Hotel Cuba, page 12
She imagines that today Frieda’s at shul in New York with Basha. Unless she’s already in Detroit with Mendel. Maybe they’re married and she’s forgotten to write.
Mrs. Steinberg talks to Pearl and Julieta as if her husband were not there: “He’s only going to synagogue to attract business.”
“Probably a good plan,” says Julieta. “Shul will be full of Jews today.”
“On the New Year, Jews go to shul,” says Pearl.
“Sure, sure,” chimes in Mr. Steinberg. “All around the world, all Jews go to shul today. It gives you a special feeling of connection. Right, Pearl?”
What does he want, applause? “On the New Year, Jews go to shul,” Pearl says simply. “That’s all.”
“And as usual, the women will be tucked away in the back,” Mrs. Steinberg says. “Safely out of sight. Who’ll know if I’m there or not?”
“I’ll know.” Mr. Steinberg’s voice sounds thin.
“What should I do while you’re schmoozing with your buddies?” she asks.
“Pray,” he says.
“With all the troubles in the world, what good is prayer?”
“Pray or don’t pray. Think or dream or do whatever the hell you please to pass the time. But I will not be seen going to shul without my goddamned wife.”
Mrs. Steinberg, fuming, goes on walking. Julieta fidgets with her umbrella, while Pearl lowers her eyes. She’s never heard the Steinbergs speak with such bitterness. And what about Mrs. Steinberg’s words? On one of the holiest days of the year, she’d stay home from shul because she dislikes where she’s going to stand?
Mr. Steinberg, who hates any unpleasantness, looks around for something to divert his attention. He finds relief in an acquaintance also heading to shul. Mr. Steinberg slaps his back, offers him candy, and instantly they’re like brothers. Someday, Pearl thinks, I’ll learn how he performs such magic tricks.
Together the two men walk ahead toward the synagogue, sandwiched between a grocery and a residential building. The men going in are beardless and wear white or light gray suits with striped ties. The women wear floral print dresses and carry yellow or green umbrellas. Cubans passing by look on curiously or smile. Pearl watches closely to see if they say something hateful or spit, but there’s nothing.
Inside, it looks like a proper shul, with a Jewish star painted in blue on the ceiling, a wooden menorah, and a wooden Ten Commandments crowning the ark. Pearl feels guilty for not having come here before. The crowd is mostly American, men who came with their families to work in the sugar business or who dodged the draft in the Great War and then stayed on. There are also a few Sephardic Jews, both men and women, dark as Arabs, dressed in rich fabrics, their fingers covered in gold rings. Whatever their background, these Jews seem proud, happy, and without fear.
The service starts late. The women linger at the sides of the room while the men compete for the best spots on the central benches, closer to the altar. It’s a modern-style service, with many prayers cut out, cut short, or recited in English.
Does God want to be spoken to in English?
Perhaps to hedge their bets on this question, the congregation has imported an old cantor from Budapest to sing a few prayers in Hebrew. He’s lost much of his voice and keeps clearing his throat to find it again. Pearl misses Father’s honeyed baritone, backed by the soft treble voices of the boys’ choir. She used to wish his personality could be like his delicate falsetto, tender and fragile.
She and Julieta are hidden behind a portico with the other women, and the balls of their feet ache from standing on tiptoe to see what’s happening in the main part of the sanctuary. Mrs. Steinberg, still miffed from their morning walk, stands at the edge of the women’s section. Pearl is glad to keep a healthy distance from her fuming.
Several of the women who hired Pearl to make pairs of slacks are there. Mrs. Steinberg used to tease her, “With all your pants money, you must be rich.”
But the pants money is gone, sailed away on a boat to Florida, and for whatever reason, when the rains came, demand for women’s pants disappeared. Plus, there were only so many Jewish merchants’ wives Pearl could serve. The market has dried up.
Julieta keeps whispering silliness. Doesn’t that man’s mustache remind her of Douglas Fairbanks? Doesn’t that woman look like Clara Bow? Pearl wouldn’t recognize Miss Bow, though she admires the woman’s peach-colored silk dress swaying from her shoulders, with its daring low neckline. Just looking at the material makes Pearl feel free.
