Monkey Hunting by Cristina Garcia Read Free Book Online Page A

door and raced down the stairs, taking care not to touch the grimy, swaying banister. He was ten minutes late for work.
    His boss was waiting for him at the restaurant. Guiomar Liu had been in New York for thirty years, but Domingo, after nine months, spoke better English. Domingo took ESL classes at a public high school twice a week. He was particularly fond of English verbs, the way they lined up regularly as sheep. His teacher, Miss Gilbert, said Domingo gave English an unusual cadence. He’d add a brush of the guiro here, the
pa-pa-pá
of the bongos there, the happy clatter of timbales.
    Languages you acquired, Domingo decided, didn’t have the same memory-packed punch as the mother tongue. But did you have to dissolve one language to accommodate another? Back home, Domingo had wanted to study marine biology. He’d known the names and habits of every fish and mollusk, crustacean and sponge for miles around. Of what use was any of it here?
    Last month, Liu had begun opening the Havana Dragon for breakfast. He’d plastered the windows with hand-lettered signs: two eggs with ham and coffee, ninety-nine cents; a Spanish omelet with roasted peppers, a dollar more; pancakes and bacon with a free glass of buttermilk. But business remained slow. When Domingo was a boy, he’d chosen foods more for their texture than their taste. Slippery foods were the best: avocados, tomatoes, spaghetti with butter. Maybe one day he would open his own place and serve nothing but oysters.
    His father had worked for seventeen years as a short-order cook at the American naval base in Guantánamo. Once a year he used to bring Domingo to work, usually on the Fourth of July. The Americans had looked gargantuan to him, another species altogether. Still, he’d liked their uniforms and their parades and the chocolate-filled lollipops everyone gave him. At the PX, Domingo had been impressed by the walls lined floor to ceiling with cans of peaches in heavy syrup.
    On weekends Papi had brought home sirloin steaks, buckets of mashed potatoes, and buttered peas from the officers’ events. Domingo used to wait for his father on the porch of their whitewashed cement house off Parque Martí, rubbing a lucky fish vertebra in his pocket. That was before the Revolution. Afterward, Mamá refused to eat any of the Yankees’ food—even when Papi donned his chef’s hat and grilled cheeseburgers for Domingo’s tenth-birthday party. Domingo often fell asleep to his parents’ bitter arguing.
    When revolutionary officials had ordered his father to give up his job with the Americans, Papi had refused. Working the grill had made him a traitor? No amount of haranguing from the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution could convince him of that.
    On his afternoon break, Domingo took a walk along the Hudson River. The sky was low and dark with clouds. Lush smells seeped up from the soil, stung with unexpected perfumes. He watched as two sailboats glided by in opposite directions. Domingo had used his father’s contacts at the U.S. naval base to get Papi and himself out of Cuba. Finally, they’d left the island behind like a rainy season. But what was their world now? What belonged to them? Was it possible, Domingo wondered, to be saved and destroyed at once?
    He wasn’t sure that he regretted leaving Cuba, but he still missed it, including its more ludicrous thefts. Last year, his Tío Eutemio had been forced to give up his congas. The authorities in Guantánamo had decided that the drums were cultural artifacts because they’d once belonged to Domingo’s great uncle, the legendary El Tumbador. Now the congas were on display at a folklore museum where
el pueblo
could admire them but never hear their
boom-tak-tak-a-tak
again.
    On Domingo’s mother’s side, most of the men were
congueros
and
batá
drummers from way back. In Cuba, the name Quiñones was synonymous with rhythm. His uncles and cousins were in demand for the
toques,
holy ceremonies that coaxed the