Yankee Come Home

by William Craig

  I’d also asked for introductions to Cuban government and military contacts in Guantánamo City, the provincial capital. I figured I might get an impression of “Gitmo” from its impact on the region, like a boot print preserved in mud. But the Cubans weren’t cooperating. The Centro de Prensa Internacional promised help, but permits and introductions never materialized.

  Down to my last forty-eight hours on-island, I decided to go without permission.

  On the afternoon of my penultimate day, I had my hand on the inside door latch of an antique Eastern Bloc subcompact pulled up to the curb of a backstreet in Guantánamo City, several miles inland from the base. I was supposed to hop out of the backseat, hit the sidewalk, and go. The driver, Orestes, a friend of a friend hired in Santiago, was watching me in his rearview mirror, his glance skittering away whenever our eyes met. My own friend, Ildefonse, had turned around in the shotgun seat to wish me luck. We’d made our plans for rendezvous and said our hasta luegos, but I hesitated.

  I’d had a case of the blue jitters since dawn. It’s a kind of dread I’ve felt now and then when something bad’s about to happen. Once in a great while, there’s even a warning in words. A thought that’s somehow not mine tells me something I couldn’t have known: There’s going to be an accident. But when there are no words, and when I’m plenty worried anyway, trying to pick a premonition out of a pack of clamoring anxieties is like trying to buy real Montecristo tabacs on Santiago’s black market: lots of urgent offers, all probably counterfeit.

  I was too short for time to distinguish dread from fretting. Besides, dread seemed ungrateful, when everything else about this journey had felt so right: Hadn’t the scowling giant in line at Havana’s train station turned out to be a shaman with the power to make my invalid ticket good as his gold tooth? This was no time to lose faith.

  So I got out of the car and walked away without looking back. There’d been no sign of anyone following us, and if I got a little way down the block before anyone official noticed an obvious yanqui wandering Guantánamo’s torpid streets, there’d be nothing connecting me to Ildefonse, to Orestes, and to the rusty blue minisedan.

  I walked a few extra blocks northward, hardly passing a soul, nodding now and then to women and children who sat by their open windows. These backstreets were sun-flattened galleries of one-story homes, the newer façades stuccoed bone-white, the old Spanish colonial casas bleached gray and crumbling. I attributed the neighborhood’s near-desertion to postlunch stupor in a town with notoriously little to do. Maybe so, but Guantánamo’s siesta seemed shot through with tension, as if the town were dreaming some spaghetti Western showdown.

  My mood seemed tainted with Orestes’ paranoia. I’d only known the old man a few hours, but he’d fretted over one thing or another for each of the eighty-six kilometers between Santiago and this half-dead town. Was I sensing real menace in the afternoon doldrums, or had I just picked up a contact low? I reached a dusty park with a little bandstand and turned toward the main drag. The streets got busier, but there were fewer cars than I’d seen in any other Cuban city. Cubans afoot were running errands, window-shopping the usual drab, half-empty clothing stores, lining up to buy ice cream. Some of the ice-cream customers were preschoolers capping off a visit to a nearby children’s zoo; its masonry gates rose up ahead, cracking beneath a fresh coat of rainbow paints. But even the niños were a little too well behaved, their happiness never rising above constrained giggles.

  I noticed, too, that the main street seemed to have the strongest police presence I’d seen anywhere on the island. With their no-nonsense fatigues and duty caps, Cuban police look more like garrison troops than tell-me-your-troubles beat cops, but that’s fitting: The country’s police are controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, which is charged with repressing domestic dissent and providing paramilitary backup to the armed forces. Downtown Guantánamo had a uniformed Interior Ministry officer on every corner, and more than a few patrolling the blocks between.

  The city’s Interior Ministry headquarters is a building of deep sepia stone opposite the children’s zoo. Its strong vertical lines have the austere but triumphal feel of mid-twentieth-century modernism, as if the police station were a dark miniature of the old Superman show’s Daily Planet Building. I climbed its broad entrance staircase and stepped through the open front door into a shadow noticeably cooler than the street.

  Just inside the door, a female noncommissioned officer stood at a podium desk. She was young and steely-thin, her hair pulled back so tight it made my head hurt. And she wasn’t at all glad to see me.

