each time it became soaked with the steaming rain.

She couldn't lie to herself. That country did matter to her-as much as her own life, or even more. How could it not, when it was a part of her? She wondered how she would feel if it disappeared from the map, if sud-denly it were to vanish and land in another dimension: an Earth where Cuba didn't exist.... What would she do then? She'd have to look for some other exotic, impossible place, another region where life defied logic. She had read that people stayed healthier if they maintained some connec-tion with the place where they had been brought up, or if they lived some-where similar. And so she would have to find a country that was elusive and bucolic at the same time, where she could readjust her biological and mental clocks. Without Cuba, what other places might do? Through her
THE   ISLAND  d      ETERNAL  LOVE      •      293

Buddha, dreaming of a freedom that would soon be theirs. And the boy, who was still very small and believed in fairy-tale endings, smiled happily.

Sometimes Pablo insisted on leaving Chinatown. Then he would walk through Paseo del Prado, which still boasted its bronze lions, sparrows twittering among the branches. Or he would go to the Malec6n to remind himself of the days when he and Amalia were still courting.

One Day ofthe Dead he visited the monument to the Chinese mambises together with Amalia, his daughter, and his grandson. Isabel's husband didn't go. Years of assault and thre:n:s had turned him into a miserable individual, full of fear and very different from the young dreamer whom the girl had met. He no longer went to see his in-laws, because his father-in-law had spent twenty years in prison as a counterrevolutionary. And it was during that outing that Pablo realized the extent of the destruction.

Havana looked like a Caribbean Pompeii, devastated by a Vesuvius of epic proportions. The streets were lined with potholes that the infrequent vehicles, old and run-down, tried to skirt. The sun singed trees and gar-dens. There was no grass left anywhere. The city was overrun with barri-cades and billboards calling for war, destruction ofthe enemy, and merciless hatred.

Only the black marble monument remained intact, as ifit were made of the same material as the heroes to whom it paid tribute, the same stuff as the dreams for which those heroes of yesteryear had fought: There never was a Chinese Cuban deserter; there never was a Chinese Cuban traitor. He inhaled the breeze blowing off the Malec6n, and, for the first time since leaving prison, he felt more himself. His great-grandfather Yuang would be proud of him.

A fine drizzle began to fall, indifferent to the sun that made steam rise from the asphalt. Pablo looked up toward the blue, cloudless sky, allowing his face to receive those sweet, shiny drops. He had never been a traitor, either, and he never would be. And, watching that miraculous rain, he knew that the deceased mambi was sending him his blessings.
•.:'



292      •      DAINA   GRAVlANO

never dared to ask him about his life in prison; it was terrible enough see-ing the scars it had left on his spirit, but the expression on his face reflected its endless loneliness.

They no longer lived in that sunny apartment in EI Vedado, either. The government had seized it to hand over to a foreign diplomat.

Pablo still had twelve years of his sentence left to serve when she had moved to one of the three residences she was offered. All of them were pigsties compared to the apartment they had shared together; however, she had no choice but to accept. Sh~ moved to a little house in the hean of Chinatown, not because it was better than the others, but because she thought it would please Pablo to return to the neighborhood of his child-hood. There she waited for him until his release. But she never imagined his memories would turn into something so burdensome.

Sometimes Pablo would ask about the Mengs' inn or Chinaman Julio's ice cream, as if it was still difficult for him to believe that twenty years of chaos had wiped away the lives of those he once knew.

"It's been worse than a war," he would mutter whenever Amalia would recount the fate of those former neighbors.

Even  so,  she  kept  the  worst  stories  to  herself,  inventing  others  in  their

. place. For example, she never told him that Dr. Loreto had been found dead on the same stoop where Rosa used to bring him his dinner. She vaguely mentioned something about the doctor having gone to the United States to be with his children.

Amalia was glad just to have him beside her, although her joy was clouded by a sorrow she didn't want to admit: they had robbed her of twenty years of life with this man, years that no one-not even God-could give back to her.

And Pablo? What did he still keep locked inside his head, this man who every afternoon walked up and down the streets of his childhood, now inhabited by men who seemed like shadows? Although he never com-plained, Amalia knew that a piece of his soul was a landscape of darkness and ashes. He smiled only when Isabel came to visit, bringing his grand-son, a little boy with greenish slanted eyes. Then both of them would sit in the doorway of the house, and-just as his great-grandfather Yuang had done with him-he would tell the child stories of the glorious days when the mambises listened to the holy words of the apak Jose Marti, the Enlightened
THE  ISLAND.,   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      291

her fears. When she heard his name called over the loudspeaker, she real-ized that at some point she must have shown her identification card with-out being aware of it. She tried to remain calm. She didn't want to tremble; she didn't want to attract the guards' attention. It might look suspicious-anything might look suspicious. But her nerves ...

She fixed her gaze on the metal door until she was able to identify the frail figure standing in the middle of the corridor as he glanced around,

until finally he recognized her. But then two strange things happened. When she reached out to embrace !llm, he brusquely pushed her away

. as he advanced with long strides and a tense, unfamiliar expression on his face.

"Pablo,  Pablo,"  she uttered.

But the man kept walking, gripping the bundle of clothing he was tak-ing with him from prison. What had happened? At last the doors closed behind them, and they were alone on the dusty road. And that's where the second strange thing occurred. Pablo turned to his wife and, without warning, began kissing her, embracing her, smelling her, caressing her, until she understood why he had hardly glanced at her before. He didn't w;mt the guards to see what she was seeing now. Pablo was crying. And his

. tears streamed down into the woman's hair, revealing a passion she feared lost. Pablo sobbed like a child, and Amalia understood that not even her daughter's tears had pained her as much as those of this man, who now looked like a fallen deity. And, in a moment of delirium, she yearned to renounce the blessed serenity of death and become a spirit, caring for the souls of those who suffered. In the distance she thought she heard a deli-cate sound, something like a flute, hidden in the brush, but she soon stopped paying attention. She and Pablo kissed, and neither of them cared about the other's haggard body or flaccid skin or shabby clothes; nor did they notice the light radiating from within them, ascending toward an invisible nearby kingdom where all promises were one day fulfilled; a light like the one that had emanated from their bodies on a certain afternoon years ago when they made love for the first time in the enchanted valley of the hummocks.




Now it was like living in another world. Amalia watched his stooped figure, barely able to imagine the suffering that had amassed within it. She
.;; ..















TWENTY    YEARS








The ugly gray building stood before her, surrounded by a wall that looked as though it had been designed to fence in dreams. Protruding above the wall were posts that glared like the lights of a sports arena. Ama-lia tried to calculate how much energy those reflectors consumed, while pearby cities and towns had no power at all.

Someone pushed her gently. She emerged from her daydream, advanc-ing a few more steps in the line of people who were waiting. The moment she had awaited for so many years had arrived. Twenty, to be exact. No pardons for good conduct, no review of the case, no appeals to a higher court. Nothing like that existed now.

During all those years she saw Pablo every time she was given permis-sion. The visits depended on his jailers' frame of mind. Sometimes they'd let her see him month after month; on other occasions she would wait beneath the sun, in the rain, or the cold hours of dawn without arousing anyone's pity. A few times they had held him in solitary confinement for six, seven, or even eight months. For what reason? None that she knew of. Was he alive? Sick? No word. It seemed like a land of the deaf. Or the mute. A nightmare.

But today, yes-today, yes, she repeated. And she wanted to dance, sing, laugh with joy-but no, better to remain calm and put on a repentant face, lest they punish him again. Better to lower her eyes and adopt a humble demeanor she was so far from feeling. She couldn't bear another night without embracing him, without hearing the voice that drove away
THE   ISLAND  pI   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      289

The woman swept her hand across her brow, as if she were trying to drive away an ancient weariness. Cecilia accompanied her to the door.

"And Pablo?" she ventured, finally. "Did he ever get out of jail? When will you see him again?"
"Soon,  my child, very soon."

And in her eyes Cecilia found traces of a heart even sadder than her own.
















.'
288      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

Six dice fell onto the table. Two of them were ordinary, hexagonal ones; another pair had eight sides; and the third set had so many that it was impossible to count them.

"Destiny is a game of chance," Amalia went on. "A certain wise man once said that God didn't play dice with the universe, but that man was wrong. Sometimes I think He must even try Russian roulette."

''What should I do?" "Throw them."

The woman looked at the numb~rsbefore picking up the dice. "Toss them again," she instructed, handing her the tiny cubes.

After seeing the results once more, she scooped up the dice and shook them a second time.

"Again."

Cecilia repeated the steps somewhat impatiently, but Amalia pretended not to notice and made her go through the whole process three more times. Finally she put the dice back into her purse.

"Look up the meaning of the numbers 40, 62, and 76 in the Cuban lottery. Their combination will show you who you are and what you can Cfxpeet of yourself. Then look up 24, 68, and 96 in the Chinese lottery.

.  They represent a future  that concerns us  all."

Cecilia remained silent for a few seconds, skeptical about how seriously to take the game.

"I've heard that lottery numbers have more than one meaning," she finally said.

"Just look up  the first  one."

"How am I  going to  interpret a three-word message?"

"Not the words, the concepts," Amalia explained. "Remember, fortune-telling systems are more intuitive than rational. Look for synonyms, asso-ciations of ideas . . ."
The  lights in the bar began to flicker.

"I didn't realize how late it was," Amalia said, rising. "Before I forget, I want to thank you for keeping me company all these evenings when I felt so alone."

"You  don't have  to  thank me for  anything."

"And also for your interest in my story. If you're part of what we left behind, I'll go in peace. I believe something better awaits Cuba."
THE  ISLAND  pi   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      287

''What's wrong?" "Nothing. "

"Don't lie to me, child." Cecilia sighed.

"I'm tired of my country's not being a country, with all the opportuni-ties it's had. Now the whole place can explode, for all I care. I just want to live in peace, knowing I can plan what's left of my life."

"It's your anger talking, not your heart. And anger is a sign that you really care about what goes on there.:

The waitress  brought her  Cuba libre.

"Well, it could be," Cecilia admitted, "but I'd give anything to know the future, so I wouldn't keep gnawing on my own insides. If I could find out once and for all what's in store for us, I might know what to cling to, and I'd stop tormenting myself."

"The future isn't just one thing. If you could see the destiny of your country or even of one person right now, that wouldn't mean you'd see the same thing a month from now."

"What are you saying?"

."The future you'd see today would become reality only if nothing 'changed minute to minute. Even an accident can change the original pre-diction. At the end of a month, the sum total of all its events would tum the future into something different."

"But what does it matter?" muttered Cecilia. "No one can see what's coming, anyway."

The waiters were cleaning off the tables as they emptied. Two more couples called for their checks.

"Do you like games  of chance?"

"I never play the lottery.  I  have bad luck."

"I'm referring to an oracle to predict the future." Cecilia leaned over the table.

''You've just said that no predictions are for sure. And now you want to play fortune-teller?"

Amalia's clear, gentle laughter rang through the nearly deserted bar. What a shame she didn't laugh more often.

"Let's say, because of the situation I find myself in, I know certain things that others don't know.... But let's not complicate matters. Why don't we consider these predictions like a sort of game?"
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I

•,'1"




286      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

a hope of recovery. Nothing had escaped Cuba's dire fate. She recalled every bit ofher own history, and her heart was choked with pain. She didn't know a single scenario in which everyone lived happily ever after. That's why, night after night, she ended up in the bar, listening to Amalia's stories in the hope that, in spite of everything, there'd be a happy ending.

That Thursday she had gone to bed very early, but she couldn't sleep. At two a.m., seized with insomnia, she decided to get dressed and go out. As she drove, she tried to see the glittering of the stars through the wind-shield. The blackness of the sky reminded her of the saying "It's always darkest before the dawn." And it struck her that, perhaps, if the expression was rooted in truth, like all bits of popular wisdom, very soon her life would be tinged with the light of morning.

She pushed open the door to the bar and looked around among the tables. It was so late that she didn't think she'd find her friend, but she was still there, looking dreamily at the photos that flashed across the two screens hanging on either side of the dance floor.

"Hi,"  Cecilia greeted her.

"My daughter and grandson are coming in two weeks," the woman apnounced without preamble. "I hope you'll come and meet them."

" "I'd love to," Cecilia replied, sitting down opposite her. "Where will you see them?"

"Here,  of course."

"But kids  aren't  allowed in places like  this."

Amalia bit into a piece of ice that crunched like a dried shell. "My grandson's not so small anymore."

Two or three couples moved slowly on the dance floor. Cecilia ordered a Cuba libre.

"What about your  daughter's husband?"

"Isabel's divorced. Just she and her boy are coming." "How'd they manage to get out?"

"They won the visa  lottery."

Now, that was luck! To get a visa in that mountain of half a million applications per year was almost a miracle. When would the exodus end? Her country had always been a land of immigrants. People from every latitude had sought refuge on the island since the time of Columbus. No one had ever thought of running away ... until now.

Cecilia noticed the  woman staring at her.
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DEFEATED     HEART








Cecilia felt as if she had been thrown to the bottom ofa pit. It seemed to her that Amalia's tragedy formed part of her own life. When she was living in Cuba, her future had been like the horizon surrounding her: a monotonous sea with no possibility of change. Her refuge was in her ~~ends, her family, and her friends' families. Some helping or comforting -hand would always appear, even if that hand belonged to another castaway like herself. Now the universe was within her reach. For the first time she was free, but she was alone. Her family was practically extinct, her friends dead or dispersed throughout the world. Several of them had committed suicide, weighted down by life's complications. Others had drowned in the Strait of Florida, attempting to flee. Many were exiles in unlikely places: Australia, Sweden, Egypt, the Canary Islands, Hungary, Japan, or any other comer of the planet where there was a piece of earth to land on. It was a myth that the Cubans had immigrated en masse to the United States; she could name dozens of friends who lived in almost legendary countries as distant and inaccessible as the mysterious Thule. The friend-ships she had cultivated so lovingly throughout her life were now lost in unforeseen banks of fog. Certain doubts caused by the occasional squab-ble would never be resolved; misunderstandings would remain misunder-standings for all eternity; and explanations would be left to ponder what might have been but never was .... And better not to think about her own homeland, that sick, broken landscape, that ruined geography with hardly
284      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

said: that there were more lives after death? If only that weren't the case. She didn't want to come back, if that meant starting another charade gov-erned by such illogical rules. She would give anything to ask God why he had chosen such a fate for her Pablo, a loving, honest man....

"Mommy," the girl whispered, pointing to the policeman watching them from a distance.

They needed to go. They weren't doing anything illegal, but one could never tell.

Isabel once again read the phr~se engraved on the black marble, a phrase she would show the children she would one day bear, when she would tell them about the deeds of her great-great-grandfather Yuang, the tenacity of her grandparents Siu Mend and Kui-fa, and the rebelliousness of her father, Pag Li. The memory of her father filled her eyes with tears. Ashamed of her own weakness, she cast a scornful glance at the policeman still watching them but who couldn't quite decipher her gesture. Then off she went with her mother, her head higher than ever, repeating like a man-tra, so she might engrave it in her genes, the phrase on the monument that her future child must never forget: There never was a Chinese Cuban deserter,.
there never was  a Chinese Cuban  traitor.
«
THE   ISLAND  ,.,  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      283

For a few seconds the music kept falling from the sky. Maybe she was imagining it. She looked at her daughter, an adolescent with wavy hair like her grandmother, Mercedes, a pink complexion like her Spanish great-grandmother, and slanted eyes like her Chinese grandmother, but the girl was off in her own world. She had stopped before the inscription engraved on the monument. Without needing an explanation, Isabel knew that no other nationality-among the dozens populating the island-eould declare anything similar to what that phrase revealed.

Her mother gently touched her elbow. The girl, roused from her day-dream, placed the flowers at the base of the column. Amalia recalled that soon they would mark another anniversary of Rita's death. She would never forget the date because, in the midst of the best-attended wake in Cuba-or had it been at Chibas's wake?-she had bumped into Delfina.

"This April seventeenth won't be the only wretched date in our his-tory," the clairvoyant assured her. "A worse one is yet to come."

"I don't believe it," sobbed Amalia, who couldn't imagine anything worse than the tragedy of losing Rita.

"Within three years,  on this  same  day,  there  will be  an invasion."
.'"A war?"

"An invasion," the woman insisted. "And if we stop it, it will be the worst misfortune in our history."

''You mean if we don't manage to stop it." "I meant what I said."

Amalia sighed. Where could sweet Delfina be now? She thought about Maestro Lecuona, dead in the Canary Islands; about dear Freddy, buried in Puerto Rico; about so many musical icons of her island who had taken refuge in foreign lands after the defeat of the invasion she predicted....

And ultimately Amalia would remain alone with her daughter, while Pablo served his twenty-year sentence.

The last little life she carried in her womb had died of a kick. It would have been her third child, ifnot for the harshness ofthe men in her history. Life is like a game of chance in which not everyone gets to be born and others die ahead of their time. Nothing could be done to guarantee a bet-ter or worse outcome. It was too unfair. Although maybe it wasn't a ques-tion of fairness, as she'd always believed, but of other rules she needed to learn. Maybe life was an apprenticeship. But for what, if after death there was only eternal bliss or eternal damnation? Or was it true what Delfina
282      •      DAiNA   GHAVIANO

on she would live with them; she would hear her own language; and she would eat moon cakes all day long. She felt a little sorry for Dr. Loreto, though, so thin and defeated, so worn out.... He'd never again have his afternoon bowl of soup.


Out   of  the   corner   of  her   eye,   Amalia  watched  her  daughter,  who
walked alongside her with a bouquet of flowers.  On this Day of the Dead,
both  of them  would fulfill  the  wish ~f the  man who had been imprisoned
for seven years. They had wanted -to go to the  cemetery instead,  but Pablo
had  begged  them  to  take  the  flowers  to  the  monument  built  in  honor  of
the  Chinese  mambises.   He  thought  it  was   a  more  appropriate  place  to
\ honor his family.  Great-grandfather Yuang was the first  on the list of rebel
ancestors.  His father,  Siu Mend, who had died demanding what was taken
\

from  him,  followed.  And  his  mother,  Kui-fa,  who  had  renounced  a  life
shrouded in  sadness,  deserved the  same respect.
The breeze that swept up  leaves  and petals  also  carried a familiar tune:
a  childhood ditty that Amalia hadn't heard in years:
A   Chinaman fell
into a  well,
his guts  turned to  water,
And started to  swell.
Arre, pate pate pate,
arre,  pate pate pa  .  .  .
His  wife  ran  away
to  a  little  cafe,
her socks  were  on  backward
and her slippers  were gray.
Arre, pate pate pate,
arre,  pate pate pa  .  .  .
The  woman looked  around,  but the  street was  deserted.  She  gazed up
at the  sky,  but all  she  saw were  clouds.  The  words,  sung in a mischievous
little  voice,  spoke  of a  common  form  of suicide  among  the  coolies  who
tried  to  escape  slavery  by  jumping headfirst  into  a  well.  Pablo,  who  had
heard about it from his great-grandfather,  had described it to her.
•:~




THE  ISLAND  ,I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      281

ries of imperialism, they had forbidden him to work. Now his clothing hung off his frame like wet rags.

Rosa  found   him  in  the   doorway  of  his  home   and   she  nostalgically

recalled the figure of the mambi who had also once sat in a doorway, wait-ing for Little Tiger, the boy who was always ready to listen to a tale of the days when men fought with honor for justice in the world.... Now the old man was dead and her Little Tiger was languishing in prison.

Twenty years.  That  was  what  the  trial  had  decreed  for  his  connection

with  a  faction  that  planned  to  sabotage  the  government.  Twenty  years.

. She wouldn't live that long. It reassured her to know that Amalia existed. To a woman who saw the world through his eyes, it was a comfort being second place in her son's heart.

She greeted the doctor and handed him the dish. He looked like an old man, and his decrepitude only increased with the anxiety and the tremu-lous gestures with which he sipped the soup. A dog approached to sniff, but he kicked it away.

Rosa averted her eyes, unable to bear this image of such a man. What would await her, alone and without any resources but a miserable
pension?
'"
.. She returned home, closed the door, and turned off the only light that illuminated the living room, but the glow lingered in the room. There, in a shadowy comer, was her mother, the stunning Lingao-fa, with her almond eyes and that silken skin.

"Kui-fa," the  dead woman called,  stretching out her arms.

'Ua, " she whispered in the language of her childhood, embracing her. "I've come to keep you company," the spirit murmured in a musical

Cantonese.

"I know,"  she replied.  "I've been very lonely."

In her mother's embrace, she luxuriated in the aroma of her childhood-her mother's smell-which brought back so many memories. Then she stepped back and went to the door to her room. From the threshold she turned to her mother.

"Will you stay with me?" "Forever."

She entered her room, climbed onto the bed she had shared with Siu Mend, and took a rope that hung from the highest beam. Soon she would see her husband, Uncle Weng, the mambi Yuang, Mei Lei. ... From now
280       •      DAiNA   GHAVIANO

grow pale. Besides, he was shimmering with a greenish light, the meaning of which she couldn't determine.
Amalia wanted to shout insults, scream, bite into her arms, and rend her clothing like La Lupe. She would have sung a duet with her if only she could spit in the face of the one who had deceived them, promising them the moon with that monkish expression that doubtless concealed-ay, Delfina!-the face of a red devil.

"A play,  with you it's  all a play:  rehearsed lies,  a perfect simulation.  ... "

She tried to get up, but she felt herself growing weaker. Before she blacked out, she suddenly understood why people were so crazy about La Lupe.




Rosa stirred the fish soup and tossed in a handful of salt before tast-ing it. In what seemed like another life, there would have been pieces of ginger, oyster sauce, and vegetables to season it, and the fragrance would have wafted up to the clouds like the aroma of the soups her nanny had prepared. She poured part of the broth into a container and went out into tlte street.

Since Siu Mend's death, she no longer found pleasure in cooking, and less so now that she couldn't indulge those moments of inspiration when adding a few sesame seeds or a splash of sweet-and-sour sauce could make all the difference between an ordinary dish and something worthy of the gods. But despite it all, every afternoon she prepared a little food for Dr. Loreto, the father of Luis and Bertica, her son's former schoolmates.

The doctor had moved nearby after his family left for California. The government had refused him an exit visa without any explanation, but he suspected the reason was a certain influential individual: a former guerrilla leader, recently arrived from the mountains, who had tried to make a move on his wife. The couple had suffered from horrible reprisals for years, until Irene died of cancer. The doctor had forgotten about the matter until he ran into the man again, face-to-face, the day he went to apply for permis-sion to leave the country. His children didn't want to abandon him, but he insisted they leave. Now he looked like the mere shadow of the once strik-ing doctor he had been-a man who always drank a glass of Calvados after those sumptuous meals he ordered at the Red Dragon. They had labeled him a gusana-a worm. As his punishment for wanting to pursue the luxu-
THE  ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      279

'~play, with you it's all a play:  rehearsed lies,  a perfect simulation.  ... "

Amalia couldn't believe her eyes when she took off one shoe and began attacking the piano with her stiletto heel. Three seconds later she seemed to change her mind, hurling the shoe from the stage and insistently pummeling the pianist in the back while he continued playing, unperturbed.

She held her breath, waiting for someone to come onstage with a strait-jacket and take the singer away, but nothing happened. Quite the oppo-site: each time La Lupe began one ofher outbursts, the audience screamed and applauded convulsively.
"This  country has  gone  crazy," Amalia thought.

She was almost glad her father wasn't there. Jose, who had rubbed elbows with the most exquisite artists, would have died all over again had he seen this farce.

"Can't you change the channel?" Pablo shouted from the bedroom. "Did you see her?" Amalia asked. "She's like a lion in a cage."

How far would this madness go? Had times changed that much? Was she getting old? She stood up to tum off the television, but she didn't get there. A sharp buzzing made her jump.

•' "What do you want  ...  ?"

She had barely opened the door when four men pushed her inside. Startled, Isabel shrieked and ran to hide against her mother's legs.

Shoving aside the furniture and decorations in their way, the men searched the apartment and discovered some leaflets sandwiched between the mattress and the bed frame. Two of them attempted to remove Pablo by force, but he resisted fiercely. While mother and daughter screamed, they dragged him, semiconscious and bleeding, from the room. Amalia stationed herself between the men and the door and received a kick in her belly that made the vomit rise out of her right there.

The shouting had alerted the neighbors, but only one elderly couple dared approach when the men had finally gone.
"Senora Amalia,  are you all right?"

"Isabel," she whispered to the girl as she felt the thick liquid running between her legs, "go call Grandma Rosa and tell her to come right away."

The blood pooled at her feet, mixing with the water that was supposed to protect her baby. For the first time she noticed that the goblin Martinico was looking at her, terrified, and that's when she learned that imps can
278      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

live much longer. Amalia suspected that Pablo wouldn't just stand around with his arms folded. She'd remembered that same expression from when he was conspiring against the previous government. And he wasn't the only one. Many friends who had previously celebrated the arrival of the new order now came to visit them with oudooks as grim as their own. Amalia knew they whispered whenever she turned her back and fell silent whenever she returned with the coffee.

She tried to think of other things-for example, the masses of refugees fleeing the insurmountable wave_of changes. Hundreds of them had escaped. Even Freddy had left f~r Puerto Rico ....

"Isabel!" she called her daughter, attempting to drive those thoughts away. "Why don't you take a bath?"

Her belly weighed a ton, even though she was only five months along. "Papa's in the shower."

''When he  comes  out,  you'll take your bath."

Isabel was only ten, but she acted fifteen, perhaps because she had already seen and heard too much.

Amalia changed the channel and rocked in her chair, practically suffo-pating with the effort. Everything bothered her, even breathing.

"And now ... La Lupe!" announced an invisible emcee, in that throaty voice in vogue during the early sixties.

She tried to ignore the pain in her back and listen to the singer everyone was talking about: a mulatto woman from Santiago, with fiery eyes and the hips of an odalisque, shimmying onstage like a mare in heat. She was beautiful, Amalia conceded. Although, in truth, ugly mulattas were the exception in Cuba.

''Just like on a stage, you act out your pain. . . . Your drama doesn't fool me. ... You see, I know that play. ... "

Too theatrical, Amalia decided. Or hysterical. There was none of Rita's suave grace in this new generation.... What was she thinking? You can't get pears from an elm tree. There would never be another like her.

"Lying . .. how well you play that part. After all, it seems that's how you are. "

There was a slight change in the tone of the music; it grew unexpect-edly dramatic. Suddenly, La Lupe seemed to go wild: she undid her bun; her hair spilled all over her face; she clawed at her chest and struck her belly.
THE   ISLAND  ,(  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      277

heard a gunshot and, for the second time in her life, again felt that numb-ness in her side, in the same place where Onolorio had stabbed her eons ago. This time the blood gushed forth, much warmer and more profusely. She moved her head a little so she could see the people coming toward her, calling for a doctor, for an ambulance. She wanted to reassure them, to let them know that Jose was nearby.

She searched all the faces for the only one that was smiling, the only one that could comfort her.

"Do you see him?"  she tried to  utter.  "I told you he'd come."

But she couldn't speak, only sigh, when he held out his arms and lifted her. What tenderness there was in his eyes! Like on those afternoons so long ago ...

They walked away from the throng still gathered in the middle of the street. Behind them they heard the din and the wail of a siren, coming to save a dying woman whose spirit had already left her body. But Mercedes didn't tum back to look. Jose had come to take care of her, this time forever.



,--

How her world had changed! "No one is ever prepared to lose their parents," Amalia said to herself. Why hadn't they warned her? Why hadn't they ever explained how to deal with such loss?

She rocked nervously in front of the television. She tried to hold it together on the outside, for her daughter's sake and for the other little one who would soon arrive, but something had shattered in her breast. She would no longer be "someone's daughter"; she'd never again call anyone "Mama" or "Papa"; there would no longer be two people running to her side, shutting out the rest of the world, to embrace her, spoil her, come to her aid.

As if that weren't enough, Pablo had changed too. Not with her. He still loved her madly. But ever since his father's arrest, a new bitterness seemed to gnaw at his soul. Manuel had been given a hasty trial and sentenced to one year in prison. Pablo tried to use his influence. He'd even spoken with several officials whom he had known from the days of his underground activity, but each petition slammed him up against an unscalable wall. Only after Siu Mend had served his sentence did he finally return home, badly injured and fatally ill, so sick that many people thought he wouldn't
.~"

276      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

mind now wandered through the days when her suitor had courted her while she, immersed in a different sort offog, had barely noticed his efforts to conquer her dark, bewitched heart.

She remembered other things too: she had lived in a brothel; she had been possessed by countless men; her mother had died in a fire that nearly destroyed Do~a Ceci's business; her father had been murdered by a rival businessman.... But she didn't have to hide it anymore because no one knew what was locked inside memory. The only one who shared her secret had died.... No! What was she 1:h4!!cing? Jose would come to see her, just as he did every day at noon, while Dofia Ceci screamed at the cleaning woman. He'd sing her a serenade, and she'd peek out the window toward the comer, fearful that Onolorio's thugs would get there first.

But Jose didn't come to her. She got out of bed and looked impatiently through the window, at the street ... the street where armed pedestrians passed by day and night: men with long weapons they brandished even in front of children. She was the only one who realized these were Onolorio's thugs, although they dressed differently now. She had to warn Jose, or they'd kill him as soon as he rounded the comer. She felt overcome by a ~dden panic.

"Assassins!"

The word caught in her chest, emerging a little with each heartbeat. She wanted to pronounce it, even in a whisper, but the nightmarish scene had left her mute.

"Assassins!"

There was a commotion near the comer. Her fear finally overcame the paralysis that had kept her silent.

"Assassins!"  she muttered.

The tumult on the comer grew louder. A few people were chasing someone. Mercedes couldn't make out his face, but she didn't need to see him to know who he was.

like a wandering spirit, like a banshee calling for the death of its next victim, she went out into the street, shrieking:

"Assassins!  Assassins!"

And her howls blended with the crowd, which also shouted accusations at a man fleeing from his crime.

But Mercedes neither saw nor understood any of this. She threw herself on the pursuers who were trying to stop her Jose. In the confusion she
THE  ISLAND  'f  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      275

"Just for one night, as a favor for the lady upstairs. They took her hus-band prisoner, and she was afraid of being searched. I burned everything, but if the man confessed, and if they threatened her...."

They got into the car after convincing Rosa it would be safer to spend the night with her son and daughter-in-law.

The ten-minute drive to the Imp was agonizing. Several nearby streets were blocked by rubble. Jukeboxes, cash registers, tables, and other acces-sories formed mounds of debris on the pavement. When they arrived at the recording studio, the door had been boarded shut, and the terrifying seal of revolutionary intervention covered the lock. From the sidewalk, Pablo, Jose, Amalia, and Rosa saw the shattered glass, the broken shelves, the musical scores scattered on the floor.

"My God!" Jose exclaimed, ready to  collapse.

How dare they! This was the universe his father had created. There were Beny's footsteps, La Unica's smile, Maestro Lecuona's dances, the Matamoroses' guitars, Roig's zarzuelas. ... Forty years of the best music on the island threatened to disappear in the face of such incomprehensible violence. He ran his fingers across the nailed boards, imagining he would neJ"er recover the treasures from a place that his daughter and little grand-daughter had filled with their laughter. His life had been taken away.

Amalia noticed her father's pallor. "Papa."

But he didn't hear her; his heart ached as if a fist were wrenching it. He closed his eyes so he could no longer see the destruction before him. He closed his eyes so he could no longer see his country.

He closed his eyes so he could no longer see. He closed his eyes.



Every morning Mercedes imagined she might find a bouquet of roses on her doorstep. Or a box of chocolate-covered liqueurs. Or a basket of fruit tied up with a red ribbon. Or a letter that someone would have to read to her later, since she still didn't know how. And not just a love letter but an inventory of afternoons that paled in comparison to the sheen of her skin, always signed with the same name, the only one that mattered to her ... Because Mercedes could not remember that Jose was dead. Her
',.




274      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

grabbed from behind. His assault took the soldiers by surprise; they'd never seen anything like it. Two decades would pass before the West became acquainted with the martial art the Chinese call wushu.

The soldiers scrambled up from the ground while Jose and Amalia tried to restrain Pablo. One of them grabbed his revolver, but the other man stopped him.
"Leave it,"  he  muttered,  gesturing around them.

As they began to realize how many witnesses had seen the incident, they opted to close the restaurant, placing a seal on the door to indicate an

. intervention by the revolutionary gov~rnment. They returned to their sta-tion wagon.
"Where are you taking him?"

"To the Third Precinct, for now," they said. "But don't bother going there today or tomorrow. It'll be difficult for us to release him anytime soon. First they'll have to find out if he's a counterrevolutionary or not."

"I plotted against Batista!" Pablo shouted as the vehicle started up. "And I was thrown in prison!"

"Then you'll understand that all this is for the  good of the people."

"My father is the people, you idiot! And you can't justify revolutions by
f
-destroying his property."

"Your father will sleep in jail as a warning," the driver yelled, throwing the vehicle into gear. "And he won't be the only one! Right now there are sear,ch warrants issued for the businesses of plenty of conspirators."

Pablo hurled himself against the station wagon, but Jose held him back. "I'll file suit in court!" he roared, flushed with rage.

He thought he heard the men laughing as the vehicle disappeared in a dark, fetid cloud.

"I didn't fight for this shit," Pablo said, feeling a new wave of rage rise in his chest.

Amalia bit her lip, as if she could anticipate what was lurking behind his words.
"I have  to  go  to  the  studio," Jose muttered,  turning pale.

"You have no reason to worry," Pablo began, but he stopped when he noticed his father-in-Iaw's expression. "What's the matter?"

"I ... kept some papers," Jose stammered. "Papa!"
THE  ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      273

When they arrived, the neighborhood seemed deserted: nothing unusual for Chinatown, where the residents preferred to observe the city from behind their blinds. Fear floated in the atmosphere, palpable as a cloud, perhaps because many people recalled similar scenes from the old country they had fled a lifetime ago. Now, as if some surly demon were pursuing them, they again faced the same nightmare in the city that had welcomed them with open arms.

Pablo got out of the car before Jose could come to a complete stop. He saw the smashed cash register on the sidewalk, the shop doors that stood

. wide open, the  darkness  inside  ...  Rosa ran to her son.

"They took him away," she said in Cantonese, her voice broken with grief.

And she kept on babbling words too garbled for Pablo to comprehend. He finally pieced together that Manuel was in a station wagon parked at the curb, concealed by tinted windows.

Pablo confronted the man in the olive green uniform as he left the res-taurant with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Compafiero, may I ask what's going on?" The conscript looked him up and down.
• "And who  are you?"

"The owner's son. What happened?" "We have reports of a conspiracy here."

"The time for conspiracies ended for us long ago," Pablo explained, attempting to appear friendly. "My father is a peaceful old man. This res-taurant is his whole life's work."
"Yes,  that's what everyone says."

Pablo wondered if he could maintain his composure. "You can't destroy an innocent person's business."

"If he's innocent, he'll have to prove it. Right now, he's coming with us."

Rosa fell to the man's feet, speaking to him in a confused jumble of Cantonese and Spanish. The conscript tried to free himself, but she clung to his knees. Another man, coming out of the restaurant, shoved the woman violently aside.

Pablo attacked him. With a quick movement, he threw him to the side-walk headfirst and immediately immobilized the second man, whom he
\,..

_. -1

\































I





272      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

Amalia, glad to have recovered her husband when the rebels opened the jails and released the former insurgents, did not take her complaints too seriously. After months ofagonizing separation, they had been reunited. Pablo was free: that was her only thought. And more important, he wasn't going to get involved in any political movement.

"They're  only rumors,"  she assured Freddy.

For a few weeks now, the singer had become increasingly uneasy, and she gave in to her emotion whenever she sang:

"1 should have cried but, you see, ~luzt 1feel is almost joy. 1 should have cried in pain, perhaps in shame. . . . "

Sitting at her table, Amalia squeezed Pablo's hand. Ah, the good for-tune of hearing a bolero sung stylishly, the pleasure of a cocktail made of rum and liqueur-soaked cherries, the privilege of nibbling fruit with flesh as supple as the tropics ...

A noise jolted her from her daydreams. Someone was arguing with the doorman, trying to force his way into the cabaret.

"It's your father."

Pablo's  announcement  startled  her.   Dh,  God-Isabelita!  She  had  left

.ller with him.  She never did figure  out how she reached his  side,  but sud-
/

denly there she was on the sidewalk, wondering what had happened to her little girl.

"Isa's all right," Jose said, trying to allay her fears. "I'm not here because of her. It's Manuel."

"My father?"

Pablo froze. Ever since he had committed that act of betrayal that dishonored his family, his father hadn't spoken to him; but Rosa commu-nicated with them in secret.

"Your mother called," Jose told him. "The rebels are in the restaurant." "The rebels? Why?"

"Manuel was  helping some  conspirators."

"That's impossible.  My father's  never been involved in politics."

"It seems he was hiding a friend at the back of the store for a few days. The man's already gone, but they're inspecting the business with the idea they'll find something."

Without waiting for further explanation, Pablo and Amalia climbed into Jose's car. No one spoke during the trip to the old section of the city.
\.,
\















I    SHOULD     HAVE     CRIED








People milled around in front of the doors to the Hotel Capri, trying to enter the cabaret where Freddy, that artist of monumental body and voice, was about to sing. She would give two performances that Friday: one in the late afternoon and the other around midnight. The commotion wa,<>n't due only to the crowd's anticipation of Freddy's singing but also to the state of growing unrest since an army of bearded men had poured into the streets and onto the estates, like a relentless tide advancing throughout the island.

A few months after they took power, rumors started to spread about hasty trials, secret executions, desertions by top officials . . . and "inter-vention" in large companies had already been announced. Intervention, a euphemism for a violent concept, used to circumvent more explicit phrases like "stripped of their property" or "robbed of their businesses." After the fat cats, it was said the smaller ones would also fall. Some had begun plot-ting against the government in fear of what might occur, but their voices were silenced by the effervescence of the majority, buoyed along by a whirlwind of hymns and slogans.

Displaying the same fervor with which it applauded each act of the new government, the bejeweled throng pushed its way into the Red Room, where everyone waited to hear the popular contralto, but the former cook seemed unhappy.

"These people have no respect, Amalia," she confided to her friend in the dressing room. "And without respect, there are no rights."





















To  stick someone in China:
In  Cuba,  the expression  alludes  to  someone who finds  himself
in  a  complicated situation  or a  very  tight spot.  A   student might
;. remark  that his  teacher  "stuck  him  in  China, "  referring to

questions on  a  very  difficult test.
By extension,  it has  also  come to  signify the  existence of a
situation  so  overwhelming as  to  render any  reaction  to  it impossible.
•    :':2"
•    .,o;.:~

:  .:.

\




















Part   Six



CHINESE


PUZZLE
..
THE  ISLAND  pI    ETERNAL  LOVE      •      265

The bolero throbbed in her ears like a premonition. She looked at Amalia once more. Every time she saw that woman, strange revelations came upon her. But for now she didn't want to think, just learn the ending of the story that had made her forget about her own for a while.

''What happened after the military police kidnapped Pablo?" she asked.

"He was freed a little while later, when the guerrillas took the capital," the woman muttered, playing with the links of her chain.

ce•••   if I  gave you  my soul,  Havana  of my heart .  .. "

"And after they let him go, what happened?" Amalia gave a sigh.
"It turned out my Little Tiger was  still the  same  old rebel as  always."









...
264      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

had envisioned the first part of the story with such clarity, there was no reason for him to be mistaken about the conclusion ... unless God had since decided to alter the plot to confuse the saint with the ending of a different story; but she was confident that wasn't the case.

The girl drank in the images that were now displayed on the screen with greater clarity: the foggy hills of the mountain range, teeming with leg-ends; the mythical sanctuary of EI Cobre, full of ex-votos from centuries past; the sacred red earth of Oriente, soaked with minerals and blood. "Beauty is the beginning of terror ..." Cecilia closed her eyes, unable to

. bear any more.



She hadn't been to the bar for three weeks, fearful of finding too much comfort in Amalia's tale, which had slowly become an even more agoniz-ing story than her own. But perhaps that was why she kept returning. As she listened, she realized her own life wasn't so unbearable. When she arrived, the darkness throbbed with life amid the bodies that filled the room. She headed for her customary comer, tripping over tables, and long before she got there, she could discern the sparkle of a jet stone in the da'tkness. Practically groping her way, she moved forward until she was face-to-face with Amalia.

"I've been waiting for you,"  the  old lady said.

Her eyes shot off sparks that seemed to illuminate everything. Or was the light just a reflection of the images on the screen behind her? Images of the Malecon with its statues and lovers, its fountains and palm trees. Ay, her lost Havana ... Cecilia summoned the recollections buried in her memory, and a wild idea struck her. Didn't they say the island was sur-rounded by submerged ruins? And didn't many people swear that those Cyclopean stones belonged to the legendary continent described by Plato? Maybe Havana had inherited the karma of Atlantis, which lay so near its coasts ... and probably its curse, as well. Ifpeople could be reincarnated, then why couldn't cities? Didn't she know that cities had souls? The phan-tom house was proof. And if that was true, couldn't they also carry the burden ofothers' karmas? Havana was like the rest ofthose mythical lands: Avalon, Shambhala, Lemuria ... That's why it left an indelible impres-sion on those who saw it or had lived there.

"Havana  of my heart .  .. "
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THE  ISLAND  .1   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      263

image ad infinitum. And beneath the bower that was supposed to repre-sent the union of everyone, the pope crowned the spiritual mother of all Cubans.

The mestiza Virgin's tiny crown was taken from the image, and the pope's trembling fingers placed another, more splendid one on top of her coppery mantle. The Virgin of Charity was proclaimed queen and patron saint of Cuba. The people went wild with enthusiasm, and the congas began: "Dear brother John Paul, don't ever go home." And another one, even bolder: "Dear brother John Paul, please take me to Rome."

Cecilia sighed as the camera panned the landscape. In the distance the blue mountain range rose, along with the sanctuary of El Cobre shrouded in eternal clouds, next to the spot where the visionary archbishop Antonio Maria Claret allegedly had predicted, in the nineteenth century, the terri-ble disaster that would befall the island. Cecilia recalled fragments of the prophecy: "A young man from the city will arrive at this Sierra Maestra and will spend a short time committing acts that will be quite removed from Christ's commandments. There will be unrest, desolation, and slaughter. He will wear an unusual uniform that no one in this country has ever seen before. Many of his followers will wear rosaries and crucifixes

.a:ound their necks, the images of many saints, side by side with weapons and munitions." More than a hundred years before she was born, the saint had seen visions that terrified him: "The young man will govern for about four decades, around mid-century, and during that time there will be bloodshed, much bloodshed. The country will be devastated...." And Cecilia imagined how alarmed the archbishop's companions must have been to see him fall into a trance while traveling through the mountains on his mule. "When this time is over, that young man, who will already be old, will die, and then the sky will become clear, blue, without this dark-ness that now surrounds me.... Columns of dust will rise up, and once more bloodshed will flood Cuban soil. There will be revenge and retribu-tion among the injured, and other, greedy folk, which will cloud everyone's eyes with tears. After these few agonizing days, Cuba will again be the pride of all the Americas, inclu~gNorth America.... When this occurs, a state of joy, peace, and unity for Cubans will arrive, and the Republic will flourish beyond anyone's imagination. There will be such great activ-ity of ships on the waters that, from afar, Cuba's noble bays will look like cities piercing the sea.... " Cecilia had no doubt that if the archbishop
Z6Z       •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

it had been wise to move away. She now had a clearer view of a landscape she'd never really seen because of its proximity. A country is like a paint-ing: you can see it better from a distance. And that distance had allowed her to understand many things.

