Caribbean: a novel Part 45

But he had never sought to deny his Cuban ancestry as some emigres did, and in 1972 he had helped in the movement to make Miami's Dade County officially bilingual. But in 1980 outraged Anglo citizens, feeling themselves pushed against the wall by the flood of Cubans, launched a counterattack and made English the official language of the county, and 'to h.e.l.l with that Spanish jazz,' as one proponent shouted.

Steve, unable to accept what he viewed as a grievous step backward, led a new fight to establish Miami as a bilingual city, and on the night his resolution pa.s.sed by a large majority, making Miami conduct its business in both English and Spanish, he appointed a committee to suggest Spanish names for streets in the Little Havana area. The valiant way in which he fought to promote Hispanic interests made him a hero to the Cubans, even though he did lose a later fight to restore Dade County bilingualism.

He had endeared himself to the Anglos by stating in a press conference on the night English was voted back to preeminence: 'The public has spoken. Let's accept the decision in the spirit of good fellows.h.i.+p and learn English as fast as possible.' But then he added, with a wink into the television cameras: 'Of course, anyone in this city who does speak Spanish will be at a tremendous advantage, because we all know that Miami is destined to become a Hispanic city.'

He also displayed his knack for civic leaders.h.i.+p when the blacks of Miami voiced their dismay at seeing the types of jobs they had traditionally held-janitors, night watchmen, warehous.e.m.e.n, helpers in stores-monopolized by better-educated Cuban immigrants, leaving the city's blacks unemployed and unemployable. When black leaders met with government officials to plead for fairer treatment, Calderon listened as one older man complained: 'We blacks have been here in Florida for more than four hundred years, and in that time we reached certain agreements with the whites. Now, if we want to keep the jobs we've always had, we have to learn Spanish, and at our age we can't do that. Your people have stolen our city from us.'

Alert to the dangers this impa.s.se presented, Steve had immediately hired two black aides at his clinic, despite the fact that Hispanics could do the job better; even if the black aides proved superior, they would be almost fifty-percent worthless, since they would not be able to speak with the clinic patients, a majority of whom were Hispanic. He also spoke in public about the necessity of protecting black employment, and he persuaded a group of well-to-do Cuban professionals and businessmen to finance a night school at which blacks could learn Spanish, but this charitable idea was sc.r.a.pped when black leaders protested: 'See, it proves what we said. Miami is becoming a Spanish city, with no place for the black worker unless he learns their language.' And then came the perpetual complaint: 'And we've been here more than four hundred years.'

Airplanes flying from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to Florida customarily cut across Virginia to a spot near Wilmington, North Carolina, where they head into the Atlantic on a straight line over water to Miami, but Dr. Calderon didn't notice the beautiful view because he was lost in deep thought. He had great sympathy for the Miami blacks. Their world seemed to him to be s.h.i.+fting under their feet and they were having real trouble adjusting. But he had no sympathy for the Anglos who crybabied about the Cuban invasion. They had done d.a.m.ned little with their city while they monopolized it, in his opinion, and nine-tenths of the good things that had made Miami a metropolis in the last decades were due to his fellow Cubans.

He had contempt for those English-speaking citizens of the city who moved northward toward Palm Beach to escape the Cubans-'Hispanic Panic' it was called-and it betrayed the fact that these fleeing Anglos feared they might not be able to cope with the Spanish city Miami was destined to become: Nor do they like the idea that we're also now a Catholic city, and a Republican one to boot. In fact, they don't like anything about us and our new ways. And he shook his head in disgust when he recalled the offensive b.u.mper sticker that appeared so frequently: 'Will the last American leaving Miami please bring the flag?'

But then, hands folded across his seat belt, he reflected on how ambivalent he had become regarding some Cuban newcomers. He believed that the first flood of Cubans in 1959 and '61 brought some of the finest immigrants ever to reach America. For any nation to have received in a short time two groups of such admirable human material was a boon which rarely happens: Not one of our group unemployed. Not one with children lacking an education. And not one so far as I know without savings in the bank. He chuckled: And not one voting anything but straight Republican. We became self-respecting American citizens overnight, and it's ridiculous for the Anglos to reject us, because we're just like them.

