Pretty soon there were some fabulous dancers on the floor. But the music wasn’t really catching fire. The band would perform a piece, up there on the remote stage, in the icy-cold ballroom, and they would go for about ten minutes, then stop for applause, then start up for another ten or fifteen minutes. But the music was very monotonous and repetitive, it never varied in tempo, or tone, or decibel level, there was no rise and fall, and all the musicians drowned each other out. I’m sure there was a lot of talent up there, but it wasn’t discernible, because everybody was dancing and playing and singing at once and non-stop: there were no solos, or maybe there were a few but they got drowned out.
Also there was none of the kind of rhythmic quality one requires for dance music, and relies on with Cuban music. It was like a giant noise band with a somewhat Creole flavour. Hate to say it, but these Cubans needed a leader! Well, there was a leader, but all he did was tell them when to start and when to stop. To get them to stop, he’d hold his arm up till the proper moment, then pull it hard. To get them to start he would just hold his arm up, then shake it. There was no serious difference between the new song and the one just abandoned.
Amund shared my discomfort. At one point twelve Italians came in. We knew they were Italians because Amund had met them earlier. Oh oh, here come the Italians, he said. And man, did they ever have a bad sense of rhythm. They were dancing really badly, but they didn’t give a damn. It was the cold in part, because just about everyone in this club had been out in the heat most of the day, and was now half-frozen, and that’s good neither for music nor dance. Also any band that big had to have a leader. And some concept of what they’re doing.
So Amund said, No, it’s not working for me either, let’s wait till the end of this song then go. Well, the song was just interminable. Never have I wished so hard for a song to end, while at the same time hoping for the music to spring to life all of a sudden. But it was finally over, and we got up, and when we got out it was pouring rain. It had looked like rain before but it was still hot and humid. Now it was cold and wet.
—
A few hours later I’m ringing Mimi’s doorbell to see if she is in and she is. We talked non-stop. It felt perfect to be here. And now and then she would say, “Oh, I love you,” and she would kiss me on the cheek.
She answered the question about the cow, once again, in pretty well the same way, and I’ll let the reader be the judge on that one. I’m flip-flopping on whether the sentence of six years was understandable, never mind fair. But then she added that this cow would not have been an ordinary cow. This would have been a cow specially bred, with beef so good it’s reserved for use in certain medical therapies.
She said someone would have decided to kill a cow, and asked for people to throw in money for shares of the meat. That’s the way it happens. Usually they don’t get caught. But this time somebody snitched. And maybe the man who was in jail had been arrested and given such a lengthy term because he steadfastly refused to name any names, to say who organized the killing or who performed the death blow. So now when his term is over he will be able to return to his own neighbourhood without worrying about being attacked for having snitched. And the person who did kill the cow will have to suffer knowing his friend was doing big time in the big house on his behalf. There wouldn’t be any more slaughter of cows in that neighbourhood in a hurry.
It began to sound plausible. I felt at peace. And even if I don’t understand it, I feel better knowing that my friend Mimi understands it and approves of it. That’s the way it is when we visit other countries. We have to turn off our minds from time to time in order to get some perspective.
Tomorrow was a day off for Mimi. I asked if she would like to go to the zoo. She broke out in the biggest smile. She hadn’t been since her father was alive. I thought it must be a good zoo if she likes it because she’s very sensitive about animals and people. And I suggested we bring my Norwegian friend. I described him. Yes, she wants to meet him for sure. I think he’ll be into it. Three on Thursday.
—
It’s 1:12 a.m. It must have been shortly after midnight that I walked home, and there were many people on the street, chit-chatting in groups, just standing there, or sitting on concrete benches with drooping flowers in their hair, and calling to each other across the Prado. Mimi says that I am the only man who ever touched her mind. Maybe she means lately. I’m sure her father touched her mind. In fact, she added that I am the only man who has treated her with the kindness her father treated her with. Geez, does that ever make me feel good. But then again, it makes me feel not so good, for it is a pity that she has not been properly appreciated by other males, principally the little guy who drank a lot.
