Cuba Diaries (27 page)

“Cuba! I see Cuba!” a passenger near me shouts.

“Thank God,” his companion says. “Now at least we won't die in the sea.”

We've had houseguests solid for the past three weeks. I would like to use Roberto for every waking moment, even to have
mojitos
with the guests on the veranda. It's not that I don't like them, but my life is slipping by. The scary part is that sometimes I find myself beyond anxiety and in some kind of state of dumb happiness, which comes from having a swimming pool and from the
deterioration of brain cells—several thousand of them controlling anxiety, located at the center of the brain, deteriorate when you are in your forties—and I find myself feeling like it doesn't matter whether I write or not.

Houseguests on my back, houseguests in my pockets and cuffs, so that I cannot crawl to the word processor. Then, in my mind, I play the alternate scenario, of never having met Nick and therefore having married or had kids or lived in strange places, the alternate scenario a linear progression from the moment of my big revelation (obvious for some, but for me a big revelation) that it was better to be alone than to be with the wrong man: the scenario of me alone in a prewar doorman building in Greenwich Village, leading an ordered, quiet life with good cheeses and plenty of time to write. Plenty of time to write and remember all my nieces' and nephews' birthdays. Plenty of time to write, but making myself do it for three hours every morning, followed by twenty-five laps at the New York Health and Racquet Club.

There is a ghost me that steps out of me and leads that life in snippets.

Nick and I visit the westernmost part of Cuba. It is the first time we have been on a trip by ourselves, without the children, since Muna left more than a year ago. We spend the first night at Los Jazmines, a hotel built in a traditional style in the first few years following
el triunfo
. It is the first time Nick and I have been alone together in a hotel in Cuba. We enter the room, put down our bags, and open the French doors leading onto the balcony.

The setting of Los Jazmines is breathtaking, overlooking the
mogotes
of the Viñales Valley—massive, verdant rock formations, caused by erosion, that rise out of valley floors, like those in Chinese landscape paintings, and exist only in China, Cuba, and a few other places in the world. In the valley grow corn, tobacco, yucca, lettuce, cucumbers, beans, horses, cows, sheep, pigs. The sun is setting, turning everything bluish green. We will return with the children, we say; we will ask about horseback riding.

In the dining room, a trio is playing “The Pennsylvania Polka” very loudly to a group of elderly French tourists. They move on to “Never on Sunday,” “La Cucaracha,” and “Guantanamera.” We ask the waitress if she can ask the trio to make the music a little softer. Our dinner is a shriveled quarter of a chicken, some dry rice and beans, some greasy and very tired sliced potatoes, then potatoes again in the form of canned cubed potatoes with canned carrots, and peas. The meal costs nine dollars per person.

Anita, who introduces herself as the head of public relations for the hotel, stops by our table. Anita is about twenty-five years old and very pretty. “The waitress tells me that you don't like the music.”

“It's fine,” we say.

“No, really, she said you didn't like it.”

“It's fine . . . just a little loud.”

“I think it's about time we stopped the music.”

She signals to the musicians, who pick up their instruments and leave.

“And how is the food?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“May I sit down? I do really want to know.”

“Why, when we are in such a rich agricultural area, do you serve tired canned vegetables from Europe?”

She nods knowingly. “This is something everyone complains about . . .”

“If everyone complains, why do you keep on serving them?”

“Because we are only allowed to buy vegetables from the entity that sells food to tourist establishments, and this is what has been available recently.”

“And why do you care what we think?”

“I just do. Maybe it's because I am young and have just started this job.”

