James Hoggard, For the Times
Record News. Tue, July 3, 2001
Many buildings in Havana are in a bad state of disrepair.
Late-model cars are a common sight in Cuba.
Even though the issue was no longer burning, one had to ask about Elian
Gonzalez; and the primary response I got to my questions about that controversy
was surprising but, on reflection, predictable. People told me they'd gotten
tired of the issue. There, they said, as well as here, it had dominated the
news. They sounded like many people in the U.S.: greedy for new distractions and
possessors of short attention spans.
More interesting, though, were other sides to the story that had been
available in the U.S. and Europe. They had surfaced well before the resolution
of the conflict, but they had not been broadcast prominently throughout the U.S.
These matters modified the flight-for-freedom scenario. The boyfriend of the
boy's mother had been trying to transport people to Florida for $1,000 a person.
That's a lot of money when the average salary on the island is about $11 per
month.
On the first attempt to get away, the boat had broken down about an hour out
on the journey into the Gulf of Mexico. The little group, however, made it back
to shore. Repairs were made, and another launch was attempted. Some of the first
group of passengers, however, reportedly backed out of the second try. There
were also reports of Elian standing on the bow and screaming that he wanted off,
he wanted to go back home. He had, after all, been living with his father, not
his mother who had taken him out of school without notifying her ex-husband who
had taken his son to school and was supposed to pick him up. When the father
arrived in the afternoon, the boy was nowhere around. The Nobel laureate Gabriel
Garc¡a M rquez had written about the event vividly in an Op-Ed piece that
had appeared in numerous newspapers around the world (including The New York
Times, March 29, 2000). Once pressingly important, the topic no longer seemed
urgent, in either Cuba or the U.S. But what did? Images at a reception would
give a curious answer.
After going to several awards presentation ceremonies in Havana, I realized
what good punishment they'd be for an enemy. The events seemed to last forever,
even if only one person were being honored. The presentation of the Casa de las
Americas Award for the best book of fiction published during the year furnished
a good example. Some six people were seated at a table in front of the crowd
that was packed together on folding chairs in the patio of the city's main
cultural center. Each one of them would make, not a statement, but a speech. One
of them even pulled out a sheaf of papers when it came time for him to talk and
proceeded to read six pages of single-spaced prose that no one apparently
considered compelling. I even saw several people at the front table rolling
their eyes in aggravation when he told the gathering that his tribute was going
to be delivered in the style of one of the other presenters. One began to
realize that events like this weren't simply ways to honor those judged
excellent; this was show-off time, and often more clowns were present than one
wanted. Although more impromptu in their methods of delivery, the others equaled
the imitative reader in length. Then, as if anticlimactically, the winner was
announced - Sergio Ram¡rez (who had been Nicaragua's Secretary of State
during the Daniel Ortega regime). A well-groomed man in a business suit, he gave
a long speech, too. Few in the audience, however, seemed bothered by the length
of the event or especially interested in its substance either.
The reception was what they had come for, and its time was approaching. The
evening's main draw seemed to be conviviality. Soon waiters were serving the
guests the standard fare for events like this: weak rum and colas (rum known on
the island as el hijo alegre de la ca¤a, "the sugar cane's happy
little boy").
The next evening I went to another, considerably larger reception next door
in the center's art museum. On the walls of three large rooms were works by the
late American contemporary painter Jean Michel Basquiat. This was an
invitation-only affair, but the art on the walls that night was not the draw.
This was the night in which all the winners of Casa de las Americas awards were
being celebrated. There was to be a private cocktail party afterwards at another
place, I was told, and I was invited if I wanted to go. Last year Fidel had
come, but this year, we found out, he wasn't due to show. That was all right;
there was still another gathering I was due at later that evening.
A pattern at these receptions was becoming obvious. People seemed to truly
enjoy themselves and each other. Conversation stayed lively and the people
circulated gracefully. One couldn't help thinking: These people know how to
party. In fact, during the evening one of them, gesturing toward the numerous
pockets of liveliness around us, told me, her eyes sparkling, "This is
political, too. Living well is an act of rebellion."
In addition to many new people - TV producers, editors, even a restaurateur
- I was reintroduced to some writers I'd met before. When I saw who I was
getting ready to be introduced to, I didn't say I'd already met them; and I was
glad I kept silent about the matter, for that evening they seemed a lot happier
to meet me than they had seemed in another place two days before. They asked
questions about my work and wanted to know if there were anything I'd like to
see that they could help me with. The reason for the changed attitude appeared
clear: they liked the person I was with more than the one I had been with.
Responses like that seem superficial until one considers that in a number of
countries around the world - and my wife and I had seen this, too, during an
extended stay in Mexico - personal points of reference seem a lot more important
than abstractions. Tonight's association made me a welcome presence.
The celebration continued.
"Come on," my hostess said, pulling me away toward another
gathering, "there's someone else you need to meet." Finding him in the
crowd, she introduced me to him and we chatted briefly before she hurried me
away again. Halfway across the room as we were sliding and turning,
side-stepping our way through tight clusters of people, she stopped, her eyes
turning mischievous again. Reaching up, she whispered in my ear, "He washes
a lot of money. Is that the way you say it?"
"Launders," I said.
"Yes, of course. Let's go. I want you to meet my ex-husband."
And we did. After we pulled away from him, she said he was a political
scientist then added, "He's the smartest man in Cuba. And even though we're
not married anymore, he's one of my best friends."
