An Innocent in Cuba Read online

  And did the people seem to mind being glanced at by gringos as they passed by? Most definitely not. People would be at the candlelit table in the back room dining frugally, maybe eight at a time, or maybe just drinking coffee, or simply talking with the table cleared and bare. The children would be playing in the front room, which would be darker, except for the glow from the television if it happened to be on. Usually there would be excellent Cuban jazz on the radio at very high volume, but definitely not blasting and not unpleasant. The kids would be dancing, and the adults would be sitting there with dreamy looks on their faces.

  In one doorway two girls, about eleven years old, stood with their arms loosely hanging over the other’s shoulders and each silently staring into the other’s eyes. I walked down a side street to buy a cigar and watch the moon from the Malecón. On the way back the girls were still standing in the same position, giving each other the same deep silent look, with their arms around each other.

  —

  The Prado was every bit as gracious and soulful as A. had described it. Again and again I’d turn a corner off the Prado and find myself at some place she had told me about. But things had changed. All these shops that A. found closed then are now open both for tourists and Cubans. Occasionally I’d stop for an icy-cold Cristal and would have a dreamlike sense of seeing this bar through A.’s eyes, and it was as if the people sitting around were the same ones as were here when she was here, but ten years older. Impossible? Sí. Dreamlike? Sí.

  I noticed him before he noticed me, and the innocent side of me called out, “¡Hola, amigo!” instead of letting him notice me if he wanted to. It was the second baseman, the first of the two guys I had met earlier. He seemed happy to have been remembered in such a friendly way, and when he noticed I was savouring a delicious cigar with bliss writ large on my physiognomy he said, “Wait here!” He returned five minutes later with five identical Relobas – and presented them to me with a bow, as if they were a little bouquet of flowers. Now, here’s my logic: I’d paid a dollar for my cigar, he being a Cuban would have got these for a peso apiece, and furthermore I hadn’t asked for them, and didn’t know he was getting them for me. So I thought I was generous by giving him three dollars for the five. He made it very clear that he was disappointed and considered me just another cheapskate tourist.

  But he continued with me along Calle Zanja. And so, during a lull in the chit-chat, when we were busy jumping over dark pits in the pavement and trying not to trip over a concrete block or some other impediment invisible in the shadows and so on, and puffing on our cigars like two little fireflies, he wanted to know about my smoking habits. He loved it when I told him the average Joe in Canada couldn’t afford to smoke a Cuban cigar except on Christmas Eve. But he wanted to know if I smoked pot. I told him heavens no, it was illegal in Canada, and I told him that there is so much joy in Cuba it is obviously not needed, and yet I understand the penalties are even greater here. Besides, pot is famous for producing false hunger in a smoker, which is a cruel situation for a Cuban to be in. Not for the tourists, he countered, suavely. There he goes again, thinking that tourists can get away with murder. He said that tourists can smoke their heads off all they want, but the Cubans can suffer extreme penalties if they are caught. I instantly believed the latter assertion but was definitely concerned about the veracity of the first, as I had been about the same fellow’s currency scam. But he insisted on taking me just a wee bit out of the way so that I could meet someone who would have some Jamaican pot and be willing to give me a little sample. I most definitely required nothing along those lines, but I had to go along with it for the sake of the book. One has to be a little adventurous now and then if one wishes to excel in travel writing. Not too adventurous though, because we must remember that writing itself is the number-one adventure.

  Also, if one gets in the habit of saying “no” too often, or too emphatically, his or her face will turn into one big “no.” One can spot at a glance the people who make a habit of saying no. Their faces are crabby and suspicious. They always grimace when in public. One senses that they could drop dead at any moment from an overdose of no’s.

