Tell Me True

by Patricia Hampl

  • • •

  Where Falsehoods Dissolve: Memory as History

  Memory is the most potent truth.

  Show me history untouched by memories and you show me lies.

  Show me lies not based on memories, and you show me the worst lies of all.

  So I say in the preamble to Waiting for Snow in Havana, a book I never intended to publish as a memoir. Never. I wrote it as a novel and sold it as a novel. It said so—A Novel, right under the title, on the cover page of the manuscript purchased by the Free Press, in large, bold type. I wrote an account of my own childhood, straight from memory, and tried to pass it off as fiction. But my editor unmasked me early in the editing process.

  She asked, point-blank: “How much of this is your own life story?”

  “All of it,” I admitted, grudgingly.

  I wanted to lie but couldn’t bring myself to do it, thanks to my Catholic schooling and my fear of hell, which has intensified as I get ever closer to my own death. Trying to pass off one’s life story as fiction is not lying, exactly, but denying the ruse certainly is.

  “Then we can’t publish this as fiction,” my editor said.

  I was doomed. I had already used my advance royalties to pay off my MasterCard debt. I had no way of backing out. Now the whole world—including all my colleagues and students—would know my innermost secrets. How could I, a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe, ever write or teach again?

  But thank God for my editor’s insistence. As I was to discover, this meant that my memories would become history, rather than fiction. Memory is the most eloquent and persuasive witness in history. Nothing connects us to the past more directly. Memory is also our very identity, the whole sum of our being. Lose your memory and you lose yourself. Memory is more than that, too. It is the only means we have of transcending time and space, our only ticket out of the evanescent present, our deepest connection to the divine and eternal.

  This is no new insight, of course. St. Augustine of Hippo knew it sixteen centuries ago. In his Confessions, written in the year 397, in a world vastly different from ours, he had this to say about memory:

  There I find heaven and earth, sea and whatever I can think on...there also I meet myself, and recall myself, what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I was affected when I did it....Great is this power of memory, exceeding great, O my God—an inner chamber vast and boundless!...Astonishment seizes me!1

  Astonishment, yes, I agree. Few things astonish me more than returning to a place where I once lived, years ago, and squaring my memories with what I see in the here and now. It happened to me recently in Minneapolis.

  There I was, near the University of Minnesota in Dinkytown, and there it was, the Varsity Theater. Suddenly, the twenty-six years that stood between the building and my memory imploded. Same place, different time, much older man. I used to drive a hundred miles to the Varsity, just to see the films that never made it to St. Cloud, where I taught between 1979 and 1981. I’m thrown off balance by what I see. The Varsity is no longer a movie house. Video cassettes, digital video disks, and multiplex theaters have killed the Varsity I knew and loved. I slip noiselessly through the gap between past and present and find myself in the audience once again, inside the Varsity. Suddenly it’s 1980, and I’m watching a movie about beatniks. John Heard is playing the role of Jack Kerouac in the film Heart Beat, and he is carrying around a large scroll of paper on which he is typing On the Road, writing in a continuous flow. His 120-foot-long autobiographical novel, an oddity worthy of Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not, will define a whole generation. I vow to write the same way some day, on a giant roll of paper towels or some such scroll. I harbor no illusions about defining a generation but simply itch to do the scroll thing, to write in one continuous flow, from memory.

  In an instant, I’m somewhere else again, nineteen years later, or seven years ago, depending on which way you count. It’s late April 2000. I begin typing on my scroll, fulfilling my vow. It’s not a roll of paper towels, but rather a computer screen, on which I can write continuously. I’m in my study in Connecticut, above the garage. I’ve decided to write a novel about a boy who lives through the Cuban Revolution and is sent to the United States as one of fourteen thousand children airlifted out of Cuba without their families by Operation Pedro Pan. I have to do it. I need to set the record straight. I have to bear witness, to speak out against those who constantly distort and deny my own history.

