An Innocent in Cuba

by David McFadden

  While the six of us were having breakfast, a fighter plane flew over very low and then four helicopters zoomed far out over the sea and over the horizon on the far side of El Morro, in the direction of Miami Beach. We could hear gunfire from far beyond the suburbs to the south of here, at some military training ground that won’t likely be on the map.

  —

  In the leafy inner courtyard at the lovely La Mina Restaurant on Calle Obispo, across from the Plaza de Armas, one of the peacocks is showing off, a real lot, even by peacock standards – a beautiful spread of feathers among the chickens, whose bright brown feathers and golden beaks seem dull by contrast. It doesn’t seem to bother the hens that a great star of featherdom is in their midst. All those feathers and no fly. And this grand peacock is pacing with slow, silent grandeur, looking as if he has been trained to spread his tailfeathers in just that way, facing the customers, every five minutes or so. I’d like to be a peacock for about five minutes just to experience spreading my tailfeathers. A bunch of gringo spring-breakers are mingling about, taking pictures of this fabled beast, from the front of course. He’s a peacock, and he wants those colours up front where they can be seen when the peahen he is pursuing gives him a backwards glance, then stops dead in her tracks, overcome with desire.

  A grossly obese black tourist has been eating non-stop for at least thirty minutes, and is now on her third elaborate dessert. She’s eating like a tourist who has decided to go on a diet the minute she gets back home, or maybe she wishes to stuff herself to death so she won’t have to go home. But then she slows down and it appears that…yes, she has finally worked up the energy to fish her camera out of her bag. She swivels her chair a bit, then – snap – takes a picture of the peacock, from the rear end, and without raising her rear end from her chair. I suppose that’s better than getting up and walking around to face the bloody thing head on. Mind you, we’ve all seen that famous photo by Michael Ondaatje of the Sphinx from the rear, instantly recognizable as the Sphinx but nonetheless strangely disorienting. The peacock is not like that. It may have a beautiful tail to spread from the front, but from the rear it definitely lacks charm. Of course we’re all like that: sometimes we’re taken aback, and other times we’re affronted! Except for the Sphinx.

  —

  So there I was quietly drinking coffee, eating ice cream, and listening to an interesting band of older musicians, with the cutest girl in a pink jumpsuit on flute. There was a big fat Englishman with a little Cuban chica and oh man was he ever a loudmouth. And there was a second Englishman who seemed to have his very pretty daughter with him. They looked rather upper crust, in that hereditary English way, but they were laughing enthusiastically at all these vulgar jokes the first Englishman was making about his chica, and about why he likes to come to Cuba. He says he lives in Ipswich but he comes to Cuba every two weeks. Who could blame you, said the second Englishman, batting his eyes at the chica. He and his daughter or niece, who was eighteen maximum and very proper, were laughing their heads off at these idiot jokes that I won’t repeat. So the flute player came around soliciting tips from diners, and the fat vulgar Englishman stood up, ostentatiously took a large bunch of loose U.S. dollars out of his pocket, and threw them at the band. It didn’t bother the band members; they all got down on their hands and knees and picked up the money, put it in the box, then came over to thank the bloke and chat with him.

  —

  Later, at the Ambos Mundos, a single male tourist comes in sporting a new cast from wrist to shoulder. It seems as if he’s fallen on the street the first day of his holiday. He’s a tall thin fellow, maybe French, and he looks and acts a bit like Monsieur Hulot. He has an oversized leather money belt, which he is trying to put on over his head, but it has become stuck, and it has come down in such a way that it’s keeping his two arms squeezed tightly against his body, and he can’t quite move, and he doesn’t seem to know why, or what to do about it. The stress of being in a foreign country plus having broken his arm must have short-circuited his brain momentarily. Not only does he not see any humour in the situation, but it also appears that he doesn’t know he’s become trapped by his own money belt. He leaves the bar abruptly, like everything’s perfectly okay, and walks off down Calle Obispo like that, with both arms squeezed against his body, a parody of a soldier at attention. I would have offered to help him, but I didn’t want to embarrass him, or to have him think I was trying to steal his money. He was hoping that nobody would notice and laugh at him. He must be very uncomfortable, for anybody could go up to him, unzip the belt, and casually take out all his dough and traveller’s cheques. Being tied up already, what could he do? Nothing! In books like this, people swim by, we have no idea where they are going or if they’ll get there.

  —

  On the Prado today there were about fifty artists showing their paintings. Some of the art was touristy, some of it was a copy of things we’ve all seen a zillion times, and some of it was interesting. But nobody was buying. Nobody was complaining that some of the work was quite erotic, even pornographic, supposedly for the alleged sex tourists. The only embarrassing thing was that there were fifty painters, each with at least ten works on display, and during the half-hour I was there I was the only one looking at the work.

  —

  Something exceedingly strange was about to happen, as a result of the arcane law of acausality, or, if you prefer, possibly through the agency of omniscient spirit guides on the astral plane pulling strings in order to manipulate events on earth. In the string of little incidents that separates two hours ago from this moment, something out of place has turned up, something so odd it blows the boredom of ordinary life right out of the water. Or you could just think of it as the spirit of Cuba, leading me all the way back to my childhood, and then back to the future again.

