Hotel Cuba, page 22
Alexander has a taxi waiting. Pearl asks if he’s heard about new laws in America to tighten the borders. He says, “Not a word, I promise you. Now get in so I can take you to your surprise.”
As they head west from the city center, Pearl forgets her worries about America and enjoys driving through the open space, the sunlight. Alexander gleefully refuses to explain where they’re going. It’s lovely, putting herself in his care. Maybe he’ll kiss her cheek again. Or her lips. Pearl takes off her headscarf, letting the wind have its way with her hair. She falls asleep, and when he nudges her awake, she feels foolish.
They’re rolling up a long driveway bordered by beds of red and purple flowers and dwarf palm trees with the bottom halves of their trunks painted white, a few of them tied with red bows left over from Christmas. Their destination is a caramel-colored mansion with a red-tile roof and a line of cars out front discharging their passengers.
Alexander explains they’re going to the Jockey Club to observe the afternoon horse races. Isn’t she pleased?
“Horses smell,” Pearl says, thinking of the Whites on horseback, waving swords and screaming like wild boars. She’d be much more pleased if the surprise were an American visa. Why does she feel so cross today? Or maybe she isn’t cross, just speaking her own mind, and she’s confusing that with anger.
Alexander laughs, as he often does when Pearl says something serious. It’s a vexing habit. “Well,” he says, “at least it’s an honest, earthy smell.”
“Spoken like a city dandy,” she says, and he laughs again. What would he know of the earth and its smells? You want to smell the earth? Come to Turya after a summer rain when the mud gets in your hair and eyes, and everywhere stinks like a stray dog.
The mansion appears more beautiful up close, and so are the people descending from the taxis: elegant women in sheer silk dresses that must cost several times the fare of a boat trip to the United States, or husky men in light gabardine coats and silly safari hats smoking cigars and complaining in loud voices about lazy waiters. “You should have told me we were going somewhere fancy,” she says, patting her hair into shape. Her dress is embarrassingly shabby.
“You look just fine,” he says. “You look real.”
He doesn’t understand. She’s fine with looking real, if that’s by choice. But first she needs to know what’s expected, to have the opportunity to make the choice.
Alexander wants a closer view of the horses, so they walk to the side of the mansion, along a bamboo hedge thick with long knobby branches. In a fenced paddock, horses paw at the red mud. Some wear fancy leather saddles and white leggings. Those animals are better dressed than I am, Pearl thinks. They fit in better with these fine ladies than I do.
A group of spectators read newspaper clippings and point at a board with the horses’ names and their position in the starting line. Pearl moves away from the crowd and looks out over the field. In the distance, a factory chimney puffs out white clouds toward the sea. Beyond that lies America.
Alexander joins her. “That factory is responsible for sweetening half the coffees in Havana,” he says. Everything to him is an opportunity to show off his intelligence, or his impressive wit, which Pearl must admit is worth showing off. “Shall we see if we can root up some luncheon in this place?”
“How do you know it’s not horsemeat?” This time she intends for him to laugh. He does, and she laughs too, good and hearty.
Back at the mansion, they pass through the marble lobby with fringed velvet curtains. In a side room, Americans cluster around a roulette wheel. Music drifts in from the shaded veranda overlooking the racetrack, where a string quartet serenades guests eating at wrought-iron tables painted white. Alexander requests a table for four, as if he expects another couple. Pearl hopes not. She feels embarrassed in this impossibly lovely place. Climbing tea roses, Chinese hibiscus, and royal poincianas are planted between statues of Greek goddesses with exposed breasts. Americans with binoculars hanging from their necks chew cigars or swill rum cocktails, while attendants in fitted green uniforms walk around taking bets and holding dollar bills between their fingers.
Pearl pulls her hat more tightly around her head and shrinks into her chair. Alexander gives a casual wave—it’s as if he were born knowing how to signal waiters—and an attendant rushes over to take his bet. “Pearl, care to place a wager?” Alexander asks, but she declines. “Then how about a drink?”
He says it like a dare. So she can get drunk and make a fool of herself? She’s about to refuse, but then she thinks, if all these people enjoy it, I can too. Maybe it will relax my nerves. “What do you recommend?” she asks.
