The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 2

Havana

1966

The knock at the door woke her.

At first, she couldn’t be sure if it was a dream, part of the nightmare that had plagued her in the months since the pounding at the door took her husband away.

But tonight, there was a hesitancy to the sound. Not the authoritative boom of the secret police, but the plaintive cry of someone who knew that throughout the homes of Havana, the walls had ears.

Pilar rose from her bed, grabbing the robe that lay draped over her desk chair in the tiny apartment where she and Enrique had once dreamed of raising a family. They had agonized over such small decisions back then—whether they should paint the kitchen blue or green, if the couch would look better by the window or if they should position it so they had a view outside. They decided on the latter, so that when they would sit curled up next to each other reading their books—a novel for her, poetry for him—all they had to do was look up to see the streets of Havana and, if they were lucky, to catch a peek of the moon shining luminously over the tops of the buildings.

She hadn’t been able to bear sitting there since they had taken him, Enrique’s slim volume of poems he had been reading that evening still resting on the couch’s arm.

Pilar liked to think the poems were waiting for him, the bookmark keeping his place, the pages still warm from his fingers. Sometimes she would open the book of poetry herself, running the pads of her fingers over the crisp sheets, ghosting over the words he held so close to his heart, resurrecting her husband letter by letter, word by word.

It had been six months since they’d taken him, no hope of a trial for his alleged “crimes” in sight. But books were magic, and if the pages of them could contain one’s essence, one’s soul, then Pilar liked to believe that Enrique’s books were waiting for him to return much as she was. And while Enrique could not give her his strength in this moment, could not stay by her side as he had for almost seven years of marriage, this piece of him remained, untouchable by Fidel’s men. They could take her husband, but they could not erase his dreams.

Pilar walked through the quiet apartment, struggling to keep her footfalls as silent as possible lest her downstairs neighbors query what she was doing awake at such an hour.

In Cuba, in the tiny apartments that were the now subdivided remnants of other people’s lives, other people’s homes, other people’s dreams, the floors had ears, too.

Pilar reached the door and leaned forward, her palm resting against the cool wood, the paint peeling in places, the idea of bothering to repair it even if she could find the materials simply exhausting.

Pilar stared through the peephole.

Her next-door neighbor Zenaida stood on the other side.

It took a couple tries, her fingers trembling with the effort, but Pilar unseated the security chain.

She was never the brave one. Enrique was the passionate one, the bold visionary, the man who would give the shirt off his back to help another. Those traits existed somewhere in her, but they were largely nascent, parts of her personality that she could rely on when she absolutely needed them rather than pieces of herself that she naturally exuded. As such, people were always calling on her husband at all hours of the night for his assistance, a fact that undeniably had landed him in prison.

In their years of marriage, Pilar grew used to the fact that Enrique would investigate strange noises in the night, would face the potential dangers that threatened the four walls of their home.

But Enrique was gone, and she remained.

Pilar took a deep breath, steadying her nerves, turned the lock on the door, and opened it.

Zenaida’s shoulders dropped, some of the tension seeping from her body as their eyes met.

Unlike Pilar, she was still dressed in her clothes from earlier in the day, the familiar blue flowered dress she always wore on laundry day.

Zenaida was a favorite in the building, her skill with a needle and thread coming in handy when a dress was too small for a growing child and needed to be let out with no money left for a new one. Zenaida had embroidered flowers on the collar of her dress, the bright colors offering a spark of joy to a well-worn gown. Pilar had never asked her where she got the thread, but she knew people often paid Zenaida’s husband for his medical services with whatever they had lying around since money was scarce, and no doubt many old clothes in Havana found new lives under Zenaida’s skillful ministrations.

The more that Fidel’s government cracked down on their lives—rationing food, nationalizing properties and businesses, confiscating personal property belonging to those who left Cuba or defied the government in any manner—the harder they all had to work to find other means of surviving outside of the official system. Even if that meant risking your freedom and being sent to prison over something as simple as extra food to feed your family.

