Havana Libre Page 2
I look up. How does he know about my conference request? “That may be so, but we both know the exit visa will not be approved in time.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“No wife, no dependents. I am what they call an emigration risk.”
“Yes, those are the usual reasons. Sad in your case, no? When we both know you would always return to Havana.”
Pérez works at Villa Marista, I remind myself. If I even hinted of thinking about deserting the national medical service, he could report me back to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Interior. It would cause many more problems than one denied exit request. Still, the wine, the heat, and a cynical reflex make me risk a response that maybe takes a step too far: “What makes you so sure?”
“Por la misma razón que yo lo haria.”
“¿Sí? And what reason is that? What could a physician in the national medical service possibly have in common with the chief homicide investigator for the PNR?”
By the orange tips of our cigarettes, Pérez and I lock eyes. “No matter your opinion of the Revolution, we are both too devoted to our jobs.”
I do not wish to admit it, but once again Pérez has me nailed. I could have left the pediátrico for a comfortable position in medical tourism years ago, except for one thing: put simply, I would never give up the clinic. I cannot abandon Havana.
Pérez says, “I could see to it that your conference request gets favorable consideration.”
The last sip of wine is bitter, but it touches my judgment with the sweetest numbness. “I am sorry, colonel, but after our last encounter I made an oath never to cooperate with another one of your investigations.”
“Is that your final word?”
“Definitively,” I say.
Pérez pulls out his cigarette case. He stubs out the glowing tip against the inside plating and tucks the butt in alongside the unsmoked others. I hear him stand and walk across the dark room before opening the door to the back stairs.
“You came up through the alley?”
“Like I said, I’ve been here since the apagón started.”
In other words, nobody saw him arrive. He points the illuminated face of his digital watch ahead of him to light the way down the stairs.
I call after him, “You’ve ruined a perfectly good bottle of shiraz.” His footsteps, not including the shuffle across the rug on Beatrice’s back landing, number twenty-six. I hear the alley door squeak and clap shut. Less than a minute passes before the power comes back on.
Since the lights went out. Who is Pérez kidding? All of Havana is the PNR’s interrogation room, and he has been observing me since he first broke into my clinic five years ago, and I followed him—believing that I was the one doing the following!—to the unmarked bar in Chinatown. He has been watching me since the night when one of his unseen minions replaced the broken windowpane while Pérez and I talked about a jinetera and her abusive chulo and how to identify a corpse if you can’t seem to find the head.
I put Beny Moré on my father’s old tocadiscos. The record is worn and the sound quality is terrible. I have to fashion needles out of bamboo splinters. I lie in bed listening to el Beny and looking at the ceiling.
The letter came in July via courier, on watermarked stationery from the Tampa Medical Extension of the University of Florida, the cuño of the State of Florida embossed over the bright blue signature of the dean of the medical school: an invitation to a conference on a subject of personal and professional passion. I was not looking for it, and yet it fell into my lap. In ’95, the pediátrico received a visit from a group of American doctors, armchair socialists who considered themselves allies against the embargo. They admired my split work model of the big hospital and small family clinic. When the time came for them to invite someone from Cuba to their conference, they also must have considered the notoriety of my own medical case as a kind of bonus, the port-wine stain on my face that became the namesake of its very own thrombosis, Havana Lunar. They even offered to pay for the flight and accommodations.
I am not one for conference hopping, but my interest in the topic—pediatric health in third world countries—makes it the opportunity of a lifetime. But where Cuban doctors and scientists are concerned, any invitation to los Estados Unidos carries an exception: my exit permission will never be approved. Or if it is, it will be cruelly too late. Rather than deny the request outright, el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores will grant the approval several days after the conference has taken place, and then the US Interests Section will have no choice but to deny the visa. We push and push, and all the while believe we’re making progress, but then life gives us a little window into ourselves from above and we see we have not really moved for five, ten, twenty-five years. As the earth circles the sun, so do we circle our destinies. One thing’s for certain: death never loses track of the simple circularity she puts us in.
MARTES, 2 SEPTIEMBRE
The Tourist
He goes down to dinner early, as soon as the restaurant opens, so as not to run into any friendly fellow tourists. The waiter brings him roast beef that is cut too thin and piled too short, and he chews with contempt, thinking of the sad deprivation of the Revolution that trickles down to every plate. The older couple at the next table eats in silence, an unhappy anniversary or second honeymoon—not newlyweds, in any case. Too jaded. This satisfies him, because even the happy ones, he knows, will become hateful soon enough.
The tourist nurtures hate the way you steep tea or coffee, subverting the awareness that the longer he brews it the more bitter the taste will be, which will allow him to complete his task more effectively. Cold determination, fueled by this paltry beef and insipid au jus, will ensure maximum impact. He believes this much: any foreigner who spends his money in Cuba deserves to go. Tourists, with their euros and their dollars, keep the dying beast on life support. If you support the tourist industry during a time when Communism is destined to die, you are a sympathizer, and to pretend otherwise makes you a cynic and a hypocrite. Send them to hell with the devil.
