Cuba Diaries

by Isadora Tattlin

  The cashier at the bar of the game center, where tokens are sold, is surrounded by Cubans pulling $5.00 and $10.00 bills out of thick wads of bills for bowling, at $3.00 a game, and for bumper cars, at $1.50 a turn.

  The bowling alley is Brunswick, with automatic setup and ball return and brightly colored balls in a variety of weights. The noise of the bowling balls, of salsa at high volume, and of girls in jine wear and their boyfriends (mostly Cuban, with some Europeans), screaming and jumping up and down as they bowl, means you have to yell to be heard.

  “You can bowl barefoot or with special shoes!” the bartender screams.

  “Just one game!” I yell at the kids.

  “OK!” they yell back.

  We pay and find an empty lane. It’s new, the bowling alley, but you can already see gaps between the boards of the lanes as well as warping in some boards. The wood has been finished with a lumpy varnish, leaving gaps and air bubbles, as if they got a kit but didn’t follow the instructions or used the flooring that came with the kit for someplace else. Our balls keep veering to the left.

  We buy more tokens and go out to the bumper cars and go seven or eight times—for a total of a hotel base salary. The bumper cars look pretty new also, but three are already out of commission, with the rods that are supposed to connect them to the electrified roof rusted and bent.

  Roberto drives us through a barrio in back of the shopping complex—dozens of tiny concrete houses packed together, with patched tin roofs.

  “Here’s where they live, and there’s where they suck it out of them,” I say.

  “Hay una pipa directa” (“There’s a direct pipeline”), Roberto says.

  IV. 16

  Caligula is playing at the same theater where we saw Te Sigo, Esperando. It is a Cubanized version of Sartre’s play.

  At the end, a woman in traveling clothes picks up a suitcase. “Me voy” (“I am going”), she says. The crowd responds mightily.

  IV. 17

  There is no flour at the Diplo. I do manage to buy 191 rolls of toilet paper, though. The ones we brought from our last country are finished and we are into the Kleenex, so I buy all the rolls on the shelf. They are twenty-five cents each, speckled, made in Cuba. There are no perforations, and the beginning of the roll is fixed to the rest with a swath of yellow glue. You have to toss the first foot or so away. We have enough toilet paper now to last until we leave. If we run out, we will move back to the Kleenex. We have had lots of diarrhea in Cuba, but not that many colds.

  LORENA DRAGS A fifty-pound bag of flour in through the door. “No fue fácil” (“It wasn’t easy”), she says, letting go of the bag, straightening her back, and wiping the sweat from her forehead with her hand. “But it’s good quality. I told them it had to be good quality for the comandante in jefe (commander in chief).”

  IV. 18

  Radio Martí has announced that the Cuban American National Foundation will be sending a flotilla to just outside the twelve-mile limit, from which they will project a laser show, which will be seen in the sky above Havana. The laser show will begin at 9 P.M., after the cañonazo (traditional nightly canon salute from the fortress of La Cabaña). At nine P.M., all habaneros are requested by Radio Martí to start banging cooking pots to express their solidarity with the democracy movement, as they did in East Germany. There is even a rumor that they are going to beam the words LIBERTAD Y DEMOCRACIA in the sky.

  We go to the paladar Prado 20, with its view over the harbor. We think that it will be the best viewing spot.

  We stand on the terrace waiting for a table to be free, watching a laser test in the sky. A waitress serves us water, explaining to us that water is the only thing she can serve on the terrace. Prado 20 has just opened again after having been closed for several months. It was closed for serving drinks on the terrace, where they did not have a bar license.

  We are called in to eat. I keep watching out the window.

  The cañonazo sounds. We rush outside.

  The light show begins. A green beam streaks up into the sky, but then it fades. It searches the sky, wobbles. It continues to shine in the sky, feeble and intermittent. There are no words, and after about twenty minutes it is over. No cooking pots bang.

  “They may be the opposition, but they are Cubans just the same,” declares a man with a British accent sitting at a table next to ours.

  IV. 19

  Jimmie lies on the floor of his room before dressing for school. “It’s kind of boring here,” he says. “It’s always the same.”