“Is something wrong?” Pilar whispered.

How ridiculous she sounded!

No one came with good news in the middle of the night.

Zenaida shifted uneasily on the doorstep, glancing from side to side quickly, a small bundle of fabric in her arms. “May I come in?”

It shamed Pilar more than she cared to admit that when Zenaida posed the question, there was a moment’s hesitation, some instinct to retreat into the comfort of her apartment, climb back into bed, and pull the covers over her head. There was a desire to tell Zenaida that Pilar had enough troubles at her door with the police taking her husband, their gaze likely still on her , and the last thing she needed was to draw more attention to her precarious situation.

These days, they all swung the pendulum of reaching out a helping hand when they could and fearing the one that was offered to them. You never knew when a trick was underfoot, when someone you thought was a friend could be spying on you, when the wrong person would see or hear the wrong thing, and you would be dragged from your house in the dead of night and simply disappeared.

Come on. You can’t think like that. How will we endure this, how will we survive, if we do not help each other? We are Cuban no matter how much Fidel tries to divide us.

She could hear Enrique’s voice in her head as loud as if he were standing next to her, giving her the courage she needed, reminding her of the part of herself that had been chiseled away since the revolution. It was impossible to live, to thrive, to breathe in a country where you were constantly filled with mistrust and fear. Sometimes the greatest act of defiance was holding that fear at bay, refusing to become the version of herself they seemed to want her to be.

Pilar nodded, stepping aside and letting Zenaida in.

She closed the door quickly behind her neighbor, her fingers trembling once more as she turned the series of locks as though they were enough to keep Fidel from this apartment.

“We’re leaving Havana,” Zenaida announced, a tremor in her voice. Her grip on the bundle tightened, her knuckles whitening at the motion. For a moment, it seemed as though Zenaida was holding herself together by a combination of force of will and the grip she maintained on the object in her hands.

It was hardly surprising Zenaida was leaving, considering how many Cubans had been forced to flee their homes these past seven years, but still, Pilar found that the flowers on the collar of Zenaida’s dress no longer seemed so bright, the colors blurring together through the lens of the moisture gathering in Pilar’s eyes.

“You will be missed. Very much so,” Pilar said.

Zenaida nodded. “I will miss this building. All of you.”

Although Zenaida never would have offered her age, and Pilar wouldn’t have dared to ask, her neighbor must be in her late fifties or early sixties—

What would it be like to have to start over at a time when one should be anticipating transitioning into their golden years? Zenaida and her husband had lived in this building before the revolution, since they were newlyweds like Pilar and Enrique had been. Their children were born here, grandchildren visited here. More than one holiday had been spent listening to the joyous laughter, raucous comments, and vibrant music that had filtered through the walls between them.

“I thought I would live out the rest of my days in this building,” Zenaida added. There was a sense of bewilderment to the statement, the same confusion that had plagued Pilar since they took Enrique away.

How had this happened to them? How had they gotten to this place where their lives were no longer recognizable? And so quickly, too? It was as though she’d woken in the middle of a nightmare, her mind dusty with sleep for all that she no longer understood the world around her.

“Hopefully, you will.” Pilar took a deep breath, willing herself to find the courage to speak in a country where words could mean death. “Hopefully, this will pass,” she continued, a whisper all she could manage even as the futility of the sentiment tugged at her heart.

Hope was the hardest emotion to bear.

Pilar found herself saying words she didn’t believe a great deal these days. It wasn’t that she was lying—or if she was, at most she was doing so to herself—but it was simply that the world had turned upside down on its head and she no longer knew what to make of reality. They had lived seven lifetimes in the seven years since the revolution, and reality had taken the shape of whatever Fidel willed it to be.