  I was in my room resting up a bit, with the TV on, and was amazed to see that the Spanish election had resulted in a socialist government. It was expected the popular government would win in a landslide, but then the crowded commuter train was blown up, and the government mishandled it so badly, immediately accusing the Basque separatists, and then only later finding out they were not to blame. To misaccuse the Basques was something the Spanish people could not abide, and they switched their vote to the socialists. Then a snippet came on saying that it was obvious to Fidel from the start that it wasn’t the Basque separatists, that it was the Muslim fundamentalists who had engineered the train wreck.

  After being engrossed in the coverage of the carnage, I tried to have a little nap but couldn’t. If I had slept for an hour, the acausally amazing event wouldn’t have happened. Sure, an even more amazing event might have happened – but what was about to happen was a five-star event, and there are no six-star events that I know about for sure these days.

  Tired, I turned out the light, put my head down, and by all rights should have fallen asleep, but something was urging me to get up and do something, to go to see Dr. Spengler perhaps, because Marita had told me he would be at the San Felipe concert hall between seven and eight. So I went out, and to make sure I wouldn’t be too late I hailed a bicycle taxi at the corner of Consulado and Animas Streets, and asked the young fellow to take me to the corner of Obrapia and Aigular, where the concert hall was located. We turned south on to the Prado, past Calle Virtudes, past Calle Neptuno, past the posh new Hotel Parque Centrale, built with Dutch money, past the old Hotel Inglaterra, past the Grand Teatro that houses the Teatro Federico García Lorca (where, when A. was here, she caught premier Cuban ballerina Rosario Suaraz in Coppelia), then turned left, at Calle San Martin (also known as San José), and across Agramonte (also known as Zulueta), then right at Avenida de Belgica (also known as Monserrate), then left at Calle Lamparilla, then right at Calle Villegas…and eventually, at the corner of Calles Obrapia and Habana, the driver was going very slowly over a great crack in the road, and to my right was a little old bar. There was no sign, but in Dr. Spengler’s book it’s referred to as El Gallo. It wa
s a very dark and stark bar, small and with no decor at all, and a black-skinned bartender was behind the bar staring off into space. He had the dazed look of a bartender who hasn’t had a customer in days, so I thought I’d pop in later and have a quiet drink, and buy one for him too.

  At the San Felipe concert hall there was a reconditioned Lada parked out front, and a police officer was writing out a ticket. I tried the door to the former church, but it was locked. I started hammering, and the officer looked up and said no no no, it’s closed. I said I was supposed to meet Dr. Spengler here. He brightened up, and said tomorrow, tomorrow. I figured I must have misunderstood Marita, as I may have misunderstood a zillion things over the past month, so I walked back sadly to El Gallo, looking forward to consoling my disappointment with a refreshing drink on a warm night.

  I tiptoed into the bar and gave a little cough. The bartender jerked his head up from his slumber. I asked for a Cristal. He didn’t know what I meant. I said, Cuba’s top beer, Cristal. So I tried pronouncing it in different ways: Kreeth Tall? Kreeth Toll? Kristle? Krithtle? Kreettle? Christall? Nothing worked. He either didn’t get it or it wasn’t there for him to get. And there wasn’t any beer on the back counter for me to point to.

  You never saw two more frustrated guys. So I said I’d just have whatever sort of beer he wanted to give me. And he said he was very sorry but they didn’t have any beer. So I said that’s okay, give me a gin and tonic. He said we have neither gin nor tonic. I said okay then what do you have? He said mohito. This is a mohito bar. I apologized and said I did not care for mohitos, they bring back bad memories, and besides a real man does not drink what the tourists drink. And I told him I hoped he got some business soon. Then I noticed he was napping on his feet again.

  More details are required here because we’re still on countdown to the amazing event, and everything leading up to it is part of its unfolding. I began walking rapidly along Calle Habana, then turned left onto Obispo, heading toward Il Gentiluomo at such a rate of speed crowds were parting for me. Again, I have no idea why I was in such a hurry. The place was crowded, and there was only one table available, so I sat at the bar and tried again to order a Cristal. But it was forever coming, and whenever a waiter would get a beer out of the fridge I’d think oh here it comes, but then he’d go right past me and put it on somebody else’s table. This seemed odd.

  Then a large group of people, who had been taking up three tables behind me, got up and left. When the waitress had finished clearing the tables, I asked if it was okay if I took a table now. It was more than okay, and she instantly came over and took my order, which was the pescado and Cristal special. And then she brought the beer and said the fish would be there momentarily. Invisible at the bar, but he looms large at the table.

  As I was sitting there with my Cristal, I noticed some other tables had left and new people had come in, and I noticed a single man, a tourist, at the third table away from me. He was wearing a black-on-white polka-dot shirt. The waiter poured him a glass of red wine, and the tourist noticed there was just a bit left in the bottle, maybe half a glass, so he told the waiter just leave it on the table. And then, before he actually took his first sip of the wine, he seemed to notice, with a bit of a double-take, that it did not look like red wine, it looked like rosé, or rosado. With me observing from such a distance, he picked up the wine, checked the label, violently slammed the bottle down, and made an angrily sarcastic gesture at the waiter, got up in a huff, and stormed out of the restaurant. He’d asked for red wine but had been brought rosado – a high crime and misdemeanour, in his mind. If not a crime against humanity.

