Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

Maybe he was right. From the television news, life in Havana seemed fairly normal, the first lady preparing for her annual holiday gift giveaway on the palace lawn, the mayor of New York City and his family vacationing with the du Ponts in Varadero, and ads for a Christmas spectacular at the Cabaret Tokio. We weren’t going to visit the Havelins, with the situation in Preston so precarious, but the Havelins wouldn’t be in Havana anyhow. A month earlier, in November, Batista had appointed Deke Havelin Cuban ambassador to Brazil. There were photos of the Havelins in the Havana Post, dressed to the nines, flying off to São Paulo. Deke was quoted, saying how proud he was to represent Cuba and so forth — his party toast all over again, wiping a tear from his eye. I’m not sure how much Spanish Deke even spoke, much less a word of Portuguese.

That day of the party there were Cuban stevedores unloading a ship on the Preston dock wearing nothing but underwear and their shoes. You never saw any Cuban wearing shorts, much less their underwear in public, but that’s how tight security had gotten. A shipment had come from England delivering weapons for Batista’s Rural Guard, and they didn’t want any funny business. “Goodness,” Mother said, and turned away, embarrassed, as she and I walked past the dock. We were on our way to pick up some medicine for Panda at the almacén. That’s how Mother was, always tending to people’s needs. Panda was sick. Mother said she heard that Dr. Romero suspected tuberculosis. Mother put the medicine on our account, and I took it down to the Allain place. They had Panda in the living room, lying on a couch under a pile of blankets, pale and coughing, with dark pouches under her eyes. Mars took the medicine and thanked me. She said Dr. Romero had just been to check on Panda. He’d said that Panda needed to be under the care of someone who specialized in respiratory illnesses, and they should get her to a hospital in Miami as soon as possible. I doubt that Dr. Romero understood the situation. Mars asked me about hospitals in Santiago. It would have been difficult to get to Santiago, I told her, because of the roadblocks.

Rudy went to speak with Daddy at his office later that day. Daddy came home and told us there wasn’t much he could do. “Makes you realize,” he said, “how well the company takes care of its own. We sure as hell don’t judge people on whatever happened in the deep past. Hold it against a man because there’s a little smudge on his dossier, a bit of shoe polish.” He was going to do what he could to get both Allain families transferred to an operation in Central America, maybe Tegucigalpa. Mother said why not have Mars take Panda to Miami? She didn’t commit any crimes. Daddy said they were all wanted now, for harboring a fugitive. I understand Daddy’s point about the shoe polish smudge, people being forgiven and allowed to start over. But in Hatch’s case it wasn’t such a minor smudge. A lot of people in Preston were under the impression he’d killed a black man, just some worker on a Louisiana cane plantation. The fellow not only wasn’t black, he was a fed — an ATF agent. Hatch apparently had an argument with this guy, a bootlegging investigator. Ironically, they were at a bar, drinking. There was some kind of dispute that escalated into a brawl, and Hatch ended up beating the guy to death.

Daddy always felt that the employees couldn’t really relax at parties so long as the boss was looking over their shoulder. It was his custom to go to the club, spin Mother around the dance floor a turn or two, and then leave so everyone could enjoy themselves. I decided to make it a short evening as well. I’d gone to the party hoping to speak with Everly Lederer, but the Lederers hadn’t come. For months now I’d had this feeling that something had been there between me and Everly all along, and that all we had to do was call it out. I guess it was foolish and romantic, this idea that she’d been a favorite of Mother’s, and that we’d known each other since the Lederers had first arrived, when I was nine and she was eight, and that there was something special in trusting what seemed fated. I hadn’t seen her much all fall, ever since my fourteenth birthday, in June, when I’d given her the keepsake. I figured she was thinking about things and would eventually come around. When she didn’t show up at the club that night, it crossed my mind that maybe she was dating someone in Nicaro. “Who would want to date Everly Lederer?” Curtis had said when I wondered out loud one day if she had a boyfriend. “She’s a gawky tomboy, walks around with that spaced-out look like she’s focusing on something invisible about two feet in front of her face.” The spaced-out look had grown on me. If Tee-Tee Allain’s face was a shield against the world, shutting off any speculation as to who she was or what she cared about, Everly’s funny look was not intentional, as if she was unaware she had any look at all. Lost in thought, a naked look. Maybe everyone has that look, but they know to cover it. Hearing Curtis’s comment, I’d become convinced it was the right thing. Who would want to date her? Only me, it seemed.

While Daddy took Mother out for a quick spin on the floor, I sat at the bar next to Mr. LaDue, who was entertaining some of us with stories about being up in the mountains with the rebels. Someone asked him what he thought had happened to Carrington. Mr. LaDue said poor Carrington had been sacked out with a migraine the whole time they were up there. Maybe he was wandering around in the woods, Mr. LaDue said, ill and confused.

Mother, Daddy, and I were walking toward home, about to turn onto La Avenida. It was a very hot night, as humid as it gets in Oriente. A dense, rhythmic buzz of insects surrounded us. We had flowers in eastern Cuba that bloomed at night, and there was a heavy fragrance in the air as we walked, made more intense by the heat. Mother breathed in and said the butterfly jasmine was opening, and how gorgeous, that smell—

Boom! we heard. Another boom. And then another. And then people screaming.

Bombs detonated in our social club. It was a rude awakening, even if no one was hurt too badly. They’d been planted in a couple of rooms that weren’t being used, but also under the dance floor. Miraculously, the bombs detonated while everyone was taking a break, sitting down to cool off because of the humidity, or at the bar getting a refresher. A few people were cut up. Val Carrington broke her nose, rammed right into the wall of the women’s bathroom. But there were no serious injuries.

What else would blow up? Everyone was in a panic. Daddy called the consul general in Santiago. He’d secured the release of our kidnapped employees, proving himself to be a lot more reliable than Ambassador Smith. The consul general said he’d been told they were having problems over in Nicaro as well. I don’t think he gave too many details. All we knew was that Nicaro was under attack — we assumed rebel attack. We didn’t know until later that the U.S. Navy was sending a rescue ship up the coast from Guantánamo. Because of the bombings, and the situation in Nicaro, which the consul general said could escalate, there would be a mandatory evacuation of all Americans around Nipe Bay.

Daddy said chances were the U.S. government was panicking for no reason, and we’d evacuate and then come back to Preston and life would settle down. We didn’t have time to pack much, grabbed a few things and stuffed them in suitcases. It was 10:00 P.M., and we got on the rescue ship at four the following morning. Daddy made phone calls and sent his secretary, Mr. Suarez, and a few other guys around to tell people to be ready to leave. Daddy tried to get through to Nicaro, but their switchboard was down. The people who’d been in the club were taken to the Preston hospital, stitched up, and treated. The Nicaro folks among them would have to be evacuated as they were. Val Carrington had two black eyes, an ice pack held to her nose. Mrs. Billings’s head was wrapped in surgical gauze. She was wearing a fancy getup, a long gown with a matching capelet, with blood crusted into her hair and over her ear. She seemed dazed, like she’d really had her bell rung, and Mother took special care to try to calm her down after we got on the ship.