An Innocent in Cuba

by David McFadden

  So I went over to the Royalton dining room and ordered a Bayamo Libre, after already having had one at La Bodega. On my table was an artificial rose with a fly on it. After five minutes the fly hadn’t budged an inch, so I snapped my finger and it still didn’t move. Aha! It’s artificial too!

  Two of the waitresses at the Royalton have been giving me unpleasant looks because they saw me with that disreputable woman this afternoon. Actually one of them, the older one, has now forgiven me, and she’s full of smiles and pleasantries, her eyes tell me she understood exactly what was happening between me, the “teacher,” and the “student” this afternoon The younger one is very miffed indeed and still keeps her nose tilted up whenever she passes by my table, and if she looks at me it’s with a glare rather than a smile. She thinks I’m the scum of the earth for having wasted so much time on such low-lifes. She wonders how I could have degraded myself like that. She’s the puritan and won’t even give me a chance to try to win her over. Honest, I thought that nice lady was a schoolteacher! She was giving me some drawing lessons! Both waitresses were wearing little silver crosses, but one was of a more forgiving denomination than the other.

  Now the puritanical lady is avoiding any kind of eye contact whatsoever with me, as if she thinks I’ve come down here with my filthy money to exploit women half my age at least. But the older woman is fawning over me, as if she admires me for having had a lot of fun with the “teacher” but being scrupulous enough not to follow her home for advanced lessons. Two different Cubans, two different takes on the subject.

  But finally I got a smile from the younger waitress. I ordered yet another Bayamo Libre from the older nicer waitress and I could hear her in the kitchen telling the younger one to take it to me. But the younger one didn’t want to. So the older one insisted. And when the younger one poutingly brought it to me she put it down with a cute little hint of a smile. She looks as if she’s on the verge of forgiving me for my terrible transgression this afternoon. After all, that was six hours ago. Let’s forgive and forget. And she seemed pleased when my curious eye told her that I had noticed the sexy black bra under her blouse.

  DAY TWENTY

  BAYAMO DAYBREAK

  Thursday, March 4, 2004. Way off in the barrios the roosters are crowing. Some sleepless maniac steps out of the darkness and tips over a trash can three feet from where I’m sitting. Then he starts poking through the mess to see if there’s anything worth salvaging. There isn’t. He sees me glaring at him and says good morning. I take the last slug of my mineral water and toss the empty bottle into the pile of garbage. He seems to get the point but comes short of looking sheepish. I’m sitting in this beautiful symmetrical park at 4 a.m., with four royal palms towering high above the Céspedes statue. As so often in Cuba, I had it all wrong – the trashcan tipper was actually a member of the early-morning street-cleaning squad. He would be joined by many others soon and they’d have this square squeaky clean.

  Embarrassed, I retreat to the roof of the Hotel Royalton and discover a new world of absolute solitude. The air is very still, but it’s almost cool enough for a sweater. This is a nicely maintained red-tiled roof, neat and charmingly laid out, with sixty empty hardback chairs tightly arranged in a symmetrical oval, with one chair removed so people can get in and out of the oval with ease, and this little passageway is conveniently close to the bar, which is not in operation at this hour. Also the roof provides views of a sky just beginning to pale from blue black to sky blue, with little birds chirping in the trees and the only roosters crowing are crowing faintly from a mile away.

  From here I can look down at the park and see the messy pile of garbage has now been swept into a neat pile but it is still on the sidewalk. A man and woman, both very corpulent Afro-Cubans, were coming out of their room, and climbing down to the lobby, as I was climbing up to the roof. Now when I lean over the retaining wall I can see them standing on the sidewalk. Finally a large black car pulls up, with one tail light missing, and the black couple silently gets in the back seat, while a skinny white woman silently and unsmilingly gets out of the back seat and climbs into the front. Everyone is careful to close the doors with as little noise as possible. The car takes off, but slowly, as if the driver just didn’t want to make a noise at such an early hour. Or maybe they were sneaking out without paying.

