I

My friend from Miami has broken off with her Cuban boyfriend and comes to visit me in Bogotá “for a change of pace.” We want to check out el Goce Pagano, a small bar in downtown Bogotá we heard about in Miami. We were told the dive, a suspected hideout for aspiring, young revolutionaries and intellectuals, has survived decades of bomb threats and impromptu closings. The Goce Pagano is even smaller than Son Salome and we’re told by the cab driver who drops us off that it has been untouched for the thirty-six years of its existence.

            We pull up to the small gray rectangular slab of concrete. A long, narrow window stretches the length of the building. Breath, sweat, steam, and smoke churn out of the window’s thin iron slats giving it the appearance of a street grating.

            In perfect Spanish, my friend cheerfully suggests that the driver pick us up in two hours. His dark eyes stare at us in silence through the rearview mirror and he shakes his head no.

            As we’re getting out, he warns us that on any given night, someone passing by will see the smoke and call the fire marshal thinking the place is on fire or the police will show up claiming it’s too small for a gathering of so many. “So you young ladies should be prepared to be taken away by the police,” he admonishes.

We quickly glance at one another silently interpreting his caution to be Colombian machismo – the sexism that says women shouldn’t be traipsing about unescorted, much less going to bars in the dangerous parts of town. We thank the driver, get out of the car and scurry toward the bar in fits of giggles like two pre-adolescent girls pulling a prank.

            Inside it’s damp, cold and thick with smoke. We check our coats behind the bar and rush to the packed dance floor delighted to discover that the patrons of el Goce Pagano dance in all kinds of formations – couples, groups, alone.

            My friend reminds me that in Miami they told us that in a tiny booth in the back of the bar a black man (rumored to be Cuban) spins all of the music for el Goce Pagano from a private collection he smuggled out of Cuba. I am titillated by the idea of meeting a Cuban after several weeks of being immersed in Colombian middle class culture at the Javeriana, so I push my way to the back and peek in the booth. It’s empty, but whoever the dj is, the music is amazing –traditional son cubano and African spirituals spin around us from the crackling vinyl.  And the people are dancing, shouting, improvising and yelling for more of it after each song. This isn’t the over-produced salsa of Miami. It’s Cuba, really Cuba, and for the first time, I intuit a difference and realize that from here, I will soon be able to go there and see it for myself.

            After several songs, we take a break and go to the bar for rum and cokes. A chubby short man who claims to be an anthropologist tells us that many of the bar’s patrons are students and professors from La Nacional, the local leftist university. He also cites the names of former patrons, radio announcers and journalists, who have been blown up while getting in their cars to go to school or reaching in their mailbox to pull out a package.

            I sip my drink and observe the skinny, working and middle class kids dressed in brightly colored ponchos and hand woven textiles typically worn by the indigenous population. They bum cigarettes, talk politics, and rub their bony hips together as they dance. When they sit down or cross one leg over the other, I notice that some of them wear bands around their ankles under their baggy pants. The anthropologist explains that it’s to show their support of various rebel groups like the ELN, one of the largest left-wing guerrilla groups in Colombia founded by Fabio Vásquez Castaño who was trained by Fidel Castro.

            A son comes on about Chango, the Cuban god of war and drums, the macho of all machos. My friend and I recognize the song, squeal in unison and race to the dance floor leaving the anthropologist to nurse his beer. We hit the floor, dancing side by side, crossing the left foot over the right and making a small dark square, a sort of box step with rhythm. This is the line dance for Chango that we learned once at a party. A short guy with closely cropped hair comes up beaming and starts to dance with us. He steps between us and falls into the rhythm of the dance, playfully stumbling over his own steps and smiling. Alberto has no direct relationship to the Yoruba religion either, but most Cubans know something about los santos whether they’re practitioners or not.  It’s the same in Miami. If you’re there long enough, you’re bound to see bloody chicken feathers splayed beneath a tree in a park or hear drums from a neighbor’s backyard. So in turning the sharp corners of Chango’s drum, we meet Alberto, a philosopher from Cuba visiting Bogotá to attend an anti globalization conference.

            Alberto’s face and throat are creased when he smiles broadly, which he does often. In that sense, he exudes something canine and trustworthy. His skin’s the color of almonds and radiant, not the fromage white with blue veins coursing through that I’d imagine a philosopher having. So far tonight, I’ve danced with two self-proclaimed “philosophers,” students from La Nacional. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old and had a strikingly similar approach to dancing. Each one clutched my wrist with long, bony fingers, pulled me to the floor, then pressed his forehead into mine intensely while shuffling his feet in place at a furious pace, as if all their mental energy migrated to their feet and lost direction.

