Island that Dared (18 page)

Rosa asked, ‘Do Irish people like Fidel?’

I had to be honest. ‘Most don’t have a view. To them Cuba’s simply a holiday place suggested by a travel agency – sunny, cheap, great for music. They don’t understand Fidel’s Cuba.’ Carlos cracked his knuckles and growled, ‘That’s because of
Yanqui
propaganda.’

I suspected that Rosa might have reservations about Fidel which would never be voiced in her father’s presence. When I invited her to accompany
me back to No. 403, ostensibly to admire photographs of the Trio in Cuba, Carlos at once quashed the idea – to the evident indignation of both Rosa and her mother.

Isabel came next on my list; we had met in November as I queued for bread outside a San Miguel bakery. A sallow, wispy little woman, aged fiftyish, her demeanour that morning seemed oddly twitchy. She feigned to ignore me while taking a furtive interest in my exchanges with the other shoppers, then on the way home I realised that she was following me. Out of sight of the bakery she laid a hand on my arm, stared up at me intently and half-whispered in English, ‘You can visit me in my home? I need to talk with a foreigner. But I’m watched.’ Swiftly she looked around, her expression hunted, then fumbled in a pocket for a scrap of paper. ‘Take this, find me here. Remember, tell no Cuban you’re visiting me. Don’t say my name to your friends in your
casa
.’ The handwriting was educated.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘tomorrow we fly home.’ When Isabel’s face crumpled, pathetically, I added, ‘But I promise to visit you in January.’ Again gripping my arm Isabel exclaimed, ‘Thank you! Thank you! Remember, don’t write to me –
ever
!’ I watched her hurrying away, head bent as though all
eye-contact
must be avoided.

Her address took me to the sixth floor of an exceptionally run-down Centro tenement (c.1890). In the hallway I confronted an antique twenty-person pulley-lift, its mechanism visible through iron bars, its groans and squeals unsettling. In fact such lifts are meticulously maintained, like the fun-fair equipment in Santiago; a building’s residents being
bottom-of-the-
pilers makes their safety no less important than anyone else’s. (In theory there is no ‘pile’ in Cuba, in real life Revolutions can’t overcome individual limitations.) However, at that date my research had not encompassed municipal virtues so I chose the stairs. Sections of the rusted wrought-iron banisters hung loose or were missing and in the dim light one had to watch one’s step while negotiating loose chunks of marble cladding. The five landings gave access to long galleries overlooking an unadorned rectangular courtyard that seemed dark despite its canopy of blue sky. Ten narrow doors opened off each gallery, the flats’ numbers crudely chalked on the wall and often indecipherable because of falling plaster. This whole building looked as though it had been neglected not merely since 1959 but from its date of completion.

Isabel’s flat was distinctive; chewing-gum blocked the keyhole and the small barred window was not curtained like the rest but tightly boarded up
from inside. In response to my rapping a half-frightened, half-angry voice asked ‘
Nombre y appelidos
?’ After much drawing of bolts and clinking of chains I was admitted and rapturously greeted.

Such a cramped flat would demoralise me within days. In a rural setting a
bohio
housing eight or ten is tolerable: life simply overflows to the Great Outside. Confinement to two cupboard-sized rooms (shared with Toni, a large adult son) on the top floor of an urban tenement must be hellish, especially if one is neurotic about spying neighbours. The unlit outer room was furnished only with a sofa-bed, an incongruously large
dining-table
on which Toni slept, and a lavatory behind a curtain. The inner room’s window, barred and unglazed looked towards the gleaming, twinkling Straits of Florida. The sink was multi-purpose: washing up, laundering, food preparation, personal toilets. Garments hung behind a curtain of Vietnamese rice sacks. A pressure-cooker stood on a gas-stove, there was no need for a fridge or larder; food disappeared as soon as bought. Catholic icons, untainted by Santería, occupied a shelf above two metal chairs.

We sat on the divan in semi-darkness and Isabel, without preamble, asked me to memorise a telephone number in Geneva and a message to her Swiss ex-husband – to be written now. When I had learned it off by heart it would be flushed down the loo. The poor woman was even more deranged than had been apparent on the street.