Stop thinking of nonsense, Pearl scolds herself, on Rosh Hashanah of all days. Yet don’t women do that in shul, let their attention wander? Men do the serious work of talking to God. Women put their trust in the men, then run home to pull pots of stew from the oven or set extra places at the table for unexpected guests.
But here is different, Pearl thinks. Here I’ve got no table to set or guests to serve, no man to speak for me.
Time for the shofar. The men gather their boys around them. Mr. Steinberg grips a friend’s arm. The women hold their daughters tight. Mrs. Steinberg ducks out of the room. Pearl recalls an old wives’ story: If you’re alone in shul when the shofar sounds, you’ll die the next year. A stupid story invented by men, Pearl thinks. I refuse to believe it.
The packed sanctuary falls silent as the ancient cantor from Vienna puts a curled pink-streaked ram’s horn to his lips. It’s so quiet, Pearl hears the raindrops tapping the windows. The strain in the old man’s face moves her heart. Maybe he lacks enough breath in his body? But he plays the first tekiah note with firmness and clarity. This sound is followed by three curling blasts of shevarim, and the syncopated stutter of the teruah. All this is meant to summon God into the room, or godliness, anyway. In Turya, Father is also blowing the shofar. In New York, her sisters must be listening to it too.
Pearl shuts her eyes. Her lips move as if of their own will. “I know I’ve disappointed you,” she says under her breath. “I promise to do better if you’ll let me follow my sister to America.”
Even if God does not answer or hear, she thinks, I hear.
The final note, a tekiah gedolah, is sounded, and Pearl turns to Julieta, whose face has gone pale. A tear courses down her rouged cheek. The tear of a modest Jewish girl named Hodele who returns Pearl’s gaze, then squeezes her hand. She’s not so bad, Pearl thinks. I should be friendlier to her.
Listening to final blast of the shofar, Pearl has no pressing duties, no pants to sew or hats to adorn. She’s simply listening, watching, and breathing. Through the windows, the bougainvillea looks especially bright in the rain.
* * *
JULIETA LIKES TO stay up late chatting. Often Pearl pretends to sleep, but tonight, she’s glad for the companionship. As they lie in their beds, Julieta says, “I miss the cold. I miss eating a steaming bowl of borscht in winter.”
Pearl says, “I used to dip a spoon of sour cream into it and stir and stir.” She can taste it now. Talking this way, simply, openly, it’s refreshing. Even the room feels bigger.
“We had a shiksa neighbor who teased me,” Julieta says. “‘Eating that soup, you look like you’re drinking Christ’s blood.’ I wanted to slap her but I didn’t dare.”
Christians, Pearl thinks with disgust. The Christian children in Turya used to hug themselves if a Jew walked by, fearing that greedy Jews might steal the buttons off their shirts. Greedy Jews indeed, she thinks. If we were greedy, it’s because you never let us earn anything. She remembers Christian soldiers riding through town, singing, “Greedy Jews, your time is past!” Soldiers with clean-shaven cheeks, dirty grasping hands . . .
“I will never go back there,” says Pearl. “Never.”
Julieta rolls over to face Pearl. “Your sister’s in America, right?”
“I have two sisters in New York,” says Pearl.
“I wanted to go to Nueva York, but there were the quotas,” says Julieta. “That first night in Havana, I got stuck in Tiscornia because I didn’t have the money to get out, and I cried plenty, stuck in that damn refugee camp, not even in America. A nice old man lent me some money.”
“Why? What did he want from you? He didn’t bother you?”
“No, he was just nice.” Julieta props herself up on an elbow. “Why do you ask?”
I shouldn’t have said that, Pearl thinks. I shouldn’t give myself away so plainly to a stranger, an outsider. “No reason,” she says. Such things, you only tell a sister. No, not even then.
Julieta says, “It’s nice here, just us two. I used to live in a workshop with four girls, making purses. We slept on the wooden worktables. My back was so sore. I’m sorry your sister’s gone, but at least she made room for me.” She sighs. “La Habana isn’t so bad, right? Better than home anyway. No one bothers us here.”
“No, no, I have to get to America.”
“Why?”
