Waiting for Snow in Havana

by Carlos Eire

  At that same time, some genius came up with the idea of teaming up that image of Fidel, the haloed one, with a catchy slogan. The resulting poster caught on like wildfire. It depicted Saint Fidel hovering over the words: “Fidel, this house is yours.” Cubans framed and hung these posters in their homes by the hundreds of thousands.

  Fidel, I think, took the invitation a little too seriously. Within two years, every house was his indeed, literally, legally. No more private property.

  Yes, I know, everything became the property of all Cubans, to be equally shared, according to need. Yes, I know, Fidel didn’t expropriate anything all by himself, or for his own gain, not even a pencil sharpener, or a discarded shaving from a pencil stub. I also know that Fidel wasn’t as interested in anyone’s house, literally, as he was in their souls. He wanted to rule over every household, totally, and forever. He wanted to own all Cubans, not just their homes.

  And he succeeded.

  How different it was in Hollywood. Take Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo and Anatomy of a Murder or Cary Grant in North by Northwest. These guys wouldn’t put up with any such crap. They didn’t need to fawn over any revolutionary, or worship him, or cave in to his bullying.

  I wanted to be Jimmy Stewart, not just because he got to be close to Kim Novak and Grace Kelly, but because he was so totally himself, always, regardless of the character. He reminded me of my grandfather. I’m sure Jimmy would have brushed lizards off his shoulder with the same aplomb as Abuelo Amador. I also wanted to be Cary Grant. He was so much in control in North by Northwest, no matter how absurd the world around him became. You can be sure that Cary and Jimmy would never have offered up their houses to Fidel, or to any other revolutionary simply because they were Americans. I knew Americans had no need for any such thing as charismatic leaders.

  After all, everything was perfect in the United States. Americans were perfect, despite the ridiculous clothes they wore when they came to Cuba as tourists. They made all the great movies, didn’t they? And they made the best cars, too, and Coke and Pepsi, and all the good comic books, like Batman and Superman. And they had snow at Christmas. And they had beaten the Germans, and the Japanese, and the Indians, and anyone who was an “enemy” in any really good movie. And they had women like Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Eva Marie Saint.

  By 1959, at the age of eight, I knew I wanted to marry an American woman, preferably one who looked like either Marilyn Monroe or Kim Novak. Meanwhile, nearly everyone around me was worshiping a man with a black beard whose name was not Jesus.

  We went to see Fidel make his triumphal entry into Havana on Epiphany, the day of the Three Kings, the feast that celebrates when the Messiah became known to the world beyond Bethlehem. Louis XVI wouldn’t go, of course, but the rest of us did. We went with Inocencia, our maid. And we stood outside the grocery store where we did all our shopping, the store owned by Fernando Chan. Fernando was a very nice Chinese man who always gave us free olives and raisins when we went to his store. We loved shopping day because boxes full of stuff would be delivered to our house by Fernando, and we could make forts out of the boxes and the merchandise. Towers made from cans of condensed milk. Turrets made from cereal boxes.

  That’s what I thought about as I stood waiting for Fidel to pass by, those towers of condensed milk. Fernando was there with his children, who were about the same age as us. He was as excited as everyone else in that crowd, and so were his kids. Everyone was smiling and joking and feeling genuinely happy.

  Fernando Chan and his family would end up in the United States, too, like so many in the crowd that January day. In less than two years, his store would be taken away from him by the state. About the same time, all of his savings would be declared nonexistent, too, just like everyone else’s. It would be Che Guevara’s idea, to wipe out all the bank accounts and level the playing field. His ultimate plan was to do away with money altogether, but that proved impossible.

  Too bad for Che that Fidel set him up for a tragic death in Bolivia. He had such a nice Mercedes-Benz and such a nice mansion, just three blocks from my house. It was so huge an estate, it took up an entire city block. He should have remained in Cuba and danced the night away, smelling of Old Spice and Brylcreem, instead of inciting revolutions south of the equator.

  I got impatient waiting for Fidel to show up that day. Too much waiting and not much to look at, except all the people lining the parade route. The whole street was full of Cubans, two or three deep, as far as the eye could see. It was a wide avenue that led to the military camp of Columbia, west of Miramar.

