âTell me you love me,â Leni whispered to me one morning during her recovery as I helped her from the bed to the bathroom. She was back at her own place by then. Her arms sort of flopped around my neck. âTell me you still love me, at least a little.â I kissed her cheek and hauled her up on her feet. âI love you,â I said. Her girlfriend was gone, every bit of her obliterated from Leniâs apartment. It was like the Russians in Cuba, erased without a trace. âOkay,â she said as we shuffled together down the hall to the bathroom, ânow tell me in Spanish, for old timesâ sake.â âTe quiero,â I said, smiling, because it was true still. Leni pulled away. âThatâs not how you used to say it,â she said, not with her usual sarcasm, but with her voice hushed and small, sore like her wounds. âSure I did,â I said, plopping her down on the toilet. Her left leg jutted out, unable to bend, the pins a gift from Dr. Frankenstein. âNo, I remember: te amo,â she said, her balance uneasy. I immediately wondered if she might be abusing any one of her many medications. âItâs te quiero now.â âWhat? Your Spanish Language Royal Dickhead Academy eliminated te amo?â This is the beauty of Leni: At any given time, she retains just enough detail about whatâs important to make you feel like sheâs really listening. âNo, no, but you and I . . . you know, weâre just te quiero, it was always te quiero underneath, thatâs why it works, thatâs why Iâm here,â I said. Leni guffawed. âOh please,â she said. âYouâre here âcause, letâs face it, thereâs some sick kick in seeing me not so cute anymore. I bet you think if this had happened earlier, there wouldnât have been so many others, so much damage to us.â She took a breath. âAw, hell, youâre all fucked up, you donât know what you want. . . .â She didnât just mean me, but usâLatinos, probably cubanos in particular. Itâs not just a prejudice on her part, although I wouldnât be surprised if Leniâs bitterness had turned that way without her realizing it. What she meant was that we have a twisted way of expressing love: Te quiero, from the verb querer, doesnât mean love at all, but desire. Querer is to want, to yearn for. But hereâs the madness: Querer is quotidian, what you say to parents and friends, cousins and children. Querer is love designed strictly for living things. You canât querer a movie the way you can love a film in English, you canât querer arroz con pollo or a bicycle or a particular and comfortable old pair of shoes (although, just to be confusing, you can querer arroz con pollo in the sense that you can have a taste for it and want some). Querer always implies an imperfect and human bond. Combine querer with any number of other words and its latent urgency shines through: como quiera, anyhow; cuando quiera, anytime; donde quiera, anywhere. Amar is so much more precise: love, romantic love. Itâs the stuff of both the most lyrical poetry and the tackiest soap opera, making it virtually impossibleâespecially among Cubans, I thinkâto say with a straight face. Te amo practically requires that you recite a quick verse by Federico GarcĂa Lorca and cut your veins. I said it to Leni in moments of complete adoration but more likely because there were no knowledgeable witnesses, no one to make me follow through on its real and complete usage. âTe amo is so cold, donât you think?â my father once asked when we were discussing this very subject. âCold?â I was stunned. This was, Iâd always thought, the most wildly intense and amorous thing you could say to a lover. How could that be cold? âWell, itâs so formal, so sharp, â he said, embarrassed. âItâs nothing you could say tosomeone with whom youâre ticklish or playful . . . I mean . . .â âDonât you say it to Mami?â âOh my god no,â he said, chortling. âSheâd never take me seriously again!â Like querer, you canât really amar a thing either; itâs generally reserved for person-to-person application. In fact, you really canât love inanimate objects in Spanish; itâs an emotion for warm bodies, sentient beings. A cat maybe, a parrot, perhaps a car if itâs been anthropomorphed enough. In Spanish, if you like something very, very much, if you love it the way you might love books or flowers in English, you are then enchanted by them (me encantan) or you like them (me gustan) and you use tone and context to convey your deep, deep affection thatâs awfully close to but never quite love. But gustar is tricky, too. Itâs versatile, good for both people and things. But while you can gustar trains and postage stamps and music by Arsenio RodrĂguez, you have to be careful when it applies to individuals. Thatâs because gustar, like querer, is chock-full of lust. In other words, while you can gustar your lifeless leather jacket and no one will necessarily think you kinky, the minute that you gustar your mother-in-law, as opposed to just liking her, you have crossed all lines of propriety. The safest thing to do in Spanish, it turns out, is to always be encantadaâenchantedâperpetually caught in some kind of spell or trance, this way your actions are not necessarily entirely your own. When I return to Cuba in 1997, MoisĂ©s and Orlando pick me up at the airport, which is as airless and hot as ever, except now it is full of happy Canadian and Spanish businessmen (no women) chattering on their cell phones. Although Havana has been rocked by a series of bombingsâas many as ten explosions and at least one dead Italian touristâthereâs a party atmosphere the whole way through customs, with the soldiers from the Ministry of the Interior now playing second fiddle to the young, blue-blazered hosts from Havanatur and the other agencies that facilitate the bureaucracy for foreigners. New TV monitors on the walls loop scenes from Cuban variety shows featuring salsa bands that play to American tastes. - from Days of Awe, by Achy Obejas
