Cuba by Stephen Coonts Page A

And perhaps, she reflected, that was the essence of his charm.
    Maximo Luis Sedano’s sedan braked to a stop in a swirl of dust. He bounded from the car, strode toward the porch, shouting names, a wide grin on his face. He gently gathered his mother in his arms, kissed her on both her cheeks and forehead, kissed each hand, knelt to look into her face.
    Mercedes didn’t hear what he said; he spoke only for his mother’s ears. When she looked away from Maximo and his mother she was surprised to see Maximo’s wife climbing the steps to the porch. Maximo’s wife—just what was her name?—condemned forever to be invisible in the glare of the great man’s spotlight.
    Another dominant personality—the Sedanos certainly produced their share of those—Maximo was a prisoner of his birth. Cuba was far too small for him. Amazingly, because
life rarely works out just right, he had found one of the few occupations in Castro’s Cuba that allowed him to travel, to play on a wider field. As finance minister he routinely visited the major capitals of Europe, Central and South America.
    Just now he gave his mother a gift, which he opened for her as his sisters leaned forward expectantly, trying to see.
    French chocolates! He opened the box and let his mother select one, then passed the rare delicacy around to all.
    The sisters stared at the box, rubbed their fingers across the metallic paper, sniffed the delicious scent, then finally, reluctantly, selected one candy and passed the box on.
    One of the sisters’ husbands whispered to the other, just loud enough for Mercedes to overhear: “Would you look at that? We ate potatoes and plantains last month, all month, and were lucky to get them.”
    The other brother-in-law whispered back, “For three days last week we had absolutely nothing. My brother brought us a fish.”
    “Well, the dons in government are doing all right. That’s the main thing.”
    Mercedes sat listening to the babble of voices, idly comparing Maximo’s clean, white hands to those of the sisters’ husbands, rough, callused, work-hardened. If the men were different, the women weren’t. Maximo’s wife wore a chic, fashionable French dress as she sat now with Dona Maria’s daughters, whispering with them, but inside the clothes she was still one of them in a way that Maximo would never be again. He had traveled too far, grown too big … .
    Mercedes was thinking these thoughts when Hector arrived, walking along the road. Even Maximo stopped talking to one of his brothers, the doctor, when he saw Hector coming up the path to the porch.
    “Happy birthday, Mima.”
    Hector, Jesuit priest, politician, revolutionary … he spoke softly to his mother, kissed her cheek, shook Maximo’s hand, looked him in the eye as he ate a chocolate,
kissed each of his sisters and touched the arms and hands of their husbands and his brothers, the doctor and the automobile mechanic.
    Ocho was watching Hector, waiting for him to reach for his hand, his lips quivering.
    Mercedes couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing, Hector hugging Ocho, holding him and rocking back and forth, the young man near tears.
    Then the moment passed.
    Hector refused to release his grip on his brother, led him to Dona Maria, gently made him sit at her feet and placed her hands in his.
    Ah, yes, Hector Sedano. If anyone could, it would be you.
     
    “They do not appreciate you,” Maximo’s wife told him as they rode back to Havana in his car.
    “They are so ignorant,” she added, slightly embarrassed that she and her husband should have to spend an evening with peasants in such squalid surroundings.
    Of course, they were his family and one had duties, but still … He had worked so hard to earn his standing and position, it was appalling that he should have to make a pilgrimage back to such squalor.
    And his relatives! The old woman, the sisters … crippled, ignorant, dirty, uncouth … it was all a bit much.
    And Hector, the priest who was