His name seems to have been hijacked by those calling for an invasion of Cuba, so it might be better for Cuba if he were given his freedom. There’s a good case for keeping him in jail and a good case for releasing him. But forty years in prison doesn’t sound right for a poet opposed to the system. How could any poet worth his tropes not be opposed to the system? I don’t know, I just don’t know.
—
All I know for sure is I’m hereby recommending the scrapping of the ubiquitous bubble cars, which are used by Havana taxi drivers who lack the energy to pedal a bicycle taxi, or want more speed than a bicycle taxi can afford, but can’t afford the luxury of a four-wheel automobile. The bubble car is a motorcycle surrounded by a comical plastic bubble the colour and shape of a partially peeled grapefruit, and it will seat three passengers in a pinch. Sounds like fun, but being a bubble-car driver must be the world’s unhealthiest job, next to being a packer in a dynamite plant or a French cabinet minister trying to trim the arts budget. There’s no windshield, so driver and passengers are forced to breathe thick clouds of black exhaust gushing out of the vehicles in front of them. And there always seems to be a vehicle directly in front of them belching out black clouds of poison. Every day at a job like that would cut a month off one’s life expectancy.
A bubble car has whisked me off to El Morro, the Fortress, standing on a high promontory – though it doesn’t seem that high when you’re gazing at it from the Malecón across Havana Bay. One feels a sense of wonder at this place, and the numerous cruelties it represents. There were four hundred Spanish soldiers garrisoned here when Samuel de Champlain paid a visit in 1601, before he turned his attention to his vast exploration of the Canadian wilderness. The more recent history of El Morro is featured prominently in Reinaldo Arenas’s autobiography, Before Night Falls, and in the eponymous movie version (2000) as well, where the Arenas character (played by Spanish actor Javier Bardem) is dually titillated and tortured by U.S. actor Johnny Depp in his dual role as transvestite prisoner and psychotic prison guard.
Now there are no prisoners in El Morro, at least none I could discover. It’s an enormously silent, imposing labyrinth, and when you’re the only visitor in such a place it can’t help but conjure up strangely mournful emotions that seem to seep out of the stones. El Cristo is nearby, it shares with El Morro the same promontory, and from their locations one has splendid views of all of Havana, including the entire length of the sinuous serpentine Malecón, which may soon need some sensitive reconstruction after several decades of being smashed by hurricane waves.
This fortress was built in 1589, about the time Shakespeare began to shape his own fortress of poetry. The king of Spain (forgive me if you’ve heard this) was so aghast at how much had been spent on its construction he facetiously grabbed a telescope and said, “We should be able to see it from here.” More than a hundred years later the French king said something similar about the fortress of Louisbourg. It’s so sweet the way reigning monarchs, from Philip II to Louis XIV to Fidel to George W. Bush, like to leaven their sarcasm with a scintilla of humour.
While wandering solo through many silent and empty galleries, profoundly sonorous rooms built out of great blocks of limestone that show no signs of crumbling even after the continual shock of so many dramatic events over the centuries, mostly involving death and destruction, I found framed copies of ancient maps, replicas of old rudders, and of old sails with bright red and white stripes, drawings of old astrolabes and so on. Here there are sea monsters, or fanciful pictures thereof, and immaculate scale drawings of various ships of the fifteenth century – the later the date of each ship the larger, speedier, and more dangerous it looks. There are many portraits of famous seafaring contemporaries of Columbus – and several of Columbus himself looking like a chubby blond or red-haired Boy George.
As I scrutinize a painting of that dramatic event of October 11, 1492, when Columbus moored his boats in the bay and came ashore with all his men, and with naked unarmed natives timidly hiding behind each tree, a woman who wishes to offer herself as my guide to El Morro sneaks up behind me and cheerfully starts serenading me with little children’s songs about the landing of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. I congratulate her on remembering that from grade school. She tells me it seems like yesterday.
