Island that Dared (5 page)

On the way to Parque Cespedes Rose noted approvingly, ‘Here’s much cleaner than Havana’. She was right, Santiago’s municipality is either better funded or better managed than Havana’s (or both).  

Zea observed, ‘It’s too much hotter than Havana! Why?’ The adults didn’t know why – maybe something to do with the nearby mountains?  

Clodagh scrutinised my face and exclaimed, ‘Look at Nyanya’s sweat! She’s leaving drips behind her on the ground!’  

Parque Cespedes (originally, and more accurately, Plaza de Armas) is Cuba’s first town square, a space left free of buildings for the convenience of the military, and never encroached upon over four centuries. But would those sixteenth-century town planners recognise it today? Trim shrubs surround neat little flower beds, a few trees provide inadequate shade and as we arrived the grey and red flagstones were being thoroughly swept with grass brooms. While the Trio romped Rachel and I, feeling
Viazul-lagged,
shared the sparse shade of palms with Carlos Cespedes on his pedestal. ‘They’re like a litter of puppies,’ I remarked, ‘the energy seems limitless.’ ‘Who are you telling!’ rejoined their mother.

On all sides stood buildings so often photographed I almost felt I’d been here before. The sonorously named Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, built in 1922 on four-hundred-year-old foundations, has quite a pleasing neo-classical façade but can’t compete with Casa de Diego Velazquez. This Andalusia-flavoured stone building has a fortress-like solidity, relieved by many Moorish gratings, and wooden lattice-work shutters and balconies. It took fourteen years (1516–30) to build, as the conquistador’s official residence, and in 1965 was intelligently restored. Santiago presents it as Cuba’s oldest surviving residence, a claim contested by Havana though it seems not implausible. Less convincing is Santiago’s assertion that Velazquez’s bones lie beneath the cathedral.

On the Park’s west side rises the dazzling white four-storey Hotel Casa Granda, a tourist base since 1920, agreeably conforming to Cuba’s eclectic style of colonial architecture. The blue and white Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), simple and dignified, was built in 1950 to replace an earthquake victim but had been designed two hundred years earlier by an anonymous architect whose drawings were found by chance in the Indies Archive. From its short central balcony, on 1 January 1959, Fidel first spoke to the Cubans as their new (twelve-hours-on-the-job) leader.

It was too early in the day for tourists (at no time were they numerous) but on a bench under a weeping fig tree two youths were sharing a cigarette and, we sensed, measuring us up as a possible source of convertible pesos. One joined us adults while his friend asked the Trio where we were staying and how much paying? When Rachel enquired about the nearest
Cambio
both offered to escort her up steep Calle Aguilera. The Trio stayed with me; they were developing a group allergy to queues.

As we lay under a palm drinking pints of water I told the girls about another Trio, Santiago sisters aged eight, nine and ten, whose ordeal is still remembered because Graham Greene recorded it. One night in 1957, soon after their father had joined Fidel’s guerrillas in the nearby mountains, they were lifted from their beds by Batista’s soldiers and, still wearing pyjamas, carried off to a military barracks to be held as hostages. In Greene’s words:

Some of Greene’s Santiago contacts – including Armand Hart, later to become Fidel’s Minister of Education – were outraged by an arms deal then being negotiated: the sale of British fighter jets to Batista’s air force. Back in England, Greene prompted a Labour MP to ask a question which brought from Selwyn Lloyd, the Foreign Secretary, an assurance that no weapon of any grade was being sold to Cuba. Months later, shortly before Batista’s defeat, Lloyd was cornered and forced to admit that he had indeed sanctioned the sale of several ‘almost-obsolete’ planes. Allegedly, when this deal went through Britain’s Foreign Secretary hadn’t yet heard about Cuba’s then two-year-long civil war, though all foreign visitors were being confined to Havana province because everywhere else was ‘insecure’.
Our Man in Havana
is not entirely a work of fiction.

Rachel was soon back, having been thwarted by one of Cuba’s legendary power-cuts; the
Cambio
couldn’t open that day. What did I say earlier about the Computer Age? Previously, currency exchanges could take place with the aid of pen and paper.

