He doesn’t sound the least bit sorry about it, the bounder.
“We’re friends,” he adds, his tone mild.
Aunt Emma shoots me a sly look. “Hmph. That’s what she said, too. You’ll forgive me for not quite believing it. In my day, a man didn’t look at a woman like you were staring at her throughout the opera if he didn’t have a good reason.”
Now, it seems it’s Rafael’s turn to look embarrassed, and as mortified as I am by the entire encounter, I’m at least mollified by the fact that he can’t meet my gaze.
“Don’t hurt her,” she adds before swirling away in a cloud of her expensive perfume.
An uncomfortable silence surrounds us in her wake.
“My aunt has a vivid imagination,” I say, struggling to fill the void. The last thing I want is for him to get the wrong idea about all of this, to think that I have designs on him. “She can be eccentric, too. I think she gets bored sometimes, and she can’t resist stirring up a bit of trouble. She means well; she simply—”
“Grace. It’s fine.” Rafael leans down, taking my hand and pressing the faintest of kisses there. “It was nice to see you again.”
He walks away, heading back to the blonde, leaving me staring after him, unraveling the encounter in my mind, not sure what just happened.
Twenty-Five
Marina
The summer of 1897 turns into fall, Weyler recalled to Spain. There are no more sightings of Mateo, and I assume he is back with the other revolutionaries. Luz and Isabella are relieved to hear that he is well and alive, but as the months pass, our relief dulls as this war seems no closer to ending. Whatever triumph I might feel in my part in the successful rescue of Evangelina is dampened by the conditions in Cuba. The death toll in the reconcentration camps keeps rising, the food supplies nearly nonexistent, my hope dwindling with each day my despair increases. In Havana, there have been demonstrations and protests decrying the United States in the wake of Evangelina Cisneros’s escape from Recogidas. Some twenty thousand citizens have taken to the streets, professing their support for Spain.
It’s difficult to understand how my countrymen can support Spain after all they’ve done to us. I often feel as though I must inhabit a different version of Cuba than they do, one where I see suffering and injustice everywhere I look and they turn their gaze away, eagerly supporting our oppressor. The Spanish have certainly done their part to stoke fear and division; when you control the news and regulate speech in a country you can shape reality however you see fit. And yet, are the camps not enough proof that Spain does not have our best interests at heart, that they are literally killing Cubans at an alarming rate with their cruel policies? How are we still so divided? How can two people look at something like Spain’s absolute and cruel dominion over Cuba and see it so differently?
I was coming back from passing a message to a household sympathetic to the revolutionaries when one of the protests in favor of the Spanish passed me by, and I felt a wave of fury unlike any I’ve ever experienced before. The Spanish have burned my home to the ground, killed or seized the animals we raised for their own purposes, and forced so many Cubans into reconcentration camps. Do our lives, our loss, mean nothing to our countrymen who have not suffered a similar fate? What will it take for them to support us?
One afternoon, I return to the Hotel Inglaterra for another meeting with Carlos Carbonell. He’s waiting for me in the same room as before, but this time he is alone.
“We were successful,” Carlos says in greeting.
I’ve seen the newspapers strewn about Havana that carried the news of Evangelina’s escape from Recogidas, but I’ve heard little about the fate of the rest of the men involved in her rescue.
“We were. Is everyone else safe?”
“They are. Decker is back in the United States.”
“And Weyler is in Spain where he belongs,” I reply, although in truth, given all he has done, the death that constantly surrounds me in the camp, I’d rather see him in hell.
“He is. Hopefully, it is the first step to bringing