  Finally, Jeeps, trucks, and tanks began to show up, each and every one of them made in the United States. I’d never seen a tank up close before. They were sublime. Better than in the movies. Those cannons on the tanks looked lethal. And the noise they made was so beautiful. A deep, deep rumble that made the earth shake under your feet. You knew they meant business. And, best of all, the tank tracks left deep scars on the asphalt. You could see where they’d rolled, exactly. And you knew those dents on the street would be there for a very long time. Forever, perhaps.

  How I wished cars had tracks just like those on tanks. Why not? Tank tracks and no mufflers. Perfect. You’d think that Americans would have thought of that already.

  All of these vehicles were full of bearded, long-haired men, as well as a few women. Most of them carried weapons, and every now and then one of them would shoot into the air. And we waved at them, and they waved back at us. And everyone shouted, loudly. Cuban flags everywhere, on the vehicles, in the hands of the rebels, in the hands of those in the crowd. Fidel’s flag—the red-and-black July 26 flag—flew from many of the tanks and trucks, but it was outnumbered by Cuban flags.

  “Viva Cuba Libre! Viva Fidel!”

  How great it was. How I wished that one of the bullets fired into the air would fall into my outstretched hand, which I held out like a farmer at the sight of a dark cloud during a drought.

  Forget the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, or the Parade of Roses in Pasadena, or the Bastille Day Parade in Paris. Forget them all. Phony, childish displays of crass commercialism and mindless patriotic drivel. Fidel’s triumphal parade was the best in the history of the human race.

  But where was Fidel? When would his tank show up?

  Zip…Whoa…Oops! Coño, qué mierda.

  He came by so quickly, I missed him completely. I was there, and he rolled by on his Sherman tank about fifteen feet from where I was standing, but I didn’t lay eyes on him. I saw his tank receding into the distance, over the heads of all the adults, but I didn’t see the man himself. Not then.

  I’d get to see him in person a couple of years later, from far away, at the Plaza of the Revolution, but by then I despised the man.

  But that Epiphany I did get to see him on television. It was Fidel’s first major speech to the whole nation. He stood where he’d stand hundreds of times later, perhaps thousands, at the base of the towering monument to the Cuban poet and patriot José Martí, at what came to be known as the Plaza of the Revolution, a vast, open space that could hold tens of thousands of people. Batista had built it, but Fidel turned it into the navel of his universe, the place from which he would fill Cuba with empty words that far outnumber all the black holes in the universe.

  Tens of thousands of Cubans gathered around that monument to hear Fidel. The cheering and chanting were unbelievable, even on a small black-and-white television. It was sheer elation, overflowing, filling the land, ripping through the air like lightning. Even an eight-year-old could feel something special was happening. I don’t remember the speech at all. What I remember is that one moment when hundreds of doves were released.

  The doves flew in all directions, like hundreds of Holy Spirits descending on new apostles. One of the doves, a nice white one, landed on Fidel’s shoulder. As he held the microphone with one hand and gestured with the other, the great revolutionary kept talking, filling the plaza with his words, the white dove on his left shoul
der.

  “Look at that dove,” Marie Antoinette said. “This must be a sign from heaven.”

  Louis XVI, who was watching all this with a look of detachment and no small measure of suspicion, perhaps even déjà vu, said to his wife: “You’d better take a closer look.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at his shoulder, look at what the dove did.”

  “Ay, Dios mío!”

  “What? What? What did the dove do?” I asked.

  “The dove took a crap,” said Tony.

  “Now, there’s a sign from heaven!” said Louis XVI.

  This might have been a sign from heaven, indeed, that many Cubans missed. But in January 1959, Fidel seemed nice enough. I didn’t even think much of all the people who were rounded up and shot to death on television. That’s just what happens when you topple a dictator, I thought. Big deal. At least I’ve got some bullets as souvenirs.

  “Preparen! Apunten! Fuego!” Ready! Aim! Fire!

  Those three words burned their way into everyone’s brain quickly, along with the chant, “Paredón! Paredón! Paredón!” Up against the wall! Up against the wall! Up against the wall!

