Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“‘My dear, sweet Ruth—’” she read in a cold matter-of-fact voice. Then she stopped and seemed to skip ahead. “Well, for a while he writes about how much he loves me,” she said and sighed, not with longing, but a kind of exhaustion. “Here, this is the part I want to read to you.” She was at the bottom of the first page. Its top drooped like a flag in a dying wind. “‘I dare not explain how I know about the danger I’m in, even though a reliable man will bring this letter to you. It is certain that the CIA is out to silence me. My life isn’t worth a nickel if I return. I have spoken with what they call in the spy movies a double agent and he showed me proof of exactly how determined the Kennedy administration is to prevent me from bringing home the truth about the Revolution.’” She looked at me. The utter loss in her eyes was scary. Her cheeks were hollows. “I’m sorry, Rafe,” she said in a mumble and lowered her gaze to the floor. She let out a huge sigh, an exhalation that was part moan. “We’re terrible parents,” she whispered and I heard tears in her voice, although there were none in her eyes.

“No, you’re not!” I answered as if a stranger had made the accusation. “I love you, Mommy,” I said. I reached for her right hand. The left one still held my fathers letter.

She squeezed my fingers for a second and then let go, sitting up to read from the second page of foolscap. “‘Obviously it would be crazy for you and Rafe to join me in Cuba. An attack could come at any time and should the U.S. bring all its forces to bear nothing could stop the devastation. I certainly don’t expect any mercy at their hands, not even for the innocents. You’re safer in New York. But still, I’m sorry to have to alarm you, and I don’t think you should repeat any of this to Rafael, but I’m convinced that you are in danger so long as you are associated with me. I’ve let it be known in Havana — especially in the presence of those I don’t trust — that our marriage is troubled and that you don’t care for my politics. If things become too uncomfortable for you, maybe you should consider talking to a lawyer about a divorce. Do whatever is necessary to make it seem we’re on the rocks. I know this is a hard thing to ask, but we’ve both known since Julius and Ethel the kind of people we’re up against, and certainly what happened in Tampa has proven they’ll stop at nothing. Don’t worry about me or the fate of the world — think of yourself and Rafe only. Pretend you’ve given it all up, especially politics. You should get a divorce — I’m sure an American court will grant it once you tell them where I’ve voluntarily chosen to live. Think of me as being in prison, a prison you can’t visit, but a prison from which I will soon be paroled, not broken, but stronger than ever. I couldn’t protect you and Rafe once. I must stay here to prevent you from being hurt again. I must stay here and help defend the Revolution. If Cuba goes, then true Socialism will exist nowhere. If it fails then I fail and I will be worthless to you and to myself. You know whom to contact to get a message to me. Be sure to destroy this. Hug and kiss Rafe for me. I don’t know if he’ll ever accept me as his father again. I hope to make it up to him someday. Without your love I am lost. Without the hope that I will see you both again, I am desolate. Un fuerte abrazo. Te amo.’” She recited his words in a consciously controlled tone, fighting her pain. As a result, she sounded angry. “That means, I love you,” she said in a grim tone.

“Daddy’s not coming home?” The rim of the tub was a precarious and uncomfortable seat. I braced myself with my hands. The porcelain was cool and massive. “Is that what it means?” I asked. I seemed to feel nothing. I know my mother expected me to be upset. Obviously, I didn’t really understand what was going on. “Use your peasant brain,” to choose just one example of my confusion, seemed like an insult to me. I understood peasants to be primitive people, only a cut above Cro-Magnon Man; indeed, peasants were less impressive since they were alive today, demonstrably inferior to other human beings, whereas Cro-Magnon was the peak of intelligence for his time. And what trouble was going to find me? More men who wanted to pee on my mother? Those terrifying Cuban anti-Communists (they were called by my father Gusanos, which means worms) and the CIA, deadly agents of the most powerful government on earth, were going to be defeated by an eight-year-old’s peasant brain? Or by my hard-headedness? And why was my father proud of our primitive ancestors? I didn’t want to emulate them: I wanted to be like him, a handsome intellectual.

But I knew even then, had known since that night in Tampa, that there was a part of Francisco I didn’t want in me, and I also believed, although I immediately shoved it out of sight, down below into the damp and unlit basement, that his reason for staying in Cuba was more cowardice than self-sacrifice. I knew what I felt and believed and then in an instant, I never knew that I had ever thought such a thought. O, miracle of miracles from the creature that thinks: we move inexorably toward truth, and on arrival, shut our eyes.

“That’s what it means, honey,” my mother said. She had no warmth in her tone, hardly any coloration. She could have been a recorded phone company voice, explaining that the number was disconnected. “Daddy won’t be coming home for a while. But he’s fine and he loves us.” The letter went back into my father’s chinos. “Don’t be frightened,” she said and stood up. She extended her hand. “It’s bedtime.”

Oh no, I was certainly not going to be frightened. Of what? What was there to be frightened of?

Poor woman. She was lost. I took my mother’s hand. To me she was beauty, sustenance, comfort. Even in the torn shirt, with the target on her back, swimming in my father’s pants, I put my hand in hers with confidence.

My room had only the nude ceiling fixture, a triangle of three bulbs that spread a yellow light, a sickly glare, as if the sun were dying. Ruth had taken down my shelves of books, comics, baseball cards, and games in order to paint the walls blue. She had done one wall and then decided the color was wrong, that it ought to remain white as before. But it was still undone, since painting a room white bored her. I had one wall of blue, three of peeling yellowed white, and my possessions were in a disorganized heap, sometimes covered by a sheet and sometimes not, depending on whether Ruth had vowed that morning to do the job. I looked at this wreck while I undressed and Ruth turned down my bed. No wonder Mrs. Stein wouldn’t allow Joseph to play at my house. Maybe it had nothing to do with her nuttiness. Maybe it was us.

I had never seriously considered that we were the weirdos. Despite our political unorthodoxy, my father’s lack of a typical job, I had a heroic image of my parents and I trusted their assertion that I was strong, fast, smart and good. It was gracious on my part to be friendly to boys like Joseph, wasn’t it? But now, as I put on my faded Superman pajama bottoms (I didn’t wear a top), I saw that we were the oddballs. Everyone else was a happy American, not enemies of the government like us. Everyone else’s mother wore dresses and cooked dinners. Everyone else’s father went to work in the morning and came home at night to talk about the Yankees, not Dostoevsky or the Third International. I wasn’t the envy of my friends, the delight of my teachers, the wonderful exception. I was the unfortunate kid, the geek, surrounded not by genuine regard, but the kindness of pity.

I don’t remember when my tears started, whether I was already into bed and had been tucked in, or whether it was just before. My mother said, in that flat voice, “You’re crying,” and got into bed with me, gathering me into the warm hollow of her curved body, her head arching over me, her legs covering and entwining with mine. She no longer had the chinos on. Perhaps she had gone out for a while and resumed painting, perhaps this took place in the middle of the night, and I had woken weeping. I don’t remember exactly. The Brooks Brothers shirt I can recall. Its fabric, smelling faintly of my father and faintly of my mother and strongly of paint, was somehow both soft and coarse. My tears wetted a large circle on the upper ridge of her left breast. Her nipple emerged, a truncated pillar, rising in the soaked material.