An Innocent in Cuba Read online

  But he had brains. For instance, he was studying Spanish very diligently, and showed me his textbooks and notebooks to prove it. When they wanted to know what I was doing, I told them I was gathering material for a book of poetic impressions of Cuba. It dawned on them right away that I might be counted on to give them a bit of free publicity in the book, and they didn’t require any free publicity just now. So first the skinny guy said he had to go. He said he’d look up my books for sure, but he didn’t ask my name or the titles. He was supposed to meet his new girlfriend half an hour ago. After he left, the chubby fellow said of him, admiringly, that even though his wife ran out on him he still gives her two hundred dollars a month in child support. He also maintained he has no problem with Cuban summers. You acclimatize quickly, he said, you adapt to it, you know how to find a cool spot and stay there when the sun is blazing. He said the saving grace for most Cubans who are underemployed, or completely unemployed, is to belong to some kind of cultural/political/historical association, where you can get out of the house, which may or may not be comfortable and cool. You’re always welcome at the club hall, and you can just sit there, watch TV, chat with people just like yourself, and play chess or dominoes, and feel somehow important. He said time goes more slowly here winter or summer. When I went to jot something in my notebook, he skittishly scurried away, saying he was late for his Spanish lesson.

  —

  Heading east out of Camagüey, I had an interesting group of three people in the car. First stop was to pick up an Afro-Cuban about thirty, a very shy woman with chubby cheeks. She indicated that she spoke no English and couldn’t understand my wretched Spanish. But before we could take off, a happy married couple in their midtwenties tapped on the window, and they got in the back seat. The couple spoke excellent English, and we chatted away about all the little things that were happening in their lives. It turned out the man was an ardent sports fisherman, like Yandys, and worked as a cook in a large glamorous new hotel just outside Camagüey. He told me if I were to get there about two o’clock he’d personally cook me a really good pescado fresh from the sea.

  He also said he’d take me fishing if I were interested. It seems the only people who get to go fishing work in the hotels. Boats of any kind seem in short supply. I told him I very much appreciated the offer, but I’m an unlucky fisherman, I never catch anything. Ever since I was a kid, it’s been the same story: everybody in the boat will be catching fish left and right except for me. I glanced at the black woman and she was trying to suppress a laugh.

  “Aha!” I said. “You speak English! I caught you in a lie!” She smiled guiltily and confessed. I don’t know if she really needed to get out at that point, or she was just making a stop request out of acute embarrassment. But as I pulled over, and she was getting out, I asked what she did for a living. “I’m a policewoman,” she said in perfect English, blushing through her black skin.

  —

  In a large electronics store just off El Parque Céspedes, in the beautiful sixteenth-century city of Bayamo (est. pop. 192,600), I tried to buy a new tape recorder. This simple transaction involved three salespeople and the manager, much running up and down stairs, and at least three phone calls to head office in Santiago de Cuba. When the transaction was finally complete, it turned out they had inadvertently charged me the wrong price, and we had to start all over again, with another three phone calls, and the manager, and numerous Cubans were leaning against the counter and watching with glee the fuss over this cheap tape recorder. When I got back to the car and put on my glasses it turned out it wasn’t a tape recorder, it was just a tape player. I had to take it back again. Turned out they didn’t have any actual tape recorders in stock, so another conglomeration of paperwork was required to give me a refund. I had to present my passport for the third time.

  But then I spotted a box of ten blank tapes on the shelf, and the price was almost as much as the tape player, so we just made a simple switch. No paperwork at all, except for that involved in cancelling the transaction.

  It was mid-afternoon, and I made a deal with myself. If the ice cream at the crowded Tropicrema is as good as it looks, I’ll spend the night at Bayamo. If not, I’ll move on. So I stood in line, the only gringo among hundreds of Cubans, each of whom was buying two ice-cream cones and putting them together head to head, and licking them as they twirl the pointy ends of the cones. With Cubans, ice-cream cones are like shoes, they only come in pairs.