When the noon heat forced the Trio and me back to our fan-cooled rooms, for many games of rummy, Rachel visited Cuba’s most famous Casa de la Trova on Calle Heredia, a few minutes walk from No. 197.

Later, we went shopping and at first were baffled. As tourists it seemed we couldn’t buy bread (easy in Havana) and two
tiendas
denied us water – visible in both fridges. That evening Irma explained; when items are in short supply (delivery problems because of petrol problems) regular
customers
get preference. Fair enough!

Outside one
tienda
a middle-aged mulatta – diminutive,
worried-looking
– whispered a request to Rachel for CP 0.45 to buy soap. (The monthly ration is rarely adequate.) Because a policeman stood nearby, and begging from tourists is strictly forbidden, Rachel shook her head and moved on – followed by the woman’s angry younger companion (daughter?) whose loud abuse included repetitions of ‘
Puta
!’ (whore).
That sound greatly appealed to the Trio who only reluctantly excluded it from their rapidly expanding Spanish vocabulary.

After sunset, during our Happy (childfree) Hour, Rachel and I agreed that Santiago’s blacks being so numerous gives the city a special sort of animation while, for both of us, awakening happy memories of African journeys. It seems Cuba’s blacks have preserved their cultural identity more successfully than their US cousins; in general their enslavement happened more recently and they form a much higher percentage of the population. Cuba abolished slavery only in 1886 – the last country to do so.

Before Rachel took off for a night of song, salsa and conga we planned an early morning departure for an undeveloped beach – Playa Siboney, twelve miles east of the city.

In the warehouse-like provincial bus terminus hundreds of passengers sat on rows of metal chairs with their bundles by their feet. We were lucky: behind the building a Siboney bus – a vehicle at the other end of the scale from our Viazul coach – was about to depart. Rushing towards it, we found the doorway blocked by a rotund woman brusquely demanding ‘chits’. We assumed she meant tickets – but no, one paid on the bus, chits simply entitled one to board it and were issued free from a distant kiosk. Such Soviet-type procedures are now exposing Castroism to ridicule as Cuban youngsters note, and replicate, foreigners’ scorn for bureaucracy gone mad. Anxiously the Trio and I watched the bus loading up: would it disappear before Rachel’s return? The rotund one seemed not on our side but the black driver, seeing us peering through the door, waved
reassuringly
and shouted. ‘OK!’ Relaxing, Zea commented in a discreet whisper on the fascinating (to her) tyre of bronze flesh protruding between the jacket and trousers of the door-blocker’s uniform.

This short juddery bus ride (adults NP1, children free) was the Trio’s introduction to how the other nine-tenths travel. Zea sat on Rachel, Clodagh sat on me, Rose stood in the tightly packed aisle unable to see out but as ever uncomplaining. Nor could I see much; the bulky man beside me was embracing a large sack of (judging by the rattle) empty bottles and Clodagh obscured the view ahead. Approaching a junction, our neighbours chorused, ‘Siboney! Siboney!’ – for our benefit. Out in the fresh air Zea asked, ‘Why doesn’t Cuba make more buses?’

A mile-long tarred cul-de-sac led from the junction to the sea, winding between forested ridges and level scrubland where large piebald pigs rooted vigorously. Only two horse-buses broke the deep silence. Zea loitered to
study tiny black crabs in a stagnant roadside creek, then trotted to catch up, tripped on loose gravel – and we all had to pause to commiserate about grazed knees.

A garish new wayside notice briefly alarmed us: HOLIDAY VILLAGE – VILLA TOURISTICA. But this proved to be a local aspiration far from the agreeable reality of wonky wooden trestle tables and benches under a tattered awning overlooking a mile-long crescent of beach – half-stony, half-sandy, uncluttered by ‘amenities’, fringed by royal palms, sheltered to the east by sheer black cliffs.

