Read Online King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online Page A

with shadows. Night’s arrival would console El Comandante, at least until his exhaustion began to feed his paranoia and worsen his mood.
    “Hijo de puta,” Babo whispered, his grin widening a quarter inch. “Did they tell you I was dead?” The pale light gleamed off the side rail of his bed.
    It seemed to El Comandante that something in the room itself, in the shelves of thick, silent tomes, in the collection of vintage typewriters and the fountain pens arranged in a perfect arc across Babo’s desk, seemed charged in some imperceptible way. His friend’s breathing grew labored, deliberate, as if he had to concentrate on it fully. A nurse who reminded the tyrant of his mother—dark-skinned with sinewy legs—held a handkerchief to Babo’s mouth until he expectorated.
    “Carajo, you look almost peaceful,” El Comandante joked. “That’s something we vowed never to become.”
    The old friends coughed companionably. The nurse poured each of them a glass of water, which their respective wives helped administer.
    “All this love and we’re still powerless against death,” Babo said,regaining his composure. “In the end, I want to leave behind something imagined, not simply recalled.”
    The tyrant couldn’t have disagreed with Babo more, but he was in no mood to antagonize him on his deathbed. No, he would much rather reminisce over his lurid, manic, garish, heroic, lived life than dwell on anything that even the great Babo could conjure up. It was action that fueled his ideas, El Líder thought, not the other way around. He was a man of action; action and appetites.
    “Facts paralyze,” his friend continued, a disconcerting rumbling emanating from his chest. “Imagination frees us.”
    El Comandante grew impatient. “But what good is imagination without action? No history is made. No lives are changed. Worthless.” He registered the discomfort on his friend’s face. “You deliver words. I deliver action.”
    “Words are action, mi amigo, as compressed and devastating as any bullet—or caress,” Babo said with surprising vigor. “What do we have left except”—he paused—“the adventure of language between two wrecked ships.”
    “Carajo, everything you say is invention!” the tyrant countered.
    “Couldn’t I say the same of you?”
    Son of a bitch. If Babo weren’t so sick, El Comandante would launch into one of his infinite tirades. Instead he sulked.
    “Have we forgotten how to laugh at ourselves?” Babo chided. “Then this must be the end.”
    The two remained silent for a moment, neither wanting to surrender to the other.
    Finally, Babo blinked and changed the subject. “These days I prefer the language of rain.”
    “He’s been praying for rain,” Gloria interjected dully.
    The tyrant turned to her. “And what have you done about it?”
    “About what?” She inspected her fingernails.
    “The rain.”
    “Mi cielo, they’re in a drought,” Delia protested. “Haven’t you been listening to the news? Gloria, did you know we have the worst meteorologist in Havana?”
    “This is your husband’s last request and you haven’t found a way to grant it?” El Comandante demanded.
    “But, Jefe, how can I—”
    “There are machines that can make rain. I could stand on the roof myself with a fucking bucket so that he might—”
    “Don’t get upset, Papi! This isn’t something you can control!” Delia flushed with embarrassment.
    The obdurate bells of Mexico City announced six o’clock, echoed by the grandfather clock in the hall. Socialism, or death? What was the damn difference? Babo remained placid in his bed, inhabiting the hour. Then, pink nostrils quivering, he requested his daily ration of chocolate tapioca and dispatched every last wobbly spoonful with enthusiasm. Visibly weakened by the effort, he collapsed onto his pillows and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was traveling back in time, to his childhood, to the river journey with his grandparents that had marked him