Then he groaned. He couldn't blame the Anglos for despising those Mariel boatlift gangsters who came in 1980, when Castro emptied the Cuban jails and s.h.i.+pped north some 125,000 criminals. They've set Cuban progress in Miami back a dozen years. He stared bleakly down at the gray ocean, visualizing that second flood of Cuban immigrants-the drug smugglers and holdup artists, the car thieves and embezzlers ... and the uneducated.

Reluctantly he admitted an ugly question which had been festering for some time: Is the real reason we despise the Mariel boatlift people because they're primarily black and we don't want the United States to discover that hordes of Cubans in this generation are black, not white like our first group of arrivals? It was a nagging problem, this race discrimination that had plagued Cuba for the last four hundred years; people who ran the hotels that tourists frequented in the good old days were white or nearly so. Also the people who governed, the diplomats who graced Paris and Was.h.i.+ngton, the millionaire sugar planters, all white. But the ma.s.s of people out in the fields, the mountains, the ones who did the work and threatened to become the majority, they were black, descendants of the slaves the sugar barons had imported from Africa. Cuba, he mused, top third white, bottom third black, middle third mixed. He grimaced: I never liked the blacks in Cuba and I don't like them here. They're rascals, and no wonder American citizens have begun to fear all Cubans. From reading newspaper accounts of Mariel crimes, you'd think the princ.i.p.al contribution we Cubans brought with us to Miami was public corruption, Spanish style.

Wincing, he thought of several recent headline cases. A big group of police officers, all white Hispanics, formed a cabal to commit a chain of horrendous crimes for money. Two Mariel Cubans operating an aluminum-siding firm did such a wretched job for an Anglo client that he demanded a rebate, which so angered the aluminum men that they stormed into the man's home, beat him up, then drove their car straight at the man's wife, crus.h.i.+ng her left leg so badly that it had to be amputated. On and on went a litany of criminal behavior so offensive that he appreciated why Anglos had come to resent even well-behaved Cubans. To counteract such negative impressions, he had, with the help of other Cuban leaders, established an informal club called Dos Patrias, the name, Two Homelands, referring to the emotional home which the Cubans had left behind and the legal one to which they were committed for the rest of their lives. It was a club without rules, regular meetings or set members.h.i.+p, just a group of intelligent men who studied how their community was developing and who sought to keep it on the right track. All who attended were Hispanics, ninety-five-percent Cuban, and most were as enlightened as Calderon. They recognized two basics: Miami was destined to become a Hispanic city; and it would be a more vital society if the Anglos who built it could be persuaded to remain instead of running away to the wealthy settlements in the north. Most Patrias had developed pragmatic solutions to the problem: 'If the rednecks who can't stand hearing a person speak Spanish get scared, encourage them to move out and to h.e.l.l with 'em. Little lost. But we must do everything reasonable to keep the sensible ones, because them we need.'

Patrias a.s.sumed responsibility for seeing that Miami remained a city in which Anglos could feel at home, and Steve said at the close of one meeting: 'I see a city that'll be maybe three-fourths Hispanic, one-fourth black and Anglo, and to make good Anglos feel at ease in such a place isn't going to be easy.'

Then Steve s.h.i.+vered, recalling the deplorable visit he'd recently had from the Hazlitts, and he wondered if the battle had not already been lost. Norman Hazlitt was the kind of man who graced any community in which he worked: unusually successful as a businessman, he had practiced good relations with labor, had been a major force in building a strong Presbyterian church, had served the Boy Scouts for decades, and helped keep the local Republican party alive in years when it won few elections. His wife, Clara, had been a princ.i.p.al fund-raiser for Doctors Hospital and the financial angel for the Center for Abused Wives. Among the charities of Miami it was known that 'if you can't get the money anywhere else, try the Hazlitts.'