  There must have been a lot of very thick walls in Cuba, because they never seemed to run out of paredones against which to line up people and shoot them dead. Lots of pock-marked, bloodstained walls in Cuba in early1959. The blood came off easily enough, but the bullet holes were harder to expunge. The bodies were entombed easily enough, or incinerated, or whatever, but the memories were harder to bury on both sides—memories of the crimes committed by Batista and his people, and memories of all the killing that took place under Fidel, in the name of justice.

  But back then, in those early days, nothing important changed for me or for anyone around me. Batista’s kids weren’t in school after Christmas break, and neither were a few other kids whose fathers were close to the former president, the loser Batista. My least favorite bully was gone, the one I’d hit on the head. The parking meters were gone too, every one of them smashed by the people. But that was it.

  So I went about the business of being an eight-year-old Cuban boy. I rode my “new” bike past old boundaries, and I scuffed it up as much as possible, just to get back at my parents for trying to fool me with that paint job at Christmas. I played with my friends and my bullets, set off firecrackers, taunted Blackie the chimp, and climbed trees. I went to the beach often and to church every Sunday. I saw new movies nearly every week and allowed Hollywood to claim one more piece of my soul with every visit to the theater. After seeing the film The Vikings that year, I began to pine for fjords, and flying axes, and all things Norse. I even got a plastic model of a Viking ship, and so did Rafael, and both of us stared at them for hours after we assembled them. I also kept scanning the clouds for Jesus. Every now and then, I still dreamt of Jesus at my window, but I also dreamt of beautiful blonde women.

  I was clueless, but, then again, so was nearly everyone else on that island.

  Except Louis XVI, who did nothing, absolutely nothing with the wonderful knowledge he had about things to come. “This guy’s up to no good. No good at all,” he said when Fidel came down from the mountains. He prophesied our doom but failed to rescue us when there was still time.

  We sneered at King Louis and his prophecies. The future seemed bright, even though the present was awash in blood. I did my share for the Revolution by pursuing lizards so I could wipe them off the island, perhaps even the face of the earth. They were so hideous, so base, the absolute opposite of Marilyn and Kim. And there were so many of them, these stinking reptiles.

  If I’d had a chance, I would have rounded up all the lizards, each and every one of them, lined them up against a wall, and shot them all dead, one by one. I needed a lot more bullets, and a gun, but I’d have done it, for sure, if I’d had the chance. Preferably with Marilyn at my right and Kim at my left, helping me to finish up more quickly.

  What do you think of these lizards, girls? Qué dicen, muchachas?

  Paredón! Paredón! Paredón!

  Okay, muy bien, my blondes. All together, now:

  Preparen! Apunten! Fuego!

  23

  Veintitres

  Kirk Douglas stood tall above Tony Curtis, sword in hand. He had just broken Tony’s sword, left him with a little stump of a weapon in his hand, slumped on the ground, his back against the wall. There they were, these two American Jews, playing Vikings in a Hollywood film, standing at the very top of a medieval tower somewhere in England, on the edge of the deep blue North Sea, their hair waving in the wind like wheat on the Russian steppes.

  Vikings. Jewish Vikings. Sons of Jewish migrants from Russia playing Vikings.

  And there I was, a Cuban boy in the Miramar Theater, the grandson of migrants from Spain, the descendant of Jews, possibly, watching this drama unfold in air-conditioned comfort while the tropical sun blazed outside. My brother Tony sat next to me on one side, my friend Rafael on the other. Manuel was there, and so was my father. I would like to think Ernesto wasn’t there, but he probably was. A very nice theater full of Cubans watching this American film about tenth-century Vikings, shot on location in Norway and England, at a Saturday afternoon matinee in a suburb of Havana. All the others had paid to get in. We had gotten in for free.

  Kirk Douglas looked surprised. Very surprised. He hadn’t expected Tony’s sword to break. The suspense was almost too much to bear. How long before Kirk ran Tony through with his nice, long, intact Viking sword? Go on, Kirk, what are you waiting for? Tony Curtis was already missing one hand. How could he possibly win? A stump of a sword in one hand, and a stump instead of a hand, wrapped in leather, at the end of his other arm.

