· web viewmy rib cage hurt. i must have broken ... their silence became oppressive, ... his...

Swimming with Fidel – pages (180-210) – 1

January 3, 1959

Saturday

Day three of the Cuban revolution.

(I thought that each day could become a book section,

given that the first two days have taken ca. 150 pages)

Thoughts?


33

My little sister shook me awake.

“Up, up, c'mon, get up. Your barbudo friend is on the phone.”

Another disadvantage of sleeping on the sofa: no door, no way of keeping little sisters out.

My neck ached. My left arm was numb. I must have slept wrong.

I wrapped myself in the sheet to hide my morning erection, swung my legs out, and fell, landing

on the book I’d been reading the night before.

“Coño! Me cago en …”

My rib cage hurt. I must have broken something. What rotten luck. Everyone and everything was

being changed for the better while I had to sleep on a sofa.

I shuffled over to the phone, in the dining room.

“Porfirio is dead,” Vega said, wasting no time on preliminaries. “I’m coming over.”

I waited for more but there was none, only a short silence followed by the dial tone.

I’d known it all along. I’d feared and expected this outcome since Porfirio jumped out of Billy’s

car to join the firefight and yet, it stunned me, much like a punch that, even when anticipated, hurts

more, much more than expected.

If only I’d held on when I grabbed his arm, when I questioned his decision, when I asked him not

to go.

Which would have been ridiculous, implausible; who would do such a thing? And yet, I knew,

even back then, that it was the right thing to do.

Strange. I’d known Porfirio for less than an hour and yet, I felt disconsolate, my sense of loss

more acute than what I’d experienced for the whole family I’d lost in the war. The two families:


Mami’s and Father’s. Of course, they had already been murdered by the time I was born. For their loss

I felt cheated, anger and a hate that grew every time I saw pictures of the camps.

I also felt cheated by Porfirio’s death. Not because we would never get together for the promised

exchange of war stories for drinks—screw the war stories and screw the book I might never write—but

because Porfirio was a selfless, citizen-soldier who fought for a better Cuba, because he risked his life

and a golden future for principle, and because he was ready to lay down his arms and return to a normal

life as a physician and a caregiver. I’d hoped we would become friends.

I told my mother and sister. They’d watched me on the phone and already knew, from the way

my face fell and my shoulders sagged under this new burden. Still, they gasped and cried out. Mami

clamped both hands to her face.

“Oy vei is mir,” she said as if she’d known Porfirio. She knew, better than me, the pain of loss.

My sister tried to console me. Mami hurried into the kitchen to get me orange juice. Father came

rushing out of my bedroom, where he must have been plotting with Isaac, asking what happened.

Mom made me toast and fried eggs for breakfast—most mornings I ate buttered bread and café

con leche—but I wasn’t hungry. I returned to the sofa and sipped a strong, sweet café. I asked Mami for

another and drank that one plus what was left in the pot. I needed something to wake me up, as if that

could change reality.

Sarita sat with me on the sofa, neither of us saying much, while Mami picked-up, my socks, the

book that almost broke my ribs, and whatever else I’d dropped on the floor before falling asleep.

Vega found me on the sofa, in my pajamas.

He’d been up all night searching for Porfirio, and it showed. Purplish circles under his eyes, a

rumpled uniform, and disheveled hair.

“C’mon,” he said. “We have to go.”

“Where?”

“We have to inform Porfirio’s family.” Vega had dismissed the offer of a seat to remain standing


next to the stuffed chair, implying there was no time to waste.

“No, no, no, not me. I can’t do that. I didn’t even know him.”

“You were the last to see him. You know how he was at the end, how he acted, how he felt, what

he said. You hold his last will.”

“Oh no. No, no, no. We dropped you off what? A half-hour earlier? You were pals, you fought

alongside him, you traveled together all night, all the way from…wherever you were. Billy and Ruben

were in the car too. Ask them.”

“You got him. You cared because you saw who he was. C’mon,” Vega had sat down on the front

edge of the chair, leaning forward, both hands pleading. “No use delaying.”

Allowed a quick shower, I stood under the water thinking-up reasons why I couldn’t go. I took

my time shaving. Many men weren’t, so that, in a few days they too would have beards and be able to

pass for rebels. I applied toilet paper to my cuts, wrapped myself in a towel and entered my bedroom. I

still had time to come up with a good excuse.

Father and Isaac clammed-up. I’d forgotten about them.

Isaac, whose color was much improved, sat on my bed; Father on my desk chair. They remained

soundless while I obsessed over what to wear—nothing struck me as suitable. Their silence became

oppressive, exclusionary and so insulting that I turned to face them, to say something, knowing I was

liable to explode and once started, I wouldn’t know how to stop.