Three months ago Steve had become aware that the Hazlitts were becoming unhappy with the way the Cubans were taking over the community; they were especially ill at ease regarding the religious sect Santeria. The matter became public when a brash young Santeria minister bought a vacant house at the far edge of the district in which the Hazlitts and other millionaires lived, and there conducted lively services in which large groups of predominantly Mariel wors.h.i.+pers sang in beautiful harmony and prayed in the Catholic style, for they were tangentially a part of that faith as practiced in Cuba. Trouble arose because their rituals were also strongly influenced by ancient African voodoo rites, including specifically the climactic sacrifice of live chickens and other animals in a way that allowed the blood to spatter members of the congregation. This was not ritual sacrifice, in which a symbolic knife made a symbolic pa.s.s over the animal; it was the severing of a living neck and the gus.h.i.+ng of hot blood.

Mrs. Hazlitt, as a member of the SPCA, was shocked when she learned that a church in her community was conducting such rituals, and with the a.s.sistance of like-minded Episcopal, Baptist and Presbyterian women, she tried to put a stop to what she and others termed 'this savage display more appropriate to the jungle than to a civilized neighborhood.'

In the public debate that followed, two unfortunate statements were made which put the Hazlitts quite at odds with the Cuban community. One of the Santeria wors.h.i.+pers had a son just graduated from law school who saw the vigorous attempts of the Anglo community to outlaw the blood sacrifice as an attack upon freedom of religion. With skill he invoked one law after another in defense of the sacrifices, treating the practices of the Santeria sect with all the high gravity that another might treat a more established religion like Catholicism or Mormonism. This so infuriated the Anglo women that Mrs. Hazlitt told the press: 'But those are real religions,' and this roused a storm from many who loudly claimed that Santeria was equally real.

The women then tried to invoke a zoning ordinance, but the young lawyer defeated them. They attempted to outlaw the sacrifices as a menace to health, but again he used the law to hold them off. They tried to call upon what they called a 'higher law of common sense' but he produced two professors of religion who proved that every tenet of Santeria, and especially the blood sacrifices, came straight out of the Old Testament.

But the coup de grce was administered by the young lawyer during an interview on the radio talk station WJNZ: 'Catholics and Protestants eat the wafer and drink the wine and pretend that these are the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus. They're doing exactly what we do in Santeria, but we have the courage to really kill our chicken.' After that, any reasonable debate became impossible, and when the ACLU entered the battle in defense of the new religion, the Hazlitts knew their side could not win.

However, one die-hard Protestant woman-not Mrs. Hazlitt, who knew better-fired a final salvo, and it was savage: 'If the Santerias start their sacrifice with a pigeon and then a chicken, then a turkey and a goat, how soon do they start killing human beings?' As a shudder pa.s.sed through the community at this intemperate and wildly inappropriate a.s.sault, the Hazlitts told each other: 'Sanity has lost. Santeria has triumphed.'

Two weeks ago this fine couple had come to the Calderon residence with doleful news: 'We're leaving Miami. Can't take it anymore.'

'Please, please!' Steve had begged. 'Forget the Santerias. They're on the other side of town behaving themselves.'

'We have forgotten them. But we began really to worry last week. The attempt to burn the television station.'

'You mean the Frei case?' Steve asked, and he listened to a lava flow of bitter complaint, for this Noriberto Frei, a minor city employee determined to get ahead in a hurry, had finally exceeded the bounds of decency and reason.

He was an engaging young fellow, not among the first Cubans to arrive after Castro but not a Mariel man, either. Announcing himself as the holder of a Harvard degree in business administration (although he had never seen New England) and a world traveler (although he had never been north of South Carolina), he had become involved in one scam after another. His explanations were always both brazen and ingenious: 'Yes, I used the initials CPA, but I never claimed I'd taken any exams. Yes, I've appointed nine of my relatives to high-paying jobs, but they tested out to be the best qualified. Yes, the man who built the condominium on land that had been zoned for single-family residential does allow me to use that big apartment on the twelfth floor, but there are no papers to prove that I actually own it. And now about that ninety-seven thousand dollars the papers claim is missing, I can explain ...'

