The Death of Fidel Perez. Elizabeth Huergo
young." Justicio smiled, shrugging.
"I was young," the old man retorted. "I never wore my hair in a point like a dunce. Never wore a red headband, like a girl."
"We're all sinners. Can you walk?"
"I'm fine," the old man said, methodically brushing off
his clothes. "I have to go. I have work to do," he added, the expression on his face suggesting he had just noticed Justicio for the very first time.
"What if something else happens?" Justicio asked. "You heard the boys. Off to see what's going on."
Justicio could see a question flash across the old man's face. Instead of asking, the old man began to turn away.
"I'm Justicio."
" Pedro Valle."
"We're going in the same direction. Can I come along?"
"Suit yourself." Pedro shrugged.
Justicio walked along the street, the bicycle cab on his left, while Pedro, on his right, walked on the sidewalk. The brass bells hanging from the rearview mirror of the bicycle cab jangled in the breeze.
"What were you doing? In front of the statue, I mean," Justicio ventured.
Pedro stopped, and Justicio could feel the old man's withering stare.
"Has Quijote become an enemy of the state?"
"I was just making conversation."
Pedro nodded, but Justicio could sense the old man's persistent suspicion, his quick and now unwavering judgment of Justicio.
"When I was a boy," Pedro said, "during the Depression, my family moved from the town of Remedios, in the province of Las Villas, to Havana. We moved into a four-story apartment building just a few blocks away from here. We all had to work. Even my youngest brother, Antonio. He would sit quietly at our mother's knees and hand her the pieces of cloth she sewed together into shirts and smocks. It was my job to go out and sell each piece for a few centavos."
"My mother took in laundry," Justicio offered. "I helped her."
"In Remedios my father would take us all to El Parque Republicano, a rectangular park near the church, in the center of town. The park was bisected with diagonal paths that all radiated from a central gazebo. The place was filled with trees and shrubs and statues. Everyone met there at day's end. Old people would sit on wooden benches along the perimeter. Children would swarm like insects, running along the paths. Young girls would saunter by in clusters of three and four, always pretending not to see the boys around them. Couples would go there to court, strolling by arm in arm. After they were married for a while, you would see them there, trying to get away from one another."
"It was so different then," Justicio said. "I was telling my wife Irma this morning. 'If our boys had jobs,' I told her, 'they would have ambition. They would marry and build families the way our generation did. They wouldn't drink all the time.' Before the fall—"
"Before the fall?"
Justicio paused. He could see that the old man walking beside him had become agitated again.
"What do you do?" Justicio asked.
"You're one of those religious fanatics, aren't you?" Pedro ventured. "The absolute corruption of man in his fallen state? And redemption, redemption and forgiveness dangling there, impossible, some endless longing for what can't quite ever happen, not with any certainty."
Pedro paused. "I teach history, at the university."
Justicio could see his face softening, awash in a sadness that was palpable.
"My mother's faith was unshakable— and my wife, Sonya's. I've never seen anything so beautiful as their faces transfixed in prayer."
"But not you, Professor?" Justicio asked.
"I fell into history. The first time I saw the statue of Quijote de América, my father placed his hands on my shoulders. The statue and my father's hands became inextricable. Every time my father brought me here, he would tell me stories about Spain and the immigration of his parents to Cuba. '¿Que veremos hoy?' he would ask. It was as if for him the history of Spain could not be told but only seen. My father's stories were like a stream of images, like the flickering movie reels in the smoky downtown theater where my brother Antonio and I would go."
"My father died when I was still a child. My mother raised all five of us by herself. I helped her. We all did."
"I'm sorry," Pedro offered.
"It was a long time ago."
Justicio felt one of the rear wheels of his cab dip into a pothole. The brass bells jangled. He looked around, aware that he had followed Pedro into the oldest part of El Vedado. It saddened Justicio to see how the neighborhood was crumbling palpably into ruin. Time had scooped out the insides of the old mansions, the way he would scoop the yolk of an egg, on those rare occasions when he could get an egg.
" Good-bye, Justicio. No need to worry about saving me," Pedro said, extending his right hand in thanks.
" Good-bye, Pedro."
Justicio lingered, unsure why he felt so solicitous toward a complete stranger. He watched Pedro Valle pass by an archway decorated with blue-and-white Alhambra tiles, pause, and glance inside as if he were peering into an ancient grotto. A wave of tenderness nearly overcame Justicio, who was certain now that he was watching a part of himself, watching some terrible dance among those who had sunk into the waters of damnation, those who had been saved, and those who clung mightily to the sides of their dinghy— waiting, hoping.
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