Cuba Diaries

by Isadora Tattlin

  At the party, one ambassador’s wife says that even if the accreditation process takes five years, they shouldn’t worry, because in five years, things are going to be a lot different here anyway, and maybe some of the twenty or more English-language-based schools that were here before the revolution might find their way back.

  “Five years?” I say.

  III. 65

  Nick and I are introduced at a lunch to Báez, an official Cuban journalist. He has just written a book called Secrets of the Generals. Báez says Fidel didn’t read the book before it was published. It was commissioned and organized, though, by Raúl. Lowering his voice and looking around, Báez says that at first the generals didn’t want to talk, and I am thinking it is not just Reny who makes me think of Alice in Wonderland.

  RENY AND I SPEAK about blackouts. He says he never has apagones where he lives because he lives near a lot of important people and the Sección de Intereses. I say sotto voce to Reny that los yanquis have to pay for the embargo by having apagones like everyone else.

  Reny looks around and, lowering his voice, speaks about repression at the biennial, about artists who were not allowed to show in some galleries. “This is the war they are making,” he says.

  Reny is wearing a long-sleeved linen guayabera with a blue-and-white polka-dot butterfly necktie and two-tone shoes. I tell him I really like his look tonight, and he says it’s men’s formal dress from before el triunfo.

  I say the greater war at the moment seems to be against cuentapropistas, against people who work for themselves or rent out houses.

  Reny spies a duro within earshot and steers me to the side of the room. Reny then says that it is too bad the government is doing that, because people were using the money to restore their houses, to make them presentable for tourists, to bring in more money for everyone. They don’t want to renovate just for their own selves.

  I know I should stop, but I think I will just say one more little thing, and I say that the government prefers to shoot itself in the foot.

  III. 66

  The Cuban Communist Party Congress, which convenes every five years, has just ended, making no concessions and calling for greater sacrifice on the part of the people.

  A law was on the table that would have allowed for the creation of private small- and medium-sized enterprises, but it was not passed because it would give too much satisfaction to the United States.

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I am not kidding,” a low-level European diplomat says to me at a cocktail party. “That is how a Cuban official explained it to me.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s not like anyone ever said we were dealing with emotional maturity here,” the European diplomat says after a pause.

  Someone asks, at the same cocktail party, if anyone remembers the song “Limbo Rock.”

  Others check for Cubans and, when they don’t see any, start bending their knees and leaning back and singing, “Every limbo boy and girl . . . and how low can you go?”

  A MICROPHONE IS FOUND in the wall behind the bed of the French ambassador, one of the few viva la revolución diplomats.

  It is said he was so viva la revolución that they couldn’t believe it.

  THE PALESTINIAN AMBASSADOR says another letter has gone out, saying that ambassadors and their wives and children could still use the protocol lounge, but that lower diplomats and their family members had to use the VIP lounge from now on.

  “MIRA COMO A ELLOS LES PASA TAMBIÉN” (“Look how it also happens to them”), Lety says when I tell her about the letters going out to the embassies. “First, the government announces to us we can never have any eggs again, and we say, ‘No eggs! How will we get along?’ Then after that, the government says, ‘OK, you can have eggs, but only four eggs a month,’ and everyone says, ‘How wonderful! We can have four eggs a month!’”

  III. 67

  People are getting fatter. I don’t know how it’s happening, but they are. There are not as many thin people, in washed-thin shirts and dresses and broken tennis shoes, struggling down streets with their last bits of strength; many amble now, with half-full shopping bags. Some bicycle home from the agros with three-pound lettuces tied on the backs. There are not as many people pleading for fulas or talking to themselves. There are not as many people waiting in line at the Coppelia for ice cream, which was for a while—when milk was not available to families with children over seven years old—the only place to find calcium. People can buy fresh cheese now from the Diplo, if they have dollars, or from friends and neighbors who bring it from the country. There is more gasoline and there are more cars and motorcycles. Our street is much noisier. People with access to dollars even have new clothes. There is more hair dye available, and superfluous hair bleach and makeup, and the styles of shoes people have on their feet are more varied.

  Buildings are being done over, too, in Habana Vieja and on Quinta Avenida. In Habana Vieja they are being done over by Eusebio Leal, but on Quinta and in parts of Siboney and Cubanacán, they are being leased by foreign companies who are renovating them. There is a patisserie française on a side street in Siboney, offering croissants, éclairs, and cakes. It is air-conditioned and the windows and tables are clean and there is no guard at the door, and foreigners and Cubans with dollars go in it on Sunday mornings, when they are out walking their dogs, and sit side by side and are treated with equal importance, just like in most pastry shops in the world.

  Cubans without dollars can’t buy anything at the patisserie, but they can at least enter the patisserie and look and no one makes a fuss, and of all the shops in Havana, it is the shop in which one feels a little less Marie-Antoinette–like—and it’s a patisserie française, of all places.

