Hotel Cuba, page 18
The girl gives her a strange look, then plucks a wilted orchid from a bouquet and hands it to Pearl. For luck, she says. Inhaling the cloying, slightly putrid smell, Pearl continues into the Old Town, passing an old man on the sidewalk, playing a guitar for change. The curving streets shaded by European-style buildings are comforting after the stiff grid of Key West, which feels like some strange dream, not America.
The crossing back from Florida went smoothly. The shipping company, which had to bear the cost of her fare, assigned her a seat in the drawing room and served her a lunch and two cups of tea besides. Now her belly is full, and she feels oddly relaxed, more than she has in weeks. Here in Old Havana, no one is trying to catch her in a lie. In this city of outcasts and desperate people, she fits in. Though she has nothing, the choice of where to go, what to do, it’s entirely hers. She’s as free as, no, maybe more free than any woman she’s known, Mrs. Steinberg, Julieta, even Alma Singer.
The scent of the orchid nauseates her. Pearl tosses it away and heads to the Steinbergs’ flat. Where else? She tries to think up an excuse for running out on them. She was sick. She was kidnapped by a white slaver.
No, the best course is honesty. This was her chance at freedom, so she took it, and it didn’t work. She betrayed their trust and she’s very sorry.
It’s a short walk to the Steinbergs’ bright yellow building on Muralla Street. Holding her breath, Pearl knocks on that familiar old door and rehearses her lines of apology. But when the door opens and it’s Mrs. Steinberg, Pearl has no words.
Mrs. Steinberg draws back in surprise. She stares at Pearl through her glasses, then quickly reaches out her hand, as if Pearl were a friend paying an unexpected social call. “Come in,” she says. “We’re having an early supper. Won’t you stay?”
Flooded with relief, Pearl gives a quick nod.
Mr. Steinberg, frowning at the Havana Post at the dinner table, brightens as Pearl walks in. His collar is unbuttoned, and his hair needs combing and more dye at the roots. He’s the kind of man whose hair looks unnatural when it isn’t dyed. “Look who’s back!” he says, draping his newspaper over a chair. “So, Pearl, it didn’t work out up north?”
Pearl says in a bitter voice, “They didn’t want me.”
“Impossible!” says Mr. Steinberg. “Maybe you didn’t try hard enough.”
Mrs. Steinberg says, “Of course she’s trying hard to get to America. Her sister’s there, isn’t she?”
“No, no,” says Mr. Steinberg. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“He never means anything. Excuse him, Pearl. He can’t help being a man.”
As Mrs. Steinberg brings out bowls of bean soup, Mr. Steinberg pulls out a chair for Pearl, who thinks, This is what kindness is.
No meat tonight, not even for Mr. Steinberg. With his habitual cheer, he says there’s been no replacement for Pearl, not enough work. Maybe things will change when the tourist season picks up again. However, Pearl’s welcome to stay in the workshop, now empty. Shortly after Pearl’s departure, Julieta left too, to marry a peddler and move to the provinces. “A Jew?” Pearl asks doubtfully. She’s relieved to hear that he is.
Mr. Steinberg briefly leaves the room, and Pearl apologizes to Mrs. Steinberg for the advance on her salary, swears she’d planned to pay her back from New York.
“It’s nothing,” says Mrs. Steinberg. “You must have needed the money badly.”
“Thank you,” says Pearl. “And thanks to Mr. Steinberg too.”
Mrs. Steinberg waves away her thanks. “I never told him. Sometimes in a marriage it’s healthier to keep a few secrets.” Pearl’s still pondering these words when Mrs. Steinberg offers the soup tureen. “More beans? We always have plenty of beans.”
Suddenly Pearl breaks out laughing, loudly, freely, and can’t stop. Mrs. Steinberg looks confused, then laughs too, in sympathy.
* * *
SAME OLD WORKSHOP. Same rough tweed curtain, worktables, twin beds. On the washstand, same pitcher with its broken handle. The pitcher is so heavy, maybe it’s better that the handle is broken, a good reminder to pick it up with two hands. Remarkable how familiar it all is. This Cuba isn’t a home, yet it’s more than a hotel. Outside, a teenager teaches her younger sister to dance without music. Pearl leans against the window and exhales deeply as she watches them go around and around.
