Later on I had a bath and put on a good suit. Before I went out I bowed my head for a few moments in front of the Santería shrine Yara had built in her room. It was really just a doll’s house covered with white lace and candles. But on each floor of the doll’s house were little animals, crucifixes, nuts, shells, and black-faced figurines in white dresses. There were also several pictures of the Virgin Mary and one picture of a woman with a knife through her tongue. Yara told me this was to stop gossip about her and me, but I hadn’t a clue about what any of the other stuff meant. With the possible exception of the Virgin Mary. I don’t know why I bowed my head to her shrine. I could say that I wanted to believe in something, but in my heart of hearts, I knew Yara’s souvenir shop was just another stupid lie. Just like Nazism.

On my way to the door I picked up Ben Siegel’s backgammon set, and then Yara took me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes as if searching for some effect that her peculiar shrine had worked in my soul. Always supposing I had such a thing as that. And, finding something, she took a step back and crossed herself several times.

“You look like the Lord Eleggua,” she said. “He is the owner of the crossroads. And who guards the home against all dangers. He is always justified in all that he does. And it is he who knows what nobody else knows and who always acts according to his perfect judgment.” She took off the necklace she was wearing and tucked this into the breast pocket of my jacket. “For good luck in your game,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “But it is only a game.”

“Not this time,” she said. “Not for you. Not for you, master.”

Chapter 10

10

I PARKED MY CAR ON ZULUETA, in sight of the local police station, and walked back to the Saratoga, where there were already plenty of taxis and cars, including a couple of the black Cadillac Seventy-fives, which were beloved to all senior government officials.

I walked through the hotel and into the monastery courtyard, where a series of lights was turning the water in the fountain into several pastel shades of color and left the marble horse looking somewhat bemused—as if it hardly dared to take a drink of the exotic-looking water for fear that it might be poisoned. It was, I reflected, a perfect metaphor for the experience of being in a Havana casino.