Ruins Read online

  “You’ve thought about this?” asked Usnavy, turning in to his family’s room.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Obdulio said. He pushed his way inside, forcing Nena to scramble up on the bed to make room. “Look, Usnavy, you need to think about it too. What are you doing here, my friend?”

  “What would I do there?” he asked.

  “Anything!” said Obdulio. “Anything’s better than here! You don’t have to be salao forever.”

  Usnavy reached up for the cord to turn on the magnificent lamp. There in the flood of light was an anxious, blinking Lidia and an eager Nena, both staring at him.

  “Usnavy, we have room, we have room for all of you,” Obdulio said.

  Usnavy shook his head. “I like it here.”

  “You like it here? Usnavy, this is me you’re talking to!” Obdulio implored. “Usnavy, people are leaving on any piece of plastic that’ll float. Remember the guy who flew the crop duster all the way to Key West? Or—wait!—when all those American pastors came, the people near the harbor trying to get a little box of crackers or a can of soup? What do you think that was about, my friend? You think you’re immune?”

  “Those people, they were a disgrace, begging like that!” Usnavy insisted. As he spoke, he couldn’t help but notice how Lidia’s thin shoulders dropped and how Nena quietly curled into a ball on the bed and turned her face to the wall. She held on to the corner of the sheet, smudged and sopping from the floor now, which barely covered her.

  “They were a disgrace,” he repeated, hoping to elicit a different reaction from his wife and daughter.

  “Lidia, talk to him,” Obdulio pleaded.

  Lidia nodded, standing there with the rest of the bed sheet around her, but kept her silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Usnavy said. “I’m grateful to you for thinking of us, for your good intentions, but …”

  Obdulio abruptly grabbed the door and slammed it shut. “Okay, fine, stay,” he said. “Rot if you like.”

  Usnavy shrugged. “Look, you’re doing better than most, with all those dollars you’re getting from your brother, and the ones you’re making here doing whatever …”

  “I’ll make more there,” Obdulio said.

  Usnavy nodded. “Probably, probably.”

  “Look, stay or go, you have to help me anyway, you have to get me some supplies. I need rope, I need some powdered milk.”

  “Obdulio …I …”

  “What? You can’t get me some lousy rope and milk? My daughter is taking the baby!” Obdulio was getting agitated.

  Usnavy looked around the room, at his frightened wife and daughter. “I’m not going to discuss this here, Obdulio,” he said, pushing his friend out the door.

  Then he pulled on his trousers and a T-shirt, grabbed his bike, and followed Obdulio out into the night.

  The two men arrived in Cojímar hours later but while it was still dark. They’d ridden to the beach on their Flying Pigeon bikes, manual and heavy, made in China in spite of the English name.

  “The Chinese can divine the future but they can’t make a lightweight bike?” a gasping Obdulio muttered, the curls on his head uncoiling in the breeze, looking now like loose pieces of a dirty sponge.

  The ride to Cojímar was always against the wind. Usnavy kept pedaling. Because there was no transportation in the middle of the night—the bus that ferried bikes to the city stopped sometime after dusk—and because non-motorized vehicles were strictly prohibited through the Havana Tunnel, they’d had to go around the bay, adding even more time to their journey. Usnavy wore a lock and chain around his waist to tie his bike but Obdulio had clipped to his a nifty, lightweight U-shaped lock, solid steel and made in the U.S., guaranteed theft-proof. (No doubt a gift from his exiled brother, Usnavy figured.)

  They entered the cozy fishing village as a silent parade of young men and women made a line to the shore. Carrying inner tubes and wooden planks, they looked like rows of giant ants hauling Lifesavers and toothpicks in the moonlight. Watching it all from the protected confines of elegant Las Terrazas—one of Ernest Hemingway’s old haunts—were foreign tourists, their giggles bubbling in the air, and journalists too, TV camera lights washing the landscape. (Also somewhere in the restaurant: Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s old boat captain, now practically mummified, propped up to play checkers or dominos for the tourists’ delight.)