At once she recognized her debt to Miami. There she had learned stories and sayings, customs and flavors, ways of speaking and working: treasures of a tradition that had been lost in Cuba. Miami might be an incomprehensible city, even for those who lived there, because it reflected the rational, powerful image of an Anglo-Saxon world while its spirit bub-bled with stormy Latin passion; burin that contradictory, feverish place, Cubans preserved their culture as if it were the British crown jewels. From Miami, the island was as palpable as the cries of the people on the screen: "Cuba for Christ! Cuba for Christ!" She now knew that a specter floated on the island, or perhaps it was a mystique that she hadn't noticed before-something about Cuba that she could discover only in Miami.

She was furious. She hated her country and yet she loved it. Why was she so confused? Maybe it was the ambivalence the images provoked. The world was spinning backward; the pope was celebrating Mass in Santiago de Cuba. It was as if his visit was a demonstration of Einstein's theories,

.fihally proven on that haunted island. Black holes and white holes. Every-thing absorbed by one can reappear in the other, thousands of light-years away. Was that Miami or Santiago she was watching on the screen?

In the heart of the island, a throng congregated in front of a replica of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity of Miami, the most beloved sanctuary of Cubans in exile. In front of the chapel, the dark waters carried vegeta-tion, fragments of bottles, and all sorts of messages back and forth. The sea was the kiss of both coasts, and Cubans on either side gazed out upon it, searching for traces ofloved ones who lived on the opposite shore.

The architectural design of the original hermitage, located on the east-ern part of the island, was quite different. And so, the image of the Miami temple on Cuban soil was a strange spectacle. Although, when one thought about it, it completed a cycle. The original image of the Virgin stood pre-served in her lovely basilica in the mountains of El Cobre, near Santiago de Cuba. The Miami hermitage had been built in imitation of her mantle. The Cuban setting where the pope now found himself also emulated-unwittingly or deliberately reproducing that mantle-the profile of the temple in exile. It was like one of those tricks with mirrors that repeat an
THE  ISLAND  ,•f  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      261

despite its dusty buildings and the fatigue etched on its citizens' familiar faces, glowed with beauty.

"Beauty is nothing but the beginning of a terror we are able to endure," she recalled. Yes, true beauty is terrifying and often leaves us in a state of absolute abandon. It hypnotizes through our senses. Sometimes the slight-est fragrance-like the perfume emanating from the sex of a flower-ean make us close our eyes and leave us breathless. At moments like those, our will is overtaken by such an intense stimulus that it cannot be released until the moment has passed. And if that beauty reaches us through music •or through an image ... ah! Then life:hovers in suspense, stunned before the supernatural sounds or the limitless potency of a vision, and we feel the terror begin. But at times it passes so fleetingly that we don't notice it. The mind immediately erases the traumatic event and leaves us with only the impression we have been in the company of an unavoidable power, something that threatens to pull us along and might make us lose our san-ity. Beauty is a blow that paralyzes. It's the certainty of finding oneself before an apparently ephemeral phenomenon that will transcend us, none-theless ... like the landscape Cecilia now contemplated.

On-screen  she  saw her  city from  the  helicopter  that  traced  the  volup-

.t\lous curve of the Malec6n. In spite of the altitude, it was possible to distinguish the shaded avenues, the gardens of venerable mansions from the days of the Republic, with their stained-glass windows and marble floors; the perfect design of the streets that led to the sea; the colonial fort that used to be known as Santa Dorotea de Luna; the majestic entrance to the tunnel that dipped toward one side of the Almendares River, emerging on Quinta Avenida ... The images began to grow confused, and the magic vanished. According to the announcer, Cuban Television had just cut off the transmission. "The same old thing," she thought. "They interrupt the signal because it's not in their interest to show the houses where terrorists and drug dealers are hiding. "

She barely realized that she had ejected the videocassette and put in another one. The equestrian statues in the parks, the dried-up fountains, and the crumbling roofs of the buildings all paraded through her mind. Why were ruins always beautiful? And why were the ruins of a once-beautiful city even more so? Her heart was tom between love and horror. She didn't know what she was supposed to feel for her city. She suspected
260       •       DAINA  GRAVlANO

house sightings had begun only after Cecilia arrived in the city. Was it a coincidence? She looked for the point where the first appearance had taken place and marked the first address where she'd lived. Then she traced the second one. Instead of counting the streets, she decided to measure the distances on the map. It would be easier. She began comparing the spaces between the visions and the places where she had lived. By the time she had finished, she had no doubt. The house always inched a bit closer to the place where she was residing. She repeated the operation with Lol6's neighborhood for the last twenty years, but the pattern wasn't the same.

. The house was  connected to  Cecilia:1t was looking for her.

Now, more than ever, she was glad she hadn't told anyone. This was madness. She still didn't understand what the deceased Demetrio had to do with her. Would the mysteries of that wretched house never cease?

Once more she felt a twinge of pain mixed with the memory of her par-ents' voices and the beaches of her childhood. The dead who wandered through Miami brought her the scent of a city she now despised more than any other. She was a woman from nowhere, someone who didn't belong. She felt more forsaken than ever. Her glance fell on the videos Freddy had brought. She wasn't interested in seeing them, but she had to write an ~icle on the pope's visit to Cuba. In the hope of forgetting her demons, she picked up the cassettes and went into the living room.


The white vehicle drove through all of Havana. For the first time in history, a pope was visiting the largest island in the Caribbean. And as Cecilia studied the masses, witness to the miracle, she rescued from the oblivion of memory those sidewalks and where they had taken her so many times. "Do you remember the Teatro Nacional?" she asked herself. "And the Cafe Cantante? And the bus stop in front of the statue of Marti? And the cold that escaped from the Rancho Luna Restaurant when the door opened as people walked by?" She went on listing memories, absorbed in the sunny spectacle of the streets. She could practically hear the hum of the trees and the gentle wind that rose off the Malec6n, wafting along Avenida Paseo toward the plaza, and the warm light that intensified the colors of that bucolic urban landscape. For the first time she saw her city through different eyes. Her island seemed a rustic, untamed garden that,
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HAVANA    OF     MY    HEART






\

Whom could she tell about her discovery? Lisa suspected the phan-toms had returned because they had grown fond of someone; Gaia had recommended she find out more about the inhabitants of the house, because she felt the dates were connected with them; and Claudia had told her she walked with the dead. And no wonder! She was up to her neck in

.mvestigating the house in which her grandmother Delfina, old Demetrio, and her parents had traveled. Her own great-aunt had suggested the dates might refer to something that had originated in Cuba and was now in Miami. Each theory contained a germ of truth.

Cecilia stopped in her tracks: there was a loose piece to the puzzle. The house and its inhabitants couldn't be related to her because she'd never met old Demetrio, despite the fact that the old lady insisted she'd intro-duced her to him. Maybe those ghosts weren't there because of her but rather because of Lo16, the only link to the four of them. She felt deeply distraught. She'd started to believe that her parents were trying to make contact, but apparently her great-aunt ... Wait a minute. Why would her father have gone looking for Lo16, his mother-in-law's sister, instead of following his own daughter? She had another upsetting thought. What if the specters had family reunions? Were there communities of ghosts? Did their presence become stronger when they all came together?

Struck by yet another possibility, she took out the map and studied the dates again. Although Lol6 had been in Miami for thirty years, the
258      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

"I didn't want to worry you," he said, hugging her, "but I have bad news. It's possible they may come to search the house."

''What?''

"We don't have time," he replied. ''We'll have to hide the papers some-where else."
He went over to  the window and looked out.

"They're still there," he confirmed, turning to his wife, "and I can't leave because they saw me come upstairs. It wouldn't be good if they knocked at the door and I wasn't here. They'd be suspicious right away."

"Where should I  take  them?"

"To the roof,"  Pablo  decided,  after hesitating briefly.

Amalia put her shoes back on. Pablo arranged the packages in her arms and opened the door for her. The numbers on the elevator panel indicated that someone was calling it from the first floor.

"Take the  stairs,  and  don't move until I  come to  get you."

Amalia climbed the five flights in less than two minutes. Where could she hide those pamphlets? She remembered a conversation she had over-heard between a neighbor and the super. The water tank that supplied apartment 34-B, empty ever since its occupants' divorce, had a leak and was out of service. She began lifting the concrete lids until she found it and threw the three bundles in before replacing the cover.

She waited a few minutes for Pablo, pacing nervously around the roof until the wait became unbearable. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothed her skirt, and took the elevator back down to her floor.

When she saw the door standing open, she felt her legs tremble. One look was enough to reveal the broken lamp, the contents of the drawers emptied all over the floor, the closet in disarray ... And Pablo? Her eyes clouded over. There was blood on the floor. She ran to the balcony in time to see they were beating him and shoving him into a police car. She tried to scream but it came out a muted cry like that of a dying animal. The world grew dark; she didn't fall. A pair of invisible hands supported her. Her childhood sweetheart, the love of her life, was on his way to some prison.
THE  ISLAND  ,/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      257

think it's all a bad joke, as if someone had invented this to frighten me or make me suffer."

"Don't say that,  Rita."

"It's just that I don't see myself closed up in a box, with my mouth shut and not even two words to say. Can you imagine? Me, who's never stopped singing out the truth to my people."

"And you'll keep on singing it, you'll see. When you're cured ..." "Let's hope so, because I don't believe I'm going to die."

"Of course not,  Dona Rita.  You never will."



She arrived home depressed and decided to sleep for a while. Her father would bring Isabelita home later, so she took advantage of the opportunity to forget about the world for a couple of hours.

Those high heels were killing her. She entered her apartment and took them off in the living room. A commotion from the bedroom stopped her. Just in case, she calculated the distance between the bedroom door and the exit. With her heart in her throat, she tiptoed toward the room.

"Pablo!"

_.;   Her husband  jumped,  startled.

''What's that?" she asked, pointing to three packages tied with a cord that her husband had dropped on the floor.

"Some copies of the Gunnun Hushen. " ''What?''

"From Huan Tao Pay's newspaper."

"You're speaking Chinese to me," she said, but immediately she real-ized that the expression was too literal to be clever. ''What are you talking about?"

"Huan Tao Pay was a countryman who died in prison. They tor-tured him for being a communist. These are copies of his newspaper, relics ..."

Amalia remembered her husband's mysterious meetings, how he'd been returning home at unexpected hours.

''Was he a friend of yours?" "No. That happened years ago."

"Didn't you swear to  me you'd never get involved in politics  again?"
.' .~.


256      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"Good morning, people! What's going on here? Has the world come to an end, or what?"

That unmistakable voice, a voice like fresh, frothy laughter. "Rita."

"No kissy-kissy right now. Let me see that little angel who's screaming like the devil."
As soon as  Rita took her in her arms,  Isabel quieted down.

"Take the money, Pepe," she said, rummaging in her purse. "Count it to make sure it's all there."

"Rita."

"Enough with the 'Rita, Rita.' You'll wear it out." The actress retained her usual expression.

"Amalita," her father said, "go do whatever you need to do, and I'll take care of the little one."

"No,  Papa.  I'd rather take her."

"But didn't you come here  to drop her off?"

"I was going to do some shopping, but I don't feel like it anymore." ''Why don't the two of us go alone, like in the good old days?"

Amalia turned to Rita and noticed the scarf wrapped around her throat.

.When  she looked up,  she realized Rita had caught her staring.

"Leave the child with me,"  Pepe urged her.  "I'll keep her till tonight." Amalia understood that her father was clamoring not just for his grand-daughter but  also  for  an  entire  world  that  was  collapsing with  the  weight of  the  bad  news.   For  the  first  time  she  observed  how  stooped  he  had grown,  and  she  discovered a  shadow of fear  in his  eyes,  an insecurity that appeared  to  be the  beginning  of a tremor,  but she  said nothing.  She gave a  kiss  to  her  daughter,  another  to  him,  and  she  left  with  Rita  to  explore
Havana.

They ended up sitting in a cafe on Prado, watching the passersby stroll-ing beneath the trees where sparrows and pigeons took refuge. They spoke of a thousand trivial things, skirting the one topic that neither of them dared to mention. They reminisced about their old escapades, the first visit to the card reader, Rita's laughing fit when she found out that Ama-lia's suitor was Chinese.... A few pigeons approached the table to peck at crumbs on the ground.

''Ay,   mi  nina,"  the  actress  sighed  after  a  long  silence,   "sometimes  I
~  ;.. ",


THE  ISLAND  _/   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      255

granddaughter. IfJose had been fascinated by his daughter, Isabel had an almost hypnotic effect on him. He never tired of picking her up, or telling her stories, or showing her how to open the instrument cases. Amalia took advantage of every opportunity to leave the child with him while she attended to other errands. Now, on a hot afternoon in that eternally humid city, the jangling bells again announced her arrival at the store where she had played so many times as a little girl.

"Hi, Papi," she greeted the man who was leaning over the counter. Jose raised his head.

"We're losing her," the man uttered. softly. His terrified expression paralyzed her. "Who?"
"Dona Rita."

Amalia left her daughter on the floor.

"How? What happened?"  she  asked,  her knees  giving way.

"She has a tumor. And on her vocal cords!" her father said, choking on his words. "Good heavens! A woman who sings like the angels."

Images   of  the   Rita   who   had   been   her   companion   since   childhood

paraded at random through Amalia's mind, and she realized she owed her

f'
whole life to that woman: a doll with golden curls; the silvery shawl she wore when she first met Pablo; the letters she carried back and forth for her beloved; the shelter she offered her when they were planning to elope; the loan for their first shop . . .

"It's like vengeance from hell," her father sobbed. "As if the devil was so jealous of that voice that he wanted to shut it down forever."
"Don't say those things,  Papi."

"The most unique voice this country has ever had.... There will never be anyone else like her!"

Her father's eyes were red, but she didn't want to cry. "I have to see her," she decided.

"Then don't go anywhere; any minute now she'll walk through that door. She told me she'd stop by after rehearsal."

"She's going to sing? In her condition?" "You know her."

A loud noise from behind the piano brought them running. Isabelita had knocked over several empty violin cases; she wasn't hurt, but the noise had frightened her and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
254      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

time talking to the hired help. If the baby wakes up, I'll come and look for you."
Amalia walked down the hall, guided by the sound of laughter. She couldn't remember if she should turn right or left, but the voices reverber-ating off the walls guided her to the parlor.
"What would you like  to  drink,  Amalia?"

Before  she could respond,  two  chimes rang in the entryway.

"That must be him," Julio said. "Vivian, offer Amalia something. I'll get it."

Pablo leaned over to get more ice,-:;md Amalia sipped her liqueur as the voices in the hallway grew closer. All of a sudden the conversation stopped abrupdy. It was Pablo's sudden tension, rather than the prolonged silence, that made Amalia turn toward the door. There stood her father, with a completely shocked expression on his face.

"Are you all right,  Don Jose?"

"Yes ... no ..." Pepe muttered, as if he couldn't breathe. A vague, undefined groan could be heard in the hall.
"We  could have  the meeting another day," Julio  proposed.

"Excuse me," said the plump Fredesvinda, struggling to hold Isabelita, WhO was trying to clamber down from her arms. "Sefiora Amalia, the child was calling for you."

"Sorry,  Don Julio,"  murmured Jose.

And to the astonishment of his hosts, he turned and walked out of the parlor. He groped for the door and tried to open it but was impeded by the complicated lock.

He felt  a tug on his pants.

"Tata. "

The little girl, not much more than a baby, was toddling over to look at the gendeman who couldn't open a door. Jose took two steps backward to get away, but the litde one wouldn't let go of his pants.
"Tata, "  she called,  with unusual persistence.

It was his own expression and his daughter's too. Weakened, overcome, and conquered, he bent down, scooped her into his arms, and began to cry.


It was as though no time had passed, except now her father had more gray hair, and his eyes glowed in a new way whenever he played with his
THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      253

Amalia didn't dare correct her. Freddy's eyes held a glint of warning.

"Is this your little girl?" the woman asked.

"Yes," Vivian answered. "What can we feed her?" "I've just baked a cake."

"A little warm milk would be good,"  Amalia said.

"Do whatever the lady wants, Freddy.... You're in good hands, Amalita."

The tapping of heels receded down the black marble hallway. ''Why did you make up that story?"" Amalia whispered.

"What did you expect me to do?" Freddy said, reverting to her intimate tone as she heated a little milk. "Admit we were neighbors?"

''Why not?"

"Ay, Amalia, you're too innocent," her friend chided, slicing a piece of cake. "If you and Pablo hadn't improved your social standing, Don Julio wouldn't have invited you over for dinner. Saying you used to be a cook's neighbor isn't going to help you get ahead, and Pablo needs to close that deal."

"How do you  know?"
'"
"We servants hear lots  of things. "

While Freddy talked, the child filched a slice of cake and held out her little hand for another.

"No, Isa," Amalia said. "That's not for you." The girl began to whine.

"Try a little panetela before you go," urged the fat woman. "I'll give her some milk and try to get her to sleep.... Ay, how cute she is!"

She began walking back and forth with the child in her arms, humming softly. By the time Amalia had finished eating the panetela, she realized her baby had fallen asleep, rocked by Fredesvinda while she hummed in her beautiful contralto.

"I didn't know you sang so well. You should do it professionally." "Anyone would think you have no eyes. Who'd want to hire a three-

hundred-pound singer?"

"You could lose  a little weight."

"Don't you think I've tried? It's a sickness...." The echo of voices reached them.

"Hurry,  go,"  Freddy  scolded  her.   "A  lady  shouldn't  spend  so  much
,....



252      •     DAINA  CHAVIANO

"Do you think she's sick?" asked Pablo, rocking the child, whose face was contorted, in his anus. "Maybe we should cancel the dinner."

"Absolutely not. You can go by yourself if you have to. I'll take care of ... "

Martinico poked his head out from behind the curtain, and the girl smiled. While the imp and the little one played peekaboo, the woman finished dressing. The whimpering started up again when Martinico waved his hands to say good-bye, grew more insistent when the family walked into the hallway, and reached its height at the front door of the Serpa -mansion.

"Come in," said the impresario, opening the door for them. "Vivian!" His wife's complexion was stark white, almost translucent.

"Would you like  something to  drink?"

Isabel was still crying in her mother's lap, and for a moment the adults looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

"Go to the library with Pablo," Vivian suggested to her husband. "I'll look after Amalia and the baby."

From the door, Amalia noticed the warm golden glow from the mahog-any bookshelves, stacked with leather-bound volumes.

.'    'Let's  go  into the  kitchen,"  Vivian said.  "I'll give  her something."

"I don't think she's hungry. She ate before we left," Amalia replied, as they walked down the hall. "And even if she is, I don't know if you'd have anything for her. She still doesn't eat lots of things."
"Don't worry,  Freddy will  see to  it."

Amalia thought about the distance that separated her family from this one. She didn't even dare dream of the luxury of a cook.

Isabel was no longer crying, perhaps because of the sweet aroma of panetela cake that filled the kitchen. Amalia stopped short when she saw the cook.

"Fredesvinda!"

The fat woman was astonished too. "Amalita!"

"You two know each other?" Vivian asked, with a new inflection to her voice.

"Of course," Amalia  began.  ''We were-"

"I worked for the lady's aunt and uncle when she was just a little girl," the cook interrupted. "Dona Amalia visited the house quite often."
THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      251




And now the baby girl was gurgling on the tile floor. The imp Martinico, tired or bored, was out on the balcony, amusing himself by throwing seeds at the passing cars three stories below. The noise of the door startled him. Pure reflex caused him to vanish, although only the child and her mother noticed, just as Pablo's flushed face appeared in the doorway.

"My  God!  What  a  fright  you  gave  me!"  the  man  cried  with  a  start.

. "Weren't you supposed to be going snopping?" "I was tired. What are you doing here?"

"I forgot  some papers."

She recalled that, two weeks earlier, she had surprised him leaving the apartment as she was arriving, and he had been startled then too.

"Tonight the contract will be settled," he said. "We need to be at Julio's by seven."

Pan's Flute had grown into a chain of four stores that sold not only musical scores and instruments but also recordings of foreign music. Julio
Serpa,  the  main  record  importer on the island,  had  asked  Pablo  to  be his
".
."distributor, but first he would have to open three more stores. When Pablo replied that he didn't have enough money, Julio offered to become the co-owner, buying out fifty percent. That way, Pablo could double his capital and both could invest an equal share. But Pablo didn't accept. That would mean having to consult him on every decision. The impresario raised the ante and offered to buyout forty percent, but Pablo didn't want to own only sixty percent of his dream. He told him he'd sell him just twenty. Finally the man invited him to dinner with a consultant, someone with enough experience to serve as go-between in cases like his. He wanted to propose another plan that he just might like.

"I'll pick you up at seven," Pablo said, kissing his wife before leaving. Amalia put the baby, who had fallen asleep, to bed. Only then did she

realize that her husband had forgotten  the papers he had come home for.



Amalia wanted to make the best possible impression, but Isabel's fussing exploded into a tantrum, distracting her from getting dressed.
250       •      DAINA  CHAVIANO




It had been a disturbin~ performance) filled with shadows moving across the stage. But they weren't theatrical shadows; they weren't fake ghosts that Dona Rita, in her role as Madame Flora, brought back to life before her guests to preserve her reputation as a clairvoyant.

Madame Flora brought her hand to her throat, insisting that phantom fingers had attempted to strangle her, which was impossible because she, more than anyone else, knew that such ghostly apparitions were pure invention.... Amalia felt a contraction. Now the medium accused the two children who had helped her stage the fabrication, saying that one of them had tried to give her a scare. Nobody-they both swore-had done any such thing. They were too busy playing with puppets and imitating voices to frighten the guests.

Amalia tried to ignore the pulsing in her belly. She remained very still, hoping it would quiet down. Uncharacteristically, she didn't get up during intermission. She asked Pablo to bring her some candy and, quite dis-tressed, waited in her seat until the lights went down once more. Was it the music or that eerie world that occupied the stage? Madame Flora turned

.to the boy, Toby, enraged. He had to be the one who had touched her again, but the mute boy couldn't reply; despite her daughter's protesta-tions, Madame Flora threw him out of the house.

Ay) her child, dead in that hosing ... and Delfina's demons ... and the Chinese pearls rescued from the massacre ... What magic did the actress use to attract so many specters to her? Anything could happen when she performed, and now her Madame Flora had turned out to be more than Amalia could bear. Onstage, the medium had gone mad with fear. And one night, convinced that some noise was a ghost trying to kill her, she fired a shot, killing poor Toby, who had returned in order to be with his beloved Monica.

But  Amalia  saw  something  no  one  else  had  seen.  The  hand  that  Rita

brought to her throat gave off a reddish glow like a lunar eclipse. Blood  ...

as if her throat had been  slit.

The audience rose, bursting into applause. Pablo barely managed to keep Amalia from falling as a clear, warm liquid dampened the carpet in the corridor.
\ .,
"
THE   ISLAND'1   ETERNAL   LOVE • 249
Never before had he seen his wife so eager to get involved. He didn't know
if  her  enthusiasm  was  due  to  wanting  to  help  or  to  some  other,  secret
desire.  He  suspected  the  latter  when  a  real  estate  agent  handed  him  the
keys  to  an  apartment.
The day of the move, Amalia stopped at the entrance,  as though she still
doubted this  could  be her new home.  The  apartment was  small but clean,
and it had a smell ofimminent wealth.  There was a balcony from which one
could  glimpse  a  slice  of sea,  and  ample  picture  windows  that  let  the  light
pour in.  The bathroom's blinding whiteness  mesmerized her,  as well as  the
-gigantic  mirror  in  which  she  could -see  herself reflected  full-length  if  she
stepped back  a  little.  She  walked  around  the  whole  place,  reveling  in such
brightness  and  so  much blue.  After her big old house near  Chinatown and
the modest dwelling in Luyan6,  the new apartment left her breathless.
It  soon  became  obvious  that  their  old  furniture  wouldn't  work  there.
The  bed  looked like  a  medieval  beast  against the  light-colored walls,  and
the sofa was a faded monstrosity beneath the sunlight that filtered through
the balcony.
"We can't invite anyone over like  this,"  Pablo concluded, half annoyed
/ and half satisfied.  "We need new furniture."
..  "It was  then he  discovered  that furnishing  their house  was  the  real  pas-
sion lurking behind her enthusiasm.
With the help of loans  and credit, Amalia found  a leather sofa with two
matching  armchairs  and  two  wooden  lamp  tables  for  the  living  room.  In
the  dining room she placed  a cedar table  that could expand to  accommo-
date eight guests, and chairs made ofthe same wood, upholstered in wine-
colored  fabric.  Above  the  table  she  hung  an  amber  crystal  chandelier.  In
addition,  she bought wineglasses,  silver cutlery,  kitchen utensils  ... Little
by little,  she  added  more  details:  fine,  filmy  curtains,  porcelain plates  for
one  wall  of the  dining  room,  a  seascape  above  the  sofa,  a  ceramic  bowl
filled  with decorative  snail shells.
In less  than two  weeks  she had  transformed the  apartment into  a place
that  cried  out  for  the  admiration  of guests.  Wasn't  that  what  Pablo  had
hinted  at  when  he  complained  about  the  old  junk?  As   she  spoke,   she
unpacked  the  case  she  had  just bought:  two  silver  candleholders  that  she
adorned with red tapers.  It was  the finishing  touch for  her dining room.
That  night  after  dinner,  Rita  called  to  let  them  know  about  the  pre-
miere  of her new play,  The  Medium.
248      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

At first Amalia thought she was referring to her baby, killed by the hos-ing ... until the .1952 coup d'etat took place, led by General Fulgencio Batista, all very civilized and without firing a single shot. The dead, in effect, began to show up later. The prophecies didn't stop there. Worse yet would be the arrival of La Pelona, the Grim Reaper, a mythical being who, supported by an army of red devils, would become the Judas, Herod, and Antichrist of the island. Even small children would be massacred if they tried to escape his clutches, Delfina swore.
Anxious to banish negative thoughts, she returned to her embroidery as

. her mind wandered. Many things had happened of late. Her mother, for instance, had appeared at the store. Did her father know? Of course not, Mercedes had reassured her. And he mustn't find out under any circum-stances. Resolute in his refusal to see her after her elopement and sub-sequent marriage, he had become antisocial and didn't even laugh like before.

Amalia didn't like to think about him because she always ended up cry-ing. She had a husband who adored her and a mother who now lived only for her, but she missed her best friend. She longed for his irreplaceable affection, that of an old, faithful companion.

o 'Pablo did his best to relieve his wife's sadness. From the time he was an adolescent, he had been aware of the strong bond between this father and daughter, two creatures as alike as they were hardheaded. Now nothing seemed to cheer her up. After a great deal of thought, he decided to use one of the strategies he knew to make her stop worrying: he'd bring her some problem-the more complicated, the better-that would require her direct intervention.

That night he had arrived home, complaining about his job. Sales were booming, and he couldn't meet his customers' demands. Besides, the business's reputation was like a social calling card. What a pity they couldn't attend all the events to which they were invited. He hadn't said anything because he didn't want to upset her, but how could they accept so many courtesies if they had no way to reciprocate? They couldn't ask anyone over ... unless they decided to move to a more appropriate place. Where? He wasn't sure. Maybe an apartment in EI Vedado?

Although she was due in a month, Amalia gave up her idle chats with fat Fredesvinda and, newspaper in hand, went to look at more than twenty apartments in two weeks. Pablo was pleased, although somewhat puzzled.












I    WAS     MISSING    YOU








When Amalia found out she had lost her baby-a girl whose sex Delfina had predicted-she didn't cry. Her eyes fixed on Pablo's face, as he sat in a chair in the hospital where she was born and where her grand-mother had worked as a slave when the Marquis ofAlmendares's daughter

had  lived  in  the  mansion.  The  stained-glass  windows  still  reflected  their

#'
.'Colors over the walls and on the floor. The ferns on the patio still whis-pered beneath the rain, filling all the rooms with the fresh fragrance of the Cuban countryside.

"Those bastards," Pablo muttered between clenched teeth. "Look what they've done to us."

"We'll have another one,"  she  said,  stifling her tears.

With damp, reddened eyes, Pablo leaned over to embrace her. And it was as if Delfina had transmitted her sibylline powers to her, because a few months later she was pregnant again.

During the period that followed, Amalia thought a great deal about Delfina, who had moved again, although not without filling her head with prophecies beforehand. Her predictions continued to give Amalia nightmares.

One day, as they were discussing Chibas's suicide, she had asserted: "His death didn't prove anything, and it's left us worse off than before. In a few years this island will be hell's waiting room."

Before leaving, Delfina had stopped by to borrow some rice. "There will be death after the deluge," she told Amalia.
<'l
\



246      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

The  clock chimed,  stirring her from her reverie.

"I'm sorry, dear, but I've got to go to Mass, and afterward ... Good-ness! Just look at your skirt."

A chocolate  stain  stuck out from underneath her blouse.

Lol6 went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out a piece of ice. "Go to the bathroom and rub it with this."

The girl left the dining room.

"Tia, why did you go out so many times this week?" she asked as she passed through the bedroom. "I thought something had happened to you. You're not going to tell me you were stuck in church all these days ..."

She trailed off when she saw the photos on top of the dresser. There was her grandmother Delfina, sporting one of her customary floral dresses and her usual smile, surrounded by roses in her garden. In another picture was a man Cecilia couldn't identify except for the unmistakable parrot he car-ried in a cage. When she saw the third photo, she felt the floor shift beneath her feet. With a combination of tenderness and horror, she recognized her parents as bride and groom: she, with her hair pulled back and in a long gown; he, with his actor's face and that tie with light-colored polka dots

that  Cecilia  had  long  since  forgotten.  At  the  bottom  of the  photo  was  a

{
. dedication:  To  my aunt Lola,  souvenir ofour wedding in the Sacred Heart Par-

ish ofEI Vedado  ...  and a date  ...  a date  ...

"February is the only month of the year when I go to church every day," the old woman said from the kitchen. "I always go to pray to the memory of your parents, who were married on February fourteenth to show how much in love they were. May God always keep them in His glory!"
\..


THE  ISLAND  p/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      245

"I haven't visited you for  a while."

"I could be your mother twice over, so don't tell me any tales. What's going on?"

Cecilia told her about the phantom house again and the historical dates on which it had appeared.

"... but now it's been spotted on a day that has nothing to do with those events," she explained, "and I don't know what to think."

The girl dipped the end of a churro in her hot chocolate, and when she brought it to her mouth, a dark drop fell on the tablecloth.

"I almost forgot!"  she  cried.

She ran out into the living room, pulled the map from her purse, and returned to the dining room to spread it out on the table; but her aunt refused to look at anything until both of them had finished breakfast. After clearing the dishes, 1..016 began to examine the map, while Cecilia watched her every move. A couple of times she noticed that she would frown and stare quietly into space, to see or hear something that only she could per-ceive. Then she silently shook her head and went back to the map.

"You know what I think?" the old woman suddenly said. "That house could.. be a reminder."
"A what?"

"A sort of monument or sign." "I don't get it."

"Until now, most of those dates have coincided with Cuba's recent his-tory. But it's possible that the house might also want to show its special relationship with someone."

"What's the  meaning of that?"

''Nothing. It's just establishing its coordinates." "Can you explain more clearly?"

"Child, it's very simple. All this time, the house might have been announcing: 'I come from such-and-such a place, or I stand for a certain thing'; now it's saying 'I'm here for such-and-such a person.' I think the house started out in Cuba, but it's also associated with something or someone in this city."

Cecilia didn't reply. She found the theory rather disconcerting. IT the house was the repository of some individual history that ended up in Miami, why did it keep showing up haphazardly in such unlikely parts of the city?
244      •     DAiNA  CHAVIANO

"Blessed Christ!" her aunt screamed. "Ifyou keep that up, I'll put pars-ley in your food!"
Cecilia rang the doorbell. The bird shrieked with fright and the aunt with alarm, thinking perhaps that one of the neighbors was about to lynch her. Then there was a deadly silence, followed by a rapid hammering and a dull thud.

"That's it," Cecilia thought. "She's finished her off." The door opened.

"How good to  see you,  my child," the  old woman greeted her with her

. most affectionate smile. "Come iii, come in, you'll catch a cold standing there."

While Lola fastened all the locks on the door, Cecilia glanced around. ''Where's the parrot?"

"Over there."

"You've finally  done it!  You've  chopped her to  bits!"

"Child, what ideas you have!" her aunt muttered, crossing herself. "Those aren't Christian thoughts."

"What Fidelina does  to  you isn't very Christian,  either."

"She's one of the Lord's creatures," the old lady sighed with a martyred
•
.expression. "I forgive her because she knows not what she does." "I heard screaming and then some noise.... "

"Oh,  that ..."

Lola went over to a closet and opened the door. Next to several boxes and suitcases, there was the parrot in her cage. Seeing the light again, she shrieked jubilantly, but her joy lasted only for a moment. Lola slammed the door in her beak.

"I had to drag the cage oyer; it weighs about ten tons. The iron feet rattle when it moves. That's what was making the noise."

"What a pity,"  muttered Cecilia,  disappointed.

"Let's go  into the  dining room.  The hot chocolate's ready."

Cecilia followed her toward the sweet, tempting aroma. Lola had risen early to buy the freshly made churros at a nearby cafe. When she returned, she put them in the oven to keep warm and melted a few tablets of Spanish chocolate in a pot filled with milk. Now a brimming pitcher of hot choco-late stood in the center of the table. Next to it, the churros were piled up on an earthenware tray, giving off steaming cinnamon fumes.

''What did you want to  see me about?"  her aunt asked as  she  served.












MATTERS    OF    THE     HEART








Hal! asleep~ Cecilia picked up the phone. It was her great-aunt, inviting her to have a proper breakfast, and she warned her she wouldn't take no for an answer. She already knew Cecilia had called her several times that week. If she needed to talk or to ask her for anything, today was the day.

She  rinsed  her face  with  cold  water  and  dressed  quickly.  In her  haste
"
.she nearly forgot the map. She'd had a week full of work, with two articles for the Sunday supplement, "Grandma's Culinary Secrets" and "Your Car's Secret Life," even though she knew nothing about cooking or auto mechanics. But despite these and other minor distractions, she never stopped thinking about the infamous map. Her aunt had disappeared-or, in any case, she hadn't answered the telephone. Cecilia had even passed by her house a couple of times with the idea of calling the police if she noticed anything unusual. A neighbor informed her that Lola went out very early every morning and came back late. What could she be up to?

From the staircase she could hear the parrot squawking: "Down with the scum! Down with the scum!"

And also her aunt's screams, worse than the bird's: "Shut up, you damn parrot, or I'll stick you in the closet and you won't get out for three days!"

But the parrot paid no attention and continued screaming all sorts of slogans:

"Go, Fidel! Give the Yankees hell! Fidel, thief! You've stolen all our beef!"
•'..::;,~.
....~.y.
,.;:
.


242      •     DAINA  GHAVIANO

saw the blood. She had been hurt when she bumped against the edge of the wall.
Once more the water hit her right in the chest, thrusting her against a cement column covered with flyers. She could see the announcement for the new show at the Tropicana ("The greatest open-air cabaret in the world"), which half-concealed another one that proclaimed the opening of the Blanquita Theatre (''With 500 more box seats than Radio City Music Hall in New York, until now the largest in the world"). And she vaguely considered the destiny of her island, with its obsession with boasting the biggest this or that, or for one thiIigOr another ... A strange country, full of music and pain.

The  water struck her again.

Before falling to the ground unconscious, she saw a flyer for the recent musical hit about a naughty incident that had taken place nearby: "A girl was going to Prado and Neptuno.... "
,  .


THE   ISLAND  ';i   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      241

bling, and a few running away and screaming did she realize that some-thing truly serious was happening. She peeked out the doorway.

"What's going on?" she asked the owner of the Stork, who was already locking her shop with a sorrowful expression.

"Chibas committed suicide." "What?"

"A few minutes ago. He was giving one of his speeches on the radio and he shot himself right there, in front of the microphone."

"Are you sure?"

"My daughter heard it. She just pl10ned me." Amalia thought she was dreaming.

"But why?"

"Something he  couldn't prove,  after he'd said he would."

Amalia noticed the panic around her and heard the commotion rising from every comer of the city. Everyone was running and shouting, but no one seemed able to explain what had occurred. She thought about Pablo. Had he gone to the sports club, or was he involved in some other sort of mix-up? Police whistles and a few gunshots filled her with terror. She went to..find her purse and, against her better judgment, closed the door and headed out into the street. She had to find her husband. She attempted to walk calmly, but she was jostled by pedestrians running in both directions.

Two blocks ahead, a crowd, marching and chanting, dragged her along in its current. She tried to take shelter in a doorway on the sidewalk, but it was impossible to escape the avalanching throng. She was obliged to keep up the same pace, practically running, knowing that if she stopped, the deaf and blind mob might trample her.

The tires of two police cars squealed in the middle of the street, and the crowd slowed its pace. Amalia took the opportunity to move forward and clamber up on the stoop of one of the entryways. People were still tripping over her, but it was no longer quite so dangerous. A column blocked her view of what was developing on the comer, so she didn't realize that many people had begun to retreat.

The first shots started a stampede she managed to avoid, protected on the stoop. However, the first gush of water knocked her to the ground. For a moment she didn't comprehend what was happening; she just felt the blow as the pain clouded her vision. She looked at her clothing and
240       •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

this man who sang like a nightingale and conducted his orchestra like a genius had never learned to read music and had to dictate his composi-tions. He was a sort of tropical Beethoven-not deaf but, rather, blind to the signs of the pentagram.

"I want them as a gift," he added, responding to a question Amalia hadn't posed. "My nephew is studying in a conservatory and always talks about this composer."

Amalia wrapped the scores in silvery paper and tied them with a red ribbon.

"And how much is that?" thesmger asked, pointing to the ebony and ivory baton.

Amalia told him the price, convinced he wouldn't go for such extrava-gance.

"I'll take it."

Amalia could think of just one thing:  if only her father could see her ...

''You haven't been open very long, have you?" the man asked as she took his change from the register.

"Two months.  How did you find  out about the  store?"

"Someone  mentioned  you  at  the  Imp  and  I  didn't  forget  the  name.  It

.. struck me as  very unusual. "

Amalia had to make an effort to appear unemotional. The Imp was her father's recording company. Who could have mentioned them there?

"Good luck," said the musician, lightly tipping his hat. "Ah! And keep listening to me every once in a while."

For a moment she didn't understand what he was saying. Then she realized that the jukebox was still playing the medley of his songs.

Amalia watched the fragile figure pause a moment on the sidewalk, on the green marble tile, before disappearing into the crowd, but her eyes remained fixed on the ground, on the faunlike creature that was their busi-ness logo, the letters that read Pan's Flute. Why had they chosen such a ridiculous name? It had occurred to both of them that long-ago night in Vifiales as they were making plans for the future. A very strange associa-tion of ideas.

A sudden racket shook the windows. Amalia stood motionless, wonder-ing what it could be: a door slamming, a thunderbolt, or a tire that had blown? Only when she saw some people stopping to look, others stum-
THE  ISLAND  pI  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      239

"Do you want your child to be born an orphan?" The bell rang again.

"Please,"  whispered Amalia.

"All right," he sighed. "I'll take them someplace else." He gave her a kiss to calm her.

"How did things go  this  morning?"

"Rita stopped by," she replied, relieved at the change of subject. "Someone told me she was sick."

"She has  a touch of bronchitis."

''Well, she ought to be in bed,"• Pablo said, heading toward the back door. "I'm going to the club for a little while."

"Where?"

"The sports club at Zanja and Campanario, don't you remember? I want to find out about that wushu business. A little exercise will do me good."

"All right, but don't be late," she agreed, walking out into the show-room.

A tall, ungainly man in a gray suit that hung on him like a sheet from a nail was examining an ivory baton, one of the curiosities that Pablo had ordered to give the place a touch of distinction. She put on her nicest smile, but she froze in place when the visitor turned to greet her. Instinc-tively she looked toward the back of the store. If only Pablo had forgotten something! The visitor was Beny More.

"Good afternoon," she said in a thread of a voice. "How may I help you?"

"Do you have  anything by Gottschalk?"

"Let me see," she said softly, turning toward an armoire with glass doors. "Nineteenth-century music."

She pulled out a  catalog and traced a few lines with her finger.

"Here it is.  Gottschalk, Louis Moreau: Fantasy on El Cocuye ...  Cuban

Country Scenes . .. A Night in the Tropics . .. " She muttered a number and looked for it in the armoire. "Look."
She  showed him two  books.

"I'll take whichever ones you recommend," he said with a candid, almost apologetic smile. "I don't read music, you know? I don't under-stand this scribbling one bit!"

Amalia nodded.  How gauche  she was!  She  suddenly remembered that






.:~
238      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

"I couldn't charge you  after all you've-"

"If you don't  charge me,  I  won't take  it,  and  I'll have to  go  somewhere

else to  buy it."

Amalia told her the price  and went in search of wrapping paper.

"I'm not sure why I want this,"  Rita  confessed as  she paid.  "Maybe the

dream has  to  do  with this bronchitis that keeps  me up  at night."

The actress walked out with her score under her arm, and Amalia set to

organizing the catalogs. A chime alerted her that Pablo was entering through the back door, but she was already attending to another customer.

. When he left,  Amalia went to  the back of the  store.

"Pablo."

Her husband gave a  start,  dropping the pamphlets.

''What's that?"

"Joaquin asked me  to hold on to them for  a  week."  He hurriedly stuck

them in a  box.

"It's political propaganda,  isn't it?"

Pablo remained silent as  he  continued putting the pamphlets away.

"If they catch us with those things,  we'll be in trouble."
, "No  one will ever guess that in a music shop-"
.'    "Pablo,  we're   about  to  have   a  child.   I  don't  want  trouble  with  the

police."

"I can assure you,  it's  not dangerous  at all;  just a call for  a  strike."

Amalia observed him  silently.

"If we  don't  take  action  against  Prio,"  he  said,  "the  situation  will  get

worse for  everyone."

He hugged her,  but she  didn't return his  embrace.

"I don't want you getting involved in politics," Amalia insisted.  "That's

for people who  wheel  and  deal instead of getting real  jobs."

"I  can't abandon Joaquin.  That's what friends  are for."

"If he's  such a good friend  of yours,  ask him to  take  this  stuff away."

He  stood  there  staring  at  her,  not  knowing  what  else  to  add.  Amalia

knew about all the disappearances and imprisonments that filled the pages of the newspapers every day. He didn't need to convince her that things were going badly. It was precisely her awareness of the danger that made her back away from the bigger picture.

"This country is a disaster," he insisted. "I can't just sit around twid-dling my thumbs."
THE  ISLAND  (./   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      237

comer. She pressed a button, and Beny More's voice flooded the morning with passion: "Today, as yesterday, 1 keep on loving you, my darling ..." Amalia sighed. The man sang like an angel drunk with melancholy.

The door chimes sounded the arrival of her first customer, or rather two: a couple looking for sheet music of Christmas carols. Amalia showed them half a dozen scores. After much deliberation and bargaining, they bought three. Almost immediately a young man came in and tried several clarinets, finally taking the cheapest one. The chimes rang again.

