by Jerome du Bois and Catherine King
[Please see the sidebar for where to begin, and see Return of La Pionera and The New Mango for a table of contents at the end of that post.]
Part One: I've Learned A Lot From The Nautilus
I have two countries --Cuba and the night.
--Jose Marti
Oh, she's little and she loves me
Too much for words to say
--Leon Russell, "Hummingbird"
I: Dillard's Mission
[Mantis here. After the New Mango Revolution, the now-retired art investor Dillard Benlinederry generously emailed several diary entries from his laptop which turned out to be particularly revelant. I thank him for his candor, his vulnerable heart, and his willingness to share his part in the story.
May 26, 2005, late evening. Diary entry by Dillard Benlinederry:]
Wonderful news came via email after dinner tonight --an answer to prayer. The Lord works in mysterious ways, praise His Name. Heather had almost given up on her Cuban connection months ago, and we were tentatively, but not very enthusiastically, planning a summer vacation in Bermuda.
But then came that little beep at her elbow, while I was sitting on the couch reading The Purpose-Driven Life, and Heather was going over some research for an exhibition about hair --yes, hair; anyway, she turned to the laptop, read the email, and gave me a big grin.
"Dilly."
I bit down on my distaste for that nickname. Lord, give me patience. "Yes, dear."
"We're not going to Bermuda this year."
"Oh, but darling--"
"Don't be silly, Dilly. Listen. This year, we're going back to Cuba." Giving me that wicked smile. "This year, we may even get something for nothing."
I slipped a finger into the book to hold my place. "Don't tell me: this has something to do with Kiku Ybarra." Kiku was Heather's Holy Grail --of gold.
"Bingo. I just found out. The rumors are true. The Insect Portraits are real." Those blazing eyes. "We're going to make a fortune!"
I held back my hallelujahs, though I felt such a surge of spiritual confirmation I wondered if I was glowing. I got up and embraced my beloved wife. "It's great news, darling." We held each other for a minute, and then sat down on the couch and began to revise our plans.
It is great news, but not, for me, because of the money, and it certainly wasn't because of the reality of those horrifying artworks (though I'd seen worse, in galleries here and in Europe). That poor woman . . .
No. When Heather announced that we were going to Cuba again this year, I knew it really was an answer to prayer. Last year, the despair, the spiritual poverty I had sensed all around me was as oppressive as any spiritual darkness I had experienced before --worse, even, than in some of those art galleries. Shudder. That feeling stayed with me on our return, accompanied by repeated dream images of buildings crumbling, of brick walls crumbling, of the world crumbling . . . they call it derrumbe there.
In Cuba, when I asked our guides about churches, I would get suspicious looks and no directions. When I asked the pampered artists about churches, I would get blank looks and wrong directions. I would try to wander out of the zones, but our guides kept us away from most of the physical poverty, at least. I knew there were churches in Cuba, and I was sorry I had missed visiting even a single one of them. (Later, I learned that dissidents sometimes used them unexpectedly for meetings, so the authorities had taken to keeping the tourists away completely, even from the famous 1748 Jesuit cathedral, Conception Immaculata.)
Every time the crumbling images came to me, I would pray (as soon as convenient; sometimes they would step into my head during business meetings; very distracting). What is the message, Lord? What are trying to tell me? What do you want me to do? And, just a month ago, the answer --a mission-- came into my head as clear as a bell.
"The next time you go to Cuba, you will pray in every church in Havana. If the church stands, your prayers will help it stand longer. If the church is in ruins, pray in the ruins. Your prayers will help it rise again."
It's as simple as that. And now I find out we're going back. Hallelujah!
Heather knows nothing about this mission of mine, of course; she already thinks I've gone overboard with "this new Jesus thing," as she calls it. We'll see. She, too, is always in my prayers.
This time I'm determined to find all the Havana churches, and pray in them. And what will I pray? That God's will be done in Cuba, of course!
[End of diary entry.]
