Slow Train to Guantanamo (25 page)

‘Muy bien,’
I tell her, very good, which may have been a mistake.

A mistake only because maybe she misunderstood my ‘very well’ for the instruction as to how I would like it cooked. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt
and blame my Spanish, but I don’t quite believe it, because we did actually have that conversation. She asked me how I would like my expensive bit of beef fillet cooked and I replied
‘poco hecho’,
which I had learned deliberately and I have since checked and know that ‘cooked just a little’ is indeed the correct way to order a rare steak in Spanish. What emerges from the kitchen, nearly half an hour later, bears the same resemblance to a cow as the preserved saddle from José Martí’s unintentionally suicidal charge against the Spanish back in 1895. With half a bottle of Chilean red for lubrication (Soroa was ‘off’!) I chew as much of it as I can. It’ll keep me from getting long in the tooth. This, remember, from a country that serves pork rare!

In comparison it is a real pleasure to see the genuine delight on the face of the waitress back at Don Juan’s as I collect the remnants of my Soroa white (more for form’s sake than from a genuine desire to finish it) and head for bed. Except that bed’s a bit further than I remembered. And for once there isn’t a bloody
bicitaxi
in sight. Probably because the man picking me up before dawn has gone to get an early night. Making him a lot more sensible than me.

But, thanking God for the grid system – and the fact that this isn’t Camagüey – I wander back towards my
casa
, a route that coincidentally takes me past the Parque Maceo, where there just happens to be a bar still open, with a few locals shooting the late night breeze. Inevitably, I join them. But there’s a problem when I come to pay: this is a peso bar and I’ve run out of pesos. All I have in my pockets are CUCs.

No problem, you might think: pay in one and get the change in the other. Except that it doesn’t work like that. There’s bookkeeping. This bar isn’t licensed to accept CUCs. And it’s illegal for Cubans to exchange them other than at a branch of the state bank. That, of course, is a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. But there is
another problem, which is that there are only four of us in the bar, of which two are local lads, barely capable of standing and stoney broke, having blown their last pesos on beers they probably couldn’t afford. The other is the forty-something waitress, who might or might not have been willing to change money for me, but doesn’t actually have any. At least not enough to change a 10 CUC note which represents as much money as she makes in a month, not exactly what most women carry round in their handbags, even if it is only £8 ($10) for me.

Under other circumstances I might have cut my losses, but there is another factor. There are two beers on sale: not just Cacique, the fairly common, hoppy peso lager, but also something called Rubia, which I have never heard of before. It turns out to be a slightly stronger lager served in smaller brown bottles. I know this because I am drinking one, by the neck, from the bottle (they have no glasses). The waitress, who tells me her name is Judith, which for some reason she thinks is Russian – it isn’t but then it isn’t Spanish either – has worked out that as I have a 2 CUC coin in my pocket (the only one I have), if she buys a couple of beers ‘for friends’ and I have no more than three, but leave the coin on the counter, then it will all have worked out.

‘Rubia is a real local beer,’ she tells me. ‘Made near Las Tunas. There are other beers from small breweries based in Cuba’s smaller towns, she says: ‘Tinima – strong beer, six per cent. And Latina – from Guantánamo.’ They are all cheaper – and a lot more interesting – than the big brands punted at the CUC-carrying foreign tourist market. A bottle of Rubia costs 8 pesos here, which means I could drink six of them before my 2 CUC coin was used up. I only want the one. But I accept her offer of another, for the road, and wander off happily into the humid night. I have to get up in five hours’ time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

This Train Doesn’t Go There

There’s a surreal moment just as dawn is breaking over Las Tunas when the bleary-eyed landlady of the
casa
stumbles into my room in her nightdress and announces abruptly and rather rudely that my ‘taxi’ is here.

I stumble, equally bleary, out of bed, pull on some clothes, grab my rucksack and lurch out the door to the
cocorico
sound of cockerels crowing in next door’s garden to find my beaming
bicitaxi
man in cool shades with some Miami rapper blasting away from the PlayStation Portable under his bottom.

