Cubop City Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

arm in front of him in an arcing motion.
    Al norte, I said. The United States was not a place I had thought of living in. It had just occurred to me because so many Cubans were going there at the time.
    What will we do, work in a factory? he said. For once I saw him angry. Sweat was beading on his forehead and the tip of his nose had turned red. He paused to compose himself. No, we stay here.
    I wanted to tell him the victors can do anything they want. I wanted to tell him about all I’d gone through at their hands, but I refrained. Vicente waved me away, laughing. How could he understand? All that mirth made him light-headed. I held my tongue and went inside to make dinner.
    That night after Vicente fell asleep I made the decision to leave as soon as I could. It was difficult to abandon him, but it would be more difficult to stay behind and wait for the tide of loss to swallow me. The following week, when he’d gone downtown to meet a friend, I packed my old leather valise and left a farewell note. There are things that have no solutions, I wrote, and solutions that are worse than the problems they are meant to resolve. I thanked him for his attentions. I did not write the word love .
    I arrived in Cubop City in February, and my tropical clothes, mostly cotton and linen dresses, were inadequate for the weather. I spent fifty dollars on a coat and gloves and rented a room in a residential hotel on the West Side. I knew how to make my money last. Finding a job was easy. I played stupid. I did not list my doctorate in the application, and in two days I was working for a temp agency. It was a job as jobs go and it paid my bills. When someone called the agency asking for a European nanny to care for a blind boy, I volunteered for it immediately. I was, after all, the only European there. I lied that I had plenty of experience in Hungary and Cuba, where I’d served as private tutor for the children of a prominent family. I told my boss I spoke five languages—that was no lie. He was unbelieving; nevertheless he allowed me to go to the interview.
    The couple who interviewed me were Cubans of the old order who expected me to do housecleaning and food preparation and laundry and silver polishing, chores hardly befitting a private tutor. I was about to excuse myself and walk away when the boy appeared in the living room. He walked directly to me, stiff backed and mechanical, and put out his hand for me to shake. His blurred eyes and smeared eyelids startled me, but the delicacy of his voice awakened in me the maternal instinct I had long suppressed. It entered my mind that he would make a good dog. I took the job.
    The mother was a stern woman who spoke in commandments. You will do this, you will not do that. Whatever love existed in her had long ago been burned out. The father turned out to be needier than the son. He was a good, sweet man who tolerated his wife and her infidelity because he didn’t know what else to do. I took him out of loneliness and charity, but he turned out to be a good lover, willing to please me before pleasing himself. He was a teacher and got home before the wife. That allowed us some time together and we made love quietly so as not to disturb the boy in his room. I think he heard us anyway. It was a different matter the few times the father came to my apartment. There we gave vent to our passion. Eventually the wife became suspicious, feigned outrage, and fired me. That same night I had a dream of a black bridge stretching back to Europe. I was sorry to leave the blind boy who was smart and gentle. He moved in and out of happiness and was desperate to know the world. I was sorry to leave the father. I felt pity for him mostly. The mother was a witch who had a love affair with her boss. Her commandments did not apply to her.
    I found myself out of a job and had prospects for none. For weeks I lost track of myself. I would wake in my apartment and not know what I’d done or where