Does he feel any differently about the common Cubans? They are less contemptible for their poverty. Unlike the tourists, the beast’s keepers and feeders, they are the prey, caught in the beast’s trap. At the same time, he kisses the cross around his neck and reminds himself that a great majority of them are atheists. If there are any Catholics among them, then they will be martyrs. Communism is on the evil side in a holy war, but their deaths will sanctify them. Let them be cleansed in fire.
A young couple in cheap Chinese business suits approach, and he realizes right away that they are from State Security, even without seeing the telltale earphones. They look too young and too Cuban to be guests at this hotel, and their come-on is deceptively ingenuous. “Are you traveling alone?”
“Sí,” he says.
Does it sound like he says it irritably? Why should he jump as if to say, Is there something wrong with traveling alone? Is he acting suspiciously? Is he trying to hide something? No, it’s just that they did not want to bother him if he was waiting for someone. Seeing as he is not, they might as well sit at his table. Small talk. These employees are early diners by routine, and sitting with a foreigner to get a window into life off the island is their entertainment.
“Mind if we join you? We work here in hotel security.” What should he do, the lonely bachelor? Eat his meal in silence? Would it arouse suspicion to be too talkative? Talk. Go ahead, talk.
Their detail is jineteras and black market cigars. No earphones. They are not looking for a bomber. But can’t anybody suspicious in this country be subject to search? Mind if we come up to your room? Mind or not, they would come up either way. He remembers the materials he laid out on his bedcover, now hidden in the back of the dresser behind the drawer. What do you need two alarm clocks for? They’re gifts. Oh, yes? And what’s this?
“Go right ahead. Have a seat.”
“Have you been to Havana before? Is this your first time?�
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“Sí.”
“You mean sí, this is your first time?”
“No . . .” He decides on yes—you better say yes because they may already know. “That is, yes, I have been to Havana on vacation. I like the beaches to the east.”
“It is a good time of year to go to the beach.”
He thinks he’s doing pretty well. “Which do you recommend?”
“If you like las Playas del Este, you should try Guanabo, if you have the time. You’d probably want to share a car. Did you like your dinner?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Well, I hope you meet some friends.” That sounded insulting. No, they are just trying to be friendly. “Maybe we’ll see you later.”
“Maybe.”
The tourist returns to his room and checks the lock on the zipper of the backpack. He opens the door to the bathroom and washes his hands. On an island of eleven million people, he is completely alone.
MARTES, 2 SEPTIEMBRE
Manolo
In advance of the weekly staff meeting, Director Gonzalez lets it slip into the gossip mill at the pediátrico that he will introduce a newly appointed physician. The nurses get hold of this information, and it is more effective than if Gonzalez had announced it on the intercom that has not worked since ’95. The halls are alive with chatter:
“He’s supposed to be some kind of child psychologist.”
“Is that even a kind of doctor?”
“What we need is more surgeons.”
The nurses do not cut cruel glances at me. Since my tangle with la jinetera a few years back, they rarely cut me any glances at all. In my mind I try referring to her as just la jinetera, because it hurts too much to acknowledge her name, her youth, her humanity, knowing how she is wasting away in prison. Julia played the damsel in distress, and she was, but she ended up taking justice into her own hands. She took a scalpel that I used to cut vegetables to the train yard, for protection, she said, but that became circumstantial when she finished the job by laying his neck across the rail beneath a freight car and releasing the brake. There was an unfortunate rumor that briefly circulated on Radio Bemba that it could have been me who had taken the chulo’s life, and five years later it still creates a separation between me and the nurses. If beforehand I was unattractive to them, afterward I have become invisible.
“I hope that he’s handsome,” says the head nurse, “and not such a womanizer as the others.”
“Ni tan maricón,” chimes in the newest orderly, a mulata from Regla. Nor such a fag—this, presumably, in reference to me or any other doctor who has yet to hit on her, she who takes such pains hemming her dingy hospital-issued dress to give us all a good look high up la pierna.
Were there other lovers? Yes, a few. But in five years nobody stands out. It’s like that hurricane knocked out my ganas. How can I be so frozen in ’92? It is not that I do not hunger, but I know that no invitation to table around here comes without ten forks—in your ass. Especially for those who dare to date across roles: whether nurse to doctor, doctor to administrator, or patient to any of the above. All the currency we have in the Período Especial is these most intimate negotiations, so sex is exchanged like a trinket or a handful of pocket change, but you could be sure of what she would expect in exchange for a taste: Pero doctor, yo que vengo todo los días de Regla, tan lejos, y tú tan cerca y solito en este apartamento. We are all better off if, rather than mixing work with pleasure again, I find my lovers far from el pediátrico, preferably as far as Pinar del Rio, better still to stick to the widow with the five orphans.
For the better part of a decade, Director Gonzales has not gone out of his way to improve conditions at the pediátrico. Every July 26 there is a little pep talk for the weary physicians with a modest reception at his apartment: rum, Tropicola, and a salami that gets shorter every year. But when it comes to shaking things up by advocating for better equipment or some new linens for the beds, the director never lifts a finger.