"Dona Rita!"

"I stopped by to check up on you;my dear. 1 remembered today is the day Pablo picks up merchandise at the port, and 1 figured you'd be alone. Besides, last night 1 had a dream, and that's why 1 want to look at some music."

"Go  on, tell me."

"I dreamed we were in Dinorah's house...." "The card reader?"

"Yes, but 1 was the one reading the cards, and 1 could predict the future. 1 saw it all so clearly! And I'm sure everything will come true.... You were in the dream too."
.'"And what did you see?"

"That's the worst part: 1 don't remember anything. But I was like a clairvoyant. 1 looked at the cards, and everything went through my mind. Suddenly 1 felt a hand grab me by the throat, cutting off my breath. When 1 was just about to suffocate, 1 woke up."

"But what does  that dream have  to  do  with the  music?"

"It's just that a while ago 1 read about a new opera by Menotti. 1 think it's called The Sibyl, or something like that. 1 don't know, but 1 felt an impulse to read the libretto."

"I have an index of composers and another one of recent titles...." "Let's look for it by title."

And with the gasping "Crazy for Mambo" and the mournful "Ah, Life" by the Great Sonero playing, they sifted through the inventory of titles.

"This is it!" Rita exclaimed. "The Medium, by Gian Carlo Menotti. How much is it?"

"For you,  free  of charge."

"Absolutely not. If you start giving things away, soon you'll have to ask for money, and that's not why 1 signed for you at the bank."
'..'1



236      •     DAINA  GHAVIANO

Pablo lit some incense sticks, which he waved before his face, murmuring phrases alternately in Spanish and Chinese. Finally he stuck the incense into the ground so that the smoke would carry his prayers. That night the bridal couple and their friends gathered at EI Pacifico for dinner. Beer accompanied the sweet-and-sour pork, and rice wine was served along with Cuban coffee.

Rita gave them a contract for the desired amount of their loan, with her own signature as guarantor. Thus it was that they opened their shop near the busy intersection ofGaliano and Neptuno. From then on, Pablo awoke at six every morning, stopped at "a warehouse to pick up the preordered merchandise, and, when he arrived at his business, phoned the interested customers. The rest of the day was devoted to selling and jotting down special orders, and he returned home at seven in the evening, after the day's business was sorted out.

"Honey, I'm leaving,"  Pablo said from  the hall.

Pablo's announcement roused her from sleep. She needed to get dressed so  she  could fill  in for her husband,  who  was  going to  the port to  pick up an important  shipment.  When  she leaped  out of bed,  Martinico  vanished from the display case, reappeared by her side, and held out the sandals she ""was  looking  for.  The  woman  couldn't  help  being  surprised  at  the  atten-tions  the  imp  had  extended  to  her  ever  since  the  start  of her  pregnancy. She  dressed hurriedly and  ate  breakfast.  A  little while  later she was  walk-
ing toward the comer.

Luyan6 was a humble neighborhood inhabited by laborers, teachers, and professionals just starting their careers or businesses and waiting for time-or good fortune-to allow them to move elsewhere. Amalia enjoyed those sunny, peaceful sU'eets. Traveling half an hour to downtown Havana, where her store was located, didn't bother her. She was happy. She had married Pablo, she was awaiting her first child, and she had the business she'd always dreamed of.

She boarded the bus, which left her off near the Malec6n, and half an hour later she unlocked the metal bolt, opened the glass door, and turned on the air-conditioning. Guitars and bongos hung from the walls. On the black satin-lined counters, musical scores displayed their cardboard and leather covers. Two grand pianos-one black and the other white-filled the available space to the left. Stringed and metal instruments were arranged along the shelves. A jukebox was wedged into the right-hand
\-,

THE   ISLAND  d     ETERNAL   LOVE      •      235

"I saw my mother."

Now, that was really a bit of news! Ever since they eloped, only Rita had stood behind them, but she couldn't offer them very much except advice.

"You spoke with her?" "Not only that."

He took a package out of his pocket and extracted two objects that gleamed like pearls in the afternoon light. Amalia held them in her hands. They were pearls.

"What's this?"

"Mama gave them to me," Pablo replied. "They belonged to my grand-mother."

"What will your father  say when he finds  out?"

"He won't find out. Mama managed to save a few items when they left China. On board ship, they were almost all stolen, but she had hidden a necklace that she handed over to my father when they arrived, and these earrings that she never showed him because she planned to keep them for an emergency."

"They must be worth a lot."

"Enough for us to think about opening the business we talked about." -' •Amalia stared at the earrings. Her dream was to have a shop where she could sell instruments and musical scores. She had spent her childhood among recordings and those who made them, and that passion, which was her father's and her grandfather's, had been transmitted to her as well.

"In any case, we'll need a loan." "We'll get one," she assured him.


S he opened her eyes and, even before getting out ofbed, saw Martinico sitting on the cedar display case, swinging his little legs against the strange-smelling wood. She felt the kick and placed her hand on her belly. Her baby was moving inside her. She noticed the imp's expression and felt a strange tenderness.

From the bed she could hear Pablo praying before the statue of San-Fan-Kon. That devotion to his ancestors was a sign of love that reassured her. The fragrance of incense reminded her of the day they had exchanged marriage vows. Accompanied by Rita and other friends, they had gone to the cemetery where the remains of his mambi great-grandfather rested.
234      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"Really?" Amalia asked. "I'm only two months along...." "I didn't mean in your body-in your face."

Amalia didn't respond, but she was sure that the woman hadn't been looking at her face when she took the package of sugar. Only her hands.

"Well, see you later. I'll send you a piece of panetela. So your little girl will grow up with a sweet tooth."

"My little girl ... ?" Amalia began, but the other woman had already turned her back and was walking away, beating her dessert with renewed vigor.

Amalia was dumbstruck. She had that same shocked look on her face when Fredesvinda found her a few minutes later.

"What's wrong?"

"Delfina,  the new neighbor  .  .  ."

She didn't finish the thought because she didn't want to reveal her secret.

"Don't mind her. I think she's a little crazy, poor thing. Just yesterday, when the newspaper vendor came by yelling something about some Peru-vians who took asylum in the Cuban embassy in Lima, do you know what she did? She put on this Sphinx-face and said this country is cursed; then

.. she said in ten years it'll be upside down and in thirty years the same thing that happened in the Cuban embassy in Peru will come to pass here in Havana, only backward and multiplied a thousand times over...."

"What did  she  mean?"  Amalia  asked.

"I told you she's slightly touched in the noggin," the fat woman affirmed, pointing a finger to her temple. "I heard she got married recently and that she miscarried in a car accident. Guess she couldn't predict that, huh?"

"Is she married?" Amalia asked, prepared to side with the madwoman after hearing the news.

"Her husband is coming soon. They were living in Sagua, I think, but she arrived first to get the house ready while he closed the business."

"How are you, Dona Freddy?" called a voice from behind them. Amalia ran to greet Pablo with a kiss.

''Well, I'll leave you turtledoves alone," the fat woman excused herself, walking down to the garden.

Pablo closed the  door.

"I got everything done. I won't have to go back to the port anymore." "How-?"











SWEET    ENCHANTMENT








"Good morning, neighbor," the woman greeted her from the gar-den, without interrupting her stirring. "I'm out of sugar. Could you lend me two cups?"

Amalia was unperturbed by the stranger in her doorway, beating that meringue. Two days earlier she had watched her through the blinds as she flitted around the men who were hauling furniture and boxes out of a truck.

"Of course," Amalia replied.  "Come in."

She knew who the woman was because fat Fredesvinda, who lived near the comer, had already spoken of her.

"Here you are."

"What's your name?" the newcomer inquired, momentarily interrupt-ing her mixing.

"Amalia."

"Thank you very much, Amalia. I'll return it tomorrow. I'm Delfina, at your service."

Her fingers brushed the hand that extended the package, and she almost dropped the sugar.

"Ay! You're pregnant!"

Amalia was startled. No one knew but Pablo. ''Who told you?"

Delfina hesitated. "It shows."
\
"

\


232      •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

Cecilia felt something begin to melt inside her, like a fortress crum-bling, but she refused to yield.

"I don't want to remember anything. I want to forget. I want to think I'm someone else. I want to imagine I was born in a dark, peaceful place where the only things that change are the seasons, where a stone I lay on my patio will still be there a thousand years from now. I don't want to have to adapt to anything new. I'm tired of being attached to someone only to lose him at the first tum. I can't take any more loss. My soul hurts; my memory hurts. I don't want to love because I don't want to die later from the pain."

Freddy understood her anguish, but he refused to support her desire for solitude. He couldn't allow her to cut herself off from everyone again. Lack of outside interaction is sanity's worst enemy.

"Well, I miss my friends, the walks, my adventures," he insisted, "and I don't mind admitting it."

"Absence means forgetting," Gaia warbled. Freddy glared at her.

"When people leave a place, they mythologize it," Gaia pronounced. "That's right!" Cecilia said. "The Havana you miss surely doesn't even
exist anymore:""

"Look who's talking!" Freddy grumbled. "The one who just a month ago was sighing over the lines in front of the Cinemateca."

"Sometimes people say dumb things," Cecilia admitted, slightly irri-tated. "A few months ago I wanted to disappear from here."

''Well,  when you were  in Cuba  ... "

Cecilia let him talk. Unlike her friend, she didn't pursue every echo of the island. Even though she might have felt the same pain, her spirit was far from that sort of blind surrender.

She noticed the breeze stirring the vine on a nearby wall, the birds chas-ing each other among the branches of the coconut palm.... She recalled her old city, her lost country. She hated it. Oh, God, how she hated it! It didn't matter that her memories filled her with torment. It didn't matter that the torment now resembled love. She'd never admit it, not even to her own shadow. But from some comer of her memory, the bolero burst forth:

"If all  those  dreams  were  lies,  why  do  you  complain  when  my  heart  so  deeply










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TilE   ISl.:\~D4 ETErn,,':\LLOVE•      2J/

After  the  appropriate  introductions,   Cecilia  suggested,   "I'm  hungry.

\Vhy  don It  we  order  in  something  to  eat?"

While Gaia phoned a pizzeria and she put some sodas on ice, Freddy decided to inspect her CD collection.

"They'll  be  here  in  fifteen  minutes, II    Gaia  announced,  sitting  down  on

the  sofa.

Cecilia  looked  for  a  bottle  of pills.

"What's  that  for?"  Freddy  asked.

"Antidepressants.  I forgot  to  rake  them  this  morning. n

The  boy  gestured  his  disapproval:-

"It's  just  temporary, II    she  explained.

Freddy was  about  to  put up  an  argument,  but  Gaia  cut  him  off,  saying,

"Have you  thought  of anything  yet?"

"1  made  a  map  with  the  locations  of the  sightings,  but  1 didn't  figure

anything out. II

"Did  you  try  to  see  if the  points  formed  figures?"

"There arenIt  any. n

"What are  you  two  talking  about,  if 1 might  ask?"

Cecilia  quickly  explained   the  details  about  the  house  and  its   appear-

.a~~es to  her  friend.  When  the  pizzas  arrived,  they  were  still  arguing  over

tl,e significance oftlle dates, especially the last one. Without a doubt it was the most puzzling because it broke the golden rule that had seemed to work before. They finished eating without reaching any conclusions. Freddy glanced at his watch and said it was getting late. He was practically

out  the  door when  he  exclaimed:

"I  forgot  the  most important  thing!"  He  opened  his  backpack and  took

out several videocassettes. "I came to lend you these. Theylre the rapes of the pope's visit. Donlt lose them."

"Thanks, really, but I'm fed up with everything having to do with that country."

nIt's  not  true, n    Freddy  thought.  However,  what he  said  was,  "Me,  too)

but you  learn  to  love  the  place  where  you've  suffered."

"Itls  not  true, n     Cecilia  contradicted  him.  "You  learn  to  love  the  place

where you've  loved.  Maybe  that's  why I'm  beginning  to  like  Miami."

"If you're right, then you'd have to love that damn island. We've loved too many things there. Things that deserved it and things that didn't. ... "
•. ~;OO:I
.'....



y.
iy
ABSENCE
g,
re
She  had forgotten  to lower the shade the night before, and now the sun
was hitting her full in the face.  She walked toward the window, groping for
the  canvas,  which  she unrolled  with  a  gentle  tug.  Then  she went  to  make
some  coffee.  She  vaguely  recalled  Gaia's  message.  She  had heard  it  from
her bed, when she was feeling too weak to care  about the rest of the world. r-
Now, however,."she went over to the answering machine to listen one more
er

time.  Gaia had  seen the house again.  She didn't provide too many details, IS

but she sounded excited. :0

With her toast half-eaten,  she began to dial the number.  She didn't stop s.

to  wonder if the other woman would be  awake on a  Sunday at eight in the ly

morning,  but  Gaia  picked up  immediately,  as  if she  had been next to  the
phone,  awaiting her call.  In fact,  she had hardly slept.  Could Cecilia guess
where  she'd  seen  the  house?  Well,  in  the  empty lot  on  Douglas  Road  ...
Cecilia  stopped  chewing.  That was  on the  same  comer  as  her house.  You
could  see  the  lot  from  her  balcony.  She  ran  to  look  out  the  window,  the at

telephone  stuck  to  her  ear.  No,  it  wasn't  there  anymore,  of course.  The
house  only appeared  at night.  What time had  she seen it? Well,  it was very J,

late,  almost  one  a.m.  She  was  driving  by  in  her  car  and hit  the  brakes  so
hard  that  everyone  in  the  neighborhood  probably  heard.  There  wasn't  a :e

soul in the  street,  perhaps  because  of the  cold.
"How  did  you  recognize  the  house  from  inside  your  car,   and  in  the :d

dark?" "

"I'd  already  seen  it  twice  before;  it's  not  the  kind  of house  you  find  so
TilE   ISI.:\:,\J)r/   ETt::H~_•\L LOVE•       229

that she draw a map with the sightings, in order to see if there was a differ-ent pattern, but she had forgotten. The theory of fateful events had seemed so solid.... But what if Gaia was right and it was a question of a
minor event that didn't always  appear on  calendars? Where  could  she find

more  information?  In  general,  the  older  generation  treasured  those  sorts

of  oddities.   Her  great-aunt   had   a   closetful   of  magazines   and   yellowed

newspapers.

She  dried  her  hair  and  dressed   quickly.  She   phoned  ahead   but  only

reached  the  answering  machine.  Maybe  she'd  gone  to  the  market.  It  was

ten  a.m.  To  kill  time,  she  rurned  on  ti,e TV  and  flipped  through  the chan-

nels.   She  saw  some  horrible  cartoons  with  monsters,   a  few  spons  pro-

grams, two or three newscasts, some dull films, and the like. She clicked off ti,e TV. What should she do next?

She got up to look for the ciry map she kept among her travel bro-chures, unfolded it on the table, and began checking her notes. With a red crayon, she went about marking the spots where the sightings had taken place and, beside each one, the date in very small print. Half an hour later the map was sprinkled with red dots. She turned it around and around, studying it from all possible angles, but she didn't see any special pattern or 'anything else ti,at indicated a logical sequence. Suddenly she remem-bered something: the constellations. She tried to draw random figures but

didn't accomplish much. There were no squares there, no stars, no trian-gles, no creatures of any kind. She attempted to cross the lines, with still no results.

Exhausted,   she   stepped  out   on   the   balcony:   From   her   position   she

could  observe  the  empry  lot  on  the  corner where  ti,e  house  had  appeared.

To  think it  had  been  so  nearby  ...  which  didn't  mean  much,  because  she

might  not  have  seen  it  anyway,  even  if it  had  popped  up  right  under  her

nose.  Maybe  she  needed  mediumistic  gifts  in  order  to  see  it.  She  vaguely

recalled  Delfina,  her  prescient  grandmother,  with  that  floury  apron,  sur-

rounded by bees ti,at always followed the fragrant trail of her desserts. She would have solved the mystery in the blink of an eye.

She returned to ti,e dining room and stared at the speckled map; she had ti,e feeling she was missing something. A hazy, shapeless idea floated

into  her  mind.  The  premonition  grew  stronger  when  she  looked  at  the

dates  again.  The  answer  was  there,  before  her  eyes,  but  she  just  couldn't

see  it  ...  yet.
.,
\

228      .       DAr;..;:\   C:JI:\\'I;\~O

often around here. Besides, it was impossible not to notice: all the lights were on. So I got out of the car and walked over."

"I  thought you  didn't  like  phantom  houses."

III  don't,  but  it  was  the  first  rime  I'd  seen  it  so  close  to  other  houses.  I

thought if something happened, I could scream. Besides, I was just going to watch it from tile sidewalk. I was about ten steps away when the door

opened and I saw the old lady in the flowered dress, along with a young couple. The woman's face looked familiar, but I have no idea where I

might've seen her.  The man was  tall,  in a dark suit and a very old-fashioned

tie  with  light-colored  polka  dots.  The-couple  didn't  even  look  at  me;  only

the  old  lady  smiled  at  me.  For  a  minute  I  thought  she  was  about  to  walk

down  the  front  stairs,  and  it  scared  me  so  much  that  I  turned  around  and

gar  back  in  the  car."

With  the  telephone  pressed  between  her  ear  and  her  shoulder,  Cecilia

began  to  clear  the  breakfast  leftovers.

"When  was  that?"  she  asked.

'~at difference  does  it make?"

"Remember  the  national  holidays?"

"Oh, yeah. It was Friday the thirteenth.... No, it was already after t.Uitlnight. Saturday, the fourteenth."
"\Xlhat  happened  that  day?"

"What planet are you living on, girl? February fourteenth: Valentine's Day!"

"No,"  Cecilia  said,  as  she  stacked  the  last  plate  in  the  dishwasher.  "It

has  to  be  a  national  holiday."

"Wait,  1 think 1 have  a  Cuban  almanac. II

As  Gaia  searched  her  house,  Cecilia  poured  in  the  detergent,  shut  the

door,  and  pressed  the  button.  The  dishwasher began  to  hum.

"I  found  it,  but  it  doesn't  say  anything  about that  day."

"Then  the  theory  doesn't  hold."

"Maybe  it has  to  do  with  something  that's  not  listed  here. II

Cecilia felt annoyed. Her discovery of the national holidays had intrigued her because it had provided her ,vith a point of departure. Now the param-eters had been broken: a single date was enough to scrap the whole thing.

"1'11 keep looking," said Gaia before she hung up. "If I find anything, I'll call you."

Cecilia   went   to   the   bathroom   to   take   a  shower.   Lisa   had   suggested
226      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

The woman leaned back in her seat. The young man's serious nature had always made her feel a little uneasy, but now she was terrified by the abyss reflected in his eyes.

"Amalia begged me to look for you," she went on. "Her father will take her to Santiago in a few days. From there, they plan to put her on a ship for Gij6n with some relatives."
"Amalia never told me.... "

"She didn't know, either, until yesterday." "What will I tell my parents?"

"You'll have to figure that out later on," the woman said. "But if you want to see her again, you must go look for her at midnight."

"Dona Rita, don't get me wrong. I love Amalia more than my life, and of course I'll go with her to the ends of the earth. The problem is that I have nowhere for us to stay. I have enough money to rent a room for a few days, but after that I don't know what we'd do. I can't count on my par-ents. It would be better just to die.... "

"What foolishness!" screeched Rita with such fury that the boy bumped his head against the roof of the car. "Death doesn't solve anything. It only cr~ates problems for the living."

"What do you  suggest?"

"Go get her tonight. . . . No, not tonight-they'll be at the wake. Tomorrow would be better, at dawn. Come straight to my house. She knows the address."

"Thank you,  Dona Rita."  He took her hand to  kiss  it.

"Not so fast," she said, pulling it back in annoyance. "Amalia can stay there, but you'll go to your parents' house and behave as if nothing is wrong so they don't suspect anything. And I'm warning you, if you don't get a job and marry her right away, I'll talk to her parents and have them come take her back."

"I swear to you,  Dona Rita,  I promise you-"

"Don't swear to me because I'm no altar saint or virgin. Do what you have to do and then we'll see."

"Tomorrow, then,"  he  whispered,  choked up,  as he  got out of the  car. And  only  when  she  saw  him  disappear  in  the  crowd,  in  his  wrinkled suit, running like  someone who'd  seen the  devil,  did Dona Rita breathe  a
sigh of relief.
THE  ISLAND  ,t ETERNAL   LOVE      •      225

Manuel's smile evaporated. The boys, far from discussing their future wives, were filling their heads with nonsense.

"I don't t'ink you should be taw-king about dat," he replied very seri-ously, with his noticeable accent. "Student should finish college and t'ink about family."

Pablo tried to redirect his father's discourse. "See you tomorrow," he said, standing up. They took their leave of the group.

"I didn't know Shu Li and Kei were involved in politics," his father scolded in Cantonese as soon as they left that place.

"We were  just talking."

"Of things that don't concern you and that you know nothing about." Pablo didn't respond. It was useless to debate these issues with his

father. Besides, he had something more important to think about. "I forgot to give Joaquin a message."

"Call him when you get home."

"But I don't know if he's on his way home, and it's urgent. I should go now."

{,' "Don't take  too  long."

But the boy didn't go back to the cafe. He turned the comer, looking for a phone booth. He hadn't finished dialing when a car pulled up along-side him.

"Pablo,"  a woman's voice called.

Thinking it probably was Amalia, he went over to the car, but he stopped short, surprised. It was Dona Rita. Something had happened.

"Get in,  son, I  don't have  all day."

The boy entered the car and the driver sped up to get away from the comer.

"How's Amalia?"

"She can't come," the woman said, dabbing at her eyes with a handker-chief. "Dona Angelita died last night, and Jose knows everything."

Pablo felt his knees melting like sugar on a flame. "What?" he stammered? "How ... ?"

"We were eating at her house, and Amalia had to go to the bathroom to throw up.... And this morning they found Dona Angela dead."

"Oh,  God."
224      •      DAiNA  GRAVlANO




When Pablo spied his friends without their seeing him, he stopped beside the Victrola as it launched its plaintive bolero into the wind. It was an obstacle. For a moment he thought of spying on the house from the barber shop across the street, but it didn't take long for the boys to discover him.

"Tiger!"

He  had no  choice but to  go  over to  them.

"It's about time!" Joaquin gree~d him. "We were about to order another round of coffees."

"Do you know Lorenzo?" Luis asked, pointing to a chubby guy with thick glasses.

"Nice to  meet you."

"Pupo!" Joaquin shouted to the mulatto working behind the counter. "Another coffee."

"That business about Manolo's assassination gave me a bad feeling," said Lorenzo, who seemed to be leading the discussion. "I think gangster-ism has taken hold in the university, and it's all Grau's fault. If he hadn't a~pointedthugs as the chief of police, we'd be singing a different tune."

"You're acting like Chibas: making accusations has become your favor-ite sport."

"Chibas has  good intentions."

"But his obsession is driving him crazy. I'm telling you, the problem with this country isn't economic, it's social ... and maybe psychological."

"I agree," said Pablo. "We just have a lot of political corruption and senseless violence. The change in government hasn't accomplished any-thing. Grau went out, Prio came in, and everything's still the same."

"That's more  or less  what  Chibas  says."

"Yes, but he's blaming the wrong person, and he's creating confusion that people take advantage of to--"

"Taw-king about gull-friends?"

The boys turned around. Pablo was startled, but he kept his composure. "What are you doing here, Papa?"

"Seiior Manuel," asked Luis, not giving him time to react, "don't you think they should change leadership in the police departments where there's been suspicious activity?"







'  ..
."
•;



TilE   ISI.A~JJ./ ETERl'ALto\'!:   .      123

But  when  Angela  returned  to  her seat,  he  decided  to  postpone  the  dis-

cussion until the nex"! day. He didn't want to upset his mother, whose eerie calm worried him more every day.

The old woman hadn't noticed her son's  anxiety,  nor did she  take in her

granddaughter's  panic  or  Mercedes'  fear.  A  new  bit  of joy  was  beating  in

her heart.  Unaware of the tension  surrounding her,  she finished  her dinner

and  cleared  the  dishes.  As usual,  she  refused  help  from  Mercedes,  and  she

stayed  in  the  kitchen,  cleaning  up.

Behind  her,  a  pot  rattled,  announcing  Martinico's  arrival.  For  several

weeks now he had been showing up every night. It was as if he wanted to provide her with his uninvited company. She didn't tum to look at him. That noise, like a little bird at her back, reminded her of the murmur of

the   mountains  on  summer  afternoons,  when   she  and  Juaneo  would  go

walking in tI,e foothills and return to the fountain where the water nymph had given her tI,e advice tI,at joined her witl, tI,e love of her life.

She missed Juanco. Not a day went by when she didn't think of him. At first she had tried to keep busy with mundane tasks, attempting to forget his absence, but largely she had begun to feel his presence close to her

again.

". 'She turned off tI,e kitchen light and went to her room, dragging her feet, shivering as though she were still slipping on the damp, tangled weeds of the sierra. She undressed without lighting the lamp. Her bones creaked

when the mattress sank to  receive her.  In  the darkness she  saw him.  Beside

her lay Juanco, with his same lovely, youthful face. She closed her eyes to see him better. How her husband would laugh!" How he would take her face in his hands and kiss it! And she would dance with her ribboned skirt

that  swirled  at  each  rum ....

The imp went over ro the bed and looked at the old woman's face, her eyelids trembling from tI,e dream. Patiently he waited at the head of her bed until dawn, and in her dream he leaped and danced through the hills with her to tI,e rhythm of the panpipes in the magical afternoon, and he watched her embrace tI,e young man she had loved so madly.

Angelita, the visionary maiden of the sierra, smiled in me darkness of her dream, as innocent as when she played among the pottery of her

father's  kiln.  And when  at last her breatlling ceased  altogetl,er and her spirit

floated  toward  the   light  where  Juanco  awaited)  the  imp  leaned  over  her

and,  for  the  first  and  last  time,  kissed  her  on  the  forehead.
222      •      DArS:\   GH:\VIANO

"Yes)  young  ladies  today  are  more  delicate  than  men)"  Loreto  com-

mented. "And Amalia has turned into a very pretty young lady. Who would've guessed? The last time I saw her, she had that talking doll-"

Jose  choked  on  his  water.   Loreto  had  to  slap  him  on   the  back  a  few

times.

"Hey)   my   only   experience   with   cases   of  drowning   was   in   medical

school,"  the  doctor joked.  ItI  can't  guarantee  anything."

Jose  stopped  choking.

"1  don't  remember  that  Amalita  had  a  talking  doll,"  her  father  com-

mented)  feigning  great  composure.

"Well,  ir  was  a  few  years  ago.  You  used  to  buy  her  all  sorts  of toys....

I  don't  think  you  remember.... "

"Well,   I  remember,"   Loreto's   wife)   Irene,   interjected)   "because   for

months  Bertica  hounded  us  to  buy  her  one  just  like  it."

Something was happening. Rita discreetly observed Pepe as she asked for more lemonade. What connection could that doll have with such ten-sion? She heard a muffled sound and realized that Amalia was vomir-ing.... Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Not that. Anything but that.
Mercedes'  footsteps  caught  the  anention  of the  guests .

. -"She seems a little better," she remarked witll tlle greatest innocence, but when she raised her eyes and saw her husband's expression, her heart

stopped.

Thirry years of living with someone is a long time, and Mercedes had been with Jose for somewhat longer than tl,at. For one moment she held her fork suspended halfway between her plate and her mouth, but her husband's gesture indicated that she should dissemble.

"The one I'd love to hear in person is Beny More," said Don Lorew. uI've only heard a few recordings he made in Mexico with Perez Prado."

"That mulano sings like the gods)" Pepe began, making an effort. "Mercedes and I went to see him a month ago."

"Well,  let's  arrange  to  go  all  together ...  including  Dona  Rita,  if she's

willing  to  accompany  us. n

"I'd  love  to)"   she  replied,  giving  a  smile  and  the  best  performance  of

her life,  because  the  fear  she  felt  for Amalia  right  then  was worse  than  fac-

ing the  flames  of hell.

"Well)  it's  settled)  then,"  Jose  exclaimed)  without  anyone's  suspecting

that  his  tone  concealed  a different  intention.
THE   ISLAND./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      221

Amalia nearly fainted when she learned that her parents had invited Don Loreto and his wife.

"What will we do if they catch us?" she asked Pablo as they ate their ices. "They might even send me to Los Arabos again."

"Nothing will happen," he reassured her, stroking her hair. "That was three months ago. There's no reason to mention it."

"And if he  does?"

"If your father finds out and wants to send you to Matanzas again, you'll phone me, and that same nigh~ we'll run away."

But Amalia was  very nervous  anyway.

Pepe observed his wife's efforts to control the spill and, for the first time, noticed the girl's appearance. She looked paler, different ... Could she be anemic? As soon as he finished the recording session with the soneros, he'd take her for a checkup.

" ... but what's happening in Japan is unbelievable," EI Zorro was say-ing. "They've gone crazy over our music."

"In Japan?" Jose repeated.

"There's  a new band called the Tokyo  Cuban Boys."

•.  "Is  it  true  that  over  there  they  commit  suicide  by  slitting  their  bellies

. open?" Mercedes asked, unable to imagine anything worse than to die under the blade of a knife.

"I've heard something along those  lines," Loreto recalled.

"It doesn't surprise me," Rita sighed. "With that sad music they play on those stringless mandolins, they must go around feeling very depressed."

''Well, now they're all dying to dance the guaracha," EI Zorro said cheerily.

Amalia's chair jumped. Her parents and her grandmother looked at her, alarmed, although the guests simply thought that the girl had moved abruptly.

"Is  something wrong?"  whispered Angela,  noticing her pallor.

"I don't feel well," the girl replied, feeling a cold sweat overcome her body. "May I go ... ?"

But she didn't complete the sentence. She covered her mouth and bolted to the bathroom. Her grandmother and mother followed.

"At that age, the same thing used to happen to me," Rita said. "When-ever it was hot, I couldn't eat much because I ended up emptying my stomach."
220      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

Upward ... upward ... toward the clouds, toward the soul's dwelling place, following the ever-curving path around the hill. First toward one side and then the other. Never in a straight line. Only in this way would their spirits remain united: bound together by invisible twists and turns.

A voice recited a magical incantation that they didn't hear, immersed as they were in a cloudbank that barely allowed them to see. The psalms, chanted in an ancient tongue, seemed to them like the chirping of unfa-miliar birds.... They could perceive nothing more. The peak stood await-ing the ceremony that would mark_their souls. Such a ceremony had already taken place countless times, and so it would occur again and again as long as the world existed and the gods-forgotten or not-retained their power over humankind.

Lulled by a silent liturgy, Pablo and Amalia surrendered to the most ancient of acts. And it was as if a divine finger, emerging from the void, had blessed them. A light descended-or perhaps emanated-from their bod-ies. It surrounded them like gauze and adhered to the edges of their souls like a mark of love, visible only to their spirits, that would last for all ages.

.
"This chicken and rice tastes like heaven," remarked Rita, with that movement of her eyebrows that could signify both admiration and flattery.

"It comes from nearby," Jose commented, stabbing a piece of white meat. "Mama learned to cook in the mountains."

Dona Angela smiled slightly. With her seventy-some years behind her, she had the placid expression of someone who was waiting only for the end. But her son was right: The house of her childhood was closer to heaven than earth. The image crossed her mind of that immortal damsel combing her hair beside a pond as well as the sound of the music that flooded the mountains. She thought of how close those creatures might be to the Supreme Authority she would soon seek in order to join her Juanco.

"Child,  watch where you're putting things!"

Mercedes' cry shook her from her reveries. Her granddaughter had just spilled a glass of water on the tablecloth. Mercedes leaped up, napkin in hand, to stem the flow that threatened to spread. It was practically a fam-ily dinner. Besides the four members ofthe family and Rita, only an impre-sario they called EI Zorro and Bertica's parents were in attendance.
:".;.'




THE  ISLAND  ,.1'  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      219

head. "May we love each other unto death, even beyond death." Then suddenly the melody ceased. The imp turned his gaze from the humming-bird he had just caught and, startled, let the winged jewel escape, twin-kling before it disappeared in the mist.

At the end of the path, Pablo kissed Amalia. But that wasn't what had frightened the imp. Atop a nearby rock, with his dark hooves and his horns, the old god Pan held the reed instrument that Martinico had seen years before in the mountains of Cuenca.

The imp and the god stared at e~ch other for a few seconds, equally disconcerted. The question "What are you doing here?" wordlessly passed between them. And in the same way their explanations crossed from one to the other: "Unto death," Amalia's thoughts resounded. "Beyond death." And he knew then that the god had stopped playing his pipes because he, too, had heard Amalia's longing for eternity.

How could it be? The creatures of the Middle Kingdom could hear human thoughts only if there was a special link between them. The imp then remembered the promise Pan had made to Amalia's grandmother: "If one of your descendants should ever need me, even without knowing a~put our pact, I could offer him whatever he wanted ... twice." The god •was bound to her by the favor she had granted him over honey on a certain Midsummer's Night. "Let it be forever, then," he felt the god concede in his silent tongue. "Until beyond death."

Pablo and Amalia began walking, preceded by the god who impercep-tibly led the way. The imp followed them from a certain distance, too intrigued to think of mischief. Soon they reached the foot of a peak where the mountain range began. The whole terrain was covered by the densest weeds, as if no one had ever trod there. The god made a gesture that nei-ther of the young people saw, but they both suddenly came upon an open-ing in the middle of the foliage. It was the start of a spiral path leading to the summit. The imp knew that no human being of those times had ever traversed it. It belonged to another era, designed by creatures who, fleeing an ancient catastrophe, had taken refuge in the then-uninhabited island before continuing to other lands. Now, thousands ofyears later, Pablo and Amalia were about to repeat a ritual which no one could recall, except a few dying gods in a world that had lost its magic....

They made their way among the curtains of ferns, toward the heights. Dew hung from the leaves, falling like frozen rain over their heads.
218      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

A dense fog hovered over the Vifiales Valley. The peace and silence were omnipresent, as though civilization had ceased to exist. She listened carefully for some familiar sound but heard only an indefinable murmur. Instinctively she clutched the jet amulet that dangled from her chain, look-ing up. Was it the rush of the breeze or the voice of the water? A little frightened, she clung to Pablo.

The icy wind blew over the heights of the sierra where that ancient, Jurassic valley was set. Hummocks-that's what they called those peaks where one-of-a-kind snail species had resided since time immemorial.

Millions of years ago, Vinales had been a woodsy plain that nature's whimsical hand had gradually shaped into those rounded masses. The mollusks entrapped in each one of the promontories encouraged the growth of independent species that, in time, would transform the valley into a mecca for scientists.

But Pablo and Amalia knew nothing of this. Their glances passed right over the dwarfpalms and clumps offerns. Among the orchids they discov-ered hummingbirds that plowed through the atmosphere like flickers of light, stopping to sip their sustenance and beating the air with frenzied wiI]gs before disappearing. It was a vision of Paradise. Awed and mute, the young couple took delight in those marvels; and just behind them, also reveling in all that beauty, Martinico followed.

Ever since Angela had left her village half a century earlier, the imp had not fully enjoyed a forest or a hill. Now he found himself in the midst of the Cuban hills, relishing the plumage of the tocororos, the fragrance of the tobacco plantations, the outline of the cork palm-more ancient than the imp himself-the red clay of the fields, and the prehistoric mountain range encircling the valley.

A delicate music pierced the fog. Amalia looked up as if she had caught the sound of it ... to the surprise of the imp, who knew that the sound was inaudible to human beings. But perhaps it had been a coincidence-or a premonition-because she immediately turned to Pablo and they plunged again into an intimate conversation.

As they advanced, the mysterious sound grew closer. The young couple had fallen silent again, deep in their own thoughts. To his right, the imp Martinico spied a tiny bird, almost like a toy: a black hummingbird. He leaped forward in order to catch it, but it slipped from between his fingers. "May God always preserve this," he heard his mistress's silent voice in his












MY    ONLY    LOVE








She still shuddered to think of how she had gotten there. Countless times she had defied her parents, seeing Pablo secretly at the university, even running off to the movies with him. In fact, she had been eluding her parents' authority for the last four years of her studies. But this ... ?
.. "You've got to  help  me,"  she had begged Bertica.  "I've always  covered
'
,your back with Joaquin."

"This is different, Amalia. My parents know yours." "You owe me this favor."

Grudgingly, her friend went with her to ask permission to go on a "trip" to Varadero. Don Jose and Don Loreto had been classmates in medical school, and they still exchanged patients and postcards. Musicians who knew Don Jose went to the doctor's clinic, and Don Loreto's patients bought records at Pepe's store.

That connection hurt Amalia because she didn't understand how her father could be such a good friend of the Cantonese doctor's and still refuse to accept her relationship with Pablo. That's why she felt no scru-ples about disobeying him by making crazy plans, like this three-day esca-pade they had planned.

Walking along the orchid-lined path, she noticed how her feet sank into the carpet of leaves. Indifferent to the chill, and with her gaze lost in that ossuary of skeletal vegetation, she felt as though she were in another time, thousands of years earlier, when human beings did not yet exist, just strange and mythical creatures like her imp.
\-,
\
-
/J7;ri JJI     9fIi;;((el J  .0'V;;IeO(i(ik
Go find  a  Chinaman to  take you in:
A  popular expression  indicating rejection.   When  a  man fought
.- with  a  woman,  he  might say:   ce•••   and go find  a  Chinaman  to
take you  in, "  meaning that she could go  to  hell if she liked,  because

the  last  thing a  decent woman  would do  was live  with  a  Chinese
man.   The later mixture of the Asian population with  blacks and
whites proved that,  despite  the  taboo,  many  women  really  did
follow  this  advice.
















Part   Five



THE     SEASON


OF     THE
..

RED     WARRIORS
\



212      •      DAINACHAVIANO

minutes, focusing on the image "120/80 .. , 120/80" until the figures shone clearly in her head. A breeze blew through the stuffy room, refresh-ing her skin. Three minutes passed, then four, then ten. She relaxed and pumped one more time until she read: 120/81. She could hardly believe it, but there was no doubt she had done it. She decided to do the same thing with her fever. After several attempts, her temperature began to fall until she herself fell ... into a deep sleep.

She awoke the next morning with the sunlight filtering through her window. She peered out onto the balcony and saw a few cars parked on the sidewalk. Their owners had tried to rest them on whatever elevated surface they could find, fearing they'd be washed away. Dozens of people milled around in the street, barefoot and in shorts. For the first time in many hours, the sun shone brilliantly above their heads. From still-drenched telephone wires, birds shook their feathers and sang at the top of their voices.

Life was  returning for  everyone,  including Cecilia.
•,


THE  ISLAND,.;   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      211

But her emotions weren't under Cecilia's control, and the medications didn't manage to lower her blood pressure. Besides, she still had that fever, a fever the doctor couldn't explain. She underwent all sorts of procedures. Nothing. It was a mysterious, isolated fever that didn't appear to be asso-ciated with anything but her depression. The doctor ordered complete rest. Two days later, when someone called to tell her they had seen Roberto at the beach with a redhead, she plunged into a lethargy that was almost welcome. She had dreams and visions. At times she thought she was talk-ing to Roberto, and the next moment she found herself alone. Or else she was leaning over to kiss him and suddenly was with a stranger.

An endless downpour began falling on the city. It rained for three days and three nights, to the alarm of the authorities. Classes were suspended, as were nearly all jobs. The news proclaimed it was the greatest rainfall in half a century. It was a strange storm, hallucinatory. And while Miami turned into a new Venice, Cecilia was delirious with fever.

On the last night of the flood, she felt she was dying. She had taken several aspirins, but her high fever continued. Despite her test results, she was shriveling up like an old woman. Suddenly she understood why peo-ple in other eras died of love: a deep depression, a compromised immune
.'
,'system,  emotions  that  shot  your  blood  pressure  up  to  the  stars,  and  ...

everything could go to hell. The heart's fragility can't withstand the bur-dens of the spirit.

The dawn of the third night, she awoke suspecting her end was near. Her eyes still closed, she felt a hand brushing her burning forehead. She turned her head, trying to locate the source of that caress. There was no one in her bedroom. For some reason she thought of her grandmother Delfina. Her gaze rested on a book she hadn't yet begun to read. Acting on impulse, she opened it at random: "Our minds carry the power of life and death." She had barely read that line when she recalled Melisa's words: "You have a shadow on your aura." She shuddered. "Something bad will happen to you if you don't start with what's inside your head. "

She checked her pressure: 165/104, and again she felt the icy touch of a nearby invisible being. She had an idea. She closed her eyes and visual-ized the numbers 120/80. She held on to that image for a few moments until she could see it in her mind, feeling-more than wishing-it would be there when she looked again. She took her pressure once more: 132/95. The numbers had fallen. She concentrated and closed her eyes for a few
;.../



210      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

"Don't worry about the money," the man reassured her. "I came because I was a good friend of Tirso's."

That name didn't mean anything to Cecilia. "Tirso was my cousin," Lauro said.

From his tone of voice, Cecilia deduced that his cousin had died, but she didn't want to find out how or of what.

"Do you have hypertension?" the man asked, after watching the needle jump.

"I don't think so."

"Well, your pressure's pretty high,''l1e remarked, rummaging for some-thing in his valise.

The man examined Cecilia's  arms  and legs.

"You can't allow your pressure to go up. Look at those black-and-blue marks. With your fragile capillaries, your arterial walls could burst. I don't want to alarm you, but that combination of high blood pressure and vas-cular fragility could cause a stroke."

"Both my grandfathers  died of that,"  she muttered.

"Oh, God!" said Lauro, fanning himself with his hand. "I think I'm going.. to faint. These things really affect me. "

. " "Goddamn it, Lauro," Freddy admonished, "quit screwing around for a change, will you?"

"I'm not screwing around," Lauro protested. "I'm a very sensitive person."

"Keep this," the doctor went on. "When you're better you can return it to me."

It was a digital blood pressure monitor. The numbers appeared on a screen.

"Take two pills right now," he recommended, removing a bottle from his valise. "And one every morning when you get up. But I recommend seeing a specialist for a complete checkup.... How's your cholesterol?"
"Normal."

"It's possible that your hypertension is  emotional.  ... "

"Of course it is!" Freddy agreed. "This woman keeps everything inside. Every time something happens to her, she hides in a corner, crying her eyes out."

"Emotions can kill faster than cholesterol," the doctor warned her as he left.
\,
-..

_.....••f
I













YOU,     MY    DELIRIUM








Was it an epidemic~ or was it something that had happened always but that no one noticed? Finally Cecilia had to admit it: Cuban women were dying in droves, like whales that beach themselves en masse.

First it was that actor's girlfriend, a girl she had spoken to a few times. Someone told her that, after a heated discussion, the girl headed out to

.-the street, mad with rage. Dozens of witnesses testified that it hadn't been the driver's fault. The girl saw the car, but she threw herself beneath the wheels.... Then it was a friend she used to get together with when they both still lived in Havana. Trini was a brilliant woman, an eloquent pro-fessor, a tireless reader. Many times they had sat together, discussing a literary work both of them worshipped: The Lord of the Rings. Cecilia would always remember their conversations about the forest of Lothl6rien and their mutual love for Galadriel, the Elf Queen.... But Trini was dead now. After breaking up with her last partner, with whom she had lived in some city in the United States, she sat down on a park bench, pulled out a revolver, and killed herself. Cecilia couldn't understand it. She didn't know how to connect the Elf Queen with a gunshot suicide. It was one of those things that turned her universe upside down.

