Adios Happy Homeland! Page 2

  “All the same, it is contrary to our policies.”

  I had a sense the men were talking about me. I stood, listening. I hoped they would say my name, which I had forgotten. How had I arrived here? What was I waiting for? On the other platforms, the trains came and went. Ours alone seemed to be delayed. I thought of searching out a timetable that might give me a clue about my destination, but I was afraid of missing the train. Around me, the men seemed to grow more impatient. But soon other men joined us and they fell into an easy, though hushed, conversation. Over the speakers, a voice in Spanish called out the names of cities that could not possibly connect to this station: Moa. Gibara. Baracoa. The trains had stopped going there years ago. Perhaps this was the cause of the delay. Someone should tell the stationmaster. But not me; I knew that if I moved from the platform, I would be carried away forever and miss this, my last chance.

  Many hours went by. Other passengers joined us. We crowded on the platform now, standing in one another’s puddles. I had the feeling that I had been followed here. But the bearded man and the hairless one began to move away. I leaned forward to search for them in the growing crowd. I cocked my ear to their accent—Jesuit-educated, from the east—when a gasp went through the crowd and silenced the station. One man pointed and then others raised their heads. At first I thought a bird was caught in the rafters. But then I saw that it was a child’s electric-yellow balloon, its silver string flashing in the shafts of light. The balloon floated and then swooped down on a draft, only to be forced up again higher into the night sky. A train came into the station and the turbulence scattered the balloon across the heavens so that I temporarily lost sight of it. But I soon found it again where the great dome curved down. The others resumed their whispered conversations. But I kept it in my sight. It seemed to be making a tour of the universe, its translucent skin veiling first Aquarius and then Capricorn. At Aries the balloon lingered for a moment and I thought it would rest there until it ran out of helium and floated down to earth. But to my surprise (for the others had long since lost interest in the orphan) the balloon shot from Aries to Pisces, barely missing a prick of the ram, and was sucked up into the void beyond the stars. Never in my life had I seen a balloon penetrate the great skein of heaven. I looked around me to see if someone else had witnessed this extraordinary event. But every man stood with his eyes fixed on the rails.

  When next I turned my eyes up, I noticed a breach in the sky, a small black hole near Pisces. The stars were very bright that evening and I thought it a trick of the light and the dome’s curvature, until I noticed the balloon’s silver string spooling away into nothing. As I watched, a light, like a searchlight, shone through the pinhole in the sky. I followed it to its source, staring up into the hole, and there—there: it could not be, but it was, there in the pinhole of the sky I met an eye staring back at me. The apparition seized my heart with horror enough, but imagine the cold that overtook me when I realized that the eye staring down from heaven was my own. I looked away quickly and then back. The eye still stared, unblinking. It was not the only thing wrong in that hard heaven. For as I stood beneath the dome fixing my stare upon myself, I saw that the stars, the constellations, and the entire firmament were backward, a mirror image, and it was the other eye, the one coolly watching beyond the celestial sphere, that saw things as they were. As the mysteries of this railway station multiplied, I was nearly overcome with anxiety. Where were my bags? Where was I going? Why was the train so delayed? I stood at the platform, wiping my cold wet hands on my trousers. I bowed my head from heaven; there was nothing but confusion there. The important thing was to make the train. I waited for what seemed hours, maybe days, but my legs did not grow tired. The sun never rose—inside it was always night, the platform glowing in the electric light of those perverse stars. Around midnight of what could have been the third day, a cry went up on the platform. Then a hush—the rails hummed softly. A train approached! We were now packed elbow to elbow on the platform. There would not be room for all of us on the train. I was carried along in the crush to the platform’s edge. As I struggled to gain footing, the two men in overcoats reappeared. They were pushing their way through the crowd with ease, pointing at me. The hairless one smiled, as if he were a friend who only wanted to say hello. But the bearded one scowled as he shoved away everyone in his path. I knew I must get away. I must run. The announcer cried out a destination. So this was it, the last train to Cojimar. I remembered now that it had been my wish to take in the sun one last time, to cover again the leaves in verse. I knew I must force my legs to move. But the men in overcoats were gaining; they were bigger and faster while I was weak and ill. Worse, the waiting men seemed to be on their side. Soon all were pointing me out for my killers as I ducked and tried to slip through the crowd. In the distance, a train whistle blew. The great eye—my own traitorous eye—regarded me from heaven, with neither pity nor interest. The rails hummed. I felt rough hands on me. The men in overcoats closed in as the others held me fast, an offering. I spun free of my coat and ran, feeling light now, so light that I nearly leapt through the outstretched hands before me, all trace of illness gone with my soiled coat. I braced for impact. With a great concussion of air, the train swept into the station, bearing with it the smell of the sea.

