By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Friday, December 10, 1999; Page A01

                  CARDENAS, Cuba, Dec. 9—The door is open to the small house on
                  Cosio Street, a narrow, potholed avenue of crumbling wood and plaster
                  dwellings near the center of this dilapidated town 90 miles east of Havana.
                  Just inside, neighbors are quietly chatting, and a woman is weeping softly
                  into the telephone. Atop a television is a school photo of a smiling,
                  5-year-old boy dressed in red shorts and a crisp white shirt, knee socks
                  and new sneakers.

                  The boy is Elian Gonzalez, who on Monday celebrated his sixth birthday
                  away from home, much to his grandmother's sorrow.

                  "I don't want to do any interviews. I don't want to talk to anyone," she says
                  as she hangs up the telephone. "I just want my grandson back." She begins
                  to sob and leaves the room.

                  Her husband, Elian's grandfather Juan Gonzalez, apologizes and invites a
                  visitor to sit down. "It's been 13 days," he says. "She can't take any more
                  of this."

                  Elian's fate seems unlikely to be resolved soon, however. In the two weeks
                  since the boy was found floating in an inner tube off the Miami coast and
                  then released by U.S. authorities into the custody of relatives in Miami, he
                  has become a symbol of everything that divides the two countries and
                  Cubans themselves both here and in southern Florida.

                  The Cuban government has fully mobilized, organizing daily
                  demonstrations, including one that drew hundreds of thousands to
                  Havana's costal highway today. At the rallies, community leaders shout that
                  the child was kidnapped by his mother, who drowned when their small
                  craft capsized during a clandestine voyage to Florida, and is now being
                  held hostage by the United States, despite demands by his father here to
                  send him home.

                  Washington seems unsure how to proceed. The U.S. government still has
                  legal control of Elian until an immigration hearing, currently scheduled for
                  Dec. 23. American officials here have asked to meet with his father, also
                  named Juan Gonzalez, so that he can document his paternity and
                  demonstrate his active participation in the boy's upbringing. The Cuban
                  government is not yet sure it wants the father to cooperate. It asked
                  Washington today to clarify whether the Immigration and Naturalization
                  Service (INS) or the Florida courts ultimately have jurisdiction over the
                  case.

                  But the Miami relatives, and the politically powerful Cuban exiles who have
                  embraced Elian in the United States, may have the biggest influence over
                  the long term. They say they won't give the boy back, no matter what.

                  And therein lies the roots of a family tragedy that, at least in this sad
                  household, dwarfs all the government pronouncements and political
                  arguments in both capitals. Grandfather Gonzalez says he hasn't spoken to
                  his five siblings in Miami since they called with the fantastic news that Elian
                  was with them, and he doesn't want to.

                  He also said his son, Elian's father, was appalled when relatives in Miami
                  offered to give the boy $2 million as an example of how much better his life
                  would be if he stays in the United States. And he said the boy himself has
                  been tugged in different directions.

                  "One night he told his father, 'I have three bicycles now,' " the grandfather
                  said. "Juan said to him 'Would you trade them for me?' and first he laughed
                  and said 'No.' Then he said 'No, Poppy, I want to be with you.' It's logical.
                  He is just a 6-year-old boy."

                  Small-statured and slim, grandfather Gonzalez, 53, sits on the edge of a
                  chair, hands clenched in his lap, as he speaks.

                  "They were divorced about 3 1/2 years ago," he said of his 31-year-old
                  elder son and Elian's mother, Elizabet, but that didn't prevent them from
                  sharing Elian.

                  Elian was here most weekends, since his mother usually worked then,
                  Gonzalez said, but they didn't worry too much when he didn't show up on
                  Saturday, Nov. 20. On Monday, when Elian's godmother went to pick him
                  up from school, however, the school said he hadn't been there all day.

                  The godmother went by the mother's house "and there was nobody there,"
                  Gonzalez said. "She met a friend of Elizabet in the street, who said, 'She's
                  gone, they're all gone,' " referring to Elizabet, her live-in boyfriend and
                  Elian.

                  Later, he said, they learned that the three, and 10 others, had left Sunday
                  morning for good. For Florida.

                  "I can't imagine that she would do something that would give us such pain,"
                  he said.