Soon she stopped questioning herself. And, as though she shared the karma of the deceased, she began to plunge into a depression, finally tak-ing to her bed with an inexplicable fever. Worried, Freddy and Lauro went to her house, accompanied by a doctor.

"I  don't know if my insurance  ... "  she began.
208       •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

friends and had exchanged addresses, telephone numbers, and their real Chinese names. Luis warned him that his line was always busy, because of his sister.

"What courses did she register for?" Pablo asked as he waited for Joaquin and Berta.

"Arts and Letters.... Look, here she comes. And, as usual, Joaquin's not here yet! Get ready for a fight."

Pablo glanced toward the comer, where a trio ofyoung women had just appeared, laden with books. One of !!J.em, with Asian features, had to be

.Luis's sister. The blondest one was gIggling madly, choking on her own laughter. The other, golden-skinned, smiled silently, her gaze fixed on the ground.

When they were just a few paces away, the golden-skinned girl raised her eyes, and her notebooks fell to the floor. For an instant she stood motionless, while her friends picked up the trail of papers at her feet. Pablo understood then that his dream had been a coded message from the gods: death, caressing the moon, had turned into a tiger. Or, in other words, his deadened spirit, in the presence of a woman, had come back to
life.  And  if he  gave  it  a  different  reading?  The  number  8-corresponding
f

to death-meant tiger; the number 17-belonging to the moon-could be a good woman; and 14--the key for tiger-also signified marriage. It was a heavenly formula: even the order didn't affect the result. In any case, he had come within reach of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, whose outline shines as brightly as the moon, in order to touch a face he had never stopped dreaming about. And there she was before him: more beautiful than ever, after his many years of fruitless searching.
....:;.~.
THE  ISLAND  et'   ETERNAL  LOVE • 207
cussions,  had been outraged.  Someone had  given  the  order to  detain  one
commander  who  was  visiting  another's  house.   Instead  of  obeying,   the
police-a  bunch  of official  thugs-had  filled  him and  several  others  with
bullets,  including the  innocent wife  of the  owner of the house.
Pablo was  about to  retrace his  steps  in  order to  get in  on the  conversa-
tion,  but he  recalled  his  father's  advice:  "Remember,  you're  going to  the
university in order to  study,  not to  get mixed up  with troublemakers."
"Pablo!"
-:: He  turned  around,  surprised.  Who  could  possibly  know  him  here?  It
. was  Shu Li,  his  old schoolmate.

"Joaquin! "
They  had  stopped  seeing each  other two  years  before,  when his friend
moved to  a different neighborhood and  another school.
"What are you studying?"
"Law.  And you?"
"Medicine. "
They  climbed the  staircase  and  crossed the  threshold  of the  rectory to
go out into the central plaza, where the commotion was even greater. Near
tq~ library  they  met  up  with  a  friend  of Shu  Li's  ...  or  rather  Joaquin,
'since neither of them used his  Chinese name in public.
"Pablo,  this  is  Luis,"  Joaquin  introduced  them.  "He's  studying  medi-
cine too."
"Nice to meet you."
''Where's Bertica?" Joaquin asked the  new arrival.
"She  just left,"  Luis  said.  "She told me  she  couldn't wait anymore."
"Bertica is Luis's  sister," Joaquin explained.
"That's  her  former   title,"  Luis   said,  winking  at  Pablo.   "Now  she's
Joaquin's girlfriend."
"If I  don't  leave  now,  I'm  not  going  to  get  there  on  time,"  Joaquin
interrupted.
And  he  said  good-bye  to  the  two  medical  students,  but  not  without
reminding them of their coffee  date  after class.
It  was  a  tiring  day,  even  though  none  of the  professors  really  gave  a
lecture.  It was  just  lists  of grading  standards  and  exams,  a  repertory  of
books they'd need to  buy,  and  a description of university activities.
By the  time  class  was  over,  Luis  and  Pablo  had  already  become  great
•.;~!'

!":

~"~.:..
.'~'.- ~:'


206       •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

dreamed something. What was it? Suddenly he felt an urgent need to remember.

A ghost. . . no, a dead man. He recalled the silhouette of a corpse advancing through an open field, heading toward the moon, a full, power-ful moon that had dipped dangerously close to the earth. Now the memory became clear. The dead man had raised his hand, and when his fingers brushed the surface of the disk, it began to crumple like a burning piece of paper, ultimately turning into a sort of cat or tiger.... That was all he could recollect. Let's see, a dead man. The dead man was number 8. And the moon was 17. And the cat? What number was the cat? He walked over to the bolitero. A moon that turned a dead man into a cat or a tiger. Of course the man knew. Wouldn't the gentleman like to bet on some other combinations? Because 14, which was the tiger cat, was also marriage. But the first number for marriage was 62. And sometimes images in dreams aren't exactly what they seem to be. He knew it from experience.... But Pablo didn't let himself be seduced. He played number 17814, and he kept the tickets in his briefcase while he watched the time on the wall clock. He'd have to hurry.

Dozens  of students headed toward the  university hill for  their first  day

+~
of classes. Groups of girls greeted each other extravagantly, as though they hadn't seen one another for a lifetime. Young men in suits and ties embraced or argued.

"They're communists in disguise," said one of them, his face purple with indignation. "They're trying to disrupt the country with all those speeches. "

"Eduardo Chibas is no communist. All he's doing is criticizing govern-ment fraud. I have faith in his party."

"Well, I don't," said a third. "I think he's going too far. You can't go around every day making accusations of this and that without proof."

''Where there's  smoke-"

"The main problem here is corruption and the murders committed by gangsters disguised as police. This isn't a country, it's a slaughterhouse. Look at what happened in Marianao. And President Grau hasn't done anything to solve it!"

He was referring to the latest national scandal. It had been such a hair-raising story that even Pablo's parents, not at all inclined to political dis-
'.




THE  ISLAND  N'     ETERNAL  LOVE      •      205

that Amalia had disappeared forever. Alternating bouts of rage and tears had caused his parents to find a reputable Chinese doctor to examine him. But aside from prescribing some herbs and poking him with dozens of needles that slightly calmed his spirit, the physician could do nothing.

"Let's go, son, it's getting late," his mother urged, flinging open the door.

When  Pablo  left  his  room,   shaved  and  dressed,  his  mother  gasped. There  was  no  more  handsome  man  in  the  entire  Chinese  community.  It wouldn't be  difficult for him to find  a young lady from  a good family who -  would make him forget that other girl.  ...  She knew her son was  still  sad;

in spite of all the time that had passed, nothing seemed to brighten him. "Do you have money?"

"Did you  check your briefcase?"

"Leave me alone," Pablo replied. "It's not like I'm going to China." His mother wouldn't stop stroking his cheek or brushing off his suit.

His father tried to display more composure, but he felt an uncontrollable itch on the tip of his nose, something that happened only when he was extremely nervous.
.'At  last  Pablo  freed  himself of their  ministrations  and  walked  out  into

."the crisp morning. The neighborhood was shaking off sleep as it had done every morning since his arrival on the island. As he looked for the right streetcar to the university, he observed the shopkeepers placing their boxes of merchandise along the sidewalks, old folks practicing tai chi in their interior courtyards, students walking to class, their eyes still heavy with sleep. It was a peaceable, familiar landscape that for the first time slightly relieved the ennui that had accompanied him these past few years.

His separation from Amalia had caused him to fail a course, in addition to the one he had failed because of his ignorance of the language when he first came to the island. But he had graduated with honors from the Insti-tuto de Segunda Ensefianza de Centro Habana. And now, after so much effort, he was about to tread the campus of the university itself.

The streetcar passed through San Lazaro, stopping two or three blocks from the university, near a cafeteria. Pablo noticed how the shop owner furtively accepted money from a passerby and understood that he was tak-ing bolita bets. Under the counter with its packs of cigars was the notebook where the amount and the name of the bettor were jotted down-quite a familiar scene for Pablo, and one that triggered his memory. He had
204      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

But Pablo no longer worked at EI Pacifico. A waiter informed her that his family had opened a restaurant or an inn, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't make him tell her where it was; no Chinese person would give her that information, no matter how famous an actress and singer she might be. Those Cantonese immigrants didn't trUst their own shadows.

Following instrUctions provided by Amalia, who had an approximate idea of the place where Pablo lived, she attempted to find his house; but she had no luck there, either. She sent several messengers to make inqui-ries, all with the same results. Amalia'~hopes went up in smoke when Rita returned her undelivered letter.

Pablo never learned of these tormenting events. During vacations, and also on some weekends, he kept continued surveillance on his girlfriend's house. Pepe, seeing that he hadn't given up, abandoned the idea of bring-ing her back. And so the months and years went by. And as time passed, Pablo visited the neighborhood less and less, until at some point he stopped going altogether.




The   young   man  looked  indifferently  at  the  clothing  his  mother  had
(

prepared for his first day at the university: a suit made of fine, light-colored cloth.

"Aren't you ready yet?" Rosa asked, peering into the shadowy bed-room. "I just have to heat some water for tea."

"Almost,"  Pablo  muttered.

The restaurant's success had allowed Manuel Wong to fulfill his dream. His son, Pag Li, would no longer be the little Chinaman who delivered clothing or the kitchen helper in EI Pacifico-not even the owner of the Red Dragon. He would soon become Dr. Pablo Wong, medical specialist.

But the young man felt no emotion; nothing had mattered since Amalia's disappearance. His enthusiasm belonged to another time, when he was able to imagine the fiercest battles, the most delirious love....

"Did you wake him?" his father whispered from the hallway. "He's getting dressed."

"If he  doesn't hurry,  he'll be late."

"Calm down, Siu Mend. Don't make him more nervous than he needs to be."

But Pablo wasn't nervous.  In any case, he felt furious  when he realized
THE  ISLAND  ,I    ETERNAL   LOVE      •      203

sparks like two knives clashing in the darkness. She vividly recalled the night when she had slipped the note into her purse, acceding to Amalia's pleas. One glance was enough for her to understand why that boy had the young woman so charmed.

To everyone's surprise, the actress seized him by the arm and pushed him into a taxi with her. She slammed the door in the faces of all present, including the admirer with the umbrella, who stood there in the rain, watching the car pull away.

"Dona Rita ... " he began, but she interrupted him. "I don't know where she is, eithei"

More than disappointment, the woman felt his anguish, but there was nothing she could do. Pepe hadn't told anyone of his daughter's where-abouts, not even Rita, who was like her second mother. She'd only man-aged to send her a note. In return, she had received another in which the girl explained that she had enrolled in a small school and didn't know when she would see her again.

"Come over Saturday at the same time," was all she could offer him. "I'll show you the note."
•  Three days later she met again with Pablo, who kept the note as though •"it were   a   sacred  relic.   The  woman   watched  him  walk   away,   sad   and despondent.  She would have  liked  to  say something to  cheer him up,  but

she felt  bound,  hand  and foot.

"Thank you very much, Dona Rita," he said as he was leaving. "I won't bother you again."

"Don't mention it,  child."

But he had  already turned  and  disappeared  into  the  darkness.

The young man kept his promise not to return, a mistake, since some weeks later Pepe phoned, inviting her to visit his daughter. The couple and the actress traveled to a small town called Los Arabos, about two hundred kilometers from the capital, where some relatives who were car-ing for their daughter lived. Amalia nearly cried when she saw Rita, but she contained herself. She had to wait more than three hours, when every-one went to the kitchen for coffee.

"Take this to Pablo for me," the girl whispered, handing her a small, wrinkled piece of paper from her pocket.

Rita hid it in her bosom, briefly recounting her conversation with Pablo and promising to return with a reply.
202      •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

"Elena doesn't study with her anymore." "Did she change schools?"

"Not Elena, Amalia ... " Pablito was stunned.

"Where is  she now?" he  asked finally.

"I don't know;  it seems they've  moved."

"That's impossible," Pablo cried, feeling panic rush through him. "I've seen her parents several times."

"Maybe they took her to  another_ clo/' You told me they didn't want  ..." Pablo  couldn't listen anymore;  he had to  sit down with his parents  and order  tea  and  soup.  Now  he  understood  why  Amalia  had  disappeared. How  would  he  find  her?  He  racked  his  brain,  imagining  acts  of heroism that might endear him to Amalia's parents. A Victrola blared the strains of a  proclamation:  "Peanuts!  We'll  meet  again!  Peanuts!  This  street  again!" Pablo  gave  such  a  violent  start  that  his  mother  turned  around  to  look  at him.  Feigning  a  slight  cough,  he  covered his  face  to  hide  his  excitement.

Why hadn't he thought of it before?

A hint of breeze brushed his cheeks, lessening the oppressive heat. A.-\)ove the rooftops, the clouds swiftly dissipated. And the sky became so blue, so bright . . .


No matter how he tried~ Pablo couldn't get to see the actress ... and not for lack ofleads, either-who didn't know the great Rita Montaner?-but rather because her crazy schedule made her hard to pin down.

He decided to ask his parents to speak to Don Pepe, since the weeks were flying by. Sadly but firmly they advised him to forget about the mat-ter; another girl fit for marriage would come his way. His pleas had no effect on Mercedes, either; she closed the door and threatened to call the police ifhe didn't leave them alone. He had no choice but to keep looking for the actress.

After many failed attempts, he managed to find her leaving a perfor-mance, surrounded by spectators who wouldn't let her escape and pro-tected from the downpour by an admirer's umbrella. Pushing and shoving, he made his way to her side. He tried to explain who he was, but it wasn't necessary: Rita recognized him at once. It was impossible to forget that bony face, the square, masculine jaw, and those slanted eyes that gave off
THE   ISLAND  d      ETERNAL  LOVE      •      201

moving it closer to the niche to protect it from the wind, while Manuel and Pablito finished pulling the weeds around the gravestone.

Havana's Chinese cemetery was a sea of burning candles and incense sticks. The breeze was filled with sandalwood smoke rising up to the nos-trils of the gods, perfuming that April morning when the immigrants vis-ited their ancestors' tombs.

For two hours the Wongs cleaned the site and shared rations of pork and sweets with the deceased, but most of the food was left behind on the marble slab so that the departed ~ould help himself to his favorites: chicken, boiled vegetables, tea, spring rolls filled with shrimp . . . Before leaving, Rosa burned a few bills of fake money. Then they left, a little sad-der than before.

Pablo had many more reasons than anyone else to feel depressed. Amalia hadn't called or written. The boy sniffed around the neighbor-hood, but his habitual rounds earned him only a couple of slammed win-dows when Don Pepe surprised him peeking through the blinds.

"I could go for some tea," Manuel said, hailing a taxi. "Well, I'm hungry," Rosa replied.

"Why don't we go to Candido's inn?" the young man suggested. "They "make the best tea and the best fish soup in this city."

But his  real motive was to  keep  watch on the  girl's house.

"All right," his father said. "On the way, I'll buy a couple of lottery tickets."

"You should bet on 68," his wife recommended. "Last night I had the strangest dream. . . ."

And while Rosa related her dream about a large place full of dead peo-ple, Pablo gobbled up the streets with his eyes, as ifhe expected Amalia to appear at any moment. Ten minutes later they climbed out of the taxi and entered the restaurant that smelled of cod fritters.
"Look who's here!"

The Wongs went over to the table where Shu Li's family was chatting over bowls of pork and rice.

"Where've you been hiding?" Pablito whispered into his friend's ear. "I've been looking for you for days."

"School is  driving me crazy.  I've had to  study like mad."

"I need your sister to take a message to Amalia," Pablo murmured, looking at the girl out of the comer of his eye.
\ -.

200       •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

The couple didn't even go to the movies, as they had agreed. They took a walk around El Vedado, had lunch in a cafeteria, and ended up sitting on the Malecon wall to carry out the sacred ritual of every lover or would-be lover in Havana.

Years later an architect would remark that not since the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza had an architectural work been more carefully con-structed than that seven-mile-long wall. No sunset in the world, the engi-neer affirmed, had the transparency or duration ofthose Havana nightfalls. It was as though every afternoon a careful mise-en-scene was staged, so that the Almighty could sit down and delight His eyes with the stars emerg-ing from the golden halo of the clouds and the turquoise sky, like the landscape of another planet.... At such moments the spectators suffered momentary amnesia. Time acquired a different physical quality, and then-some people swore-it was possible to see certain ghostly shadows from both the past and the future strolling by the wall.

Therefore, Amalia wasn't too surprised to spy the imp Martinico, who, after leaping tirelessly over sea foam-sprayed rocks, stood motionless before the strange mirage that she, too, could see, knowing that it was not a real, present.- image but rather something from another era: hundreds of people la:unched themselves into the sea on rafts and anything else that would float. Pablo also fell speecWess at the sight of a young woman in a scandal-ously short dress, walking alongside the wall, as his great-grandfather's favorite saint looked on. He didn't understand what the spirit of apak Marti was doing there, or the sadness with which he regarded the young woman, whose natural rhythm bore the marks of a life of bought and sold love.

Visions . . . phantoms . . . The entire past and future came together along the Havana Malecon during moments when God sat there, at rest from ruling over the universe. At any other time the young couple would have been taken aback, but those who witness Malecon sunsets under-stand their effects on the spirit, which momentarily accepts such meta-morphoses without hesitation. Absorbed in contemplation of the many specters around them, neither young lover noticed Pepe in his car, spying from a distance on his daughter's unmistakable silhouette.


A gust of wind knocked over the carnations that Rosa had just placed on Wong Yuang's tomb. Carefully she lifted the flowerpot once more,
\ -.
"\
THE   ISLAND  ''I'  ETERNAL   LOVE • 199
"He  works  in  EI  Pacifico.  I  know  you  go  there  sometimes.  Could you
make sure  someone gives  him this note?"
"Gladly.  Look,  I  have  such  a  craving for  fried  rice  that I  think I'll  run
right  over there  after the performance."
Amalia  smiled.  She  knew  that  this  alleged  yeaming  for  Chinese  food
had nothing to  do  with appetite  and  everything to  do  with curiosity.
"May God bless you for this,  Dona Rita."
"Hush, child, hush-you're only supposed to say that for noble actions,
and  what  I'm  about  to  do  is  madness.  If your parents  find  out,  I'll  lose  a
- lifelong friendship."
"You're  a saint."
"Enough  with  the   church!   You're  not  thinking  of  becoming  a  nun,
\ are you?"
"Of course not.  If! did I  couldn't marry Pablo."
"Jesus!  This girl moves fast!"
"Thank   you,   thank   you   so   much,"   said   Amalia,   touched,   as   she
embraced the woman.
''Why such enthusiasm,  if one might ask?"
.-Pepe and Mercedes  approached,  smiling.
"We were planning a little  excursion."
"Whenever you  like.  For me it's  always  been  an honor to  consider you
a  member of the family,"  and he  pressed the  woman's  hands  between his
own.   "If I  were  to  die,  I'd  hand  my  daughter  over  to  you  with  my  eyes
closed."
The  actress  smiled,  a little uncomfortable  at that display of confidence
she was  about to  betray,  but then  she thought,  "Everything for love,"  and
felt  slightly less  guilty.
A bell resounded throughout the  corridors.
"See  you  later."  Amalia   kissed  her,   and  the  girl's   smile   erased   any
remaining hesitation on her part.
"Ab,  how  beautiful  it  is  to  fall  in  love  like  that,"  the  actress  sighed  to
herself,  as  she might in one  of her own films.
"If  they  catch  you~ I  don't know anything,"  Rita warned.
And  so,  when  she  asked  her  father's  permission  to  go  shopping,  she
knew what she was in for.
198      •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

The woman looked at the young girl and, for the first time, felt alarmed by her expression.
"What's the matter?" she asked, leading her away from the group. Amalia hesitated a few seconds, not knowing where to begin. "I'm in love," she burst out.

"Blessed Saint Barbara!" the diva cried, about to cross herself. "Any-one would've said ... You're not pregnant, are you?"

"Dona Rita!"

"Forgive me, child, but when love makes you look like that, anything's possible. "

"The problem is, my dad doesn't like my boyfriend." "Oh! So, there's a courtship going on already?"

"My parents don't want to have anything to do with him." "Why not?"

"He's  Chinese."

''What?''

"He's  Chinese,"  she repeated.

For one moment the  actress  regarded the  girl,  mouth agape;  suddenly,

unable  to  contain herself,  she let out a guffaw that made  everyone nearby
r'
•turntheir heads.

"If you think it's  so funny  ... "

"Wait," Rita begged, still laughing and grabbing her arm to keep her from running away. "My God, I always wondered how Dinorah's predic-tion that night would tum out...."
"Who?"

"The card reader I took you to see a few years ago--don't you remember?"

"I remember her but not what she  said."

"Well, I do. She warned you that you'd have complicated love af-fairs."

Amalia was  in no  mood to  discuss  oracles.

"My parents are furious." She swallowed hard before opening her purse. "I need a favor, and you're the only one who can help me."

"Ask away."

"I have a note I've  written to  Pablo.... "

"So it's Pablo," the woman repeated, savoring the story as if it were a sweet.
THE  ISLAND  '/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      197

leaves me out of such refined categories. And if a white man can marry a mulatto woman, why can't a mulatto woman who passes for white marry the son of Chinese parents?"

And she bolted from the living room, heading for her room. The bang of her door slamming was followed by the crash of a vase full offresh flow-ers. Above their heads, the crystal chandelier began to sway furiously.

"I'll have to take some measures," Pepe said, composing himself. "Take all you like, son," Angela muttered with a sigh, "but the girl is

right. And forgive me for saying so, but you and Mercedes are the last people who should object to such a match."

And with labored little steps, the old woman went oft'to her room, leav-ing a faint trail of mountain dew on the marble tiles.



The cream of Havana society wandered up and down the corridors of the theater. All sorts of individuals-estate owners and marquises, poli-ticians and actresses-rubbed elbows that night at the premiere of The Little Countess, a ballet with music by Joaquin Nin, "Cuba's glory and favorite son, now back from his fruitful artistic exile in Europe and the
."

United States," according to a newspaper from the capital. And just in case there was any doubt about his musical pedigree, the addendum stat-ing that he had been the piano instructor of none other than Emesto Lec-uona was enough to attract even the most skeptical.

Amid the bustle, Amalia, despite her pink tulle dress and the bouquet of violets on her bodice, looked like the picture of desolation. The girl clutched her little silver purse tightly as she scanned the crowd for the one person who might help her. At last she spotted her, lost in a flurry ofhand-some admirers.

"Dona Rita," the girl hissed, rushing to her when her parents weren't looking.

"But what a beautiful girl!" the woman exclaimed when she saw her. "Gentlemen," she said to the male public surrounding her, "I want to introduce you to this adorable creature, who, allow me to add, is single and unattached."

Amalia,  all smiles, had to  greet the coterie.

"Rita," Amalia implored, whispering in her ear, "I need to speak to you urgently. "
.    ••.l
. ...:.:.....~' .
196      •      DAiNA  GRAVlANO

The  shout reached her through the  window grating.

"Gotta run," she interrupted him. "I'll let you know when we can see each other."

Her father's expression left no room for doubt: he was furious. Her mother's glare was identical. Only her grandmother looked worried.

''Iwent to  buy sugar  .  . ."

"Go to your room,"  her father whispered.  "We'll talk later."

For half an hour Amalia bit her nails, working on her alibi. She'd say she couldn't find sugar for the coffe~and had gone out to buy more. Just by chance she ran into Pablo and-

Someone knocked.

"Your father wants to talk to you," Mercedes said, poking her head in the doorway.

When she got to the living room, the guests had already gone, leaving ashes and empty coffee cups everywhere.

"What were you doing?" her father asked. "I went to get-"

"Don't think 1 haven't noticed how that boy's been following you awund for some time now. At first 1 played dumb because 1 thought it was -just a childish crush, but you're almost seventeen now, and I'm not going to allow my daughter to go out with any riffraff-"

"Pablo's not riffraff!"

"Amalita," her mother intervened, "that boy is way beneath us." "Way beneath?" the girl repeated, her indignation growing. "Tell me,

what class do we belong to that's so different from his?" "Our business-"

''Your business is a recording studio," she interrupted, "and his parents have a laundry that they're going to sell in order to buy a restaurant. Tell me, what's the difference?"

Amalia's agitated breathing clouded the silence. "Those people are ... Chinese," her father said at last. "So?"

"We're white."

A dish crashed noisily in the sink. Everyone except Amalia turned toward the empty kitchen.

"No, Papa," the girl corrected, feeling the blood rush to her face. "You're white, but my mother is a mulatto, and you married her. That
THE   ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      195

"Not for me. Remember, I was separated from their mother when they were very small."

"I've heard that Joaquinito turned out like you: a brilliant musician." "Yes, but Thorvald went into engineering, and Anais is obsessed with

literature and psychiatry.... That girl is different from everyone else. She attracts people like flies."

"Some people  are touched by an  angel."

"Or by an imp," the musician replied, "as Lorca would say. But I tell you, just between us, Anais is bedevi!ed." Amalia shuddered.

"Excuse me," the young woman interrupted, emerging from the shadows.

"Ab,  the lovely Amalia!"  exclaimed the pianist.

With a slight smile, she passed between the two men on the way to the dining room, where other musicians were smoking by the open windows-so wide open that she immediately spied Pablo, nervously pacing on the comer.

Her mother stopped her as she opened the door. "Where are you going?"

... "Grandma asked me to  buy some  sugar."

And  she left without giving her time to  respond.

He spotted her right away: a vision, hair curling at the slightest wisp of breeze, eyes like liquid sparks, and pale copper skin. For Pablo she was still the reincarnation of Kuan Yin, the goddess who moved with the grace of a golden fish.

"I'm so glad you came!" she greeted him. "Friday we won't be able to see each other. Papa wants to take me to the premiere of a ballet, and I can't get out of it."

"We'll have to :find another time." He looked at her for a few seconds before breaking the news. "Did you know my parents are going to sell the laundry?"

"But they're  doing so well!"

"They want to open a restaurant. It's better than a laundry." "Will you quit your job at EI Pacifico?"

"As soon as the business is open. We'll have to figure out another way to communicate."

"Amalia!"












I    CAN'T FIND     HAPPINESS








CCAmalia~ is   the  coffee  ready?"  her father  called.

She jolted from her daydream in front of the sink, noticing that the tap water was overflowing the rim of the coffeepot.

"Get out of here," her grandmother told her, walking into the kitchen. "I'll do it."

0•0 i With weary gestures, quite different from the agile leaps and bounds she had once used to climb mountains in search offems, her grandmother Angela turned off the faucet and put the pot on the burner to boil.

Amalia returned to the living room. Standing next to the window, her father was chatting with Joaquin Nin, that pianist with a Chinese name. Or did everything sound Chinese to her these days? She'd been seeing Pablito secretly for three years now and couldn't stop thinking about him.

''When's the premiere of the ballet?" "In less than a week."

"Won't you miss Europe?"

"A little, but I've wanted to return for so long. This country is bewitch-ing. It drags you back, it always calls you.... As I was telling my daughter the last time we spoke, Cuba is a curse."

Another one, Amalia thought. Because she was cursed too. And with a burden worse than carrying the shadow of an imp around for all eternity.

"Maybe the hardest part of returning is being far from your children," Pepe remarked.
THE   ISLAND  _I   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      193

Since her parents left her . . . Cecilia shook her head to get rid of the memory and tried to find a more comforting thought: Amalia's tale. It was a consolation to know she wasn't alone. She felt a breath of hope. She wasn't about to let it be trampled.
"I'm leaving,"  she  said suddenly,  drying her tears.

"Want me to go with you?" Freddy asked, surprised at the sudden change.

"No,  I'm going to  see  a friend."

And,  without  so  much  as  a  good-bye,   she  walked  out  into  the  blue
..:::.
Miami night.










.'
.~.t}'




192      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"I wish I were somewhere else," she sobbed. "This will pass."
Freddy stroked her head, not knowing how to console her. That was Cecilia's dilemma: a sensitive nature that always caused her to flee. Most of the time she tried to appear distant, as though she were running away from her emotions, but he knew it was a defense against getting hurt ...

like now. He also suspected that her parents' early deaths were responsible for a temperament that sought refuge in hidden corners, seeking escape from the pain of the world. But his suspicion wasn't enough to know how to help her.

"I hate  this  country,"  she  said at last.

"Come on! With you, it's always the country's fault. First it was Cuba, because you didn't like Bluebeard. Now you're picking on this one, just on account of some girl, some nobody. It's not a country's fault when horrible people live in it."

"Cities  are  like the people who  live there."

"Excuse me, but you're talking nonsense. Millions of people live in a city: good and bad, wise and stupid, heroes and murderers."

"Well,  I've  drawn  the  shortest  straw.  I  don't  even  have  friends.  I  have

.n~ one to  talk to,  just you  and Lauro."

She was about to mention Gaia and Lisa, but she quickly decided not to include them in her list of confidants.

"It's about time for you to make some new friends," Freddy ad-vised her.

''Where? I like walking, and you can't walk anywhere around here. Everything's a thousand miles away. You don't know how I'd love to lose myself on some street and forget about everything. . . . Go on, tell me where I can find anything here like the parks ofEI Vedado or the Malecon wall or the benches on Prado, or Teatro Lorca during a ballet festival, or
the  entrance of Cinemateca when they're showing a Bergman series ?"

"If you keep on talking like that, I just might move back to Cuba . with Lucifer in power and everything. And don't confuse things! Your problem is romantic, not cultural. You love to mix everything up so you don't have to face the hard stuff."

The last accusation hit its mark, snapping her back to reality. She was convinced she'd never see Roberto again, but how would she get over him? No one had found a cure for that kind of pain, nor would they ever.
THE  ISLAND  ,r ETERNAL  LOVE      •      191

Cecilia managed a faint smile.

"They're going to broadcast all the Masses live," he added, "so don't miss them. Maybe Troy will bum right in front of you-know-who's beard."

"I can't stay home watching TV," she muttered. "I've got to work." "That's what recorders were invented for, my dear."

A female voice began to sing: "They say your caresses are notfor me, that your loving arms will not embrace me. . . ."

The knot in Cecilia's throat was  cutting off her air.

"I'm going to record everything for-posterity," Freddy remarked, stack-ing several cassettes of Gregorian chants. "So no one will be able to tell me some story...."

And when  that  mid-century bolero  moaned,  "Give  me  a  kiss  and forget

you've kissed me; my life isyours for the asking. ... " her sobs startled Freddy. He dropped the cassettes and two whole columns tumbled over.
''What's wrong?" he asked, alarmed. ''What's the matter?" He'd never seen her like this.

"Nothing....  Roberto  ..."  she stammered.

.'"Him again?" he exclaimed. "Damn him to hell." "Don't say that."

''What happened now? Did you break up again?" She nodded.

"And why this  time?"  he  asked.

"I don't know. He doesn't know. He thinks he might still be in love with her."

"The one you told me about?" She nodded.

"Well, listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you," he said, position-ing himself in front of her. "I know who that woman is. I've made some inquiries. . . ."

"Freddy!"  Cecilia started to  reprimand him.

"I know who she is," he continued, "and I'm telling you she doesn't even measure up to your ankle. Ifhe wants to stay with that boring, miser-able little woman, let him. You're worth more than any other girl in this city. What am 1 saying-in this city? On the whole planet! If he wants to give up the last wonder ofthe modem world, he's a real fool and he doesn't deserve a single one of your tears."
190       •      DAINACHAVIANO

he admitted that he had started seeing his old girlfriend again. Cecilia still didn't understand. He was the one who had insisted that they get back together; he had assured her that there was no one else. Now he appeared confused, as if struggling between two forces. Was there really a spell on him? He confessed that they had talked, trying to clarify what went wrong in their past relationship. And Cecilia died a little with each of his words.

"I don't know what to  do,"  he  concluded.

"I'll make it easy for you," Cecilia said. "Go to her and forget about me."

He looked at her, surprised .. .- astonished, maybe. Her tears blinded her. Now she was behaving with that sort of irrational, slightly suicidal instinct that had always surfaced whenever she found herself in an unfair situation. If perseverance and love weren't enough, she'd rather step aside.

"I need for us  to  talk,"  he said.

"There's nothing to talk about," she murmured, without a drop of bitterness.

"Can I  call you?"
''No.   I   can't  go   on  like   this,   or  you'll   kill   the   little  bit   of  sanity  I
.,'
.have left."

"I swear I don't understand what's happening to me," he whispered. "Find out," she replied, "but do it far away from me."


When she reached Freddy's house, she was at the point of collapse. Unaware of what was going on, the boy invited her in amid a chaos of cas-settes and compact discs. A plaintive bolero could be heard coming from the tape recorder. Cecilia sat down on the floor, on the brink of tears.

"Did you hear that the pope has arrived in Havana?" the young man inquired, piling discs in various heaps.

''No.''

"Luckily, I remembered to tape the reception ceremony. It was spec-tacular," he said, trying to decide where to put Ravi Shankar. "Oh! I've got a joke for you. Do you know why the pope is going to Cuba?"

She  shook her head indifferently.

"To get to know hell up close, see the devil in person, and find out how to live on miracles."
\

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/
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/
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THE  ISLAND"I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      189

The Christmas festivities of the past few weeks had revived their rela-tionship. Cecilia's spirits, which were always stirred up during the winter months, now bubbled. She went shopping for the first time in ages, eager to adopt a younger, fresher look. She tried on new makeup and bought herself some new dresses.

On New Year's Eve, Roberto came by to pick her up for a party that was being given on a private island filled with mansions owned by actors and singers who spent half the year filming or recording in some remote corner of the planet. The host was an old client of Roberto's who had invited him
- before.

They got slightly lost on the dark, leafy streets before arriving. The patio, with its recently mowed lawn, ended at a dock from which one could see the large downtown buildings and a slice of sea. Strangers came and went, passing through the rooms, poking around among the works of art that complemented the minimalist decor. After greeting the owner ofthe house, they escaped the commotion and went out to the dock and, chatter-ing away, took off their shoes and awaited the arrival of the New Year.

Cecilia was  sure her romantic problems were over at last.  Now,  splash-

in~ her bare feet  in the  cold water,  she felt  completely happy.  Behind her,
•

-the countdown on TV had begun as the East Coast of the United States watched the shiny ball fall in Times Square. Fireworks began bursting over the Miami bay: white clusters, spheres ringed with green, willows with red branches ...

When Roberto kissed her, she yielded to her sensations, intoxicated with pleasure, savoring the grape juice in his mouth like a divine, super-natural delight. In the last season of that romance, it was a sensual, unfor-gettable, almost religious experience.


A week later Roberto showed up at her apartment at dusk. "Let's go get a drink," he said.

From a little outdoor table by the bay, one could see a sailboat-a combination of pirate ship and clipper-full of people who had nothing to do but sail along the calm waters and watch the bustling activity onshore. Between one martini and the next, Roberto announced:

"1 don't know if we  should keep  seeing each other."

Cecilia thought she'd misheard.  Little by little,  stumbling on his words,












I'LLREMEMBER    YOUR     LIPS








Despite the card reader's warning, Cecilia refused to end her rela-tionship with Roberto. Although she couldn't shake the apprehension she felt when she was with him, she decided to attribute it to insecurity rather than instinct. It was true that everything the oracle had said surprised her with.. its accuracy, but she had no plans to follow the advice of a fortune-
."teller.

Roberto introduced her to his parents. The old man was a pleasant guy who talked constantly about the businesses he would set up once Cuba was free. He'd establish a paint factory ("because everything looks gray in the photos people bring over from the island"), a shoe store ("because those poor people over there go around practically barefoot"), and a book-store where they'd sell inexpensive editions ("because my countrymen have spent half a century not being able to buy the books they'd like"). Cecilia was amused by that combination of investor and Good Samaritan, and she didn't try to slip away when the man called her over to tell her about some new project he'd dreamed up. His wife scolded him for his crazy insistence on creating more work for himself when he had retired over ten years ago, but he told her it was a temporary retirement, just a little respite before undertaking the last part of the journey. Roberto didn't get involved in those discussions; he seemed interested only in finding out more about the island he had never set foot upon. But, after all, that was a common obsession for those of his generation, whether or not they were born in Cuba, and she didn't stop to give the matter any further attention.
THE   ISLAND.r  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      187

"Just from  meeting him?"

"Yes. It seems the imp can figure out who's going to marry whom." Pablo stroked her hand.

"I have to go," he muttered again, spurred to action by an anxiety even greater than anything an invisible imp might provoke. "Your parents might come home, and mine don't know where I am."

''Will we see each other again?" "Our whole lives," he assured her.


On the way back home~ the boy forgot about Martinico. His heart had room only for Amalia. He bounced along, light and happy, as if he himself had turned into a spirit. He tried to think of how he'd explain his tardiness to his parents. He had just enough time to invent an excuse before pushing the half-open door.
"Papa, Mama  ... "

He stopped short in the doorway. The house was filled with people. His mother was crying in a chair, and his father, head hanging, remained by her.. side. He saw the coffin in a corner of the room and then he noticed that everyone was dressed in yellow.

''Akun ... " the boy whispered.

He had returned from the Isle of the Immortals only to face a world where people died.
186      •     DAINA  CHAVIANO

boy, too, noticed that headiness.... Ah, the first kiss. That fear oflosing oneself in dangerous lands, that whiff of the soul that could easily die if destiny were to take an unforeseen turn. . . . The first kiss can be as terrify-ing as the last.

Above their heads the lamp began to sway, but Pablo didn't notice it. Only the crash of something smashing into pieces jolted him back to real-ity. Beside them lay the ruins of a broken piece of porcelain.

"Are they home already?" Pablo whispered, terrified at the possibility that the aggressor might be his girlfriend's father.

"It's that idiot Martinico, up to Ills old tricks." "Who?"

"I'll tell you  another time."

''No, tell me now," he insisted, staring at the inexplicable destruction. ''Who else is here?"

Amalia hesitated slightly. She didn't want this dream before her to evaporate because of some ghost story, but she could tell by the boy's face, he wouldn't tolerate excuses.

"There's a curse on my family." "A what?"

"An imp that pursues us." "And what's that?"

"A kind of spirit ... a dwarf who appears at all the most inconvenient times."

Pablo remained silent, not knowing how to digest her explanation. "It's like a spirit that's inherited," she explained.

"Inherited?"  he repeated.

"Yes, and damn that inheritance. Only our women are affected by it." Contrary to what she had expected, Pablo took the news quite natu-

rally. Among the Chinese, stranger things were thought to be true. "Go on, explain it all to me," he asked, curious.

"I inherited it from my papa. He can't see it, but my grandmother can. And Mama can, too, since she's his wife."

"Do you mean any woman can see the imp if she marries a man in the family?"

"And even before she marries. That's what happened to one of my great-great-grandmothers: she saw the imp appear as soon as she was introduced to my great-great-grandfather. She was awfully frightened."
\-.

THE  ISLAND.I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      185

stood there, uncertain, not knowing what to do. The third door on his left opened up right in his face.

"I thought you'd get lost!" Amalia greeted him, adding candidly, "That's why 1 was watching."

Pablo entered shyly, although his embarrassment didn't show. "And your parents?"

"They went to meet a musician who's arriving from Europe. My grandma went along with them.... Sit down. Want some water?"

''No,  thanks."

Instead of calming him, the girl's cordiality made him more nervous. "Let's go into the living room. 1 want to show you my music col-

lection."

Amalia went over to a box from which a sort of giant hom emerged. "Did you ever hear Rita Montaner?"

"Of course," said Pablo, almost offended. "Do you have any of her songs?"

"Yes, and also the Trio Matamoros, Sindo Garay, the Sexteto Nacional ..."

She kept on reciting names, some familiar and others that he was hear-ing for the first time, until he interrupted her:

"Play whatever you want."

Amalia placed a record disc on top of the box and carefully lifted the mechanical arm.

"Love me deeply, my sweet love, for I'll always adore you. ... " rang a clear, tremulous voice through the speaker.

For a few moments they listened in silence. Pablo watched the girl, who, for the first time, seemed inhibited.

"Do you like movies?" he ventured. "A lot," she replied, perking up.

And they began comparing films and actors. Two hours later, neither one of them could control their amazement at the other creature before them. When she lit the lamp, Pablo realized how late it was.

"I have  to go."

His parents  didn't know where he was.

"We could see each other again," he suggested, brushing the girl's arm. And suddenly she felt a wave of heat spreading through her body. The
184      •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

flavors on one's palate. . . . Heaven must surely smell like this, Pablo thought: a bewitching, delicious mixture that squeezes your insides and unleashes an enormous appetite.

From the comer of his eye, the young man observed the cooks' skill and efficiency, constandy squabbling and whipping the most sluggish ones. Pablo never had problems, except for one day, when he had already been working there for several months. Normally he carried out his tasks with the greatest dedication, but that morning he seemed more distracted than usual. It wasn't his fault. He had received a note from Amalia, which he read standing by the ketdes where •the soups were cooking:

Dear Friend Pablo:

Well, I guess I can call you a friend now, right? I was very happy to meet your family. Ifyou're free one afternoon, maybe we could get together and talk for a while, ifyou want to, because I'd like to know more about you. Today, for example, my parents won't be home after 5 p.m. It's not that I'm trying to invite anyone when they're not home (since there's nothing wrong with talking to a friend), but I think we could talk better without adults around.

Affectionately,

AMALIA

He read the note three times before putting it away and going back to his chores, but his mind was in the clouds and, at the height of his daydreaming, he dropped a load of fish in the kitchen. His supervisor delivered a blow to his head that knocked away any further desire to dream.

No one was home when he arrived. He remembered that his parents had planned to go to the hospital to look in on Grandfather, who had been readmitted the night before due to complications from the wound, which never seemed to heal altogether, but he didn't wait around for news. He bathed, changed clothes, and left. He couldn't avoid glancing at the door-way where the old man used to sit, and he felt a burning in his heart. He revived somewhat at the idea of seeing that strange girl again, the same one who occupied his thoughts both night and day.

Once  more,  he  was  confused  by the  doors  with identical  knockers;  he
THE  ISLAND"   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      183

China but who was an omnipresent figure on the island. And so Pag Li left him to his devotions as he went to his room in search of his shoes. As he fastened them, he recalled the story his now dying great-grandfather had told him about the saint.

Kuan Kong was a brave warrior who had lived during the Han dynasty. When he died, he turned into an immortal whose reddish face reflected his proven loyalty. When the first Chinese arrived on the island, an immigrant who lived in the central area affirmed that Kuan Kong had appeared to him to announce he would protect anyone who shared his food with his unfortunate brothers. The news spread throughout the country, but in Cuba there already lived another holy warrior named Shang6, who dressed in red and had arrived on the ships coming from Africa. Soon the Chinese believed that Shang6 must be an avatar of Kuan Kong, a sort of spiritual brother of a different race. Shortly thereafter, the saint became the dual figure Shang6-Kuan Kong. Later he turned into San-Fan-Kon, who pro-tected everyone equally. Pablo had also heard another version of the story, in which San-Fan-Kon was the badly pronounced name of Shen Guan Kong ("the ancestor Kuan, who is venerated in life"), whose memory some.'of his compatriots had vulgarized. The young man suspected that, at

.this rate,  even more versions of the mysterious  saint's origins might appear. He thought about all this  as he listened to his father's prayers. When he left  the  room,  his  mother  was  just finishing  breakfast.  Siu  Mend  drank  a

little tea,  and then they all put on their jackets and left.

