An Innocent in Cuba Read online

  A Jesus-loving Afro-Cuban hitchhiker showed me a photo of her and her little boy, obviously taken a long time ago, when she was young and beautiful. Now that she’s forty-three I wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d said she was fifty-three or maybe even sixty-three. But you cannot say she hasn’t aged well because although she’s lost her youthful beauty she hasn’t lost her spirit and charming manner.

  She showed me a book about Jesus, and she was very nice about it. I showed her the silver cross around my neck, which I wear to hedge my bets in dicey situations, and told her it hasn’t failed me yet – touch wood! She had this big happy smile on her face and it seemed permanent. Occasionally you could see her try to turn down the intensity of her happiness a bit, but it didn’t last long.

  It’s unrealistic to ask hitchhikers for directions, especially the younger ones whose sense of personal morality and interconnectedness is still incompletely formed. They’ll only tell you where they want to go, not where you want to go. I was like that myself in my student days: when a car would stop and ask for directions but not offer me a ride, even though I was going to the same place, I’d take great delight in giving them really wrong directions.

  The first person I picked up, just out of Santa Clara, was a teenage student who had forgotten that classes had been cancelled today, and so she was heading back home. I told her I was trying to get to Cienfuegos and she told me I was on the right route. But I later found out I was definitely on the wrong route, and she would have known it, and she took me way out of the way because she wanted to go to Placetas. So after I dropped her off there I had to double-back and was losing a lot of time on that, so I made a bad decision and took a more direct route on lesser roads, soon becoming badly messed up.

  Something had been bothering me over the past few days and it might have been the fact that I had been passing mobs of hitchhikers without stopping, even though I had three empty seats in the car. I kept rationalizing that being a tourist, and not knowing the roads very well, and not overly familiar with Cuban driving habits, I can’t be expected to risk a hitchhiker’s life by stopping for them. So at least I’m stopping now. I’ve seen the light.

  But now as I sailed through the small Sierra Escambray foothill village of Güinia de Miranda, a man sitting on a chair at the side of the road shook his head at me and pointed back the way I’d come. He seemed to think I was going the wrong way; but I, being a tourist, knew better, and kept going. The road had been badly pitted but now seemed to be improving. Several miles south of Güinia, I passed an old man who was giving his mule a little break from the task of dragging two large dead trees God knows how far. Then a younger man who had been talking at the side of the road with a large group of campesinos jumped in front of the car like a rabbit and forced me to stop. He insisted I was going the wrong way. This road goes nowhere, he was saying – but when I got out my map and asked if he would be kind enough to show me where we were he squinted and turned the map every which way but couldn’t find the spot. This must be a road that is not on the map. Could that be possible? No way. Not with a new, highly detailed book of maps like the one Orestes had presented me with, and which I was following slavishly.

  The two of us were standing in the middle of this unmapped route to nowhere, a road innocent of motorized traffic of any form, although it was quite wide and covered with loose gravel. We were waving the maps around, while his friends stood by watching our confusion and frustration with great fellow-feeling. We all had solemn looks on our faces. It wouldn’t do for Cubans to be laughing at a tourist’s distress. Fidel would not be very pleased to hear about that.

  It was obvious I had to return to Güinia de Miranda, about half an hour back. My new friend said he would accompany me and if I would consent to drive to the escuelo secondario just outside that town, he would introduce me to the English teacher, who spoke fluent English and would be able to explain everything in words I could easily understand. Soon I would be on the right road to Cienfuegos. The school was exactly where he wanted to go as well, as it happened.

  We both burst out laughing at that moment, laughing with relief – and suddenly all his friends also burst out laughing, in the most pleasant fashion, as if to show solidarity with us, and to show pleasure that our differences of opinion had been resolved, and because they’d been wanting to laugh for quite some time but were waiting until the best moment, or until we laughed first.

  His name was Pablo. As we drove back the way I’d come, he proudly pointed out his fine house high in the hills back quite a stretch from the road, but clearly visible. He said he was a teacher of “physic.” Did he mean physical education? No, he said, he meant “physic,” as in “Galileo and Einstein and how the universe works.” “Physics,” I said. Yes, he replied, “Physic.” We may seem very backward here, he said, with our sombreros, and horses, and cowboy boots, but we are very intelligent, at least as much so as are los Habaneros and possibly as much so even as your people are in Canada.

  “How does the universe work, Pablo?” I said. “I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “That’s a big question,” said Pablo. “You’ll have to register for my class.”

  Then he slowly and dramatically got out his glasses, a sign of high intellectual attainment up here in the hills, polished them with a bit of red chamois, and put them on, as he smilingly watched me out of the corner of his eye. They were excellent glasses, with a gaily multicoloured thick string on them so they would not fall to the ground if they slipped from his nose. He was immensely proud of them.

  “I have never harboured the slightest doubt,” I said, “that the Cubans – even ones in the most remote areas such as this – were on an intellectual par with every other nationality in the world.”

  “In other words,” said Pablo, “you knew even before I put my glasses on that there was nothing stupid about me.”

  “If I’d thought you were stupid, I’d have ignored your advice and continued driving, eventually falling off a cliff.”

