Warren Murphy: Cold Warrior

These he slipped into rips and rents in his raggedy uniform. Once these things had been held in place by string and elastics-Russian string and elastics. There had been none since the fall of the hated capitialationist, Gorbachev.

When he was so festooned with greenery as to resemble an ambulatory bush, Xavier strode off toward the beach, his branches and fronds bouncing happily.

The Caribbean sun was coming up, promising a glorious day. Xavier enjoyed the warm, sultry rays as they seeped through his itchy camouflage. It was a walk he had been taking since the earliest days of the Revolution, when he had been a young man.

Now he was old and bent, and his beard had turned to snow. And while his camouflage bounced, his proud heart did not.

As he trudged down to the beach, Xavier Custodio wondered where the years had gone. And thinking of the passage of time made him wonder where the Revolution had gone.

No, he thought morosely. Where the Revolution had gone wrong.

Oh, it had been so exciting when he was a young Fidelista! He could remember the day Batista had fled in the middle of the night-after a New Year's Day celebration. Xavier had been in Habana when Fidel had marched in with his guerrilleros.

The santeria priests lined the road to offer the protection of their gods to the bearded man wearing the jaunty beret, who was hailed as a redeemer and the new Pizarro. Rebels shot up the parking meters. There would be no taxes levied on the people in the new Cuba, they proclaimed. Millions came out to greet their new leader, and when he appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace, to give his first historic speech to the masses, doves actually roosted in the stonework above him. One right on his shoulder.

A glorious day. It had been the dawn of a new Cuba. A Cuba for Cubans-not Americanos or Mafiosos, but the Cuban people.

So long ago . . .

In those days it had been an honor to rise with the sun and go down to the beach, even with the putrid crab-stink.

As he thought this, a scarlet land crab scuttled out of the brush on nervous, spidery legs. It lifted its sun burned pincers angrily, as if challenging Xavier's right to walk on his own island.

Without giving it a thought, Xavier stepped on the crab. It made a sound like a Dixie cup popping, and Xavier walked on.

Behind him another land crab scuttled out, clamped pincers onto the mortal remains of its brother, and dragged it greedily from sight. Crunching cannibal sounds came from a mangrove thicket.

Near a stand of sugarcane, Xavier stopped for breakfast, too. He selected a moderate shoot of cane, and cutting it so close to the ground that the shoot would not stop growing, deftly spun it in his hand as he hacked off the bitter tip, letting it drop to decompose and fertilize the still living parent stalk.

As he walked, Xavier sucked in the sweet brown sucrose juice without enjoyment.

There was a time when breakfast had been more nourishing, he thought sadly. And somehow sweeter.

There had been a time when Xavier had driven down to the beach in his 1953 DeSoto. Until the irreplaceable parts had begun to decay. A motor scooter had replaced that. Until gasoline had become scarce and a Chinese bicycle had replaced that-until its tires had been confiscated to make tires for the military trucks that had drunk the entire gas ration of the island.

Where did the Revolution go wrong? Xavier asked himself.

Was it when the leadership organized the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood? Before the Revolution, to be a chivato had been a shameful thing. Now every Cuban was an informer. Every Cuban carried a secret shame.

Was it when the Russians had insisted upon converting the Cuban economy to sugarcane harvesting-even though El Lider Maximo had earlier abandoned sugarcane as an industry for peons and imperialista lackeys?

Was it when the flower of Cuban youth had been sent to Africa to fight in liberation wars that had resulted only in returning coffins?

No, Xavier thought. Things had truly begun to go awry after the Bay of Pigs.

He had been on the beach then, digging ditches. Then, as now, he had been a militiaman. Then, as now, loyal to Fidel.

The B-26s came flying Cuban Revolutionary colors. They buzzed in low, and Xavier laid down his spade to wave at them with both arms. But then he noticed something the American CIA had overlooked in their preparations: They had solid metal noses. The B-26s of the Cuban Air Force-all three of them-had Plexiglas noses.

The false Cuban warplanes opened fire. Xavier rolled into his half-dug trench just ahead of the blunt teeth of death, and lived.

The Bay was soon alive with invading forces. Xavier had helped sound the alarm. As a guide for Batallion 111, he helped capture nearly two hundred mercenaries. They thought they had captured Americans. They had taken only Cubans. Exiles.

For his bravery that day, the Maximum Leader himself had decorated Xavier and assigned him the honor of guarding Playa Giron, the beach at the mouth of the Bahia de Cochinos. It was not only an honor but a gift.

For no one ever expected the U.S. or their tools to attempt another Bay of Pigs. Certainly not at the site of their greatest humiliation. Certainly not in the Bay of Pigs itself.

Yet as he thought about it, Xavier realized that everything had changed in that first flush of triumph. For it was after the Bay of Pigs that Fidel had declared himself a Marxist-Leninist.

Xavier could recall his surprise when he'd heard the news. Then, with Latin resolution, he had shrugged his leafy shoulders and muttered, "Well, now we know what we are."

Before the Bay of Pigs, Xavier had been a defender of the Revolution. After, a defender of Socialism. And now . . .

Socialism was dead where it was not dying. And it was dying with tortuous slowness on the island of Cuba.

As he walked down to the beach, the memorials to the fallen of the Revolution began to appear at the side of the dirt road. Weeds had grown up around them. Over thirty years had passed. The young men of Cuba knew not of the Bay of Pigs. It was sad.

The land crabs began to accumulate in the road. Those that had died the day before-both eaten and not-had been baked orange by the relentless Caribbean sun.

As he sucked on the too-sweet cane, Xavier casually popped the crabs with his worn shoes. Coolie shoes. Imported from China. Suitable only for the feet of children, not men like Xavier.

How long, he wondered, before we are reduced to eating the indigestible land crabs?

How long until the long-promised fruits of the Revolution fall at the feet of the people, in whose name the Revolution was carried out?

As the warm turquoise water-so clear it was like rippling azure glass-came into view, Xavier popped with each step. The crabs died and the crabs were carried off by the buzzards and the other crabs to be eaten. But the crabs were always just as plentiful the next day.

Xavier recalled a phrase he had heard: "A revolution always eats its young."

It was not that way in Cuba. Cuba was different. Its people were different. Its leaders were different.

Down by the beach, a copy of Granma flapped among the crabs. Since it was his task to keep the beach clean as well as safe, Xavier stooped to retrieve it.

Idly he flipped through its pages. There were fifteen pictures of El Lider scattered throughout its eight pages. In each of them Fidel wore his familiar designer fatigues. In each of them his paunch hung over his cinched-tight webbed belt.

Perhaps it was his downcast mood, perhaps it was because Xavier was approaching his sixtieth birthday, but the sight of the once charismatic leader of the Revolution bursting at the seams, while Xavier actually weighed less now than he did in 1961 when he'd fought at the Bay of Pigs, brought bitter tears to his sun-wrinkled eyes.