An Innocent in Cuba Read online

  ALSO BY DAVID MCFADDEN

  POETRY

  Intense Pleasure, 1972

  A Knight in Dried Plums, 1975

  The Poet’s Progress, 1977

  On the Road Again, 1978

  My Body Was Eaten by Dogs, 1981

  The Art of Darkness, 1984

  Gypsy Guitar, 1987

  Anonymity Suite, 1992

  The Death of Greg Curnoe, 1995

  There’ll Be Another, 1995

  Five Star Planet, 2002

  Cow Swims Lake Ontario, 2003

  FICTION

  The Great Canadian Sonnet, 1975, 2002

  Animal Spirits, 1983

  Canadian Sunset, 1986

  NON-FICTION

  A Trip Around Lake Erie, 1981

  A Trip Around Lake Huron, 1981

  A Trip Around Lake Ontario, 1988

  An Innocent in Ireland, 1995

  Great Lakes Suite, 1997

  An Innocent in Scotland, 1999

  An Innocent in Newfoundland, 2003

  Copyright © 2005 by David W. McFadden

  Paperback edition published 2005

  Electronic edition published 2016

  McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request

  Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request

  ISBN 9780771055065

  Ebook ISBN 9780771061370

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.​penguin​random​house.​ca

  v4.1

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  For my father, my daughter, my brother

  – and for Cachita too.

  If there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

  – Pablo Picasso

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by David McFadden

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Sea of Happiness

  2. Two Steps Ahead of the Law

  3. Vanilla and Chocolate

  4. The Great Fascist

  5. Dedo Doloroso

  6. Stolen Notebooks

  7. El Cristo de Jilma

  8. Varadero Beach and the Battle of Ideas

  9. Santa Clara 10, Holguín 2

  10. I Am Yours Forever

  11. How the Universe Works

  12. One Short Sad Story After Another

  13. Chica chica? Chica chica chica?

  14. El Uvero, El Cobre, and the Black Virgin

  15. The Road to Baracoa

  16. From Baracoa across the Río Toa to Moa

  17. An Afternoon in Holguín

  18. An Afternoon at the Beach

  19. It’s Palma Day in Bayamo Libre!

  20. Bayamo Daybreak

  21. All Davids Are Brothers

  22. Wildfires at Sunset

  23. Heavenly Havana

  24. Sad-Eyed Señoritas of El Morro

  25. Magic Is What You Imagine!

  26. Mimi’s Gift

  27. Two Englishmen in Havana

  28. Another Dream for Cuba

  29. My Left Earlobe

  30. A Ghost in the Air

  31. The Death of Hemingway

  32. The World Is a Handkerchief

  33. Sea of Sadness

  Epilogue

  Suggested Reading

  DAY ONE

  SEA OF HAPPINESS

  Saturday, February 14, 2004. From the nineteenth floor of the four-star Hotel Neptuno Tritón there’s a wide-angle view of the western-most limits of suburban Havana, the parklike area south of Miramar Beach – lightly industrial, lightly residential, agricultural hardly at all. Clusters of palm trees dot the tops of green hills on the southern horizon. The sky is baby blue and speckled with swirling little galaxylike clouds of baby pink. The lights on tall metal poles around the front of the hotel switch off at precisely seven o’clock. It’s a new day: two loud sharp clangs come from a tuneless bell way off in the distance and small groups of workers quicken their pace to the construction sites. Hotels are going up all around here, with fabulous neo–art deco lines and dazzling colour combinations.

  On Cuban construction sites where workers are docked pay for being late or absent, there is much lateness and absenteeism. On jobs where one is not docked, workers will go out of their way to show up on time every day. That’s why workers aren’t getting docked these days. I’ve heard this twice already, so it must be true.

  Ten years ago the view from the nineteenth floor would have been dominated by the neo-classical red-roof Iglesia Jesús de Miramar off in the distance, with its beautiful pearl-grey dome. It would have had a vast rural rolling landscape to itself, an opalescent island in a sea of emeralds. But now that church, still with all its attractions, has been rendered less significant, dwarfed by recently constructed hotels, the Havana Trade Center, and the beginnings of new residential neighbourhoods.

  Traffic on the highway below seems light – a few speeding toy cars well spaced, now and then a toy lorry loaded with cement blocks. People will casually sidestep onto the sidewalk to avoid the occasional bus jammed with people. A former beauty queen from Venezuela is touting Reduce Fat Fast pills on the twenty-two-channel universe, and gives different numbers to call for different Latin American countries. Each country is listed on the screen, except for Cuba, where obesity is rare, beauty contests are considered moronic, and few people have credit cards.

  Winter storms have paralyzed traffic in Istanbul, airports have been turned into dormitories in Athens, in Toronto it’s fifteen below – but in Cuba it looks like another fine day with hot sunshine. The only snow is on an old man’s beard and the only ice is in his first drink of the day.

