An Innocent in Cuba

by David McFadden

  When I came back down, the place had filled up with beautiful Cuban women dressed in very tiny miniskirts and bottomless cleavage, and the same desk clerk who had been telling me how bad the food was here took me to one side and pleaded with me whisperingly to try the food at this paladares he insisted was the best in the world. I hadn’t been to a paladares, so it made sense to check it out, if it was the best in the world. But I couldn’t possibly go until I had a shower, and there was no water in my room. The desk clerk introduced me to the little guy in charge of water, and he offered him, I suspect, a cut of the paladares commission if he could have my shower running in thirty minutes. After thirty minutes there was still no water and the little guy said ten more minutes. And sure enough in another twenty minutes some water started trickling out thinly and I managed to have a bit of a shower, though I was unable to shave after the shower owing to a sudden resurgence of total waterlessness.

  On my way out I passed the plumber-in-chief, shook his hand, thanked him profusely for getting the water started just for me. He beamed radiantly. Cubans love to have their hand shook and they love to be thanked for their efforts. A good handshake, a look in the eye, a wink, and a muchas graçias often elicits a stronger response than a tip. When you hold out your hand to a Cuban it’s a wonderful thing. It’s not something they expect from tourists, and it’s a sign of sympathy, understanding, solidarity, trust, and maybe even a cautious sort of love. When you do a double handshake, taking their hand in two of yours, that definitely adds to the atmosphere of sincerity, and they positively purr with pleasure. They also respond well to a high-five. And when you take the time to kiss a Cuban woman on both cheeks, she’s liable to kiss you on the lips and be your friend for as long as you want.

  —

  After a long walk, longer and much more confusing than the map would indicate, I was just about to give up when I found the nice little house with the plastic flamingo on the door. I had to sit in the front room for an hour staring at the artificial flowers in ceramic vases on the tables and floors, along with knick-knacks, doodads, and whatnots here and there, and the framed family photos on the wall. One frame contained eight very cool action shots of a boy about ten years old all dressed up for the big game and proudly wielding a brand new Slugger baseball bat.

  There were two fairly large tables in one small dining room – one with six people dining and the other with four. They all seemed to be youthful Cubans, dressed in their best clothes, and they’d be getting the peso rate. The table for six looked like well-heeled high-school graduates on a triple date. When the other four showed signs of being finished, the owner of the paladares took my order. Cabbage salad was very good, he said. No seafood. Chicken very good. Pork. Biftek. So I had two beers, and when he brought the biftek, cabbage salad, French fries, and papaya there was enough for ten men. He’d obviously been used to tourists with monstrous appetites. I didn’t eat one-tenth of the food and it came to ten dollars.

  So they’ve done a fair job of setting up a little alternate eatery, though the food was blander than bland, and it left me bloated after a few bites. Nothing on the table stimulated my appetite. I don’t think this would be considered a proper paladares. Christopher P. Baker says if there’s no printed menu, then it’s a bad sign and you should up and walk out, but I couldn’t do that. Ten years ago some such innovative entrepreneurs found themselves in jail. But now the paladares have been reluctantly accepted, as a competitive thorn in the side of the state restaurants, forcing them to try harder to please their patrons. The paladares are accepted but not liked by Fidel and the Fidelistas, who refuse to eat at them, so we’re told. These places are seen as counter-revolutionary, and the people who run them are indulging in personal enrichment, a no-no in a socialist state, but the paladares are, like all thorns in the side, essentially useful in the larger scheme of things.

