The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 8

Havana

1966

It was quiet this morning, the rain likely driving their patrons away. On days like this, she wanted nothing more than to curl up and read. She was almost done with A Time for Forgetting and the book kept calling to her, the novel begging to be finished.

Sleep had eluded her last night, the knowledge that one of Fidel’s men now resided a wall away obliterating the sanctuary of her apartment. She’d sat in bed, the covers pulled over her, listening to every creak of the floorboards, the shuffling of—furniture? Boxes? Had he simply moved into Zenaida’s life, scavenging through her possessions, and discarding what wasn’t of value to him and stealing what was?

Would the same thing happen to her one day?

Eventually, would the apartment where she and Enrique had dreamed so many dreams become someone else’s to do with as they wished? Would their memories be erased by another? It seemed as likely as it was unbearable.

If not for the comfort of A Time for Forgetting , she wasn’t sure how she would have gotten through the night.

The more Pilar read, the more she wondered how much of the novel was inspired by Eva’s experiences at the summer school and whether the mysterious letter was tied to a real-life love Eva had—and lost. The main character, Ana, was a Cuban teacher who had traveled from Havana to Boston to attend the summer school.

Pilar must have read the letter a dozen times.

It was strange—invasive, even—to read someone’s intimate correspondence, but she kept searching for clues in the letter—and in the novel—that might shed some light on Eva’s life and how to find her so she could honor the responsibility Zenaida had given her. And the letter seemed like an extension of the novel, Eva’s manner of writing and the emotions she conveyed so similar that they appeared connected.

The heroine Ana reminded Pilar so much of herself that sometimes when she was reading, she had to set the book down because the truth the words contained rocked her with a wave of sadness. For Ana—or Eva herself—the long specter of Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain loomed large over her life, the uncertainty of Cuba’s tenuous future making it hard for her to envision a future for herself. It was impossible not to draw parallels between the struggles Cuba faced then and the difficulties she faced now. It was as though history kept repeating itself, and the calls for a free Cuba— Viva Cuba Libre —that echoed on the pages of A Time for Forgetting were the same ones that beat in Pilar’s heart.

They had traded Spain’s tyranny for Fidel’s dictatorship.

Was that why Eva Fuentes had chosen to write the book in English—because she’d wanted to appeal to an American audience, considering they’d had administrative control over Cuba at the time?

Pilar wasn’t sure.

The book was political in parts, unflinching in its portrayal of the cost that the war had taken on Cuba and its people. But at its heart, it was a love story between Ana and the young man she’d met at Harvard. In that, Eva Fuentes had been unflinching, too. She wrote about falling in love from the perspective of someone who seemed to understand the twin sides of love and loss, and it was that truth, that honesty, that had ensnared Pilar the most. Even though sixty-five years separated them, she wondered if Eva would have understood what she was going through now as Eva’s bravery inspired her.

Pilar slipped through the stacks toward the back of the library where they kept the books that were too damaged or frail for lending.

She’d tried for as long as she could to keep this away from the library, to not involve Ignacio in her subterfuge. But with the enemy living next door to her, her apartment no longer seemed like a safe hiding place.

She pulled the books out of the large tote she’d brought with her, the one she used when she’d shop for food each week. There were a dozen titles in all—thirteen if you counted A Time for Forgetting , which she wasn’t ready to relinquish just yet. The books ranged in value from the sentimental to those that were monetarily significant—namely, an edition of Don Quixote from 1605, a Medieval Bible that had belonged to one of Cuba’s most influential families tracing back to their time in Spain, a rare Hemingway edition that the author had signed and personally given to a friend during his time in Havana.

Considering how much property Fidel’s government had seized, it was hardly enough, but in the moments when despair crept in, she tried to remember that it was something .

Pilar moved quickly, trying to be as careful as possible removing the books from her bag and setting them on the shelves. The older titles were delicate, and she hated the haphazard way she was forced to transport and store them. Some of the books that they were in the process of rehabilitating had makeshift covers on them, and she switched some of the covers onto the secret books, sliding them onto the shelves so they were hidden in plain sight. It wasn’t a permanent solution—or even a long-term one—but it was the best option until she could come up with another hiding place for them.