2. Carlos Lage's First Soliloquy
May 26, 2005, 6:00PM: Transcript of audio from The Daily Journal of La Fuerza [Yasmani Oliva, 16 years old], recorded in his own voice on microcassette, to be held in safekeeping in the collection of Marta O'Gorman:
Met the others; only two hours late, well within our boundaries. We divided the materials and went out on our errands. And now I've heard back from everyone, thanks to my brothers' cell phones, so the first distribution is complete. It's official: The New Mango is rolling. We are next!
[Mantis here, introducing Carlos Lage’s first soliloquy, which was captured on F’s state-of-the-art digital systems, which themselves were captured, by me, when the horrible old man deserted the island. Lage knew his office was wired for sound --he wanted F to hear-- but he didn’t know about several hidden digital video cameras (with sophisticated zoom capability) which had been secretly installed by F’s crew when Lage installed his own surveillance center behind the mahogany doors. That’s F’s way: the man behind the man behind the man. The cameras were trained both inside the secure room and the outer office itself. We found them --the old paranoid kept detailed digital files-- after the Mango bounced.
By the end of the day of May 26, 2005, Lage had thirty of the little white cards --THE NEW MANGO, WE ARE NEXT-- scattered over the center of a cleared space on his desk, each one delivered by a Habanero CDR or someone sent by one of them. Lage paces his office as he speaks, sometimes picking up one of the cards as he passes by his desk.]
“. . . and Comandante, this is a real thumb in the eye: how did these get delivered to the CDRs without the CDRs noticing? Noticing is what they do. So, in each case, what are the possibilities? One, the CDR is in on it, whatever it is. That’s a bad sign. Two, the CDR just didn’t notice, due to lack of discipline. That’s a bad sign. Three, it was someone they knew, a friend or acquaintance or family member, and so they were, perhaps naturally, careless, and didn’t see the person deliver the card. That’s a bad sign of a different sort. And all these deliveries demonstrate arrogance. This is worrisome.
“But the situation is more serious than these few cards scattered on my desk now, Comandante. Jeronimo found one at Guillermo Gorgojo’s apartment, and his cadres --and my nephews-- report that these little cards popped up here and there all over the city, from the taco stands, to the juice vendors, to the knife sharpeners, to the hustlers at the Hotel Riviera. Even in Chinatown. A musician, maybe more than one. Several were found in student lockers at the Art Institute. Three police stations. There’s more.
“If I’m looking at thirty here on my desk, plus the ones I’ve mentioned, you know there must be hundreds more that haven’t been noticed yet by anyone. When they are, they'll be snapped up. Nobody will turn them in. People will think it has something to do with the lottery, maybe, or El Bombo. They'll know it means something. Claro, they'll hang on to these little white cards, Comandante, and hide them from prying eyes. And they'll think about the words, over and over. The cards are easily hidden, and easily disposable. If necessary, you could even eat one. [Pause, then a kind of giddy bark] Maybe they taste like mango! Should I . . . ? [sniffing sounds, growling laugh, then a deep sigh]
. . . I know, I know, they don't say much, do they? Except they do! Comandante! Listen: Consider The White Rose --I know, I know, you can't bear to hear that name, but it's a good example. It's serious, dignified, proud, pure. But The New Mango? What's so serious about a mango? It's frivolous, it's . . . bouncy. And it appeals, not to the reason or the passions, but to the sense of taste, a very simple stimulus. What political group would get behind that? And that's worrisome, because when it sounds innocent, you can bet it isn't innocent, and because they --yes, they say WE, not I --they say, WE ARE NEXT. More arrogance.
"There's more: I wish you could see these --oh, wait, by the time you listen to this, later today, my courier will already have delivered six to you, from the bunch the CDRs sent to me. So, you can see that's it not just a little white card with a drawing. It's printed on a laser printer, on good stock, and in color. You know what that means. First, an illegal computer, and all that implies --a whole substructure of smuggling: software, paper, ink cartridges, batteries, probably a generator, gasoline, maybe adapters . . . and people to pass them out. It sure looks innocuous: little . . . white . . . paper. Simple words --no ¡Abajo Fidel! No "Down with the Revolution!" But . . . WE ARE NEXT?
