The Woman She Was Read online

  Dedicated to the memory of Celia Sánchez

  and those Cubans still working to realize

  her humanitarian vision of their homeland.

  ONE

  CELIA was sure that she had not fainted, hallucinated, nor suffered an altered state. She had simply—what? Carefully, as if reviewing a patient’s case history, she tried to reconstruct what had happened.

  As on previous visits, she had first examined the small museum’s paltry exhibits: a few articles of clothing, a worn leather purse, the dented aluminium canteen that Sánchez was said to have carried during her years as a rebel leader. Then she had turned her attention to the portraits. Although done by different artists, each had rendered the face with a flatness that stripped the subject of personality. Celia guessed that this was because the paintings were copied from photographs, Sánchez having never posed for a portrait. Still, what was the matter with those men? Couldn’t they see who she was ? Celia turned away from each painting with the feeling one gets upon discovering that essential parts of an important book have been blacked out.

  The museum contained not a page of Sánchez’s writings, no description of her role in bringing Cuba from under the boot of the dictator Batista, no list of the schools, hospitals, housing, and recreational facilities she had established after the war. There was not even mention of the very park in which the museum sat, Habana’s largest, which had sprung from Sánchez’s mind. She had considered it so important for city residents to have easy access to nature that she had helped plant a grove of mango trees in Parque Lenin herself. She had not lived to see how they’d grown, but as she placed seedlings in the ground she must have imagined them like the giants that now provided fruit and shade in her hometown at the eastern end of the island.

  There was nothing in the one-room museum to tell a visitor those things, or much else about the woman it purported to memorialize. By its silence, history, including the officially sanctioned Fidel Castro version of history, had reduced Celia Sánchez to a pretty face—and not an honest one at that, for all of the gallery’s portraits presented her as prettier than she actually had been.

  Troubled as always by what the museum did not contain, Celia had exited through the back door into the garden to see the one exhibit that did give her a sense of who the woman had been—a life-sized bronze of Sánchez as she might have appeared in her late thirties. Celia had gazed intently at the statue, then reached out to place a flower at its foot—a rose, rare in Cuba, given to her by the grateful mother of a child patient. It was then, with the suddenness of a TV turned on at top volume in a quiet room, that the silence of the garden seemed to have been shattered.

  Habaneras lined the highway, cheering guerrilla fighters as they rolled into the capital. Celia turned to Fidel, sitting next to her atop the tank. A flower was flung from the crowd. He caught the blossom with a high reach, as if it were a baseball, and handed it to her. She could not hear his whisper above the rumble of the tank and cheers of the crowd but read the words on his lips: “Para ti, compañera.” Their eyes met and she was embraced by the totality of what they shared: the dreams, struggles, incalculable losses, and this euphoric moment.

  Celia Cantú gave a small cry as a thorn on the rose stem pricked her. Her thumb went to her mouth and she sucked at the tiny puncture, extracting herself from something that she had felt, for an instant, she was experiencing.

  Of course she had seen Castro’s triumphant 1959 arrival into Habana on television countless times; what Cuban had not? That historic film footage was not so different from what had just screened in her mind’s eye. Flowers were thrown, but she recalled no picture showing Sánchez and Castro exchanging such an intimate gaze. Indeed, she could not recall seeing Sánchez in the newsreels at all, although as the Revolutionary Armed Forces’ first commander, predating even Fidel, she must have been there.

  Celia closed her eyes and tried to see the thirty-eight-year-old Sánchez as she would have appeared beside Castro when the tanks rumbled into Habana. No image came. The scene burned into her senses, even after the hallucination had passed, was from Sánchez’s point of view. Or was it her own? With absolute clarity, Celia recalled looking directly into golden-brown eyes that for a split second were looking into her own, sharing every emotional nuance.

  Worried by what the incident might imply about her mental health—for it bore some resemblance to a hallucination she had had about a year earlier—she turned to leave. For a long moment she stared at the door leading back into the museum. Was she was coming or going? Hadn’t she just been here? Or was that another year? She stood there treading time as one treads water when unsure of how deep the bottom is.

  “Compañera? Are you all right?”

  With difficulty, Celia brought the man who had spoken into focus. He was staring at her with consternation.

  “I know you,” he said. “You come every year.”

  She did not know him and wondered, running fingers through her hair the way one sometimes does when trying to wake up, if she was still hallucinating. Then she noticed that he carried a rake and guessed that he was the museum’s gardener.

  “Yes. I just came to see . . .” She gestured toward the bronze of Sánchez.

  “Of course. Did you know her?”

  “No.” At his look of disappointment, she added, “But my mother did. She was in the sierra with Raúl. And Celia, of course, with Fidel. I did meet her once but I was very young. All I understood was that she was called Celia too. That I was named for her.”

  The gardener scrutinized her. “You have the same eyes.”

  It was the sort of thing her father would have said, had in fact said. Only he had meant her mother’s eyes, not those of Celia Sánchez.

  Celia Cantú smiled. “Brown?”

  The gardener ignored her teasing tone. “Tender,” he said reverently. “She had the capacity to feel the pain of others. That was why she embraced the Revolution.”