  —

  Now I’m back in my room and I have no idea how long I’ve been without sleep. Havana and Sancti Spíritus were playing in extra innings when I got home, so it was exciting baseball, but I still fell asleep before the final run. For some reason I had forgotten how noisy this room overlooking the street was, even in the middle of the night. It’s the same room as last time and it feels as if I’ve been coming here off and on all my life. The room overlooks the same narrow street, the street where all the Holguín night people hang out, and all night long it’s hollering and honking, squealing and shrieking, incessant revving of engines, the rolling of empty fifty-gallon drums down the street, and every now and then an emergency vehicle will blast by with its siren going, on its way to another bloody emergency somewhere, or maybe just a simple case of food poisoning at some out-of-the-way paladares. This is the only spot in Cuba where I have heard sirens, and there were two the last night I was here and four tonight already. Just when you’re about to slip into deep sleep – another siren.

  Also getting in the way of slumber was my barbecued left arm, which was tingling in the most worrisome fashion, from shoulder to knuckle. To be truthful, it was really sore, beyond pink, well done. Luckily I’d been an ardent reader of tropical adventure books as a boy, and remembered how quickly gangrene could set in, and with what unpleasant results. So I slathered the arm with Polysporin. It was the right thing to do. My arm saluted me. So then I took a full relaxing tab, rather than my normal half, and fell almost immediately into the deepest sleep.

  Slept for about two hours, then the all-night screaming and screeching in this strange little street reached a crescendo and I was awakened, but it was a good awakening, because it saved me from a horrible dream that had something to do with the large chunk of biftek I’d managed to get down. It wasn’t a very good cut and it was entirely lacking in taste, but I slathered it with Cuban ketchup (much like Worcestershire sauce) and foolishly ate too much of it.

  In my dream, there was a crazy woman who was very angry with me. She had electrical cords coming out of her head, and they were all waving around. If one of those cords touched me I’d be fried. I wanted to turn and run, but bravely stood my ground as she approached. The scene shifted and I found myself on an underground train, but stretched out and strapped tightly to the undercarriage as the train hurtled at top speed around the bend and back again. Again, there were all these electrical cords that were wiggling around. If one touched me I’d be dead, but I couldn’t move. It was the most horrible nightmare I’ve experienced. I’m sure it had plenty to do with the fact that I had eaten beef for the first time in years.

  And then who should visit me under the subway train but my Vancouver friend George Bowering. He sized up the situation and told me I didn’t have to worry about those cables. He grabbed one to show me they’re harmless. See? It won’t kill you. But you have to know what time it’s okay to grab it. If you grab it at the wrong time, it will kill you. But if you grab it at the right time, it will be harmless. And there is even a certain time to grab it and it will set you free. He tried to explain how you could tell when the time was right, but at that point he stopped making sense.

  DAY TWENTY-TWO

  WILDFIRES AT SUNSET

  Saturday, March 6, 2004. Jannier was most impressive yesterday on political issues, such as when I asked him what he thought of the Volverán issue, Los Cinqo Innocentes, and what he thought about the Cuban drug laws.

  He said it’s amazing that in the United States you can actually be given life in prison for opposing terrorism – if the terrorism you’re opposing is against Cuba. He said it seems odd that it has now become a crime to warn human beings that they are about to be killed. He also said it makes him sick to his stomach to realize that anyone in the United States could come to Cuba at any time and kill all the people he wanted, and if he could get back to the United States without being caught he would not be prosecuted there. So it’s not only okay to kill Cubans, it’s a crime to try to stop them from being killed.

  As for dope, he said as far as he knows there is no marijuana anywhere on the island. Except wha
t grows wild. He said he heard of a guy who got ten years for having a bag of pot he found growing wild. He also said his father believes from a personal experience he had in Mexico that pot is extremely powerful stuff, but he thought it would be impossible to allow popular use of marijuana in Cuba, and it was important for Fidel to “nip in the bud” any potential outbreak of pot smoking because it would just be the end of the Revolution. He thought it would be seen as counter-revolutionary because of its tendency for potheads to spend more time thinking their own thoughts and less time thinking Fidel’s thoughts. People would have a greater tendency to think for themselves.

