Category Archives: Cuba

A Cuban memory trick

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Some of the older people do have memories, for big events. Those old enough remember the revolution or, much later,  the Russians leaving, but everyday life, everyday people, they are past or gone, unless they stick around or return. Tony remembers, he clearly remembers me, but he could not remember Yamilia, José or Paul. He says I am family, that I can stay in his house anytime, but I don’t think he remembers why; I don’t think he remembers any of the stuff we got up to all those years before, he just knows there was something, that I keep coming back, that there is something there.

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Lucia (my nurse) didn’t remember when I went to see her. She remembered me, the face, but when I mentioned Yamilia, to whom she was close, there was a complete blank. No memory of her. No memory of the flat, of the eighteen or so months we were intermittently together, of José or anybody else. I wish I spoke Spanish. I have tried. I have a good memory; I remember loads of words and their meaning, I can make myself understood, but I can never get the hang of putting all the words together. I don’t understand how they link. I’m hopeless; being able to learn a language is a gift – I don’t have it.

 

If I could speak Spanish (I will continue to try), I could talk to people, learn more about what happens here. I’ve learned a lot because I am curious; I know a great deal about Cuba, but I want to know more, before it disappears. I think it will disappear, not as quickly as many people think, but it will go, and here will be the same as everywhere else.

 

Yuri remembers our meeting and many of the events since. But we have stayed in constant touch; I have been part of her life for seven years. If I had disappeared after meeting her in 2006, I don’t think she would remember me. At the Ambos Mundos, where I used to stay before I met Yuri, the staff there remember me from 1998, my first visit, but in between I’m sure they don’t remember me at all. Perhaps that is typical, to a certain extent I think it is; my memory is very good, perhaps I assume that everybody has the same faculty.

 

There is something unique about Cuban memory. Joel James Figarola believes that Cubans live in ‘a spiritual environment where life is lived as if one would die the following day – which is to say as if one would never die’. I think this explains Cuban life quite well; they live very much in the moment – what has just passed has gone, the future does not matter, all that matters is now – this moment.

 

It is a good way to live. It requires that everyone else lives that way too, but it is a good way to be. Stuff still gets done, in a way that is sometimes mystifying. For ages nothing seems to happen, then suddenly there is a new building or a new cafe or restaurant. The pace of life is slow, but that is partly the weather – who wants to hurry in 30˚ of heat? Bureaucracy can be painfully slow, but that can happen anywhere. It is a hangover from the Soviet influence. I think it will change, slowly, but things will always take longer here.

 

Whatever the answers are, life in Cuba is unique. It has its faults (as does everywhere), but there is nothing like here, the way it is now. I love it. I leave the final words with Andrei Codrescu (not a fan of modern Cuba):

‘The best quality of an observer is empathy, which has to come with your worldview. No amount of immersion or adventure can take the place of empathy. If you look with love, you get back love. Ditto anger, indignation, or indifference. The Cubans are full of warmth, a vast reservoir of affection.’

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This is progress?

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The buildings here are much the same as they were when the revolution occurred. They have been extended upwards and backwards, but the main structures are the same as they were then. Many are in disrepair. Three, four or five stories have been added to most of the buildings. Most have gas and electric systems that would be illegal in most other countries: wires and tubes protruding everywhere. Even on Obispo, the most touristy of streets, there is nothing new. Away from Old and Central Havana there are fairly new flats, but it is hard to find any progress.

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The building opposite us is empty. Some of its balconies are shored up. It must have been some kind of government building, whatever, definitely not inhabited. Perhaps one hundred years old, on a list somewhere for renovation. I have only seen what there is between Jose Marti Airport and central and old Havana. But I have not noticed any change; there are many derelict factories, many more signs of dilapidation than progress. Occasionally there is a newish building with a newish business, but it all seems a bit depressing. Perhaps progress is being made, but in a depressed world economy and a collapsing Cuban economy, it is hard to find it. Apart from tourism, I’m not sure that the Cubans have much going for them.

