Hotel Cuba, page 9
It could be that no one is conspiring against her. What if they’re just having fun? Something loosens inside. Her shoulders drop and she relaxes a little, feels a fluttering in her chest. It reminds her of when she’d go to the town bathhouse as an adolescent, where the naked women would pause their washing to play and shout and splash each other and laugh. One of the girls was so lovely, they called her Leah the Flower. She had a tall, willowy figure that drove young, plump Pearl mad with envy, or some other emotion.
The song ends abruptly, setting Pearl free. Oddly, she’s disappointed. The Americans applaud and open their wallets and purses. Pearl lets go of the woman, offers a short bow. Frieda returns the woman’s cigar, then says as they walk away, “You were marvelous, Pearl! At first I thought you were going to faint, but then you settled down nicely. I wish she’d asked me. I’d never dance with a strange man, but with a woman, why not? What harm could it do?”
Quite a lot, thinks Pearl, panting and dabbing the sweat from her forehead. She looks over her shoulder at the woman, already dancing with a new partner, an American man with extraordinarily bright teeth. Pearl hates him immediately. She still feels the pressure of the Cuban woman’s hands. An unusual sensation, not altogether unwelcome.
* * *
THEY TAKE THEIR dinner on Compostela Street, at a cheap dairy restaurant that has Lenin’s picture on the door, with his terrifyingly sharp chin and fierce glare.
When the Bolsheviks came to Turya, the Jews were glad to see them drive out their former tormentors, the Whites. But the Reds proved as bloody as their name, hunting “counterrevolutionaries,” meaning anyone who owned a store or was thought to be a Zionist, even though the Zionists were socialists. After one of their forays into Turya, the townspeople found the wall of the main synagogue splattered with blood. Two dozen “counterrevolutionaries” had been lined up there and shot.
Cuban Bolsheviks, however, are harmless, barely able to run their European-style restaurant, with erratic service yet homey, satisfying food. And after the dancing, Pearl feels hungrier than ever. She and Frieda order two seltzer waters, or “Polish water,” as it’s called here, black bread with sour cream, herring, and roasted potatoes with burned skin.
The waiter who brings their dinner is striking looking, with a sharp nose like Lenin’s and dark eyes with long, almost feminine lashes. He invites them to enjoy their meal in a soft, kind voice, and Pearl wants to take his hand, squeeze it in hers to thank him. She digs into the familiar, starchy food, the roasted potato, the sour herring, the rich tang of the sour cream. Also, there’s hot tea, real tea, which in Havana is sold only in pharmacies—Cubans take it as a cure for upset stomachs. She drinks her fill, then turns her glass upside down to indicate she doesn’t want anymore.
Afterward, she and Frieda walk slowly along the Malecon seawall, where half of Havana, rich, poor, and in between, come to feel the breeze and enjoy the spray of waves shooting up in the air, crashing against rock and cement. As they look at the diamond necklace of lights along the curved coastline, Pearl recalls dancing with that woman, her firm grip on Pearl’s waist, and then that kind waiter in the restaurant, his gentle voice. Maybe Frieda thinks this way about Mendel. It’s human. What’s so wrong?
So much of my life wasted, Pearl thinks. I don’t want to waste anymore. I want to be held, touched. I want to feel deeply. . . .
“Pearl,” says Frieda, touching her shoulder. “You’re crying.”
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” says Pearl. “Let’s go back.”
She feels better once they start walking home. They cross the Plaza de Armas, where the American consulate is located. All day, immigrants wait under its arcades. In the Havana Post, the consul complains they’re becoming a nuisance.
Pearl and Frieda stop near an old tree that’s holy to the locals, who leave coins, fruit, and bread at its roots and make wishes. Pearl is tempted to take some of the coins. All that money wasted on wishes, when it could do so much real good elsewhere.
What a country, where women smoke cigars and people worship trees.
She hears that old churlish devil’s voice in her mind, asking what’s wrong with worshipping trees? Is that any more bizarre than worshipping a pair of scrolls?
We don’t worship the scrolls, she replies, but the words they contain.
Fine, so you worship words and they worship trees. In the end, it’s the same. No one hears you. In the end, you wind up in the mud, with mud in your hair, in your skirts, on the backs of your bare legs.