  Cojimar

  BY ERNESTO DEL CAMINO

  Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea. He had stopped fishing years ago, but he had not stopped coming to the beach. In his day it had been only about the fishing. The rocky shore covered in skiffs. Now it was different. The fish had disappeared, and the beach was for leaving. He stood on the deck of La Terraza, next to Papa’s bronze head, and stared out over the shore. Not yet seven A.M. and already they were gathering.

  Earlier that morning, in a different city, the boy was woken by his mother. That’s how it is for children: they are always being acted upon. They are woken and fed and they are walked to school, where they are then, for eight long hours, taught how to be. Children are slaves of other voices. They have not yet mastered the first person singular and are always at the blunt end of someone else’s dream.

  So the boy was woken early that morning by his mother, whom he, naturally, adored. She was his sun and his moon, his waking and his sleeping. And that Monday morning in November when she shook him awake, her face was the first thing he saw, luminous in the wan light of early morning. Or, as he would have said it had we given him the chance to speak: her face looked pretty and soft in the dark. She smelled of soap. And when she kissed him, he reached up with his thin arms to hang on her neck.

  She told him to hurry, that the others were waiting. And school? No school. Later, in Miami. Miami. People were always talking about Miami. He had asked his father about it. They were standing outside together beneath a mango tree that had not given fruit that year. His father had turned him to face the smell of the ocean and pointed up, through the leaves. “Miami is that way.”

  So Miami was someplace in the sky, behind the clouds. Curious. If he had religious training, he might have thought Miami was in heaven, with Papa Dios. His mother thought that and so did many others. But he didn’t know about things like heaven or God. Miami was just a cloud city beyond sight. Someplace that hovered over the waters and that’s where they were going. They were going on a ship. His mother had told him all about it, preparing. And when he asked how they would get to the clouds, she had laughed.

  The boy and his mother lived in Matanzas, a province in Cuba that writers love because it means “the killings,” and it gives them a chance to comment on how bloody this bloody awful land is. And it’s true. If it were in a book, you couldn’t say the boy lived in Matanzas because it would be too ridiculous. But he did. Truth is the strangest thing you’ll ever know.

  That morning, though, the morning the boy was awakened before dawn, Matanzas was at peace. The only sound was of roosters crowing in the distance, and the air through the open windows was cool and nice. He was h
appy and snuggled closer to his mother. Don’t go back to sleep, son. You need to get dressed. She was warm, so warm. Hurry, boy, hurry.

  A man he didn’t know picked them up by the monument to the bicycle in Cárdenas. His mother thought this was funny. We’re going to pedal all the way to Miami, she said. There were already others in the truck, each of them holding a small bundle. They laughed also. The boy knew some of them. He worried that the ship would be too heavy with all these people, and they would not be able to lift into the clouds. He wanted to tug at his mother to tell her, but he didn’t want her to laugh at him again in front of the others. So he leaned against her thigh and closed his eyes as the truck bumped along the empty road in the dark.

  It was still dark when they arrived in Cojimar. Others had arrived before them. Some were taking their coffee at La Terraza, which every morning opened earlier and earlier. It had once been a famous bar for the tourists: its black bean soup had been featured in a European travel guide, and for six months La Terraza had more Spanish and Dutch backpackers than it could feed. These days, though, most of the traffic was in the curious and the foolhardy.

