Cuba Diaries

by Isadora Tattlin

  We visit a gallery of works for sale on the ground floor. The works for sale are interesting as well, especially some painted bas-relief plaster panels, with the sheen and somber tone of religious works. One shows the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, who usually holds the Christ child, holding an alligator (a symbol of Cuba, whose outline on a map resembles the outline of an alligator) instead, floating above three cannons instead of above the usual three men in a boat. One shows the Virgen del Cobre being offered a red baby in exchange for a white one. Another shows a bearded man in a classic Cuban Army uniform, with a rifle on his back, feeding sugarcane into an ox-driven mill, the kind of sugar mill used two hundred years ago. The mood is gentle, resigned. The artist, Esterio Segura, is there by chance. The gallery manager introduces us to him as he is wheeling his bicycle out of the courtyard. He is a combination of white, black, and Chinese, with high cheekbones, a birthmark near one eye like a permanent tear, a long, sparse, mustache and goatee like a Buddhist sage, and a relaxed Afro swelling upward from behind a tortoiseshell headband.

  I. 37

  It is May, ninety degrees, and humid. Sweat pouring into the girls’ eyes is hampering the girls’ performance, the teacher explains, and the dance studio is too crowded now that more girls have signed up for lessons. The lessons will be on the back patio from now until the fall. Girls should no longer wear ballet shoes because the cement floor of the patio is so rough it will tear them up. The girls should wear sneakers. They will not do floor exercises again until they move back into the dance studio in the fall.

  The Cuban mothers and children absorb this information without comment.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Thea says in English.

  The children look at her. “Are you from Japan?” one of the children asks Thea.

  The class moves onto the back patio and begins its exercises. Thea does them jerkily, rolling her eyes. I frown at her and she adjusts her expression.

  I. 38

  Since the big cocktail party the firm recommends we have every year is going to be in one month, Manuel says that it’s a good idea to start resolviendo and consiguiendo now.

  Para resolver y/o conseguir: 500 drinking glasses, paper napkins, ice, limes, mint (for mojitos), ice containers, rum (4 cases dark and 4 light), 8 cases beer, 12 cases Tropicola, 4 cases scotch, 4 cases vodka, 6 cases champagne, 1 pig, 2 jamon bikis (a salami-shaped ham made of different parts of the pig pressed together), 10 pounds white cheese, 40 liters canned tomatoes, 5 pounds grated coconut, 10 dozen eggs, 50 kilos flour, 50 kilos sugar, 20 kilos malangas, 20 kilos potatoes, 20 kilos green bananas, 8 waiters.

  The list is broken down into manageable units, with the resolviendo and/or consiguiendo of each item assigned to the employee most able to do it, to the firm, or to me. Alcohol and mixers are to be ordered through the firm. Readily available fruits and vegetables will be bought at the agro. The jamon biki is to be conseguidoed through a friend of Miguel’s. Flour and sugar resueltoed by Lorena. Potatoes are to be conseguidoed by Manuel. Ice, ice containers, and mint will be resueltoed at the last minute, but the pig remains up in the air.

  I tell Manuel that I would like to find some other way to get enough flour and sugar, and others have whispered to me that they would be able to resolver flour and sugar, but so far Lorena has been the only one who has been able to successfully resolver these two items.

  “I’VE GOT A NICE PIG,” the plumber who is Miguel’s friend says, lying under the sink with a wrench in his hand.

  Miguel is nearby, nodding. “It’s true,” he says. “He has a very nice pig, large, good for the party.”

  We arrange to buy the pig for three hundred dollars, which I gather is one dollar a pound. The plumber will kill it, scald it (which, I learn, is what you have to do to get the bristles off), and bring it to the house with the head and feet removed on a day when the children are in school.

  SACKS OF FLOUR AND of sugar are dragged in through the door by Lorena, who is whispering, eyes opened wide and the whites of her eyes showing all the way around her pupils.

  CONCHA APPROACHES ME while I am having lunch. “I have a good boy who can help for the party.”

  “Good.” I have asked the help to find extra waiters, people they know, for the party.

  “He knows how to serve. He has a white shirt . . .”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you mind if he’s black?”

  “What?” I say, thinking that it’s just my Spanish, but Concha touches two fingers to her forearm.

