Fifty Grand

I shake my head. Even before it had gotten a bad reputation, I’d never had a desire to gape at the Yankees in Guantánamo. The Interior Ministry had mined the bay and surrounded the camp with hundreds of soldiers. A few people had tried to defect there but all had been caught. It was easier by far to try for the Keys. And even if I had gone to Caimanera I wouldn’t admit it to Hector. The last thing I wanted to do was exhibit any kind of wistful longing for America.

He slows his pace. Easier now. My limp vanishes.

Hector is smiling to himself, probably thinking of his adventures with girls on that long, awful train from Santiago to Havana.

“You fell down some steps, Detective Mercado?”

“Yes, sir. Thieves have stolen all the streetlights on that-”

“When I was a child I fell down a well. Did you know that?”

“No, sir.”

“An early sign of idiocy or an early sign of brilliance, what do you think?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“The philosopher Thales fell in a well while contemplating the heavens. Heard of him, detective?”

“No.”

“What did you study in college?” Hector asks.

“Dual major, sir.”

“Dual major in what?”

“English and Russian.”

“Hedging your bets, eh? I like that.”

“Not really, sir, we didn’t have much choice, we were told what to-”

“When was the last time you walked along here?” Hector interrupts.

“Yesterday. As a matter of fact, every morning. I-”

“Not me, must be a year since I walked here. I have a car, you know. A brand-new Volkswagen from Mexico,” he says with pride.

“I didn’t know that.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” He sighs. “It’s changed since the last time I was here. Worse. In Cuba things always change for the worse.”

“Yes, sir,” I reply and inwardly groan. From past experience I know that Hector is going to hit me with an expansion of this theory.

“Yes, things got worse for the indigenous Cubans when the Spanish came, then they got worse under the Yankees, then worse still under the little dictators, then worse under Sergeant Batista, then worse under Fidel. And you’ll see, it’ll continue to get worse under Raúl and the Venezuelans.”

“And after Raúl?” I venture.

“Ah, you mean when the Miamistas come?” He looks at me with a glint in his eye. “We’ll talk about that in a minute,” he says mysteriously.

We walk along the seawall toward the curve of the Castillo. In the distance is the fort of San Carlos and the chimneys of the oil refineries on the bay.

The wind is blowing the smoke offshore, decanting it north to Florida, 150 sweet sea kilometers from here.

He lights a little cigar, offers me one. I decline. Two summers working in the plantations for the Young Pioneers cured me of any desire to smoke Cuban cigars. He hoists himself up and sits on the seawall.

“Sit next to me,” he says.

I sit.

He smokes his stubby cigar and, feeling the need for more nicotine, reaches into the pocket of his beat-up leather jacket to remove a packet of Dominican cigarettes. He offers me one and this time I do accept. He lights it and I inhale. It’s American. A Camel. He’s hiding American cigarettes in a Dominican packet.

“Do you know the concept of duende, Mercado?”

“Something to do with flamenco?”

He sighs. “My father was at the lecture Lorca gave here in Habana on duende, in 1930. Duende is the dark creative energy, the opposite of the creative spirit of the muses. You must avoid that energy, that energy gets you in trouble, Mercado, killed, like Lorca himself a few years later.”

I stare at him and say nothing. He’s overhearing his own thoughts, trying to bring himself to the point.

He shakes his head. “Please at least tell me you’re familiar with Lorca, Detective Mercado.”

“Of course. Murdered by the fascists.”

“Yes. Murdered by the fascists,” he says slowly, making every word count.

Waves.

Gulls.

A chain grinding against a buoy.

“I’ve got property here,” he says at last, pointing at the rows of derelict and bricked-up buildings on the Malecón.

“Really?” I say with surprise.

“Yes. Land money. Best kind. Seafront. Worth shit now. I got it for nothing. But in five years when the Yankees are back…”

“You think the Yankees will be here in five years, sir?” I ask.

“Give or take, and call me Hector, Mercado. Call me Hector.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beneath us more kids are combing the concrete-and-iron coastal defenses for flotsam or garbage, and farther down the shore in the cool light of day a desperate character is making a raft out of driftwood and polystyrene packing. I point him out.

“You want to fill in a lot of forms today? You didn’t see him,” Hector says.

“No, sir.”

We sit for a minute and listen to the waves. A pale sun is rising over a paler sea. Traffic is starting to pick up on the road.

Hector clears his throat. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mercado. I know you. I know that you’re stubborn and I know that you’re clever and I know that your brother has already taken considerable risks, but I will say this, if you think you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, you’re mistaken. And if you can’t fool me, then you’re not going to fool anyone in the ministry either.”