However Long the Night by David Pereda

However Long the Night
by David Pereda

Eternal Press

eBook ISBN: 9781615725984
Print ISBN: 9781615725991

Successful Miami Architect born in Cuba learns from his dying father buried family secrets that compel him to return to the land he abandoned to search for the woman he left behind and the son he never knew. What if you found out your whole life was built on a lie told by your father? What if you realized this lie was instrumental in your achieving so much while others you once loved achieved so little, or worse, destroyed their lives? What if you had the opportunity to do something about it twenty-five years later…but at the risk of your own life? Would you do it? This is the dilemma Cuban-born, award-winning Miami Architect and successful real estate developer Cid Milan suddenly faces when his dying father reveals to him a shocking twenty-five year old family secret. Cid realizes there’s only one thing he can do to unravel the mystery of his own past and right the wrongs committed: return to the land he abandoned. In his quest, Cid rediscovers himself and his roots as he searches frantically throughout Cuba for his teenage flame, Sandra, and the secret she’s been keeping from him all these years: his only son. In the process, Cid learns an invaluable lesson about love, forgiveness and redemption that changes his life forever.

Chapter One

However long the night, the dawn will break

African Proverb

Summer, 1980 Port of Mariel, Cuba

Where is Sandra?

From his vantage point on the pier, sitting atop the pile of family luggage, Cid Milan scanned the chaotic crowd clogging the dirt road leading to the harbor. If she didn’t hurry, his parents would return, and he’d have to leave.

The port teemed with life. A heavy-set man stumbled under the weight of a huge cardboard box balanced over his head. A skinny woman streaked through the throng clutching a bright-red bag in one hand and the hand of a dazed boy in the other. A shirtless old man scampered after a scurrying black dog.

None of them was Sandra.

Where was she?

Cid was tired. He had a sore throat, and the stench of harbor rot and human sweat turned his stomach. The August sun blistered his skin. It was early afternoon already, and he’d been at Mariel since dawn. Now Sandra was late. Why hadn’t she come yet?

He caught the shimmer of sunlight on auburn hair and his heart thumped like a wild bongo beat. Sandra didn’t materialize from the throng. The hair belonged to a middle-aged woman wearing a canary-yellow dress, clasping a purple purse.

Cid slipped down the stack and kicked his suitcase hard. Taking a deep breath, he turned to check the marina. The sharp wharf odor prickled his nostrils. The cloverleaf-shaped harbor was as chaotic as the street. It was jammed with boats, pitching and bobbing in the rough water, all waiting for the official order to leave. Beyond them, on the hill across the harbor, he saw the outline of the Naval Academy buildings. Mariel was a small town, known for only two things--the academy and the electric power station. Why it was chosen for this massive evacuation, he could not understand. Many things were incomprehensible to him ever since a bus crashed the Peruvian Embassy gates months earlier and the twenty-five Cubans on board asked for asylum.

An enraged Fidel Castro immediately proclaimed, “Any malcontent in this country who wants to live in Peru can seek asylum too.” Within days, more than ten thousand Cubans accepted the Comandante’s invitation and crammed the Peruvian Embassy. Conditions deteriorated quickly. Food, water, medical care and medicines were scarce; sanitary facilities were inadequate. International public opinion condemned Castro’s irresponsibility.

El Comandante’s reaction didn’t take long. Overnight he opened the port at Mariel and declared, “Whoever wants to leave Cuba can do so freely.”

The response to this second invitation was overwhelming. Castro never anticipated the flood of Cubans anxious to take advantage of this new opportunity.

The potential emigrants, on the other hand, never imagined what an ordeal leaving Cuba would be. Cid could see the telltale signs on the haggard but grimly determined faces of the people milling about. He wondered if his own face looked like that.

The road to Mariel, as someone in his barrio once said, required cojones.

Cid’s father, Colonel Milan, shocked his family by being one of the first to submit an application to leave. He was forced to immediately surrender his ration card and work permit. The following day a belligerent neighborhood repudiation committee showed up on his doorstep to persuade him and his family to stay. The Colonel threw them out. Morphing into an angry mob, the committee trampled flowerbeds and painted signs on the walls proclaiming the Milan family traidores. Cid’s mother had to restrain the Colonel from going outside when the rabble destroyed her prized rose garden.

