Читать книгу No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer’s Story - Carlos Acosta - Страница 16

The ambulance pulled up outside our house. Most of the neighbours stopped what they were doing and came out into the street. A few of them stayed inside, and watched everything through the cracks in their windows. None of us children had gone to school because we wanted to make the house as nice as possible for our mother’s return. Marilín cleaned, Bertica washed the clothes and I went out to fetch the provisions for the month and to carry some buckets of water upstairs to fill the tanks. The old man had left early for the hospital.

We came out onto the balcony just as the two ambulance men were preparing to carry out the stretcher on which my mother was lying. My father got down from the ambulance to hold the doors open for the stretcher-bearers and to warn them repeatedly to take care on the stairs. When they brought my mother out, Ramona, our next-door neighbour, put her hand over her mouth, and many of the other neighbours turned their heads away. Mamá looked like a defenceless dove. Her eyes were closed and she was as pale as she had been in the hospital. Her body shook as the stretcher-bearers made unsteady progress and her head rolled from side to side, as if she wanted to make sure everyone saw the horrific sunken scar her operation had left her with. We made way so the ambulance men could get past. My mother was sleeping. She did not seem to be breathing. My father squeezed my shoulders and kissed my sisters. He seemed more animated than he had in weeks. I looked at the faces of the neighbours who had crowded into the street. Some of them gave me the thumbs-up sign. Only Opito was sitting on the wall at the corner making fun of me, flapping his arms like a bird and mincing round, insinuating that prancing swan was me. It did not matter now. My mother was home. I went into the house and closed the door behind me.

Little by little things began to improve. My mother recovered some of her colour and the hair on her head started to grow back. When she tried to speak, she mumbled sounds that were mainly incomprehensible, but at least she recognized us. I was just happy to know that she was here, alive.

Our neighbour Marta helped us to care for Mamá in the mornings so my father could go to work and we could attend school. She was a good and generous woman, an affectionate, gentle, warmhearted soul. In fact everyone in the neighbourhood was good and generous: one big happy family, not just when it came to drinking rum, dancing salsa or playing dominoes, but also in times of hardship and necessity. Delia let us have some eggs, Kenia gave us rice and Candida donated a little cooking fat. There was always someone on hand with a friendly word of advice or a small act of kindness, things that are very important when you are feeling lost.

Now that things were getting back to normal, I was beginning to get tired of keeping to the straight and narrow and behaving well. Even though I had felt good hearing the applause that greeted my first performance, football was still my passion. I had to find a way to play.

One day, I got up as usual at five in the morning to go to ballet school, but instead took a different bus to a nearby stadium where I knew the football team from the Arturo Montori School trained every day. There was not a soul about, just the early morning sunshine, the football pitch and me. Occasionally buses passed by, making a racket, or a Chevrolet of the kind that abound in Cuba, where the only original parts remaining are the bodywork and the name – ten cars rolled into one. The noise did not bother me. I was totally immersed in myself, thinking about ballet, looking at the football pitch and comparing this glorious morning with my usual schoolday. Six hours of studying French and piano, the monotony and boredom of standing at the barre … against being here. It was sweet to breathe in the scent of the dew and imagine what my life might have been. There was no hope now of realizing my dreams, but at least I could dream – nobody could ever take that away from me. I stretched myself out in a corner, rested my head on my rucksack and waited for daybreak.

I was so tired that I did not feel the Caribbean sun on my skin as it rose. I was fast asleep on the concrete floor, heavy as an elephant. When I opened my eyes there were boys out on the pitch, warming up to the rhythm of shouts from the trainer before the start of a game. I leapt to my feet. I counted fourteen boys, all my age. The coach was yelling out questions and they were responding.

‘What is the most important thing in football?’

‘The warm-up!’

‘What does your body need before the game?’

‘To warm up!’

They carried on shouting out as they warmed up their ankles, their knees and their waists. They did squat thrusts. I copied them. The coach noticed me and called me over to join the group, so I did.

Ten minutes later the game began. We played all morning. For me, it was perfect and I wished that every day could begin like that.

The match finished at midday and the coach promised me that I could come back whenever I wanted. I was a sweaty, muddy wreck, but I was so happy I did not care. I knew I would have to think of some excuse for my appearance, but I could not go home yet anyway because if I got back too early my parents would realize I had not gone to ballet school.

I decided to catch a bus out to the woods in La Fortuna, where there was a big fishing lake and lots of fruit trees. My plan was to hang out there for a while and then return home about the same time that I usually got back from ballet.