The Americans had banned all trade with Cuba, and what had historically been a close if not fraught relationship was seemingly irreparably severed. Now Fidel was a great friend to the Soviet Union. The invasion at Playa Girón—the Bay of Pigs as the Americans referred to it—had failed, Fidel impossibly surviving a staggering number of attempts on his life; the missile crisis had brought both countries—and the larger world—to the brink of war. Her home was no longer a place Pilar recognized, a place that seemed to wish for her to be there, a place where she could stay, a place where she could leave. She was here and not, caught between politicians and the games they played.

It was hard to know which version of reality to cling to. The daily one she lived where she went to work and drank watered-down coffee to make up for the fact that sleep eluded her, and filed books on shelves, and waited in food lines, and fell asleep on the couch with an open book resting on her lap praying that she would be greeted by dreams of her husband and their happier days, or the one that told her that the world as she knew it could end at any moment and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

“It won’t be the same without you,” Pilar said, searching for the right words to give in a moment like this. She had always been more comfortable with the characters in her books than with the people she encountered in her daily life. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel things, as a former boyfriend had once levied at her in accusation—she did, deeply—but she lacked the ability to translate her feelings to others. That was one of the qualities that first drew her to Enrique. He had an uncanny knack for understanding people, for getting to the heart of their strengths and weaknesses, for knowing others and for being known.

In Enrique she had found someone she didn’t have to explain parts of herself to, someone for whom she didn’t need to pretty aspects of her personality or strive for an acceptance she might never receive. With him she could just be , and there was little that was more powerful than the sensation of being loved for exactly who you were.

“Where will you go?” Pilar asked Zenaida.

“Madrid. To my cousin’s.”

The decision had clearly been made, and yet the indecision in Zenaida’s voice rang through the silent night, an invisible question mark suspended on the end of the sentence, as though Zenaida couldn’t quite believe it herself. Pilar was staring at a woman who was caught between two times, two places. A part of Zenaida had already moved on, had left Cuba a long time ago—or perhaps, more accurately, Cuba had left her—and now she was left clinging to her memories, a tether tying her to the island forever.

“We cannot stay,” Zenaida added, as though offering an explanation, an apology, when none was needed. Maybe she was simply trying to convince herself of the inevitability of it.

We cannot stay.

How many times had Pilar whispered the same words to Enrique? How many times had the beat of them sounded in her breast like a warning she ultimately hadn’t heeded?

Now she could not stay, and she could not leave. Not with a husband who was a political prisoner somewhere in Cuba.

When Enrique told her that he was working against Fidel’s regime, that he was helping people who had been targeted, every single fear she’d ever had rose to the surface. She had weaved her way through Havana choking on her terror, her only solace the moment when Enrique would walk through the front door. He had never gone into details on the work he did or who comprised the network of Cubans secretly fighting against the regime. It was as if he knew that telling her too much would only make her worry more, and no doubt he’d been trying to protect her as well. She’d been somewhat grateful for the way he shielded her from the intricacies of what he was doing, but now she was left with more questions than answers. Why did the regime turn their sights on Enrique? Did someone betray him?

“Our fridge will go to Mrs. Padilla,” Zenaida added. “Hers is a few years older.”

Mrs. Padilla was a good choice. In a building of twenty families, she was beloved. Her children had fled to Miami, and she had stayed behind caring for her elderly mother, who had decreed that facing imminent death, she would live her last days on Cuban soil even if she couldn’t stomach the bearded man.

Passing along items was a common enough practice before one left Cuba, one that Pilar had watched play out under the cover of darkness in their apartment building as possessions and lives shifted from one room to the next like the acts of a play.

It was survival, and a show of Cuban ingenuity and defiance—a way of privately sticking it to Fidel. He might try to strip their dignity from them, but at least in this they had the last laugh. When they left the airport fleeing the revolution, at least they did so with the knowledge that while Fidel’s men had recorded a 1955 refrigerator on their inventory, they had really owned a 1958, which was presently being enjoyed by someone else. It was a small victory to be had, for sure, but when the odds were so clearly stacked against them and the stakes were so high, those small victories were what fueled the soul.