Grandmotherhood can induce character change. Although emphatically not a beach person, I thoroughly enjoyed that day. The Trio were ecstatic, emerging at frequent intervals from the clear green sea to report on the marine life seen through their goggles, then being constructive with sand, then underwater again, then shell collecting, then back to the sea, then climbing the low, strangely contorted sea-grape trees. These, scattered along the beach close to the wavelets, provided the only shade. (That evening I wrote in my journal: ‘For how much longer will Siboney survive in its simplicity as a naturally beautiful place of sea, sand, shells and silence?’)

We had the
playa
to ourselves until two taxi-loads of university students arrived on an end-of-exams excursion, radiating
joie de vivre
, frolicking on the sand, playing waterpolo, swimming so far out that Zea almost panicked on their behalf. ‘Will they be able to swim back? Who can rescue them?’

I was alone when two young English-speakers joined me, introducing themselves with an attractive mix of shyness (the age gap?) and that unbumptious self-confidence which I was beginning to recognise as a common Cuban trait. Rene was white, Luis black, both were medical students in their final year. First came the standard questions – ‘Which is your country? You like Cuba? You stay how long? You have self-drive car? You like our beer? Now in this month Ireland is all snow?’ Then followed, ‘Your grand-daughters are beautiful! Where is your daughter’s husband? She is beautiful too, why does he let her away to Cuba?’

When it was my turn I asked, ‘Will you specialise? How will you choose your first job? Or does the government place you?’

Yes, as graduates they would go where they were told to go. Both had already volunteered to serve abroad in the Henry Reeves Brigade – but that was away in the future, to qualify they must have ten years experience.

‘So we’ll be thirty-three,’ said Rene, ‘and probably married and sensible.’

‘That means,’ said Luis, ‘we must find wives also wanting to join the Brigade.’

Rene laughed, slapped his friend on a powerful naked shoulder and said, ‘You’re lucky, you’ve found her already!’

Luis looked bashful, then glanced around and pointed to a lithe mulatta doing her
ti’ chi
exercises with three friends. ‘There she is, a paediatrician by next year, very much wanting to work in Africa. We’ll have two babies, then leave them with our parents. Where we go won’t be healthy for children.’

That slightly threw me: would Mum be as happy as Dad if separated from her young for so long? Well, maybe so – Cuba’s Revolution has bred people with unusual mind-sets.

Rene and Luis boasted about Cuba’s contribution to healthcare in remote deprived regions. WHO, they asserted, sends fewer doctors to such areas. (I checked on that: it’s true.) Their expressions hardened as they recalled Hurricane Katrina and the US authorities’ ignoring of Cuba’s offer to send emergency medical teams to New Orleans. ‘But we got thanking messages from a few victims,’ said Rene. ‘Thanking us for
wanting
to help them.’ ‘Mostly from black victims,’ added Luis. ‘They suffered worst, like always in the States.’

Rene said, ‘As we’re talking here having fun in the sun, hundreds of Cubans are freezing up in the Himalayas where that earthquake hit. The Muslim women are pleased, we’ve so many women doctors – their men won’t let other men go near them. We know Pakistan’s government works for the
Yanquis
but you can’t blame poor people far up in high mountains for that!’

I asked, ‘Why is this brigade named Henry Reeves?’

‘Because Fidel’s not anti-American,’ Rene swiftly replied. ‘He’s not hating ordinary people who must live under criminal governments.’

Luis was more explicit. ‘Henry Reeves came from the States in 1869 with other young Americans, to fight with us against Spain. He fought for seven years, got many times badly wounded, kept on fighting, died in a battle. You can see his name on a monument in Havana. Fidel wants us to remember Americans like him. And we do. Tourists from the States all say they feel welcome. They see we don’t think they’re bad because their government punishes the Revolution. We pity them. And we like the way they trust us, not listening to propaganda saying “communist Cubans hate Americans!” Like Rene said, Fidel tells us
people
are different from
governments.
That day those twin towers were hit, before sunset thousands of Cubans donated blood for New Yorkers.’

The young men offered to show us around the university next morning and suggested 10.00 a.m. But they broke our appointment. Elsewhere, I
was to have a few similar experiences with young Cubans spontaneously eager to befriend the foreigner, then thinking better of it – perhaps because someone in authority would disapprove?