The Domino Diaries Part 14

"Yeah, from all the suicides who hung themselves off these incredibly haunting banyan trees there. The park looks like someone's nightmare."

"This is where you lost your virginity?"

"Mhmm," she said, waving at our driver in the rearview to stop the truck. "My old house isn't far. I'll take you to see where I grew up."

We stopped an old Plymouth that was huffing its way over to Quinta Avenida, the avenue where the Malecn ends and dips under a tunnel and climbs to blossom into a six-lane avenue, divided by a lush, tree-lined island for pedestrians to stroll in the shade or relax on stone benches straight out of Santa Monica, California. When you exit that tunnel Miramar isn't so much a different neighborhood of the city as a different world. The decay and despair of so many homes in Vedado give way to the abandoned, opulent mansions that run for miles, many converted into foreign emba.s.sies. At night the most expensive jineteras across the city strut in their Lycra catsuits looking to lure diplomats and other rich visitors until someone accepts their price.

We turned off the avenue down a side street just before the spooky suicide park Sofa had mentioned. A man from a group playing dominoes over a table on the corner glared at Sofa in her summer dress and then over at me. He muttered something and they all stared at us.

"Coo! These tourists steal the best of everything in our country," one of them moaned.

Our visit to her childhood neighborhood hadn't begun auspiciously.

Sofa turned and gave me a scolding look before smiling her satisfaction. "My people giving you s.h.i.+t definitely helps cheer me up."

"It's depressing as f.u.c.k," I said.

"People like you are all the same. The ugliest thing you can find traveling around damaged places is always another tourist. That's your biggest fear, isn't it?"

"I can't help where I'm from any more than they can help where they came from."

"Why should you be depressed? According to them you've stolen the best mujer in all of Cuba. I bet they wouldn't have said the same thing about Fidel Castro's granddaughter. Who knows, maybe she'll see us around Havana."

This was an accurate forecast of my doomed last stretch in Havana. And after this she walked away emphasizing her triumph with each voluptuous step and wrecking-ball swing of her hips while the domino table full of men hissed and shrieked their approval. I followed her over to the park until she reached behind herself to pull up her skirt. We unpacked some much needed cheer and goodwill at the Park of the Hanged under one of the nightmarish banyan trees while Sofa sarcastically called out the name of the guy she lost her virginity to as a means of encouraging me to pick up the tempo before we got arrested.

Afterward, we wandered a few blocks off the avenue and turned up at a residential street littered with drowsy homes that wouldn't look out of place in any suburb across the United States. Most had the familiar Cuban sausage dogs behind fences yelping "Intruder! Intruder!" until they abandoned their posts once we went over to pet them and applaud their ferociousness.

"The next house was ours," Sofa said softly. "They painted it yellow. It was nicer pink. I wonder if the man my father sold it to still lives there now. Probably. I've heard he's had a terrible time since he bought it ten years ago."

"Who was he?"

"A Spanish businessman. Supplies the hotels in Miramar with various things. I don't know him well. I don't really know why I'm taking you here actually."

Sofa opened the gate and I followed behind her into the front yard of her former home. As she walked she looked a little shaken glancing over at her neighbors' properties. When we got to the front door we could hear what sounded like a sledgehammer coming from the backyard. We went around the side of the house and saw construction workers being overseen by an older, debonair gentleman who'd brought out a pitcher of mojitos and was pouring gla.s.ses.

"Oye, Mario!" Sofa cried out.

Mario turned around and smiled wide with his lips slowly parting.

"Still here?" Sofa laughed.

"I've been stranded ever since I bought the place. Look at you. You're as beautiful as your mother. Come closer so I can give you a kiss."

They talked for twenty minutes while Mario showed Sofa the changes he'd made to the house in an attempt to improve its value for a sale. In between Mario pointing out his changes and Sofa updating him on her family on the island and in Canada, she showed me where she'd taken her first steps, where she'd slept with her brother and aunt, and the room where she'd kissed a boy for the first time. It was as if we were viewing her past and the forgotten dreams she'd long since abandoned behind the gla.s.s of a p.a.w.nshop window. In every room we entered she made a face like her heart caved in.

"It's a beautiful home," I said to both of them. I turned to Mario. "Why are you trying to sell it?"

He sighed as Sofa shook her head.