  I did my best, smiling respectfully as I explained that I wanted to ask directions and, more important, permission to visit one of the approved tourist overlooks for el Báse.

  She made me repeat my request, but if the second time made it any more acceptable, she never let that affect her minimalist scowl. Then she pointed behind me and told me to wait.

  As I turned from her desk, I saw that we were standing at one end of a central hallway running deep into the building. Passing door after door, the hall darkened to gloom, relieved by very occasional low-watt bulbs, until it teed into a brighter space, still interior but receiving sunlight from some high window. I turned slowly enough to adjust to the contrast and realized that the bright space at the back was gridded and barred: a block of cells. I kept right on moving and stepped into the waiting room.

  The ministry’s first floor had ceilings at least fourteen feet high. The waiting room was a tall rectangle with ten-foot louvered windows on two sides, its walls paneled and parqueted in glowing hardwoods. Or hardwoods that would have glowed, if they’d been dusted and oiled once in the preceding decade. The abstract parquetry had an appealing, avant-garde vigor that suggested it dated back to the first years of the Revolution, before Cuba’s rebellious aesthetics were suffocated by Soviet Realism. The waiting room must have been beautiful once, a tribute to the people whom the Revolution would serve. Now it felt like the antechamber of an abandoned idea.

  At least I had company. The interior walls were lined with benches, and I took a seat at a right angle to two young women. Younger than I, anyway, by at least a good fifteen years: two mothers in their early thirties, obviously poor and worried, but immediately curious and kind. Where was I from? What was I doing? Was I married? How did I like Cuba?

  Dressed alike in old shirts, worn skirts, and bright head kerchiefs, they were friends, fond of one another’s unpretentious wit. “We’ve been waiting so long, I’m starting to want to clean this place.” One was pretty, the other less so but possessed of sirenic green eyes. Their skin was glossy and dark, their hands strong and thickly callused. (Guantánamo is often described as Cuba’s most “African” city, closest in demographics and culture to the black Caribbean experience. It’s the capital of the island’s poorest province. Work is hard and hard to come by; many of Havana’s toughest jobs are done by guantanameros seeking better lives.)

  We introduced ourselves, chatting quietly to show respect but a little louder than a library hush to show anyone listening that we had nothing to hide. I explained that I wanted to see el Báse, and that made sense to them: Guantánamo City isn’t known for much else, besides poverty and a few handsome nineteenth-century houses, but it does receive a steady trickle of tourists seeking a peek at the U.S. enclave.

  Con permiso, I asked, what were they doing at the ministry headquarters? Their worried looks returned. Their sons, likewise close friends, had gotten into trouble and were somewhere in the building. In one of the rooms along the dark corridor? In a cell? Who knew? The one with the green eyes made a discreet upward nod, tipping the back of her head at all the ominous space behind the heartwood parquet. They’d come to collect the young men, if that was possible, or to learn what the police were willing to tell about what the boys had done.

  I offered my condolences, as a parent, for the worries children bring, and we began to swap the rosters of our marriages and offspring. That kept us busy for s
ome time, while my eyes accepted the room’s ersatz dusk as a new definition of day. Now it stung to look at the brilliance slatting the two-story louvers. I would have liked to ask the women much more about their lives, about the city and the ways of its police, but closeness with Americans doesn’t do Cubans any good in official eyes, and there could be no more indiscreet place to cross that boundary. Our conversation slowed and stopped, except for occasional smiles. Traffic sounds and puffs of Cuba’s black exhaust drifted past to remind us that we weren’t moving. Now and again, I heard noises I couldn’t identify or locate: echoing groans and snatches of shrill babble. Were they coming in from the street, up from the cells, from someone’s radio? I certainly wasn’t going to ask.

  The female noncom returned, leading a young officer, tall and thin. She pointed me out to him, as if to prove she hadn’t been making this up. I rose to meet him, as he advanced with a smile and an extended hand. He introduced himself as Lieutenant C, and sat us back down on the bench. I was aware that the female officer was saying something to the women behind me, but I had turned to face the lieutenant.