  “You wanted to ignore my advice, but I wouldn’t let you.”

  When we got to the school, Pablo asked me to wait, and he went in for ten minutes, then brought the teacher out to meet me. She did not look very happy to be disturbed in the middle of a class by a mere tourist, especially of the single-male variety. Her name was Kenya, and she was very much a black Afro-Cuban, a very short, heavy-set, and powerfully serious campañera, and in no mood for frivolity. She didn’t care for that friendly imperialist smile on my face. The Saxon smile, as the Irish call it.

  “How may I help you?” she said unsmilingly.

  I told her that I wanted to get to Trinidad de Cuba, and found the signs a bit confusing – misleading at times but most often simply missing. She said I should just proceed along the road that runs by the school where we were standing. It would take me there. Not far, only thirty-five miles. I was very happy and asked, cautiously, if she’d been there lately.

  Not in several years, she said sternly, as if she felt that was a frivolous question and didn’t enjoy having to answer it. I’m not sure if she was angry with me for wasting her time, or with Pablo for bringing me here when he could have told me just as easily to continue along this road, which branches off from the first road, at the point where the latter passes through Güinia de Miranda.

  I think that the strict compañeros (male comrades) and compañeras (female comrades), of whom many of the best are also campesinos (male agricultural workers) or campesinas (female agricultural workers), have a rather ambiguous attitude toward Trinidad de Cuba. It was the notorious tyrant Fulgencio Batista who decided way back to restore the old part of Trinidad de Cuba as a magnet for tourism, and perhaps because he loved the era of Spanish control and hated to see its relics disintegrating. If it had been Fidel who got the bright idea, that would be fine. But Batista? Even the most bloodthirsty tyrants sometimes do good things, theoretically, but for a solid compañero to visit Trinidad de Cuba would be akin to an Italian socialist trying t
o find it in his heart to admire some of those impregnable and massive train stations built in the 1930s by Mussolini. Theoretically.

  And even though Trinidad de Cuba has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site, it is said to practise a form of apartheid, in terms of the inhabitants not caring to see blacks and whites together at a table, or walking arm in arm, especially if the black is a local one and the white is a tourist. This is stated with great authority by Christopher P. Baker, in Moon Handbooks: Cuba.

  In fact, it’s possible that Kenya had me pegged for some kind of imperialist stooge, a single-male sex-tourist ignoramus on the loose in a rented car. When she said she had not been to Trinidad in several years I merrily blurted out an invite to come with me if she wished. The look on her face was one of extraordinarily stern disapproval. So I countered by saying that it would of course be impossible for her to go because she had classes to teach, but I couldn’t quite find the words to atone for the insensitivity of my invitation. She was as huffy as she would have been if I’d asked her to become my sex slave.

  And so I left Kenya to her charges, and Pablo as well, she obviously angry at being taken from her duties, and he itching to get in there and teach the kids more about how the universe works.

  —

  After a few miles the Trinidad road became very bad. It would stay bad all the way. I passed a chilling sign saying, Perigrosa. There had been a similar sign at Manicuaga, at the start of the previous road, but for some reason I thought the sign was the name of a village coming up. I’d forgotten that perigrosa meant “danger.” And I realized that the thirty-five-mile trip to Trinidad was about to become a huge nightmare. I felt fated to drive this bone-jarring high-mountain road for all eternity, alternating from first to second gear, never getting over twenty miles an hour maximum. I’d have turned around and gone back to the autopista, but every time I was about to do so, I’d see the gleam of some fresh pavement up ahead and so continued on. But time and again the alluringly fresh pavement would deceive me and turn out to be even more full of dangerous potholes than the unpaved patches. Some of the potholes contained rainwater, so it was impossible to determine their depth.

  The only moment of respite was when a man on horseback offered me a big bunch of bananas. He even invited me to his home for dinner, but that would only have prolonged my agony. I had to get off this road or I’d go nuts. Besides, I now had all these bananas to eat.

  A large Afro-Cuban woman came running down to the road. I didn’t want to pick her up because she looked so heavy and I didn’t want to put any more rubber on these sharp stones. But how could I refuse to pick up a single hitchhiker on a such a dreary and lonely road?

  She had appeared out of nowhere in shorts, very tight, and very short, and she had the hairiest and fattest thighs of any woman anywhere. And for the rest of the way to Trinidad de Cuba – with my every nerve end focused on checking the depth of the next crater in the road, one after another, scattered randomly like brown spots on the skin of an overripe banana – she kept poking me sharply in the ribs. I hear that Fidel has the same irritating habit, in fact you see it a lot in Cuba. Every time she thought of something more to tell me about her wonderfully cute little niña, and her handsome and caring novidad who happened to be on a “special mission” to Venezuela at the moment, she would jab me in the ribs to get my attention. Her husband was not a doctor, she said. He was involved in the urban gardening venture there, so that the poor city dwellers could have more to eat, without being at the mercy of the great food conglomerates. She couldn’t remember how long he’d been away and wasn’t sure when he’d be back.