“I’m afraid for my son,” Zenaida said, making the sign of the cross over herself with practiced ease. Fidel was determined to drive organized religion out of Cuba, even as many privately clung to it in these difficult times. “My eldest. He speaks his mind too much, has too many opinions. It’s not good. Not here. Not now.”

A loud series of booms echoed off in the distance.

Zenaida’s grip on the bundle tightened even more.

Those booms had become a death knell—the sound of gunshots echoing in the city. Before the police took Enrique, Pilar had grown accustomed to the sound of executions—they all had. She was now ashamed to admit that they had once become a regular part of the tenor of her days, that she had grown used to the gunshots until her husband was sent to prison and she began to wonder if it was Enrique facing down the barrel of a rifle.

“We pray for him—your husband—the whole building does,” Zenaida added as if she had belatedly realized who she was talking to, that Pilar knew better than anyone the perils of having a loved one who spoke their mind and “had too many opinions.”

“I’m sorry for your troubles,” Zenaida whispered. “And I’m sorry to add to them. But I’ve heard…” Her voice trailed off, and then it strengthened. “…what you do with the books.”

A stone sank in Pilar’s stomach.

“You save them,” Zenaida continued, and the way she said “save” made it sound like Pilar was doing a great thing indeed when she worried she wasn’t doing enough.

“Save them” was an audacious term for the fact that she had become a guardian of books that belonged to Cubans fleeing the island. Like Pilar, those tomes existed in a state of flux—their owners could not take them with them when they left or risk seizure at the airport, but they certainly did not wish to have them confiscated by the regime, either. It wasn’t just the ones whose value was immense that she cared for; she was the temporary custodian of people’s histories, their lives and passions contained in the pages of the books they loved. A book was so much more than ink and paper; it contained a part of the author’s and reader’s souls.

It was the first book I ever read. My parents gave it to me for my birthday. I remember my mother sitting next to me in bed, her arm wrapped around me as we read the words aloud together. She passed away this year, and whenever I look at the cover, I’m reminded of her and how safe I was in her arms.

My family recorded each new birth at the beginning of the Bible. It has hundreds of years of our family history. Perhaps we can find a way for you to send it to us once we’re in Miami.

Sometimes, they didn’t say anything at all, merely handed her the books wordlessly, some sacred trust passing between them from one book lover to another.

“I don’t do enough,” Pilar said, which she worried was not exactly the right thing to say, but the best she could do under the circumstances. Saving books hardly seemed enough in a world where firing squads were the reality, and yet, if they did not save them, if they did not do what they could to preserve their histories, their memories, the things that shaped their souls, then what was left? Fidel’s regime was already doing everything they could to craft what Cubans thought, how they felt. Some books were banned as others were published by the state’s new publishing arm as propaganda to thrust upon schoolchildren in the classrooms.

“I need your help,” Zenaida replied.

Here was the moment when they were forced to show their cards, to be vulnerable with each other, to go beyond the normal bounds that tied two neighbors who up until this moment had little occasion for their lives to cross paths besides the polite hello or the casual inquiry about a maintenance problem in the building. When Enrique was taken, Zenaida had not come, but Pilar had not held that fact against her. They were all doing what they could to survive.

Someone had left a flan on her doorstep days later, though, and while Pilar had barely been able to eat the baked custard in her grief, the sweetness of the caramel overpowering her, she knew how dear the ingredients were these days, and the sight of it had told her that someone cared.

She was not alone.

Zenaida took a deep breath. “A long time ago, I made a promise that I would keep this book safe. I can’t take it with me, and when they come to our apartment, I do not want them to have it.”

She unwrapped the bundle and held a book out to Pilar.

Pilar took the book from her.

The weight of it was so familiar, the scent of leather, paper, and ink immediately soothing.

There was something about a book that Pilar couldn’t resist. There was an intimacy one could have with books that was difficult to find anywhere else—a quiet understanding, a haven, a place to escape the troubles of the world.

