by Pico Iyer
“If Martí were here now …”
“Ja,” said Ilse. “He was a man who did everything, no? Like Ho Chi Minh. And he was in prison, no? All the great ones are in prison: Gandhi, Mandela, Fidel too.”
“Me too,” said José. “I was in Combinado four years. Sometimes there was no light. Sometimes I was alone. Three times I tried to kill myself.”
There was a difficult silence.
“And you know what Martí said about America,” José went on. “ ‘At last I live in a country where each man seems to be his own master.’ ”
“Ja, but he also says, ‘I have lived inside the monster, and—’ ”
“Sure,” said José. “But look at Fidel! Even Fidel loves America! You know he took his honeymoon in New York? You know when he was a student, he sent a letter to Roosevelt and asked him for a ten-dollar bill? You know he ate hot dogs in Yankee Stadium?”
“You do not know this,” said Anna. “You have never been outside. You do not know how lucky you are. You do not know what the world is. You have hopes here, ideals.”
“Hopes for what? For it to end?”
“No. You have this faith. This sharing: every person helping every other person. Like members of the same collective. Like a kibbutz.”
“Sure. Like a family. For thirty years, we are Children of the Revolution, children of a father who says that children must be quiet and must sleep without food and must be told what to do every minute of our lives. For thirty years, he’s telling us not to pray before our meals, and not to go to other countries, and how we must never forget our obligation to our parents, and how we must give our lives for our family. For thirty years, we hear him say, ‘You are too young to think for yourself. You must wait. You must wait.’ If this is a family, Combinado is a family.”
“You cannot believe that?”
“I can believe it. I do believe it. In Cuba, you have to believe everything.” José was calming down now, he was getting quiet. “In Cuba, you believe everything or you believe nothing. Because everything is crazy. More divorces than weddings. More deaths than births. This guy’s in prison, but that guy’s in Miami. Nothing makes sense in Cuba.”
“So you don’t believe Fidel?”
“Sure I do. Sometimes I think Fidel is the most intelligent man in the world.”
“No!”
“Sure. Who else could make such propaganda for the yanquis? Who else could make all this country want to go to Miami and buy a Cadillac and listen to Madonna?”
“Yes,” I said, unable to hold back. “But who else could help him the way the U.S. government has? They’re his best ally—trying to put bombs in his cigars, invading Girón and Grenada, so he can always tell the people that all the problems are because of the embargo and he’s standing up against Goliath. The two are a perfect league of thieves. Partners in crime.”
José chuckled.
“They deserve one another, like a snake and its poison. Fidel can’t live without an important enemy. The U.S. can’t live without a military threat. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”
The girls were looking uncomfortable now. “So what do you do if you hate everything here?” Anna asked.
“Get drunk,” said José. “Make love. Make music. We are like animals here. Sex and rum and sleep are the only things that are not in the ration book.”
“So you want to live like Americans? Gangs. Drugs. People on the street. Bodies everywhere. A police state.”
“I want to live like humans.”
“Okay,” said Anna. “Thank you for the coffee. We must go.”
“Thank you,” said Ilse, smiling all around, and the two of them let themselves out.
“Too bad,” I said.
“Is okay. Some are like that. They want to live here for two years. But after two weeks, they want to leave.”
“But if you feel that way about the situation, why don’t you act on it?”
“I do. Eleven years now, I am trying to leave.”
“Why not do something more? About Fidel?”
“And what then? Look at his friends—Ochoa, Raúl, the rest: first-class bastards. They are worse than him—they have only beards, no brains. Only guns, no ideas. And the imperialists in Miami? Forget it!”
“So better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know?”
“Sure. Better we wait. Better we do nothing. Most people here, they know only the Revolution. Maybe the other ways are worse. So we wait. Keep quiet. Find a girl. Make business.”
He cleaned up the coffee cups.
“I give her a seven,” said Ignacio.
“Anna?”
“No. Use!”
“And Anna?”
“Four.”
