The Cat King of Havana Read online

  Not that everyone looked like this. There was also an older guy in a once-white shirt with yellow pit stains, and plenty of people in clothes that showed their age. At one corner a long line had formed, men and women with ragged canvas shopping bags.

  “Waiting for the new iPhone,” I said to Ana in English, feeling witty.

  “They’re waiting for toilet paper,” Yolanda answered in Spanish. “The shops have been out for weeks.”

  Yeah. I’m a real comedian.

  We turned into a quieter side street. “Here we are,” Juanita said.

  We pulled up at the door of a seven-story apartment building. Its yellow paint job had faded, and the first floor was an abandoned shop. Strips of blue tape marked Xs on dusty storefront windows. Even so, the edifice had a reassuring solidity to it.

  “We’ve lived here almost forty-five years,” Juanita said. “Since my dad was reassigned to Havana, when your mother was ten years old.”

  I looked up and down the street. No shops here, only dusty buildings, a bicycle rickshaw parked in front of one.

  I tried to picture Mom as a girl here, walking to school, playing jump rope on the sidewalk. All that came to me was an image of Mom in her last days—gaunt, with a scarf around her bald head. She leaned against the nearest building, an unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers. Defiant, like she knew what was coming and didn’t care.

  But Mom hadn’t smoked at the end, not once she got her diagnosis. She had cared. She’d cared so damn much, and it hadn’t made any difference.

  Ana poked my shoulder. “You taking a nap?”

  I started. This was why I’d felt reluctant to come to Cuba. I’d have to remember things.

  We lugged our bags into a bare, dusty lobby. There was an ornate, ancient-looking metal cage in the middle of a stairwell. With some knocking of knees, I recognized it as an elevator.

  “Get in, get in.” Juanita herded us into the narrow cage. Yolanda dragged the gate closed behind us. A fan turned slowly on the ceiling, wheezing as it went.

  “Our elevator is seventy years old,” Juanita said.

  An elevator is not a fine wine. I don’t need to know the vintage.

  “Behind you, Rick,” Yolanda said.

  I turned. Stared. There were no buttons here—only a lever protruding from a metal plate, currently vertical.

  This thing was manual.

  “I’ll tell you when to stop,” Juanita said.

  I took a deep breath and pulled the lever.

  There came a rumbling from far above. The elevator groaned. The elevator shifted. We rose into the air—slow and steady.

  Lurch.

  Slow, anyway.

  There were clangs as the ground fell away below us. There were mysterious squeaks as we passed the second floor. Between the fourth and fifth floors, the elevator shook from side to side.

  “Your mom and I would go up and down, up and down, fifteen times in a row,” Juanita said. “One day our father caught us and gave us a thrashing. After that, we made sure he wasn’t around.”

  Which made me wonder how many places like this were there in the world, where you could return thirty-five years after your mother left and find things the same.

  “What floor?” Ana asked in a small voice.

  “Seven,” Juanita said.

  I had a feeling Ana and I were going to climb a lot of stairs.

  “Now!” Juanita cried. “Dale, ya!”

  I started, let go the lever. The elevator stopped a foot above floor level.

  “Take it down a bit.”

  I edged the lever back, and we eased down gently.

  Yolanda pulled open the gate. We poured out onto the landing. As my feet crossed the threshold, I felt like Odysseus emerging from Hades into the mortal world. (What? I read.)

  Juanita’s apartment had an outer grille made of iron bars and a steel door on the inside. Getting through wasn’t easy—unlock the grille, reach inside the bars, lift a hidden latch, pull the grille open, unlock the deadbolt on the inner door, stick another key into the main lock, lift the inner door up by the handle, turn the key and pull at the same time. I doubted if anyone short of Houdini could have copied this ritual on first try.

  Juanita’s apartment was airy, bright, with minimal furniture and stone floors and tall ceilings. A worn, comfortable-looking sofa and three wooden rocking chairs faced an analog TV, complete with chromed knobs and a metal antenna. In the corner sat an antique dressing table with a tall mirror. The surface of the table was covered in enough porcelain figurines of pigs, cows, and donkeys to stage a production of Animal Farm.

