My heart pounds. “You’re angry.”
There were hints of his discontent earlier, but now something has changed between us, and it feels as though the mask has fallen and he’s sharing a part of himself he normally keeps hidden away.
“‘Angry’ is the easiest emotion,” Luis replies. “You’d be surprised what people do when they’re desperate, when the dream of a society that provides for its citizens isn’t the reality.”
“People thrive regardless of their circumstances?”
“Something like that. The irony of the revolution is that it sought to eradicate capitalism, entrepreneurship, but the revolution’s greatest legacy has been the rise of a new breed of Cuban entrepreneurs. The black market thrives.”
“So where does Orwell in Cuba fit in?” I ask, returning to our original point.
He smiles faintly, his previous rancor erased. “You forget, I am a history professor.”
“A Cuban history professor. I thought Castro discouraged such activity—examining the why behind things.”
“How can we study history if we only examine the events in a vacuum? Orwell’s stocked in the National Library and others. Knowledge is not discouraged in Cuba, only acting upon that knowledge.”
“And reading?”
“Reading is encouraged.” His lips twist, that tinge of disdain back again. “Few can afford to buy books, however, so we borrow them. My students attend the university for free, which is a great thing, but they still must pay for books, supplies, transportation, food, on limited incomes. How can we afford those things when we’re barely surviving as it is? When our ability to support ourselves is limited by the government? The legacy of modern Cuba is that we can enjoy things for a moment, but we cannot truly possess them. The country is not ours; it is merely on loan from Fidel.”
If I thought him attractive before, this conversation, the passion that animates him now, is my undoing.
“Do all Cubans think like this, speak like this?” It surprises me to hear the same thoughts fall from his lips echoed by the exiles hanging around Versailles in Miami, sipping espresso and eating pastelitos while calling for change in Cuba.
“Some do. Not enough.” His voice lowers. “Those of us who want more speak in whispers.”
Luis takes a deep breath, leaning forward. His scent fills my nostrils, and once again, we’re sharing confidences. A line of goose bumps rises over my skin. I glance away from his dark flashing eyes, his full mouth, simultaneously craving his words and wishing I could build an impenetrable wall between us.
“Existing in a constant state of uncertainty is hell,” Luis says. “This restaurant is the difference between putting meals on the table and the days when we went hungry. But how long will it last? The government controls everything.”
A curse falls from his beautiful mouth.
“This country. It has so much potential. So much possibility. But it breaks your heart every single time you dare hope for more. Fidel’s great revolution was supposed to bring us equality. Yet so many of the problems that existed before him still do.”
“What would you wish it to be?” I ask, meeting his gaze, unable to look away. Have I ever met a man like him?
No.
“Free. Democratic.” He lifts the cigar to his mouth, inhaling in one deep breath. He exhales a cloud of smoke. “I would like to shout. The freedom to protest when I do not agree with what my government is doing without fear of retribution. The freedom to listen to music without the fear that the regime will accuse me of being too ‘Western’ and throw me in jail. I don’t want to spend my days looking over my shoulder, wondering if my neighbor is really a member of the secret police, that one of the students in my classroom isn’t there solely for the purpose of spying on me for the government, that I won’t accidentally say something that could result in me being thrown in jail or worse.”
A chill slides down my spine. This is the Cuba my great-aunts warned me about.
“I want to own something of my own,” Luis continues. “Something the government can’t take from me, something that is mine. If we left, the government would come into our house and inventory every single possession to make sure we didn’t take any of it with us. We don’t own the furniture, the pieces that have been in our family for generations. The framed photographs on the wall taken by my grandfather. None of it is ours.”
The urge to take his hand, to offer comfort, is so strong I reach out before I catch myself. I snatch my hand back, my fingers curling into a fist in my lap. This connection between us—I can’t be imagining it—he must feel it, too.
Married. He’s married, Marisol.
“I want to be my own person.” His words wrap around my heart. “Not another number in the eyes of the government. Another food ration, another worker, another Cuban who isn’t free in his own country.”
My heart breaks for him even as I reach for hope in a place where that particular emotion seems perversely futile.
“We survive by not calling attention to ourselves, by being good little soldiers. I am tired of putting on the uniform, pretending I’m someone I’m not, unable to think for myself, burying these thoughts so they don’t get me or my family killed. I’m thirty-six years old, and each day the fight filters from my body, the effort to exert myself, to get through a day and meet my basic needs, to care for my grandmother, for my family, to put food on the table, robbing me of much else. They ensure we’re so preoccupied with the daily struggle that there’s little left over for the most important one, for taking control of our future.”
“Do you think things will improve now that diplomatic relations have increased?”
“I hope so. But what change? Will we go from this to serving even more tourists and courting cruise ships? That was the Cuba of Batista’s time, when the American mob ran Havana with their hotels and casinos. When Hollywood used this as their playground. Is there no chance for Cuba to be something more? Something greater?”
The light casts a shadow across his face, the bruise there. Luis rubs his jaw, his gaze downcast.
“There are restaurants in Havana my grandmother frequented with her family when she was a little girl. Now only tourists can afford to eat there. We’re guests in our own country. Second-rate citizens because we had the misfortune to be born Cuban.”
He raises his head to meet my gaze, his eyes defiant. We do not wear humility well.
“Would increased tourism be better, though? Than this?”
“I don’t know,” he answers, his voice weary. “It’s a cruel twist of fate that we’ve suffered through all we have to merely end up where we started, and in my family’s case with far less.
“It’s hard to hope,” he continues. “We’ve known worse times, of course. It was hell when we lost the support of the Soviet Union.”
The not-so-Special Period.
“Would you ever leave?”
“This is my home; it’s all I’ve ever known. And at the same time, it’s hard. There comes a point when you have to decide if it’s worth it, if the abuses are enough to make you want to leave, if they outweigh those few moments when you know true pleasure.”
It’s the word “pleasure” that does it—
It’s late and I should go to bed. I shouldn’t have hushed conversations with a married man in the near-darkness.
I set my glass on the table, rising—
“Cristina never understood why I couldn’t be happy here. Why it wasn’t enough. It was what ended our marriage.”
I sit back down. “You’re separated?”
“Divorced.”
“Recently?”
“It depends on your definition of ‘recent,’ I suppose. It’s been two years.”
“But she said she was your wife,” I sputter.
A short laugh escapes his beautiful mouth. “That sounds like Cristina.” There’s affection contained in those words, too. He takes another puff of his cigar. “She doesn’t like you.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t speak, but then again he doesn’t have to. His eyes say it all—that and the memory of his finger brushing mine earlier on the Malecón.