Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

There are many splits in the struggle: between sierra and llano (the Rebel Army in the hills; the working-class movements on the plains and in the towns); between nationalism and socialism; and, of course, among the left. But I fear the more profound schism, that universal dichotomy between the intimate vision and the shared ideal. Everybody has their own idea of what a perfect world is. For the moment we have a common enemy but that’s never enough. We need to find a united front in our imaginations. We are too convivial in our nightmares. We must find a way of dreaming collectively.

I have a job as a waiter (can you imagine?). The Sindicato de Obreras Gastronomico is actually one of the few unions that retains a radical leadership. So much of the labour movement here is in the hands of mujalista gangsters. A week ago a customer called me to his table and asked if I was Angel Carvajal’s son. I nodded, knowing not much more of my father than that he had been in jail when I was born. Then he told me about this party and said that my dad would be there, if I wanted to see him.

So that’s how I ended up on the Malecón, at the age of thirty-six, face to face with paternity for the first time. I have little recollection as to what we talked about at the beginning. I was cautious in my speech, as if waiting for an explanation from him. Then he started to tell me of something that had happened to him.

‘I hear that you’re some kind of a writer,’ he said. ‘Here’s a story for you.’

And this is what he told me:

‘I was born out in Santiago de las Vegas. My father worked on a tobacco plantation. He was a real bastard. Sorry, I suppose he was your grandfather. Anyway, there wasn’t much room, all five of us living in a shack, so I was hardly missed when I left. I was fifteen. I got a job in Marianao, working as a stable hand. I was shovelling horse-shit all day but it wasn’t bad. Horse-shit is better than most kinds of shit, certainly better than human shit. It was a racing stables by the track at Oriental Park. I got there in November and there was plenty of work. American owners brought their horses over to race through the winter season. I earned a dollar a week and slept in the hayloft.

‘There was a girl I worked with, Dominga. A light mulatta with a hard face but an elegant, long-limbed body. About my age but taller than me, more developed: you know how girls grow up quicker than boys. She was proud and haughty, and ordered me about with little mercy. Today I see her as a bossy girl; then she seemed a goddess to me. She showed me the duties of the stable and taught me how to roll a cigarette in one hand.

‘One day I came across two strangers in a box stall. One had a vet’s bag but he clearly wasn’t a vet. They were sticking something into the backside of the horse. I went to tell the manager. I came across Dominga on the way and told her what I had seen. She nodded and asked me where I was going and when I told her she slapped me across the face. What was that for? I asked her. For you to remember, stupid. You see anything, come to me first.

‘She told me all the tricks of the trade that we might witness. A horse might be doped to go fast, or to go slow. Or even be swapped with a ringer. In a race confined to three-year-olds, say, one of the horses entered might be substituted with an older, stronger horse that looked the same. She explained that there was always the possibility of making a dollar here or there. Errands to be run, lookouts to be posted, leaving a bucket of water in a certain stall before a race to load a horse down. When I looked, astonished, at the lengths people would go to to cheat the odds, she pinched my cheek and called me Angelito, the little innocent.

‘One afternoon in the hayloft she showed me another kind of trick. The oldest. She rode me hard and when I begged to have a turn at jockey she shook her head and pushed me down into the straw. Man, whenever I smell horse-shit I think of Dominga. Later I plucked up the courage to tell her I loved her and she slapped my face again. Don’t be stupid, Angelito, she told me. You’re just a stable hand. That’s not going to work, is it? So that was that.

‘Then came the night we helped a gang bring in a ringer for a race the following day. This time it was a substitute for the favourite; this ringer was meant to lose. It was the same size and shape but there was one problem. It was the wrong colour; the tone of its coat was too light. The favourite was a deep chestnut, the ringer was bay. I stood to one side and watched how everybody argued over what was to be done. Dominga suggested that we paint the thing. The men laughed but she assured them she had seen it done. With something called henna. You mix this red pigment in water and it works as a dye. In the end they agreed. We would do it at first light, and then they would come and see the result. They offered five dollars, but Dominga haggled up to seven. She had to go into Havana to get this stuff and at dawn we mixed it in a bucket and started to brush it on. We managed to get some sort of a match, a little blotchy in places maybe, but the gang seemed happy and paid us our money.

‘It was only after they had left that we noticed how frisky the ringer was getting. This could be trouble, Angelito, she told me. Perhaps there was something in this henna that was irritating the horse. By the time it was in the paddock it was fairly jumping around. I asked Dominga for my split of the money and she suddenly gave me this look. No, she said. Get all the money you’ve got and bring it to me. Hurry. I had five dollars and two bits saved that I had stashed by my bedroll. I ran to get it and brought it back to her. What are you going to do? I asked her. She shook her head and told me to meet her later behind the grandstand.

‘You can judge a race easily enough simply by the sound of it. I heard the commentary on the tannoy, the roar building up. I knew that somehow our ringer was coming in as favourite and that we were in a whole pile of shit. The gang would be after our blood, and so would most of the bookies on the track when they learnt what had happened. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt a tap on my shoulder. But it was Dominga, and she told me that we had to get going. What are we going to do? I asked her. She said that we’d think of something. But, look. She showed me the money she had got. With a sudden thought that, in its henna-induced delirium, the ringer might go like the wind, Dominga had staked everything she could scrape together on it at two to one. We had nearly fifty dollars. Time to go, Angelito, she said. Enough of horse-shit for us.’

He smiled and gave a plaintive gesture to indicate that his story was done. ‘And then?’ I asked him.

‘Then we hitched a ride to Havana and found a place to flop in the Barrio Chino. Dominga got a job in a nightclub. And I started getting into real trouble.’

We both gave out the same long sigh. Then I was puzzled and wondered about him meeting my mother and how he ended up in jail. I’d expected somehow that his story would lead to that. We walked back to be part of the crowd once more. I took hold of his hand. It was hard and calloused. For some reason I told him about Juanita, a girl I’ve been seeing for the past few weeks. She’s a waitress at the restaurant and a comrade.

Larry, I’m truly sorry that things did not work out between you and Sharleen. It’s an easy thing to say now but I really never thought that you were right for each other. Of course, I always thought that it would happen between you and Mary-Lou. I remember you telling me about that night you tried to explain quantum mechanics to her. Maybe there’s always been an Uncertainty Principle between you. But even Einstein had problems with quantum theory (and a fear of blind chance, perhaps) — ‘God does not play dice with the universe,’ he says. No, not dice but roulette (and none of us likes the house odds). The Wheel of Fortune is one big particle accelerator.