"My friend." Mario put his hand on my shoulder. "As I'm sure you know, to visit Havana is paradise. But to live in Havana is h.e.l.l. And that's before I could even begin to explain what doing business is like in this f.u.c.king country. Over the years they've come here and seized my car, my motorcycle. I'm hara.s.sed constantly. They've seized all kinds of things. You can't do business here without dealing with the black market. Of course the government knows this. The illegal economy is bigger than the official economy. It's all inst.i.tutionally corrupt and I was just too nave to think I could ever navigate such a hideously broken system. I need to go back to Spain and start over. I give up. I've spent everything I've ever earned here just to improve this property to sell it off so I can finally leave. I'm dying faster than even this rotting-away city."

"Would you leave tomorrow if you could sell it?" I asked Mario.

"Por favor." He laughed. "Would I leave tomorrow if I sold this place? I would leave tonight."

"Brinicito is here trying to interview the family Guillermo Rigondeaux left behind."

"A very beautiful boxer. What a sad face he had even before Fidel called him a traitor. A true Cuban champion for his time."

"How dangerous is it to try to talk with them?" I asked Mario.

"Two government cameras are focused on his house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Easily the most politically radioactive home in Havana. If you go, be prepared for a knock on the door any second and to be escorted to the airport by security. I wouldn't go if I were you."

"I don't even know where it is yet."

"Que va." Mario snickered. "We all know where it is. Boyeros. Near the airport. Everybody knows the little green house. His house was on the news here for weeks after he tried to defect. Stay here, I'll go inside and get a pencil and paper and draw you a map."

After he'd finished sketching the street and government buildings next to Rigondeaux's home, I asked how he knew the directions were accurate.

Mario smiled and asked me to stop any taxi on the street, secure a ride, and then ask them to take me to the address he'd written down. After we'd left her old home, Sofa and I tried this twice back on Quinta Avenida. Both times drivers gave us an incredulous look before driving off. It was pretty evident this was a real danger in a land where, if there was a suggestion you were sympathetic to one of the most famous living traitors in any way, your whole life was in peril. Maybe not just your life, either; anyone close to you, also. While you aren't likely to meet a people more generous, n.o.body can hold a grudge like Cubans.

24.

JUDAS.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

-Fidel Castro "LISTEN, BRINICITO," SOFA WAS SAYING in bed at our apartment, late on the night before we went to the house Fidel had given Rigondeaux as a reward for his first Olympic medal. "We don't have long in Havana together. It's only because of Rigondeaux winning his fight that we have this time together, so I'll go with you to this house. I'd like to meet his family. Keep in mind, if we visit that house you're never going to be let back into this country again. So if you're comfortable with that, you better get everything you want to film in Havana before they take you away."

The phone rang.

"Oye, campen," a voice slurred. I knew from the word campen that it was a boxer, all right, but whoever it was, he was drunk out of his mind and I couldn't make out much. "Lo siento, campen. Lo siento. Emergencia. Por favor. Lo siento. Mi familia. Emergencia. I must see you right away. Lo siento."

The only boxer I'd ever spoken with on the phone who was drunk was Tefilo Stevenson. He'd declined or indefinitely postponed every request I'd ever made to meet with him and usually ended each phone call with the same tragic question, "Campen, what time is it anyway?" I'd answer with the time and he'd follow up, "Bueno. Which day is it?" After I'd tell him the day he'd break my heart again asking what month it was. It made no difference what hour I called him. No matter how early it was that I called him on his cell phone, Stevenson was to some extent intoxicated.

But after a dozen of these horribly awkward phone calls, I was very familiar with his nasal voice that enjoyed toying with me, using Russian and English sprinkled into the conversation. This wasn't him or any voice that I recognized. Then it dawned on me....

"Hector?"

"S," he groaned, clearing his throat. "Lo siento, campen. But I must come over."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Sofa was glaring at me.

"Con permiso," I told Hector. I turned to Sofa and covered the phone: "He says there's some kind of family emergency and he has to come over."

"He's drunk?" she asked.

"He's drunk or he's badly injured. He sounds awful."

"He knows where we are?"

"Yeah."

"Madre ma, Brinicito. There's no family emergency. He needs money! Don't let him come over here. Give me the f.u.c.king phone," she demanded, reaching over to grab it.

"This has never happened before! Hector's a friend. What if there is an emergency?"

"Right," Sofa lamented. "Decide now how much you want to lose when he's in our apartment begging and refusing to leave unless you pay him. And keep in mind how it looks having a drunken two-time Olympic champion puking and stumbling his way to our apartment at this hour of the night."