  A ceiling fan turned in the breeze from the open windows. And those windows . . . I stared all the way across the rooftops of Centro Habana, to a monumental domed building, gleaming white in the sun.

  “Nice view of the capitolio, isn’t it,” Juanita said.

  They must have taken inspiration from the one in Washington, back in the days when Cuba and the US were tight.

  Juanita showed us the bathroom. It was clean and tiled in blue, though with no plastic seat on the toilet—you had to perch on the ceramic edge. “Seats are expensive,” Juanita said. “Let me know in advance when you need hot water. It takes fifteen minutes to run the heater.”

  Next door, the kitchen seemed modern enough, with fridge and microwave and oven, and a bunch of bananas in a bowl on the table.

  All in all, this wasn’t so bad. So maybe there was no AC, and I saw no sign of a computer, let alone broadband, but the apartment looked comfortable enough.

  “Here we are,” Juanita said. “You’re staying here.”

  We stood in the door of a small bedroom, with an ancient upright piano in the corner and a heavy carved dresser by the wall. The bed was wide and spacious, covered in a green quilt.

  “Who’s staying here?” I asked, to clarify.

  “Why, you two.”

  There was a silence.

  In that silence, some looks may have been exchanged. Some arms may have been crossed. Some faces may have flushed.

  “Umm,” I said.

  “Yeah, Ricky,” Ana said in English. “Umm.”

  “Ana’s my friend,” I said. “Not my girlfriend.”

  Juanita crossed her arms, stood side by side with Ana. “She’s not your girlfriend.”

  “Hey, I told you on the phone, I’m coming with a friend.” I was discovering it was possible to sweat more indoors than in the Cuban sun. “Una amiga, te acuerdas?”

  “In this family, when a man says he’s coming over with an amiga, they usually mean something else,” Juanita said. “Yolanda?”

  Yolanda poked her head around the corner. “Sí?”

  “They’re not novios.”

  Yolanda raised one eyebrow. “I did think she was quite a girl for him.”

  “Hey—”

  “Not that you’re ugly,” Yolanda reassured me. “Just . . .”

  “Flojo,” Juanita said. “A bit of a wallflower.”

  “Great.” I tried to look like I found this funny.

  “Uh,” Ana said. “I’m sorry about this. We didn’t want to cause you guys trouble . . .”

  “Oh, we’re happy to have you.” Juanita gave me a look. “Your amigo Rick will sleep in my son Yosvany’s room. There’s a sofa. Yosvany!”

  “He’s in the street,” Yolanda said.

  “Come, Rick,” Juanita said. “I’ll show you your room. Let your friend get settled.”

  I could tell this was going to get old.

  Juanita pushed open a door farther down the hallway. “This is it.”

  Apparently, Yosvany was not a great believer in the washing of socks. Maybe a dozen lay scattered across the windowsill, the (rumpled) bed and the (messy) desk. A faint scent in the air attested to their ripeness.

  “You’ll sleep there.” Juanita waved at the sofa, barely visible under a finely curated selection of one T-shirt, one pair of jeans, an old acoustic guitar, four or five different drumsticks, one white sneaker
, a cracked leather belt, a simple canvas backpack, and a large, rust-streaked barbell that I’d probably need two hands to lift. “You can dump all that stuff on his bed.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “We eat in half an hour. Make yourself at home.”

  I found it difficult to implement this suggestion once Juanita left. I’d never shared a room with anyone, let alone with a cousin I’d never met. I knew how I’d feel if I came home one day to find a stranger in my room and all my stuff moved.

  So I was still standing beside that sofa five minutes later, when Yosvany came home. He rattled his way through the locks on the door and greeted Juanita with a jaunty “Buenas tardes, jefa!”—and then he stood before me.

  Yosvany was my height and not much older. The biceps bulging from his shirt made me feel small, though, as did the jeans riding low on his hips—swathes of checkered underpants on display. He was darker-skinned and had a bony, angular face, and didn’t resemble his mother and sister much.

