An Innocent in Cuba

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  The praying man is now my friend! And he wasn’t a Cuban at all, he was a tourist. I said adios to the cathedral and started strolling down the steep and cobblestoned Calle Compostela – and suddenly a man overtook me. He was wearing a form-fitting undershirt and skintight jeans, a man in his prime and in great physical shape. He was full of charm and enthusiasm. He harboured no doubts about himself. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so radiant. He sensed I’d been here a while, and might have some tourist tips for him. Also, being a cop, he had a natural desire to know why I was talking into my tape recorder. But like a good cop he betrayed no suspicion when he asked, it was just a friendly question.

  He was a French tourist, a Mauritian named Christophe who lives and works in Paris. He has a touch of food poisoning. Maybe that’s why he’d been praying. But it’s probably just the tourist tummy, and he’ll soon be fine. He’s right now in the toilet of a dark but friendly little peso bar in the shadow of the baroque seventeenth-century towers of Santo Ángel. He bought me a beer and I bought him a cigar. When we paid up, several poor Cubans who were watching the transaction turned to look at each other and cock their eyebrows, as if to say these guys must be fabulously wealthy.

  Between visits to the john he tells me his thirty-eight-year-old brother quit his government job as an ichythologist to write sci-fi novels. He has now finished his first one, and it’s doing so well he’s already started another. Christophe himself works as a secret police officer with the French government, and he is very much enjoying this little holiday in Havana, walking around so casually, without having to carry a gun. He’s only in Cuba for four days, and feels lucky to have got away because he’s been working around the clock, dealing with a serious assassination threat against the minister of culture. As elsewhere, the government is slashing arts-funding budgets. Unlike elsewhere, artists are so furious they’re calling for blood.

  It’s hard to imagine what he’s like at home, but in the heavenly Havana milieu Christophe comes across as an extremely fine person, and wildly enthusiastic about everyone he meets and everything he sees. He likes to make an impression, he likes to be remembered, and he even shows me pictures of his children. He likes to stand in the sun and be observed, while on the job he would likely prefer to lurk in the shadows and observe.

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE

  MAGIC IS WHAT YOU IMAGINE!

  Tuesday, March 9, 2004. After the magician had gone through his amazing routine last night, Christophe’s friend Isabella remarked that “Magic is what you imagine.” At first that didn’t seem helpful in understanding magic or the imagination. She said it after I said something even more meaningless: “And they say there is no magic.” It’s the sort of puerile thing baffled people say after some spectacular trick. We knew these were tricks, very skilfully done, but the smiling Afro-Cuban somehow managed to convince us, almost, that he was causing the laws of physics to vanish and be replaced by the laws of his own subjectivity. He wasn’t manipulating the laws of the universe in order to make coins appear where they couldn’t possibly be. He didn’t levitate, and he didn’t cause the moon to open its mouth and say, Howdy, Isabella. But it was as if he could have, if he had wanted to.

  What he did do was cause knots in a soft white cord five feet long to disappear by passing his hand over them. With another hypnotic gesture, this Cuban Mandrake/Lothar all-in-one made the cord turn into five cords each one foot long. And then back again, all with a detached smile on his face. He went on for about twenty minutes without a pause, without a word, with all four members of his audience desperately trying to see the trickery behind the facade of the miraculous.

  —

  The poor bartender earlier yesterday was brimming over with happiness at having two tourists there, delighted to be getting even such a small amount of U.S. funds. He was selling loose cigarettes to the locals. People would come in with a peso in their hand and he’d count out five cigarettes. He also had an open box of cigars and man oh man were they good, the best one-dollar cigar imaginable. The smoke was as thick and rich as warm liquid chocolate and it coated your entire respiratory track with a glowingly intense pleasure. They weren’t anything famous, just cheap no-name Cuban cigars, and yet they seemed on a level with your Cohibas and your Romeo y Julietas. Christophe said he usually preferred cigars from Mauritius, but given the price these would do.

  Christophe was enthralling everyone with his tiny Minolta digital camera. In the bar he took a picture of the bartender and then showed him the picture instantly, not printed, but viewable inside the camera, like a tiny bartender inside a tiny bar. And he’d press a button to show all the pictures he’d already taken, then zoom in on any one of them.

  So the word got out and several people came into the bar wanting to get their pictures taken. Radio Bemba, as they call this sort of thing in Cuba, where word-of-mouth news often seems to travel faster than radio signals. They didn’t have to ask twice. Just a hint would be enough to cause Christophe to leap into action and take all the pictures they required. They didn’t care that they couldn’t take the shot home with them. It was enough just to be part of the cutting edge of global technology for a moment. Whole crowds were surrounding him, and jockeying to see the little guys inside the camera. When he got tired of it he just slipped the camera into his pocket and the people would politely disperse. Just like magic!

  —

  Christophe had found a private apartment for $25 a night and it was spacious enough for himself and his two friends. He said he was astonished at his own luck: he had ordered this camera, and he knew he had a few days off, so he decided to go to Cuba with his friend Marcel. It was a miracle that his camera arrived just as he was about to step into his taxi to the airport for his flight from Orly to Varadero. Such miraculous timing inspired him to use the camera as much as possible.

