Hotel Cuba, page 21
“I have to go home.” Pearl pulls back her hand. “Good night.”
“Wait! How will I find you?” he asks.
She gives him the address of the workshop, tells him good night a third time, then runs away before he can get it into his head to chase her.
* * *
AFTER CHANGING INTO her nightdress, Pearl opens the windows to air out the stuffy workshop and hears a guitar playing, a street vendor hawking hot empanadas, the syncopated rumble of car tires rolling over cobblestones. Day and night, someone in Havana is always making noise. A strange city, constantly changing forms like an evil spirit. But Alexander says she should give it a chance. Alexander admires her. Alexander wants to be her friend, and her lover.
Pearl examines herself in the mirror. Yes, she decides, some people might consider me a looker. Not like Frieda, but in my own way.
She liked the feeling of him holding her shoulders, her hand, maybe liked it too well. In time she might be able to love him, or anyway marry him. He could provide her an easy life without work. She’d be a mistress of the tropics, lying on a reclining chair in the shade, no more mud or snow, plenty of food, and she wouldn’t be a burden for her family. From time to time, he might let her have some money to send them.
Or she could continue as she has, somehow scrape together Martin’s seventy dollars, which Alexander could probably lend her, though she could never ask him. Who else could help? She’s taken enough from the Steinbergs. Her family in Turya has only what Basha sends from New York, and Pearl cannot divert any of that for herself. Though Frieda promised to ask Mendel for a loan, he probably doesn’t have two coins in his pocket to rub together. He’d have to borrow it from his brother, Ben the Oak.
Ben the Oak. Now, he’s something different. Honest, serious, a man with a fine reputation. After the war, he threw himself into work, running the store six days a week. Even when the bandits came to town, followed by the Reds and the Whites, his store stayed open, served a loyal stream of customers. She heard a story that he once saved the town by bribing a Cossack with his own watch.
Frieda said Ben was doing well in America. . . .
She doesn’t have many memories of Ben, who rarely attended their Friday night dinners. When he did, he barely talked, while Mendel monopolized the conversation. If she tries, she can picture his face vaguely. Round, solidly shaped, like a potato. Fair skin, the color of potato flesh. And blue eyes.
Pearl takes out pen and paper. What words should she use for such a crazy request? To a man who’s almost a stranger? She’s never been much for writing, especially in a situation this delicate. She really should have worked harder in school.
Look, either Ben’s going to help her or he isn’t. What does she have to lose? She might as well find out. If she offends a stranger, who cares?
So she writes:
Dear Benjamin,
This is Pearl, Frieda’s sister, writing to you from Cuba. Can you lend me some money? Twenty-five dollars, or fifty if you can spare it. When I get to America, I’ll earn the money to pay you back.
Don’t wait too long to answer.
Sincerely, Pearl
Thirteen
AS NOVEMBER TURNS INTO DECEMBER, AND 1922 DRAWS to its end, there’s no word from the Ben the Oak, but then mail travels slowly.
Pearl does receive a brief and welcome letter from Frieda:
All over with that mamzer Mendel. Never mention his name to me again.
Let’s hope for good this time, Pearl thinks, though she doubts it.
. . . My life is for myself now. I’m in America, and I intend to make the most of it. I’m taking a night class to improve my English. I want to work in an office someday.
That last sentence floods Pearl with hope. She lets her mind run wild with dreams: Frieda wearing a white silk blouse with a lady’s necktie, sitting at a polished oak desk and assisting some great man. Or continuing her education, perhaps at a ladies’ college. She’s young, with more life ahead of her than behind.
More good luck. Pearl has found a job sewing zippers. Anyone can sew a button or a hem, but zippers require a special mix of patience and perfectionism, the kind she has. Her new boss, a Jew from Baltimore, closes on Shabbes, yet he doesn’t mind if Pearl takes a stack of garments home to earn extra pennies. Actually, he expects it.
Determined to save, Pearl trims every expense she can. She fills a hole in her shoe with cardboard. She cuts her soap into pieces, which she adds to boiling water to extend its life, dousing her clothes, body, and hair in this same runny soapy liquid. When the tailor brings leftovers cooked by his wife, Pearl divides them into smaller portions to stretch over several meals.