“Who cares, Jose?” she asked calmly. “We’ll probably never see this place again. I’ll grow the prettiest roses in the world in Florida. You’ll see.”

An official arrived three days later. He seized their home, stripped them of their valuable possessions, and escorted them to the checking station at Abreu Fontan on Havana Harbor. There, two insulting, sweaty soldiers interrogated them for hours.

“Why do you want to leave our wonderful country?” one asked again and again.

“You’re worms,” the other kept repeating. “Gusanos! You’re nothing.”

Afterward, they were taken to Mosquito, a holding camp between Havana and Mariel, to wait for their turn to board their vessel and leave. They spent a week at Mosquito, using clogged-up toilets and eating runny scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cid didn’t want to eat another scrambled egg for the rest of his life.

This treatment, and worse, he learned, was routine for anyone wishing to leave the country, yet it did little to discourage the mass exodus. He heard that more than one-hundred thousand Cubans had left the country already.

He spotted his brother Manny scampering through the crowd, waving his arms. At seventeen, he was already taller and more muscular than Cid, even though he was two years younger.

“Papa says to get ready!” Manny shouted as he approached, his mop of curly brown hair flopping. “We’re leaving in an hour.” He skidded to a stop next to Cid, panting.

Cid checked the street again for signs of Sandra. “I’m here.”

“We’re not leaving from here. There’s been a change. We’re leaving from another pier.”

“How come?”

“Who knows? They’ve been shuffling the boats around. It was either that or wait another week.” Manny wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Who cares anyway, as long as we leave?”

Cid thought he saw Sandra weaving through the crowd toward him and a current of joy shot through his body. It wasn’t her. He pinched the bridge of his nose. At least his head didn’t hurt so much anymore.

“Where are Mama and Papa?”

“With Tio Chucho and the captain, doing the paperwork. They’ll be coming soon to help us with our things.”

Tio Chucho was his father’s older and only brother. Half as tall as the Colonel, he was easily twice as wide. Whenever his uncle and dad were together, Cid was reminded of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. When Castro took over, Tio Chucho left the country and migrated to the United States. A successful small businessman in Tampa, he owned a Cuban restaurant and a butcher’s shop. He loved to eat, always smelled of onions and idolized his younger brother. The moment Tio Chucho learned he could take the Colonel and his family out of Cuba he hired a captain with an ancient fishing boat and came to get them.

“How’s Tio Chucho doing?” Cid asked. His overweight uncle suffered from diabetes and a heart condition.

“Not too good. The heat’s killing him. He looks like death warmed over, brother. White as a sheet. I tell you, another delay and he might not make it out of Cuba alive.”

Cid plucked a pebble from the ground and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. “We need to leave soon, then.”

“The sooner the better,” Manny said. “It’s a mess out there, and getting worse. People are screaming at each other, fighting. Two men got into a fistfight up the street. One beat up the other pretty bad, too. The authorities just stood around and laughed. They called them maricónes.” He slowed down to catch his breath. “Isn’t Sandra coming to say good-bye to you?”

“She is.”

“Where is she?”

“Quién sabe?”

“I don’t know how you do it, brother.” Manny chuckled. “You’re always so cool. You live in a cocoon. Nothing seems to touch you.”

Despite the chaos and his growing resentment toward the Colonel for having to leave Cuba so suddenly, Cid managed to keep focused. However, Sandra’s mysterious absence was making him lose control. His cocoon, as Manny called it, was cracking.

“I’m afraid that’s only my outward appearance,” he said.

Manny made a face that was supposed to be funny but wasn’t--at least not to Cid. “She told you she was coming, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

Cid threw the pebble on the ground and rubbed his hands together. Manny narrowed his eyes.

“Everything okay between you two?”

“Yes,” Cid said.

“Did you call her today?”

“How could I? I was here watching our belongings, remember? I called her before we left for Mosquito.”

“And?”

“Nada. Couldn’t talk to her. No one answered the phone.”

“Maybe the line was out of order. You know how good our telephone company is.”

Cid felt eyes boring into him from somewhere. He hoped it was Sandra but when he checked the messy street, she wasn’t there. He massaged his temples. His headache was coming back.

“Maybe you’re right.” He crossed his arms against his chest, feeling foolish. “Her phone is out of order.”

