“Yes, Manuel?”
“I don’t want you to think I’ve been trying to hide anything from you. I, too, have been in prison. For political crimes. After el triunfo de la revolución, I didn’t agree with the way things were going. I aided some counterrevolutionaries and I was put in jail for nine years. My conviction is here if you would like to read it . . .”
Manuel returns with his conviction on a silver tray.
Manuel, too, says el triunfo de la revolución.
SOCIALISMO O MUERTE (Socialism or death), reads the sign in six-foot-high letters supported by scaffolding over the entrance to a tunnel under the Almendares River.
You see it, you see it, you see it as you drive toward the tunnel, and then you have darkness, as if you have picked death.
I. 20
We visit a complex of stores for tourists in a newly restored palacio just off the Malecón. Tourist buses are parked outside it. We have heard the best store for Che T-shirts is here. Some friends want them.
There are Che T-shirts, there are Camilo Cienfuegos T-shirts, there are Tropicola T-shirts, there are fringed T-shirts with sleepy-eyed, unrecognizable cartoon characters on them, saying things that you don’t understand if they are written in Spanish or that don’t make any sense if they are written in English. There are T-shirts with naked women on them, or parts of naked women, saying, “Yo ♥ Cuba.”
There is a store selling tapes and CDs; there is a store selling beer, rum, soft drinks, film, and suntan lotion. There is a store selling jewelry, and a store selling leather items. There is a store selling refrigerator magnets of the cathedral and the Hotel Nacional, highly lacquered wooden key holders, rum pourers, cigar holders, and even ashtrays with images of Che and the words HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE burned into them with soldering irons. An image of Che’s face is in the bottom of each ashtray, so that cigarettes will be stubbed out on his face. There are papier-mâché images of fish, clowns, butterflies, and alligators and of black rumberas in long, flouncy dresses with head kerchiefs, with huge behinds and huge lips, smoking cigars. There are African-style masks and statues, macramé bracelets, a $120 Black & Decker sandwich maker, an $85 blender, a $75 crushed-ice maker, a $40 toilet paper holder, playing cards, beaded necklaces . . .
Nick and I stop at the last few items on display. The pink plastic toilet paper holder is out of its box, with the mounting screws taped onto the back of it with yellowed Scotch tape. The Black & Decker sandwich-maker box is crushed and worn on the edges but looks unused.
We are the only people in the store. Nick says, “Buenos días,” to the saleswoman behind the counter.
“Buenos días,” she says.
“This is a very nice store.”
“Thank you.”
“There are nice things in the store.”
“Yes, there are very nice things in this store.”
There is silence. We’ve got time on our hands, so Nick says after a while, “This is a store for tourists, isn’t it?”
“Yes, for tourists.”
“We’re intrigued by the sandwich maker.”
“Intrigued?”
“Is it for tourists?”
“Sí, claro.”
“It’s for tourists to buy for themselves?”
“Certainly.”
“A tourist comes in here and says to himself, ‘I’m just going to pick up a little one-hundred-twenty-dollar, one-hundred-ten-volt sandwich maker to take back to Düsseldorf to remember Cuba by’?”
She laughs. “Why not? It’s something original, isn’t it?”
I. 21
Our container has arrived after two months, and our three days of unpacking are attended by an expert from Bienes Culturales and a veterinarian. We serve them coffee, lunch, more coffee, and Tropicola as they wander for eight hours a day among boxes and growing mountains of Bubble Wrap and newspaper.
The expert from Bienes Culturales is looking for Cuban national treasures.
“Cuban national treasures coming back to Cuba from Southeast Asia?”
“Eso es.” Cuban national treasures, the expert tells me conspiratorially, have been known to come back to Cuba from all over the world.
The veterinarian is on the lookout for canned meat.
I tell the veterinarian the family doesn’t like canned meat. Canned meat has preservatives—carcinogens—in it.
The veterinarian tells me she just has to make sure there isn’t any in our shipment.
The Bienes Culturales expert, Betina, hands me her card and, winking, tells me to be sure to ask for her when we move out.