* * *
THE OLD DRESSES that Pearl had left behind in the workshop now seem wrong to her, too plain and earnest, the uniform of a scullery maid. She chooses the least offensive of the lot, pairs it with a jacket, then sews on a smart belt and adds a bright ladies’ bow tie for a pop of color. She applies some of Julieta’s old lipstick to her lips and smudges a bit on her cheeks. Thus attired, she sets forth to find a job.
For several days, she makes a futile circuit of the tailor shops. Her reception is polite, yet always the same. It’s the end of November, the low season for tourism, not exactly fall, yet not quite winter, so there’s no work. She calls on Mrs. Steinberg’s friends, for whom she used to make slacks or do minor alterations, but they’re not home, at least not to her. At the last house, she kicks the front gate and bruises her big toe.
On a Tuesday morning, she takes a break from job searching to seek out the address Rabbi Singer gave her, in the Colon neighborhood. Pearl’s been warned repeatedly by the Steinbergs, the ladies of the Ezra Society, Julieta, pretty much everyone, to avoid the Colon, especially at night or on weekends, when the streets are packed with American tourists of the seedier sort and Cuban factory workers, who get paid on Fridays and are flush with cash to waste.
In the Colon, cement and dirt crowd out anything green or fresh. A noisy truck pumps petroleum into a sewer to combat mosquitoes. The buildings are plastered with ads for Heinz Soup and Borden’s Milk. Also, there’s a poster featuring a beaming man saying: “The Doctor gave me scientific treatment for syphilis. Now I’m well—what joy!” Next to him, a sad-looking fellow moans: “A folk healer gave me a home remedy. What a disgrace! I’m paralyzed! If only I went to the doctor.”
The address from the rabbi belongs to an aqua-blue building, a cabaret called Gold Dollar with a gold coin painted on the door. It’s closed, locked. The windows, covered in metal grilles, are dark. Did Pearl remember the number wrong? Is it a trick? She doesn’t think so. Because she’s seen the worst of Rabbi Singer, she trusts his word.
A man with a wrinkled, tanned face asks in Spanish what she wants. Pearl says nada, nada, but he persists. “You want narcotic? I know where you can find narcotics.” Pearl says nada again, and the man goes on. “No one’s there now. They’re asleep.” He puts his hands under his cheek, closes his eyes. “Why wait for them? I’ll help you now.”
“People like you only help themselves,” says Pearl. “Leave me in peace.”
“One minute, señora. No need to feel ashamed,” he says, but she hurries away, grabbing the loose folds of her skirt to walk faster.
Pearl’s glad to emerge from the Colon at the Prado Avenue, with its pruned palm trees, curled streetlamps, and electric trolleys. She continues walking into Old Havana toward the Women’s Home, to eat free soup with strangers. Though she’d prefer to buy her own lunch, to eat alone, she can’t afford it. Isidro offers her peanuts without charge, but his charity embarrasses her. She tries to avoid him.
At the Home, a woman from the Ezra Society is giving a tour to a delegation from the Ladies’ Lyceum Lawn and Tennis Club. “Here is one of our unfortunate sisters,” she says, and the group turns on their bootheels to stare at Pearl. “Without our help, what choice do these women have but to sell their own bodies?”
These bored tradesmen’s wives are calling me, a cantor’s daughter, unfortunate? Pearl thinks. Maybe she is unfortunate, but not the way they’re thinking. “You want to take my picture?” she snaps in Yiddish and brushes past their stunned faces to the dining hall. Today’s soup is a salty chicken broth thickened with flour instead of bone marrow. The woman sitting next to her is Hungarian, and like most Hungarians, has rotten breath.
At least she’s no longer like these greenhorns sweating in their woolen stockings, sniffing suspiciously at mangoes and chatting excitedly about their plans to get to America, only ninety miles away. Let someone else disappoint them with the truth. As Father says, never give unsolicited advice. People resent it and they don’t listen anyway.
Pearl deposits her half-full soup bowl in the kitchen, then walks to the American consulate as she does every day to join the line that never moves, just lengthens as the day progresses. Today, there’s a mob at the door, men with dark hair and flowing white tunics. They resemble Cubans from the provinces, but on closer inspection she realizes they’re Hindoos. How did they get here? The Hindoos indignantly wave their British passports, demand to be respected as subjects of King George.