  My car is also down there, parked in front of the hotel entrance. It’s been there for forty-eight hours now. Even when all the festivities were going on they just worked their way around it. They even put a little portable fence around it, maybe to prevent kids from sitting on the roof. Maybe they saw an angry tourist once and didn’t want to repeat that experience.

  Now a whole team of sweepers is out sweeping, each wearing a khaki vest with the word COMUNALES in big yellow block letters. A well-fed blond lady goes serenely by on her bicycle with a long white skirt and a maroon T-shirt. Five minutes later she rides back with a package under her arm and as she passes she glances at her watch. There’s also a splendid view of the cathedral, and especially of the bells, which have not once rung all the time I’ve been here. Maybe Cuban churches don’t like to call attention to themselves in an officially atheist and pro-choice state. But I’m told that all the churches in Cuba toll their bells like mad on Christmas, ever since 1998 when the public observance of Christmas was reinstituted, in honour of the papal visit that year.

  Directly across from me, and to one side of the parque, is a four-storey office building. This early, there are already three people working away at their desks. One man is doing paperwork. A woman is looking at her computer screen, and just as she turns the computer off, all the lights on lampposts around the parque go off as well, an odd coincidence to start the new day.

  A small two-seater plane has taken off from the Carlos M. Céspedes Airport and is flying south over Bayamo, still climbing, but painfully. It’s heading straight toward Kingston, Jamaica, in the first light of morning, but the engine doesn’t sound very good. It’s misfiring badly. It sounds exactly like a misfiring 500 cc motorcycle engine. Good luck, amigos.

  After the ceremonial festivities yesterday there was some live music in the square, a bandstand was set up, with a little band backing a singer who was very macho with tight jeans, transparent T-shirt, and lots of hairy chest muscles. As soon as his name was announced, hundreds of schoolchildren appeared out of nowhere and came running from all directions up to the bandstand to get a good look at this Revolutionary pop star. He sang some tender Cuban ballads, the music very slow and with great heartfelt crescendos and diminuendos of despair. The kids adored him. What kind of a cretin would drop bombs on a country like this?

  There are worse things than being a Cuban streetsweeper. These sweepers are perfectly ordinary Bayamese citizens having a good time. Nobody’s working too hard, everybody knows what he or she is doing. It’s an everyday opera of interesting chit-chat, gossip, repartee, laughter, and socializing. No rush, no anxiety, everything moves at the speed of nature. And the place is getting shiny clean all over again, as if by magic. And yes, the fellow who tipped the first can over turns out to be the foreman of the sweeping group, and he keeps a close but friendly eye on his flock, and yet he was doing almost as much work as everyone else. No one is doing too much or too little. Everyone’s perfectly happy.

  On the third floor of the office building an Afro-Cuban office worker opens the window, steps out onto the balustraded balcony, and leans over to watch the ballet of the streetsweepers just as I am doing. She’s wearing a black skirt just above her dimpled knees and a white blouse, and she looks as if she’s almost ready for a good day’s work helping to keep the Revolution humming sweetly in a sour world. It’s the Coreos de Cuba building, i.e., the post office.

  Every minute that passes there are more people wandering around down there, just as at daybreak anywhere in the known world. From my field of vision, including swivelling my head from side to side, I can see about forty people. Off in the distance a mournful train whistle r
ises slowly in the morning air. It’s the seven o’clock special to Havana. If you want to see a beautiful Latin American city of la belle époque, check out Bayamo. I’m tempted to find myself a little apartment and stay here forever or until they kick me out. No matter how long I lived here I’d never understand Bayamo, but it would be an interesting daily challenge trying to reach a state bordering on understanding.

  A tractor goes by pulling a cart in which are standing an old campesino couple, man and woman, straw hats, a cart that could hold forty people standing in a pinch, and maybe soon will be. A very slim and attractive older woman, about sixty, sizzles by with a decidedly youthful aura about her, amplified by her purple miniskirt, white bobby sox, black suede shoes, and a shockingly black silk top with silky red straps over her shoulders. She looks serious too and is determined to get wherever she’s going. Which is to work, no doubt. Or maybe home from work, who knows? Here comes an Afro-Cuban mama with white shoes, a green-and-red parrotlike bandana, a pair of lime green Bermuda shorts, and a very nice jacket. And a large shoulder bag filled with paperwork.

