Havana Bay

Chapter Thirteen

Ofelia found Renko at the Malecon apartment. After he placed a chair against the door he led her down the hall to the office, where the computer monitor told a tale that was sad but true.

American attempts on the life of the Cuban Head of State have included the use of exploding cigars, exploding seashells, poison pens, poison pills, poison diving suits, poison sugar, poison cigars, midget submarines, snipers, bounties. They have employed Cubans, Cuban-Americans, Venezuelans, Chileans, Angolans, American gangsters. Cuban Security has investigated 600 plots against the President's life. The CIA has tried to introduce hallucinogenic sprays into television studios where the President was broadcasting and depilatory powders to make his beard fall out. For these reasons, the President continues to make use of a number of secure residences and never announces his schedule in advance.

"You found Pribluda's password." "Wasn't that brilliant of me?" he said.» This was entered January 5, the next to last file Pribluda entered, and I have to ask myself, what has this got to do with sugar?"

"It's nothing that any Cuban doesn't know. The life of the Comandante is always at risk."

"The day before he disappears, maybe the day before he dies, Sergei Pribluda gets the urge to write a short history of assassination attempts?"

"Apparently. He was a spy. Why are you interested?"

"I'm fishing with the Cuban method, setting hooks everywhere."

Ofelia had showered at home and come in jeans, a shirt tied at the midriff, sensible sandals, floppy straw bag over her shoulder, but she maintained a professional attitude.» Did you find a photograph of Pribluda for Dr. Bias?"

"No."

"But you have been busy." New and old maps of Havana printed by the Ministry of Tourism, Rand McNally and Texaco covered the desk.

"A cultural visit to the ballet, a pleasant drive on the Malecon. You?"

"I have other cases, no?" She regarded Pribluda's computer.» This machine is on Cuban territory."

"Ah, but the memory of this machine, that is purely Russian." Like a virtuoso of the keyboard, he exited the file, shut off the computer and, as screen and room went dark, said, "Useless without the code."

"You don't have the authority, the language or background to investigate here."

"I'd hardly call what I'm doing investigating. But then, you're not either."

It was not easy to control her temper around this man. She opened the bag and brought out a screwdriver, screws and slide bolt. The screwdriver was hers, but it had taken her an hour at the flea market outside the Central Train Station to find the bolt and screws.

"I brought you this for the door."

"Thank you, that's very thoughtful. Let me pay."

"A gift from the Cuban people." She thrust them into his hands.

"I insist."

"I insist more."

"Then, thank you. I will sleep like a babe. Better than a babe, a bivalve."

Whatever that meant, she thought.

After screwing in the bolt and latch, Renko celebrated what he called his "heightened sense of security" by opening a bottle of Pribluda's rum and taking a tray of Pribluda's pickles, mushrooms and other Russian indi-gestibles on a tray out to the balcony. Sitting in an aluminum chair, she scanned the street for danger while he basked in a half-moon that balanced at the end of a silver path across the water. The beam from Morro Castle swept the air, and the occasional Lada rattled by like a drum set being delivered. Jineteras in all hues of spandex cruised the seawall. An old man sold carrots from a briefcase that Renko pointed out looked identical with Pribluda's plastic briefcase and Ofelia said was of Cuban manufacture. A neumdtico out for night fishing carried a huge, inflated inner tube, making his way like a two-legged snail bearing his shell. Bikers raced on the pavement, and she saw a boy swoop by a tourist and snatch the woman's handbag off her shoulder so neatly that she spun around searching the ground while he crossed the boulevard and darted up a side street. PNRs arrived to play out the drama, the tourist turned, disillusioned, to her hotel, and the equilibrium of the Malec6n reestablished itself. Night divers climbed up the rocks, flashlights in one hand and squid in the other. Small dogs fought over the carcasses of gulls. Men drank from paper bags. Couples tucked into the night shadows of the pillars of the wall.

From the portal below came a slow country son, a poem by Guillen adapted to a six-stringed guitar.» Maria Belen, Maria Belen, Maria Belen, watching your hips roll and sway from Camaguey to Santiago, from Santiago to Camaguey"

Renko lit a cigarette.» Actually, Sergeant Luna seems to have forgotten about me. He didn't seem the forgetful type. Good rum."

