Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

Hatch came up to our house while we were packing. He told Daddy that he and Rudy and the families would stay and look after things. Daddy reminded him that the evacuation was mandatory and said that navy officers would be clearing the town.

“But they’re taking everyone to Guantánamo, sir,” Hatch said. “I’m not going to Guantánamo.”

Daddy had just been on the phone again with the consul general and had a better idea of what was happening. He told Hatch that Nicaro was being strafed by Cuban military bombers and that the rebels had moved into town and were firing back. There was a battle going on right in Nicaro, and the American families there were in serious danger. Later we found out there were no rebels in Nicaro. Only Batista’s bombers, strafing the Americans. The mistake was no accident. It was a situation that Lito Gonzalez had carefully arranged. He called in the attack, claiming the rebels had occupied the town and that all the Americans were safely inside the mine. He didn’t care about their lives. He knew the Americans would be evacuated, and he planned to take over the nickel operation.

“This is chaos,” Daddy said, “and you can’t stay, Hatch.”

I think it was mostly because of Panda that the Allains decided to risk it and get on the ship with the rest of us.

Charmaine Mackey had rehearsed the conversation so many times in her mind that having it for real would not seem so radical, or risky, or outrageous.

She would go to his home, knock on the door, announce herself to the butler, and ask to speak to Mr. Gonzalez.

Hubert had left for the shindig at the Preston club without her. As they had gotten dressed for the party, she’d mentioned not feeling well, and Hubert said angrily that she was never feeling well, and why didn’t she just stay home. She hadn’t argued with him. He’d sighed heavily, knotted his tie, and put on his coat and wristwatch, his movements angry and deliberate, as if he were punishing her, when in fact she wanted to stay home. He patted her on the shoulder as he left, to indicate a breath of forgiveness in the stern policy of leaving her behind.

How outraged Hubert would be if he knew what she thought about. He’d come to believe that he and Mr. Gonzalez were fighting some sort of war. He said Gonzalez was scheming to drive them all out and take control of the plant. “He wants my job,” Hubert said, “and he’s not getting it.” Charmaine couldn’t help but feel that none of it was about the nickel company, or Gonzalez hating Americans, as Hubert insisted. She sometimes believed that it was about her they were really fighting over.

She took off her party attire and put on something plainer, more appropriate for a neighborly visit, a cotton dress that she thought looked vaguely Cuban because of its cheerfully romantic print — huge, floppy red hibiscus flowers — and the white, nubby sweater she’d been wearing that first day, when he’d rescued her from the bakery. That was years ago now, but he might remember the sweater. She was daubing on a tiny amount of perfume when she heard the deafening screech of a low-flying plane passing over the house, and then the staccato yap of Mrs. Billings’s poodle.

On her way to Mr. Gonzalez’s, more planes flew over, so low they rang her ears and stirred up the dust on the road. She looked up but couldn’t see any lights. They usually had those lights on the wings. Maybe clouds were blocking them. But the sky was a black velvet carpet littered with stars. There was no cloud cover. These mysterious low planes were flying with their lights off.

At his door, she did as she’d rehearsed, announced herself to the butler and asked for him.

He looked surprised to see her, not happily surprised. “Why aren’t you at the club in Preston?” he asked.

She felt a moment of doubt. He wants me to be at the club — why aren’t I at the club? “I didn’t feel like going. My husband is there, and I thought perhaps you and I could talk—”

“Mrs. Mackey, did you hear the planes?”

“Yes, I heard them.”

“It’s the Cuban military. They’re strafing. This is extremely dangerous. It’s not safe to stay in town.”

She could barely focus on what he was saying. Partly because she didn’t understand this word “strafe,” what it meant. Something to do with weapons. She could only concentrate on what she had come to say to him. It had dominated her thoughts for a long, long time. Her hands shook every time she thought about him, every time she thought she might run into him in town. She was overflowing with the need to confront him. It had taken weeks of rehearsing and storing up courage. She couldn’t back out now.

“Mr. Gonzalez, I don’t love Hubert. I don’t love him. And I would be willing to leave him if you think that you and I—”

“Mrs. Mackey,” Mr. Gonzalez said with a smile, but she immediately saw that it was not a friendly smile, “you’re a foolish person. I don’t hold it against you. If I believed, as you say, that you and I could be together, don’t you think you would know? Don’t you think I would have told you?”

“But…maybe I thought you had let me know. We have been intimate, after all—”

“In a car — years ago. Behind a squalid pool hall. Is that how a man treats a woman he hopes to marry? You come from a strange culture, Mrs. Mackey. If I wanted you to leave your husband for me, that’s not how things would have gone.”

Her heart felt like a heavy person was standing on it. Her throat was closing in. She told herself to be brave. “But I thought maybe because of Hubert…that you didn’t want to—”

“You think I actually care about your husband? What Mackey thinks? It only takes one incident, and a husband is humiliated. One incident, of another man with his wife, and he is a, how do you say it in English? A cuckold . You should go and pack now. They’re going to evacuate — I heard just before you rang, on my shortwave.”

A plane thundered over, low and deafening.

“Why are they ‘strafing’ us, Mr. Gonzalez?”

“Because the rebels have taken over the town. They have endangered American lives, and the military has no choice but to respond. Their planes are being shot at by rebels.”

She hadn’t seen any rebels. Or heard any shots. She’d heard only the planes. “But Mr. Gonzalez, there are no rebels in town—”

“You should go, Mrs. Mackey. They’re evacuating all Americans, and you and Hubert will have to leave.”

“Oh,” she said, almost laughing, and then shook her head emphatically. “Oh, Mr. Gonzalez, Hubert isn’t going anywhere. He’s convinced that you want to replace him. He says it won’t happen over his dead body. He will not go. I can promise you that.”

“It isn’t safe to stay.”

“He’ll risk it. He’s said over and over that if every last American goes, he’ll stay to run the plant. You don’t know Hubert, Mr. Gonzalez.”

“It won’t be a risk. It will be a certainty that something happens to him, Mrs. Mackey. A certainty. It won’t matter how it happens, because there are so many possibilities. Shot, accidentally, in rebel cross fire. Or shot, accidentally, by the Rural Guard. In any case, shot. That’s what he chooses if he stays.”

She could feel that she was about to cry, and once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop. Gonzalez hated them and wanted them gone. It didn’t make her appreciate Hubert any better, it just carried her to a new depth of loneliness and misery. Nothing was ever how she thought it could be. She turned around, her hands dug in the pockets of her sweater, and walked down his porch steps and out of his yard. She heard an airplane, invisible above her, scraping against the black sky.