TWO MEN FROM THE central bank come to make a note of all the jewelry and silver we are bringing into the country. We spread it out on the dining table, silver on one end and jewelry on the other. The list of silver and jewelry we have brought in will be checked, before we leave in a few years’ time, against a list of the silver and jewelry we will be taking out of the country.
One man is in his sixties, and the other man is in his thirties. We offer them coffee and Coca-Cola. The older man describes the pieces and measures them while the younger man writes.
“How do you like it here in Cuba?” the older man asks me.
“It is a beautiful country.”
“Are you from X—— as well?”
“No, I am from the United States.”
“The United States?”
“Yes.”
“Hm . . .” He turns over a silver dish. “Does Cuba remind you of the United States? The look of it, I mean. This is what some North Americans tell me . . .”
“Nature is different, and I have only seen Havana, but I am struck by similarities in the urban landscape every day. The design of so many of the houses, the way the streets are laid out, the stores. Americans will be fascinated by this place when they finally do come here. It will remind people my age of the way streets and stores looked in their childhoods. It reminds me of my childhood. The Woolworth’s. The coffee shops. I even saw a piece of a Montgomery Ward sign the other day.”
“El sea me encantó . . .”
“Sorry?” I don’t know what el sea is, but he liked it, or literally was enchanted by it.
“El . . . ¿como se dice in inglés? El Sea-errs me encantó, con su catálogo.”
“Oh, Sears Roebuck.”
“Eso es.” He turns to the young man. “If they didn’t have it in the store, you could order it from the catalog and it would get here in a few days. I’m telling you, it was like that.” He turns to me: “Y me encantaron las revistas, getting them from the United States. El National Geographic. Qué revista tan interesante, tan hermosa” (“And I loved the magazines . . . What an interesting and beautiful magazine”).
I wait for him to say something else. His eyes mist.
“The National Geographic is still there, and it is exactly the same,” I say heartily. “The format hasn’t changed. Water?”
“Sí, por favor.” He picks up another piece of silver, stares at it. He slaps the young man’s arm, clearing his throat. “Vamos. A la pincha, chico” (“Let’s get back to work, kid”).
I. 22
We finally start Spanish lessons. The director of our children’s school has found someone for us, Olga. Olga wears a peasant blouse and a dirndl skirt. She will teach the children first, then Muna, then Nick and me, one hour for each group, two days a week. We tell her the children take Spanish in school, but we want them to have extra Spanish, at home. We say that it should be playful, to hold their interest.
We assess, together with her, what we need to work on. She nods, taking notes.
“But no ideology,” Nick says.
“Of course not,” Olga says, flushing.
“It was the blouse,” Nick says to me later.
I. 23
It is late April but not terribly hot today. We put the children’s bicycles, which arrived in the container, in the back of the Land Cruiser and take them to one of the large, shady squares we have driven by in Miramar. There are bus
ts of Cuban poets in the square. It is shaded with giant ficus trees, and there is a small bandstand in the middle of it.
Thea and Jimmie get on their bikes and start riding enthusiastically. Nick and I walk in the shade of the ficus trees. The cement paths are pulverized in many places, and there are small trash heaps, some of which are smoldering, but they are far enough off the paths. Thea rides ahead of Jimmie until we cannot see her anymore. We climb steps to the bandstand. We see Thea at one side of the square. She has stopped her bike and is waiting for Jimmie. We also see a group of boys, about eight of them, between the ages of ten and fourteen, moving toward Thea and her bike, stopping behind bushes on the way, and looking at Jimmie’s bike at the same time.
“Hijos de puta!” (“Sons of a whore!”) Nick yells in the loudest voice possible. The boys scatter. Thea and Jimmie, their mouths agape, watch the boys scattering. Then, in a loud but casual voice, Nick calls to Thea and Jimmie, “Hey kids, ride back to us. Let’s see how fast you can do it, come on . . .”