After Enrique was arrested, the secret police had come to the library looking for her. She’d spent over a day in custody while they interrogated her about her husband’s activities. The truth was, even if she had been willing to turn on Enrique, which was inconceivable, she didn’t have any information to share. He’d been careful to protect her, and so while she knew broad strokes—that he was helping those who had been targeted by Fidel’s regime—she didn’t know who he had been working with, or what safe house locations they’d used, or any of the questions they asked her repeatedly, trying to break her will.

And so finally they’d released her, likely convinced that the bookish librarian who had appeared absolutely terrified the entire time she’d been in their custody was the last person who would engage in anything subversive.

Pilar stowed her bag in the room and hurried toward the front of the library.

Three new patrons had entered since she went to the back, and Pilar spent the next hour helping them find books, recommending a few of her favorites to a young woman who was looking for a good adventure story.

Ignacio walked over to her.

“There’s someone waiting in the back to speak with you,” he murmured. “I’ll watch the desk.”

For a moment, she considered asking him who was there, but there was something about the way in which he avoided meeting her gaze that sent a sinking feeling through her.

“Is it the same man who came by the library looking for me the other day?”

Would today be the day they arrested her, too?

Ignacio shook his head.

Heart pounding, Pilar turned away. Her legs wobbled as she walked through the library, past the rows of books she cared for.

When she reached the back of the building, she turned to the right, to the little room where they often did their recordkeeping and took breaks.

Enrique’s cousin Julio sat at the small table in the corner, his hat in his hand. He glanced up at the sound of her footsteps, her worn heels clacking against the floor.

She stopped in her tracks.

Julio rose from the table. “Pilar.”

She knew. She knew from the first moment she saw him, knew from the look in his eyes, from the sound of her name, the way his voice broke over the syllables.

Enrique isn’t coming home.

Her legs gave way beneath her, a roar in her head crashing through her.

Pilar grabbed one of the bookshelves in the staff room, catching herself as she fell, her fingers ghosting across a leather spine. She lowered herself to the floor slowly, faintly registering Julio crouching in front of her, mimicking her stance.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Logically, she’d known when they took Enrique that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending, that the sight of him being led away might be the last glimpse she would ever have of her husband.

Logically, she’d known, and still she’d allowed herself to hope against all odds that she might see him again, because the alternative had been simply unbearable. And perhaps that hope had been a kindness of sorts, because without it, she never would have been able to survive the days that had followed.

He isn’t coming home.

Pilar stared down at the thin gold wedding band on her finger, the one Enrique placed there that magical day they married. In that moment, she had felt invincible, as though the future was theirs for the taking, certain that they could defeat any struggles that came their way.

She hadn’t been ready for Fidel’s revolution.

In truth, no one had.

“What happened?” she asked, glancing up at him.

No matter how horrible the truth was, she needed to know. It was the end to their story, as much a part of their love as the day they met and the day they wed.

“He died in prison,” Julio answered. “At least that’s what Esteban told me.”

Pilar knew Esteban well—before their lives had fallen apart, before the revolution, he’d had dreams of being a comedian and an entertainer. He was the sort of person who lit up a room with his easygoing personality. He and Enrique had grown up together and were more like brothers than friends.

“Esteban was there in the cell with him when he died. They just released Esteban and he came to tell me.” Julio hesitated. “He asked me to apologize to you that he didn’t come himself. He’s not—he’s not who you remember him to be.”

What had he been through? What had Enrique been through?

“They were together—Enrique and Esteban?”

Julio nodded. “They were held in a communal cell with other men. From what I could gather from Esteban, conditions were rough. Enrique became ill, he was malnourished, and his body couldn’t handle everything that happened—”

She could see Julio was choosing his words carefully, trying to keep the horrific truth from her. As if they all hadn’t heard the whispers, or the firing squads. As if they all didn’t know how far the regime was willing to go to suppress all dissent.

