Slow Train to Guantanamo (16 page)

When dealing with economies so radically different in conception, the numbers game doesn’t work. Yes, in comparison I am very rich and he is very poor. But only here. If I bumped into an Arab oil sheikh or Russian oligarch in London – and our money-based class system means that is very unlikely although there is no shortage of either – they would make a very similar comparison. The age-old problem of communism is that its apparently moral aim of trying to iron out unjust inequality has had to resort time and again to immoral means: repression and confiscation. And they in turn just build up a different system of inequality. The famed ‘middle way’ is as elusive to modern politicians and economists as the North-West Passage was to seventeenth-century mariners.

The nautical metaphor seems particularly apt at the moment, as I am beginning to think the only way to leave the cosy confines of the Europa bar – with its images of the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate and Tower of London on the walls – may be in an inflatable dinghy. Or perhaps padding in an upturned plastic potty from next door. Maybe I should have bought one after all.

But the downpour isn’t bothering a couple of teenage lads across the way, who have stripped down to their shorts and are taking advantage of Boulevard’s showpiece polished granite pavement for a spot of body surfing. This is as much entertainment as chatting with Ernesto has been enlightening, but by now I have bought him two beers and a burger and if I am not to have him as an accompaniment for life, it is time to go. Especially as a large man with a moustache has now entered the conversation with the clear intent of making sure the foreigner does not take away any unflattering
ideas about the Cuban populace’s lack of enduring revolutionary fervour.

Back at the
casa
, Pablo has rustled up
gambas al ajillo
, prawns in garlic, hopelessly overcooked so that the prawns are chewy and there is no perceptible taste of garlic. It is a curious fact that among denizens of hot climes in general and the Caribbean in particular, Cubans use almost no spices: tourists from Mexico must find it impossible to taste anything. I was once advised by a bartender in the Yucatán that a glass of Chardonnay tasted better with a dash of Tabasco. He wasn’t wholly wrong. But only
in situ
. Don’t try it at home.

Pablo clearly believes this is a real gourmet meal and is particularly proud of his starter: asparagus soup. Out of a packet. It’s not hard to tell because not only does it taste only very vaguely of asparagus, but it has lots of little lumps of undissolved powder in it. Cuba’s gastronomic culture remains that of America circa 1959, when convenience food was considered the height of new age sophistication. I can imagine he fairly danced with joy when he somehow or other got hold of it, and would be horrified if I told him I wished he hadn’t.

My last task is to make the long slog in the dark drippy evening, the overcast skies accentuating the lack of street lighting, down to the station to wait for the magical hour of midnight when I might be able to buy my ticket for tomorrow. It is not optimistic. A chalk scrawl on a big blackboard inside announces that because of the heavy rains there will be NO trains to Havana until washed-away track can be replaced. I am travelling in the opposite direction but it is not a good omen.

On the stroke of midnight I knock on the ticket office door and ask for the
jefe al torno
who turns out to be not Cinderella but one of the ugly sisters. A fierce-looking white woman with thick-rimmed glasses, her black hair pulled
back tightly into a bun, in blue uniform with the trademark fishnet tights emerges and shouts, ‘
Qué?
’ She is not exactly enamoured at being disturbed. The remarkable thing by our standards of course, is that she is there at all. Cuban stations may have only one or two trains a day, but they are staffed twenty-four hours. Zero unemployment is easy to achieve if government creates non-jobs for workers paid in peanuts. Except that there is a shortage of peanuts.

But I am glad to see her. Or was until she opens her mouth.

‘Come back tomorrow,’ she says.

‘But it is tomorrow, sort of.’

She consults her watch and reluctantly concedes the point.

‘There might be no train.’

‘But this is where it starts,’ I protest.

She shrugs, as if to indicate that has absolutely no relevance to anything and says:

‘Can I buy a ticket?’

The look on her faces implies the very idea is impertinent and the concept a huge inconvenience, not least because it is – theoretically – her job to sell me one. She sighs wearily and says, ‘If there is no train, you won’t get a refund.’

