Cuba Libre

EIGHT

"You are now entering the presidio, the prison gallery of the famous Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, completed in 1610 to protect the city from hostile forces, marauders, invaders… The lamps along the wall burn coal oil. The soldiers asleep on the floor? They arrived today from a penal settlement in Africa-where you two could be going, if you aren't taken out and shot one morning at sunrise. You see, what I'm thinking," the lieutenant-who gave his name as Molina-said in English, slurring his words a little, but with only the trace of an accent, "is to remain here after the war and give tours of the Morro. There will be a war, of course, soon, and America will win. Our ships are rusting, fouled, our army can't subdue even these peasants. The Morro will become a place for American tourists to visit and I can tell them in the proper English I learned in your country what notables were here, like a guest list, and show them the wall where thousands of prisoners were lined up and shot."

Tyler and Charlie Burke, following Lieutenant Molina along this corridor that resembled a tunnel cut through stone, looked at one another. The two guards following behind gave them each a shove to keep moving. Tyler believed Lieutenant Molina was drunk.

He was saying now, "By the way, what did you do to be brought here?"

"Nothing I know of," Tyler said. "That's everyone's answer." Tyler said, "What did you do?"

And the lieutenant looked over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. "Oh, so you don't think this is a reward, uh, to serve here? I was on the staff of our legation in Washington, where I made many friends, aide to the military attach when I quite literally fucked myself out of a job. Perhaps I also drank too much of your bourbon."

He came to a cell door, a grating of steel bars, and stopped. While one of the guards unlocked the door and pulled it open, the lieutenant looked at Charlie Burke and said, "You go in here, please."

Light from the corridor showed the beginning of a row of canvas hammocks, sagging and rounded with the weight of men sleeping, in a cell that looked as wide as a road and with a vaulted ceiling, but too dark in there to tell how far it extended.

Tyler said to the lieutenant, "Wait. Can't we stay together?"

"I was told to separate you. I suppose so you won't be able to make up a story."

Tyler said, "You don't care, do you?"

"Listen," Molina said, "I could have been assigned to Africa. I can tell you the Morro is a hotel, the Inglaterra, compared to prison settlements over there. That Guardia officer who brought you, Lionel Tavalera? He wants to see you go to Ceuta, Melilla, one of those places where they send anarchists and assassins of the lowest class, men sentenced to hard labor or reclusion for life. Prisoners work in chains on a public road, beaten unmercifully by cabos, the prisoners they use as guards. Or they weld your fetters on permanently and drop you into a dungeon with a small hole in the ceiling, so that light comes to you only at midday. The food is a scrap of meat, usually infested with maggots, and some kind of pulse. The vermin eat you alive and you don't come out until they finish and you're dead." Lieutenant Molina looked at Charlie Burke then and said, "Please go in there. Here, not doing what you're told will be met with blows and imprecations."

Tyler put his hand on Charlie Burke's shoulder and Charlie Burke shook his head saying, "I'm sorry I got you into this, partner, but I don't imagine we'll be here too long." He didn't sound at all sure of it and added, "Do you?"

"Once it's in the newspapers and everybody knows about it," Tyler said, "Neely's pretty sure it'll get some action from the consulate. They'll demand a hearing right away."

The worry was in Charlie Burke's eyes, watery and shining in the lamplight.

He said, "Once they get hold of the Vamoose…"

"We don't have to go into that, Charlie."

He said, "Well…"

And that was all as one of the guards shoved him into the cell and slammed the grating closed. Molina said to him through the grille, "If you can, find a hammock not occupied."

Tyler asked, "Who's he in there with?"

"Revolutionaries," Molina said. "From their point of view, patriots."

Moving along the corridor again, their shadows accompanying them on the wall, he said, "You get food twice a day, eleven o'clock and I believe five, stew made from some kind of meat and rancho bread. It can make you sick, give you the shits, so don't eat it if you have money. Pay one of the guards to bring you food from the cantina. It's bad, but not as bad as the food they serve you. Let me see-you can buy coffee and fix your own, otherwise I don't think you get any." Tyler said, "You're not in charge here?" "I'm told what to do."

Tyler let it go. They had come to another cell and the guard with the key was pulling open the door in the steel grating.

Time to ask one more question.

"How soon will we get a hearing?"

Molina seemed to think about what he was going to say. Then: "If you're transferred to La Cabafia-you know the other prison? It's right here, so close it appears to be part of the Morro. Prisoners are usually transferred there before they go to a hearing. But then more executions take place in La Cabafia that here. They have a procession, the priest accompanying the condemned man, who usually acts quite brave while he must be frightened to death. He'll cry out, "Viva Cuba Libret." in the moment before the firing squad shoots him. The officer then uses his pistol to give the victim the tiro de gracia, a bullet in the brain. The executions take place in the foso over there, the moat; it's always dry. You see papaya trees growing there, the soil rich with the blood of martyrs to the cause."

It sounded to Tyler like something Neely Tucker had said in the hotel bar. Molina, though, expressed the idea in a melancholy tone of voice that he changed immediately, adding, "That is, if you think of those people as martyrs."

Tyler said, "And if we're kept here?"

"In the Morro? The best I can tell you," Molina said, "to give you hope…"

Tyler waited.

"Is to say, Who knows?"