“I’m so sorry,” Julio whispered, or at least that was how it sounded over the roaring in her ears.

Julio had offered to walk her home, but she’d told him she would rather be alone.

She’d always been a private person, never comfortable sharing her emotions with just anyone. That was part of how she had known that Enrique was the one for her—she’d been at ease with him in a way she hadn’t been at ease with anyone, like they occupied their own private space in the world where they could be a haven for each other.

On the surface, they were so different—Pilar wasn’t one to make friends easily and Enrique was a friend to everyone. Sometimes she would walk home from the library to find him leaning over the hood of a car, helping one of their neighbors string together a repair to get it running again. He had an easy nature she’d simultaneously loved and envied. If the roles had been reversed, if something had happened to her, Enrique would have taken solace in the company of others. She took hers in the cocoon she placed around herself that kept the world at bay.

Her feet carried her down the streets of Havana through memory alone. She passed by the spot where many of her neighbors would gather, where Enrique’s laughter would greet her.

It was empty today.

Pilar made her way through the building, and when she reached the top of the staircase, when she stood outside her apartment door, she returned to herself, to reality, to the unavoidable truth that every single time she walked through this door from now until the day she died, silence would greet her. Enrique would never again be there waiting for her, would never again walk through the door with a smile and a kiss, and a story about his day.

Her hand shook as she placed the key in the lock, as she turned the knob, as she pushed open the door, the hinges announcing her presence with an eerie creak.

She closed the door behind her, her heart in her throat, tears welling in her eyes as she scanned the space. How strange that it appeared the same as it had this morning before she’d learned that her husband had died, and at the same time, it was something new entirely, a dream she no longer recognized.

And yet—

Someone had been in her apartment.

It hit her, the sensation of wrongness sending a chill down her spine, piercing its way through the grief inside her.

Enrique’s book of poetry wasn’t where he left it, waiting for him to return. It was close, but it was inches off where it had been. Perhaps if she hadn’t been staring at the book for months, if she hadn’t been able to move it from its place on the couch without returning it to the exact same spot each time after she’d picked it up and caressed the pages, running her fingers over the inky words, perhaps then she would never have noticed.

Someone had touched Enrique’s things, had gone through them.

And for what?

For Enrique’s secrets or for hers?

Her mind raced as she struggled to connect the timing of all that had happened, to unravel the coincidence of a man visiting the library where she worked asking Ignacio if she was a loyal revolutionary, of the major moving in next door, of Julio’s visit, of someone breaking into her apartment. Had Enrique told them something in his final hours that had brought them here to their apartment, to scavenge over the corpse of their life one last time? Or was her neighbor responsible for this?

Pilar’s gaze swept over her things.

It wasn’t obvious—nothing had been overturned or left dramatically out of place, but there was a shift in the room, little things that were inches off.

What were they looking for? And who was behind this?

A creak sounded somewhere in the building, the thin walls making it difficult to tell if it came from inside her apartment or one of her neighbors’ homes.

Fear mingled with the grief that threatened to tear her in two. A strangled sob burst from her lips, and she cut it off, pressing her fist to her mouth, struggling to keep from making a sound. She was losing herself, losing her grip on the world around her—inch by inch, minute by minute. Her life had turned itself upside down, first with her husband’s death and now with this invasion of their private space.

Pilar had prayed for death the entire walk from the library to the apartment; it had echoed like a drumbeat through her mind. She’d prayed to God to take her, too, since he’d seen fit to take her husband away, because there was no world she wanted to live in that didn’t include Enrique.

And yet—now, now that it seemed as though her prayer might be answered, Pilar’s gaze darted to the stove in the kitchen, the enormous iron pan that she had left resting there because it was too big for her tiny cabinets. She set her purse down and grabbed the pan, moving quietly, quickly now. Beyond the living area was the doorway to her bedroom, the bathroom attached to that.

