Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “I can assure you,” said Kennedy, “that it is the strongest wish of the people of this country, as well as the people of this hemisphere, that Cuba shall one day be free again; and this Brigade will march at the head of the free column.”

  What was happening, I wondered, to the negotiation—so impressive to Kittredge—that Kennedy was working up with Khrushchev? Had the hot blood of the politician overwhelmed the cool arteries of the President? Or was I attending a new declaration of war against Cuba?

  In the morning, my father called me from Washington. “I hope,” he said, “that we get a transfusion out of all this.”

  24

  January 15, 1963

  Dear Kittredge,

  This is to announce the reappearance of Howard Hunt. I had not heard from him in fifteen months, but we had dinner a few nights ago. Last seen before this occasion, he was buried in the Domestic Operations Division under Tracy Barnes, either, per his cover, writing spy fiction for New American Library or engaged in more cloak-and-daggered stuff. Wouldn’t let on.

  I suspect he was chugging along on a parallel track with Bill Harvey, albeit dealing in more ultra-right-wing Cuban types—I can’t be certain. He won’t tell. I saw him for no more than our one evening which came by way of a call saying that he wanted me to join him for dinner with Manuel Artime. So this letter is to impart what I learned from Artime about the Brigade’s experience in Cuban prisons.

  It was a good night. Do you know, I entered the Agency for adventure, and by now it feels as if, after a day at a desk, most of my excitement has come from dining out? My Life in Central Intelligence; or, The Hundred Most Memorable Dinners.

  Well, this was one of them. Howard, still stationed in Washington, has obtained for his exclusive Miami use one of our best safe houses, a jewel of a villa out on Key Biscayne called La Nevisca. I used to engage the place occasionally during the pre-Pigs period, but Howard occupies it now, and demonstrates for me that there are amenities to Agency life. We had a corkeroo of a repast, polished off with Château Yquem, served up—I only learn of their existence at this late date—by two contract Agency caterers, who shop for special occasions, chef it forth in haute cuisine, and serve it themselves.

  This was five-star. Howard is obviously back in full self-esteem. For all I know, his key passion is to get to just some place like this every night.

  At any rate, I felt like an interloper. If Hunt and Artime do not love each other, they are fabulous actors. I do not know that I have ever seen Howard manifest more warmth toward anyone, and thereby was introduced to the untrammeled hyperbole of real Cuban toasts. The art, I discovered, is to raise one’s glass as if addressing a hundred folk.

  “I drink to a remarkable man,” said Howard, “to a Cuban gentleman whose funds of patriotism are inexhaustible. I drink to a man I esteem so highly that, never knowing whether I would see him again, I chose nonetheless to name him, in absentia, the godfather of my son, David.”

  Artime replied in ringing terms—now I know ringing terms! He would defend his godson, if need arose, with his life. Do you know, Kittredge, I never heard a man sound more sincere. Artime, if finely drawn from his twenty months in prison, has gained, all the same, in personal impressiveness. Before, he was charming but a hint boyish, and considerably too emotional for my taste. Now, he is more emotional than ever, but his charisma embodies it. You cannot take your eyes off him. You do not know if you are looking at a killer or a saint. He seems endowed with an inner dedication that no human force can overcome. It is far from wholly attractive. My grandmother, Cal’s mother, was equally endowed for church work—I do not exaggerate!—and she died at age eighty of cancer of the bowel. One senses the inflexible beast of ideology in such persons. Nonetheless, after spending an evening with Artime, I wished to fight Castro hand to hand.

  Let me give you a full presentation of Artime’s response to Howard’s toast.

  “In prison, there were hours,” he said, “when despair was the only emotion we could feel. Yet, in the depths of our imprisonment, we were even ready to welcome despair, for that at least is a powerful emotion, and all feelings, whether noble or petty, are but streams and brooks and rivulets”—riachuelas was the word he used—“that flow into the universal medium which is love. It was love to which we wished to return. Love for one’s fellow man no matter how evil he might be. I wanted to stand in the light of God so that I could regain my strength to fight another day. I was grateful, therefore, for the power of my despair. It enabled me to rise above apathy.

