The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  Our waterline went down by several centimetres as we stashed away seventy litres of long-life milk, enough powdered milk for a few hundred litres more, eighteen huge tubs of peanut butter (four of which completed the circumnavigation with us and returned to our pantry in Ottawa), twelve large jugs of pancake syrup, twenty kilos of potatoes, ten kilos of Florida oranges, hundreds and hundreds of cans of fruits, vegetables and meat, many kilos of dried beans and grains, and quite a few kilos of hidden chocolate. Some people are said to wonder how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. I was much much more pragmatic; I spent my time calculating how many bags of Hershey’s Kisses I could secretly stuff into my underwear drawer.

  We spent our last day at Fort Lauderdale, in a frenzy of activity that was strongly reminiscent of our final day before leaving Ottawa. With supper dishes cleaned up, everything put away, and leecloths prepared on all the beds to keep people in place in case of a rocky passage, we eased out of our dock and past the twinkling lights of the city. Our route would take us on a course parallel to the coastline, down the Florida Keys and then across the Straits of Florida to Cuba.

  Leaving the United States, we were all brimming with excitement. It felt as if our adventure had now truly begun.

  3

  The First Link in Our Chain

  Our two-day passage to Cuba began on a placid ocean unmarred by even the tiniest ripple. Soon the sun rose, and we found ourselves motoring along the south coast of Florida on a sweet and sunny morning, the tiny islands of the Florida Keys arrayed before us like a glistening string of pearls. Life was very good.

  We didn’t stop in the Keys, but continued on to the ninety-nautical-mile hop between Florida and Cuba, fearing a bit our entry into the often-rough Gulf Stream current, and the sometimes even rougher “Security Zone” that separated those sworn enemies of forty years, Cuba and the United States.

  No U.S. coastguard officers boarded us, but the sheets of lightning that illuminated the sky for most of the night-time passage between Key West and Havana provided an eerie entertainment that had Michael waking up full of apprehension that the next bolt might be meant for us. No such catastrophe struck, however, and we entered Cuban waters in a buoyant mood, thanks to a welcoming committee of at least fifty small dolphins and two flying fish that frolicked around us as we made our bouncing way out of the Gulf Stream and into harbour at Marina Hemingway, west of Havana.

  The process of clearing into Cuba was handled with incredible politeness and precision by a stream of officials who boarded our boat one after the other: a medical officer, two agriculture inspectors, two immigration officials, two customs officials, two coastguard officers, and two port officials bringing up the rear. Finally all the formalities were finished and we were free to explore before retiring to a good night’s sleep.

  Cuba can be a perplexing land, where the principles of Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution butt and strain against the more powerful forces of the free marketplace. We soon discovered its citizens were gregarious and friendly, passionate Cuban music was played on every corner, and there was, we felt, no better spontaneous dancing to be found anywhere. But as cruisers we were, perhaps, more aware of the paradoxes of Cuba’s distorted, dual economy than the regular tourist would be. Like ordinary Cubans, we had to invest hours each day hunting for everyday things that might or might not be available. The inconsistencies of the communist system and its unresponsiveness to the laws of supply and demand slapped us in the face everywhere we went.

  This reality hit us on our first day in Havana. While we were there sightseeing, we decided to grab an ordinary loaf of bread for the next day’s sandwiches. For miles we could see nothing that looked like a bread store, or indeed any store at all. Back at the marina, we spoke to some Dutch friends about our search. They, like us, had been on the hunt for bread, and told us that they had managed to find a small and sporadic supply in a nearby village. There was supposed to be some more available next morning at eight.

  I dispatched Herbert at seven-thirty next morning, but he came back empty handed — all he could find were a few bottles of beans, sad wrinkled apples for a dollar each, some scrawny frozen chickens, and highly dubious-looking “Spam”-type luncheon meat.