  But when I finally was about to be served it turned out it was pesos only. Like a fool, I flashed a dollar bill and pleaded, but they just shook their heads solemnly. So I zipped around the corner to the bank to buy some pesos, and just as I got there the bank closed.

  Since I still didn’t know if the ice cream was any good, I decided to stay overnight in Bayamo if there happened to be a front balcony room available at the gorgeous and attractively restored Hotel Royalton, overlooking the parque. The desk clerk, a friendly fellow who hasn’t had a word from his brother in Toronto for a decade, said there were plenty of vacancies but unfortunately none at the front. I told him about my deal with myself, and he smilingly sympathized, but couldn’t do anything about it.

  So I decided to stay if there was an Etesca office where I could check my e-mail and see if everything was fine at home. But there wasn’t one.

  On the way out of Bayamo I passed a little hospital for people seeking treatment for the kind of eye diseases often caused by poor nutrition. It was a restful little place, with about six or seven men sitting outside on hard chairs and quietly squinting at passersby.

  Everybody in town has ice cream – except for me and these poor fellows.

  —

  Farther out on the highway there was a penal institute way back from the road, and two handsome bright young well-dressed fellows in handcuffs were being marched along the highway toward it. These kids didn’t seem like bad guys at all. They seemed full of confidence, giving no hint that they were frightened, depressed, or even slightly worried about their fate. They may have been “dissidents” – overly vociferous anti-abortionists who might have been pleased that they got a light sentence, that they will be able to spend some time praying in their cell, and also spreading the word to the other prisoners about the evils of abortion. Farther on, a green military truck was stalled on the road, and some soldiers were trying to push it to get it started.

  Those two Canadian guys in Camagüey told me a schoolteacher makes ten pesos a day. They were dead-on. I picked up a charming, happy, uncomplaining hitchhiker, a schoolteacher, twenty-three, who says she makes the equivalent of ten U.S. dollars a month, which is exactly ten pesos times twenty-seven days. She teaches eight hours a day, five and a half days a week, and has to hitchhike fifteen miles back and forth six days a week. “The bus is so uncomfortable,” she said.

  Life is cruel. If she only knew how much cash I had on me – US $637, plus a card with a line of credit which, though modest by Canadian standards, would have dazzled her. And what do I do for it? Yet she lives rent-free, while I’m often on the verge of being unable to pay my rent. Isn’t that odd?

  We were passing through sugar-cane country. We passed a billboard saying, The struggle is day by day, but the victory will be eternal. We exchanged quick glances, silent but meaningful. I decided it was impossible to decide who was the more fortunate child, the one born in Cuba or the one in Canada, though Canada’s infant mortality rate is slightly higher.

  After the teacher got out, I stopped for a large group of schoolgirls waiting for a bus, accompanied by a couple of teachers. Three happy eight-year-olds hopped in the back seat. I hopped out and ran around to open the back door, helped one of the kids out, and put her in the front seat. Then I thought I better do up their seat belts, an accident would ruin our day. All the other kids, and the teachers, were sitting there watching this with great glee.

  These kids had obviously never seen a seat belt in their lives. They tried wrapping them around their necks, but couldn’t ge
t them fastened. So I had to get out again and run around and clip the seat belts for them with even greater laughter from the rapt crowd. The girls in the car were giggling like maniacs, and so were the rest of the gang, watching from the little pickup station. Then I hopped in the car, did my own belt up, and took off.

  Their uniforms were white blouses and short maroon skirts. The girls were eight, no more than nine. As I took off I noticed the male teacher had been among the crowd of kids laughing. He seemed pleased about my seat-belt concern, even though he deemed it unnecessary because nobody uses seat belts in Cuba. Only rental cars have seat belts. Adding to the unnecessariness was the fact that the girls were only going about three miles. And had hitched hundreds of miles already in their young lives. They were so pretty – and they knew a bit of English.