  He asked my name and nationality—“¿De que país?”—tilting his head and nodding, when I said norteamericano, as if I’d made a profound remark. I said I lived in Vermont. Like most Cubans, he gave that a blank look, so I explained that it is un estado muy pequeño, a very little state, up in the woods near Canada. He nodded again and asked how he could help me.

  I gave my explanation again, in greater detail. I understood that there were two locations from which tourists were allowed to see el Báse: The old one, known as el Mirador, offers an overlook from a ridgetop clearing at the end of a short, stiff hike. More recently, I’d been told, the government had erected an observation tower at the Hotel Caimanera, in a village of the same name on Guantánamo City’s western edge. Buses regularly bring tourists there for a peek and a meal. Neither view is a closeup: The city is about fifteen kilometers from the U.S. base. But I wanted to see el Báse and would be happy to look from either location. Since I was traveling without a tour guide, I thought it best to stop at the ministry and ask for permission and directions.

  “Traveling by yourself?” the lieutenant repeated in a tone of mild surprise. “How did you get to Guantánamo?”

  “I hired a car and driver.”

  “Really?” he asked, with just a touch of unintended urgency. “And where is your car now?”

  The lieutenant’s question turned the moment inside out, instantly explaining my blue jitters. I realized that asking for help had somehow made me a suspect. Worse, I suddenly understood the risk my friends had taken in bringing me to this town. What had I said that might hurt them? “He contratado por un coche y chofer.” I’ve hired a car and driver. I had to erase that, but the important thing was to answer quickly, as if the answer didn’t matter.

  “On the near side of the little park,” I said. “The one with the bandstand? I told him to wait there an hour, maybe an hour and a half, while I looked at the town. Then, with your permission, we would go to see the base.”

  The lieutenant tried his approving, reassuring frown again. “Good. And what color is your car?”

  “It’s a red taxi. Of course, I know he may not wait, but I assumed that there are many taxis in Guantánamo, as in Santiago. Is that true?”

  “Not so many, no.” The lieutenant stood abruptly. “May I see your passport, please?”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling through my dismay.

  I pulled my money belt out from under the waistband of my khaki pants. It’s handy for carrying important papers and reserve cash in pickpocket-ridden Havana or Santiago, but tugging it out in public felt oddly disgraceful. He compared me to my picture, glanced over my description, looked at the separate, Cuban card containing my journalist’s visa. “Thank you,” he said. “Please wait here.” He tacked on a word of English—“Okay?”—but left the room without waiting for an answer, my passport in his hand.

  The two mothers were gone. Sometime during my talk with the lieutenant, I’d heard them rise behind me, but they hadn’t called out good-byes.

  This kind of omission is a constant in Cuban life, not at all exclusive to contact with foreigners. The Communist system doesn’t work, fails to provide enough of even the most basic basics, such as cooking oil, meat, bread, shoes. Every day, every Cuban who needs milk for the baby or aspirin for pain must either do without or do something illegal. The system’s failure has many causes, from its false premises to the choke hold of the forty-seven-year-old U.S. trade embargo, but the result is a way of life that makes everyone a liar, from the fisherman who illegally trades a lobster for a black-market engine part to the policeman who would arrest the fisherman and, at the end of his shift, buy black-market eyedrops for his mother. The system fails the people, but the police enforce the system, so Cubans go about the business of living, of putting food on table and shoes on feet, alert as criminals or spies. They need to look out—without appearing to look out—for the policeman, the neighborhood Party watchdog, the snitch. They need to be able to drive as if there were no black-market vegetables in the trunk. They need to be able to switch, in an instant, from deep negotiations with a friend who has some coffee to the blank look that says No lo conozco. “I’ve never seen this person before.” And to walk away.

  The women were gone, but in a little while an officer entered the waiting room and manned a stand-up desk that looked like it had been gathering dust for some time. He didn’t look at me, but I knew he was watching me, and I smiled all around the otherwise empty room to deny that I knew it. There was some coming and going of officers out the front door, which I could see from my bench, and I wondered whether they already knew there was no red taxi at the park.