In July I submitted the paperwork for my request to attend the Tampa conference, along with the dean of medicine’s invitation letter. There was ample time for my application to get from Gonzalez’s desk, where it sat for who knows how long, up the chain of command to the Minister of Health himself, and from there across chasms of bureaucracy to MINREX, el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores. But because ministries speak only to ministries, I have no way of knowing when or if he forwarded my application.
“Still waiting to hear back from MINREX,” he said when I stuck my head in his office. “Here, take some chocolate.” It was Belgian and still in the wrapper, so I did not decline.
The summer dragged on, and I knew in my heart that he let it sit on his desk until the last day of the prescribed review period. Every step of the way he has delayed the petition process. I could flatter myself that he does not want to lose me, but since that desire exists only within his architecture of bureaucracy and mediocracy, it is no consolation. He does not think it would be approved in time, and neither do I. He is not cultivating a star clinician and surgeon for the sake of creating one of the best pediatric hospitals on the island. Instead, he is abusing and exhausting one of his only competent doctors because by burning me out, it helps him maintain the status quo at minimal effort and expense, which is exactly what his superior administrators in the national medical service expect of him.
If improved attendance at the meeting was his ulterior motive in leaking the news, then Director Gonzalez got his wish. There’s a full house—doctors, nurses, orderlies, and even a few parents of long-term patients—when he enters the staff room followed by the new physician, a pediatric psychiatrist. “Compañeros, I am pleased to introduce to you Doctora Ana Luisa Hernández.”
The nurses audibly deflate while the men all share a barely audible hmm! It takes a moment for me to focus because, although she dons a doctor’s coat (mercifully no stethoscope), instead of scrubs she’s wearing the snug blue jeans popular among the young women of Havana. A psychiatrist’s consultations do not often get messy, so she is free to wear what she pleases.
“Thank you, Director Gonzalez.” She steps into the hush to examine us. She seems too young to be a physician, but that’s what they said about me. She’s not pretty—she’s gorgeous. The denim flatters the curve of her hip, thrown sideways provocatively even as her crossed arms suggest she takes new business only by referral. Her blouse does not quite reach the top of her pantalones, so if it weren’t for the lab coat, every time she bends even the slightest bit—to pick a pencil off the desk, for instance, or to pour herself a little water from the jug on the table—we get a glimpse of midriff. “Colleagues, for the past seven years since the official start of the Período Especial, depression and desperation have been on the rise. Young people experience feelings of hopelessness in home and school environments, and increasing aggression and exploitation. I am very interested in getting to know the makeup of the community, and I hope that before long I can be of some assistance to you and to the people of Havana who use the pediátrico.”
The brief meeting concludes with my male coworkers lining up to introduce themselves. I opt out of the reception line and make my way to the broom closet that serves as a break room.
I am stretched out on two chairs in the closet for a brief nap before the start of my shift when the new doctor interrupts me: “Buenos días, Doctor Rodriguez.”
“Buenos días, Doctora Hernández, y bienvenida al pediátrico.” I endeavor to make my new colleague feel welcome with a dose of the usual teasing reserved for interns and recent arrivals on staff: “So, they make psychiatrists just for children now? How very post-Soviético.”
“I would think that you, who could have benefited from one during the medical confusion around your Havana Lunar, would be the last to scoff.”
Her commentary about the mark on my left cheek is not the anticipated How did you get that? or the clueless This remind me of something I read in a medical journal. She already knows the
case and, being a good psychiatrist, she understands that two decades later any expressions of sympathy would be purely gratuitous and practically insulting. Thank goodness it does not veer into the buffoonish insensitivity I have noticed surfacing more of late, even among otherwise mature medical personnel: ¡Mira! ¡El famoso Havana Lunar! Wow, it must be cool to have a syndrome named after you!
I cannot dislodge myself from my two-chair stretcher in this narrow alcove without an awkard bit of clattering around, so I remain supine while she stands over me. “Let me know if I can be of any assistance, Doctora Hernández, orienting you to our patients and their neuroses.”
She pours herself a cup of water from the pitcher on the dusty shelf. “Surely children are much more than just their neurosis.”
“Without a doubt.”
She is comfortable in conversation, does not mind protracted silences, and has a pleasant smile and pretty eyes. In my mind I am singing, Que bonitos ojos tienes . . .
“But yes,” she says, “disorders would be a good place to start.”
“I agree with your assessment of pervasive desperation,” I tell her.
“Yes, except for the occasional pinguero or jinetera, in which case a liaison with a foreigner might lead to delusions of grandeur, thinking they have found a way out.”
“Only to be cheated, abused, or otherwise knocked down again.”
“In most cases, yes.”
“I have to admit, it’s a story I hear over and over, but in so many different versions it will make your head spin: I have a chance to leave the island . . .”
“That’s right,” she says. “It has become a collective hallucination. A form of currency more powerful than the peso or even the dollar: Tengo un chance de irme . . .”
“The parents’ desperation is frequently worse. Oftentimes the nurses or I will have to calm them down with platitudes and placebos before we are able to conduct an exam on the actual patient.”
“The job of the Cuban psychiatrist at the end of the century seems to have become helping 95 percent of the population cope with the Período Especial, and I have a prediction: it will continue to be the case well into the next century.”