"This is no art prank."
[End of transcript.]
3. Guillermo's Hangover
[The next morning, May 27, 2005: From the Journal of Professor Guillermo Gorgojo, President of the Instituto de Superior de Arte (ISA), Havana; early to midmorning:]
Good thing I have strong coffee in the house this morning. My head is pounding. Yesterday I came home from work in the early evening with a jaba vinyl of plantains to fry up, only to lose my appetite as soon as I opened the door and saw, across the room, propped in presentation on my desk, another atrocity from The Mantis. I barely looked at it. "Lage, you bastard!" I shouted to the Ears, slamming the door. There was mail and other papers scattered on the floor, but I ignored them. My hands were shaking. A funky stink reached out from the piece like a dirty finger.
Normally I keep my emotions in compartments, like the chambers of the nautilus. You have to here, these dolorous days. But this . . . I found it both horrible and gratifying --she's still alive!-- and these two feelings crashed together. I knew what was going to happen. I left the bag on the floor by the door, and went to my bedroom, where I dug out a bottle, a gift from a visitor a few weeks ago --some big shot British art dealer. I had drunk a little, but didn't like the taste that much, so I put it in my dresser drawer. There would be plenty left for my needs now. I didn't care what it tasted like.
I grabbed a tumbler from the kitchen and a tin plate with a curl of mosquito punk attached. Still not looking at the atrocity, I went past the desk and opened the glass doors to the secure outdoor balcony. I was always glad for that perk of the job.
Returning to the desk, I used a kitchen match on the punk, which started smoking right away, its medicinal smell as heady as incense in that stinky air. I poured generously from the bottle, then looked at the label: The Macallan, 18 years old. Never heard of it. I took a drink; a little thin, so I drank some more. Ahem. Better. I went back to the fresh air and stood looking out at the bright golden evening hanging like an empty promise over the ruins-in-process of my beloved, flaking, crumbling city. I took a couple more sips and listened to the dinnertime bustle three floors below. I wasn't used to drinking. I couldn't really afford it. But every time Lage sent the Mantis to torment me with one of these things --all the others that now stood behind the curtain on my balcony-- I would go out and buy a bottle of rum from my cousin Cristobal. I couldn't face these things sober, but I knew I had to face them. And I kept them all, no matter how disgusting it seemed, even to me, because they were the only contact I had with Kiku --"little mango" I used to call her-- who I had last seen being hustled into a MININT van ten years ago on the night she defied gravity. Today, Kiku Ybarra, who had lost her mind in prisons, was still defying death. I had to honor that endurance. And, of course, I still loved her.
Finally I turned from the balcony and pulled my desk chair way back and sat down and, even before I raised my head to examine Kiku's latest helpless offering, delivered by the hand of evil, tears already welled in my eyes --so I had to blink, and blink, and wipe them away with my free hand, before I could get a clear look. Oh, no: on an irregular square of stained cardboard with torn edges, Carlos Lage himself, but younger.
I burst out sobbing, but I couldn't help staring at it. I kept wiping my hands over my wet face. Her hands --"the butterflies" I used to call them, "the butterflies who never sleep"-- had touched those filthy things --cockroaches of all sizes, flies, bees, and fat centipedes-- delicately and precisely arranged their corpses into a recognizable pattern, then glued them in place with flour and water. Of course it was expertly done; she had lost none of her technical skill. She even put in a hint of his uniform collar. So . . . If I touched those insects, too, would there be something of her left that I could detect? I shuddered. I never had. I never would. I always handled the cardboard by the edges, which, after all, she had handled too.
I picked the piece up by the top edges and managed to stumble out to the balcony. I pulled back the curtain and there they all were, about three dozen leaning against the wall and stacked gently two or three deep in places, the smaller ones --mostly abstract design miniatures-- in the front rank, like troll pawns. I carelessly dropped the new one in with the others and was about to fling the curtain shut, but there was something about this new one . . . I turned back.
