Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano Page A

a diety who uses the image as an index,” he explained, “capturing a lover’s spirit and rendering it a prisoner of the paper. Offerings of fruit, money, tobacco, and coffee nurture the image in its process of becoming a powerful idol. After a few days, the lover’s destiny is completely absorbed in the material image, and the palero tenders the idol to the supplicant, who may do with it—and with the lover—as he or she pleases. In your case, the photographs have probably been hung upside-down somewhere: the prescription for holding captive someone’s heart. I did tell her that the charm’s power would be more effective if she hid the pictures near where the lover sleeps. But there is nothing I can do about it now. The job is out of my hands.”
    He stood up. I thanked him for his time and rose to go. At the door I lit a cigarette and hesitated.
    The palero read my thoughts. “You don’t owe me anything, compañero, but I’ll give you one last piece of advice: You should get help from another palero. There is something very dark at play with you. This trabajo of mine is nothing by comparison.”
    Back in Vedado I looked for the photos in cluttered closets, taped to the backs of drawers, beneath the shelf paper inside the kitchen cabinets. No luck. Suspecting Beatrice’s complicity, I waited until she was out and picked the primitive lock on her apartment. I took apart framed photos of her homely parents, sisters, neices and nephews. A few of the mattes were backed by smiling portraits of a man whose wickedness must have been obvious to all in the very narrowness of his mustache—obvious to all but Beatrice, at least for a time. I returned to my attic empty-handed. I thought about what Elena’s palero did with those photos and wondered if I would ever love again.

4 August 1992
    I n the morning I took a walk down the alleys behind the Riviera and bought a bunch of bananas for twenty pesos. When I returned to the attic the girl was asleep on the sofa wearing just a white tank top and a purple thong. The sheet was twisted down around her legs. I bent over the pile of laundry to pick out clean scrubs for the morning. Warm lavender radiated from her sleep and her blue eyelids fluttered. Reaching for the uniform, I lightly brushed her wrist and my heart skipped a beat. From his perch above the sofa, El Ché brooded: “¡Qué cogido!”
    I took two bananas and left the rest for her on the coffee table. I wished there was coffee, wished there was more than bananas to eat. Congris would almost have cut it, if there had more than two beans to add to a cupful of rice.
    When I got home after my shift I bumped into Beatrice on the front step. I bowed my head and said, “Buenos días.”
    She blocked my way and picked in the nest of hair beneath her bandana for a small box of matches and a filterless Popular. “Do you mind if I smoke, doctor?”
    â€œNo, but I have to discourage it for the sake of your health.”
    â€œFor my health?”
    I answered on the party line. “It’s been years since El Comandante quit smoking.”
    â€œWhat does it matter to you what El Comandante does?” She smiled around her cigarette. “You forfeited the party’s injunction to join the directorate.” Beatrice has a way of turning up one corner of her mouth when she spouts out doctrine picked up piecemeal and reassembled in her petty, paranoid head: this recent article in Juventud Rebelde , that obscure “Año de los Diez Millones de Toneladas” speech by Fidel, or another dusty Martí discourse from La Edad de Oro .
    I had to crack a smile a little like hers. “M’importa todo. It matters to my job, my freedom, my Cuba.”
    â€œI have always known you to be resistant to integration, doctor, but I never expected this.”
    â€œExpected what?”
    â€œDo we really have to tap dance around the