By Judy Doenges, special to The Seattle Times. Sunday, January 2, 2000, 11:27 p.m. Pacific
"I Gave You All I Had"
by Zoe Valdes
Translated by Nadia Benabid
Arcade, $24.95
From the first page of Zoe Valdes' rollicking second novel, "I Gave You All I Had," it's clear we're in the hands of a satirist capable of squeezing humor, exaggeration and cartoonish characterization out of a serious situation. In this case, it's the absurdity of life in the Cuba of
Fidel Castro, whose 1959 revolution squelches the burgeoning love life of our heroine, Cuca Martinez.
The novel begins in the late 1940s, when Cuca, after a scrappy upbringing in the country, arrives in Havana to work for a family friend. The friend turns out to be a madam, her home a brothel, and soon young Cuca is taken under the blowzy wings of two prostitutes. With her new life-long friends,
La Mechunga and La Puchunga, Cuca frequents salsa clubs dressed like a starlet.
Havana in the 1950s, according to Valdes' rapturous description, was a city driven by music and dance: "The thrum and hum of an early morning was a croon as gentle as any danzon. . . . Afternoon, with its swishing and tossing, was a son. And night, night was a filin and guaracha. And how
could I forget the chachacha!"
One night, Cuca meets handsome, dashing Juan Perez, also known as Uan ("Number One"), and they quickly fall in love. However, Uan leads a mysterious life, disappearing and resurfacing without warning, often carrying a large roll of American money. As Castro's troops approach Havana,
Uan's Mafia pals whisk him away to the U.S. But before he leaves, Uan entrusts Cuca with a single dollar bill, impressing upon her its value and ordering her not to lose it.
With the victory of Castro (referred to in the novel only as "XXL," or Extra Extra Large), "I Gave You All I Had" adopts a new style, switching points of view between Cuca, aging and starving in Havana; Uan, rich and married in exile in New York; and a meta-narrator who
alternately praises and complains about Valdes herself.
The changes in perspective are sometimes confusing, and the competing voices don't add to the already rich, quirky writing. However, Valdes retains her scabrous portrayal of life under Castro. Cuca, Reglita (Cuca's patriotic daughter with Uan), and their friends scavenge Havana for paper, a pair
of shoes, a piece of soap and, in painful scenes, for any edible food.
Valdes' hilarious dissection of her characters' attempts at survival gives double meaning to her title: Cuca carries a torch for Uan decades after he's disappeared, and Cubans sacrifice themselves to the new Cuba, with no reward.
But politics shift again, and in the 1990s, Castro invites Uan and the mob to invest in the island. Uan returns to Cuca, searching for the dollar bill which holds the key to their fates. Their reunion is as dramatic and as charmingly implausible as the rest of "I Gave You All I Had,"
but, alas, short-lived. In an odd and bitter last chapter, Reglita, her mother gone, travels between past and present, rural and urban Cuba, until she is able to see her homeland as it really is, a confluence of natural beauty and aggressive politics: "The palm trees wait like brides, and all
that foolish stuff that is so essential to the Cuban soul . . . everything looks as it always has . . . Except for the billboards with their militant message of SOCIALISM OR DEATH."
Zoe Valdes bubble-wraps her anti-Castro romance in satire, protecting "I Gave You All I Had" from charges of extremism, but guaranteeing its value as a powerful political novel.
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