  I’m thinking, What a fool. He’s missing out on a great meal, because of his irritability and pigheadedness, and he lost the chance to enjoy the pleasure of teaching the waiter the difference between rosado and red wine. Whatever that may be. And to make a fuss like that in a humble restaurant, with rock-bottom prices, in a country that is being starved to death by the rest of the world made me hope he’ll be suitably annoyed with himself in the morning. He couldn’t expect the joint to have an extensive variety of the finest wines to choose from.

  Actually the fellow might have thought he was being cheated. It was a habit of the restaurant to have a bottle of good red wine on each table, and once someone sits down to dine he can either ask for the wine to be opened, ask for another kind of wine, or whatever. So this fellow just wanted a glass, and so asked for one, expecting it to be like the wine on the table, or in that ballpark. Perfectly understandable, for those preoccupied with other things besides the details of the moment. Quite possibly the only wine that was open was the rosado, and it could be argued that rosado is a red wine, and that he got what he asked for.

  If this fellow hadn’t been so irritable, and had swallowed his anger and stayed on for the feast, then I wouldn’t have wandered over to his now-vacant table to check the situation out. My pescado was still being prepared, so I took my Cristal with me and looked at the wine. Sure enough, it said rosado, Spanish rosé. The waiter said, It’s good wine, why don’t you sit down here? [I’m getting goosebumps typing this out.]

  So I sat down, finished my beer, and began sipping the rosado, which was fine. And at the next table there was another single male tourist, I hadn’t noticed him come in, but he was just sitting there staring at the menu. At this point I wasn’t sure he was a tourist, he looked like a very benign and thoughtful businessman of some sort, someone who likes to be alone at the end of the day to sort things out.

  So as he continued staring at the menu, my steaming pescado arrived. And as it arrived the fellow at the next table was eyeballing it. I tilted the plate up a bit, making sure the food didn’t start sliding, so he could have a clear look at it, and he looked at it, then he looked me in the eye, and he said, “Looks good.” And so he ordered it too and he thanked me very much. And I said, very unch​aracter​istic​ally, You can join me if you wish. He said, Thank you very much, and he came over and sat down, and we started chatting.

  He was a man of my age, with very beautiful eyes, we had great eye contact. He was the kind of guy you just wanted to have eye contact with all the time. Often when I have eye contact with a male I become shy and find it hard to concentrate on the chit-chat. But this was unusual for me to have such constant friendly eye contact with anyone, immediately, at first meeting.

  He began telling me about a project he was working on. He was getting close to retirement age but was obviously active, in good shape, with all his wits about him, thinking all the time. He had spent his earlier years in marketing and communication projects, working for various companies, and how to get the most out of the largest number of customers. He told me he was working on a book now, because he felt he had a lot to say about what is wrong with marketing practices and how they could be improved for the benefit of everyone. Like Amund, he felt capitalism was showing its ugly face in recent times. The working title of his book was “Quantum Ideas.” His working subtitle could have been something along the lines of “systems for co-operative endeavour.” He was interested in new ways of doing things, and he was concerned in general about businesses and governments stumbling about blindly and continually screwing up in the most counterproductive way imaginable. For instance, the intense rivalry between the United States and Cuba seemed entirely counterproductive to both sides.

  For starters he thought it would be preferable for customers to be thought of as clients, which would lessen the emphasis of getting as much money out of the customer as possible and increasing the emphasis on learning how to share with clients ideas on how to improve the service. “Clients” would lead to a more mutually enriching experience. In other words, he was developing working principles that would lead to better and more humane ways of doing things, and showing that sharp business practices are harmful to everyone.

  So he was writing a series of essays on this. At one point I asked where he was from and he said, Vancouver, Canada. I said I thought you were a Canadian, because
I am too, I’m from Toronto. He said he thought I was a Canadian too, and I told him I was very glad. We agreed that the world is gradually becoming able to tell a Canadian’s nationality at first guess. We divulged our ages and it turned out he was nine months older. I asked if he had always lived in Vancouver. He said no, he had been born in Hamilton, Ontario. And not only was he my age, but he was born in the same general neighbourhood as I was.

  We looked at each other. We had exchanged names earlier, but his didn’t register.

  I said, “What was your name again?”

  He said, “Roger Chilton.”

  My hair stood on end. Chills went up and down my spine.

  I said, “Oh my God, Roger Chilton! I can see it now, you are Roger Chilton. I thought you were dead.”

  He said, “Oh, you are that David McFadden. I was wondering but I figured there were lots of David McFaddens around. So I didn’t say anything. But I see now that you are David McFadden….”

  And I repeated myself, “But I was under the impression you were dead. About fifteen years ago somebody told me you had died, of brain cancer.”

  “No, I never had cancer and I never died.”

  “Well, isn’t that strange? I went through a period of mourning for you.”