  III. 68

  I hear the story of the Swiss pastry chef, the jinetera, and her marinovio. A twenty-seven-year-old pastry chef, living in Switzerland, was in love for several years with a jinetera he met on his first vacation in Cuba. The jinetera was married to a Cuban, or was living with a Cuban and either was divorced or had done divorcio a lo cubano: that is, she had gotten involved with the Swiss chef as a way of bringing in extra income with the consent of the marinovio. The marinovio would make himself scarce when the Swiss was in town. The jinetera had two children, the first one with the marinovio, and the second one—it is not clear whether it was with the ex-marinovio, the Swiss, or someone else. The Swiss knew the marinovio, but the jinetera always said he was her cousin, the children were trained not to call him Papa, and the Swiss didn’t suspect a thing. The jinetera and the Swiss started to make plans to go to Switzerland, and the marinovio (when the Swiss was absent) freaked out and smashed all the furniture in the jinetera’s apartment. The Swiss thought it was an extreme reaction for someone who was just a cousin, but the jinetera told him, “My cousin is just concerned that I will be leaving my children behind.” The jinetera did not press any charges, and the Swiss bought her all new furniture.

  Three days ago, the marinovio stabbed the Swiss in the chest. The Swiss went after him until the marinovio shot him, execution style, behind the ear. The marinovio then picked up the body and threw it off the terrace onto the street. The person who told me the story didn’t know where the jinetera was at that point, but the marinovio let the oldest child go and took the youngest child and kept a gun to its head. The block was cordoned off; psychologists were called. The standoff lasted for many hours, but the marinovio finally surrendered.

  III. 69

  Nick is depressed. He always gets depressed, he says, in June, when the kids and I take off. He joins us when he can, but he usually has to spend six weeks alone. It’s the heat, he says, and the fact that he’s alone, and the shoddiness and the idea that things now will only get shoddier. Even if there is a change, at this point he doesn’t see how things can ever be anything but shoddy, they are so far gone already: grim hotels, sad restaurants, jineteras and jineteros with it all out there, every single minute.

  “And palad
ares and beaches and orchids and music . . . ,” I say stupidly, as if I have to be up when he is down, like carousel horses.

  It’s for the children that I leave, I tell myself. They need fresh air. They also need to see another kind of world from time to time. If it weren’t for the children, I’d be right here with him, sharing the shoddiness, I tell Nick, I really would.

  III. 70

  Torrential rain, making lakes of intersections. Cars drive on the hump in the middle of the road but still make waves. We watch from the balcony overlooking the street. Waves wash up under the gates of the driveway. A dinner is canceled, because cars can’t get to our house. The children are restless. The rain doesn’t take away the heat; it only makes it steamy. “For Daddy’s next job, can we go to Norway?” they ask. Only four more days until summer vacation. The children draw grids on several pieces of paper and write an hour in each square, crossing the hours off as they pass.

  III. 71

  Miguel and I try to cross the river to go to the agro in Vedado, where I have heard there is still spinach, but both the Quinta and Socialism or Death tunnels are closed. We try to get to the bridge over the Almendares, but the traffic leading to it is so thick that we finally give up and go to the agro on Forty-second Street.

  There is no spinach and no rice, and flies dot hunks of pork like raisins on a pudding. I do find watercress, though, a big bunch, unusual for this time of year, and so we are able to have salad for dinner.

  I check with Nick as we eat our watercress, asking him if eating a vegetable he hasn’t eaten for a while makes him as happy as it makes me, and Nick says it sends him absolutely over the moon.

  The Fourth School Year

  IV. 1

  Back from vacation with four hundred pounds of luggage, the usual haul. Twelve hours and three different airplanes, it takes us, to get from Newark to Havana.

  Tums, we bring back for the help, Pepto-Bismol, Advil, Tagamet, foot powder, corn pads, false-teeth adhesive, hemorrhoidal suppositories, antibacterial soap, vitamins E and C, multivitamins, calcium pills, cod-liver oil pills, support stockings, underpants, bras, socks, raincoats, and sneakers. For ourselves, we bring tennis balls, books, a dish rack, ten pounds of kid’s snack food, and sneakers, sandals, and dress shoes one and two sizes bigger so the kids won’t run out, as well as every size of Ziploc bag and photo sleeve so we won’t have to depend on visitors.

  I am wondering if this is the last time I will have to make such a haul.

  I hold out my hand to shake hands with the baby-faced guard who was there before we left, and before I know it, he kisses me on both cheeks.

  THERE WERE FOUR BOMBS in one day while we were gone—three fifteen minutes apart at the Triton, Chateau Miramar, and Copacabana and one later in the day at the Bodeguita del Medio. An Italian was killed at the Copacabana while sitting in the bar with his father. He was hit in the jugular vein by a shard from a glass ashtray and bled to death. An El Salvadoran was caught, a mercenary trained in Georgia, the TV says, and paid by the Cuban-American National Foundation.

  I FIND A SATIN BOW among my stash of present-wrapping supplies and carry it to the veranda along with a small aluminum suitcase I have brought from the United States. It’s the kind of suitcase used for carrying camera equipment, lined with foam rubber. I tie the bow on the handle and put it on Nick’s chair before he comes down for breakfast.

  “Surprise!” I say as Nick unlocks the suitcase with a tiny key. Nick has already been back in Cuba for two weeks.

