Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

Only Mr. Mackey was speaking. He was outraged, he told Mr. LaDue, who kept touching a cut on his forehead. Mr. Mackey shouted angrily that it was Lito Gonzalez they had to thank for this, that he’d orchestrated the whole thing, called in the Cuban army to drive them out. Mr. LaDue nodded, but it seemed as if he’d already given up, and that Mr. Mackey was just filling the air with irrelevant facts. Mrs. LaDue stood quietly by, holding Poncho in her arms. Poncho was dressed in one of the white double-breasted jackets that the bartenders wore at the Pan-American Club. Someone must have put it on him during the rescue. Maybe he was cold.

Poncho climbed down out of Mrs. LaDue’s arms. He came across the deck toward Everly and Duffy and peeked down between the ship’s rails at the water. “Hi, Poncho,” Everly said tentatively, hoping he wouldn’t stay long, that he would lose interest and pay attention to someone else. He gazed up at her, hanging on to the railing with both hands, like a bored child. Then he began to swing back and forth from the railing. “No, Poncho,” Everly said. She tried to pull him away from the rail, but he was too fast. He was on the outside of the rail now. Everly grabbed his furry, warm arm and tried to pull him back onto the deck. When he lunged to bite her, she let go. She’d forgotten that Poncho didn’t have teeth. He slipped from the rail.

Luckily, he landed in a lifeboat that was strapped to the side of the ship a few feet below the deck. He stood up in the lifeboat. They were traveling at full speed, and the ocean, far down below him, moved swiftly past, greenish-black in the early morning light. Standing in the little boat wearing just the bartender’s jacket, he looked like a small, hairy man nude from the waist down. People ran to the rail to see what had happened. Mrs. LaDue pleaded with him in a cracked and desperate voice. Mr. LaDue rushed off to get the purser for help. “Sweety, please come back up here. Can you climb up the rope? Mommy loves you. Please, Poncho, please .”

He was so close, just a few feet below them, but he refused to climb back up. He looked out at the horizon, as if in a moment of great contemplation, or faking a moment of great contemplation, knowing he had a rapt audience, keeping them in suspense as he stood there, balanced in the lifeboat. He did not look at Mrs. LaDue, though she pleaded with him. Not until the very last moment, when he looked up at her and smiled a broad, gummy smile. Then, in one swift movement, he knocked his head against the side of the ship, forcefully. It made a loud smack! Everyone gasped. Mrs. LaDue screamed. Poncho took a wobbly step toward the side of the lifeboat. Like a sleepwalker, or a drunk, he was leaning over the side. He leaned farther and farther until he went over, headfirst.

The whole episode was so seamless and precise — the smack, those shaky steps toward the edge, then going over and plunging into the water. Almost choreographed, Everly thought, but a terrible choreography.

He was facedown, floating on the water. The ship was moving fast, and Poncho was almost behind them. They all watched, Mrs. LaDue in hysterics, as the white bartender’s jacket ballooned with air. Then the white jacket began to fade into the depths of the greenish-black water.

Mrs. LaDue was screaming for them to stop the ship and turn it around. Everly remembered that it would take several miles for a large ship to stop when it was going full speed, something she’d read, though she couldn’t remember where.

Afterward she kept imagining the feel of Poncho’s gummy mouth on her hand, if only she’d kept it there. If she’d held on to his arm as he’d bitten her she could have pulled him safely back onto the ship. She closed her eyes and saw the scene and felt his mouth clamping onto her hand, that lunge when she’d known he would bite her, leaving the hand there and letting it happen. Over and over she imagined it. Just leave it there and let him bite. Knowing he couldn’t puncture the skin, couldn’t hurt her, didn’t have teeth. Still, every single time she wanted to pull her hand away.

They had a modern medical facility in Guantánamo, and Panda was admitted and put under the care of an American doctor. Mrs. LaDue also was seen by an American doctor, who gave her a sedative. They were placed in plain, almost barren guesthouses across from a dusty baseball diamond, and ate American hamburgers and American-style soft-serve ice cream that evening at a military mess hall. The Guantánamo street signs were in English. The commissary sign, too, where they had Playboy magazine on a display rack. One of the Nicaro boys stole a copy. There were American sailors everywhere. By the second day, Val Carrington was already dating one.

An immigration services official arrived in the afternoon that second day, sent by the U.S. government to assist them. He collected their passports, would handle all their paperwork, and help them repatriate. The process would not be quick, and everyone was asked to be patient.

Two days later they were summoned in alphabetical groups. A through L was the first group. They waited in line outside a Quonset hut. Genevieve and Giddle Allain were doing handstands and cartwheels. They both wore shorts under their dresses so they could practice without flashing their underwear. Val whispered to Everly that the Allain sisters were wearing her old shorts. “Mother must have given them a bag of stuff I didn’t want anymore.” Val thought it demeaned them, but it didn’t. The shorts were madras and they looked good on Genevieve and Giddle, both girls upside down, skirts over their heads, Giddle walking on her hands.

People looked at their watches. It was after 8:00 A.M., and no one had come to open the hut. Finally an immigration services official arrived with three military policemen. They walked up to Hatch Allain and pulled him aside.

No one could hear what they were saying, but everyone— A through L —could see what was happening. The policemen handcuffed Hatch. Then they walked him past all the other Americans, right past his own family. Hatch smiled and spoke to them. Maybe it was the only dignified thing to do, with everyone staring. He said to no one in particular that the little monkey might have had the right idea. And then the immigration official and the military police led him into the Quonset hut and the door was shut behind them.

What was the right idea? Everly thought about it and thought about it, and finally it dawned on her that maybe Poncho had been trying to escape. To get someplace, into some other life, away from being Mrs. LaDue’s pet monkey. Like the Chinese railroad workers Everly had read about, who hung themselves from nooses to try to get back to China, as if suicide were a form of travel, like air travel or sea travel. She didn’t know where Poncho had been trying to go. Hatch would be going to prison.

There was a lot of killing time at the guesthouses, people hoping to send telegrams and make calls. But the telegraph machine was intermittent and the phones were dead.

Everly was sitting on the guesthouse porch when Mrs. Carrington returned with a letter. Everly asked if it was news of Mr. Carrington, and added that she hoped he was okay.

Mrs. Carrington gave the oblique reply that Everly shouldn’t worry about Mr. Carrington, that he’d be fine, just fine. Then she went into the room she was sharing with Val, and returned with two photo albums that she set on the porch table in front of Everly.

Everly figured it was memorabilia, like Stevie and her Duchess of Windsor scrapbook, Stevie and her Cuba scrapbook, with maps and restaurant menus and articles from Unifruitco, photos of all three Lederer girls at the Preston pool. Stevie had taken the Cuba scrapbook with her when she’d left for boarding school.