XL

It’s sunset, the sky still kindling on the night of Kol Nidrei, and Moisés feels I should accompany him to the Sephardic Center.

“You might find it appropriate in some ways,” he says, both his eyes spinning white.

Kol Nidrei is a haunting prayer in Aramaic chanted on the eve of Yom Kippur, an ancient supplication that goes back to medieval Spain and asks god to forgive and annul promises not kept. It was designed specifically to reconcile those Jews who converted to other faiths under threat of violence or death and, having survived, wished to return. It is a necessary preamble to atonement.

But standing outside the weathered facade of Chevet Ahim, I instantly understand there is another temple I have to visit and other vows to keep. As Orlando’s blue Moskvitch disappears into the narrow labyrinth of the mysterious old city, Moisés gazing back at me through the rear window, I make my way slowly past the crumbling buildings. Fresh drops of rain fall on my skin, a light cool drizzle that makes me shiver.

From nearby, I hear the soft siren of ships in port, long wailings with a primeval timbre. Around the city, white breakers rim the shore with their effervescent froth. The sky rumbles, its groan a deep and faraway ache. The rain generates little streams around the cobblestones, dipping this way then that, taking everything with them. As I walk, I see people step out of their homes to empty a bucket or jar that’s been catching the water coming in through cracks and fissures in their ceilings.

“Compañera, ¿qué hora es?” a young boy asks as he leans against the cathedral wall at the main plaza. He’s undaunted by the rain, his body language already haughty, much more seasoned than his years.

I glance at my watch without thinking. “Las ocho,” I say.

“Gracias,” he mumbles, disappointed, signaling across the way for his home boys to stay put, not to venture from under the protective awning at a local cafe.

What does it mean for me to be here?

Like everyone else in Cuba—land of symbolism and rumors— I’m trying to remember the blessing and the curse, the burnt-out dream, the wellspring, our true country.

Finally, it begins to pour, one of those torrential rains so typical and yet fantastic in the tropics. Thunder blasts like the bombs of years before. Jacarandas and roses, hibiscus and the sweetest tobacco rise up, intoxicating me. I begin to run, splashing my way through the streets.

When I turn the corner to the Menachs’, for the first time since I’ve returned, I spy the lights ablaze in my family’s apartment. Dripping wet, I run into the building only to find David and his wife at dinner, the door to the first-floor apartment wide open. He waves me in and I look around for Celina, but there’s no sign of her.

“This is Alejandra,” David says to his wife. He introduces her then tells me he and Celina have traded apartments because he can’t manage the stairs anymore.

But I’m a gazelle . . . I take the steps two at a time, defying their slickness. The bulb at the top of the hallway hangs naked on a wire as delicate as lace. When I reach the third floor, my heart in my hands, the door is ajar, a faint humming coming from inside.

I find Celina framed by the threshold: a luminous young woman in a loose beige housedress and blue plastic flip-flops, her prodigious hair swimming in the humid air. As I watch, she runs water at the kitchen sink, letting it splash into a large metal bucket.

“Hey,” she says when she finally sees me, smiling and not at all surprised. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

I step inside and the storm intensifies, the lights flickering above and around us.

“You’d think with this downpour we wouldn’t need to hoard water.” She laughs, tossing her head back, her swan’s neck elegant and fine. “C’mon,” she says, “are you gonna help me or what?”

Together, we fill the bathtub, the bathroom sink, various buckets and other containers, each one to overflowing. When we run out of pots and plastic bottles, Celina points to a cabinet above the kitchen sink.

“There are some more up there—goblets, tumblers, that kind of thing,” she says.

I open the cupboard and reach for my mother’s old wine and champagne glasses, one for every imaginable libation. As I take each receptacle, I hand it to Celina, who fills and places it on the dining room table. There are scores of shiny crystals, twinkling with a gentle music that matches the rain.

When there’s nothing left to fill, Celina steps back, sighs languidly, and runs both hands through her lush hair in relief. “Está escampando,” she says walking out to the precarious balcony and its breathtaking view of Havana. The sky is clearing, the Caribbean shimmers in the distance.

But I remain at the table with its pure waters, its verdant streams flooding the tributaries through the floors, the beams, the stairs, to the very earth.

Hours later, at the Malecón, I pull from my backpack the sealed box with my father’s ashes. I carry it in my wet hand like a talisman, the rain beading up on the plastic. I’m soaked to the spine, my clothes meaningless.

Out in the bay, lightning cuts through the sheer mist like jagged spears. It’s low tide and the green and red coral is exposed, tidal pools rippling with rain. Somewhere out there the St. Louis once hovered, its passengers weary and innocent, the blue of the ocean the least of their perils. My father traversed that watery frontier twice—once to deliver his precious pineapples and other gifts, then again, on a longer journey to deliver my mother and me.

Por el amor de dios, por el amor de dios, por el amor de dios.

When the rain finally breaks, I tear the wrapping and unseal the box, the white powder sticking to my moist fingertips. I hold the treasure to my lips for a kiss but blow instead, my warm breath carrying my father’s remains north. I watch them scatter, even the tiny chips, for a moment swirling into a smoky funnel, a figure that, in another place, another life, could have been Ochún, the Virgin of Charity. Then a fluttering of birds lifts out of the darkness from the rocks, their wings white lines as they soar.

It is on the edge of my city that I offer my father a different, more appropriate kaddish: “I say in the heart of the seas to the quaking heart / Fearing greatly because they lift up their waves / If you believe in God who made the sea / And whose name stands for eternity / The sea shall not frighten you when its waves rise up / For with you is one who has set a bound to the sea.” ⁵

Judah Halevi may or may not have made it to his Zion, but here, through me, my father is at rest in his.