Mami awaited me outside the bedroom.

“Du badarfnisht gein.” You don’t have to go, Mami said.

“Ich veis.” I know, I said.

Sarita hugged me. Mami walked us to the door. She said something else, in Yiddish, as Vega and

I left.

“What did she say?” Vega said.

“Wash your hands.”


“Really?”

“It’s a Jewish custom. You wash your hands after the cemetery and before you enter the house

where they are sitting Shiva.”

I explained Shiva, as well as other practices: covering mirrors, rendering the garments of the

bereaved.

“Sounds archaic.”

“It is. King David rendered his clothes when he heard of King Saul’s death.”

“That far back?” Vega said. “Coño! I know nothing of your religion.”

“It’s in the Old Testament, so it must be part of your religion too. No matter. Who knows whether

it’s a religious thing or a custom or a tradition. Maybe it’s just superstition,” I said. “It’s what we do.”

Few people were out on the streets of Havana. The general strike remained in effect, and it was

early, not quite mid-morning. Besides, we were traveling from Santos Suarez to el Cerro, from suburb

to suburb, along a route that favored vehicles over pedestrians.

“I doubt Porfirio would have liked that. Sitting Shiva, I mean. He didn’t want to make people

suffer, not even at his funeral. He was the opposite, always looking to help, healing our wounded,

doctoring farmers’ kids, everybody,” Vega said.

I’d been to one Christian funeral, and I’d been to one Shiva. They were nothing alike.

We drove in silence.

Vega’s car, a late model Buick, still smelled new. His family must have been well-off. He’d

graduated from Villanova, a private college, and that too took money.

“They didn’t kill him in the shootout," Vega said, after a short while.

He rolled down his window. I did the same. The air retained some of the freshness of the night

before.

“Please tell me they killed those bastards in the firefight,” I said.

“The Batistianos escaped,” Vega said, a slight hesitation between the words, as if it was hurtful to


speak of it, as if the futility of it all was too much. “They were on a top floor but somehow made it

down and out through the sewers.”

“Some escaped? How many killed?

He pressed his lips together until they disappeared. I couldn’t tell whether he’d heard me over the

noisy onrush of air.

“Not even wounded,” he said, “They found no bodies, not even any blood near the spent

cartridges.”

“So the whole thing was for nothing? How is that even possible? How did he get killed?”

Vega had stopped at a red light. He didn’t notice it turning green.

“After they realized the esbirros had escaped, an angry militia slammed his rifle down. It went

off when the butt hit the ground. The bullet entered at the base of Porfirio’s skull and came out through

the front. Half his brain, half his face were gone.”

A shiver ran up to my shoulders.

A car’s horn alerted Vega that the light was green.

“A militia?”

“Just some guy. A kid with an armband and a rifle. An irregular.”

I too had had an armband. And a rifle.

“I too had those.”

I heard myself and couldn’t believe I said it.

Vega turned his head toward me.

“I returned it,” I hurried to say. “I gave back the rifle. I never wanted to shoot anyone, or

anything, except now: I would shoot that asshole.”

“They took his weapons away. The incident is under investigation."

“Not gonna help Porfirio.”

“I’m sorry,” Vega said, “I didn’t mean that because you had an armband…”


“It’s okay. I deserve it. I had no business wearing it.”

“You liberated La Vibora high,” Vega said.

Big Fucking Deal.

This time our silence lasted until we reached Porfirio’s house.


34

“This is the place,” Vega said.

Porfirio lived on the second floor of a two-story building off of La Calzada del Cerro, within

walking distance of the stadium.

As a kid, that stadium had been a faraway, magical land. I used to listen to beisbol radio

broadcasts, brought to life by Felo Ramirez’s knowledgeable play-by-play, voice and wit, “baseball is a

strange game. The balls are round but come in square boxes,” and later watched the blurry, black and

white TV images.

The first time I attended a baseball game was at the stadium in El Cerro, a night game at that—an

exciting occasion in itself. As I emerged from the entrance tunnel and beheld the field, a vast expanse

of grass, vibrant under the bright floodlights, I knew I was in heaven. I’d never seen anything so green,

so inviting.

I’d never gone anywhere else in El Cerro.

“Wait,” I grabbed Vega by the shoulder before he knocked on the door. “Just a minute. Oh boy!

We may be making a terrible mistake. This may sound…I don’t know. Hear me out. If his face is half-

gone, how do we know it was him?”

“I called you from the morgue. It is Porfirio.”

Vega rapped on the door three times.