This tiny señorita of forty drags me over to see a map pinpointing all the known pre-Columbian settlements. The red dots are the farming villages, the yellow dots fishing villages. Many of the large cities of Cuba were once Aboriginal settlements, and she had me repeating the place names with her exact pronunciation: Bare-adáro (Varadero), Labánna (l’Havana), Wan-tán-amo (Guantánamo), Bara-kúwa (Baracoa), and when she said Granma (not an Aboriginal word), I jokingly said, Are you a granma? She punched me on the chest for insinuating she was old.
All the exhibits are copies, few things in El Morro are real except for El Morro itself, and the people who work here – the guides, who double as salespeople in the gift shop, and also when required as window-washers, floor-sweepers, bookkeepers, and sometimes even plumbers. Nothing original or in any way valuable can be kept here for fear of it being damaged by the proximity to the sea and the pawing of the tourists. The maps, drawings, paintings are carefully assembled colour photocopies. The reconstructed palm-thatched Aboriginal houses are fake, and any Aboriginal looking at them would probably burst into tears. Even the pottery is fake. But nice fake. Some of the stone implements used for grinding corn might be real, though the Aboriginal shovel looks like a facsimile. The pictograms look real, and in their painstakingly geometric complexity closely resemble the much earlier carvings in the stones at Newgrange, far away and long ago.
The cannons and cannonballs are real. Nobody would make a fake cannonball because there are loose cannonballs everywhere you look in Cuba. Loose cannons too, no doubt. And bells, immense bells, the tolling of which in days of yore would bring the salivating slaves in from the fields for lunch. The bells and the cannonballs have found new functions in recent years, the bells for ornamental additions to inner courtyards of restaurants and historical buildings, and the cannonballs for blocking off roads to vehicular traffic. The cannonballs here are overlarge, like a ten-pin bowling ball in size (and shape of course), but not as polished, in fact not polished at all. It would be very uncomfortable to be hit by a cannonball, you would have to lie where you fell, and you would have to be very still because of your pulverized spine and other broken bones. For half a millennium, up until 1959 when Fidel took over, Cuba has had a long history of being crushed and humiliated by imperial powers. Its spine has been pulverized many times.
Although I’m the sole visitor to El Morro, there are several female guides sitting around, enjoying the lonesome ambience, contemplating the nature of time and eternity, listening to the innocent chirping of sparrows, and wishing some handsome man from a distant country might ask to be escorted through the ancient holding cells where many brave souls over the centuries starved, and bled, and suffered great tortures, and died. Sometimes without realizing it, one learns things, such as how to address a Cuban lady. Call her a señorita. The older she is the more she’ll like it. Hearing herself called señora is not a big thrill for Cuban women. It’s like calling a Canadian woman missus. They’re likely to respond coolly. Call her señorita and she’ll give you a bright attentive look. If she seems really grandmotherly, however, señorita can sound a bit facetious, but even then don’t call her señora, call her compañera (they love that), and pronounce the word with gusto! If people would start calling all their female friends, from anywhere on earth, señorita (and maybe their male friends as well), it could start some momentum, like a stadium wave.
One little brown-skinned señorita who claimed to be thirty-one, when she found out I was from Canada, said that the Cubans have a high regard for Canada, and reminded me that Fidel was an honorary pallbearer at Trudeau’s funeral. And she said that when the people of Cuba are suffering, Fidel suffers too, and when they are happy
Fidel is also happy – which is undoubtedly true. And even though nobody seemed to be working very hard around El Morro on this particular day, she complained about the overriding and neverending plight of Cuba: mucho trabajo, poco dinero. Shyly and with much embarrassment, I offered her what I considered to be an insignificant sum of money, and she was flabbergasted. It was just a ten-peso bill.
Then she calmed down and became very sad, and she began to tell me sad stories about Cuban life, and family breakups, and friends dying trying to get to Florida, and how difficult it is to get enough food….