  Inside are two dozen half-ripe beefsteak tomatoes.

  A SMIRKING CUBAN NEWSCASTER reports that the Cuban government finds it incredible that security forces as efficient as those in the United States were not able to know about the attempts beforehand.

  NO SUGAR OR FLOUR at the Diplo, Lorena reports.

  THE POPE IS COMING. It is confirmed now. He will come in January.

  IV. 2

  Jaime, a gay Cuban man in his fifties, comes for dinner. Jaime tells us he was out for dinner with a friend at a paladar when they got the idea to go to the nightclub Perikiton because his friend had never been. The Perikiton, basically a large fenced-in open-air space, started as a place for gays, but now more than half the people who go there are straight. There were between three and four thousand people there the night Jaime and his friend went. The Spanish director Almodóvar was there, as well as the actress Bibi Andersson and the French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. Jaime and his friend were standing there, remarking how whenever they were in a place like that, they always felt that they had to be on their guard, because of what used to happen in the old days. They were just saying that, when suddenly there were screams and they felt themselves being shoved by a wave of people. Plain-clothes policemen scattered throughout the crowd pulled out guns. They herded everyone outside—foreigners on one side, and Cubans on the other. They had waited for Almodóvar and Bibi Andersson to leave before they busted the club, but they didn’t know about Gaultier. All the Cubans were photographed, then loaded into one set of buses, and all foreigners were loaded into another. Cubans had to pay fines of thirty pesos each, but the foreigners were set free. We ask Jaime what the charges were, but Jaime says he doesn’t know. Jaime says that he and his friend, for some reason, were allowed to leave. “Pasa, pasa,” a guard said to them. They got in their car and started to drive away, when another guard stood in front of their car and said, “Who do you think you are? Diplomats?” They had to get out of their car and be checked all over again.

  I say that I thought it was no big deal anymore in Cuba when someone was gay.

  Jaime says the roundup was designed to humiliate.

  I say you can humiliate large numbers of people up to a certain point, but humiliating four thousand people on an island of eleven million seems kind of counterproductive.

  Jaime says they don’t see it that way.

  IV. 3

  Mrs. Fleites se quedó (“stayed,” which in Cuba means “went for a visit to another country and stayed”), another teacher tells me. She will not be coming back. She is making a living for the time being giving private English lessons in Miami.

  “But what about her husband?”

  “It’s divorcio a lo cubano. He will get to Miami someday, or maybe not.”

  MRS. FLEITES IS GONE, the first-grade teacher is gone, too, and the school’s Spanish teacher and Gonzalo and Raulito, a man who sold us fruit out of the back of his 1959 Nash Rambler. Now they live in Miami, in Venezuela, in Michigan, in Canada. Most slip away, but the fruit man announced, “I’m going. Maybe I will stay.” One friend’s brother left in a boat. He now has a job in a bakery, and a house and car. A film critic, too, has gone. He went to teach a course at a U.S. university and stayed. His wife and children are trying to join him and have been given refugee status so that they can now travel to the United States, but they still have not been allowed to leave Cuba. The film critic’s wife lived all right for a year after her husband left, but now that she has been given refugee status, her son and daughter have been kicked out of school and she has lost her job. Still the family has not been given an exit permit.

  A TEACHER AT THE school gives me a slip of paper. “This is Mrs. Fleites’s telephone number in Miami. She wants you to call her the next time you are there.”

  I spend the next few minutes thinking about how much I will not call Mrs. Fleites.

  IV. 4

  I go to Lola’s. A friend of a friend has gotten in touch with me over the summer. She is a Cuban American who left Cuba in the early sixties, along with her whole family. She married an American American and has one son. She meant never to return to Cuba, but now she is feeling more like visiting if only to show Cuba to her son. I tell Lola that she doesn’t want to visit like a regular tourist. She wants a car, a driver. She wants to stay in people’s houses.

  Lola moves her abundant body to the edge of her chair. She asks me where the woman is from. I say her family is from Camagüey. They had a ranch there, bu
t she grew up in Havana. Lola says she can find her and her husband and son a car, a driver, and places to stay in Havana, in Camagüey, and in places along the way to Camagüey if they are interested in stopping. Lola then says she also knows someone in the archives department and that if my friend needs any deeds or any other kind of documentation, her friend could get them for her.

  I ask Lola if her friend could get into trouble for that.

  Lola explains patiently to me that the deeds in the archives are the deeds of private properties that were taken over, just taken over by the government . . .

  I ask Lola if she could get into trouble for that, and Lola explains patiently that people have to make a living.

  IV. 5

  A party in yet another spacious but dilapidated mansion in Cubanacán. The host is yet another European man of about fifty-five with adolescent Cuban girlfriend, this time a six-footer in a backless polyester evening dress and sixties updo. Her long face is sullen, as if she doesn’t know who to blame for being in that dress with that hair in that place. A Middle Eastern ambassador, about fifty, is also there with his adolescent girlfriend. Both the host and the ambassador look utterly unembarrassed. The Middle Eastern ambassador tells us he knew the Italian who was blown up in the blast.