  IV. 20

  The first security detail arrives around noon. Men in stonewashed jeans and imitation Lacoste shirts. We sit on the veranda. I serve them coffee. The head of security asks me to list the names of the help. He asks me to give him and his men a tour of the house. He asks me what bathroom the president will use. I say we have only one downstairs bathroom. He tells me the president will use that bathroom and that all other guests should use the guest bathroom upstairs. He asks me what kind of toilet paper the president will use. I show them one of the rolls I have just bought from the Diplo. He asks me if it is Cuban toilet paper. I say it is. He asks me if we don’t have any better-quality toilet paper. I say we don’t. The head of security asks me to take the roll, put it in a plastic bag, tape the bag shut, and leave it beside the toilet for the president. He asks me how the food will be served. I say it will be served buffet style, with identical dishes on both sides of the table so that the guests can serve themselves more quickly. He asks me to show him what side of the table the president will be served from, and after I walk with him to the dining room and show him, he tells me to serve Fidel only from that side. He then asks me where we will sit down to eat dinner. I escort him to the veranda, which is open on two sides. The tables have already been set up. Some of the tables have chairs with their backs facing the garden. The security man tells me to seat the president with his back facing the wall.

  At two o’clock, the house checkers and the food taster come. The food taster spends the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen with Lorena. The checkers start combing the house delicately, looking under every piece of furniture with flashlights, tapping the furniture in some places. They get ladders and peek into chandeliers and rub the insides of lampshades with the flats of their hands. They pick up cushions and squeeze every part of them between their hands. They take out the telephone in the despacho and install a red one. They install a green one in the garden in the bushes near the entrance.

  At five o’clock, Nick’s secretary calls to tell me Fidel likes Chivas Regal. I go to the Diplo for the third time that day.

  The security men check the dining table after it has been set, sliding on their backs under the tablecloth with flashlights. This is a signal for Jimmie and Thea to jump up giggling from the glass table on the adjoining veranda, where they have been eating their dinner, and, before anyone can stop them, dive under the dining table with the security men. “Te cojí!” (“Gotcha!”), Jimmie says, flopping onto one of the security men’s stomachs with a ketchup-stained napkin still stuffed into his pajama collar.

  One hour before the guests arrive, closed trucks park on the street by our fence. Machine guns are hoisted to the tops of the trucks. Soldiers in combat uniforms stand beside them.

  The guests assemble. We wait without drinking anything. We wait nearly an hour. “He likes for everyone to be here before he makes his appearance,” one Cuban whispers to me.

  He arrives in a loud rush of black Ladas and one Mercedes. We greet him on the steps. He asks permission to use our hall mirror, stands in front of it, and with great concentration combs his hair with a small black comb, as thirty guests look on, beaming.

  He appears top-heavy with what seem to be two layers of olive green polyester, even though it is at least ninety-five degrees outside. Olive green pants over legs that look all the slenderer in contrast to the top-heaviness. The pants are gathered at the ankles, combat-style, but instead of combat boots he wears zip-up, Beatles
-like boots with heels that seem to be just the slightest bit higher than the heels on normal men’s shoes. The hands on the comb are thin, pale, hairless. The beard is long and sparse. You can see through it all the way to his skin. Old hippies, I think of, and the Fab Four and the gruff but whimsical top-heavy executives in old New Yorker cartoons.

  Danila stands with a tray at the entrance to the living room. Fidel finishes combing his hair, walks up to Danila, puts his arm around her, and enters the living room with her, raising his other arm and calling a general, cheerful greeting to the room. Danila beams. Her café con mucha leche cheeks blush dusty rose. He releases her gracefully. She whirls off with her tray into the kitchen. Nick introduces him to the most important guests in the room. I ask Fidel what he would like to drink. He says he would like a sweet vermouth. I apologize and say we have no sweet vermouth. He says he would like some French wine, then. I say that unfortunately we have no French wine, just Chilean. Nick looks at me impatiently; Fidel, mock humbly (it’s a look I have seen him use on TV). “I will have some red wine,” he says supplicatingly, “or some white wine.”

