The Lazarus Rumba.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

The Lazarus Rumba, by Ernesto Mestre. New York: Picador, 1999.

The Lazarus Rumba is an epic novel, so complex that the author felt compelled to include a genealogical diagram and a cast of characters (sixty-four of them!) in order to help the reader keep the players straight. And what an assortment it is! The dramatis personae include the widow Alicia Lucientes, a political dissident; Dona Adela, her mother; Teresita, her daughter; Elena Mule, a sensuous Egyptian breeder of cocks; Sara Zimmerman, a Jewish doctor who lost six brothers to Nazi concentration camps; Nana the halfwit; the sweet but strong Father Gonzalo; a hodgepodge of circus performers, bakers, bartenders, mailmen, torturers, and, of course, Fidel himself; not to mention some engaging representatives of the animal kingdom--namely, Paco Fortunato and Atila, blue-feathered fighting cocks, and Tomas de Aquino, a mastiff.

Cuban writer Ernesto Mestre undertakes a formidable task: to bring to life the aftermath of Castro's revolution and to depict its impact on both its adherents and adversaries, He accomplishes his goal brilliantly, with style, humor, and poignancy.

The story revolves around the Lucientes women, although at times the numerous supporting actors nearly crowd them out. Dona Adela, the matriarch, learns as her husband lies dying that he has had a mistress for many years and that this woman's daughter, Marta, is nearly the same age as her own Alicia. In fact, unbeknownst to her, the two girls have become friends, and both look just like their dad. Eventually, they will become even more closely joined in their opposition to the Castro regime.

Just as Father Gonzalo, monsignor of Santa Catalina de Ricis Church (where all important family events take place), saw Adela through that trauma, he sees her through the one with which the novel opens. The Lazarus Rumba unfolds in three parts or "books." The first, "A Widow's Grief: An Old Tale," recounts how Alicia Lucientes fortuitously became one of the socialist government's most notable antagonists. When Castro's agents kill her husband, Julio Cesar Cruz, a commander in the rebel army who later turns against the revolution, Alicia nearly goes mad. Soon she begins to speak out against the regime, and her reputation as a dissident earns her some time in prison. Then, her cousin Hector, a homosexual circus artist, is arrested and sent to a forced labor camp for misfits. Later, the torturers send Alicia his ashes in a plastic bag.

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