  Yosvany’s gaze latched onto me like a tractor beam on the Millennium Falcon. “Who are you?”

  “Rick Gutiérrez? Tu primo?” I squeaked. Then, forcing my voice lower as I wrestled with a tongue that suddenly refused to speak Spanish, “Uhh . . . your mom said I’m supposed to stay on your sofa?”

  I could sense him cataloging the ways he could dispose of me. Toss me out the window? Launch me down the stairs? Lock me in the elevator and wait for a heart attack?

  “A yuma’s staying with me?” Yosvany grinned. “Empingao.” He stretched out his hand.

  I almost tripped over myself hurrying to shake it. “Uh . . . what’s a yuma?”

  “You.” Yosvany grabbed an armload of stuff off the sofa—the single sneaker flopping to the ground—and plopped it all down on his bed. “You-mai-friend, entiendes?”

  I made a mental note to double-check that translation. “Sorry to intrude.”

  “No problem,” he said. “We’ll have fun together, yes? Go out?”

  “Sure.”

  Cool kids didn’t often ask if I’d hang out with them. But I’d read enough Cuba travel forums to figure this might simply mean—will you pay for us to go out? If so, that was all right. I wasn’t above bribery if that meant getting along with my new roommate.

  “So you’re from New York? What’s it like? Do you go to a lot of concerts? Do you see famous people on the street? Derek Jeter? Mark Teixeira?” Yosvany kept on this stream of questions without waiting for an answer. “I thought you were coming with your girlfriend.”

  “I—”

  “She’s not his girlfriend,” Juanita called, passing by in the hallway with laundry in her arms.

  Yosvany stopped. Looked at me with newfound interest. “She pretty?”

  “Well . . . ,” I said.

  Yosvany must have seen something in my face. He went to the door and shut it. “I see,” he said, all serious. “You want her.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t touch her.”

  Were I a better man, I would have explained that wasn’t how it worked. I would have explained that Ana made her own decisions and we had no business deciding who was going to touch her.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I mean, I believed those things. I really did. I just couldn’t bring myself to say them. Not if it might send Yosvany after Ana.

  “I’ll help you,” Yosvany said. “You’ll see. I’m an expert at this. Soon she’ll be your girlfriend.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I’m your cousin, you know? And I have only one rule in life.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hay que chingar, my friend. Hay que chingar.”

  chapter nine

  JUST KISS HER

  Sometimes when bored I play Match the Cat. The goal of this sophisticated mental game is to find the perfect celebrity cat to match the people around you.

  Lettuce, for example, is the Great White Cloud. He’s white, he’s great, and, like his namesake, he drifts through the world with an unshakable knowledge of his own excellence.

  Ana’s Queen of Pillow Fights. Serene, elegant, and secure in her beauty, but rouse her anger and feathers will fly.

  Yosvany, now . . . Yosvany is Al Capone Jr. He’s the hippest guy in town, cool as ice, above it all. When he spots something interesting—a balloon or some yarn or an empty water bottle—he’ll strut past like it’s nothing to him. But give him a minute and he’ll be back. Circling. Circling. Look away for an instant—and he’ll pounce.

  I didn’t know this at first, though.

  Yosvany seemed to take our conversation about Ana as some kind of challenge. He waited until she left her room and introduced himself in the hallway, his Spanish slurred and careless. “Qué vuelta, I’m Yosvany.”

  “I’m Ana,” she said. “Mucho gusto.”

  He walked straight past her, then turned as if he’d just remembered. “Rick mentioned you’re dancers. There’s a salsa party at the Milocho tonight. Want to go?”

  “The Milocho?”

  “Club 1830,” he said. “Best place to dance casino in Havana.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “Can I take my camera? Shoot video there?”

  “Of course,” Yosvany said. “You want me to introduce you to the show dancers?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I mean, if it’s not a bother.”

  Yosvany assured her that it wasn’t.

  “So here’s the deal,” he said once back in the room. “I’ve got her figured out.”

  “What?” I picked through my suitcase. “How? You just met her.”

  “Experience,” he said. “I’ve had enough girls that I can tell.”

