“Do you like your job? Practicing law?”
I know enough about topics I’ve studied in heavy books given to me by tutors, but I know little of the practical applications of things. Lawyers dine at our table occasionally; however, the conversation rarely turns to their work or anything of substance.
“I like it well enough, I suppose,” he answers. “I enjoy helping people—trying to, at least. Justice in Cuba—” His voice trails off, but I’m not so oblivious to the reality around me to not fill in the blanks.
Most of my education on Cuba’s political condition was given to me through the walls of my father’s study in the form of the angry shouts and recriminations I’ve overheard.
How can you justify the way we live? People are starving, suffering. You built your fortune on the backs of others. We all have.
Up ahead, a group of boys dive for coins left by American tourists, the children’s bodies bobbing against the waves before disappearing beneath the surface in waters likely overrun by sharks. All for a few coins.
“These are difficult times,” Pablo says, his gaze—like mine—on the boys. “So many of my friends graduated from university years ago and can’t find jobs. They’re frustrated, and they’re angry, and they’re scared for their future.” He turns from the boys, back to face me. “I took some time off from practicing law to focus on other things.”
The phrase “other things” dangles ominously between us. The winds of change coming from the former students of the University of Havana—who are now left without a place to study since Batista closed the university out of fear for their subversive activities—have already torn through my life once. This is one afternoon, one indulgence. I don’t need to know all his secrets; can pretend he is merely an attorney, nothing more.
“What about you?” Pablo asks.
“What about me?”
“You never really answered me before. What is life like on the other side of the gates?”
I laugh softly, relieved to be back on firmer ground. “Not as exciting as people seem to imagine.”
Pablo is silent for a moment, his gaze far more intense than an afternoon walk on the Malecón merits. Everything about him is intense—when he discusses politics, when he looks at me. It’s that intensity that has me gravitating toward him; it’s refreshing to be around someone who cares more about substance than frivolity. He reminds me so much of my brother—Alejandro has that same determined glint in his eyes, the same conviction underscoring each word.
Pablo grins. “So if you aren’t marching all over Havana, capturing hearts, what do you do in your free time?”
“I spend time with my sisters—I have three.” And a brother no one speaks of anymore. “I read; I go shopping. We like to ride horses, go to the beach.”
I don’t mention the social obligations. It all sounds so frivolous and tedious. And it is, this waiting around for a man to walk into our lives and marry us. A part of me envies Alejandro for his ability to cast off the weight and responsibility of being a Perez, the ease with which he is willing to risk everything for his beliefs. And at the same time, there’s an anger there I cannot erase. Loyalty is a complicated thing—where does family fit on the hierarchy? Above or below country? Above or below the natural order of things? Or are we above all else loyal to ourselves, to our hearts, our convictions, the internal voice that guides us?
I wish I knew.
“I’m surprised you’re not in school overseas somewhere.”
“My mother didn’t support us going to university. Beatriz lobbied the hardest for it—she would have made an excellent attorney—but in the end, it wasn’t worth the fight. My parents have a very traditional view of what it is to be a woman in Cuba, and no matter how much society might disagree with them, they weren’t going to change their opinions. A working Perez woman is a blight on the Perez name.”
He looks faintly outraged. “So you’re just what—supposed to wait around until one day you move from your parents’ home to your husband’s?”
“Yes.”
“What if you never marry?”
“Then I’ll stay in our house taking care of my mother until I grow old.”
I don’t find the idea any more appealing than he does, but I don’t know how to explain to him how few options are afforded to us. I suppose I could break from family tradition, go against my parents’ wishes, but the truth is there’s never been anything I’ve been passionate enough about to risk severing all ties with my family. I don’t possess secret dreams of being a doctor or lawyer. I’m nineteen, and I don’t know what my future looks like, harder still to predict when I’m surrounded by such uncertainty.
“And you’re happy with that?” he asks, his expression doubtful.
“No, of course not. But you speak as though there are limitless options available to me.”
“What if there could be?”
“I have no interest in politics,” I reply.
It is both warning and caution—I have no interest in revolution, in even a hint of it. Bombs aren’t the only things that go off in Havana; President Batista’s firing squads have been especially prolific lately, and no Cuban, regardless of their wealth, is above his notice. My own brother is proof of that. The best thing to do, the smart thing, the way to survive in Havana is to keep your head down and go about your daily life as though the world around you isn’t creeping into madness.
“You speak as though politics is its own separate entity,” he says. “As though it isn’t in the air around us, as though every single part of us isn’t political. How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?”
“Very few can afford the luxury of being political in Cuba.”
“And no one can afford the luxury of not being political in Cuba,” he counters.
The fervor lingering in his words, the conviction with which he speaks them, transforms him before my eyes. His overlong hair blows in the breeze, his dark eyes flashing, and there’s something about the ferocity in his gaze that reminds me of the corsair on our wall at home. This is not the sort of man who waits for permission, but a man of action, a man of deep abiding passion.
What would it be like to have such a man be mine?
“Aren’t you tired of keeping your head down and praying for invisibility?” he asks, his voice soft.
His question tugs at me, the undeniable fact that I am both attracted to and repelled by this zeal within him. How many hours have I spent having these very conversations with my brother, and in the end, where did it leave us? I didn’t lie—I have no interest in revolution, in armed revolt, in killing. There are women who fight this battle for Cuba’s future, but I have no desire to join their ranks, for my presence to be excised from our family as Alejandro’s has been. But the freedom Pablo speaks of? The love for his country that infuses each word that falls from his lips? There is beauty behind that sentiment and a devotion that is admirable.
Batista’s policies aren’t about Cuba or what’s best for the Cuban people. They’re designed to serve Batista, to increase his wealth, his power, to keep his stranglehold on the island forever.
Do we all dare to hope for more?
Of course.
But it’s hard to hope when all you’ve known is corruption, when your reality is rigged elections and the possibility of more of the same.
I admire his hope; I envy it. And even more, I fear it.
Pablo shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak of such things.”
A rueful smile settles on my lips. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who worries about ‘should.’”
“That’s true,” he concedes, his mouth quirking.