Porfirio’s father—I assumed it was his father—came to meet us. I’d heard his hopeful footfall

rushing down the steps to throw the door open, a happy, bright-eyed, expectant look on his face that

melted when he saw us. It took but an instant for his face to pale and his eyes to sink into the bleak

half-moons beneath them.

He turned his head to look up the stairs before stepping out onto the sidewalk, one hand on the


doorknob to keep the front door from closing all the way,

He turned to face us, blinking in the sunlight.

Vega introduced himself. Without much of a preamble, he gave him the bad news.

Porfirio’s father kept on blinking. He brought up his other hand to shade his eyes. I wondered if

he’d understood.

He had.

He’d known since the moment he saw us.

I had to look away. I couldn’t watch the pain overtake his face. My eyes drifted elsewhere,

anywhere, to the trembling front door, to a chipped tile on the front stoop, to a purplish stain on the

sidewalk resembling a half-eaten cookie.

A song played somewhere, too far to make out the words. Had to be a record player; the

revolution’s progress filled the radio waves.

“How?” The man’s question followed a long breath intake.

Vega told him in a few terse phrases, about the firefight, about the friendly fire.

A car drove past, the faulty muffler loud, a passenger sticking his head out the window to yell at

us, “Viva Cuba Libre."

“Come in, please,” Porfirio’s father said, pushing the door open. “I’ll get my wife.”

I followed Vega up the steps. The contrast between the warm brightness outside and the cool

darkness of the staircase was palpable. The narrow steps went on and on, rekindling my hope they

would never end.

We stepped onto a large, airy foyer, facing the back, where a wrought-iron railing laden with

flower pots looked over the ground-floor courtyard. A square roof opening, the size of the courtyard,

opened to light and sky.

I did a one-eighty, pivoting on one foot to face the front, and froze. A wide archway led to a large

living room and beyond it to a balcony commanding the street below. The ceilings were very high,


colonial height, much higher than those in my modern apartment, and adorned with plaster crown

moldings, cornices, corner fans; all painted a bright yellow.

Eventually, I had to look down. I counted eight expectant people standing under the broad

archway, some considering us, some staring along the hallway overlooking the downstairs patio, their

eyes on the door through which Porfirio’s father had disappeared.

I had no idea what Porfirio looked like under his long, scraggly beard but I noticed a

commonality to the gathered group, a flushed look reminiscent of Porfirio, enough to convince me they

were relatives. Half were older, Aunts and Uncles, half were young, early teens to mid-twenties,

siblings, cousins. A ninth person, a dark-haired girl stood on the edge, leaning on a wall, shoulders

hunched, one hand squeezing her nose and mouth.

They all knew.

A screech reached us from somewhere inside. Had to be Porfirio’s mother.

Two middle-aged women rushed toward the scream. The rest, except for the dark-haired young

woman, who’d collapsed onto a corner chair, approached us.

Vega looked even worse than earlier that morning, his thinness accentuated by a too large shirt. I

stepped back, trying to shrink, to make myself invisible. It was up to Vega to handle the questions; he’d

been his comrade in arms, his friend. What was there for me to say?

Mami’s words rattled in my head, like the stuck, unwanted refrain from a bad song.

Du badarfnisht gein. You don’t have to go.

~~

Porfirio’s mother, wearing a light colored sweater buttoned only at the neck, seemed too shrunken, too

wrinkled, too old to be a young man’s mother. Two thin lines occupied the space where her lips once

might have parted in a smile. She marched up to Vega.

“Tell me,” she said.

He did.


She asked who, he told her. She asked how, he told her. She listened, her teeth, her mouth, her

mandibles, her whole face clenching and unclenching, her thin lips parting only to spit out the next

question.

All along, between her questions and Vega’s answers, she’d stolen glances my way.

“Who’s he?” She said, pointing at me.

I’d decided on black pants, a short sleeve shirt—gray squares on a light blue background—and

penniless penny loafers. The closest I could come to inconspicuous.

“A friend,” I said.

“How did you know my son?”

I told her.

Her head recoiled, fluttering side to side as her eyes widened. She asked why I’d come, why I

called her son a friend after knowing him for a moment.

Vega leaned forward to say I’d been the last person to see him alive.

She turned her head to face Vega, deadly rays spewing from her eyeballs and said no, the killer

was, the little wannabe with a silly armband and a gun was the last one to see her son alive.

She turned back to me to ask where I’d fought.

I shook my head.

“You don’t belong here. This is a hero’s place. You shouldn’t be here, my son should, ” she said.

“He survived being on the run, he survived in the mountains, two whole years of being under the gun,

only to be taken by you to be killed in sight of his home, of the place where he was born."