Many reasons. Because I can’t sleep for worrying over Frieda. Because I didn’t cross an ocean to speak Spanish and live in a sweatshop on a poor island with no future, no proper shul, no kosher meat. Will I never again taste chicken?
“Here it’s poor,” explains Pearl. “And in poor countries, they always learn to hate Jews. They’ll turn on us.”
“No, no,” says Julieta. “Los cubanos are very friendly. They don’t know how to hate. But if you want to get to America very badly, you can smuggle.”
Yes, she could smuggle. Where Frieda had succeeded, so could Pearl. “But to smuggle, you need money.”
“Then make more of your famous pants.”
“Not too many customers lately.”
“Ask your sister in America to help. You helped her, now she can help you.”
“I couldn’t take her money.”
Julieta reaches across the gap between their beds to touch Pearl’s arm. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”
Pearl draws her clammy bedsheet over her neck. Nosy, nosy, she thinks, her insides twisting up tight. Why are you so interested in other people’s business?
“What’s wrong, Pearl? You can tell me. You might feel better.”
Pearl is suddenly and wildly desperate to get outside. She feels Julieta’s eyes on her, even through this darkness. Of course something is wrong, she thinks. Do I have to paint you a sign?
Now I’m being like Frieda, blaming whoever’s nearby for my troubles. I suppose I shouldn’t be angry at Julieta. It’s not her fault.
Pearl turns over on her back, faces the ceiling.
Maybe if I shared some small piece of this weight with someone—a bit, not all—my heart might feel that much lighter.
But if I put these memories into words, they are no longer memories. They’d print themselves on my life here.
The word for it is so ugly, so judicial. So final.
In the end, the temptation to speak proves too great. “Something happened to me,” Pearl says in a low voice. “Not here. In the Old Country.” Does Julieta understand? It’s hard to tell in the dark. To clarify, Pearl adds, “A soldier.”
There, she’s done it. What will Julieta say now? What will she think?
After a few painful seconds, Julieta replies, “It isn’t your fault. He did this, not you. Don’t you see?”
No, Pearl doesn’t see. There were two of us there, she thinks. Don’t I bear some responsibility? Don’t I?
Julieta says, “You’re not ashamed, are you? Pearl, he’s a louse. A total louse.”
“For me, he doesn’t exist,” says Pearl. “He might as well be dead. Let’s not talk about him.”
“Take my advice,” says Julieta. “Forget him, forget the Old Country. And forget America too. Stay here in La Habana with me, Pearl. What, you think they don’t fool around with women in America?”
“Good night,” says Pearl. “I’m going to sleep.”
But long after Julieta’s snoring away, Pearl lies awake, wishing she could erase the words she carelessly let escape and have changed the shape of the air in this room. She should have kept quiet, followed Frieda’s advice and left the Old Country in the Old Country. Now Pearl can’t sleep for thinking. She imagines she hears a leak and the rain is dripping on her pillow, flooding their room. Air, air, I need fresh air. Pearl gets out of bed and tiptoes across the floor, which is damp on her bare feet. She steps lightly, trying to avoid landing on a stray bead or pin.
In the workshop, her fingers search her worktable for the tin where she keeps Frieda’s knickknacks. Pearl wants to hold them now, close to her chest. I’ve got to join her, Pearl thinks. I’ve got to get away.
Opening the box, Pearl inhales the earthy scent of tobacco. She sets aside a swatch of pink silk, a ceramic flute shaped like a bird, a pillbox painted with an image of Morro Castle. Under these trinkets is a cigar, the one they’d joked about smoking. Frieda kept it all this time. I could sell it to a tourist, Pearl thinks. How much would he give me?
She closes the box, steps into her house slippers, and goes out into the hall. It’s raining again, so she stands in the building doorway as water drips from the wrought-iron balconies. She listens to the tap, tap, tap of water on stone. Somewhere, a cat is crying. It’s not your fault, Julieta says. Maybe tomorrow she’ll change her mind, say it is my fault, or no one’s fault. Maybe no one is responsible for anything anymore.
Pearl’s head hurts. She breathes deeply for several seconds to slow her heart. The wet air is fresh and soothing. She looks at Frieda’s cigar, then puts it to her mouth.
What if I were to light it? To taste it?
