An Innocent in Cuba Page 4
How can I stuff myself with expensive dinners when people everywhere are on extremely strict rations? I can’t and won’t. A family of four, so I’m told, must make do with two hundred grams of coffee a month, and even then it’s not the same coffee the tourist becomes so smugly and self-congratulatorially accustomed to. One hears that it gets cut with ground peas. Sometimes a tourist will be given ration-book coffee by mistake, and will soon be making highly vocal complaints, causing great sadness all around.
It’s true that rations are much less strict than a decade ago, but fatsos are still a rare sight in Cuba. Even the police are skinny as a fencepost. And the famous Castro brothers, Fidel and his brother Raúl, are looking a bit slimmer these days. According to the late Arthur Miller, in an excellent piece in the Observer on his visit to Cuba, Fidel seems to live on nothing but spring water and lettuce.
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The streets of Havana Vieja are thronged with tourists and are no longer grey and crumbling as they were in A.’s photos from ten years ago. It was to cry, and now it is to laugh. And maybe even to celebrate, cautiously. This is the anniversary of A.’s visit, and now her close friend has come to the island, armed with her memories.
There is a large congregation of English tourists standing in the lobby of the Hotel Ambos Mundos, with their luggage at their feet. They seem to be on their way home. Meanwhile a large congregation of French tourists has just arrived and is laying siege to the not-so-large dining room of the Hotel Valencia. My friend A. contracted a horrible bout of food poisoning in that very dining room, but that was then, this is now.
At the Ambos Mundos bar I order a strong gin and tonic, with Angostura bitters, no ice, no sugar, the way Hemingway liked it in Islands in the Stream. I take this symbolic drink up to the fifth floor to pay a visit to the room Hemingway usually stayed in, a small room but it’s in the corner, with a north window and an east window to help keep things light and breezy. On the wall is a framed handwritten page from the manuscript of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Instead of a period at the end of a sentence, Hemingway would put an x in a circle, a sign of a highly self-conscious personality, and perhaps a reference to his days at the Toronto Star, where he spent some time editing other people’s copy, using such symbols. There was also an alarmingly downward slope to his handwriting, but this might have been just on that one particular day. His handwriting was writ large and flowing, not in the cramped style of the scholar, but the pessimistic flow of a cynical big-game hunter. But still highly self-conscious.
The room is decorated with numerous photos of Hemingway, including one of him whispering something in the ear of young Fidel, the one and only time they met. The always magical Fidel was supposed to judge the fishing contest that day, but he somehow ended up catching the biggest fish, outdoing even old Papa. There were excellent photos taken of Papa and Fidel, one showing Fidel burdened down with a vast number of fishing trophies. In each photo they seem to be the same height – though Papa was said to have been six-foot-even, and Fidel six-foot-three. Someone’s lying. They looked happy together. They obviously clicked.
On the same floor is the private office of a uniformed doorman who is trying to sell me a box of Cohibas for $70. I promise to be back on March 17 and make the purchase just before flying home. He puts on a very disappointed face, and is unable to believe that I’ll show up on the date in question.
—
Someone tells me Cuban scientists have developed a new anti-cholesterol drug called PPG. It is also called Policosanol. Fidel is said to swear by it. It was developed in Cuba a decade ago with chemicals derived from sugar cane, and it is rumoured to have Viagra-like side effects – no extra charge for this extra charge, as Lady Sekhmet, Sacred Artist of the Internet, would say. Not to be believed at all, but the word around town is that Fidel doubles his dosage on nights when his girlfriend is visiting.
So, just as an experiment, I went into the handsome old farmacía on Calle Obispo and with no questions asked was given a three months’ supply of PPG for a mere $25. I popped a tablet in my mouth on the way out of the pharmacy. This was all very innocent.
But an hour later, I was being guided by a beautiful woman named Mimi on a tour of a certain interesting old government building. She was definitely not young, but she had the deepest, darkest, keenest eyes, as she led me through the ancient rooms of this magnificent building. She was a very respectable black woman with somewhat Indian features, and I was rather stunned by the intensity of my reaction to her. I was smitten and she knew it. I have no idea if it was the PPG or the woman herself. Perhaps a combination. It was insane. I wanted to smother her with kisses. It was like being back in high school. It wasn’t all that one-sided either, for there was a certain electricity emanating from her lovely self.