'It isn't the devilish things he's done,' Norman Hazlitt said. 'It's how your Cuban community has defended his performances ... made a hero of him. You're sending a signal and we're receiving it loud and clear.'

'It's been unfortunate,' Calderon conceded.

Indeed it was. Noriberto Frei had, through his charm and fast talking, built himself a little empire, from which he exercised considerable power. But when he became embroiled in yet another scandal, a local television station presented a skit of Frei's escapades, with the question at the end: WHAT WILL HE DO NEXT?

'It was proper castigation of a scoundrel,' Hazlitt said, and Steve agreed.

But on the same evening, after the skit was broadcast, hundreds of Frei supporters-all Cubans-marched on the offices of the offending station, branding the broadcasters communists, and would have set the place afire had not the police intervened.

'That was a deplorable action,' Calderon admitted, but Mrs. Hazlitt added: 'I sometimes think there must be a secret Cuban Ayatollah that no Anglo is ever allowed to see who orchestrates these scandals,' and Calderon winced.

But that was not what the Hazlitts had come to complain about. Brandis.h.i.+ng a copy of the day's paper, they pointed to a typical Miami photograph spread across the front page: a jubilant Nariberto Frei brandis.h.i.+ng a victory gla.s.s of champagne with some two dozen cheering supporters, mostly Hispanic, toasting the fact that he had once again outsmarted the Anglos. 'Seven times they've tried to get me,' Frei was quoted, 'but it's been nothing but a futile vendetta mounted by that d.a.m.ned station. Well, I've proved I'm here to stay.'

'And he is,' Hazlitt admitted. 'He and his style of government have won. Victorious, he declares war on people like me. Shut up or get out.'

Then Clara spoke, and as she did she placed her trembling hand on Steve Calderon's arm: 'You better than most, Steven, know that Norman and I are not racists.'

'Heavens, no! Who loaned me the money to get my clinic started?' He reached over to kiss her on the cheek, but this did not placate her: 'I do so hate it when I enter a store I've patronized for forty years and find that the salesgirls not only can't speak English but insult me because I use it. I can no longer visit my longtime hairdresser because the new management hires only Cubans who speak no English. Wherever I go, it's the same.' Turning to face Steve, she said accusingly: 'Your people have stolen our city from us.'

When he tried to rea.s.sure her that Miami needed the Hazlitts now more than ever, she clenched her fists and said: 'It's no longer a matter of words. We're frightened ... terrified. Tell him what happened two nights ago, Norman,' and the financier related yet another distressing Miami story: 'Clara and I were driving home on Dixie Highway, obeying the speed limit. An urgent driver behind us, wanting to pa.s.s, honked at us angrily, then took a wild chance and whizzed by on the right-hand shoulder, cursing at us as he went. But that put him behind a car even slower than ours, and now his honking displayed real fury. But this time there was no shoulder. Enraged, he rushed up behind the slow car, b.u.mped it three times, then pulled up beside it at a traffic light. Saying nothing, he reached in his glove compartment, whipped out a revolver, and shot the slow driver dead ... not eight feet from us.'

Clara added: 'Before we could do anything, the killer sped through the red light and was gone.'

'Did you identify the car for the police?'

'We were afraid to. He might come back and kill us, too.'

'Was he Hispanic?'

'He must have been.' Before Steve could point out what a shameful a.s.sumption that was, Hazlitt said: 'We sold the house this morning ... closing out my partners.h.i.+ps as soon as possible.'