  Near the rocky shore—Cojímar is all dog’s teeth, a snarling bank of coral and junk—groups of people hammered away at their rafts, tying ropes around pieces of rubber, metal kegs, and plastic jugs for buoyancy. There were no surfboards anywhere, no windsurfers pretending science or recreation. This was all out in the open; the Revolution suspended.

  A different group stood apart from the builders, waiting, not so much for the rafts to be built but for other, northern sailors: These folks, dressed for holiday travel—some carrying suitcases, umbrellas, a bowler hat or two, still others with plastic bags or bundles wrapped in newspapers, others nothing at all—gazed at the black waters, watching for the flicker of faraway flares, ready at a moment’s notice to leave behind even those very satchels that now seemed so precious, and leap onto whatever gleaming white yacht or slick flat cigarette boat kissed the shore. Although some had flashlights, and others hurricane lamps lit by who knows what for fuel, everyone was featureless except for their eyes: large white orbs, slightly startled by the sudden bursts of light.

  On this night, different from every other night in Usnavy’s memory, the town sloped down to the sea but he labored to envision instead plateaus and rugged ranges. In his mind, he was somewhere else: Katanga or Shaba, an impenetrable forest full of wild geese and ostriches, buffalo, and lions. He imagined not rafters but fields of coffee and cotton; rubber trees, coconut, and plantain; timber from cedar, mahogany, iroko, and redwood. The staring eyes were the peacocks Usnavy had never seen, pelicans, herons, and other wild birds.

  While the work continued on the beach, no one said a word except the local fishermen, who held tightly to their rolls of lines and gaffs, nets and tattered masts. Their own boats securely put away or anchored under guard, they sat vigilantly on the seawall, their arms across their chests, sucking on cigars and hand-rolled cigarettes, passing judgment on the work before them. One guy tapped a long hardwood stick on the ground, another held a machete against his hip in a not so subtle warning to potential thieves. Not far from them, a few boys rolled dice against the seawall, occasionally shouting with victory.

  “That won’t go, no,” said an old man in a red cap, pointing to a particularly chancy-looking homemade dinghy. The others nodded agreement.

  “That’s unbalanced too—look at that,” a second fisherman said as he singled out another one. “They’ll roll right into the water in that, you watch.”

  “Quéva,” exclaimed yet another fellow, shaking his head in dismay at a throng of young men and women who were now lifting what looked like a white wooden kayak. They carried it to the water, where it swayed on the surface. As soon as one of the young men stepped into it, his weight took it down as if it were made of paper. A collective moan went up from the group, while they quickly scrambled to recover what they could from the ocean and start again. The fishermen laughed and laughed.

  Some of the rafts, of course, did float. Some precariously, others effortlessly. Usnavy listened to the dip and push of their efforts as the moon sank from sight.

  In a clearing, Usnavy finally saw the boat being crafted by Obdulio’s family, which was dependent on four large industrial inner tubes—Usnavy didn’t want to know where they’d gotten them. Obdulio’s nephews secured the craft tighter with the length of rope Usnavy had procured for them. Like the others, Obdulio’s nephews didn’t speak, only nodded their appreciation. Obdulio’s daughter thanked Usnavy for the powdered milk with a quick, timid peck on the cheek. The baby was fast asleep on her shoulder, undisturbed by the bustle of activity.

  Usnavy moved quickly away from them. He did not want to look at the rope; he did
not want to consider the powdered milk. Before he’d gathered them up, the rope had belonged to the workers of Cuba; the milk had been for the island’s children. (As crazy as it seemed, he really believed this; his heart twisted in anguish because he so believed this.) He let himself replay the scene at the bodega, watched himself as if he were someone else, carefully lifting the rope and powdered milk his dear friend needed, knowing he could not replace them, knowing that everything was wrong now, everything was ugly and sick.

  That he loved Obdulio and his family was not the matter; after all, it was Che himself who said that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. That he loved them so much that he put them above everyone else—that was the black smear on his soul now. Usnavy’s hands trembled, his eyes moistened from shame.