“That’s a good girl. One drink wouldn’t kill you. I know just the thing.” He orders a Mary Pickford, fresh pineapple juice, rum, and a splash of what looks like red ink. Though Pearl generally dislikes the smell of alcohol, this drink is sweet and refreshing. She finishes it quickly. Alexander claims it’s healthy—the pineapple juice is excellent for digestion. He orders her another and something called deviled eggs.
Deviled? Does that mean with ham? Alexander says no. She asks if he’d like to recite the blessing before meals, as she’s taught him. Usually he likes practicing it with her when they eat out alone, but he glances at the fine people at the neighboring tables, then says, “Let’s skip it for today, shall we?”
Next comes a salad with baked beans, cold veal (which she won’t touch but Alexander eats with relish), potato cakes, and sautéed carrots. She expertly wields her silverware in the American style. Alexander talks about the race, but she’s preoccupied noting the flavors and textures of each bite. She keeps looking to see what’s coming next, like the next chapter of a story. You don’t just eat this kind of food. You savor it.
“I wish Frieda could taste this,” Pearl says, interrupting his horse chatter. Her head is buzzing pleasantly, her lips feel loose, and she’s hit with a powerful wave of nostalgia for her sister. “Frieda’s always saying if she could take a pill and fill herself up for the day, she would. Let her taste a meal like this and see what she’d say.” She takes a deep sip of the pineapple drink. With Alexander, she could eat like this all the time. Though so much rich food might make her stomach hurt.
“Frieda’s not here,” Alexander reminds her. “Forget her for a minute and tell me about you, what you’re enjoying today.”
“Everything.” She waves her fork, then lets it droop between her fingers with a girlish giggle. Frieda vanishes from her mind. Work is a distant memory. America is a rumor. Russia is a crumb from her roll that’s fallen to the ground.
He leans forward and says, “Then I’m happy.” There’s a funny fluttering in her throat, heart, and stomach.
For dessert there are orange marmalade cookies and little lemon cakes decorated with Christmas trees in piped frosting. Though the holiday was two weeks ago, Pearl has noticed that Gentiles hold on to it as long as possible. I’m not worshipping Christ, she tells herself. I just want to eat this cake. She scrapes off the Christmas design with her butter knife and bites into the cake, a burst of citrus and rich butter punctuated by a high note of sugar. If only all of Cuba were like this, she thinks, luxuriating in the sweetness, though she knows full well that places like this club are beautiful because people like Pearl work like packhorses to produce the beauty. She’s no socialist, but maybe it’s better to have a bit less beauty in the world and a lot more fairness.
A bell rings and the spectators rush to the fence along the racetrack, though they have a perfectly fine view from their tables. Pearl reluctantly joins Alexander, who’s found a choice place to stand. The horses and jockeys amble out onto the dirty track. She hears shouting in the open stands on either side of the veranda, where factory workers and Chinese immigrants pack the cheaper seats—I belong there, not here, Pearl thinks. “I’m thirsty,” she says, but Alexander is studying the horses through his field glasses.
On the track, a man raises a pistol and sets it off with a vicious snap that makes Pearl jump. The horses kick up clouds of dust while the jockeys whip their sides. All around, people shout: “Come on, Chestnut!” “Let’s go, Starry Night. Hurry now!” The horses’ noses flare as they go around a second time. A gong sounds, and the race is finished. The whole thing takes five minutes.
Back at their table, they await the posting of results. Waiting, always waiting. The string quartet plays a new waltz, and Alexander asks if she’d like another drink. Pearl says okay, and maybe more cake? Alexander nods to the waiter and wiggles his finger.
The results are posted on a giant board, and there’s a loud chorus of sighs and groans as the winning jockey skips forward to receive a green wreath around his neck. Meanwhile, the people on the veranda rip up their betting slips or toss their hats into the air in celebration. What if they lose them and have to buy new ones?
Alexander instructs an attendant to collect his winnings, then tells Pearl, “See, you should have bet. What happened to your drink?”
She taps her empty glass. “I was thirsty.” Her head hurts.