We drive the Cordillera de Guaniguanico the next day. It is not just Viñales that is full of
mogotes;
it is the entire
cordillera
(mountain chain), which runs eighty kilometers from Minas de Matahambre to Guanes. Minas de Matahambre (Hungerkiller Mines) is a tropical Wild West. We drive up and down hills topped by rusting nineteenth-century mining machinery. From then on, it's a high plain, wending its way between
mogotes
, full of caves and rivers that snake in and out of the caves and porous bases of the
mogotes
. Some of the caves are nearly hidden by thick vines. On the plain, tobacco, beans, rice, zebu cattle,
guajiro
houses with palm-thatched roofs, and corroding bridges. In eighty kilometers on this main road, we see neither bodega nor store, nor state-run restaurant, nor
paladar
, nor filling station, nor any sign of commercial life. The only signs of modern life are corroding steel bridges with wooden boards laid across them that shift precariously as we cross. It could be a dream of a place for kayaking, hiking, horseback riding, for sleeping
in simple bungalow-style hotels with wide verandas, no electricity, and mosquito nets.

The
mogotes
end at Guane. From Guane to Mantua are pine-forested hills. Some of the pines are hung with resin-collecting cans.

Mantua, the northwesternmost city in Cuba, is a town of twenty-three thousand people, who live for the most part in small wooden houses with porches. The straight streets have U.S.-style sidewalks of poured cement with lines drawn in them and U.S.-style fire hydrants placed at regular intervals. One area in Mantua looks as if it might have been a business district at one time, but now there is not a café nor a bodega nor an
agro
to be seen anywhere.

There is, however, a historical society, which is nearly bare inside. A custodian rises from the seat where she is dozing and kisses us on both cheeks. There is a reproduction of the table at which the victorious
mulato
Cuban general Antonio Maceo sat when Mantua's Spanish mayor ceded the town to Maceo's forces. It's a reproduction, the custodian explains, because the town was burned twice during the war of independence. There are a few arrowheads, some remnants of cooking pots and stirrups from the colonial period, a photo portrait (taken in 1920) of a lady who danced all night with Maceo in 1896. There is a photo of the high school band, taken in 1940: braided uniforms they had then, plumed hats, and a full complement of shiny musical instruments, including a tuba, and there were majorettes in tasseled white cowboy boots with batons. There are photos of martyrs of the revolution and a photo of the one boy from Mantua who died (of disease) in Angola.

“But the town was burned
after
Maceo arrived?” we ask. “Who burned it?”

“It was burned by the Cubans themselves. The Spanish retook the town after it was ceded to Maceo's forces and were trying to fortify it. The Cubans burned it so it would not fall into Spanish hands.”

Maceo died in Mantua later in the same year, in a Spanish ambush.

A thin
blanco
in his sixties arrives. He is introduced to us as the city historian. He takes each of our hands in both of his hands and squeezes them. “It is so good to have some visitors,” he says.

We catch sight of a small boy standing outside in the alley peering through the shutters at us. He slams the shutters shut when he sees us looking at him. “My grandson,” the historian says.

The historian explains that it is generally believed that the city's name is the
Spanish name for Mantova, a landlocked Italian city, because the duchy of Mantova, in Italy, became a Spanish protectorate in the sixteenth century following the Spanish invasion of northern Italy. A duke of Mantova, Gonzaga, himself of Spanish origin, was chief of Spanish shipbuilding for a time in the sixteenth century. This is the first explanation. After that, there are two slightly diverging explanations, both having to do with a Spanish ship named the
Mantua
or the
Mantova
and captained by one Anatolio Fiorenzana. One legend is that the ship, pursued by the English, sought refuge behind coral reefs off what is now Mantua, and its captain and crew decided to stay. The other legend is that the ship was wrecked on the reefs, and those who made it ashore decided to stay. There is no money, though, to look for the remains of the boat or the shipwreck on the coral reefs, and there are no written records. All that is left is oral tradition and the fact that a lot of people in the town have names that sound like Italian names. There is also a copy of the original sixteenth-century shield of the town, which has in it the image of a sinking ship. Finally, there is the Virgin in the church, the Virgen de las Nieves (Virgin of the Snows), which is also the Virgin in the cathedral of Mantova. The Virgin was saved from both fires. No one knows exactly how old she is, only that she is very old.