Arriving at La Fortuna, I walked towards the woods and climbed over the barbed wire fence. The lake was about a mile from the road, between a mental hospital and an abattoir. I needed a good swim to cool myself down a bit. The path was wet from two days’ rain and the air was humid and full of insects. By now I was very hungry and my guts were making sounds like a cat’s mewling. I spotted several white mango trees just a little way off and ran towards them, barging through the undergrowth, pushing branches out of the way as mud splashed up behind me and splattered my shirt. I was too hungry to notice, my only objective was to eat. Under the first tree two juicy mangos were ready and waiting for me. I ate them, skin and all, without even thinking that an insect or two might have got there first. I must have eaten at least seven ants and three or four centipedes, but at the time I was not bothered, and my stomach was grateful for the minute helpings of protein.

Although my hunger was sated, I was starting to feel uncomfortable. I could not avoid thinking about what would happen in a few hours’ time. If my father found out what I had been up to, I would get my ears boxed or be whipped with his big buckled belt or the thick cable he kept under the bed to defend himself against intruders, or even be hit with the machete he had once threatened me with. I would have to invent a credible story to avoid suspicion. If not, the guillotine.

Despite these rankling worries, however, for the first time in a long while I felt happy and free. It was better to enjoy the little time that was left to me. I collected all the mangos that would fit inside my rucksack and continued on towards the lake. I would keep the biggest mango for my mother, save another for my father, and sell the rest so that I could go to the cinema where The Girl with the Dimples was still playing. My father had not given me any money yet to see the film, but with a bit of luck, I would make enough now to see it three times.

At the water’s edge, I put my shoes and rucksack beneath a chirimoya tree but kept my uniform on to give it a bit of a wash. Splash! Oh, what delicious water! I got out so that I could dive in again, head first this time. A little way to my left, a countryman was collecting a creel full of writhing freshwater fish that glistened in the sunlight. Another man was fishing peacefully from his boat. We were the only three people sharing the birdsong and the damp, softly fragrant breeze, enjoying the beauty of the forest, communing with the fish. It was an idyllic setting for a siesta. I washed my uniform as well as I could and hung it out on a bush to dry, then threw myself down naked onto a pile of dry leaves and fell asleep.

‘How come you’re home so early?’ My father’s face loomed in front of me.

‘Because I’ve told you already, I don’t want to be a dancer!’

‘So you just bunked off because you felt like it?’ His face drew closer to mine.

‘That’s right and tomorrow I’m going to join a football school,’ I told him defiantly.

‘I’ll give you football, you little son of a bitch!’ He reached behind him and swung the blade. A flash of glinting silver …

‘No, not the machete! No! Papito, no!’

‘I’m going to hack your head off for disobeying me!’

I awoke with a start, my heart in my mouth. A bird had shat on my head. I smelt of fresh bird shit. I had no idea how long I had slept. The country folk had gone home. I was alone and the sun was starting to set. I got up to wash my head and I picked up my uniform, which was still damp when I put it on.

I got out of the bus in Cisneros Betancourt and headed towards Naranjito, my heart hammering in my chest. At every corner I seemed to see my father, his machete in hand, determined to cut my head off. At Naranjito I was about to check whether my father’s lorry was parked outside the house, when suddenly …

‘Yuli, what are you doing home so soon?’

I flinched with fright and covered my head.

‘Not the machete, no!’ I screamed.

‘Calm down kid, machete indeed!’

It was only our neighbour, Candida.

My balls dropped back into their proper place.

‘Why didn’t you go to school?’ she asked.

‘I did go. What happened was … We finished early …’ It sounded pretty lame, even to me.

‘Look at you, you’re soaking wet!’

‘It’s because I ran all the way from the bus-stop …’

‘And where are Alexis and Alexander?’

‘Don’t know … haven’t seen them.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Sorry, got to go now!’

I ran away not wanting a lecture about how the youth of today did not appreciate the achievements of the Revolution etc., etc. Once Candida got the bit between her teeth there was no stopping her and I really could not get caught up in all that. My father might appear at any moment.

I climbed the stairs to our apartment, and the door was wide open so I went in without making a noise, passing through the living room into the bedroom. Bertica was in the kitchen cooking and Marilín was in the bathroom. I was creeping towards the bunk bed where Mamá had been sleeping since she came back from the hospital, when she opened her eyes in alarm, as if to ask me, ‘What the hell are you doing home so early?’

I fished a mango out of my rucksack and kissed her, just before Bertica caught me.

‘Yuli, what are you doing here? Papito’s going to kill you. Oooh mangos! Come on, give me one, give me one, my lovely little brother!’

Marilín heard her and came running out of the bathroom.

