‘A Handbook to Luck’

His paternal grandparents and his aunt had remained in Cuba by choice. Abuelo Arturo still strolled down Avenida Echeverría in his waistcoat and long-chained pocket watch and Abuela Carmen rode around town in a horse-drawn carriage, joining her friends for guayaba pastries on the tiled terrace of La Dominica Hotel. His Tía Adela managed to scrape by knitting baby blankets from old wool. They stayed in Cuba despite the shortages, despite the threat of another yanqui invasion, despite the hurricanes and the blackouts and the clashes with intolerant neighbors because for them, Communism or not, it was still home.

At school Enrique's best friend was a Japanese boy named Shuntaro, taller than him by an inch and with the same lanky hair. They spent Saturday afternoons at his grandparents' nursery on Sawtelle Boulevard, with its damp earth smells and its sleeping, lovestruck lily bulbs. The nursery specialized in bonsai-the rear greenhouse was devoted to them-and people came from all over California to buy their minuscule junipers and elms. This year they were growing a perfect dwarf pomegranate tree with golf ball-sized fruit.

Shuntaro's grandparents listened politely to Papi's stories about magic. Enrique suspected they didn't understand a word he said. His father told them-looking around to include any customers within earshot-that magic was a noble, perilous profession. In the past magicians had been condemned as witches, sorcerers, and devil worshipers and frequently put to death. Only in the last hundred years had professional magicians been able to work without fear of persecution.

Papi's hero was Robert-Houdin, the French magician who'd inspired Houdini to adapt his name for the stage. In the 1850s, Robert-Houdin was sent by his government to calm the natives of Algeria with his wondrous feats. He did many things to impress the Arabs, including devising a chest too heavy for the strongest of them to lift and disappearing a young Moor from under a large cloth cone. By the time he'd completed his tricks, the Arab chiefs had surrendered, pledging their loyalty to France.

According to Papi, El Comandante had similarly fooled the Cuban people. After his victory march across the island, thousands of supporters gathered in the capital to celebrate. During El Comandante's speech-a deceptive concoction of propaganda and hope, Papi scoffed-top magicians were paid to send trained doves to fly over the crowd. When one of the doves landed dramatically on El Comandante's shoulder during the climax of his speech, the santeros and their followers took this as a sign that he was destined to rule Cuba.

To Fernando Florit, everything was connected to magic. When Enrique showed him his history report on Benjamin Franklin, Papi suggested adding a little-known fact to the biography of the inventor. In Franklin's day, he said, the famous illusionist Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen had devised an automated chess player that took on all challengers. "In 1783," Papi crowed, "Benjamin Franklin played against the machine and lost!"