'But where will you go?' Calderon asked plaintively, and they said: 'Somewhere fresh and clean north of Palm Beach, where we'll build a wall around our home and hope to keep it protected during our lifetime, while the rest of south Florida becomes wholly Hispanic.'

When Steve reported this development to his Patrias, several expressed regret at losing such estimable citizens, but some of the realists countered: 'A cla.s.sic case of Hispanic Panic. Let 'em go.' Another said: 'I'm sick and tired of hearing complaints against our use of Spanish. A man can spend a month along Calle Ocho and never need a word of English,' to which Steve replied: 'Tell your Cubans they'd better learn, or they'll be left behind as Miami grows.'

There was, however, a problem of greater threat to the nation, as a political scientist, invited down from the university at Gainesville, explained to the Patrias one evening: 'I think we must expect at some future time another ma.s.s exodus from Cuba and certainly a huge influx from Central America, where the birth rate is simply running wild. So we're talking about maybe two or three hundred thousand new Hispanics, and they won't be already educated the way you gentlemen were. They'll be illiterates, many of them will be black, and they'll all want to settle in Miami.

'The great risk these people will pose is that they'll introduce into Miami life the political corruption that seems to infect all Hispanic government: bribery of officials, fraud in elections, nepotism in political appointments, and invariably putting the interests of one's family members ahead of the general welfare. These characteristics are already surfacing in Miami, and with a constant influx of new arrivals the problem will worsen.

'It's up to you leaders of the Hispanic community to ensure that this doesn't happen. Florida's politics must not become Latin-Americanized. The officials you elect to office must live not by traditions of Colombia, where they shoot judges they don't like, or Bolivia, where everything can be stolen, but by the traditions of reasonable honesty and responsibility on which the United States has relied for the past three centuries.'

As the man spoke, Calderon was thinking of the recent scandals on Wall Street in which Anglos of supposed probity had stolen the investors of the nation blind, and he felt that the young man was overstating his case, but in the heated question period the speaker modified his views somewhat: 'For the present, Miami is getting horrendous adverse publicity as the crime capital of the nation, the gangsterism a.s.sociated with cocaine accounting for most of it, and I would look for this to continue through the end of the century. But we must remember that Al Capone made Chicago a similar capital in his day and Chicago didn't suffer more than three or four decades. Neither will Miami.

'Turbulence comes with vitality, and Miami has a strong chance of being one of the most vital cities in the Western Hemisphere-playground of the North ... capital of the Caribbean ... magnet to all the South American nations ... blessed with a multiracial society ... and don't forget those hardworking Haitians. Its future is bright indeed.'

Calderon's plane had now reached a point in Florida north of Palm Beach, and in the final moments of approach he thought exclusively of what lay ahead-a possible meeting with Fidel Castro. He knew that as long as his generation lived in south Florida, hatred for that evil man would never subside. Bay of Pigs veterans like Maximo Quiroz would keep the bitterness alive. But he also knew there was a greater reality-the rest of the United States was willing to let Castro run his course, to keep him isolated, and when he did go, to get on with the job of reconciliation with Cuba.

Then a sardonic thought brought a smile to his face: If Castro vanished tomorrow, I wonder if even Maximo and his henchmen would go back. They know how good they have it here in Miami and they're not about to give it up. Not more than two in a hundred would go back. Maybe two is a mite few. There is such a thing as homesickness. Then, as the plane swung into its landing pattern: Make it five in a hundred. But of the kids born here and educated in American schools and colleges, make it one in a hundred ... at most.

But when he reached home the problem at hand a.s.sumed an entirely different coloration, for his wife met him at the door with news that several callers who would not give their names had wanted to speak with him, and even as she said the words the phone jangled, and when he answered, a voice he did not recognize said in a low growl: 'Don't you dare go to Cuba.' Obviously, someone in his Was.h.i.+ngton meeting that afternoon had warned someone in Miami that contacts were about to be made with Castro and that injurious concessions might result.