Ahem! She cautioned me that she had been on this job twenty years and it was imperative that we don’t get carried away. We were alone in the seldom-visited recesses of the old building, but she was a Cuban government worker and I was a single male tourist. She did not wish to be caught in any kind of embarrassing position. It could be dangerous for her. Spies were everywhere. Who knows what hidden cameras there were in this building, which I am being careful not to identify. She could be accused, if only by certain of her more puritanical co-workers, of trying to romance foreigners in order to get out of Cuba, or otherwise personally enrich herself. She could lose her job, or be transferred to a job she didn’t like in a part of town that wasn’t to her taste.
At any rate she did agree to meet me tomorrow evening after work. And she introduced me to a fellow employee, a woman who understood these situations. She confirmed Mimi was wise to be cautious. I really didn’t think all this had anything to do with the PPG, but not only will I be there tomorrow evening, I’ll be popping in earlier to make sure she’s not going to chicken out. And yes, like most Cuban women her age, she has been long divorced.
Perhaps I should be ashamed of my behaviour with Mimi. But it didn’t bother her at all. What I am truly ashamed of happened a bit later when I was strolling along the treelined Prado. A young fellow with two stumps for legs wheeled his ancient wheelchair after me and said something about my long-visored red Team Canada baseball cap. I thought he wanted it and I said no. But he kept on smiling, and he said he just wanted to see what it said. Churlishly I turned to him so he could see it, then continued walking without any sign of friendliness. Now I feel very badly about that and if I see him tomorrow on the Prado, or anywhere, I will give him the hat. How shameful to be caught in one’s own shadow like that. Any Habanero with stumps for legs on the Prado should be wearing a Team Canada cap, or any cap he wants, especially one with such a lengthy beak.
—
In Havana, at any given moment, a mood will sweep the city, a sort of psychic drift, and it will settle on an entire neighbourhood and drive all the other moods away. Tonight everything is quiet. No music, no hollering, no loud noises. Everyone is being pleasantly quiet, sitting on hard chairs tilted back a bit, smoking cigars, whispering, smiling at some old memory. Today was a good day and in the silence of the night I feel a beam of happiness from a distant star. Maybe I’m in love. But if Mimi doesn’t show up for our date I promise not to fall to pieces. I will just be normal. I am too old for broken hearts. Thank God I’m all grown up! And why did it take so long?
DAY FOUR
THE GREAT FASCIST
Tuesday, February 17, 2004. It’s 6:40 a.m. In my dream I had come to Cuba to manage the construction of a series of windmills for power generation. But something went askew, and the windmills turned the wrong way: instead of generating electrical power they were degenerating it, draining Cuba of power and sending it to other countries, although I was the only one who seemed to realize it. So I became very annoyed, made a big fuss, and blamed the whole thing on Fidel. On the front page of Granma (dream edition) was an editorial stating that I, an unnoted non-expert on just about everything, had the audacity to state publicly that windmills were an unreliable sourc
e of electric power. So it was embarrassing, a bad review and I haven’t even written the book yet.
What woke me up was the thunderous screech and roar of a caravan of fifty huge trucks carrying heavy loads through narrow streets in first gear. The great trucks were inching their way through the neighbourhood, in a gear-grinding, ear-splitting manner, one big fat overloaded, underpowered lorry after another, so loud the hens had to strain like mad to hear the roosters crowing.
After what seemed like two hours but was probably only about one and a half, the roar of the last truck began to fade and the cocks resumed their crowing, the dogs barking, and the scooters a kind of whining and wailing not unlike a chainsaw at full throttle.
It’s odd that Cubans aren’t bothered by noise. Theirs is an unmufflered culture of spontaneity and they make noise whenever they feel like it, and they expect others to do the same, and nobody even notices the noise except the occasional irritable tourist. Noise, señor? What noise?