“My dear, I do believe you’re tipsy.”
Before she can answer, a male voice calls out, “Alex, you old swell!” The voice belongs to a slender middle-aged man holding a rum cocktail and an unlit cigar. Behind him, a small group of men in summer suits flirt with a middle-aged woman with a sparkling headband. The woman frowns at Pearl.
Alexander stands up, moves in front of Pearl’s chair as if to block her view, and yelps in an impossibly cheerful voice, “Carleton! Any luck today?”
The man called Carleton sets his drink down to shake his hand. Get that glass away from me, thinks Pearl, feeling a burning sensation behind her eyes.
Carleton wears a straw hat, a light-gray three-piece suit, and pince-nez. He has a puff of gray hair atop his forehead and thick black eyebrows that arch in the middle, as if he’s on the verge of asking a question. “No luck at all,” he says. “How about you, you old sheik? Wait, don’t answer. Your people always come out ahead. Aren’t I right?”
Alexander winces briefly, then says with an awkward laugh, “Touché!” and puts his hand on his heart. The two of them kid around like father and son.
“Who’s this pretty gal you’re hiding? Penny for your thoughts,” says Carleton.
Realizing he’s talking to her, Pearl looks up. Her head is buzzing terribly.
The man shakes his head, raises those dark, arched eyebrows. “Another lovely Cuban woman with no English.”
“I hate to contradict you, Carl, but she’s not Cuban,” says Alexander.
“No? She has the right coloring. Where is she from?”
Alexander hesitates, then waves his hand in a circle, “Oh, around.”
Carleton leans over, peers into her eyes, and Pearl lets out an inopportune hiccup. “You’re pickled!” he says and raises his drink. “You may be ahead of me now, but I’ll catch up.”
“I speak,” Pearl says indignantly. Her mouth feels fuzzy.
“Excellent, excellent.” The man points at Alexander with his unlit cigar. “If these Cubans worked harder at their English, they’d have happier lives.”
“Come now, that’s bosh. Many Cubans speak fine English,” says Alexander.
“Which just proves my point. If more made the effort, you’d see a blessed change on this island,” he says. “But sadly, your average Cuban whiles away his days picking food from trees, walking half naked through sugarcane. All he wants are a few coins to buy a lottery ticket or wager in a cockfight, and he’s in paradise.”
“Yes, I know. You want to turn them all into proper Yankees.”
“And you want to keep them barefoot and poor, yet pure. Noble savages. That’s how all you well-bred elites think. But I know a thing or two about poverty, personally. As a boy, I worked for years sorting rotten potatoes in a grocery store. It didn’t demean me. It benefited me, financially and other ways. It helped me grow up, become a man.”
“Horatio Alger couldn’t have said it better,” says Alexander.
“I’ll never convince you. But enough of this blah-blah. Alex, you’re being terribly rude. You haven’t told me the name of your pretty friend.”
Alexander hesitates, then says, “Only if you promise not to steal her from me,” and introduces them.
“May I borrow your fella for a moment?” Carleton asks Pearl as they shake hands. His skin feels even smoother than Alexander’s.
Pearl says, “Okay,” an all-purpose word that serves a variety of situations.
“I won’t be long,” Alexander says in English, then whispers it in Yiddish.
“I’m not feeling well,” she whispers, but he doesn’t hear.
“Are you sure she’s not Cuban?” Carleton asks as they walk away. “She’s certainly striking. Especially those dark piercing eyes. Where’d you pick her up?”
Alexander belts out another fake laugh as they join a few other men at the bar. Meanwhile, Pearl holds her head. If this is being drunk, she dislikes it. It’s like riding in a Ford going too fast. She wants to put her head down for a minute. Alexander’s not even looking her way anymore; he’s focused intently on some stuffy old man’s jokes.
The woman in the sparkling headband stops at Pearl’s table and asks, “Haven’t we met? Miami? Newport? Somewhere.”
“I don’t understand,” says Pearl.
The woman touches her own rouged cheek. “Sorry! I thought you were . . . Oh, well, no matter. But aren’t you a lucky girl? Hobnobbing with the American consul.”