During the day at work, Pilar was often distracted by the stories she shelved. When she’d originally started working at the small library three years ago, she wondered if her passion for books would change once she was surrounded by them all the time. In her childhood, books were an absolute luxury, the few she owned lovingly read and reread until she knew the stories by heart, could recite her favorite lines from memory. The first day nearly a decade ago when she’d begun working as a librarian—initially at one of the larger municipal libraries and now at the smaller community library near her home—had been magical. Suddenly, her world grew from the four books she owned, the ones she read at school, the books she was able to borrow when her parents could take her to the library, to hundreds of books all in her care. Pilar devoted herself to getting to know the books as one might a friend, reading as many as she could in her free time, bringing them home with her, her nights spent in bed with a novel in hand.

The magic never lessened. If anything, her passion grew as her life became books. She knew no greater joy, no deeper peace, than lying beside her husband in bed, silence between them, reading one of her favorite stories.

“May I?” she asked Zenaida, curiosity filling her about the mysterious book.

Zenaida nodded.

At first glance, it appeared well-loved and well-traveled, the maroon leather cover slightly worn in places, the gold ink rubbed off on some of the letters.

A Time for Forgetting

She looked down at the author’s name—

Eva Fuentes

Pilar had never heard of the book before, or the author, and the realization that this was something new sent a tiny thrill through her.

Many of her favorite writers were women, authors like Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, María Luisa Dolz, Dulce María Loynaz, and Cristina Ayala. There was something in the power of their words, in the way that they navigated their lives and identities in Cuba during difficult times, that gave her comfort and inspiration. Pilar came from a small family, her parents long gone, but these writers had become her adopted ancestors, the women whose words gave her strength when she needed it most.

Perhaps Eva Fuentes would be one of those writers for her.

The book was in English, and while Pilar’s English was rusty from disuse, she was curious about the title and how it had come to Zenaida.

“What do you love about it?” Pilar asked, feeling as she always did, uncomfortable asking such an intimate question, but she wanted to know, desperately—

Why this book? Out of all the ones you could save, why did you choose this one? What does it mean to you and why must I risk my freedom—and why do you risk yours—to protect it?

After all, everything belonged to the state, and stealing from the state was a crime.

“I don’t know,” Zenaida replied. “I’ve never read it.” She looked momentarily abashed. “I’m not much of a reader.”

She said the last part almost apologetically as though she thought that to Pilar saying such a thing was tantamount to blasphemy.

In truth, it wasn’t.

All sorts of people came into the library these days. Some readers, some not, some not readers yet , waiting for the right book to change their lives. Sometimes Pilar liked those customers the best, the ones who would almost reluctantly check out a book only to return the next week with their gazes filled with a zeal she understood all too well, like they had discovered a secret they couldn’t wait to share with someone else.

The beautiful thing about libraries was that they offered a home to the casual reader, the devoted reader, and the nonreader alike.

“Eva and my mother were friends,” Zenaida explained. “They taught together. Before my mother passed away, she asked me to take care of the book. Eva had entrusted her with it. Eva wrote it. My mother didn’t tell me why it was important to her, and I didn’t question it.”

No, she wouldn’t have. This is what they did for one another—preserving histories, helping friends, honoring ancestors. It needed no explanation.

“I’ll keep it safe for you,” Pilar promised.

The words until you can return were on her lips, but she didn’t voice them. In the beginning after Fidel took power, Cubans fled the country thinking their exile would be a temporary one, that surely the actions of a few hundred revolutionaries wouldn’t stand and the revolution would fall. After all, it would hardly be the first time in Cuba’s recent history that a political regime rose to power only to subsequently fail. But the years had tumbled by, and Fidel remained, and it became more difficult to believe this was temporary. Hope was nearly as hard to find as meat in Cuba these days.

“Thank you,” Zenaida replied. “There’s another thing—I know it’s a lot to ask—but would it be possible for you to return the book to the author, to Eva Fuentes?”

