***
The flight from Panama City was on a commercial airline and because of overbooking we were given first class seats. With drinks in hand and our stomachs full we watched Castro’s new world slide slowly beneath us, green and beautiful from that height, the mountains off to the north and south looking like the soft brown border of a lush and peaceful picture, dotted here and there with the blue-white gleam of mountain lakes. Just off the northwest corner of the main island I could see two smaller ones, but the plane eventually banked sharply for its final approach, turning away from them and toward Havana. As we came in over the harbor the early afternoon sunlight was reflected from the polished brass fittings of only one luxury yacht, moored in splendid isolation from the freighters which hugged the various docks. I counted three freighters and a large oil tanker, all flying the Russian colors alongside their Cuban port flags, before the plane dipped to the left and settled on the runway.
The airport was a bleak and barely used place and the immigration and customs people were giving the two of us a particularly bad time as the only Americans they’d seen in a long time -- and traveling, as well, on capitalistic military I.D. cards instead of passports -- when a Cuban colonel showed up with our names on a list of conference participants and put a stop to the harassment. The bus to our hotel passed along wide streets lined with magnificent palm trees and most of the people watching our progress were soldiers, dressed in combat fatigues and carrying automatic rifles, who looked proud and alert even when lounging at a street corner. A once-famous American-built hotel had had its name changed and all but the smallest of its bars dismantled and its main floor and huge lobby thrown open to all, the poorest peasant included, and we were given rooms that had had all the frills removed but which were still more than adequate. The conference would begin the next morning at the same hotel; we were free to explore the city until the midnight curfew; we were not to go beyond the city limits nor enter any restricted areas, all of which were very clearly marked with a red star on an olive drab background. We unpacked and cleaned up a little and went out to have our first close look at Havana.
Near the hotel there were a few tourist shops and a travel agent’s office but the travel office was empty and a pair of dark-suited Russians trying to make themselves understood in slowly spoken but very loud Russian were the only customers in the tourist shops. A few blocks away the stores were smaller and more practical and the lines were intimidating; both men and women were lined up outside a bakery, each person holding what looked like a book of ration coupons, waiting to purchase one of the very few loaves of bread that seemed to be available on the store’s counter; outside a grocery store the long line waiting for milk was made up mostly of patient old women and impatient young children, and it was obvious from the open racks of milk bottles that not even half the people in line would get any of them that day. As we walked past appliance or clothing stores we noted the meager amounts of merchandise and the general lack of customers; in the window of a shop selling new books there were only two items, a paperback edition of The Communist Manifesto and a hardcover copy of The Old Man and The Sea. Both seemed to have an undisturbed coating of dust on them.
We turned toward the harbor, Ray leading in our search for a bar he’d heard about in which the rum daiquiris were supposed to be so strong that anyone able to down more than two and still stand without assistance was allowed to drink without paying the rest of that day. We walked all the way to the docks and still couldn’t find it so we finally stopped at a taxi stand and asked directions, only to be told that the place had been closed more than a year earlier when almost all of the old tourist places had been either shut down or dismantled by government decree. It was dark by this time and the few streetlights that were working came on as we walked back to the hotel along the promenade that faced the harbor entrance, making vaguely disparaging remarks to each other, in English, about the essentially puritanical nature of most twentieth century revolutions. The desk clerk handed us our keys and gave Ray a telephone message that had been taken just a few minutes before our return. Ray handed it to me as we went up to our rooms.
Mi Casa, su casa. It will be good to see old friends again.
Hasta manana, Carlos.
After the opening ceremonies the next day, he greeted us warmly as we stood in one of the hallways.
“I apologize for not saying goodbye the last time we met. I am afraid my exit was too hasty to allow me to show you my appreciation for such a pleasant evening. I hope you will allow me to do so here in my own country this week.” He seemed to be looking directly at me as he spoke so I assured him that it would be our pleasure. Ray nodded his agreement as Carlos continued.
“A jeep has been placed at our disposal at the conclusion of each day’s session. If you are not too tired at the time, I propose that we see as much of the island as possible while you are here. Shall we begin after today’s meetings? I will find you in the lobby at six.”
At my affirmative nod he smiled and moved off, looking as fit and self-contained in his tailored fatigues as he had the first time I’d met him. Ray seemed to be preoccupied.
“What’s up sergeant? He’s certainly being friendly enough, considering we hardly know him, and the offer to show us some of the country sounds good to me. What with El Jefe making all those anti-communist noises but actually moving closer to Moscow each day I doubt that we’ll be welcome here very much longer -- should probably take advantage of it while we still can. See any problems?”
“No, no problems. Think I’m just a little tired. Didn’t sleep very well last night. Unfamiliar bed, I guess. And a guided tour might be interesting.”
