chapter sixteen
Elisa
The weeks eke by with agonizing slowness after Pablo leaves Havana, December creeping in, the monotony of life punctuated by the occasional bombing, shooting, random attacks that leave our mother even more convinced we mustn’t traipse around Havana on our own. I’m fine with the new rules—I’m in purgatory, clinging to each radio report, every scrap of news about the fighting in the Sierra Maestra. Pablo’s letters arrive sporadically, delivered by messengers, ferreted to me by the staff members I’ve recruited through bribery and cajoling. I live in terror of my mother or father finding the letters, of Magda’s condemnation, my sisters’ questions.
One afternoon I confide in Ana, telling her I met a man and little else. I want to talk about Pablo, want to share this secret with those closest to me, but each time I begin to speak of him, something inside me rebels. Instead, I content myself with the letters he sends me, the ones I write to him. I hide his letters in my room, reading them over and over again when I am alone, when the connection between us is gossamer thin. I worry my own letters won’t reach him in the mountains, that they’ll be intercepted, fear I am barreling toward disaster.
Despite the way we left things, the uncertainty of us, I cannot stop hoping our relationship isn’t finished.
When the next letter arrives, I rip it open greedily.
There’s a stillness in the mountains. A quiet I never found in the city. It’s so beautiful—you would love it here. We are drawn to the water, but the countryside has its charms, too. It’s so green—we wake up to the sun rising over the mountains, and the view rivals even that over the seawall. The clouds are so low it feels as though you could reach up and touch them.
I think of you often. I miss you.
I adopt an intense piety I never possessed before, kneeling in the pews of the Cathedral and praying God will protect Pablo, keep him safe, bring him back to me. And I worry about Alejandro. Constantly.
I’m not sure where God weighs in on the issue of Cuba’s future—I fear he created this paradise on earth and left us to fend for ourselves—but I hope he’ll protect my brother and Pablo. Hope is all you have to cling to when the world around you evokes every other emotion.
I’ve taken to spending more and more of my days with Ana. We lounge by the pool, drinks in hand while Maria plays in the water, splashing around. It’s hard to reconcile this image of Havana with the one that greets me each time I read my father’s discarded newspapers. The news often tells a gruesome tale—bloody pictures of dead Cubans cover the pages. I can’t help it—I search the images, the faces, fearing the day Pablo or Alejandro will stare back at me. Batista has been especially prolific lately, purging the streets of anyone he deems a threat. It must be exhausting to have so many enemies, to feel the breath of Fidel Castro against the back of his neck.
Today, Beatriz and Isabel are fighting off boredom by fighting with each other in the living room while I sit on the couch, curled up with a book. God knows where Maria is, probably off chasing lizards in the backyard.
“She’s crazy, isn’t she?”
Beatriz’s voice intrudes on my novel.
“What?” I ask.
“Isabel. She’s crazy for saying she’ll marry Alberto. Tell her.”
Our eldest sister shoots daggers at Beatriz, her gaze turning swiftly to me.
Our parents don’t know about the engagement yet. Personally, I doubt Alberto had the stomach to face our father—not that I can entirely blame him. Alberto’s father is a doctor, successful and staunchly middle-class, but not exactly sugar baron money; Alberto works as an accountant. He and Isabel met in Varadero nine months ago, and from that moment, she hasn’t paid attention to any other man.
He’s handsome enough, and he does seem to genuinely care about Isabel, but I’m not quite sure how she feels about him. She’s the most difficult one to read of all of us. She keeps her emotions locked tightly away whereas Beatriz lets them fly for the entire world to see. I’d like to think I’m as contained as Isabel, but I fear my heart gives me away.
“If she’s happy, that’s all that matters,” I reply.
Isabel’s expression softens, shooting me a grateful look.
Beatriz lets out an inelegant snort.