  “Bring him some white wine,” Nick says abruptly to Danila, who has reappeared.

  Nick tells Fidel almost immediately that I am a norteamericana (Nick has taken to telling everyone almost immediately that I am a norteamericana because he doesn’t want to give them anything that they can discover). Fidel opens his eyes wide. “But I have nothing against the American people,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders and shaking them gently. He says he doesn’t understand why the same Torricelli who exposed the abuses of the CIA in Guatemala is so much for Helms-Burton. His tone is one of hurt, puzzlement. It is just a shade different from mock humility.

  I sit between Fidel and the featured guest, an X——ian manufacturer of pipelines, who I had thought would have some distinction because his company is so well known, but instead turns out to be a ferrety little man with a sizable gold bracelet. A translator sits on the other side of the featured guest. The man is so ferrety and so excited to be sitting with Fidel (I catch him once or twice grabbing his crotch) that he is able to get a lot of words in edgewise and ends up talking nearly as much as Fidel. He tells us that many Chinese have Ferraris now. He talks about how they have yachts now, and two hundred suits, and vacation homes. I expect Fidel to be taken aback at this but he listens, with his eyebrows arched. “You don’t say?” he says. The man talks about how they like to go hunting—Chinese hunting big game in Africa—and about how he likes to go hunting, too. He talks about how thrilling it is to shoot an elephant.

  “But I didn’t think it was legal to shoot elephants anymore,” I say feebly, but the ferrety man tells us it can be done on certain reserves in Tanzania. He tells us where to go, the name of the man to contact. He likes to hunt lions, too, with a bow and arrow. He likes to hunt ducks. He chuckles. He even—he wouldn’t do this all the time, but just once—shot ducks with a machine gun. He got three hundred ducks at once. I expect Fidel to be appalled at this and I get ready to do lots of covering, distraction—I don’t want Fidel to think that all X——ians are like this little guy—but Fidel simply says that he likes to go duck hunting, too. He says they have beautiful duck-hunting reserves in Cuba. The ferrety man tells Fidel what kinds of guns he likes to use. Fidel tells the ferrety man what kinds of guns he likes to use. He tells the ferrety man about their special features. The translator leans forward, sweating. He is having to work fast, with unusual words. Fidel makes like he’s breaking open a gun, putting it together, sighting along it. And night hunting, the ferrety man says he likes to do. He was sold a special sight for his rifle—the kind used by the CIA—for night shooting. His voice drops an octave; he pulls on his crotch. It was sold to him by an Arab he met in Africa.

  Fidel moves forward on his seat and, winking at me, says he would like to get his hands on one of those.

  I am very aware of my back in a red dress, facing the garden with the bushes beyond and the neighboring building with its second floor clearing our dividing hedge, its dark windows looking at us, and I am aware of the soldiers with machine guns in the trucks on the streets outside. I glance at my watch. “Ah, señora, you can’t imagine how many attempts there have been on his life, and one just recently,” the surprisingly voluble young translator, with whom I had been chatting before Fidel’s arrival, said to me within earshot of bodyguards as we were moving into the dining room.

  Fidel sits in an armchair in the living room after dinner. There are not enough chairs to seat everyone, so Nick sits on a small ottoman beside him. The ferrety man is in another part of the living room speaking to other people. Fidel asked for a Sambuca, but we have no Sambuca, so he is sipping a cognac. Fidel is speaking about frozen shrimp. I don’t know how long it is that Fidel has been speaking about frozen shrimp (I have been off talking with other people) but it seems that he has been speaking about frozen shrimp for a while, for the eyes of people around him are starting to dart around the room. Fidel has finished his cognac. Nick asks Fidel if he would like another cognac and takes advantage of a split second of silence to ask Fidel a question about the war in Angola. I think Fidel will be jarrred by such a different subject’s being introduced, but he launches immediately into the war in Angola without batting an eye. Fidel talks for twenty-five minutes about Angola, and then Nick, offering Fidel a third cognac, asks him about Eritrea. Fidel moves serenely on to Eritrea for twenty-five minutes more.