‘I want one too, I want a mango!’

I held on tightly to my rucksack.

‘You’re not getting anything! This one’s for Mami and I’m going to sell the rest.’

‘Yuli, don’t be bad.’

‘No, Marilín. I want to sell them to go to the cinema.’

‘Then I’m going to tell Papito that you didn’t go to school.’ Bertica was such a blackmailer.

‘I don’t give a fuck. Tell him what you like. You’re still gonna get a big fat nothing, noth—’

I stopped. Outside we all heard the unmistakable sound of my father’s lorry as he parked. For about ten seconds you could have heard a pin drop.

‘Papito’s home, now you’re in for it!’ said Bertica.

I started to shake and both my sisters stared hard at me. We heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs and then the sound of a key in the lock. I could not hold out any longer. I dived into my rucksack and pulled out four mangos.

‘Go on, quick, take them and keep your mouths shut!’ I thrust them at the girls.

The door opened.

‘Evening everyone! What are you doing here?’ My father zoomed in on me immediately.

‘Nothing, we just finished a little bit early today.’

‘A little bit? You mean about two hours.’

‘The piano teacher was ill, so we missed the last session.’

‘And what new things did you learn today?’

My sisters went pale, clearly wondering how I was going to get out of that one.

‘Well … this … we learnt how to do échappé in fifth position.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a ballet exercise, it’s a bit weird, it starts…’

I pointed my toe to demonstrate.

‘What about in your schoolwork?’ My father interrupted me.

‘I … in my schoolwork …’

My hesitation finished me. He knew I was lying. I was for it.

We all held our breaths, but just then, my mother beckoned to my father to come over.

He crouched down beside her and she whispered something in his ear. He listened attentively for a moment then he got up again and walked towards me.

I was praying for a miracle.

His heavy hand fell onto my shoulder.

‘Go and get washed,’ he said.

My sisters’ jaws dropped. They looked at me amazed as I turned and got out of there as fast as I could. In the kitchen I gave thanks for both Marías – the one up there in heaven, and my blessed saviour Mamá, down here on the bed.

But my deliverance would not last for long.

Having got away with it once, I started to skip class on a regular basis. One Tuesday morning, a couple of months later, the school called my father to inform him that, as I had not shown up for four weeks in a row, I would not be allowed to participate in any of the ballets that I was supposed to be dancing in. My old man said there must be some mistake: he himself had been waking me up at five o’clock every morning. Surely they were confusing me with another student also called Carlos? The school told him that this was not the first time that Carlos Junior Acosta had missed extended periods of school, and that he would need to have a serious talk with me if I were to avoid being transferred or expelled.

When my old man heard this, steam started hissing out of his ears, like a coffee pot on the point of percolating. Certainly, he assured the teacher, it would never happen again.

Meanwhile, I had spent a happy day at the lake in La Fortuna, gorging on mangos. When I arrived back in my neighbourhood that afternoon, I noticed that my father’s truck was not parked outside my house yet, and, as it was still too early to go home, I joined in a game of ‘four corners’– a kind of street baseball – with some friends. Two and a half hours later, I picked up my rucksack and walked nonchalantly home. When I reached our corner, however, I was horrified to see the green lorry parked in a different spot from usual. I immediately knew that something was amiss. Why would the old man park his lorry round the corner from his usual spot? Was he trying to hide it from me? Had he been home the whole time I was playing? Did he have some kind of suspicion that he wanted to confirm? I began to sweat and feel sick.

My father was waiting for me on the balcony. His face was contorted with rage, the veins in his neck were swollen and his nostrils were flared, like a bull about to charge. He gestured at me to come upstairs, and I knew there was no escape.

As I reached the top step, his great hand grabbed me by the neck and hurled me into the apartment.

My sisters Bertica and Marilín looked at me with expectant fear; my mother, in her bed, said nothing. My father slammed the door and walked towards me.

‘Sit down!’ he commanded.

Marilín’s eyes were wide with terror.

Outside, life had stopped. I could not hear the shouts of the neighbours any more, or the honk of car horns, or Kenia’s radio as she listened to her soap operas. I was only aware of my heart pounding crazily in my chest as my father leant towards me.

‘What did you learn today?’

‘Um, well … I learnt …’

Crack!

I’m not sure what he hit me with. I only remember that when I came round, I was lying on the floor and my face was stinging badly. I could see blurred figures all around me, and a man with a machete in his hand.

‘Shit, not that dream again!’ I thought.