“Don’t look so sad, brother. She’s probably on her way here now.”

“I hope so.”

Cid uncrossed his arms and searched the road once more. Instead of Sandra, he saw his parents weaving their way through the multitude, accompanied by a perspiring Tio Chucho, thick legs churning.

Cid’s mother looked elegant even when walking through a mob. Her dark, well-groomed hair gleamed in the sunlight, and she glided through the throng like a wisp of air. He marveled at this unusual ability of hers. The frenzied crowd, without being asked, opened a path for her.

Manny tapped Cid’s shoulder and pointed. “There are Papa, Mama and Tio Chucho.”

“I see them.”

The Colonel towered head and shoulders above the crowd, a ramrod of a man, his body as straight and strong as his principles. He held two values sacred: honesty and loyalty. Three years of abuse in a Castro prison hadn’t been able to change that.

Cid knew how rough it must have been for his father to go from being a hero of the revolution to becoming a political prisoner. For years, a photograph of his bearded father in fatigues, taken in the Escambray Mountains with Castro, Guevara and Cienfuegos during the fighting days, was prominently displayed in their living room. The Colonel believed in the revolution then. Cid was proud of him for sticking to his principles and defending his country. When the Colonel spoke publicly against Castro’s increasingly Marxist stance, he knew what would happen. Within a week, he was tossed in jail.

Others fared much worse. At least his father was still alive.

His parents were an odd couple. Where the Colonel was hard, Mama was soft. Where he was angular, she was round. Where he was unyielding, she was always willing to compromise. It was no accident that Cid asked advice from his mother and never from his father. The Colonel ordered, but Mama always had time to listen. He respected his father, but he loved his mother.

His parents’ different but confluent views of life were represented in the names each had picked for him when he was born. Hoping he would shake up the world, his father named him Cid after Don Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the legendary Cid Campeador. His mother, the artiste, selected the more melodious Diego, pronouncing it “Dee-ah-go” when she spoke with him. During his early years, each of his parents called him by their chosen name until, finally, his father prevailed. The Colonel always won.

“Let’s start moving the luggage,” his father said. “We’re boarding in fifteen minutes.”

“I’m waiting for Sandra, Papa.”

“Sandra never came?” Cid’s mother asked as she hugged him.

He shook his head, his eyes misty despite his resolve not to show weakness in front of his father.

“Who’s Sandra?” Tio Chucho asked, mopping his forehead with a crumpled handkerchief.

“His girlfriend,” the Colonel said. “We don’t have time to wait for noviecitas now. This is a serious matter, getting out of this crazy country.”

His father could be so damn cold and unjust sometimes. Sandra wasn’t a stranger, as his comment to Tio Chucho made her seem. She was, literally, part of the family, and spent hours at their home, chatting with his parents. Her father, a stubborn Galician with a head harder than concrete, was extremely protective of his daughter and prone to angry reprimands for the littlest things. Her mother was so terrified of him she never intervened. Over time, Cid’s parents became Sandra’s surrogate parents. His mother took her shopping and gave her advice on girl things. The Colonel, on the other hand, listened to her troubles and provided direction on more serious topics, like education and life.

“You’re my second father,” Sandra used to tell the Colonel. “Papa Dos.”

“You’re my consentida,” his father would say to her. “The daughter I never had.”

How could his father make a remark like that about her now to Tio Chucho? It just wasn’t right.

Cid’s mother patted his arm, her eyes misty too. “Can we wait five more minutes, José?”

“No.” The Colonel turned his back on them. He chose the two heaviest suitcases in the pile of luggage and hefted them with a grunt.

“Why not?” Cid’s head throbbed again. “We’ve been waiting all day. Surely we can wait five more minutes.”

“No, we can’t.” Brow knitted, the Colonel spun around to face Cid, a suitcase in each hand. “You can call Sandra from Tampa when we arrive. Now grab a bag!”

Cid clutched his battered suitcase and followed his father…unaware of the crying young woman with auburn hair and hazel eyes, watching him closely from behind a scrawny mango tree less than twenty meters away in one corner of the harbor.

* * * *

This wasn’t where Sandra wanted to be, hiding like a criminal behind a mango tree on this port filled with noisy strangers, watching Cid leave Cuba and her forever. No, she wanted to be in his arms, snuggled up under the Poinciana tree in his back yard, planning their future together. She choked back a sob. She was losing what she loved most in her life, but she had to be strong and let Cid go.

