Chapter Two
Pilar
Havana
The knock at the door woke her.
At first, she couldn’t be sure if it was a dream, part of the nightmare that had plagued her in the months since the pounding at the door took her husband away.
But tonight, there was a hesitancy to the sound. Not the authoritative boom of the secret police, but the plaintive cry of someone who knew that throughout the homes of Havana, the walls had ears.
Pilar rose from her bed, grabbing the robe that lay draped over her desk chair in the tiny apartment where she and Enrique had once dreamed of raising a family.
They had agonized over such small decisions back then—whether they should paint the kitchen blue or green, if the couch would look better by the window or if they should position it so they had a view outside.
They decided on the latter, so that when they would sit curled up next to each other reading their books—a novel for her, poetry for him—all they had to do was look up to see the streets of Havana and, if they were lucky, to catch a peek of the moon shining luminously over the tops of the buildings.
She hadn’t been able to bear sitting there since they had taken him, Enrique’s slim volume of poems he had been reading that evening still resting on the couch’s arm.
Pilar liked to think the poems were waiting for him, the bookmark keeping his place, the pages still warm from his fingers.
Sometimes she would open the book of poetry herself, running the pads of her fingers over the crisp sheets, ghosting over the words he held so close to his heart, resurrecting her husband letter by letter, word by word.
It had been six months since they’d taken him, no hope of a trial for his alleged “crimes” in sight.
But books were magic, and if the pages of them could contain one’s essence, one’s soul, then Pilar liked to believe that Enrique’s books were waiting for him to return much as she was.
And while Enrique could not give her his strength in this moment, could not stay by her side as he had for almost seven years of marriage, this piece of him remained, untouchable by Fidel’s men.
They could take her husband, but they could not erase his dreams.
Pilar walked through the quiet apartment, struggling to keep her footfalls as silent as possible lest her downstairs neighbors query what she was doing awake at such an hour.
In Cuba, in the tiny apartments that were the now subdivided remnants of other people’s lives, other people’s homes, other people’s dreams, the floors had ears, too.
Pilar reached the door and leaned forward, her palm resting against the cool wood, the paint peeling in places, the idea of bothering to repair it even if she could find the materials simply exhausting.
Pilar stared through the peephole.
Her next-door neighbor Zenaida stood on the other side.
It took a couple tries, her fingers trembling with the effort, but Pilar unseated the security chain.
She was never the brave one. Enrique was the passionate one, the bold visionary, the man who would give the shirt off his back to help another.
Those traits existed somewhere in her, but they were largely nascent, parts of her personality that she could rely on when she absolutely needed them rather than pieces of herself that she naturally exuded.
As such, people were always calling on her husband at all hours of the night for his assistance, a fact that undeniably had landed him in prison.
In their years of marriage, Pilar grew used to the fact that Enrique would investigate strange noises in the night, would face the potential dangers that threatened the four walls of their home.
But Enrique was gone, and she remained.
Pilar took a deep breath, steadying her nerves, turned the lock on the door, and opened it.
Zenaida’s shoulders dropped, some of the tension seeping from her body as their eyes met.
Unlike Pilar, she was still dressed in her clothes from earlier in the day, the familiar blue flowered dress she always wore on laundry day.
Zenaida was a favorite in the building, her skill with a needle and thread coming in handy when a dress was too small for a growing child and needed to be let out with no money left for a new one.
Zenaida had embroidered flowers on the collar of her dress, the bright colors offering a spark of joy to a well-worn gown.
Pilar had never asked her where she got the thread, but she knew people often paid Zenaida’s husband for his medical services with whatever they had lying around since money was scarce, and no doubt many old clothes in Havana found new lives under Zenaida’s skillful ministrations.
The more that Fidel’s government cracked down on their lives—rationing food, nationalizing properties and businesses, confiscating personal property belonging to those who left Cuba or defied the government in any manner—the harder they all had to work to find other means of surviving outside of the official system.
Even if that meant risking your freedom and being sent to prison over something as simple as extra food to feed your family.
“Is something wrong?” Pilar whispered.
How ridiculous she sounded!
No one came with good news in the middle of the night.
Zenaida shifted uneasily on the doorstep, glancing from side to side quickly, a small bundle of fabric in her arms. “May I come in?”
It shamed Pilar more than she cared to admit that when Zenaida posed the question, there was a moment’s hesitation, some instinct to retreat into the comfort of her apartment, climb back into bed, and pull the covers over her head.
There was a desire to tell Zenaida that Pilar had enough troubles at her door with the police taking her husband, their gaze likely still on her , and the last thing she needed was to draw more attention to her precarious situation.
These days, they all swung the pendulum of reaching out a helping hand when they could and fearing the one that was offered to them.
You never knew when a trick was underfoot, when someone you thought was a friend could be spying on you, when the wrong person would see or hear the wrong thing, and you would be dragged from your house in the dead of night and simply disappeared.
Come on. You can’t think like that. How will we endure this, how will we survive, if we do not help each other? We are Cuban no matter how much Fidel tries to divide us.
She could hear Enrique’s voice in her head as loud as if he were standing next to her, giving her the courage she needed, reminding her of the part of herself that had been chiseled away since the revolution.
It was impossible to live, to thrive, to breathe in a country where you were constantly filled with mistrust and fear.
Sometimes the greatest act of defiance was holding that fear at bay, refusing to become the version of herself they seemed to want her to be.
Pilar nodded, stepping aside and letting Zenaida in.
She closed the door quickly behind her neighbor, her fingers trembling once more as she turned the series of locks as though they were enough to keep Fidel from this apartment.
“We’re leaving Havana,” Zenaida announced, a tremor in her voice. Her grip on the bundle tightened, her knuckles whitening at the motion. For a moment, it seemed as though Zenaida was holding herself together by a combination of force of will and the grip she maintained on the object in her hands.
It was hardly surprising Zenaida was leaving, considering how many Cubans had been forced to flee their homes these past seven years, but still, Pilar found that the flowers on the collar of Zenaida’s dress no longer seemed so bright, the colors blurring together through the lens of the moisture gathering in Pilar’s eyes.
“You will be missed. Very much so,” Pilar said.
Zenaida nodded. “I will miss this building. All of you.”
Although Zenaida never would have offered her age, and Pilar wouldn’t have dared to ask, her neighbor must be in her late fifties or early sixties—
What would it be like to have to start over at a time when one should be anticipating transitioning into their golden years?
Zenaida and her husband had lived in this building before the revolution, since they were newlyweds like Pilar and Enrique had been.
Their children were born here, grandchildren visited here.
More than one holiday had been spent listening to the joyous laughter, raucous comments, and vibrant music that had filtered through the walls between them.
“I thought I would live out the rest of my days in this building,” Zenaida added. There was a sense of bewilderment to the statement, the same confusion that had plagued Pilar since they took Enrique away.
How had this happened to them? How had they gotten to this place where their lives were no longer recognizable? And so quickly, too? It was as though she’d woken in the middle of a nightmare, her mind dusty with sleep for all that she no longer understood the world around her.
“Hopefully, you will.” Pilar took a deep breath, willing herself to find the courage to speak in a country where words could mean death. “Hopefully, this will pass,” she continued, a whisper all she could manage even as the futility of the sentiment tugged at her heart.
Hope was the hardest emotion to bear.
Pilar found herself saying words she didn’t believe a great deal these days.
It wasn’t that she was lying—or if she was, at most she was doing so to herself—but it was simply that the world had turned upside down on its head and she no longer knew what to make of reality.
They had lived seven lifetimes in the seven years since the revolution, and reality had taken the shape of whatever Fidel willed it to be.