  How—he was asking himself, his hands deep in his empty pockets—how could he ever question anyone else? How could he ever seek out the answers to other missing items at the bodega, rice and soap and cooking oil that were sometimes reduced by half from arrival to dispensing? What about the blankets that someone would no doubt steal for Rosita? He would never—not with a clear conscience, not without first confessing his own transgression—be able to ask that the others be mindful and disciplined, that they be selfless in their duties. He could see his coworkers shrinking from him. Or worse: What if they suddenly included him in their schemes? What if his crime automatically implicated him in every other petty theft at the bodega? What if, once revealed, he was expected to cover for everyone else so that they’d cover for him?

  Usnavy shuddered. He thought of Lidia for a moment, worried about what her response would be. His stomach flipped, made him a little seasick. He stepped back from the water.

  “In Miami,” said Obdulio, now beside him and gazing out at the gloom before them, “maybe I’ll finally learn to drive a car.”

  “You could learn to drive here,” Usnavy replied, thinking how it had never really been essential.

  Until recently, buses had been plentiful, distances all seemed attainable. At the end of her cab route, Lidia, herself a bus driver’s daughter, had always come home energized, ready for more. (She would have been a bus driver too, if only she’d had the opportunity.) Usnavy had learned to drive long ago, back in Oriente, when he was only fifteen. It was a strange feeling, all that power in his hands, though none of it ever truly his: Each time he drove, it was with a burly American who’d sit next to him, or frolic with a local in the backseat while he toured the lesser-known roads aimlessly.

  “Nobody’s stopping you,” Usnavy finally said.

  Obdulio sighed. “Yeah, but what for? And in whose car? I’ll never get to own a car here. Neither will you, my militant friend.”

  “You think you’ll get a car there? Do you have any idea how much a car costs?” Usnavy asked.

  “No, but my brother … he has a car and, god willing, I’ll get to drive it.”

  “Seems like a stupid reason to leave …”

  “C’mon, Usnavy … don’t you have any aspirations? Don’t you want a place to live that’s made for humans instead of laboratory mice? Don’t you want a little privacy with your wife? Don’t you have any dreams?”

  “This is my dream,” Usnavy said.

  He stepped away again, watching as another group labored over planks and tubes, but Obdulio moved right along with him. Usnavy wanted to say something—anything—so they wouldn’t go. He wondered how many would disappear like his own father, gone without a trace into the blue.

  Obdulio persisted. “C’mon … when you look at that crazy lamp of yours—do you realize it’s the only thing you have of value, my friend? Don’t you see anything in all that light and color besides clouds and giraffes and Africa? Africa—I mean, Usnavy, how perverse is that? Who dreams of Africa when you can dream of Miami? Don’t you see any hope at all?”

  Usnavy took a deep breath. “Obdulio, I am here because you are my friend,” he said. “Now I will ask you to be a friend to me and stop this crap. I’m not leaving, now or ever.”

  Obdulio shrugged. “Fine,” he said as his nephews began to drag their raft to the water. It eased in with squeaks and whines, bouncing on the soft waves with the weight of each new person. Usnavy took off his shoes and socks and stepped into the sea to help, the smell of saline almost overwhelming him. He held onto the raft and steadied it as they loaded up, all the while feeling the sharp rocks under his feet, the ticklish weeds wrapping themselves around his ankles. The local fishermen looked on, nodding approval at the superior work. Finally, it was Obdulio’s turn to board.

  “Look, your wife and daughter … Usnavy, you need to get over this saintly devotion, your ridiculously selfish virtues,” Obdulio said, one foot on the gravelly sand, the other on the shaky vessel. “If you’re going to stay, for god’s sake, at least do something for them … get some dollars. If you sell that lamp—it’s a monstrosity, it must be worth at least a few hundred, maybe even a thousand dollars!—think of what you can do. You could start your own little business on the side, you could buy things Nena and Lidia only dream about.”

  Obdulio’s daughter took his hand to help him sit, and with a bereft Usnavy waist deep in the water, the raft pushed off.

  “Good luck,” Usnavy said, waving weakly.

  “Good luck to you, my friend,” Obdulio shot back.

