The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 5

Havana

1966

Morning came to Havana slowly, the sounds of the street, of her neighbors rising from their beds, waking her before the sun made its appearance.

Pilar lay on her back, her eyes closed, allowing the morning melody to pull her awake footstep by footstep, yell by yell, slamming door by slamming door. Each day the noises were a constant greeting, each note giving her something to focus on, to distract herself from the inevitability that when she opened her eyes, her husband wouldn’t be lying beside her.

Pilar rolled over in bed, her gaze resting on the little nightstand they had inherited from Enrique’s mother after they married. It was a good piece, a sturdy wood that had lived a lifetime and then some by the time it came their way. It had fit the space next to the bed they shared perfectly, and Pilar spent hours on the weekends lovingly restoring it until the wood shone.

The book Zenaida brought her sat atop the nightstand, its maroon spine staring back at her, the leather cover practically begging to be opened.

A Time for Forgetting.

The book whispered to her in the early Havana morning.

Just a few more pages.

She’d read far later than she should have, far later than was wise certainly for the day of work she had ahead of her. What had started as initial curiosity about the novel had quickly become a need to know what happened next.

From the first words, it seemed like she was sitting down with a friend. The English had taken some adjustment; Pilar far preferred reading in Spanish, the words coming to her more easily, the pages flying at a rapid speed. Reading A Time for Forgetting had forced her to savor each word, translating as she read, her progress much slower than was normal for her. She almost liked it better for that fact, the way she could linger over the novel, because almost immediately it had become abundantly clear to her that when she finally did finish reading it, she would be left with a void.

Why had Eva chosen to write the novel in English? It was just one curiosity that had been sparked since Pilar first picked up the book. The author was just Eva to her now, an intimacy that had developed between them since Pilar had first begun reading.

There was something so honest in the words on the page, something that resonated so deeply with Pilar. When Eva Fuentes wrote about what it was like to be a woman traveling alone to a foreign country, responsible for representing not only her profession and her gender but also her country, it was impossible for Pilar not to feel a kinship with the author. She might not have a trip ahead of her, but ever since they took Enrique, she couldn’t escape the sense of change, of transformation unwanted or not. Pilar had been pushed from the life they had built together, ejected from the apartment she inhabited with her body while her spirit resided elsewhere, in that unknown place where Enrique now was.

For the first few days after he was taken, she had mourned. She cried, she prayed, she talked to every friend, every acquaintance, called in all the favors she could think of to try to save her husband.

It was all in vain.

Whatever Fidel had done with Enrique, wherever he was being held was firmly removed from her grasp.

For the first few weeks, she’d wanted to die.

She barely ate, barely slept, slipping away inch by inch, until a month had passed, and when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she no longer recognized the woman staring back at her, certainly no longer recognized the woman Enrique had once loved. Since then, she had been existing—barely.

Last night, reading A Time for Forgetting was the first time she’d experienced excitement about anything since they took her husband.

If there was anything she was evangelical about, it was books, and there was something about Eva Fuentes’s words that kindled a fire inside her, gave her hope for the possibility that she would, in fact, be able to continue—even if it meant that the driving force for doing so was finding out what happened in the mysterious book and seeing it returned to its author.

Pilar opened the novel, the bookmark Enrique had made her for their fourth wedding anniversary marking her place. She rubbed her fingers over the flower he’d pressed there, the ache sharp and piercing.

She’d stopped mid-chapter, her desire to continue reading no match for the sleep that had eventually overtaken her. Pilar flipped forward a few pages, checking to see how many were left in the chapter.

Could she finish it before she had to get ready for work?

When she got to the last page in the chapter, her breath caught.

A thin, folded piece of paper was nestled in between chapters seven and eight.

Pilar slipped it out from its resting place, remnants of dark ink bleeding through the other side of the page.

Interest piqued, she unfolded the paper.

Elegant penmanship greeted her, the words like the novel curiously written in English.

My love,

Not a moment goes by that I don’t think of you and wonder how you are doing. I find myself yearning for sleep because at least in those moments, in my dreams, you visit me. I am haunted by the last moment I saw you, by the memory of your face. I wish things were different. I wish we could be together. I wish I’d never had to let you go. But more than anything, I hope that you are happy, safe, loved. That this life will be kind to you.

