Chapter Eight #2
She could see Julio was choosing his words carefully, trying to keep the horrific truth from her. As if they all hadn’t heard the whispers, or the firing squads. As if they all didn’t know how far the regime was willing to go to suppress all dissent.
“I’m so sorry,” Julio whispered, or at least that was how it sounded over the roaring in her ears.
—
Julio had offered to walk her home, but she’d told him she would rather be alone.
She’d always been a private person, never comfortable sharing her emotions with just anyone.
That was part of how she had known that Enrique was the one for her—she’d been at ease with him in a way she hadn’t been at ease with anyone, like they occupied their own private space in the world where they could be a haven for each other.
On the surface, they were so different—Pilar wasn’t one to make friends easily and Enrique was a friend to everyone.
Sometimes she would walk home from the library to find him leaning over the hood of a car, helping one of their neighbors string together a repair to get it running again.
He had an easy nature she’d simultaneously loved and envied.
If the roles had been reversed, if something had happened to her, Enrique would have taken solace in the company of others.
She took hers in the cocoon she placed around herself that kept the world at bay.
Her feet carried her down the streets of Havana through memory alone. She passed by the spot where many of her neighbors would gather, where Enrique’s laughter would greet her.
It was empty today.
Pilar made her way through the building, and when she reached the top of the staircase, when she stood outside her apartment door, she returned to herself, to reality, to the unavoidable truth that every single time she walked through this door from now until the day she died, silence would greet her.
Enrique would never again be there waiting for her, would never again walk through the door with a smile and a kiss, and a story about his day.
Her hand shook as she placed the key in the lock, as she turned the knob, as she pushed open the door, the hinges announcing her presence with an eerie creak.
She closed the door behind her, her heart in her throat, tears welling in her eyes as she scanned the space.
How strange that it appeared the same as it had this morning before she’d learned that her husband had died, and at the same time, it was something new entirely, a dream she no longer recognized.
And yet—
Someone had been in her apartment.
It hit her, the sensation of wrongness sending a chill down her spine, piercing its way through the grief inside her.
Enrique’s book of poetry wasn’t where he left it, waiting for him to return.
It was close, but it was inches off where it had been.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been staring at the book for months, if she hadn’t been able to move it from its place on the couch without returning it to the exact same spot each time after she’d picked it up and caressed the pages, running her fingers over the inky words, perhaps then she would never have noticed.
Someone had touched Enrique’s things, had gone through them.
And for what?
For Enrique’s secrets or for hers?
Her mind raced as she struggled to connect the timing of all that had happened, to unravel the coincidence of a man visiting the library where she worked asking Ignacio if she was a loyal revolutionary, of the major moving in next door, of Julio’s visit, of someone breaking into her apartment.
Had Enrique told them something in his final hours that had brought them here to their apartment, to scavenge over the corpse of their life one last time?
Or was her neighbor responsible for this?
Pilar’s gaze swept over her things.
It wasn’t obvious—nothing had been overturned or left dramatically out of place, but there was a shift in the room, little things that were inches off.
What were they looking for? And who was behind this?
A creak sounded somewhere in the building, the thin walls making it difficult to tell if it came from inside her apartment or one of her neighbors’ homes.
Fear mingled with the grief that threatened to tear her in two.
A strangled sob burst from her lips, and she cut it off, pressing her fist to her mouth, struggling to keep from making a sound.
She was losing herself, losing her grip on the world around her—inch by inch, minute by minute.
Her life had turned itself upside down, first with her husband’s death and now with this invasion of their private space.
Pilar had prayed for death the entire walk from the library to the apartment; it had echoed like a drumbeat through her mind. She’d prayed to God to take her, too, since he’d seen fit to take her husband away, because there was no world she wanted to live in that didn’t include Enrique.
And yet—now, now that it seemed as though her prayer might be answered, Pilar’s gaze darted to the stove in the kitchen, the enormous iron pan that she had left resting there because it was too big for her tiny cabinets.
She set her purse down and grabbed the pan, moving quietly, quickly now.
Beyond the living area was the doorway to her bedroom, the bathroom attached to that.