Someday he might regret his behavior and return for her, to this chaotic land where he’d been born. Someday things might be different. Someday, but not now. She didn’t have a crystal ball to predict the future. She only knew she had to let Cid go. The Colonel was quite clear on that point. Cid didn’t love her anymore and she was too proud a woman to go begging to him. Sandra didn’t want Cid’s pity.

Besides, she had a more pressing problem in her hands now. She needed to make a decision as to what to do with the little present from Cid growing inside her. Heaven forbid what her father would do to her if he ever found out she was pregnant.

She watched Cid disappear into the crowd.

* * * *

Cid and Manny leaned against the rail on the crammed upper deck of the venerable boat, watching the retreating Cuban coastline. Vessels of all sizes motored out of the harbor, seeking the open sea. The noise was deafening. Passengers screamed and boat captains blew their horns. On deck a group of men drank rum from a bottle and chanted, “Libertad, libertad, libertad.”

“Many weird-looking people on this boat,” Manny commented. “That guy over there looks like a drug lord.”

“Castro emptied the jails and let out all the scum along with the political prisoners--murderers, druggies, thieves, prostitutes. The cream of society.”

“Hear, hear, but we’re out of that shit hole and on the way to America. A new life, brother.” He slapped Cid’s back. “You, who like to build things, will flourish there. You’ll become an architect, as you’ve always wanted, and be very successful in Tampa, I’m sure.”

“What about you?”

“Me, I like to destroy things, and I’m good at sports. I’ll learn to play American football and become a star.”

“Seems like you have everything figured out.” He looked around. “Where are Mama and Papa?”

“They’re with Tio Chucho. He isn’t feeling well.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“His blood pressure is a little high. I don’t think it’s anything real bad.” Manny flashed a big smile to someone behind Cid’s back and added a wolf whistle. “Think you can be without my charming company for a while, brother? A knockout of a girl just gave me the eye. You want to join me and make new friends?”

Cid shook his head.

“You’re still down about Sandra not coming to say good-bye to you?”

He nodded. “It’s been a bad week all around.”

“Things will improve now, brother. Cheer up. You’re depressing me.” He punched Cid on the arm playfully. “In a month you might not even remember Sandra. There are tons of beautiful women in the United States. We’ll arrive in Florida in a couple of hours to start a new life. I’m going to try to get a head start, maybe find me a new girlfriend. Sure you don’t want to come?”

“I’m sure.”

Several moments later his mother leaned on the rail next to him. She wrapped an arm around his waist and hugged him tenderly. “How are you doing, son?”

Cid looked into her soft brown eyes. “Fine, Mama.”

“I know you. You’re not fine at all. You always try to be so tough, but you’re not. Manny is like your father. They see life one way, like bulls. You’re like me. We feel every little emotion, because we care. So, I know you’re not fine. You’re hurt.”

His eyes filled with tears. “She doesn’t love me, Mama. She didn’t come.”

“Maybe she had a reason for not coming.”

“No. I tried talking to her for days, and she disappeared on me. It was as if she was angry about something. It was her way of breaking up with me.”

“Give her a chance. Call her from Tampa and listen to her explanation. You can always send for her. Maybe even come to get her.”

“I will. Deep down I know she doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Before you came I remembered something she said to me once. She told me, looking at me with those beautiful hazel eyes of hers, ‘Cid, the day you don’t love me anymore, don’t tell me. I don’t want to be hurt. Just go away and disappear. I’ll understand.’” A tear rolled down his cheek. “That’s what Sandra did, you see? She disappeared.”

They watched the Cuban coast in silence; gold, green and blue. A cool breeze replaced the strong wharf odor with the briny smell of the open sea.

After a while, Cid noticed his mother was crying. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t mind me. Just an old lady’s tears.” She fixed her gaze on the receding coastline. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Si.”

“I’ll miss her.”

“Me, too.”

* * * *

Sandra gazed at the blur of Cid’s boat disappearing over the horizon. She dried her tears with the heels of her hands and stumbled to her feet. Squeezing her stomach, she stepped away from the mango tree and shuffled slowly toward the harbor entrance, unaware of the turmoil around her.

She’d made her decision.

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