 

I don’t really know anything beyond Old, Central, Bahia Honda, Villa Pan Americana or Guanabacoa, I don’t know much about Cuba. I lived in Villa Pan Americana for a year; I lived in Guanabacoa for six months; I stayed in Bahia Honda on several occasions, Lugareno too; I stayed in various places in Havana many, many times. I noticed much about those places, felt at home in them, was part of them. But I still feel that I don’t know much about Cuba. I know a lot more than most foreigners, but still not much.

 

I’ve seen how the very poorest live and the rich too. Some clearly stayed rich after the revolution – I don’t know how. Some get money sent to them from the United States, many don’t. This trip I had been unsure until the last minute whether I wanted to come or not; I have been bored by my last few visits. But then I had a different outlook; I was mainly clubbing and drinking and getting up at midday. Now, I have adjusted to the pace of life here; I’m looking at it from a different point of view. I like it. It needs money. Not a great deal, but more than I have, so far.

 

According to Graham Greene,

‘The Spanish, the French and the Portuguese built cities where they settled, but the English just allowed cities to grow.’

I hadn’t thought about that before, but it is true. This is a Spanish city that has had a Cuban makeover, but very little has been added; most of what has been added is for the benefit of tourists, not Cubans. I think plans are afoot to improve the Cubans lot, but they will be slow and very gradual. Much will depend on the success of quasi-socialist governments in South America. Can they hold out against US influence or will they find a way to succeed? If they do succeed, even partially, then Cuba will have friends and allies. If the embargo were to end (without the US taking over), that would help tremendously too.

 

I don’t think Cuba will change quite as quickly as some people suppose. There are plans in place for gradual change, but what influence will the new entrepreneurship have on the people? Will the taste of money change everything? Or will they continue with a vaguely socialist outlook? Whatever happens, I hope that change doesn’t come too quickly, that Cubans somehow find a way to retain their uniqueness. It really is unique here; it would be awful if Cuba were just to become like everywhere else.

What do People do here?

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I didn’t really ask myself in the past – what do people do here? I still don’t know but I have much more idea. What almost everybody does is something. Starting at around five in the morning, a constant stream of people pass beneath my balcony; just one street of millions in the city. Among the first to arrive are the taxis, not taxis in the imagined sense, but ordinary low level private cars. They use the seventy yards or so just before the corner as a queuing spot for customers, perhaps eight or so taxis at any one time, constantly changing as customers take the first in the queue, all day, six or seven days a week. Although this happened before; there were always willing drivers to take people on whatever journey they wished, this is more official. I don’t know how much they charge because we only take bicycle taxis, of which there seem to be many more than were here a few years ago.

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Whatever they charge, they are just part of the burgeoning private enterprise; along with the taxis are soft drink sellers, fruit sellers, cloth sellers, trinket sellers – anything sellers. All this activity takes place non-stop, every day, along with what must be the normal day-to-day activity of everyone else.  The daily pushing of carts, trolleys, the carrying of goods, those who work and those who don’t – a constant stream of people – in one street, my street, one of many, many thousands.

 

There are more people begging on the streets, more selling Granma, the daily paper here, more persistently, more of a nuisance and mostly completely tolerated by hotel staff and anyone else involved. Perhaps that is the result of a more tolerant attitude to free enterprise. While they were once stopped or discouraged by police, they are now more ubiquitous. Nothing like as bad as in almost any other country, but certainly more here, more real and more confident.

 

The Capitol is closed for renovation, as is a very big shopping centre close by and many public buildings. No matter what else is happening here the country is gearing up for more tourism. The shopping centre contained six or seven floors above it, also closed and empty. What happened to the people who were in those rooms? I don’t know. Were they moved elsewhere? Will they be able to return? I don’t know.