There has not been a priest in the church for a long time, the historian says, but more priests are being ordained now in Havana, and they have heard that one will be sent from Havana soon. The house facing the church has the key. We kiss old women rocking on the porch of the house facing the church, who raise their faces to us expectantly, and are handed the key.

Over the door of the church is the copied shield with the sinking ship on it. Above the altar is the ancient Virgin of the Snows. She has the small mouth and full chin of eighteenth-century-and-earlier beauty. Her robe is white satin, with large rhinestone snowflakes embroidered on it. She holds a white tobacco flower in one hand. The tobacco flower, of carved wood, was added in the last century, the historian explains, when she became, in this tobacco-growing region, the Virgen del Tabaco as well. Her shrine is carved from one piece of wood. She holds a tiny Jesus in her arms. Jesus is the size of a newborn but has the face of a crabby four-year-old.

At the end of Cuba, the Virgin of the Snows. The expression “when it snows in Cuba” is the Cuban equivalent of “when pigs have wings.” The silence on the street outside, the loneliness, is like that in some wintry place. We sit in the front pew, willing the Virgin's sweet face to reveal the mystery of her origin and tell us when snow will finally fall.

The only place to spend the night is in the Laguna Grande Motel, about forty kilometers from Mantua. The one-star motel is a former
campismo popular
, where workers were sent on vacation. Its small bungalows are made to look like thatched huts. The interior walls of our bungalow are lined with patterned curtains. At first we think it's because someone has an enthusiasm for sewing, but when we look behind them we realize they are to cover sweat and mildew on the plaster walls. The pillows are thin mats with lumps. Large ants crawl on the floor of the shower.

I ask the receptionist who shows us to our room if there is hot water. In a toneless voice she says that there is none running from the taps, but if we would like some, it can be heated in the kitchen. I ask in what container, in what receptacle, the hot water could be put, but I'm not using the right word. What I am trying to find out is whether I have to take my body over to the kitchen and wash there, so I ask, “If someone wants to take a shower, how do they do it?” She gets in the shower and, with the same bored expression on her face, takes the telephone-type showerhead off the hook and trains it over her body to illustrate. “I know how to take a shower,” I say. “I just want to know where you put the hot water.” She holds up a plastic bucket with a top. The room costs forty dollars per night.

We go into the dining room for dinner. There is no other place for seventy-five miles offering food of any kind.

The tablecloth and the napkin are gray, as if they have been used for dusting. “Can I please have a napkin that is a little cleaner?” I ask. Paper napkins are produced. The waiter appears. “There is no electricity in the kitchen,” he says, “so we can't cook the food. There will be a delay.”

“Can we look at the menu?”

“There will be a delay.”

“How long?”

He seems confused.

“Can we look at the menu so that we can think about what we want to eat while we are waiting?”

He hesitates.

“They want to look at the menu,” Roberto barks.

It is finally produced.

“I don't see why they didn't want to at least bring a menu,” I whisper to Roberto. Usually I don't say anything, but there are still times here when bad service, delivered
so
unapologetically, feels like an aggression.

When we are alone in the car, Roberto criticizes nearly everything, with no prompting from us, heaping the greatest vitriol upon the Bearded One himself, but here in the restaurant, Roberto begins a loud sotto voce speech—like an operatic aside—about how unprepared they are for tourism. It's for the benefit of the restaurant staff, and for the handful of Cuban “guests”—chain-smoking men in tight polo shirts who sit, also without food, at another table. Roberto speaks about how difficult it is to get soap, about how one state agency will not provide another state agency with the product for making a decent soap, about how difficult it is to get running water and to heat it if there is little gas. Nick and I flatter ourselves that the men in tight polo shirts might be our tails.

“But before
el triunfo de la revolución
, there were water heaters,” I say to Roberto. “People had hot water . . .”

“My family never had hot water.”

Nick kicks me in the ankle.

After dinner, Nick vomits into the plastic bucket the receptionist told us was meant for hot water. I spray the sides of the bucket with the telephone-type showerhead and dump it into the hibiscus bushes to the side of our bungalow.