Why Carlos Lage?
I snickered: I'm sure Mr. Control had seen these things, or pictures of them, before sending them on to me; so what did he think about looking at himself? That must have given him pause. Plus the time displacement must have been jarring to him. It was to me. Was that the thing I had noticed? No, there was something about the way the damned thing was made . . . But then the whole tableau, leaning there, stacked three-deep, all at once, all that horrible intensive labor thrust forward, suddenly repulsed me --ten years, she's been in those hellholes ten years-- and I backed away from it all into my apartment. Coward.
I closed the door to the balcony, picked up my drink, drained it, shuddered, and reeled over to the closet. Inside a carelessly covered burlap bag in the corner was one my treasures. Like many Cubans, I had a fondness for classic American pop culture, especially early doo-wop, rock-and-roll, and rhythm and blues. I had inherited from my twin brother, now dead, his collection of 45s, which I had been able to add to from the black market from time to time --and, to play them, a wonderfully-preserved 1956 Columbia 360 Suitcase Model Record Player, a very rare aqua-and-white tuck-and-roll leather model. I dragged it out onto the living room floor and plugged it into the adapter, and the adapter into the outlet. On the bookshelf, in a cardboard box, were the 45s. In my condition I managed to spill the box as I turned, so the discs went skittering across the floor.
I got down on my hands and knees. As I gathered the 45s together with my long fingers, trying to delicately lift the plastic discs off the hardwood floor, giggling, I suddenly had an image of The Mantis-- we had the same long, skinny body type-- picking up every little bit of creativity he was ordered to, and putting it into a box. And then delivering horror without a blink. I reared up and shouted at the ceiling and the Ears: "Hey, Jeronimo! When was the last time your heart beat? Comemierda."
I set aside a couple of the 45s and plugged in the record player. Like a lot of Cubans my age, I was trilingual --Spanish, Russian, English-- so I had no trouble with Donny Hathaway --a suicide by jumping, that always stuck in my mind-- singing on a rare late 45 I had tracked down-- one of my Kiku songs, though she would always shake her head every time I put it on: Leon Russell's "Hummingbird."
Sometimes I get impatient,
but she cools me without words
And she comes so sweet and so plain,
my hummingbird and have you heard,
that I thought my life had ended
But I find that it's just begun,
'cause she gets me where I live
I'll give all I have to give
I'm talking about that hummingbird
Oh she's little and she loves me,
too much for words to say
When I see her in the morning sleeping,
she's little and she loves me
To my lucky day
Hummingbird don't fly away
When I'm feeling wild and lonesome
she knows the words to say
And she gives me a little understanding,
in her special way
And I just have to say,
in my life I loved a woman
Because she's more than I deserve,
and she gets me where I live
I'll give all I have to give
I'm talking about that hummingbird
Oh she's little and she loves me,
too much for words to say
When I see her in the morning sleeping,
she's little and she loves me
To my lucky day,
hummingbird don't fly away
Donny Hathaway must have known he couldn't fly away when he launched himself from 15 stories above the street. Kiku Ybarra launched herself up from the street, her long thick glossy black hair lifting like wings, but even she must have known she couldn't fly away. And when she fell, Carlos Lage swooped in to smother her, to trap her, and to cage her. She went away into the dark labyrinth, and I went on to launch and lead the New Inventado Movement of Cuban Art, a cash cow that secures my place in F's graces --so far.
Over the years, from time to time, overcome with guilty rage, I would barge into Lage's office (an indulgence he allowed) and demand to know at least how she was. Lage would give me his square Stalin smile, baring his teeth, and whisper, "Safe."
And then he would taunt me with the insect pieces.
She's still alive. Kiku . . . I always pictured her hair first; glossy, and thick, and so long I often woke to find my arms and legs tangled in its skeins in the middle of the night. Sometimes I would drawl, mimicking an American country singer, "She was a lotta hair and a little woman." But there was more . . . I called her hair "the obsidian mirror" because its highlights were so unusual that if she stood or sat still you could see things flitting through them, around the curve of her small head, or running down that swaying waterfall of black. Sometimes, when she was sitting bent over her drawing, oblivious, I would stand a couple of feet behind her and watch fire and snakes and emeralds and jaguars and pineapples and dancing beings appear and disappear in her hair . . .
