“Alfie Rivero is also here and he really is your cousin, no?”
“Yes,” said Arsenio, ”and sometimes I trust my cousins.”
“He says he can get many guns for Fidel,” said Holtz. “He’s connected to Mafia people in Miami and he has airplanes. He knows guns and he will do anything.”
“We will talk with him about the guns,” Arsenio said.
“The periodista Quinn, all he wants is to interview Fidel.”
“Is that all?” said Arsenio.
“Will Fidel see any of them?”
“I will know tomorrow.”
“Is there a plan? Will we go toward the mountains?”
“If the answer is yes then Moncho will know the place. He will tell you.”
“Should all four of us go? Are we too many?”
“It makes no difference. It is dangerous, no matter how many. Not all of this group will go to Fidel.”
“How many army checkpoints where we’re going?”
“Who knows? They keep moving them.”
“I assume we should have a good reason for going.”
“The army asks who you are and why you are here and where you are going.”
“I can say I’m on business, buying land that was part of an old sugar mill.”
“There are no mills where you are going.”
“Then you know where we’re going.”
“I know where you might be going.”
“What about a family gathering? Quinn has the idea of doing an actual wedding celebration to marry Renata and he wants a babalawo and a Catholic priest to perform the ceremony. Alfie and I would be the bride’s relatives, and Moncho actually is a relative — he was married to Renata’s sister. Marriage seems like a good reason for going someplace. I do like the idea.”
“Is this a real marriage?”
“Quinn wants it to be. I don’t know if Renata wants it.”
“I like the marriage.”
“I know. You do it often.”
Arsenio dropped the stub of cigar he was chewing on and took a new one from his shirt. He put it in the corner of his mouth but did not light it. He stared at the pilgrims who all wanted to go to see the hero.
“Moncho will come here tomorrow,” he said. “You follow him in your car. The mafioso will go with me. Your cousin está muy buena.”
“You have a fine eye, Don Arsenio.”
Arsenio nodded at the pilgrims and walked out of the mill.
Quinn may or may not be about to meet with Fidel Castro and is now in the midst of the waiting game Fidel plays with visitors. He is in the main room of a house in Los Negros, a crossroads village near the northern foothills of the Sierra, where Moncho had led him and the other pilgrims from Palma Soriano. They passed two army checkpoints without trouble, Moncho explaining they were going to a wedding and the bride and groom are in the car behind me. The soldier inspected the Buick Quinn was driving and Renata said yes it’s true, and showed him her grandmother’s wedding ring that she would be wed with, and the soldier waved them on.
Quinn, waiting for Fidel — is now into his sixth hour in this house which belongs to one of Arsenio’s fifteen or twenty mujeres, wives of a sort. This wife lives here with two of her four daughters — and Quinn is witnessing an impromptu prelude to his wedding, a Santeria dance ritual, organized for Renata, that will, he hopes, lead into a divination, the calling down of one, maybe two Orishas who might hint at the destiny of the bride and groom, or offer a prognosis of the marriage, or faux marriage, whichever it is. Quinn hasn’t quite got a handle yet on the details of either the divination ritual or the marriage, but he’s getting there.
The ritual is being enacted by two principals brought here by Moncho — Ezequiel, who is playing the tambor beta, or sacred drum, and Floreal, who belongs to Ezequiel and is a Santera, a priestess of lesser station than a babalawo but empowered to invoke the Orishas. Floreal is singing as she dances barefoot, a chanting singsong in Yoruban verse evoking one of the hundreds of mysteries of Ifa, which is a belief system, a method of divination, an all-encompassing myth of the history of the universe. Her song is melodious despite the limited range of the music. She is wearing a head wrap, something like a turban but also like a crown, and she is floating her great blue skirt, another blue skirt beneath it (blue because that is the color associated with Oshun, the Orisha with whom Renata wants to commune). Floreal dances with graceful twirls and revolutions, with arcs of her body and subtle rhythms of hips, arms, and shoulders akin to the moves of the mambo, but a subdued mambo, elegant in twist and thrust.
This is taking place in the main room of this modest wooden house that Arsenio built for his old wife long ago. Chairs have been pushed to one wall. A table, with a white cloth covering it, is serving as an altar and is set out with two coconuts and a hammer, two stones, a glass of water, several bowls, one with water, two with offerings to the Orishas being summoned. Changó’s is the second bowl, which is wooden so it won’t break. Changó can be rowdy. Both these bowls are full — with beads and sunflowers and small cups of honey, plus herbs and other elements Quinn cannot identify. Behind the table a large fabric, red and light blue, has been hung to transform the room, and there is a festive quality here.
Quinn is fixated on Renata, who is totally absorbed by it all; and she is scoring dance points with Quinn by her effective emulation of Floreal’s moves, which isn’t easy. Quinn is reveling in Renata’s aesthetic control of her body. Grace and beauty prevail in all realms of her being, it seems to him. He is exploding with love for her; and immersed as he is in all this mumbo-jumbo, he would not be surprised to see his love materialize somewhere in this room in the shape of an idea, a corporeal rendering of his possibly insane desire. He would not go on record at the moment as to his own sanity.
Renata had told him she did not like to dance and would not dance with him. But she lied, or perhaps she just changed because of the impulse that started her dancing yesterday in her hotel room and took hold of her again here when Ezequiel’s drum began singing to her and Floreal’s chant and elegant movement brought her to her feet.
Quinn is also on his feet now, dancing with Renata at a distance, he too emulating Floreal’s steps; and he feels the power of this dance. He is with its beat, which is a slow mambo, he has definitely decided — you go with what you know. Floreal gave Quinn a small smile because of the way he was swaying his hips, not bad was his reading of her glance. His only exotic dance specialties were the merengue and the rumba, but soon he’d really nail this mambo, and maybe even the salsa, what the hell, he was in Cuba.
Moncho knew all about the involvement of Ezequiel and Floreal in Santeria from his time in Los Negros, and he approached them at their home to do this rite for Quinn and Renata. Moncho first thought he should dissuade Renata from this hasty marriage, she being so young and tempted. But as a believer in irrational love he offered no objection. Also, he had taken a liking to Quinn who is a bit strange, but seems to know what he wants — that fixation of his on babalawos and he doesn’t know anything about them. But there is no babalawo, for babalawos really can’t legally do weddings. And there’s no Catholic priest either. Moncho told Quinn and Renata, You don’t need a priest, I’ll do it.
All-purpose Moncho, a sometime criminal lawyer and public defender, is also a notario público appointed for life by Carlos Prío when he was president, with the power to draw real estate contracts and perform other legal functions, marriage among them. Moncho now sits in a corner and observes, across the room, in motion, the two daughters of the house. Holtz, who dances reasonably well, is focusing on the elder daughter. Arsenio’s old wife, and Moncho’s driver, Epifanio, who works with Arsenio, are all dancing, and the seated Moncho is moving his shoulders to the beat of the beta. Then he rises and gets into it. Is Moncho a believer like Renata? Who cares? Moncho dances, betraying ballroom talent and moving like a Cuban Fred Astaire — he could dance for a living — and he jangles toward those two daughters in long dresses, into a communion, perhaps, sanctified by Ifa, competing with Holtz for their attention.