  The flight from Toronto was full of people from Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, New York. They were a serious bunch, curious about Cuba rather than just wishing to sprawl mindlessly on the beach for a week. They were more interested in sizing up the island, sniffing out opportunities. A group of five had been corresponding with the Council of Cuban Churches and were now excitedly going over their maps and discussing their plans to visit every single one of the Protestant churches in Cuba – dispensing advice, no doubt. Nine out of ten such churches are said to be lacking pastors. Anti-abortion feeling is high among the faithful, and the more outspoken get thrown in jail. The non-Cuban world, including Amnesty International, calls these people dissenters. Most Cubans call them worse names. What seems clear is that there is a long-standing majority tradition in Cuba of considering a woman’s desire for a safe abortion to be inviolable.

  —

  At the José Martí Airport last night, it was like being trapped inside an ant’s eye. Every television monitor was showing a weary but passionate old Fidel giving yet another speech. We were in Toronto when he started and he’s still at it, with no notes, no teleprompter, and no wire in his ear feeding him lines by his brother Raúl. The speech is being delivered to the people who love him and understand him, and anyone else who wants to tune in. Passengers disembarking stare at the TV screens with an unconscious look of disdain, as if at the shock of actually seeing Fidel on the t
ube speaking, instead of being the invisible subject of unfriendly one-sided roundtable discussions on the U.S. networks. [Note: This was the speech in which Fidel said that President George W. Bush couldn’t debate a Cuban ninth grader, and that after four decades of economic blockade the Cuban economy is in better shape, in certain important ways, than the U.S. economy, which is hanging by a thread. Also, he said once again that Bush was actively plotting to have him assassinated and planning to invade Cuba. Cubans should get ready to defend their country with guerrilla tactics. He may even have mentioned bomb shelters.]

  —

  A. lives in Toronto and doesn’t travel much these days. She has been generous with her memories of her two-week urban ramble in Havana ten years ago, all the little details from beginning to end. For starters, she related how high-spirited schoolteachers from southern Ontario filled the plane with their crazed screams and sudden eruptions of funny noises and silly remarks. The pilot was careful not to break the law by flying the more direct route over the United States, which would have saved an hour of corny jokes. After the teachers staggered off the plane in Varadero, A. was the sole passenger to continue to Havana. She said she felt like a shadow. The one person on duty in the dimly lit customs shack had no desire to look at her shadowy passport, her shadowy bag, or to ask where she planned to stay. There were no taxis or buses waiting.

  In the tropical night, gawking up at the full moon among the towering royal palms, she was approached by a friendly tall beanpole of an Afro-Cuban and his very short black wife, plump and with a sense of humour. They said they were driving into the city. They often drove out to the airport to watch the Canadians disembark, to see the joy on their faces as they feel their bones thawing, their allergies disappearing, their sex glands self-secreting. Did they actually say that about the sex glands? A. laughed and admitted she made that up. So, could they have the pleasure of her company? They would drive her into the city and help her find a hotel. Of course!

  She booked into the Deauville, and if her friends got a commission for taking her there she didn’t notice. Her friends, in fact, stayed outside. Then they all went for a long slow walk along the Malecón. They sat on the crumbling concrete seawall. They wanted to explain to her how the system works in Cuba, so that she would understand what she was looking at. In no way would they consider themselves even mildly anti-Fidel, but they assured A. that black people (A. is white), no matter how well educated, or how many languages they spoke, could not get a decent job in any branch of the government – not even in tourism. Picking up people at the airport was her new friends’ idea of performing voluntary labour on an unsolicited basis for the good of the country, although many would call it running an unlicensed taxi even though they refused to accept any money for the ride. A. couldn’t even buy them a drink. They assured her that they were not starving, they were not homeless, they even had this nice little old car, but they were unable to get the kind of job they were so obviously qualified for, and they saw themselves as marginalized and unfulfilled. They also said that many whites, especially if they were Catholics, had similar problems.

  Then they told her about the jinatera situation. A. was about to discover that Havana was a sea of prostitutes day and night, and the jinateras with their cosmetics and pretty dresses and flowers in their hair were like exotic islands in the gloomy greyness that Cuba was in 1994. The Soviet Union collapse and the sudden withdrawal of Russian aid had been devastating. What Fidel dubbed the “Special Period” was at its most critical.

  They told her that one jinatera represented a neighbourhood mini-industry – with extended family and friends chipping in for cute outfits, beauty aids, and sly suggestions – which was in turn rewarded when the money started coming in. If the girl was pretty enough she was commissioned shortly after her fifteenth birthday. There were many variations on this theme, but the general system, in this field as in others, still confuses them sometimes, they told her, even though they’ve grown up in the milieu. In fact, they didn’t think anyone understands it.

  Fidel’s long-gone-to-Miami daughter, Alina Fernández, in her book, Castro’s Daughter, writes that “in 1993, our main purpose in life was to choke down our anguish.”

  A. said that was exactly what seemed to be going on in March 1994. The mood was bad. There was no music in the air, no pleasure. Bitter resentment was everywhere. There was a lot of anguish being choked down. The only smiles were on the faces of the jinateras.

