The Black Cathedral

by Marcial Gala

Genres: Hispanic & Latino; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Haunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate

The Stuart family moves to a marginal neighborhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem.

In a neighborhood that roils with passions and conflicts, at the foot of a cathedral that rises higher day by day, there grows a generation marked by violence, cruelty, and extreme selfishness. This generation will carry these traits beyond the borders of the neighborhood, the city, and the country, unable to escape the shadow of the unfinished cathedral.

Told by a chorus of narrators—including gossips, gangsters, a ghost, and a serial killer—who flirt, lie, argue, and finish one another’s stories, Marcial Gala's The Black Cathedral is a darkly comic indictment of modern Cuba, gritty and realistic but laced with magic. It is a portrait of what remains when dreams of utopia have withered away.

Release date: January 7, 2020

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 224

Sample

PART ONE


MARIBEL GARCÍA MEDINA

Besides David King and Samuel Prince, there was an older one, Mary Johannes, she was called, or still is, because she’s alive and things are going better for her than for us. They arrived in Punta Gotica one day in an old Ford truck with Camagüey plates. I remember them unloading their stuff. Too much furniture for someone moving into a neighborhood like this, I thought from the first.

YOHANDRIS CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ RAMÍREZ, a.k.a. GUTS

I was playing soccer when they arrived. This can’t be good, I thought, because the girl riding in the truck’s cab was fanning herself and looking at the neighborhood as if they’d dropped her right at the doors to hell. “One more sucker in town,” I said out loud, and went back to doing my thing. The guys were just kids then; Cricket, the older one, already looked like a total nutjob. I can take that one, I’ll hack him down like a palm tree, I thought, because he was very tall. “Guts, he’s so tall he can’t scratch his own ass,” Nacho Fat-Lips said, and passed me the ball.

MARIBEL

I’ve lived here for years, but that doesn’t mean I’m tied down here. The thing is that this place, before the riffraff began moving in, was a rooming house for sailors. That was back in the time of the other government, and a nephew of President Machado himself lived in one of the rooms. He’d also met José Martí’s son, you know, that Ismaelillo—and actually, it seems that Martí wasn’t as famous then as he is now, when he shows up all over the place and you can’t even turn on the TV without hearing, “As the apostle of Cuban independence said,” and, well, it gets a little old. They say that Ismaelillo was in the business of renting out rooms, and one of his customers was this nephew of Machado’s, who owed him for about six months. He didn’t charge him because, on the day that he personally went to kick him out of the house, all of Martí’s works were there in a bookcase, cared for like they were made of gold, and Ismaelillo got sentimental and forgave Machado’s relative, who, now that I think of it, must have been his nephew by marriage, because no matter how cheap he was, a former president wouldn’t have his sister’s son renting one of these little rooms that get miserable as hell on a hot day, now would he? But back to the folks from Camagüey: when they got here, it had been three months since I’d broken up with Chago, and, well, I really had a thing for everything from the eastern part of the island, and when I heard they were from around there, I went to take a look at the move, specifically so that I could drop a few snide comments here and there to see if the new neighbor had it in her to hop over and say something to me, to show me up front what this family was really made of.

BERTA

I didn’t see them arrive, since I was at school. It was my mother who told me that old Castillo’s place had been taken over by a family with a girl who was more or less my age, but that she didn’t want us getting together right away. “First you have to get to know people,” she said. “That’s why things happen to you, you’re too trusting.” I told her it was fine, that I didn’t really want to meet anyone anyway, but after I changed out of my uniform, since I didn’t have anything else to do, I sat at the door to our house and looked over at the place that used to belong to Castillo, an old man who, as mean-spirited gossip had it, died of cirrhosis.

MARIBEL

All of it could have been avoided if they hadn’t drawn so much attention, but ever since they arrived, with their stuck-up faces and wearing that fancy gear, the people in the neighborhood fell all over themselves for them. “Did you meet the folks from Camagüey?” Lucy the gum seller asked me, taking over a little plate of sweet potato pudding to the girl, who, according to the mother, was in delicate health. I had seen that young girl and she seemed healthy as a horse, thin, with slanted eyes, a beautiful black girl, yes, but full of herself—now she lives in Italy, all the ones like her end up over there.