Pearl runs back in for matches and comes out again. Before lighting the cigar, she has to clip off the tip. That’s how she’s seen it done. She takes a savage bite off the end and spits the tip into the street. Then she strikes a match. The cigar takes longer to catch flame than a cigarette, so the match goes out. It happens with the second match, and the third. The fourth does the trick.
“To Frieda,” she says, holding up the cigar like a glass of wine on Friday night.
A plume of smoke travels into her lungs and sets her coughing. Finally, she manages to puff cleanly, letting the smoke float out into the rain. It tastes spicy, like cinnamon or cloves, and a trace of oak. She remembers what Mr. Steinberg said about cigars curing the typhus. Maybe it cures other things.
Dear God, she thinks, maybe I really am becoming a man. First pants, now a cigar. Why don’t I feel powerful?
Eight
THE ANGLO-AMERICAN OPTICAL COMPANY ON OBISPO Street is a five-minute walk from the workshop. The smuggler at the Parque Central told Pearl to arrive at noon with her hundred dollars. She’s bringing fifty.
A notice in the shop window claims that Anglo-American Optical sells the highest quality glasses in Havana. The sign over the door features a giant black eye, like a keina hora, an evil eye. Pearl avoids looking directly into its dark pupil. For luck, she tugs on her ear and sneezes before going in.
Inside, the stifling air smells of overripe melons, and a fine layer of sawdust has settled on the floor. The walls are lined with small wooden drawers.
The eye doctor lowers the shades and locks the door as if for the siesta. He’s a short, slim American with a receding hairline. Behind his black horn-rimmed glasses are a pair of deeply set dark eyes—like the one on the sign outside. In fluid Yiddish, he presses Pearl for the other fifty dollars, his breath smelling of fish, rum, and coffee.
Clearing her throat to bring her trembling voice under control, Pearl stands firm: “Not a penny more until I arrive in Florida.”
The doctor’s assistant, a dark-skinned Cuban in a black shirt, watches their conversation, as does the hollow-cheeked old woman from America who’ll play Pearl’s mother. Sitting in a wooden desk chair, she devours three of the sweet biscuits that the doctor has set before her. She eats a fourth more slowly, as if in apology for her earlier gluttony. Her hair is dyed a shimmering gray that looks blue in the low light of the store.
“Please, I’m not a rich man,” the eye doctor says in the voice of a bleating goat. “I haven’t sold a thing in weeks. These days, no one except tourists can afford a decent pair of glasses. And tourists don’t come to Havana to buy glasses.”
Pearl isn’t falling for his shtick, but in the end, she compromises. She’ll return that afternoon with ten more dollars. The rest she’ll pay the old woman in Florida.
The Cuban assistant goes to the P & O office to book their boat tickets to Key West with train tickets to Miami attached. Pearl listens carefully to the eye doctor’s instructions. She and the old woman will leave Havana tomorrow morning. Later that afternoon, their boat will anchor in Key West, across the pier from the train tracks. Foreigners get off from the back, to show their documents. As an American, Pearl will disembark from the front with her “mother” and cross the dock to the train. No need to stop or say a word to anyone. Understand?
“Yes,” says Pearl. It’s all arranged, she thinks. I’ve saved myself. After nine months, I’m leaving this island.
They help the old woman rise from her chair. She manages it with labored breathing and squinting eyes, like Pearl’s grandmother in her declining days. “By day, I see fine,” she insists, taking tiny steps toward the door. “But it’s so dark in this shop.”
“I don’t like to keep the lights on in this heat,” says the doctor.
He doesn’t like to pay to keep the lights on, Pearl thinks. You’re both liars.
“Many thanks, gentlemen,” says the woman, as if Pearl is a man.
Pearl, swallowing the hurt of this remark, offers to accompany the old woman to her boardinghouse. It’s located on a cheap block close to the Paseo, where the old buildings are crowded together like a mouthful of bad teeth. They shed flakes of paint or bits of stone facade onto the streets. Beggars stretch out halfhearted hands in their direction, then quickly recognize how poor these women are—not worth the effort. A peddler hawks Eskimo Pies out of a box on his back. Pearl’s stomach growls, but she has stale bread at the workshop, and she’d rather save the money for America.