At six we headed east out of the city, Carlos behind the wheel and Ray in back, having graciously allowed as how he’d bounce around less than I would back there because he was taller and heavier; the logic seemed rather tenuous but I appreciated the considerateness. It was a clear day, the sun getting lower behind us as we drove along the coast and the shadows lengthening ahead of us like darker markers on the dark macadam road, pointing us in the proper direction. Carlos drove fast but well, the old American army surplus vehicle obviously in good condition and he called our attention to things only occasionally, letting us ask questions when something interested us and then answering us in sufficient but not excessive detail. He was obviously proud of what the revolution was attempting to accomplish and he appreciated the natural beauty of his island home. He pointed to the long white beaches on our left which curved gradually and gracefully in a series of half-moons, a few serious sunbathers trying to catch the last of the late afternoon rays.
“Our most famous beach, of course. Before the revolution it was reserved almost exclusively for the tourists and the rich officials from Havana. The people themselves were very carefully kept away. The beach is still beautiful, but now it is open to all. Each workers’ cooperative keeps a few cottages here and when a worker takes his mandatory vacation each year he can choose to come here with his family and use a cottage at no expense to him for the two or three or four weeks that he has earned. That big brick house in the pine trees over there used to be one of Batista’s vacation homes; now it belongs to the people of the dairy cooperatives and it houses twenty vacationing workers at any one time.”
As the road turned away from the coast for a few miles we saw a partially completed complex of two and three story buildings in a level field with men and women hauling bricks and cinderblocks up to other workers on scaffolding who were using trowels and mortar. Some worked with evident expertise but many seemed to be enthusiastic rather than knowledgeable about what they were doing.
“A cooperative being built by its members. It will have housing in apartments for one hundred and fifty families, a large food store, a dairy, a fully equipped clinic with doctors and nurses, and a comprehensive school for both children and adults. Already our literacy rate has doubled; in a few years almost every man, woman, and child in Cuba will be abl
e to read and write. That was certainly not the situation before the revolution.”
“Does everyone work at putting up the buildings, regardless of their training?” I asked.
“Yes, everyone who expects to get housing there has to put in a certain amount of time on the construction itself; the doctors get the necessary work credits by putting in fewer hours than the regular trained construction workers, of course, because the doctors have to continue to work in the hospitals in Havana until this project is finished, but most people want to be part of the actual construction. It has become a matter of pride since the revolution.”
“Can people still live in their old houses if they wish, instead of moving into these new buildings?”
“The government is using all kinds of pressure, both direct and indirect, to encourage people to leave their old houses and move into the modern ones. Most of the pre-revolution housing in the villages is appalling; one or two tiny rooms, no running water, no real kitchen or bathroom, walls and roofs that are usually falling down. If a person absolutely refuses to move -- usually the very old people -- the government lets them stay, but they don’t get the flour and dairy and grain coupons that they would if they agreed to move, and they don’t get the free television set that the government is trying to supply to everyone.”
The road wound back toward the coast and as the sun set behind us Carlos pulled up to a small restaurant set back about fifty yards from a cove with a rocky beach. Several fishing boats lay at anchor and small white stucco houses with red tiled roofs dotted the hillside that rimmed the cove.
“This village used to be very popular with your people. All the famous fishermen came here for the marlin tournaments. Maybe someday they will fish here again.”
The restaurant was almost empty and the meal had been arranged in advance. It was delicious and we lingered over our coffees, Carlos talking quietly and earnestly about the revolution and the changes that were being planned. He was eloquent on the benefits of compulsory education coupled with everyone working in the fields for at least an hour each day, but his eloquence was tinged with barely suppressed anger when I asked him about the long-term effects on his country’s economy of the lack of a profit motive.
“The incentive to make money is usually the belief that it will lead to a better way of life. Under Batista and those like him my country sold itself and made many fortunes in the process, but the people of my country lived in squalor. The privileged few always told us that the more money we made by catering to the needs of other nations -- and your country was the most influential, but still only one of the many -- the better off we would all be. In truth, Cuban capitalism before the revolution was not much more than an economic dictatorship. The hotels and casinos of Havana were very profitable, but disease and prostitution and abject poverty for the masses were the foundations upon which those profits were built.
“I know it probably sounds very idealistic to you as Americans, but what we have substituted for the profit motive is an absolute dedication to the principle of cooperation, a belief in the ultimate ability of cooperation to raise everyone’s standard of living and everyone’s quality of life. I know our critics on the other side of the Gulf Stream say this principle just as often leads to a leveling in society that reduces everyone’s standard of living, but maybe our criteria for judging that standard is different over here. We made the revolution to return pride and dignity to our people; you will have to judge for yourselves how successful we have been.”