  Kirk stood there, hesitating. His blind eye, mauled by a hawk’s talons at the start of the film, looked downright fiendish. It was Tony’s hawk that had blinded Kirk. Tony had also stolen Janet Leigh from Kirk. Wondrous Janet, so beautiful, so desirable, had been won over by Tony. Janet loved Tony. They had even kissed already, in a sun-drenched, flowery meadow somewhere on the coast of England, on the edge of the deep blue northern sea. And Kirk wanted Janet so badly. Kirk was a bleedin’ volcano, to borrow a phrase from Mick Jagger. Burned as hot as the core of the sun, Kirk did. You could see it in his one good eye, and even in the bad eye, all white and cloudy, which also radiated desire in its own warped way. This was the moment for revenge. The one chance to gain possession of heavenly Janet. Think of her eyes, Kirk. Those blue eyes, as blue as the northern sea, God damn it. Yours, all yours, for the taking. Go on, Kirk, stab him. Run him through. What are you waiting for?

  A one-eyed Jewish Viking versus a one-handed Jewish half-Viking. No contest. How long could the suspense last?

  Stupid Kirk. He waited too long. As he hesitated, Tony stabbed him in the gut with his little stump of a sword. Whoa! What a surprise! A guy stabbed with a broken fragment of a sword. Pure genius! For the first time ever, I grasped the power of inventiveness.

  Kirk just stood there for a long time, looking totally surprised. His one good eye spoke for him: “What the hell just happened? This cretin just killed me with a little stump of a sword.”

  Then Kirk keeled over and died.

  The saddest thing of all was that Kirk and Tony didn’t know they were half brothers. We in the audience knew that this was fratricide, that he and Tony were both sons of Ragnar. Sons of Ernest Borgnine. Yes, Ernest Borg-nine was a Viking too. Ernest had raped some English lady at the very start of the film. She had gotten pregnant, and given birth to Tony Curtis, who had been sent to a monastery somewhere in the British Isles. Then the monastery had been raided by Vikings, and, as fate would have it, Tony ended up in Norway as a slave of his father, Ernest, and half brother, Kirk. And then Tony’s hawk had blinded Kirk, and started a whole lot of trouble.

  What a great scene, that attack by the hawk. Kirk struggling against the hawk, the talons digging into his eye socket, the blood streaming down his face. And Kirk didn’t even cry. Vikings don’t weep
or register pain, I learned that day. I thought them capable of plucking out their own eyeballs without wincing.

  God, how I wanted to be a Viking. How I wanted to sail on a Viking ship, hold a Viking shield, wield a Viking sword, and cry out “Odin!” as I died a heroic death. Maybe someday I, too, would get to leap into a wolf pit, just as Ernest Borgnine had done, sword in hand, invoking the name of the chief god of Valhalla. Then I could have a Viking funeral, just like Kirk Douglas, my corpse set out to sea on an empty ship, flaming arrows shot from shore, ship and corpse set ablaze on the bright blue northern sea at sunset. A pale Nordic sunset, mind you, not a bright tangerine Cuban sunset.

  Nordic fantasies in Havana, in 1959, as the Revolution enjoyed its first few triumphal months. Not much had changed yet, except for all the men who had been executed by firing squads. All those men, so many of them. It seemed there were thousands, and rivers of blood.

  Paredón! Paredón! shouted the mobs. Hard to translate. A paredón is a large wall, any wall against which you can line up your enemies and shoot them dead while they can’t defend themselves. Get rid of them. Quickly, and with industrial efficiency.

  So many Cubans were killed this way, shot dead without a real trial. I saw it all on my black-and-white television, under the watchful gaze of Maria Theresa and the Good Shepherd boy Jesus. The so-called trials. The rhythmic chanting by the mobs that never seemed to disperse. “Paredón! Paredón! Paredón!” The executions. Amazing, how quickly a human body can crumple and fall when hit by bullets. Amazing how long a man can writhe on the ground before the coup de grâce is administered to the head. Blow of grace, so-called, a holdover from the days of the Vikings, when cudgels and maces were used instead of firearms. Thank you very much, sir, for putting me out of my misery. Thank you for filling me up with lead, missing my heart, and then blowing my brains out. I must have deserved it. Muchas gracias.