  The kids and I went for a bike ride to Jaimanitas, a small village near the marina. It was a shabby place that consisted of no industry that we could discern. The streets, mainly free of cars, as was most of Cuba, were lined with small ugly concrete bungalows with fenced front yards. At one corner we saw two large pigs dozing in the shade of a fenced-in lot. As the kids and I stopped to get a closer look, several friendly kids and a pretty young woman in her late twenties came over to get a closer look at us. We stood, smiling awkwardly at one another for a while before exchanging rudimentary phrases and compliments. The Cuban kids were friendly, but my three were pretty shy. Everyone made a big fuss over our blue eyes. I passed around cookies I had in our backpack, and before we knew it, Merita, the mother of two of the children, was escorting us to see the baby pigs in her backyard. Soon, various Cuban kids were riding our kids’ bikes up and down the street with big smiles.

  Merita was interested in the fact that we were staying at the marina. She had never seen it, even though it was almost around the corner. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t go there. It didn’t take me long to understand why. I realized the only women, other than foreigners, I had seen at the marina appeared in the evening and slowly walked around in pairs: young, beautiful, and dressed in tight, revealing clothes and stiletto heels. Merita touched the ragged shirt her thin young son, Alejandro, was wearing. It was more hole than shirt. Better to be poor, she said quietly, than to be one of those women.

  Our conversation was interrupted by a lovely young girl with long brown hair and almond eyes delivering half a dozen buns. This was Merita’s daughter, Jadi. My eyes lit up at the sight of the buns. Did she know where I could buy some? Not today, Merita answered, but if I came back tomorrow she would take me there. So a date was made and a friendship was born.

  I spent the next morning rummaging through Christopher’s over-stuffed clothing locker. I was haunted by the thought of the rags little Alejandro had been wearing and the sad but proud look in his mother’s eyes. Christopher had far too many changes of clothes, anyway, so I filled a plastic bag. The kids and I also selected a few small toys to give to their new friends.

  Our next visit was a great success. We got a tour of the local bakery, although there was still no bread to be bought. However, after seeing the open vat of bubbling, fermenting yeast liberally sprinkled with the bodies of numerous large flies, some still alive and struggling in the sticky mess, and others dead, looking like plump dark raisins in a pot of porridge, I didn’t much regret missing out. In fact, the experience was enough to cure me of trying to buy local bread ever again.

  We returned to Merita’s place, where we met many of her relatives. We chatted inside the front room as well as my limited Spanish would allow, and laughed to see chickens and dogs running freely around the sparsely furnished house. Merita was ecstatic about the clothing I had brought. I had included a dressy outfit I had purchased for myself in a thrift shop in Washington, and she held it in front of her as if it were Cinderella’s gown. She beamed with excitement and put her arms around me, exclaiming, “Now we are really amigas!” She also cast a sly glance at Jonathan, who was a year older than her daughter, and made it clear she considered the two of them a good match.

  Before I knew it, we had agreed to come back the next evening for a pork dinner. We all cringed a bit, wondering if the invitation would cost one of our piggy friends his life. We had a talk with the kids about it that night; I don’t think the children had ever really considered the price to be paid for our nightly dinner of meat.

  We had learned that in Cuba many people rarely get meat, eating one meal of stringy chicken perhaps once a month. Merita had, in fact, shown us an official booklet listing her family’s monthly allotment of staples such as beans,
flour, and cooking oil. Meat was not even on the list. They had been unable to get eggs for the past seven weeks, and neither of her children had ever tasted milk.

  We accepted their invitation, and after much discussion decided to bring along an electric hand mixer we didn’t need. The kids and I spent the afternoon baking the very best treat we could think of, Aunt Linda’s Excellent Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. If this poor Cuban family could serve us meat, then we could certainly part with some of our precious supply of chocolate chips.