  The old man stood on the deck and nodded at the boy and his mother. The mother ordered water, saying it was for the boy, but the old man understood and made her a coffee as well. He brought the boy a guava pastry. When the mother said she didn’t have money, the old man held up his hand.

  “I have my own,” he said. “I know.”

  The boy thanked him, but did not eat the pastry. The old man looked at the boy and then at the mother.

  “He is young,” the old man said.

  “Six, almost seven,” said the mother. “He is small for his age.”

  “Too small for that long journey,” the old man said. He saw something in the boy’s eyes.

  “We are only going fishing,” the mother said.

  “All the same, the boy is young and fragile and the sea is deep and rough.”

  “It is a short fishing trip,” the woman said, pulling the boy close to her. “Don’t bring the evil eye down on us.”

  “Go with God,” the old man said.

  At the water’s edge, the boy had tried to run back. No, no, no, that ship cannot fly! The others laughing. The boy hated these kinds of jokes that he couldn’t understand. The boy had almost reached La Terraza. The old man, watching, took a step down onto the rocky beach. But one of the men from the raft caught up with the boy and held him aloft. His legs kicked and the old man thought he looked like a sad little crab.

  “That ship cannot fly!” the boy screamed into the sky.

  The old man realized that the boy could not swim. He took another step toward the shore, but the man already had the boy on the raft. Twice, the boy tried to jump out and a crowd from La Terraza gathered to watch.

  “Shameful.”

  “What some people do for money.”

  “Endanger yourself if you want, but don’t be selfish with the children.”

  “Look there! He’s jumped out.”

  “That poor boy.”

  “The boy has jumped.”

  The old man did not see this, but the raft was too far out now for him to be able to count its passengers. Besides, he could not remember how many had boarded on the shore.

  Dawn had come, but brought with it little light. The sky was low and gray. The sea was dark. A few young men swam out, but they were turned back by the waves. For a while it seemed there would be no more launchings, but after an hour, the first raft went out into the rough sea. And then another and another. They had come this far. And if others judged it safe . . .

  The old man spent the rest of the morning writing down orders in his notebook and watching out over the sea. In the afternoon, the clouds shifted inland. The sea calmed. The old man was taking an order for black beans when the second shout went out.

  Body in the surf!

  The old man put his pad and pen in his pocket and hurried down to the shore. He was old and did not move quickly. So by the time he got to the water’s edge, a crowd had already gathered. He strained to see past them. In the water, about twenty meters out, something dark moved and bobbed. The boy, the old man said quietly. The boy jumped.

  Some men were already in the water. The strongest of them swam almost to the body, but was pushed back by the current. He returned to the shore, panting. I saw the body; it’s the boy. A shout went up: A boat, a boat! The young men ran to the harbor to ask for help. Only the old man stayed behind. He waited, watching the dark bobbing and knowing that all was already lost. The others were a long time returning. Later, it emerged that the police would not grant them a rescue boat—the illegal activities of Cojimar being well documented by the indifferent but cruel authority. But it was just as well. For as the old man waited on the shore, the current brought the body closer and closer. The man waded in to his knees to receive it. It had been many years since he had felt the sting of seawater, and the sensation took him back to his youth. With what vitality he had met life, with what hope he had pushed out every morning from the shore, the stars still brilliant in the firmament!

  One last wave carried the body high and, in retreating, laid it on the sand. The old man pushed out of the water as quickly as he could. The body lay sideways on the shore, its highest point rising and falling as with breath. The man’s heart caught in his throat.

  Now he was running to the body that was not, in fact, a body. My Lord, the old man said. For at his feet, tangled with seaweed and moss, was a giant jellyfish, the likes of which had never been seen in Cojimar. It was almost exactly the size of a small boy caught inside a balloon. Its iridescent yellow body expanded and contracted in the breeze. The man watched it for a moment. The others were fast approaching. He had only a moment. The old man felt in his pocket for the pen. He mumbled an old prayer. And in one swift stroke all that was left of the jellyfish was a withered yellow film, which the next wave carried back out to sea.