  The raft glided away, pulled north by the currents. Its shadow clung to the shore at first, black figures thinning, then turning into gold strings reaching back to the island. As he watched, Usnavy discerned the arcs of flying fish in the distance, like pebbles skipping across the surface. He felt something collapse in his chest. This was it, he realized with a start, this was the last time he’d ever see his lifelong friend.

  In a moment, Obdulio’s raft had vanished into the bright nimbus of dawn.

  The trip home from Cojímar was usually easier, downhill with the wind in the biker’s favor, but this time it was longer. Usnavy couldn’t count the hours; they seemed so viscid and unreal. Part of the difficulty was that Obdulio had left his bike as a gift for Nena—Usnavy knew she’d be thrilled—and he was having difficulty maneuvering both bikes at once. He’d tried riding his and leading the other with one hand on the handlebars, but the roads around the bay to Havana were demolished, as if a squadron of bombers had just passed, and what had been inconvenient zigzagging en route to Cojímar had become impossible on the way home. The two times a truck zoomed by, it knocked Usnavy off balance. Then his feet began to hurt; taking off his shoes and socks to get in the sea and help push off Obdulio’s raft had exposed his bare soles to the craggy reefs. Not only had he been cut, bitten, and scratched in a million places, but his joints ached and his skin itched from the dried salt.

  To make things worse, as soon as Usnavy decided against trying to ride and surrendered to walking home holding a bike on each side, it began to rain. A rush of water soaked him from the tip of his head to the squishy toes of his now surely ruined shoes. The downpour grew so intense that Usnavy couldn’t see anything but a gray mist in front of him. It fell with all the noisy fury of a galloping herd of horses, tiny hoofs rampaging all over his exposed skin.

  There was no point in running for cover; the shower had come after an ear-splitting crack in the sky, as if it had abruptly opened up, sending a cascade from the heavens to this caiman of dirt. Usnavy wondered about Obdulio and his family. Would they survive the storm? Might they be just out of its reach, or were they now bailing water out of the boat, desperate and scared?

  Maybe, thought Usnavy, turning the matter over, the weight of so many Cuban prayers had finally eroded celestial resistance. (He was an inadvertent believer, his faith so personal and spontaneous that it stood apart from all debate about the merits of religion, or even his own conscious acknowledgment.) Maybe, he pondered, the layer of sky that works as a streambed had been undermined, finally giving way and discharging into a divine cataract.

  This is Mosi-oa-Tunya—Victoria Falls—he mused, as the wate
r plunged from hundreds of feet above him with a mighty howl and pounded on his shoulders and back. If only this could be harvested somehow, if only Cuba could absorb this awesome force. (It would solve all the electrical problems, that’s for sure.) It was coming down in a furious free fall.

  A drenched Usnavy was limping along when he thought he saw a shadowy shape—something eerie, its limbs oversized, its head sprouting a kind of feathery ornament. Was it one of his giants, one of those Goliaths on whom he was sure the entire city was dependent? Usnavy stared ahead as the shape slipped right through the screen of water in front of him. He stopped, leaned a bike against each hip, and ran a hand over his face. But when he looked up again, he saw not one but several black stick figures sneaking in and out of view in the blink of an eye.

  As Usnavy stared ahead, he realized they’d begun to take notice of him too: He was sure one had just made a quick gesture his way, pointing and snapping its fingers; another clicked its tongue. Usnavy shook his head like a dog that’s just made it back to shore, trying to regain composure. Then he looked again: There they were, the figures now more roundly human, less black and more muddled, rushing in and out of the undulating sheets of rain. There were voices too, each mixed into the soundtrack of thunder and the rattle of water on the pavement, nearby awnings, and cars.

  Somebody somewhere was playing with sticks, their tick tock marking the time. There was a flicker of light, a flash. Instantly Usnavy realized he was in Old Havana, right on Tejadillo, only blocks from home.

  “Cuida’o, abuelo, cuida’o,” a young man called out as he snaked around Usnavy.

  He was carrying long pieces of wood, their ends jagged as if they’d been torn. Usnavy pulled back, avoiding the spear points by centimeters.

  “Ojo, ojo,” called out another man as he dashed by—almost running into him—pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks still covered with paint and mortar. The chalky stench of wet plaster rose like vapor.