“You are visiting in Cuba, of course,” the woman said in Russian.
“Of course.”
“For the celebration of antinuclear peace?”
“Partly that.”
The path led along a cut through the sandy scarp behind the beach; on each side of them was a head-high bank of sand and a growth of pine trees. Tarp saw an old tire track in the deep sand, as if the cut were used for vehicles that patrolled the beach, perhaps. He sensed the Cuban woman studying him, and as a distraction he said, “Americans are very young for their years, are they not? These two seem like children.”
“You have been to America?” she said.
“I have met Americans before.”
“Yes, they are very young. And very spoiled. They think they are the kings of creation.”
“Many Americans think that,” he said.
She laughed. “All Cuban men think that.”
Up ahead he could see a paved road and a rather pretty circular road with benches and palms in the middle. There were two buses there and a crowd of people. “Are Cuban men different from Cuban women?” he said idly, thinking of how he was going to get to Havana and of whether he could get on one of these buses safely. The gun seemed very big and very visible just then.
She was looking down at the sand. “Cuban men are children, but they think they are very grown-up, and what they want their women to be is even younger children.” She looked at him with a smile and then looked away. “It is called machismo.” She shrugged. “Politically, Cuban men are all Communists now, but sexually they are still tied to the pope’s skirts.”
Tarp was looking at the buses, which were decorated with brightly colored posters celebrating peace and the establishment of nuclear-free zones. “Happily, we Russians do not have that problem,” he said. She laughed. She was laughing at him, no doubt, and even though she was laughing at the stuffy Russian he was only pretending to be, he was piqued. She went right on laughing at him, and the annoyance changed to genuine amusement, then to sexual recognition. “You are very beautiful,” he said.
“You even talk like a Cuban man!” she said.
“Men are men, at a certain level. You are very beautiful!”
“Well.” She stopped. She took off a shoe to empty it of sand, and to hold herself steady she put a hand on his arm. “Well, I am enough of a Cuban woman to like being told I am beautiful.” She blew out her breath in what seemed to be impatience with herself. He thought she would empty the other shoe, and to do so she would hold his arm again, but she started toward the road and the buses. He caught her shoulder. “Will you go out with me?” he said. He was not sure whether he had asked her as himself or as his Russian creation.
“Where?”
His hesitation was very brief. “The Russian ballet.”
“You want to see the ballet?”
“Of course.”
“Tonight is their last performance in Havana.”
“Well, then — tonight.”
She looked him over. He had a sick feeling that she could see the gun, even though the shirt hid it well. She folded her arms, which were brown and leanly muscled, like a swimmer’s arms, and covered with fine brown hairs the color of a seal’s. “I’m not one of the easy Cuban girls, Russki,” she said.
“I can tell that by looking at you.”
“Well… All right.” For the first time she looked unhappy with herself, as if she disliked what she had done. Still, she said stubbornly, “I will meet you in front of the theater at seven-thirty.”
“It will be a great pleasure for me.”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” She looked at the buses and the crowd, her arms still folded, her face twisted by a frown. “How are you getting back to Havana?” she asked.
“A friend is picking me up.”
“When?”
He lied. “Ten-thirty.”
“But it is long past that!”
“It can’t be.”
“It is after eleven!” She held a brown wrist up for him to study. “See?”
Tarp frowned. He meant only to look like a man who was annoyed with himself; his frowns, however, inevitably looked far more serious than that.
“Don’t be angry,” she said softly.
“I am not angry.”
“You look angry. Terribly angry.”
“Not at all.” He rubbed the lines between his brows. “Only at my own stupidity.”
“Have you money?”
He frowned again. She winced. “I left everything in his car,” he said. “A walk on the beach — no need to take anything — well, what a fool I am! If my superiors hear of this…”
“Typical Russian,” she said.
“I beg your pardon!”
“You all go crazy in the sun. Well, come on.” She grabbed his short left sleeve and tugged. “I will find you a ride, sun-struck Russki. Come along!”
“Can I ride with you?”
“Certainly not! These young Americans have antennae like oversexed roosters; they would giggle and gossip and I would lose my authority with them. What little authority it is possible to have with them! You will ride in the other bus.”
“But I will see you tonight?”
“Yes, yes, in front of the Theatre of Revolutionary Culture.”
“How will I find you?”
“I will find you. You are so tall, you will stick up like a signal for yourself. Come on.”
There were two militia men in the back of the second bus, which was rather old and which put out a cloud of diesel smoke as it racketed down the highway toward Havana. The militia men were from a Havana suburb, and they carried holstered pistols, but they were less threatening than two American deputy sheriffs might have been. Tarp sat with them and chatted whenever the bus slowed enough so that they could hear each other.
“You like Cuba?” one of them said.
“Oh, yes. The finest country in Latin America!”
They smiled shyly, as if Cuba were their personal triumph.
“You are from Moscow?”
“No, no, the Ukraine.”
“I studied that in school. I have been to school, of course. Before the revolution, a man like me, he would never have been to school. Now, I can write, and I read the announcements to my block committee. The Ukraine is the breadbasket of Russia.”
“That’s very good,” Tarp said in his Russian-accented Spanish. He did not say what he really thought — that the breadbasket of Russia was in Iowa.
They passed through clean little towns, then through a development of semi-detached concrete houses that would have reminded him of Moscow because of their sameness if they had not been painted in pretty pastels and if there had not been chickens and mules in the minuscule front yards. He waved a hand at them. “Cuba is very picturesque,” he said.
“Cuba is very clean,” one of the militia men corrected him.
“All of it?”
“All except Buena Ventura.” The man smiled shyly. Then he guffawed a little nervously, and his companion elbowed him and they both giggled.
“What is Buena Ventura, please?”
“Buena Ventura is the place that does not officially exist.”
The man’s companion looked disgusted. “He is a thug,” he said. “He has no manners. He should not have said that.”
“I see.”
The first man was enjoying being bad, however. “Buena Ventura is more carefully hidden than Fidel’s bald spot,” he said. He giggled again. The other man shushed him, then turned away and stared out the window as if he were trying to disassociate himself from his unruly friend. Clearly it had occurred to him that Tarp might make a report of the conversation. (It had already occurred to Tarp that they might make a report on him. There was nothing he could do about that.)