“That’s a sad and happy story,” Quinn said to Renata. “Now you must marry me and my Changó beads. Did you just hear what Changó did for your favorite Orisha, Babalu Aye?”
“I heard,” she said, “and will you always do that for me?”
“I will,” he said. “And will you give me such love that the gods will be jealous?”
“I will try.”
“Then it is time to marry,” Quinn said, and he put her arm in his arm and he walked her to the table with the bowls of Oshun and Changó, and he looked to Moncho, who called Epifanio, his driver, and one of Arsenio’s daughters, Encarnita, as witnesses, and then Moncho spoke from memory the civil ritual that made Quinn and Renata man and wife. Felipe Holtz gave the bride away.
Arsenio’s old wife brought many plates of food to the table, and the wedding feast carried on until after midnight when a messenger arrived and talked to Moncho, and together they told Quinn that it was time for him to meet Arsenio in the forest. His bride would not be going with them. She should see a woman in Havana who would find a meaningful connection for her in the revolution, and Moncho would tell her that woman’s name. Quinn passed this on to Renata who said if I go back to Havana they will arrest and kill me. I will go back with Felipe to his house and wait for you. Then she kissed Quinn, her new husband, and went alone to their marriage bed.
Quinn and two of Arsenio’s people went out the back door of the house and walked through a black forest, mostly uphill, and after the first hour Quinn was short of breath, his knees aching, his arches ready to collapse, why the hell did you wear these shoes? Because they’re the only tough shoes I own and what’s more I’m hungry, I should’ve brought a sandwich. At his wedding Quinn had eaten a forkful of tortoise stew (Changó’s favorite), a quarter of an aguacate, and the bread pudding he publicly designated as the wedding cake — one mouthful, with which he kissed Renata, and food then became irrelevant. But, listen, sometimes the only thing the Mambí troops had to eat was sour oranges and tree rats. Quinn blocked the hunger nag and focused on the light of the large, almost full moon (the same moon his grandfather saw — he was with the Mambises in March, and beyond). Its light filtered at times onto the path Arsenio’s men were following through the dense foliage; but when the blackness resumed they still moved with great certainty, eyesight being only one of their navigational tools.
They walked without speaking, not a word. The burlier of the two men was the leader and carried on his back something like a bedroll wrapped in straw, which, Quinn would see when it was delivered to Fidel, was not a bedroll but a Thompson machine gun and cartons of ammunition, a gift to Fidel from Arsenio who got the Thompson and a Garand from two of Batista’s soldiers, killed after they left a whorehouse in Bayamo. The Garand was strapped over the shoulder of the second man, Omar, a son of Arsenio who was joining Fidel, and that was possible only if you brought your own weapon.
Omar had been driven off his land by the army, which was clearing out all villages where Fidel had gotten, or might get, help or supplies, creating a no-man’s-land where friend or foe would be shot on sight, and which opened great areas to the bombing raids the air force was planning. This was a replay of 1896 and ’97 when Capitán-General Valeriano Weyler, the Spanish commander of all Cuba, emptied villages to isolate rebels who lived in them invisibly. He herded 300,000 peasants, maybe more, no one kept count, into reconcentration camps where hundreds of thousands died of hunger and disease, earning Weyler his Cuban sobriquet, “The Butcher,” and establishing his reputation as one of history’s great villains.
In the seventh hour of their journey Quinn and Arsenio’s son waited at a small creek while the burly man went ahead to confirm that they were near their destination. He returned and they walked thirty more minutes into the sunrise, feeling the onset of the intense morning heat, and found the Comandante at his headquarters of the moment, a primitive hut whose occupants had been evacuated by the army. He was sitting on a stool, two men with him and four more circulating around the hut watching for danger. Quinn would count another twenty-some men at rest among the trees.
“Mr. Quinn,” said Fidel, standing up and confirming that he was six-feet-three, three inches closer to the moon than Quinn, “they tell me you interrupted your honeymoon to come here.” There was that noted beard, black as the forest night, and an amiable smile. He wore fatigues and a cap he kept on throughout the interview.
“They are right,” said Quinn, “but my pilgrimage here is part of the honeymoon. Without coming to talk to you about revolution I wouldn’t be married.”
“Then you are in my debt. You are wearing beads of Santeria. Are you a follower?”
“My bride is, but I am learning. A babalawo gave me these beads. They represent Changó.”
“My mother was a Catholic but also followed the Santeria. When she was pregnant a babalawo told her I was the son of a warrior god. She initiated me with a ceremony when I was still in the womb and she said Changó put in an appearance.”
“Wherever I go in Cuba I run into Changó. But the womb is new.”
Fidel was thirty-one, a year and a half up on Quinn, and he looked fit, sanguine, and on edge, which Quinn thought was probably his permanent condition. He talked softly and told Quinn to do likewise, for the moisture of the morning carries words great distances and who knows who might be passing by out there? He spoke in Spanish, with one of his soldiers interpreting in English. Quinn identified himself as Daniel Quinn the Second, grandson of Daniel Quinn the First who came to Cuba to prove Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was not dead, as the Spaniards were claiming; and Herbert Matthews did the same for you. Now you’re famous for not being dead; and Fidel agreed. Quinn said he would point out in his story that during an interview one month after Matthews, the Comandante still showed no symptoms of death.
Fidel thought he remembered the americano Quinn’s book on Céspedes from his University days. Quinn said the Cubans called his grandfather El Quin. Fidel remembered an American called El Inglesito, fellow named Reeve, who had been a Union soldier in the Civil War and then came down and fought four hundred battles with the Mambises.