'Who was on the phone?' Kate asked, and he lied: 'Someone seeking my help on a zoning variance.' Then she s.h.i.+fted the conversation: 'At your meeting in Was.h.i.+ngton? Cuba?' He nodded, and she reminded him of the promise he had made yesterday. But he made light of the matter, though in the end he had to confide: 'Maybe a trip to visit your sister in Havana,' and she kissed him: 'Now that I could tolerate ... if we keep politics out of it,' and he agreed.

Then the phone rang again, and a much different voice, still unrecognizable, said darkly: 'We're warning you, Calderon. Don't go to Cuba.'

This time when he replaced the receiver his hands were shaking, and he s.h.i.+fted his body to prevent his wife from seeing. He was frightened, and he had a right to be, for ten years ago, in 1978, one of the finest doctors in his clinic, Fermin Sanchez, had organized a group of seventy-five exiles, who then flew to Havana to see Castro and discuss the possibility of normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States. Word of their meeting exploded through the refugee community, and shortly after the committee's return to Miami, two members were murdered, another had both legs blown off, six had their businesses dynamited, and all were threatened by savage but anonymous phone calls: 'Traitor, you too will die.'

Once Steve took a call intended for Dr. Sanchez: 'Oh, Dr. Calderon! Tell Dr. Sanchez I'd like to keep seeing him, but I'm afraid they'll bomb your office while I'm there.'

'Who told you that?'

'They telephoned.'

In time the wrath diminished, but Steve knew that even he was held in suspicion because he employed Sanchez. Considerable pressure had been applied to make him fire the doctor, but he had refused and eventually the raging fires had subsided.

If ever two cities were destined to be interlocked, each complementing the other, they were Miami, perched at the tip of a great continent, striving to retain its Anglo-Saxon character, and Havana, located on the edge of a glorious island and determined to protect its Spanish heritage. Only two hundred and thirty-five miles apart, a distance which could be covered in less than forty minutes by a moderately fast plane, they should have enjoyed a symbiotic relations.h.i.+p of mutual reward, with the residents of Miami flying south not only for recreation but also for instruction in Caribbean life and Spanish ways, and the Cubans flying north for shopping, medical help and advanced education. But the Castro revolution dislocated arrangements and made intercourse between the two natural neighbors impossible, to the grave detriment of each.

In the summer of 1988, when normal travel between the two cities was forbidden, there were three ways by which an American could get to Cuba: he could fly to Mexico, quietly arrange a visa there, and hop a speedy flight to Havana; or he could fly to Montreal for the same kind of transaction; or in difficult and somewhat secret circ.u.mstances, he could report quietly to the Miami airport at midnight, with a U.S. Treasury Department clearance, for a charter flight that left each night of the week to transfer those pa.s.sengers and goods which each nation recognized had to be exchanged. Scant public notice was taken of these flights, for each nation knew they were necessary.

For the flight of Dr. Calderon and his wife to Havana, the State Department had decided that secrecy could best be preserved by using the Canadian route. Fortunately, in late August a large medical meeting involving Canadian and American doctors was scheduled in Toronto, and it was arranged that a formal invitation would be issued to Calderon, and news of this was circulated among other Miami-area doctors who had also been invited. The Calderons would appear at the convention early, meet the maximum numbers of Floridians, attend sessions during the first two days, then quietly disappear, ostensibly for a motor trip through Nova Scotia.

But before the Calderons could put this plan into operation, Steve was visited at his banking headquarters by a man he really did not care to see but who was not entirely unexpected. He was a Cuban in his late forties, of medium size and very rugged, with dark black hair combed forward over his forehead and a pinched countenance fixed into a permanent scowl. He was Maximo Quiroz.

He was a princ.i.p.al adversary to the conciliatory Dos Patrias group that Calderon had organized to provide sober guidance to Miami's Cuban community, for Quiroz wanted to go the confrontational route in all affairs pertaining to Hispanics. He dreamed not only of invading Cuba but also of ousting all the Anglos from Miami: 'I'll be glad when the last of them head north and leave the running of this city to those of us who know what's needed.' Men like Calderon were fed up with Quiroz, seeing him as an irresponsible agitator indifferent to the turbulent consequences his acts might have.