Was someone still in the apartment? Were they hiding there?
For an instant she wondered if she should go for help, but the impulse vanished as quickly as it came.
Who was there to ask for assistance? She knew who would search her apartment, and if the regime was after her, there was no help to be had for her in Havana, no safe place to hide.
Enrique’s network had disbanded after he and his friends were arrested, and there was no one she could think of who would—or could—help her now.
She couldn’t risk endangering those he loved—Julio, who was a father of two; Esteban, who had already been through so much.
Pilar walked into her bedroom, the pan gripped in her hands, her arms heaving slightly from the effort.
With each step she began to question the wisdom of her decision, but some stubbornness she didn’t even know she possessed propelled her forward.
They had already taken so much from her—her husband, her country, her peace—this little apartment was one of the last things she had left, and she refused to let it be another casualty of this cursed revolution.
Anger filled her, and in that moment, with nothing left to lose, she understood how people could be capable of just about anything, how circumstances could propel someone to act completely out of character. She understood the lengths one would go to for revenge.
Her bedroom was empty.
She took a step forward, and then another, peering into the small bathroom.
Empty, too.
She set the pan down on the edge of the bed, her arm exhausted by the effort, her entire body giving way beneath her.
Her heart skipped.
The floorboards next to her bed, the floorboards that up until this morning had housed the books that she had safeguarded, had been pulled up.
Whoever had replaced them had clearly tried to make the opening look undisturbed, but they had put the planks back in the wrong direction so that the wood grain didn’t match as it should have.
It was a small thing, but considering the risks she took, Pilar had committed every single aspect to memory.
She knew what they would have found when they pulled up the planks—absolutely nothing—but was that enough to dissuade them or would they continue searching?
What was next—tearing apart the library to see if she was hiding something?
She needed to move the books from their hiding place at work. She’d sworn at the beginning of this that she would keep Ignacio safe, that she wouldn’t jeopardize his freedom or that of his family. But she was running out of options, running out of friends.
Everyone had left Cuba, everyone had left her, and now the circle of people she could trust had grown terrifyingly small.
The silence of the apartment engulfed her even as the sounds of the street traffic below echoed on the other side of the windows.
My husband is dead. My husband is dead.
She needed to say it out loud, to shout the words, to make it real.
How was it possible that in an instant her entire world had been shattered, her life ripped away from her, and yet outside these four walls car horns honked and women hung clothes out to dry and waited in food lines and her husband was dead?
How was she supposed to wake up tomorrow and put on a dress and go to the library and pretend like things were normal?
There was no body to bury. No funeral to be had. There was just the thin gold band on her finger and the memory that once she had loved and been loved, and once upon a time there had been hope that the world could be a better place than this.
Minutes passed. Hours passed. The sun went down, and the stars came out, and Pilar sat on her bed, staring at the mismatched floorboards, and for the first time in her life there were no thoughts. There was just—nothing.
A vast nothing.
A noise on the other side of the wall pulled her out of her stupor sometime after eleven in the evening.
It was the thud of the front door slamming closed followed by the rush of running water filtering through the apartment next door.
Zenaida’s apartment.
The army major’s apartment.
More footsteps.
Had he been the one to go through her things?
Had he been involved in Enrique’s death? Had he seen her husband in his final moments?
She’d started safekeeping the books after they took Enrique.
It was as though the regime’s cruelty had unlocked something inside of her, some rebellious spirit she had never known she had until they took everything from her and the desire to fight back had consumed her.
The first time had been a longtime patron at the library who approached her with tears in her eyes and the story of how she was leaving Cuba.
Enrique couldn’t have told the government about the books because he hadn’t known.
The only people she had trusted with her secret were the ones who came to her door asking for help.
But you no longer knew who you could trust, who was pretending to garner valuable information to turn over to Fidel’s secret police.
In these times of desperation, there were those who would betray their own mother to survive.
Had someone betrayed Enrique?
Or had someone betrayed her?
Fear and anger wound their way through her like twin snakes, and in her grief, she did the only thing she knew to do.
She read.