“Consul,” Pearl repeats slowly. This woman talks so fast, maybe on purpose to confuse her. “Who is consul?”
“Don’t you know? Carl. Of course he’s the American consul.”
Pearl’s stunned. Never has she been so close to a man with such power over her life. This is Alexander’s friend? Maybe meeting him is the real surprise Alexander promised her. When she stands up, she stumbles forward, like the woman at the Santeria performance. But she can’t miss this chance.
Alexander, still in conversation with some of the men, notices her and, as if already sensing disaster, waves his hand no. Why, thinks Pearl. Are you ashamed of me?
“Mr. Carl,” Pearl says in a clear, strong voice, louder than she’d intended. She grips the back of a chair to steady herself. “I want to say something to you.”
The consul needs a moment to recognize her. “Ah, Alex’s friend. Mi encanta. Well, whatever a bewitching little señorita like you has to say, I’m all ears.”
Pearl begins with “I . . .” and then falters. Until now, the American consul has been a man hiding behind a title, a man offering taunting advice to immigrants that she’s read in the Yiddish newspapers. Go back where you came from. Your own rotten luck to be born on the wrong soil. Stay far away from us.
“Don’t be frightened,” Carleton says genially. “Talk to Uncle Carl.”
Alexander, looking concerned, is trying in vain to get away politely from a man telling a long, involved yarn.
Pearl’s head is humming. The consul is no longer a story in a newspaper, but a real flesh-and-blood man, holding a cool, intoxicating drink with pale fingers. If she could take away that drink and replace it with a pen, he could sign forms to reunite her with Frieda. She could ask him, here and now. She could beg for mercy.
She blinks a few times, focuses her thoughts. “You are a great man,” she says.
He laughs. “Am I?” He thinks she’s flirting.
“You have power to do good things for many people.” She’s shouting again. “To help their problems. The immigrants.”
The amused expression on his face hardens.
“But you don’t help us,” she says. “You laugh at us. Like we are animals.”
“I’m sorry, Carl,” says Alexander, inserting himself between them.
“This person is your friend?” asks the consul. “Or is this some kind of put-on?”
“Please, I’d like to explain,” says Alexander, but Pearl interrupts.
“You, you . . .” Pearl lacks the words she needs, but she can’t stop. People nearby are watching, and she points to them. “Where is your heart? Why don’t you help us? We leave everything, our families, our homes. We have nothing. You have everything.”
“Perhaps she has had a few too many,” says Alexander with a pained expression. This time, he’s unable to force a phony laugh to diffuse the tension.
“Always a pleasure to meet any friend of Alex’s,” says Carleton. “Enjoy the races.” He wanders inside the mansion, toward the room with the roulette tables. She wants to follow, but Alex grips her arm. His fingers are tight and they hurt.
“Help us!” she shouts, losing her balance, but Alex holds her up. The nearby chatter halts. After a brief, humiliating silence, the string quartet musicians resume their playing.
“Come with me,” Alex whispers fiercely in Yiddish and guides her back to their table. Why isn’t he on her side? Whose side is he on? “Sit for a while. You’re not well.” Alexander pulls out her chair, but she doesn’t sit.
“You let him get away without answering me.”
“You’re doing yourself and your cause no good. Particularly in your current state. Just sit for now. I’ll bring coffee.”
“My cause? Isn’t it your cause too? You’re a Jew, remember?”
“How could I forget with you here?”
Stunned by his awful words, she sinks into a chair. How dare he tell her to be quiet? “Don’t you know what he says about immigrants? It’s in the newspapers.”
“I’m sorry for being so cross. But the way to influence people like Carl isn’t by shouting like someone in a shtetl marketplace. Try to understand. Carl is simply ignorant of your plight, as are most people in his position.” He looks around, seems satisfied that the others are losing interest in the little scene she’s caused. “Though even if he wanted to help, his hands are tied by the law.”
She’s made a fool of herself. Fine, she doesn’t care. These people enjoying themselves, they don’t appreciate what all this pleasure costs. “Why are you defending that man?” Pearl asks. “You have some business with him?”