We returned to some of the people we'd had conversations with earlier in the
evening, and on our way out, I was introduced to Aitana Alberti, the daughter of
the great Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, who, several years before at
ninety-eight, had been the last surviving member of the famous Grupo 27.
I told her I'd met her two years before after the reading from her father's
poems she'd helped give in the Gran Teatro, the old National Theatre.
"Yes, yes," she said, throwing her arms around me, "I'm so
glad you remember."
"So you already know each other?" my hostess asked.
"Oh yes," Aitana said, "he came to my reading, and we had a
fine visit. He even told me about an award for one of my father's translators."
That had been The National Translation Award that my wife had presented in
Guadalajara.
It was time to leave again. There was another party we were due at. This one
would be on a roof-top patio across town. It was being given for the
participants in the conference where I'd come to give a talk, and before the
evening was over we'd all have joined together dancing in a thoroughly lively,
long conga line. Again and again I found myself remembering a comment from
earlier in the evening:
"Living well is an act of rebellion."
Somehow the remark seemed simultaneously ingenuous, glib, sly and sweet. The
people I'd seen at the several events I went to that evening had been dressed
smartly. As the saying goes, they wore their clothes well. I already knew,
though, that the homes they returned to needed serious repair; but that wasn't
because of sloth. There were neither materials nor funds available to fix walls
and doors that had been cracking and peeling for years.
What remained of the night would be stingy with sleep, and the day ahead
would be long. Shortly before 12:30 a.m. I decided to leave the small dinner
party where I'd spent the evening. I had a wake-up call due at three. One of the
other guests, a university dean from Peru who was staying at the same hotel as
mine, left with me. We were going to share a cab, but the several that came by
weren't free, so we caught a ride on a cocomovil, a little open-air orange
half-bubble pulled by a motor scooter.
The night sea air chilly, I kept thinking about how generous the meal had
been: a quarter-chicken for each of the four of us. The relative expense had
been enormous, any kind of meat a rarity for a home table. Who knew what
sacrifices would follow? Black beans and rice (moros y cristianos, Moors and
Christians): that's what a home-cooked meal usually meant, but not, for
heavensakes, a quarter-chicken apiece. As I thought about the dinner party, an
old word came to mind: sprezzatura. In Renaissance Italy that was what one aimed
for: making the difficult look easy.
As late as it was, people were still out on the Malecon, the long
thoroughfare that borders the sea. Sitting on the top of the sea wall, lovers
nuzzled each other while solitary joggers ran by. Even the main streets were
only dimly lighted. Generating electricity, after all, is expensive. A crosstown
cab ride, however, seemed cheap: four or five dollars. That amount, though, is
prohibitive for most. That's why the natives often ride the "Camels,"
the hump-roof buses that something like 300 people regularly cram themselves
into, for twenty Cuban cents each.
As I glanced about the parts of the city we were sputtering past, our
vehicle leaned radically on sharp turns, but it never tipped over. It seemed
thoroughly understandable that so many of the finest graduates in the country
were seeking employment in the tourist trades. Small as they tended to be, the
tips were enticing. Other jobs and even the professions couldn't match them in
terms of money. That was another problem on the island; and a number of people,
I heard, were getting worried, even nervous, about this form of "brain-drain."
Who was going to do research? Who was going to mind the store? Even medical
doctors had salaries of only about $20 per month, yet Cuban medical care was
highly respected throughout Central and South America.
I thought of a Cuban friend. He hated the Camels, so he walked, mile after
mile across the city. Twice during the last year a sedan had stopped alongside
him, and the man being chauffeured in it offered him a ride. Both times he
accepted, and both times the man making the offer was Cuba's Secretary of
Foreign Affairs, Felipe P‚rez Roque, a 37-year-old electrical engineer who,
some Cubans think, I was told, is first in line to be Fidel Castro's successor.
When I asked my friend what he and the (what we call) Secretary of State had
talked about, he said, "We just visited."
"Did he know that you'd been a professor at the University (of Havana)?"
"No."
"Did he ask you your name?"
"No."
"So what did you talk about?"
"We just visited," he said, sounding testy because he'd already
answered the question. "Was the car impressive?"
"No," he said, "it was just an ordinary car."
The dean and I were now back at the hotel. We said goodbye then I went to my
room and packed. I left a $10 bill on the nightstand for the maid who'd left me
a sweet note. I left her one as well.
The next morning on the plane to Cancun I had another surprise. The man
sitting next to me was from Texas. We laughed at the coincidence. He and his
wife were retired and they'd just spent two weeks in various parts of Cuba with
twenty-seven other members of an Elderhostel group studying Cuban ecology. He
and his wife, he said, had quickly come to love the place. I said you'd have to
have a rock heart not to. Quickly we were both lamenting the embargo.
"All it's doing is hurting good people," he said, then he added
with force, "As soon as we get back home, I'm writing my Congressman."
"Good," I said.
"Not only that," he told me, "I'm gathering the rest of my
family together and turning them into activists."
I found myself thinking about the Prado, the sweetly shady, tree-bordered
walkway near the edge of Old Havana. I'd seen amazingly well-coordinated boys
skateboarding fast through the strollers. Coming from the opposite direction,
younger boys pushed home-made scooters. Attached to a one-by-four board, the
metal wheels had come off a pair of roller skates, the handlebar a piece of flat
molding nailed to another one-by-four. Two more skateboarders flew past, and the
little boys on scooters turned to watch them. "Some day," the yearning
look on their faces seemed to say, "we'll be big and fast, too."
© The E.W. Scripps Co. |