 

It is hard to tell what is going on here. Most people take no interest, too busy in surviving, getting by. There are more paladares, more taxis, more stalls selling bits and pieces. I asked Yuri if life was easier now or more difficult than, say, 2006. She says things are easier. What of the buildings? Coming in from the airport there seems to be no difference in anything: people still stand by the road waiting for lifts or rare buses; people still seem to struggle with their daily lives. Our lift from the airport stopped along the way to carry out some private business or other. Old and central Havana, where I spend very much most of my time, is different. More people have more, though not so that most people would notice.

 

With the world economy in a complete mess, demonstrations and revolts occurring everywhere: Egypt, Spain, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Greece… what are the Cubans doing? Yuri has not the slightest interest. At the moment I don’t know anyone that has, although if I make contact with more English speakers or find an interpreter then I’m sure there will be a different story. At the moment I don’t care. I am curious though. I know only what I see. Some of that I may interpret correctly, much I’m sure that I don’t.

 

The police have new cars. There are new buses although they are as full as ever and the queues remain long. There are designer stores, many more now than before, and not just for tourists. This is one of the big contradictions here: How can ordinary Cubans, on a wage of ten dollars a month, afford the prices, which are much the same as any other store worldwide. But many Cubans do afford the prices, perhaps with money from the United States or perhaps through employment in the more profitable parts of the tourist industry or perhaps through the new entrepreneurship, although I very much doubt it.

 

Everywhere you go is fantastically clean in Cuba. A woman comes every other day to clean our apartment. If it were left to me I would probably give it a very quick once over, maybe once a week. Just tidy the bathroom and the kitchen and a quick sweep elsewhere. She takes between two and three hours every time. Everything is spotless. You do come across the odd mosca (fly) and very occasionally a mosquito; otherwise I have never seen an insect in any Cuban house.

 

It is not just the cleaning lady who is so conscious of cleanliness. We have her because I rent a room, otherwise the lady of the house would clean everything every day. Many years ago, when I was with Yamilia, although she was basically lazy, she would always clean the house first thing. It is the same wherever I’ve stayed in Cuba – I’ve never seen a dirty house.

 

It seems to be part of the Cuban DNA. The floor is always covered with water and mopped – all rooms have tile floors. Of course there are many dilapidated buildings which, until they get attention, are left to rot, but any inhabited house, no matter how humble will be clean.

 

Certainly things have changed since I first came here. Cubans can now stay in their own hotels (if they can afford it), visit their own beaches. Accommodation is much easier to find. All sorts of jobs (about 180) have been added to an entrepreneurial list. In other ways it’s not so good. The bars on Obispo used to stay open all night, now they shut at twelve (so as not to disturb tourists in the few hotels nearby) – why come to Havana if you’re bothered by noise? Now, I don’t mind the changes, but a quiet Obispo does not seem right. Even though I rarely drink, I would like the choice; there are always other places, but it’s not quite the same.

 

Just now I don’t know. I know a lot and I will learn more, but after fifteen years there’s still loads I don’t know. Yuri knows everything, absolutely everything. I’ll have another go at Spanish (they talk so fast here), but I’ll try.

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Changing Cuba

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In the street outside our flat, taxis start to position themselves early in the morning. It seems to be a partly or wholly official business. There are perhaps twenty or so people who come here daily. They work from about six to midnight, depending on how keen they are. Before in Cuba it was always possible to find an unofficial taxi, but it was illicit, easy but illicit. Now, I assume that it is official and controlled. It is low status, compared to the official taxis, but it is here, and it means that the drivers can turn up every day and be able to work, I would imagine, much more regularly than before.

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The line of taxis, usually seven or eight, but varying as the day progresses, works peacefully most of the time. Ninety per cent of the cars are Ladas in various states of disrepair although efforts have been made to spruce them up. The other cars are a mixture of all sorts, usually slightly more modern, but well below the standard of the official taxis. Occasionally, every few days, a row breaks out over the positioning of the taxis; it is not serious but often continues for about an hour. Much shouting and waving of arms, but there is no violence; the argument is not serious – Cubans just like shouting at each other, letting off steam.