  “Yet, despair is spiritual peril. One must rise out of it or lose oneself forever. So one needs stepping-stones, trails to ascend, rungs to a ladder. When one is lost in the black current of limitless misery, the memory of friends can sometimes be the only bridge that leads one back to the higher emotions. While I was in prison, no American friend appeared before my mind with more of a beautiful presence to lift my tortured spirit than you, Don Eduardo, you, caballero espléndido, whom I salute tonight in all the honor of feeling myself blessed by the high moral obligation to be the godfather of your son, David.”

  On they went. I came to recognize that the first good reason for inviting me is that my Spanish is satisfactory, and two grown men cannot speak to each other in such elevated fashion without having at least one witness for audience.

  Artime began to talk about prison. Which I certainly wanted to hear about. Much of what he had to say was, however, contradictory. Where the food proved decent in one jail, it was wretched in another; if Brigade leaders were put away in individual cells for a time, they were soon brought back into prison dormitories; when, for a period, treatment turned courteous, it later became ugly. Conditions in one prison bore little relation to the next. They were moved frequently.

  This exposition gave me a sense of the turmoil outside the walls. Right now, in Cuba, theories and events must be colliding, for there appeared to be no consistent intent behind the incarceration.

  From what he told us, Artime’s first hours of imprisonment were his worst. At the dire end of the Bay of Pigs, seeking to avoid capture, he took off with a few men into a trackless swamp called Zapata. He said he had had some idea of reaching the Sierra Escambray, eighty miles off, where he would initiate a guerrilla movement. Two weeks later, his group was rounded up.

  Artime was the most important Brigade leader yet captured by Castro’s counterintelligence. Since I must assume you are not all that familiar with his background, let me try a quick summary. I hope it was not Samuel Johnson who said, “None but a talentless wretch attempts a sketch.” Artime, educated in Jesuit schools as a psychiatrist, was not yet twenty-eight when he joined Castro in the Sierra Maestra: In the first year after victory, however, feeling himself to be “a democratic infiltrator in a Communist government,” he set out to build an underground movement. It did not take long for him to become a fugitive hunted by the police. Clothed in the cassock of a priest, and carrying a pistol inside a hollowed-out missal, Artime walked up the steps of the American Embassy in Havana one morning, and was shortly thereafter smuggled out to Tampa on a Honduran freighter. Doubtless, you first heard of him as a leader in the Frente, then in the Brigade. Artime, however, managed to maintain his underground group in Cuba as well. With such tripartite credentials, be certain he received no ordinary interrogation after capture.

  Of course, he was in no ordinary condition. The swamp was arid, and choked in thorn bushes. Fresh water was rare. After fourteen days of thirst, no one could speak. They were not able to move their tongues. “I had always thought,” said Artime, “that I was one of the people called upon for the liberation of Cuba. God would use me as His sword. After I was captured, however, I came to believe that God must be more in need of my blood, and I had to be prepared to die if Cuba was ever to be liberated.

  “Back at Girón, however, as soon as they studied my diary and recognized who I was, one of the counterintelligence said, ‘Artime, you have something to pay for all you have done to us. Do y
ou wish to die like a hero, quickly, and by a bullet? Then cooperate. Declare that the Americans betrayed the Brigade. If you fail to help us, you will go out in misery.’”

  When Artime would not sign such a declaration, his captors drove him to Havana, where he was brought into a basement room whose walls were lined with old mattresses. There, his shirt removed, his arms and legs strapped to a chair, a spotlight in his eyes, he was questioned for three days.

  Not all the voices were angry. Sometimes a man would tell him that the Revolution was prepared to have compassion for his error; such men were replaced by others with harsh voices. Forced to stare into the spotlight, he never saw any of their faces. The angry voice would say, “Innocent Cubans died for this man’s vanity.” One interrogator pushed a photograph into his face. He looked at a field of dead men. Corpses from the three-day battle stared back at him.