She also fills up during periodic outings with Alexander Lewis, supper in regular restaurants. He continues claiming that he’ll speak to his friend at the consulate about her and will have news soon. Pearl doubts it will ever happen. He seems more bent on convincing her to stay here than helping her leave. Anyway, she’s been hesitant to press him. In Alexander’s company, she likes to forget her planning, working, and saving. Being with him feels like a welcome vacation from her life. She sometimes worries she’s enjoying that vacation all too well, that she’ll never want it to end.
For Alexander too, life in Cuba is just an extended vacation, though it’s supposed to be his punishment, an exile. He hardly seems to be suffering.
At dinner, Pearl will order a plate of tiny smelts, fried Cuban-style until they’re dried and brittle, or a cheese sandwich, which she inspects rigorously for ham with her fork before taking a bite. He asks her to teach him the blessing before meals, explaining that his parents weren’t people of faith. So she recites it and he repeats after her. “Such simple words,” he marvels, “yet so profound. Like a poem.”
That’s not right. Prayers aren’t poetry, any more than recipes or sewing patterns are poetry. (Then again, maybe there could be poetry in a sewing pattern.) No, prayers are confirmations of God’s place above, and ours below. Or else they are cries for help. In all his life, hasn’t Alexander ever needed to cry for help? She guesses not.
Alexander peppers his Yiddish with American slang like “giggle water” and “on a toot.” She asks him to teach her more American words, to show her again how he holds his knife and fork. In return, he requests stories of shtetl life. A fair trade.
“I’ll teach you something else,” Alexander says one evening. “See that man at the bar, the one nursing a whiskey? He’s a smuggler.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugs. “One of my few talents, sniffing out criminals. I get plenty of practice in Havana. When Americans come here to live, it’s generally because they’ve failed at something back home. That also goes for the women.” He puts the back of his hand to his forehead in mock horror. “Mostly silly, fancy-free flappers.”
“Maybe you’re a criminal too.” She’s only half joking.
“Anything’s possible,” he says. “Maybe you’re one.”
“Seriously, what exactly is your job?” When he answers with his usual “import-export,” she demands to know what he imports or exports.
“Many things. Like cigarettes.” He extends a packet of French cigarettes and she takes one. “I smoke only French cigarettes. The others are stinkeroos.”
She can’t tell the difference between a French cigarette or any other, but Alexander often notices fine distinctions between things that don’t matter to her.
Perhaps the real reason he can’t return to America is that he’s doing something wrong, like rum-running. But rumrunners wear flashy ties. Their faces are unshaven and their breath constantly reeks of alcohol mixed with Sen-Sen to disguise it. When Alexander kisses her cheek good night, she smells only his aftershave, like lavender and cedarwood. He asks her permission before offering the kiss, and she gives it. His soft lips press delicately on her skin in a way that feels respectful, kind, and very safe. She catches a faint whiff of his breath, sweet like a ripe strawberry. “Good night, Pearl,” he says. “The next time we meet, I promise, I’ll have a terrific surprise for you.”
Like all people with money, he enjoys surprises. Pearl tries to imagine leading a life where the unexpected is welcome, a delight.
She walks home slowly, thinks of Alexander kissing her, perhaps as his wife, a grand lady in a mansion with high ceilings and gauzy curtains floating in tall windows, open to the garden. Every morning, she’d wake up late, feeling well rested, yawning lazily as he brings her cold green coconut milk on a tray. He’d be wearing one of his pretty suits, and as she takes the glass, he’d bid her farewell and go to work in the city.
A silly fantasy. As she’s told Alexander many times, Havana doesn’t feel like a real place to her, only a playground for tourists or a sweatshop for poor people like herself. A way station to join her sisters in America, where she can be truly safe, truly free. Alexander listens politely, but she suspects he can’t really understand how she feels about Cuba and America. He chose to run away from his country, from war and its attendant horrors, and now he enjoys his life here. He had the freedom and the ability to choose. She did not. She came here with nothing but nightmares of what she was forced to witness and experience, things he could only imagine, and his life is too agreeable for him to want to imagine them.