His parents walked in silence, their mouths puffing vapor. The boy tried to forget the cold, peeking curiously into doorways that allowed a glimpse of their interior patios. Sheltered from intrusive glances, early risers moved with the slow motion of the morning exercises Pablo had practiced so often with his great-grandfather.

On any other day Pablo would have gone to school in the morning and worked in the afternoon. But on this particular Saturday the family said their good-byes in front of the building, and the boy went upstairs to begin his first day of work. He was to light the ovens, clean and chop vegetables, wash kettles, take merchandise out of boxes, and do anything else that needed doing.

By mid-morning, a cloud floated over the kitchen with the aroma of steaming, sticky rice, pork cooked in wine and sugar, shrimp sauteed with dozens of vegetables, and the pale green tea that accentuated all these
.......
........:;....
:,;~..
. ,  . ~"":







,.



182      •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

Siu Mend grabbed his wife and son, forcing them to lie on the sidewalk. The old man was already huddled in a comer of the doorway. The scream-ing throughout the neighborhood could be heard above the exchange of gunfire. A few passersby, too terrified to think, ran from one side to the other in search of a hiding place.

At last the car disappeared around the comer with another squeal of tires. Little by little, the people began to peer out of their hiding places. Siu Mend helped his wife stand up. Pablito went over to help his great-grandfather.

"They're gone now,  akun ... "

"Goddess of Mercy," the woman cried in her language. "Those gang-sters will bring tragedy to the neighborhood."
''Akun?''

The old man was still huddled on the sidewalk. Manuel went over to pick him up, but the effort made him groan. Wong Yuang, who had so often defied danger, had just been struck down by a bullet not even intended for him.

..
.' The Lunar New Year arrived without celebrations for the Wong fam-ily. While the old man was dying in the hospital, the entire neighborhood paraded through the house with gifts and miracle cures. Despite their gen-erosity, the hospital bills were excessive. Two doctors offered their services free of charge, but even that proved insufficient. Then Siu Mend, alias Manuel, thought they could use an extra salary at home. He remembered the kitchen at EI Pacifico, a restaurant filled with the most delicious aro-mas in the world, and went to ask humbly for the lowliest possible job for his son. Any questions about the boy's commitment were just a formality, since the whole community already knew about his dying grandfather. He would begin work the next day.

"Hurry up, Pag Li," his mother chided him that morning. "You can't be late your first week."

Pablito scurried over to the table and sat down. He quickly said his prayers and attacked his bowl of fish and rice with chopsticks. The boiling tea burned his tongue, but he liked that sensation early in the morning.

Siu Mend had never been especially religious, but now he prayed every morning before the image of San-Fan-Kon, a saint who didn't exist in
THE  ISLAND"    ETERNAL  LOVE      •      181

"I'll send for one from China. I still have many contacts there." Pablito felt a knot in his throat.

"I'm tired," Kui-fa complained. "Grandfather, wouldn't you like to go home?"

''Yes,  I'm hungry."

Far from lessening, the crowd grew along the route. The city swarmed during those days, the air swelled with parades, and Chinatown was no exception. The arrival of the Lunar New Year, which almost always fell in February, had contributed to the grand commotion. The Chinese joined the city festivities while also organizing their own celebration.

Nearly everyone had finished their preparations for the close of another Year of the Tiger. Even more than in previous years, Pablo's mother had taken great pains with every detail. New suits hung on their hangers, ready to be inaugurated. Crisp strips of red paper dangled from the walls, with letters that invoked good fortune, wealth, and happiness. And days ago she had rubbed the God of the Hearth's lips with plenty of molasses, sweeter than honey, so that her words would arrive in heaven sufficiently sweetened.
..Throughout the entire neighborhood, little colored lanterns waved in the winter breeze. They were everywhere: in the doorways of businesses, on the clotheslines strung from one sidewalk to another, on solitary lamp-posts ... Rosa had also hung some of them from two posts at the thresh-old of the front door.

The old man smiled at the lanterns and breathed the familiar odors of the neighborhood where he had lived for so many years. He recalled his wanderings through the countryside of that island where he had risked his hide in the company ofother mambises, throwing themselves on the enemy, their bare machetes in the air.

"Good night, Grandfather," said Siu Mend, waiting for the old man to enter.

"Good night...."

The squeal oftires on asphalt interrupted their leave-taking. The Wongs turned and saw a black car that had stopped at the comer. From the open windows, two white men began firing at three Asians who were chatting beneath a street lamp. One of the Chinese men fell to the ground. The others shielded themselves behind a fruit stand, shooting back at their assailants.
180       •      DAi     A   CHAVIANO

The three adults  who  were with him turned  around.

"Good afta-noon," said one ofthe men in a tone that was supposed to be friendly but which didn't hide his distrust of the white young lady.

"Papa, Mama, akun, this is Amalia, the record maker's daughter." "Ah!" the man said.
The woman uttered something that sounded like "Aha!" and the oldest man simply scrutinized her with a displeased expression.

''Who'd you  come with?"  Pablo  asked.

''With Mama and Papa. They're over there, with some friends." "And they leave girl alone?" the~oman asked.

"Well,  they don't know I'm here."

"That not good," said the Chinese woman with her terrible accent. "Parents must watch daw-tah."

"Mal" the boy hissed.

''We came to watch the D.ragon Parade," she said, in the hope of mak-ing them forget their obvious displeasure.
"What's that?"  the boy asked.

"You  don't  know?"  she  asked  incredulously,  and  as  they  all  continued
to  stare  at  her  with  a  vacant  expression,  she  continued,  "A  few  people
~ .

." move an oJ;"ange dragon. . . like that ..." And she tried to imitate the swaying of the paper creature.

"It not dla-gon,  it lion,"  the  woman replied.

"And it not pa-Iade, it dance," the old man grumbled, even more annoyed now.

"Amalia!"

The call couldn't have come at a more opportune moment. "I've got to go," she muttered.

And,  anguished,  she  escaped to  the  doorway where her parents  stood.



"Now you see what these Cuban girls are like," said his mother in Can-tonese after Amalia had disappeared among the crowd. "They're not raised properly."

"Well, we have no reason to worry," commented Great-grandfather Yuang in his language. "Pag Li will marry the daughter of genuine Can-tonese . . . right, son?"

"There  aren't many of those  on the island,"  the boy dared to reply.
THE  ISLAND  ~I ETERNAL  LOVE      •      179

They walked down Prado, sweating profusely. February is the coolest month in Cuba, but-unless a cold front comes along-Carnival crowds could melt an iceberg in seconds.

They approached Virtudes, surrounded by a throng of people dancing and blowing whistles. Amalia dragged her parents in the direction of a signal that was audible to her heart. She herself didn't know where it was coming from, but her instinct seemed to guide her. She didn't stop until she saw Pablo, eating an ice cream in the middle of the street.

"We can stop here," she decided, letting go of her mother's hand. "There are too many people," Mercedes complained. "Wouldn't it be

better to go  over toward the bay?"

"It's worse there," the girl assured her. "But, child . . ."

"Pepe!"

The shout came from a doorway where several men were drinking beer. "It's the maestro," Mercedes whispered to her husband, who seemed

more bewildered than she was. "Where? I don't see him."

"Don Ernesto!"  she waved,  walking toward him.

f<
.' Only then did Pepe see him. Amalia followed her parents, annoyed at the coincidental meeting keeping her from her goal.

"Can you guess who's written me from Paris?" the musician asked, after an effusive handshake.

''Who?''

"MyoId piano teacher." "Joaquin Nin?"
"It seems he's planning to  return next year."

Amalia's gaze wandered among the multitude, searching for those dark, slanted eyes that had stayed with her since that night at her front door. She saw their owner, absorbed in studying the convertibles that joined the parade of carriages a few blocks farther down. Taking advantage of her parents' distraction, and before anyone could notice, she ran up to Pablo.

"Hi!"  she greeted him,  tapping him lightly on the  shoulder.

The surprise on the boy's face turned into a joy he couldn't conceal. "I thought you wouldn't come," he said, not daring to add anything

more.

cym-
,~pi.

-.' ;















LOVE     ME     DEEPLY








The paper lion moved along like a serpent, attempting to bite an old man who walked ahead ofit, making faces. It was the second year in which the traditional Lion Dance had branched out of Chinatown and joined the Havana Carnival festivities. But the Cubans saw a different sort of crea-
ture in the  lion that twisted and  turned to  the  sound  of comets  and
(   .
. 'bals  advancing toward the  sea.

"Mama, let's go see the Dragon Parade," Amalia begged her mother. It wasn't that she was so interested in seeing the gigantic puppet that

sometimes jumped convulsively when one of the Chinese men underneath it got caught up in the distant rhythm of the drums. All she knew was that Pablo was waiting for her on the comer of Prado and Virtudes.

"We can go tomorrow," her father said. "The parade must have already left Zanja."

"Dona Rita told me it was more fun to see it on Prado," Amalia insisted. "That's where the Chinese people forget to follow the maracas when they start to hear the congas at the Malec6n."

"They're not maracas, child-" corrected her father, who couldn't stand it when musical instruments were called by the wrong names.

"It's the same thing, Pepe," Mercedes interrupted. "In any case, that Chinese music makes an infernal noise."

"If we keep arguing, I won't get to see anything," Amalia shrieked. "All right, all right ... Let's go!"
\,-,
THE  ISLAND  ,{  ETERNAL  LOVE • 177

handed over the books to Cecilia, who now felt perplexed by her demeanor. What had she done to bring about such a change? Maybe her question had awakened some memory. Many painful stories resided on the island.

Comers of her childhood sprang to mind: the feel of the sand, the wind whipping along the Malec6n.... She had struggled to forget her city, to exile a memory that was half nightmare, half longing, but the effect Clau-dia's words produced in her proved she hadn't really succeeded. All roads led to Havana, she thought. It didn't matter how far she might travel: one way or another, her city managed to catch up with her.

Good God! Could she be a masochist without knowing it? How could she hate something and long for it at the same time? So many years in that inferno must have burned out her brain. But didn't people go crazy when they were so alone? Now she was beginning to feel nostalgic for her city, that place where she had known only an agonizing fear that never aban-doned her. ''You are always with me, in my sadness. You are in my agony, in my suffering. ... " She must really be out of her mind, thinking in boleros! Whatever happened to her, good or bad, was set to music. Even her memo-ries of Roberto. That's how she'd been living lately, with her soul split in two.'parts she couldn't forget: her city and her lover. And so she carried -them, as the bolero went, very close to her heart.
176      •     DAINA  GHAVIANO

remembered what she had come for and headed to the shelf where she had seen several books on enchanted houses. She chose two and went over to the cash register. Maybe the cashier wouldn't remember her. Without say-ing a word, she handed her the books and watched Claudia's hands as she wrapped them.

"I know you were frightened the other night when I told you that you were walking among the dead," Claudia said without raising her eyes, "but you don't have to worry. Yours aren't like mine."

"And what are yours like?" Cecilia boldly ventured. Claudia sighed.

"I had one that was especially awful when I was living in Cuba: a mulatto who hated women. It seems he was murdered in a brothel."

"And they say there's no such thing as coincidences," Cecilia said to herself.

"He was a very disagreeable dead man," Claudia went on. "Luckily, he stopped stalking me after a few months. When I left the island, I also stopped seeing a mute Indian who warned me of misfortunes."
Cecilia was  speechless.  Guabina,  Angela's  friend,  also  had a  spirit that
.warned her of danger,  although she couldn't remember if it was an Indian.
'
Once more she recalled Mercedes' mulatto lover, the one who was so jeal-ous ... but what was she thinking? How could they be the same spirits?

"Don't worry," Claudia insisted, noting her expression. "You have nothing to fear from yours."

But Cecilia didn't much like the idea of walking among the dead, not even if they were her own or if they had good intentions. And less so if suddenly the whole matter was about to turn into something even more mysterious when similar dead people appeared to women who didn't know one another. Or did they?

"Do you know a woman called Amalia?" "No, why?"

"Your dead  ...  do you know anything else  about them?"

"Only Ursula and I could see them. Ursula's a nun who's still in Cuba."

"Were you  a nun?"

The  other woman blushed.

''No.''

For the first time, Claudia seemed to lose her desire to talk and brusquely
THE  ISLAND  "/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      175

"What's wrong?" her aunt asked. "You're silent all of a sudden." "I'd better not say. You'll think I'm crazy."

"I'll be the one to decide what 1 think." "I see a halo around the stones."

"Oh, is that all?" The old woman seemed disappointed. "Aren't you surprised?"

"Not at all. I see it too." "You do?"

"It always appears in the afternoon, but hardly anyone notices it." "What is it?"

Lola shrugged. "Some sort of energy. It reminds me of Delfina's aura, bless her soul."

"My grandmother had a halo?"

"Just like that one." Lola pointed toward the Fountain of the Moon. "Quite strong, because Demetrio's is lighter-a little diluted, I'd say."

"Well," Cecilia remarked, doubting her own sanity for taking her aunt seriously, "it's not so strange that you can see it, but what about me? The family's gift of sight ended with you and with my grandmother."
"These things  are  always inherited."
~.
. "Not in my case," Cecilia assured her. "Maybe it's the exercises." "What exercises?"

"For seeing the  aura."

Cecilia assumed that the old woman didn't know what she was talking about because she remained silent for a few seconds.

"And where exactly did you learn that?" she asked at last, in a tone that left no doubt of her understanding.

"In Atlantis.  Do you know the place?"

"I didn't know you were interested in esoteric bookstores." "It happened by chance. I was doing research."

And as they approached the Florida Table, Cecilia told Lola about the phantom house.


When Cecilia crossed the threshold, setting off the bells in the door-way, the fragrance of roses overcame her. The young woman behind the counter wasn't Lisa, but rather Claudia, the one she had bumped into after the lecture on Marti. Cecilia was about to tum and leave, but she
\
\
174 • DAINA  GHAVIANO
"He was  obsessed with her,"  Lol6  said,  sitting down in a  stone rocking
chair  and  observing  the  interest  with  which  her  niece  studied  the  bro-
chure.  "That's why he built this place.  Some said he was crazy, others that
he was  a genius.  I  think it's  possible he was both things  at once."
Crazy or not,  the man had sought a spot in which to build a monument
to  his  love.  Thus,  he  devoted  himself to  the  task  of raising  that  fortress
during the  1920s. The rocks,  carved in the shape ofhousehold or architec-
tural  objects,  lent  it  a  peculiar,  dreamlike  appearance.  In  the  bedroom
there  was  a  bed  for  him  and  his  lost  sweetheart,  two  little  beds  for  chil-
dren,  and  even a  stone  cradle that actually rocked.  Nearby was  a gigantic
sculpture known as the Obelisk, as well as a sundial that marked the hours
from  nine  in  the  morning  until  four  in  the  afternoon.  And  there  was  the
i Nine  Ton  Door:   an  irregular  rock  that  revolved-through  a  miracle  of

\ engineering-like  the  door  of  a  modern  hotel.   But  the  two  places  that

most fascinated  Cecilia were the  Fountain of the Moon and the Northern
Wall.  The first had three sections:  two lunar-shaped sickles and a fountain
in  the  shape  of the  moon,  with  a  little  island  in  the  form  of a  star.  The
Northern  Wall  was  crowned  with  several  sculptures:  the  crescent  moon;
~!lturn, with  its  rings;  and  Mars,  with  a  tiny  tree  carved  on  its  surface,  a
. 'tribute to the life that might exist there.  Observing the Heart Table, where
a  jungle  geranium  bloomed,  Cecilia  suspected  she  understood  the  origin
of his  obsession  with  carving  immense  rocks:  perhaps  the  only  way  that
man could deal with his  anguish was by turning his  love into  stone.
"These are his  tools,"  the  old woman remarked,  entering a room.
Cecilia saw a  jumble of iron, pulleys,  and hooks.  Nothing heavy or par-
ticularly large.
"It says here,"  Cecilia observed, reading from her brochure,  "that there
are  more  than  one  thousand  tons  of rock,  including  the  walls  and  the
tower.  The average weight of the stones is six and  a half tons,  and some of
them weigh more than twenty tons.  It would be impossible to move all this
without  a crane."
"But he  did,"  Lol6  affirmed,  "and nobody  could figure  out the  secret.
He worked at night, in the dark,  and when visitors showed up, he wouldn't
go back to work until  they'd left."
Cecilia  wandered  around  the  place,  mesmerized  by  the  stones'  radi-
ance.  She could almost see it gleaming from every rock, surrounding them
with a translucent,  slightly purplish, halo.
,  .
::>:,?~~
....:.:;..
. . ",  ~"









,/



VERY    CLOSE    TO     MY    HEART








Coral Castle: a magical name for a forgotten comer of misty Miami. That's what Cecilia thought as she gazed at the horizon. Her great-aunt had convinced her to go there in order to see "the eighth wonder ofMiami." And as they traveled south, she noticed the flocks of ducks on those man-made.. rivers that paralleled the streets, kissing the patios of the houses. •
She awoke from her daydream when her aunt pulled in beside a rough, medieval-looking wall guarding what resembled a tiny fortress more than one of the castles of Ludwig II, the mad king of Bavaria. The structure looked undeniably surreal, like one of Lovecraft's visions, with all their esoteric, astronomical symbols. And that energy ... it was impossible not to feel it. It flowed from the ground like a current that could rise to the top of one's head. Who the devil could have built such a thing? And for what purpose?

She glanced at the brochure. It had been built by Edward Leedskalnin, born in Lithuania in 1887. The day before his wedding, his fiancee had informed him she wouldn't marry him, and he fled, brokenhearted, to other lands. Suffering from tuberculosis, and after much travel, he decided to move to Florida, where the climate was good for his health.
172      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

"Really?"  the  child inquired, interested.

"With a spell from the time when the pyramids were covered with blood and flowers. 'Ifthe mantle oflight comes in contact with a talisman of shad-ows in the presence of two strangers, they will love each other forever. ' "

"What's a talisman of shadows?"

"I don't know," the woman sighed. "I never asked the person who sold it to me. But it's a very lovely legend."

The girl fingered the shawl, which draped obediently between her fin-gers. She felt a force emanating from the garment and penetrating her body, making her feel both frightened and euphoric.

"Dear God,  what is this?"  she thought.

"How pretty you look," Rita said, pushing her toward the mirror in the entryway. "Run, go and look."

As Amalia turned her back on Rita, the guests caught their breath after witnessing the metamorphosis.

In front of the mirror, Amalia recalled the story of the runaway princess who hid beneath a donkey skin during the day but kept one suit of sunlight and another of moonlight that she secretly donned every night. That was
how she met the prince who would fall in love with her.... She enveloped
t--
-,- herself in that icy beauty, feeling more protected beneath the weight of the cloth.

The doorbell rang twice, but no one seemed to hear it. Amalia went to open the door.

"Does the retired schoolteacher live here?" asked an unfamiliar voice. "Who?"

She drew a little closer to make out the shadow lurking in the doorway, but all she saw was a Chinese boy with a bundle of clothing in his hands. The jet amulet she wore around her neck came loose from its setting and fell at the young man's feet. He hurriedly picked it up. Accidentally, his fingers brushed the silvery fabric.

He raised his face to look at her, and at that moment he saw none other than the Goddess of Mercy herself, she whose features all mortals adore. She took back the stone with trembling hands. She had just met her prince.
THE   ISLAND  "I    ETERNAL  LOVE      •      171

midnight, when the adults planned to leave for the Inferno, an all-night cabaret located at the intersection of Calle Barcelona and Amistad. The child would stay with her grandmother, who was now fussing about in the kitchen, preparing punch for the guests.

Almost everyone had arrived, anxious to share the evening with the great Rita Montaner, who hadn't yet made her appearance, and with Mae-stros Lecuona and Roig, whose imminent arrival was expected. The clock chimed nine times, and, as if waiting for that signal, the doorbell rang. When Amalia went to open it, there was a suspenseful pause where some people finished the last sip of their d.riD.ks or polished off their sandwiches.

The night breeze blew through the jasmine. A discernible change came over the atmosphere, and some looked around to determine the cause. A spontaneous gasp rose from the multitude. Draped in a pearl-gray gown, with a silvery shawl around her shoulders, the silhouette of a goddess appeared on the threshold. Flanked by the two musicians, the actress crossed the room.

Amalia was as amazed as the others, savoring the enchantment, but she soon realized that the magic didn't originate in the diva. Her glance was

drawn to an object: the mantle covering her shoulders.  She had never seen
"
-anything so beautiful. It didn't look like cloth, but rather like a piece of liquid moonlight.

"Oh, what is that you're wearing?" the girl whispered to her when she finally managed to make her way through the crowd of admirers.

Rita smiled. "Mexican blood." "What?"

"I bought it in Mexico. They say that silver flows from the earth there as blood does from the people."

And, noticing Amalia's expression, she removed the amorphous bit of quicksilver and placed it over the child's head.

A deadly silence spread throughout the patio. Even Don Jose, who had been about to reprimand his daughter for monopolizing the guest ofhonor, was speechless. As soon as the shawl covered Amalia, an otherworldly clarity radiated from her skin.

"It's so heavy," the girl whispered, feeling the weight of hundreds of small metallic scales.

"It's pure  silver," its  owner informed her.  "And it's bewitched."
170      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

"Hmm ... Let's see: you'll have children. Three of them." She looked at the girl, hesitating to continue. "No, just one ... a girl." She selected three more cards from the deck. "Be careful. Your man will get into trouble."

"With another woman?" Rita inquired. "I don't think so...."

Amalia stifled a yawn, uninterested in a man she would never marry. "My God, look how late it is!" Rita suddenly exclaimed.

"What about my tickets?" aske~the woman, accompanying them to the door.

"Don't worry," Rita assured her. "I promise you'll be there on opening night."



Jose threw an "intimate, cozy" party, according to the note in the society column, for the artists and producers involved in the film. He also sent invitations to a few musicians who were up and coming, in order to establish new contacts.

• For the first time he was glad his wife had suggested moving to a house. Initially he had rejected the idea-he'd always preferred high places-but even his mother had supported Mercedes' decision. The old woman was growing tired of climbing those interminable stairs.

"If climbing is hard for you two," Pepe had insisted, "thieves will feel the same way. This apartment is safer."

"Rubbish!" Angela said. "It's your mountain heritage that makes you want to live high up, but we're not in Cuenca anymore."

"I'm talking about safety," he replied. "It's in your blood," Angela insisted.

But Mercedes was fed up with stairs, and at last he gave in. Now he was pleased with the change. He had a large space for parties at his disposal: a patio that his wife had decorated with earthenware jars crammed full of jasmine.

Under the chill of the stars they set up a table laden with liquor. A gramophone filled the air with melodies. The aroma of the dishes-meat pies, deviled eggs, cheeses, hors d'oeuvres piled high with red and black caviar, spiced eel rolls-piqued the appetites of the attendees. But the most excited one of all was Amalia, who asked permission to stay up till
THE  ISLAND  _;   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      169

"You picked a good time to come. There's no one else here." Amalia sensed that the actress visited her often.

"Wait for me here, darling," Rita told her as she followed the woman. Twenty minutes later she poked her head into the living room. "Come on, it's your turn."

A candle illuminated the darkened room. The woman sat at a little table with a glass of water on it. Before shuffling the cards, she sprinkled them with the liquid and murmured a prayer.

"Cut,"  she  said,  but  Amalia  didn't  understand  what  she  was  talking

.about.

"Pick a pile of cards,"  Rita whispered.

The woman began arranging the cards from top to bottom and from right to left.

"Hmm. . . . Your birth was a miracle, little one. And your mother escaped from quite a.... Let's see.... There's a man here.... No, a boy.... Wait...." She chose another card, and then another. "That's strange. There's someone in your life. It's not a lover, not your father....

Do you have  a  special friend?"

The child  shook her head.
~.

"Well, there's a presence watching over you, like a spirit." "This child has always seemed different to me."

Amalia said nothing. She knew who it was, but her parents had warned her not to speak of such things to anyone, not even to Dona Rita.

"Yes, you have  a very powerful guardian."

"And very annoying," the girl thought to herself, recalling the imp Martinico and the ruckus he created.

"Ah ...  I  see  some love affairs...."

"Oh, yes?" Rita grew as excited as if the news was for her. "Go on, tell us."

"I don't want to deceive you," the seer revealed with a somber air. "They will be very difficult love affairs."

"All great loves are like that," the actress declared optimistically. "Cheer up, little one! Good times are coming."

But Amalia didn't want any kind of love, no matter how big, if it would complicate her life. She swore to herself that she'd always remain in her father's store, helping him put his discs in order and listening to the stories of the musicians who came there to make recordings.
~"















.,

168      •     DAiNA  GRAVlAND

since the days ofthe pirates, reverberating throughout the entire island.  .  .  .

Those were joyful days whose memory they would treasure in years to come.


Amalia liked going out with Dona Rita, and vice versa; and of late, whenever Dona Rita felt the urge to go shopping, she would stop by the store, where the girl helped sort records after school.

"Lend her to me for a little while, Don Jose," the actress pleaded with a tragic air. "She's the only one who doesn't torment me and who helps me find what I'm looking for."

"What choice do I  have?"  the father  agreed.

And the two of them went off arm in arm like schoolgirls, exploring the elegant shops and admiring the window displays that even the Europeans envied. Gossiping and laughing, they tried on piles ofclothing. The actress took advantage of the adoration she provoked everywhere she went, asking the clerks to bring her more and more boxes of hats and shoes, shawls, fur coats, and all sorts of accessories. Afterward they'd snack on ice cream ~.nd syrup-drenched sponge cake, and sometimes they'd end up at the movies.

One afternoon, after making a few purchases-including a pair ofdainty shoes for the girl-Rita proposed something new.

"Have you ever had your cards read?" "Cards?"

"Yes, a deck of cards. Like the Gypsies do." "Oh! You mean my fortune!"

"And your future,  my child."

Amalia didn't know what Gypsies were, but she was sure no one had ever predicted her future.

"There's someone around here who can do it," said Dona Rita. "Her name is Dinorah, and she's a friend of mine. Would you like to go with me?"

But of course.  What little girl wouldn't have adored it?

They walked three blocks, crossed a park, climbed some narrow stairs, and, two doors past the last step, rang the bell.

"Mi negra, how are you?" Rita greeted the woman who came out to receive them, a short blonde dressed all in white like an angel.
THE  ISLAND  ,(  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      167

"Well, this  is the  event of the  century," he uttered at last.

"Let's see if I can guess what's being cooked up behind my back." Everyone turned toward the man who had just arrived.

"Something you already know about," Rita replied, unperturbed. "The first Cuban musical comedy."

"Maestro Lecuona!" Pepe exclaimed.

"Ah!" the man sighed. "Now we're all excited about the project, but these experiments will be the downfall of creativity. They'll squelch talent.... "

"The same old story, Ernesto!" Rita cried. "A few of these motion pic-tures have already been made; we can't be left behind."

"I hope I'm mistaken, but I think this mess will lead to the creation of false idols. True art must be live, or at least it mustn't have so much tech-nical mumbo jumbo. You'll see, soon they'll feature singers with no voice at all. Oh, well ... Is everything ready?"

"Yes, Don Ernesto." "Can I go in, too, Papa?"

"All right,  but once you're inside,  not even one breath out of you."

The  girl nodded in  silent  anticipation.  With Rita's  hat  still perched  on
~.

lier head, she followed the adults into the studio at the back of the store, insulated from noise by acoustical panels. The technicians stopped joking around and took their places in the booth.

Amalia adored those recording sessions. She had inherited her father's passion for music. Or, rather, her grandfather Juanco's, the true founder of the business that he later passed on to his son. Jose didn't hesitate for a moment before abandoning his medical career in favor of that world full of surprises.

Father and daughter alike were fascinated by the parties that came out of those recording sessions, where they learned all the gossip of a bohe-mian Cuba at the tum of the century. They heard about the historical gaffe made by Sarah Bernhardt, who, enraged by her Cuban audience's whispering during a performance, tried to insult them by screaming that they were a bunch of Indians in frock coats, but since there weren't any Indians left on the island, no one took it personally, and they all kept chat-ting away without a care. Or else they'd laugh at the antics of the local journalists, who every night placed a microphone on the roof to broadcast the firing ofthe nine o'clock cannon, which had been discharged in Havana
166      •      DAiNA  GRAVlAND

"You spoil her too much," the man protested, delighted. "You'll ruin her for me."

The actress, normally suspicious of such fawning, shared a special bond with this twelve-year-old creature, and she was transformed before the young girl. The girl's mother also piqued her interest, albeit for different reasons. If the child throbbed like a cloudburst, ready to sweep away mys-teries and shadows, Mercedes was the enigma that generated them. She would never forget the night when Jose introduced them during a perfor-mance of Cecilia Valdes.

With a vacant expression Mercedes had remarked: "Who could ever have told me that such a pretty lie could come from such an ugly truth?"

The actress was dumbfounded. What was she referring to? When she tried to probe more deeply, Mercedes didn't seem to recall what she was talking about, as if she had never made the remark at all. Rita ran into her again on other occasions, but they barely exchanged a few words. Mercedes lived in her own world.

Amalia, on the other hand, radiated a special charm. Sometimes she acted as though she harbored an invisible friend within her that only she
. phrases, which Rita attributed to her imagination, although she was fasci-nated by such creativity nonetheless. It had been only during the past few months that the girl seemed to have forgotten those games. Now she paid much more attention to other details, like Rita's outfits.

"Has Ernesto  arrived yet?"

"He called to say he'd be late," Pepe replied, arranging the records in alphabetical order.

"Every time I have a rehearsal, he does the same thing to me." "Which theater are you going to perform in?" Amalia asked, with an

expression halfway between innocence and shamelessness. "No theater, darling. We're going to make a movie." Pepe looked up from the records.

"Are you  about to  leave us for the States?"

"No, my boy." Rita smiled. "Can you keep a secret for me? We're doing a musical comedy."

The man swallowed hard. "In Cuba?"

She nodded.

THE  IMP,  RECORDING  STUDIO.












AH LIFE!








After the car pulled up to the curb, the driver got out to open the door. The woman emerged, wrapped in a very tight-fitting green suit, and the man was about to bow, but he contained the impulse, bending only slightly.
."How much do  lowe you?"  she said,  opening her purse.
"

." "Don't even mention it, Dona Rita. I'd go straight to hell if! charged you a single cent. It's been my honor to drive you."

The woman smiled, accustomed to such displays of admiration. "Thanks, dear," she said to the taxi driver. "May God brighten your

day."

And  she  crossed  the  sidewalk,  heading  toward  the  door  whose  sign

read:

The bell startled the young girl who was drawing next to a shelf stacked with musical scores.

"Hello,  sweetheart!" The woman smiled.

"Papa, look who's here!" the child shouted, running toward the new-comer.

"Be careful, Amalita!" Pepe scolded as he emerged from the back of the store with some records. "You'll ruin her hat!"

"Isn't it pretty?" the girl shrieked, spreading the tulle across the visitor's face.

"Come,  try it on," the  woman said,  removing the  garment.
\.
"\

























Not  even the  Chinese  doctor  can save him:


This expression is still used in Cuba for cases of incurable illness, and, by extension, for those who find themselves in very grave situations. It's assumed that the phrase alludes to one of the Chinese doctors who arrived on the island during the second half of the nineteenth century-according to some, Chan Bombia, who landed in 1858, while for others it was Kan Shi Kon, who died in 1885. In any event, it's a sort ofpopular homage to the Chinese Galens who achieved astonishing and inexplicable cures in colonial Cuba.
















Part   Four



PASSION     AND     DEATH



IN     THE     YEAR     OF



THE     TIGER
\.
\


160       •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

when his own mother had spent her life seeing imps and had bequeathed that curse to his wife, possibly even to the little one now sleeping beside them?

"Are you ready to inscribe her birth?" asked a voice from the doorway. "We prefer to have her baptized."

"Of course," replied the little nun, "but first you must inscribe her. Have you thought of a name yet?"

They looked at each other. For some reason they had always thought they'd have a son, but Mercedes remembered a woman's name that she'd always liked: a sweet name, yet filled with strength.

"We'll call her Amalia."


\
'.






...
THE  ISLAND  ./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      159

At that moment Jose opened the door and stopped in his tracks, per-plexed. The flowerpots on the balcony were spinning like tops. The paint-ing and the lamp vied with the clock's pendulum in a swinging competition. Four chairs rocked all by themselves, suggesting a convention of ghosts. Then the cause of that carnival-like commotion hit him.

Mercedes' moan roused him from his daze. He ran to pick her up while the apartment trembled with the thud of the painting falling to the floor. Oblivious to everything else, he lifted her in his arms and ran downstairs to the car, forgetting to close the door.

Mercedes was moaning with her eyes shut, and long before they arrived at the clinic, a warm liquid soaked her legs. The pain was agonizing, as if an internal force threatened to split her in two. At that moment she didn't think of the child she had so ardently desired. She wanted to die. At the hospital she ignored the doctor's recommendations and the nurses' exhor-tations. She just screamed as though they were killing her.

After many long, confusing hours-hands touching her, squeezing her, or comforting her-she heard the cry of a new voice. Only when they brought her a little girl who was bawling like the dickens did she notice the
nurses  with  their  enormous  nuns'  wimples  coming  and  going  along  the
..'

~orridors. It took her a few moments to understand that her child had been born in the Cat6licas Cubanas Clinic, formerly the country estate of Jose Melgares and Maria Teresa Herrera, where her mother had worked as a slave until she met Florencio, the coachman who would become her father. Florencio had left that same mansion one night, after delivering his shipment of candles and wine, just before he was murdered.... Mercedes closed her eyes to stave off the forbidden memory.

"Jose," she whispered to her husband, who was leaning over the new-born, entranced, "hand me my purse."

The man obeyed without questioning why she might need a purse just then. She rooted around in the lining and pulled out a tiny package.

"I bought it a long time ago," she said, before revealing what the pack-age concealed.

It was a shiny, little black stone, mounted in a hand-shaped hoop. With a safety pin, Mercedes affixed it to the blanket that swaddled her daughter.

"When she's older, I'll hang it around her neck on a gold chain," she announced. "It's to protect her from the Evil Eye."

Pepe  didn't  comment.   How  could  he  refuse  such  a  strange  request
158      •      DAINA   GRAVlANO

"I love you, Maria Magdalena," said Juan de la Rosa, her husband's rival, "but I cannot leave Elvira. If she hadn't sacrificed herself to save little Ramiro .... "

Maria Magdalena, so understanding at first, was plotting an assassina-tion that only Father Isidro, her confessor, knew about-Father Isidro, the same man who had been in love with Elvira since childhood and who had entered the priesthood when he learned of her marriage. Now that his beloved's life was in his hands, it seemed he could do nothing to save her, for he was obliged to respect the secrecy of the confessional. And yet ...

would he dare reveal what he knew? Or, at least, would he be able to find some way to do it without breaking his oath?

Mercedes fell asleep. On that windy, overcast day, troubling dreams shook her spirit: icy talons seized her belly and stifled her breathing. She brought her hands to the old wound, but an even sharper sting told her that the pain was coming from somewhere else. She awoke, feeling dizzy. The ceiling vibrated with a muffled sound, as though many bare feet were running across it. Then the windowpanes rattled together in dissonant arpeggios. Mercedes lifted her eyes and saw an outrageous dwarf hanging ifpm the chandelier, the same one she had seen running down the hotel

..corridors on her wedding day. At that moment it had struck her as very odd that she was the only one who saw him. When, more than a little upset, she reported it to her husband, Jose, he told her a fantastic story. The dwarf was an imp that only the women in his family were able to see, including the women who joined the family through marriage. But the imp had never shown up again. She had almost forgotten about him ...
until now.

"Get down from there, you fiendish thing!" she shouted furiously. "If you break that lamp, I'll kill you."

But the manikin pretended not to notice; quite the contrary, he dupli-cated himself so that he could swing from the balcony. Now there were two imps in the house.

"Damned devil,"  Mercedes muttered,  trying to  ignore him.

A piercing stab forced her to lean against a small table where she often placed flowers. She heard shrieking behind her and turned around. Now there were four imps. The third one was balancing on top of a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And the fourth was leaping from one rocking chair to another.
THE  ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      157

room with some water. The girl awoke on hearing the sound of the liquid filling the glass. The light-moonlight-was reflected in it, and the liq-uid spilled interminably. Suddenly, she remembered everything: the noc-turnal ceremony, the honey bath, her fainting spell.... She realized that she had been possessed since infancy, and that the spirit possessing her was as cold as an iceberg. She had barely recalled the memory for a few moments when a merciful hand covered it over forever. Her mind flooded with calming thoughts. Her father's assassination became a sudden illness; her mother's ghastly death, a benevolent accident; and her life in the brothel, a long sojourn in the countrY; where she had lived surrounded by female cousins.

Jose, the only witness to her previous life, said nothing, not even to her, preferring to keep the real story to himself.



Before he became her husband, Jose was the father and brother she'd never had, the friend who took care of her and taught her genteel manners; he was also the teacher who taught her to read.

After graduating, he opened his own practice. And she, with nothing to

~.

•00, took up reading. Jose was surprised by the books he discovered at their bedside every night: about heroes of the past and impossible loves, mythi-cal journeys and miracles ... like the one Mercedes herself had wished for. Because the years were beginning to pass, and she understood that, in spite of her husband's love, nothing would make her as happy as having a child. But the ugly scar across her abdomen seemed like a divine prohibi-tion. Could it be punishment for some sin she didn't recall?

After much praying, the miracle finally happened. One autumn day her womb began to swell. And then she knew that her life and her sanity depended upon the bundle that throbbed inside her....


Mercedes stroked her belly and watched the reddish cloud moving through the Havana sky, fleeing a hurricane that threatened the island. With a sigh, she abandoned the balcony.

Lately she had hardly been able to take a siesta, riveted as she was to the radio and the latest soap operas. Today's episode might turn out to be decisive for Father Isidro.
>~ ..:'

~.~•f";,::.,_















LIKE    A      MIRACLE








For four months, her injury held her between life and death. But that wasn't the worst of it: the chill penetrating her body since infancy was once again fighting to possess her. It was as if two women lived within her. When Jose went to the hospital in the daytime, he found himself in the presence.. of a sweet, timid young woman who hardly spoke; at night
."Mercedes'  crazed eyes refused to recognize him.

The most difficult part was facing his parents' opposition. Juan stopped speaking to him, and his mother complained of chest pains, the conse-quence (as she said between sighs) of her suffering. But Jose would not be intimidated by that sort of blackmail.

His credentials as a medical student won him a loan, with which he paid the hospital bills. Nothing would deter him from his goal, and he took comfort in noting that, despite her mood changes, Mercedes was recover-ing ... not only from her injury, but also from the sufferings of her soul.

Little by little, her confusion withdrew to a dark comer of her subcon-scious, revealing an innocent young girl who seemed to be viewing the world for the first time. Jose was taken aback by her questions: Where was God hiding? Why did it rain? What was the very biggest number of all? It was as though he were speaking to a little child. And maybe that was the case. Perhaps some incident, unknown to him, had forced her spirit out during her childhood, and now that spirit was returning to help her see the world anew.


One  night,  shortly  after  he  left  the  hospital,  a  nurse  walked  into  the
...'



THE   ISLAND  "~I ETERNAL   LOVE      •      155

The song ended, and spirits grew somewhat calmer. The musicians left the stage for a break as the dance floor lit up again. A recording, famous on the island when she was a little girl, played over the loudspeakers:

"Wounded by the shadows ofyour absence am I,  darkness is my only companion

now. ... " She felt something in the atmosphere, a vague impression in the air. She couldn't figure out what it was. And suddenly she saw her, this time sitting at the end of the bar.
"I'm going over to  say hello  to  a friend,"  she  excused herself.

As  she  made  her  way  among  the  dancers  who  were  returning  to  the

.floor, she looked around in the darkness. There was Amalia, crouching like a solitary animal.

"A martini," she called to the barman, immediately changing her mind. "No, make that a mojito."

"Lovesickness," Amalia observed. "The only thing that persists in the human heart. Everything ends or changes, except for love."

"I came here because 1 want to forget," Cecilia explained. "I don't feel like talking about myself."

"I thought you wanted company."

"Yes,  but  just  so  1  can  think  about  other  things,"  the  young  woman
"

.said, trying a sip of the cocktail just placed in front of her. "Like what?"

"I'd like to know who you wait for every night," Cecilia insisted. "You told me about a Spanish woman who sees imps, a Chinese family that escaped slaughter, and a slave's daughter who ended up in a brothel. ... 1 think you may have forgotten your own story."

"I haven't forgotten," Amalia reassured her gently. "Here comes the connection. "
•....

154      •      DAINA   GHAVIANO

respective wives along, bedecked with jewels but with blank faces. By the time dinner ended, Cecilia was excruciatingly bored, but she was resolved to salvage the evening.

"Do you guys like to dance?" she asked. "A little."

''Well, I know a place where you can hear good music ... that is, if you like Cuban music."

The bar was a madhouse that night. Perhaps it was due to the body chemistry-altering heat, but the cli~ntele seemed even more outrageous than usual. When they walked iIi, a Japanese girl-the soloist of a Nip-ponese salsa group-was singing in flawless Spanish. She had come to the bar directly after a performance on the beach, but ended up playing with a band of musicians that had assembled gradually over the course of the evening. Three Canadian concert performers joined in the merriment. On the dance floor and at the tables, total delirium reigned. A group of Ital-ians at the next table shouted, some Argentines chatted loudly at the bar, and even a bunch of Irish people were dancing some new variation on the jig.

•'  Roberto decided there were too many people on the dance floor. They'd

. dance when there was more room. Cecilia sighed. That would never hap-pen. While he went on talking with the men, she withdrew into herself more and more. She felt out of place, especially among those women who seemed sculpted out of ice. She tried to get involved in the men's conver-sations, but they were speaking of things she was unfamiliar with. Bored, she thought of her old friend. But at the table where the woman usually sat, some Brazilians were shouting like madmen. A cocktail waitress walked by.

"Listen," she whispered, tugging at the waitress's sleeve. "Have you seen the lady who usually sits at that table?"

"Lots of ladies  sit at the  tables."

"The  one I'm talking about is  always  there."

"I didn't notice," the girl said dismissively, continuing on her way. Roberto tried to divide his attention between Cecilia and his friends,

but she felt lost. It was like tiptoeing through uncharted territory. Three new acquaintances of Roberto's walked over to the table, all of them very elegant and surrounded by women too young for them. Cecilia didn't like the feeling she got from them. It reeked of phoniness and greed.
THE  ISLAND  _I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      153

"What a strange man!" she said. "Deep down he believes in the beyond and in spells, but he doesn't like to admit it. And if he does think about these things, he immediately changes the subject.... Very strange!" she repeated, looking up to gaze at her. "You love him very much, but I don't think this one is the man for you."

Cecilia returned her glance so desolately that the old woman added: "Well, do whatever you like. But ifyou want my advice, you should wait

for  something different that will appear in your life."

She picked up  the  deck again and asked  Cecilia to  divide  it.

"See?  Here  it  is  again,"  she  said,  pointing  out  the  cards  as  she  read

them. "The redhead  ... the devil.  ... There's the job I told you about....

Jesus!"

The woman crossed herself before returning to the cards. "And this is the man who will appear, someone who has to do with papers: tall, young, maybe two or three years older than you.... Yes, he definitely works with papers."