—
It was such a pleasure to see twenty kids playing football on the excellent marble surface of the Prado. Arribe! Arribe! they cried like excited exotic birds, hoping to get their hands on the ball, and the smaller the kid the louder the cry. As I walked by I glanced away from the game for a moment and just then the ball smashed into my shoulder. The kids went into freeze-frame mode, but when they saw the old man wasn’t hurt they relaxed.
There’s a billboard with a picture of Fidel saying, A better world is possible. I imagine Fidel motoring by, shaking his head and saying to his driver, “I don’t remember saying that. Sounds more like Che.”
“It’d be a better world already,” says the driver, “if we weren’t behind a billion dollars in oil payments to Venezuela.”
“Just drive, okay?”
—
My blisters have hardened over without breaking. But last night I stumbled badly on a dark street and my big left toe has a deep nasty cut that has become infected. What an angry-looking toe that is. I shall look away. I shall call it my dedo doloroso (sore finger) rather than the more cumbersome dedo del pie doloroso (sore toe), and there are two red lines running out from it, like the forked tongue of a rattlesnake, as if trying to reach up my leg and bite into my heart, before the toe turns gangrenous and falls off.
—
The modernistic Museo Naçional de Bellas Artes (built in 1954 and recently reopened after a five-year spell of renovation and reorganization) is fairly crowded today, while ten years ago there was nobody, and my friend A. had the whole place to herself for the entire afternoon. The little bookstore where she bought some little books has since been incorporated into a much larger bookstore at the other Museo Naçional de Bellas Artes. There was only one then, but there are two now, with the one big collection having been divided into the International Collection and the Cuban Collection, with the international having been moved to another location, which I promise to visit and report on at a later date.
The most astonishing piece in the Cuban collection is The Great Fascist by Rafael Zarza. It shows a bull dressed up like a man, but with great long horns. Blood drips from his mouth. One can see this ugly figure as Mussolini, but there’s more than a hint of Fidel in his stance, and Fidel’s well-known air of meditative thoughtfulness is well captured, so much at odds with the blood, and the sense of fury and fear. The bull is standing on a balcony, with his right hoof in his jacket pocket, and his left hoof emphasizing some point he’s making as he holds forth to the crowd below, a crowd of cattle of course, rather hysterical looking, each one trying to find a way out of this stockyard before it’s too late.
Fidel is hardly a fascist, but this large painting was painted in 1973, still a bad time for the homosexuals of Cuba, and to many he must have seemed like a fascist. Zarza is apparently still alive at sixty, still living and working in Cuba, and he travels out of the country from time to time. He was in Nigeria last year, and has had solo exhibitions in Caracas, Damascus, and many in Cuba. His work is represented in the national galleries of Germany, Finland, Venezuela, and Spain, and he’s been involved in group exhibitions in Uruguay, Mexico, Scotland, the Czech Republic, the United States, Slovenia, Puerto Rico, Egypt, and Finland. So he has definitely not been blacklisted for the audacity of calling Fidel a bloody fascist. Other works in the gallery are similarly aimed at Fidel in terms as critical, but not as obviously so.
What Fidel thinks of this painting I haven’t heard. He’d have seen it as essentially a pro-Revolutionary work, I imagine, critical as can be but in a supportive way, and he would certainly admire Zarza’s courage. It’s likely El Beardo took one look at it, saw a bit of himself in it, shuddered, and vowed to be as unlike that in the future as possible.
Another painting shows a woman, with one arm recently amputated, her left, and not healed yet, sitting calmly on a grey bull and wearing a simple black dress. Another, more colourful and joyful, called La Virgen del Melón (1973), shows a big slice of watermelon floating in the sky and a Cuban Virgin Mary ascending to heaven with the sexiest smile on her face, and the shortest skirt imaginable, and a yellow robe. She’s floating above the watermelon and there are two little angels assisting her by holding up her skirt even higher. On the ground there are many people, some looking up, some not noticing anything odd, some merely noticing the melon, others seeing beyond the melon to the virgin. Also on the ground are several barnyard animals, a dinosaur, and some palm trees. As in all truly great art, every stroke is pregnant with meaning. And as for the painter, whose name I have misplaced, you can tell he has a lusty appetite for watermelon.