I. 24
When Nick comes home for lunch, and then later, at dinner, after the children are in bed, we search each other’s eyes, looking for scraps of information—rumors, secrets, speculations, anecdotes—to use as indicators of how much longer things will go on this way, to give some significance to our being here, to make us feel that we are in an unfolding drama instead of a dull slog.
“Muhammad Ali will be coming here . . .”
“Fidel kept his hand behind his back during the meeting. There’s a rumor that he has Parkinson’s . . .”
“Elizardo Sanchez”—a Cuban dissident—“was arrested, and while he was being taken away, a group of people outside his house sang the Cuban national anthem . . .”
“There were only half as many vendors in the agro today . . .”
“M. says Raúl Castro is called La China because he is supposed to be gay and his real father was the family’s Chinese cook. He does look entirely different from Fidel and Ramón . . .”
“There was white spittle in the corners of Fidel’s mouth when he spoke. R. says a doctor told her Parkinson’s medication can cause that . . .”
“A group of Republican senators’ aides will be visiting . . .”
“Cooking oil will no longer be subsidized . . .”
“A Spanish priest was expelled . . .”
“A vice president was caught with ten thousand dollars cash in his home . . .”
MIGUEL ASKS US IF he can take tomorrow off. His wife has to have an operation, to remove a benign cyst on her femur. She has asthma, and so it has been hard to find the right moment for the operation, but she hasn’t had any asthma attacks lately, so the doctor wants to operate on her tomorrow.
I. 25
We spend the first night of our first overnight trip outside of Havana since arriving five months ago at Hotel Rancho Faro Luna, which is just outside of Cienfuegos. The trip is a combination of business and pleasure. Hotel Rancho Faro Luna is modest, but clean and recently renovated. We take a swim in the sea with a teenage girl who is a relative of the hotel’s director. I have the sensation of being stung in the water, but Nick says he doesn’t feel anything. The girl pulls her hand out of the water. She has raised welts like mosquito bites on her forearm. “Microorganisms,” she says, “they come in the spring.” I have itching, raised welts on my skin, too. She tells us it’s called agua mala (bad water).
We leave the children with Muna, who will take them to have dinner in the dining room of Hotel Rancho Faro Luna.
We have been invited to dinner by a member of the local nomenklatura (a Soviet word meaning “Communist leadership”). His house is modest, but very clean. Our host, a short, stout, clean-cut man, yells heartily to us in Spanish. I do not understand most of it. We are served snapper, shrimp, and lobster, grilled, fried, in enchilado sauce (a moderately spicy tomato sauce), and flambéed. The lights are dimmed when the flambéed shrimp comes out, glowing with a blue flame. We have two mojitos each and move on to beer. Our host wants to give us each another mojito, but we say we’d better not. He keeps yelling. Nick eggs him on. They are all laughing, so I start laughing, too. “Qué simpático es este señor,” our host says, about Nick. Ladisel, our guide on the trip, and Flora, his wife, smile timidly. We are also served yucca con mojo (a root vegetable similar to a potato, with a garlic sauce), a salad of avocado, cucumber, and tomato, and a dessert of cáscara de toronja (pressed grapefruit rind in syrup) with cream cheese, followed by coffee and ron añejo (rum aged over seven years). The rum is like hot silk. Nick is offered Cohibas, which are the finest Cuban cigars and sell for four hundred dollars a box.
We roll back to the Hotel Rancho Faro Luna, feeling like we need wheelbarrows under our stomachs. Nick puts a hand on the small of my back to push me up the stairs.
We stand on the balcony of our hotel room. A nearly full moon is rising out of the sea. First it is orange, and then it becomes white. It shines on the sea and on our very full stomachs, which protrude over the aluminum railing and over the sea below like the prows of pirate ships. The children snore in the next room. We burp. We have done nothing we approve of, but still, we are happy.
I. 26
Standing inside the unfinished nuclear reactor outside of Cienfuegos (which has sat three-quarters complete since the Russians pulled out) is like standing inside a dark, nearly dried-out navel orange, cracked open.