—
The outer walls of El Morro are six or seven feet thick. Antique cannons sit around dreaming of past battles, of ships going down in flames with the screams of dying men. It’s all so lonesome, brooding, melancholy – and very strange. This is the archetype to which all those dungeons and fortresses in computer games owe their existence. A poet with a camera could take some wonderful pictures in El Morro on a day like today, with nobody around but the stone walls, the precipitous cobblestone walkways, perfectly curved arches leading from one level to another, the long-dormant skills of the ancient stone masons, the occasional cat sneaking up on a bird, the brilliant sun, the welcome shadows, the blue sky, the flat sea, the silent pale silver ship way out on the horizon, and the lonely guides with no one to guide.
There’s also a hint of low-grade irrational anxiety in the air, as if it were possible that this entire massive fortress could suddenly sink into the sea, or an errant cannonball could rip the head off your shoulders. Or you could be arrested, put in chains, have your nose cut off, and given smaller and smaller portions of gruel until you starved to death. But I like it nevertheless, and I am not at all unhappy to be a solitary tourist from a faraway land, wandering through the multitudinous symbols of human selfishness, fiendish ingenuity, cruelty, and stupidity.
But tourists here must be careful, especially when looking out over the city, and especially when they have children with them. Many of these retaining walls are not high, and one false move could send a body to the wave-washed rocks below. Many have fallen to their deaths or been thrown from these downward-sloping ramparts, some of which are only a couple of feet high, and the waves eventually washing everything away. In Before Night Falls, Arenas speaks of being incarcerated in El Morro in the early 1970s during the antihomosexual phase of the Revolution, when homosexuality was considered a bourgeois affectation. He witnessed a prisoner become crazed with desperation and throw himself off the ramparts. The poor fellow broke both his legs on the rocks below. He started pulling himself toward the sea. A compassionate guard fired at him and killed him.
—
A chubby smiling señorita, with cafe con leche skin, serenades me from a filigreed upper window as I stroll by meditatively. She’s singing “Dos Gardenias” (a gushy romantic ballad made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club), but she has shrewdly changed the words from “Two gardenias for you” to “No gardenias for me” – and as I stop to listen and look up at her, she locks eyes with me and the song becomes more passionate. She has a beautiful voice and knows how to use it. There are a lot of guides, and it seems that I am the only one in this massive fortress who is not a full staff member. Buses pull in, the tourists get out, and they run up to the gift shop for Che T-shirts, Fidel change-purses, José Martí ashtrays, Buena Vista Social Club bottle openers, and maybe even video tapes detailing the history of El Morro. Then they run back to the bus and zoom off to the next souvenir shop. Sad but perfectly understandable that they have desire perhaps, but no time for the fulfilment of it. They’ll return to Cuba some day for sure, at least in their dreams. Our ancestors had no problem living in eternity, so it’s said, but the god of time, armed with a razor-sharp machete, has captured us and chopped our sense of timelessness into bits and pieces, minutes and seconds – just like the English navy destroying the old lighthouse at El Morro, as it did during the siege of Havana in 1762.
—
By the parking lot, there’s a nice little breezy palm-shaded outdoor restaurant called Los Doce Apóstoles. Only two of the twelve are on duty today, and they’re calling me over to have a look at the menu. It was a nice menu, but much to their dismay I was neither hungry nor thirsty. High season, but no visitors.
One of the two apostles has two fingers on his left hand strapped together with a splint and a heavy bandage. What happened? He rather proudly says he slammed a car door on his hand. Did you cry? He looks at me, surprised that I would ask such an intimate question. Yes, I did, he said. I cried like a baby.
Parked nearby is a white Baby Austin, a tiny British car from 1952, not much bigger than a bubble car, in fact smaller, you’d feel more cramped and claustrophobic in one of these. This one has retained the original grill, a very handsome vertical grill like a Mercedes-Benz, but where there would have been an A for Austin at the top of the grill, someone has very carefully painted the Rolling Stone emblem, with bright red lips and a bright yellow tongue.
The man who cried asked if I wanted a taxi. He made a call and a dirty old beat-up Lada appeared, with no fare box or meter, or any indication it was a taxi. The driver said it’d be four dollars. I said it was only three dollars to get here in a real taxi. He said no, four dollars. So then he drove me down the hill, stopped the car, got out, and another guy got behind the wheel and drove me down through the tunnel under Havana Bay without turning his lights on (probably didn’t have lights), and let me off at a dangerous spot on the traffic circle (with the Máximo Gómez statue smack in the centre) leading into Old Havana. This was neither a licensed cab nor a licensed driver. So I cheekily gave him a bright orange three-dollar bill, expecting him to say one more, but he seemed perfectly okay with the three, and so did I without it.