Paula and Ernesto (both black) shared the roomy basement of a ramshackle 1920s villa with their undersized dachshund and long-haired Alsatian, the latter serving as a couch for the former. A ceiba tree’s roots gave character to the living-room; every year, Ernesto explained, he had to repair that wall. Yet the ceiba was regarded with much affection, to fell it would be unthinkable. Anyway, given those roots’ radius, the villa might come down with it. This was a happy family, the parents very proud of both of their sons’ baseball achievements.

On my second visit the Lavíns (fluent English-speakers) confided their deep dissatisfaction with Fidel’s 2003 decision to again restrict private enterprise. Paula, a high school teacher, had then been running a
one-woman
hair-dressing salon, after school hours, for four years.

‘He’s trying to “purify” the Revolution,’ said Ernesto in a scorn-laden voice. During the truly desperate Special Period, impurities had to be permitted. Then, as Ernesto put it, ‘Cheap Venezuelan oil made things less desperate and
el comandante
got scared, saw capitalism poisoning “our
Revolution”, little business people being not so poor as others. Taxes got worse and silly rules and regulations made small enterprises too hard to run.’

Paula sighed gustily and said, ‘It’s crazy! And makes corruption worse – more need for bribes, more black markets. We know fourteen Trade Ministry inspectors visited that store near the harbour, where 2,000 tonnes of food got lost. Not one noticed anything missing! Last week Raúl, our vice-president, said corruption in government departments is like a cancer spreading from our knees to our neck.’

Ernesto’s brother had migrated to Florida in 1992 and returned ten years later. ‘Here we grow up feeling equal, he didn’t like feeling unequal. He had more comfortable living but only a factory job and he’s a math graduate. He got into bad debt, the rents are so high. Even before the Revolution, blacks didn’t have the same problems here as in the States.’

‘Not the same,’ said Paula, ‘but bad enough. How many blacks went to university?’ (Both she and Ernesto were graduates.) ‘Even with Fidel, how many blacks have been high in government?’

Ernesto gestured impatiently. ‘Isn’t that because mostly we don’t like politics? I like more my researching and my students.’

I asked, ‘What’s your brother doing now?’

‘Can’t you guess? By day lecturing in the university, by night working in Hotel Inglaterra. His tips get him ten times his university pay. It’s all gone mad, his official job his hobby, his night work feeding the family. But he’s happier than in Miami.’

Castroist Cuba has its old-fashioned aspect, much derided by those who see this as yet another symptom of authoritarianism/tyranny. Paula showed me a Ministry of Education ‘directive’ containing the Youth Code, to be imprinted on tiny minds by parents, then reinforced at school. ‘Children should at all times display correct social behaviour and understand that they have a fundamental obligation to love their parents, and respect their teachers, professors and all adults in general.’ Parents and teachers are urged to present ‘our grandparents’ courtesy as the standard to be upheld. This includes men opening doors for women, offering to carry heavy burdens and other such quaint customs (of Spanish rather than African origin) which of course incense feminists. Personally I warm to a code promoting grandparental standards.

Walking home, I passed Coppelia and briefly missed the Trio. Then I remembered a conversation with a Cuban journalist at Santiago’s Viazul terminus at the end of November. Fidel had just launched another
anti-corruption
campaign during a speech at Havana University. The journalist recalled that since 1992
el comandante
has been arguing that the cancer of corruption, rather than external opposition, killed the Soviet Union. And now, he warned the students, Cuba’s economic revival was being undermined by widespread dishonesty at every level. I remembered that ‘every level’ when, over the next few months,
Granma
reported the
replacement
of five out of the Party’s fourteen provincial leaders. Also, a young member of the twenty-one member Politburo was publicly sacked, accused of ‘abuse of authority’ and ‘ostentation’.

That evening there was another prolonged
apagón
(power failure), these being not least among Cuba’s post-Soviet tribulations. For their guests,
casas
particulares
provide portable battery-powered strip lighting, less privileged households make do with small smoky kerosene lamps. Few people complain within earshot of a foreigner – out of loyalty to Castroism? Or because disloyalty is felt to be imprudent? In individual cases a casual visitor can’t presume to judge how that cookie crumbles.