I took my hand off the phone. "This is a family emergency?"

"Please. I must see you. Please. Please, please, please..."

"I can go to you."

"No," Hector insisted. "I will be there in thirty minutes. Stay where you are. Please."

"Okay."

He hung up the phone.

"You think you're being a friend right now," Sofa groaned. "All you've done is made yourself a target."

I got dressed and left our apartment and went out onto the roof to keep a look out for Hector's arrival. Even as late as it was, broken-down American gypsy cabs haunted Calle Neptuno like meandering spirits climbing toward the magnificent front steps of the University of Havana and the bizarre Napoleon museum nearby, only to swing off along the bend toward the Coppelia ice cream stand and under the looming bulk of the Habana Libre, where the city's increasingly visible h.o.m.os.e.xual cruising community roamed at night. Fidel used to send them off to gruesome labor camps enclosed in barbwire, but things had slowly improved. Looking out toward Miami, a blackout extended down every street leading down to the Malecn, interrupted in distant pinp.r.i.c.ks of light from the ends of cigars smoked by unseen figures. I sat on the edge of my roof dreading Hector's arrival while I watched the procession of Fords, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs, all with their ghostly, lonesome headlights drifting over the shattered terrain of broken streets toward my apartment until they pa.s.sed and receded on their way to complete their city-wide circuit. One car honked the theme of The G.o.dfather to warn stray animals of their approach or maybe gently interrupt a couple arguing in the shadows, seeing if they wanted to be picked up. The Hotel Nacional was only a mile or so away, where Michael Corleone met the rest of America's most powerful fictional gangsters on the rooftop and sliced off pieces of Cuba, frosted over a cake, dividing up owners.h.i.+p until Castro ruined everything. When the car honked the opening bars of the theme again, dogs on a neighbor's rooftop howled their attempts at harmony as several couples leaned against their wrought iron balconies, under their laundry lines swaying limply in the warm air, and turned in our direction. I noticed a hand-painted portrait of Camilo on the roof of a Buick. One of the most beautiful surprises I'd ever seen was witnessing children across the country observing the anniversary of Camilo's death from a plane crash shortly after the triumph of the revolution by bringing flowers to the ocean and rivers. Many rumors claimed Fidel was responsible for the crash.

When you wake up from a bad dream in Havana, it always takes longer than you've ever experienced in your life to make sure that you're really awake. I kept wanting to go back inside my room to ask Sofa if Hector had really called and was really on the way over. It was only after Hector finally arrived and spilled out of the cab and fell into the gutter that I knew it was real. A group of men playing dominoes on the corner came over to help him up. Suddenly the streetlight burned out and there was nothing but darkness and urgent voices.

I ran down several flights of stairs and found Hector crawling up the fifth stair, having thrown up on the landing. The stench from the vomit and the alcohol wafting off him was overwhelming. He was wearing a bright red Cuban national team volleyball jersey that was soaked around his belly from the puke.

"Do you need an ambulance?" I asked, taking his arm and flinging it over my shoulder.

"Todo bien," Hector grunted. "Your stairs are an abomination against humanity."

"You need a doctor?"

"No," Hector shouted. But he was out of breath. "My daughter ... She needs my help. I need your help.... I didn't know who else to ask. I know how this looks. If you can give me a hundred CUC it could save her life. Please."

What the f.u.c.k was there to say?

"Stay here," I said. "I'll go up and get it."

Hector retched and his cheeks blew up like Dizzy Gillespie's for a second before I hoisted him up so he could puke over the side of the stairwell. Dogs inside the apartments just above us sounded their alarms as Sofa's footsteps cascaded down the stairs toward us.

A neighbor who opened his door hissed at us behind his barred gate. "Ay ... who is this person? You need security?"

"No," I said. "This is a friend. Everything is okay."

Sofa walked past the neighbor and stopped a couple of stairs above us.

"Listen," I told her. "This is a really f.u.c.ked-up situation that's going to get a lot worse in a hurry."

Sofa ignored me and cast a steely glare at Hector. "c.u.n.to?" was all she asked.