"Cuba is known for its rum. Did you know the computer password the first time I brought you here?"

"No."

Ofelia hadn't thought so, which meant that he had found it since he had moved into the apartment, although she herself had looked everywhere when she dusted the place for prints. She controlled the impulse to glance back at the apartment and was aware of him watching her do just that.

"I've been thinking. Maybe it would be safer if you went to the embassy and stayed there under guard."

"Ruin my Caribbean vacation? Oh, no."

Even in poor light she saw the scab and bandage at his hairline. She felt unaccountably responsible for his state of health and infuriated, as usual, by the way he twisted a conversation.

"But you still claim that the sergeant attacked you? You think there is a conspiracy against you?"

"Oh, no, that would be crazy. I would say, however, after Rufo and Luna, a hint of animosity."

"Rufo is one thing," she maintained.» The accusation that an officer would attack you is an effort to paint Cuba a backward country."

"Why? It could certainly happen in Russia. The Russian senate is full of Mafia. They regularly assault each other with clubs, chairs, guns."

"Not in Cuba. I think you imagined Luna."

"I imagined the sergeant wears Air Jordans?"

"Then why hasn't he come back?"

"I don't know. Maybe because of you."

She wasn't sure how to take that.

Renko said, "You told me Dr. Bias was honest, and if he said the heart muscle of the man you pulled from the bay shows signs of cardiac arrest, the doctor is telling the truth?"

"If he says so."

"Let's say I do believe him. What I don't believe is that a healthy man has a heart attack for no reason. If he was out on the water and hit by lightning, that would be a different matter. Shouldn't Bias examine the body for signs of a bolt?"

"Anything else?" She meant to be sarcastic.

"You could find who Rufo talked to between the time he let me off and when he came back to kill me. Check his telephone records."

"Rufo didn't have a telephone."

"He had a cell phone when he picked me up at the airport."

"He didn't when I searched him. In any case, there is no investigation."

The Cuban guitar was the sweetest guitar on earth, with notes that flickered the way light dappled the water. She watched him light another cigarette from the ember of the first.

"Have you ever stopped smoking?"

"Certainly." He inhaled.» But I know a doctor who says the optimum time to start smoking is in a person's forties, when a person can really use nicotine's effect to focus the mind and forestall senility. He says it generally takes about twenty years for the consequences-cancer, coronary problems, emphysema-to develop, and then you are ready to go anyway. Of course, he's a Russian doctor."

Although she regarded it as a filthy habit, Ofelia heard herself say, "There were times I wished I smoked.

My mother smokes cigars and watches Mexican telenovelas and shouts to the characters, 'Don't believe her, don't believe that bitch!'"

"Really?"

"My mother is light-skinned from a family of tobacco growers, and even though she married a black cane cutter, my father, she always maintains the cultural superiority of tobacco workers. 'When they roll cigars in the factory, there's someone reading aloud the great stories. Madame Bovary, Don Quixote. You think in the middle of the cane field there's someone reading Madame Bovary? "

"I imagine not."

Ofelia opened her bag, laid the Makarov on her knees and placed a necklace of white and yellow beads around her neck.

"Very pretty," Renko said.

Bias would have disapproved. Yellow was for Oshun, the goddess of fresh water and sweet things, the color of honey and gold and Oshun's mulata glow. Ofelia was comfortable wearing it around the Russian because he was ignorant.

"Just beads," she said.» Does the music bother you?"

A song lingered in the arcade under the balcony. Havana being so crowded, there was a problem of privacy. Sometimes lovers chose the dark of the Male-con portal to consummate what they couldn't find room for anywhere else. The song said, "Eros, blind man, let me show you the way. I crave your strong hands, your body hot as flames, spreading me like the petals of a rose."

"No," Arkady said.

"You don't understand any Spanish?"

"Honey and absinthe pour from your veins, into my burning furrow and making me insane." Along with the song came murmuring and rustling from below. Couples on the seawall moved closer.

"Not a word."

"You know," Ofelia said, "there are differences between rumba, mambo, son, songo, salsa."

"I'm sure."

"But everything is based on drums, for dancing."

"Well, I'm not much of a dancer."