I put on the second record, and Percy Sledge drove his soft golden axe into my heart:
When a man loves a woman
Can't keep his mind on nothing else
He'll trade the world
For the good thing he's found
If she's bad he can't see it
She can do no wrong
Turn his back on his best friend
If he put her down
When a man loves a woman
Spend his very last dime
Tryin' to hold on to what he needs
He'd give up all his comfort
Sleep out in the rain
If she said that's the way it ought to be
But Kiku never said much, she never made any demands --except for silence that I night I discovered her levitating-- and here I was with all the comfort, sheltered from the rain, and she--
But wait: she said something else that night, when I told her I loved her, and that I was for her. She said, "But not for long enough." She must have sensed she was going to be taken away, and that I would let it happen. And I did, because I was a coward. So I get a career, and she gets to lose her mind and churn out, in her disgusting medium, horrible little abstracts and postcard-genre historical portraits --de Cespedes, Maceo, Calixto Garcia with his giant moustache, Maximo Gomez-- doing them over and over, stuck in her mad loop--
Wait a minute. I sat up and stopped the record. Even in my drunken self-pity, something tugged at my soggy mind. My art training had noticed some discrepancy, some . . . I asked myself again, Why Carlos Lage? I finished what was in my glass, levered myself determinedly to my feet, and zigzagged my way to the balcony. I fought briefly with doors and curtains, but then there they were again, in all their frozen crawling ugliness.
I began to pick through them, pulling some out into the open, sorting them, and as I did so I fantasized about all the art supplies I had wanted to deliver to her: rich thick creamy white papers, big as you please; thirty-six watercolors in a wooden case, with a dozen of the finest brushes; two dozen fat tubes of oil paints; boxes of pencils and pastel sticks; charcoal and erasers by the drawerful; rolls of canvas and linen and precut ash for making stretcher bars; a real easel; until finally I came out of it, stepped back, shook my head --what was that?-- and tried to evalute the insect "artworks" as dispassionately as a curator.
I saw right away my hunch was correct, and it sent a chill up my spine. The Lage piece broke the pattern in several ways: it was the only contemporary portrait, and it was of someone she knew --we both knew. Not only that, it was the very man who put her in her present hell. In other words, it was the only piece with reference to her --her self --even if it was an image of ten years ago. She was referring to the last thing she could remember, maybe. I was getting excited, because that fact made this latest piece even more significant. It was as if she was recovering her self --the pivot of memory-- but had to begin back there from here, back then from now.
There was something else about the way this latest piece was made that distinguished it from its predecessors. The others were neat simplifications of formal portraits, as you might see on money or in history books. But this Lage piece was expressionistic, like a van Gogh: she crowded the piece with insects, many more than the others, and she bent and twisted some of her materials, aiming them toward the edges and sides, making Lage look vivid, even nervous. This, too, was a departure, and in the same direction, a movement forward in time, this one aesthetic.
Were these signals? Was she coming back? And if she was . . . My heart stopped: what will it do to her to wake to herself in hell? So is it better that she stays insane? I backed away from the tableau and the thought, retreating into my flat, and sank back into my desk chair, slapping my bald head with both hands.
What kind of thinking is that? You want her to stay insane? No! But what can I do? Same as you've ever done --nothing-- only here's the difference: it looks like she's changing the balance. And maybe you can do something now. Think!
Why Carlos Lage? Because he would have been the last familiar face she had seen that night of her performance. Perhaps he interrogated her, or simply stood on the other side of the bars to make sure she was under lock and key. From that time on, cruel strangers would tend to her until her mind unravelled. But now . . .
