Song of the Errant Heart
Eduardo Manet.
Translated by Robert Davies.
French Millennium Library. 267 pages. $11.99
in paper.
A Cuban's defection, a long love affair
By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Published
Sunday, October 14, 2001. The Miami Herald
Despite its newsy plot line and contemporary setting, Song of the Errant
Heart, about a loyal Cuban Communist bureaucrat who, at the end of an official
mission in Europe, suddenly announces his decision to remain in France, has an
old-fashioned, melodramatic tone.
The sentimentality -- in the style of a black-and-white Hollywood movie --
has little to do with the defection of Leonardo Esteban, and perhaps more with
the morality behind the love story penned by Eduardo Manet, a prominent Cuban
playwright long exiled in Paris.
Although Leonardo is supposed to be a product of today's Cuba, where
separation, divorce and multiple relationships are common (a condition reflected
in the literature of the island's contemporary authors), the romantic tension
that drives the story is more reflective of the generation that came of age in
the 1950s.
Cuban men and women of that era typically married young and later often
embarked on highly romanticized affairs, but seldom left the unhappy marriages.
Leonardo has been having an affair for 11 years with Berta Maria Díaz, a
married mother of twin boys, and, like Leonardo, she's a trusted, well-connected
Cuban bureaucrat who travels abroad for the Foreign Trade Ministry.
Unlike the high-tech, '90s political intrigue that unfolds alongside their
affair, other details date the novel to another epoch. Leonardo, for instance,
calls his lover "Belle.'' Cuban men of Manet's generation, influenced by
the U.S. cultural scene on the island, often gave their lovers American
nicknames. So Maria Elena became Meg, Caridad became Carrie, Berta became Belle.
Then, there are the sappy dialogue and discreet sexual encounters.
"Eleven years, already, mi amor!,'' Berta murmurs in one such moment.
Despite such distractions, the book's tug-of-war over love and country --
the ageless to be or not to be -- coupled with the tension and mystery of a
high-stakes defection has enough elements to engage readers, especially those
familiar with Cuban affairs.
Leonardo's defection is particularly interesting, because it's not as
one-dimensional as a political statement. It's more of a personal yearning to
fill a void, to explore his family ties to the Basque region of Spain and,
perhaps, to pursue a future there.
When Leonardo doesn't return from his assignment, Cuban government officials
send his mistress to lure him back to the homeland. Berta's brother, a sinister
high-ranking state security type, lays the pressure on thick. When Leonardo and
Berta passionately rendezvous in the gorgeous mountain and sea landscape of San
Sebastián, the tables turn on Berta.
Love and morality aside, Manet's novel, which won France's prestigious Prix
Relais H, is at its best when it delves into issues of exile. Manet uses the
character of Antton, a Basque printer in Havana who befriends Leonardo when he's
a boy and becomes his godfather, to speak eloquently of what it's like to live
in the widely misunderstood condition.
His words will ring oh-so-true in Miami:
"The exiled, they make others ill at ease by their very presence,''
Manet writes. "They elicit a sense of discomfort and pain. The exiled are
the discordant notes in a social score that tries so hard to achieve conformity.
Nothing is more irritating to this score than such discordance: it scrapes our
sensitivity, claws at our brains, shrieks in our ears. Everywhere in the world,
it is seen as preferable that the exile cover his anguished look with a veil, as
good a way as any to make it appear that life is proceeding normally, that the
well-tuned violins of society are rising again in a harmonious crescendo.''
If only in those words, Manet has scored an eloquent melodrama.
Fabiola Santiago is a Herald features writer.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald
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