The Rose & Thorn
a literary e-zine

Cuba, Cuba: Cuba qué bella es
(words to a popular song)

Forenote: Even before the actual travel begins––-in fact the very night before––-you’ll find yourself forced to venture out into the shops on a frigid Christmas Eve in your home town, to search for sunglasses because your puppy ate yours. You’ll find that they no longer make your favorite ones.

Your plane from the Mexican peninsula, Havana-bound, inspires shaky confidence with its Cyrillic inscription over the entrance portal: Cut here during emergency. It doesn’t help that just before takeoff, a visible smoke-like vapor suddenly rises from the beleaguered carpet and swirls around the feet of all those seated; your first thought is that the plane is on fire. Panicked, you get the attention of a flight attendant, who laughs and brings you a plastic cup of rum. (And you were in a bad mood to start with, since in spite of the ticket agent kindly confirming your vegetarian meal, no meal is in fact served.) An unseen voice announces over the loudspeaker in garbled English what sounds clearly like “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the Communism, thank you.” The interior of the aircraft is shoddy; suspicious strips of metal are peeling away from the sides and most of the seat backs are in a state of permanent recline. The engines sound much louder than they should. Guaranteed, the passengers will clap upon landing.

And then the adventure, always the adventure, the dread upon awakening at the hostel, of The Foreign Shower: What will it be today? Will it work at all? Will the water be cold, the way it usually is, and the way that sultry, mildew-happy Cuba itself never is? Will the Russian water heater suddenly, surprisingly, work too well, producing a scalding, fear-inducing stream (er, trickle)? (You sometimes can get hot water—however, it will be very hot and unfortunately you cannot mix it with the cold.) Is it possible (oh, hope springing eternal!) that today there might be enough water pressure to rinse out the shampoo, or will it be like yesterday, where only three of the tiny holes in the shower head functioned, or the day before yesterday, where the handyman from next door arrived to shut off the water to the building just as you’d worked up a Mr. Bubble-worthy lather?

The polyester-sheeted bed may be sprung and uncomfortable, but it beats the eight hours spent in the Cancún airport starting at 5 a.m., in those cruel seats designed specifically to prevent an exhausted body from achieving the horizontal.

And always, always, somewhere in the background, there will be plastic flowers—many, many plastic flowers--and a Muzaked Abba song playing.

The hostels are oddly contradictory places. The bathroom is spotless but the toilet doesn’t work (and how you miss toilet seats and free toilet paper when you’re here in Cuba—oh luxury, Imperialist luxury!). The bathroom is fairly clean except for the mirror, which offers incontrovertible evidence that Windex has been unavailable in Cuba since the Bay of Pigs. The bathroom is clean, but the soap is furry with the previous Danish guest’s pubic hair. The toilet works fine for two days, then stops flushing on the last morning of your stay, precisely after you very much needed it to flush. You may be fortunate enough to experience a flushing mechanism, which consists of a bottle cap attached cleverly to a shoelace. Your room will have a fan, which when turned on, does not work. When you call in the señora, she will shrug: “Yeah, a couple of years ago one of the tourists burned it out. They plugged it into the wrong outlet.” And the reading lamp, you ask? “Oh, the bulb on that went a few months ago.” Replacements are inquired after but never delivered, and you will spend the night self-basting with your crabby partner whom the overhead light is keeping from sleep. You will be given a key to your room, but when you try to open the lock with said key, the proprietress will inform you, matter-of-factly, that that lock doesn’t work and you must enter your room via the bathroom, at which one arrives after a brief and slightly shocking tour through the kitchen. On the morning you finally check out, backpacks bulging on your shoulders, you’ll receive a heartfelt kiss on the cheek and a shy request to carry a letter to a loved one in the United States: “Could you possibly see your way to putting a stamp on this and posting it? See, don’t worry––the envelope doesn’t say anything about Cuba.”

Cuba itself is an endlessly contradictory place. “Colorado Springs” reads the T-shirt of a man who has never left the island, while bewildered U.S. frat boys (perhaps somehow lost en route to Acapulco?) sport tees with legends written in Spanish: “Alcohol abuse blurs the vision!” Tourists ride in relative comfort in taxis, while locals squeeze into “camels”—semi-truck engines hauling enormous metal people-carriers, which resemble garbage trucks and can hold a couple of hundred people. The pension owners casually admit that they are using the Internet––a potentially jailable crime––but why did their new laptop become so slow when they installed McAfee? Illegally, the house señora—likely with an advanced degree in finance, or perhaps law—who makes your bed every day will change your dollars into local currency, thus helping you avoid the long, sweaty bank lines, so that her second cousin who hopes to emigrate to Venezuela can save up dollar bills. The most unassuming man killing time on the street, smoking and vacantly watching the passersby—one of the few entertainments available—is a doctor; the dreadlocked, loitering Afro-Cuban and his Caucasian father, well-known painters. “What do you like to paint?” you ask as, with a power-of-suggestion craving, you bum a cigarette, though you sneer at those who smoke in the States. “Whatever sells,” is the answer.