            My friend and I dance with Alberto for a few more songs until el Goce Pagano shuts down for the night. We head off to a Spanish tavern and invite him to come along. Alberto smiles at me earnestly. He isn’t afraid to smile and his manners are impeccable. At the tavern, he guides us through the crowd to a small table and my friend goes off to put her coat behind the bar. The song, Son de la loma comes on and I ask Alberto if he’s familiar with it. I have the idea that the Cuban government doesn’t play much pre-Revolutionary music on the radio.

            “It’s been a long time,” he smiles shyly, “But it’s nice to hear.” Beyond that, we hardly speak. The more we listen to the music, the more silent we become. I’m torn between wanting to dance with him and fearing I won’t do it right. A couple of times, Alberto turns to me and once he even starts to extend his hand, but both times, I pretend to be looking intensely at something in another direction or I ask him a question that requires more than a yes or no answer.

            Alberto tells me the same thing that fueled the Cuban Revolution, also fueled el son: hunger. The Revolution of 1959 did not blaze a path into Havana. It followed a path already well worn by starving farmers who came from the provinces looking to feed themselves singing. Cane harvesters, tobacco farmers, and shoemakers formed the first septets and trios in the early thirties. Decades later, the same unsteady hooves and swaggering mules carried fighters down from la sierra into la Havana to oust Batista. I listen closely for some kind of pro-Castro rhetoric, for some Viva la Revolucion! hype embedded in this little bit of history, but Alberto is soft-spoken and quietly passionate. He enunciates “hunger” and “farmer” slowly and carefully like they are words he reveres, yet the word “la Revolucion” has the efficient, dull ring of a car part or type of engineering. Still, just hearing the word revolution spoken as a fact of history and not a curse is jarring.

I go to the bathroom. Calma, calma, I tell myself. I’m meeting a real Cuban from the island for the first time, I tell myself. His voice is low and full of emotion. He’s a philosopher. That must mean he’s a communist, right? Drops of liquid fall from the ceiling into a metal pail in the corner. They sound like nails being dropped. I wonder how water can make a metal sound? What if the water was to fall from only a few feet away, would it still make that metal sound? How about if it was only a few inches away? I’m getting obsessive, ready to contemplate any ridiculous phenomenon to fight my nerves. I go back out and smile at Alberto who’s dancing with my friend.  The song finishes and he immediately takes a seat beside me. I feel dizzy, overly anxious, and I can see Alberto’s chest lift then collapse as he lets out one big exhale. Finally, he raises his eyebrows, rubs his temples and asks:

            “Why do I feel so nervous?” he runs his hand across his closely cropped black and gray hair, exhales again audibly and laughs at himself. “You’re making me nervous, Mia,” he says as if he’s just realized it.

            “Me?” I say secretly thrilled and outwardly relieved that I don’t have to admit my own anxiety.

He nods his head and smiles jubilantly as if he’s pleasantly surprised to find someone’s made him nervous.

“Well, I guess no matter how you look at it, I’m the enemy,” I offer up. Alberto still smiling as he cocks his head and stares at me quizzically.

“I mean, it’s like if you see me as someone of Cuban descent from Miami, you think the Miami mafia, Cuban right wingers, and so on.” I have no idea where I’m going to go with this and I can feel a huge smile hardening on my face, the kind of nervous reaction one might get in a job interview or giving a speech. I keep going, “Or if you see me as an American, I’m a Yankee. Yanki, right? That’s what they say in Cuba, right? In Colombia, they say Gringo, but that actually originated in Mexico. The soldiers used it to say ‘Green go!” meaning. . .” I can hear myself babbling, hanging myself on the long rope of injustices the US has committed against Latin America, and I want more than anything to shut up, but I can’t seem to find a stopping place in this diatribe.

Alberto looks amused. He smiles and says, “Let’s dance.” He waits for me to stand before standing up himself. We make our way to the “dance floor,” which is only a few feet away, a space where tables have been pushed aside. Surrounded by cheerful people peeling off their coats and heading to the dance floor, Alberto looks at me expectantly. I don’t want this to be the first time. I don’t want to look like a beginner. I want to be sure-footed, well versed in the language of dance, fluent in the turns and steps. But reality dictates that I’m bound to stumble over words and dance steps and conversations. I feel angry. Why did my father leave me with the rumor that he was a wonderful dancer and not teach me? Why did he leave me to learn Spanish by myself? Why did he leave me without his name, a wing missing from my shoulder leaving me awkward and unidentified?