She was pointing to that night as the end of a thread she was picking up. Drunk or not, drowning in shame or not, I was convinced Kiku Ybarra was coming back to herself, and I had to do something about it, to get her out of wherever Lage had her caged. I just had no idea what to do. I was a college administrator and an art professor. I looked around my art-crammed apartment as if all that creativity could help. Nada. Lage, you bastard . . .
That's when I saw my mail on the floor. I automatically got down on my hands and knees and began to gather it up: school announcements, government regulation updates, and . . . a little white card with a mango logo and the words THE NEW MANGO on one side, and WE ARE NEXT on the other.
I dropped the rest of the mail and sank back on my heels, a little dizzy, and brought the card up close to my eyes, turning it over and over. I had no idea what it meant, but that little orange mango glowing in the center of the card brought fresh tears to my eyes.
The night MININT dragged Kiku away under the blanket, and cleared the square, I lingered behind because I wanted to confront Lage or Jeronimo. When they didn't show up after a few minutes, and the thugs began dismantling the stage, I remembered that big orange paper mango still stuck up on the wall. I didn't want MININT to confiscate it, so I scrambled up the ladder, ran along the roofline, and reached down my long arm and peeled it off the wall. As I stood and rolled it up into a tube, I saw Jeronimo appear in a doorway across the street, wearing and carrying his deadly black shapes. I changed my mind about confrontation. I backed away and took the hotel fire stairs down the other side, and ran all the way home.
I had helped her cut and paint the symbols. but she never did tell me what the mango meant. Now here was another mango symbol, but it couldn't be from her. I went into my bedroom and sat on the double bed, still unmade from this morning. I switched on the bedside lamp and reached behind the stool I used as a bedside table. I pulled out a cardboard tube, slipped off the worn rubber band, and unrolled the four-foot paper mango out on the empty half of the bed. My eyes went back and forth between the little mango and the big mango, back and forth, back and forth, as I swayed over them both. I thought, They're only orange all over when their skin's been peeled away, and then I swooned and fell into an expanding ocean of orange.
* * * * * *
When I woke up this morning, groaning, I was curled up on the big paper mango like a baby. The little card was crumpled in my right hand. As I rolled back and forth my head, and then my mind, and then my stomach, remembered what had happened the night before. I barely made it to the basin.
I came out a half-hour later, starving, freshly shaved and showered, with a handful of aspirin in my stomach. I put on the coffee, and the margarine in the pan for the plantains, opened a can of refried beans, and prepared my breakfast. It felt good to be clean and fresh, though it was hard work getting that way. Once again I remembered that my mother's joke from my childhood --that I was so skinny I had to run around in the shower to get wet-- had all too quickly turned ruefully true even before I grew up.
As the food heated up on the propane stove I went back over to my desk to clear off the mail and other things so I could write in this journal. That's when I saw the package from Carlos Lage. I sighed; there was more, then. I hefted the padded envelope, then set it aside. My mind had enough to process from the night before. Kiku . . . little mango . . . still alive. I cleared off my desk and set out my journal. From my ratty bathrobe's pocket I removed the little card, creased and stained with scotch, and put it on the desk. Then I put my platanos fritos together, turned my one padded armchair toward the balcony, and ate my breakfast as the pink morning sun grew into a fat crimson rose, and then into its usual blind white eye. The slight breeze became warm, and a little sticky, and then stiffened up enough to make me close the glass doors and feel the itchy fear of the coming hurricane season. What kind of gods would torture Cubans with both people and nature?
I cleaned up the dishes. Then I called ISA and told my assistant I was on a special assignment and would not be at my office today. After that I got dressed and sat down at my desk with fresh coffee, a fresh pen (from cousin Cristobal), and a fresh page. (Kiku used to whisper "scribble, scribble, scribble," but she was just teasing; she knew if I didn't write things down I would forget them. I had a terrible memory otherwise.) I began to write . . .
Now here it is midmorning, and I'm ready to open the envelope from Carlos Lage.