My legs aren’t bare any longer, Pearl thinks. I’m wearing pants.
“I’m writing to Mendel,” says Frieda. “Pearl, did you hear me?”
“So?” says Pearl, seizing up as usual when she hears that name. “You’re always writing to Mendel. News would be if he wrote you back as often as you write him.” She doesn’t mean to sound so harsh, but she’s had too many years of practice of talking to Frieda this way. She’s got to try to speak more gently.
“This is a different kind of letter. I’m going to ask for money.” Frieda lowers her voice. “So I can smuggle to America.”
“Good luck to you.” Idle talk, thinks Pearl. Tomorrow it’ll be another idea.
“I’m serious, Pearl. What if that man in the park is right, the laws have changed, and we’re stuck here? There are people in Havana who can help us go to America now.”
“If you get caught, they could put you in jail, or send you back to Europe.”
“What if I wait too long? What if Mendel won’t wait?” Frieda blurts out.
Pearl could say, he loves you, of course he’ll wait. Or she could say, who cares if he waits. Neither option would change Frieda’s mind. Finally, she says, “If he doesn’t wait, then you know what kind of man he is.”
They watch a woman kneeling at the roots of the magic tree. She lights a candle, then rocks on her heels, moving her lips with fervor and clutching her stomach. Maybe she’s hoping to have a baby.
Pearl’s had a long, dizzying day, and she’s craving a break from her thoughts.
“I’m going to America. Nothing you say will change my decision,” says Frieda. “I can be just as stubborn as you are.”
She sounds serious, like she really means it. But why Mendel? This is the point Pearl keeps coming back to. Here’s Frieda, the daughter of a cantor, from Lithuania, young and strong and bright, and she’s throwing away her life on a fool, so she can keep house like an old-fashioned balabusta. And she’d leave me here alone to do it.
Frieda, don’t you want something more?
Or is that only my desire, my story?
Okay, fine, Pearl decides. Leave me, go to America. Join your precious boyfriend.
But this could be the solution to all Pearl’s problems. Mendel might enjoy exchanging love letters from afar, but once Frieda’s in the States and marriage becomes a real possibility, he might tire of their childish romance and break it off for good this time. Or maybe Frieda, seeing Mendel up close, will wake up to his true nature. For people like her, the only way to know a shoe doesn’t fit is to try it on and feel it pinching her foot. And all the while, Frieda will believe that Pearl’s really changed her mind, that she’s open to the idea of marrying Mendel. Yes, it could be brilliant.
Pearl takes a deep breath. “If you’re so determined to go to America, I can’t stop you. But don’t ask him for money.” At the very least she can prevent Frieda from groveling to Mendel. “I’ll earn it somehow.” She doesn’t know how, but she’ll figure out something. “It’s all I ask. Is that so unreasonable?”
“I suppose not.” Frieda slips her arm through Pearl’s arm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Pearl’s voice is barely audible because it’s breaking.
Five
PEARL APPROACHES MRS. STEINBERG. DOES SHE KNOW OF any ladies in need of some tailoring?
“Funny you should ask!” she says.
The pants Pearl made caused a sensation at the suffragist meeting. Several of the attendees expressed interest in acquiring a pair. Mrs. Steinberg makes the connection, and the women invite Pearl to fit them for slacks. Those women share her name with their friends, and soon business becomes so brisk, Pearl acquires an English nickname: Pearl the Pants Lady.
As spring turns to summer, it becomes Pearl’s Sunday routine to pack up a sewing basket and hike west to the mansions in the Vedado district. At first she requested that the women be responsible for ordering their own material, but now she does it herself. They don’t have Pearl’s eye, let alone her sense of quality. The fabric stores and tailors sell them the coarsest, densest fabrics at the highest prices. Also, if Pearl picks out the material, she can make a modest profit on the upcharge. Sometimes the women give her additional small work like alterations, which is good money too.
Pearl’s so busy now with work, she scarcely knows her own mind. Vedado’s a far way to go, but Pearl likes the change of scenery, the airy rooms and peaceful gated gardens. Usually, she’s rewarded with a plate of something to eat, shortbread cookies, peeled slices of fruit. Once she gets a whole wedge of cheese.