            “Martinez, Fernandez, Rodriguez,” my mother hesitated and continued in a flourish of her regal script. “Rodriguez, Jose. Fernandez, Eduardo.” Fourth grade. In the school parking lot on personal heritage day, my mother forged my family tree so that I would be legitimate and complete. I remember asking, “But if he’s dead, don’t you have something written somewhere with the real names?” She looked up with her eyes brimming, threatening to drown us both. There I paused and dutifully formed the picture I always erected in my imagination for these rare moments when we mentioned my father. I saw him in a long, severe, immaculately polished mahogany coffin – a dark man, with dark hair slicked back. He was young and Chicano looking. Although I knew that this couldn’t be what my father looked like and that the coffin stood too alone to be in a real funeral, it was the image I always conjured up for myself. It was a glimpse of a funeral one might see on TV, a box within a box, neither one containing anything real-to-life.

Calma, Calma, I tell myself. Even though English is my first language, certain words in Spanish have more emotional resonance. Calma is one of them. I turn to Alberto apologetically, “I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

            “You do. Sabes,” he emphasizes and because the verb contains the pronoun in Spanish and they can exist together as one word, something sounds more resolute and confident about it. “You’re a beautiful dancer, Mia. A natural,” he smiles.

            He puts his hand on my waist. By American standards, Alberto’s short, but I’ve always liked men close to my height. I’ve never wanted to be towered over or engulfed. I’ve always liked bodies that can be comfortably looked to and accessed. I remember my mother saying: “Put yourself close to your partner, so close that you can hear him listening to the music. Listen to how his body understands the music and follow.” I resolve to not care about doing it right or wrong. I resolve to do as my mother said and just try to listen to the music as he listens to it. Not following exactly, but yes, following. We exchange few words. We stop sitting between songs and instead stand like two kids anxious to see what they will put on next. He starts to spin me around. He turns me before the chorus creating a counterpoint, interjecting another opinion to the call and response of the song. One thing I am a natural at – spinning. I can circle endlessly and not grow dizzy. It’s not that I don’t grow dizzy. I embrace the turns, the headiness, the trance of it. Like a Sufi practitioner throwing himself into a state of ecstasy by spinning, I can turn endlessly. Crossing wrists, raising our arms, arching our backs, Alberto and I coil and recoil into consecutive turns and spins without losing touch with one another.

            The son is a four-legged animal.  It is music to be mounted, ridden and traveled upon.  As with any burro, mule or horse and its rider, a small space exists between the son and the couple being carried by it. The son uses the four legs of its dancers to transport itself. In that way, I made my first trip to Cuba, dancing with Alberto on a makeshift dance floor in a small Spanish tavern in Bogotá, Colombia. In the small zone between my scuffed black shoes and the multi-colored wool sweater someone loaned him for the cold all travel is possible.

            We dance until we are soaked with sweat. We drink water and dance. We fill carafes, bottles, plastic cups and wine glasses with water until it sounds like rain on the cobblestones outside and the aluminum roof above our heads. The heels of our shoes wear down and our feet throb inside them like tired mongrels. We dance until the owner’s calling his wife from the back of the kitchen to help place the chairs on top of the tables and mop down the floor and my friend is laughing at us from the back of the room, fanning herself and fending off last minute invitations with her feet propped up on the vacant chair beside her.

            In the son, there’s a movement from the melodic to the rhythmic. From the straight back and long neck to the undulating hips. The dancing moves from melodic to percussive, but my emotions run the other way. I find myself becoming more and more melancholic, the kind of sadness you don’t want to let go of. Musicians describe the phenomenon of meeting up, playing for hours and then going their separate ways without having exchanged more than a few words. Is this what happened with Alberto that first night? I had only danced such long periods of time by myself. He was the first person I had danced with for this long. What does it mean to dance beyond the allotted time, to trespass the social boundaries? For me it meant wanting to listen to someone else, wanting to let someone close to me – not for pleasure, but for something closer to joy.