  They are everywhere, these deniers of all the horrors and holocausts of history, including mine, and they are unavoidable. Their voices show up most frequently in the news media, drowning out all others. Even worse, I can’t help but run into them all the time on university campuses, for the majority of my colleagues tend to believe that Fidel Castro is an idealist who has done great things for his people. Some of them are even my best friends. This may sound odd to anyone who doesn’t inhabit the academic ivory tower, but if you doubt me, simply stroll down to any large college or university bookstore and peruse the section where the books on Cuba are shelved. Chances are that eight or nine out of every ten books on that shelf will sing the praises of the so-called Revolution and overlook all of its horrors. For my entire adult life, I’ve had to listen to absolute nonsense about my own past. I’ve put up with the worst sort of ignorance—ironically—among the most learned folk in the Western world. And I’ve been subjected to their accusations. It’s been enough to make me hide my nationality, to stress that my grandparents were Spanish, not Cuban. Enough to make me wish for a different name, one that won’t identify me as a Hispanic: perhaps something like Jacques Clouseau, McKinley Morganfield, or Ludwig Feuerbach. I’m on the very edge of sanity, perched over an abyss, driven there by all those who have constantly denied my memories, falsified my history, and accused me of being a selfish lout:

  You simply didn’t want to share your stuff with the poor. You bastard.

  Everything you say about Cuba is a lie. You son of a bitch.

  Numbers don’t matter. It makes no difference whether I hear this from tens of thousands or only a handful of people. Every time I encounter a believer in this Big Lie, I feel the same pain, the same terror. The mere fact that anyone could think of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship as a good thing—even just one person on earth—is torture, and too frightening. If anyone can be so easily fooled, or if anyone can willingly overlook the worst of atrocities, what hope is there for the world? If thousands or millions can believe the Big Lie about Cuba, then they can believe just about anything, including the absolute necessity of Final Solutions.

  I can’t take it any more. Elián Gonzalez pushes me off the edge.

  The hypocrites in Havana clamor for the boy to be returned. His mother has drowned at sea, like thousands of others, trying to escape a totalitarian nightmare. The boy is now in the United States, but his father remains in Cuba, and the high priests in Havana proclaim that every child deserves to be with his father—the very same high priests who strove to keep me and over ten thousand children away from our parents, and succeeded. The very same caste who made my mother and thousands of others wait for many years before reuniting with their children. The very same oligarchs who kept thousands of us Cuban children from reuniting with our fathers. The very same comrades who prevented me from attending my father’s funeral.

  I write to the American news media on my Yale stationery and inscribe my august title under my signature. I ask the journalists to focus on the larger picture, please, and to cover the history of the airlift and of the unsparing efforts the Cuban authorities have made over the years to tear families apart. I mention the labor camps where fathers and mothers were sent to work as slaves for long stretches of time, away from their spouses and children—labor camps where parents were forced to spend months and years paying off their “debt” to the so-called Revolution, toiling without compensation in the tropical sun, under brutal
conditions, hundreds of miles from their families. I point out that any parents who wanted to leave Cuba with their kids would be subjected to this forced separation. I make mention of the thousands of parents who are still routinely denied the right to emigrate with their children or to be reunited with them abroad.

  No one acknowledges my letters.

  The Cable News Network simply refers to Elián as “Cuban Boy.” No name is needed under his photo. He is only a Cuban, after all, and just a boy.

  And he is forcibly returned to the hell his mother tried to free him from.

  I plunge off the edge and free fall.

  I stop reading newspapers and magazines. I stop watching television or listening to the radio. I don’t want to know what will happen to the boy. He is already screwed, no matter what. Ten times over.

  Just like his fellow countrymen, all eleven million of us, whom he embodies: all Cubans everywhere, both on the island and abroad.

  I write every night for the next four months, continuously. I begin writing at 10:00 P.M. every night and write until 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00 A.M. Some nights I write until sunrise, the pale gray light reminding me that I’ve lost track of time. I go to work early in the morning to teach my summer-term class, From Crusade to Enlightenment. In the afternoon I assume the role of department chair. When I get home in the late afternoon, I turn into dad and husband, and I eat dinner, and then, once I’ve done that, I read to my children what I wrote the previous night, put them to bed, and begin writing again. I do this every day, seven days a week.