  “I am going to kill you, cocksucker,” said the angry voice. Artime felt the barrel of a pistol against his lips. He looked at Hunt and at me. “I was calm. I could not believe it. I said to myself, ‘This is how wild horses feel when the bridle goes into their mouth. Yet, this bridle is the exercise of God’s will.’ Then a man who had a gentle voice said to the man with the angry voice, ‘Get yourself out of here. You are making things worse.’ ‘I won’t leave,’ said the angry man, ‘the Revolution gives me just as much right to be here as it does you.’ They kept arguing,” said Artime, “until the bad one left. Then the good one said, ‘He is in a state of great disturbance because his brother was killed at Girón.’”

  “Were you ever close to breaking?” asked Hunt.

  “Never,” answered Artime. “I did not see how I was going to live, so there was nothing to break.” He did nod his head, however. “On the third day, they put me in a cell, and I was visited by a man named Ramiro Valdes, who is Castro’s chief of G-2.” Valdes seemed concerned with Artime’s appearance, particularly the burns received from cigarettes. “Who were your interrogators?” he asked. “We will treat them severely. The Revolution wants revolutionaries, not fanatics. Please describe them to me, Manuel.”

  “Commander,” said Artime, “I never saw their faces. Let us forget about it.”

  Hunt, in a husky voice, said, “I would have wanted to locate those sons of bitches.”

  “No,” said Artime, “I did not believe Valdes. I knew he wished to establish a good relation with me. Then he would commence conversion. But I was not the proper person for such intentions. My situation as a prisoner was less real to me than my inner psychology. I felt that God was testing Manuel Artime. If I passed His tests, Cuba would become more worthy of liberation.”

  “Which was the most difficult test?” I asked.

  He nodded, as if he liked the question. “Valdes ordered a good dinner to be brought into my cell. There was chicken and rice and black beans. I had forgotten how much I love to eat. No food had ever tasted better, and for a moment I was not ready to die. The beauty that is in life itself received my attention. I began to think of the sweet and simple barnyard life of the chicken who was providing me with this feast. But then, I said to myself, ‘No, I am being tested,’ and I no longer felt so tenderhearted toward the white meat of the breast. Suddenly I thought, ‘I have an immortal soul, and this chicken does not. I am in the devil’s hour.’”

  A more difficult test came to Artime after he had been a prisoner for a year, had gone to trial, and was awaiting the court’s verdict. By then he was accustomed to being alive; so it occurred to him with some force that his refusal to collaborate at the trial was bound to result in a sentence of death for himself.

  “At that moment I realized that I would never have a son. To a Cuban, that is a sad thought. When a man feels unfulfilled, he is not ready to meet his end. Therefore, I asked a guard for pencil and paper. I wanted to write out exactly what to say when I was shot. Concentration upon that event might remove the temptation to wish one could stay alive. So, I decided to tell my executioners: ‘I forgive you. And I remind you: God exists. His Presence enables me to die while loving you. Long live Christ the King. Long live Cuba Libre.’ That took me through the temptation.”

  Soon after, he was visited by Fidel Castro. By Artime’s description, Castro came to the prison at two in the morning six days after the trial and woke up Pepe San Román, who yawned in Castro’s face, then stood before him in his underwear.

  “What kind of people are you?” asked Castro. “I cannot comprehend. You trust the North Americans. They turn our women into whores and our politicians into gangsters. What would happen if your side had won? The Americans would be here. We would have to live with the hope that if they visit Cuba often enough, we will teach them how to fuck.”

  “I would rather deal with an American than a Russian,” San Román answered.

  “I ask you not to waste your life. The Revolution has need of you. We have fought you, so we know how many men in your Brigade have valor.”

  “Why,” asked Pepe San Román, “didn’t you say that at the trial? You referred to us as worms. Now you wake me up to tell me that we are brave. Why do you not leave? Enough is enough.”

  “Enough is enough? My God, man, I wonder if you even want to live.”

  “We agree on something. I do not want to live. I have been played with by the United States, and now you are playing with me. Kill us, but stop playing.”