Even the innocent can see a scam when it presents itself. It’s not a serious scam, though, because no real taxi driver would be up there waiting for a fare. He’d be waiting all day. So these guys are performing a vital service, even if there is little demand for it even at high season, and even if it is illegal in Cuba to charge for a ride without being licensed.
—
Inspired by the sweet singing of “Dos Gardenias” at the Fortress, I darted dangerously across the street and into the Museo de la Musica, and immediately felt unwelcome. There seems to be a foreigners-by-invitation-only routine here, but there I was, and although nobody seemed pleased nobody made a move to usher me out. This place is considered to hold in its hand the beating heart of Cuban music, plus a really small but brilliant and optimistic little store selling Cuban recordings.
I stumbled into the cutest auditorium, with a grand piano taking up more than half the stage, and old-fashioned cinema-style seating – thirteen rows of seven seats each, so that it will hold ninety-one, with just a single very narrow aisle along one wall.
Two female guides did not wish to know how long I’d been in Cuba, but they were eager to know how many chicas I’d danced the boogie-woogie with since arriving in Cuba. They thought it was hilarious when I informed them I’m only attracted to nuns.
In the little shop, on the main floor, there were many photos of famous Cuban musicians on the wall. Some of the old-time musicians looked really interesting, but everybody seemed busy so I left without buying anything. In Cuba, it seems that everybody has great music in their soul – with the curious exception of Fidel, who is famous for not being able to dance or sing. But look at that chubby señorita at El Morro just now – her voice was stunningly beautiful in the silence of that huge fortress, suddenly, through the filigree-barred window where she was sitting, and reclining languorously, singing a sad song about the absence of gardenias.
The Museo de la Revoluçion with tremendous irony is housed in the magnificent old Presidential Palace where Batista lived and where he hosted fascists from all around the world, and where in 1958 an attack by student rebels intent on assassinating him was foiled. The attack was very well organized, but unforeseeable things went wrong, there was an accident
on the way to the palace, gunfire broke out prematurely, and many young idealistic Revolutionaries were killed. Fidel wasn’t involved at all in that one.
So I wandered around the first floor, and watched some films of parades. The still photos from the 1950s were more interesting, many photos of armed men in the heat of battle. I was wishing I could take a pill that would confer on my brain full command of the Spanish language, when an unpleasant woman in a brown shirt and a dark brown skirt came up to me and demanded that I check my shoulder bag. I understood perfectly, it was a legitimate request, I could have a camera in my bag, or something even more deadly, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, so I left, vowing to return another day.
—
The Presidential Palace is still known by that name, though Fidel wisely refused the opportunity to make it his home base. Doing so would have made him seem like just another Batista, whose unsavoury friends, such as the young Richard Nixon and certain Hollywood movie stars, would congregate here on occasion for massive pigouts while the country starved. The Presidential Palace is still a symbol of the opulence of power in a poor country, and to have it filled with photos of unwashed bearded rebels and other ragtags is an irony of juxtaposition.
Iglesia del Santo Ángel Custodio is the name of the magnificent old cathedral across the street from Batista’s former digs. I’m standing at the Lourdes altar, with a life-sized Nuestra Señora de Lourdes flanked by Jesús Nazarino on her left and el Niño Jesús de Praga on her right. But someone has come in, a handsome fellow with a worried look on his face and great authority in his bearing. He sees me talking into my tape recorder, and indicates he wishes to kneel and pray at the very altar where I’m standing. This seems odd, since there are so many altars, and this is by no means the most impressive. And now, looking back over my shoulder, he looks like a very nice devout Cuban, kneeling silently and sending up a message to Our Lady of Lourdes to protect him and his loved ones from excessive suffering in this uncertain life.
An Innocent in Cuba Page 31