Scene: A secret Havana military hospital. A frail, old man snaps awake and stares. There's a stranger seated next to the bed, a long, unlit cigar in one hand. The stranger leans back and smiles.
"Don't be alarmed," he says. "It's just me, the Angel of History. I like to have a chat with men of your stature at times like this. Good run, old chap; dying in bed. Well played! A little advice? Pretend to die just as you're telling them the secret Swiss bank account numbers. Drives them mad, and it's most amusing to watch. Mind if I smoke?"
The old man's eyes are wide and frantic; the uninvited guest leans forward.
"What's that? Right, right, your funeral. You want to know. Oh, next week, next month, hard to say. There's the usual jostling for power right now. Odd, really: In this democratic, egalitarian nation, the only man you saw fit to follow happened to be your brother. What are the chances of that, eh? Most people in America don't know a thing about him. `Another Castro?' the Americans think. `They had a spare?'
"When it all shakes out, and enough people have been put against a wall, you'll get a funeral. Second-tier diplomats will attend, mostly Europeans who will privately complain that you didn't have the dignity to die in a cooler season. Hugo Chavez will steal the show, of course. He's rather like you, without the iconic facial hair and rhetoric that were stale when Woody Allen was funny. Chavez has money, too. Good suits. I have my eye on that one.
"But we were talking about your funeral, weren't we? The general consensus will be simple: At least it wasn't as long as one of your speeches.
"After that? Well. You know how it goes. Your fans in the West will forget you quickly enough. At home, you'll always have admirers. Memories are short, and the human heart is fickle. Mao slaughtered millions, and his picture still sits on cab drivers' dashboards; get some old Russians in the right mood — which is to say, drunk — and you'll hear how Stalin was a great man who did what needed to be done, as though millions of people were begging to be starved or uprooted. Let democracy fail to bring paradise back in a year, and the talk will begin. Under Fidel, we were united!
"They will forget they were united in hatred of Fidel, of course. They will feel nostalgia for posters they saw when they were young. They will remember a song that reminds them of simpler times, and conclude the times were better.
"The old — whom you left with no pensions, no savings — will mutter when they cannot afford to shop in the new stores, and they will be joined by the young, who look south to Chavez and see the American hamburger as an instrument of oppression. The malcontent, the street brute, the intellectuals who mistake their neuroses for insights — they'll remember you, and speak in your name. But they will be few. There was no such thing as Castroism, after all. Only Castro. In the end it all dies with you.
"Eventually it will come down to this, my friend: History will note that the people in the American jails at the tip of this island ate better than the average Cuban."
He holds up the cigar.
"One more puff? I know, I know, you gave them up. But don't tell me you haven't dreamed of them. That's the story of your country and your countrymen; home or abroad, they dream of Cuba. The past or the future. But never the present. Until this day, that is."
He leans over and puts the cigar in the trembling lips. Flames leap from his fingertips. "It may be stale," he says as the old man inhales. "But it's rare. I got this one years ago, from the CIA. Brace yourself; the flavor's quite ... explosive."