The Hotel Nacional, in its splendor (approximately $200 a night for a simple room), seems to belie its state-run nature. Until, that is, you look more closely: the bathrooms are 1-star; the staff surly, the women in reception dressed in somber dark skirt uniforms with awkward thick-heeled shoes.

Russian tourists abound in Havana; they are easily identified by their total lack of fashion sense. For women, dyed hair is a must, and there are exactly three colors to choose from: a white gone yellow with age, a greasy black, or rust with maroon overtones. Also de rigueur are polyester pashminas, open-toed white vinyl sandals, and the communist equivalent of Lee Press-On Nails (for hands and feet) accented with tiny plastic glued-on beads. Blue eye shadow with false eyelashes continues to remain a popular look. For men this season, the trend is toward tiny black stretchy underpants worn in public with faux Lauren polo shirts and flip-flops.

The permanently island-confined citizens know more about geography, world history, and current events than you ever will. School is free—at every level, all the time, even the university, even the best universities in the nation. “If you don’t study here,” you’ll hear from all the residents, “it’s because you don’t want to.” Everyone is literate—well, okay, a mere 99% of the population—even the toothless old woman dancing salsa in the street, taking time off from selling paper cones of peanuts.

Everyone can read, but the choices are mostly limited to monochrome-cover paperbacks in praise of la revolución. On television, Brazilian soap operas compete with “the bearded one’s” three-hour speeches and Terminator movies unsettlingly dubbed: “Hasta la vista, bebé.” You can’t fail to notice the television, as it is playing at the loudest possible volume in every residence from late afternoon to midnight.

No one is starving. No one is homeless. No one goes out in public with dirty—or even old––clothes. Women get their hair done. Yet somehow, everyone is…well, poor (except for those mysterious souls driving new Audis). No one has an email address because, of course, it’s illegal for the average Cuban to use the Internet; however, the proprietress whose cookware resembles dinged-up ancient tin camping equipment has a shiny silver laptop in that little room you glanced into by accident. If you stop in at Julia Valdés’ art studio in Old Havana and decide to purchase one of her lovely multimedia abstracts, you will be directed to wire money to a secret account in Chile, and your painting will arrive via Mexico. Light bulbs stronger than 25 watts and toilet seats are scarcer here than permission-to-travel visas, or vegetarians.

When you explain to the restaurant staff in great detail that you do not consume animal products in any form––no red meat, no chicken, no fish, no meat stock in the rice, no chicken broth please––they nod understandingly, then bring you your rice and beans glistening with bacon grease and accented by shiny chunks of flesh and gristle that they didn’t bother to pick out in the kitchen after preparation. You’ll waste entire days trudging through the noise, pollution, and sucking Havana humidity tracking down the five veggie restaurants listed in all the latest guidebooks, only to find them reincarnated (literally) as specialty purveyors of osso bucco. When you return your plate of fried rice in the sole vegetarian restaurant still extant (dripping plates of pork available just there, on the right of the buffet) due to the stringy bits of fried egg scattered amongst the grains, the waitress will apologize and bring you the other kind of rice instead—the one with the egg in it.

The taxi driver speaks impeccable English, which he taught himself, along with the fluent Russian he learned in school, and the perfect German and French he’s picked up along the way. Everyone wants to leave the country, but the few that do desperately miss their tropical clime, their relatives left behind, their unhurried, easy way of life back in Havana, where toting their rations of eggs and white-flour buns back to their decaying buildings may be the most exciting thing that happens all day. “My sister left,” you’ll hear. “Miami. She wants to come back. She and her husband say they have to work too hard to pay for rent. My brother’s boy, in Houston, he had to come back because of a medical condition that was too expensive for him to get treated in the United States. My neighbor’s number came up in the citizenship lottery and she was so excited. She decided to come back only five months into the trial year. The man who lives on the corner went, and came back—he didn’t want to work.” Though previously you were familiar only with the scenario of expatriate, usually Miami-based Cubans wiring money to relatives back home, now you’ll also learn the story of the aged single mother in Havana who must illegally rent out part of her apartment to send money to her daughter who lives in Peru; the grandchildren can’t possibly attend the dangerous public schools there. “They’re so white,” she frets, “and they’re on the streets there with Indians. They’d be kidnapped if they didn’t have a private driver to take them to school.”