  Castro left. Artime’s cell was next. When he saw him in the doorway, Manuel assumed the Maximum Leader was paying this visit in order to execute him. “Do you finally come to see me,” asked Artime, “so that you can try to make a fool of me in front of your men?”

  “No,” said Castro. “The only reason that I did not approach you earlier is I knew you were weak from the swamps. I do not wish you to think that I will make fun of you. In fact, I would ask: How are you now?”

  “Very well. Though not as well as you are. You are heavier than you were in the mountains.”

  Castro smiled. “As yet in our Revolution, not all eat equally. Chico, I am here to ask what you are expecting.”

  “Death.”

  “Death? Is this your understanding of the Revolution? To the contrary, we are here to look for the potential in each other. Your side looks to improve the condition of those people who have obtained a good deal already. My side hopes to improve the lot of those who have nothing. My side is more Christian than yours, I would say. What a loss that you are not a Communist.”

  “What a pity that you are not a democrat.”

  “Artime, I will demonstrate that you are wrong. You see, we are not going to kill you. Under the circumstances, that is very democratic. We accept the existence of a point of view that wishes to destroy us. Tell me that is not generous. The Revolution is sparing your lives. You may have been sentenced to thirty years in jail, but you will not even have to serve your sentence. Since you are so valuable to the Americans, we are ready to ransom you. In four months, you’ll all be gone.”

  Well, as we know, it took eight.

  Toward the end of the evening, Artime shifted the ground of discussion.

  “We have yet to commence the true fight,” he told Howard and me.

  “You can’t be ready to go into action this quickly,” said Hunt.

  “Physically, we still must recover, yes. But we will be ready before long. I feel sorry for any man who believes he will stop us.”

  “Jack Kennedy can stop you,” said Hunt. “He thinks it is obscene not to deal in two directions at once. I will warn you, Manuel, I have heard rumors that the White House is ready to make a deal with Castro.”

  “The devil,” said Artime, “is defined as a man who has his head put on backwards.”

  Hunt nodded profoundly. “Smiling Jack,” he answered.

  Hunt has changed, Kittredge. He always had a good deal of anger in him, divided neatly into two parts: half for the Communists, and half for the manner in which his achievements have not been properly recognized. Now, however, his hatred breaks through the
skin of what used to be his considerable urbanity. When the crude stuff pops forth, it is strikingly disagreeable. Hunt is not the sort of man who should ever reveal this side of himself.

  “Many of us,” said Artime, “do not have a clear view on the Kennedys. For example, the brother, Bobby, took me on a ski trip last week. I cannot say I do not like him. When he saw that I do not know how to ski, but was ready to plunge down—you call it the fall line—of every slope until I fell, he would laugh and laugh, and then say to me, ‘Now I have seen fire on ice.’”

  “The Kennedys are adept at charming those they wish to have on their side,” said Hunt.

  “With all due respect, Don Eduardo, I believe the President’s brother is serious about Cuba. He has new plans, he says, and wants me to be a leader in them.”

  Hunt said: “I would suggest that you develop your own operation. Once you are privately funded and free of the government, I know people who can give you more assistance than if you are directly under Kennedy’s nose.”

  Artime said: “I am not happy with complexity. I heard the President say, ‘This flag will be returned some day to a free Havana.’ To me, that is an absolute commitment to our cause.”

  Hunt smiled. Hunt took a sip of his brandy. “I repeat your words: The devil is a man who has his head put on backward.”

  Artime sighed again. “I cannot pretend that there is no division among my people concerning the subject of the Kennedys.”

  “I heard that some of you did not want to hand the Brigade flag over to Kennedy?”

  “We were divided. That is true. I was uncertain myself,” said Artime. “I have to admit that I like the Kennedys better now that Bobby took me skiing.”

  “Is it true?” asked Hunt. “Was the flag handed over to Jack not the original, but a duplicate?”

  Artime looked most unhappy. He threw a glance at me, at which Hunt waved his hand as if to say, “It is all right. He is one of us.” That startled me. Hunt is not the kind of enthusiast to put unqualified trust in someone as marginal to his purposes as myself. “Was it a copy?” Hunt persisted.