Fat tears welled up before rolling down her cheeks while she asked where God had been, and

how could He allow her only son, her hero son, her doctor son, the best person, man or woman, she’d

ever known to lie dead while people like me dared claim his friendship.

She meant that I should be the one dead, not Porfirio, not her only son.

Her husband placed an arm around her shoulders and started to guide her away, toward their


bedroom.

She turned her head toward me. “Get out.”

I backed away toward the stairs, my cheeks burning with shame.

She was right, of course, on all counts.


35

Back home my sister told me Ernesto had called three times. “He said it was urgent.”

Ernesto didn’t have a phone. He’d asked I call him at a neighbor’s number. I already had the

number, from before, but in the past he’d warned me not to call him unless it was a true emergency.

Phone service in Cuba was not only expensive—little wonder why the Cuban telephone

monopoly, an ITT subsidiary, bestowed a gold phone on Batista—but the ‘service’ part was also

questionable. A long waiting list stood in the way of any new phone installation.

I called Ernesto’s neighbor, but no one answered.

Ernesto’s family moved often, in spite of, or because of their modest means. In the four years I’d

known Ernesto, the Morales family had moved twice. Rather than two blocks away, they now lived

twelve blocks away. Ernesto’s explanation, always accompanied by a disarming smile, was that his

mother liked change.

I would have to walk over if I wanted to find out what was so fucking important. It could wait.

Ernesto would call again.

I plopped on the sofa, in front of the TV, tired, drained, not wanting to go anywhere. Catching up

with the news while eating a sandwich seemed the better use of my time.

The bad news was that Fidel’s advance toward Havana, escorted by thousands of well-armed

barbudos, was snail-like, stopping everywhere along the way; his updated, expected time of arrival was

Wednesday, another four days. His every step, action and word was being reported. His many words,

by the sound of it— he’d spoken to a gathering in Camagüey for three hours, until he lost his voice.

The man Fidel had proclaimed president, Manuel Urrutia, a former judge, was expected to reach

Havana in two days, Monday the fifth of January. After being sworn-in in Santiago de Cuba, he listed


his priorities as reviving the Cuban economy, restoring democracy and opposing Latin American

dictators. He introduced a half dozen cabinet members to the crowd gathered around Oriente

University. He appointed Fidel Castro head of the armed forces.

That was a surprise. Army chief? The revolution’s maximum leader didn’t even merit a

premiership?

Not that it mattered. We listened to our new president’s words but sought Fidel’s. His every

utterance carried authority, his every word became law.

Fidel, rather than Urrutia announced the restoration of constitutional guarantees. They had been

suspended by Batista.

In other news, a group of hard-core, Batista supporters were executed.

Three days earlier, after losing the decisive battle of Santa Clara, a group of Batistianos sought

refuge in a hotel. They opened fire from the roof, killing a number of civilians, including a nine-year-

old boy. They surrendered later that day, Wednesday, New Year’s Eve.

They were shot by a firing squad two days later. Friday.

The Santa Clara garrison commander, a brigadier general, was killed trying to escape. He’d been

captured by a farmer and shot dead when he made a grab for a gun.

In other news, Alaska became the forty-ninth state of our northern neighbor.

From the Dominican Republic, Batista claimed he’d left to prevent further bloodshed. He also

stated that he’d lost because the rebels had the superior weapons. He’d also requested permission to

enter the United States where many of his murdering lieutenants had already been granted asylum.

The food I’d just eaten surged-up, bile rising in my throat. I wasn’t sick, just angry. Very angry.

Explosively angry. I dropped my half-eaten sandwich on the plate and stormed out.

The execution of those hijo de putas in Santa Clara, those bastards who killed without remorse,

who didn’t care who they shot, didn’t trouble me. Nor did I care that their cowardly commander was

shot dead where he stood. I did mind the nine-year-old boy but, most of all I minded Porfirio’s death,


and the wreath of lies placed on the caskets of our dead, the ongoing, never-ending string of Batista’s

excuses and fabrications, as if the truth never mattered and the lies would live on forever.

Batista had had ships and planes and tanks and thousands upon thousands of troops and training

and strategic support from the States, he even had a fucking armored train and now he was crying ‘poor

little me, I was fighting without resources, I was trying to save lives.’

Fidel better hurry up, better come to Havana to flush away all this shit.

I’d walked and walked in random directions until, eventually, finding myself on Calle Vista

Alegre, I turned east and headed for Ernesto’s house. Might as well find out what he thought so

important.

~~

We met by the high school.

“I called you again. Your sister said she didn’t know where you’d gone,” he said.

