Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

by Oscar Hijuelos

  He waited for her summary judgment. Then, with a flick of a hand, she said, “But do be careful, son. Mercy me if something were to happen to you.” Like all good mothers, she had said her piece.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, after Mother Clemens had embarked north to St. Louis on The Crescent City, its decks overflowing with anxious passengers and soldier recruits, Clemens and I made our way to the harbor to book tickets to Havana. It took us an hour to reach the sales window of the Hamburg–New Orleans–Cuba line, as there was a glut of southerners, their faces drained of color, waiting in a long queue to secure their own passage, an air of impatience about them, apprehensive as they were over the prospect of Yankee blockades sealing them off from their concerns on the island. It seemed to us as well that some of them simply wanted to get out of New Orleans before the war started. Within a few hours we booked passage out: It cost thirty-two dollars for the round-trip, and, at dawn, a few days later, we boarded the steamer Malta en route to Havana.

  We Arrive in Cuba

  ON THE MORNING of our seventh day at sea, after sailing some six hundred nautical miles, we steamed into Havana Bay through its narrow entrance, with fortresses, hooking out on elongated shoals, to either side. Though the tideless waters were sparkling blue and the air was clear as glass, the harbor had the smell of the stagnant and offal-ridden drainage from the city. Diamonds of light quivered in the water alongside shreds of timber and flowing clouds of filth that made the fish scatter. Still, the sun shone brightly, and along all the outcroppings of shore stood tall coconut palms and clusters of other tropical fruit trees that made for hedges of pleasing foliage. Church spires and Moorish minarets rose in the distance, as did a great hill on which stood several neoclassical buildings. The air sometimes became sweet, as if we had come to a city of gardens.

  The harbor itself was protected by a large castle that stood on a rocky outcropping, its parapets fitted with cannons that, as we came in, were firing off a volley into the air to summon the day. Church bells were ringing from the interior of the city, and all along the shore were a hundred majestic buildings with yellow and red and blue facades, most of them ornately designed, with parapets and twisting balconies, some being private residences and others warehouses and places of commerce. Spanish flags flew everywhere, but then the flags of many other nations, from every clime, were fluttering off the forest of masts before us, as there were frigates, brigs, schooners, and steamers from all over the world jammed along the docks. Altogether the city seemed booming and in decline; beautiful but aging; a gem and a rough stone; florid with scents and repugnant with rot at the same time.

  Clemens remained busy with his notebook, scribbling down some impressions, when we dropped anchor at a place called Regla, which was across the bay from the city proper. Because the yellow fever had come to Cuba from New Orleans that past year, our ship was boarded by a health official, who conducted an interminably slow appraisal of all the passengers, whom he looked over for signs of that illness. This took up most of the morning. Then another official, accompanied by several soldiers, set up a table and chair on deck to check our credentials against the names he had from a passenger list. I still had my old English passport, wherein I was still listed as John Rowlands, and it was in that name that I was given a visitor’s permit—what was called a cédula: Clemens had a Missouri passport, a holdover from the days when he had planned a journey to Brazil some years before. Altogether he had seemed very pleased that at long last, after so many travels out East, and up-and downriver, he was finally about to set foot in a foreign land.

  During the transfer of documents he noticed the name written in my passport and said to me:

  “So your birth name is John?”

  “It was.”

  “Well, then, how is it that you’ve never mentioned it to me?”

  “I thought I had. But the truth is, Samuel, as far as I’m concerned John Rowlands no longer exists.”

  “No matter: I prefer Henry, at any rate; but it is strange to think that happenstance has given you a name most special to me.”

  Disembarking on a small lighter, we were taken to shore by locals so thin and emaciated that we thought they’d certainly suffered from the fever, for their limbs were shrunken and their feet were shriveled down to the bone. As happens in any port, after we had passed through the customhouse—I had hidden away my Bible, as I’d heard from a passenger aboard ship that Bibles were contraband in that country—we were assailed by persons anxious to sell every service. Were we of a different bent of mind we could have gone off with some very friendly ladies or taken up residence in some private home, for there were several poor-looking persons soliciting passengers to stay with them, cheaply. Availing myself of my few phrases of Spanish—I would learn the language well in Spain years later—we hired a carriage and driver to take us around to the city.