 

Repairs are continuous. Most days at least two of the taxis will undergo running repairs. The system appears to be random, but it isn’t; someone has control, someone is getting the customers, making sure they go to the right taxi and so on. This process is being repeated all over the city; wherever you go there will be someone touting for a taxi. Their service will be mostly taken up by Cubans looking for a cheaper ride, whereas before they would wait by the roadside until someone appeared willing to take them where they wanted to go; now they go direct to the taxi. I assume the price is about the same. We took mostly bicycle taxis because we weren’t going very far, but on the couple of occasions we had a longer journey, we took one of the taxis queuing rather than an ‘official’ one, always checking the price first.

 

This is just one example of the new entrepreneurship. There are apparently around one hundred and eighty possible avenues. There are many more bicycle taxis – by far the bobispoest way to go short distances and many more stalls. The stalls are selling everything that can be sold: drinks, peanuts and fruit and much more; there are many more paladares. There must be some kind of pecking order for where you can sell your stuff, but it is mostly not obvious. The taxis in our street have a good spot, but nearer Obispo would be better and, of course, there are sellers of everything there too. There must be strong competition for the best spots, probably corruption too.

 

The new entrepreneurship is called trabajo por cuenta propia, the individuals are cuentapropistas. Every street in every town has something new. In 2010 Fidel Castro told, then president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, that

‘Here we nationalised even the funeral home, the barber shop, the sale of ice cream. That doesn’t have any reason to belong to the state.’

Attitudes have changed very slowly since the Russians left, but they are changing nonetheless, and will probably speed up from here. There are estimated to be six hundred thousand Cubans in the private sector now; half-a-million state sector jobs are expected to be lost by 2015.

 

On one street is an Esoteric Digital Library. What is it? Customers arrive with a blank disc or flash drive to download books and articles and music. The first download costs twenty pesos, and each one after that costs ten. Streets have cafeterias, room rentals, ice cream stands, sellers of trinkets, pizza makers and new private restaurants.

 

This is just a very brief snapshot of what’s happening. Where will Cuba be in five years, ten years? I don’t know, but it will be very exciting. I hope I’m here to see it.

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Cuban television is great…

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Cuban television is great. There are five channels (I think) – I can only ever find three with regularity – but I live in a flat with poor reception. I don’t watch much TV in the UK; I’m very, very fussy.  I can’t stand advertising of any sort, so watch mainly the BBC channels or, if occasionally I want to watch a commercial station, I edit out the adverts before watching. I don’t have SKY or any other non-traditional station. Cuban TV has no adverts, none whatsoever.

 

It is a mixture of imported stuff and home-grown Cuban stuff, mainly documentaries. It is twenty four hours now, which it wasn’t back in the early noughties. Strangely, there is a mass of United States’ imports: everything from reality shows, weight loss programmes, cartoons, crime shows and films – everything. US programmes are shown regardless of content. Life is shown as the Americans want it to be shown; it is repeated here as though it is something that exists, but is nothing to either envy or comment on.

 

The news is pretty biased. Every country has a prejudice towards itself, but Cuba is quite extreme. The news programmes, although not so plentiful as they are here, tell you next to nothing about the outside world. Every broadcast has masses of stuff about Cuba: a technological advance, a meeting somewhere discussing something important, somebody has been awarded a certificate; very occasionally there will be some mild criticism. But there are only two main hour long news programmes per day with a few fillers in between. Foreign news is given about two minutes on a normal day, perhaps longer if anything noteworthy has happened. Sports news is hard to decipher; there is much about baseball, anything else that Cubans have been doing: swimming, judo, football, but I find that for long periods the announcers just talk; of course not understanding ninety per cent of what they say doesn’t help, and they seem to talk for much longer without showing any images – I noticed this on all the programmes; there seems to be much more dialogue, they stay in scenes for much longer. This applies to a whole variety of broadcasting because although much of their television is from the US, there are also Brazilian and Argentinean soap operas, English programmes; it seems to be a Latin American thing – needing many more words to say the same thing. There is an hour long discussion programme just before the evening news, where events of the day are debated at length.