  The Boy Who Was Rescued by Fish

  BY TERESA DE LA LANDRE

  For reasons that are too complicated to get into, it had been a trying month at the organization and Beatrice, our leader, finally called a meeting at La Carreta.

  “I want to start a new era,” she said. “An era of hope, of positive thoughts, of good things.” We feared what was coming. Beatrice once fired a new girl when she found a homemade Eleguá in her drawer. The organization, Beatrice warned, had a zero-tolerance policy for Santería. Eleguá, Yemayá, and Santa Bárbara (unless it was thundering) were spirits non grata in this office so long as Beatrice was boss. But for all that, Beatrice was a fundamentalist believer in American Santería, the branch of religion that includes crystals, self-help, and sprouted pumpkin seeds. “Positive thoughts?” said Lucy. She could not suppress a sigh. Mia, as ever, sat hunched next to Beatrice like a giant crane, nodding at every other word. Beatrice ignored them both and plowed ahead, a breezy smile on her lips.

  “Ladies, I want to introduce you to our salvation,” Beatrice said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a book.

  “A book?” said Lucy. “We’re going to be saved by a book?”

  “Not just any book,” said Beatrice, smiling. “The Undisclosed.”

  “The undisclosed what?” said Lucy.

  “Just The Undisclosed,” I said. “It’s a self-help book that’s all the rage. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I don’t watch television,” she said.

  “It is not a ‘self-help book,’ Zenia,” said Beatrice, making quotation marks in the air. “It is a serious book full of wisdom known to sages since the time of Moses.”

  “OK,” I said.

  Mia looked at me. You could say, in the style of some books, that she shot me a disapproving glance.

  “I read it straight through in one sitting,” Beatrice said. “And then I read it again.” She nodded at Mia, who, taking her cue, took three copies of the book out of her bag. “I’ve bought each of you a copy and I want y
ou to study it. It has changed my life and it will change yours. Together, we will change ours,” Beatrice said.

  She stared at us, waiting. No one spoke. So she continued. “It seems like such a simple prescription, and yet it’s so profound: change your thinking and you will change your life.”

  Lucy closed her eyes and put her fingers to her forehead. “I’m thinking that I’m going to win a million dollars and have enough money to pay for a nurse for my husband.” She opened her eyes and smiled mildly.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said Beatrice. “You can’t be sarcastic. You have to really believe it. You have to ask the universe for what you want and then know that it will come to you. The universe will take care of you, but it doesn’t like sarcasm.”

  “I’ve been warned,” said Lucy.

  She turned to me and smiled. I really had nothing to say. Honestly, I had no opinion one way or another on The Undisclosed. But I sensed that my job was on the line. At least I should seem curious. Beatrice liked curiosity. On the other hand, I liked Lucy, too. I tried to respond in a way that would please them both.

  “How is this different from . . .” I almost said “Santería,” but not wanting to antagonize Beatrice, I just said, “religion? You know, praying?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” said Beatrice, who had now settled comfortably into her role as chief educator and pronouncer. “Religion posits a single unknowable God whom one must worship and bribe and plead with.”

  “Also saints,” added Lucy, but Beatrice ignored her.

  “The Undisclosed is not about that; it’s not about an entity; it’s much more mystical, much more all-encompassing,” Beatrice said. “It’s all about the law of magnets. You know, the way magnets attract other magnets and iron things. I can’t explain it as well as the book; that’s why I want you to read it. This lady knows her stuff.”

  “For sure. Look at all the success she’s had with the book,” I said. I meant it to affirm Beatrice’s general thesis, but when Lucy laughed I realized the way it had come out. Beatrice pursed her lips at me. But in keeping with her new positivism, she didn’t call me out.