  At another point I picked up two older schoolgirls, about fourteen at a guess, also pretty. They were in the back seat, and in the front was a gap-toothed unsavoury-looking character who smelled as if he hadn’t changed his clothes since the Papal Visit in 1998. With a big evil smile, this slob looked at me and said loud enough for the kids to hear, “You and I and those two in the back, we could do the f**ky f**ky.” I was embarrassed as all get out, but when I glanced in the rear-view mirror, the girls definitely were not embarrassed: they looked and sounded so cute with their heads close together in mock fear, saying, “No, no, por favor, señors, no!” Giggle giggle!

  DAY FOURTEEN

  EL UVERO, EL COBRE, AND THE BLACK VIRGIN

  Friday, February 27, 2004. This morning’s grapefruit juice tasted the way it did in childhood. In the street, Cubans cross their arms under their T-shirts, then pull their T-shirts down over their arms. When the temperature dips below twenty-eight Celsius, people go home for their sweaters. But the hitchhikers love to have the air conditioner full blast. Isn’t that odd?

  This is the Hotel Niquero, in the town of Niquero, on the Gulf of Guacanayabo, at the extreme southeastern tip of Cuba. Niquero is where a big cruiser named the Granma intended to land in 1956, after a three-day sail from Mexico, but things didn’t go smoothly: it landed a few miles farther south, at Belic, in a mangrove swamp, after a seven-day sail, and after being strafed by machine-gun fire from planes tipped off by a spy, still not identified, who was thought to be among the eighty-two aboard the Granma, according to the Mexican novelist and biographer Paco I. Taibo II. If the spy was indeed aboard, that would explain why the enemy neglected to sink the boat. It was not a pleasant trip for Che, who was suffering so badly from asthma that his fellow guerrilleros, most of whom were seasick, thought he was dead and were on the verge of throwing him overboard. Fidel and his brother Raúl were the only healthy ones.

  In Niquero today, all the boys and girls on their way to school are dressed in light denim uniforms, trousers, and shirts. While standing on the curb bending over to open my car door, I see in the rear-view mirror that one of the girls has stopped and is brazenly checking me out, giving me a visual appraisal from head to toe. So I suddenly turn around and smile at her. She is astonished. She can’t figure out how I could have seen her, plus she is probably shocked that my face was so pink, so lined, so grizzled. She is thinking to herself, Some of these old gringos must have an eye in the back of their head. She catches up with her classmates, whispers to them, and they look back and giggle.

  —

  Hotel Niquero has a nice write-up in Christopher P. Baker’s book. I showed it to the two women at the night desk. They squealed with delight. Nobody had told them that they were so famous! There was a big hotel in Manzanillo (est. pop. 128,200), but A.’s spirit whispered in my ear that I should continue south along the shore. She was sure I’d find a romantic moonlit seaside hotel that would be nicer than that monster. But there were no signs. Whenever it was a toss-up over which was the main road, I would choose the wrong one. I found myself in an enclosed barrio with a vast maze of wretched roads, and the way in and the way out seemed to have closed up on me. People would give me precise directions for an exit strategy, but time and again it wouldn’t pan out. Kids would have to break up their ball game to let me pass, then ten minutes later they’d have to do it all over again for the same guy. Many times I passed the same father throwing the same blistering baseball at the same young son. The boy was only about ten but was doing a good job of catching these speedballs, with no glove, and trying to laugh off the pain.

  Soon the sun had sunk into the Caribbean and the night was profound. The nightmare continued. A short, heavy-set, scowling Afro-Cuban guard with an extraordinarily unpleasant personality was standing at the gate of a military camp. He had twice already given me directions to the main road, the second time in a much less cordial manner. The third time, he was about to strangle me. He calmed down and said he’d hop in the car and direct me to the exit road. I asked him to get in the back seat because I had all my stuff in the front seat, but he insisted on sitting in the front. He got in, very stiffly, humourlessly, and with great self-importance. I offered him a Popular, he said no, he directed me down the same barrio road that I had taken twice before according to his directions, and there was something I hadn’t noticed before: a narrow unmarked pony trail of a dirt road disappearing into the bush. Nobody would ever have taken it to be the main road leading from the barrio to the highway. He got out of the car and told me that’s the road that will lead to where I want to go.