On the drive back to Havana that night we took a road that curved inland just before we reached the city and Carlos pointed out a suburb almost ablaze with modern yellow streetlights, the houses all small but well painted and the lawns and streets well tended and uncharacteristically free of litter. Children played in front of some of the homes, laughing and waving at our jeep whenever we waved at them.
“In 1959 this area had no running water, a cantina on every corner, and every third teenager was for sale, boys and girls. Quite a difference now, isn’t it?”
He left us at the hotel a few minutes later with the promise of more sightseeing the next day, adding that we might leave the meetings earlier in the days to come so that we could get to some of the more distant villages during daylight.
For the next five days I listened to the speeches and informal discussions at the sessions with less real interest and concern than I listened to Carlos as he guided Ray and me around the island. He spoke of a few of the revolution’s failures up to that point -- they hadn’t been able to get very many of Havana’s sophisticated professionals to voluntarily move out to the rural cooperative complexes where their expertise was most sorely needed -- but he showed us examples of the successes. We’d seen some of Havana that first afternoon, but on a subsequent walk with Carlos he pointed out the absence of beggars and crippled people on the streets, attributing their disappearance to a return of personal pride and improved medical care and facilities. When I gently suggested that perhaps rigorously enforced new laws and overcrowded asylums and prisons might also have something to do with it, he sidestepped the issue by explaining that now there were very few vocational asylums for the mentally ill; now such people were not locked up but were allowed, with minimal supervision by trained personnel, to spend most of their days out in the fields, doing simple but necessary work for the benefit of the country and the improvement of their own health. To my query about the inherent problems of such a system when it involved the criminally insane he responded by admitting, without elaboration, that drug therapy was sometimes necessary.
In Cabanas we had coffee with an old sugarcane worker who still lived in his own two room house. He told us that he knew he could have a more modern place with an indoor toilet if he moved as most of his neighbors had done, but he liked his old house and his small garden and now that there was no longer any absentee landlord to worry about he was quite content with his situation -- although it would be nice if he could get more flour each month and if the pharmacy in town wouldn’t always run out of the medicine he needed for the arthritis in his hands. As we stood in his doorway saying goodbye and shaking hands he noticed my glance back into the sparsely furnished house.
“Yes, it is not very elegant, but it is mine and I sleep much more peacefully now than I did before the revolution. And now I have food in my belly every night.”
On one of our drives I asked Carlos if we could go to Guantanamo to see the U.S. base there and he looked inquiringly at Ray before he answered me, his voice flat and controlled.
“Guantanamo is strictly off-limits to me. You two might be able to get on with your military I.D. cards, but I doubt that we could get close enough in this vehicle to show them to anyone. Your base is, as you must be aware, an embarrassment to those of us who wish to give Cuba back her dignity. Some day, I believe, Guantanamo will become an embarrassment for your country as well.”
The conference ended with a spate of propaganda speeches by several high-ranking Cubans on a Saturday afternoon and as Ray and I made our way back to our rooms to prepare for the evening -- Carlos had suggested a farewell celebration at what he called the last vestige of profitable colonialism in Havana, the Copacabana nightclub, adding that it was allowed to remain open only because its profits now were used to support the revolution -- we talked about the week’s experiences and our departures the next day.
“What time does your Miami flight go?”
“Scheduled for one o’clock. Same plane as the morning flight in -- same pilots, one Cuban, one American -- just turns around and goes right back. When do you leave?”
“The noon flight, with a short stop in Kingston. Well, how did you like your last job for the army? That Carlos is quite impressive, ain’t he?”
“Very. Seems like he really believes most of that stuff about the revolution, but sometimes I wonder, did you notice how careful he is to steer clear of the touchy areas and still carry on as if he’s all open-minded and reasonable?�
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“You have to admit, the dude’s good at what he does.”
“Maybe a little too good for my taste. So many perfect answers; direct, simple, and incontrovertibly true. Maybe these last twelve months have made me too cynical, but when I hear a perfect answer these days my first instinct is not to believe a word of it.”
“Careful, son, where will you be without some faith in your fellow men?”
“Look who’s talking. By the way how do you read his interest in us? Do you think he’s just relaxing with ex-boonie rats with whom he feels he has some affinity or is there more to it? I can’t see that we gave him anything that could be of much value.”
“Me neither, but maybe he’s not after information.” We’d reached the doors to our rooms, one on each side of a wide and still thickly carpeted hallway, and Ray motioned to me to follow him as he opened his, made a quick visual check to see if anything had been added or disturbed in his absence, and closed the door behind us.
“Maybe he’s trying to see if one of us can be turned around.” He said it casually as he threw his jacket on the bed and walked into the bathroom. I watched him turn on the tap and begin washing his hands and face, but my mind was racing through the week now and through the partially open bathroom door his white-shirted back was little more than a vague blur. I tried to focus on what he’d just said and blot out the uneasy feeling that gnawed at the edges of my consciousness as the tone of his voice echoed in my mind. Casual but inquisitive? Too inquisitive? Just a touch too casual?