“If only it were that simple. How long do you think happiness and love will continue once the difference in their circumstances is too much for them to overcome? Do you think it simply won’t matter that she was born into all of this and he wasn’t?” Her tone gentles as her attention turns to Isabel. “You love him, maybe. You’re infatuated with him, yes. But is that enough for marriage?”
“What else is there?” Isabel snaps.
“Compatibility.”
Beatriz has an uncanny way of striking at the uncomfortable heart of things.
“We’re fine in that department, but thanks for your concern,” Isabel retorts.
Beatriz rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about sex.”
“Beatriz,” Isabel hisses, her face reddening.
“Please, like we don’t know that’s what you mean.”
“Perhaps some of us don’t believe you must say every single thing you think. That some things are private.”
Beatriz shrugs. “I suppose I don’t see the point in pretending.”
“You haven’t any sense.”
“Sense? I’m not the one marrying a man who’s utterly wrong for me.” Beatriz rises from her perch on the sofa, her voice softening a bit. “I love you. I don’t want to see you make a mistake. Alberto is a nice enough man for someone. I just don’t believe he’s right for you, and I want you to be with a man who is worthy of you, a man who is your match in every way.”
“Then you presume too much. We are not all you. We do not all have your ambitions. Alberto makes me happy. He is a good man. That is enough.” Isabel’s gaze narrows. “Is that why you reject every man who proposes, why you play the flirt and keep them at arm’s length? Because you don’t think they’re worthy of you?”
Beatriz shrugs, flashing us an enigmatic smile. “If telling yourself that makes you feel smug and superior about your own choices, then sure.”
She leaves us without a good-bye.
“She is impossible,” Isabel mutters.
She can be. She also can be too perceptive by half.
A minute later Isabel leaves the room and I am alone with my thoughts, not an entirely welcome place to be. It’s been a week since I’ve heard from Pablo, since I received that last letter, a week of uncertainty and nerves, a week of missing him terribly. Has he simply tired of me or is there something more at play? Has danger befallen him?
I can’t help but think of Beatriz’s words to Isabel now; is she correct? Once passion fades are we left with compatibility, and if so, will Pablo and I forever be at odds, viewing the world from distinct—and opposing—beliefs?
One of the gardeners walks into the room, his hat in his hands, a look of discomfort on his face. He’s one of the staff members I’ve been bribing for weeks now, using them to carry letters back and forth between Pablo’s messengers and me. I’m fairly certain Beatriz does the same thing with our brother.
“Miss Elisa, there’s a man to see you. He’s in the backyard. He’s—”
I leap off the couch, mustering what little decorum I can in the face of overwhelming relief and excitement.
He’s home.
In the end, I can’t resist the impulse to follow Pablo through the city to the house where he’s been staying.
The residence is in the Vedado district, a few streets from Guillermo’s home, the site of our first meeting. It’s a nondescript place filled with generic furnishings, sparse decor, and a faintly stale scent that suggests it hasn’t been aired out in a long time.
“Are you the only one staying here?” I ask when he closes the door behind us.
“For now. I live here from time to time.”
The floor plan is fairly open, room leading into room, and I follow Pablo as he walks into the kitchen, my gaze running over his appearance. He looks leaner, and at the same time, more muscular than when I last saw him, as though he’s been shaped and molded, chiseled down to the bare essentials during his time in the mountains. His skin is darker than it was when he left, his hair a touch longer than is fashionable. His face is once again freshly shaved; wearing a scraggly beard in Havana these days is tantamount to testing the limits of Batista’s self-restraint.
I can’t stop looking at him, wanting to pinch myself. This isn’t a dream. He’s been gone for a month, I’ve missed him for a month, and now we’re here and we’re alone.
“Can I get you a drink? Or something to eat? I have a few things in the cupboards.” He grins. “I warn you, I’m not the most domestic.”
I shake my head.
“Do you want to sit?” He walks out of the narrow kitchen and gestures toward a faded couch shoved into a corner of the tiny room.
