Cuba Diaries (6 page)

Concha shows the seating plan at the entrance to the dining room. The first woman into the dining room, wife of the guest of honor, tries to take the seating plan from her, thinking it's some kind of party favor, but Concha holds on. “Oh,” the woman says. Concha smiles slightly, arching one eyebrow.

The first course is served, and each person served digs right in without waiting for anyone else. I don't know whether to hold my ground or not, but eventually I do, waiting for Nick. Some don't put their napkins in their laps. One stands up and reaches across the table to grab the salt. Others spear the pâté on their plates with knives and carry it directly to their mouths. Still others wave their knives around as they talk. One woman, clacking loudly, with her face very near her plate, sucks pâté from her side teeth, clearing the rest with the nail of her pinky.

“
Qué rico!
” (“How rich!” i.e., sumptuous) several of them say, complimenting me on the food.

“
Sí, sí, muy sabroso
” (“Yes, yes, very delicious”), one of the men who has just been waving his knife around says to me, in a honeyed basso profondo. “
Señora, felicidades
. . .” (“Congratulations . . .”). He makes a flourish with his knifeless hand, as though he were doffing a hat.

“You're from the United States?” the high official to my right says. He is very thin, with bad posture and a few strands of hair combed over his baldness. His voice is thin, too, plaintive.

“Have you ever been there?”

“Never,” he says. “They won't
let me
. . .”

“Maybe you will get there some day . . .”

“But the United States, it has this policy, this embargo, it won't
let
Communist ministers like me in. Only to the UN . . .”

“That's really too bad,” I say, “because Cuba is a beautiful country, and the United States is a beautiful country, and I think they would enjoy each other so much.”

He sighs. “I just don't know why they don't
like us
. . .”

“The United States is a very large country, a very vast and complicated country, and there are some people in the United States who are for the embargo, but there are also a lot of people who are against the embargo . . .”

The man to my left is saying something across the table about North Americans.

“The
señora
is North American!” the man to my right, leaning forward, calls to the man to my left.

“The
señora
is North American!” the man to my left repeats. He looks at me. “You can help us! You know Sullivan's wife—you can talk to her!”

Sullivan is the chief officer of the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy, the de facto U.S. ambassador.

“But Sullivan doesn't
have
a wife. He is divorced . . .”

“He has a wife! You should talk to her!”

MIGUEL APPROACHES ME
in the garden after breakfast. “
Mira, señora
. . .” I follow him to where the hose we use for watering the lawn and vegetable garden is lying on the ground. He picks up the end of the hose. It is completely bare. “One of the chauffeurs last night, they stole the attachment for connecting the hose to the sprinkler. It will take much more time to water the garden now.”

“One of the chauffeurs from last night? One of the chauffeurs
of the officials?
”

“
Señora
, when Cubans come, you have to hide things.”

“But people
from the government?
”

Miguel looks at the ground, shaking his head.

“Can you find attachments in Cuba?”

“No.”

“That's why they stole it, then.”

Miguel considers this. He sticks out his lower lip, nodding. “That's why, of course . . .”

Lorena's son is in prison. He was sentenced to ten years in prison when he was eighteen years old. He has already been in prison for three years. Muna hasn't found out yet what he is in for. Lorena goes once a month to visit him.

After Lorena has gone home for the evening, we ask Manuel what Lorena's son did. Manuel shrugs, saying he thought it was just an ordinary crime.

After a minute or two, Manuel returns. He clears his throat. We know what's coming. Manuel has the habit of shuffling his feet and moving one hand, then the other, beyond his ample paunch as he talks, in a kind of sedate cross-country skiing action. “With your permission, there is something I have been meaning to talk to you about . . .”

“Yes, Manuel?”

“I don't want you to think I've been trying to hide anything from you. I, too, have been in prison. For political crimes. After
el triunfo de la revolución
, I didn't agree with the way things were going. I aided some counterrevolutionaries and I was put in jail for nine years. My conviction is here if you would like to read it . . .”

Manuel returns with his conviction on a silver tray.

Manuel, too, says
el triunfo de la revolución
.

SOCIALISMO O MUERTE
(Socialism or death), reads the sign in six-foot-high letters supported by scaffolding over the entrance to a tunnel under the Almendares River.

You see it, you see it, you see it as you drive toward the tunnel, and then you have darkness, as if you have picked death.

We visit a complex of stores for tourists in a newly restored
palacio
just off the Malecón. Tourist buses are parked outside it. We have heard the best store for Che T-shirts is here. Some friends want them.

There are Che T-shirts, there are Camilo Cienfuegos T-shirts, there are
Tropicola T-shirts, there are fringed T-shirts with sleepy-eyed, unrecognizable cartoon characters on them, saying things that you don't understand if they are written in Spanish or that don't make any sense if they are written in English. There are T-shirts with naked women on them, or parts of naked women, saying, “
Yo
♥
Cuba
.”

There is a store selling tapes and CDs; there is a store selling beer, rum, soft drinks, film, and suntan lotion. There is a store selling jewelry, and a store selling leather items. There is a store selling refrigerator magnets of the cathedral and the Hotel Nacional, highly lacquered wooden key holders, rum pourers, cigar holders, and even ashtrays with images of Che and the words
HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE
burned into them with soldering irons. An image of Che's face is in the bottom of each ashtray, so that cigarettes will be stubbed out on his face. There are papier-mâché images of fish, clowns, butterflies, and alligators and of black
rumberas
in long, flouncy dresses with head kerchiefs, with huge behinds and huge lips, smoking cigars. There are African-style masks and statues, macramé bracelets, a $120 Black & Decker sandwich maker, an $85 blender, a $75 crushed-ice maker, a $40 toilet paper holder, playing cards, beaded necklaces . . .