  At the end of four months, in late August, I have a book. And I can scroll from the first to the last page, through one continuous computer document.

  My scroll. My novel.

  It’s a frightfully honest and accurate rendering from memory of my own childhood. Everyone has different names, of course. I’ve given myself a much better name than I have in real life. I’ve become Jesús Rubio—“Blond Jesus” in English. My nickname is very Cuban. I am Chucho—Chucho Rubio—“Blond Light Switch” in English. And the title for the book is perfect, even though it will later be discarded by my editor: Kiss the Lizard, Jesus.

  I’ve written straight from memory. No outline. No rewriting either. I simply move forward with the narrative, on a scroll, guided by images. I’m possessed by my own ghost, by my memory, by the urge to tell my story, to get it out there. The story of a Cuban Boy, like Elián.

  I set memory loose and pit it against the Big Lie.

  And my memories crash against the Lie like an acid tsunami, dissolving its tissues, making them sputter, hiss, and smoke, turning them into noxious vapors. Memory is like photographic evidence in a courtroom: a snapshot that can’t be easily dismissed. All acts of cruelty, all repression and injustice are captured by memory in its deepest recesses, and when these images are released to the world at large, they reveal very clearly the cost of something as monstrous as the Cuban Revolution. My memories, freely shared, allow readers to get into my Cuban skin. The memories vanquish all abstractions, and all statistics too. And those who praise the Revolution are thus forced to confront their prejudices toward the so-called Third World, to recognize their condescending acceptance of evil, especially of those tyrannies that masquerade as humanitarian causes.

  Evil has a way of extending itself, way beyond its immediate manifestations.

  My colleague Miroslav Volf has argued in The End of Memory that evil can triumph over and over again whenever an unjust act is erased, distorted, or eclipsed by a lie. When an evil deed is wiped clean from memory, or from history, evil wins out, and it becomes easier for the evil to repeat itself. This is where memory enters the picture as an ethical imperative. Memory is the most eloquent witness against injustice. Elie Wiesel never tires of saying this: to bear witness against injustice is to wage war on evil.

  Do not deny what happened. Never again. Not in my presence. I know better.

  The Big Lie comes in different versions, but it is always the same at heart. Forget the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s Gulag, the Armenian genocide, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, the presence of slaves at Mount Vernon and Monticello, the massacre at Wounded Knee. Forget each and every one of these horrors. They didn’t happen, or don’t really matter. Great things were accomplished.

  The Cuban version of the Big Lie has its own peculiar insidious features. Without exception, the Lie highlights the “fact” that Cubans enjoy free universal health care and education. The Lie loves statistics too, which it twists with abandon. So the more one tries to expose the Lie by dwelling on the “facts” and statistics it generates, the deeper one sinks into some sort of quicksand. One can try to explain the price Cubans pay for these ostensibly “free” services or to point out how hollow their much-vaunted success is, but it will make no difference. The Lie depends on a value system, on certain myths, and on ideological constructs. In many ways, the Lie depends on something akin to religious belief. And everyone knows that beliefs that rely on myths are hard to dislodge. Those who believe the Lie will instantly doubt anything that calls their myths into question, for “facts” and statistics are always open to interpretation, especially when ideologies are exposed. Even worse, “facts” and statistics are boring. Start jabbering about such things, and chances are most readers and audiences will yawn or fall asleep.

  So, never mind that in Cuba there is no freedom of speech or expression or assembly. Or that the press is run by the government and all dissent is stifled. Never mind that the health care is abysmally poor and that the so-called free education involves forced labor camps for children. Never mind that 20 percent of the population is in exile. Never mind that tourists in Cuba have access to all of the things Cubans lack and that the tourist hotels, restaurants, stores, and beaches are all off-limits to Cubans. Forget that kind of apartheid. It doesn’t count. One can’t even call it “apartheid” without being chastised: “How dare you!” It’s the gestalt that counts: the overall shape, configuration, and political orientation of a society. Forget the details, along with the “facts” and statistics.

