Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

“From the water closet,” he said, “in Daddy’s Pullman car. I stole it when I was little, on one of our trips to Havana. It might seem like a crazy gift, but I’ve hung on to it all these years. Now they’ve destroyed Daddy’s Pullman car, and it’s all that’s left.”

He was looking at her, and she wished he wouldn’t. That he would just give her a minute to absorb what was happening.

“You know that Mother has always liked you, Everly. She thinks you’re something special. Anyway, this little object means a lot to me, and I wanted you to have it.”

Everly thanked him and put the handle in the purse her mother had wanted her to carry, which now held one thing. K.C. was a golden boy, had all the confidence in the world. Girls were always declaring crushes on him. He was good at sports. Did well in school. His father ran the entire town and yet he wasn’t spoiled, always good-natured and loved to show people around and tell them about the sugar operation and how it was run. “We” and “ours” and “the company,” he’d say, proud of everything. He should have wanted to date a blond tennis star from Ruston Academy in Havana, one of those girls with tan arms and charm bracelets, a jaunty ponytail with a scarf looped around it. The kind of ladylike girl Everly’s mother nagged her to be, and that she wasn’t.

Something about that day, giving in to the kitten heels, the dress, and the attention from K.C., changed her. She didn’t mind the attention. It didn’t embarrass her the way it would have even the year before, when she’d squealed with horror at Stevie’s suggestion that she go to the movies with Tico Leál’s younger brother. In fact, attention from boys was okay. Nice, even. A redhead was an acquired taste. Not conventionally attractive. She’d been told this her whole life. Maybe it was to her advantage, because it meant she wouldn’t attract boys who wanted conventional.

If K.C. liked her, there must have been something to like. What about Willy? she wondered. If K.C. saw something, what about Willy? “Thank you K.C,” she imagined herself saying, “but I can’t accept this. Because I’m spoken for.”

The Americans said the guards in Nicaro, the new guard at the movie theater, the guard patrolling the managers’ row, made them nervous.

“Thugs,” Mrs. Billings said.

“You know Batista let some of them out of prison. Murderers and rapists keeping the peace.”

“Charming. Just charming.”

“I mean, is this really necessary ?”

Because they’d all complained, there’d been no guard on the boat to Preston that day, and no guard on the boat home.

As they approached Nicaro, Everly could see people standing along the dock, as if waiting for them.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Mackey asked.

Behind the people were cars and jeeps parked at angles. Vehicles were not normally allowed on the dock, unless they were authorized to unload supplies.

“That looks like our Studebaker!” Everly’s mother said. Dusk was descending and it was difficult to see the color, but it did look like their car, dark green, with the bullet nose, parked next to some sort of tractor with a curious metal structure built onto it, and guns pointing out.

As the boat got closer, they saw that the people were Cuban rebels. They wore army fatigues and berets, and M-26 armbands. They smiled broadly and waved at the Americans like a curious greeting committee. They did not look scary or menacing, although some of them had guns. They looked like people who were just back from a very long camping trip, dirty and tired but happy. Everly scanned them as the boat pulled up to the dock, hoping to identify some of them from the pictures at the nickel company offices. She looked for D. L. Mazierre. He didn’t seem to be among them, though one did resemble a photo from the offices. He had a soft smile and dark, pretty eyes, his beret cocked sideways. It was Raúl Castro. He smiled and helped Everly out of the boat. He called her “linda,” and retrieved two M-26 armbands from a jeep and gave one to her and one to Duffy.

A rebel who spoke English explained that the American men would go with them into the mountains but that no one would be harmed. It was simply “procedural,” and there was no reason for alarm. They thanked the Americans for being so cooperative and apologized for having to take the men, promising again, as they directed them at gunpoint into the vehicles, that no harm would come to them. Everly’s father was led into the backseat of his own car, which a rebel started by opening the hood and touching two wires together. Her mother watched, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I really think they mean it,” Everly said, trying to console her. “Mean what?” “That they won’t hurt them.”

After they’d left, Mrs. Billings screamed that it was an outrage. Ambassador Smith would be equally outraged, and she was going to telephone him immediately. Two days later, someone from the ambassador’s office finally contacted her and said the ambassador didn’t see what the wives in Nicaro wanted him to do. What could he do? Mrs. Carrington called the consul general in Santiago, whom she’d known from the U.S. embassy in La Paz, Bolivia. He arranged a mission up to the camp, to negotiate with the rebels. Eventually Fidel Castro called for the Americans’ release.

Her father said he’d enjoyed himself immensely during his three weeks in the mountains. They were good people, fighting for a reasonable cause, and had treated him well. Too well, he said, patting his belly. He and the other Americans had eaten delicious food that the local guajiros brought into the camp every day. Three meals a day, without fail. Roast pig. Fried plantains. Arroz con pollo. Picadillo. Coconut cakes. All washed down with prú, a homemade herb drink, her father explained. Or sometimes beer, which the rebels went to great lengths to acquire for them, and then cleverly kept cold in a stream.

The guajiros up there were clearly rooting for the Castro boys, her father said, and you couldn’t help but sympathize. He’d slept on a mattress and eaten like a king and dipped his feet in the cool stream where they kept the beer supply. It was excessive and terrible, he said, what Batista’s people had gone and done in Levisa. The Rural Guard burned it to a smoldering, flattened wasteland as retribution. Thousands of people were homeless. Others, who hadn’t been able to escape, were killed in the fire. Retribution for what? her father asked, pointing out that even Mr. Mackey had a ball, though Mackey would never admit it. Too busy insisting that Raúl was practicing Marxism out of books. Mr. Mackey drafted letters to the State Department, warning them that the rebels in the hills were Communists. No one, Mr. Mackey complained, seemed interested. The other Americans, including Everly’s father, mooned around talking about Raúl’s future wedding to his aide-de-camp, Vilma Espín, which they’d all been invited to attend, to be held in Santiago sometime after the triumph. “You’re hoping for a revolution, so you can go to a wedding?” Marjorie Lederer asked him. The question seemed to stump George Lederer, who shrugged and said nothing.

Willy was living in a navy barracks now, on a special ship sent to house the servants and mine employees after Levisa burned. He told Everly that no one got on the ship without proper ID. Guards roamed the bunks all night long with flashlights, waking people up and shining lights in their faces, demanding to see their papers. He said the guards barely let you close your eyes in there, and when he finally did manage to drift off, rats nibbled on his toes.

George Lederer had gotten Willy a job in the nickel plant. He said Willy was a quick study and that he could learn metallurgy. Willy had pointed out that the locks on the company boats got ruined because they were brass on the outside and iron on the inside. Her father told the story over and over, marveling that Willy knew something about metal. Her father wanted to train Willy as a technician, said he was trustworthy and no troublemaker. But he got resistance, as he put it, “from on high.” Willy was given a job, but Mr. Mackey arranged for him to work in the furnace room, where he’d get zero technical training, her father said sadly. “They’ll promote you eventually,” he told Willy, “I promise.” On the weekends, Willy still came to work for the Lederers. “Why are you up so early? It’s Saturday,” Willy asked Everly. She wanted to be near him every hour he was there.