  Within the hour we were making our way along the densely packed streets of Havana, a city unlike any I had ever seen before: New Orleans, for all its mazes, had many a street that opened wide to the sky and air, but here the buildings seemed narrowly separated from one another, the passageways between them barely wide enough for two carts to pass side by side. Where movement was not slow it had stopped completely, for those streets were congested with carriages and donkey-drawn carts and poor farmers pulling along their mules, their woven cane panniers filled with bunches of bananas, oranges, and the local favorite, a tuber called plantain. And many of them were on foot, hauling chickens tied by their feet and hung off sticks on their backs. There were slaves here, too, none rushed in his labors and all of a generally poorer condition than the slaves of New Orleans. Many of them, steeped in misery, were going shoeless or were huddled off, sickly and malnourished, in some shady cubbyhole with their loads at their sides. Occasionally we saw a fancier kind of slave, usually a postilion in attendance of an expensive silver-rimmed carriage, dressed in white leggings, long spurs, and a bright red jacket (but that was more the exception than the rule). Beggars, deformed and diseased, were everywhere, and lepers, too, their hands wrapped in rags or covered in worn mittens.

  Striking as well was the abundance of Chinese—many of them, Clemens noticed, missing their right ears—conscripted former criminals, we would later learn, brought to Cuba under strict seven-year contracts as indentured servants. These Chinamen were valued by the planters for their resourcefulness and tenacity at labor (and because they were cheaper to keep than slaves). Their imprint on the city came from the exotic flavor of their shops and restaurants, for alongside the Spanish stores called bodegas and the usual haberdashery and ladies’ dress establishments—my clerk’s eye could not fail to notice such places of commerce—there would be a window scrawled with Chinese characters, a dim doorway, and, in the half-light of day, one could see high shelves stocked with all manner of exotic-looking goods. These shopkeepers wore their hair in long black braided pigtails, or they shaved their heads completely, their white pantaloons and coolie hats common among the Chinese of that city.

  Strange to say, Clemens was generally delighted with the colorful attractions of the place, whereas I, having seen both the highs and lows of what a locality could afford, remained somewhat mystified by Mr. Stanley’s attraction to the city, for from what I could observe, the first impressions I had of impending decline and neglect were reinforced at nearly every turn. Still, despite its apparent chaos, there seemed some promise to Havana—for there were many fine buildings to be admired, some of them tranquil-looking places set back behind palm-filled, marble-floored courtyards, off the street. There were bars and billiard halls, and we noticed that virtually every Cuban man of commerce was quite well—if not practically—dressed, in dark suits with cravats and heavy French hats. And the Cubans we saw—whether lowly peasant or aristocrat—smoked, either small cigarillos or the Cuban cigars for which the island was famous.

  WE ENDED UP at a hotel owned by an American woman in the old city, not far from the city’s Plaza de Armas, where the gardens were
in bloom. It was called the Hotel Cubano, and it was where Mr. Stanley had occasionally stayed while visiting that city, as its guests were mainly southerners like himself. Indeed, when Clemens and I finally arrived—in midafternoon, in the extreme heat of the day—a group of southern gentlemen was shooting billiards in a room off the reception area. The owner, a certain Mrs. Rosedale, late of Savannah, Georgia, was the sort of lady in perpetual bloom despite her middle-aged years, gracious of manner and friendly. When I signed the register, she asked me if I was a relation of Mr. Stanley. When I said that I was, she chanced to remark: “Oh, how is he?”

  “I imagine that he is well, ma’am—it is my hope, anyway; you see, we have had some difficulty in communications. But I hope to find him. Surely he is known around here?”

  “He is. Last I saw of him, he was in that very bar conducting some business—a few months ago, I believe it was. I spoke to him then: It seemed he was in attendance of some urgent matter involving his brother.” Then: “But I am sure you will find him shortly if he is in Havana. Here the community of southern folk find each other, and quickly, especially now, with the probability of war.”