  According to the Lie, the Revolution has been good for Cubans because they live in a Third World country, and people in the Third World don’t really need something as abstract as what we call “freedom” or “human rights.” In fact, the Lie goes further, proposing that “human rights” is a relative, subjective concept and that real “human rights” for Cuba and the whole Third World is simply a matter of providing adequate nutrition, schooling, and health care. It doesn’t matter how they get their food, doctors, and teachers, or how inferior and awful it may all be, or how much repression is needed to make it happen, or how many lies are told. The end always justifies the means in the Third World, where the descendants of Rousseau’s noble savage continue to suffer from a congenital handicap of sorts, a trait common to all who live in balmy climes and have dark complexions. They can’t make progress without some Mussolini figure who will make the trains run on time, so to speak. They are so inferior, a dictator is the best they can hope for. Dictators are good for them. They can even be heroic or saintly, like Fidel.

  Fortunately, I stumbled upon the best weapon I could use to unmask the Lie: my memory. It was all I had, really, so I had no choice. But its effectiveness was not dulled by chance. No one can deny the injustices visited upon me and my family by the Cuban Revolution; no one can deny the fact of my pain, confirmed in my memories. And the same goes for other authors who bear witness to the history they have lived through. I also lucked out in another way. Since my memories were those of a child, I had found within myself the perfect instrument, the most powerful of weapons against repression of any sort: the child’s voice.

  Do you seek proof that what we call “human rights” is more than an abstract concept? Proof of the fact that all humans yearn for a certain measure of freedom, respect, and love?

  Let a child tell you
about it.

  Get the reader into the child’s skin. Help the reader to become a child again, to relive the wonder and the fear, to laugh and weep, and to remember what it was like when the future was wide open and all emotions flowed seamlessly into one another. Help the reader to live as a Cuban in the only way that a non-Cuban could conceivably understand. Turn the reader into a Cuban Boy.

  Nothing links all human beings on earth more closely than childhood. Those early years of life have a certain sameness around the globe, regardless of cultural differences. Childhood transcends boundaries, ignoring the wide gap that adults perceive between themselves and those who are “others.” If you take adults back to childhood, you take them back to the core of their souls, to that part of their being where they can most readily perceive what they share with all other human beings. Above all, you can erase boundaries and remind people of their deepest longings. If you can get a reader to identify with you, to live your life as a child, the reader might actually see the Big Lie for what it is, subliminally, from within.

  So, as I go into a free fall that summer—and the feeling of falling is very real and inescapable—I relive my childhood, with all of my senses on high alert. Suddenly, I see things again, hear them, touch them, smell them, feel them. My entire self is overwhelmed by images, especially. Not false images, mind you. Not idols. Sacred images, the most sacred of all: my memories.

  My memories of what happened, and the intermingling of good and evil: memories of all the highs and lows, of all of what was wondrous and horrendous, of all of the love showered on me and all of the injustices I have witnessed.

  Every day, several times a day, I am transported to Havana. I hear my father’s voice; I hear him tell me of previous incarnations. I am scratched by stubble on his cheeks as he hugs me; I learn of my cousin being shot to death by a firing squad. I see my brother hurling rotten breadfruit at me and smell and taste it as it slams into my chest; I am told that my uncle has been whisked away to prison in the middle of the night. I hear the street vendors, their songs echoing as loudly as ever; I listen to the government informants murmuring next door. I am overwhelmed by a crimson sun sinking into the turquoise sea and by the tropical breeze on my skin; I bristle at the tears streaming down my grandfather’s cheeks on that awful day when the Revolution seizes all of his life’s savings, turning him into a pauper. I say farewell to my father, over and over, several times a day. And I cringe every time the militia men at the Havana airport strip me down to my underpants.