The reactor is explained very rapidly to Nick in Spanish. We walk on catwalks over rods that stick up, and I remember what I can of Chernobyl and make a note to ask Nick later: were those the rods? Water drips and I make a note: was that the water?Flojos (literally, “loose guys”—thin guys with bad posture who pretend to work but just lounge around) hover in the shadows. Everything is covered with grease to keep it from rusting, but it’s still like a dried-out navel orange.
Nick’s firm has told him not to touch the nuclear issue, but we have to be polite.
“It will make a wonderful discotheque,” Nick says to Ladisel, Flora, and the head of the suspended works. “Put a Plexiglas floor over this whole level.” Nick indicates the level we are standing on. “Light the rods up from below.”
Ladisel, Flora, and the head of the suspended works laugh uneasily.
I. 27
Driving from Cienfuegos to Varadero (this is our reward for having visited the reactor) on the second leg of our trip, we pass through a citrus-growing region. It is neither cold nor hot, and the smell of the orange blossoms blows in through the open windows of the van. The children put their noses at the edge of the window and start breathing and breathing with little moans of delight, like they do when they eat guava ice cream. Jimmie says, “There’s perfume all around, Mommy,” and I feel like swooning and jumping out of my skin, all at once; it’s the same pleasantly panicky feeling I get sometimes at dusk on our back patio.
Flora is telling me that the hardest thing to find right now is clothes.
Flora and I have gotten to the point of talking about how things are—materially—for her family. It takes longer, usually, to get to this point with a Cuban official, or a Cuban official’s wife, but we’ve had nearly two solid days together. Some will never say that they lack for anything, or if you mention material hardship, they will launch right into education and health care, as if no other country in the world offered free education and health care.
“Food, we have,” Flora says. “It’s a bit boring because it’s always the same thing—rice, beans, rice, beans, sometimes chicken or meat—but there are practically no clothes or shoes.”
Flora is wearing a shirtwaist of flowered cloth. It looks brand-new.
“That’s a nice dress.”
“This cloth was given to me by a friend who traveled to Spain. It’s the only way.”
We drive over a rise, and a thick black plume of smoke appears. It is an affront in the middle of the orange groves. The smoke is not behaving in the same way as other paleoindustrial smoke we have seen in Cuba, though. It is in
termittent but regular, and it is coming toward us. I am trying to think of what it could be or where I have seen smoke like it before, when suddenly, a huge black . . . thing appears in an alley between the orange trees. I feel my hand go up to my throat and my mouth drop open. “Look!” we yell to the children.
It’s got a bulbous burner, a gaping funnel, a cowcatcher, a big number on the side, arms pushing the wheels round and round, and an engineer hanging out the side, and it’s pulling ten railroad cars on a track I haven’t noticed before. It’s huge, it’s magnificent, and it’s every cowboy movie I’ve ever seen and every American history book, and it’s in front of us in the bright light of the middle of the day, in the middle of an orange grove in Cuba, just as casual as you please.
“Does it burn wood? Does it burn wood?” we ask Ladisel. We are practically bouncing up and down on our seats.
“Wood. And also sugarcane fibers.”
“Fantastic!” Nick says.
Ladisel smiles.
The engine is gliding majestically in front of us now, metal screeching against metal, an operatic aria out of the Industrial Revolution, and I want to remember everything about it, forever. It is matte black, there is not a spot of rust on it, the number 1 is painted on the side of the engine with nineteenth-century flourishes, and the smoke and soot (of the kind Grandma used to make, with cinders in it) is blowing back on the soot black railroad cars.
There’s paleoindustry, and then there’s paleoindustry.
“It’s like something out of a museum!” I yell over the noise.
Ladisel’s smile turns sheepish and he gets the beat-up, hollow-chested, chain-smoking look that some Cuban officials have. “It’s just for freight, you know,” he says. “Passenger trains are more modern.”
“My wife’s never seen one,” Nick says, “but in X—— we had them up until a few years ago. I used to ride them when I was a little boy.”
Cuba Diaries Page 5
