4
Josef “El Bobo” Manzo, Jacobo “Chaki” Levitz, Roberto “Beto” Yardeni, and I made up the inseparable little foursome that everyone referred to as “Los Cuatro Compadres.” The four of us, tight as brothers, would spend our carefree days and nights out on the pulsing streets and hot beaches of Havana—always whooping it up looking for girls, money, and adventure (not always in that order). In those electrifying days of our youth, anything was possible. We strutted around like our shit didn’t stink, seeking only to fuel our childish fiery egos.
“Hot-shit, big shots,” Abuelo would call us. My grandfather didn’t care much for my friends, and I never figured out why he had a particular dislike for Bobo. But my compadres and I always had each other’s back, no matter what.
Bobo’s parents, Berta and Manolo, had left him in Cuba while they resettled themselves in Puerto Rico. I always found it unnerving how every time I asked my mother about Bobo’s parents, she would quickly change the conversation. After all, Berta was Mamá’s best friend, the two girls were practically inseparable until Berta finally left our island with Manolo. How could they just pick up and leave all their friends and family behind? And their own children too! There had to be more to this mystery, I assured myself.
People at the synagogue would spit “poo-poo” when Berta’s name was mentioned, never adding any hints or information about why she and her young husband had left Cuba for Puerto Rico. All Mamá ever said about them was that Berta had made some bad choices and was consequently shunned by our tight little community. Manolo had done the right thing, standing by Berta and moving with her to Puerto Rico to start a new life together. But that was all the information I was going to get on the subject.
What could Bobo’s parents have done that was so terrible? How could they just pick up and leave their home and their son behind? I learned to stop asking questions and to avoid getting caught up in the part of our community rumor mill that kept judgmental accusations running like sewage through our streets.
There was no limit to the sounds and rhythms that made life in Havana, and music had been our main diversion. Chaki was the singer of our group. He had a sweet voice that could melt anybody’s heart. (Women who heard Chaki’s sweet melodies would fall like wilted flower petals at his feet!) But it was me who would arouse audiences of curious strangers and friends alike with the flawless beat of my conga drum.
My drum went everywhere with me. Beto and Bobo were more instrumentally challenged, but they were never left out of our colorful performances. Beto and Bobo would accompany Chaki and me with any type of homemade instrument they could get their hands on—a guiro carved from a hollowed block of wood or a set of maracas made by filling coconut shells with uncooked frijoles.
Those times when we were able to slip into one of our favorite nighttime hangouts—the famous Hotel Nacionál—without inviting too much attention from the authorities, we could earn pocketsful of pesos from the swarming tourists and wealthy patrons at the hotel’s bars and casinos. It certainly beat diving for measly coins that tourists would toss into the waves of the ocean just to watch young Cuban kids desperately dive in after them. To the wealthy foreigners, this was great entertainment. They threw their loose change into the water like it was nothing. But to us Cuban children, those coins meant everything. Extra coins each day was the difference between being able to get things like gas for the car and sugar for our coffee or having to desperately hunt for things on the growing black market.
There was an extensive wall developing and dividing the citizens of Cuba. The rich remained loyal to Batista’s government, holding their collective breaths hoping to get richer; while the poor protested, got abused by the system, and got poorer. Corruption, crime, and political divide was growing. Political threats were rising to dangerous proportions around our tiny island, but Havana was still our pocket of pride and hope.
My compadres and I had become regular confidantes of the bookies and gangsters that discreetly (and not so discreetly) stirred through the more exclusive and wealthy tourist spots in our city. Visits to the Hotel Nacionál were made even more enticing with run-ins with famous international celebrities that frequented our proud and colorful city. Like the great American pelotero Mickey Mantle or the actor Johnny Weissmuller. (Imagine, Tarzan himself inaugurated the swimming pool at the hotel! What a day that was!) Boy, did I wish to be as famous and rich as those guys. My number one obsession in those days was Meyer Lansky—aside from the money and celebrity that he brought to the Hotel Nacionál and to Cuba, he was Jewish too! He was the manifestation of cool in every way for me. Another one of our community’s mantras was, “If we don’t take care of our own, who will take care of us?” Bless the members of our tribe—each and every one, near and far.
One memorable summer afternoon, we nearly lost our wits when we were hanging around the hotel and spotted the legendary Frank Sinatra inside the Starlight Terrace Bar. My compadres and I were completely starstruck, glued to our places like the columns that surround the Plaza de Armas in central Havana. The famous crooner was encircled by his massive entourage, laughing loudly and causing quite the commotion in the back of the bar. In Chaki’s eyes, Sinatra was the most suave ladies’ man in the whole world.
By the time we could compose our starry-eyed foolishness at running into “ol’ blue eyes” right on our own turf, the famous entertainer with his mischievous grin had vanished into the smoky interior of the bar’s private back room. Los Cuatro Compadres would not soon forget the electrifying run-in that afternoon!
In the midst of all the glitz and glamour that we so desperately sought, there were those days when I would wake up with my head set to explode from those persistent dreams, always of the father I never knew. Sleep those nights simply would not settle on me, and in the mornings that followed I would wake up with nothing short of an emptiness weighing heavy on my shoulders. I would wander aimlessly on the eight-kilometer stretch of beach along the Malecón before the sun even had a chance to rise over the boardwalk, the sound of the crashing waves against the mortar of the old Spanish fort and the smell of the salty water offering up a sense of grounding, a place to be. My fingers would twitch nervously, wildly and involuntarily, first searching for my father’s gold chain around my neck and then balling up into fists.
Stumbling around on the beach by myself and looking to strike deals to make some cash, I would then wait impatiently for the announcing of the daily bolita, lottery, with the results of the winning numbers that broadcasted precisely at 2:00 p.m. on Radio Progreso. Ghastly cockfights might have stopped in Cuba, but those clandestine bolita numbers were always good to me. I wasn’t going to dive for coins like a circus monkey. No, not me. I was too lucky for that bullshit.
5
I was reciting my morning prayers with Abuelo one morning after a night of welcomed restful sleep. I never knew what to pray for, as my grandfather led me in those obligatory traditional prayers, so I just repeated my memorized supplications and my wishes for my guiding star—my guardian angel, my father, up in heaven—to continue watching over me. The weathered leather straps of the tefillin, prayer phylacteries, wrapped tightly on my arm and head kept me tethered to my grandfather, to our family, and to our faith. Something—what was it really?—had been protecting me for as long as I could remember, and whether it was God or Gabriel Stein, I wasn’t going to test fate. We Jews might have been a flawed and tragic bunch, but our faith and legacy kept us bound to survival and hope. So I prayed with Abuelo.
That morning, I was suddenly distracted by screeching shouts and whistles from the street below our second-floor window. I knew right away it was El Bobo. Concealing the religious phylacteries on my forehead and arm behind the sun-faded lace curtains that hung in the