Pearl touches the back of her wrist to her sweating cheeks and forehead. She’s tired of coming here so often for nothing.
A young man tries to push through the crowd. Pearl guesses he’s American because he’s wearing a summer suit. At the end of autumn, despite the heat, all Cuban men switch to dark winter suits with stiff collars. Tall and thin, this man towers over these Hindoos shouting for their rights. The Hindoos, perhaps guessing he’s a consular official, wave their passports in his face.
Without warning, the door to the consulate opens, and the crowd surges forward. The man in the suit stands aside, then loses his balance, teetering in the open plaza as if drunk. His eyes rolling upward, he reaches out his hand, then trips over his own feet. Pearl rushes to help. Though she isn’t strong enough to catch him, she manages to break his fall. Kneeling beside him, she props up his head with the crook of her arm.
“Let me help you,” she says, speaking Yiddish on instinct.
Pearl’s trying to translate her words into Spanish when the man’s eyes flutter open. To her surprise, he speaks Yiddish. “Please, help me go there.” He gestures weakly to the portico across the square. “In the shade.”
A Jew? she wonders, searching his face. “Can you walk? If I help you?”
It takes him a few painfully slow seconds to answer, “Yes, I think so.”
Still amazed to hear an aristocrat like him speak Yiddish, she places his arm around her shoulders and they shuffle to the portico, where she sets him gently against a pillar. “Agua,” she calls to a sweaty-cheeked boy skipping by. Immediately, he rushes to a nearby café. Even for a stranger, Cubans will drop whatever they’re doing to help.
Pearl fans the man’s forehead and flushed cheeks with his hat, an expensive hat lined with silk. Also the fabric of his light summer suit is cut to fit his body, by a skilled tailor. The man’s expression strikes her as earnest, kind, and now that she considers it, yes, Jewish. She sees it in the hint of an aquiline nose, the slight fullness of his lips.
He blinks a few times, then looks at her. “What’s your name, sweetheart? I couldn’t believe it when you spoke to me in Yiddish just now. The last person who spoke to me in Yiddish was my mother.” He smirks. “You’re not she, are you?”
“Shh,” she says. “Just rest.”
“Please, I want to know your name.” She tells him and he repeats it back to her. “Pearl,” he says. “You’re a lifesaver. My name’s Alexander.”
The boy comes back with a waiter in a bow tie, who brings water in a glass. Alexander reaches for it, to gulp it down, but Pearl holds it to his lips, tilting the glass slightly, and says, “Slowly.” He obeys. When he’s finished half the glass, he thanks the waiter and the boy in Spanish. He tells Pearl in Yiddish, “I’ve lived here five years. I know how to manage hot weather. But today the heat, it just got to me. I feel foolish.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “Your body did this, not you.”
The waiter invites them to his café, where it’s cool, so they walk there together. Pearl and Alexander sit at a table, under the breeze of an electric fan, while the waiter fetches more water. The boy sits with them. His legs, which don’t quite touch the ground, are swinging rapidly. If he were her son, she’d tell him to quit it. The three of them could be an odd sort of family, like three mismatched socks: the smiling brown boy; this tall, fair gentleman; and Pearl, with her dark, intense eyes and her mop of black curls.
“I feel so foolish,” Alexander says again in Yiddish. “I had urgent business at the consulate, and I ran there before taking my lunch, but then those men from India were blocking the way in. You know, I’ve never seen an actual Hindoo before.”
“So you don’t work in the consulate,” says Pearl, disappointed.
“No, I’m in import-export,” he says quickly. “And here comes our reward.”
The waiter brings them pastries filled with guava preserves, saying, “The sugar is good for the gentleman.” He won’t accept Alexander’s money. The boy devours his pastry in three bites, then runs away, leaving her alone with Alexander. Pearl’s grandmother used to warn her never to sit alone next to a strange man, that’s how you got pregnant. She laughs at the thought and Alexander asks what’s so funny.
“Nothing,” she says. “The foolishness of human beings.”
Pearl, who’s starving, eats her pastry quickly. Alexander, who is more delicate, holds his pastry by his fingertips and nibbles at the edge, as if he’d prefer to use a knife and fork. Pearl feels self-conscious about the crumbs on her lips and cheeks. Blushing, she wipes them away with her fingers before remembering the cloth napkin.
