Summary

Christian de La Maziere, “ex-Charlemagne Division Waffen SS, minor aristocrat, memoirist, and traitor to the state of France” (55), sat at the back of the Pam Pam Room, admiring the fake zazou dancer. He found her bluntly attractive, and thought she resembled “a Manouche Gypsy or a German Jew” (55). He had gone to the Cabaret Tokio every night since his arrival in Cuba, where he had hoped the coup would create new mercenary opportunities for a man like himself. He ingratiated himself with the dancers, who thought he was German, but kept his distance from Rachel K, though their eyes often met. One night, after Batista’s visit, she approached him. He told her that he knew she was not French, and she told him that she had in fact spent her life since adolescence at the Cabaret after her mother abandoned her. When...