Dr. Calderon tried to be understanding and patient: 'Well, Maximo, old friend, what's new these days?'

'All bad. Russia moving in tons of weapons to the island, not even unpacking them, then straight off to Nicaragua.' He complained that mixed signals from the American Congress meant that the contras, whom he supported pa.s.sionately, were left bewildered.

'What did you find when you went to Honduras last month?' Calderon asked, and his question was not mere courteous conversation, for he too was an ardent supporter of the contras.

'n.o.ble determination to regain their country. Confusion as to where the supplies were going to come from.' He added that if Calderon was really interested, he, Maximo, could arrange meetings with the contra leaders.h.i.+p, all of whom were living in Miami, but although Steve supported the contras emotionally and with cash contributions, he did not care to become too deeply involved.

'What brings you here this morning?' he asked, and Quiroz began a long review of the relations.h.i.+ps between the Calderons and the Quiroz branch of the family: 'Don't forget,' he said in Spanish, for he had refused to become proficient in English, having expected all along that he would be returning to Cuba, 'that your great-grandfather's name was Caldern y Quiroz and his mother was my great-grandfather's sister. We're related, you must remember, and it isn't proper for you to oppose the things I'm trying to do.'

'What are you trying to do?' Steve interrupted, drawing an even deeper scowl.

'Regain Cuba, and if that's impossible because the Russians won't allow it, even when Castro's gone, to make a safe place for us here in Miami.'

'Do you have to insult the Anglos to accomplish that?'

'Yes!' he said defiantly. 'I can never forget how they insulted us when we came here in 1959. Their days are numbered.'

Distressed by such talk, Calderon rose and began pacing about his office, then turned to face Quiroz: 'Maximo, you're free to fight for a Cuba freed from Russian domination, but you mustn't ruin south Florida for those of us who're going to remain here for the rest of our lives.' He stopped suddenly, stared at his cousin, and asked: 'By the way, have you ever applied for American citizens.h.i.+p?'

'My home is down there.'

'Then for heaven's sake, spend your efforts there. Don't wreck Miami for the rest of us.'

'What am I doing to wreck ...?'

'Reopening that bilingual problem.'

'Ah! Your wealthy Anglo friends better accept the fact, Miami is going to be a Spanish city. Not only Cubans coming in. All the extra people in Central America-todas la gente en America Central-they'll be coming here to live, and they must be free to conduct their lives in Spanish.'

'But, Maximo,' Steve asked almost pleadingly, 'don't you realize that such a campaign, all over again, will make the Anglos ...'

'I want to make them eat dirt the way you and I had to when we came to their city.'

'I never ate dirt,' Steve insisted, but Quiroz raged: 'Yes you did. Year after year, working as a janitor, but you refused to admit it!' and Steve saw that it was hopeless to use either truth or logic with this difficult man: 'I don't know why I bother with you, Maximo,' he said, and his visitor leered at him provocatively: 'Yes you do. You listen to me because you know I'm a true Cuban patriot ... a hero ... a man who will lead us back to Cuba.' Quiroz could afford to be arrogant because he knew that he was a reproach to those Americanized Cubans who were uneasy about adopting a new homeland and turning their backs on the old.

Some months ago the Patrias, aware that friction was increasing between Quiroz and Calderon, sent one of their most stable members to reason with Steve, and the man said: 'Quiroz is difficult, and I'm a member of Patrias because I don't like his extremist acts here in Miami, but he's also a man of n.o.ble courage. I know. When he came to me here in Miami back in 1961 and whispered: "We're going to invade Cuba, kill that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Castro, and make our homeland free once more," I jumped forward to help.