  “Negro. El es Negro. Le da fastidio?”

  I give a slight jerk. She is asking me if it bothers me that he is black.

  “Black, white, yellow, green, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Sorry to ask you, señora, but some ladies, they do mind.”

  THE PIG ARRIVES AND is laid out on the table on the veranda in back of the kitchen, where the help usually eat lunch, two legs of the table on the slightly raised cement floor of the veranda, two legs on the grass, so that the blood drains off into a basin Manuel has placed in the grass at the lower end. I walk back and forth in front of the door leading to the veranda, half watching, half not wanting to watch, as Manuel, wearing an old guayabera and wielding a large knife, skins the pig, then cuts the fat off. He cuts the fat into large cubes, which are rendered into chicharrones, or cracklings, by Lorena and put into tubs of lard in the despensa, like goose livers in France. The legs are cut off, wrapped, and put in the freezer, then the rest of the meat is cut up into pieces of three to four kilos each, wrapped, and put in the freezer.

  I am—afraid, I guess, is the word—to ask whether the three hundred dollars includes the head and feet of the pig or not. I have not seen the head, but there is a mysterious black plastic bag on the kitchen floor. I don’t want them to know that I didn’t know, when I paid the plumber, if I was paying for the head and feet or not. I did ask the plumber to cut the head and feet off before the pig came to the house, but I didn’t tell him to keep them. I don’t want the help to know that I didn’t know exactly what I was paying for. I think the plumber did say something to me about head and feet and price, but I don’t want him or the help to know how little in control I am.

  I am also afraid to find out (if the head is around), what it is they do with the head. I’m sure they do something with it: Cuba is a do-something-with pigs’-heads type of place.

  I. 39

  Nick and I go with our Elegguá to the opening of a group show in the gallery-cum-paladar of Arquitecto Vasquez.

  Once again, people in natural-fiber clothes, and on the wall, a picture of a bearded centaur (his face is covered, but you can see pieces of beard protruding), his body pierced by arrows decorated with the flags of former Communist countries. A cherub seated on the centaur’s back holds the cloth covering the centaur’s face, but you cannot tell whether the cherub is holding the cloth in order to keep it in place or to remove it. El Caballo (the Horse) is one of the many names for Fidel because in the numerology of the Cuban lottery, the number one is represented by a horse. Another picture shows Lenin in a coffin floating above a contemplative Karl Marx, over whose shoulder the face of Groucho Marx mugs.

  Castro is never named in Cuba; he is referred to as Él (Him), El Señor (the Mister, the Sir, or probably more accurately, the Lord), El Caballo (the Horse), or El Niño (the Child), or one simply makes a silent hand gesture down from the chin to indicate a beard. Among the art we have seen so far, we have never seen a painting depicting Him openly, and we have been wondering if it is even allowed to paint direct images of Him. We have asked our Elegguá and others if it is allowed, but no one has been able to tell us so far. At Galería Vasquez, though, there is also a painting depicting Him openly: it is a close-up of Him, presumably in some European museum, contemplating a painting of the head of a woman in Renaissance dress. The painting is in black, white, and gray. It is a copy of an actual well-known news photograph of him, Arquitecto Vasquez tells us. Arquitecto Vasquez tells us that
the artist, Toirac, has painted an entire series of paintings of Fidel, copied from well-known photographs of Him.

  We ask Arquitecto Vasquez if he thinks it might be possible for us to visit Toirac in his studio. Arquitecto Vasquez gives us the telephone number of Toirac’s neighbor’s mother. Not everyone in Havana has a phone, and this is the easiest way to get him a message.

  ÁNGEL TOIRAC AND HIS WIFE, Meira, live in a fifth-floor walk-up in Old Havana.

  Ángel has large features, and his abundant, curly black hair is, like Esterio Segura’s, held back by a lady’s tortoiseshell headband. Meira, who is a poet, has creamy skin and a very wholesome air about her.