“What’s so important?” Maybe the climb, or the lack of food—I’d skipped breakfast and most of

my lunch—had me out of breath.

“I first called you about a quinceañera,” he said.

“Who’s turning fifteen?”

“You don’t know her.”

“You do. Right?”

His eyebrows slid up, and his lips turned into a half grin.

“Well, no, not personally. But I’m a friend of a friend."

“So we, I mean you, aren’t invited?"

“Everybody will be there. She’s very popular.”

Ernesto often talked me into doing things I would never consider doing on my own. Like

crashing fancy quinceañeras or neighborhood parties.

Once he dragged me to an all-black, eerie, quasi-Santeria party on a fourth of December, Santa


Barbara’s day. I’d seen Santeria offerings on the streets in La Habana Vieja, when I’d been a little kid:

chicken heads, copper pennys wrapped in red ribbons, items I knew not to touch and he’d schlepped

me to a party where I feared it was happening. By all appearances, everyone else was having a good

time. Not I. I didn’t dare eat, or drink anything, or go to the back, even to go to the bathroom. People

were going in and out of the backroom, going in normal and coming out with spooky eyes. Whatever

was going on in the back I didn’t want to know.

I’m white, and even though my hair is black and curly and I’m always a bit tanned from going to

the beach all year long, I was still white. I suppose it was easier to pass for black than to pass for white.

Unless they didn’t care.

Ernesto and I discussed when and where to meet and how to dress for the quinceanera, and

whether I could get a quick dancing refresher from his sister. She was a great dancer and I wasn’t. She

said I only lacked confidence.

At this point, under normal conditions, Ernesto and I would start to walk, somewhere, anywhere,

but Ernesto didn’t move.

“What?” I said.

“The other reason I called you,” he said, hesitating, his eyes straying to look over my shoulder. I

turned and looked. No one was there.

“I called you because your father got a hold of my brother.”

“Antonio? Why?”

“He asked Antonio whether he would be willing to take Isaac to Batabanó.”

“He still has the Jeep?” A note of hope crept into my voice. Was I about to get my bedroom back?

“Quinto does.”

“That means—”

“Yeah. Quinto is involved.”

“And?” I said, a sudden emptiness in my stomach.


“I don’t know.” He shook his head, he lowered his eyes, a grimace squeezing his lips together.

“No, no, no, coño, no. Ernesto, no! You can’t. You can’t not say. What exactly is it you do not

know?”

“Quinto means to steal Isaac’s money. I think. I don’t know. Antonio wouldn’t. He’d be happy

with what they’ll pay him for the ride.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to envision what that meant.

“If they take his money—” I let the words hang, “—they’ll have to get rid of him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything,” Ernesto shook his head and kept shaking it. “I’m

guessing, suspecting, I’m not sure of anything. Maybe Quinto will dump him, or turn him in, or…”

“When?”

“Today. Now.”

Viewed from high above, the footprint of La Vibora high school would look like a lower case ‘d.’

Ernesto and I were standing on the Vista Alegre and Parraga corner, by the top of the ‘d.’ From the

school’s roof, an armed, uniformed, bearded rebel had been watching us, standing on the same

northernmost spot were two days earlier, Molotov in hand, I scanned a Havana that had yet to wake-up

to the new reality. That seemed a long time ago.

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit,” I said.

We started for home, our pace quickening. It was downhill most of the way but the insisting tick,

tock of time pressed against me. It squeezed my chest; it chocked my throat. I broke into an impatient

jog that turned into a full, all-out sprint. Ernesto did too but to no avail; I was the faster by a mile.

I came upon a crowded scene, Antonio and Quinto getting Isaac into the back of Jeep—the thirty

caliber machine gun no longer there—Father watching from the building’s front door, Matilda from her

front balcony and Señora Ramirez, the resident busybody, from hers. A few guys—two were part of my

childhood gang—stood in the park, baseball gloves on hand, watching as well.

Coming down the hill at full speed while wearing regular leather soled shoes, I had to grab hold


of a something to stop myself. I wrapped my forearm around a thin tree trunk, and ripped my skin

elbow to wrist.

“What are you doing?” I said, to everyone, to no one, panting from the run.

Father came down a couple of steps to say something I couldn’t make out—blood was pulsing,

pounding on my ears—my attention focused on Quinto. And Antonio. And Isaac.

“Well, well, what have we got here?” Quinto said. He wore an open, untucked short sleeve shirt,

just as he had two days earlier.

“Where are you taking him?” I said.

“What business is it of yours?”