I love you. Always.

Eva

Tears spilled down Pilar’s cheeks and she batted them away, her heart pounding as she reread the letter, and the words contained there.

Eva had to be Eva Fuentes, didn’t it?

Was this why Zenaida’s mom wanted to return the book to Eva? Did she know it contained a love letter? Likely, Zenaida wasn’t aware of it if she hadn’t read the book. The paper was old and worn, and it fit perfectly between the pages. Pilar hadn’t even realized it was there.

The book was a love story involving a young Cuban teacher who traveled to the United States as part of a summer school exchange. Had Eva written the letter for a love she left back in Cuba? Or one she left in the United States?

The words—the longing contained there—reminded Pilar of how she loved Enrique. She looked for him in her dreams, too.

Who was the intended recipient? And why was Eva meant to have the book returned to her?

At least today she could start her search in the library.

Pilar rose from the bed and dressed quickly, going through her morning ablutions purely from memory, her mind elsewhere entirely. When she was a child, she had been consumed with the stories she concocted and frequently shared with her classmates at the little schoolhouse in Cienfuegos where she studied. Sometimes, she would daydream about her future, about how exciting life would be when she was able to leave home, to go to Havana, to study, to work among books, to fall in love. She spun tales fictional and aspirational while she went about her days, the characters that populated her stories becoming her dearest imaginary friends.

Then she grew older, and love found her when Enrique walked into the library where she was working at the time and asked her for a book on philosophy, and her inner thoughts changed to looking toward the future life they would have together.

They were married September 19, 1958.

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista and her daydreams changed yet again, from hope for the future to a pervasive fear that weighed down her bones and stole her breath, the years passing by until she was left with little more than a yawning ache in her belly from the never-ending food lines and shortages, her mind preoccupied with how she was going to make do in a world that seemed intent on giving them less and less.

Fidel railed against the Americans and their embargo as the cause for the hungry bellies, but the fire in his speeches didn’t align with the reality of him dining at the country clubs the wealthy had fled. Where was Fidel’s hunger? Where was the sacrifice he routinely called on his countrymen and women to make? Where was Fidel’s struggle?

She’d never had much faith in politicians—in their empty promises and twisting tongues—but even she was taken aback at how spectacularly the entire business had failed. Enrique had been intrigued by Fidel in the way that a starving man is willing to overlook the providence of a piece of bread that just happens to find its way in his pockets. While he had never joined the revolutionaries like some of his friends from the University of Havana, Enrique had hoped that things might get better, that perhaps this change could bring some stability to Cuba and address some of the problems that plagued the island. It was the kind of hope that came when there were few other good alternatives to be had. It was the kind of hope that could sustain you for years, morsel by morsel, because you knew that when it ran out—well, then you would have simply nothing left at all.

It was the kind of hope that kept Pilar in Cuba now, waiting for word of her husband, clinging to the belief that he might still be alive when she feared the reality was more likely that he would soon be dead if he wasn’t already.

Pilar gingerly crept out of the bed, careful to keep her footfalls light as she walked toward the dresser crammed into one corner of the bedroom. Her downstairs neighbor worked late hours, sleeping during the day while Pilar shelved books at the library, and considering the thin floors between them, she tried her best to be as quiet as possible in the mornings just as he did when he returned from work an hour or two before she rose.

Their schedules had overlapped in the first few days after the police had taken Enrique, when sleep had eluded her, the hours ticking by while she stared at the door praying that it would swing open and her husband would return home, fearing that they would come for her next.

The sounds of his life had been one of the only things to keep her from believing she was already dead.

The library was still sleeping when she arrived.

Ignacio Arenas, who had been the head librarian for as long as she had been working there, was already walking the stacks as he always did, making sure that there were no books that had been mis-shelved from the night before, no errant items cluttering the books.

In the beginning, when she was first hired as a librarian, she had tried to arrive as early as he did and stay as late, desperate to make a good impression at her new job. She’d quickly learned from observing Ignacio that while he never told her outright that he preferred the task of opening and closing the library alone, it was clear that this time was sacred to him, a routine that he would cherish for as long as he was able to, so she left him to it until the day when he would turn the charge over to her.