‘
Buena
,’ he says, which I gather is Cuban hip short for
‘Buenas dias’
. Apparently he’s been waiting 15 minutes already – it’s only 5.45 a.m. – and announced himself to my landlady when he arrived, which might very well account for her less than congenial attitude. Clearly fares paid in CUCs are few and far between in tourist-deprived Las Tunas.

Any vestige of a hangover fades as he pedals us up a street of pastel houses, low palms and wandering dogs all seemingly oblivious to the cacophony we’re inflicting on them from the PSP. One or two people standing at bus stops even smile and wave and jiggle a foot in time. In a sane country you’d question their sanity but then
Cu’a e Cu’a
.

The station ahead is all but deserted. There is a signal absence of people not just on the street outside but also
inside the relatively clean and tidy pastel-blue painted waiting-room. Obviously there is no timetable posted and no indication of what time a train might depart – in any direction – except for the less than reassuring absence of any other potential passengers. Until I discover a pudgy woman with a scowl on her face reclining on an uncomfortable looking chair behind the Plexiglas ticket office window. She is decidedly unimpressed by – and uninterested in – my arrival. One look at the expression on the face of the woman behind the counter, whose eyelids have drooped again, suggests it might not be a good idea to ask her about train times. I do what by now I know any Cuban would do in my situation: sit down and wait – on the floor, given the absence of seats.

Shortly after 6.15 a.m. a more cheerful-looking bloke comes in through the door on the other side of the counter, looks around and then waves an arm at me, not calling me over but nonetheless clearly trying to tell me something. I haven’t a clue what he wants but he’s looking a bit agitated. Then he smiles, realizing he’s got a stupid gringo on his hands, points to the fluorescent light tubes above my head and the switch by the door. I get the message, get up, go over and click it. Nothing happens. I shrug and look back at him. He shrugs and looks back at me and says
‘otra vez’
: do it again. I can’t quite see how that’s going to work as the switch was up to start with but then I realize he means flick it up and down. I do, and there is a worrying hum, followed by a lightning flash, then nothing, then a brief flicker, and suddenly the strip light bursts reluctantly into life. He smiles, gives me a thumbs up, shrugs and says,
‘La capacidad.’
I’m not sure if he means ‘capacitor’ (which in Madrid Spanish is
condensador
), but I don’t care much as the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I am never going to dabble in amateur electrics in Cuba.

The grumpy woman behind the ticket counter inevitably is not happy to have the lights turned on and glares at me as if it’s my fault, before reluctantly pulling herself upright in the chair where, now I come to think of it, she’s obviously spent the night sleeping, and starts fiddling with hair clips.

The bloke who got me to turn the lights on has pulled out a ledger of some sort and begun to go through what looks like an exhaustive wedge of paperwork, with endless tallies scribbled in blue ballpoint marked against piles of paper slips which may or may not be tickets.

His female colleague has gone into a coughing fit, which only ends when she manages to find the remote control for the television hanging over my head, pull a cigarette from some pocket and light up. Immediately there is the raucous squawking of Latino females arguing, but not in real life, from the television above my head. I look up and recognize another episode of
Mujeres de Nadie,
this time with the amethyst-eyed blonde woman in the doctor’s white coat screaming at a sultry dark haired woman in a low-cut dress who’s fondling the bald head of a little fat bloke that I can hardly imagine either of them fighting over. I begin to suspect this is a soap opera for women written more in wistful hope than expectation by men. I’m almost surprised it isn’t a Cuban co-production, for it certainly meets the PC qualifications when the sultry dark-haired woman turns on a look of the utmost scorn and screams back:
‘Usted e’ una capitalista’,
almost as grave an insult as a US politician calling someone a ‘socialist’.

More in my own version of hope rather than expectation I glance around the station for some indication that there might be a train expected at some stage. Eventually I pluck up my courage and go over to the counter to timidly ask the woman behind it, cigarette in hand, if she is the
jefe
del torno
. She nods, a mite imperiously. But when I ask her about trains, she shakes her head and tells me to wait.