That man from Camagüey ate, lived, and breathed Jesus Christ, always had Him at the tip of his tongue. The day of their arrival, he threw five pesos at the kids who were playing soccer so they would help him unload the stuff, and then he came over to greet us. He had a polite smile and a thin, strong, dry hand. “Blessings,” he said. “My name is Arturo and this is my wife, Carmen.” “Blessings,” echoed that Carmen, who was walking a few steps behind; you could tell she was too hot for a guy like him, in his fifties and pretty run-down, you could tell that wouldn’t end well. I was shocked when he introduced the kids, since they didn’t seem like they were hers. The three of them were tall, especially the older boy, David, he was a real beanpole and only thirteen years old. The younger one, Prince, held out his elegant, slightly sweaty hand and looked at us with those same slanted eyes as his mother and his sister, and I thought, This one’s a fairy.

“Please, can you tell me where the Church of the Holy Sacrament is?” the guy asked.

“Church of the Holy Sacrament?” was the response. “There’s never been anything like that here.”

GUTS

Jelly, Barbarito, Lupe’s kid, named him, as soon as he saw him reading right in the middle of the day, as if there were no soccer to play, no girls to check out, no kite to fly, no gas to pass. He said to me, “Guts, if this guy isn’t a fairy, he knows where the pixie dust is,” especially since the kid was wearing some tight pants, a little too short, that were ugly as sin. “That’s the fashion in Camagüey,” Berta had to say, she was already defending him back then, saying he looked like Michael Jackson before he bleached his skin, that he was a beautiful black boy like none other in the neighborhood and that he was good enough to eat; “not like his brother, who you can tell is kind of loony.”

“That one’s queerer than a three-dollar bill,” Barbarito insisted. “You’ll see.”

ALAIN SILVA ACOSTA

The truth is that we were innocent back then, even if our future was already wasted. NO ONE GETS OUT OF THIS NEIGHBORHOOD ALIVE, someone had written on the side of a house, because the neighborhood was bad, really and truly bad. If you’re born black, you’re already screwed; imagine if, in addition, you have to live in the squalid rooming houses of a neighborhood like this; and I’m a university graduate, a psychologist, and even have a master’s in business administration, you’d think I wouldn’t be so fucked. But with a salary of four hundred pesos and no bonus in foreign currency, what can you possibly come up with? Nothing—Armageddon. I didn’t see them arrive; they called me when the younger one, Prince, split open Lupe’s kid Bárbaro’s head. He did it with a book, terrible, blood everywhere, and I said, “Somebody’s going to get it,” because that Lupe isn’t rational, she’s a fat black woman with arms that look like Muhammad Ali’s and a temper that, well, I don’t know what to compare it to, but to say it’s short would be an understatement. “Does his mother know yet?” I asked, while I cleaned up the kid’s wound.

“Not yet, she’s out, busting her ass.”

“When she finds out, she’s gonna make a lot of noise.”

“That Jelly is going to pay for this, I’ll make him suck my balls, goddammit, I’ll cut off his dick, shit, goddamn,” Barbarito said, his eyes tearing up, not looking like he could hurt anyone.

GUTS

Jelly: because he was like a dark substance almost like water, but when you look closer, you realize it’s fat, thick, and heavy; Jelly, because he looked at us with those wide eyes like a girl’s, he was really thin, he’d smile at the drop of a hat, and then get into some terrible fights. He knew how to fight, not with his hands, but by picking up rocks, sand, sticks, cans, whatever there was. He hit Barbarito with the edge of a book; it was a quick, skilled, and cunning blow, as if he’d practiced a lot. This dude has a future in the neighborhood, I thought, if Lupe doesn’t throw the whole family out on their ass, she’ll make such a racket that they’ll pack up and fly back to Camagüey, they won’t know how to react when Lupe comes around asking about her son’s cracked skull and stands there with her feet planted, screaming for someone to take responsibility, with a “Go to hell” and a “Fuck your mother” to everyone from Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila, the eastern part of the island, and even from Haiti.

AURORA, neighbor

They had been in Cienfuegos for three days and had already cracked somebody’s skull, and not just anyone’s: it was Bárbaro, Lupe’s son, Urbieta’s stepson. That day, the parents and the girl, that Johannes, who always rubbed me the wrong way, had gone out. At home, only the two boys were left, so the younger one, after Bárbaro came out screaming and bleeding, he went inside as if nothing had happened and I think he started watching television. He didn’t say, “I’ll kill anyone who calls me a maricón,” he didn’t say, “I’m a maricón but whoever calls me that has to fuck me or I’ll kill him,” he didn’t say, “You’ve got to jerk me off,” he didn’t say, “You have no respect,” none of that; all he did, when Bárbaro approached him and said to him, “You’re like a little bit of jelly that I just want to eat up, you’re hotter than your sister, and, man, she’s hot,” he picked up his book, turned it on its side, and dropped it, with shocking speed, and that was the end of Barbarito being fresh, that was as far as he got.