She glanced down at her watch. Ten minutes until opening.

“Good morning,” she called out, announcing her presence, knowing that Ignacio wouldn’t respond or make his way toward her until he had finished with the last books.

Most of the patrons were a little afraid of Ignacio; his propensity to quiet a visitor who was too loud or scold another who had damaged—or even worse, lost—a book could intimidate some.

His ferocity was one of the things Pilar admired most about him.

She busied herself with turning on lights before heading to the circulation desk. The ledger where they kept a record of which books had been checked out was already sitting open waiting for her.

The revolution had touched the library just like it had set every aspect of life in Cuba on fire. It was a public library, and therefore, like everything else now, controlled by the state.

Fidel’s literacy campaign that he instituted five years ago with military-like determination had been lauded internationally. On paper, the goal was to increase the number of Cubans who were literate by having volunteers teach them to read. But the lessons instructing Cubans to read were dictated by propaganda pamphlets and books the government had published to “teach” the public about the gloriousness of the revolution whether the printed words matched the reality of their lives or not. To be deemed “literate” by the state, the participants were to write a letter addressed to Fidel himself, the political fervor attached to the whole business setting off increasing unease inside her.

For most of her life, books had meant freedom. Now she wasn’t so sure, considering the extent to which books were being censored and banned in Cuba, the free press eradicated, artists and authors driven from their homeland. The narrative that was being printed and distributed by the state was somehow to be taken as fact.

The first time she’d opened the box that they’d received, seen the materials they had printed for children to be stocked in classrooms throughout the country, dread had filled her.

She’d come home from work sick to her stomach. It was the first time she had ever considered quitting her job as a librarian.

It was Enrique who convinced her not to quit, who told her that there was good that she could still do, that her work mattered.

“Good morning,” Ignacio returned, walking out from the most distant shelves where they kept the children’s books.

He was, as always, dressed impeccably. Despite the strained times, she had never seen him with a button out of place, a loose thread, or a stain besmirching his clothes. His wife Migdalia had been a seamstress for a Cuban fashion designer who fled Havana after the revolution, and now she took in sewing, bartering her services for extra bits of food or supplies. Pilar imagined that after she finished her work, she labored over her husband’s garments.

Pilar made sure she wore her finest clothes when she worked at the library. Her skill with a needle was abysmal, but she tried her best to follow Ignacio’s lead. He had told her from the beginning that theirs was a noble vocation, that they were custodians of a literary history, a cultural tradition that must be protected at all costs. She tried to live up to such an important task.

“How were the books?” Pilar asked Ignacio.

“Awaiting their next adventure,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye that belied his normally formal demeanor.

“Speaking of adventures.” Pilar pulled the chair out behind the circulation desk and sat down. “Have you ever heard of an author named Eva Fuentes? She’s Cuban. She wrote a book called A Time for Forgetting. ”

If anyone would know of the book, it was Ignacio.

He hesitated, and she could almost visualize him combing through the recesses of his mind much as he did the stacks in the library. She’d never met anyone with as prodigious a memory as he possessed.

“It doesn’t come to mind, no. Did you check the catalogue to see if we have the book or if she published any other works?”

“I plan on doing so.”

“How did the book pique your interest?”

“A friend mentioned it. She thought I might enjoy it. Have you ever heard of a group of Cuban teachers who visited the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century?” Pilar asked, changing tack. “They studied at Harvard. I was curious about Eva Fuentes since I’d never heard of her, so I read her biography in the back of the book. It mentioned that Eva was one of those teachers.”

Strange that an event that happened in her parents’ lifetime was unfamiliar to her considering sixty-six years wasn’t that long ago, but if she’d ever heard mention of the Cuban Summer School, she couldn’t recall.

“When specifically?”

“The summer of 1900. The book was published in English by a Boston publisher the year after.”

She considered sharing the story of the book with him—not the full story, not Zenaida, and the late-night visit, and the secrecy, or the letter, but rather the marvelous words she’d found contained in its pages. She desperately wanted to tell someone what a delight it was to read, the sensation that the author was talking to her directly, as though they were sharing intimacies like old friends. She wanted to tell him about the book because she knew instinctively that Ignacio would recognize it for the gem that it was, but something held her back. She trusted him, as much as you could trust anyone these days, which sadly was not very much. But, it wasn’t just about who you trusted; you had to consider who you wanted to keep safe. Ignacio knew about Enrique, had kept her on at the library even though she had become troublesome in the eyes of the state, considering her connections. She didn’t want to repay his kindness by jeopardizing his safety.