  —

  A.’s friends were not waiting for me. I knew the chance would be slim, but I did look around for a couple ten years older still answering their description. Instead I booked at the Neptuno, with the commission that would have gone to my travel agent going instead to the airport lady at the hotel table, who insisted that my first choices, the Deauville, the Inglaterra, the Valencia, and the Havana Libre (A.’s famous four from ’94) were all “overbooked” – a term by which she meant “all booked up” rather than referring to a sleazy (but understandable) business practice ubiquitous in countries that may not be quite as advanced as Cuba.

  My booking fee covered the taxi ride, but the driver was a very strange man who remained silent, refused to respond to any of my comments, but every mile or two he would turn to me and repeat, in tediously memorized English, “My boss make all the money, all I make is the tip.” Do you think he was giving me a hint?

  It’s an interesting line, and although he sounded and looked anything but sincere, it could have been true, or simply an exaggeration for effect. Besides, in tourist-related enterprises such as cab driving the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and Cuban pesos can be very favourable, and U.S. dollars tend to be thrown around as if they were only a peso when in rough terms it would appear that they represent twenty-seven pesos in Cuban buying power, and often much more depending on whose hand they land in. In retrospect, I’m sure the cabbie’s only income is the tips. I can’t see him getting a penny of the rebate from the hotel.

  —

  There seem to be three kinds of Cuban attitudes surrounding the U.S. dollar: The first and most common would be that held by many associated, however peripherally, with tourism – the more they can get their hands on the better. The second would be the Revolutionaries, who are more relaxed about things and have to be talked into taking payment for services rendered. These are the people who can magically transform a generous tourist into a beggar, pleading with them to take a little monetary gift for their kindness. The third would be the truly dedicated Revolutionaries, the ultraproud nationalists of this blood-soaked land, the incorruptible ones, who are maybe a bit puritanical because under no conditions would they be caught dead with a U.S. dollar in their pocket or purse, any more than a Presbyterian would dance a jig. In these groups, all of whom would be pretty well convinced of the necessity of massive investments in tourism, there would be much overlap, backsliding, and changes of position according to changing circumstances and different understandings. A. said that even in the bad times ten years ago there were people who refused to take money for things one would expect to have to pay for. To use a happy-hour metaphor, the three groups could be compared to the drunks, the social drinkers, and the teetotallers.

  —

  Ten years ago, in spite of the general gloom, the people of Havana would make a fuss over a single female tourist. Shy, curious A. was an event. They were eager to show off their command of the English language, and would ask to be corrected if they made a mistake. This seemed to be particularly true of the blacks. One of my duties here is to check out A.’s significant but strange observation that in Cuba the blacker your skin the more likely you were to speak excellent English.

  But now there’s a sense in the air, upon arrival, that interest in English is fading fast. Among Cubans, there is as little interest in learning English as there is among Albertans in learning French. Many Cubans who spoke excellent English ten years ago have forgotten a lot of it. English-language tourism is numero uno in Cuba, by far, but there is
a tendency for Cubans today to fade out when they hear English spoken. They’ve lost their ear for English. English is no longer considered sexy in Cuba.

  At first I thought it was a slow reaction to the cruelty of the forty-five-year economic blockade against Cuba, and the continuing insults from the White House, and the assassination attempts and/or threats, the harassment, the bombings. But maybe it’s something less obvious. A more Cuban form of Spanish is evolving in Cuba. Creating a new language is more exciting than learning an old one. Cuba is becoming a country of serious linguistic nationalists. If evidence comes to me over the next month that this is not so, or that any of the observations I make or conclusions I draw this early on turn out to be on shaky ground, I shall consider it my duty to advise the reader.

  —

  It’s time for breakfast in the vast dining hall behind the Neptuno lobby, with walls of windows allowing for grand views, between the exotic flowering trees and royal palms, of the deep dark shining blue Straits of Florida.

  There aren’t many people here, just a sprinkling of South American tourist couples, sometimes with children, and groups of business people who seem to know what they’re here for. Everything is slow, quiet, calm, civilized. No elbows or low blows. We’re all having scrambled eggs with fresh carrots and papaya plus numerous cafecitos. Úrsula is a large happy Afro-Cuban hostess mingling with the guests in a capacity that borders on does-she-work-here-or-is-she-just-friendly? She has no problem with shifting topics or waxing semi-philosophical. She maintains I was wrong to think the situation of black Cubans has improved all that much in the past ten years. She insists things have improved only minimally. “If you’re black you have to be good,” she says. And she doesn’t mean morally good. She means really good in every way just to get a job, better than all the whites – brighter, more energetic, more competitive, better qualified, more enthusiastic, sexier, funnier, with a better grasp of the issues, and a lot better at dancing. Or maybe she means morally good as well. Or morally good period. As in, and this is probably it – politically good. In Cuba, politics and morality are one.