  And then she turned to Clemens and, reading the entry he had made in the guest book, declared: “A riverboat pilot! And one who dresses so elegantly! Goodness! What a romantic and courageous profession!” Then: “Rest assured, my dear friends, for as long as you are here at my hotel, you will not go wanting for anything.”

  As we followed her down a corridor to a broad marble staircase leading to the upper floors, we could see that the hotel was a grand and cavernous affair. Behind a grillwork gate, along an inner hall, was a palm courtyard and fountain, and a choir of parrots chortling in an immense cage. Somewhere upstairs an opera company was rehearsing—their voices, ringing throughout the halls and echoing throughout the place, attested to its scale.

  “This was once the residence of a very highly placed Spanish lord,” she told us. “Over a hundred years ago, he was poisoned by one of his sons in a dispute over a woman, and so, as is very common in these parts, his ghost dwells in this place. Now and then he is known to come around to greet the guests; but do not be alarmed. He is mainly a sad ghost, and not as vengeful or malicious as one would think.”

  “And you’ve seen this gentleman yourself?” Clemens asked her.

  “Oh, I have. His English is not very good—you would think it would be, after he’s spent so much time around my guests—but my Spanish is very fine, and we do communicate, though I find some of his antique words hard to understand sometimes.”

  “And what do you speak about, ma’am?” Clemens inquired.

  “Well”—she seemed amused at the question—“just ’cause he’s dead doesn’t mean he can’t fall in love! As my late husband has told me, there is no end of emotions on the other side. No, gentlemen, he has often confessed to me that I am the very sight that makes his spirit heart tremble with joy! He calls me his beautiful angel and regales me with sonnets. I am flattered, of course, but my one loyalty is to my late husband. As you can imagine, my Spanish lord—el Conde Miguel Asturiano is his name—is none too happy about the situation. Nevertheless, he persists.”

  She led us up to our room on the third floor. The accommodations consisted of two hard beds, each with its own canopy of mosquito netting and separated from the other by a Chinese-style screen; a common sitting area, a dresser, and large closet. The airy chamber’s finest feature was a broad balcony opening out to the inner courtyard.

  “Gentlemen, as you can see, you have a sink, but as the water piped in through the city is fetid, use it only for washing. Each morning you will find several pitchers of clear drinking water outside your door. It is brought in from a place about nine miles north of here called Marianao; this will cost you each ten cents a day. I would also caution you to wear slippers and to never walk barefoot on the floors, as there are, in this city, tiny mites that will bore their way into your toes and settle there with an infection. We have a fine restaurant below us, facing the street, and a billiard room next to it. Just a few doors down from us is a public bathhouse; and above, on our roof, there is a promenade from which you will see the harbor and the ocean beyond, an especially delightful view at sunset.”

  Then, as she parted:

  “But do avoid drinking the water. And if you see the count, do not be alarmed. Now, good day, gentlemen.”

  THAT FIRST EVENING, AFTER CLEANING ourselves up, we went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, where we partook of a large meal of all kinds of freshly caught fish in a stew, consumed with a sizable quantity of claret and local staples, among them some tasty plantain fritters that were heavily doused in lemon and salt.

  Soon enough, we made the acquaintance of several southern gentlemen who invited us to join them after our meal for some billiards. Because I did not know how to play, I remained content to watch Clemens, who seemed to have an endless capacity for the game. Occasionally he would sit down beside me and thusly apprise me of the personalities he encountered.

  “A lot of these gentlemen,” Clemens told me, “own various and many businesses in Havana and elsewhere on the island. That old gentleman with the silver beard, Henry, is ninety years old—but he doesn’t look it, does he? He claims that his mingling with the Cuban ladies of ill repute has been an elixir of youth. He owns six hundred acres of a sugar enterprise. That gent, a retired politician named Morgan, was greatly involved, in the 1850s, in some kind of movement in the South to invade and annex the island of Cuba as a state. That gentleman runs one of the biggest banking concerns in Havana. Owns fifty thousand acres of timberland somewhere in the East. These businessmen are so many in number that there are several southern commercial associations in Havana—along with lodges and clubs and cultural groups, all distinct from the Spanish variety. Among these, I was pleased to find out, dear Henry, is a literary society situated in the mansion of a gentleman who lives in a verdant neighborhood in the heights of the city, an area known as the Cerro, where the embassies of foreign nations are located. Apparently this man has one of the largest English-language libraries on the island, one at which strangers are welcome. And I’ve eavesdropped on much talk about the presumed Southern victory in the event of a war, which they can’t see lasting much longer than a year. Once that happens, in regard to Cuba itself, it is said that the South will take upon itself what the federal government hasn’t been able to do in years past, which is to annex Cuba as a Southern state—to buy it from Spain outright.

