“You’re not talking about Cuba, alcahuete.” They had been talking in Spanish; suddenly, for unknown reasons, Rafe found that he had lapsed into English. “You’re talking about sugar, how can you pretend differently? How will it help the poor slobs who really are Cuba if we boot Fidel in the nalgas and take back all our marbles?” He took a furious swallow of scotch. “Would whoever we set up to take his place treat them differently?

“Never,” he answered his own question. To his chagrin he found himself trembling.

Guillermo waited him out coldly.

“Few men in our movement are sugar men. We have some of the best,” he said, as if talking to a child.

“Perhaps all of them are patriots. Even if they are, their reasons undoubtedly are just as bad as yours.”

“It’s wonderful to be omniscient, you spineless son-of-a-bitch.”

Rafael shrugged. Guillermo had been a loving son in his fashion. Rafe knew the thoughtless insult had been directed at him and not at their mother. At last, he thought with a strange sense of relief, we are calling each other, aloud, the names we have always kept in hidden places.

Nevertheless, Guillermo obviously regretted his choice of words. “Mama,” he said.

“What about her?”

“Do you think she can rest peacefully in a grave with snow on it? She should be returned to sleep in Cuba.”

“Why don’t you go to hell,” Rafe said furiously. He got up without finishing his drink and walked away, leaving his brother sitting and staring into his glass.

Guillermo and Uncle Erneido left that evening after shaking his hand like strangers.

Four days later the last nor’easter of the spring struck New England a white blow, dumping four inches of snow along the coast from Portland to Block Island. Late that afternoon Rafe took a taxi to Holyhood Cemetery. The storm had passed but the wind blew snow devils that whirled their way up the sleeves of his topcoat and down beneath his collar. He walked to the grave, getting snow in his shoes. The mound was still raised; despite the wind, veins of trapped snow stood out between the frozen earth-clumps. He stood there as long as he could, until his nose ran and there was no sensation in his frozen feet. When he returned to his room he sat in the dark by the window as she had been accustomed to sit, watching the traffic continue to move over Arlington Street. No doubt some of the same machines; automobiles died slower than people.

He moved out of the Ritz to a converted brownstone rooming house one block from the hospital. Across the hall lived two lissome male students, perhaps in sin. Upstairs was a cross-eyed girl he thought was a hooker, although there was no sign that she entertained even a boy friend in her room.