“You know what they say?” José said. “When you turn out the light, a blonde looks like the sheet: you can’t see her in the dark. A black girl looks like the darkness: you can’t see her too. But a mulatta—ah, a mulatta shines and shines in the dark, like a jewel.”
“Okay, Carlos,” said Ignacio, laughing. “I go now.”
“Okay. Luego.”
“ ‘Carlos’?” I said when Ignacio had left.
“Sure,” said José. “Is better. More secure. I have many different names. So if someone is saying, ‘What is this José doing?’ I can say, ‘José? I don’t know him. Who is he?’ And if someone is looking for Carlos, I can say, ‘Who is Carlos?’ Is better like this. In Cuba, you must be many people. But these stranger girls, they don’t know. I tell you about the library woman?”
“No.”
“Last year, I met a woman from a library in England. Not so beautiful, but friendly, intelligent. We go to Tropicana, we drink some rum, and then I feel her hand on my leg. ‘What does this mean?’ I say, and she smiles a little, and we dance. But it is late, and her plane leaves at ten o’clock next day.
“The next day, at twelve o’clock in the night, there is a noise at my door. I think it is the police: they see me speaking English to her. They see me in the dollar store. But no, it is her. ‘Why do you not leave?’ I say. ‘I love you,’ she says.
“So she stays with me one week, and I teach her some Spanish, and she teaches me to speak English like an Englishman, not like a gangster from Miami. Is good. Okay. But then, when she goes home, she sends me a letter saying she loves me too much, she can never write to me again. And I want to say, ‘So I am just your Caribbean souvenir, no? Like a postcard? Like a sunglass you pick up and carry and then leave behind? So you can always have romantic memories of your vacation in Caribbean. So you can always tell your friends about your boyfriend in Havana.’ ”
It was the first time I had seen José lose his cool, something cracking way inside him.
“But Cubans use foreigners too.”
“Sure,” he said, recovering himself. “We find some girls, we go to Tropicana on Sunday. Okay?”
We met the next day at the old Johnson Drugstore at the bottom of Obispo, Lourdes and I, to do some shopping for her aunt: I guess the news that a foreigner was around had spread. Lourdes said she wanted to show me more of the city, and though I figured I knew it well enough by now, had seen plenty of easy ironies and smiling faces in empty rooms, I knew that seeing her city would be a way of seeing her. What was important to her, what she valued. After all this time, I still couldn’t figure the girl out: I liked it that she was coming on so slow, but I was getting edgy too, and restless. When love is a commodity, you wonder why anyone’s giving it away for free. Or what the hidden costs might be.
She was waiting for me this time under a poster, put up by the local CDR, imploring her to GIVE BLOOD.
“Richard,” she said as soon as I came up to her, “I want to buy a present for your mother.”
“Great. That’s like taking from the poor to give to the rich.”
“I know. But I want to do something for you.”
“Okay.”
So we stopped in at a house and she bought me a black voodoo doll that I knew was going to be hell
to pack, and then we went into the old Casa de las Infusiones and ordered some medicinal drinks. In the distance, I could hear trumpets and percussion, crazily jaunty even at this hour. Everywhere, people sitting or drinking or playing music in the trees.
“You have a map?” she said.
“Of Havana?”
“Not Havana. I know Havana. Of America.”
“Only this.” I got out my Pocket Flight Schedule, and she took it from me and went through the United Airlines routings as if she were tracing the lines on the palm of a man she loved, saying the names out loud to herself, asking me questions sometimes—“These are Indian places: Oshkosh, Kalamazoo?”—reciting the Spanish names as if they were a kind of incantation. It must have been fifteen minutes before she gave it back.
Then we went out into the nearest dollar store, where the ancient Chinese fans were going for two hundred dollars, and the refrigerators for two thousand. Young girls sat and grinned around movie-star glossies of Fidel thirty years before, and key chains with Che’s face on them; Romanians picked up black dolls in bikinis that looked like wild-eyed spirits.