But in the dream, it was just my father, whereas now there were two figures next to him, which ruptured my sense of déjà vu. As they struggled, they looked as though they were contorting themselves in an extraordinary African dance, but there was no sound of drumming, just the machete waving in the air. I blinked, trying to convince myself that it was a dream, but then the figures started to come into focus and I realized my father really was lurching towards me, machete in hand, and my sisters were hanging on to his arms, trying to hold him back.

‘Run, Yuli, run!’ they screeched at me.

In her bed, my mother was screaming with her eyes, unable to do anything to save me.

As fast as I could, I jumped over the patio railing, onto the roof of our neighbour Raquel’s house. I clambered down the wall and escaped along the alleyway between our buildings, running as fast as I could until I was sure my father could not catch up with me. My father’s voice echoed in my ears – ‘I’m going to kill you, you little son of a bitch!’– and I could still hear my sisters shouting ‘Run, Yuli, run!’ Panting with panic I tried to think what to do now.

Where could I go where my father would not find me? Eventually, I thought of Eddie, a pal from my break-dancing days who lived in Vieja Linda. I ran up the hill, past the lorry repair shop, Cundo’s house, the fibreboard caves and into the forest. My face was still smarting, my mind filled with the image of my powerless mother. What would happen to me? Would I ever see her again? My 9-year-old heart was broken. Still I ran, grabbing on to tree trunks and up the hill until I got to the pool. I was so hot, it would have felt good to have a dip, but this would be the first place my father would think of looking for me. I continued running, past a tobacco field, cows, and over a stream until eventually I came to Vieja Linda in the south-eastern part of Havana.

Vieja Linda is not one of the worst districts in Havana, but it certainly is not one of the best. Eddie lived on a hill which we used to close off with rubbish bins in order to practise our break-dancing. He was mixed race, with delicate features and round black eyes. He was much older than me, about twenty-three, and lived alone with his brother Humberto as all the rest of his family were in the United States. I never knew how they got there, but Eddie also dreamt of leaving the country one day, being reunited with his relatives and following the so-called American Dream. That is what got him into break-dancing, because it was all the rage in the USA. He used to take every opportunity to pepper his speech with phrases and swear words in English.

Eddie was happy to see me because it turned out he had been trying to track me down for ages. There was about to be a break-dancing competition in Almendares Park, and he wanted me to join up with the gang again. I told him what had been happening at home and asked if I could stay with him for a few days. Sure, he said, as long as I competed. I told him it was a deal.

I went to bed and tried to forget about what had happened, but my soul was as bruised as my skin, and as soon as I had fallen asleep, the nightmares started: my father with the machete in his hand, my mother and my sisters crying, my ballet classmates making fun of me …

In no time at all, Eddie was shaking me awake.

We went out to meet up with the rest of the gang. A guy called Lalo had put a piece of linoleum down in the street and was practising his moves. He was really good at doing ‘windmills’ with his legs in the splits, at great speed and with incredible control.

‘How’s it goin’, bro’?’ I said, slipping back into the language of the street with ease.

‘Hey! Fucking excellent, man! Heard you took up ballet, that true?’

‘Yeah, s’just temporary though … hey, bro’… Who’re we going for tomorrow?’

‘Alta Havana.’

‘Alta Havana … heard they’re fucking dynamite!’

‘Yeah, and you got picked against Michael from Envi.’

‘No way! Shit! That’s tough!’

‘Who you kidding, brother, that’s nothing for you.’

‘I haven’t practised for ages.’

‘Then whaddya waiting for … come on, it’s all yours.’

He turned the music up even higher, and gave me space to warm up in. I had hardly started to move when I began to sweat. I practised the moonwalk repeatedly then I asked Guillermo, another member of the group, to pass me a towel. I put it beneath my knee and started to spin round, gathering momentum, but I soon lost my balance. I tried again. Little by little the old sensations came back and my confidence grew and grew until I became, once again, El Moro de Los Pinos.

‘Hey brother, you’re looking really good!’ said Lalo, stretching out his hand to help me to my feet. I grinned, feeling pretty good, until a voice behind him spelt trouble.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t Alicia Alonso herself, come to grace us with her presence!’ Opito had arrived.

‘Shut the fuck up, arsehole, or I’ll knock you down,’ I answered him.

‘Yeah, yeah. Like you did last time.’

‘I’m warning you, shitface, I’ll punch your head in.’

‘Hey, hey, hey … we’re doing some training here, getting this neighbourhood a famous name. If you wanna fight you can both fuck off … unnerstan?’

On that emphatically American note, Eddie pulled us forcibly apart.

‘Opito, get warmed up, it’s late, you gotta practise the moves with El Moro here.’

‘No, I wanna dance on my own,’ replied Opito.