 

Apart from that there is an eclectic mixture. There has been something on China every day (a pending deal?), but that may not be so unusual – back in the UK there have been many programmes on China too. Strangely, bearing in mind the bias of the news, US television makes up about a third of the broadcasting. It is not censored at all. Whereas the internet is practically banned here, so that Cubans cannot learn what is going on in the outside world, US television provides a constant reminder that just across the water, life, apparently, is much easier. It seems that the way of life is regarded as inferior, nothing to be sought after, just here for your amusement. Of course Cubans don’t entirely believe in the US stuff. It’s treated as propaganda; for all the wealthy, happy people, the news sometimes points out that there is no free health care, that millions live below the poverty line, that the economy is collapsing and life is not at all as it is represented most of the time.

 

The TV is very well organised now, and professional. There are many, many films, often very recent, more recent than those available to me in the UK. Sunday is film day on one of the stations, twenty four hours of film, at least half very recent. When I first came to Cuba there were only two stations, and the schedule was fairly disorganised. In many ways I preferred that – you never knew what you were going to get, but it was often interesting – perhaps a two hour documentary about Bob Marley as a kid’s programme,TVCuba followed by a film, followed by sport. Children are very well catered for and treated as mini-adults. There is still no advertising here (although they advertise themselves a lot), which is fantastic for me. I do fear that soon they will change that, though. The economy desperately needs a boost, and I’m afraid that advertising will do it no harm. Perhaps they will manage to do it tastefully. I hope so.

 

 

Unsociable Cat

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catOpposite our flat is some sort of park; it is not public, it seems to be open only to certain people, reserved for those of a certain organisation. There are so many organisations in Cuba, at every level; the park could be for members of the revolution or merely some association of gardeners. I did ask Yuri; she sort of knew but is not really interested and my Spanish is not good enough to understand her when it comes to details.

If the park is for former members of the revolution, perhaps its members are dwindling – there can’t be many left. It provides work for at least three people, who tend to it and keep it clean. I don’t know exactly what they do, but it is not very much, and perhaps next to nothing at all. They seem to sit in the shade of the garden most of the day. Good luck to them. Perhaps this type of job is repeated many times, not so much now that there are cuts, but pretty often. The park is pretty big, perhaps fifty yards by one hundred yards, walled with a gate and an office. The office is opened at about six in the morning and stays open all day, perhaps till midnight. In the time I’ve stayed here I haven’t noticed more than a dozen visitors.

It contains mature trees of many varieties, trees that have been there and grown for fifty or more years; as well as younger varieties, palms, smaller trees and plants. Of course, whomever’s job it is to tend to the offices and park will not receive much money, ten to fifteen dollars a month perhaps, which may explain why the workers are slightly apathetic: they do their stuff, go through the motions, but they do seem tired – I’ve only been watching for a few weeks; they are here every day, probably been doing it for years. There is a strange mixture of apathy and energy here, not confined to age groups, but more what people do with their lives. There is more choice now, but prospects are still quite narrow for most people.

Several cats live there, rarely straying outside the park. I can see them by the gate sometimes but mostly they are hidden. I assume they are fed by the keepers of the park and I’ve seen neighbours put scraps through the fence or leave something outside, the only time I see the cats leave the grounds. One cat in particular, a mixture of white, brown and black, stays almost continually on the office roof. Round and about are grey, ginger, black, white and all mixtures in between. The cat on the roof is thoroughly unsociable. At first I thought it was too scared to go down, that it was frightened of the company of the other cats, perhaps not having its own territory and taking refuge on the roof. But it is not scared, it is just unfriendly and aloof.

