Cuba Diaries (48 page)

It's not just European men striving to get
negras de pelo
out of Cuba, I realize; it's all kinds of foreigners wanting to show all kinds of Cubans how the rest of the world
is
. It's also so that they can know how Cuba is for us.

I'm beginning to have fantasies about seeing Lorena see the United States, too.

WE HAVE DINNER WITH
an X——ian who is restructuring a hotel in Habana Vieja. Nick talks about how tired we are. The X——ian talks about how tired he is. He says the Cubans who are working with him are insisting on putting the hotel bathroom's sinks, tubs, and toilets on the same waste pipe. He asks us to imagine what it will be like when the pipes back up.

Nick says that for every business that gives up, another one will come in and try, because it's Cuba.

STILL NO DHL ENVELOPE
, but Nick's secretary tells me that she called DHL, and the envelope is in Havana and will be arriving later today. It has taken nine days to get the envelope via DHL from the States, but that is about average because it has to come through Mexico.

JUANA'S CANCÚN-MIAMI
and U.S.-X—— tickets are delivered by DHL.

Juana comes over to drop off her passport, which we need to buy the rest of the tickets.

I tell Juana that I am worried about what it says on her exit permit, that she can only be out of the country for thirty days.

Juana says that she can be out of the country for eleven months (if she is out for more than eleven months, her house will be requisitioned), but that for every month beyond the first month that she is out of the country, she has to pay a certain sum of money to the Cuban Consulate in whatever country she is in. If she does not pay, she cannot return to Cuba. She has to pay $150 per month to the Cuban Consulate in the United States for every month she is in the United States, but it's less in X—— and Spain.

I tell Juana I knew that a Cuban had to pay to
get out
of Cuba, but I didn't know, until now, that a Cuban had to pay to
stay out
of Cuba as well. I tell Juana that we will pay the monthly payments for her to stay out of Cuba, because it is for
us
that she is traveling. Juana tells me that she forbids me to pay it—she absolutely forbids me. She says she will not come with us if I pay it.

NICK'S SECRETARY GOES TO
buy Juana's X——-Madrid-Havana return ticket and, once that is done, to get Juana's and our Mexicana ticket from Havana to Cancún and Juana's charter return ticket from Miami to Havana, which she will not use but is still required to have in order to be able to purchase her ticket from Havana to Cancún.

I wait by the phone all morning.

Nick's secretary returns, mission accomplished.

When you expect the worst, sometimes things work out all right.

Nick says he is beginning to believe we are leaving.

I will tell Juana this afternoon what I have not been wanting to tell her before we had the tickets: that in order for her to get a visa for the United States I had to promise to the consul at the U.S. Interests Section—I really did—that once we are in the United States I will not pay her the $350 per month I am paying her now, but a regular salary for someone doing a job like hers in the United States, which is $900.

I go to Miguel's house to see his wife, who is in bed with her leg up, following the second breaking of her femur and third surgery.

I follow Miguel's car to a neighborhood that is a ten-minute drive from our house. It is a tree-lined street, with rows of two-story houses with barred, gated carports. On the gate is a sign indicating that their home is the site of the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.

“You are the head of the local CDR?” I ask Miguel.

“It helps us get along,” Miguel says.

Miguel, his wife, and their two children live on the top floor. Miguel's brother Ysidro and his wife and two children live on the ground floor. Miguel and Ysidro's mother and father live in an apartment in back. Miguel's car is locked in the carport alongside his brother's motorcycle.

“We have to lock them in now because of all the robberies,” Miguel explains.

Ysidro's apartment is light and spacious. Salsa pours out of Ysidro's Sony stereo system. I tour Ysidro's apartment, making appreciative comments: it really is a nice apartment. Ysidro, his wife, their children, Miguel, his children, and Estrella follow me as I go.

“You have a very nice setup here. Congratulations.”

“We help one another,” Ysidro says.

“That is very important. Not all families can do that.”

I am near the door to Estrella's apartment. “You don't mind my looking, do you?”

“
Señora, por favor
,” Estrella says, holding the door open for me.

“I am curious. I have known you all these years.”

Estrella and her husband's apartment is smaller but also pleasant, with furniture that looks new.

I walk upstairs to Miguel's apartment. “These are the stairs she fell on last time,” Miguel explains. Miguel's apartment is smaller than Ysidro's apartment, but it is full of light and pleasant. Miguel shows me the electric range they were able to repair with the burners I brought them from the United States.

Miguel's wife lies on a white sheet in a room containing a bed and an armoire. She is wearing cutoffs and an embroidered blouse I brought her from Mexico. A straw purse, which I gave her on another occasion, is pinned on the wall. The blouse and the straw purse are the only decorations in the room. There is a stainless-steel brace on her thigh, through which the scar is visible.
It is a neat scar and there are no bruises. From the brace, anchors go through the flesh of her thigh to the bone to keep it in place. “They are trying this new method now, with this brace on the outside of the leg,” Miguel explains. “They don't know how long she will have to stay like this.”

Miguel's wife answers my questions in quiet monosyllables, hardly raising her voice above a murmur.

“She is embarrassed that she cannot get up from the bed, that she cannot offer you anything,” Estrella whispered to me before we left our house to come here.

“It is good you have a light, pleasant room to stay in,” I say to Miguel's wife, taking a
cafecito
off a tray brought by Estrella from her apartment.

“We are very lucky,” she murmurs.

“You
are
lucky,” I say.

The official dining area of the Palacio de la Revolución is beautiful in a 1960s-seat-of-power-in-the-tropics kind of way, with large islands of space on the ground floor that are not floored with marble, but filled with minijungles of native plants. Nick and I and the president of Energy Consulting International sit at a large table among the minijungles with Fidel Castro and twenty other people—some foreigners, but mostly high-ranking members of the
nomenklatura
.