The woman shuffled the cards again. "Choose three piles."
..Cecilia obeyed.

." "Don't worry, m'hijita," the mystic added as she studied the outcome. "You are a very noble person. You deserve the best man possible, and he'll appear sooner than you can imagine. The one who will lose what he seeks is the man you're crying over now. Unless his guiding spirits illuminate him in time, he's the one who'll come out the loser." She raised her eyes. "I know you're not going to like this, but you should wait for the second man. He's the one for you."


Nevertheless, when Roberto called, she accepted his invitation to go to dinner with two other couples. She was still tied to him, as he was to her ... or that's what he told her, anyway: the past few days he hadn't been able to get her out of his mind. Why didn't they go out together again? They could go to that Italian restaurant Cecilia liked so much because its walls reminded her of the Roman ruins at Caracalla. They'd order that dark, rich wine, with its scent of cloves that pierced her nos-trils.... Yes, Roberto had thought about her when he chose that place.

At  first,   everything  went  quite  well.   Roberto's  friends   brought  their
152      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"I haven't missed anything from the outside world." "We'll see about that. Get dressed!"

''What for?"

"I want you to  come with me  somewhere."

Only when they had completed half the journey did Lisa tell her that she was taking her to see a fortune-teller who lived in Hialeah. The woman bought products in Lisa's store, and whenever Lisa recommended her, the customers spoke wonders of her.

"And don't even think about complaining," Lisa added, "because the consultation is on me."

Annoyed, but resolved to endure it as best she could, Cecilia leaned back in the passenger seat. She'd pretend she was at a show or something.

"I'll wait for you in the living room," Lisa whispered as they knocked at the door.

Cecilia didn't answer, but her skepticism was shaken when the fortune-teller, after shuffling the deck of cards and asking her to divide it into three parts, revealed the first card and asked:
"Who's Roberto?"
.Cecilia  jumped in her chair.
'
"A former boyfriend,"  she muttered.  "The relationship's over."

"But you're still in it," the sibyl affirmed. "There's a redhead who's also connected with that man. She's put a spell on him to bind him to her because she's still obsessed with him. Don't stop calling him; don't let him go."

Cecilia couldn't believe what she was hearing. Roberto had told her of that relationship, which had ended before they met, and it was true that the woman continued calling him because he himself mentioned it to her, but the whole bewitched business ...

"It can't be," she dared to contradict her. "That girl was born here, and I don't think she knows anything about witchcraft. She works in a com-pany that-"

"Ay, m'hijita, how innocent you are," the old woman said. "Women will go to any lengths to get their men back, no matter where they were born. And this one"-she consulted her cards again-"if she hasn't bound him with witchcraft, then she's done it with her mind. And believe me, thoughts are very harmful, especially when they're filled with anger."
The woman threw the cards  again.
THE  ISLAND  ,I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      151

She gazed at him with a look that resembled pain. "Ceci, I've got to be honest with you ..."

Instead of walking away, as she had planned to do, she remained in her seat and listened to him for half an hour. He confessed that the whole world of specters, auras, and mind reading made him uneasy. Or, rather, it annoyed him. Cecilia didn't understand. She had always found comfort in things she couldn't see; it meant that one could rely on an arsenal of powers if circumstances became too painful or terrible. But such matters filled Roberto with uncertainty. Finally he said that all those stories were stupid, and that only fools could• believe in them. And that's when he really hurt her.



They saw each other again three days later ... and again they drifted apart. She recalled the I Ching hexagram she had consulted the night she decided to phone Roberto. She opened to the still-bookmarked page and discovered, beneath the epigraph that read "different lines," the number nine that she had drawn from the third line but had overlooked in her previous.. reading:

This deep and persistent nocturnal analysis must not be taken too far, as it will impede the ability to make decisions. Once a matter has been duly committed to reflection, it is a question of decision and actz•on. Excessive thought and deliberation will time and again provoke a burden of doubt, and therefore, humiliation, since one will become unable to act.

That was it. She had been forcing something that was finished. Undoubtedly she had made a mistake, but the realization came too late to console her.

From that moment on, she stopped putting on makeup, eating, and even going out, except to the office. And that was how Lisa found her, slumped on the sofa and surrounded by cups of lime tea, one afternoon when she stopped by to bring her another testimony she had just recorded. Contrary to Lisa's expectations, Cecilia showed no enthusiasm. Her pain over Roberto had shifted the mystery of the house to second place.

"This isn't healthy," Lisa said as soon as she found out. ''You're coming with me."
\.

"\

,'I




150      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

if she could sense the pain of those souls who were buried in the mansion. She didn't need to see it in order to feel the traces of melancholy left behind at the locations where the house had appeared, or the feeling of nostalgia in the air, bordering on sadness, that lingered after the vision had vanished.

She thought of Roberto. What would he have made of this? She'd wanted to tell him about the house but he always avoided the subject. Each time she tried to bring him closer to her world, he had to make a phone call or he remembered a meeting or suggested going for a drink. It was as if they only shared one area ~f existence: emotion. Cecilia would begin to feel a sort of suffocation, .like being trapped, although she didn't know by exactly what or why. Roberto, similarly, seemed distant and with-drawn when they were together.

She decided to stop by the dealership. He had told her he'd be there until eight. She found him in the showroom where some sports cars were on display.

"I need to tell you something," Cecilia said. "Let's go to my office."
As  they walked,  she  began to  tell  him  of the house,  the  interviews,  and
the.visions.
'

"Why don't we go get a drink?" he suddenly suggested. "Again."

"Again what?"

"Every time I try to talk to you about something personal, you change the subject," she said.

"That's  not true."

"I've tried to tell you about the house twice now." "I'm not interested in ghosts."

"It's part of my work."

"No, you're you, and your work is something else. Tell me about your-self and I'll listen. "

"My work is part of me."

Roberto thought for a moment before: replying: "I don't want to talk about things that don't exist."

"Maybe the house doesn't exist, but lots of people have seen it. Aren't you even curious to find out why?"

"There are always people who are ready to believe anything instead of getting involved in more productive activities."
\ -.
\


THE   ISLAND  ,.r  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      149

"Because the house is a symbol. I've already told you that these phan-tom mansions revealed certain aspects of a place's soul."

"But which place? Miami or Cuba? Because this house appears in one place, on certain dates related to another . . ."

"That's why we need to find out who's occupying it. Usually it's the people who move from one place to another. I think the house is following the impulses of its inhabitants. That's the link we have to look for: the people. Who were they? What did they do? Who or what did they lose on those days?"

"They might be relatives of any' one of the thousands of Cubans who live in Miami," Cecilia ventured, squeezing more lemon into her tea.

"And hasn't it occurred to you that they might be famous people? Actors, singers, politicians . . . people who symbolize something."

Cecilia shook her head.

"I don't think so. No one has recognized them. According to the testi-monies, they seem like ordinary people."

Polyphemus was snoring at his mistress's side. He had rolled off the cushion without realizing it, displaced by Circe, who was now sleeping with.. her paws in the air.

.' "There's something else you can do," Gaia said when she saw Cecilia getting up to leave. "Mark down the locations on a map. It might give you another clue."

"I don't know if! should keep investigating. I have to actually write my article sooner or later."

Gaia  walked her to  the door.

"Cecilia, listen to me: you're not interested in the article anymore, but the mystery of the house. Don't impose limits on yourself."

They looked at each other for  a moment.

"Well, I'll keep you posted," Cecilia muttered, then turned and disap-peared among the trees.



But she didn't leave immediately. From the darkness of her car, she observed her surroundings. Gaia was right. Her interest in the mystery went far beyond the article. The phantom house had, in a way, become her Holy Grail. Without realizing, she had turned it into a source of anxiety, as











DON'TASK     ME    WHY    I'M SAD








It was raining buckets when she parked her car next to Gaia's house. It was barely five p.m., but the storm had swallowed up the meager light, and changed the sky to night.

Inside, in the dry, cozy living room, Circe and Polyphemus were nap-ping.' on a cushion that their owner had placed at the foot of the sofa. The

. 'cats' purring was audible above the sound of the rain beating pleasantly against the wood. Gaia served tea and opened a tin of biscuits.

"My grandmother used to like to make hot chocolate in weather like this," she said. "At least, that's what she always told me whenever a hurri-cane was approaching; but since hot chocolate was already an unknown luxury when I was a kid, we'd :fry a little bread in oil and eat it while we listened to the squall."

Cecilia recalled how her grandmother Delfina also used to mention drinking hot chocolate whenever a hurricane threatened, but since Cecilia belonged to the same generation as Gaia, her grandmother couldn't offer her a cup of chocolate, either.

"What do you make of the dates?" she asked, after tasting her tea. "Same as you: that it's no coincidence. There are eight dates, and all of

them represent different misfortunes in Cuba's history. Some are repeated more than once. In order to discover why the house's appearances coin-cide with those dates, I'd check out its inhabitants."

"Why's that?"
THE  ISLAND.I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      147




Guabina prayed~ banging Obba's stones together. Angela had fallen asleep, as though the power of the spell had exhausted her strength. Sud-denly, Guabina stopped her prayer. She heard a noise behind her, a gut-tural sound, and then an unrelated creaking like the vibration of a piece of paper tossed by the wind. She turned around to face her spirit messenger. There it was, squatting as usual, a mute, scar-crossed Indian, assassinated centuries ago, whose soul still clung to that bit of city for reasons she did

. not comprehend. The apparition began to tremble as if a hurricane were trying to demolish it, and Guabina intrinsically knew that this would be the last time she would see him. The Indian had come to warn her of tre-mendous danger ahead, but that danger had passed. She gave a deep sigh of relief and she turned back to wake her friend after she bade farewell to the gradually fading silhouette.

While it's true that she never saw him again, it wouldn't be the last time the Indian appeared to someone in that city.

...
\,-,

\


146      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

to lose except her life, which was already beginning to escape, she dug her elbow with all her force into the side of the man, who, surprised, let her go.

With a reaction closer to instinct, Leonardo charged the other man. Both of them were so tangled in each other that Mercedes, too dizzy now, couldn't keep track. As she tried to stanch the blood, something shot out of her insides as if it, too, wanted to escape through the wound. But it wasn't her soul grudgingly separating from her body. Her eyes clouded over. She heard screams-a woman's piercing, terrified screams-but the world was spinning so fast that she feII to the floor, relieved to find a spot where the ground would support her.



Before Jose reached the door, he knew something terrible had hap-pened. Several women were screaming hysterically in the street, and the police were everywhere.

When he went inside, he had to lean against a wall to  keep from falling. Two men were bleeding to  death in the middle  of the patio.  One of them, whose.. face  looked familiar,  lay motionless  on  the  cement.  The  other,  an •'unsavory-Iooking  mulatto,  was  still  crawling  on  his  belly,  but Jose  knew

he  wouldn't live much longer.

The patio was momentarily empty. Women were still screaming in the street, and the police had gone looking for help. Jose walked over to the only person he cared about. Mercedes was still breathing agitatedly, but quiedy.

"For God's sake, what happened?" he muttered, not expecting a response.

The mulatto's vibrating breath reached him from the other side of the patio.

"If I die from this, I swear I'll take revenge on all the whores from the other world," he spat in Mercedes' direction, although she didn't hear him. "They'll find no peace, even in hell."

The man lowered his head, vomited a mouthful of blood, and lay still, nose nailed to the ground.

"Jose," Mercedes whispered, feeling a warm wave in her chest, and she realized that the cold that had inhabited her for years had left forever with the blood that flowed from her wound.
THE  ISLAND  _I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      145

with fear. There it was, crouching in wait. Something would surely happen if she didn't take measures.

She went over to the white soup tureen belonging to Obba, one of the three "death-dealing" goddesses and the mortal enemy of Oshlin. Only she would be able to help her snatch a victim away from that ghost.

She stood before the tureen, banged on the stones, and prayed before the images of the Catholic and African saints that filled the altar. Angela watched her over the top of her handkerchief, trusting in the mulatto woman's powers. The sound of the stones exploded in the room and rico-•cheted off the walls like crazed, clucking laughter.


An hour had already passed since Pepe had left. Maybe he'd had a change of heart. What man would think of bringing a prostitute to his par-ents' home? No, Jose was different. Mercedes was sure he'd return. Some mishap had delayed him. Too nervous to wait in her room, she dragged her two suitcases along the corridor toward the back door. She was returning for the third one when a hand bent her arm, forcing her to her knees.
"1  don't  know  where  you  think  you're  going."  Onolorio  pointed  an

~.

open razor at her cheek. ''No woman--do you hear me?-not one, has ever left me. And you're not about to be the first."

He grabbed her by the hair, shaking her so violently that Mercedes screamed, imagining her neck would break.

"Leave her alone!"

The voice came from the patio. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Leonardo approaching.

"If you don't leave her alone, I'll  call the police."

"Now it's all clear!" Onolorio said without releasing her, wielding the razor sharp against her belly. "So the turtledoves were about to fly the coop."

Mercedes prayed that Jose  wouldn't come walking in.

"1 don't know what you're talking about," Leonardo assured him, "but you're going to hand that woman over to me right now or you'll end up in jail."

"I'll hand her over, all right ... as soon as I'm finished with her." Mercedes felt a chill on her side. Terrified, knowing that she had nothing
144      •     DAiNA  GRAV1ANO

Every night a solitary troubadour-or a duo or a trio-would approach Mercedes' window to croon a bolero for the occasion. The first week, Onolorio tried to find the perpetrator's identity. The second week, the thugs went after the wretched crooners, beating them with their own guitars. The third week, he destroyed three bouquets of roses-from an unknown sender, but with the addressee clearly marked-that a messen-ger had left in Dona Cecilia's hands. The fourth, he threatened to beat Mercedes if she didn't tell him her suitor's name. The fifth, when Pepe arrived just after noon, Mercedes had a black eye.

"Collect your things," Jose told her. "We're getting out of here." "No," the demon inside her replied. "I'm not leaving."

His expression pained her so greatly that, for the first time, she explained herself.

"Your parents would never accept me." "If I accept you, so will they."

The girl fought  against the spirit that controlled her will.

"Onolorio won't ever stop looking for us," she insisted. "He'll kill us-" Jose gave her a quick kiss on the lips, and the demon withdrew,
stunned..
'
"Trust me."

She nodded,  shaken by a  deadly anguish.

"Go collect your things," he said. "Wait for me by the back door, but don't worry if I'm a little bit late...."

Because, before he could pick up the suitcases, he had to go see his parents.




Guabina handed her a glass of ice water that Angela gulped down between sobs. Pepe had told her the news, and the poor woman didn't even want to think about what would happen when her husband found out. A prostitute in their home-how had such a thing happened? A well-brought-up boy who was studying for a profession. . . How could the good Lord allow it?

Guabina sat down beside her, unable to offer any comfort. She didn't dare, especially since, right next to the comer where her saints rested, that spirit who alerted her to danger had reappeared. She was struck dumb
~':",-




THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL  LOVE • 143
The devil within her, bewildered by such an homage, abandoned her body
for  several  hours:  enough time  for  Mercedes  to  be  able  to  speak  to  Jose,
find  out  his  name  and  from  what  mysterious  universe  he-so  unlike  any
other-had sprung.
Jose  told her of his  dreams  and  of the  thoughts  buzzing in his  head;  of
impossible images, like those that appear in moments of romantic ecstasy,
when  one's  humanity  is  transformed.  .  .  .  She  listened,  enraptured,  and
then,  in turn,  she told him her dreams  as  well:  dreams  that differed from
'..:," all those she had harbored until then and that emerged from  some deeper
place within her.

She felt transported to her infancy, to the time when her parents would
rock her to  sleep, when Dona Cecilia ordered dozens of bars  of soap from
her  father,  who  was  still  alive.  Because  Jose  spoke  to  her,  she  became  a
child  again.  With  him  by her  side,  all  the  men-with  their  harsh  expres-
sions,  cruel  jokes,  and the  smells  of the  bordello-dissipated into thin air.
She  was  happy-a  new  kind  of happiness-until  he  went  away,  and  she
was  once  more  in  the  company  of mortals  and  demons.  Could  she  have
dreamed it?
That   night   Leonardo   visited   her.   And   Onolorio   too.   But   she   had
,,'
lOng left her body during those visits.  She was detached,  indifferent to the
ruby  necklace  that  Onolorio  had  bought  for  her.  .  .  and  it  didn't  pass
unnoticed.
Without  her  knowing,  Onolorio  ordered  his  escorts  to  stand  guard  in
front  of the  bordello.  Although  he  hadn't  seen  Leonardo,  he  suspected
that  dandy  was  to  blame  for  Mercedes'  attitude.  This  was  a  matter  that
had  to  be  resolved.  It  was  one  thing  for  the  guy  to  bed  her,  but  quite
another  for  her  to  be  distracted  with  thoughts  of him  when  they  were
together.  Everything had its limits,  and Onolorio had warned him.
Twice  he  met  with  Leonardo,  who  claimed  not  to  have  noticed  the
changes  in  Mercedes.   Onolorio  didn't  give  up.   Something  strange  was
going  on,  and  he  would  watch  and  wait  from  four  in  the  afternoon  on,
when the  clients began to  arrive.
Luckily,  Jose  wasn't  one  of  them.   He  visited  Mercedes  at  the  noon
hour,  when  she  seemed  relaxed  and  hardly  any  clients  were  in  the  bor-
dello.  But he had already determined to fill his  nights with her memory.
It  didn't  take  long  for  the  story  of the  serenades  to  reach  Onolorio.
...,..;



142      •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

The  stranger stopped speaking and turned to  him.

"Sorry, sir," said Fermin, approaching. "We didn't mean to disturb you."

And he grabbed Pepe by the  arm to  pull him away.

"If you're going to stay, you'd better shut up," Fermin whispered. "You could get us into a mess."
But Jose  was  in  no  condition  to  decide  whether  to  stay  or  go  home,

so Fermin and Pancho left him with a woman while they went off with others.

"My name is Jose," he repeated when she sat him down on a bed. "But everybody calls me Pepe...."

He  closed his  eyes  and  his  speech  trailed  off.  The  woman  understood

that she could expect nothing of him, but, as she had already collected the fee, she let him sleep.

He  awoke  one  hour later,  startled by the  commotion  around  him.  His

head didn't hurt too much, but the world was spinning endlessly. He went over to a basin of water and wet his face. Staggering, he opened the door. The cold dawn air awoke his senses. Where was he? Some red lights illu-minated.. the patio. He leaned against a wall, trying to get his bearings.
.'    And then he  saw her.  An angel.  A  creature  sent to  him by God to  lead

him to any kind of heaven imaginable. He was astonished at the fragility of her features, but especially by her eyes: the eyes of a sorceress ... The creature stopped, scrutinizing him with wonder. Her wings moved behind her shoulders with a slow, aquatic quality. Unreal. She must be a water nymph, like the one his mother had seen before he was born.

But the miracle was fleeting. The nymph returned his gaze, afflicted with an old pain, and assumed her previous, hermetic expression, as she walked on by. Only then did Jose realize that she didn't have wings but a filmy tunic that the night air had lifted above her shoulders.

Half an hour later, when his friends came by to pick him up, he was drunker than ever, after having downed several shots of rum.



Mercedes might have forgotten him, but the man with the shadowy expression returned, and with an unusual gift: roses, and a trio of trouba-dours who serenaded her on the patio, a first in the history of the bordello.
THE  ISLAND  pI   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      141

Spanish army over the mambi troops, and although the Republic had already been in place for several years, the boy took the Cuban bloodshed very much to heart. It didn't matter that he was the son of Spaniards. He had been born on the island so he was Cuban.

During intermission, Fermin and Pancho remarked on his grave ex-pression.

"Don't take it so seriously," Fermin whispered in his ear. "It's all history."

"But it lives  on here,"  Pepe answered,  touching his  temples.

"Cheer up, man," Pancho said:'''Look at all the women around you." Jose shrugged.

"The truth is, God gives a handkerchief to a man without nostrils," Pancho sighed.

After the  show, they invited him to  dinner.

"Don't come home  too  late,"  his mother had pleaded.

He got home not only very late, but completely drunk and accompa-nied by his friends in more or less the same condition. Maybe if they had told Angela immediately the reason for his behavior, she wouldn't have been so angry: her Pepito was in love. But falling in love doesn't usually

.c~~e with the frenzy that Pepito  experienced.

After dinner, they had gone for a few drinks. Four were sufficient for young Jose, who never drank, to want to make friends with every passerby. The world now struck him as a place filled with kind, lovable people. He had never noticed before.

At ten in the evening, and without understanding how, he found him-selfwandering through an unknown part ofthe city, escorted by his friends. They stumbled across the threshold of an unfamiliar house. Immediately, the boy noticed a gentleman chatting with a mummy. The mummy wasn't dead, which would have been normal. It was smiling, and when it did, it grew even more wrinkled. Everything was quite dark, except for the red lanterns that filled the patio with shadows. He drew a little closer to see more clearly. The gentleman looked very distinguished, worthy of being a part of such a gala evening. Despite the frustrated expression that hard-ened the man's features, Pepe felt a sudden desire to count on his good graces.

"Good evening," he said, extending his hand. "My name is Jose, but my friends call me Pepe.... "
, :.,i'-.;




140      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

The first inkling of change came about in an unexpected way, like one of those dreams that one later confuses with reality. It happened, as luck would have it, the first night Leonardo spent with her.

At dawn, when nearly all the customers had gone home, there was a lunar eclipse over Havana. Mercedes didn't know what an eclipse was. She just heard the women's racket on the patio, shouting that the moon was growing dark and it was the end of the world. But when she went out to look, she didn't see anything unusual. It was the same old moon, only a piece ofit was missing. A few young men, probably students, were trying to calm the women. Mercedes, unamused with the spectacle, went back to her room.

She never found out if the eclipse had unchained some magical powers or if other strange forces were at work.

As she returned to her bedroom, a different sort of creature passed by her side, its face leaving the trace of something that compelled her more than the spirit of Oshim. She didn't think of the apparition as human, although it was, because of the shadowy quality of his gaze. The man fixed his eyes on Mercedes, with an expression like no other. Her inner demon-tq~ succubus that had penetrated her when the goddess's honey wet her -lips-withdrew before the gentleness of that face. With all its might, this spirit within her latched onto the beautiful body it had inhabited for years, refusing to relinquish it. The young woman fought against that power, almost suffocating, and it was as if a veil over her eyes had fallen to her feet. For a few moments the world seemed transformed. She repeatedly struggled to throw offthe alien will that tied her to a dark, desperate universe, but at last she succumbed to the entity that had dominated her, and she walked past the man, distant and indifferent, as though he did not exist.


Pepe made fun of his mother's superstitions, but only in public. The young man had inherited a sixth sense that, although it didn't allow him to see creatures beyond the world, enabled him to sense omens and pre-monitions. However, he wasn't even aware of his gift's existence. Rather, he perceived them on a distant, hidden level.

He would dwell on this years later as he reviewed the events that had changed his life the afternoon Fermin and Pancho invited him to a play at the Teatro Albisu. The zarzuela was about the victory of the now-extinct
THE  ISLAND  -I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      139

the same honey she had used in the ceremony, but the damage had already been done.

First came that certain expression on Mercedes' face whenever she saw a man. Several times Cecilia had caught her peeking in on what was going on inside the rooms, and later she found her thrashing strangely between the sheets. The girl painted her lips with coffee liqueur, applied sugar to her eyelids to make them sparkle beneath the red lanterns, and wandered naked up and down the halls, wrapped in a golden silk shawl. Cecilia con-cluded that OshUn's spirit had touched her and she was under her grasp.

But the main problem was that-Mercedes wasn't such a girl anymore. Although Mercedes was nearly fifteen, her mother needed to scold her to get dressed. And she had to fend off the customers who offered money for her. Onolorio was the most dangerous. Cecilia felt threatened every time the man walked into her house with those shadowy bodyguards lurking behind him.

Caridad's death two years later was providential. Although the fire had almost destroyed her business, Dona Cecilia saw a way out ofher dilemma when Onolorio offered her twice the amount it would have cost her to repair everything in exchange for lifetime rights to that nymphet. He
wasn't trying to buy her,  of course not.  He just wanted to be a priority and
,.

-nave unlimited access to her bedroom whenever he wished to see her. Cecilia didn't hesitate. The girl seemed anxious to get started in such a

life ... something she'd surely turn to sooner or later, now that her mother was dead. According to the agreement, Mercedes would receive no money for those visits, but Onolorio was pledged to her, and the young woman did with him whatever she pleased.

Very soon, men became instruments to fulfill her whims and to calm what burned inside her night and day. No one awakened anything but pure instinct within her. Not even Onolorio, who never left her side for the first few months, or all the others who came later, including Leonardo, that dandy who always brought her gifts.

Oriolorio's visits, which had become more infrequent, picked up again when Leonardo appeared. She suspected that a silent battle for her affec-tion was going on. Onolorio asked her to go away with him, but she refused. She liked her life and the house, which she considered her own, and she wasn't prepared to submit to the will of a single man who might not treat her so well if she were to become his and his only. But her com-fortable existence would not last long.
138      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

good-bye and went back inside, leaving the door ajar. The mulatto passed by Leonardo's side.
"I know you're infatuated with her," he told him. "Lots of men would get fed up and go off with someone else, but you're persistent."

''Who told you  ...  ?"

"That doesn't matter. You can see her tonight, but be careful, and don't get carried away."

Leaving Leonardo with his mouth agape, he crossed the main thresh-old, followed by a sinister figure who appeared to be waiting for him at the entrance.

"Your sweetheart is free  now,"  Dona  Ceci said.

"You're an old snitch," Leonardo accused her. "You didn't have to go around saying who 1 came for."

"I'm not the one that gives out information. Onolorio has his own ways of finding out what's happening, especially when it concerns his mistress. "

At that exact moment someone stepped out ofthe shadows and bumped against him, practically knocking Leonardo to the floor.

"Good evening,"  said the  boy with a  humble  expression.  "My name  is

.jose, but my friends call me Pepe.... " He was obviously drunk.

"Sorry, sir," another young man interjected, struggling to drag his friend away. "We didn't mean to disturb you."

Leonardo turned his back on them, anxious to be with Mercedes, to complete what had already been too long delayed.

"We'll arrange the price later," he whispered to the woman as he walked toward the half-open door.


S he had never thought of men as anything but little beasts that were put on earth to satisfy her desires. Other women might dress up to attract them, but for Mercedes, it was they who should adorn her with dresses and jewels. No one ever told her that she'd gotten it wrong; and she never discussed the matter either, believing that such was the natural order.

She didn't know where those ideas had started. After losing conscious-ness that night, her mind had become a jumble. Only Cecilia noticed the change. She understood her mistake in trying to revive the child with
THE   ISLAND.I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      137

kept him from recognizing her. Only when he emerged from a room hours later and saw her by the lamplight illuminating the dark patio did his heart leap back to the past. The girl was the very image of her late mother, with a paler complexion and an angelic face. It was already quite late, and he had no time to linger ... but he came back the following night, requesting to see her.

"The lover wants to rekindle an old passion," Dona Ceci joked. "The mother's not here anymore, but the daughter is ... and she's much more desirable, incidentally."

"Enough talk ...  go  and get her."  -

"I'm sorry, but Mercedes is with someone." "I'll wait."

"Don't get your hopes up. Onolorio came to see her today." "Who?"

"Her protector, her number one man.... When he shows up, she has to be at his disposal."

"It's not as ifhe's her owner," Leonardo began, but Cecilia's expression cut him short. ''What's the matter?"

"He £s her owner."

.' •"What do you mean?" "He bought her."

"What are you talking about?"

"How do you think I managed to rebuild my house after the fire? Don Onolorio had been drooling over her for a while, but her mother wouldn't have permitted it for anything in the world. When Caridad died, Onolorio offered me a fortune to let him become the girl's 'mentor.' I had no choice but to accept."

"You handed that little girl over to  a man?"

"She wasn't a little girl anymore, and besides, Mercedes was thrilled. She always struck me as half-bedeviled."

"Mercedes?" he insisted, recalling the young woman's face. "It can't be." "I'm just warning you."

Leonardo left at dawn without having seen her. But he came back the next day, and the next, and the day after that. At last, around midnight, Mercedes emerged from a room, accompanied by a man. He was a mulatto with Chinese features, dressed in an impeccable white suit. She kissed him
\,-,



136      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

women in the city. She was just an old lady slathered in makeup who tried to hide the tremors in her hands with the same prideful gestures of her youth.

"I've come because she promised to see me this afternoon." Cecilia wriggled out of the man's grasp.

"With Mercedes, a promise is no guarantee," she assured him, straight-ening her shawl. "She's flightier than her deceased mother, may God keep her in His glory."

Leonardo  smiled sarcastically.

"In glory? I doubt there's room- for women like you there." Cecilia's icy stare pierced the man's face.

"You're right," she replied. "We'll end up in the same place as men like you."

Leonardo was about to give her back what she deserved, but he shrugged his shoulders instead. The memory of that young girl held his entire atten-tion.  He  had  first  seen  her  when  her  mother  was  still  alive.  Caridad had driven him mad ever since  she offered herself to  him,  bathed in honey.  In those  days  Mercedes was  just a little girl who  emerged from  her mother's bedroom,,- sometimes half asleep,  whenever he  came  to  visit  his  lover.  He -"never saw her any other way until  Caridad died in the fire  that had nearly ruined  the  business.  But  Leonardo  didn't  notice  her  at  first.  He  nearly forgot  she  even  existed  because  he  stopped  coming  to  the  brothel.  And when  he  finally  returned  two  years  later,  his  visits  were  sporadic,  always

during the early-morning hours, so their paths never crossed. "She says she can't help you right now."

Dona Cecilia's voice behind him shook him from his reverie. "But she told me-"

"It's not that she won't see you at all tonight, but she's busy right now." Leonardo fell onto a sofa and lit a cigarette.

Months before, at barely midday, a friend had insisted that he accom-pany him to Dona Cecilia's.

"Dona Cecilia's not in," a golden-haired girl informed them as she opened the door, "but you can wait if you like."

The girl wore a nightgown that did nothing to conceal her splendid figure. Leonardo watched her walk away, vanishing through one of the doors. Her appearance seemed familiar to him, but his stunned reverie
\. \

THE  ISLAND  _/   ETERNAL  LOVE • 135
''No.  There's  some skirt business  going on."
"A woman?"
"And not a good one."
Angela's heart skipped.
"How do you know?"
"Remember  that   I,   too,   have   my  Martinico,"   the   mulatto   woman
replied.
Guabina was  the  only person,  besides her husband and son, who  knew
of  the   imp's   existence.  Juanco,   who   had  witnessed   many   inexplicable
.events, accepted his presence but never referred to him.  Her son scoffed at
that  story,  accusing  her  of being  superstitious.   Only  Guabina  respected
her  curse  without  fuss  or  surprise,  just  another  daily  annoyance.  Angela
\ had  confessed to  her  one  afternoon  when  the  mulatto  woman  spoke  of a
silent spirit who would appear whenever something evil lurked nearby.
\.

"A woman?"  Angela  repeated,  trying to  comprehend the  idea:  her son
was  no longer a boy; he was  capable of falling in love; he could marry and
move far  away.  "Are you sure?"
Guabina turned her eyes toward  a  comer of the  room.
•"Yes,"  she  confirmed.
.'    And  Angela  knew  that  the  answer had  come  from  someone  she  could
not see.
Leonardo  had  gone  out  earlier than usual.  Doors  opened before him
like  jewel boxes  in a  shop  of dreams:  the  neighborhood brothels prepared
to  greet their customers.
When  he  reached  Dofia   Ceci's  house,  the   entry  door  already  stood
wide open.
"Come  in,"  the  owner  greeted  him,  wrapped  in  the  black  stole  she
always  wore.  "I'll tell  the  girls."
Leonardo  grabbed her arm.
''You know who 1 came for.  Just tell her."
"I  don't know if she'll let you  in today."
Leonardo  looked  at  the  woman  with  disgust,  wondering  how  she  had
ever  appealed  to  him.  That had  been  long  ago,  of course.  His  blood had
run so wild then that his brain hardly ruled his  decisions.  But now he was
looking  at  the  ruins  of  what  had  once  been  one  of  the  most  beautiful
134      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"The boy's a man now," he said when he learned the original cause of the disturbance, although unaware of Martinico. "It's normal for him to come home a little tipsy. Come on, let's go to bed.... "

"A little tipsy?" Angela shrieked, with no concern for the hour or the neighbors. "He's completely smashed!"

"In any case, he's of age." "A fine thing!"

"Leave him alone," Juanco said in a tone he rarely used, one that halted further discussion. "Let's go to sleep."

And both of them went off to bed, after tucking in their son and leaving the imp frustrated for lack of an audience.

The next day Pepito got up and showered for half an hour until Angela started yelling to find out what was taking him so long. The boy emerged haughtily from the bathroom and left the house without breakfast-something unusual for one who never did anything before quaffing his cafe con leche and devouring half a slice of bread and butter and three fried eggs with ham-leaving his mother in a nauseating wake of cologne.

"He's on vacation," Juanco would explain whenever she complained about.- her son's sloth. "When he goes back to the university, he won't even -have time to blow his nose."

But classes were still two months off, and every morning the young man spent hours in the shower, singing at the top of his lungs: "For her I sing and weep, for her I feel such love; for you, darling Mercedes, you who ease my pain. ... " Or that other song whose whiny rumba plaint drove her crazy:

"Don't cry for her, don't cry for her; she was the great bandoleer; oh, grave dig-ger, don't cry for her. . . ."

Now, more than ever, she haLed the gringo and his little dog. She was sure the army of Victrolas on every comer would drive all of them crazy. Her son had been one of the first victims, and she, no doubt, would be next. How could she enjoy music when it was something she listened to by force, not for pleasure? For the last few years a biblical plague of itinerant troubadours and infernal jukeboxes had invaded the city.

"Master Pepe's problem isn't the music," Guabina interrupted her friend in mid-diatribe one afternoon. "Greater forces are at work here."

Angela fell silent. Each time her friend began to speak like an oracle, some new revelation was produced.

"It isn't the music?"
THE  ISLAND  p'  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      133

dish curls who lived next door. "Can you imagine? He can hardly keep a bodega going in this damn neighborhood and he still thinks he can com-pete with that gringo with his little dog, Nipper."

Juanco had explained to her why it would be so advantageous to open a record company in Havana: the musicians wouldn't have to travel to New York anymore. But she didn't want to hear any of his foolishness.

Angela grew to hate the gringo and his little dog so much that Guabina, an expert in magical matters, suggested doing some witchcraft ... not on the man but on the beast.

"No more dog, no more frothing mouth," she said. "And afterward the owner will have a fit, for sure. You can tell he loves him a lot: he includes him in all his commercials."

"Oh, Jesus," Angela replied. "I don't want a dead dog on my con-science. Besides, it's not the poor dog's fault-it's those Victrolas they've put everywhere. They're a curse!"

"Not so, Dofia Angela. Music is a blessing from the gods, a haven in this vale of tears, a little sip of spirits that sweetens our lives . . ."

''Well, it makes mine bitter, Guabina. And to be honest with you, I think it's driven my son a little crazy!"

.. • "Pepito?" repeated the mulatto woman. "How's it going to drive that boy crazy? He's more alert than ever."

"You're not kidding. Some bug's bitten him, and it has something to do with those songs you hear on every comer all day long."

Angela sighed. Her Pepito, the light of her soul, had been living in another world for weeks now. It all started shortly after he returned home early one morning, half drunk, leaning on two friends' shoulders. She'd nearly had a heart attack when he came home, and she threatened to keep him in at night, but her son played dumb. He smiled in his drunkenness, even though Angela shook her hand before his face like a fan, threatening to slap him.

Suddenly, as might be expected with so much commotion, the imp Martinico appeared in the middle of a lilliputian cloud, leaping onto a display case full of glazed pottery. At the sight of him, Angela became hysterical, which set Martinico off even more. The furniture started shak-ing as she screamed-half at Maninico, half at her son-until Juanco left the room, frightened by the uproar.











A     TEMPEST    GOING     NOWHERE








Angela watched the street from her balcony. The morning dampened her nostrils with a frozen taste that reminded her of shadowy mountain vegetation. How distant those days seemed, when she had roamed forests filled with immortal creatures. Now, as she observed the passersby, her youth.. felt like the shadow of a different life. Had she really spoken with a

."nymph? Had she been blessed by a sad, forgotten god? If not for the per-sistence of her imp, she might have believed it had all been a dream.

Two decades is a long time, especially living in a strange land. Anguish beat in her chest whenever she heard the songs of her homeland: "If the songs I breathe here--ay!-reach you, sadly, on those shores; they hold my heart, a prisoner of your nearness." Yes, she missed her country, the accent of her people, the placid, eternal life of the hills, where tomorrow didn't exist, only now and yesterday.

Her parents had died beside those foothills. She had promised them she would return, but she hadn't yet, and she carried that broken promise with her like an ancient, heavy bundle.

Juanco,  luckily, had turned out to  be a good husband.  A little irritable,

to be sure, especially after he inherited the grocery from Uncle Manolo  ...

or the bodega, as the locals called it. While she raised their son, Juanco col-lected money in the hope of opening the only sort of business that excited him: a record company.

"It's  madness,"  she  confided  to  Guabina,  a  mulatto  woman  with  red-
..~

1      "


THE  ISLAND  ,.1   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      131

war, captured at the Bay of Pigs. Not too many people remember the date."

"And how do you know?"

"I interviewed two  of the  survivors."

Lisa remained silent, still not comprehending what could be inferred from that chronological sequence.

"It doesn't make any sense," she said at last. ''Why the hell would a house that appears on unlucky days for Cuba materialize in Coral Gables?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea." "We should consult Gaia." "Why?"

"She has  experience in this ghost-house business."

"Oh, that's right. She told me she saw one in Havana. Do you know anything about what happened there?"

"No," Lisa insisted, averting her gaze as she said it. Cecilia knew she was lying, but she didn't insist. "I'll talk to her. Will you lend me the notebook?" "Are you leaving already?" Lisa asked, taken aback.

..."I've got a date tonight." "What about the coffee?" "Another time."

"Please, don't lose the notebook.  Make a  copy, won't you?"

Cecilia watched the front light go out before she started her motor. On the way home she tried to organize the knot of jumbled ideas pounding in her temples, but only managed an unconnected montage of scenes and faces. She had never taken that stuff very seriously, but now everything had changed: the Miami ghost house had its roots in Cuba.
130       •      DAiNA  GHAVIANO

The second one took place seven days later: January 8. Then another report, July 26. And another after that: August 13. Cecilia observed the dates and, despite the air-conditioning, felt a drop of sweat running down her back. No one had remarked on that.

"Do you take a lot of sugar in your coffee?" "Why didn't you tell me about the dates?" "What are you talking about?"

"The  dates  when the  sightings took place."

"What for, when there's no coh~ent sequence? The intervals are ir-regular."

"There's a pattern," Cecilia emphasized, "but it doesn't have to do with time."

Lisa waited in suspense, afraid she was about to hear something unthinkable.

"They're national holidays . . . or, rather, bad national holidays." "What do you mean?" the girl asked, sitting down beside her on the

sofa.

"July twenty-sixth. Don't tell me you don't know what happened on Jply twenty-sixth."

"How could I not? It was the assault on the Moncada barracks." "Worse than that: it was the start of what came later."

"And what about the  other dates?"

"January first-the triumph of the revolution. January eighth, the rebels enter Havana. August thirteenth, you-know-who is born ..."

"There are some obscure ones too." "No, not one."

"Yes, there are," Lisa insisted. "Which?"

"July thirteenth."

"The killing of those who tried to escape on the 13 de Marzo ferry." "April nineteenth."

"Defeat of the exiles at the Bay of Pigs." "April sixteenth."

"The people who died in the truck." Lisa tried to recall.

"Which people who  died?"

"They were  left  to  suffocate  in  a  locked  truck.  They  were  prisoners  of
,.~ff
... ~'.
','
'.'.

THE  ISLAND  ,I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      129

fascinated by that smile, his passion for an island he didn't know yet still considered home. And so she decided to keep seeing him.

The following night they went to a club, and when he kissed her for the first time, she had already made up her mind to gloss over his mania for auto races and his obsession with calling the dealership manager every two hours to see how sales were going. ''Nobody's perfect," she told herself. She had almost forgotten about her interview with Lisa the next day. That night she excused herself early and went home with a lighter heart.


Lisa lived on the border of Coral Gables, very close to Calle Ocho, but the din of the traffic didn't reach her cozy ochre-colored house. There were plants everywhere, and old, dark wooden furniture. Cecilia turned on her tape recorder, placing it on a table shaped like a chest as she lis-tened to Lisa's explanation. Through the glass door, she could see some blue birds bathing in the patio fountain.

"Generally ghosts come back for revenge or because they're seeking justice for an unsolved crime," Lisa said, "but the inhabitants of that house se~m happy."
.    "So  ...  ?"

"I think they've come back because they miss something they don't want to leave behind. The strange thing is that the ghosts always return to , the same place, but the house travels all the time."

"Maybe there are other details no one has noticed. Where's that thing you promised me?"

Lisa went over to a sideboard and took out a well-worn notebook. "Everything's here," she said, handing her the book. "Take a look at it

while 1 go  to  the kitchen."

The notes were irregular. Some were perfectly legible; others, barely comprehensible; but every page documented a different sighting, with the date, time, and place. The oldest sightings had occurred in Coconut Grove, not very far from the studio apartment where Cecilia had lived when she arrived from Cuba. The most recent noted a section of Coral Gables bordering on Little Havana.

Cecilia was about to copy the name of the first witness when she noticed the date: the dawn ofJanuary first, five months after the year of her arrival.
,  ,
..~~:~'.;;.~















WOUNDED     BY    SHADOWS








The Rusty Pelican was a restaurant surrounded by water, located at the entrance to Key Biscayne. As soon as she saw the red letters on the unpainted wood, Cecilia recalled it as one of the places her aunt had men-tioned. From the immense bridge, it wasn't very attractive. Only the ships 3Jld yachts all around it suggested that it wasn't abandoned. But when she

. entered the cool interior and regarded the sea beyond the glass walls, she realized her aunt had been right: there were some dreamy places in Miami.

They watched the sun set from a crystalline fishbowl that isolated them from the summer heat. In the distance, ships trailed their wakes of warm foam on the darkening waters as the buildings began to light up. After din-ner, over two glasses of Cointreau, they spoke of a thousand things.

Roberto told her about his childhood and his parents, two immigrants with no knowledge of English who had made their way in a generous but harsh country. While his buddies all found girlfriends and went to parties, he and his brothers worked in an auto repair shop after school, changing tires, taking merchandise out of the storeroom, and answering phones. Somehow or other, he managed to get to the university, but he never fin-ished. One day he decided to invest his school funds in a business ... and it worked. For the first two years he worked twelve hours a day, sleeping only five or six, but at last he achieved his goal. Now he was the owner of one of the most prosperous auto dealerships in Florida.

Cecilia  realized  how far  apart  their  worlds  and  lives  were,  yet  she  was
THE   ISLAND  ,I   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      127

"I'll pick you up. If I'm not there on time, it's because they didn't let me go."

Yuang was sitting in the doorway. He greeted the boy with a wave of his hand, but the child ran inside the house.

"Mommy, can 1 go to the movies?" he asked in Cantonese, as he always did whenever he spoke to his parents and sometimes to his great-grandfather.