That seems a bit harsh, but as the price is only CUC 9, a fortune to her, but barely the cost of a one-day Travelcard on the London Underground it seems a fair risk to me, set against the alternative of a pre-dawn rise.

Shaking her head at either my insanity or wanton profligacy with hard currency, she examines my passport, takes the money and hands me the ticket.

Her final shot is brusque, if initially reassuring. But with a sting in the tail:

‘Be here at 9 o’clock. Sharp. The train leaves at 9.30. If there is one!’

5
.
The Black Madonna
(2009), by Peter Millar is published by Arcadia Books.

CHAPTER NINE

Railroading in Style

There are many reasons why a city, monument or natural wonder may claim the much-prized right to be placed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. Not surprisingly, older countries tend to have more than newer ones, and a greater number tend to be human constructions rather than wonders of nature. For example Italy and Spain have the most in Europe with more than 40 each, from the Amalfi Coast and the City of Venice to the Alhambra and Burgos Cathedral.

France boasts 37 led by Versailles and Le Mont St Michel. The United Kingdom has 28 including Westminster Abbey and Edinburgh Old Town. The continental-sized United States by contrast has just 21, over half of which are natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon. Cuba in comparison, with less than five per cent of the land mass, does rather well with nine, nearly all of which are the products of human artifice. Perhaps the most unusual of all is the historic centre of the little inland town of Camagüey, the most recent addition having been put on the list in 2008.

It is that, plus the fact there is a train which goes there and Pablo has already rung ahead to arrange accommodation with a
casa
inevitably run by a friend of his, that makes Camagüey my next destination. Getting there, however, is not as easy as it ought to be.

Pablo blessedly makes the first part easy by giving me a lift to the station in his car, sadly once again not an American classic, but a representative of their relatively new wave successors: a run-down, thirty-year-old Moskvich, with a door panel that has rusted away and been admirably replaced with hardwood. He may be one of the better connected
casa
owners in Santa Clara but he still can’t get the cracks in his windscreen fixed or his wipers to work. Blessedly it has stopped raining.

My cigars, reliably delivered by Santiago as promised, are in my backpack. I have no idea if they are the real thing, but they are in a proper Cohiba wooden box with the proper tax-paid customs stickers. Pablo is impressed.

The station is crowded. I can’t help being struck by the stylishness of the average Cuban – male and female – despite their relative poverty. It is a style all of its own, of course, helped by the tropical weather requiring only a minimal level of clothing and the fact that food rationing means very few Cubans are fat. Certainly not by US or indeed UK standards. But it’s not so much quality and cut of the clothing, it’s attitude and the way it’s worn.

The default style for young women is an ultra-skimpy version of micro-short shorts, coupled with low-cut tops worn over push-up bras. Overt sexualization is not something Cubans worry about too much. It is, if you’ll pardon the expression,
de rigueur
. For blokes too. Most young men favour very tight blue jeans worn with equally tight T-shirts to show off those pectorals, usually sporting the grotesque logo of some heavy metal band. Giant belt buckles are compulsory, the most popular being a vast silver American Eagle. The United States may be the ideological enemy, but it is still the distorting mirror role model.

In theory I have 30 minutes before my train goes, but I’ve given up hoping it’ll leave on time, especially after what the
ugly sister told me last night. To kill the time, I actually pick up a copy of
Granma
. The main story is a feature on a new series of agreements signed to further deepen the ‘special relationship’, with Venezuela. I don’t know it at the time but this is hardly a coincidence with Chavez currently in hospital in Havana: ‘More painkillers,
presidente
? Certainly, and could you up the oil deliveries please.’ I’m being unfair; both the Castros regarded the Venezuelan strongman as their fairy godfather.