A small crowd is listening to a band of street performers singing a love ballad, and Pearl stops to listen. If Alexander were with her now, he might enjoy it. He appreciates good music. And so does she—there’s one thing they share—though he likes to spend time analyzing it afterward while she savors the feeling it stirs inside, in the moment she hears the music. When it’s over, it’s done.
The ballad ends. The Cubans in the crowd applaud and whistle while the Americans toss change into the plate at the musicians’ feet. Pearl, who’s in a melancholy mood, strolls home to her workshop. She now feels safe walking alone at night. How different she has become from that nervous girl stepping tentatively down the gangplank of the SS Hudson, or that terrified teenager hiding at home during the war and the Revolution, listening for soldiers, afraid to move or turn on a light or cry.
Her life has changed so fast, she could use a minute to catch her breath.
At the workshop, she’s surprised to run into the Steinbergs, who have come to drop off boxes of hats in need of adornment. Mr. Steinberg has a special commission for her, a season’s worth of hats for an American lady whose husband runs a big sugar mill. She’s glad, for her and them. Lately Mr. Steinberg’s handsome suits have looked rumpled, and the generosity with which he extends smiles and free candy or cigars seems more anxious than good-natured. Tonight, he’s positively giddy, even mentions reopening the workshop full time. Mrs. Steinberg seems happy too. Good for her.
“By the by,” says Mr. Steinberg, “the funniest-looking person was just here looking for you. A woman dressed in a man’s suit. With a driver waiting outside in a Ford, all decked out in flags and flowers, like a carnival tent on wheels.”
“Must be some mistake,” says Pearl, forcing a laugh. Inwardly, she panics. Martin’s expecting her seventy dollars, which she doesn’t yet have. And what about Alexander, with that lovely kiss that mixes up all her ideas of what she wants? Still, disappointing Martin doesn’t seem like a good idea.
* * *
PEARL MAKES HERSELF crazy between sewing zippers for the tailor and decorating hats for Mr. Steinberg, taking breaks only to visit the water closet, grab a meal, or accidentally doze off at her worktable. She needs to earn more, much more.
She’s at home when Martin drives up with the Queen of England in the funny-looking car. Pearl hears them come to a screeching stop on the sidewalk, narrowly missing a boy chasing a baseball.
They enter the workshop with an air of possession, as if they’re buying the place. The Queen sifts through a box of buttons, holds a few to his chest. Martin sticks her thumbs in her belt and plants her feet in the middle of the room. Her thick-soled boots add to her height, and the revolver with the mother-of-pearl handle glints in its holster. Pearl can’t stop staring at the gun. Does she actually use it?
“May I?” Martin asks, taking out a cigar and a lighter. “Besides the company of a good-looking woman, there’s nothing so absolutely satisfying as a nice cigar.”
The novelty of Martin’s mannish act no longer intimidates Pearl, and she wants to make that known. “Not inside, please,” she says, pointing to the cigar. “It hurts my eyes.”
“Anything for you, my dear.” Martin puts the cigar away.
“I don’t have all your money yet. But I work hard.” Pearl gestures to her worktable, covered in hats, pants, and jackets. “You see how much I work, no?”
“It’s okay, my dear anxious Oyster Fruit. I’m not here to scold.” Martin removes the man’s hat she’s wearing and tries on a ladies’ green felt cloche from the stack on Pearl’s table. The penciled-in mustache is missing today. “I guess I don’t make much of a lady, to my mother’s eternal disappointment. She was always lecturing me on how to be one.” She raises the pitch of her voice, like a bird’s. “A lady should walk with a light step, an easy smile. She should never wear yellow gloves, drink more than a glass of champagne, or be so vulgar as to raise her dress with both hands when stepping over a mud puddle.” Martin tosses the green hat aside.
“Your mother also lives in Cuba?” asks Pearl.
“Heck, I’m not sure if she lives anywhere. I left home at fifteen and never looked back.” Martin taps the floor with her boot. “This is some dump.”