“Isaac?” I yelled out. I could see him sitting sideways on the back, where the machine gun had

been. “Get off the Jeep. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Quinto ordered him to stay where he was and took a couple of steps toward me. Isaac didn’t

move. Antonio remained at the side of the Jeep, one hand resting on the canvas top.

“What is it to you?” I said.

“I got a job to do.”

“I relieve you of the responsibility.”

“You? Who the fuck are you? You’re just a little boy, a little kike boy, like all the other, good for

nothing, fucking, thieving kikes. I shoulda used you for target practice.”

“You are right, I’m a little kike,” I said, though I could taste growing anger on the back of my

throat. “Isaac!” I said louder, “get out of there.”

“Leave me be. They are taking me where I need to go,” Isaac said.

“Isaac!” I snapped back.

“You don’t give orders around here,” Quinto said.

Ernesto had caught up and now stood some ten feet away, near his brother. I heard new voices

added to the tumult and sensed that all eyes were on me, the center of a stock-still world, where all


awaited my next step.

I knew the right thing to do. I couldn’t afford any doubt. I couldn’t afford being intimidated by

my father’s mostly unintelligible commands, or by Quinto, or by the feeling that the crowd wanted to

see me fail. I’d come to acknowledge that it was one of my weaknesses, that I’d been intimidated by

the two dozen kibitzers watching me play the Cuban chess grand master. I didn’t know whether I could

have beaten him, but I’d come to understand that I’d allowed the crowd’s whispers to browbeat me.

It was happening again. I heard murmurs, shushing, the gathering crowd asking what was

happening, who was who, what had happened to the old man, what was I doing and above all, my

father’s baritone.

I couldn’t let it happen.

I had to do the exact right thing.

“Isaac! Now! Get-out-of-the-Jeep.”

Quinto moved closer, too close, invading my personal space.

Nothing happened for a few moments as we faced each other. He was taller than me, not much, a

couple of inches, but he was also up-hill, exaggerating his height advantage.

He shoved me. With his left hand. Not too hard, his arm stretching out in one quick motion,

enough to convey a challenge, an invitation to fight. I took a step back and regained my balance. I

couldn’t accept. Under no circumstances could I accept.

“Listen,” I said. “You have the money. You were paid. Let the old man—”

I glimpsed Isaac’s bandaged leg start to emerge from the Jeep. He’d removed most of his

dressings.

That momentary loss of attention was enough; Quinto’s next shove, again with his left, caught me

off guard and I stumbled, falling on my ass.

Quinto laughed.

In one measure I was up, as if I’d bounced off of a trampoline, surging forward, bile embittering


my mouth for the umpteenth time that day, eyes narrowed into a tunnel, funneled in by an abstraction

of moving shapes and blurry colors and sound, a bedlam of noise, with Quinto, in full focus, on the

other end.


36

I never cared for fights. They always struck me as unnatural; one moment at peace and next throwing

and ducking punches. Like American musicals, where people broke into song and dance out of

nowhere, in the middle of doing all sorts of other things.

I’d been a small, scrawny kid. I liked being outside, playing, any game, and whether I’d been six

or eight or ten, whether in La Habana Vieja or in Melena del Sur, where my uncle lived, without fail I

was the only Jewish kid. For any one of those reasons or, for some other reason I never figured out,

kids picked on me, for no apparent reason. I was always reluctant to fight but, I was often left with no

choice.

It got me an unmerited reputation as a troublemaker. In fact, I didn’t even touch people. I just

didn’t. I’d been blessed, or damned, with an innate respect for others personal space.

In sixth grade, at El Centro Israelita, when we were eleven or twelve, and the girls began to

sprout breasts, the boys dared each other to cop a feel.

The mildest form of contact entailed an exploratory brush of their back to determine if the girl

was wearing a bra. The real challenge, the real test of my eleven-year-old machismo, was to touch one

of their breasts. Reach out and feel it. Just like that.

I wouldn’t do it.

I didn’t care if they called me chicken or delighted in describing those nascent, heavenly mounds

of flesh. I too wanted to touch and feel them, but not like that. I plotted a thousand ways to have the girl

invite me to touch them, maybe to bare them, alone in her house, perhaps as a prelude to more, but I

couldn’t grab a girl, unless she wanted me to.

Whatever ‘look but don’t touch’ rule governed me, was one of a myriad unwritten rules of


unknown origin that governed me as I grew up.

And, as I grew up, the stupid fistfights stopped. I had been in just one since fifth grade, a year

earlier, during my last year of day school at La Vibora high school.

After gym, a kid started to make fun of me. We’d just been in opposing basketball teams and

nothing unusual had happened.