Mariano was getting more information out of me than I was out of him. I kept asking this museum guide questions about the paintings and he kept asking questions about me and why I was asking such questions. I told him I didn’t think I’d ever seen such an interesting collection of politically committed art, full of the subtlest ambiguities and ironies within ironies. For instance, there was one painting of a bouquet of flowers, in a very undistinguished amateurish style. But it redeemed itself with a banner bearing a Fidel quotation, “Art Too Is an Arm of the Struggle.” Mariano agreed when I took it to mean that Fidel’s quotation overshoots the mark, and maybe the artist was making fun of Fidel, accusing him of being superficial, and asking him how this painting of a bouquet of flowers can possibly be an arm of the struggle. Mariano said maybe too the bouquet can be an arm of the struggle if a naive tourist is deceived into buying a work of such banality with foreign currency. He also thought that the word “struggle” might be taken to mean struggle of a personal rather than Revolutionary nature.
There was an excellent action painting of a blond white American boxer with blood gushing from his nose getting knocked out by a tall handsome proud unscathed Afro-Cuban boxer. Mariano confessed he didn’t like the work because that’s not what things are really like. With Cuba and the United States, it’s not a matter of a boxing match, it’s not one system against the other, it’s just two entirely different systems, and there’s no need for them to fight, there’s no need for one to prevail over the other, there is no reason for them to have any hostilities at all. I agreed, but he didn’t quite understand my suggestion that this particular pugilistic painting was really about Cuban art versus U.S. art, rather than the Cuban system versus the U.S. system, and Cuban art winning out, which it really truly does if the wonderful collection in this museum is any example. He might have thought I didn’t appreciate the ideal virtues of peaceful coexistence. But it does seem odd in retrospect that he took it to refer to politics and I took it to represent art. Nobody for a moment would think it was just a boxing match. Except, maybe, the artist.
Also, he might have been faking it, but he expressed great astonishment when I confessed that in Canada one very seldom any more sees any political engagement in the work of painters or poets. Well why not? Canada is a democratic country, he exclaimed. You have freedom to express yourself any way you want.
Was that a smirk on his face? I said pol
itical artists in Canada are just not taken seriously. Their canvases are piling up in their studios unsold. Nobody’s interested. People who would have been excited about this work twenty years ago now get all the political art they need from the editorial cartoons in their favourite daily, and all the political poetry they need on the op-ed page. But then again artists who remain apolitical are losing their audience as well.
It’s always a good time for art in Cuba. But there is also a sort of marketplace censorship here. It’s the pretty pictures that the tourists buy, not the ones with political content; in other words, the political stuff is not to be taken seriously, except by the Cubans themselves. The pretty pictures are the new avant garde, more so if they are inventively pretty, with old cars in them, and other allusions to this lovely island, but not too inventive so that they could be confused with the political. It was a sadly inconclusive little chat. It left me feeling a bit debilitated. Things were beyond my capacity to deal with today. There’s a horrible paralysis in the arts. Everybody’s just hanging on to everybody else, but nobody wants to be hung on to.
Mariano is not an artist, not a painter, not a poet, but he reads a lot of poetry, and has tried his hand at poetry – in dealing with personal problems mostly. But he wouldn’t call himself a poet until he had broken through into something beyond that. He is a fastidious little guy in a neat uniform of maroon jacket and white shirt, a dark narrow intelligent face with a long nose, and an aura of Revolutionary certainty about him.
—
Later I spent a couple of hours walking around the nighttime streets of Havana Vieja. Fidel’s remark about art being an arm of the struggle struck me again and again as I wandered past one artist’s studio after another, with painters actually inside each studio slaving over a hot easel, and the walls festooned with paintings bright and beautiful, with hypnotic colours, and unusual angles and twists. But these are mostly pleasant works for the tourist market, skilled souvenir paintings of little subtlety, with the more serious works shoved to one side, and often there will be one single solitary painting, with a biting political reference or two, or some oddly interesting metaphysical conceit, on the wall among a dozen touristy paintings, and the artist obviously is hoping that someone, anyone, will notice.