I took a cab with Hector to make sure he got home okay, but everything was pointing to the fact I didn't have much time left in Cuba. Sofa and I left the next morning for Boyeros with Mario's map. We got dropped off a few blocks from where Rigondeaux's family lived in their half of a little green duplex. Sofa knocked on the door and Rigondeaux's wife, Farah Colina Rigondeaux, answered the door. I could see the outline of their two children, Guillermo Jr. and Cesar, now eight and seventeen respectively, behind her in the living room.

I explained who I was, unsure of how she'd react. I'd spent a lot of time with her husband after his escape and gained a measured respect for him in the process. After a pause she invited me in with a warm smile, as if I were a neighbor. She had spent fourteen years with Rigondeaux before he escaped. The living room looked exactly the same as when the international news crews had covered his famous defection. Small TV in the corner, a red couch, a few pictures on the wall of the family together, some medals and trophies from Rigondeaux's career, blinds that looked perpetually drawn.

She broke the ice by telling me she'd originally met him at one of his fights. He noticed her in the crowd while he was sitting on his stool between rounds. She laughed until it was clear she was about to cry.

Suddenly Farah's expression changed as she a.s.sured me the police were tracking me and asked that I be very careful for the rest of my time in Havana. "Your phone, e-mail, movements, everything. Beeg Brother knows everything."

A camerawoman I'd hired had visited a friend who had taken a trip to a central police station and told me that for every two cameras in Havana (which in many areas was nearly every block) there was one policeman a.s.signed to monitor all movements.

I told Farah that the reason I'd come was to bring footage of her husband to her family and to bring back footage of their family to Rigondeaux. I owed him that much for giving me such access to his life.

With her children beside her, we looked over the photos and video of her husband I'd brought. Guillermo Jr. brought photos of his father over from the back of the apartment for me to look at. In the back of my mind I was wondering how much time we had before there might be an ominous knock at the door.

"He looks very sad, doesn't he?" Farah said to Sofa. "Obviously what affects us most here is his absence. More than anything, we miss his presence, especially our smallest child, who needs him a lot. Above all, he's a good father and husband. Regardless of what happens, I have confidence in him. And he will never abandon us for anything. The last time he sent some things to our son, my mother told him, 'Now you should be happy because your dad sent some stuff.' He told her, 'I will only be happy when my dad comes to see me.' Those were his exact words."

Farah told us how on the last day she saw her husband in Cuba, he had stayed home from working some menial job he'd found so that he could play with his small son. He told her he was going east to Santiago, his hometown, but in fact he'd gone west to leave some days later. She told me that he called her the moment he arrived safely in Miami and that the journey-through a horrible storm-had been the most frightening experience of his life. She cried talking about how much Rigondeaux's mother's death had affected him shortly after he made it to Miami. Not long after, his son had gotten sick just before Rigondeaux fought for a world champions.h.i.+p. Guilt-ridden, he braced himself for losing another family member he was helpless to be with. The trauma outside the ring had nearly derailed his professional career in America on the ironic basis of him not risking enough in front of a paying audience. Farah a.s.sured me he called regularly and sent money. She emphasized that he was a decent human being and the love of her life. She a.s.sured me again-and also her children at the same time-that he would never abandon them. Farah said Rigondeaux had never discussed the specifics or anything else about leaving, but she insisted the government had left him with no choice.

I asked Guillermo's eight-year-old son what he thought of the father he hadn't seen in more than two years. He gave me a hard look for a second and ran into his room. Before I could apologize to his mother, he ran back out to the living room with a poster of his dad and opened it up for me to see. The poster was bigger than he was. He brushed his cheek against his father's and looked up at me. "I miss him. I miss watching him fight. My father is my hero."

Rigondeaux's wife rubbed her eyes and turned away from her son to me. "He's a hero to both of us."

"Can I come back to speak with you once more tomorrow?" I asked.

"Of course. Just be careful."

Harvey Milk said that although you can't live on hope alone, without hope life isn't worth living. I still believed that when I first met Rigondeaux in 2007. Catching up with him in the United States made it harder. No matter what the restrictions were regarding baggage limits on that smuggler's boat, none were traveling light. Rigondeaux and the rest of the people on that vessel had left everything they'd ever known behind, perhaps forever. Maybe the weight of their hope was their greatest vulnerability. Where could you hide it?

The following afternoon, on Sofa's last day in Havana, I hired a cinematographer from Cuban television under the table to come along for our return to Farah Colina's house. Farah wasn't answering her phone as we drove over.

Both Sofa and the cinematographer were dead certain "security" had gotten to her and was closing in on us.