  Christophe was sharing the apartment with Marcel – a relatively new friend of his – and Isabella, a Paris TV producer of Corsican origin whom Christophe and Marcel met for the first time two days ago. Marcel and Isabella didn’t have Christophe’s dynamic flat-out energies, and although they loved him they found him impossible to keep up with. Christophe invited me into the flat, where the other two were having a nap, and they sleepily shook my hand as he woke them up and introduced us. Isabella looked very cynical, as Christophe described the show she produced as the best Paris TV show of all time. It covered all aspects of the cinema, and was extremely popular. Marcel was the manager (and owner, insisted Christophe) of a fabulously expensive restaurant in Paris. He sleepily told me about his chefs with the big white hats and how he’s quietly trying to devise ways of getting them to sample less of the product. Tasting is fine, but the way they were overindulging was making them fat and him skinny.

  Isabella was a short woman approaching forty with blond hair, soft fair features, and beautiful eyes. Christophe noticed me admiring her eyes, and said she was just a producer behind the scenes, and never was on-camera, and with those eyes wasn’t it a shame. She said she has no desire to be on-screen because she knew she would hate being famous. She’d hate to be gawked at on the street by people who had seen her on the tube. She said some people love it, but she would hate it. She said if you’re famous you can’t become anonymous, you’re stuck with it, but if you’re anonymous you can always become famous, or at least give it a try. She said fame was like money, you spend your whole life amassing it but no matter how much you amass it’s never enough to satisfy you.

  Christophe and Marcel had known each other for six months. Isabella was on the same flight, heading to Varadero on her own for some solitary seaside rest and relaxation. They met and hit it off on the bus from the airport to the beach hotel. She said she knew they were destined to be friends forever, but she just wished Christophe would slow down a bit, it was so exhausting trying to keep up with him. She complained unsmilingly, without irony, as a woman might complain about some bad habits that she has to endure with her husband, yet they’ll neve
r part.

  So Isabella would have preferred to stay in Varadero, and Marcel would have as well, but Christophe insisted they head down to Cárdenas, where they rented scooters. Christophe wrecked his and hurt his shoulder, and there was a nasty bruise on his lower left arm. A slight separation for sure, he said. It was very painful, especially when coupled with his tourist tummy. But it wasn’t slowing down this extraordinarily dynamic person, because he immediately insisted the three of them head for Havana. Marcel was as laid-back as anyone I’d ever known. Isabella kept complaining that she couldn’t keep up with the pace Christophe was setting.

  As a security officer with the French government, Christophe said there were so many critically important things going on in Paris, including mass protests by the artists, it was necessary for him to get away for a few days, and try to see things with more perspective. He’d been deeply involved, and working around the clock. Folk burnt out need a vacation, says Ezra Pound. But only Marcel and Isabella seem at all burnt out.

  Christophe is involved with some top-level security tasks. He comes in close contact with all kinds of interesting figures such as Yasser Arafat, with whom he speaks in English because Yasser speaks no French. Beyond that all he wished to say about him was that he was a very kind person. Also he’s worked closely with Bill Clinton, whom he admires and he felt it was awful that Bill had to suffer so much simply for being a human being. George W. Bush was causing all kinds of problems at the federal level in France because he’ll be at a meeting and suddenly he’ll get angry for no reason at all. Everybody in the French government considers him a madman. He’s really crazy, he’s dyslexic, he has no manners, he can’t concentrate, and every time he opens his mouth he says something inappropriate. At meetings he gets angry at perceived but non-existent slights. He wants France to become just like the United States, and when he is told that that is just not possible he blows up. Any differences between France and the United States are intolerable to him and he cannot accept them. Everybody in government is on the verge of resigning, because they can’t stand being in the same room as poor George.

  —

  These three adopted me into their little high-power Parisian circle of TV production, restaurant management, and top-level security. They knew about my book and said I should have no qualms about repeating anything they told me. This was before I’d decided to go on a first-name basis throughout, and in many cases changing the first name, just to be on the safe side. Christophe has no qualms about revelling in the intensely erotic sensuality of Havana and has already had at least one interesting fling. We didn’t have to beg for the details. Christophe and a Cárdenas woman were going at it so furiously the bed broke. He thought that was hilarious. And that didn’t cause them to miss a beat, they just continued on, at such a high decibel level that the woman’s female friend barged in to see if her friend was being murdered. And she stayed to watch. Which only inspired them to even greater efforts.

  Christophe is a little guy, fast and strong. From what he said I’d expect him to be handy with his weapon of choice, a 9mm Glock. He’d been a French army officer before switching to the police.

  —

  We gave the magician four dollars and he was very happy about that, then he proceeded to the bar to enthrall the more serious drinkers up there. He performed very subtle and beguiling feats of magic – indefatigable – twenty minutes without the slightest error – no commercial breaks – and left the four of us having no idea how he did any of the tricks even though we were deeply concentrating, and trying to see through his legerdemain.

