Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

He did not invite her to his house, but parked on an access road halfway to the mine. That wonderful leather interior, with a very roomy backseat. He was not exactly gentle that afternoon. In fact, he was rough. He grabbed her and pinched her arm and then the inside of her leg, so hard that he left a bruise. But his roughness seemed exactly right. The way he’d grabbed her, it meant he was paying attention. To her. She celebrated the beet-colored bruise on the inside of her thigh, and mourned its disappearance.

A few weeks later, she waited in his car while he conducted business at the Mayarí courthouse, then followed him into a ravine behind the pool hall. They made love on the ground, under the midday sun. She lay on a bed of pine needles, whose scratchiness had the same intoxicating effect as his rough pinches when they’d done it in his car.

After each incidence, he made her wait and wait and wait to see him again. But by now she’d grown somewhat used to the waiting, and considered it a part of their courtship. She sensed that the waiting, his ignoring her for weeks and even months, abided some logic that was remote to her but not to him. The courtship required profound patience on her part. It tortured her, but torture was part of infatuation.

Hubert continued to talk about Gonzalez as if he were an unconvicted killer. How unlikely that she, Charmaine, had an intimate thread to the person her husband and the other Americans despised. Hubert swore that Gonzalez would be their undoing. Hubert said — not to her, but to Mr. Lederer and Mr. Billings, though right in front of her because she didn’t count, was too stupid and batty to understand — that Gonzalez was working with the rebels, and also making deals with Batista, trying to build a pressure cooker and bring combat right into Nicaro, to drive the Americans out. Her lover, whom they were talking about. And if they only knew. Maybe he was doing all of that, but he told her nothing. He was rough and hasty and never spoke her name, which made him that much more attractive and mysterious.

She imagined years from now, when Phillip was grown up, that maybe she could ask him about Mr. Gonzalez. Phillip had been caught using his boat to ferry rebel arms and supplies across Saetía. Hubert spoke to Phillip and decided to send him away. He said little about it to Charmaine. She suspected that her son, a clever and gifted boy, a sensitive boy, probably understood a great deal about what was going on with the rebels and mysterious Mr. Gonzalez and whether or not he was involved. Someday, when he was all grown up, Phillip might explain it to her.

Christmas in Havana

The morning we were leaving, Del kept us waiting. His bags were packed and in the hall with mine and Mother and Daddy’s, but there was no sign of him.

Crushing season was set to begin just after the New Year, and people were going to Havana or Miami or New York to get a proper holiday before the sugar mill started running around the clock. This was December of 1957, just before the big cane fire. Before anything, really, had started to go wrong. We were going to Miami for the annual shopping spree, then to Havana as guests of Deke and Dolly Havelin.

Del knew what time we were supposed to be at the airstrip to meet the company plane. He’d gone off somewhere earlier that morning. I stuck around the house. Curtis Allain came by, and we killed time pitching rotten fruit at the mamoncillo tree, trying to get bats to fly out of it — they sleep in mamoncillo trees. The Allains weren’t going anywhere. I think Rudy and Hatch were supposed to be around all the time, keeping an eye on the mill. I can’t imagine the Allains going on a vacation anyhow. Pearly sure didn’t like to go anywhere, not even to Mayarí. “Can’t blast her out of there with dynamite,” Rudy joked. Mother had gone up to Nicaro that morning. The roads were good, and Hilton Hardy took her in one of the Buicks. She wanted to bring a Christmas ring to the Lederers, and she’d bought a gift for Everly — I think a bottle of perfume. Mother had invited Everly to come with us to Havana, but she couldn’t for some reason that I don’t recall, and Mother was sad about that. As I said, she had a real soft spot for Everly Lederer. She had our piano tuned religiously, even after Everly stopped coming over to play it. Mother felt that she had a unique personality — very “individualistic” is what Mother said. She loved us boys to death, but I think it was a special treat to have a girl around.

When Del didn’t show up on time, we all figured he was off sulking. Daddy had enrolled him in military school in Georgia starting in the spring, and Del didn’t want to go. He was too old for the Preston school. I was almost too old for it, and would be enrolling at Ruston Academy in Havana the next fall. Del had been doing Calvert home schooling system by mail. After Phillip Mackey was caught helping the rebels, Daddy said it was proof enough to him that the humidity was making these older boys soft in the head. Del would go to the States and have a drill sergeant teach him some common sense.

We’d waited maybe thirty minutes when Daddy started getting anxious. “Screw him,” he said. “He’s sixteen and he can take care of himself. Let him eat cat food.”

The entire staff of servants had the week off, except the company guards and Ho, the Chinaman who tended our flowers.

Of course, Mother didn’t want to leave without him. But you didn’t cross Daddy. Hilton Hardy put the suitcases in the Buick, and we left. Daddy gossiped to Mother about Mr. Carrington’s embezzlement troubles. Mother usually had a taste for these things, but she was too preoccupied about Del to enjoy the scandal. “Bought himself a brand-new Cadillac. What a jerk. Can’t even be discreet.”

On the plane, Daddy talked about Deke and Dolly Havelin and how they’d probably do a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. He seemed in a fine mood, and I guess it was peculiar, given that his oldest son had run off, but I didn’t always understand Daddy.

Aside from Del getting shipped off to military school, everything seemed normal to me that Christmas. Daddy must have known the situation was worse than a few ruffians in the hills, as Batista was claiming, but he hadn’t told us. He never told Mother anything because Mother couldn’t keep a secret. It wasn’t her fault, Daddy said, it’s biology, just how women are.

United Fruit put out their “Jungle Bells” issue of Unifruitco, with pictures from the masquerade at the Pan-American Club, everybody goofing in ridiculous costumes. A lot of people just switched roles — husbands dressed up as wives, women in pants with mustaches drawn over their upper lip. I went as the Lone Ranger, and Daddy let me carry a real pistol. Daddy wore a tall, pointy white hood with eyeholes cut into it and insisted he was dressed like a Spanish Holy Week penitent. He could be perverse like that. The year before, he’d gone as a guajiro. After that, everybody started doing it. It’s an easy costume, just smear dirt on your cheeks, cut jagged hems on your pants, hitch them up with a rope, and walk around going “Sí, señor.” I’m not saying it’s polite. But this was a different time.

Mother’s flamboyán tree was blooming a brilliant red and made things feel Christmasy even if the air was a wet ninety-one degrees. I’d never had a white Christmas anyhow. Christmas for us was Hatch taking all the boys fishing at Saetía. Splashing around in crystal-green, waist-deep water, warm as a tub. Eating pounded octopus we brought back, a typical Cuban feast except for Mother playing carols on the piano after dessert, and Annie’s traditional no-show. On the evening of the twenty-fourth, Mother let Annie go down to Mayarí to visit her family. Christmas morning, like clockwork, she’d call person-to-person from the Mayarí post office saying she’d missed the bus up to Preston and would have to wait for the afternoon coach. Mother would sigh. “Just take the rest of the day off, Annie.” It was a game. Annie pretending she missed the bus. Mother pretending she was exasperated.