“Lula!” a bearded boy shouted then, and he came over and kissed her on both cheeks. So then there were three of us, going down to the magic ceiba tree marking the Founding of Havana, where Lourdes scavenged for coins and came up with two nickels. “For you,” she said, bringing them back to me. “For us.”
“Come mierda,” said a policeman nearby, hearing her speak to me in English. Eat shit.
The bearded boy spat in his direction. “Aquí estamos muertos,” he hissed as we went. “If Martí were here, things would be different. If Martí were here, he’d be a freedom fighter.”
“You mean a Fidelista—or one of Fidel’s enemies?”
“Martí loved his country.”
“Sure. So does Fidel. So do Fidel’s enemies.”
“If Martí were here,” the boy went on, obstinate, “if Martí and Che and Camilo were in power, there would be no problem. No Communism; only equality.”
We turned down old, half-paved streets, where lonely boys stood in doorways and women looked out from the railings of their terraces. “You know Fidel killed Camilo? Because all the people loved him. When he went into the street, everyone shouted, ‘Camilo! Camilo!’ When Fidel went out, they had to hide him in a dark car. Why do you think Camilo died?”
“It’s true,” said Lourdes. “Why did Frank País die too? And Che? And all the rest? Do you not think it is strange that all the Heroes of the Revolution are dead? Why is it all the ones the people loved are gone? Is Fidel so hungry for the blood of martyrs? Why does he find his friends only among the dead?”
“Soon you’ll be blaming him for the death of Christ.”
“I am saying the truth, Richard. Why don’t you listen? Where are the Heroes of the Revolution now? Where are they? Dead. No threat to Fidel; no threat to the system. When Camilo came to Havana, in 1959, the people sat on his car and put their arms around him. You know what his name means? One hundred flames! And what do we have now? Only a few ashes.”
That was the great thing about dictators, I thought: they always gave the people someone to blame. There was always a prime suspect for every crime, even the ones that hadn’t been committed yet. It wasn’t worth reminding her that streets and schools in Cuba could be named by law only after the dead; it wasn’t worth saying that dead men always seemed heroes because there was nothing they could do wrong now. Whatever happened, the people would always say that the guy at the top was guilty and everyone else was innocent. And there was never a shortage of rumors here. The Americans were going to invade tomorrow. Che was coming back from Bolivia to rescue the Revolution. Reagan was a secret Communist.
We stopped in at the car museum where they kept Camilo’s Oldsmobile and Che’s Chevy and even Vilma Espín’s jeep (“This is where she made love to women,” Lourdes whispered). There was a pair of jet skis too, given to Fidel by Japan. “Why does Fidel not jetski to Miami?” Lourdes whispered fiercely. “He doesn’t care anything for us. He only has thoughts for his mistress.”
“His mistress?” I led her on.
“Socialism,” she spat.
“And what about his private life?”
“What private life? You know what he said once? ‘If Carlo Marx were a woman, I would not love her.’ He has no time for women; he only wants to use them. You know Tina?”
“Che’s lover?”
“Sure. She gave everything to the Revolution. She married a Bolivian, she sent Che to Europe, she gave them secret messages on the radio. And what did she get for it? Nothing! These men are married only to their lives.”
“Like Martí.”
“No. Martí was bigger than Fidel. He had room for Revolution and for Love.”
As we walked, a woman called out, “Compañera, can you tie my baby’s laces?” Lourdes went over, and did them up so softly that the baby never cried. I think I fell in love with her right then, just the way her bitterness passed, and she went over without hesitation, and she summoned a tenderness for the baby that she usually kept in hiding. It made me wonder how she would be if she were away from all this craziness.
Then some black boys strolled past, calling out for matches, and then the bearded boy disappeared into a doorway, and then, as we walked down Perseverancia, we came upon Caridad, in a thin white shirt, looking—as usual—like she was going to cry.
“Eh, niña, dónde vas?” Lourdes called out to her.
“Nowhere,” she said, and so she joined us as we slipped into the Hotel Lincoln for a drink. I ordered a Cuba Libre, and Cari got a Habana Libre, and Lourdes, waving her glass in the air, said, “To a Lula Libre! Let’s drink to an independent Lourdes!”