  Not without sadness, I dropped Jannier off at his uncle’s place outside of Camagüey. His uncle lived in some kind of walled block community. There were several sections of flats, each about four or five storeys high – grey, dark, gloomy. There was a big stone wall around it, with a locked iron fence. If it sounds like a prison, I should add there were no bars visible on the windows. Jannier asked somebody at the gate if his uncle was home. Then he came back and said, Yes, it’s all right, I’m going to stay here. He didn’t seem to want to say much about the place, and I didn’t want to ask. He would tell me if he wanted to. He would know that I’d be interested.

  And then I presented him with a brand-new five-dollar bill. His whole body stiffened as if struck by lightning and his eyes just popped out of his head. It was amazing. He couldn’t believe it. He’d already told me that he wouldn’t accept any money off me, but then he added, “I’m not going to charge you a cent, but if you want to make me a gift, that’s okay.” He figured the free ride was plenty. But he didn’t figure on a guy like me. I had a whole pocket full of fives. Why not give him one? If it destroys his Revolutionary sentiments, if it detours him into a life of sin, causing him to abandon his mother and sister, nobody could possibly blame me for that.

  But I have a feeling he will hang on to that five till he gets home, then give it to his mom. That’s my reading of Jannier.

  —

  I woke up this morning seized by a strong desire to return to Havana forthwith, but first I had to watch Fidel on TV. He is getting old. His eyes are baggy and so is his dark blue suit, which he wears with a white shirt and a dark blue tie with white polka dots. He has no spring in his step. It’s all play-acting for him these days. You could see him occasionally suppressing a yawn. The Vietnamese have great suits but lousy haircuts, the Cubans have great haircuts but not so good suits. Solution? Send barbers to Vietnam in exchange for tailors to Cuba.

  Yes, that’s what caused the roadblock on the autopista yesterday. The top leaders of the Vietnamese government were flying into a quiet airport to be greeted by the top leaders of the Cuban government who were in the airport waiting for them. So it was a perfectly legitimate precaution to close down the highway, thereby lowering the chances of somebody eviscerating the Cuban and Vietnamese governments with one bomb. What a mess a few guys with AK-47s could have made if they opened fire just as the Vietnamese and Cubans were throwing their arms around each other.

  —

  I’ve had breakfast, waited on by my little sweetheart Gina, and told her I’d be sure to drop back in next time I’m in Cuba. I’ve phoned my sad friend Enmo and told her where I was and why. She understood perfectly, thanked me for my friendship, and hoped to see me again sometime somewhere. I’m well rested and the car is driving well. There’s a shady place for coffee on the Carretera Central, near the small town of Jicotea (est. pop. 1,400). There’s a baseball game on a small-screen TV above the bar. I can’t seem to get a good angle on it without glare. An outfielder has a similar problem, drops a sacrifice fly, and a Havana run scores, with the Havana manager jumping up and down.

  At the next stool sits a tall, fair-skinned Afro-Cuban about thirty-five, a very distinguished Buddha who looks as if his face will be as serene twenty years from now. He works for a series of tourist hotels on Cayo Coco, owned by, in part, the famous former Canadian hockey star Serge Savard, who visits Cayo Coco a lot, and not just to check out his investments. They’ve become good friends.

  Today his job is to escort a large group of Havana Club employees on a tour of this area. There are about three little Havana Club buses full of them. Next to the coffee shop is a tourist finca, where the Havana Club contingent go around looking at the old-style thatched farmhouses and study how different kinds of fruit trees are grafted and grown. Now and then at Havana Club and most other state enterprises, groups of employees who have been doing good work get a free trip like this with their immediate families, and it must be thrilling for them. Maybe some of them are bartenders who have done a good job of promoting Havana Club products. But to be truthful (as always!), they don’t look as if they’re having any fun. The tour leader, the fellow I was chatting with, was the only one who seemed at all happy to be there. He said he was particularly happy because he got a day off work in order to do this, and “quite frankly it’s a nice little break.” He said he had many friends in Toronto, mostly in the tourist business, and everybody keeps in close contact.