MARIBEL

I mean, what kind of black person thinks of naming their sons David King and Samuel Prince, that’s just setting them up to think they deserve the world. I would have named one of them Nardo and the other one Paco and that would be that, and if they didn’t like it, they could deal with it; although now that I think about it, any name can fuck you up or get you fucked.

The book was one of those that has a hard cover, although it wasn’t a Bible, or something by Lenin, or a volume of Martí’s complete works, it was some kind of poetry, I’m sure of it because it had a lot of little figures on the front and didn’t seem like it would be about anything too serious, but anyway, he really clocked Bárbaro with that book. If that didn’t teach him his letters, they’re never getting in there, I thought. You have to be really tough to hit someone like that when you’ve just moved in, really tough or really ignorant of how things work in a neighborhood like this one, you have to be from Pinar del Río, actually, and not from Camagüey.

BÁRBARO SUÁREZ ROSALES

Hit him, give him a hard one to the belly, then take him to the train tracks and crush his head against the rails and wait for a train to come, then force him to put a foot on the line, if he’s left-handed, then the left one, if he’s right-handed, then the other one, then piss on him, first once, then again, piss on him, and if you still feel like it, shit on his face, but don’t let him touch your ass while you’re shitting on him, you don’t want anyone to think you’re a fag, do him in, he’s not worth a dime, finish him, so you get respect and not whatever the hell it is they think of you now. That’s what my mother told me when Jelly cracked my skull, she said, Let’s go, dammit, we’re going so you can crack his skull open, I’ll fuck up anyone who gets in the way.

“Let’s go.”

GUTS

When they came over, a cowboy show was on TV, not like the crap shows they have today, but the old ones, the ones with the Villalobos brothers, and all of us kids were focused on the TV. Anyway, three knocks came at the door, sounding like cannon fire.

BÁRBARO

That Arturo opened the door for us.

“Blessings. How can I help you good people?” he said to us, in that way he had of speaking, so soft it was like he had a turd stuck in his throat.

“I don’t even believe in my own mother who birthed me, so save your breath,” my mother said. “Your good-for-nothing son cracked open Barbarito’s head and he has to come out and fight him. Barbarito is nobody’s fool, he needs to be shown some respect. So let’s have your little gumdrop, or whatever the fuck he is. I don’t understand a thing, you’re going to have hell to pay.”

I don’t understand a thing, you’re going to have hell to pay. That was how my mother talked. Later, after she had the stroke, Urbieta, who had already gotten out of jail, left her for someone else, and my mother, fifty-some years old, had to spend her days washing floors, white people’s floors, and since the stroke had left her kind of dopey, no one respected her. La Lupe, your son is a transvestite, they would say to her, a maricón.

“Swear it isn’t true,” she would say to me when she saw me come in.

“Of course it’s not true,” I would assure her. “I’m a man. It’s art, what I do, I get dressed and make myself up as a woman as a form of art.”

“It was Jelly who got that into your head, who hurt you, that son of a bitch. You were so macho, my son, very macho. You never liked pinga, I know you didn’t.”

“No, mamá,” I’d say, and as I closed my eyes, it would be that April afternoon again, when my mother and I went to the Stuarts’ house to bust Jelly’s head.

“David King, present yourself,” Stuart said.

So Cricket popped out his crazy-ass face.

“Not that one,” I said. “It was the other one.”

“What do you mean, the other one?” the father said. “Take a good look at him, boy, surely it was this one.”

“No,” I said. “It was the other one, the gentle one.”

“Impossible. The other one is an irreproachable gentleman.”

“Irreproachable, my ass,” said my mother. “Call him out here before I come in and find him.”

“Go in, David King,” the man said, and then, “Listen, ma’am, why don’t we straighten all this out inside the house. I’m sure that with God’s favor, we can come to an agreement.”

“No,” my mother said. “Tell that worthless son of yours to come out already. If you don’t, I’ll be the one who goes in there and starts swinging.”