“I was surprised I’d never heard of the summer school—or if I had, I’d forgotten it entirely,” Pilar added.

“You’d be forgiven, I think, considering all the history Cuba has lived in those sixty-six years,” he replied, his tone wry.

He wasn’t wrong. She often wondered what it would have been like to be born in a country where her biggest worries would be purely domestic ones, when her life would be occupied by personal matters rather than the reality of dealing with the ever-changing political tides. How would her life have differed if it hadn’t been shaped by wars like her mother’s was, and her grandmother’s before her, and her great-grandmother’s before that? To be a Cuban woman was to master the art of enduring.

“There might be mention of the summer school in some of the history books written about that time. In some of the news articles we have. Likely even more at the National Library. You could do some research.”

Theirs was a small community library, their selections lovingly curated but hardly as robust as some of the larger municipal libraries and the prestigious José Martí National Library.

Pilar nodded, the idea taking root.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Ignacio said. “There was a man here yesterday after you left. He was asking questions about what kind of worker you are. Whether you supported the revolution.”

Fear sliced through her. If she lost her job…

This was all she had, the library all that kept her going now that Enrique was gone.

She’d always known this was a possibility, had feared that because the regime had deemed her husband a threat, she would be considered one by association. They’d questioned her after they took Enrique, but she hadn’t lied when she said she didn’t know much about what her husband had been involved in. He’d not confided in her to keep her safe.

“What did you tell him?” Pilar asked, fighting to keep the tremor from her voice.

Ignacio held her gaze. “That you’re a good librarian. Quiet. That you mostly keep to yourself and that you’re dedicated to the books. I told him that I had never seen or heard anything that made me think you weren’t loyal to the revolution.”

She tried to read his tone, the expression on his face, to assess what he wasn’t saying. They didn’t speak of the revolution at work. Ignacio was a good boss, a fair employer, but they’d never had an overly personal relationship. He was a formal man, and given her own private nature, Pilar had never minded that their interactions never strayed far from the professional. Besides, these days it was safer to keep your thoughts to yourself, considering how fervently the regime was committed to rooting out dissent.

If Ignacio knew that she wasn’t loyal to the revolution, if Ignacio knew that she was hiding exiles’ books rather than allowing the state to inventory and seize them, would he turn her over to the authorities?

She didn’t know.

Pilar climbed the stairs to her apartment, a stack of books in hand. After her conversation with Ignacio, she’d been unable to concentrate, fear seizing her throughout the day. In the quieter moments of her day, afternoon rain driving their patrons away, Pilar had distracted herself by searching the stacks for any books she could find on Cuba at the beginning of the twentieth century and any mention of the Cuban contingent of teachers that had traveled to Harvard. She’d searched for Eva Fuentes, too, but as far as she could tell, A Time for Forgetting was the only thing she’d published, and she hadn’t been able to find another copy.

There hadn’t been much in the way of information, but their neighborhood library lent itself more to fictional works than the kind of research materials she was looking for. A trip to the National Library was in order on her day off.

Pilar quickened her steps as she bounded up to the next floor, already eager to return to the quiet comfort of her apartment, her fingers itching to turn the pages of A Time for Forgetting .

Working at the library both enervated and exhausted her. There was nothing she loved more than conversing with readers about books, recommending titles that she thought they would enjoy, matching their personalities and needs with the perfect reads even as the busy days tired her, her personality ill-suited to the constant talking and performing that came with greeting customers. It was a vocation of sorts, and sometimes, when she felt like a very small grain of sand in the vastness of life, in a world where the stakes were ever changing and impossibly high, she was reminded by the smile on a patron’s face, the relief in another’s, that what she did mattered.

Two of her neighbors—one of whom was Mrs. Padilla, the recipient of Zenaida’s newer refrigerator—were huddled together on the landing whispering.

They stopped as soon as they saw Pilar.