DAY THIRTY-THREE
SEA OF SADNESS
Wednesday, March 17, 2004. On the way to the zoo we passed a vast necropolis, on a broad hilltop, with many splendid mortuary monuments. Mimi confessed she hadn’t visited her father’s grave in a long time. I could see why not. There were no trees, no shade. It was hot as hell in there.
The zoo resembled the cemetery except there were cages instead of monuments, and there were trees, and shade. At the crocodile pit, Mimi sentimentally recalled that her son “was afraid of crocodiles when he was a little boy – but now he is in the army!”
One crocodile was lying so still he looked dead, and I said so, causing Mimi to grasp my arm and start a loud lament for the departed soul of the beast. But then it blinked, causing her to recover quickly, and not without embarrassment. She said she had overreacted because the crocodile was very young and must have been looking for his mother. Young? It was ten feet long! She said that was small for crocodiles. Let’s see if we can find some larger ones.
All we could find were smaller ones. “There’s one – two, three, four,” she said. She had a good eye. They camouflage themselves very well. But these were truly babies.
She said she visited this zoo with her father “when my son was little. And once when I was very little too. A long time ago.” She looked sad.
“What do you call these birds?”
“Flamingos,” I said. She said the Uruguayan people have a good story about the “history of these birds.” They call them “serpent birds” because their necks can twist and turn any way they want. They got their name because they were considered very ugly. There was a big party, and these birds decided to attend wearing something that would make them more attractive. They did not like being considered ugly, so they found some sleeping serpents and wore them over their shoulders. But the others at the party were not impressed, they still made fun of the birds for being ugly. And so the serpents woke up and poisoned all the nasty people, but they didn’t harm the birds at all. And now the flamingos are still called “serpent birds” in Uruguay, but the people have changed their mind and think that they are beautiful. But in actual fact they are just as ugly as they ever were.
Mimi wanted to know if the story was funny. I said it was more than funny, it was an excellent story, with a lot of psychological depth, and I thanked her for it. Where did she hear it? She said when her son was a little boy he came home with the story one day. The teacher had told it to the class.
Meanwhile the flamingos seemed to be cohabiting very well on an island with a number of ducks, except that whenever the serene and ugly/beautiful flamingos sleepwalk too close to the small ugly ducks, the ducks snap at them and force them to back off.
Mimi said that the ducks don’t mind visitors as long as they don’t get too close. How did she know that the ducks weren’t the visitors? She pointed at an unoccupied island in another pond farther along. That was where the flamingos lived, she said. They were just paying a friendly call.
These flamingos were orange and white, rather than pink. I’ve never thought of them as ugly before today. Odd-looking for sure. But Hemingway considered them ugly. He would have been poisoned had he been at that party. In Islands in the Stream they’re sailing around Cayo Contrabando, and Hemingway alter-ego Thoma
s Hudson is standing on the flying bridge, looking for U-boats, with one hand on his machine gun and a icy-cold drink in the other. Suddenly a flock of flamingos flies over the water. Thomas Hudson calmly calls them “ugly in detail and yet perversely beautiful.” And he says, “They must be a very old bird from the earliest times.”
—
She was only eleven months old and had an enormous cage, all to herself. The cage was shaped like a bell jar, and she was sitting silently on the highest perch, just a few feet down from the pointy top, about three human storeys high, as high as a Saskatchewan grain elevator. She seemed to be focusing hard on whatever could be seen out there, predominantly a solid wall of rich green trees separating the zoo from a row of residential buildings.
“This is an Andean condor, one of the first to be born in jail,” said Mimi.
“In captivity?” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, in captivity.”
“Much the same thing. And birds aren’t born, they’re hatched.” She didn’t know the word hatched.