“Excuse me, but you will not go into my house without my permission, and I assure you that your son must be mistaken. Samuel Prince is incapable of treating another of God’s children like that … Come in the right way and let’s settle this. At the end of the day, we’re not animals, the spirit of God dwells within us all.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Come in,” the man insisted. “Please.”

MARIBEL

A guy who used money to settle things, like the white people in Punta Gorda—he had that defect, or that virtue, depending on how you look at it. He paid la Lupe five hundred pesos to keep her quiet, at least that’s what she said, maybe she settled for fifty; la Lupe, tough act and all, she was always a pushover. You would’ve had to kill me—I’ll smash the brains out of anyone who touches a child of mine. “The guy’s a real moneybags,” the whole neighborhood said, and people began to beat down his door; if someone stole a bicycle, they went to see him: Arturo, you dig these wheels? See how new this is, it’s straight from the store. If a woman was trying to hustle, she would wait for Carmen to leave before going to see him: Listen, Arturo, I need a hundred pesos and don’t have any way to pay you back … Look, here’s my body. But he was all “Blessings, sister,” he said the same thing to everyone, without getting into any business; and as for the whores, they soon stopped visiting him. It was around then that the bigger of the two boys decided to start singing; that’s when we named him Cricket, because what came out of his mouth was pure honey, he coulda been in a reggaeton band, that voice of his was so good.

GUTS

We let Cricket in from the beginning. He was kind of crazy, but at least he didn’t seem like a fairy and he played soccer pretty good. But his thing was baseball. When we said to him, Hey, man, we don’t play ball here, you’ve got to get outta the neighborhood for that, he was kind of sad, but then he forgot about it. I was sure he was kind of slow, like my brother Tere, who was at Tato Madruga, the school for retards, and I’d ask him things: “Hey, Cricket, how much is six times six?”

“Thirty-six,” he would say, and I would tell myself, It can’t be thirty-six, this idiot doesn’t know, but when I asked other people, they also said it had been thirty-six for years and should still be, unless math had changed and the news hadn’t reached the neighborhood yet.

Later, I’d ask him, “Hey, Cricket, what’s the deal with America? Who discovered it?”

“Columbus.”

“So was Columbus white or black?”

“White, Guts, blond and blue-eyed.”

Basically, he knew a lot for a brown kid, ’cause that’s what he was, brown, but I liked him; it was the other one I couldn’t stand, he was too pretty, always so clean, always reading. His parents treated him even more gently than the girl, who really was hot.

MARIBEL

He hated for his son to sing. If he came home early from work and heard Cricket’s voice, he’d say to everyone, “Blessings,” and then he’d say, “One artist in the family is enough. Come in, David King,” and the kid would go into the house without daring to lift his head to look at his father. We soon found out that he beat him, Guts was the one who said so; he went up on the roof, peeked in a window, and saw how old Stuart removed his wide leather belt to hit his son on the back. After that, we thought Cricket wouldn’t sing anymore, but with that kid, singing was an obsession. As soon as old Stuart went out to the shop with his mechanic’s tools, Cricket would start singing. It didn’t matter to him if it was a Marco Antonio Solís song or a bolero by Orlando Contreras, it didn’t matter if Aurora, Berta’s mom, took out her guitar to accompany him or if Nacho Fat-Lips started to play a rumba on the box drum, and when there was no accompaniment, he did it a cappella, Cricket sang whatever. His mother would come to the door and say, David, please, stop that, your father will lose it with me.

IBRAHIM SALAZAR

The Church of the Holy Sacrament of the Resurrected Christ … When Stuart arrived from Camagüey, no more than a dozen people in Cienfuegos had heard of our congregation, and across the whole province, there weren’t even twenty of us, eight of whom lived in Aguada and three in Cruces, making it difficult to depend on them for anything practical. The pastor of the Cienfuegos Sacramentalists was named Basulto, an intelligent young guy, but cold and aloof. Arturo Stuart had charisma and a knack with crowds, he was a natural leader, and a church like the Sacramentalist one, which is inspired by ancient Greek rites, fit like a glove on someone given to manners and mystery. Besides, he had his son Prince. The kid knew how to speak. He knew how to be convincing. He had read the Bible with purpose and knew how to cite verses correctly. Even his siblings would fall silent, watching him as if the angel of the Lord himself were speaking through his mouth. Everybody liked that; Cubans have a penchant for the corny and sentimental, and on worship Sundays, Basulto’s house would fill up. Certainly another factor was that Arturo had cemented friendships with the denomination’s pastors in several U.S. states, and they began to send us contributions, or assistance, as we also called it. Such assistance took the form of electric razors, soap, toys for the children, shoes, clothing, and kitchen utensils, even Bibles, worship books and videos, which gave us an idea of the Sacramentalist church’s power in the U.S. In six months, we went from twenty people to almost a thousand; few, in a sense, but for a congregation as strict as the Sacramentalists’, that was legion. So, Basulto’s house, big as it was, came to be completely insufficient, and we decided to worship at the house of our good sister Elizabet.