I wasn’t even sure I’d heard the beginning of his provocation. I’d been minding my own

business, my thoughts a thousand miles away.

I let it pass. I made believe he’d been joking.

When I didn’t react, he called me names. I winced at ‘maricón,’ but still didn’t respond. The

whole thing was reminiscent of when I was a kid in the playgrounds.

He swiped one of my shoes and threw it over the cyclone fence. He wanted to fight, of that there

could be little doubt. Why, I didn’t know and would likely never find out but, he’d left me no choice.

The strangest part was that I wasn’t mad, that my decision to fight followed a cool, rational

decision. Had I walked out, one shoe on, one shoe off, to retrieve my missing shoe, I would have been

bullied and picked-on forever.

I put up my fists, and he did the same. The other kids, delighted to see a fight, retreated into a

surrounding circle.

Between my last kid fight—the inconsequential one round in the ring with Ernesto didn’t count

as anything—I’d acquired boxing knowledge, from el ñato, ironically one of Ernesto’s brother’s

friends.

I’d also grown a bit, not in height, I was still five seven but, after lifting weights for a few weeks

—I had to stop when my neck disappeared—I’d moved up to be a welterweight, at one hundred and

forty-seven pounds.

Ñato is a nickname given to people with flat, or no noses. El ñato was a retired lightweight,

Golden Glove champion with a half cauliflower right ear and, of course, a flattened nose. He’d already


retired by the time I met him but, according to Ernesto, ñato had been a puncher, not a boxer: he buried

his face in his gloves and took punch after punch until he unleashed a punch. Then the match was over.

Ñato was a nice enough guy, given to fidgeting, and long silences. He was a couple of years older

than Antonio, which made him close to thirty. Nice or not, he made me nervous. For one thing, I was

reluctant to call him ñato, even after being shown a Golden Gloves fight poster featuring him, as

Ultiminio “ñato” Vasconcelos.

He didn’t know how to hold a normal conversation, or tell jokes, or laugh at jokes. Given a

chance, or not, he turned the conversation to boxing, not about his fights—he’d retired undefeated but

never spoke of them—but about the science of boxing. At times it turned into an obsession, a strange

need to teach me self-defense, how to duck under a punch, how to throw one. My concerns reached

their peak when we stood across each other, in one of his forced demonstrations, and I looked into the

intense eyes of a no longer lightweight, punching machine, worried that something would go amiss,

instinct would take over, and all my teeth would end up on the floor.

The secret to a punch, he told me in one of those sessions, unbid, of course, is not to hit the other

guy’s chin, but to drive your fist through his jaw as if you wanted it to emerge on the other side of his

head.

Ho-hum. Follow-through, we called it in baseball. And in basketball. And in any other sport as in,

‘keep your eye on the ball and follow-through.’

Ñato’s instructions rattled in my head when I faced the shoe thrower.

I didn’t throw the first punch. He did and punched me on the forehead. My fault. I’d been

careless, assuming that by the mere act of standing up to him, the situation would defuse. He was taller,

bigger too, and I hadn’t expected the punch.

A curtain descended to obscure my vision. I was in luck, though. It took only an instant for the

darkness to lift, in time to parry his next punch into a glancing blow to the side of my head and duck

under the next one, just like Ñato had taught me.


His last miss had been meant to end the fight, and when he missed, it startled him and left him

open. I threw a left jab, which he parried with too wide a motion. I feinted a second left jab and aimed a

straight right, going all out, putting my shoulder, my everything into it, intending to drive my fist clear

through his chin.

First time I knocked anyone out.

Hurt my hand good too. I couldn’t grip a pen for days.

Good thing Señor Flores, the PE instructor, the one whose brother was a boxing promoter,

wasn’t there. He might have recruited me on the spot to his brother’s stable of fighters.


37

I charged Quinto; my worldview focused on the open shirt, pale-white, bare-chested image of the son

of a bitch. He took a step back, lifting his arms in self-defense while I threw haymaker after haymaker,

none connecting.

He threw a punch. It hit me on top of one shoulder. I felt it. A jolt, like an alarm clock waking me

up.

He threw a left jab and a right cross. The jab I fended off, the cross I ducked under—Ñato’s well-

learned lesson, once again—and as I straightened up, I threw a right cross of my own, aiming between

his elbows, aiming to pierce him and have my fist emerge from his back.

He’d stepped back a bit blunting the punch’s full strength, but it connected, enough to have him

lean forward.

I jabbed left, left, left, quick punches to his head, now within easy reach. He retreated, crab-like,

eyes burdened with fear. I chased him, moving in for the kill. He lowered his guard.