Certain it is that Cuba’s chronic
apagón
problem had engendered an admirable government policy: Cubans pay higher rates for electricity the more they use, an energy-saving device that favours the poor. Incidentally, the World Wildlife Fund, in their
Living Planet Report 2006
, praised Cuba as the only country at present ‘developing sustainably’.

Following another Mario contact, I spent an afternoon at the university with a group of English language students (five male, three female) and found them predictably cagey on the topic of domestic politics. Instead, they took me out of my depth with their knowledge of English Literature in its historical context. I soon realised that quite complicated messages about contemporary Cuba were being conveyed by references to
Shakespeare’s
relationship with Elizabeth I’s court, Milton’s successful opposition to press censorship, the involvement of writers in eighteenth-century English politics, Byron’s Greek escapism, Dickens’ exposure of social evils and Evelyn Waugh’s exposure of social frivolities.

Towards sunset we dispersed and I sought the nearest café, as is my habit, immediately to record the afternoon’s impressions. There I was observed, writing rapidly, by the Milton specialist and his girlfriend. They paused to stare at me, looking alarmed. That was an odd moment: alarm seemed to become hostility before they went on their way. Why? They knew my profession and writers take notes. Or was I imagining things? Occasionally, in Castroland, I did doubt my antennae.

Another odd moment occurred the next day. In November I became a regular customer at a small
tienda
on arcaded Galiano; if Jorge noticed my approach he at once opened the fridge and with a big grin placed six tins of Buccanero on the counter. (He, too, seemed bothered by my solo return; loose-cannon
abuelas
do flummox the family-oriented Cubans.) On this occasion, when I coincided with a youth who spoke uncommonly fluent English, Jorge encouraged a conversation and his young woman assistant requested a photograph of the Trio, with whom she had established a rapport. I was closely questioned about the Northern Ireland Peace Process; my lack of enthusiasm for Riverdance disappointed everyone; we debated the respective merits of Guinness and Buccanero. An elderly man, born in Santiago, joined us and was gratified by my fondness for his native city. Then a fourth customer arrived to buy two packets of pasta – an entirely unremarkable man, but at once the atmosphere changed. Clearly Jorge didn’t want him to observe our fraternising and I departed without the usual friendly farewells.

To those not pressed for time almost everywhere one wants to go in Havana is accessible on foot and I only once tried to take a bus. That involved waiting on Padre Varela Street for forty minutes; some of my eighteen companions had been in situ for more than an hour and were beginning to grumble. The bench seated a mere half-dozen but on my arrival a shaven-headed youth, wearing a spruce check shirt and carefully patched jeans, politely surrendered his space.

Despite President Chavez’s oily largesse, Havana’s traffic remained sparse enough for dogs to be independent and I watched a large, well-fed piebald mongrel happily bounding along this main thoroughfare. He was the quintessential Heinz; usually one can theorise about a mongrel’s family tree but his defied speculation. Near the bus stop he paused, looked back – and waited for his owner, a stooped little black man on crutches. As he caught up Heinz wagged an absurd tail (both curly and plumed) in a congratulatory way, then bounded another fifty yards ahead and waited again. Soon after a dachshund appeared, sitting upright in the handlebar basket of an obese elder whose breathing was audible as he slowly pedalled up Padre Varela’s hill, his carrier loaded with bananas. In all districts of Havana, up- or down-market, dachshunds are by far the commonest pure breed. Flawless pedigrees give them only a minuscule monetary value but are a matter of great pride among their own coterie.

Looking at my watch, I reckoned a forty-minute wait, plus my
companions
’
patience-test, entitled me to report that in January 2006 Havana’s public transport was inadequate. I then walked to Casa de las Americas.

This much-admired (though not by me) Art Deco building could be a Mormon Church and was built within four months in 1959. It houses a cultural institute founded by Haydee Santamaria, one of the Revolution’s most celebrated heroines, its purpose to forge bonds between artists and writers from all over Latin America. I had been invited there by Mario’s friends Nicanor and Sofiel, an anthropologist, and his marine biologist son who specialises in the protection of coral reefs. ‘Such work,’ declared Sofiel, ‘is two-way important. For the planet’s health and Cuba’s wealth. When our tourist industry gets more clever it can earn more from our reefs if we can keep them alive.’