RICARDO MORA GUTIÉRREZ, a.k.a. GRINGO

I had killed my first guy. I slashed his neck and didn’t stop until his eyes were like a dead cow’s. “Who has the biggest cock now?” I asked him, then I cleaned the switchblade with the sleeveless shirt he had been wearing to show off.

“Now what do we do, Gringo?” Pork Chop asked me.

“That’s the easy part. We cut him up—the guy came from Cabaiguán, no one is going to miss him. You’ll see. Get the bike, but pedal slowly, you don’t want anyone to mess with you, and start telling suckers that you have some high-quality meat. When you’re done with that, go to the hiding place and bring over the boning knife. But first, wash yourself and change your clothes, ’cause you fucking reek of moonshine.”

“But we don’t have any,” Pork Chop said.

“But we don’t have any what? Soap?”

“Meat, Gringo, meat.”

“What about this? Grade A meat.”

“Damn, Gringo, you’re a genius.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet … Get moving, but calmly. I’ll start preparing this veal.”

He came all the way from Santiespíritu to end up like this, some guys really are a special kind of stupid, I thought, looking at the deceased, who had been left with an idiotic expression on his face that made me feel a smidgen of pity, but, “You gotta fuck life before it fucks you,” my mother used to say, and this guy had come to fuck us, so he got what he had coming to him.

The first thing I did was remove his huge-ass gold chain, then I took out the wad of cash from his backpack and found the piece, one of those Makarovs that always jams. What a useless piece of shit you are, I thought. Who thinks of putting a gun in his backpack? Idiots must be a dime a dozen in Cabaiguán.

“Hey, man, do you know where you can buy a motorcycle, a really good one, an MZT or something like that, none of this Carpati or Benjovina shit?” the guy had asked me right at the door of La Mimbre. I was selling shades, but the minute I saw him, I thought this guajiro, this peasant, had cash.

“I might know,” I told him. “Who can say, the only fortune-teller here is God.”

“But it has to have the paperwork in order. I came from Cabaiguán because they had one set aside for me, and when I got here, they didn’t have the title.”

“This one has everything. It’s just waiting for a guy like you to ride it … It’s almost new.”

“I like that. Is it an MZT?”

“No, a Harley-Davidson that my cousin the sailor brought from Panama.”

“Really?”

“Just like I said.”

“It’s going to be really expensive.”

“No, about the same as a Jawa, and it’s got the kind of engine that, well, when you ride it into Cabaiguán, all of those guajiros are going to go nuts.”

“Let’s go see it.”

“Do you have the money on you?”

The useless piece of shit said yes, then he saw something in my eyes, regretted it, and said he had hidden it at the house of a girlfriend just in case.

I said, “You’re not a cop, are you?”

“Cop? Me? No way, I’m a normal guy.”

“You can tell, but we’re already talking too much. Let’s go to my cousin’s house so you can see the hog.”

“Let’s go.” I took him to San Lázaro, and he was all, “Your cousin lives in a pretty bad place.”

“The thing is, his wife threw him out and he had to come here, motorcycle and all, and he’s scared about it getting stolen, that’s why he’s going to sell it, for peace of mind.”

We got to Pork Chop’s room:

“Cuz? Listen, tarugo, are you there?”

“What a surprise, Gringo, how’s life going, my man?” Piggy said from inside with a grin ear to ear, thinking I had come to collect the money he owed me, but you could tell that he’d been drinking, he stank of rotgut and piss and the guajiro practically took off.

“I’ll wait for you outside.”

“These sailors really drink a lot.” I smiled. “But have a seat, man, have a seat.”

The guajiro sat down, and I asked Piggy, “Hey, tarugo, how’s the bike?”

What bike? he was going to ask, but I winked at him.

“Oh, yeah, the bike. It’s around. I lent it out.”

“You lent it out? That’s not the kind of thing you lend out. To who?”

“Mariana’s guy.”