You’re coming here to insult my housekeeping? Pearl thinks. I sweep this floor every day and mop with soapy water so the cockroaches and ants can’t find their footing.
“Now Pearl,” Martin says, “who’s this young man the Queen says you’re running around with? I thought you didn’t have a fella.”
“This man is not my fella.” She shoots a glare at the Queen, feeling hurt that he’d betrayed her privacy. “Why do you tell stories on me?”
“Sorry,” he says.
“You didn’t mention our arrangement to him, did you?” Martin asks.
“No, nothing,” says Pearl.
“Okay. Just checking. You can’t trust no one in this crazy town.”
It sounds like a warning. Pearl thinks of those Chinamen that Alexander described, lost in the sea, limbs flailing, heads sinking below the waterline. However, she believes she can trust Martin. Call it an instinct. “I will get your money, I promise.”
Martin jabs her finger into Pearl’s shoulder. “Maybe you don’t want to go to America anymore. Maybe you want to stay here with your fella.”
“No, no, I want to go to America.” Yet her voice sounds flat as she says it.
“As you wish. But I warn you, the laws are changing. The ports, the coastlines, everything’s getting tighter. If you want to go, you have to go soon, or I might not be able to get you there at all. Understand?”
Pearl swallows hard. “I understand. But I don’t yet have the money.”
“Seventy bucks is a bargain, even if it means a bit less for me, and for your friend Rabbi Singer, who was none too pleased to hear about it. He expects me to make up the loss on his end with my share. How do you like that? I’m doing all the work here on the ground, and he thinks I should take the whole thing on the chin!”
Rabbi Singer’s making money from this deal, Pearl realizes. She feels embarrassed not to have guessed it earlier. Maybe all he ever wanted from her was money, not her body. Or was it both? She’ll never know.
Martin sidles up to Pearl, then says to her, directly into her ear, “At the Gold Dollar, we got some rooms upstairs no one’s using. You can have one for free, save up your seventy bucks faster. We could become good friends, you and me.”
Friends? What friends? “But I don’t pay nothing to live here,” explains Pearl. She dislikes the direction this conversation is taking.
“You have remarkable hair.” Martin pats a lock of Pearl’s frizz. “It’s so, so . . .”
“Big!” says the Queen, then accidentally tips over a bottle of buttons, scattering a few on the floor. “Sorry,” he says and scoops them up.
Pearl shrinks from Martin’s hand. She must know I’d give her anything, Pearl thinks. But I have nothing, just my own two hands. Unless she wants me to be her mistress, or as she calls it, her “old lady.”
Though Pearl fears losing her connection to the States, she has to be clear on this point. She folds her arms and says, “I must speak, Señora Martin.”
“Please, just Martin.” Her face has a strangely tender look. “I’m not trying to press any advantage. Just tell me what you do want and what you don’t want.”
Right now, though Pearl wants sleep, she must stay awake, alert. “Martin,” she says in a slow, calm voice, “I don’t say to other people what’s right or wrong. But I can’t live in your place. Your place, it’s not my kind of place.” It feels good to say so clearly.
Martin throws back her head and laughs. “You’re a real pip, Oyster Fruit.”
“You finished, Martin?” asks the Queen of England. He scoops up the last of the spilled buttons and deposits them in their box.
“Apparently so.” Martin pats Pearl on the behind and says, “Farewell, my dear. And don’t worry. You get the money, I’ll get you to America. Only don’t take too long.”
Pearl rubs her behind, as if to wipe away the touch. “One more question,” she says. “Your gun? Is it for protection? Why do you have it?”
“Want to hold it?” Martin draws it out of her holster, grabs it by the barrel, and extends the handle to Pearl, who shakes her head. “Suit yourself,” says Martin, putting it back in the holster. “Every woman ought to have one, I say. It would be a better world.”
* * *
PEARL FINISHES HER day’s work near dawn, then collapses, fully dressed, on her narrow bed. She wakes at noon, barely enough time to change into her good dress, dab on her lipstick-rouge, and meet Alexander at the Plaza de Armas. He’s wearing his beautiful white suit with white shoes. In Turya, a man only wears white when they put on his burial shroud.