  Eyes dart. Nick steals a glance at me, grinning with satisfaction. Nick loves footnotes in history, lesser-known military campaigns. Fidel keeps talking.

  At midnight the head bodyguard approaches us. “Commandante, with your permission . . .”

  “Is it time?” Fidel says.

  The bodyguard nods.

  “Hmm, time already. Amazing, how time flies”—he chuckles—“when one is doing all the talking!” He glances at Nick, then at me, his eyes sparkling. We smile. The guests laugh appreciatively. Fidel then pushes himself forward on the armchair. The head bodyguard nears the chair, but Fidel waves him away. He grips the two arms of the armchair, moves his chest toward his knees, and on a second rock forward pushes himself up stiffly onto his feet. The head bodyguard and other bodyguards remain alert as Fidel steadies himself. Fidel holds his hand out to Nick. Nick takes the hand, his arm rigid to help Fidel steady himself more. It is a combination of steadying himself with Nick’s help and shaking Nick’s hand. Fidel thanks Nick for the pleasant evening and for the intelligent questions Nick asked. The ferrety man approaches. Fidel shakes his hand and grips his shoulder while the ferrety man beams.

  Fully steady now, Fidel turns to me. “Señora norteamericana, muchísimas gracias a usted igualmente (to you, too).” The guests chuckle at the norteamericana part. Fidel puts his hands on my shoulders, leans forward, and kisses me on both cheeks. As with Piñeiro, I prepare myself for a bristly experience with distinct aroma to it. I marshal every nerve end in my nose and cheek, to remember and describe, but the beard is even softer than Piñeiro’s—whispery soft, in fact, odorless, and withdrawn in an instant.

  With Nick on one side of Fidel and a bodyguard on the other, the bodyguard’s hand cupped a millimeter below Fidel’s elbow, his eyes on Fidel’s feet, Fidel makes his way down the entry stairs and into the black Mercedes while black Ladas rev their engines in front of the Mercedes and behind it. The Ladas fill with green uniforms and tight guayaberas. The car doors slam shut, the gates creak open, and the cars roar off, tires screeching, Nick’s pant legs and my skirt flattened by exhaust, as are the pant legs of the ferrety man and the X——ian guests fanning out on the steps on either side of us—all male guests, whom we don’t know well—their faces beatific.

  IV. 21

  Concha back at work after several days at home with bronchitis. She was sick, she said, because of the powerful cleanser she was using to try to get white film off the green marbled toilet seat in the guest bathroom—residue of a powder the security men sprinkl
ed on the toilet seat when Fidel came to dinner. We told Concha not to bother with it, but she was determined to get it off.

  IV. 22

  Cuban Americans are arrested on the high seas on their way to Isla Margarita to kill Fidel Castro at the iberoamericano summit.

  I ASK A CUBAN historian (not Leal) if he thinks the revolution and its continuance was and is the result of the romanticism of the Spaniard conflicting with the pragmatic coldness of the Anglo-Saxon.

  The historian says romanticism was losing its platform, American pragmatism was rejected for being too pragmatic, and so surrealism, which is desiccated romanticism, took hold.

  IV. 23

  We are supplied with haute X——ian cuisine to serve at a reception we are giving for participants at an X——ian trade show—several kinds of preserved artichokes, mushroom salad, dried tomatoes, smoked pheasant, several kinds of truffle pâtés, cheeses, smoked trout, a variety of hams, wine, beer, and liqueurs. The bottles, cans, jars, and packages are wheeled into the house on dollies and unloaded into the despensa. Thea, Jimmie, the help, and I take turns going into the despensa to stare.

  Nick says the Cuban government is beginning to figure out that elite tourism is the way to go.

  I tell Nick you don’t get elite tourists by feeding them pâté: that’s like serving French tourists potatoes out of a can from Europe. Elite tourists would like good-quality Cuban food, since they are in Cuba—they would like sopa de platano, they would like escabeche, they would like grilled shrimps, boliche cubano (Cuban pot roast), judias or frijoles negros, chicken baked with honey and mint, stuffed peppers, banana pie, mango pudding—and besides, he’s an energy consultant, he’s not in the tourist business.