  Ángel’s latest series of paintings is called Tiempos Nuevos (New Times). The paintings are oil, in black, white, gray, and red, and faithfully reproduce famous photos of Fidel, mostly from the time of the revolution, but within contemporary commercial contexts, in which Fidel appears to be promoting products and businesses. There is a painting of Fidel astride a horse (a well-known photo of the revolution) with the Marlboro symbol beneath him. There is a painting of Fidel and Che trawling off a sportfishing boat, with the words MARINA HEMINGWAY (an existing tourist marina) in one corner. There is a painting of Fidel smiling, eating Chinese food with a large bottle of CocaCola beside it and, underneath, the words, LAS COSAS VAN MEJOR CON COCACOLA (Things go better with Coke).

  Toirac was about to have an exhibition when he was told that he couldn’t display images of Fidel in those contexts, so he painted new paintings for the exhibition, substituting his wife in a uniform, smoking a cigar, for every image of Fidel. He shows us one of the paintings in which the image of his wife appears. He is not allowed to export any of the paintings showing Fidel, either.

  We ask him about the painting of his we saw at Galeriá Vasquez.

  “That has no advertisement with it. It is not part of the series. It is not considered . . . ironic, though some may consider it ironic . . .”

  I. 40

  Just as I have forgotten about the pig’s head, I open the door of the most broken-down of our three refrigerators, a compact Minsk without shelves and with the internal freezer-compartment door broken off, so that everything in it stays only semifrozen.

  There, on the floor of the Minsk, long-lashed eyes closed serenely, frost swirling around it, as if on some glacial altar, is our own little Lord of the Flies.

  I. 41

  Carlita is from Bayamo, which is on the other end of the island, near Santiago, but her mother’s cousin, Davide, lives in Havana. Carlita stays with Davide on her days off and on the weekends. Carlita would like Nick and me to meet him. Carlita is, in fact, determined for us to meet Davide, though she won’t explain why. She has been trying to get us to come to Davide’s house for several weeks, but Nick has been busy.

  Davide is a retired architect. He designed hotels before el triunfo de la revolución, he even designed a hotel for Lucky Luciano, but then he became a revolutionary. He went back to working as an architect after el triunfo, but he designed more modest buildings then.

  Davide, who is in his sixties, and his girlfriend, who is in her thirties, live in Miramar in a small house he designed for himself. It is a square brick house with louvers for windows. The bedrooms are in the basement, for coolness, he says.

  Davide is slim and well groomed, with a boyish face, and seems at once pleased and appalled to see us.

  We sit on Danish modern sofas in the living room. Macramé plant holders hang in front of every window, and on the windowsills are blown-glass bottles holding sand in brightly colored layers, urchin figurines with humorous signs on them, and a terra-cotta Mexican donkey with tiny cacti growing out of a small planter on its back. A guitar leans in one corner. Paintings of Cuban landscapes are interspersed with paintings of clowns and paintings on velvet of bare-breasted Polynesian girls.

  Carlita sits on the edge of one Danish modern sofa, looking back and forth, from Davide to us.

  Nick asks Davide if he knows of any good paladares.

  “Paladares?” Davide says, looking uncomfortable.

  I had the feeling when I first walked into Davide’s house—and now I know it for sure—that Davide is sitting in a room with card-carrying capitalists for the first time since 1962. I have not had this feeling meeting other Cubans, but I do have it with Davide.

  Davide says he doesn’t know of any paladares . . .

  I ask Davide quickly if he would like us to bring him back anything from Europe or the United States.

  “Architectural magazines,” Davide says emphatically, looking relieved. “Anything about architecture . . .”

  I tell Nick after we get outside that he shouldn’t ask people like that about paladares.

  “People like what?”

  “Nick.”

  I don’t know whether it’s my being a woman or my not being X——ian, or whether it’s just that marriages must have their little surprises every day, for on another day, it would have been Nick sensing the vibes and me saying the wrong thing.

  I. 42

  The children and I will be leaving soon for the summer (Nick will join us when he can), but we still have a few weekends left.

  There is a median strip on the Prado, which is in places still paved with smooth terrazzo. It is ideal for in-line skating. We have seen children—Cuban children—on Rollerblades there already. The Prado is a copy of the famous promenade, Las Ramblas, in Barcelona.