  So he dragged me back the way we’d come, to a dark side street, and he introduced me to El Pinko, an albino with red hair and a mixture of Chinese and African features. We were to climb several flights of unlit stairs to a moonlit rooftop and he’d meet us there. It was a long wait. Some other men joined us. I was getting tired but tried not to insult these guys by yawning. One tall handsome fellow said he was the son of a famous Cuban baseball player, whose name I shan’t mention, but who went to the United States and had a brilliant career there, then stayed on too long, and now he isn’t playing, and things haven’t been going all that well, and so on. But his son was proud of him. Then El Pinko came up, and he said everything was okay, the pot was being “prepared.” Ten minutes later a Jamaican guy (to add some authenticity) appeared with three cute little joints. They’d been rolled in brown industrial-strength paper and the lack of gum was made up for by the elaborate bow-tie twist at each end. I wearily asked how much. He said smoke one first. I lit up. The first puff was without noticeable effect. I was suspicious, but if I was being conned why would they insist I smoke one first? Smoke more, they said. I kept smoking. They didn’t want any. I tried to pass it to them. No, it’s for you. So eventually I had it smoked down to nothing, and felt as if it might have been heavily cut with catnip and sawdust. The only effect I got was paranoia – a fear that if I refused to pay I might accidentally fall off the roof and break my neck.

  So I didn’t really feel as if I wanted to fight with them. It didn’t seem to be pot, but I didn’t want to tell them that. It just seemed that the prudent thing to do would be to give them the money and make my way down to street level, the safe way, via the staircase. I went back to Melba and Monica’s, wondering what it was I smoked, and why were these cats following me and nipping at my pantcuffs.

  DAY THREE

  VANILLA AND CHOCOLATE

  Monday, February 16, 2004. I am sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and Mama Melba is standing in the doorway laughing. She laughs all the time. It’s her nature. Monica must have got tired of all this gaiety at an early age because she is serious and her laughter is infrequent, awkward, a bit forced. I didn’t catch what field of medicine she’s in, but she has the air of a dedicated doctor, and a dedicated Fidelista as well.

  Monica has never been anywhere much outside of Havana and its suburbs. She nevertheless speaks with pride and affection of Santiago de Cuba (she sighs and calls it “the second Havana”) and Trinidad de Cuba (“the whole city is a museum”), both of which for her must be found only in the magic of books and dreams for now. Just knowing they are there is enough for her. And yet there’s a sadness about her, a need that is not being fulfilled, one which she is trying in vain to ignore. Like many Cubans she wants to travel, but she wants it to be for a meaningful reason, something beyond self-indulgent tourism.

  When Monica left for the suburbs to visit her father this afternoon, her mother relaxed. She lay for hours on top of her neatly made bed while enjoying a laughter-filled series of telephone chats. Then she sat on a comfy old sofa in her darkened parlour watching silly TV shows, laughing to herself, and taking a few more phone calls. Her English is non-existent. At one point, because she hadn’t laughed for a bit, I dressed up in my winter things from home, including an absurdly long and heavy woollen scarf, three jackets, a heavy-duty Nepalese toque. I stood there at the entrance to the parlour, shivering, with arms folded tightly over my chest and teeth chattering. She glanced at me, then leapt to her feet. I told her, “This is me – on the way to the Toronto airport.” She drew nearer, shaking with laughter, her eyes wide.

  —

  In the afternoon rain I’m wearing my Hamilton Tiger-Cats jacket, black and yellow, light as a nylon feather. A very exclusive, dollaronly restaurant, with keen-eyed doormen, where my friend A. had dined ten years ago, on Avenida de lo
s Presidentes at Calle 23, is now a wreck. The sign has fallen off, but the place is still alive and selling coffee and sandwiches for pesos. Conversely, other places that would have been left derelict at that time are up and running now. For instance, the Coppelia, the famous Havana ice-cream parlour, was definitely having a bad time during A.’s visit. She remembered a fellow standing behind the counter in a white smock, but he looked sad and hopeless. There was no ice cream and it looked as if there hadn’t been any for quite a while. A. thought the fellow had been asked to stay on because nobody knew when the ice cream would be delivered, it could be any time of the night or day, and he could double as a guard while waiting.

  But today the ice cream had definitely arrived. I sat in the soft rain with a two-scooper in a silver dish, chocolate and vanilla. Heavenly ice cream, every bit as good as what used to be served in England, except with no chocolate wafer sticking out of it. Unfortunately you can’t get it anywhere else, so I’m told, this is it, the Coppelia hasn’t been franchised yet, and ice cream elsewhere in Cuba has little to recommend it.