  And now it has become light enough to see, from the Royalton rooftop, the faint blue jagged Sierra Maestra way off to the south. Closer at hand, the garbage has been cleaned up and put in bags, and now someone has to bring a cart around to pick up the bags and the brooms.

  Even the cops are nice in Bayamo. As I came out of La Bodega last night an officer of the law smilingly pointed to my money belt, suggesting I should pull my shirt over it, which of course I immediately did, being prudent and quick of mind. He wasn’t suggesting I was in danger of being robbed, but that I was in danger of causing envy among the poor townfolk. There are thieves everywhere, but it’s hard to imagine one in Bayamo, it doesn’t seem that kind of city at all. If two cars collided on the main street I don’t think there’d be a fight: the drivers would jump out and shake hands.

  People are already sitting on the long benches surrounding the square, waiting for something to happen but hoping it doesn’t. Five women are standing there with brooms, just chatting. A child is talking merrily to a dog and trying to grab its tail. The dog barks. A fellow kickstarts his motorcycle, then just sits there, looking around, waiting for the little engine to warm up before taking off. One of the women, with red hair, white skin, and blue shorts down to her knees, resumes sweeping but the other four keep chatting. The sun is coming up and the high peaks of the Sierra Maestra are becoming sharply defined.

  There are some German tourists in the hotel, and two big tourist buses out front. They came in late last night. The bus driver is the first one up. He unlocks the bus, goes in, makes sure everything is okay. Now he starts the engine and takes off for a little ride all by himself.

  —

  Action: A man is holding a bag open and a woman is dumping garbage from the receptacle into the bag. But the man isn’t holding the bag open widely enough, so a third woman tries to help him, while a fourth sweeps up the garbage that has spilled – and all four wear those little vests with COMUNALES on the back. People are greeting each other, shaking hands, kissing, wishing each other a good day. Here comes a man in a dirty shirt carrying a table over his head. A man who seems to be the boss of Coreos de Cuba, with shiny black hair and a nice pair of trousers and shiny black shoes, comes over and starts shaking hands with all the sweepers. Then he sits down on the bench with the sweeper boss in the red shirt and they have an earnest talk. Another guy, in a straw hat and a pair of overalls and a sleeveless red T-shirt, has put his can of paint down on the bench and has sat down himself; it looks as if he has a bit of painting to do today, and he’s going to get his brand-new running shoes splattered with paint if he’s not careful. A lonesome smoker strolling by stops to get a light from the painter, and they chat for a few minutes, with the smoker doing a lot of coughing. There are two dogs on the roof across the way. They are as close to the edge as can be even though it’s four storeys straight down, with no retaining wall. The big dog woofs, the little dog yaps, as they both look down at some sweepers directly below them.

  And over on the east side of the park there’s a circle of six people standing there chatting pleasantly with plenty of arm gestures – five police officers, tall and skinny in light brown shirts and dark brown trousers, and a fashionable young woman with a bag over her shoulder. Now the painter in the overalls is reading a newspaper, and the smoker, an older man, is reading it over his shoulder. It’s last week’s Rebelde. And they’re talking about what they’re reading as they read it. Then the painter stands up, folds the paper, puts it in his pocket. Will he continue standing there, walk away, or sit down again? The older man is wiggling his knees in anticipation. And the painter sits down again.

  The little circle of cops is breaking up. Three of them are walking across the park toward the hotel, then they turn around and look at the two other cops who have opted to stay put and continue their chat with the fashionable woman. These are very benign cops; they smile, they don’t have guns, they have brown baseball caps, with brown epaulettes on their shirts, they’re all in shades of brown, they’re not paranoid, and they don’t stop you for questioning just for being black.

