Havana

Chapter 16

The young man studied the board. Now this was interesting. It seemed that the force was setting itself up to the left, where the queen commanded doughty pawns, clever rooks, heroic knights and even the bishop, while the king languished, as was his wont, far away, shielded by a few disengaged pieces. The old lady did the work.

But the more he studied, the more he concluded that his opponent was lulling him. He was engineering what seemed to be an aggression on the right, but the real action would come suddenly from the left, and it would be blinding and clever and swift. He knew a possibility lurked here. In his mind, he struggled to unlock it, but no epiphany arrived for assistance.

Yet his faith was deep: he was convinced the right was a ruse, the left a trap. He knew he had to decide, to countermove, to show aggression and tenacity. So he-

"No, no, no!" the older man screamed at him. "Have you learned nothing these days? Have you been sleeping? Have you been daydreaming! Ach, such an idiot you are!"

"But, sir," said the twenty-six-year-old Castro, "it appeared to me that―"

"Go ahead, make your move, this is becoming boring."

Castro moved, the older man countermoved insolently, a performance of abject contempt, and in the countermove Castro saw a seam open, an unexpected thrust of aggression rupture his defenses, and felt the steam go out of him.

"Damn!" he said. "Again."

"Play it out, idiot."

It was quick: three moves and for the sixth straight time and the ninth time in ten days, he was checkmated. He had but a solitary, lucky draw to show for his efforts.

"You have to have a feel for these things," said the chess master.

"Maybe chess is not the game for you. There's no opportunity to give speeches or go on the radio. Perhaps that is what you are really good at. It's a tawdry talent, but I suppose it is what one has, and one must make the best of it. Let the smarter fellows make the decisions and figure things out."

"No, no," whined the young man, "I am smart. You will see that―" But then he stopped. He said, "That was last year. How did you know I was on the radio? You are not from Cuba."

"I know some things. One thing I know: You need a better head for chess. That would be a wiser place to start than speeches, where you get paid in plaudits and end up the day with nothing tangible. What have I been telling you? Don't be so hasty. It gets you massacred every time."

"At least it's a glorious massacre," said the young man.

"Have you ever seen a massacre?" the older fellow asked.

"No," Castro admitted.

"Well, I have. Not pretty. Certainly not glorious. Ugly, bloody, pitiful, pathetic, squalid. So all great crusades end up, if they are not carefully managed."

"Who are you?" Castro asked. "You show up and suddenly we are playing chess every day. You speak our language too well, and with a European accent. You learned your Spanish in Spain."

"Spain, it's true."

"Thirty-six to thirty-nine? Where also you saw the massacre?"

"I have, alas, seen many massacres. Too many. I hope not to see another."

The two sat in the park called San Francisco under palm trees in Old Havana, not far from a coffee stand, a shoeshine man, a fleet of bolita salesmen, two whores taking a time off from a busy morning, a woman rolling cigars, and many relaxing seagulls. The sun was hot, but a fresh sea breeze from the nearby harbor made the palms dance and kept the sweat from collecting.

"I think you've come a long way to see me," said Castro. "You were interested in me from the start, that I could tell. I understood that."

"I have some practical experience. Possibly you'd listen to my advice now and then. Sometime in the future, when you are wiser, you might even take it."

"Where are you from?"

"What does it matter? What matters is that you and I believe in the same things and possibly the same methods."

The boy began a hoary recitation of what he believed in. Meanwhile, Speshnev looked hard at him and, try as he could, only saw a familiar type, thrown up by revolutions and wars the world over. An opportunist with a lazy streak, and also a violent one. Not smart, but clever enough to get himself in real trouble. A minor gift for gab, but no real character or integrity. No vision beyond the self, but a willingness to use the vernacular of the struggle for his own private careerism.

Speshnev had of course read the documents. The boy Castro was only a third-generation Cuban, his father being the son of a Spanish soldier who, when Spain left in 1899, had decided to stay in the new country rather than move back to the old. The father's family was Galician, from that severe province in the north of Spain whence hailed conquistadors and other men of cruel disposition and rapacious appetite. But there was no evidence the boy was comprised of such fortitude. So far, beside the speeches, there'd only been mischief: he played at organizing demonstrations against the American secretary of state in 1948 and had gone on some mad pretend campaign to liberate the Dominicans from the strongman Trujillo, abandoning the quest when things got tough. No questions had been answered.

This was the sort of boy who-like dozens of others-ended up hanging on a meathook in Secret Police headquarters, or turned, compromised, made a parody of himself, trafficking in betrayal for a few dollars, a few more days of limited freedom.

Did he have the steel will? Was he able to kill and not die of guilt? Could he spy, torture, intimidate, betray to advance the greater cause? Who knew? Could he yield on the shabby bourgeois "morality" of his father, a petty landowner in Oriente province who had done well by groveling before American interests?

So the boy bobbed before him, a weird blend of gifts, ambition and vagueness, too romantic for anybody's good, particularly his own. He might have what it took, and Speshnev might be able to help him. But as for now: who could tell?

"Allow me to point out," Speshnev lectured harshly, delineating another flaw, "that you lack curiosity. Day in, day out, I beat you. You don't wonder why, you don't try new tactics, you don't do research or make intelligent sacrifices. You attack, attack, attack. You find romance in the attack. That is a way to die young and bitter."

"I am following my heart."

"Ach, you're giving me a headache. So much passion, so little accomplished. Work steadily toward a goal that is immediately attainable. A seat in the legislature, a column in the newspaper, an endorsement from an older fellow. Reach out to them, so that they may reach out to you. In the arms of others shall you rise. The great revolutionaries all knew that. Thus far you have demonstrated that you know nothing."

Castro now took the insults easily. Another man he would have killed for such an insult, but this dry old buzzard knew a thing or two.

"So, think. Think of a man who can help you."

"Hmmm," said Castro. "I know of such a man. Perhaps I should go to see him and make a strategic alliance."

"An excellent start."

"His name is Leon Lemus."

"And should I know Senor Lemus?"

"He is a leader in the movement. He led the Socialist Revolutionary Movement in the forties, and worked hard to change things. He is still a power."

"He has retired?"

"Not so much retired as changed paths."

"And where does his new path take him?"

"Well, many places. But he has power and influence, he pays much in protection money, so the police look with favor upon him. He has gunmen, so they fear him."

"He is a gangster, I take it. A killer, a robber, a whoremonger."

"I suppose. He is known as El Colorado. I will go to him; is that a good idea? I will make an alliance and good things will come of it, you shall see."

"El Colorado," said Speshnev. "It sounds ridiculous, but you may have to learn that the hard way."