Island that Dared (40 page)

Where the truck dropped me off, near the National Aquarium in Miramar, I had a two-hour walk to No. 403. The pace of change along the Malecón upset me. Granted, restoration was urgently needed – but not demolition. A quirkily handsome building had given way to a Fiat car showroom, its façade plastic-tiled. Other buildings, under the arcade, were being converted to tourist-bait shops while makeshift cafeterias had sprouted on recently cleared sites. All this within one month, since my visa visit. The Malecón buildings are not as old as they seem (mere centenarians) and as demolition proceeds, and one compares them with Old Havana’s semi-ruins, they look much less soundly constructed.
According
to a too-credible rumour, various US fast-food chains had already made ‘informal arrangements’ to acquire certain Malecón properties in an unblockaded Cuba.

As I crossed Parque Central next morning (the eve of my departure) it seemed some sort of serious trouble was brewing. Civil dissension surfacing? Gang warfare breaking out? Or could those men be drunk or on drugs? But that would be very unCuban … I sat and watched the two large groups frenziedly arguing – loud hoarse shouts, aggressive gestures of a strange
nature, faces distorted by passionate emotions. I feared at any moment to witness grievous bodily harm – yet none of the many passers-by paid the slightest attention to these extraordinary confrontations. Eventually the centavo dropped. All this emotional turmoil was to do with an international baseball game and the men’s alarmingly violent gestures were no more than demonstrations of what some player should or should not have done.

Relieved, I went on my way to say ‘adios’ to friends in Old Havana, then found a
jinetero
keeping pace with me. ‘You want cigars? Twenty-five Juliets, CP30 – in shop much bigger price. Real export cigars, no fake!’

I hesitated; cigars were on that day’s shopping list. In fact CP30 was the exact
tienda
price but should I not let someone outside the tourist economy have those convertible pesos? Or would that be a counter-revolutionary encouragement of corruption? Should I sternly refuse to buy stolen goods? As the youth stood by a wide arched entrance, saying no more, his pleading expression decided me; his demeanour was diffident rather than slick. When I nodded he led me into a splendid falling-asunder mansion smelling of rotten wood. Within his third-floor flat all was neat and clean, as usual. His parents greeted me politely and offered coffee while he was unroping a large worn suitcase packed with cigars – many in the ‘US$75 for five’ category. Then he realised that here were no Juliets and I wanted nothing bigger. Gesturing towards a chair he said, ‘Small moment you wait!’ Out on the staircase he whistled piercingly and within a very small moment his brother appeared, carrying over his shoulder a sack of cigars, including Juliets. Then, to my dismay, I discovered that my purse held only CP10 – very embarrassing! My apology was elaborate, followed by a promise to do a deal on my return to Cuba in 2007 for the fortieth anniversary of Ché’s execution. But CP30, eighteen months hence, was of no interest; that promise, though genuine, must have sounded unconvincingly glib. The young man thrust a box of Juliets into my hands and said, ‘CP10 OK, give now please!’

As I stood irresolute, looking down at the box’s pretty picture, Mother intervened. ‘Is OK, CP10 – is all profit! Is hard to sell cigars another way, CP30 is right price, CP10 is best than no price!’ Seeing her point, I handed over the note and departed with my stolen goods feeling immoral. Halfway down the staircase Mother overtook me, registering anxiety; I must conceal the box in my shoulder-bag, not let it be seen on the street as I left this building.

And that is the sad story of how a normally respectable
abuela
became a corrupt counter-Revolutionary.

All the way to the airport my unlicenced taxi driver (by now an old friend) was listening tensely to a radio commentary on the Cuba versus Dominican Republic game. Once he became perilously over-excited and didn’t notice a red light – which around Havana matters less than elsewhere. Evidently Cuba was losing, thereby traumatising a large percentage of the male population. In the airport’s uncrowded outer concourse all eyes were on the overhead TV sets and at intervals viewers yelled or moaned or buried their faces in their hands.