  We also talked about the Vietnamese delegation. He thought it was just a friendly visit, he didn’t think there was anything special to it. Just keeping up friendly relations is the best way to operate if you want to live in a friendly world. There were about fifty people, they just decided to come over and say hello to Fidel, do some goosestepping, make a few congratulatory remarks, cement the friendship, exchange a few Revolutionary medals. I said Fidel was looking older than he did on TV just a few weeks ago even. My friend said, Yes, he’s almost seventy-eight and that’s particularly old for a guy who lived such a dangerous and action-packed life as he has. Like most Cubans, he restrained himself and spoke politely about the United States and its Cuban policy. We made a quick list of what we saw were the respective virtues in leadership style exhibited by Presidents Bush and Castro, and I’m sorry, George, but the latter won the day hands down. As soon as the Havana Club gang heard we were talking about Bush and Castro they fell silent, their ears perked up, and they inched closer. Everybody’s a quasi-journalist, secretly looking for a scoop. And something that seems dull today could be very interesting tomorrow. And then, with all eyes on us, and perhaps as a spoof of the visit of the Vietnamese delegation, the tour leader ceremoniously pinned a Havana Club button on my Old Navy sweatshirt – just below the left clavicle.

  —

  An old Austin-Healey went by, a relic left behind by a California playboy who brought it down to race in Cuba in 1952, during the era of organized sports-car races for small purses on dirt tracks. He totalled it on the track and didn’t consider it worth shipping home. That’s my fantasy. Some patient and dedicated Cuban claimed it and over the years restored it to peak form. Willy Nelson’s “On the Road Again” could be the official anthem of the Cuban motoring fraternity. Whoever brought that car here fifty years ago or so is probably dead, but the car seems very much alive.

  —

  Sad news! Enmo on the phone said she finally had her interview and there was nothing for her just now. She would try again in a couple of months. She could not talk about it more than that, but she was frustrated. She would have been a good fit in any of the top hotels in Cuba. She was a highly respectable person, and not the type one would feel comfortable pumping for information. But somehow I think it may have had something to do with her religious beliefs, and her sister being in Florida may have been a factor. Maybe in the past Enmo has been supportive of some of the more extreme anti-abortionists. Probably she doesn’t even know for sure why she is being stonewalled, and does not wish to speculate about it out loud. She doesn’t seem to be the type to be carried away by her religious beliefs, but maybe she has been annoying tourists by talking about the evils of abortion. She certainly did not betray her feelings about such sensitive topics to me during our time together. Not a word about it.

  I briefly mentioned Enmo to my Cayo Coco comrade, careful not to bring up any issues about religion or political attitudes,
and he jotted down her name and promised to find out what the problem was, if there was one. And I emphasized to him that Enmo did not offer any special theories about why she was not being hired; in fact, she didn’t even suggest there were any such reasons beyond the fact that the hotels in her area currently had too many employees for too few guests.

  Also, you wouldn’t notice this if you hadn’t seen her with her mother and grandmother, but there is a certain heaviness in Enmo’s eye. She’s a wonderful person, but something is not quite right. She’s not comfortable in her skin somehow. She’s witty and spontaneous, but something is holding her back from having the same sort of absolute happiness and untrammelled joie de vivre one sees not only in most Cubans but specifically in her very happy and carefree mother and grandmother. As for her romantic side, all she offered was that she did have a passionate romance a few years ago, but it didn’t last long and after her lover abruptly changed his mind about loving her forever she was furious for a long time. Apparently the fury was much more furious than the fun was fun, and she doesn’t want any part of that sort of thing any more. It made perfect sense to me, so I wasn’t going to be foolish enough to try to change her mind. In fact I’m of pretty well the same mind on that subject, and when I told her that she seemed very pleased. In fact, I think for a little while I became her missing father. And now I’ve gone missing again. In retrospect I see her as a person in a slightly depressed state who is forcing herself to seem happy, and she’ll be better when she gets back on the job.