William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

“Renata didn’t think so.”

“Renata. I saw how she got to you. Everybody goes ga-ga. She’s easy to love, but she’s not easy. She’s tough.”

“I told her I was ready to marry her. She’s thinking it over.”

“You do get your story in the first paragraph.”

“That fellow who sang for us, Papa’s punching bag, where’s he staying?”

“Cooney? He’s at the Regis.”

“Maybe I’ll go apologize to him for Papa.”

“He’s not a story either.”

“I could interview him as a composer.”

“Dog bites composer. It’s still not a story.”

Renata could not find Diego, her fine and dangerous lover, for good reason: he had been acuartelado in an apartment house in the Vedado with fifty-two other men for four days, waiting for the signal to attack the Presidential Palace and kill the dictator. Simultaneously fifteen other attackers led by José Antonio Echevarría, the leader of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, would leave from another apartment to take over Radio Reloj and announce to all Cuba that Batista was dead. Days and nights passed, the cool moon yielding to new morning and the return of smothering heat in the apartment, for no windows could be opened. Whispers, no other sounds, were permitted, for the young men’s presence here was secret. Read, don’t talk. Sleep, don’t snore. Only five at a time can smoke, and only by the window in the back room. Nobody goes out except Carlos, the leader of the attack, and Diego, who will drive the streets of Old Havana in Carlos’ car to estimate the presence of soldiers.

The attack had been set for the twelfth until Diego and Carlos, on the morning of the eleventh, found Calle Colón blocked to all traffic. Only the Colón entrance to the south wing of the Palace offered a door to be breached. That south wing faced Bellas Artes across Zayas Park. On the early morning of the thirteenth the street was still blocked, but an inside informant said the dictator had stayed the night in the Palace, and was there now. At eleven o’clock the barriers were gone, traffic was again moving, and Carlos and Diego drove onto Colón. A soldier with a machine gun was monitoring a car as it entered the south wing’s driveway; so yes, access was possible. That soldier could be the first to die.

“We should go to Bellas Artes now,” Diego said to Carlos as they moved. They saw Military Intelligence cars parked nearby. Diego went into the museum and found no troops, no SIM agents. Renata was talking to an Americano. She saw Diego and came to him.

“Where have you been?” she said.

“Don’t talk. Today you must work here all day.”

“I’m supposed to finish at two,” she said.

“Work till six. We may need you to drive someone.”

“What are you talking about? What is happening?”

“Don’t go out of the museum. Stay inside and work all day, do you hear me?”

“I hear.”

“Do you have your mother’s car?”

“No.”

“My car is on Agramonte. The key is in the ashtray. If you don’t see me later drive it someplace safe and leave it. Someone will call you about where you put it.”

“Why won’t you drive it? Won’t I see you later?”

“Who can say?”

He kissed her with a fierce mouth and squeezed the life in her body. Then he said good-bye my love, and went back to Carlos in the car.

At two that afternoon the fifty-three Palace attackers who had been acuartelados wrapped their Thompsons and Garands into the bedding they had slept on, came down the stairs silently in pairs, and climbed into the Fast Delivery panel truck parked by the side door. Four men, including the leaders, would ride in each of two cars. As the vehicles were being loaded two men turned coward. Carlos said he couldn’t shoot them now because of the noise, but they would be held in the apartment at gunpoint by a comrade wounded in an earlier shooting. Maybe he would shoot them later. They knew this was a suicidal mission. We can kill Batista or they can kill us all.

The attack proceeded: Carlos driving the lead car, with Diego and two others, and the Fast Delivery truck following with forty-two men. The truck was unbearably hot, without light, and so overloaded that its six tires were nearly flat. The second car, driven by Aurelio, second in command, with three others, followed the truck. The plan was that once the three vehicles had breached the entrance, another hundred fighters in trucks and cars would arrive shooting heavy weapons, certain to demoralize Palace guards into flight. If the first wave found Palace access impossible, the attack would move against a secondary target — the Cuartel Maestre, the armory of the police — where they would seize its arms, then move to another police station for more arms. There would be no going back. The vehicles moved at inchworm pace through dense traffic. Menelao Mora, at fifty-three the oldest man in the truck, and an ex-legislator in the Cámara and former ally of Prío, told his young comrades what to expect, how to move and never stop. Machadito, holding the rope that kept the rear door from flapping open, saw his girlfriend crossing Aguila and said, “ Mi amor, allí está, ” and his comrades stared at him.

The truck turned onto Ánimas, the driver’s mistake, and separated from the two cars. Carlos and Aurelio both waited for it to catch up at the Prado, and when the three vehicles were again in tandem they moved onto Colón, and there it was. Carlos very suddenly careened into the Palace driveway, hit the brakes and bolted from the car firing his M-1, running under the arcade of the Palace’s gate, his surprise so perfect that the guards did not slam the gate shut or realize it was time to do that, or even see who was firing the machine gun that was killing them. Diego was behind Carlos, and Aurelio, leaping from the second car, took out the two guards shooting at Carlos’ back. Then others jumped out of the truck — Machadito and Carbó and Menelao setting the pace, the rest in twos and threes shooting, remembering Menelao’s advice — don’t crouch, don’t stop — run to the Palace wall out of the line of high fire from the upper terraces. But those machine guns roared, riddling the truck and pavement with such a hail of bullets that clouds of stone dust rose around the men who instinctively sought cover or stasis in the face of the impenetrable and died throwing a grenade or shooting at the sky. Carlos opened the gate and yelled, “ Arriba, muchachos, it’s ours!” Diego moved through the gate after him and the Palace was breached according to plan.

On the third floor of Bellas Artes, Renata was explaining to seventy American and English tourists that the young woman in the painting was named Sikan and she had met the sacred fish, Tanze, quite by accident. But for both it was a fateful meeting, for young Sikan would be kidnapped and dismembered as a sacrifice in order to recover the lost voice of the gods which was the voice of the fish. Why it was also fateful for the fish Renata did not have time to explain for the bullets came in through the front windows and then the screaming and warning yells — they’re shooting! Renata now realized Diego would die.

She yelled to the tourists, Get down, somebody’s shooting. Who’s shooting? What does it matter who’s shooting if they shoot you, get down you fool get down, and the fool got down. Renata knew Diego was now shooting at somebody and somebody was shooting at him. He was saying, We will kill the devil, we will butcher the butcher, as he entered the Palace with his M-1. That young man of such culture and knowledge and courage and beauty would be a sacrifice today. Renata listened as he whispered to her: Be careful, they will know I love you and will remember I kissed you, I shouldn’t have, but now they will question you about me and you must tell them we only talked about painting and Santeria and of course they will believe you, for you look so innocent. He was shooting now and he will kill before he is killed. The guardia at the Palace will also deliver sacrifices today. She could see Diego shooting on the Palace stairs, so agile, so alert to the living instant, and she crawled to the museum’s stairs to see everybody below, all crouching or flattened by the guns, which stopped, began, stopped, began. Why are they firing at Bellas Artes? We have no guns.