  He continued to look at her as fathers do when they are assessing the worthiness of their offspring. “And you? Are you a good communist?”

  He must be an old revolutionary himself, Celia thought. They grew up in such serious times. She shrugged. “I’m a good doctor.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy him. She smiled goodbye and took the path around the building, back to the parking lot. He followed her, walking rather too close. Perhaps he was not convinced that she really was okay. Celia was not entirely convinced herself, but she affected the purposeful stride that on normal days carried her up and down hospital corridors.

  With egalitarian good manners, he did not try to open the car door for her. Celia slid in, nodded goodbye, and drove away. Just before she turned the corner she glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that he was still staring after her—a small, muscular man in his seventies who had grown up in an era that she, barely thirty-five, seemed compelled to reinvent.

  By the shortest route it was a mere kilometre to the restaurant, but she chose a more meandering route through Parque Lenin, past rowboats on the lake and children flying kites in open fields. She heard in the near distance the toot of a little choo-choo train taking families around the park, and farther away, the whistle of a larger one, which, now that it was late afternoon, would be taking others back to the city. The drive gave her an extra few minutes to consider what had happened back there in the garden, time to wonder why, although it had alarmed her, she felt a lingering sense of exhilaration.

  Psychiatry was not Celia’s area of expertise, but her medical training told her that whatever tricks her mind had played on her must have sprung from some brief aberration in brain chemistry. She would have to consider the implications of that later, and perhaps seek a second opinion. But now she must hurry, becau
se Luis was waiting, had been waiting for—she was not sure how long.

  TWO

  LUIS LAGO approved of Las Ruinas’ Soviet-inspired architecture. It did not bother him that the restaurant, monstrous in size, with heavy horizontal lines painted dazzling white, seemed as out of place in its wooded setting as a luxury liner in an orange grove. Its weightiness promised the durability of Cuba’s colonial construction, while clean lines implied a purity of purpose lacking in edifices of that ostentatious era. But the place was expensive. Luis was here only because of the location, and because Celia liked it.

  It was his discovery, three years ago, that she bussed out to Parque Lenin every year to visit the Sánchez museum, his offering to drive her, and inviting her to dine at Las Ruinas afterwards, that had led to their engagement. Naturally he would have liked to visit the museum with her, but she made it clear at the onset that she wanted to go alone.

  He assured her that he didn’t mind waiting at the restaurant. He really didn’t mind. It was a small thing and helped fill a void in their relationship—his nagging sense that nothing he had to offer was particularly important to her. He could not fault her courtesy in acknowledging the things he did for her, but he sensed that it was more ritual than need. Celia Cantú asked for nothing.

  Consciously he admired her quiet restraint as much as he had detested the voluble emotions flung at him by women with whom he had been involved when he was younger. Yet Celia’s self-containment was almost too complete. Luis knew that among family, friends, and co-workers he was most at ease when taking cues from the group. Celia, though, did not signal her desires. She had a kind of emotional opaqueness that left him perpetually unsure of what she wanted, how she felt, or, perhaps, even who she was.

  Luis gave a disparaging grunt at that last, stupid thought. They had known each other since childhood. It had always been him watching her, not the other way around, so what could there be to know about her that he didn’t know already?

  Even as he told himself this, Luis knew he was whistling in the dark. He did not know, for example, what her reaction would be to the letter in his pocket—a letter that he had kept to himself as long as possible.

  A trickle of sweat slid down his spine. He moved into the shade of Las Ruinas’ cement-heavy portico. Unobtrusively dressed in a short-sleeved guayabera, grey slacks, and black shoes, he went unnoticed by a quince party posing for pictures in the restaurant’s flower-filled garden. Although he stood a head taller than most Cuban men, he rarely attracted attention. He had what he jokingly called “a talent for invisibility.” It had bothered him when he was a child, especially in the presence of his polar-opposite brother, but later, in politics, it was an asset. His input, never controversial but always thoughtful, was given consideration at the highest levels of government. From the outset he had aimed for an approach that would never be perceived as threatening. A genuine readiness to serve the Revolution in whatever capacity his colleagues deemed most useful had facilitated his rise in the ranks.

  Luis watched a man, probably the fifteen-year-old’s father, snapping pictures. The man must be forty, which meant that like Luis he had been born soon after the victory of the Revolution and had grown up steeped in its values. But what good had it done? The fool had obviously spent a bundle of money, more likely the money of Miami relatives, to make an extravaganza of what Luis viewed as one of the bourgeoisie’s most obnoxious traditions.

  The tight fit of the girl’s formal gown suggested that it had been purchased elsewhere by someone who remembered her as more slender than she was now. New outfits worn by the brothers, sisters, and cousins who surrounded her to simulate the escorts and attendants of a royal child were likely from Miami relatives too. In return, those who sent the crap would get copies of the photos that the proud father was snapping so feverishly. He probably imagined that the pictures would offer incontrovertible evidence that he had done right by his daughter; proof that although island Cubans lacked certain consumer goods, they had one thing that many Cuban emigrants did not: a close family that included happy, well-adjusted adolescents.