  —

  Parque Céspedes has two main statues. One is of the aforementioned Perucho Figueredo, who was one of many ordinary amateur musicians in Bayamo until he rose to the occasion and in a fit of inspiration dashed off the words and music for the Cuban national anthem. Little did he know that some day a Cuba Libre would be a refreshing drink on a hot day. On the reverse side of the base of the statue is a plaque commemorating the great Bayamo fire of 1869, which was started by Bayamese patriots in order to drive out the Spanish troops. The plaque shows the church in flames (the same church that, all patched up, I can see from here), and a couple of neighbouring houses also in flame, including the Céspedes house, which has been restored beautifully and is now a charming museum, situated right next to the Royalton.

  Much taller and more elaborate is the other statue, showing Céspedes himself urging people to enter into battle with the foe, with a naked woman in chains huddling at his feet, a white man and a black man with machetes in their raised hands, a man gonging a bell, a woman wearing a long gown with a naked baby in her arms, and another man holding his hand up and looking the other way. Also there’s a firing squad about to shoot an anguished blindfolded man (representing Céspedes’s son Oscar), and there’s a man with sword raised ready to bring it down and shout, “Fire!” It’s very dramatic and full of action. Céspedes was a great hero, no stranger to prisons, and he did many famous things such as freeing the slaves and proclaiming the Cuban Declaration of Independence (which led to the horrendous Ten Years War). These stirring images on his statue commemorate his signing of a decree granting freedom to the slaves, on December 27, 1870. Earlier that year his son Oscar, who had been captured by the Spanish forces, faced the firing squad because Céspedes refused to negotiate for his son’s freedom.

  —

  In the Royalton lobby, the Germans are getting ready for a longdistance bicycle ride from Bayamo to Manzanillo. Everything is well organized. They are all dressed in that deliberate, carefully chosen style beloved of tourists, but this gang was especially fashionable, with muted colours, no primaries, and no two alike, as if planned in advance. They are very tense and stiff, but maybe that’s just a touch of culture shock. They keep bumping into tables and chairs and pretending they didn’t, or pretending that it didn’t hurt. I’m sure they’ll be fine as soon as they get on their bicycles, which still have to be put together because they’ve been shipped from Germany in pieces to lessen the bulk cost. But they’ve got all the tools to put those pieces back together in a flash.

  —

  Thank you, Cachita, for providing me with an opportunity to apologize to that poor guy who washed my car. For slamming the door in his face, my apology was accepted with graceful unconditionality. De nada, de nada. He looked very splendid this morning in his blue security guard uniform. He’s the secur
ity guard for the hotel. He thought the Germans were Canadians and I was German. He had a soft musical voice and he had that very handsome Lorca look, a worried, apple-shaped face with a broad forehead, sensitive, definitely no stranger to tears.

  This morning I saw my shining car again, and remembered how stricken he’d looked when I snarled at him. And there he was in his uniform studying the Germans as they put the pieces of their bicycles together. Along with my apology I gave him another dollar. He was a bit embarrassed, but for the sake of his family he could hardly refuse to accept it. Apparently it’s not in the Cuban temper to be angry about being awakened from the deepest sleep.

  But then again he may not have been the one who actually washed the car. I had asked the bartender if he knew of anyone and he said to leave it to him. So I figured that the security guard said he’d do it. But maybe he had a kid do it, paid the kid two pesos, sent the kid home, then came up to bang on my door for the two dollars. Interesting conspiracy theory, but I reject it. The car was too clean for that. I’m discovering over and over again a certain fundamental sense of kindness and honesty in Cuba and am now looking for it and expecting it wherever I go.

  But when people bang on your door in the middle of the night in Cuba you can be sure they want money. Don’t make my mistake. Just say to them, Vuelto más adelante – “Come back later” – and they’ll leave you in peace. Hemingway had a more crucial piece of advice to offer tourists with toothaches: all you have to say is, Este diente lastima pero no lo deseo tiré – “This tooth hurts but I do not want it pulled.”