What a chance. I loaded up. Wait. No. He was reaching behind his back with one hand, lifting his

shirt tails out of the way with the other.

There was no time to jab, feint or reset. I charged him, right arm still cocked for a final strike,

aiming to drive my fist through his pointy, stubbly chin.

There was impact, a loud explosion and then, sudden, total absence of sound, though the report of

the gunshot reverberated in my ears.

The silence lasted a mere instant. Voices, screams, yells.

Quinto was on his knees, eyes bulging, both hands on his throat.

I couldn’t tell what happened. I punched. Someone took a shot. I needed to reconstruct events


transpiring too fast for me to comprehend.

I’d missed Quinto’s chin. My punch had glanced of his chin and connected with his throat. I

might have even heard a crunch except that every sound had been obliterated by the gunshot. Someone

had fired their weapon. Antonio? Quinto? Had he reached his gun and fired it? If I’d been shot I hadn’t

felt it. Perhaps it was too soon for the pain sensation to travel all the way to my brain.

Before I could figure anything out, Antonio charged me, hurling a stream of obscenities, and

knocked me to the ground, falling on me, raining punches on me.

I covered up fast enough, most punches striking my arms. That still hurt. Ernesto dove at his

brother and both spiraled away from me in a confusion of arms and legs. I rolled the other way, toward

the prostrated Quinto.

“Stop, stop,” Father yelled. “He needs help.”

He didn’t mean me.

Quinto’s face had turned purple. He couldn’t breathe.

Father, who’d materialized next to me, rushed to Quinto’s side, pried his arms from his throat and

spread them wide. Quinto took a breath, his eyes still desperate but his chest rose, and he coughed, a

rough gasp, once, and again, a spray of blood making my father jump back. The last time a yellowish

liquid dribbled out. Still on his knees, his face now tilted forward, the vomit trickled down his chest to

mix with the blood soaking into his pants.

I hadn’t been shot. The only pain I felt was in my hand. And arms, And ribs: I’d been laying on

Quinto’s revolver.

It took an eternity before Quinto’s eyes lost their wildness, before he stopped wheezing, coughing

and vomiting long enough to whisper a faint, rough, “my hip.”

By then Father had been joined by Ernesto and Antonio and one of my old neighborhood gang

friends. Antonio pulled out a dagger and sliced open Quinto’s pant leg to reveal a wound, an angry,

long, pulsing, crimson gash from hip to thigh.


“You’ll live,” Ernesto said, not in a reassuring voice, the words ‘you asshole’ implied but

unspoken.

“The shot grazed you. It don’t look bad, but they’ll have to sew it up,” Antonio said while he cut

off the pant leg, folded it into a bandage, wrapped the leg and asked Ernesto for help in lifting Quinto

into the Jeep while giving me, on passing, a less than friendly look.

“You okay?” my former doorbell-ringing, rose-stealing, neighborhood gang friend put a hand on

my shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I said, standing up, gun in hand. I felt the revolver’s heft and the ache on

my hand, on my index finger. I switched the gun to my left while I clenched and unclenched my right. I

must have caught part of his chin before striking the throat. I hoped I hadn’t broken anything.

“Gimme it,” Antonio said, lifting his chin toward the gun in my hand.

Instinctively I switched the gun back to my right hand, turning it to hold it by the chrome barrel,

offering the grip. I held it while Antonio and Ernesto laid Quinto on the back of the Jeep. Ernesto got in

with Quinto to keep pressure on the wound.

Antonio approached me, arm stretched out, to retrieve the gun. I thought better of it.

“I’m gonna keep it for the time being.”

“They find you with that…”

“Make goddamned sure they don’t.”

“Gimme my money back,” Isaac called from the building’s front steps.

The Jeep started, stalled, re-started and took off, with Antonio at the wheel. It turned left at the

corner, toward Santa Catalina. I didn’t know where they were taking Quinto. I couldn’t think of a

nearby hospital.

I remained in place, gun in hand.

Father remained next to me, Isaac on the front steps. Every kid who’d been in the park,

seemingly thousands of them, had lined-up across the street to witness the fight. Neighbors had


emerged alarmed by the gunshot to bear witness to the events.

I hadn’t fired the gun. I hadn’t shot anybody. All I’d done is pick up the gun but, in all likelihood,

everyone had missed everything, except me, gun in hand, watching a bleeding man being driven away.

And everyone had seen Isaac. Other than Matilda—and probably Señora Martinez, the busybody

—no one had known Isaac was staying with us.

Next time the thugs came sniffing around, Isaac’s whereabouts would be revealed, and the goons

would come knocking at our door.

What had I done?

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