  It was raining fiercely as we arrived. We were shown into the main room again, where many new family members awaited us, before Merita ushered us back outside. It was then that we realized we had been in her parents’ house all along. At the side of the house, near the pigsty, was a little door, and we followed Merita through it into a single room just big enough for a small wooden table, a double bed, and two bunk beds. Along a narrow corridor was a counter containing a sink and a single-burner propane camp stove. There was no fridge and no oven. This was Merita’s home.

  Merita’s husband, Francisco, was at work preparing the meal on the narrow counter. He was a handsome man of about thirty with a neat moustache and a friendly face. He was busy deep-frying something that smelled delicious but paused from his cooking to offer effusive thanks for our gift of the clothing.

  The two children — Jadi, the beautiful seven-year-old girl, and Alejandro, who was six – were finishing up eating with their fingers on the rickety little table, which seemed almost alive the way it squeaked and swayed from side to side. Both children were proudly wearing Christopher’s old clothes: Jadi in Christopher’s Batman pyjama top, her brother in another pair of Christopher’s pyjamas underneath a yellow pullover I had always liked.

  There were only three toys in the room: the small top, matchbox car, and prism we had given the children the day before. These three treasures were proudly displayed on a ledge next to the stove. Other than that, the room was absolutely bare. Both Herbert and I were taken aback. Our new friends were much, much poorer than we had thought.

  Once the children finished eating, Francisco moved the table over so that some of us could squeeze onto the bed and eat off the table. One of the children found an extra chair, then hung back shyly, watching us eat. Francisco cooked while Merita presented us with each dish.

  The first one turned out to be breaded, deep-fried plantains. It was delicious. It tasted something like French fries, and I said so.

  “Do you like French fries?” Merita’s husband asked, eagerly.

  “Oh yes,” I answered. Francisco said something rapid in Spanish I didn’t understand and one of the children scooted out the door.

  Next came the pork, beautifully prepared and very tasty. The family didn’t own knives or forks, and we all had a little trouble sawing through the meat with the side of our spoons, but the dish tasted wonderful. The pork was accompanied by a huge plate full of rice and beans as well as a dish of interesting little brown cubes that Michael particularly liked. These turned out, upon close inspection, to be fried pork fat. Although I didn’t mind the taste, I couldn’t bring myself to nibble at more than one.

  The food arrayed before me was far more than I could manage. I was already pondering how I could get out of eating it all without causing offence when I noticed our host appearing with some fresh potatoes in his hands. Suddenly I understood: I had said I liked French fries, and he planned to make me some! With much protestation, I finally convinced him we had plenty of food and there was no need to make more.

  There was no room for our hosts to sit at the table; indeed, moving from one side of the room to the other with all of us sitting there required an athletic vault over the bed. So as soon as our kids finished, they moved over on the bed to make room for our hosts to devour their own plates of food.

  We had a wonderful, warm, and happy evening. All our linguistic and cultural differences were somehow overcome. We were overwhelmed by this family’s hospitality, especially considering how little they had to share with us. Before we left, I brought out our gift of the mixer, hoping it would please them as much as had the bag of clothes. I had, however, seriously miscalculated. Merita had no idea what this thing was for, or how she would use it. As we attempted to explain it to her, I realized my mistake. Merita did not have an oven. She had no way to bake. She didn’t even own a mixing bowl. What good was a mixer to her?

  It seemed the only thing to do would be to reciprocate by inviting them over to eat with us the next night. As we were to discover, following through on our good intentions would not be as simple as we had thought.

  I didn’t want to dip into our provisions more than necessary, so through the services of the marina, at inflated prices, I ended up finding the ingredients for a simple spaghetti. The meat I found for the sauce was supposed to be beef, but strangely enough it never lost its vivid pink colour no matter how long I cooked it. What it was exactly, I am afraid to know. Nonetheless, I had a mammoth concoction of magenta-coloured meat sauce bubbling on all four burners of my propane stove by seven the next night, our guests’ anticipated arrival time.