Around us, Herb Alpert was blasting away, and then he was followed by Silvio, singing ‘Adónde va la sorpresa?’ while the bartender went off to the bathroom to change some money. Everyone in the hotel seemed to be coming or going to the bathroom, counting money or looking around nervously, except for one couple in the corner—newlyweds, I guessed—who sat over two tiny glasses of Coke, saying nothing. On the wall there was a huge wooden statue of the Three Monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
Silvio struck up the refrain again, in that tremulous, heartbreaking way of his—a kid cracking into first love—‘Adónde va la sorpresa?’—and the high notes blotted out the whispers and murmurs in the bar. This place was safe, Lula said, we could talk about anything here, and she started telling me things about Fidel in my ear, and it felt so good, her hot breath on my lobe, that I wanted her to talk and talk about the slow death of her country.
Soon it was getting dark, though, and Cari had someplace else to go, and I figured that now was the time with Lula. If she was leading me on, I didn’t know where it was going; I only knew that I wasn’t getting any pictures out of it.
“Look, let’s go somewhere,” I said as we went out into the darkening street. “How much longer do we have to wait?”
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s never safe round here. This is the goddamn land of unsafe sex.”
“Why can’t you be patient?”
“I am patient. But I can’t wait forever.”
“In Cuba, we can wait forever.”
“Great. That’s what makes you a Cuban. I’m a foreigner. I can’t wait. Nor can my editors in New York.”
“Why do you have to be like this?”
“Because I don’t have time. I have to go to Artemisa tomorrow, to shoot Fidel. Then to Cayo Largo. Then I leave. I can’t wait.”
“You go to Artemisa? Great. I will come with you,” she said, eyes bright. “I have an aunt in Artemisa.”
“That’s wonderful. But it doesn’t help us right now.”
“Okay, Richard. Let me show you something. I will show you where we can go. Tell me what you think.”
Beside us, the buildings round the Parque Central looked like headless ghosts gathered about the street. Teenage boys circling the
striding statue of Martí. The streets of the old city like slatted bars on a window. Godforsaken apartments lit up only by the flicker of black-and-white TVs, and old women in old dresses sitting under crumbling ceilings, trying to catch some monster movie from the States.
Once, as we walked, she suddenly whispered, “Silencio!” and we passed a couple of Minint men, in their uniforms. Now and then, we saw figures moving in an unlit room, or shadows stirring on a terrace. Sometimes we heard whispers from the dark places—“Ay, mi cielita! Ven acá!”—sometimes a white eye rolling, as if in some voodoo trance. The moon was high above the Malecón, and everywhere were shadows.
Finally, we were standing before a shabby, dingy entrance, unlit, with a sign that said HOTEL SAN JOSÉ, on the corner of San Martín. Next to the sign was a picture of a couple, with a pair of soft drinks. Inside, on the wall, a poster of a girl at a Varadero beach. An old man sat in the Carpeta area, and another, even older, a black tie loose around his king-sized neck, sat wheezing on a stool beside the entrance. It looked like any whorehouse.
A couple in army fatigues came out, holding hands, and the old man told Lula we could have a room in forty-five minutes or so. He motioned us to another room, and she called out for “El último,” and we joined the line. There was an ad for Miller beer on the wall, and some pictures from a Swedish porno mag. A few couples sat on chairs, looking as if they were trying to ignore the smell. “He says it is five dollars,” Lula whispered.
“Enough,” I snapped. “I didn’t come here to visit a five-dollar love hotel. I want this, I can go back to Manila. Let’s just go to the St. John’s. I’ve paid for it; the people there are cool. What’s your problem?”
“One night in the St. John’s, and then two years in Combinado. My dream.”
“I can make it right for them. Slip the chambermaid a few bucks.”
“Richard. You know the girls in these hotels? How do you think they stay there? How do you think they pay the police? What do you think the government does with them? This is at least a hotel for people in love.”
