Luz: book i: comings and goings (Troubled Times 1) by Luis Gonzalez Page B

project.
    “What is it?” Rigo asked, knowing he would regret asking.
    “Do you know anything about library science?” they asked him.
    “No,” Rigo said. “I don’t know the first thing about it.”
    Members of the delegation looked at one another and came to a tacit agreement, having heard of his distinguished accomplishments in teaching calculus and forming a gut feeling that Rigo would be perfect for the job. “Well, as long as you’re so good at numbers and designing and drafting, do you think you can help us create a system that will index and catalog our books?”
    In dazed resignation, Rigo looked back and forth and from side to side at the vacant faces of his Camagüeyan hosts. How could he refuse them? They were so nice to him. And so in need. He wanted to accommodate them, but how had heended up in this predicament? How had he gone from wanting to fulfill a lifelong dream of designing luxury hotels to being stuck in a cattle co-op in the Camagüey countryside teaching calculus to fifth graders who barely knew basic arithmetic? From wanting to alter Havana’s skyline, to library cataloging! This was what all his years of studying and passing rigorous exams had amounted to? It made absolutely no sense, but the answer he provided made even less.
    “Sure,” he replied. “Why not? I’ll try it.”
    If his new friends were ecstatic before, they were overjoyed now, exuberant. Soon, local leaders from Rio Piedras held a banquet in Rigo’s honor and even invited neighboring towns. The feast included generous servings of beef and goat and pork, and even the vegetarians from the coop found themselves partaking in the meal. Amid all the hoopla, Rigo had not the slightest clue as to what he would be doing or how to accomplish it. But if the people of Camagüey had selected him for this task, he was all theirs. They could do whatever they wanted with him, whatever their hearts desired. He was at their disposal as long as he never had to build so much as a four-by-four mud hut anywhere on this earth; as long as he never had to gaze upon another hotel anywhere in Cuba built and owned by foreigners, while the everyday, ordinary Cuban could not so much as step foot on such a property. For what seemed an eternity now, a whole year, my husband and I saw each other only once a month. Naturally, when he came home to Havana for those very brief weekends, I was only too eager to hear about Rio Piedras and Camagüey and how the school was coming along.
    “Is everything going as you planned?” I would ask. “Is the project ahead of schedule?”
    “Ahead of schedule!” Rigo shrugged. “We haven’t so much as dug one bucket of earth from the ground yet. That’s how ahead of schedule we are.”
    By now Rigo had been working in Rio Piedras for months, which made no sense to me. “But why?” I insisted on knowing. “What in the world is the hold up?”
    How could he explain? How could he accurately describe all his misadventures? I found out much later that for months he had hidden the truth from me. He’d been too embarrassed, too ashamed to reveal the unexpected turn of events with his career. For the longest time I believed the delay was all due to lack of materials and lack of workers, lack of planning and communication, revolutionary red tape and bloated socialist bureaucracy—the US embargo even! I pressed Rigo for answers and information, but each time he brushed me off. He didn’t want to go into it. To explain was to relive, and he didn’t feel like reliving all his frustrations. He’d say that he was in Havana for only two weekends a month, and preferred to spend his thoughts on anything else but his second life in Camagüey.
    Or had it become his primary life? Rigo didn’t know anymore. There were times he felt and acted like a visitor in his own home. Even here, a ten-hour train ride away, Camagüey was all he thought about. And there were times he felt and acted like a visitor in his own home.