  We park the car at the beginning of the Prado near the Malecón. The children seat themselves on a stone bench and put on Rollerblades. They have knee pads on, too, and wrist guards. They start to skate. We walk behind them. Jimmie skates briskly, but Thea skates listlessly. Old people sitting on the stone benches that are still intact, and children climbing on the remains of lampposts and stone lions, stare at us as we pass. We see a few other children with Rollerblades on, but none with wrist guards or knee pads. Our children’s clothes are not exceptional, just shorts and T-shirts, but they look extraordinarily pressed and gleaming, compared with the other children’s clothes; and with the wrist guards and knee pads, our children looked pressed, gleaming, and science fictional. Our clothes are not exceptional either, just jeans and T-shirts, but they look gleaming, too, and together as a family we are huge and gleaming and all but carrying a big sign that says LOOK AT US. Jimmie skates ahead; Thea skates more and more slowly, her shoulders ever more hunched. “Dáme un chicle,” (“Give me some chewing gum,”) a boy Thea age’s says to Thea. Thea speeds up past him, then flops down on a bench beyond him. I bring my face close to hers. “I want to go home,” she mumbles. She starts to cry.

  We hear honking. A crowd gathers at one side of the median strip, across from an ornate building. It is the Palacio de Matrimonios and it is Saturday afternoon. No one is looking at us anymore, for a two-tone Ford Galaxie convertible has rolled up to the palacio, with a woman in a wedding dress seated up on top of the backseat. Ladas and motorcycles with sidecars bearing wedding guests pull up behind her. “Viva la esposa!” the crowd shouts. The bride, white-tuxedo-clad groom, and wedding guests enter the palacio. They emerge a few minutes later, and the bride and groom take off in the Ford Galaxie under a handful of confetti, the guests after them, honking and shouting.

  It’s one convertible and one wedding party after another after that, every ten to fifteen minutes. Thea stands in her socks on a stone lion with Jimmie, holding on to our shoulders for balance. Nick and I hold their Rollerblades tightly in our arms. “I still want to go home,” Thea says after the second wedding group has left, but we manage to watch through a third group, then go home.

  I. 43

  I am packing my bag.

  Nick comes in. “I know now how to tell real cigars from fake cigars,” Nick tells me, ripping the wrapping off a box of cigars he has bought from the repairman’s brother-in-law’s uncle’s second wife’s present husband. “If it’s real, it bends but doesn’t break.”

  He bends a cigar. It breaks immediately, dry c
igar flakes showering his hands.

  “Pig penis,” Nick says in X——ian, crushing the cigar to pieces and throwing the box against the wall.

  The Second School Year

  II. 1

  The first thing Nick wants to do after I get back with the children from summer vacation is to take me to a good paladar and introduce me to some interesting people he has met over the summer: Natalia Bolivar and Reynaldo González.

  Natalia Bolivar is an anthropologist, an expert on Santeria. Nick had Natalia over a couple of times during the summer. She sat with him on the veranda, drinking mojitos and talking about the old days. She is from a wealthy, conservative background and she told Nick her mother used to call the police, just as a matter of course, whenever she saw an unknown black person walking on the street in front of their house. As a teenager, Natalia became a revolutionary. She had used a machine gun and been arrested and tortured by Batista.

  Reynaldo is the director of the Cuban Film Archives. In the evenings, he and his boyfriend, Eddie, run the paladar we are going to. It is the best paladar Nick has been to so far.

  Reynaldo greets us as we enter. He is of average height, balding, with a cast to one eye. Eddie, much younger than he and with a very sweet face, does the cooking. Reynaldo is said to be the model for the gay guy in Strawberry and Chocolate.

  There is an apagón (blackout) when we get there, so we spend most of the evening with candles. Natalia is in her late fifties or early sixties, statuesque, with white hair pinned up in a casual chignon and a mass of necklaces around her throat, most of them descending halfway down her chest. They shine dully in the candlelight. They are made of shells, beads (presumably in the colors of her chosen orishas, or Afro-Cuban Santeria gods), metal, and stone, and of other materials that I cannot identify in the semidarkness. I ask a question about them, but Natalia answers me rapidly, speaking with a heavy Cuban accent. I cannot understand anything she is saying, but I don’t want to slow down the conversation by asking her to repeat what she has just said. I am having a hard time understanding Reynaldo and Eddie, too. Nick, though, can understand everything, it seems: he’s making comments in all the right places. He’s made a lot of progress in Spanish and cubano over the summer, while my Spanish has deteriorated and my cubano has deteriorated even more.