Not everyone had to be a dancer, Ofelia thought. Not that she found him attractive. As her mother would say, will he live through the day? Ofelia's first husband, Humberto, was black as a domino, a baseball player, a fantastic dancer. The second, a musician, was the sort everyone called chino, not only because he was such a handsome mix but because everybody liked him. He played bongos, which demanded an outgoing personality. Until he finally went out completely. But an even better dancer than Humberto. Her mother despised them both and simply called them Primero and Segundo, leaving lots of room for additions. Compared with them, wrapped in his black coat in spite of the heat, Renko looked like an invalid.

"That's how spirits communicate," she explained.» They're in the drums. Unless you dance the spirits can't come out."

"Like they came out for Hedy?"

"Yes."

"Then it's safer not to dance."

"Then you're already dead."

"Good point. Abakua is a version of Santeria?"

"They couldn't be more different. Santeria is from Nigeria, Abakua is from the Congo." It was like confusing Germany and Sicily.

"Bias said they used to run smuggling."

Ofelia was starting to learn how Renko hid behind the most innocent expressions ready to pounce. She wasn't going to get into the fact there were two Abak-uas, a public one with sincere devotees who could be university professors or Party members and a secret criminal Abakua that had risen from its grave. This second Abakua was, needless to say, for men only and had a thieves' morality. Murder of an outsider was allowed, while informing on another Abakua was the ultimate sin. And Cubans believed the Abakua could reach anywhere. Ofelia knew an informer who got himself assigned to a post in Finland to escape Havana. He died falling through the ice and people said, "Abakua!" The police had not penetrated the Abakua. In fact, more police-black and white-were becoming members. Anyway, the last thing she needed was this sort of conversation with a Russian.

"We don't have to talk about it," Arkady said.

"It was the way you asked."

"I sounded smug? It's just my ignorance. I apologize."

"We will not talk about religions."

"God knows."

From the radio in the portal rose the deep beat of a drum that Ofelia knew had to be a tall iya with a dark red center on the skin, accompanied by the grinding rhythm of a belly-shaped gourd. A single horn insinuated itself, the way a man asked a woman to dance.

"Anyway, it's not a bad thing to be possessed," Ofelia said.

"Well, I have an unimaginative Russian mind, I don't think it's going to happen to me. What is it like?"

"Theoretically?" She watched him for the slightest hint of condescension.

"Theoretically."

"As a child, you must have spread your arms and put your head back and danced in the rain. You are drenched and clean and dizzy. If you are possessed, it's like that."

"Afterward?"

"Your mind still spins."

An abwe, the poor man's triangle, joined in from below. It was nothing more than a hoe blade played with a stick of iron, but an abwe could sound like the ticking in the mind when a man's strong hand reached around your waist. As the saxophone tried to wrap around it, the gourd trembled, the drum stopped and started like a heart. These were the snares set for silly girls who lingered in shadows. Not Ofelia. She visualized a clear mind.

She looked toward his arm, the one she had found the bruises on.» You're sounding better. You were not in a healthy mood when you came here."

"I am now. I'm curious about Pribluda and Rufo and Luna. I have a new purpose in life, so to speak."

"But why did you want to hurt yourself?"

She half expected contemptuous dismissal, but Renko said, "You have it backwards."

Ofelia sensed the next question so strongly she asked before she checked herself, "Did you lose someone? Not here. In Moscow?"

"I lose people all the time." He lit one cigarette from the other.» Most boats that go on the rocks really don't intend to go there. It's not a mood, it's just exhaustion. Exhaustion from self-pity." He added, "You're with someone and for some reason with them you feel more alive, on another level. Taste has taste and color has color. You both think the same thing at the same time and you're doubly alive. And if you manage to lose them in some gruesomely irrevocable way, then strange things happen. You wander around looking for a car to hit you so you won't have to go home in the evening. So this incident with Rufo is interesting to me because I don't mind a car hitting me, but I do mind a driver trying to hit me. A fine distinction, but there you are."

In the night Ofelia awoke to find lovers gone, the moon becalmed. In the very lack of breeze she detected a faint scent, a perfume she traced to Renko's soft black coat, to the sleeve of a man who claimed he'd never been possessed.