'He and I were first on the beach at Bay of Pigs, last to leave. Fact is, he stayed behind so long, still firing at the communists, that we were captured and thrown into big trucks, door bolted shut and s.h.i.+pped in disgrace to Havana for the Cubans to gloat over us.'

At this point in his recollection of that catastrophe, and overwhelmed by what he must say next, the veteran of that bungled cause asked for a drink of water before concluding: 'The trip in that locked bus took eight hours, with the sun beating upon our roof, and before long men began to die of suffocation. It was now that Maximo proved his heroism, for he told us to scratch at the siding with our belt buckles, try to make a hole, and when an hour pa.s.sed with no results he screamed: "Scratch harder or die!" and he was the first to complete a hole, and the fresh air he brought us saved my life. Today Maximo lives for only one thing. To get back to Cuba and finish with Castro.'

Quietly, Steve had asked: 'Will any Miami Cubans join him?' and this sensible man had replied instantly: 'Me and ten thousand like me.'

So now, when Steve stared across his desk at Quiroz, he had to admit that the unpleasant fellow was a verifiable hero. He also knew that Maximo had come for some specific reason, so he asked: 'Now what is it that you came to see me about?' and Quiroz realized that the time had come for a frank discussion. With his scowl newly intensified, he growled: 'They tell me you're going down to see Castro.'

Steve's strong inclination was to ask: 'Who told you that?' but he did not wish to engage in a lying contest, so he replied truthfully: 'I have no plans to visit Castro, none at all.'

'Then why are you visiting Cuba?'

'Who said I was?'

'We know. We too have friends in high places who dream of freedom in Cuba.'

'If I were going,' Steve said, 'I'd take my wife, and the purpose of the trip would be to see your cousin and mine, Roberto Caldern.' He paused: 'I'm sure you know that his wife and mine are twin sisters.'

'I did know. But that can't be a reason for a man like you going back to Cuba. With your family record of always favoring the United States, Cuba would be crazy to let you in.'

'Times change, Maximo.'

'Not where Castro is concerned. Let me warn you, Estefano, do not go to visit with that criminal in La Habana.' The use of his Spanish name evoked so many pleasant memories to Steve that he rose, embraced his formidable cousin, and said: 'One of these day, Maximo, we'll all go back to La Habana for a long visit. Things will change, believe me,' and Quiroz, disarmed by this gesture of good will, said grudgingly: 'For me it won't be a visit. Castro will be dead and I'll be going home to stay ... in triumph.' Then quickly he regained his composure: 'Estefano, I warn you. Do not go to Cuba. Do not make concessions to that murderer.'

'I have no intention ...'

'But you already have a ticket to Toronto. I know what happens in Toronto. You slip into Cuba that way.'

Astonished by Maximo's knowledge of his movements, Steve said: 'If you know so much, you must also know that I'm attending a medical meeting up there.'

Rising and heading for the door, Quiroz growled: 'Estefano, if you go to Cuba and try to meet with Castro, you'll be in grave danger. I warn you, don't do it.'

When Steve heard him clumping down the hallway, he leaned back in his chair and wondered who it could have been in that Was.h.i.+ngton meeting who had slipped the word south to his allies in Miami concerning the government's new strategies relating to Cuba, and his own involvement in those strategies.

In Toronto, Steve and Kate attended the medical meetings and he spoke twice from the floor in order to verify his presence. On the third day they rented a car, and not wis.h.i.+ng to provide any possible verification of their trip to Cuba, allowed themselves to be seen heading east toward Nova Scotia, but when they were well on their way they deviated to Montreal, parked their car at the airport, and boarded a plane for Mexico, where they transferred to a much smaller plane which sped them swiftly to Havana.

On the bus ride into town there were enough seats so that the Calderons could each have a window, Kate in front, Steve right behind her, and their remarks pa.s.sing back and forth attested to their continuing surprise: 'It's sure cleaner than it used to be,' Kate said, and Steve responded: 'A lot fewer uniforms than we used to see in Batista's day.'