The president of Energy Consulting International says to Fidel that he doesn't agree with his belief that globalization is a bad thing.

There is a shifting as the high-ranking members of the
nomenklatura
who have sunk in their seats prepare to push themselves back up. They wait to see if Fidel will keep talking, but Fidel stays silent. The members who have sunk push themselves up halfway.

The president of Energy Consulting International says that globalization will undoubtedly cause trauma and dislocation to many populations in the beginning, but that in the end it is a good thing because it will reduce tensions between nations and it will create jobs.

“How will it create jobs?” Fidel asks.

“It will create jobs in the service sector.”

“How so?”

“Well, for example . . . even now, because of the computer, many North American banks no longer keep their records in the United States. They keep
them in Bangladesh. They can keep them in Bangladesh and use Bangladeshi workers, because in Bangladesh, they speak English.”

There is a murmur. The members of the
nomenklatura
who had sunk down in their seats are now all the way up. I have never heard that American banks are doing this. I do not know this because I don't read current magazines and newspapers. Judging from the rapid adjustments to the expressions on the faces of the members of the
nomenklatura
around the table, it looks like
they
don't know this, either, but are trying to look like they do.

Fidel pushes out his lower lip, then leans forward and silently checks the faces of the members of the
nomenklatura
on one side of him and on the other, his eyebrows raised.

There is silence. “We should all learn English!” Fidel declares merrily, slapping the edge of the table. “Here we were, learning Russian all those years, and while we were learning Russian, the Russians were learning English!”

We don't know what to say to Roberto. It has never happened to us before, to not be able to find a job for someone. We did try. There were the little suspicions about him, but they were never substantiated, and we are sure that if the salary were good enough—say, $150 a month—the little skims here and there (which may or may not have happened) would really not happen anymore.

“Good luck,” we say.

There are tears in his eyes.

We watch them through the back window of the car in which José is driving us to the airport until we cannot see them anymore—Manuel, Miguel, Concha, Danila, Estrella, Lorena, and Bloqueo, who is squirming in Lorena's arms, for Lorena is holding one of Bloqueo's paws and waving it at us.

Will Manuel and his
mujer's
house be requisitioned for the
nomenklatura?
Will Miguel's wife's leg get better? Will Concha's son motor to Cuba in his
yate?
Will Danila's learning-disabled son be discharged from the army? Will Estrella and her husband live long lives in their apartment? Will Lorena's son get out of jail? Will Bloqueo be petted and loved by those who come after us and die a fat cat at sixteen?

I want people coming out of Cuba to keep telling me about them always, for I am going to miss them until the end of my days.

Juana, the children, and I are in the Cancún airport. Nick is on his way to X—— to get our apartment ready for us there. We go to the newsstand. I buy comic books in English and in Spanish for the children, and the
Herald-Tribune, Time
, the
Economist
, and
Vogue
for me. Juana buys
El País
and
El Nuevo Herald
.

We go to the gift shop. It's just a plain old Mexican gift shop, but everything looks wonderful, like it always does when you've just left Cuba. Juana and I talk about how we want to buy everything in the store. I tell her the impulse subsides after a few days. The important thing is to get over the first wave of wanting to buy. I tell her we have to buy a little something, though, to appease the wave. I buy hand cream for myself, some sandals for the children, and a key chain in the form of a Mexican sombrero for Juana. Juana buys a key chain in the form of a beach ball and gives it to me.

We go to the coffee shop. We order tacos even though we are not hungry and eat them all. We drink iced tea.

We walk to the gate for the airplane to Miami. The children sit in chairs, absorbed in their comic books. Juana is reading
El País
. I wait for the “I'm not in Cuba!” feeling to come—a kind of singing and running in my mind over a mountaintop, like Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music
, only it should be
more
this time, with alpine winds and fluffy clouds and hoards of liberated children on either side of me, because we're not going back and because Juana is with us—but it does not come. It has always come before, in Nassau, Miami, Cancún, and even European airports, as soon as I got off the plane from Cuba. I wait for it and wait for it; it has always come so easily before. This time it's like being on a swing with my legs pumping, but the swing won't go.

It will come, the “I'm not in Cuba!” feeling, but maybe not until we get to the States, or to X——, in the fall. It will come, but not like Julie Andrews.

We board the plane to Miami.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED AND
not changed since we were in Cuba.

Though they have been proposed many times, there are still no provisions for the creation of small and medium private enterprises or independent trade unions. The salaries of professionals such as doctors and architects and of Cubans in other peso-paying jobs continue to be a small fraction of what is made by Cubans in contact with tourists and dollars. Against rising crime, policemen's salaries have been increased four times. This has led to an enlargement of the police force and a still more visible police presence on the streets.

Until September 11, 2001, the economy was growing in all sectors but sugar. The number of tourists was expected to rise in 2001 to 1,750,000, to the point that the Union of Artists and Writers worried that the ratio of tourists to natives in some cities would turn integral elements of
cubanidad
, such as Santeria rites, into nothing more than sanitized shows geared to tourists. The events of September 11 have drastically reduced tourism to Cuba and Cuba's economic prospects; a subsequent devastating hurricane has delivered a further blow. It is not know at this time when Cuba's economy will recover.

Terrorists and natural disasters, however, do not affect the increasing worldwide popularity of Cuban art and music, which continue to be Cuba's most effective and posititve means for gaining international recognition.

Independent tourism in the hinterlands continues to be a daunting experience, though Havana sprouts new, well-run hotels. Punishing taxes have caused many
paladares
to close, but those that remain are ever fancier.