Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

Given to frequenting low resort. Low resort. Low resort. Given to frequenting low resort —

Outside, wind stirred the banana leaves beyond her bedroom window. The leaves brushed against one another and cast a papery sound. The wind gusted, and the banana plants made shadows on her bedroom wall like mad puppets. Willy said that after a soaking rain, if you stood under the leaves and listened carefully, you could hear the bananas growing. What sort of sound did they make? A damp pop and creaking, he said. He explained how they grew, that you planted an “eye,” and then the eye bore fruit for several seasons. He knew all about gardening and tropical species of flowers, even their Latin names. He ordered seeds from catalogs and planted them in tidy rows that alternated in color. A pale, salmon-colored trumpet vine next to deeper orange heliconias and flamingo flowers, which were like Valentine hearts cut from shiny red patent leather. Along one flower bed edge, white butterfly jasmine as an accent. He pruned the flamboyán tree that grew outside the Lederers’ dining room windows so that it bloomed longer than anyone else’s on the manager’s row. Vermilion sprays of color flocked the windows and formed a carpet of brilliant leaves on the ground below. When the sun shone into the tree, the windows were ablaze in orange flames. The women who came to tea at the Lederers’ were envious. “Where on earth did you get him?” they asked. “He speaks French and he’s handsome — that smile, it’s practically like a drug — and he’s got the greenest thumb.” “Not to mention,” the lady from French Guiana said, “those beautiful hands.” Willy planted a night-blooming cereus in the Lederers’ yard, right underneath Everly’s bedroom window. It wouldn’t bloom for several years, he said. But eventually it would produce an enormous ivory flower with a strange, sweet smell. One evening, it would open at dusk, bloom until dawn, and then close, never to open again. Years from now its first bloom would open and fill her room with fragrance, he said, but Everly would be gone by then. “I’ll be here!” she protested. “No you won’t. You’ll be in college, a university, getting your degree.” “Maybe I’ll stay in Cuba,” she said. “Maybe I won’t want to go.” “That’s silly,” Willy said. “You have to go.”

The wind gusted like a personality, quieted, then gusted again. Duffy was snoring gently in her bed across the room.

Everly thought she might like D. L. Mazierre to come and agitate them, even if she didn’t know what was involved. She felt sure he was one of the good guys that Willy talked about, on his way to help.

Maybe low resort meant rough areas, the kinds of places her mother would tell her she wasn’t allowed to go. Like Gamble Valley, where the Negroes lived in Oak Ridge. Timothy Hodgkiss had said his father went to Gamble Valley to buy splo. “What’s splo?” Everly had asked. “You know, moonshine.” But she was only eight, and didn’t know what that was, either. “My father says the county is dry,” Timothy Hodgkiss had said, as if to explain. She didn’t press on, although she knew that what she imagined was wrong. Moonshine, something too bright, like a metal car-door handle hit by the sun. They didn’t need moonshine in Cuba because everyone drank rum. “Ron,” the Cubans said, the Spanish word making the drink seem somehow thinner and more watery, with an “n” rather than an “m.” Anyone could buy rum, even a kid. Just walk up to a bar and order it. And there was marijuana growing everywhere, which K.C. had pointed out, to roll into cigarettes that the cane cutters smoked. She’d seen them smoking marijuana cigarettes, she could tell by the smell, the cane cutters whetting their machetes with a rock and molasses, sitting on the side of a road that Everly was not supposed to go down because there were shacks along it where adult things went on.

When they’d first arrived in Nicaro, her mother said that Everly and Duffy’s bathroom, with its pink and black tiles, looked like a bordello. “What’s a bordello?” Everly had asked. “A bathroom with pink and black tiles,” her father said. The first time she was invited to Val and Pamela’s, she pointed out to Mrs. Carrington that they, too, had a bordello.

“Excuse me, child?” Mrs. Carrington said.

Everly’s face went hot. “The tile pattern in your bathroom, isn’t it bordello?”

After Mrs. Carrington excused herself “to powder her nose in the bordello,” Val explained that it wasn’t tiles. It was a place where men paid money for certain services. “What kinds of services?” “Sex,” Val said. Now she was older and knew what sex was. It was possible her sister had tried it with Tico Leál. But back then, she’d pictured a thing that came in a box, like something you purchased from Sears, folded and wrapped in tissue.

She supposed that if Gamble Valley were low resort, a bordello could be low resort. But buying sex didn’t seem like something D. L. Mazierre would do. He’d be busy agitating.

Charmaine Mackey was near the ice factory when she saw Lito Gonzalez coming up the road in his white Cadillac. She felt a strange rise in something — her heart rate, maybe — when she realized his car was slowing, and that he would stop to speak with her.

His window went down. Did she need a lift?

She explained that she was out walking on purpose, for exercise, which suddenly seemed like a ridiculous activity. The Cubans didn’t walk anywhere unless they had to.

Another car pulled up behind Mr. Gonzalez’s, the driver honking impatiently. It was Mrs. Carrington. Probably stocking up on ice.

Charmaine felt caught. Doing what, she wasn’t sure, but in a perverse instinct to prove that she had nothing to hide, and hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking to the greasy Cuban millionaire, she put her hand on the passenger side door handle and opened it. Said she’d take a ride after all, and got in next to Mr. Gonzalez.

They proceeded up the road, Mrs. Carrington, behind them, turning left onto the manager’s row. The interior of Mr. Gonzalez’s car was enormous, white leather upholstery that reminded Charmaine of the sleek, plush lining of coffins. But what a waste, to line a coffin in white leather. This was an interior you could actually enjoy. Mrs. Billings was wrong about Mr. Gonzalez’s taste in cars. It was a wonderful car, and she wished she could tell him so, but she couldn’t think of how to say it without relaying the insult, in order to pay him the compliment.

“I was heading up to the mine, Mrs. Mackey, but I can take you anyplace you need to go.”

“Do you think I could come with you?” she impulsively asked. “I’ve never been up to the mine.” It was absurd of her to ask. But there was something about Mr. Gonzalez that put her at ease, perhaps too much ease. He was so reserved that he brought out something assertive in her. The Americans in Nicaro were friendly in an overbearing way, with their smiles and warmth and handshakes — sometimes even hugs, which almost hurt Charmaine Mackey’s nervous system. She was standoffish because she had to be, because it was too intense to be embraced by acquaintances. Mr. Gonzalez was not friendly or unfriendly. He let her take the lead, and she did.

“There isn’t much to see at the mine, Mrs. Mackey, and it’s no place for a lady. It’s dusty and hot and unpleasant. And not so safe these days. There are rebels nearby. Perhaps your husband has told you about the situation?”

“He says it isn’t anything to worry about. My son, Phillip, went up there last year on a class field trip with Miss Alfaro, and found it fascinating, just—”

“Is that what he said?”

“Yes, he had a wonderful time. He likes Miss Alfaro quite a lot. All the children do.”