  I thanked him and, since I didn’t think I should tip a soldier, I offered to drive him the mile or so back to where he was serving guard duty. But he refused. He just wanted money. And then he gently caressed his left hip where a loaded pistol hung from his belt, and reminded me that this was a dark and desolate area. I smilingly pulled a dollar out of my pocket and handed it to him with a flourish, hoping that would be enough and pretending I hadn’t noticed the threatening gesture. He grabbed the dollar, grunted, got out of the car, and walked back to his post. [I was to see the same guy in a couple of days, miraculously, at Guantánamo Bay – or maybe it was his twin brother.]

  But that was yesterday, this is today. I’ve left Niquero behind, passed through the town of Pilón, and for the next few hours the highway takes me along the geometrically straight southern coast, to Santiago de Cuba, with the Caribbean on the right and on the left the tall green mountains of the largest and most famous range in Cuba, the world-famous Sierra Maestra, including the highest mountain in Cuba, Pico Turquino (6,476 feet). Fidel took an altimeter when he climbed this mountain, we’re told, just to make sure Turquino was the same height the geographers claimed it was.

  —

  At the battlefield memorial at El Uvero, the stunning main monument is surrounded by royal palms, concrete benches, and stone walkways. It’s a short walk up from the highway, with the vivid Caribbean shining through the trees, stretching out like the empty space between planets, and unconsciously displaying an ecstatic voluptuosidad of its rarest and most exotic milky greens and shining dark blues, with Haiti to the right and Jamaica to the left, and both just over the horizon. El Uvero was a Batista garrison, attacked by Fidel on May 28, 1957. The battle took place right here, and it was over in three hours with the rebels triumphant. A great all-weather map shows the positions of each man at the beginning of the fight. Six of the eighty rebels were killed and nine wounded, and of the fifty-three Batista soldiers, fourteen were killed, nineteen wounded, and fourteen taken prisoner. Fidel refused on principle to execute any of the prisoners, which is not surprising since four years earlier in a courthouse in Santiago he had accused Batista’s soldiers of killing seventy of Fidel’s men after they had already been captured and disarmed, following the ill-favoured attack on the Moncada Barracks in that city. Some of these soldiers were in the courtroom, squirming with embarrassment as Fidel spoke, since they were wearing watches, rings, and crosses they had removed from the bodies.

  It’s quiet here now, with numerous bushes bearing unusual flowers – purple-red azalealike blossoms with vivid yellow multipetalled centres, for in
stance. A baby donkey is quietly nibbling away at the lush grass and trying to ignore the cries of a nasty rooster. I should have a vast choice of Haitian, Jamaican, and Cuban music at this point, but the radio in my car seems to have died. I can’t get a thing.

  The long narrow town of Uvero has a sleepy atmosphere even though it’s more commercial than residential, sort of a farming centre, with a handsome baseball park, a cinema, a school, and an awesome number of repair shops, machine shops, oddly shaped buildings, hexagonal huts, circular structures with thatched roofs, and several tae kwan do studios along the main street, with everything freshly painted and nicely colour-coordinated. Don’t let anyone tell you the martial arts aren’t big in little Uvero – even if the most internationally prominent of the Cuban tae kwan do practitioners, Olympic star Urbia Meléndez who took the silver in Sydney in 2000, lives in distant Holguín. Interesting facts: From the 1900 Olympics in Paris to the 2004 in Athens, Cuba has copped sixty-five gold medals, fifty-three silver, and fifty-two bronze. Its best year was Barcelona in 1992 when it won fourteen golds, twice Canada’s total for that year, and with only one-third the population.

  —

  No signs! This isn’t tourist country. Everybody is supposed to know how to get where they want to go. Maybe signs are for sissies, and Santiago de Cuba isn’t called the City of Heroes for nothing. Fidel had no signs when he drove all the way from Havana to Santiago in 1953 in order to launch his assault on the Moncado Barracks. For that stunt he spent a year or two in jail in Santiago, in solitary, reading books and composing his essential essay, “History Will Absolve Me.”