  The girl’s father noticed Luis only when, trying to get an overview shot of the group, he actually backed into him. The man quickly apologized, then held out the camera. “Would you mind taking one of us all together? You know, with me in it?”

  Luis hesitated and then accepted the camera. The man positioned himself next to his daughter, a pouty girl who would have been pretty without the mask of makeup.

  “Ready!” The father beamed.

  Luis snapped the shutter, only to be greeted by cries of “Aye, no! I had my mouth open!” “My eyes were closed!” “Otro, por favor!”

  Luis took one more. He returned the camera with an expression meant to convey that he did not approve of the event or his small part in it.

  The man did not seem to notice. He raced back to pose his daughter for other photos, tilting her chin, instructing her to smile. Luis saw that the girl was growing impatient with the mannequin treatment. At last she flopped onto a bench and refused to look up. The father shouted in exasperation. Then, seeing something in her sullen downcast eyes that the camera would translate into modesty, he gave a delighted, “Wait! Perfecto!” and snapped the picture.

  Luis turned away, frowning, and saw Celia coming toward him. She was walking fast, almost trotting. The short dark curls, usually so tidy, had the messy look of a woman just up in the morning who only half-combed her hair, and without benefit of a mirror. Her smile was tense and did not reach her eyes.

  Before he could ask what was wrong, she burst out, “Sorry I kept you waiting so long, Luis!”

  “Long? Why, you haven’t been gone an hour!”

  She stopped in her tracks and checked her watch, as if she couldn’t take his word.

  He wondered why she seemed surprised. The museum was not five minutes away. “You didn’t stay as long as usual.”

  “But I—you were frowning,” she said faintly. “I thought it was the waiting.”

  “No. It’s that nonsense over there.” He jerked his head toward the quince party, which was being rearranged into yet another combination on the broad white steps leading into the restaurant.

  Celia glanced toward to the group. “Pobrecita! ” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Look at the swelling! Those shoes are so tight they have cut off circulation in her feet. And the way the high heels have thrust her pelvis forward; see how it exaggerates the curvature of her spine?”

  Luis dropped an arm around Celia’s shoulder. “A girl that age ought to be spending the weekend at a campismo with friends, not enduring this, this charade!”

  “Thank goodness Liliana didn’t want a fiesta de quince,” Celia murmured.

  “Surely you would not have given her one?”

  Celia tensed and Luis immediately regretted the question. Both in tone and phrasing it recalled their major area of conflict: his belief that she was too lenient with her sixteen-year-old niece. Had Celia replied yes to his question they would have quarrelled, and he would have agonized later over how he could have been so inept as to anger this normally even-tempered woman whom he only wanted to please.

  But what Celia said, patiently, as if explaining herself to someone who barely knew her, was, “I may not be a communist, Luis, but I am not so bourgeois that I would allow my own flesh and blood to be paraded like a commodity.”

  The fact that he was a party member and she was not was not an issue between them—or, rather, only became one when he tried to defend some National Assembly decision that annoyed her. But the quinceñero had nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with them, and now of all times he did not want to annoy her. He pulled her close and asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “I suppose . . . yes,” she replied vaguely, as if food was the last thing on her mind.

  They stepped through the ornate door and stopped, waiting for their eyes to adjust from harsh sunlight to the shadowed interior. In contrast to the ultra-modern planes that ma
de up the shell of the building, the interior was graced with the brick ruins of an ancient sugar mill, age-melted into soft irregular shapes. Indirect natural light filtered through spaces left between the walls and roof, revealing tables artfully arranged against crumbling walls overgrown with tropical vegetation.

  Luis stood slightly behind Celia when they entered so he could watch her. She was wearing a dress, which she did not often do, giving him a view of bare shoulders and well-muscled calves. She loved Las Ruinas and it thrilled him to make this pleasure possible—not often, but once a year, on the day she chose to visit the Sánchez museum. He had no idea why the restaurant appealed to her. It was out of character for her to crave luxury and she positively detested the ostentatious. But there was no denying that Las Ruinas entranced her. “What is it you like so much about this place?” he asked.

  He rarely asked a direct question about her feelings. He had learned better. He had learned that while her answer was never an evasion, neither was it enlightening. But with the letter in his pocket, the one she did not know about yet, he had a more urgent need than usual to know her true feelings.

  “The contrast,” she replied thoughtfully. “The modern exterior gives no hint that the inside conceals so much history and mystery and . . . forgotten lives.”

  The headwaiter approached and they followed him to a table. Luis welcomed the distraction. A discussion of what they would order made it unnecessary for him to ponder her explanation. Although perfectly straightforward, instinct told him that it concealed labyrinths of meaning that he could not even guess.

  They spoke little during the meal. Luis thought Celia seemed distracted, and knew for a fact that he was. As they dawdled over dessert, he finally forced himself to tell her what he had put off for two weeks. He spread his hands flat on the table to ensure that they neither shook nor balled into fists and said in what he hoped was a steady voice, “I got a letter. From José.”

  “José who?” she asked, licking chocolate icing from her fork.