Cubop City Blues Read Online Free PDF

old age, but one day he found himself pursued by enemies intent on his elimination. He escaped into exile in the United States with his wife and three daughters and a suitcase full of cash.
    One of the last things the politician did before leaving was get me a job teaching philosophy at the university. It was there I met Vicente Iriarte, the anatomy professor, early in the first term. He was a pale man with thinning black hair that he combed straight back and held down with pomade. Out of his nostrils grew tufts of nose hairs and on his face was a permanent five-o’clock shadow that gave him the appearance of a sinister cobbler. But Vicente was a jovial and cultured man who could recite Schiller in German and sing Italian arias in our bedroom. His large belly bounced when he laughed, which he did loudly and often. His laughter was the perfect antidote to the dark moods I had dragged from Europe like a chain of misery around my neck.
    After work he would sit in the front porch to catch the afternoon breeze and I would bring him a beer, then go back in to cook for him those casseroles and stews Cubans liked to eat in those days when food was plentiful, as well as Hungarian peasant dishes my mother’s gypsy cooks had taught me—he liked those, too. I learned to please him sexually, rubbing his fantastical belly, then moving my hand down to find his little nub hidden in a nest of pubic hair. Once he got hard I mounted him and rode him until he giggled, laughed, squealed, and came in quick spasmodic jerks of his pelvis. He fell asleep quickly and I took care of myself. It was best that way. I’d reached the age when I knew my body better than any man. All I wanted now was the erasure of the past that I had been seeking all the years after the war, through all the cities I’d passed, people I’d loved or who had loved me. In Havana the darkness dissipated, the glue dissolved. I began inching my way toward hope. No one suffers forever, I told myself, not even Job. I was wrong.
    Off in the mountains there was a rebel army fighting the government, and in the city student groups were leading demonstrations, attacking police barracks and stations, planting bombs in shopping areas. As a professor I was asked to provide funds, hide guns, and give the student leaders passing grades. I refused. Not that I was against their ideals, no. Ideals are good in young minds. I was simply tired of war. My family was dead. My land was gone, my country, or what had been my country, under the heel of the Soviets. The police responded as police everywhere respond—by rounding up suspects, torturing and killing them at random, and dropping their bodies on street corners and parks. I knew how all this would end. I told Vicente but he reassured me that these upheavals were part of life in Cuba. Our society needs cleansing every few years, he said. Things will settle down, the students will go back to their studies, and the unionists will return to work.
    I distracted myself with Vicente and my German students, whom I taught privately at home. I took up sewing and wrote poetry. I could feel the breath of the past on my neck.
    Vicente was mistaken. The revolutionaries triumphed and the country went on a binge of celebration. The university closed its doors and on every street corner were groups of armed men, all young, puffed up with victory. I wanted to leave the country. Vicente was dismissive in his jovial way. You can’t run away every time there’s trouble. It was easy for him to say that. Cuba was his country, not mine. I had no interest in any struggle except self-preservation. I insisted.
    Where would we go? he asked. We were sitting on the front porch. Vicente was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt tucked tightly into his gray pants. The flab of his belly flopped over his belt. He had just taken a shower and his black hair glistened in the late afternoon sunlight. There is no better place than this, he said, moving his