  “People are different,” I said.

  Yosvany shrugged. “Then call it a theory. I have a theory that can help you get with her.”

  On the one hand, Yosvany figuring out Ana at a glance felt vaguely offensive, as if he were lessening her by making the claim. On the other hand, getting with Ana.

  “She’s one of those hot girls who get hit on all the time,” Yosvany said. “You can’t do the same. You know, things like, you’re pretty, you’re nice, I like you, do you want to go out sometime, all that crap. You have to stand out. Meterle el dedo completo.”

  I sat up from the suitcase, scandalized. “What do you mean, meterle el dedo completo?”

  A word of caution. If you’re the easily offended type, don’t google Yosvany’s Spanish.

  I mean, I could censor it, but writing Yosvany without foul language would be like playing a guitar with three strings missing. It would be like leaving out the smile on the Mona Lisa. If I had to try, I’d be—to borrow Yosvany’s own term—embarca’o.

  “I don’t mean it literally,” Yosvany said. “Not yet.” He snorted. “What I mean is, surprise her. Make her feel like she’s in a movie. Say things to her that no one’s ever said to her.”

  “Like what?”

  “Take Cristina, this girl I met last week,” Yosvany said. “I took her to this cool little club in Miramar. We’re grooving to a bachata and I whisper in her ear: ‘Forgive me if I’m too honest, but I’ve never felt like this dancing with anyone. You’re the most beautiful girl here and the best dancer. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’”

  I cringed just to imagine saying those things. But presumably Yosvany knew better.

  “You’re lucky to find a girl that makes you feel like that,” I said.

  “That’s what I say to everyone.”

  “You lie to them?”

  Yosvany shook his head, as if disappointed in me. “You’ve got to lie to women, cousin. The more lies, the better.”

  I felt dirty listening to him, like I’d googled “relationship advice” and ended up at a porn site. There seemed to be something uniquely icky about the idea of lying to someone so they would get with me.

  Maybe I should have denounced Yosvany’s philosophy loud and clear. But, thinking of the weeks ahead, I sa
id, “I think we have different styles when it comes to girls.”

  “Really?” Yosvany asked, as if genuinely curious. “What’s your style?”

  My style was standing there with my hands in my pockets, staring at my shoes, until the girl lost interest. Thankfully, I didn’t have to explain this because Juanita walked in (people didn’t seem to bother knocking in this apartment).

  “Dinner’s ready. Benny’s here, asi que a comer!”

  Dinner was thick slices of ham with rice and beans, a vegetable salad, and crunchy fried bananas. Hardly a feast for the senses, but tasty—and the papaya juice Juanita poured us was rich and sweet.

  “You’ll eat here every day,” Juanita instructed us. “We wash everything with chlorine bleach. You have to be careful, because there’s cholera in Havana.”

  Cholera. Things were getting better and better.

  Benny was Yolanda’s boyfriend, a wiry, spectacled black man who worked for the government agency responsible for food distribution. He had spent several years in London. “Lovely to meet you both,” he said to us in fine Queen’s English, and asked us questions about recent political developments in Washington. He knew more about primaries and gerrymandering and the latest filibuster in Congress than Ana or me.

  “He’s in IT, so he gets good internet access,” Yolanda explained. “Not like us mere mortals, who have to stand in line and pay a week’s salary to get online.”

  “It’s not like that,” Benny said, shifting uncomfortably.

  “So what is it like?” Ana asked.

  “Rick, you’re sitting in your mother’s place,” Juanita said. “That’s where she always sat. She loved looking out the window to the Morro.”

  I looked out that window. In the distance, where the city ended and the water began, rose the old white lighthouse of the Morro fortress. I knew of it from a hundred photographs, and from a book I’d read about the Revolution. Along with the nearby Cabaña, the Morro had served as a prison for political enemies of the Castro regime.

  “You sure she wasn’t looking north at Miami?” Yolanda asked.

  “It’s hard to tell the difference at this angle,” Benny said.

  I could tell Juanita was about to cut in again, so I spoke quickly. “Did you use to be close, tía? With my mother?”