Alexander’s neatly combed hair is thinning on top, though his face looks young, smooth, and fresh. He tells Pearl that his parents immigrated from Germany. So that accounts for his fluent Yiddish and elegant Central European demeanor. Between his middle and index fingers, he extends his card, printed with the name Alexander B. Lewis, which hardly sounds like a Jewish name or a German one for that matter. He says he’s been in Havana for five years, since America joined the war. “I could not in good conscience kill another man because my country tells me he is evil.”
“But the war is over,” she says. “You can return home.”
“Not me. They’d put me in jail.”
“I didn’t know they could do that in America.” If what he’s saying is true, then what is the point of America, if the government there can treat its citizens the same as the tsar did to his subjects in Russia?
“I feel proud,” he says, “to have my beliefs tested and know I’m willing to defend them.”
Without knowing a thing about it, she’s on his side. “Won’t you ever go back?”
“It isn’t for me to decide. The question is whether they’ll have me. For now, I’m comfortable here.” He relaxes in his chair. “Tell me your story.”
Pearl tells him a version of it, starting with the miserable journey from Danzig and stopping short of Key West. As she recounts her adventures, they hardly seem real, as if she’s a character in a book written by someone else.
“So you’re trying to get to America,” he says. “How sad for Havana.”
Sad for Havana? she thinks, then realizes Mr. Alexander Lewis means to pay her a compliment. “Oh. Well, thank you.”
“You’re most welcome, Pearl.” He sits up in his chair, exhibiting marvelous posture. “You’ve been an angel to me, and I feel much better now, but I’m afraid I have an appointment.” He stares at her, thinking for a minute. “May I ask, before you go to America, could I prevail upon you to remain in Havana just long enough to meet me again, so I may thank you properly for your assistance? And as added incentive, I know a few chaps at the consulate. I could talk to them, see what’s what.”
“Really? You can?” She isn’t sure how she feels about this Alexander, but if he could help her at the consulate . . .
“Yes, I could really. And when we meet again, I could tell you what they say.”
The elegant way he talks mixes up her thoughts. Is he mocking her? “But are you healthy enough to go now?” she asks.
“Please don’t insult me by thinking twice about it,” he says. “I feel as strong as an ox. Now, will you meet me again?”
He’s so insistent. Just to say thank you? Whatever his reasons, she’s in no position to refuse. “Yes, sure.”
“We’ll meet here, then? For a proper dinner, not just pastry. Tomorrow night?”
“So soon?” she says and wishes she hadn’t. “I mean, yes, it’s fine.”
“We’ll say eight o’clock. And you promise you’ll come?”
“Of course.” As he stands, she adds, “You’re sure you’re well again?”
Alexander Lewis laughs. “Just to please you, I’ll call for a taxi.” He tries again to pay the waiter, who declines his money. Outside, Alexander raises his arm gracefully, and a taxi arrives in an instant. She watches him slip easily into the car the way she might tuck an artificial flower into a silken hatband.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Pearl sleeps late, wakes up feeling dizzy, happy, and nervous. Now she has two prospects to get to America. Later this afternoon, she’ll try the Colon again, and afterward she’ll see this Alexander Lewis.
Rather than go on her usual fruitless job search, she stays in the workshop, leafing through Julieta’s old movie magazines, writing a letter to Frieda and giving it up. She holds Alexander’s ivory-colored business card up to the light. Though it’s been in her pocket all day, the card remains crisp and clean. The city center address must be his office. Someone who dresses and speaks as beautifully as an Alexander B. Lewis should have a refined suburban address to match his manners. And a distinguished lady to run his household. He didn’t say he was married. But he also didn’t say he wasn’t.
She runs her finger across the card, feeling the good paper, the exquisite printing of the words in raised type that doesn’t smudge. The property of a real aristocrat. A Jewish aristocrat—is such a thing possible?
By late afternoon, Pearl’s anxious and bored. She coats a slice of bread with a thick spackle of butter, then gulps it down. It tastes so good, she has a second piece.
Though her meeting with Alexander isn’t for hours, she washes and brushes her hair and considers her outfit. She chooses a sand-colored dress, fixing it up with a bow at the neckline. To go with it, she finds a purple hat with a wide brim and a dark silken band. Unfortunately, she’s stuck with her same old pair of shoes.