"With whom?" "Shu Li."

"All right, but first take these clothes to the retired teacher." "I don't know him."

"He lives next door to the man who makes phonograph records." "I don't know him, either. Why don't you send Chiok Fun?"

"He's  sick.  You'll have to  go.  You can go  on from there to Shu Li's....

And be glad your father's not back yet, because he might not let you go at all!"

The boy regarded the bundle of clothing. "What's the address?"

•."Do you know where Meng's inn is?" "That far?"

"Two or three houses beyond. There's a door knocker that looks like a lion."

Pablito bathed, dressed, and grabbed a bite to eat before dashing out the door. Along the way, Pablito asked each passerby for the time. He'd never make it. Seven blocks later he passed the inn and looked for the lion door knocker, but he found three identical doors on that block. He cursed his luck and his parents' unfortunate habit of never writing addresses on the tickets. So many years living in Havana, and they still hadn't even learned the numbers .... Had his mother said it was two houses past the inn? Or four? He didn't remember. He decided to knock on one door after another until he found the right one. And it was pure luck that he did. Or perhaps misfortune.... Or maybe both.

126      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

thirty-six. But the bolita had one hundred numbers, and that's why new symbols and numerals had to be added.

The night before, Little Tiger's mother had dreamed that a tremendous downpour carried off her new shoes. With those two elements-water and shoes-the Wongs decided to play number eleven-which signified rooster, but also rain-and number thirty-one--which meant deer, but could also denote shoes. The variety of meanings had to do with the fact that other puzzles had already been invented: Cuban, American, Indian.... But the most popular-and the one everyone could recite by heart-was the Chi-nese version.

Before arriving at the bar where Chiong the numbers runner collected the bets, the boy saw him chatting with a curious character: a countryman wearing a Western suit and tie and with a fine, trimmed mustache, some-thing quite unusual for a Chinese man-at least the ones Pag Li knew. Chiong wore a frightened expression and glanced around in all directions. Was he looking for help, or was he afraid someone would see him? Instinct told Pag Li to keep his distance. While he pretended to read the movie posters, he furtively watched Chiong open the drawer, take out some peso bills, and hand them to that individual. The scene reminded him: ''When you see a Chinese man dressed like a rich white, run away; most likely he's one of those gangsters who take money from respectable businesses ..." Yuang had warned him. Well, the bolita wasn't exactly a respectable busi-ness, but Chiong hadn't done anyone harm. You could always find him in that corner, greeting his fellow Chinese and offering directions to pass-ersby who asked for them.

The boy sighed. In any case, he mustn't become involved in politics. As soon as the man walked away, he crossed the street and paid the bets like someone who hadn't seen anything.

"Hey, Tiger!"

He turned in the direction of the voice. "Hi, Joaquin."

Joaquin was Shu Li, a classmate who had been born on the island, the son of Cantonese parents.

"1 was just about to look for you. Want to go to the movies?" Pablo thought it over for a moment.

"When?"

"In half an hour."
\

\

or

.......

THE  IS•LAND./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      125

right before Don Efrain del Rio's very eyes, he wrote Dumb Fairy, and on Senorita Mariana's receipt (she always carefully enunciated her name, Ma-ri-a-na, so that the Chinese kid would understand it), he scribbled, with a very serious expression, Young Lady with One-Eyed Dog, and on the baker's wife's receipt, he put Talky Lady. And so on.

Those first days were times ofdiscovery. Little by little, his classes started making sense. The teacher, realizing his interest in learning, took pains to help him, but that meant assigning him extra homework.

Now he had less time for chatting with his great-grandfather. When he returned home from school, he leapecfalong the sidewalks, to the songs escaping from the bars where musicians went to play or to eat. Pag Li didn't stop to listen, although he would have liked to hear more of the contagious music that stirred his blood. He kept on going, passing old Yuang's door, and immediately plunged his nose into his notebooks until his mother called him to supper and a bath.

Thus passed many months, a year, then two ... and one day Pag• Li, the firstborn son of Rosa and Manuel Wong, whose friends also began to call him Little Tiger when they found out the year of his birth, irrevocably be~llme young Pablito.


In some other country in the hemisphere it might have been autumn, but not in the capital of the Caribbean. The breeze whipped its residents' hair, lifted the ladies' skirts, and fluttered the flags on public buildings. It was the only sign that the weather was beginning to change. The sun's heat still punished people's skin.

Little Tiger was coming back from the inn on the comer, after running an errand for his father: the weekly bolita wager, a clandestine lottery played by everyone, especially the Chinese. Their passion for the game was practically in their genes, and in fact their famous Chinese puzzle, or chitta, which the first immigrants had brought to the island, had perme-ated and infected the rest of the population. There wasn't a single Cuban alive who hadn't memorized the symbolism of the numbers.

A figure of a Chinese man whose body was covered by all kinds of pic-tures accompanied by numbers represented the puzzle: at the top of his head he had a horse (number one); on one ear, a butterfly (two); on the other, a sailor (three); on his mouth, a cat (four) ... and so on, up to
124      •     DAINA  CHAVIANO

have been a great wizard, for although Yuang insisted that he frequently didn't understand what the Buddha was talking about, he never failed to follow him everywhere, and there was always a certain light whenever the man was near.

"AkUn, " the boy would ask almost daily, in his usual mixture of Span-ish and Cantonese, "tell me about the Enlightened Buddha that you fought with side by side."
"Ah!  The honorable  apak Jose Marti."

''Yes, Malti," the child prodded, struggling with his r's. "A great saint ..."

And his great-grandfather told him about the apostle of Cuban inde-pendence, whose portrait hung in every Cuban classroom, recollecting the night when he met him at a secret gathering where he was brought by other coolies, when freedom was still a dream. And he described how, when Marti was still a boy, he had been imprisoned and forced to drag a chain with an enormous ball; and how he had taken that chain and used it to make a ring that he wore always, so that he would never forget the affront to his dignity.

''What else?" the boy would urge whenever his great-grandfather began
~'
,"nodding off.

"I'm tired,"  he protested.

"All right,  akun,  do you want me to  turn on the radio?"

Then they would sit down to listen to the news from their distant home-land, a place Pag Li was beginning to forget.

As the boy became familiar with his new country, Manuel and Rosa grew swamped with customers who, attracted by their laundry's reputa-tion, requested more and more services. Soon they had to hire another countryman to deliver the clean clothes to the clients' homes. Sometimes Pablito helped out, and since neither of his parents could read or write Spanish, he was the one to memorize the descriptions with which they had labeled their clients.

"Take the white suit to the mulatto with the birthmark on his forehead, and the two bundles go to the crafty old lady."

And so he would look for the suit bearing the paper that read in Can-tonese Mulatto with Mole and the two tied-together bundles with the leg-end Old Witch and deliver them to their owners. Similarly, he would jot down names of the customers whose dirty clothing he had picked up. And
THE  ISLAND  ,I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      123

"Good afternoon, Grandfather." Pag Li greeted him respectfully. "Hello there, Little Tiger," Yuang replied. "Tell me, what did you all

do  today?"

And he listened to the boy's tales as he stroked his bamboo pipe. He had fitted that artifact with an enormous tin can, whose top part he cut off. After filling it halfway with water, he sat down on a step. At the other end of the cut-off tin, he placed the smoldering embers. The pipe was a thick bamboo stalk into which he had inserted a narrow tube on one side. Inside that hollow cylinder, he introduced a little balled-up wad of tobacco, light-

.ing it with a rolled newspaper that he Ignited from the coals. It was a ritual Pablito wouldn't have missed for the world, despite his fatigue on return-ing from the store. He didn't change his routine even when school began.

Now that he had to traverse the neighborhood alone, his great-grandfather instructed him about dangers the boy thought imaginary:

"When you see a Chinese man dressed like a rich white, run away from him: most likely he's one of those gangsters who extort money from respectable businesses. And if you see someone shouting and handing out papers, don't go near him: the police might be nearby and they could arrest.. you for being involved with the union bosses ..."

.' And thus the old man listed all possible worldly disasters that lurked in wait. Pablito noticed, though, that his great-grandfather used gentler words when referring to the agitators or union leaders-the "revolutionar-ies," as he sometimes called them. But even though he tried to ask several times what sort of work those people were engaged in, the old man just replied:

"You're not old enough to worry about such things yet. Study first, and then we'll see."

So Pablito sat down among the children and tried to guess what the lesson was about by looking at the slides and drawings, but his fractured Spanish was an object of ridicule. And although two of his Cantonese classmates helped him, daily he returned home very upset. Despite all this, he painstakingly filled his notebook with symbols and tried to sputter out his half-learned lessons.

In the afternoons, as usual, he went to chat with the old man. More than anything, he enjoyed the stories that seemed like Han dynasty leg-ends. In those tales, there was one character that the boy especially liked. His great-grandfather called him "the Enlightened Buddha." He must
'{'I'"
\ .,
\


122      •      DAINA   CHAVIANO

magically emerging from within its petals. From that cavity, a woman's natural hiding place, came the pearl necklace that Kui-fa had carried with her ever since Siu Mend had left her alone in the sugarcane fields. With that inside her, she had endured that long crossing. They had lost every-thing except the necklace and something else that she didn't show him. Now she laid the pearls before her husband, like an offering that he received in awe and amazement.

The man looked at Kui-fa as though she were a stranger. He knew he would never have had the imagination-and perhaps the courage-to carry out such an act, and he thought lUs wife an extraordinary woman, but needn't say this aloud. As he fingered the necklace, he simply murmured:

"I think we can have  our own business now."

His wife realized the depth of his emotion only when he turned off the light and flung himself on top of her.


Thus began a completely different life for Pag Li. In the first place, he had a new name. He was no longer called Wong Pag Li, but rather Pablo

Wong.  His  parents  would  now  be  known  as  Manuel  and  Rosa.  And  he
t,'
.. began to pronounce his first words in that fiendish language, with the help of his great-grandfather Yuang, who for the Cubans was the respectable mambi Julio Wong.

The family had moved to a little room nearby. Early every morning, Pablito would go off with his parents to set up the small shop they had bought near Zanja and Lealtad, with the intention of converting it into a laundry. Still half asleep, the boy skipped down the dark streets, tugged along by his mother, awakening only when he started moving things from one side to the other.

They worked until well into the afternoon. Then they would go to an inn and eat white rice and fish with vegetables. Sometimes the boy would order carita balls, delicious fritters made of mashed beans. And once a week his father would give him a few coins to take to the Chinaman Julio's ice-cream shop, in order to sample one ofhis fruit sherbets-mamey, coco-nut, guava-famous for being the creamiest in the city.

When they returned home in the afternoon, they would find Yuang sitting in the doorway, watching the frenetic neighborhood life and smoking.
\.,
\.
THE  ISLAND,/  ETERNAL   LOVE • 121
"Yes,  she's  a good woman."
"That's not what 1 meant-l meant her name."
"Her name?"
"You'll  have  to  find  Western  names  in  order to  deal  with  the  Cubans.
There's  a  very  common  one  that  means  the  same  thing  as  her  Chinese
name:  Rosa."
"Losa,"  she repeated with difficulty.
"You'll soon learn to  pronounce  it."  He  stared  at  them in  delayed sur-
prise.  "Why  didn't you let me  know you  were  coming?  The  People's  Voice
.published something about some disturbances, but  ... "
Siu Mend's face  darkened.
"Grandfather, 1 have bad news."
\\ The  old man looked  at his grandson.  His chin quivered slightly.
"Let's  go inside," he  murmured in a thread of a voice.  Siu Mend lifted
the  water  pipe  that  rested  by  the  door,  and  the  four  of them  entered  the
house.



That night, while little Pag Li slept in a makeshift bed in the living room, the couple said good night to the old man and went to the room that would be their quarters until they could afford to have their own place.

"Tomorrow I'll go see Tak," whispered Siu Mend, remembering the merchant who had done business with the deceased Weng. "1 won't be a burden to Grandfather."

"You're part of the family business."

"But I've come empty-handed," Siu Mend sighed. "lfthey hadn't taken everything . . ."

Kui-fa's expression caught his eye. "What's going on?"

"I'm going to show you something," she whispered. "But promise me you won't cry out.... The house is small and you can hear everything."

Siu Mend nodded,  mute with astonishment.

Deliberately his wife lay down on the bed, spread her legs, and began foraging with her finger in the opening that he himself had penetrated so many times and through which their son had entered the world. A pearly sphere materialized from the reddened flower of her sex, like an insect
120      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

note of everyone's expression, including those of the other Chinese. It didn't take long for her to realize her garments were inappropriate for the humid heat of a city where women shamelessly flaunted their legs and wore dresses to reveal, not conceal, their figures.

But it was Pag Li who showed the greatest enthusiasm for such a feast of the senses. He had already noticed how the children tossed coins from one sidewalk to another, and sometimes from the street itself, with the intention of hitting or touching others. He didn't understand the game, but he intuited the pastime's feverishness, repeated on street after street, erupting in shouts and arguments from the players.

At last the family entered a neighborhood filled with their countrymen. The fragrance of incense and boiled vegetables floated in the air, more consuming than the scent of the sea.

"I feel like I've come home," sighed Kui-fa, who hadn't opened her mouth during the entire walk.

"We're in Chinatown."

Kui-fa wondered how she'd ever find her way back to this neighbor-hood if she had to leave. On every comer was a metallic plate with the

street name, but it didn't do her any good. With the exception of the signs

f
."in the area, the rest of the city posted an unintelligible alphabet. She took comfort in recalling the number of Asian faces she'd seen.

"Grandfather!" shouted Siu Mend, spying an elderly man, placidly smoking on a step.

The old man blinked twice and adjusted his glasses before standing and throwing his arms open wide.

"I thought I'd never see you again, son." They embraced.

"I've come back, as you can see ... and I've brought your great-grandson. "

"So this is your firstborn."

He observed the boy with reserve, although his desire to kiss him was obvious. Finally he settled on stroking his cheek.

"And that's your wife?"

''Yes, honorable Yuang," she said, bowing slightly. ''What did you say her name was?"

"Kui-fa," he replied. "You are lucky."
THE   ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      119

"What is that,  Father?"

"El Morro." And, anticipating the question in his son's eyes, he explained: "A giant lantern that guides ships in the night."

"A giant lantern? How big?"

"Like  a pagoda.  Maybe  even bigger...."

And he described many wonders to Pag Li. The boy listened in amaze-ment to tales of creatures with black skin, of deities who entered men and women's bodies, making them perform savage dances ... Ah! And the music. Because music was everywhere. The islanders gathered with their families and listened to music. They cooked to the sound of music. They studied or read, and music accompanied anything that should have been performed in silence or contemplation. These were people who seemed unable to live without music.

Kui-fa stared at the moon, which appeared surrounded by a supernatu-ral halo. Its misty gauziness intensified her sense of unreality. She under-stood that her former life had disappeared forever, as if she, too, had died along with the rest of her family. Perhaps her corpse now rested in the rice fields, and it was her spirit that sailed toward an unknown island. Perhaps she was approaching the mythical island where Kuan Yin had her throne.
." •"Goddess of Mercy, lady of the afflicted," pleaded Kui-fa, "calm my fears; watch over my dear ones."

And she continued to pray as dawn broke, and the ship, with its exhausted cargo, drew near the island where gods and mortals coexisted beneath a single sky.


But none of Siu Mend's tales could have prepared her for the vision that appeared at mid-morning, glittering on the horizon. A narrow white barricade, like the Great Wall in miniature, protected the city from the pounding of the waves. The sun tinged the buildings with all the hues of the rainbow. And she saw the docks. And the port. An entire multi-colored, supernatural world. What a bunch of strange people! As if the ten regions of hell had spilled out all its denizens there. And the shouting. And the garments. And that guttural language.

After disembarking, Siu Mend led them through the intricate web of alleyways, guided by his memory. From time to time he would run into a countryman and would ask directions in his own tongue. Kui-fa made







'"


IF    ONLY    YOU     UNDERSTOOD     ME








They boarded the shipJ shoved along by the tide of humanity that crammed the docks, but first they had to pay an exorbitant sum: some gold earrings and two silver bracelets. Thanks to the handful of jewels that Kui-fa had rescued, the family managed some space on deck. Before set-ting sail, they had sold their land and the house, although at a much lower

.-pnce than they were worth. Jostled by the furious waves, husband and wife made plans, counting the money and jewelry that might help them begin a new life. The other refugees were quite seasick and slept nearly all the time. Or so it seemed.

Two days before they arrived, someone stole their little stash. Although the authorities searched many of the passengers, the overcrowding was so great that it was impossible to carry out a full-fledged investigation. Panic flooded through Siu Mend. He could depend on his grandfather's assis-tance, but he was terrified at the thought of landing in a strange country with nothing to offer. He commended himself to his ancestors, thinking of the city that awaited him and his family.

The smell of the sea had changed, now that the vessel was rocking gen-tly on the dark waters of the Caribbean.

"Look, Pag Li, there's a full moon," Kui-fa whispered into her son's ear.

They were on deck, leaning against the railing and gazing at the clarity on the horizon. Every so often, a flash of light gleamed amid that re-splendence.
.,~.



THE   ISLAND  pI   ETERNAL   LOVE      •      117

as if the genes of the island were so strong that it took more than one gen-eration to disavow them.

"Can I take you to dinner?" "Thanks, but I'm not sure that . . ."

"If you decide, call me...." He extracted a card from his pocket and gave it to her.

A few streets farther on, Cecilia took advantage of a red light to read it: Roberto C. Osorio. And a line in English that she had to read again. Owner of a car dealership? She'd never known anyone involved in anything like

. that. It could be an interesting change, the start of an adventure.... She had a moment of panic. Change terrified her. The changes in her life had never been good.

She returned to her apartment with no desire to cook. She helped her-self to a can of sardines, another of pears in syrup, and a few crackers. She ate standing by the kitchen counter before sitting down to read the I Ching. While reading, she thought of consulting the oracle, just to see what it would say. After tossing three coins six times, the hexagram 57 came up:

"Sun"/the gentle (the penetrating) wind. The message read: "It is auspi-cious to have somewhere to go. It is auspicious to see the great man."
.Stie didn't bother to read the rest of the lines separately. If she had, she might have decided to do something different from dialing the number on the card.

She left a message and hung up. Now all she had to do was wait ... but not in the loneliness of her retreat.
116      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

but she could tell immediately that he was no criminal. He was wearing a suit that looked elegant, even against the light. She moved aside to glimpse his face. Something about his appearance told her he wasn't American. And in that city, if you weren't a gringo, there was a ninety-nine percent chance you were Latino.

"Creo que tengo una rueda ponchada," she ventured in her Cuban-accented Spanish.

"Si, tienes razon. It's flat, all right. Do you have anything to change it?" asked the man, comfortably leaping from one language to another.
"There's  a  spare in the trunk.""

"Do you want to call Triple A? Digo, ifyou don't have a cell phone, you can use mine."

Lauro had warned her a thousand times: a woman needs to join an auto club for road service. What would she do if her car broke down right on the expressway or in the middle of the night, like now?

"I don't have Triple A."

"Well,  don't worry.  I'll change it for you."

He wasn't an exceedingly handsome  man,  but he had his charms.  And

he   exuded  masculinity  from   all  his  pores.   Cecilia  watched  him  as  he
*"
.. changed the tire, an operation she had witnessed many times but couldn't imitate if she tried.

"I don't know how to thank you," she said, handing him some cleans-ing lotion that she always kept in her purse.

"It was nothing.  By the way,  me llamo Roberto. "

"Cecilia. Mucho gusto. "

"Do you live nearby?" "Fairly close."

"Are you Cuban?" "Yes. And you?" "Me too."

"I'm from  Havana."

"I was born in Miami." "Then you're not Cuban."

''Yes, I am," he insisted. "I was born here by accident, because my par-ents left . . ."

It wasn't  the  first  time  Cecilia had  witnessed this  phenomenon.  It was
THE  ISLAND.I  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      115

"It seems  cold on the  outside, but inside it's not."

"Ceci, por favor, I've already had my dose of metaphysics. Now I want to go to Versailles and have my cafe con leche, eat a few masitas de puerco, and catch up with the gossip on the Havana Ballet Festival. Wanna come?"
"No,  I'm tired."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow."

Cecilia realized that it was just a few minutes until closing. She grabbed a copy of the I Ching from the shelves, and, turning around, bumped into a girl.

"Sorry,"  Cecilia said.

"You're like me," murmured the young woman by way of reply. "You carry the dead with you."

And without another word, she walked away, leaving Cecilia stunned. Another crazy on the loose in Miami. Why was she always the one to find them? Well, that's what you get for frequenting places that attract such types.

"Do you know the girl who just left?" she asked Lisa when she went to the register to pay for her I Ching.
"Claudia? Yes,  she's the friend who's been helping me.  Why?"
.'"No reason."

She watched her find  a bag for the book.

"We could meet Wednesday at noon," Lisa suggested, a bit embar-rassed at not keeping her word.

"Are you  sure? I  mean,  the last time I  stood around waiting."

"We'll talk at my house," Lisa said, scribbling an address on the sales slip. "Don't bother calling unless you can't make it. I'll be there."

Once outside, Cecilia sighed with relief. At last she might be able to finish her article.

Her car was parked at the end of the block, but she didn't have to get very far down the street to see she had a flat tire. Was it just low, or did it have a puncture? She squatted to examine it, although she had no idea what to look for. A hole? A slash? Or the air could be escaping through an invisible opening. How was she to know what was wrong with the god-damn tire?

A shadow fell over her. "Do you need help?"
Cecilia blinked.  The street lamp behind the  stranger obscured his face,
..<~~.
," . ;.
..~  .-   -"
114 • DAiNA   CHAVIANO

There were no seats left, but the carpet looked new and clean. Cecilia sat down near the door with Lauro.

"Do you believe how he always manages to make trouble wherever he goes?" Lauro whispered into her ear. ''When I was in Cuba, he got two of my friends into a fight because ... " He trailed off. "Oh, I can't believe it! Is that Gerardo?"

He leaped up and shot toward the other side of the room. Cecilia laid her purse on the empty spot, but a few seconds later Lauro motioned to her that he would stay where he was.

The old woman began her lectureby reading from several texts in which Marti spoke of the soul's return after death to pursue its evolutionary apprenticeship. Then she quoted a poem that seemed to attribute her coun-try's suffering to the law of karma, as if the extermination of the indigenous people and the killings of the black slaves demanded a purge, a reincarna-tion of those souls in the future. Cecilia listened, astonished. It seemed that the apostle of Cuban independence was practically a spiritualist.

When  the  lecture  was  over,  she  tried  to  approach  the  old  woman,  but the  throngs  of people  waiting  to  speak  to  her  seemed  greater  than  those who  had been listening.  She  gave  up  and  went  over to  the  counter where ,"Lisa.' was  waiting  on  customers.   She  couldn't  get  near  her,   either.   She

decided to wait and explore the bookshelves"

Miami had become an enigma. She was starting to suspect that a kind of spirituality remained, which the elders had lovingly tried to rescue from the sacrificial pyre: the glow was just hidden in forgotten little comers of the city, often far from the beaten path. Maybe the city was a time cap-sule, an attic where the remains of a splendid past were stored, waiting to return to their place of origin. She thought about Gaia's theory of a city's multiple souls.

"Listen, girl, I've been talking to you for half an hour and you're not even looking at me," Lauro huffed indignantly.

''What?''

"Don't even dream of making me tell you the whole story again. What's the matter with you?'

"I'm thinking."

"Yeah, about everything but my story." "Miami isn't what it seems."

"What's that  supposed  to  mean?"
THE  ISLAND  _,   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      113

influenced by those old folks who insisted that in Cuba everything tasted different, smelled different, looked different . . . as if the island were para-dise and she was on another planet. She tried to shake off those thoughts. If her island had once been a paradise, now it was cursed-and curses weren't to be carried in one's heart. At least not in hers.

Exhausted, she opened her eyes. The halo diminished without disap-pearing altogether. She stood up and turned on the light. The plant, no longer a phosphorescent specter, became, again, an ordinary potted palm. Had she really seen something? She felt like an idiot.

"Luckily no one  saw me,"  she  saiato herself.

She looked at her watch. In one hour the fourth lecture of the series would begin. She dragged the plant back to its place and turned out the light, then went to her room. She didn't stay long enough to witness the silver clarity still floating around the leaves.



Lauro grumblingly went with her, disappointed at his change of plans for the evening. When they arrived at the bookstore, some forty people buzzed around like frantic bees.

.' •"That gossipy bitch ..." Lauro muttered, pulling her to the other side of the room and surreptitiously pointing at a young man who was chatting with two women. "I don't want him anywhere near me."

"Hi, Lisa," Cecilia said. The girl turned around. "Oh, hi! How're you doing?"

"I brought my tape recorder today. There's a place over there where-" "I'm sorry, Ceci. We can't talk today, either."

"But I've been leaving you messages for three weeks. I came to the last two lectures but I didn't see you there."

"Sorry, I was sick, and I still don't feel good. If not for a friend who's been helping me out ..."

A commotion by the door announced the speaker's arrival. At first Cecilia couldn't differentiate her from the group that had just walked in. To her surprise, an ancient woman, nearing the century mark, made her way to the table with the microphone, barely supporting herself on her cane.

"I'll see you later," whispered Lisa  as  she walked away.
112      •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

"God!" exclaimed Lauro, glancing at his watch. "Let's get the check. We've been here nearly an hour, and I still have three articles to translate."

"We've got time."

"And I need to call the travel agency about the cruise. I wouldn't want to miss seeing the wall come down for anything in this world."

"The wall that was  about to fall  has  already fallen."

"I'm talking about the Malec6n wall. When the old Roman lands in Havana in his filmy whites, you'll see what an uproar there'll be on the island."

"Nothing's going to happen."

"Dream on, but I want to be in the front row when the trumpets of Jericho sound."

"Unless there are Chinese comets at the carnival, I don't know what you'll hear on that island full of lunatics."



The sun was setting. Half an hour after arriving home, she was ready for her exercises. She began turning off the lights until she walked in shad-

ows,  where  objects  were  barely  distinguishable.  It  was  what  she  needed.
*'
.. Or,  at least,  it was what Melisa had recommended at her lecture.

She dragged the dwarf palm from its comer and positioned it against the wall. She sat down a few steps away from the flowerpot, closed her eyes, and tried to compose herself. Then she peeked out from beneath her half-open lids and observed the plant without really staring at it. She recalled the instructions clearly: "To look without seeing, as though you're not interested in what's before you." She thought she could discern a milky outline around the leaves. "It might be an illusion," she mused. The halo grew. It seemed to be beating gently. In, out, in, out ... like a heart made of light. Could this be the aura of a living being?

She closed her eyes once more. When she opened them again, a lunar radiance surrounded the palm, but it clearly didn't come from an external source. It flowed from the leaves, from the fine, delicate trunk that bent in reverence, even from the earth where its roots were anchored. Cuba, her homeland, her island.... Why was she remembering it now? Because of that milky luminescence? In her mind's eye, she saw the moon over the sea at Varadero, over the fields of Pinar del Rio.... The moon shone differ-ently there, she thought, as though it were alive. Or perhaps she had been
\.
\














CUBAN     NIGHT













/
I'
I








The most beautiful men in the world passed through South Beach. She and Lauro had escaped from the newspaper office to have lunch in an area filled with boutiques and open-air cafes.

As she devoured her arugula, blue cheese, and walnut salad, she thought

about  her  strange   destiny:   without  parents   or  siblings,   she  languished

~'
:rIone in a city where she never imagined herself. It wasn't so unusual, then, that she'd gone for those aura classes. After the first one, she returned for a second, and then a third.... Lauro made fun of her, saying that a boyfriend would cure her of that quirk. She ignored him, although deep down, she wondered ifhe was right. Couldn't she just be inventing some-thing esoteric in order to block out more earthly needs?

She was still busy with her salad when Lauro, bored with waiting, opened the newspaper.

"Look," he said. "Since you're into mysticism, this might interest you." He handed her the page.

"What am I  supposed to  look at?"

The young man pointed to an ad before returning to his reading. It was an announcement of another lecture at Atlantis, Lisa's shop: "Marti and Reincarnation." She nearly laughed at its audacity.

"Want to  go?"  she  asked.

"No, I've got better offers for the evening." "Your loss."

A waiter took away the empty plates,  and  another brought coffee.





















To  stay in  China:


In  Cuba,  when  someone says,   "So-and-so  stayed in  China, "  it

doesn't  mean  that  the person  decided to  remain  in  that country,  but

,.'   rather that he  understood nothing of what he saw  or heard.
The  expression probably originates with  the poor communication

or confusion  that newly  arrived Chinese  immigrants experienced,

without any  knowledge  of the  language  and confronted with  a

culture  so  different from  the  one  they  left behind.
\ '.
\



















Part   Three



CITY     OF     ORAOLES





..'
106      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

sang the old black woman in a muffled voice, while the woman started to laugh gendy and move in a strange, voluptuous dance.

The girl felt a tickling sensation between her legs. Secretly she wished the honey would drip on her as well, mixing with the dew that dampened the city and its inhabitants. She wanted to lose herself in the same trance that held the woman, laughing madly and shaking her hips with an earthy shudder.

Miz Ceci withdrew. Now the ancestral African voice had acquired a sensual, agitated rhythm, like the galloping of a beast. The naked woman bent over, moaning.

"She's yours,  Leonardo,"  Dona  Cecilia said.

A figure emerged from the shadows. Mercedes immediately recognized the man who had frightened them. The woman turned her back on the approaching man, and for the first time, the girl saw her mother's face. The man rubbed up against her, but this time, instead of rejecting him, her mother welcomed his caresses.

The patio suddenly began to spin around Mercedes, and everything grew darker than the night. The moon disappeared, and the world as well.
... Leonardo  took  Caridad's  naked  body  in  his  arms  and  led  her  into  a

."nearby room. The night throbbed to the incessant chanting. Dofia Cecilia opened the door to the patio, where she found the girl unconscious. She understood instandy what had happened. Lifting Mercedes, she carried her to bed. She looked for water in the washbasin, but there wasn't any left. She remembered the jar of honey she had left by the door and went searching for it. Taking a bit on her finger, she moistened the child's tem-ples and lips. The pungent sweetness of the oiii appeared to revive her.

"It seems you've been dreaming," Dona Cecilia told her when her eyes met the girl's. "You fell out of bed."

Mercedes said nothing. She closed her eyes so she might be left alone, and that was exacdy what Dona Cecilia did.

As soon as the door closed, she sat up in bed and discovered the pitcher of honey. Without thinking, she stuck her hand in the jar. Outside, the drums continued worshiping the orisha of love, while Mercedes anointed all the nooks and crevices of her body with honey. Oiii for her burning, fire for her impatience.... She had been pierced by OshUn's spell.
THE  ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      105

"Why didn't I think of it before? Do you know who your ruling orisha is?

"Oshun, I  think."

"Let me make an offering to her. You'll see how you'll lose your fear of men."

Caridad hesitated for a few seconds. She didn't know whether to con-tinue refusing or to let the woman do with her as she pleased. Caridad didn't believe that any orisha could take away her scruples, but she said nothing. Perhaps the ceremony would give her a few more days to decide

. what to  do.  Though one thing worried her.

"I don't want Mechita to find out anything." "We'll do it at midnight, when she's asleep."



But Mercedes didn't sleep that night. A monotonous, pulsing thrum drove away the dreaminess that had begun to settle on her eyelids. She slipped from her bed and saw that her mother's was empty. Carefully she opened the door, but all she saw was the gleam of the moon bathing
the  deserted patio.  Following the  sound,  she  advanced  along the  corridor
•
-until she reached a window that shielded a flickering, yellowish light. In a comer, a toothless old woman was rocking to the rhythm of her own chant while Miz Ceci poured an oily liquid over a naked woman's head. The piercing smell of honey assaulted her nostrils. The oni, as her mother called it, the same word her slave grandmother had used, was making her skin glow.

"Oshun Yeye Mor6, queen of queens, I pour this honey over the body of your daughter, and I pray in your name to let her serve you," said Miz Cecilia, walking around and around the motionless figure. "She wants to be strong; she wants to be free to love without commitments. And so I implore you, Oshun Yeye Karl, free her from embarrassment, render her fearless and without shame."

The candle flames flickered in an invisible breeze, as if someone had opened a side door. The woman, who until that moment had remained still, seemed to tremble with a chill and slid her hands down her thighs, spreading the oni. Despite the moon twinkling over her from outside the window, Mercedes couldn't see the woman's face.

"Oshishe iwaaa ma, oshishe iwaaa ma omode ka sire ko bara bi 10 sooo .  . ."

1   •   ~

. \
.   ,,~;

l:












/'





104      •     DAiNA  GHAVIANO

and at the end it turns out he's my half brother. How perverse! Finally, the rich boy pays with his life, because a jealous black man shoots him outside a church just when he's about to marry an aristocratic woman. I go crazy and end up in a madhouse.... How can writers make up such nonsense?" She furrowed her brow, lost in thought. "I've always thought they must be half out of their minds."

"Did you ever see him again?"

"Don Cirilo? I ran into him by chance one day. He'd been in prison, I think for some political scandal, and he left the country, but he returned after being pardoned. It seems he considered me the great love of his life, even though we never even exchanged a single kiss. He wouldn't let me leave until I gave him my address. And would you believe he came to the brothel several times, asking for me?"

"Did you see him?"

''Not on your life. I had already told the story to the previous owner, who was even more frightened than I was. Every time he showed up, she told him I was busy. I never wanted to get mixed up with lunatics," she sighed. "But one day we bumped into each other on the street, and I felt
..sorry for  him.  And  so  I  accepted his  invitation to  dinner.  He  came  to  see

." me before he left for New York. Then he returned to Havana a few times, always bringing me flowers or candy, as if! were a great lady. The last time was three years ago. He was more than eighty, and he still knocked on the door of this house with a bouquet of roses."

"Did he  go  back to  New York?"

"Yes, and he died almost immediately after.... But life is strange. Do you remember that young man who came up to us when we arrived at this house?"

"Yes."

"His name is Leonardo, just like the white gentleman in the novel. A few days after Don Cirilo died, he showed up at my door. He wanted me to take care of him, but at my age, I'm not up to those tasks. He's come around several times already, and he always leaves furious at my rejec-tions. The other girls don't interest him at all. Sometimes I think he's Don Cirilo's ghost, or a curse he left me with that novel of his.... Well, now he's become obsessed with you."

Emerging from her trance, Dona Cecilia smacked herself in the fore-head.
..':~rt~ to ~

1   ,.


THE  ISLAND  _/'  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      103

I haven't used this room in months, and I'm losing money. I've already got two girls interested in it."

"As soon as I get a job, I'll pay you for the room. People need maids ..."

"No one wants other people's children in their homes," Dona Cecilia assured her.

Caridad looked at her, terrified. "I could . . . I could . . ."

"I'm  offering you  something  I  don't  offer  anyone:  choosing your  own

.clients....  Believe me,  that'll raise. your price."

"I don't know,"  she  stammered.  "Let me think about it."

"Don't be afraid. I've spent my whole life in this profession. It's not as bad as they say."

"Your whole life?" "Since I was a child."

"How?" she asked skeptically.  "How did it happen?"

"I lived near La Loma del Angel, and I used to play half-naked in the streets, with no house and no family, surviving however I could. I was start-ing to develop breasts, but I didn't realize it. A woman picked me up and ~tdmy virginity for a fortune, and here I am: I'm not dead yet," she laughed softly. "Imagine, it's worked out so well for me that I'm even in a novel."

"In a novel?" Caridad repeated, not quite understanding how a person could really be in a novel.

"When I was still running around the streets, I was discovered by a lawyer who had left his practice in order to become a professor. Whenever he saw me, he would call me over and give me a few coins or candies. I think he fell in love with me, even though I was only twelve and he must have been around thirty. After they took me to the brothel, I stopped see-ing him, but later I found out through a client that the professor had writ-ten a novel and that the heroine had my name."

"He wrote your story?"  Caridad asked,  suddenly interested.

"Of course not! He didn't know the first thing about me. His Cecilia Valdes and I only shared a name and the fact that we were both from La Loma del Angel."

"Did you read the novel?"

"A client told me about it. My God! The things Don Cirilo invented! Imagine, in the novel I was an innocent girl, seduced by a rich white boy,
102      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

A man,  spotting them from  across the  street,  crossed over.

"How much for your stuff, honey?" he asked, leaning over toward Caridad.

For the first time since the fire, Caridad reacted. She gave the man a shove that nearly knocked him down. He, in tum, lurched toward her as if he were about to strike her, but Miz Ceci intervened.

"We're not open at this hour, Leonardo. And she's not for sale." Cecilia's haughty attitude was enough to make the man tum back. "I'm sorry," Cecilia muttered, opening the door.

Caridad hesitated a few seconds before finally crossing the threshold. Once inside, she saw no living room or dining room but rather an enor-mous patio framed by four covered corridors with doors along their entire length. Several intimate feminine garments rested on haphazard furniture. And then it came to her how she had met that woman.

"So the soaps ... ?" she began, not knowing what to ask. Dona Cecilia gazed at her for a few seconds.

"I thought you  knew,"  she said.  "I own a brothel."



.-She had no choice. It was either the street or the bordello. Dona Ceci let her move into the last empty room, which had been recently vacated by a pupil who disappeared without a trace. Every afternoon, mother and daughter locked themselves in their room. Only in the morning would Caridad allow the child to play outside on the patio, while she worked as the brothel's maid. But Cecilia already had a woman to do the cleaning. Caridad took advantage of her every slip, sweeping, washing any clothing that was left around, or cleaning a little. The woman, fearful of losing her job, complained to Dona Ceci.

"Why don't you do some real work?" she suggested one afternoon. "I'll let you choose your clients. I can tell you come from a different sort of background and aren't used to this."

"I could never do  it."

''You're prettier than all the others. Do you realize what you could earn?" "No," Caridad repeated. "Besides, what kind of example would I be

setting for my daughter? She's practically a young lady now." Cecilia sighed.

"I'm sorry to have to  tell you this, but ifyou don't work, you can't stay.
THE  ISLAND  if   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      101

sidewalk, unable to comprehend what possible relationship might exist between him and the disaster. At last he sighed and, seeing that there was nothing else to be done, turned and walked away.


Miz Ceci woke up feeling very perky. The eternal summer heat that always put her in such a foul mood had finally broken. At home, everyone was asleep. She decided to use her early-morning vigor to visit La Flor de Montserrat and place her usual order. She ignored the empty carriages

. that passed beside her, preferring towalk. It was delicious to stroll in the fresh air, enjoying that cool breeze, refreshing as a hailstorm. At her sixty-odd years of age, she barely looked fifty, and some even took her for a woman of forty or so. She had an alluring presence that was the envy of many twenty-year-olds. In a land where beauty abounded, she was a para-gon ofloveliness.

She stepped lightly, skirting the puddles that dotted the paving stones. Long before she arrived, the air began to bring Cecilia a whiff of some-thing ominous. She ignored it until she turned the comer and came upon
the disaster. For a few seconds she regarded the remains ofthe fire, shocked
,-
.and motionless. Then she saw the two crouching figures in front of the building and approached them almost furtively.

"Dona Caridad," Cecilia whispered, not daring to wish her good morning.

The woman lifted her eyes but couldn't muster a response. Only when she was able to look at her old house again did she manage to mutter: "There's no soap today."

Cecilia bit her lip and observed the youngster, still clinging to her mother.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" Caridad shook her head.

Cecilia gestured toward a carriage that was parked on the comer. "Let's go," she said, bending to help her. "You can't stay here." Without resisting, Caridad allowed herself to be guided to the coach.

Miz Ceci shouted out an address, and the coachman spurred his horses, which started running toward the sea, but they stopped short. After a few blocks, they turned off to the left and came to a halt in a deserted area.
'0;t
.-;




100      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

picked up the kerosene lamp. It was still dark inside the house, although the streets were growing bright with a gleam that left a golden halo on everything. In that glow, the city seemed like a ghostly vision. The tropical light impregnated the island with its magic, something the inhabitants barely noticed, too absorbed in their own problems ...

And Caridad's main problem was her daughter, a child who was eager to find out everything but was strangely silent. The woman never knew what thoughts were passing behind those eyes in wbich-ab, yes!-there shone the same passion that had once filled her father's gaze.

Caridad placed the kerosene lamp on the ground and bent down to light the wood stove to heat some water. She watched as the flames licked the reddening coals, until they grew white-hot and finally turned gray. She was contemplating that metamorphosis when some fingers brushed her shoulders. Thinking her daughter had awakened, she turned around. The image of her husband, chest destroyed by machete blows and his face streaked with blood, rose before her. She screamed and drew back, knock-ing the kerosene lamp into the flames. The metal burst in the fire, and the fuel intensified the flames, which leaped from their stone enclosure, ignit-

ing  the  kitchen  walls  and  singeing  her  legs.  For  a  few  desperate  seconds
*.
. . ' she tried to put out the flames, swatting at them with a piece of cloth she had found nearby, but the fire grew, fed by the dry wood.

"Mercedes!" she shouted, running to the room where her daughter slept. "Mercedes!"

The child, not understanding what was happening, opened her huge, frightened eyes.

"Get out of bed!" Caridad roared, pulling off the sheets. "The house is on fire!"

By the time the firemen arrived, La Flor de Montserrat was a pile of smoking ruins. The neighbors stared at in horror and fascination. Many women went over to Caridad, offering her water, coffee, and even little sips of liquor to boost her spirits, but she could do no more than stare emptily at the remains of her greatest wealth.

At midday she was still there, sitting on the edge of the pavement, rock-ing with her hands wrapped around her legs, while her daughter stroked her hair, cradling Caridad against her chest. And that's how the notary found them, with a quick glance at the rubble and the two huddled on the











FORGIVE     ME,    CONSCIENCE








Caridad looked out the window and watched the first passersby. Dawn left a trace of dampness on the wooden windowsill. It was her last day in that house where she had arrived with so much hope, dreaming that her life would be different and imagining many outcomes, but none like this one.
After Florencio's burial,  she returned to the  store, ready to forge  ahead

.wIth the business. Although she didn't know her numbers and could barely recognize a few letters, she did her best to keep the import-export business afloat, but the selection of products dwindled quite a bit without her deceased husband's bargaining expertise. Besides, the suppliers didn't seem to respond to her demands as they had done to Florencio's. She had to find a go-between, but still it wasn't the same.

She might have been able to stay, eking out a meager living, or perhaps even trying to develop the business, but at last she decided to leave for a reason she would never confess aloud to anyone: her husband's specter pursued her. Every so often, she heard his footsteps. Other times she felt his breath behind her, on the back of her neck. Or his scent would reach her, carried by the wind. A few nights she noticed her mattress sinking beneath the weight of a body in bed beside her.... She couldn't bear it, and she decided to sell. With the money she would buy another place and start a new business. Maybe a store specializing in items for ladies.

The morning ofthe sale, she got up earlier than usual. The notary would arrive at noon in order to have her sign some papers. Shivering with cold-the tropical winter, which can be wet and piercing, was approaching-she
'"


98      •     DAINA  CHAVIANO

"Sorry,  I  didn't recognize you in those clothes."

"I'll get the room ready," Lisa said, disappearing behind a curtain. "Can I ask you a question?" said Cecilia when they were alone. Melisa nodded slightly.

"The day we met, you said I had a shadow on my aura." "You still do."