  We finally arrived in Trinidad de Cuba. I drove her to her lovely little house on a cobblestone street at the edge of the old part of town, the part the tourists come from all over the world to see. She seemed to check out the street a bit too carefully for my comfort before deciding to hop out of the car at great speed and rush into her house without even a look over her shoulder, or a whispered muchas graçias, señor. She must have known this was rude, but she had very dark skin and mine was very bright pink, so her rude departure may have had something to do with the unofficial apartheid policy Christopher Baker claims still lingers in this rich old colonial town.

  —

  But I was only in Trinidad an hour and didn’t get up to the area of colonial splendour, with great old palaces turned into state museums, and where tourists wander from museum to museum taking photos. It just didn’t appeal to me on this particular day. I could see the tourist buses parked all over the place and didn’t want to go any farther. There must be something wrong with the shocks on this car, because I’m taking a beating even from these cobblestones, no matter how slowly I drive. And every time I get out of the car I’m surrounded by schoolkids in uniform, with sly looks on their faces, demanding U.S. dollars.

  —

  An hour later I found myself at the most peaceful spot on the seashore, a very quiet and relaxed beach bar and restaurant, and I sat watching the sun go down on a dreadful day, and watching myself calming down – with the help of a relaxing tablet. The red snapper, freshly caught, perfectly cooked, looked a bit like an old Cuban automobile from the tail-finned 1950s. My table was on a nicely constructed stone elevation overlooking the beach and the sea, with its milky green and blue horizontal stripes. I was the sole (as opposed to snapper) diner, in La Boca, a newly opened bar/restaurant with only a bit of straw overhead on sticks to deflect the sun. Sometimes my gaze would shift from the sea and sky to the shapely vectors of the glorious Topes de Collantes mountains, part of the Sierra Excambray, mildly precipitous hills grassy green to the top and with dense palm forests from the deepest valleys all the way up the sweet steep slopes to the impossibly highest peak (slightly rounded) of the highest mountains, and there were many.

  But there were no rooms at La Boca. They hadn’t finished building the overnight quarters. Also all the casas particulares along this stretch had become booked, owing to tourists wanting a cheaper place to stay within a short distance from Trinidad de Cuba. And the ugly barracklike hotels, so I was told, were only for the Cubans. But I was also told that if a foreigner goes into the lobby of a Cuban hotel they just might be happy to take him in, depending on the liberality of the person on the desk, and how busy they are, or whatever.

  And so I had to hit the road again, this time a bit smoother, but still a problem because I was exhausted from too much tense driving, induced relaxation, and recent bouts of insomnia. Also night had fallen. But shortly a perfectly nice hotel and bar/restaurant presented itself, at Playa Yaguanabo, situated on a rocky little cove – and I promptly booked in, showered, then threw myself in bed and fell asleep until the phone rang an hour or so later.

  DAY TWELVE

  ONE SHORT SAD STORY AFTER ANOTHER

  Wednesday, February 25, 2004. Jesús querido, if you need me for anything it’s 12:33 a.m. and I’m in room 116 at Playa Yaguanabo on the Caribbean coast halfway between Cienfuegos and Trinidad de Cuba. I fell asleep at 10:30 to the sound of rocks splashing against the waves – or was it the other way around? – and became involved in nightmares about being humiliated, beaten, tortured, shot by firing squads, and hanged over and over again. I’d been captured by counter-revolutionaries and charged with being a Fidelista spy. My only hope was to be saved by El Beardo himself, in person, but he refused to get out of bed.

  Then the phone rang – three very loud rings. My heart pounded. I couldn’t answer. When I calmed down I called the front desk and sarcastically asked the young woman not to call me so late, call me in the morning. To her, my abrupt manner would be a greater sin than a midnight phone call. She simply and sadly said, “Okay.”

  I unplugged the phone, but imagined the woman bursting into tears, so I got dressed and went over to the front office to apologize in person for my rudeness.

  The young woman apologized right back. She was a timid, serious, sensitive, and pretty little soul about twenty-five – all alone on the night de
sk. Not a pleasant job for such a person. She decided it was probably someone in one room trying to call a friend in another room and my room got called by mistake. Of course, why didn’t I think of that? A tourist bus full of Canadians had arrived shortly after I booked in.

  The large bar and dining room was closed already, but a woman and two men were drinking Havana Club, straight, in little glasses. They immediately called me over, and poured me a stiff one on the house. They were the waitress, the bartender, and the manager. I told them about the midnight phone call, and that less than half an hour ago I was in bed dreaming that I was being hanged.

  “Many people have been hanged in Cuba,” said the woman.

  “But not lately,” said the bartender.

  “And there has not been one instance of torture since Batista fled the country,” said the manager.

  —

  The sewage exploded in the shower at 8:30, when I was lying in bed with a map trying to figure out my route for today. All this raw sewage, from an overloaded bilge tank being fed by too many toilets, is bursting like a geyser at great pressure out of the blowhole of my shower stall, then dripping from the curtains and slithering out like sludge all over the floor of the bathroom and into the bedroom. And it just keeps coming. I know it will eventually die down and stop, but I don’t know when. It seems to be slowing down a bit. The stench isn’t as unbearable as one would think. But it’s strange that such a thing would happen in such a nice, modern, newly built hotel.