The Air Jamaica desk was deserted; my 20.50 departure had been postponed to 23.45, arriving Kingston 1.15. A quick mental sum suggested a plane borrowed from some Aviation Museum: in one and a half hours you could almost sail the distance. Then I thought positive. My flight to Miami was scheduled for 14.50 next day and a pre-midnight landing would have involved an expensive hotel room, passengers being forbidden to sleep overnight at the airport. Arriving at 1.15 on my departure date I would not be overnighting …

Choosing a café table giving a wide view of the surrounding countryside, I slid a Buccanero out of my shoulder-bag; the airport price was
unforgettable
, CP2.50 for a one-convertible peso tin. Had I foreseen a five-hour wait that tin would not have been alone. At the next table three beautiful mulattos, surrounded by sierras of luggage, were joined by a policeman friend come to see them off; he too had brought his Buccanero from Outside. Immediately he lit a cigarette, defying the ubiquitous NO SMOKING signs, and in his protective presence several others quickly lit up. Watching the Caracas-bound mulattos moving to a check-in desk I noticed how light was their bulky luggage. Doubtless they were in the import business.

My waiting hours were profitably spent, reading a slim vol. found in the famous Plaza de Armas book market – Fidel’s
Main Report to the 2nd Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.
This 1980 speech, far from being obsolete, is essential reading for an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of twenty-first-century Cuba. The anonymous translator was competent and I wondered why most of the expensive translations recently published by the Instituto Cubano del Libro are so atrociously mangled.

Twenty-four passengers underloaded our two hundred and sixty-seater plane. The only Cubans aboard – Lina and José, a middle-aged couple – were en route to a conference on the new Latin America/Caribbean economic union. Lina vomited frequently and the Japanese youth beside me wanted to do likewise but used some esoteric mind-over-matter technique to control his turbulent guts. This required him to let his body go limp and keep his eyes shut and isolate himself mentally from the rest of the world. The other twenty passengers were young Chinese doctors who had spent two weeks studying Cuban AIDS-control. José suspected they’d been wasting their time; what works on a small island with an efficient health service was unlikely to work in the New China.

At Manley airport the well-organised Chinese were swiftly processed in bulk and disappeared on a special coach. Air Jamaica then partially redeemed itself by providing free bunk beds in a windowless cell for those who had no hotel booked. At 2.00 a.m. our plan to share a taxi to Kingston, ten miles away, and there seek cheap lodgings, was quashed by a security officer.

In a maladorous airport workers’ cafeteria my breakfast was filling but not tasty: yam, yucca, sweet potatoes and a kidney stew that made me feel like a dog chewing a tennis ball. It was depressing to be back in the globalised disposable world where a giant bin awaited my plate and cutlery. Most customers dumped part of their meal.

Then off by bus for a three-hour glimpse of Kingston. Billboards lined the road, branded foods competing garishly, and insurance companies, banks, digital cameras and cell phones proclaiming their superiority. Some agencies (those puzzled me) offered a Midas service: ‘We help You to be AS RICH as You Want to be!’ The culture shock was severe, after months of billboards quoting only the lofty thoughts of José Martí, Fidel, Che & Co. Meanwhile, studying my fellow-passengers, I saw people poorly clad in dirty frayed garments and worn-out shoes, slumped in their seats looking not very healthy. But the Cubans would envy them their regular, affordable and not overcrowded bus service.

Downtown Kingston was sweltering (82°F), scruffy, thronged, colourful, raucous, grossly littered, reeking of urine (an olfactory experience sharper than Centro’s defective drains) and with an unpleasant buzz:
aggressiveness
jangled. Bargaining in the open-air markets often brought out
hostility
between buyers and sellers, highlighting the benefits of fixed prices clearly marked, leaving no scope for ‘free-market’ hassles. The variety
and quantity of available goods made Cuba seem seriously deprived, in consumerist terms. By any other standard, Jamaica seems the deprived country.

Kingston’s motor traffic unnerved me; speeding cars rounded corners in the city centre as though on a race track. I had two very narrow escapes. Every few hundred yards giant billboards urged drivers to slow down – an obvious waste of public funds.

On the return bus journey a young woman – an Air Jamaica employee – deplored Kingston’s murder rate. When I opined that Jamaica urgently needs a Fidel the young woman looked shocked and exclaimed, ‘But he’s a
Communist
!’