  An Afro-Cuban percussionist is standing amidst a crowd waiting for the bus while playing simple music with two sticks and two drums. In the light rain, almost a warm mist, and with such dreamy ice cream, I find myself listening more carefully to the percussionist, and in a flash the music transforms itself into something as all-absorbing and as complex as a Bach prelude.

  I was spooning up a little sliver of the vanilla scoop, then a little sliver of the chocolate scoop, making it last on a humid day, with the rain ensuring the lineup will be short should I wish more. There was a girl about four years old, very dark-skinned with African features, and with a pair of red-ribboned pigtails. She was off in the distance to my right and was not keeping up with her parents because she insisted upon continuing her chat with a grey kitten rolling on its back on the rainy pavement. Her parents, who were behind me and to my left, halfway to the percussionist already, were stamping their feet and calling out, “Merédios, ¡vamos!, ¡vamos!” Finally Merédios said goodbye to the kitten and came running to her parents. But just as she passed me, for some reason she stopped, turned around, looked at me full in the face, then jumped up on my lap and gave me a big wet warm kiss on the lips. I was shocked and strangely pleased at the same time, while also a bit embarrassed, and thinking of the sad story of Perry King. So I didn’t want to look at the parents. But I could sense they were laughing. And then I started laughing, and then I looked at them, and sure enough they were laughing, and then the little girl had bounced off my lap and was running toward them. She was laughing too.

  —

  Las Bulerías, on Calle L in the shadow of the Hotel Havana Libre, is a basement pizza patio by day, with a large dining room inside, which is cleared to make way for disco parties after hours. There’s a bright yellow Cristal umbrella over my table, so I sit there in the sunken forecourt having a slice with a beer and watching people go by at an interesting angle in the gentle afternoon rain. I’m as thrilled as a cinematographer who has discovered the perfect angle. My eyes are about at knee level with the passing throngs, which would include skinny young handsome cops in brown or grey, some with batons, others with sidearms; the occasional garbage picker, operating with stealth in this tony area; bearded old men with friendly faces; and groups of fifteen-year-old girls in frilly long dresses, going to a birthday party.

  The word used to be jinatera. In a speech a decade ago Fidel claimed that the Cuban jinateras are the healthiest women on the planet. But jinatera appears to have fallen from favour. The word is now the subtler and more ambiguous chicas, or, equally available night and day but less noticeable in the crowd, the chicos. One very attractive blonde, about twenty-five, struck up a chat with me under the broad yellow Cristal umbrella. “Gummo,” she said, with the sincerest sigh she could dredge up, and placed a Chiclet on my tongue as if it were a sacramental wafer. “Gum,” I answered, glumly. This woman’s name was Aída. She had a gold chain around her neck with her name on it. She was studying Italian but had no use for English.

  It used to be easy to spot the jinateras from blocks away, because they were dressed colourfully, and with flair, with pretty dresses, and makeup, and coiffures. Now the borders are blurred, and all the women dress that way, even older ones, or strive to. There is no longer much of a line separating the chicas from the non-chicas. The jinateras had a wonderful sensuality infused with intelligence and humour, and nothing seemed to bother them. They were the only ones with smiles on their faces. And it was a leisurely sort of occupation. If you don’t wish to have sex, then let’s put some money in the jukebox and dance. Or let’s just have a beer and tell me stories about Canada.

  At first glance the chicas of today seem more professional, more mature. There are fewer Lolitas on the prowl. They can be aggressive as well, as in not wanting to take no for an answer. They don’t stand out so flagrantly. In fact, I’m beginning to think that behind every woman in today’s Cuba, even those as old as Melba or older, there lurks a laughing chica.

  —

  Melba is about fifty. She’s missing an upper incisor, which adds character to her sweet and happy smile, and to the giggling spirit of a slaphappy teenager at a sleepover. As soon as she hears that I have finished my shower and am returning to my room naked but for a large dark violet towel that I wear like a Dorothy Lamour sarong, she charges toward me with a book in her hand and, natch, a smile on her face. “Good morning,” she says in perfect English, although I suspect she had just learned the term while I was showering. “English!” I exclaim, with a manic smile. “You can speak English!” She laughs all the harder.