To the left of me, Pablo stands in the doorway to the kitchen. To the right of me is another doorway. I can make out the edge of a mattress covered in a navy blue spread, a pair of trouser pants draped across the foot of the bed, this intimate view of his domestic life sending a flutter to my stomach.
I could rationalize my decision by saying there’s an uncertainty thickening the air in Havana these days, that each shot, each explosion, each act of rebellion pushes us closer and closer to the edge and I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there. I could point to my own lack of control in my life, the match that was lit months ago burning strong and bright inside me. I could use so many excuses to justify love, but in the end none of them seem to matter much anymore.
He is here. I love him.
There’s nothing else.
I leave Pablo standing in the doorway to the kitchen, my heart pounding as I walk toward the bedroom. My knees tremble beneath my dress.
His gaze heats my skin.
Perhaps this is foolish—it most likely is—but what is there in life if not the ability to indulge in the occasional foolish moment? How many of these indulgences do I have left?
I stop a foot away from the bed, its outline mottled by the dying daylight. I take a deep breath, then another, my back to him, my fingers shaking as I pull my hair forward, draping it over my shoulder, fumbling with the buttons at my nape.
The sound of his feet against the carpet, each inhale and exhale of breath, fills the room.
Pablo stops.
I already gave him my heart, but I can’t deny that there’s something equally momentous in this, too. Or that I’m more than a little nervous.
His lips ghost across my nape, followed by his fingers at the back of my dress, his knuckles brushing my spine, a reenactment of that first night in the yard behind Guillermo’s house. Pablo undoes the line of buttons, the air hitting my back with each one. When he’s finished, he kisses my skin, turning me in his arms.
“Are you sure?” Pablo asks, his voice taut.
“Yes.”
He leans into me, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders, stroking between the blades, reveling in the feel of him, the scent of him. He rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed.
“I love you,” he whispers.
My eyes slam close. It’s silly, really, that saying the words out loud gives them so much power, but it does.
“I love you, too.”
We lie in bed beside each other, the sheets pooled around our waists. The act of being naked in front of a man, even Pablo, is too novel for me to be entirely comfortable, so I rest on my stomach, my head propped on the pillow, watching him. His hand trails down my back, his fingers walking the length of my spine, the sensation both soothing and ticklish. I bury my head in the pillow, stifling another laugh.
“I give up; I can’t take it anymore.”
Pablo grins, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me snug against his body, burying his face in my hair.
“Have I told you how much I love you?” he asks.
I turn to face him. “How much?”
A note of seriousness threads through my teasing tone; there are so many differences between us, and I know why I admire him—his passion, honor, and conviction. What does he admire in me?
“With everything I have, everything I am,” he answers. “You’re the hope in all of this. I’ve been fighting for so long now that I almost forget what life was like before, who I was when I was just a lawyer in Havana, a brother, a son, a friend. When I’m with you I remember the man I used to be, the man who had hope, a man who wasn’t surrounded by death.
“I want to be the kind of man who deserves you. A good man, an honorable man. A man devoted to his country and his family. You are my family now, Elisa.
“You’re smart, and you’re kind, and you’re loyal. You have faith and courage, and you push me to be better, to believe in those things, too. I want to be a man you’re proud of. A man you could love.”
I want the same things, to be someone he admires, to fight for what I believe in just as he does. He makes me want to be brave.
“I love you,” I whisper. “Always.”
Pablo takes my hand, his lips running over my naked ring finger.
“I wish you could wear my ring on your hand for everyone to see,” he says against my skin.
My heart thunders at the promise contained there. “Me, too.”
The keeping of this secret becomes progressively more difficult, a little more painful, and with each day he fights against Batista, protecting him becomes even more important.
Pablo’s fingers move to my brow, stroking there, tracing the line, sweeping down to caress my face.
“You’re worried,” he says.
There’s hardly a point in lying to him.
“I am. What happens next? Is this it?”
“This will never be it.”
“What else can there be?” I ask, my tone bleak.
