Miguel Mejides - Havana Noir

“Now you’re gonna pay me my hundred pesos, aren’t you?” he says, and hits him on the nose with the piece.

“Fuck, white boy, no need to be this way,” the guy says, and shoves his hand in his pocket.

“Careful!” screams El Cao, and Alexis doesn’t think: He shoots him right in the head. The black guy’s head explodes and rolls back. Even I get splattered with his blood. It’s practically black, like the dog’s, although it’s got little white dots. Then the black guy falls and Alexis leans down to talk to him, though I don’t think the guy can hear him anymore.

“See what happens to tough little black guys like you and your buddy?” He takes the guy’s hand out of his pocket. The black guy doesn’t have a gun today, just a roll of bills: more than five hundred.

Since everybody on the block’s already looking and screaming, we start running. That’s when everything gets fucked up: Two cops appear on the corner and Alexis doesn’t even give it a thought. He never gives anything a thought. And with the aim he’s got. He shoots and downs one, and the other one flees. We run off and no one else comes after us.

If you kill two black delinquents, you get in trouble. But if you kill a cop, then things go from bad to the very worst. We know this, which is why we all agree when El Cao speaks up.

“Let’s steal a boat from the river and head for La Yuma, cuz this is really bad now; this is what happens when you hang out with punks like this,” he says, taking the gun from Alexis. When Alexis starts to say something, El Cao interrupts him: “Shut up or I’ll shut you up.”

It’s been two hours now I’ve been staring at the sun. I like looking at the sun. I can look at the sun without dropping my lids, with my pupils intact, and without tears. It’s been two hours since the boat ran out of fuel and more than four that we’ve been without water. It’s been at least an hour since Alexis slipped off the side, when he went to drink some sea water and never came back. Yovanoti says a shark probably got him. Then he starts to cry and babble, “I’m glad, I’m glad,” and to spit in the water. I don’t like that. I think Alexis was my best friend.

I’ve never worried so much about time passing. Richard El Cao says it’ll be dark in two hours, and that this is good. I don’t know if it’s so good. The best thing would be to be on the corner, listening to the bitching of the old women, singing a little, and staring at the sun. Without water, without food, without rum in the middle of the ocean, yeah, there’s nothing better... It stinks of vomit and shit. If an American coast guard doesn’t show up, we’re fucked. And if one does show up, we’re even more fucked. I ask myself, What the fuck am I doing on this boat? I wanna throw myself in the water like Alexis, but I control myself.

It’s nighttime and I fall asleep.

The sun’s fucked up, intense. My head hurts a little. I’m really sleepy. It’s been awhile since Yovanoti has said anything about what he’s gonna do when he gets to La Yuma. He’s thrown up so much he doesn’t have anything left to throw up. He’s just oozing green spit. El Cao says we should think about good things, we shouldn’t think about how thirsty we are. That’s hard to do. I think about sucking Vanessa the blonde’s tits and then I think about being in church and then about the corner. Later, still, I think about the mulatta’s pussy, the one from the movie. And, to be honest, I do feel better, I even get a hard-on.

When El Cao speaks up again, he says, “Now it’s nighttime again.”

Yovanoti starts to cry and El Cao slaps him twice. So that he’ll calm down. Then Yovanoti throws up a little more. There’s not much moon tonight and I can’t see anything; I don’t stare at anything either.

When I wake up, I see the sun and I see the helicopter. It doesn’t look like the Cuban police. From way up there, with a bullhorn, they shout down something in English. When I look around the boat, I see only El Cao, just lying there, fainted, I think. Yovanoti is nowhere to be seen. To think he was the one who most wanted to go live in Miami. Tough luck. I really need a chug of rum right about now. I splash some water in El Cao’s face and he wakes up, but he stays down.

“We’re saved,” I tell him, but I’m very sleepy again. I open my eyes real wide and look up at the sun, just as if I were back on my corner, and I sing a little of that song about the bitter smell of desperation.

Translation by Achy Obejas

Flores

1992

Señor Luis, I walked all over Havana, I promise, I went everywhere, all over — but nothing!” Eladio Martínez was close to tears as he stood wringing his hands on a rag of a handkerchief that was once beautiful, beautiful linen. “I couldn’t find any!”

Eladio reached out for the railing around the terrace, balanced himself, and then slowly raised his feet — first one, then the other. He wanted his employer to see that the soles of his shoes had eroded almost completely, so much so that the paper he’d lined them with was also worn through in places, and the balls and heels of his feet were walking directly on the ground.

“Just like the other times, Señor Luis, nothing!”

“Thank you, Eladio, I know you tried your best — it’s not your fault. As always, I appreciate all your work.” Luis Rodríguez-López looked down at the shoes and shook his head in sorrow. Lifting his head then, as if it were heavy, he gave Eladio a wan smile. “I’m so sorry about your shoes. I’ll see what can be done; maybe get you a new pair to replace those.”

Even if Luis had been able to afford to purchase a new pair of shoes, it would be highly unlikely he would find them, as footwear was either in very short supply or priced out of reach in present day Cuba. Life in the Special Period was brutal, a never-ending struggle for survival. Both men knew that Eladio’s loss in trying to accomplish what Luis had asked of him was permanent.

Eladio raised his right hand, and then slowly, as discreetly as possible, dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. Even in such extreme heat, gentlemen did not show sweat. But in the steaming air — and wiping with a bit of fabric worn to a fragile lace — fresh sweat continued to pour down his face.

“I would appreciate that, Señor Luis,” Eladio replied, though he knew there was no chance that the señor would be able to fulfill his promise. “New shoes would be nice.” They had both been living such a duplicitous life, pretending all was as before for so long.

Luis nodded. “You look so very hot and tired. Please, go inside the house and drink some water, and rest.”

“Thank you, Señor Luis, I will.” Eladio bowed — the habit was ingrained. “Before I go inside, is there anything I may do for you?”

“No, Eladio, I don’t need anything right now, thank you very much. I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer myself. But you go now, before the heat and your exertion make you ill.”

Eladio had worked for the Rodríguez-López family for more than forty years, but the relationship between the two old men was more like friends, especially as he had not been paid for the last thirty years. Still, a sense of rank remained, and manifested itself in their formality with each other.

At this point in their lives — they were both seventy years old, their sunset years — Eladio and Luis were so similar in appearance that one could easily have been mistaken for the other. They had both once been over six feet tall but they had each lost a few inches with age. And, as was the case with most ordinary Cubans — because they never had enough to eat — they were both quite thin, and their clothes hung loose on their slight frames.