Nick and I stop at the last few items on display. The pink plastic toilet paper holder is out of its box, with the mounting screws taped onto the back of it with yellowed Scotch tape. The Black & Decker sandwich-maker box is crushed and worn on the edges but looks unused.

We are the only people in the store. Nick says, “
Buenos días
,” to the saleswoman behind the counter.

“
Buenos días
,” she says.

“This is a very nice store.”

“Thank you.”

“There are nice things in the store.”

“Yes, there are very nice things in this store.”

There is silence. We've got time on our hands, so Nick says after a while, “This is a store for tourists, isn't it?”

“Yes, for tourists.”

“We're intrigued by the sandwich maker.”

“Intrigued?”

“Is it for tourists?”

“
Sí, claro
.”

“It's for tourists to buy for themselves?”

“Certainly.”

“A tourist comes in here and says to himself, ‘I'm just going to pick up a little one-hundred-twenty-dollar, one-hundred-ten-volt sandwich maker to take back to Düsseldorf to remember Cuba by'?”

She laughs. “Why not? It's something original, isn't it?”

Our container has arrived after two months, and our three days of unpacking are attended by an expert from Bienes Culturales and a veterinarian. We serve them coffee, lunch, more coffee, and Tropicola as they wander for eight hours a day among boxes and growing mountains of Bubble Wrap and newspaper.

The expert from Bienes Culturales is looking for Cuban national treasures.

“Cuban national treasures
coming back
to Cuba
from Southeast Asia?
”

“
Eso es
.” Cuban national treasures, the expert tells me conspiratorially, have been known to come back to Cuba
from all over the world
.

The veterinarian is on the lookout for canned meat.

I tell the veterinarian the family doesn't
like
canned meat. Canned meat has preservatives—carcinogens—in it.

The veterinarian tells me she just has to make sure there isn't any in our shipment.

The Bienes Culturales expert, Betina, hands me her card and, winking, tells me to be sure to ask for her when we move out.

TWO MEN FROM THE
central bank come to make a note of all the jewelry and silver we are bringing into the country. We spread it out on the dining table, silver on one end and jewelry on the other. The list of silver and jewelry we have brought in will be checked, before we leave in a few years' time, against a list of the silver and jewelry we will be taking out of the country.

One man is in his sixties, and the other man is in his thirties. We offer them coffee and Coca-Cola. The older man describes the pieces and measures them while the younger man writes.

“How do you like it here in Cuba?” the older man asks me.

“It is a beautiful country.”

“Are you from X—— as well?”

“No, I am from the United States.”

“The United States?”

“Yes.”

“Hm . . .” He turns over a silver dish. “Does Cuba remind you of the United States? The look of it, I mean. This is what some North Americans tell me . . .”

“Nature is different, and I have only seen Havana, but I am struck by similarities in the urban landscape every day. The design of so many of the houses, the way the streets are laid out, the stores. Americans will be fascinated by this place when they finally do come here. It will remind people my age of the way streets and stores looked in their childhoods. It reminds me of my childhood. The Woolworth's. The coffee shops. I even saw a piece of a Montgomery Ward sign the other day.”

“
El sea me encantó
. . .”

“Sorry?” I don't know what
el sea
is, but he liked it, or literally was enchanted by it.

“
El . . . ¿como se dice in inglés? El
Sea-errs
me encantó, con su catálogo
.”

“Oh, Sears Roebuck.”

“
Eso
es.” He turns to the young man. “If they didn't have it in the store, you could order it from the catalog and it would get here in a few days. I'm telling you, it was like that.” He turns to me: “
Y me encantaron las revistas
, getting them from the United States.
El
National Geographic.
Qué revista tan interesante, tan hermosa
” (“And I loved the magazines . . . What an interesting and beautiful magazine”).

I wait for him to say something else. His eyes mist.

“The
National Geographic
is still there, and it is exactly the same,” I say heartily. “The format hasn't changed. Water?”

“
Sí, por favor
.” He picks up another piece of silver, stares at it. He slaps the young man's arm, clearing his throat. “
Vamos
. A
la pincha, chico
” (“Let's get back to work, kid”).

We finally start Spanish lessons. The director of our children's school has found someone for us, Olga. Olga wears a peasant blouse and a dirndl skirt. She will teach the children first, then Muna, then Nick and me, one hour for each group, two days a week. We tell her the children take Spanish in school, but we want them to have extra Spanish, at home. We say that it should be playful, to hold their interest.

We assess, together with her, what we need to work on. She nods, taking notes.

“But no ideology,” Nick says.

“Of course not,” Olga says, flushing.

“It was the blouse,” Nick says to me later.

It is late April but not terribly hot today. We put the children's bicycles, which arrived in the container, in the back of the Land Cruiser and take them to one of the large, shady squares we have driven by in Miramar. There are busts of Cuban poets in the square. It is shaded with giant ficus trees, and there is a small bandstand in the middle of it.

Thea and Jimmie get on their bikes and start riding enthusiastically. Nick and I walk in the shade of the ficus trees. The cement paths are pulverized in many places, and there are small trash heaps, some of which are smoldering, but they are far enough off the paths. Thea rides ahead of Jimmie until we cannot see her anymore. We climb steps to the bandstand. We see Thea at one side of the square. She has stopped her bike and is waiting for Jimmie. We also see a group of boys, about eight of them, between the ages of ten and fourteen, moving toward Thea and her bike, stopping behind bushes on the way, and looking at Jimmie's bike at the same time.

“
Hijos de puta!
” (“Sons of a whore!”) Nick yells in the loudest voice possible. The boys scatter. Thea and Jimmie, their mouths agape, watch the boys scattering. Then, in a loud but casual voice, Nick calls to Thea and Jimmie, “Hey kids, ride back to us. Let's see how fast you can do it, come on . . .”