* * * * * *
Well, well, well. These four new subjects --Yasmani Oliva the rebellious student (and his remarkable work), Rosa Blanca Azul my own star student, Carlos Lage's closer attention, and the second appearance of the New Mango-- they were like windows and doors opening into chambers I would never otherwise see. From my position, professionally and as a semi-shunned Communist, Havana --all Cuba, actually-- was like a nautilus, a nautilus ruled by an octopus each of whose tentacles didn't know what the other seven were up to.
I don't use these images by accident. Yasmani Oliva's accomplished and dynamic ink drawings of sea life summoned them --several shelled creatures-- crabs, lobsters, shrimp, the nautilus (in cutaway, somehow)-- octopi, spiny urchins, starfish, and a hammerhead shark skeleton. I also admired his skill. At sixteen, he was already a master of curves and shading.
Of course I had never heard of Yasmani Oliva, and here at the art college I had been keeping out of classrooms for the last few years, so I was ignorant of any counterrevolutionary rumblings among the last few graduating classes. Most students were actually cynical, and just wanted to find a niche --a gimmick, a trick, a style-- to attract offshore money. Idealism --much less "Down With Fidel"-- was far from their acquisitive minds. That partly explains my retreat from the classroom. I got to where I'd rather argue with government bureaucrats about funds for building repair than contend with students about what art could contribute to the world.
What I had helped contribute was Rosa Blanca Azul --you know, La Pionera!-- and the rest of the New Inventado Movement. The rich world loved it that our artists had to use the wood from old dressers, for example, for many many things. And the artists, and student-artists, picked up the signal right away, and unleashed a flood of "arte povera Cubana" which charmed the world and brought in the much-needed dollars. And Rosa was in the vanguard with her signature Pioneer Girl, almost always in uniform. (I never admitted it, but that little girl image always irritated me.)
Now Lage wants me to point Rosa at Yasmani. I had a sudden image of fingers of different sizes: Lage pokes me, I poke Rosa, Rosa pokes Yasmani, Yasmani takes his place in the line. The old story of the big fish and the little fish. But. Once again, the thorn: Why Carlos Lage? He has one of the biggest fingers in Cuba. He could flick Yasmani into one of a dozen Re-education Centers without bothering either Rosa or myself. Then I recalled the tone of his note: he was worried. So was F.
About a 16-year-old kid? About art? About three words?
Which brought my thoughts back to The New Mango. Whatever it was, it was already on the street. If it was in the ISA, I had no idea --and I ran the school. Well, that's worrisome. I needed to get back into the classrooms and corridors, observing and listening to hear what the students were talking about these days. Except for the fast-track graduate student Erasmo Oliva --better known as Flash No More-- a prodigy, a true exception (related to Yasmani? Must ask him)-- I stayed away from most of the students. WE ARE NEXT. Could it be some subversive student project? How? These college students weren't subversive. I examined the card again. Even after the wrinkles and the scotch, I could tell the edges were nicely squared away, but it still seemed hand-cut to me. The paper wasn't perforated. It was stock. But it couldn't be from a printer at school. All printing --not just at ISA-- was strictly controlled. This card was made off-site somewhere. And, of course, it was not alone. How many of these little cards could there be?
Laser printers were hard to come by, not to mention paper and batteries and ink cartridges --color, too, don't forget. And a good computer and software, too, to direct the printer to create that fine orange shade! This was not some primitive, hand-colored operation. This was organized.
Ten cards per page, let's say. Fifty pages, five hundred cards. One hundred pages, one thousand cards. Could it be one of the independent library groups? But what for? The message, after all this effort, was both vague and ominous. WE ARE NEXT spoke of replacement, and that was unacceptable to the regime, of course. Who was WE and what did NEXT mean?
Good questions . . . Questions.
Maybe that was the point. To question. Even if there was nothing behind it. It occured to me that perhaps there need be nothing behind it. Questions were enough. Three little words. Two words -- "Abajo Fidel"-- were enough to get Yasmani Oliva into trouble.
Well . . . this might get dangerous. And these days, "dangerousness" was a crime.
Posted by Jerome at July 31, 2005 09:03 PM | TrackBack