                  "I called my brother in Miami that Monday. I spoke to my sister, Caridad,"
                  Gonzalez said. "We all had good relations with each other--they've been
                  back here to visit" since the siblings fled in the massive Cuban emigration of
                  the early 1960s. "I said, 'I think they left in a small boat. You have to find
                  out if they got there.' She called back and said they had had no news. They
                  were not in Krome," the INS detention camp in Miami.

                  On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, he said the family
                  here heard on a Miami radio station that a boat had sunk, that people were
                  dead and "that one boy had been found" by local fishermen and been taken
                  to a hospital. Again, they called Miami. "I said, 'Take his photo to the
                  hospital and see if it is him.' "

                  "Imagine how overjoyed we were when we found out it was Elian,"
                  Gonzalez said. "He was two days in the water."

                  Elian's great aunts and uncles picked him up at the hospital on Friday.
                  "When they got home they called us, and put Elian on the phone" with his
                  father. "He didn't talk much. He said 'Poppy, I saw my mother' go into the
                  water and die."

                  "But then," Gonzalez said, "it started." Elian's father's brothers got on the
                  phone and "began offering things" to his son. "They said, 'We can give
                  [Elian] everything here. You have nothing there.' They said they would put
                  $2 million in the bank for him, and a thousand other things. He was
                  offended. He hung up the phone."

                  Since then, they have spoken every day with Miami. "But every time, we
                  will talk only to the boy. Last night, I spoke with him, I could hear them in
                  the background telling him, 'Say you're in the hands of the Brothers to the
                  Rescue,' " a militant, anti-Castro exile group.

                  His son started to gather birth and marriage certificates, and had a friend in
                  Havana contact authorities, Gonzalez said. The Cuban government sent
                  diplomatic notes to Washington asking for Elian's return. First, the Clinton
                  administration said it was a custody matter to be dealt with by Florida
                  courts. Later, seeming to backtrack, Washington said the INS was still in
                  control and would consult with Elian's father.

                  And that is where things stand. Pointing to a rusted 1956 Rambler,
                  Gonzalez said his son has put the car up for sale to pay for the long
                  distance telephone calls and other expenses. "I'm the grandfather; I have a
                  broken heart. But he is completely broken."

                  But Gonzalez said his son will not go to Florida to plead for Elian's return.
                  And he only wants to talk to U.S. authorities if they will tell him when Elian
                  will be back.

                  At Elian's school, the Marcelo Salado Primary School, a sort of shrine has
                  been created. The small, blue table and chair where he sat in his first grade
                  class is there, with his workbooks and a pencil holder on which a
                  photograph of his father, and one of the family together, are pasted. On
                  one table is an array of children's letters and drawings about the missing
                  boy.

                  Sixth-grader Ulacia Petroya wrote: "William Clinton . . . You have to
                  understand that this six year old boy saw his mother drown. What you are
                  doing is unjust." A drawing shows a small boy surrounded by grown-ups
                  and flashy toys and a bicycle, with tears rolling down his cheeks. In a
                  thought balloon above his head is the school and a group of equally
                  sad-looking children.

                  Pride of place, however, is given to a sign-in book where local residents
                  are lined up to write their names. On the first page, a large scrawl says:
                  "For the Freedom of Little Elian. Our Country, or Death. Fidel Castro."

                  Both Elian's mother and father obtained coveted jobs in the
                  government-run tourist business near here, at the beach resort of
                  Veradero. Elizabet cleaned rooms at the Paradiso Hotel, and the father
                  stands guard at the gate of an amusement park and shopping mall.
                  Grandfather Gonzalez is a retired employee of the Interior Ministry. But the
                  grandfather says he hasn't gone to any of the demonstrations and hasn't
                  talked to anybody in the government.

                  As Juan Gonzalez says goodbye to his guest, he hesitates and then reaches
                  into his pocket for his wallet. He opens a wrinkled sheet of yellow paper
                  on which two names and Florida telephone numbers are written--the
                  fishermen who rescued Elian. "I'd like you to do something for me," he
                  says. "Tell them we appreciate with all our hearts what they did for him.
                  We are so grateful.

                  "Tell them that here in Cuba, they have a family."

                           © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company