The reason becomes clear when, only a few seconds later, another woman arrives looking altogether fresher, brighter and more efficient – not least perhaps because she’s had a proper night’s sleep – and abruptly dismisses her relieved colleague. Another man has arrived too and taken over the bulky ledger. It occurs to me, though I have seen zero evidence of racism in any way in Cuba, that the two people on the day shift are white while the two on the night shift were black. I am going to assume it is coincidence but I am not one hundred per cent certain. It may be or may not be more reflective of the society in place when the revolutionaries came to power but it is hard to ignore the fact that in the largely geriatric politburo there is still only one male black and only one woman of any colour!

The new woman at the Last Tunas ticket office, however, smiles genially at me over her gold-rimmed glasses, and tells me as kindly as she possibly can that she is unable to sell me a ticket for my onward journey until she has received word that the train has actually left Camagüey.

‘Is there a reason for that?’ I ask stupidly.

‘Of course,’ she says still smiling as if talking to a child with learning difficulties. ‘It might not.’

Ah, of course. ‘When is it expected to leave?’ She glances at her watch and says: ‘In an hour. Or so.’

An hour later she beckons me over. Hey presto. It’s 7.30 a.m. and at least I have a ticket. In celebration I break open the bottle of Rubia saved from last night. The now-warm wine I left for my landlady.

Some forty minutes later, the Rubia has gone and taken my enthusiasm with it. The lack of sleep is beginning to tell, but I don’t want to doze off and miss the train. I ask the woman with the gold-rimmed glasses what the latest
estimate of its arrival might be. She gives me that special smile again (the one reserved for idiots) and says maybe a bit after 9.30. This is the train I was told just 48 hours ago, in Camagüey, would get in at 6.35. Maybe they meant get into Camagüey. Even then it’s late.

Meanwhile the woman at the ticket counter has started taking what appear to be bunches of used tickets and begun sorting them. Into what inconceivable order, I have no idea. All I can see and hear is the constant staccato as she lifts a rubber stamp, dabs it on an ink pad twice, and then thumps it down on the ticket. I’m not sure if it’s manifestation of obsessive compulsive behaviour or just that she takes satisfaction from the rhythmic tic-tic-TAC, tic-tic-TAC. Actually, after a while it’s curiously comforting, like a jazz metronome. Maybe she plays part-time in a rumba band. By my count she’s gone through the sequence at least 200 times by now.

By 9.01 we’re finally on the move, in a Cuban manner of speaking. The new
jefe de torno
has called up all those who have already booked tickets and is shouting out a list of names even though all of them have already gathered in a scrum around the ticket window. I’m trying hard to be relaxed, which is not bad given that I got out of bed nearly three and a half hours ago in a house little more than a kilometre away and am still waiting to be given the opportunity to buy a ticket for a train that hasn’t arrived but should have been and gone hours ago.

I take the opportunity provided by the scrum to buy something to eat from a vendor who was overwhelmed with would-be customers until just a second ago. All he has for sale is a roll filled with fatty spam. The spam is unsurprisingly disgusting, but at least the bread is good. Cost 5 pesos, about fourpence ($0.6). Finally, last but not least, madam summons up the one hard-currency paying would-be passenger: me. A single to Santiago, I say. She looks up, surprised.

‘This train doesn’t go to Santiago.’

I look back at her, open mouthed in horror.

‘But I was told that this was the train to Guantánamo via Santiago.’

She looks as if I’ve just said Fidel Castro is a moron.

‘No! This is the train to Guantánamo. If you want to go to Santiago, you have to get off at San Luis.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Outside Santiago.’

This seems obvious. I meant how far outside Santiago, but never mind.

‘When is the connection?’

She looks back as if I’ve just asked if there’s a Father Christmas.

‘The connection?’

‘To Santiago’

‘The next train to Santiago is tomorrow.’

‘And the train from Santiago to Guantánamo?’

Same look.

‘There isn’t a train from Santiago to Guantánamo. Trains from Santiago go to Havana.’

‘Could I change at San Luis?’

This is obviously an option that’s never occurred to her.

‘When is the next train to Guantánamo that stops at San Luis?’ I venture, to help her with the general concept.