Sometimes another cat will join it on the roof, sit close to it for a while, stare at it. It does not respond, merely turning its back on the interloper until it goes away. It wants to be on its own, have nothing to do with any cat life or, as far as I can see, any humans either, apart from when it is fed. It is an antisocial cat, taking no part in Cuban comradeship. I don’t think it is old, not particularly, it moves well enough. It is an individual cat, perhaps a result of the new entrepreneurial spirit of the city and country.

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A Room in Havana

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Our flat is on the fourth floor in a busy street in central Havana. It has a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom – quite luxurious for most of Havana, well, luxurious for two people; often at least one family, probably more, would live in a place like this. It has a large balcony, where I spend much of my time, watching the constant action around. My neighbour’s balconies are just a few yards either side of me, and below. We have two

rocking chairs and a metal table with four chairs in the living room, a large bed; the kitchen is small but perfectly usable. We have a TV attached to the wall. Cuba has five stations now; it used to have two when I first visited. Yuri cooks every day.

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The people below us were fitting a new bathroom. Intermittently, perhaps three days out of five, there was a constant banging, all day, until six or seven o’clock. It drove me mad. Yuri didn’t even notice it. The banging has changed. Tiles are being reshaped with an automatic grinder. The banging appears to have finished for the time being, cement has been mixed, I can just see it in the moribund bath on the balcony below, and tiles are being fixed. I assume the banging from before was making space for the tiles. There is occasional banging as the tiles are put in place. Everywhere you go in Havana, someone will be banging. Noise is compulsory.

When I first arrived I was completely sensitive to the noise. I insisted we change apartment (although, noise apart, I do like the place we have now). Later, I wouldn’t notice it during the day, but would get irritated if it continued after seven o’clock. Bear in mind that this noise is in conjunction with constant shouting, horns blaring, conversations of neighbours and assorted other noise. Now, after almost two weeks here, I hardly notice any noise. I think the banging would bother me, but it has stopped; the rest: the grinder, the soft banging as the tiles are put in place, the mixing – everything – is ceasing to bother me.

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It would be impossible to live in Cuba without acclimatising to the noise. There is something quite relaxing about that. I would not like to be Cuban; I would be at home with the organised chaos that seems to be a part of life here, but I would like to be less bothered by neighbours building a new bathroom, the everyday chaos of life. I would like to be more Cuban, while retaining whatever it is that makes me, me.

I have acclimatised before. I lived here. But I was thirteen years younger. I have certainly changed since then. I still smoke, but hardly ever drink. Before, I could barely go a day without rum. At my worst I would be drinking, perhaps, two bottles a day. I lost myself, had no idea what I was doing. I described the experience fairly accurately in my book, Caliente. I only just recognise the man who had those experiences – what was I doing? – I don’t really know. I came here with a plan. I was naive, some people tried to take advantage, others tried to help, I hardly knew which was which.

At the moment I can’t afford to stay here, although I would like to. My ambition when I get home is to promote my book (something I’ve been unable to do so far), continue with my writing and somehow find a way to live here. It would have to be partly on my terms – I would only intend to be part Cuban.  I would need a library of English books, a large library. I would need access to new books. I have discovered some Cuban and South and Central American writers I like; I’d like to discover more, but there are very few books in English here, and my Spanish is nowhere near good enough for reading. So, I would need a flat (something similar to what I have now would be fine, perhaps a little bigger) and the means to pay for it. And Yuri. That is really all I need.

The people below have started banging again, although it is fairly rare now. I have accepted it. To live in Cuba one must accept the noise, or to be more accurate: to live in Havana. We visited Tony at his Bahia house; it was perfectly quiet. In many ways it would be the perfect place for me. I didn’t like the house when I first moved there with Yamilia in 2001, or later when I lived there through necessity. I stayed there in 2009 with Yuri and I didn’t like it. The main reason for this was that the house is not within walking distance of anywhere: a few shops, a bar is ten minutes walk away, Havana a twenty minute taxi journey – back then it was not enough. But when we visited last week I suddenly realised that now, perhaps, it is ideal. It just what I need.