“Us growing old together. Raising a family together. Watching our children have children of their own. Falling asleep beside each other at night and waking next to each other every morning.”
“Do you really think we can have that?”
“I hope so. If not, what are we fighting for?”
“How bad is it in the mountains? We hear things, but it’s impossible to know what’s real and what’s false with Batista. They say he’s censoring more and more.”
“That’s because we’re advancing. We captured one of Batista’s garrisons. At some point, morale will play a factor. His military is fighting their own countrymen, have been doing so for years now, and most of them know Batista’s not worth dying for. We’ll wear them down. And if we don’t, another group will. He has too many enemies to survive this.”
“How bad is it?” I repeat.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want it touching you. I get through the nights in the mountains by imagining you here, safe in the city. Imagining our future together.” Pablo grimaces. “War is never anything other than bad, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.”
“I worry about you,” I confess. “All the time. Wonder where you are, what you’re doing, if you’re alive. It’s so strange to go about my day as though everything is normal, to not be able to tell anyone about you, while I feel like half my heart has been torn from my chest.” I take a deep breath. “I worry something will happen to you and I won’t know considering we’re little more than secrets in each other’s lives.”
My brother is a conduit of sorts between us, my ears within Cuba’s rebellion, but his whereabouts are equally difficult to predict.
Pablo squeezes my hand. “If anything happens to me while I’m gone, Guillermo will find you. It won’t come to that, though, because I’m coming home to you, Elisa. Batista himself couldn’t keep me away.”
“Where will you go?”
“Che is marching toward Santa Clara. He and his men plan to make a stand against Batista’s forces.”
“And you will join them.”
“Yes.”
“Are you ever afraid?” I can’t imagine the risks he takes, the dangers he faces.
“I was with Latour in the Sierra Maestra at the end of July.” He pushes up on his elbow, the sheet falling to his waist, my gaze dropping to his lean chest before returning to his eyes. “We fought the Cuban army. Men died beside me, their bodies crumpling to the ground as their blood spilled over the mountains. Latour was killed. Fidel came to bolster our forces, but we were already surrounded by Batista’s army. Fidel had to negotiate a cease-fire—try to, at least—in order to give us a chance to escape. We were a breath away from being wiped out, the revolution, everything we’ve fought for over. I was afraid then.”
“Would that be such a bad thing? If the cease-fire had held? We’ve been fighting for what? Over five years? What has the rebellion accomplished other than chipping away at us? Batista’s still in power.”
“He won’t be forever. What else is there to do but fight? There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Cuba, nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice.”
Pablo climbs out of bed, walking to where his clothes lie in a pile on the floor, where I stripped them from his body, a sliver of light from the open window highlighting his nakedness. My body is suddenly cold without his warmth.
I never considered that the war would make monsters out of all of them, but I fear it now. There’s a danger in the way we live, in blithely continuing on as though nothing is wrong with the society we’ve created, but there’s also danger in the fervor that fills him, the emotion driving all of the bearded ones.
And suddenly, I am very afraid.
“I love you,” Pablo says, his voice fierce.
I close my eyes.
“I love you, too.”
I’ve never told a man I wasn’t related to that I loved him before today, never had a man say those words to me. It should feel like the beginning of everything, but it sounds unmistakably like good-bye.
Pablo reaches into his trouser pocket, pulling out a tiny box.
I still.
He flips open the box.
His voice is hoarse. “It was my grandmother’s.”
The ring is beautiful and delicate, the diamonds arranged in a vintage shape.
I swallow, my mouth going dry at the sight of that ring, my heart thundering in my chest.
It’s fast. Much too fast.
He’s leaving. Revolution is here, knocking on the door.
Pablo swallows, a tremor in his voice. “I don’t know what kind of life we’ll have when this is over. I probably won’t be able to give you the life you’re used to. But I love you. Always. I can promise you that.”
Tears slide down my face. He slides the ring on my finger.
“Come back to me,” I say.
“I promise.”