  One trick, he puts a card – say the nine of diamonds – inside an empty glass, turns the glass around, pulls the card out, and it’s the ten of spades – when we could see very clearly, or thought we could, that he had only put one card in that glass. And he would just turn it and it would be a different card. Strange thing is, we didn’t get his name. It was sort of an anonymous thing. He didn’t seem to be interested in promoting himself in any way. He had no card to offer. He didn’t want anyone to think he was trying to get a free one-way trip to Canada or France. He had the modesty of the highly secure person with an amazing set of skills and artistry that couldn’t be beat and would always ensure a little bit of money in his pocket. What more can life bring you?

  I had the feeling it might have been a family trade, passed on from father to son, handed down for a few generations perhaps, and always evolving. Maybe his father had worked the posh hotels in the Batista era. I did ask if he had started as a child and he indicated he was doing these tricks at a very early age, putting his hand way down to knee level. But that was all the information we were able to get. If one becomes dedicated to a certain trade or art or set of interests at an early age, one does tend to become very good at it, without even really trying. It’s sort of like something he’s been doing every day of his life since birth practically. Just keeps evolving and in that way he never loses interest. People like that often don’t make much money but that somehow is not a reason to quit.

  —

  Christophe was such a spontaneous person, and with such a quick mind, he’d be quite capable of shooting first and asking questions later. He also mentioned that he is a painter, so when we finished with the magician, and when we finished our drinks, I suggested that it might be interesting to visit the Museo Naçional de Bellas Artes. I touted it with sincere enthusiasm, and said it contained the essential distillation of the heart and soul of Cuba. Their ears perked up, and off we went.

  But they didn’t get into the paintings the way I thought they would. Maybe my buildup shouldn’t have been so strong. They just didn’t have the sort of commitment to really see the paintings somehow. It didn’t measure up to the Louvre, I suppose. They didn’t say much, except for Isabella, who was very outspoken about her problems with some of the work. They seem like “copies,” she kept saying, meaning imitations, of other “paintings,” meaning painting styles. She would look at one painting and say, “Picasso,” then at another and say, “Magritte,” and so on. Isabella saw it as imitation, the sign of the second rate. I saw it as homage, the sign of the first rate. Maybe she was right, maybe I was just looking at the paintings from a Cuban point of view, while she was looking at them from a global point of view.

  The painting from the 1960s, showing the multiple images of Che, and by the same painter with the multiple images of José Martí – I didn’t even bother thinking of them as being inspired by Andy Warhol, because it was so obvious, and it detracted not a whit from the work. But she just instantly dismissed them with a stern countenance as being “imitative,” and refused to spend any time looking at them.

  I said that everybody was painting like Picasso in those days, and she kind of accepted that. But she was openly dismissive, and I saw silent hints in the faces of the others that they agreed with her, but were too polite to tell me I was wrong about this museum. Mind you, some of the paintings she really liked. All three were astonished by the painting of the previously mentioned The Great Fascist, the bull on the platform with blood drooling from his mouth. I said it seemed to me to be rather astonishing that such a painting should be in the national museum because it is a wee bit reminiscent of Fidel, wouldn’t you say? And they said, Not reminiscent, it is Fidel. “It even looks like him,” said Christophe. It never occurred to them it might be meant to represent Mussolini, and they had no problem seeing it as Fidel. “No doubt about it.” And the three of them spent a lot of time together, silently looking at that painting, lost in their private thoughts about the bloody history of the twentieth century, and perhaps among other things reassessing their notions of artistic freedom in Cuba. They may have been thinking that the painting is an emblem of the courage of the Cuban people, the artist’s courage in painting such a picture, the courage required for the museum to hang it, and the courage of Fidel to allow it to be shown.

  Fidel was shrewd enough and detached enough to take the hit like a man, and allow it to continue to hang
as a symbol of artistic freedom in Cuba. He must see the painting as another side of himself, the side of him that lays the law down all over the land, who has had anti-abortionists jailed, priests and drug smugglers shot, and so on.

  —

  When the four of us were leaving the art museum, the ever-effervescent Christophe began jumping up and down enthusiastically. “A Sea Fury!” he shouted. “A Sea Fury!” He tended to get fired up about anything to do with the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. The Sea Fury was an airplane on display across the street by the Granma memorial, as part of a display of large outdoor historical relics of the Cuban Revolution. He spent ten minutes touching the Sea Fury all over, talking to it, admiring it, while Isabella spoke to Marcel and me about the paintings, how she liked some of them.

  When Christophe returned he raved about what he had seen and what he had heard. He wasn’t at all concerned about the bullet-riddled Fast Delivery truck on display, the one in which numerous armed students were killed while trying to smash their way into the palace and assassinate Batista. For some odd reason he only wanted to talk about the Sea Fury – how they’re so rare, and how he’d never seen one before – and he made the rest of us feel a bit inferior for not being similarly enthusiastic about it. Fidel employed seventeen British Second World War Sea Furies in defending Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They performed beautifully. This particular plane, piloted by Maj. Enrique Carrera, strafed and sank the Houston, the main CIA supply ship.