Before this trip I wondered if I would ever be able to visit Cuba without alcohol, specifically rum. But now I rarely drink. For three years I stopped smoking too, and I could not imagine being in Cuba without cigarettes. During the non-smoking, non-drinking years I didn’t do anything; I never went anywhere. Perhaps I was prolonging my life, but what for, for what reason?  When I began smoking again I came back to Cuba. Not drinking is now easy. I smoke far too much but I am working on that (I’ve been working on it for forty years). So now that I know that I can be here and enjoy myself without rum, Tony’s house becomes rather different. I’d often wondered what I would do with all my books, assuming that I could get them here. Well, Tony’s house is ideal; it has at least two rooms which could be used for books. And it has silence, something I didn’t want before, but now I do seek it like a pain relieving balm – I can become acclimatised to the noise in Havana, but never will I become comfortable with it. So, if I can get my books here, order the occasional new one, write, sell a few books – Tony’s house it is.

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We went to Yuri’s Padrino’s house. She is undergoing some form of santeria. Some men were banging next door; I was the only person to notice it. Later, much later, when it was time to leave, some men were banging the ceiling at Jose Marti Airport…

Cuba, a place of contradictions…

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Cuba is most certainly a place of contradictions. If you are of a right wing persuasion you will disapprove of it; if you are left wing you will probably approve. Both sides see the country inaccurately: the right wing sees a dictatorship, as if there was freedom for the people before, under Batista, and before; the left see the last bastion of socialism, bravely holding out against a materialistic world. The truth has always been somewhere in between.

 

I have been coming to Cuba for over fifteen years; I’ve lived here for two of those years and have visited perhaps twenty five other times. My sympathies are with the Cuban people, although I do not wholeheartedly swallow the propaganda given out by the government in power, which has, in effect, been in place for over fifty years.

 

I try to see the good side. That is that Cuba has what the rest of the world has lost: a community, a people, a country. It is the one country in the world to resist Americanism. Its people still live together, they work together – they are together. How many would change given the choice? I don’t know, perhaps many, perhaps few. For years here there was little choice and there are still many restrictions.

 

At the airport we had to wait thirty minutes on the runway. The baggage area was poorly lit and understaffed. Many of the waiting Cubans were outside the building; they used to be inside. There have certainly been cuts in the labour force. But I haven’t seen drastic change; change is always very slow. Yuri (my girlfriend) says things are easier now. She knows. She is completely uninterested in politics, living only for the day. I suspect that she is not alone in that belief, that many, many more live the same way.

 

How many still support the Castros? A reign which must surely end soon, when Raul decides he is too old to continue. The Cuban news shows about two minutes of foreign stuff; the rest is advances in Cuban technology, new tractors, new medical advances, meetings where something or other was voted for or some certificate was handed out – everything is about Cuba – it is old-fashionedly Soviet in that respect. There is no internet apart from in the hotels. So the majority of the people have no idea what is going on. But they must know that their economy is a mess – the new entrepreneurship apart – and has been a mess for living memory.

 

But Cuba is a symbol. Central and South American countries have slowly tried to follow it. For all its faults Cuba has remained and sustained for over fifty years while the rest of the world has changed. Has it changed for the better? Despite the onslaught of propaganda, that is debatable.

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Cuba remains Cuba. Change is incredibly slow. What will happen when the Castros are gone? It is difficult to say. There will be tremendous pressure from outside to change, to become the same as the rest of the world; there would be a real-estate bonanza, people would be moved out of their homes – so much adjustment would have to take place. All this must have been anticipated by the Castros. They must have strong people in place to continue with whatever they want to do. But they are tremendous symbols of a system. The whole of Cuba identifies with the Castros. When they are gone, and with the new spirit of entrepreneurship, how long can Cuba, as it is, last?