My astonishment was a mixed bag; surprise that anyone else might even consider me worth recruiting, disappointment and even depression that my naiveté might be so close to stupidity that I hadn’t even realized a pitch had been made, and outrage at the assumptions about me that had to have been made in the first place. Beyond all this, however, was something more disturbing, something I couldn’t quite see clearly as I reviewed Carlos’ behavior of the past week toward me, toward us, toward Ray. By the time Ray turned back into the bedroom, drying his hands with a towel, the source of my unease was taking on some solid form. I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible.
“Do you think he’s interested in both of us or just me?”
Ray looked up from his towel and watched my reaction as he spoke. “Just you. I’ve worked for him, on and off, since 1960.”
He must have seen the hurt because he turned back to the bathroom then and as I fumbled my way out of his room I had a fleeting vision of this pathetic kid waiting at the player’s exit of the 1919 World Series as Shoeless Joe Jackson tried unsuccessfully to sneak by him. By the time I got back to my own room the vision had completely disappeared.
The Copacabana that night was filled with Russian technicians and several busloads of Bulgarian businessmen and their wives who arrived just as the show began. It was a garish affair, totally out of keeping with the austere principles of the revolution, but it was a performance imported almost whole from the casinos of Las Vegas and as such it hadn’t changed very much since Havana first became a popular American playground; the costumes and sets were lavish, the dance numbers were sensual and expertly choreographed, the lighting was complicated and very colorful, and the women dancers outnumbered the men by ten to one and wore a lot less clothing. It was an island version of what evey well-heeled Western businessman on a vacation is supposed to want and the Russians loved it. Sitting in groups of five or six to a table in their black suits and white shirts they called loudly for more rum and more vodka and applauded with enthusiasm the athletic nakedness on the large and many-tiered stage in front of them. We sat just behind them at a table set on a slightly raised platform that supported about a dozen other tables as well and had a low metal railing around it to set the area off from the stage-side tables. Carlos had reserved one of the best spots in the club and if he and Ray had communicated since the three of us had last been together he gave no indication of it at first.
“A toast to begin the evening, my friends. To health, to wealth, and to love -- and to the betterment of mankind.”
The Cuba Libres were weak but the extra wedges of lime that came with them were fresh and strong. Ray seemed to be absorbed in the show so I spoke to Carlos as the band moved smoothly into a loud rhumba.”
“Do you come here often?” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice but he sensed that I was baiting him.
“No, not very often. I enjoy watching the beautiful women but the rest of it is not to my liking. You should see this place at least once though, don’t you agree, especially if you’re only going to be in Cuba this one time? Or are you thinking of coming back here in the future?”
“I hadn’t thought much about it. Would you say there’s much chance of that happening?”
“Such things can always be arranged. My work allows me a great deal of flexibility and I meet a great many people. I’m sure someone would be happy to accommodate you if you were interested.
“By the way, Captain, just what kind of work do you actually do?”
He put down his drink and slowly turned in his chair so that he was looking straight at me, his stare hard and flat and unblinking.
“I could say I’m an officer in the Cuban army, and I’d be telling you the truth, but you already know that. What you don’t seem to grasp is that what I do -- what we do, young man -- is not deal in sentimentality and vague notions of personal loyalty and childish petulance about imagined insults or deceptions. What I do is face the reality of an unfair world and try to do something practical about it. I use every trick I’ve ever been taught and then I make up some of my own, but I get the job done. What I do -- what we do -- is to make happen whatever needs to happen. It’s not a child’s game and the rules are not to be taken lightly and the goals are serious enough so that personal feelings are often an unaffordable luxury.” His stare shifted to the stage and he picked up his drink. Ray had turned to listen when Carlos had begun his quiet outburst and now he too spoke up.
“Carlos is right, you know. It’s another world but it’s a hell of a lot more real than the one most people live in. The lies we tell are no worse than the lies others tell everyday and we can usually be more convincing. And we know why we tell them, we have a good reason for doing what we do.”
“A good reason? You had a good reason for faking a friendship for a whole year, for fucking over a guy who trusted you? What kind of god damn logic is it that lets you treat people like some kind of disposable napkin -- use and toss out and forget it?”“Nobody’s tossing anything out -- at least, it doesn’t have to be that way.” He said it but he looked away now as he spoke and his voice trailed off without conviction.
“Yes it does.” Neither of them looked up as I stood and pushed back my chair and I didn’t look back as I made my way out so I never knew what they said to each other, if anything. I tried a scalding shower back at the hotel but it didn’t do much good and I still felt guilty and gritty the next day when I boarded my plane for the States.
The Shadow Knows Page 8