Mimi said that Chinese scientists came all the way to Cuba to see this condor. “And this is her up there!” She was a very youthful specimen, not a year old, but she looked serious, and intelligent beyond her months. She definitely was not in a playful mood, nor was she hungry, nor was she sleepy. She just wanted to stare, way off in the distance, from the tower of her captivity. Maybe she was waiting for her parents to return.
“There’s only one? She must be very lonely,” I said.
“I think she feels very sad too,” said Mimi, “and probably she will die soon because she is alone.”
“Maybe the Chinese will send her a partner.”
—
And a zebra. And many burros. And what other animals have we seen so far? A big fat rhino with very grey skin, very sad. How can I tell it’s sad? Because it has its head in the corner and won’t look at anyone. Not that there’s anyone to look at. Oh, here he comes, he’s turning around now. He’s very slow on his feet, each of which bears three toes. Bonjour, monsieur. He’s very slow to think. He has nothing to do except stand around. He knows something’s wrong but he’s not quite sure what it is. Mimi notes he’s losing weight, he has many wrinkles around his stomach. There he goes. Now he’s really trotting around. Poor boy. Free to stand in the corner or trot around.
Mimi says the first time she was at the zoo she was six years old. In fact, they lived nearby. She remembers that there were more animals then. But there was only one lion. They could hear the growling and roaring of the lion continuously. “We were afraid all the time. Our father had to get us a different house. That was a long time ago.”
—
It is well known that the Havana Zoo has many dedicated and caring people behind it, but there is no money in the budget for zoos, as is the case, of course, more or less, everywhere. The animals are so bored that if a leaf falls from a tree and lands in their enclosure it’s a big event.
The gorillas are in good shape, but the four lions didn’t move all the time we were there. Christopher P. Black says they regularly have sex – thirty times a day. But today they must have already consummated their daily quota. That’s right, get the hard work over with early, then you can relax. The various little monkeys and baboons were also trying to make the best life they could out of a bad situation. Unlike many people we know.
Mimi mourned the decrease in the number of animals, and said that when they died they don’t get replaced, and when offspring are born they sell them to other zoos. So it’s a fairly big zoo with not many animals in it and many of the enclosures are empty.
—
Later, at the Hotel Isabella, I was checking my e-mail, and sent off a little note to my friend George Bowering, Canada’s award-winning poet. He hates it when I get to go to places he’s never been, such as Cuba. For the twentieth time he tells me how envious he is. This is so I won’t feel badly when he wins yet another award.
There were a number of messages, so I sent a line to each saying I’d be home tomorrow, just to show I was thinking of them while in Cuba. Mimi was reading over my shoulder. When we got to George’s note, she said he’s funny, and I said oh yes he’s famous for being funny. She asked if she could write something to him herself. So I wrote to George that my friend Mimi was going to say a word, and she wrote, “I love David very much because he love Cuba. And we needs people like David, because we are struggling for our survival.”
So that’ll give George a little something to think about. Or maybe a lot. Who knows?
—
On our several petites promenades we saw many beautiful sights. I’d forgotten how a little romance in the air can reconfigure the landscape. We would stop. We would stare. We would shiver. We would gape. We would hold hands. That’s not what you do when you look at a photograph. You don’t stop and shiver in astonishment. And your heart doesn’t go boing boing boing. Not usually. Maybe sometimes.
EPILOGUE
I’ve had my last breakfast on the rooftop of the Hotel Lido. The young fellow learning to be a waiter, and who had a little beard just like mine, did not give me the ritual fake look of sadness or sympathy that one would expect, but I gave him a dollar anyway. An Englishman saw me forking out the cash and yelled over from his table, Isn’t the price of the breakfast included? I said, Yes, but the people here respond well to tips. He said, Pardon? I laughed.
He came over and said that he had a problem with tipping, because when he and the missus were coming in they had some sandwiches left over from the flight, buns and ham, butter and mustard. And it had been all confiscated. He couldn’t stop imagining, with great bitterness, those airport employees sitting in the back room and having a great time wolfing down the food he had paid good money for yesterday in Sheffield.
