The Hemingway Maid

I listened to her tale of teenaged submission to the Cuban Minister with a mixture of revulsion and admiration, attentively cringed as she described her seduction by power and material greed. She recounted tales of debauchery that, frankly, scared me silly with the combination of erotic excess and moral depravity. She told me of her ambivalence to these activities, how she no longer viewed them as something she was ashamed of, yet she felt little desire to wander those byways of excess again. She told me that she would never have children, described in nauseating detail how the Minister had forcibly had her surgically sterilized.

As afternoon gave way to evening, as our trust built in the shadow of her experience, I learned of her desire to join Miguel in America, her frustration at her inability to help Pedro, and her gratitude for her job on Sabrina.

I expressed my desire to help her, and her brother, in any way I could; I offered them food and shelter on Sabrina, money, and clothing; Elise with her hard won wisdom simply extrapolated the eventual outcome of such a move. I would leave eventually, Elise and her brother would return to the mangroves no better off than they were right now. It was a grave calculus, the mathematics of uncertainty proving safer than the hollow certainties of incremental compassion.

Compassion was, I learned that day, not something you doled out when and if it was morally convenient. Compassion was a choice no different than the choice to love. It must consume the soul to the same degree, or it is hollow.

As the sun set, the feelings we shared for each other as a result of our wanderings that day gave way to the tiredness we felt, to say nothing of the hunger I now felt acutely. Elise explained that this emptiness had been, for Pedro and herself, their daily bread before he had found his way to the Marina Hemingway. Now that she had worked on Sabrina for a while, become re-accustomed to a regular diet, she feared more than anything else a return to exile, to their poverty, and to the naked starvation of chance.

Elise laid her body down onto the rough surface of her burlap bed, and motioned me to her side. She had me lay beside her, my head in her lap, and I felt her fingers as they gently wound their way through my hair. She felt the contours of my heart through her fingers as I listened to her breathing. Our heartbeats seemed to mingle and join in evensong, our hunger and uncertainty giving way to the gentle arms of sleep.

+

I got up in the middle of the night with some urgent business to take care of, and stepped outside of the little shack and into the cool night air. I made my way through the shantytown to the beach and saw Ron and Pedro lying on either side of a small fire, apparently asleep. I walked away from them down the surf line, and looked up at the Dipper glowing in the deep night sky. As I gave my water back to the earth, grateful for the sharing, I heard another stream join mine, and turned to see Ron grinning like a ghost.

"So, Pudd-knocker, how stands the union," he said.

"Who's got the boats?" I replied, never one for sentimental chit-chat.

"Left the Two Amigo there. Gave 'em the keys to your liquor cabinet, some really dirty magazines, and a quart of Vaseline. When you get back, watch your step, and don't say I didn't warn you."

"Thanks. Helluva day, Ron."

"Yeah, relativity bites. Here we are in this world, comfortable, full bellies, money for rum, and all around us people are lying in the sewer. I used to keep telling myself I'd fought my war, paid my dues; but how do you look another human being in the eye while they're starving to death."

We stood, looking to the north, across the Straits. I could just barely, away from the lights of Havana, make out the distant glow of Key West in the still night.

So close. An irresistible force.

Moths to the flame.

"She's a helluva woman, Ron."

"Don't I know it. A might too high class for my taste, though. Thought you might enjoy her company."

"Wasn't like that, Ron. We talked. All goddamn day long. Fucking remarkable."

"Yeah, well, Pete and I brought you two some grub. I was gonna get you up before first light; I wanna get back to the reservation before the gomers start their rounds."

"Jeez, Ron, are you ever gonna leave Vietnam behind?"

"Hey, listen, bro, this is Cuba, not fucking Puerto Rico. Technically we ain't supposed to be outta the marina after midnight. Just because some of us have decided to float the local economy by drinking ourselves to death, well, ya'know, they cut us some slack. But this is the People's Paradise, bro, and they don't like it when we find things that don't mesh with the Propaganda Ministry's version of Marx. O.K.? Man, you liberal pukes can be so fuckin' naive sometimes."

"What time is it?"

"See Arcturus?

"Yeah, so?"

"Four-thirty. 'Bout an hour and a half 'till sunup." Ron seemed to enjoy these games.

"Smart ass!"

"Puke-face!" Ah, ethology!

The evening's moral philosophy lecture finished, Ron sent Pedro to wake his sister. I tried to chew down some sort of jerky and gave up, and tossed down a Coke instead. Pedro came back a few minutes later; Elise followed after a few more. Pedro unwrapped some fruit and gave it to her, and we all started the long walk back to the marina. If Ron and Pedro noticed Elise and I falling behind, they didn't make any remarks about it. Who knows, maybe they didn't notice when Elise took my hand in hers. Or the smile on my face when she did.

+

When the sun set that afternoon, the rhythm of life in the marina seemed to pause. As the outrageous aromas of Elise's cooking spread out over the surrounding boats, eyes took in the scene. Pedro sat in Sabrina's cockpit, drinking a soda long after the time he and his sister usually left the marina for their long walk home. I was up on the foredeck, sanding a couple of boards on the teak decks that needed some touching up. All appeared simply, unjustifiably, clandestinely normal.

The very picture of domesticity.

I guess the wandering eyes took in the three of us sitting in the cockpit a bit later, eating dinner together, trying our best to conceal the awkward butterflies that seemed to be hovering all around us. Maybe as it got darker they gave up trying to look toward Sabrina, and didn't see Elise and I sitting in the cockpit, talking at first across from one another, then moving closer together, closer, but not touching. Maybe they listened to the tone of our voices as they drifted through the cool evening air. Could they have discerned that moment when casual conversation moved to the beat of distant times and ancient music and fell into the chromatic chords of intimacy?

Even I would have to admit that later, as night took us in her gentle embrace, it would have been hard to ignore the primal sounds that growled and sighed from deep within Sabrina's amber-glowing belly. Even I was surprised by Elise's gentle fury as years of horror and despair gave way to the simple honesty of one soul's need basking in the warmth of acceptance. But there could have been little doubt, as still waterborne airs were pierced by the arrows of need, that in the womb of this night love found new hearts in which to dwell.

+

As the night wore on, Ron, Rosalita, and Pedro sat in Blade Runner's cozy little interior playing cards, trying to stifle laughs as moans and cries from the boat next door ripped through the air. In time, as quiet returned to the marina, Ron and Pedro took up their glasses and tipped them together, and in conspiratorial shadows made a quiet toast to their success.



I'm feeling my way toward a second part to this story. Let me know what you think.