"But you never told me what I should do about it." "Because I don't know."

Cecilia stared  at her in astonishment.

"Really, I have no idea. With auras, it's a matter of energies, sensa-tions.... You can't always be sure. Why don't you stay for my lecture? Who knows-it might help you later on."

Cecilia didn't believe in it, but she stayed because she had nothing else to do. Besides, she needed to speak to the owner about her article. And so she learned in the course of the lecture that people emit all kinds of vibrations. According to Melisa, anyone could give off-eonsciously or otherwise-harmful or healing charges toward others. With appropriate training, it was possible to perceive these energies and also to protect oneself. There were many tools for channeling energy: water, crystals, sharp objects like

."daggers, swords, or shepherd's crooks.... At her next lecture, those who were interested could practice some exercises to see their auras. That was one of the first steps toward recognizing the presence of a psychic episode.

Later on, at home, as she listened to Bob and Gaia's recorded testimo-nies, a spark of intuition-perhaps passed down from her grandmother Delfina-suggested to her that she shouldn't reject anything in her inves-tigation, not even a bizarre talk like that one. Recently her points of refer-ence seemed to coincide, as if everything were connected. Besides, who was she to doubt? Her grandmother had been a sibyl, after all.

For a moment she thought of Amalia. What would she have thought of all those auras and energies? Cecilia had no idea what really went on in that woman's mind. She had barely even spoken to her of anything that wasn't connected to Amalia's story. She listened with the hope that some episode would spill over into her own life. That's why she kept returning to the bar. Those reminiscences had become her vice. The more she found out, the more she wanted to know. It was impossible to avoid Amalia's enchantment. And tonight, she told herself, would be no exception.
\,-,


THE  ISLAND  ,./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      97

"What did she tell you?"  Lauro  asked.

For a moment Cecilia watched the figure withdraw. "I'm not sure," she muttered.



She   stared  at  the  display  window  from  the  sidewalk:  pyramids,  tarot
decks,  quartz  crystals,  Tibetan bells,  incense from  India,  crystal  balls  . . .
and,  like  the  absolute  monarch  of  such  a  mystical  kingdom,  a  coppery
Buddha with a diamond-shaped eye in his forehead.  All around him hung
webs fitted inside rings with danglingfeathers:  dream catchers. The Navajo
placed them over their beds in order to trap benevolent visions and destroy
nightmares.
She  pushed  the  door  open  to  the  jangling  of bells.  Immediately  she
smelled a scent that stuck to her hair like  the  sweetest molasses.  Inside,  it
was frigid  and fragrant.  Fairy music filled  the  air.  Atop  a counter,  colored
stones  squeaked  like  insects  as  two  women  rubbed  them  together.  One
woman was  a customer;  the other Cecilia figured for the owner.
Silently, so as not to cause a disturbance, Cecilia investigated the shelves
filled with books:  astrology, yoga, reincarnation, Kabbalah,  theosophy ...
..
-Finally the customer at the counter chose three stones, paid for them, and left.
"Hi,"  Cecilia  said.
) "Good moming.  How can I help you?"

"My name is  Cecilia.  I'm a  journalist,  and I'm writing an article about
a phantom house."
"I know.  Gaia  called me.  But today's not good because in a little while
there's going to be a lecture,  and I  have to finish up  a few things first."
The  doorbells  jingled.  A  couple  waved  as  they  came  in  and  headed
toward the  theosophy corner.
"Why  don't  you  phone  me  and  we'll  get  together  some  other  time?"
Lisa  suggested.
"When?"
"I  can't  tell  you  right  now.  You  can  call  me  tomorrow  or ...  Oh,  hi!
How great you're here!"
Melisa had  just arrived.
"How are you?"  Cecilia greeted her.
At  first  Melisa  looked  at  her  as  if she  were  a  stranger,  and  then  she
raised her eyes  and stood looking at the  air above  her head.
96      •      DAiNA   GHAVIANO

"If that's the case, there's no need to worry," Freddy assured them as he approached. "Those people believe things come back in threes. So the last thing they want is to do harm. They're even careful with their thoughts."

"A witch is a witch. They have all those weird energies around them. Ifyou don't watch out, you might be struck by lightning just from being close."

"For God's  sake!"  Freddy exclaimed.  "How ignorant!"

Cecilia didn't pay them any attention. Slowly she approached the kiosk where the girl was bargaining with the artisan.
"Can I ask you something?" Melisa turned around.
"Uh-huh. "

"Why do you need  a shepherd's  crook?"

"It's a long story, but if you're interested"-she looked in her purse and pulled out a card-"come see me at this address on Friday. We're starting a class.... "
There was a name on the card-Atlantis-and under that a list ofprod-

ucts:  books  on mysticism,  candles,  incense,  quartz  crystals,  music  ...

"What a coincidence!"  Cecilia exclaimed.
~. "Why?"  she  questioned  with  a  distracted  expression,  taking  out  some
.' money to pay with.

"A few days ago someone told me to go see lisa, the owner of that book-store. I'm a reporter and I'm looking for information about a house-"

"You have a shadow on your aura," the girl interrupted. "What?"

Melisa finished paying.

"You have a shadow on your aura," she repeated, but she didn't look her in the eye, appearing to focus instead on something floating above her. "You should protect yourself."

"With something you can sell me at your class?" Cecilia asked, unable to mask her sarcasm.

"The protection you need can't be bought. It's something you have to do in here," she answered, and touched her temple with her finger. "I don't want to scare you, but something bad will happen to you ifyou don't start with what's inside your head. "

She turned and plunged into the crowd. Leaning on her staff, she looked like a druid enchantress about to embark on a journey as her tunic fluttered around her body.
THE  ISLAND  ,/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      95

"And they hold it in an enchanted forest!" Lauro interrupted. "There are lovely things there: even a medieval joust where the knights charge at each other on horseback, like King Arthur's. Ifyou saw them take off their armor, you'd have a heart attack."

But Cecilia wasn't listening anymore. Her attention turned to a stand full of little wooden boxes.

"Melisa!"

Lauro's cry shook her from her trance. A young woman turned toward them.

"Laureano!"

"Girl, don't call me that," he whispered, looking all around. "Did you change your name?"

"Here I'm Lauro," he said, adding in a throaty voice, "but my closest friends call me La Lupe: 'It's over, our love is gone. ... It's over, I swear it's true. ... '"

The  stranger burst out laughing.

"Melisa, this is Cecilia," Lauro said. "Do you know Freddy?" "I don't think so."

"Sure  you  do,  girl,"  Freddy  reminded  her.   "Edgar  introduced  us  in

.H.'tivana. I'll never forget because you looked divine in that white dress. And when you read your poems, we all practically fainted...."

"I think I remember," said Melisa. "What are you doing here?"

"I always come to buy things." She looked down at the two shepherd's crooks she held. "I don't know which one to get."

"Don't you like this one?" Cecilia interjected, offering her a different one. For the first time, Melisa fixed her gaze on her.

"I've  already tried it-it's no good."

She turned her back,  still holding both staffs.

''Well, I'm almost tempted to buy it," Cecilia insisted. "It looks so pretty." "What it looks like doesn't matter," the other girl replied. "The crook I
need has  to feel  different."

Lauro pulled Cecilia toward a stand farther down the walkway. "Don't argue with her," he whispered.

"Why not?"

"She's a witch. Has been ever since she lived in Cuba. Celtic magic, or something like that. Be careful."
\.















DESTINY    PROPOSES








Freddy and Lauro had dragged their friend to see the Renaissance fair that was held every year at Vizcaya Palace. Tugging her from one kiosk to another, they made her try on all sorts of clothing until they managed to transform her look into-according to them-something worthy of the

event.  Now the young woman walked among artisans  and fortune-tellers,
{

. 'letting the breeze whip her Gypsy skirt against her legs. On her head she wore the wreath of flowers that Freddy had crowned her with.

The revelry was contagious. Children and adults alike showed off their masks and brightly colored costumes; harp music floated in the air; trou-badours meandered among the fountains with their mandolins, flutes, and drums; and Cecilia rubbed elbows with princesses who wandered through the perfectly trimmed gardens. The masquerade also included the vendors and craftsmen. Here, a blacksmith hammered a horseshoe over the coals of his forge; there, a fat, smiling weaver spun on a wheel that looked like it came from a Perrault fairy tale; farther down, an old man with a silvery beard and a Merlin-like expression sold shepherd's crooks inlaid with semiprecious stones and minerals: quartz for clairvoyance, onyx to com-bat psychic attacks, amethyst to learn of past lives . . .

"Where have I been all this time, and why didn't I know about this?" Cecilia murmured.

"On the moon," Lauro replied, trying on a feather-accented hat. "And imagine, you haven't even seen the Broward Fair," Freddy com-

mented.  "It's much bigger."
\



THE  ISLAND  e/   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      93

downstairs to their stateroom. Juan struggled a bit with the rusty lock of their modest room. Then he stepped aside to let her pass. Angela groaned.

''What's wrong?" he asked, afraid that her labor had begun. ''Nothing,'' she whispered, closing her eyes to erase the vision.

But her ploy didn't work. When she opened them again, Martinico was still sitting amid the jumbled clothes, mischievously covering his head with her best mantilla.















..
92      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

"It's just for a little while. We'll save some money and then we'll come back."

"But how will I get by alone in a foreign country? I need someone who knows about children."

"Mama will come with us. She always says she'd like to see her brother before she dies."

Angela sighed, almost defeated. "I'll have to talk to my parents."

The news struck them like a bolt of lightning, and Juan couldn't say much to comfort them. Pedro himself had spoken to his wife about the possibility of moving to the city, but Dona Clara wouldn't hear of it. And now, suddenly, they discovered that not only would they be separated from their daughter but that they wouldn't even see the birth of their grandchild. They were only slightly comforted when they learned that Luisa would accompany them. At least their daughter would not be alone during the delivery.

Among the six of them, they packed all the necessities. Since the jour-ney to the coast was long and Juan didn't want his in-laws to make the

return  trip  alone,  he  convinced  them  to  say  good-bye  right  there.  With

{'
."tears and advice, they all said their farewells. The memory of her parents' silhouette at the edge of that dusty trail ending at their door would never leave Angela. It would be her last image of them.



From the stern of the ship, she watched the horizon disappear. Lost in the mist of the gray waters, her home looked like a fairyland, with its little towers and medieval palaces, its reddish roofs and the bustling port that now faded away.

The young woman remained on deck for a long time, together with Juan and Dona Luisa. Her husband chattered endlessly, making plans for their new life. He seemed eager to take on something new, and he had heard so much about the Americas, a mythical place where everyone could get rich.

"I'm cold," Angela  complained.

"Go with her, Juanco," Dona Luisa encouraged. "I'll stay here a little while."

Lovingly,   he  bundled  her  up   in  her  shawl,   and  together  they  went
THE  ISLAND  _/  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      91

to finish building their new home, with the help of a few villagers, on an empty parcel ofland near her parents' house. While the men busied them-selves cutting, planing, and nailing boards, the women helped the bride with her trousseau, spinning and weaving all sorts of tablecloths, curtains, bed linens, and rugs.

The first few months of wedded life were idyllic. For some reason Martinico disappeared again. Perhaps, understanding that there was some-one more important in her life now, he had retreated to a remote comer of the mountain range. She didn't miss him. He was an ill-mannered imp who only made trouble, and he soon faded from her memory. Besides, other problems were beginning to arise.

On the one hand, worms were devouring the crops in the area, and Juanco racked his brains trying to think of a solution. As if that weren't enough, Angela surprised him on several occasions reading a mysterious piece of paper that he hid every time she came near. Who could be writing to her husband? And why so much secrecy? Besides, her own health seemed to be declining. She was always tired, and she vomited all the time. She didn't say anything to her mother because she didn't want her to call in a healer again. Only when she noticed that the laces on her dress

.barely closed did she suspect what was going on.

"Now we'll really have to do it," Juan said on hearing the news. "Do what?"

The man took the wrinkled paper from his pocket and held it out to her.

"What's that?"  she  asked,  without trying to  read it.

"A letter from Uncle Manolo. He's written me several times, saying he needs an assistant. He wants us to go there."

"Where?"

"To America."

"It's very far away," the young woman replied, stroking her belly. "I don't want to travel in this condition."

"Listen to me, Angelita. The harvest is lost, and we have no money to replant. Many of the neighbors have already moved away or are starting new businesses. I don't think there'll be any more saffron around here. We could move farther south, but I have no money and no one to lend me any. Uncle Manolo is offering a good opportunity."

"I can't leave my parents."
90      •      DAiNA  CHAVIANO

"There's something I want more than anything."

"Tell me--" he began to say, but he cut himself short, as something behind her caught his eye.

She  turned  around.  Standing  by  the  entrance  to  the  cave,  Martinico

leaped about,  making grotesque faces  and carrying on behind her back.

"I can't believe it!" Angela groaned. "I thought you had gone to hell!" She bit her tongue, looking at the old man from the comer of her eye,

but he seemed to take no offense. On the contrary, he asked with genuine astonishment:

"Can you see him?"

"Of course I can! It's a curse." "You can get rid of it."

"And would you help  me  do  something else?"

"I can help you with only one thing. Although if one of your descen-dants should ever need me, even without knowing about our pact, I could offer him whatever he wanted ... twice."

"Why?"

"It's the law."
.."What law?"
.'     "Orders from  above."

Apparently, there existed a power stronger than the mountain gods. And now it had restricted her choices.

Tom, she watched Martinico's antics and thought about those eyes awaiting her in the foothills of the mountains.

"All right,"  she  decided.  "I'll have to  keep  living with my curse."

"I don't understand," he replied. ''What could be better than getting rid of that?"

And the girl told the god Pan about the pain of a soul that has discov-ered its own soul.



Juan assured her that he had loved her from the moment he saw her, but she suspected that his conviction was a creation of the exiled god-the perfect work of an ancient spirit. Every month she visited the cave to leave him honey and wine, confident that the old man would gobble up the treats with delight, although she never saw him again.

The courtship, however,  didn't last very long,  just long enough for Juan
, .
'...,..~

THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      89

Instinctively she opened her knapsack, looking for the pot of honey that was left over from breakfast, and offered it to him. The old man sniffed the contents and looked at her, surprised.

"It's been centuries since anyone offered me honey," he sighed. He stuck a finger into the syrup and sucked it with delight.

"Are you from around here?" Angela asked, more curious than terrified. The old man sighed again.

"I'm from everywhere, but my roots are in an archipelago that can be reached by crossing the sea," he said, and pointed toward the east.

"Did you arrive with the humans?" The old man shook his head.

"The humans threw me out, although not on purpose. It's more like they forgot about me.... And when people forget their gods, there's noth-ing to do but hide."

Angela began to feel a little tickle in her nose, the kind she often got when she felt confused. The spirits of the mountains-whose existence she had learned to accept after Martinko's arrival-were one thing, but the existence of multiple gods was quite another.
.."Isn't there only one God?"

.. "There are as many as humans want. They create us and they destroy us. We can endure loneliness, but not their indifference; it's the only thing that makes us mortal."

The girl suddenly felt sorry for that lonely god. "My name is Angela." She held out her hand. "Pan," he replied, extending his own.

"I haven't brought anything to cook with," she said, pointing to her knapsack.

"No, no!" the old man explained. "Pan is my name." The girl was dumbfounded.

"You should change it. You'll confuse everybody." ''No one remembers," he sighed.

"Remembers what?" The old man's face lit up.

"It doesn't matter. You've been very kind to me. I can help you with anything you want. I still have some powers left."

Angela's  heart  started to  beat wildly.
.,•'.
;-.....
"~.

88      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

had traversed hours earlier. She didn't want to frighten the good woman with the sight of a fairy combing her hair at the edge of a fountain. So she guided her in the opposite direction, toward a particularly woodsy area. They had walked for half an hour when Angela stopped short.

"I'll look on this side," the girl said. "There are a few caves behind that tree."

"All right, I'll look over here, but I'm warning you, I won't go more than twenty paces by myself. If I don't find anything, I'll wait for you right at this spot."

Each one took a different trait Angela walked a short distance and almost immediately stumbled upon a clump of ferns, still damp with dew. She gathered plenty for the widow and for herself. She had decided that just one fern wouldn't be enough to bring her what she so greatly needed now....

A whistle pierced the trees, and she stopped to listen. It wasn't a repeti-tive sound, like that of some ordinary mountain bird, but rather a harmo-nious, constant clamor, the fleeting cadence of a music she had never heard before. She turned her head to see where it was coming from and, possessed.. by a sudden urgency, went to search it out.

.. The melody echoed from rock to rock and from tree to tree, until it reached the entrance of a cave. There it burst forth with the cadences of a pristine, tumbling waterfall; a summer storm; ancient, chilly nights ...

Within that song vibrated the entire mountain range and all the creatures in it. Angela entered the cavern, unable to resist its call. At the back, beside the flames that illuminated the place, an old man was playing an instrument made of different-size reeds. The breath from his lips drew a wave of tones, bass and treble, tremulous and harsh. She gazed at the drawings adorning the rocky walls: enormous beasts of some remote time, with little human figures skittering around them. But she didn't move until the musician stopped playing and lifted his gaze.

"They're very  old,"  he  explained,  noting her interest.

Then he gestured as if he were trying to work the stiffness out of his legs. And she saw that he had the feet of a goat, and two little horns half hidden beneath his tangled hair. Even as she instantly recalled the story of the devil of the mountains, her intuition told her that this old man with hooves must be one of those creatures the lilac fairy had told her about.
THE  ISLAND./  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      87

lery around the table, which was occupied by men and a woman dressed in black.

"Angelita, do you remember Dona Luisa?" her father asked as soon as he saw her approaching.

The girl nodded, thinking to herself that she'd never seen her before. "This is Juan, her son."

"You can call him Juanco," the woman suggested. "That's what his father, may he rest in peace, used to call him, and that's what I call him too."

Angela turned toward the young man. A pair of dark eyes, like the bot-tom of a well, stared up at her, and she felt herself falling into that abyss.

The afternoon went by in discussions of the best way to dry the stigmas, how to fight off the worms that were eating the plants, how one farmer in the region was ruining the others' reputation by adding carbonate to his saffron, and scandals of that sort. The roast disappeared amid full glasses of red wine. The men continued drinking while the women, including the widow, went into the house with the dishes and leftover food.

" ... It's just that I want to do it before it gets dark," said Dona Luisa. "I wouldn't dare go alone right now, even though it's still afternoon."

.' •'''Angela can go with you," Clara said. "Let the boy stay with the men for a while... , Child, go with Dona Luisa and help her find some ferns."

For the first time, the girl seemed to emerge from her stupor. She remembered her hidden fern.

''What for?"

"Why do you think, child?" her mother reproved, lowering her voice. "Today is Saint John's Day."

"Those ferns cure constipation and fever for the rest of the year," Dona Luisa explained. "Come on, hurry-it's getting late."

Angela picked up her knapsack and followed the widow outside. "And you should gather some too," Dona Luisa advised her as she

walked away.  "They also bring love  and good luck."

Angela blushed, afraid that the woman had discovered what was already lodged in her heart, but the widow seemed absorbed in examining the shrubs that grew along the paths.

The  girl  guided her  down  a  trail  branching  off the  main  road  that  she
86      •      DAINA  CHAVIANO

The young lady smiled again.

"Yes, but it's not in your power to  offer it to  me."

"I know who you are," she whispered, tom between sadness and terror.

"Everyone knows who  I  am,"  the maiden replied impassively.

"Excuse me, but I'm a stranger around here.... Are there others like you?"

"Yes, but they live far away," the young woman continued, staring fixedly at her. "Here you can find £ther creatures that aren't human, either."

"Imps?" Angela ventured,  thinking of her Martinico.

"No. Some of them have been here since long before people arrived; others came with them. I'm a stranger myself, but I feel like a part of this place and can hardly remember my own." The young woman stretched her neck, apparently sniffing the air. ''Now go. I don't have much time left."

Angela didn't want to see what would happen to the maiden when her time ran out. She pulled out the fern, turned, and began her return trip without looking back.

If-

"Where were you, child?" Dona Clara scolded, standing by the fire-place, where she was roasting a quartered goat.

Angela hurriedly removed the flowers she had picked but, unsure what she would do with it later, hid the fern behind some jugs.

"Uncle Paco has a guest waiting to eat, and you're out wandering who-knows-where. Why did you take so long?" she repeated, and, without waiting for a reply, added: "Go serve the bread and wine. We've set the table under the arbor."

"How many are  we?"

"Let's see: Ana and Uncle Paco, two neighbors, the three of us, Dofia Luisa and her son."

"Dona Luisa?"

"The widow who  lives on the  outskirts  of town."

Angela shrugged. She had met many people since her arrival, but she had no memory for so many new faces. Before leaving, she picked up the bread basket and the carafe of wine. Dofia Ana distributed dishes and cut-
THE   ISLAND  _/  ETERNAL   LOVE      •      85

''You shouldn't walk around  these places."

"I've already been warned," Angela admitted, recalling Dofia Ana's words.

"A young girl is vulnerable to many dangers in these mountains." "You're young, too, but here you are, as large as life, combing your hair

in the woods."

The stranger stared at Angela for a few seconds before pronouncing: "Something's happening to you."

"To me?"

But the other girl just watched her, waiting for a response. Angela's feet idly brushed a dew-drenched fern.

"I don't even understand it myself," she finally admitted. "Sometimes I feel like crying, for no reason."

"Lovesickness. " "I'm not in love."

"Pick that fern and take it home," the girl recommended. "It will bring you luck."

"Are you  a witch?"

•  The stranger laughed, and her chirp was like the babbling ofthe streams

.that flowed down from the peaks. Angela felt a premonition as she noticed the comb that the young lady once again buried in her hair.

"I'll tell you something else," the maiden went on, studying the clouds that had begun to enshroud the morning. "Today is an especially dangerous day.... Did you bring any honey?"

"Do you want some? I've  got bread too."

"It's not for me. But ifyou meet anyone else, offer him whatever you've got with you."

"I've never refused  anyone  food."

"No one will ask you for anything; you're the one who has to offer first, today or any of these days of early summer." The maiden's eyes began to darken. "If you don't ... "

She stopped in mid-sentence, but Angela didn't want to hear any-thing that might frighten her even more. She had just noticed the strange limb peeking out from under the violet gauze tunic immersed in the foun-tain, an appendage that was quite different from the maiden's blushing complexion-a scaly green tail that twisted beneath the liquid surface.

"And you,"  Angela  added,  trembling,  "don't you need  anything?"
",f:-

"

,.   !  ~


84      •     DAINA  CHAVIANO

local legend, but she didn't bother to find out. No matter, she wasn't interested. Absorbed in her labors, she didn't even notice that the men had already returned home until her mother asked her to help take the roast out of the oven.


Every morning she listened to the quiet moaning of the mountains, as if some ancient suffering were burning there. In the afternoon, her chores concluded, she would wander around nearby in search of herbs for cook-ing, after loading her knapsack with bread, honey, and fruit that she would eat along the way. She walked along the barely trodden paths, losing her-self amid the multihued foliage of the mountain range. Little by little she felt her melancholy return: it was the same sadness she had suffered months earlier, but now it was fraught with anguish. Maybe it was the expectant silence of the forest. Or that omnipresent, constant, painful beating of her heart.

And so  several weeks went by.

One morning she slipped out of bed earlier than usual and decided to gq.out looking for herbs. All night long she had felt a peculiar anxiety, and now her chest throbbed as she climbed up toward an area she hadn't explored before.

Propelled by instinct, she climbed toward the cloud-darkened peak. The wind howled strangely, and soon she discovered where the sound came from: the air was playing in the cracks of a ruined turret next to a fountain. Exhausted from the ascent, she sat down to rest.

Despite summer's imminent arrival, the areas surrounding the moun-tain range radiated their morning chill. Angela lifted her head toward the sun to feel its rays, which were already wanning her face. Behind her, the swish of delicate gauze obscured the voice of the breeze. Startled, Angela turned around. Next to the fountain, a young woman, her feet submerged in the water, was combing her hair.

"Hello,"  said Angela.  "I didn't hear you coming."

''You didn't see me," the creature explained, without interrupting her toilette. "I was already here when you appeared on this path."

Angela didn't reply. She noticed the golden strands that fell over the stranger's shoulders and felt a stab of anxiety, but then the young woman finished her steady strokes and smiled at her.
\


THE  ISLAND  pI  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      83

room. Now sunlight streaked through the holes in the roof, and the morn-ing chill filtered through the paned windows.

Luckily, it was the slow season for fieldwork. The tiny shoots were just beginning to emerge, and all that needed to be done was to keep the weeds from choking the sprouting plants. Pedro, Uncle Paco, and two other locals were busy fixing up the house, while the women embroidered bed-spreads and curtains. Between stitches, Uncle Paco's wife, a plump villager with a red nose, informed Angela about regional customs and practices.

"Don't stray too far from the paths," Dona Ana warned her. "All sorts of creatures wander through these mountains.... And don't trust strang-ers, no matter how harmless they may seem! Heaven forbid you should go through something like what happened to poor Ximena.... She ran into the devil himself while he was playing his flute in the cave of the wall paintings, and ever since then she's been as crazy as a loon...."

Angela only half-listened, wondering intermittently what had become of Martinico. The imp hadn't returned since they passed through Ciudad Encantada, where they had stopped to rest awhile, fascinated by the beauty of the surroundings. The region owed its name to a group of rocks that had been carved by the water's ageless hand. Wandering among them was

.like strolling through a ghost town or through the gardens of some mythi-cal castle.

The imp Martinico, who had pursued them, making all sorts of noises and breaking branches with each step, fell as silent as death when they spied the outline of the peaks. At least, thought Angela, the vexing crea-ture wasn't indifferent to certain acts of God. Hours later, she noticed that he seemed to have vanished. She didn't take it too seriously, for she sus-pected he was probably exploring some of the niches-steps, slides, paths-that were so abundant there. Just two nights after arriving in Tor-relila, she realized she hadn't seen him again. Could she have finally got-ten rid of him forever? Maybe he was just an imp looking for a more beautiful place to live....

"... but she remains in that state for just a few hours," Dona Ana con-tinued, checking the edging of a flounce. "And so she keeps waiting for a young man to break her spell, and whoever does will marry her and earn great riches . . . and, some say, even immortality."

Angela  couldn't  tell  if the  woman  had  been  narrating  a  fairy  tale  or  a












SOUL    OF     MY    SOUL








The village was near Villar del Humo, slightly to the west, on the way to Carboneras de Guadazaon. It was like many other such places scattered throughout the Cuenca highlands, yet at the same time it was different. To begin with, it didn't even appear on the maps. Its inhabitants called it Tor-relila, although the name had no connection to the clusters of bluebells that spread through the foothills like a carpet leading to the river, nor did it have anything to do with the color ofthe crocuses that bloomed through-out the region.

Torrelila owed its name to a fairy. According to legend, she was a spirit older than the village itself, and she had resided in a spring for centuries. They called her "the Moor of the Fountain," and many people swore she could be seen on Saint John's Day, when she left her watery abode to sit alongside a partially crumbled watchtower, combing her hair. Some old women believed she was related to the Galici~n mouras, who also emerge to comb their hair on that day; others maintained she was a cousin of the Asturian xanas, denizens of creeks and rivers, who suffer the same obses-sion with grooming themselves. In any case, the fairy of the foothills wore a lilac-colored tunic, unlike her northern relatives, who dressed in white.

Angela knew nothing about this when she arrived in Torrelila, and even if she had known, it wouldn't have interested her in the least. She and her parents were too busy refurbishing the tiny dwelling located about a hun-dred paces from Uncle Paco's house. Years ago, the hut had been a storage
THE   ISLAND  "I      ETERNAL   LOVE      •      81

like an eccentric. She thought of the bar, where she had gone several times but where she had never danced, and the fact that it was so dark no one would even notice that she didn't know where to put her feet. Besides, among all those Swedes and Germans, who wouldn't recognize a gua-guanco if it bit them, she could practically be queen of the dance floor. But Amalia's story was so fascinating that she forgot everything else as soon as she arrived.

She started her car. There was still time to change clothes and hunker down at a table, a martini in her han.Q. She felt a tickle in her heart. Really, how important was her loneliness when all the past awaited her in an old woman's reminiscences?
80 • DAiNA  CHAVIANO
said  anything  about  it,  she  assumed  she  shouldn't  let  on.  But  when  she
grew  up  and  began  asking  questions,  she  realized  she'd  been  talking  to
people who  weren't real  ...  or rather,  who  weren't alive."
"And wasn't she scared?"
"The ones who were scared were Mama and Papa when she mentioned
'the   visitors.'   They  thought   she   was   crazy   or   making   things   up.   My
sister  tried  to  convince  them  otherwise  and  told  them  what  our  great-
grandparents  had  revealed  to  her  about  their  childhoods  ...  secrets  that
would've  been  impossible  for  Delfina  to   learn.   That's  what  frightened
them  even more."
Cecilia put her  cup  in the  sink.
"I   don't   know   why  we're   discussing   these   things,"   Lol6   muttered.
\ "Let's  go  into  the  living room. "
They  left  the  kitchen  and  headed  for  the  other  room,  where  they  sat
\
down beside the  open door.
"Tell me  about yourself,"  the  old lady asked.
"There's nothing to  tell."
"Impossible.  Such a pretty young girl must have boyfriends."
•. "With my job, I  have no  time."
"People  make  their  own  time.  I   can't  believe  you  don't  go  out  any-
where."
"Sometimes I  go  to  the beach."
She  didn't  dare  mention  the  bar,  imagining  that  the  woman  wouldn't
appreciate knowing that her sister's granddaughter frequented  such seedy
establishments.
"When I  was your  age,  I  had  a couple  of favorite  little hideaways."
"There's  nowhere  to  go  in  this  city.  It's  the  most  boring  place  in  the
world."
"There are  some very nice  spots  here."
"Like what?"
"Vizcaya Palace,  for  example.  Or Coral  Castle."
"I  don't know them."
"Well, one ofthese weekends I'll call you so you can see them. And, mind
you"-she shook a finger at  Cecilia-"these aren't  just empty words."
Half an  hour  later,  as  she  walked  downstairs,  Cecilia  again  heard  the
parrot squawking,  apparently freed  from  its prison.
Her  great-aunt  was  right.  There  was  no  reason  to  shut herself indoors
•:~~

.;'
.~  .'

.:. \':~'I

THE  ISLAND  d    ETERNAL  LOVE      •      79








r

"What?"

"If I were Delfina, I could summon him right now and find out what to do, but I'm going to have to wait."

Cecilia stared at the old woman. She'd never doubted her grandmother Delfina's gifts; there were too many stories about it circulating in her fam-ily. But now she couldn't determine if what her great-aunt was telling her was real or the result of old age.

"I'm not crazy," the woman said impassively. "Sometimes I feel he's nearby."

"Do you see things  too?"

"I told you, I'm not like my sister. She was an oracle, like the one at Delphi. I think Mama had a premonition when she gave her that name. Delfina could speak with the dead whenever she felt like it. She would summon them and they would show up in droves. I can speak to them, too, but I have to wait for them to appear."

"Can you  speak with my mother?"

"No,  only with my sister and Demetrio."

Cecilia sweetened her coffee. She still couldn't decide if all that was true. How could she get the answer without offending her great-aunt?

.... "How long have you been able  to  talk to  the  dead?"

"Ever since I was a child, when I chatted with my grandmother in the garden, thinking she had come to pay us a visit. The next day I found out that, at precisely the same time, she was dying in a bed in the Covadonga Hospital. The only one I told was Delfina, who comforted me and told me not to worry, that worse things had happened to her. That's how I learned about her ability."

"But she never predicted that death. And no one in the family ever spoke a word to me of your visions!"

"Mine weren't important. Far more amazing things happened to Delfina. She always knew both good and bad news ahead of time: some plane that was about to crash, who would marry whom, how many children a couple would have, natural disasters that would kill thousands of people any-where in the world ... things like that. Delfina knew your mother was pregnant with you before she herself found out, because your grandfather, may he rest in peace, informed her from the Beyond. Ever since she was four or five years old, she would chat with members of the family who had lived long ago. At first she thought they were visitors. And since nobody
78      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

Cecilia didn't recall.

"He left me this damn parrot when he died, and she doesn't stop chat-tering all bloody day long."

The bird squawked again.

"Viva Fidel!  Traitors go  to  hell!"

"Fidelina!" she screamed. The cry shook the apartment.

"Even worse, any day now they'll accuse me of being a communist." ''Who taught her to say that?"

Cecilia recalled that slogan, challted throughout the island against thousands of refugees who had sought shelter at the Peruvian embassy shortly before the Mariel exodus.

"That devil learned it from a video they brought over from Havana. Every time someone comes to visit, she repeats the refrain."

"Viva Fidel.  .  ."

"Ay, the neighbors are going to bum me alive." "Do you have a cloth?"

"What for?"

"Do you have one?"

" "Yes."

"Bring it to  me."

The  old  woman  left  the  room  and  returned  with  a  folded,  perfumed

sheet. Cecilia spread out the cloth and laid it over the cage. The shrieking stopped.

"I don't like to do that," said the woman, wrinkling her brow. "It's cruel."

"What she does to people's eardrums is even crueler." The woman sighed.

"Do you want some coffee?" They went into the kitchen.

"I don't understand why you don't get rid of her." "Demetrio left her to me," the old lady replied stubbornly. "I don't see what would be so bad about giving her away."

"All right, I'll ask him. But I'll have to wait till he feels like showing up because I'm not Delfina."

Although Cecilia had been busy with the coffeepot, the last sentence made her look up.
THE  ISLAND  e/   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      77

again. But why was she being so selfish? Which was worse: to avoid the memory or to confront it? Making a great effort, she started punching in the number.



Lola lived in a neighborhood of broad sidewalks and newly mowed lawns, very close to those two bastions of Cuban cuisine, La Carreta and Versailles, where the late-night crowd gathered. While nearly all the other businesses closed before midnight and lost money hand over fist, those
.two  restaurants  stayed open well into-the wee  hours.

Cecilia tried to let her memory guide her, but all those buildings were identical. She had to pull out the piece of paper and look at the num-bers. It was the wrong comer. She walked a few more blocks until she found it. After climbing the stairs, she pressed a buzzer that didn't work. The squawking of a parrot interrupted a mysterious hum emanating from

within.

"Viva Fidelf" the parrot shrieked.

Footsteps scuffled toward the door. Cecilia saw the shadow through the glass.. in the peephole.
.'    "Who is it?"

Cecilia sighed. Why did old folks do these things? Couldn't she see who it was?

"It's me,  Auntie....  It's  Ceci."

Was it her insecurity that compelled her to verify that the person she saw was who she claimed to be? Or was it that she didn't remember her?

The door swung open. "Come in, child."

The parrot kept up  its  din.

"Throw  them  out,  throw  them  out.  .  ."

"Quiet, Fidelina! If you keep it up, I'll feed you parsley." The shrieking ceased.

"I don't know what to do anymore. The neighbors are all ready to declare war on me. If Demetrio, bless his soul, hadn't left her to me, I'd give her away."

"Demetrio?"

"My bingo partner for nine years. He was here the day you came to see me."
•.~
......
~ ,,"  .



76      •      DAINA  GHAVIANO

"Antisocial."

"A hermit,"  she  corrected him.

''With a nun's calling," he added. "And the further misfortune of not being Catholic, so you can't even join a convent. Although to tell the truth, it really would suit you perfectly. You're not even trying to catch a man."

"And I have no intention of trying, either. I'd rather be an old maid, dressing up statues of saints."

"See? Saint Cecilia of Havana in ~uins. When Bluebeard dies, they'll build a hermitage in your name in Monte Barreto, right by your house, and people will make pilgrimages there, sliding downhill from the Tropi-cana in carriages and on palm-frond toboggans, all of them drunk and in sequins. They might even award a prize: the one who makes it to the bottom alive without breaking his head could be declared saint of the month.... "

She stopped listening to Freddy, absorbed by the sea crashing against the rocks. She was a hermit here. Here she had no past. It was left behind in a city she struggled to forget, along with her happy childhood, her lost a4olescence, her dead parents. . . . Or maybe there was another reason 'she tried to put it out of her mind. She didn't want to be reminded that she was utterly alone.

Suddenly she thought of her great-aunt, her grandmother's only sister. She had been living in Miami for thirty years, after leaving Cuba at Delfina's suggestion. Cecilia had visited her only once and hadn't seen her since.

"Are you listening to me?" Freddy shouted. "Yes."

"Then,  are you  coming or not?"

"Let me  think about it.  I'll get back to you later."

The loneliness had grown thick around her, like one of Dante's circles. She looked for her address book in order to phone Lauro. She had been meaning to transfer the numbers to her cell phone, but kept forgetting; that's why she carried a dog-eared little directory. Her glance fell on another number on the same page.... Yes, she still had family: an old lady who lived right in the heart of the city. Why hadn't she ever gone back to visit her? The answer dwelled in her pain, in her fear of remembering, her fear of perpetuating something that, in any case, she could never have

',"




THE  ISLAND  .1  ETERNAL  LOVE      •      75
..
,

him, to the great consternation of the neighbors, who cheered his trium-phal entrance.

What happened then was worse than anything that had come before, although that story wasn't taught in school. Brandishing his scythe, La Pelona trampled property and human life alike; and in less than five years, the country had become the anteroom to hell. Once more Delfina had foreseen what no one else was able to anticipate, and ever since then her doubters recognized that she had a mouth that was close to God. She became the local oracle, and later on, when the family relocated to Sagua,
. the  entire town went into mourning.

But her grandmother wasn't wholly devoted to forecasting the future. After marrying, she moved to Havana to raise her daughter and grow flow-ers. She was so clever at producing roses and carnations that many neigh-bors wanted to pay her for them, but she always refused to mutilate her bushes. Only once in a while, for some special occasion, would she give away little bouquets, gifts that were received like jewels.

Cecilia walked along the winding path through the grass, dotted here and there with clumps of wild bluebells and oleander. Her grandmother's

house  had been  a  sort  of garden too.  Her porcelain  dishes,  her furniture,
"
'her Baccarat crystal, even her clothing, had a floral cast. Now, surrounded by nature's bounty, Cecilia couldn't help evoking her grandmother's memory.

The ring of her cell phone jarred her from her reverie. It was Freddy. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Going for  a walk."

"Got anything on for tonight?"

She left the path,  turning toward the  coast.

"There's a program about pyramids on the Discovery Channel I want to see."

"Why don't we go  to  the bar?"

She walked a little farther before replying. "I don't know if! feel like going out." She started to take off her shoes.

"C'mon, mi china, you need to get moving! Last year you spent your whole vacation locked up inside."

"You know how I  am."












HATE     YOU,

,:,1
AND     YET "LOVE     YOU






Just like every other Saturday, Cecilia went walking by the docks. She watched the skaters, young families, cyclists, and runners all crowded into the park. It was a bucolic, but disturbing, image. Far from lifting her spirits, all those happy faces left her feeling isolated. It wasn't just the park
that. pained  her,  but  the  whole  world:  everything  they  called  civilization.
"
-She wondered if she wouldn't have been happier offin the wilderness, free from the social pressures that only added to her anxiety. But she had been born in a wann, seaside Latin city, and now she lived in another warm city by the sea, albeit an Anglo one. This was clearly her destiny.

She had always been a stranger to her time and place, a perception that had grown in the last few years. Perhaps this was why she returned time and again to the bar, to hear Amalia's stories and lose herself in the past.

All her life Cecilia had been interested in exotic people, unlike her mother, who had loved everything that had to do with her own island. That's why she had named her daughter Cecilia, in homage to Cirilo Villa-verde's novel Cecilia Valdes, a classic. But Cecilia hadn't inherited even a shadow of that passion. She was indifferent to her past. In school they endlessly retaught the island's social history. It had always consisted of the hungry and the powerful, those who had everything and others who had nothing, throughout different stages of history: the same story of the exploiters and the exploited, ad infinitum ... until La Pelona, the Grim Reaper, arrived, as her prescient grandmother had immediately baptized
~   ;......

THE  ISLAND  _/   ETERNAL  LOVE      •      73

''We're going someplace else," he announced in a choked voice. "Where?"

The man looked at her for a moment, but she knew that he didn't see her. And when he replied, it didn't sound like his voice but like that of a mortal anxious to return to the Kingdom of the Jade Emperor.

''We're going to  Cuba."



















~.
72      •      DAiNA  GRAVlAND

of the face of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. She felt the whole sky weeping along with her. Or was it just the weeping moon that covered the fields? Siu Mend drew closer to them. And so they remained till morning.

The shooting grew less frequent and finally ceased altogether. Kui-fa sighed with relief when she spied the solar disk between the long, jagged stalks, but Siu Mend would not let them leave their refuge. They stayed all day, despite insects, hunger, and thirst. Only when the sun once again hid its face and the stars shone in the sky did Siu Mend decide that the time had come.

Filled with fear, they retraced thei! steps to the edge of the field, where Siu Mend ordered them to stop.

"I'm going out," he announced to his wife. "If I don't come back, tum around and run. Don't stay here."

Kui-fa waited anxiously, afraid of hearing her husband's dying cries at every tum, but she heard only the crickets chirping as they once again took over the silence. She remembered the jewels she had hidden in her clothing. She would have to find a more secure place for them. Her husband's absence reminded her of something. Yes, there was a place where no one would discover them....

~. The  insects  silenced  their  voices  with  the  cool  breeze  just  before  the

. dawn. The disk of the full moon moved slightly. The weather grew colder and damper. An interminable, teary fog rose above their heads. The ghost of the wind blew, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching through the sugarcane. The woman pressed her sleeping child against her breast. It was Siu Mend. In spite ofthe meager light, the expression on his face spoke more than words. She fell to her knees before her husband, no strength left to hold on to her sleeping child.

"Let's go," he said, his eyes filled with tears as he helped her stand up. "There's nothing more for us to do."

"But the house  .  .  ."  she  stammered.  "  . .  . the fields."

"The house doesn't exist. The land ... it would be better to sell it. The soldiers have left, but they'll be back. I don't want to stay. Anyway, I promised Weng."

"Did you see him?" "Before he died."

"And Mei Lei? And the others?"

Instead of replying, Siu Mend took the child by one hand and her by the other.
THE  ISLAND  ''I'ETERNAL  LOVE      •      71

decided to speak with the father of one of the young candidates. Gifts passed between the families along with vows of a future betrothal, and everyone returned to their business as usual, waiting for the time to be right.

And then,  one  afternoon,  war broke out.



The sugarcane rose generously beneath the sun, and the fields swayed like an ocean, whipped by the breeze. Kui-fa was embroidering a pair of slippers in her bedroom when she heard the cries:

"Here they come!  Here they come!"

Out of sheer instinct she dashed to the hiding place where she kept her jewels, grabbed the bundle, which fit into her fist, and concealed it in her clothing. Before the cries could be repeated, she was already dragging Pag Li toward the door. Her husband bumped into her. He was sweaty, his clothes in disarray.

"Run to  the fields!"  he  exclaimed nervously.

''Ayii!'' shouted Kui-fa  in the  direction of the kitchen.  ''Ayii!''

"Leave her alone," her husband said, dragging her outside. "She must h~ye run away with the others."

. The first shots burst out when they were still about a hundred paces from the fields. Then came the screams, distant and terrible. They dove into the sugarcane, whose stalks scratched their faces, cutting their skin, but Siu Mend forged on. The farther they r