I told him, jokingly, that although it’s well known that there’s a law against bringing food into Cuba, it’s also well known that the customs people only apply the law just before lunchtime. He turned to his much younger wife and said, “Hear that, dear? He agrees with me.” She rolled her eyes sullenly.
Then he asked if it was safe to walk the streets at night. His wife was watching us. She was not a young trophy wife as much as a prematurely dowdy wife, about twenty-five going on sixty. She looked about twice as smart as he did, and half his age. I told him as long as he held on tight to his wife’s hand they’d both be fine. He laughed. Even she laughed.
—
It’s amazing how irritated I’ve been the last few days. Everything was bothering me, especially the mariachi bands, not the good ones, but the ones who relentlessly chase the tourists from the time they get off their bus till the time they get back on. They practically have to slam the bus doors on their fingers. These are the holidayers from Varadero who sign up for an all-day bus tour to relieve the tedium. But these mariachi bands should be banned, they just keep playing the same bloody song over and over again. And it’s so nauseating to see them grovelling, following the tourists around like gulls following the ferry, but with less grace, even though the tourists completely ignore them, especially when they hold their hats out for tips. But who can blame the tourists for that? It’s so undignified for the Cubans and so irritating to everyone else.
A thousand mariachi bands, one song. You know the one. “Guantanamera.” Fine song, based on a poem by José Martí. But the finest song will drive you around the bend real fast if it’s played over and over by a bad band.
Even Mimi was irritating me a bit, through no fault of her own. Why does she have to keep asking why my face is red? And surely it’s not that hard to understand that I like being in the shade whenever possible. And surely she doesn’t have to pull me out of the way when a car is coming down the street. I can see if I’ve got enough room.
—
A horrible thing happened at work the other day. A colleague received a call that her father and brother had been killed in a car accident. That’s all that Mimi knew about it. She couldn’t tell me any details. The girl,
strangely, shrugged off all attempts to get her to go home, she insisted on remaining at her post until her shift was over. She just cried and cried all day long. Why didn’t she go home? Mimi, for once, had no idea.
Finally I managed to convince Mimi that it would be okay to accept my large roll of pesos. Here’s what happened: She insisted on making a meal for me and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I thought it was going to be a disaster for some reason. I was so irritable I got prejudiced. But it was rice, black beans, and some kind of vegetable-protein product that she fried very lightly in little patties. It was a great meal, and I brought some icy-cold beer.
After dinner I tried again to give her the pesos. No way. So I pulled out my trump card. I suggested she present this money as a little gift to the woman whose father and brother were killed in the accident. Just tell her it’s for additional funeral expenses. She went for the idea in a big way. I think it was the word additional that won her over. So finally I was able to make good use of all those pesos I was unable to spend in Havana, though they are still appreciated in Camagüey and Santiago de Cuba.
—
When one spends thirty-three days wandering in any country anywhere, one’s impressions will change from day to day. So in a true travel journal we must be prepared for inconsistencies, reversals, perceptual error, and corrections. When I told the Spanish ladies that, they said it sounds like the kind of book they’d like to read.
Again, everything is irritating me. Especially the overwhelming fact of my ignorance about this country, that there are so many important things I know nothing about. So many streets I haven’t walked along. So many observations I failed to make. For instance every peanut vendor, every flower seller, and the bicycle taxis, each one trying to be a little bit different in the way they do business or the way they holler their high-pitched come-on. Each one made individual by some ingenious knack on the part of the owner, like the fellow who found a hubcap so he fastened it very beautifully as a decorative item on the back of his bicycle taxi so you can spot him at a moment. He may not have a car but at least he’s got a hubcap. Or another fellow, a bicycle taxi driver with a box on the back with his dog in it, and that dog never seems to be without a fresh bone. Or an excited little boy with a puppy in his hands, trying to sell it.
An Innocent in Cuba Page 42