With Fidel and Jack Bauer in the Alps
04.55: La Pradera International Health Center, Havanna. The terminally ill Fidel Castro awakes and blinks. His room in the luxury clinic is illuminated by the muted light coming from a gigantic Pasonic TH-PH9UK plasma HDTV. What was it showing when he dozed off? Lost? Six Feet Under? The Sopranos? The West Wing? He was glad that the sixth series of 24 was starting. At the outset, he wasn't sure that casting Kiefer Sutherland in the lead role was right, but now he saw the brilliance of Surnow and Cochran's move. Los Yanquees! He could have done with men like Jack Bauer in the Sierra Maestra back then. What a wanker Che was! Always insisting on a daily change of uniform and refusing to fight after dark. If only the world had known.
THE wall facing him was adorned with a canvas bearing the bare number "59". Nothing else. Just "59". It was a present from that Columbian prick Botero. Still, he liked it. He had seized power in 1959 and he still held it, and the reminder of that glorious year moved him to tears every time he gazed at it. He pondered the mystery of life. He had survived but Mao was gone. So was Nixon. John Lennon, too. The Kennedy brothers. Those bastards. Killed. And the drunken sibling was still a senator in Washington. America. Inscrutable. Always would be.
FRANCO dead and Pinochet as well. Churchill buried, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra in the earth. But Fidel was still alive. He chuckled. Then he looked back at "59" and his smile faded. He could see the "57" that Raul had scribbled at the bottom of the painting. It was a burden to have a younger brother who was both idiotic and spiteful.
ONE day when Chubby Chávez had popped over from Caracas, he'd asked him if he knew the significance of that "57" and the Venezuelan had told him an incredible story. One that made him laugh at first and then later filled him with remorse. According to Chubby, in the southern part of Germany, in the province called Bavaria, a single party had ruled without interruption since 1957. And it had done so with the aid of elections. Just as in Venezuela. Fidel didn't believe that the Latin American model could work at such northerly latitudes, but Chubby was adamant that it did. According to the Venezuelan, the party was called the Socialist Christian Trade Union, or something like that, and it advocated extensive involvement of the state in the economy, just as he did in Venezuela, while keeping the regressive Catholic church placated by stuffing the bureaucracy with its followers. Once they were assured of uniforms, official titles, long holidays and early pensions and the occasional bribe, they kept quiet.
CHUBBY did tend to go on and on and on...so Fidel began to drift away, into his memories. Germany. He remembered Berlin and a glorious June afternoon in 1972. He had memorized the wire service report: "The indestructible class and arms comradeship of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces and the GDR's National People's Army was affirmed by the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, Premier Fidel Castro, Wednesday evening at a meeting at the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in Berlin."
WHEN he pulled out of his reverie, Chubby was still there, deep in monologue, now saying that the Bavarian Comandante en Jefe was in trouble. Although it was a state secret, Fidel had, in fact, toyed with the idea of allowing elections but he found it impossible to take the final step. What if an opponent got more votes? Or a hundred opponents? Could he depend on the firing squads after every "unsatisfactory" vote? So he'd dropped the idea. And the revanchists in Miami had never forgiven him. But it had worked in Bavaria! Which, by the sound of it, was in a much earlier phase of development than Cuba was in 1959.
HE had an idea. With one single stroke, he could make amends. He would hold a conference call with the Bavarian Socialists and arrange to send 12,000 doctors, or teachers or whatever it was they wanted in their hour of need. If only things had turned out differently at Playa Las Coloradas in 1956, he, Fidel, would now be 51 years in power. Longer than the Bavarian national socialists. But according to Chubby, the Bavarian lider, Edmundo, who had seized power in 1993 was planning to stay at the helm until 2013 and the Americans were threatening to destabilize the province by fomenting a right-wing coup. Men like Jack Bauer were needed now. But not in the Sierra Maestra. In the Alps! Maybe he could watch 24 tonight. But first he had to get Chubby to shut up and go. He closed his eyes and began to snore.