Most of the women are Jewish and speak Yiddish, though generally not well. Pearl communicates with them in a mishmash of Yiddish, Spanish, and a few English phrases she’s picked up in addition to her Spanish. Imagine me, she thinks, speaking all these foreign tongues.
As Pearl works at their feet, she listens to the women discussing people she doesn’t know, or politics. In this way, she hopes to improve her language skills. However, they speak together very quickly and mostly in English, so it’s tough going.
In addition to their English, Pearl also studies the lives of these women, who have real money, real status, with servants and teas and largely absent husbands. Their lives are completely different from hers, and she has trouble truly understanding them. Sometimes their manners strike her as cold, even mean. At one afternoon fitting party, Pearl observes how they shun one of their guests, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing gold earrings, several gold necklaces, and a fox fur stole, which she keeps around her neck inside the house, though she’s sweating. In response to this dark woman’s valiant efforts to join their conversations, they nod coolly, talk over her, or look the other way.
While Pearl is taking a break, sipping tea in a corner, the woman comes over and introduces herself. Her name is Señora Sassoon and she’s a Sephardic Jew, or a turco, as they say here, though she’s from Greece, not Turkey. She’d like Pearl to come to her home on Thursday for a fitting. Pearl asks to come Sunday instead, when she’s not working for Mr. Steinberg, but Señora Sassoon is very particular. She insists that Pearl come this Thursday, and by no means Sunday, which is bad luck. She’ll pay extra.
So Pearl leaves Frieda in charge of the workshop and makes the trek out to Vedado, spending a whole nickel to take a streetcar partway, because Señora Sassoon lives further out than the other ladies. Hers is a new mansion, painted blue-green like the scales of a fish. It’s set apart from its neighbors, with a large garden around the house and a high wall and gate to protect it from the street.
A gardener in blue overalls and a cap opens the gate with a friendly grunt and leads Pearl across a newly dug path through the grass to the patio, where piles of moving boxes wait to be unpacked. The doors to the house are open, and on one side a curtain billows in the draft. The other, its mate, is draped over a chair, waiting to be hung.
“Hola? Hello?” Pearl calls out. She wanders into the receiving room. Its tall ceiling is lined in brown wooden beams. The marble tile floors must feel cool if you’re walking barefoot. The air, smelling of fresh paint, is flecked with sawdust.
A servant appears. He’s bald and thin, with a long nose and hollow cheeks, and he wears a formal butler’s uniform that looks silly in these tropical surroundings. Pearl pegs him immediately as a Jew even before he speaks to her in Yiddish. He regrets to inform her that Señora Sassoon will not be available after all.
“But I’ve come all this way!” Pearl protests.
“The señora says the hostile moon in the sky has arrived earlier than expected, and she will see no one until it passes. Of course she will pay you for your time.”
Pearl pauses to consider this information. Someone can be paid for their time, without doing work? How much is time worth?
Apparently quite a lot, as the butler opens a leather wallet and pays her just the same as what she expected for the fitting. “The señora hopes you will return next week, when skies are more favorable.” He then beckons Pearl to lean in closer. “They’re all crazy about the stars, those Sephardim,” he whispers.
“Can I rest a minute before I go?” asks Pearl. “It’s a long walk.”
“Of course!” He directs her back out to the garden, under a tree, so she’ll be safe from the sun. There’s a special kind of chair, a metal frame with a long extension where you can put up your legs. “I’m sorry,” he says, “the cushions haven’t arrived yet.”
“I’m fine,” says Pearl, sitting sidesaddle on the chair.
“Please,” he says, “put up your feet. It’s how you sit in such a chair.”
She’s not sure about it, but she sets her sewing basket on the grass, slides back in the chair, then swings up her legs. It really is comfortable to sit this way.
“You see?” he says. “I’ll return in a minute.”
She lies back, squinting in the sunlight. A fresh breeze tickles her hair, and she lets her body go limp. For a change, her hands are empty. The butler returns with a glass of crushed pineapple with ice and a straw. She drinks too fast at first, which hurts her head. Then she takes it slowly, and the drink tastes cool and sour-sweet. Why not rest for a minute? No one’s asking her to leave, and she’s being paid for her time.
