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

He awoke in his apartment in Havana on the fourth day after her disappearance and stopped his search, bereft of new ideas, and he began writing his interview with Fidel. He could not think clearly, and failed to convince his ex-editor at the Miami Herald , Henry McMullen, that a profile based on Fidel’s intellectual views of revolution was the salient element of the story. Matthews already did that, McMullen said. Not the way I’m doing it, said Quinn. Then work it into the body of the story but we need a hard news dimension to justify it, said McMullen. You don’t think the fact that he’s alive is hard news, said Quinn, or that after we ended our talk he marched all day and half the night and captured El Uvero — how hard does it have to get? We did El Uvero yesterday in six paragraphs, McMullen said, what else have you got? I quit smoking last year but I smoked a cigar with Fidel, Quinn said. How great does it get? Very great, McMullen said. We’ll put it on the comics page.

So Quinn wrote it the way he wanted to write it, giving a nod to the El Uvero raid, the bloodiest battle so far in the war, a great success for the rebels, and he used as his lead Fidel’s farewell line that “I have an appointment with President Batista’s armed forces.” He drew a picture of a leader whose mother thinks he was born as a warrior god, his birth witnessed by Changó the Orisha. Nobody will know who Changó is. Let them find out. He wrote that Fidel had been born into the era where he belonged, a man who found his hour, as Faulkner put it. A hero is born, not made, right? Does Quinn really think that? Probably not. If McMullen doesn’t use the story he’ll give it to the AP or The Washington Post, somewhere there’s an editor who values Fidel’s personal take on his miraculous survival. Just write it.

While he was writing, Hemingway called.

“I got another letter from Cooney,” Hemingway said. “Same stuff, a little more urgency. I decided I’d meet him. Pistols. Since you’ve been central in all this I want you to set it up and be the referee. Cooney trusts you. I’ll also bring a second. We’ll do it tomorrow, if he’s not chicken. We’ll meet at Colón Cemetery at dawn, that’s how it’s done down here. Six-thirty-two is sunrise. I’ll pick you up at six. Meet at the main gate. I’ll have to pay off one of the guards to let us in. The cemetery doesn’t open till nine. Where do you live? And no press, not even you.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I saw the whites of his eyes. Are you on?”

“I’m on. My wife disappeared but I’m on. Three days and I can’t find her. I told Fidel about your duel. He thinks you have to do it, even though you’re too valuable to take such a risk. If you can hold off till he wins the revolution he’ll fix it so you win, but if not, then you should find a way not to lose because you’re too valuable to die. He said he had For Whom the Bell Tolls with him in the Sierra and it taught him things about battle.”

“Always glad to help a worthy cause. But I’ll fight my own battles, without a fix.”

“Is Cooney still at the Hotel Regis?”

“His letter was on their stationery.”

“You’ll need a doctor in case somebody gets shot. You think anybody will?”

“I’d bet against it,” Hemingway said.

“You know a doctor who’ll come?”

“Yes. What about your wife?”

“When I came back after Fidel she was gone. She must’ve been taken by the police or the SIM.”

“What did she do?”

“She was close to one of the Palace attackers.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I know.”

“Then you don’t need this duel in your life.”

“I have no direction to go in right now, nowhere to look. I’ll do it.”

“You married her. How did that happen so fast?”

“I was always told to get my story in the first paragraph.”

They would meet Cooney at the great Romanesque Arch that was the northern gate of Colón Cemetery, and then go to the southern section of the cemetery, which Hemingway had said was the least populated, with ample room for a bullet to fly toward the horizon and lose its momentum after a hundred or a few hundred yards without hitting anything but a tree. The place looked like a dwarf city, sidewalks and sculpted trees, a hundred and forty acres, so many mausoleums, family chapels, crypts, magnificent marble structures (the Firemen’s Monument, which honors twenty-seven who died in 1890, looked about six stories tall), statues, domes, obelisks, an Egyptian pyramid, a Pietà, an hourglass with wings, a world of kitsch, a world of art.

“You know this cemetery?” Hemingway asked.

Quinn was alone in the backseat of the Chrysler station wagon, Hemingway in the passenger seat beside his driver, Juan, who came for him after the Cooney knockout. He would be Hemingway’s second.

“All I know is that it’s a spectacular place,” Quinn said.

“It’s where they put all the famosos ,” Hemingway said. “There’s also thousands of Cubans the Spaniards starved to death back in ’98, and your grandfather’s pal Máximo Gómez is buried here.”

“Why do Cubans fight their duels in a cemetery?”

“It gets you in the mood for death. And it’s handy for the loser.”

“Cooney’s got two seconds that he flew in from Miami.”

“He can have twenty. All I need is Juan to carry the pistols. I’ve got a pair of.38 revolvers I brought back from France. Cooney wanted.38s. He can use one of mine, either one.”

“You think he’d use one of your pistols?”

“He can test it in advance if he doesn’t trust me. Juan has extra cartridges.”

“I didn’t talk about that with Cooney. We assumed you’d each have your own.”

“That’s all right. I’m not fussy.”

“You’re pretty calm about this.”

“If you get excited your aim goes bad. Cooney agreed on you being the referee, right?”

“He did. What does a referee do?”

“You’ll have to imagine that for yourself, just like chapter six. By tradition we start back-to-back. Pace off to the count of ten, then turn and shoot. You do the counting, then duck behind the nearest tombstone.”

“This is absurd,” Quinn said, “absolutely nuts, you putting your life on the line. You’re like goddamn Mount Rushmore and here you are diddling with some Baltimore salesman. I can’t believe you’re going through with it and I can’t believe I’m part of it.”

“It’ll work out,” Hemingway said.

“How?”

“You’ll see.”

“Bullets are bullets.”

“You’re right about that.”

“If you kill him that’s the end of you.”

“I’ll try not to kill him.”

“He could kill you.”

“He could, and some would say I deserved it, that I violated his honor.”

“If he kills you you won’t finish your book.”

“That’s the real tragedy. I’ve got four books to finish.”

“You shouldn’t do this. Why not apologize and get it over with?”

“Never apologize, never explain, John Wayne.”

“Every duel Wayne ever fought they used blanks,” Quinn said. “Juan, what do you think? Qué piensa? ”

“ Papa sabe, ” Juan said, not taking his eyes from the road. “He know.”

“What does he know?”

“Lo sabe todo. Everyting.”

“If you die my career is ruined,” Quinn said. “I’ll be the one who let you do this.”

“You couldn’t stop me.”

“That won’t matter. I’ll be the goat, the man who let Papa die, the man who set up the duel. I’ll be like Ralph Branca throwing that fastball to Bobby Thomson. How will it look on my résumé?”