  Suddenly it occurred to us that we ought to notify the security guard at the front gate of the marina that we were expecting guests. I jumped on a bike and raced out into the howling night, the wind blasting and cold. There had been a terrible storm, a near hurricane, a few days before, and the weather was still miserable. After a long discussion with the guard at the gate, and another one with his boss at the guard hut, I finally got everything cleared away for their arrival. Or so I thought.

  Seven o’clock came and went. By seven-forty-five we began to worry that there had been some misunderstanding.

  Finally, at ten to eight, I hopped back on the bike to see if for some reason our guests were at the marina gate. I was sure they wouldn’t have any problems getting in (“No es un problema,” the supervisor had assured me), but there I found Merita and Francisco, detained by this same, suddenly problematic, official. Merita was shivering violently, dressed only in the short-sleeved green velour dress I had given her two days before. She didn’t own a jacket. She cast me a look of immense relief as I sped towards them, my long hair whipping in the wind.

  It turned out that I needed the port captain’s authority to receive Cuban visitors. Why I wasn’t told this before, I have no idea. But luckily the port captain was in his office, so I pedalled off there at top speed.

  The captain, a proud moustachioed specimen of Cuban machismo, unleashed a torrent of rapid Spanish on me as I arrived. Most of this I met with a blank gaze, although the essentials were clear enough. With a little patience I’m sure we would have made our way through it, but he looked annoyed and promptly towed me over to a nearby Cuban boat owner who could serve as our translator.

  Cuba, despite its socialist ideals, remains a highly stratified society. Any Cuban wealthy enough to keep a motor yacht at chic Marina Hemingway was obviously very well connected and privileged. The imperious Cuban who emerged reluctantly from his sleek vessel to the impatient knocking of the port captain was certainly that.

  The captain rapidly explained the situation to the boat owner. I understood the gist of it very well, but stood in quiet submission as the boat owner condescendingly reiterated it to me: “When you are in Cuba, you have to abide by the laws of Cuba. You can’t just do whatever you want. You can’t just invite anybody you want into the marina. We are very careful about who we admit here.” Yes, very careful indeed, I thought, picturing the pairs of provocatively dressed young tarts strolling through the marina every night. I waited impatiently, thinking both of my freezing-cold guests and of my overcooked pots of pasta and pink meat sauce, trying not to interrupt his tirade. This boat owner was even more officious than the official.

  Finally I had a chance to open my mouth. “Fine,” I said. “I didn’t know that this permission was required. If I had known, I would have certainly applied for it. But what do we have to do to get the permission?”

&
nbsp; “Well, you have to start by talking to this man,” he replied patronizingly, stating the obvious.

  “That’s exactly what I am here to do,” I answered, trying to keep a sweet countenance. “How do I get the permission now? I’ve been working all day, and I spent a lot of money on the ingred– ”

  “This is not about money!” he interrupted indignantly. This has nothing to do with money! This is about acting according to the laws of the country!”

  “I’m sorry, you have misunderstood me,” I said with restraint. “I just meant to explain that we have invested a lot of time and money in preparing for our guests, and they are waiting right now for the meal which is burning on my stove. I don’t need the permission tomorrow. What do I have to do to get it now?”

  “Surely you knew such a permission was required,” he retorted crossly. “It’s the same everywhere.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I answered, annoyed I was getting drawn into this ridiculous argument. “I’m from Canada, and in Canada I have never had to ask permission to invite friends into our home.”

  With quivering indignation, the boat owner drew himself up to his full height of 5’8”. “Who do you think you are talking to?” he practically yelled at me. His moustache was vibrating. “I’m not some ignorant person. I have boats everywhere – Canada, the United States, Europe, and it is the same everywhere you go. In high-class compounds you always have to get permission.”

  “Well I’m sorry, I have never experienced this before,” I conceded, still trying not to escalate the confrontation. “But what do I have to do to get the permission now?”

  The two men exchanged a few words, and the port captain nodded.