The Streets of Old Havana

                                                                                       

Hemingway's Home above Havana

      Timothy, the owner of an African American bookstore in Baldwin Hills, and I walked past an outdoor market on the streets of Old Havana. We spotted Bernie, a friend in our group, tussling with a street vendor, an old Cuban woman. Looked like they were having a problem communicating. Bernie spoke English and the woman Spanish. Neither understood the other. I stepped closer and watched Bernie bargain over a Che t-shirt, the woman tugging at one end and Bernie at the other, stretching Che’s face into an undignified pose. 

     “Bernie,” I said. “What are you doing?”

     He spun around, dark skin, shades of his African ancestors, and without hesitation, said, “Tell her I’ll buy three for ten dollars. She wants fifteen for three.”

     “Bernie, think about it. Two weeks ago, you were collecting aspirin, face cream, toothpaste, all that good stuff as gifts for these folks. Now you’re fighting an old lady over five bucks.”

     A sheepish grin crossed his face. Then he hardened again, maybe thinking of his hardscrabble life in Compton before earning his Ph. D. “Yeah, man. But this here’s business,” he said, flatly, before finally settling on twelve dollars.

     Timothy and I walked down the potholed streets, deeper into the barrios, away from the tourists and congested boulevards. “Man,” Timothy said, “This is like life in the 50s instead of the 90s.”

     We were surrounded by hard-living and sacrifice, men hustling bike parts in alleyways, a guy with greasy hands pulling a timing chair out of an old Chevy, and women trading fruits and vegetables. Outside their first-floor apartments, young girls dipped the tips of their old brooms into pails of water and swept the cracked marble stoops.

     Grisela, who lectured us on life in Cuba, told us on bad days, there would be no water, often no electricity, even the toilets would stop working. She didn't want to get more graphic than that. Some artists were accused of criticising the government and their works were censured. Others were fearful and stayed in their homes, but they understood, Cuba was barely emerging from the “special period,” a tough time after the Soviets pulled out, took their resources, technology, and money. The U.S. clamped down harder on its embargo. Yet, everywhere, we heard laughter, music, and energetic voices. The kids, teenagers, and adults calling from the apartment balconies down to the street below. 

     We entered stores and watched women jabbering. I translated, and from what I could catch of their machinegun-rapid Spanish, told Timothy they were complaining about whatnot while they purchased whatever goods were available on the near-empty shelves. In neighborhood plazas, we saw young girls in frilly, orange, yellow, and green dresses, preparing for a party. Three kids passed us, as they pulled at cotton candy. On one corner two boys knelt on a sidewalk nailing metal skates to a two-by-four, making a skateboard.

     I said, “That’s how we did it when I was a kid.”

     “Us too,” Timothy answered. “American kids today don’t want it if it ain’t bought at Toys ‘R Us.”

     The humidity was taking its toll. We were both drenched. We heard music coming from the bars across the street from the Capital, what Cubans call El Capitolio, ironically, modeled after the capital in Washington D.C.

     We could feel the fans blow onto the sidewalk through the open doors. We entered a bar and stepped back into time. A woman approached and seated us at a table, overhead-fans blowing like little helicopters, the whirring raising nostalgic emotions from my past as a teenager in Vietnam.

     A salsa band, a buxom African-Cuban woman singing and seven musicians, entertained the tourists. “You notice,” Timothy said. “Since we got here, we haven’t seen a bad musician, not even last night at the carnival. These cats are monster musicians, man.” 

     In the dimly lit bar, as our eyes adjusted, we observed a motley assortment of characters. Two European couples danced in front of the bandstand. We were in Bogart’s Casablanca. A man, a pencil-thin mustache, dressed in a three-piece white suit, white Panama hat, and white pointed shoes, sat at the bar. He smoked a cigarette attached to a long, silver holder. He eyes roamed from table to table, watching everyone who entered and exited. He looked like a caricature from a time long past, Graham Greene’s Saigon.

     Beside us, at a table covered with drinks, a group of men laughed, heartily, and talked loudly, probably Dutch, maybe Danish, their voices fighting the music. One man in faded jeans wore a red bandana over his head, like a pirate. He proudly displayed his muscular tattooed arms under a sleeveless, black Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers t-shirt. A long, thick chain hung from his pocket, biker-style. His friends' attire varied slightly, except for one guy with a black patch over an eye. It was like a movie set, or a scene from Star Wars.

     Timothy nudged me, “What you want to drink, partner?” He ordered a Cuba libre for himself.

     “Let me try a mojito; never had one.”

     In no time, after finishing two more, I was light-headed, “tight.”

     The men at the table next to us began to ask us questions in heavily accented English. They said they shipped their bikes over from Amsterdam. At another table, a large group of men and women, Germans, dressed in more traditional tourist attire, sandals, shorts, and polo shirts. Young Cuban women in skintight dresses sat at the bar. A few moved through the room, eyeing the men.

     After the last song, the band stepped down from the stage, CDs in hand. They circulated among the crowd hawking their music. The lead singer caught my eye. She walked towards us. Up close, she was larger and even more voluptuous. She took a chair and sat at my side, a companion standing behind her.

     She broke into a huge, beautiful smile. It lit her exotic face. "Ah, hijo mijo." she said, seductively. 

     I told her the band sounded great. Wasting no time, her companion asked if Timothy or I would sponsor them on a trip to the U.S. They’d love to travel and play in American clubs. They said all they needed was a letter from a sponsor and a contract from a club owner guaranteeing a job. Did we know any club owners? I was just drunk enough to think I did, but I became nervous and didn’t want to get their hopes up.

     Timothy admitted he didn’t know any club owners, but we’d look into it when we returned home. The musician was pleased when we purchased their CD’s. The two autographed their photos, and the singer wrote a phone number under her name. She leaned across the table and shook Timothy’s hand. She kissed me on the cheek, pressed her enormous bust against my shoulders, stood, and as she walked away, said, “Hasta pronto, carino.”

     We finished our drinks and headed outside, walked a few blocks and stopped to rest at a large park. The traffic was heavy. We needed to get back to the hotel for our group dinner. We hailed a taxi, the heat pressing on us like a hot iron. Behind us, we heard loud voices coming from the large tree-shaded park. It was a group of men, between fifteen and twenty, talking loudly, like they were arguing, as if angry. I walked to the group and listened.

     Two men stood in the middle surrounded by the others. The two debated. They spoke so rapidly I could only catch words like North Korea and its right to defend itself, while the other said something about nuclear weapons and Pandora’s box.

     On the ride back to the hotel, I thought about Grisela, a university professor assigned to assist our group during our stay, a beautiful woman, educated at the Sorbonne. She was from an elite Cuban family, whose patriarch had hated the Batista regime and vowed to ride out the revolution, she'd told us in accented English, “Come hell or high water.”

     I recalled the sound of her voice, her gestures, and the way her light dress swayed when she moved, sophisticated. I had difficulty reconciling her and the Cuba outside my hotel window, classic colonial buildings in various states of decomposition, the mildew, the uncollected trash in the alleys, and passengers hanging on to over-loaded cattle cars pulled by trucks pouring smoke into the air. In a lecture she'd given, I told her I was an American of Mexican descent. She'd answered, “Ah, a Chicano. You know, we Latinos are one.”

     She promised to accompany us the next day to Hemingway's home La Finca Vigia.