  “It seems that there are several thousand well-armed American soldiers from Southern regiments already here; troops brought in to protect Southern interests and help fight rebel insurgencies in the eastern part of the island. These fellows, I was told, are ready to declare themselves for the South should the war come.” Then, as he was pleased with himself: “I should teach you billiards, as there is much to learn over such a game.”

  As he told me such stories, his words brought to mind something else that Mr. Stanley had told me about Cuba: Given Southern ownership of its greatest estates and concerns, Cuba might as well have been an extension of the South. (In fact, some months later, the Spanish-controlled government of Cuba, much under the sway of the Southern diplomatic corps there, would declare war on the North.)

  But the behavior of these gentlemen struck even a youth such as I as somewhere paradoxical, for while it would seem that they should have been wary of strangers—as if Yankee spies might be afoot—they made no secret of the fact that a fleet of ships out of New Orleans and other ports along the gulf—from Brownsville, Texas, to St. Marks, Florida—was heading to Havana to fill the city’s warehouses with supplies that would, in the unlikely event of a future Southern reversal, be vital to the continuation of the war. As a merchant, hearing their boasts, I was fascinated by the difficult logistics of such a feat, and I found myself admiring the confidence and organization of such men. I need not further pursue the theme other than to say that as that evening and others like it unfolded, Cle
mens and I found ourselves among the converted when it came to the belief that the South would easily win the war.

  AT SOME LATE HOUR WE RETIRED to the discomforts of our beds and tried to sleep. But sleep was somewhat of an impossibility, for even under the best of circumstances, both Clemens and I were prone to insomnia. As I remained awake, in speculation over Mr. Stanley, Clemens, giving up the fight, had gotten up for a smoke or two by the open window. It was his way. When, at some later hour, we finally managed to doze off, what rest we took was brief enough, for at six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by bells and cock crows, and by the loud conversation of some cleaning women mopping the dust off the marble floors outside our door and carrying on a discussion about a woman of their acquaintance named María Josefina. Hearing the clipped locutions of their Spanish, of which I had only a fledgling knowledge, and with the sun beginning to stream in through the shutters, and with a great feeling of the strangeness of that place, I finally realized that we had indeed arrived in Mr. Stanley’s Cuba.

  I WILL NOW SPEAK of my search for my father. We had, on the first day, visited his office, which, I remembered from his correspondence, was located on a street called O’Reilly. Along that commercial stretch of warehouses and stores, much like Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans, hung many signs in the English language. When we arrived on foot, around ten in the morning, after having partaken (at Clemens’s insistence) of a large and fortifying breakfast at the hotel, I was heartened to see that there was much activity along its street and pavements—all manner of carts being emptied and loaded from a countless succession of doorways; a strong smell of manure, coffee, and raw tobacco permeated the air; and there were the usual contingents of blacks at work and Cuban gentlemen to give them orders, while others were lying low in the shadows, a sight typical to that city. There were also some military constables milling about. Then, as we looked for the building numbered 7A, my heart quickened, for I saw a sight that was gratifyingly familiar, that of a tallish and bearded man sitting in front of one of the warehouses reading a newspaper. Believing that this man was Mr. Stanley, I rushed ahead to greet him, but I was sadly mistaken: “If you are looking for Mr. Stanley,” he told me, “you will find his offices over there.” And he pointed to a darkened doorway across the way: This was apparently the aforementioned 7A, though there would have been no way of telling, for it had no marking. Entering the premises through a long passageway, we found ourselves in the recesses of a warehouse.