When the first wave of ‘refugees’ surged to Miami (and, in lesser numbers, to other US destinations) the Revolution’s durability was unthinkable – seemed impossible. As counter-revolutionaries, backed by the US, they looked forward to an early return. Between January 1959 and October 1962 more than two hundred thousand emigrated; thirty-one per cent were technicians, managers, professionals, thirty-three per cent
businessmen
and bureaucrats – the classes trained to run a country and economy. According to Cuba’s 1953 census, fifty-two per cent of their generation had less than a fourth-grade education, but only four per cent of the émigrés (usually loyal family retainers) came from that layer.

It’s futile to speculate but sometimes hard not to …
If
the US had accepted Cuba’s Revolution, taken the compensation on offer to
corporations
and individuals, established normal trading relationships with the new regime but otherwise left the island to its own devices, Cuban socialism could have developed in its own non-aligned way, independent of the USSR. Moscow was not lusting to acquire a Caribbean property. Granted, Raúl Castro and Che were keen on the Soviet model of Marxism but Fidel did not declare Cuba to be a Socialist state until the very eve of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion when it became clear that the Revolution had to get off the Cold War fence.

My host-family in Miami were comparatively recent émigrés and allergic to hard-liners. Merci and Eber claimed to have migrated in 1993 not because they felt politically ‘repressed’ but because they were hungry and unwilling to expose their small sons to Special Period hardships which then seemed likely to continue indefinitely. Being sensible people, they were sceptical about the ‘American way of life’ as assiduously promoted by
Radio Marti and had never pictured themselves living in luxury in Miami. In fact their flat was more cramped, and very much more expensive to run, than the Centro flat where I had been entertained by Eber’s mother. And the unutterable dreariness of their Miami suburb – pavements almost pedestrian-free, fast motor traffic incessant – felt humanly impoverished in contrast to Centro’s crowded streets and vibrant squalor. The chronic homesickness to which they both admitted was not assuaged by living in the US’s most Cuban/Latin American city where the Spanish language prevails over English. In fact that had made the readjustment harder – a ‘so near and yet so far’ feeling. And the implied requirement to be (or seem) anti-Castro upset them. ‘We weren’t against Fidel,’ Merci insisted, ‘only against hunger!’ In 1994 they had considered moving elsewhere and rearing the boys simply as ‘Americans’ – delete ‘Cuban’. But given their limited resources that would have been too risky; Miami’s exile network had soon placed Eber in a steady job, ill-paid but secure. And Merci had found work, when the children were old enough, as the daily help of fabulously rich Cuban-Americans who employed three other servants. Her bus rides were long and expensive and her wages low but the perks were good: as-new cast-offs, that could be sold on another exile network, and high quality left-over foods – thrown in the trash can by most US
householders
. The boys also worked at weekends, washing-up in a Cuban restaurant, and were doing reasonably well at school and so far expending all their adolescent energy on baseball and netball. ‘They’re good guys,’ said Eber proudly. Merci added, ‘They know we left Cuba for them, as family. But they’re real Americans, not interested in Cuba. That’s OK, we wouldn’t want them feeling political.’

This couple were themselves completely apolitical, too concerned with day-to-day survival to bother about the role of the Cuban Mafia in Florida, or the fate of Cuba post-Fidel, or the disadvantages of living in a
non-socialist
state. ‘We’re OK,’ said Merci, ‘so long as we stay healthy. Here it gets real bad if you’re sick.’

Strolling the stereotypical streets I was conscious of being an oddity because on foot. Numerous attorneys’ offices advertised their ability to solve tax/immigration/work permit/marital/property transfer. Numerous churches (Inc.) advertised – mostly in Spanish – their ability to save your soul/bring the Lord Jesus Christ into your home/protect your children from alcohol/rescue the unborn. Numerous car-stickers proclaimed (usually under the Stars and Stripes) – ‘I’m proud to be American!’ – ‘God Bless America!’ – ‘One Nation under God!’ – ‘God Protects America!’ There has
to be some dis-ease at the root of all this vocal godliness. It’s inconceivable that any European nation’s citizens would thus affirm their patriotism. Other stickers warned, ‘Iraq now, Cuba next!’ Those are provided by CANF and at first their popularity alarmed me because a recent poll had showed some twenty-five per cent of Miami Cubans eager to go home. Then I reassured myself: as the original Cuban population ages, so the hardliners’ influence is weakening.