The other woman—Mrs. Sandoval—was less familiar to Pilar, but she had seen her hanging her clothes out on the line and they had smiled at each other in passing.

The look they both gave Pilar sent a ripple of foreboding through her.

She’d always had an active imagination. As a child, it had kept her busy—she could have been sitting anywhere, but in her mind, she was always off having adventures. Reading had only expanded the reach of the possibilities she conjured. But now—

“Good evening.” Pilar forced herself to smile as she struggled to keep the tremor from her voice even as her mind immediately jumped to all the things that might have gone wrong since she had left for work this morning.

The two women regarded her with something akin to matching expressions of pity and fear.

She immediately thought of Enrique. Pilar would know if her husband was dead, wouldn’t she? She would feel it somewhere in the vicinity of her chest, near her heart, as though the tether that had connected them since the first moment they met had been irrevocably severed.

“Is everything alright?”

She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the news.

“Zenaida is gone,” Mrs. Padilla said quietly.

Pilar opened her eyes. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

Gone? Or Gone ?

Not Zenaida.

Mrs. Padilla shook her head, reaching out and gently resting her arm on Pilar’s forearm as though she realized how close she was to breaking and was trying to steady her.

Over the years, they had exchanged little more than the barest of pleasantries, but in this moment, the world crashing down around her, the sensation of Mrs. Padilla’s hand on her arm was the only thing anchoring her.

“No—sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Not gone like that. She left. The building. Havana. Cuba.”

Relief flooded her.

So, Zenaida had gotten out. Good for her. Pilar also appreciated that apparently Zenaida hadn’t told Mrs. Padilla about going to see Pilar last night, about the book or any of it.

“They’ve already gone through her apartment,” Mrs. Padilla added.

That was fast. Had they found something incriminating? Did that explain the worried looks on their faces?

“We have a new resident,” Mrs. Padilla continued.

Surprise filled Pilar, but then again, she had been several steps behind this entire conversation from the moment she saw the two women standing on the landing. She’d been distracted by Ignacio’s announcement that a man had come looking for her, her mind racing with the possibility that he might return.

“Someone has already moved into Zenaida’s apartment?” Pilar asked. “So soon?”

Truthfully, with all that had happened, she hadn’t even had the opportunity to contemplate getting a new neighbor. It was no longer Zenaida’s apartment, of course—the state took everything—but the swiftness with which Zenaida’s home had moved to another was more than a little unsettling.

Both women glanced up the stairs, as if searching for the new neighbor.

Whoever it was, Pilar had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good.

These women ran the building. Quietly, but everyone knew that they had lived here the longest, seen the most, and there was a deference that the residents paid to them. Zenaida had been part of their triad, but now that she was gone, there was a void of sorts.

It was a good building. It was a good apartment, a nice location. For someone to have moved in so quickly, they must have some sort of connections, must be someone important in Fidel’s regime. Ordinary people didn’t get prime apartments in Havana so easily.

“And the new tenant?” Pilar asked.

“It’s a man. A single man,” Mrs. Padilla replied, her voice dropping to little more than a whisper. She glanced up the stairs and then back at Pilar. She hesitated, a loud silence swirling around them.

What wasn’t she saying?

“He’s a military man. A major in the army, I believe.”

A wave of nausea assailed her.

Was it a coincidence? Was she so unlucky that it just so happened that one of Fidel’s majors needed a place to live at the exact moment Zenaida’s apartment came available? Perhaps. Life had a funny, horrible way of twisting itself in surprising manners.

If Pilar was, say, a person with a fanciful imagination, she might worry that it wasn’t a coincidence after all. That more likely this building was on a list somewhere, she was on a list somewhere because of Enrique, and that when an opportunity had presented itself, the vipers had struck.

If she was a person with an imagination that tended to run wild, she might be terrified that this major had been tasked with spying on her, monitoring her comings and goings. Was this the same man who had come by the library asking about her? Was he here because of Enrique’s actions? Or something else entirely?

She wished she knew.

After Pilar exchanged her goodbyes with the two women, when she forced herself to take the steps one at a time, to put one foot in front of the other, feeling as though they were weighed down by lead, she swore she heard a whisper rise to meet her. Whether it came from one of the women or the recesses of her mind, she couldn’t say.

Be careful.