  I’m embarrassed by the rustiness of my Spanish. But not discouraged, for it occurs to me that my linguistic handicaps will allow my intuition to blossom, the same thought Che Guevara might have had in the last few weeks of his life, among the Bolivian Indians whose language he didn’t know. I shall see everything more clearly and understand the basics more easily, without a lot of fuzzy rhetoric and distracting philosophies getting in the way. I may not be all that clear on what people are saying, but I see all the more clearly what people are thinking and feeling. And if I should die, my instructions are to bury me in El Cementerio Gringo.

  If I had stopped to realize how badly my Spanish had deteriorated over the years, I’d have brushed up. But now that I’m already here, I refuse to be discouraged. It will make for a more interesting book. Could Herodotus speak Egyptian? Could Livingstone speak Swahili? Could Gertrude Stein speak French? Could Hemingway speak Italian? I bet Hemingway wasn’t all that fluent in Spanish either. And in Hemingway’s day, los cubanos almost all spoke excellent English.

  —

  The book Melba had in her hand when she gave me the brightest, cheeriest “Good morning!” of all time was a very passionate cheap Mexican historia about an escritora – a female writer who, it would appear, is continually falling into the arms of the wrong man. It’s Melba’s solemn duty to read these books so she can better advise Monica on the right step to take at any given time in the brave new world of computers (they don’t have one yet) and bombs in the street (not for quite a while now). Yes, Melba is always reading, or talking on the phone, or watching TV in the dark. Besides the soaps, she also likes programs featuring hot Cuban music and dancing, and her birds get very excited when she turns the volume up.

  In my room is a small Samsung fridge, which keeps my rum cold and my cigars fresh. The dark walnut wardrobe is very spacious and can be locked. The bed is part of a suite of five furnishings all from the same manufacturer – one bed, two night tables, a tall thin ovalshaped mirror, and a matching table below it for cosmetics. All these furnishings are made of wrought iron in very gracefully sensuous flowery swirls. It’s by far the best example of erotic wrought-iron work I’ve seen in bedroom furnishings. Mounted on the wall is some kind of greasy fuzzy old electronic device either designed to prevent power surges from damaging the Russian air conditioner adjacent to it in the w
indow, or maybe it’s a kind of burglar alarm. There is unfortunately no bed lamp, the only illumination being an overly bright fluorescent rod on the ceiling. There are figurines and doodads, knick-knacks and ceramic vases, curious whatnots and happy ceramic pigs with artificial flowers stuck in their backs, and there are also numerous little china dogs and sombreros with “Cuba” written on them – souvenirs from the Batista era possibly.

  The windows are innocent of the glazier’s art and open for every breeze. The Venetian blinds are thick wooden slats assembled like a stack of small horizontal cricket bats, with the ones in the bottom half of each window fixed in place for privacy.

  There are many excellent paintings hanging on Melba and Monica’s walls, but the best paintings are Melba’s. It’s a pity she didn’t put herself forward more vigorously way back in the days when painting was everything. But medicine called. Her work resembles the paintings of the Canadian Bill Bissett, more famous for the ultraphonetic spelling of his amazing and fun-to-read poetry. But Melba’s work lacks the pointillist element that is Bissett’s trademark. Both Melba and Bissett highlight the naked human form, but Bissett’s are straight ahead and deliberately simple, in brilliant primary dabs of colours, while Melba’s are much curvier, more elaborate, intricate, and with a subtler and smoother palette. In one of her canvases a naked female is in agony while naked satanic hobgoblins try to pin her down with evil intent. In another a golden Blakean figure emerges from the sun, and in repeated forms becomes less and less a figure of light and more a figure of flesh and earth. Muy metafisico, I said, for the sake of saying something beyond magnifico. Sí, sí, she said, with shining eyes. She hasn’t painted for decades, but she still looks at her work admiringly and loves to have guests notice it.

  —

  I managed to walk for miles without aggravating my blisters, but there was a stiff norther coming off the Straits of Florida and smacking against the Malecón with great explosions of foamy spray, then flooding over the road, so that a pedestrian can get sprayed from the waves hitting the seawall on one side and from automobile tires hitting the puddles on the other side.