My friends’ flat was in a low-rise, run-down residential district well supplied with family-owned Cuban cafeterias where hand-written menus, propped on the counter, listed homemade dishes. In several I drank cups of excellent coffee à la Cuba but my experimental admission that I’d just spent a few months enjoying their homeland aroused hostility rather than interest.

On Merci’s advice I took a free ride on the elevated metromover and had to admit that much of Miami’s cityscape is quite beautiful in its excessive way. A fifty-five storey edifice of polished granite – then on Brickell Avenue the Southeast Financial Centre, seeming from afar like a piece of captured sky – and in every direction a surreal blending and contrasting and
competing
of soaring precipices and improbable curves and daring angles – all hectic innovations, outgrowths of the post-war boom.

Back at ground level my search for a watch-strap took me through a bazaar-like quarter of small boutiques, carpet-shops and jewellers’ heavily defended stores. In one of the latter a white-haired Russian émigré decently volunteered to mend my strap instead of selling me a new one.

When Merci’s employer, Vicente Mazaparra, learned of my existence he telephoned to offer hospitality; he did a little writing himself, I’d be very welcome to stay, we could talk books. My declining this kind invitation seemed to take him aback. Then he suggested dinner next evening and so I found myself in an architectural hybrid, an Old Havana palacio crossed with a Vedado villa.

In the Mazaparras’ enclave mansions stood on wide green lawns surrounded by palms and pines and a planned variety of shrubs, some always in bloom. Elsewhere in Miami the grass was then brown and such well-watered expanses seemed an insensitive flaunting of wealth (green grass robbed of its innocence). High, wrought-iron gates were reinforced by cunning electronic gadgets, not crudely obvious but lethal (Vicente boasted) to intruders. The well-swept streets – not a cigar stump in sight – were tranquil, free of through traffic. Tall trees almost concealed
forty-storey
condominiums rising in the distance beyond a canal spanned by
dainty arched foot-bridges. All these mansions (no two alike) had
distinctively
Cuban house names.

A distant black servant (security-officer-cum-butler) pressed some button to open the gate, then advanced, smiling, to escort me up a short driveway, past a graceful sparkling fountain incorporating Aphrodite. In a circular glass porch Vicente hugged me; the fact that hugging strangers had
survived
the move to Miami pleasantly surprised me. A moment later Flora appeared, as beautiful as her husband was handsome. More hugging and kissing before we moved through an amazing space – high ceiling, Moorish arches, mosaic floor, a white marble staircase with glowing mahogany banisters, illuminated by a stained glass triptych showing treasure galleons in Havana harbour. Slim marble columns framed a patio where ferns rioted and climbing orange trees wove tendrils around the balustrade of an upper gallery. There we sat in cane rocking-chairs (a nice link with the common man) – and what would I like to drink? A Mojito or Cuba Libre? Gin, whisky, brandy, vodka, wine? ‘A Buccanero, please.’ Vicente looked startled, then summoned the butler. Were there any Buccaneros in the servants’ quarters? Happily there were …

Vicente’s parents had left Havana within weeks of the Bearded Ones’ arrival in January 1959. Flora too was Miami-born; her parents took fright in October 1958 as the Rebel Army moved closer and they visualised machete-armed mobs swarming into Miramar and beheading the rich.

‘That was a bit silly!’ laughed Flora. ‘They weren’t Batista’s friends, they needn’t have rushed away without their valuable stuff.’

Vicente emphasised that he had nothing against those left behind, he was only against Castro whose brigands has so terrorised the population into submission. ‘Our people are OK,’ he explained earnestly. ‘Like in all Communist countries they’re victims of tyranny. Once he’s gone, they’ll recover fast. It’s happening already, Communism is dead in Cuba, same as elsewhere. In China now they’re only pretending.’