On a brief stroll through your average neighborhood, you’ll see many buildings that in the United States might possibly be condemned, or at least slated for demolition or serious remodeling. These structures house surprising enterprises: “Teaching hospital” reads the sign on the place with no window screens or even glass; “Union of Canned Vegetables” reads another, mystifyingly.

Political exhortations—encouragements, really—pop up everywhere on billboards, posters, and words on walls. They give off a wistful, almost sad, whiff of desperation: “We will continue to defend our system! We will never stop hoping for The Five to return! The spirit of Che Guevara will lead us into the future to defeat the Imperialists! United, if we try our best, we can persevere with our plans!” And even, pathetically, “Our little island nation is ours!” and “We’re doing well!” Though most older people are fidelistas, the impression, judging by such slogans, is that the young people here may have to be convinced. Occasionally, though much less frequently, are seen quite detailed warnings about the United States, e.g.: “Bush’s plan: He’ll take away our homes, our schools, our history, and everything good we have built.”

If you were Cuban in this “classless” society, you would find yourself prohibited, physically barred, from mixing with non-Cubans, those who might bring new ideas, different ideologies. You would not be allowed to set foot into even the lobbies of nice hotels; you would be prevented from ever laying eyes on the most beautiful beaches in your own country, and find yourself in trouble with the authorities if you were even to consider giving foreigners a ride in your car or offering them, in friendship, a meal or an afternoon chat in the rocking chairs on your terrace. Even those who legally provide accommodations for tourists in their homes (the most popular type of lodging, casas particulares) must be careful; the neighbors are watching. The proprietress’s husband may sit down with you at lunch for a five-minute political discussion, but just as it’s getting juicy, “Ssshh,” he’ll whisper, “here comes my stepson. His dad is military.” In the next place you stay, the proprietress will admit to you, sotto voce, that when she takes her lodgers’ visas to the registry office, as she must always do within 24 hours, there will be at least one officer who will later, and possibly incognito, come by the house at odd hours to make sure that things aren’t getting too cozy.

What will happen after Fidel? It’s the question on everyone’s lips, whether tourist or island inhabitant. Civil unrest is feared, permission to travel hoped for.

Street dogs—all variations on a theme from their dachsund-mix Adam and wire-haired terrier Eve, trot by on individual missions, their ribs often surprisingly invisible thanks to the kindness of locals who place uneaten portions of congrí, beans and rice, directly onto the sidewalk for that very purpose. Puppies who have yet to learn their lessons, which stray from the safety of the pitted sidewalks, are gently nudged back from the path of astoundingly old and patched-up cars that cough by. Cats, hipbones sharp and eyes infected, fare less well with the carbohydrate-rich leavings.

It’s all negotiable. Don’t like the 5-peso fare quoted by the driver? Wave him on and demand a 3-peso fare from the next one. (You may or may not convince him.) The man taking the bus tickets to go to the provincias (this means pretty much anywhere outside of Havana) insists you are too late, you will miss this bus, the only one today—because the lady in the other building refused to appear at her voucher/ticket exchange counter. The ticket-taking man says don’t even try it now, it’s too late, you can give up on getting on this bus, why didn’t you exchange your voucher for tickets in time, and anyway even if you had done so, as you should have, there are no seats left, in spite of the reservation you made days ago. Once the ticket-voucher-exchange lady is at last located, you return triumphant, running, perspiring, bearing the coveted paper stubs. You thrust them at the ticket-taking man, this time deciding to ignore his gloomy prognostications, and you board the bus to find ten yawningly empty seats.

In the bus station, amazingly, you rub shoulders with actor Roberto Benigni, who thanks you profusely in a British accent for the compliment, as, he explains, his visage is more often likened to that of Mr. Bean. You protest that he bears no resemblance whatsoever to that unfortunate star of English slapstick, but rather to he of Down By Law “we all scream for ice cream” fame. At your continued suspicious expression, “La vita è bella,” he laughs with a shrug. His spontaneous Italian accent is quite convincing, and you will continue to surreptitiously scrutinize his features up till the minute you board your bus. You’re tempted to join his arranged illegal private-taxi-driver party to Viñales in order to spy on him till you catch him revealing his true identity, in spite of the fact that it took you the past three days to get your ómnibus reservation confirmed for the other side of the island.

Leaving noisy, bustling Havana is a relief. Red-flowered trees, pink bougainvillea, shiny, deep-green mango leaves and sugarcane waving in the humid breezes rest the eyes after the crumbling concrete and rusting steel of the city. Of course, this is so far being enjoyed from the comfort of an air-conditioned luxury bus containing only those able to pay the $25 charge, i.e., foreigners, i.e., you, a bus whose only fault is the pervasive aroma of the Dutch guy’s fungusy feet at your side.