There’s also what almost amounts to a genuine news story, about more power cuts in Matanzas due to the heavy rain. It’s easier to blame forces of nature than human error. The piece talks about a ‘cyclonic system’ over the whole island but assures us the worst is over. And then to my surprise there’s another dinosaur horn blast and through the open doors to the platform I catch a glimpse of a great orange diesel locomotive chugging into the station. A few minutes later we are ordered onto the platform. It is only 9.20. Could it possibly be that the train will leave on time?

Thanks to the daylight I am at least able this time to get a good look at the loco, which seems identical to the one which pulled the ‘Spirituario’. It’s not exactly cutting edge by European standards but it doesn’t look a whole lot more antique or unreliable than the workhorses which pull Amtrak trains across the United States. A quick glance at the writing on the side makes absolutely clear where it comes from, and that it is of substantially more recent construction than I had imagined:

‘Manufactured by the 7
^th
February locomotive corporation, Beijing, 2009’. A further sign of the other, still developing special relationship. One that, with my discussion with Pablo still in mind, goes back to the Angolan conflict when one reason South Africa intervened is that it was afraid of the growing number of Chinese advisers across the sea in
Cuba. It is worth remembering that Cuba may still look on China as a ‘fellow communist country’, even if it no longer meets the old impoverished stereotype.

But if the locomotive is of relatively modern Chinese production, the rolling stock is another matter. So far I have been unable to ascertain accurately where the Cubans have acquired their carriages, although I know that both China and Mexico and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe feature.

There are no tell-tale signs that I can see, but that’s hardly surprising since the bodywork has been painted so many times that it’s tempting to say you could cut it with a knife, but it would have to be a machete. Inside there are both compartments and open carriages, the windows cracked or missing, the seating faux leather in black or blue patched here, there and everywhere with shiny red vinyl. The interior false ceiling is made of curved hardboard, except where it is missing altogether. Fluorescent tubes dangle down and the electric links between the carriages are stretched alongside the rubber connectors, wires wrapped in insulating tape mostly, but occasionally, seemingly bare. I take extreme care not to touch any, although it must be at best 50-50 that they are actually carrying current.

Middle-aged female inspectors in the by now familiar blue miniskirts and fishnet tights usher us on board, checking both tickets and identity cards, though most of the Cubans’ credit-card sized bits of laminated paper – the standard identity card it is compulsory to carry at all times – are so limp and cracked from years of exposure to sweat, rain and 80 per cent humidity that it is a wonder she can recognize photographs. It is more a ritual than anything else.

I find my allocated seat, alongside a group of youngish women in one of the open carriages. I suspect this might be policy for foreigners. They seem well-mannered if a little shy,
one of them deeply engrossed in a book of crossword puzzles. There is a communal exhalation of incredulity when, dead on the dot of 9.30 a.m. the locomotive lurches into life and we pull away from the platform. It seems too good to be true.

It is. Barely 60 seconds later we shunt to a stop. I’m wondering if the Cuban railway people have been taking hints from their British counterparts: at least the statistics will show our departure was on time! At 9.34 we set off again. At 9.35 we stop. At 9.36 we’re off again. At 9.37 we stop. This is not looking good. At 9.39 we set off once more and this time we’re on a roll. Not just that, we’re passing the
tren blindado
, scene of Che’s finest hour. I stare out the window and can honestly imagine – it’s not that hard – our train hitting ripped up rails and teetering off the tracks while desperadoes hiding in the jungle hurl Molotov cocktails at us and pepper the coaches with gunfire. I’m a believer.

Two Ministry of the Interior
Policía Ferroviaria
(Railway Policemen) with serious moustaches walk up and down the carriage self-importantly. We’re picking up speed now, which is a blessing, not least because there is a hugely refreshing through draft of air rushing through the carriage. It’s only when I watch the retreating backs of the policemen that I realize why it’s such a powerful draft. As they jump the six-inch gap between the footplates to pass into the next carriage, I can see beyond them to where the rear door of the train should be. I say ‘should be’, because it isn’t. Instead there’s an ever increasing vista of a long line of railway track receding into the distance, and now already, just seconds after we passed over it, repopulated by wandering dogs, a cow and a few motley human beings.