II

            The cab driver stops at a cold, quiet building on a hill. Alberto sits in the front seat. My friend and I are in the back. It’s cold enough to see your breath even inside the taxi. Alberto starts to say something, sees his breath and smiles shyly. He pulls a few Colombian pesos from his jacket and counts them gingerly. A one-dollar bill surfaces among the bills. He pauses, carefully folds the bill and puts it in another pocket. There’s something absurd about seeing George Washington’s alabaster forehead and ruffled shirt materialize in Alberto’s hand. How many hands has George passed through to make it to this taxicab in the Candelaria section of Bogotá, Colombia where a man from a fishing village in Cuba and a woman from a town in rural Missouri want to kiss goodnight? It’s a fairly recent policy change that dollar bills are legal in Cuba. Not so long ago, people were jailed for possessing US dollars. I feel angry that George Washington has appeared at this moment to represent the power-wielding, bullying currency of my country, like some obnoxious uncle-by-marriage showing up and reminding me how screwed up my family is.

Alberto pays the cab driver and pauses. He quickly takes my face between his hands and kisses me on the forehead. It can take up to 12 months for a newborn’s eye color to be established and Alberto’s are of this variety, an uncertain brown. When he looks at me, his eyes darken with every pigment, but there’s still a slight gray ring around his iris when the headlights from a passing car flash across his face. Alberto’s eyes still haven’t decided on their color.

            That evening stays with me for the next several months. I’m relieved to find a Cuban in Bogotá, to be comforted by the familiar informal tu, a respite from the distant insular usted that confounds me with the Bogotanos. I’m lonely and hungry to better understand my connection with the island, but even as I acknowledge all of these factors, the parts still don’t equal the whole, the “whole” being the inexplicable attraction I have for Alberto, this intimate stranger. The logical reasons can’t match the joy I feel at having met this person or the immense sadness I experience when he’s gone.

              I wake up touching myself. I’m curled on my side, my forehead bent with the concentration of a pianist. Then I’m wide open, my limbs ivory covered, faster and faster the blood coursing through. Is it the rustle of sheets or the rush of blood? This morning every move I make, every gesture, sounds like the ocean. I’m getting closer to Cuba, which means I’m getting closer to the sea, so I prepare for solitude with white candles and small bodies of water – baths of eucalyptus and salts, bowls of lilacs floating in mineral water. I prepare for solitude because no matter how well accompanied, we each must stand at the sea alone.

            After a long bath, I get dressed to go out. I step out of the damp, gray alcove of my apartment into the damp, gray alcove of Bogotá. I walk a few blocks and order a caldo de res, a deep abiding broth at the center of cold Andean Sundays. My hands wrap around the steaming bowl poised to receive someone else’s work. Someone else’s hands snapped bones and skinned off the meat for this soup. Hands which are absent now cut off the tops of carrots and rooted out the bitter eyes of the potato. They pinched parsley and cilantro from their stems. Perhaps the hands sulked at the body’s sides or hurried to perform other tasks while the broth followed the trajectory of a heated discussion, first it boils, then it simmers and finally, it steeps until the placid surface reveals none of its history. Then the hands awakened and quickened to strain the rich liquid from the iron boiling pot.

I imagine the hand and all its finely tuned machinations. Like little birds fluttering around the tree’s edge, the hands always appear to be almost escaping the body’s sovereignty, only to be reigned by its monolithic cravings. Here are my hands, wrapped around a steaming caldo, an entire city at the edge of my table and just on the other side, the man who stepped into the dark corner of a bar to give me a piece of myself, a lesson in dance that can only happen between words, without conversation and instruction.  Today, he’ll call and I’ll be out or the phone lines on the grid will blink red signaling an electrical blackout in this part of the city. His hands will fold, sort and stack goods to take home. His hands will pause between take off and landing and sketch a face in the window. 

            Later in an e-mail, Alberto will tell me he’s been to France, Africa, and Mexico. To my surprise, Alberto, with his government-approved red Cuban passport, travels quite easily. The scholar, the scientist, the anthropologist and diplomat – the names of these travelers rustle with the heavy cloth of tweed, the surefooted stomp of boot and staff. Even though Alberto’s a victim of geopolitics, even though he’s economically disadvantaged and politically marginalized, he still fits into this tradition of travel proving that it is ultimately a male tradition. But some of us have traveled without invitations or guides. We layer ourselves in scarves and shed them instinctively with only our hand for a compass. Little has been written about the female-shaped traveler, the girl who will leave the United States, hoard Colombian pesos, and cross the Caribbean illegally to convert those pesos into dollars and explore a territory embargoed by her country and vilified by the majority of the exile community.

 © Mia Leonin 2005-2006

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You are reading Volume 20, Issue 1. A Menendez Publication.