Surprise filled Pilar. When people asked for her help, it was to safeguard their books with the hopes that they would eventually be reunited with their owner. She’d never been asked to return a book to its author. Surely, Eva Fuentes had copies of her own book? What was so special about this edition?

“My mother and Eva lost touch after I was born,” Zenaida added. “I never met Eva. I believe my mother always meant to return the book to her friend, but she died before she could. I tried finding Eva once, but all my mother had was an address in Old Havana, and when I went there, the current residents told me she had moved. They didn’t know where she had gone, but they believed she’s still in Cuba. She’s a teacher. I meant to continue searching for her, but—”

She gestured with her hands as if to convey the utter futility of trying to make plans or navigate the normal details of life amid such uncertainty and turmoil. It was a struggle Pilar knew all too well, considering her plans had been thoroughly upended when they took her husband.

“Life slipped away from me. My son got in trouble right after that, and I was so worried about him, about what would happen to him. The book disappeared from my thoughts. It wasn’t until we were going through our belongings that I remembered it.” She ducked her head. “I am ashamed that I did not try to find her sooner, that—”

Pilar took Zenaida’s hand, squeezing it softly for reassurance before releasing it.

“Please,” Zenaida finished, the look in her gaze—

What could she say? How could she not help?

Pilar nodded. “I’ll do everything I can to find Eva Fuentes.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment, neither one of them spoke, the space between them brimming with all the things that were unsaid, the truths they knew but were unable or unwilling to voice. Loss enveloped them, the kind that could not be made whole.

“It’s in English,” Zenaida added. “But Enrique mentioned once that you spoke English. You can read it if you want. I know how you like books. It must be difficult being alone here.”

Tears pricked Pilar’s eyes. Zenaida was proud. They all were. For her to come to Pilar with this and ask her for help must have given Zenaida pause. So here she was, offering something of value—a story for Pilar, who loved books above nearly all else.

“Thank you,” Pilar echoed.

When she was lying in bed hours later, Pilar would think back on the moment, on the decision that led her to close the distance between them and embrace her neighbor. It was so wholly out of character for Pilar that she was shocked by the intimacy, and eventually she would conclude that it must have been the way she recognized the quiet pain that rested like a mantle over Zenaida’s shoulders. In a manner of speaking, they had both lost their homes—physical and emotional—to the revolution.

Initially, Zenaida seemed caught off guard by the hug. But then, perhaps realizing how much they both needed it, she relaxed into the embrace, the tension seemingly leaving her body as she held on tight, the book clutched between them.

A minute must have passed, maybe two, and then the sound of her downstairs neighbor returning home—a shut door, padded footfalls—pulled them apart.

Zenaida had places to go.

They offered each other hasty goodbyes, words that inevitably failed to meet the gravity of the situation. After all, how did you adequately express such a depth of emotion? What could you ever say to make the act of fleeing the only home you’d ever known palatable?

Despite everything, despite the understanding that had sprung up between them, truthfully, they were just neighbors, little more than strangers but for the act of fate that had placed their apartments beside each other.

And still, they were both Cuban.

That was everything.

When she settled into bed, Pilar turned her attention to the novel Zenaida had left in her care.

A Time for Forgetting by Eva Fuentes.

There was a pact that existed between an author and a reader. An agreement that began when the reader picked up the book, studied the cover, and saw the author’s name on the front, and then finally in that moment when their fingers flipped to the first few pages as a bargain was sealed.

Read me and I will tell you all my secrets.

The reader was promised the possibility of sinking into another world, of escaping their problems, the weight of life subsiding for minutes, hours, days at a time. They were promised a story, a fiction, a sleight of hand, a shuffling of letters that altered reality. And yet, in that make-believe world, the reader looked for truth—for the words on the page to resonate, for the characters in the scene to make them feel seen, for a thread that they could hold on to, for the book to sink its hooks into them and carry them on an unforgettable adventure.

Pilar began to read.