“Oh, well, I don’t have any problem with him … When’s he bringing it back? Our friend here is interested in the hog.”

“In a little while; he needed it to go to Varadero.”

“On a machine like that you can go to Varadero in minutes, it runs faster than a Ferrari.”

“Runs? It flies. Especially since I have it in tip-top shape, it doesn’t need anything.”

“Besides, the Harley is a classic, the best there is in motorcycles.”

“You said it.”

“Look, here, go get six beers over there, but get Bucaneros.” I made as if to put my hand in my pocket, but the guajiro was faster.

“Forget it.” He opened his backpack and took out his wad of cash, and that was his mistake; he thought he was so young and strong with that bull’s neck and those big mitts, he waltzed into the lion’s den for a beer. What a moron, it still surprises me. I had to wait for him to drink three Bucanero beers and then say, “I’m going to the bathroom,” and while Pork Chop talked to him, I got behind him, took out my switchblade, and quickly slit his throat so he wouldn’t scream.

When Pork Chop came back, I had already counted the money and I had the guy naked on top of the sink. “Did you bring everything?”

Pork Chop opened the bag and showed me the hammer, the knives, and a machete.

“Did you tell the chumps we had steak?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“The ones in Punta Gorda. Those blancos are going to be eating dead person for a week.”

“They deserve it. Let’s get started.” I grabbed the boning knife.

“You’re really something, Gringo.”

“What I am is a guy with money.” I showed Pork Chop the big wad of bills. “Do you know how many are here? A thousand bills of a hundred each.”

“And how much is that?”

“How much do you think?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“You’re such an idiot, Piggy, such an idiot.”

“Lucky you that you’re smart.”

“Well, now we’ll see if that little black girl from Camagüey gives me a chance, we’ll see.”

GUTS

Gringo liked her as soon as he saw her. A black girl for taking out on the town, she has Beyoncé’s body and the face of an angel, and she’s going to be mine, he said, and it was as if he had branded her, no one in the neighborhood would dare mess with her.

“Pass it to me, loco, pass it to me!” I was shouting to Cricket, because that was his problem, he thought he was Messi, he didn’t give the ball to anyone. Plenty of times I wanted to fight him after we lost a match because he thought he could handle everything like he was Ronaldinho Gaúcho himself. I’d get right on him, Next time you pass it or I’ll fuck you up! That was before we knew that Gringo was all gaga over the sister and that it was dangerous to threaten to hit Cricket, because Gringo was a super inconvenient guy to cross, he was a Palo initiate, and besides, he seemed to be suddenly flush with cash; he showed up in the neighborhood one day riding a bike from the shopping center, he rang the bell and shouted, “I demand respect!” And everyone knew that Gringo was loaded, more so when he invited the whole neighborhood to drink beer, not just crappy little cans, or even bottles, but an enormous keg on wheels. Good old lager, and lots of it, but anyway, the keg stopped, attached to a tractor and everything, in front of one of the entrances to the neighborhood, and each family got a tub apiece. By ten at night, everyone was drunk, even the kids. It was pure pandemonium. All the families drank, except for the one from Camagüey, because when Gringo showed up at the Stuarts’ door with eight cans of Bucanero beer and two cola drinks, the old man practically kicked him out.

GRINGO

“Hey,” I said to him.

“Blessings,” he said. “What do you desire?”

“I’m sharing, my friend, sharing,” I began, which was my first mistake because the old man didn’t like being called that.

“I’m not your friend.”

“Yes, I know, it’s a figure of speech. How would you like me to address you? Compañero? Fine then, no problem; I’ll call you compañero and that’s that.”

“Oxen are compañeros. It’s better to call me Mr. Stuart, or if that bothers you, Arturo Stuart or just Arturo.”

“Whatever you say … Look, Mr. Arturo, I’d like to share these beers with you, and these soft drinks are for the kids, since I know they don’t drink, and I’d like to speak with your daughter, Johannes, just for a minute.”

The old man let me unload all of that, but when I finished, he wouldn’t let me in. He stood in front of the door like Barcelona’s goalie and forcefully shook his head no. “This is a Christian family and we don’t accept this kind of invitation.” He said it just like that, strike me dead if I’m lying. That old coot was the biggest weirdo I’ve ever seen. Behind him was his wife, Carmen, who was almost as pretty as her daughter, but with a batty face that would give anyone the creeps. Where did he get her from? I thought. A cave? Anyway, I couldn’t see Johannes until the next day, at the do