Ah, but there is one thing that will be sorely missed in Havana—Coppelia. (The name alone excites taste buds in the know.) This place is a cultural institution, a whitewashed giant-meringue-like construction in the center of the Vedado district, which serves truly excellent ice cream to a globally unparalleled 30,000 persons per day. In summer the line wraps around the entire block; ice cream is the reward for the two-hour wait in the sizzling sun. In spite of your best resolutions, you will find yourself inventing the most creative reasons why you should walk in that direction each and every day (not that your partner needs much encouragement)—after all, perambulating along that block is the shortcut to the Capitolio on the opposite side of the city, right?

Be wise, however, about the hour you choose to time your entrance into Coppelia. Like pulling off a successful jailbreak in reverse, you may find it advantageous to loiter for a time around the edges of the place until the moment is right. The Coppelia cops who stand guard at every entrance around this creamy, sweet, city block, in the afternoon will look at your outsiders’ faces and point you toward the stainless steel counter where two scoops of ice cream cost $3.50. Ah, but in the late evenings you will often be successful sauntering past the same Coppelia guards, being especially cautious to avoid eye contact; you must try hard to present a mask of false courage (your mouth is counting on you). Though perhaps it is not so much your attempt at projecting an outward confidence as the fact that the ice-cream cops are tired and just want to go home. Or out for a mojito or three.

Nothing in Havana is as amusing as the vagaries of Coppelia. The day’s flavors are listed outside each entrance on a whiteboard, and guidebooks mouthwateringly describe the 26 flavors, but when you sit down and ask for the “salad” (5 scoops in a plastic bowl for fifty cents, which seem to be consumed shockingly fast—and watch with fascination as each day that you return to Coppelia, your partner will order two “salads,” then three, then aspire to a fourth, until finally you put a stop to the insanity), there is a very good chance that only coconut will come. Tomorrow too. And the next day. Even native habaneros ask, hopefully, for mango or fruta-bomba flavor (“papaya” in Havana is quite a naughty word), or even the elusive chocolate, only to receive a bored headshake from the red-aproned server. Fortunately, the coconut ice cream is delicious, as delicious in fact as all the other flavors are rumored to be.

You are certain, as you ponder your final week ahead in Cuba, that there are certain images absorbed from your sticky meanderings along random streets that will never be erased from your brain. The one-toothed Chihuahua with the under bite. The woman who, in passing, blew kisses at you because she loved your sunglasses (Ha, you thought, you should’ve seen the old ones!) The smile of the little girl who accepted your gift of a candy-colored pencil, though she admitted seriously, when pressed, that as she was only three, she did not in fact know yet how to write. And the fat old man in his living room, front door open to the street, rocking away in his chair in front of the television, eyes glued to the screen and hands busy with a huge electric razor, shaving off his armpit hair.

You’ll go snorkeling on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, your guide hired under-the-table, of course. You’ll have a good time and admire the neon-blue fish, and hold a sea star gently in your palm just beneath the waves, in spite of the wind and your generally disgruntled mood, having been awakened at a too-early hour by the screaming of a pig being butchered below your balcony. “Perhaps a million pigs will die today,” says your snorkel guide, Pedro, with a smile. He will help you out of your wetsuit, politely accept your cash, and escort you back home in the illegal taxi (his friend’s cousin’s ’56 Chevy). He shakes your hand and kisses your cheek. “Now,” he says, “I must go home and keel the pork.” That night, intoxicated by cancháncharas—alcoholic beverages with honey—and the fever of the crowd gathered to usher in 2007 with the salsa band in the public square, you will join the multitude in shouting, at midnight, “¡Viva Fidel!” The Italians next to you, with whom you have been chatting for the last two hours, will be appalled.

The next day, New Year’s Day and a day for new things, you will ask in the restaurant for them to please put any vegetables they might have on your mini-pizza. It will be the first time you have ever tried pickle pizza. It won’t be as bad as it sounds.

In five grimy hours you will disembark in the faded town of Trinidad and already you are wondering how much meat will find its way into your next rice and beans, and whether you can possibly stomach another banana––and what the shower will be like in the next casa particular. Oh, and what flavor ice cream Coppelia will be serving when you return for your last night in Havana. You’re keeping your fingers crossed for chocolate.

About Author:

Jala Pfaff holds an M.A. in Spanish Linguistics and teaches Spanish to adults in Boulder, Colorado. Her short story, Fine Bones, was published in Slow Trains. Her self-published first novel, Seducing the Rabbi, is available at her website and Blue Flax Press.

Balcony on Obrapia Street, Havana courtsey of Art.com

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The Rose & Thorn (A Literary E-zine)

Cuba, Cuba: Cuba qué bella es (words to a popular song)

Cuba, Cuba: Cuba qué bella es
(words to a popular song)