The gardener reappears with a wheelbarrow of dirt and a tray of brilliant pink flowers, like little trumpets, with streaks of red and yellow stamens inside the blossoms. As he plants a heavy, pointed shovel into the earth, Pearl recalls her garden in Turya, probably a mass of weeds now. The gardener begins singing in a high, clear voice, and Pearl realizes this gardener is a woman. It’s a lovely song, and though Pearl can’t understand the words, she’s moved by the sad melody. We poor people all the world over depend on music, Pearl thinks, like a folk medicine. The notes soar up, even as we stay down. The song ends, and she applauds. The gardener smiles and bows, then starts a new tune.
In Turya now, there’d be a late spring breeze. The air would smell of warm manure, yellowing hayfields, and late-blooming flowers, poppies and daisies. As a girl in springtime, she used to hide in the tall grasses by the river and crack flower seeds between her teeth, eating the meat inside and spitting out the shells in the dirt. What was the word for the flower? A simple Yiddish word, and she can’t recall it now.
Sunflower! Yes, of course, sunflower seeds. She sees rows of them growing in the fields, turning their heads toward the sky.
Pearl opens her eyes and the sun is much lower now, hitting her in the face. The flowers are all planted and the gardener is gone. Pearl’s cheeks, forearms, and calves are hot pink and tingling. She checks for her money; it’s there.
How long have I been sleeping? I’ve wasted the day away. She grabs her basket and runs out the gate before someone chases her off.
During her long walk home, Pearl moves in a slow daze. Too much sun. She keeps massaging her head and rubbing her eyes, trying to shake it off. To think that some women, like Señora Sassoon, live like this always, sipping drinks brought on a tray, napping away the afternoon. But God hasn’t willed this to be Pearl’s fate.
Pearl crosses the Paseo into Old Havana, along with several Cuban men wearing slim black ties, all walking home from work. The tourists are loitering outside the bars and peddlers run up to them offering souvenirs: beads made in America. Children approach them too, yelling, “Gimme one cent!”
Gimme one cent, Pearl mutters. It’s like a song. Gimme a cent, gimme a cent.
Pearl turns onto Calle Obispo and sees a young Cuban woman with a young man, an admirer, walking slightly behind her. The woman yells insults over her shoulder as the man calls her pet names: my love, my darling. He comes closer, and she keeps insulting him. You idiot! You ugly bastard! But he is undeterred. Pearl’s nervous, fears violence.
The woman spins around and lands such a slap on the young man’s cheek it makes a noise, like a whip cracking. The man falters, cradling his cheek, and Pearl is startled too. The woman continues on her way, while the man leans against a wall and rubs his cheek. Pearl watches the pair in awe.
How did she do that? And he doesn’t run after her. He respects her will. Maybe that’s what Mrs. Steinberg means about training husbands like dogs. The women here have such a powerful way about them, and they are none the less beautiful for it.
The sound of that smack lingers with Pearl when she reaches her street, where Frieda is standing beside an iron window grille and laughing, talking to three men from Latvia who earn their living making purses in a home workshop. She waves to Pearl. “You look like you were working in the sugarcane fields all afternoon. Your skin’s as red as a beet!”
Frieda offers to introduce the men to Pearl, who says she doesn’t have time and drags Frieda back to the workshop.
“You were supposed to cover for me, finish those straw hats with the orange rosettes and the striped ribbon.”
“I did,” says Frieda. “I did them all, just as you told me to.”
“Let me see,” says Pearl. Frieda’s telling the truth. The hats are done, and the ribbons along the brim are on straight, so the stripes line up where the two ends meet. The rosettes are centered perfectly too. “Well now,” says Pearl, “that’s fine.”
“And I made dinner,” says Frieda. Just bread and cheese, but it does the trick. Also, Frieda says she knows of something to help the sunburn. She goes out and returns with a spiky green stalk that she breaks in half. It oozes a thick, sticky liquid that smells like cucumber. Frieda massages the liquid on the burned places on Pearl’s skin, and it soothes. Just as nice is the touch of healing fingers pressing Pearl’s sore limbs. It’s been awhile since Pearl has felt this close to her sister, who tonight seems more than a sister, like a friend. It’s a shame to realize it just as Frieda wants to leave for America.