Was someone still in the apartment? Were they hiding there?

For an instant she wondered if she should go for help, but the impulse vanished as quickly as it came. Who was there to ask for assistance? She knew who would search her apartment, and if the regime was after her, there was no help to be had for her in Havana, no safe place to hide. Enrique’s network had disbanded after he and his friends were arrested, and there was no one she could think of who would—or could—help her now. She couldn’t risk endangering those he loved—Julio, who was a father of two; Esteban, who had already been through so much.

Pilar walked into her bedroom, the pan gripped in her hands, her arms heaving slightly from the effort.

With each step she began to question the wisdom of her decision, but some stubbornness she didn’t even know she possessed propelled her forward. They had already taken so much from her—her husband, her country, her peace—this little apartment was one of the last things she had left, and she refused to let it be another casualty of this cursed revolution.

Anger filled her, and in that moment, with nothing left to lose, she understood how people could be capable of just about anything, how circumstances could propel someone to act completely out of character. She understood the lengths one would go to for revenge.

Her bedroom was empty.

She took a step forward, and then another, peering into the small bathroom.

Empty, too.

She set the pan down on the edge of the bed, her arm exhausted by the effort, her entire body giving way beneath her.

Her heart skipped.

The floorboards next to her bed, the floorboards that up until this morning had housed the books that she had safeguarded, had been pulled up. Whoever had replaced them had clearly tried to make the opening look undisturbed, but they had put the planks back in the wrong direction so that the wood grain didn’t match as it should have. It was a small thing, but considering the risks she took, Pilar had committed every single aspect to memory. She knew what they would have found when they pulled up the planks—absolutely nothing—but was that enough to dissuade them or would they continue searching? What was next—tearing apart the library to see if she was hiding something?

She needed to move the books from their hiding place at work. She’d sworn at the beginning of this that she would keep Ignacio safe, that she wouldn’t jeopardize his freedom or that of his family. But she was running out of options, running out of friends.

Everyone had left Cuba, everyone had left her, and now the circle of people she could trust had grown terrifyingly small.

The silence of the apartment engulfed her even as the sounds of the street traffic below echoed on the other side of the windows.

My husband is dead. My husband is dead.

She needed to say it out loud, to shout the words, to make it real. How was it possible that in an instant her entire world had been shattered, her life ripped away from her, and yet outside these four walls car horns honked and women hung clothes out to dry and waited in food lines and her husband was dead?

How was she supposed to wake up tomorrow and put on a dress and go to the library and pretend like things were normal?

There was no body to bury. No funeral to be had. There was just the thin gold band on her finger and the memory that once she had loved and been loved, and once upon a time there had been hope that the world could be a better place than this.

Minutes passed. Hours passed. The sun went down, and the stars came out, and Pilar sat on her bed, staring at the mismatched floorboards, and for the first time in her life there were no thoughts. There was just—nothing.

A vast nothing.

A noise on the other side of the wall pulled her out of her stupor sometime after eleven in the evening.

It was the thud of the front door slamming closed followed by the rush of running water filtering through the apartment next door.

Zenaida’s apartment.

The army major’s apartment.

More footsteps.

Had he been the one to go through her things?

Had he been involved in Enrique’s death? Had he seen her husband in his final moments?

She’d started safekeeping the books after they took Enrique. It was as though the regime’s cruelty had unlocked something inside of her, some rebellious spirit she had never known she had until they took everything from her and the desire to fight back had consumed her. The first time had been a longtime patron at the library who approached her with tears in her eyes and the story of how she was leaving Cuba.

Enrique couldn’t have told the government about the books because he hadn’t known. The only people she had trusted with her secret were the ones who came to her door asking for help. But you no longer knew who you could trust, who was pretending to garner valuable information to turn over to Fidel’s secret police. In these times of desperation, there were those who would betray their own mother to survive.

Had someone betrayed Enrique?

Or had someone betrayed her?

Fear and anger wound their way through her like twin snakes, and in her grief, she did the only thing she knew to do.

She read.