‘You’re gonna dance with who I tell you, if you don’t like it you can geddafuckout!’

There was silence. Opito looked at me then looked at Eddie. There was still tension in the air as we started to rehearse our choreography together. Eddie watched us, chewing on his strip of sticking plaster, his baseball cap on sideways. Slowly, as we practised, we started to get into it, like in the old days when Opito and I were one. Somebody cracked a joke and we all laughed. The day ended well.

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Almendares Park was full of break-dancers. It was a lovely place, lush and green, but totally enveloped by the stench that rose from the river. The gang from Alta Havana were already rehearsing some steps, but they broke off when they saw us arrive. The gang leader, Alfredo ‘the Tyre’, came over.

‘For a moment there, I thought you was getting scared,’ he said, ironically, to Eddie.

‘Scared of who, you? Who you fuckin’ kidding, man?’

‘You just wait and see, got a li’l surprise in store for you.’

‘I don’t fucking care. You know I kick your ass any time.’

‘Hey, speak Spanish, punk. Up yours!’

Mickey the Stink interrupted them. Black and of medium height, he lived in the Lawton neighbourhood and was still considered to be the best break-dancer in the whole of Cuba. He had arrived with a crew of about twenty, including two enormous fat guys.

‘Girls, girls,’ he teased. ‘We’ve come here to dance, leave your kisses and hugs for another day!’

One of the fat guys, ‘Tar Ball’, passed him the tape recorder. The music started. A hundred or so people had gathered in a circle big enough to allow us to dance in its centre. Nearly all of them were tough guys who spent hours lifting weights and were anxious to pick a fight and show off their strength.

Eddie’s brother Humberto began the contest. His body-popping moves went off to thunderous applause. A guy called ‘the Coffee Pot’ did some steps from Soul Train and some windmills resting his hands on the ground. Lalo looked at Eddie, waiting for the order to go in. Eddie raised his hand and Lalo entered the centre of the circle to demonstrate his speciality: windmills without using his hands, resting his head on the ground and moving so fast that sparks seemed to fly. There were whoops, whistles, jumps, more applause.

The Tyre, looking a little put out, indicated to Michael from Envi – my rival – that he should go in. He started with some steps from Thriller, grabbing his balls like Michael Jackson, throwing a kick and moonwalking. Everybody went crazy.

Then Eddie signalled to me. I started with a little bit of ‘Chardo’, a dance that was popular in the eighties, then I grabbed my balls like Michael Jackson as my rival had done, but I could see Eddie out of the corner of my eye telling me to let Opito have a go. I exited. Opito stood on his head and started to spin: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven … By now, the spectators were jumping up and down with excitement, shouting, and rolling around on the ground, unable to contain themselves. Eight turns! Nine! Finally Opito fell over. The whole place exploded. The audience seized Opito and threw him up into the air. The Tyre watched, still as a stone, his face eaten up with envy. Eddie, as happy as could be, squeezed my shoulders and shouted ‘Well done!’

The competition was over, but suddenly we heard a scream. Everyone froze. Somebody moaned. Everybody started to run in different directions.

‘He went that way, catch him, catch him!’ shouted Mickey the Stink, holding on to the body of the fat guy, Tar Ball, who was bleeding copiously from two stab wounds to his stomach. A group of guys chased after the Tyre, who had fled. From my nine-year-old height, all I could see were legs racing frantically and figures scattering. Police sirens were getting nearer and nearer.

‘Quick, Lalo, grab everything, let’s go, the cops are here!’ cried Eddie and we fled from the chaos.

Nearly all those break-dance competitions ended in trouble: in order for someone to win, somebody else had to be defeated, and none of us were good losers.

Eddie said I could stay at his house again, but I knew my family would be worrying about me. I arrived back home at five o’clock in the afternoon. My father was there. He had not gone to work. Marilín opened the door, but did not say anything, and nor did I. I went through and saw my father. There was no anger in his face now, only pain. He looked completely disillusioned, which made my chest seize up with guilt. Neither of us spoke. I walked into my mother’s room. Her face lit up and she stretched her hands out to me. I fell into her arms, and my sisters rushed over to join us, all four of us in one, big, relieved embrace. I so wanted to cry and to kneel down in front of my father and beg his forgiveness, but pride would not let me.

I heard the door slam and then the engine start up. I ran over to the balcony just in time to see the green lorry driving away leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Then I cried inconsolably. I could not get his hurt expression out of my mind. A hand touched me on the shoulder. I turned round and saw my mother standing there. It was the first time that she had walked in six months. We all hugged again, but this time the tears had a different flavour.