  Now Orestes was waiting for me at his Baptist friend’s house. He’d been sure no good would come of my plan, but promised to wait “as long as he could.” Ildefonse probably didn’t like the odds either, but my friend knew I was too stubborn to quit, and he’s Cuban rebel enough to find the occasional rash act irresistible. Of course, being black, he had at least as much reason as a Baptist to stay out of cops’ way. Was he waiting with Orestes? What if the cops traced me back to a blue minisedan and found that car parked just a few streets away?

  I waited a good forty-five minutes, trying to look unworried, listening to the shuttered room’s confusing inside-outside mix of honks and whispers, metallic yawns and Latin radio pop. Mostly I was just thinking, rehearsing my lines. If any members of the public wanted to use the room, they were discouraged from doing so. Except for my watcher, I was alone.

  A captain came in without the lieutenant, accompanied by two officers he didn’t introduce. They remained standing as he sat, not on the bench with me, but on a chair fetched by the watcher. He was young, but not so much a boy as the lieutenant. Prematurely balding, the captain looked to be one of those guys whose desk jobs and comforts make an early gift of the slab weight of middle age. Still, he seemed sharp, and though he smiled as we shook hands, he didn’t make much of an effort at friendliness.

  He didn’t have my passport, but he’d obviously studied it. After we’d gone over the basics again—name, nationality, address, what I wanted in Guantánamo—he asked when I’d arrived in Cuba, and I gave him the date stamped on my papers. Then he asked whether I’d ever been on the island before. As I approximated the dates recorded in previous stamps, I could see the ledger behind his eyes cross-checking, compiling.

  “And under what OFAC license are you traveling?”

  “I came as a missionary.”

  The captain didn’t smile.

  “Si entiende, my government has made it very hard to get to Cuba,” I explained. “I came as a writer before, but now that’s not possible, so I joined a group traveling under the license of a Christian church, bringing clothes and medicine to Santiago.”

  “And you’re here in Guantánamo to do missionary work?”

  “No, that’s finished. Before I go, I wan
t to see el Báse, like any tourist.”

  “Like a tourist,” he echoed doubtfully. Then he bored in on the car again: the red taxi, the driver’s name, his description (I made him sour and paunchy as Orestes, but younger, with thick black hair), the fare (I upped my bargain with Orestes by 50 percent), the park rendezvous. The captain went over every point at least twice, and at one point asked, “Back home in Boston, you don’t bother to get the driver’s name?”

  With this guy, that had to be a test. “I live in Vermont,” I reminded him. “In the country. No taxis in the woods.”

  He didn’t smile then, either. But, to my relief, he let go of the taxi and started asking whether anyone knew I was planning to come to Guantánamo. Had I spoken to anyone about it? Any other Americans? Any Europeans? Had anyone else suggested the trip? Had anyone traveled with me? Had anyone wanted to travel with me? Any Americans? Any Europeans? Was anyone coming to meet me? Was I given anything, a package to bring?

  A package? No, I assured him, no conversations, no companions, no questions, no packages. If there was a problem with seeing el Báse, that was all right. I’d find my taxi and go home. No es importante.

  “Don’t worry,” the captain said. His brief smile was tight as a zipper. “We’ll just need to keep you a little longer. Where did you say you were staying in Santiago?” He left the waiting room, but his two subordinates stayed, talking to each other about nothing. That made three watchers, in addition to the noncom at her desk in the corridor. Now and then, another uniformed officer or a plainclothesman popped in for a look at me.

  I wondered where Ildefonse was, whether Orestes was still waiting in the other Baptist’s house, whether they’d had the sense to leave town. I inventoried the lies I’d told so far, trying to keep those guys out of this. Then I tried to tally the ones I’d told about myself. These were mostly lies of omission: I hadn’t described what I was really doing in Cuba. I’d explained the missionary license, sort of, but I hadn’t quite said that I was also here to write. I hadn’t mentioned journalism or the Centro de Prensa Internacional. Not that I thought I could hide anything—they had my papers, my Cuban journalist’s visa—but if they didn’t bring it up, I sure wasn’t going to. Journalism closes doors; the CPI had stiffed me for weeks on a trip any tourist can take. If these cops could see me more or less as a tourist; I might just get where I wanted to go.