 

Holiday for God

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I lived in Cuba from 2000 to 2002, and have visited maybe twenty times since then, sometimes spending three or four months of the year there. I lived most of the time with Yamilia; José was a constant friend, as was his girlfriend Celia. Tony was a business partner; he later became more than that, when I ran out of money, but that is another story. Manolo was a translator, Tony’s acquaintance.

Manolo spoke the best English.  He was word perfect, never slipped up, read books in English, could talk about anything.  I didn’t like him much.  He was bitchy and often depressed, unique in Cuba, and he looked down on people.  He was scornful of Yamilia, the ‘she devil’ and considered her stupid.  Lots of people felt the same way.  They thought she was wasting the opportunities she had by being with me. 

‘Why doesn’t she study something?’

‘Why doesn’t she learn to drive?’

‘Your woman is not clever, she wastes everything.’ 

I disagreed, particularly about the driving.  If Yamilia ever got a license no one was safe.  José had good English.  He was educated, could approach the tourists and communicate.  But, in my time in Cuba, I didn’t notice his English improve.  He often mumbled, repeated the same mistakes.  Tony spoke no English.  Celia spoke well, but never in company.  I had good conversations with her, one to one, but in company she always deferred, she observed rather that took part in life.  That was fine, he didn’t need it.  He was top of his tree.  Why should he learn English?  I couldn’t learn Spanish; I could make myself understood, but with so many English speakers around me, I just didn’t progress beyond a pidgin style, although I did understand more than they thought.

Then there was Yamilia.  Everybody, including Yamilia, considered her English poor, basic pidgin, that’s all.  She’d lived in France for a year, spoke some French and often mixed it up together with her Spanish and English.  She wasn’t sneaky.  Some people thought she understood much more than she let on.  She didn’t.  She did have an uncanny ability to pluck complete English sentences out of the air, though.  Often expressing sly humour, big ideas, home spun wisdom or insults.  Whenever she did speak English she pronounced the words clearly, spoke very well when she strung whole sentences together.  She naturally possessed an imperious, melodic, often mocking tone, and this added to the effect.

 

Once at Tony’s house, Tony, Manolo, Jose and I had been drinking, talking politics and generally putting the world to rights.  Yamilia had no interest.  She would listen to music, do her nails, hair or just fall asleep on the sofa.  On this occasion she swanned past us on her way to the kitchen singing, at the top of her voice:

‘We are the world, we are the people,’

She sang in such mocking tones that I stopped and watched her.  She gave me a sly smile.  She would have been around ten years old when a bunch of American multi-millionaire egomaniacs got together and made that record, so as not to be outdone by Bob Geldof’s Live Aid extravaganza.  All the sugary, sentimental, self-righteous hypocrisy of that record came across in her mocking tones.  It was the perfect put down of our self-important conversation, and she just plucked it out of the air.  How?  I thought she possessed a natural wisdom and the courage and sense of fun to puncture pomposity wherever she sensed it.  Cubans wouldn’t notice; it was too subtle.  I’m sure it was unconscious on her part.  I sometimes thought Manolo picked up on it, but he was far too against her to give her any credit.  I never even tried to talk about it to her.  She would have had no idea what I was talking about.  It was just there, sometimes, and it amazed me. 

 

During the longest day we were sitting in Cathedral Square, my favourite place at the time. Very touristy but beautiful and peaceful, no matter what the time of day, no matter if there was music playing, tables full of tourists or just quiet, mostly in the lull between the afternoon trade and the evening pick up when everyone began thinking differently. We would spend hours, sometimes all day there, watching the world go by.  I was in philosophical mood, thinking about the longest day in Cuba, the tropics; not as long as the longest English day, but the longest all the same.  The summer solstice, the day the sun is said to pause.  I liked the idea, something typically Cuban about it, as though the universe paused, took a day off work.  I said as much to Yamilia, explained the summer solstice to her.

            ‘How can the longest day be a holiday for God?’ she said.

She pointed to her head,

 ‘You have problem here.’

 

Exasperated, she turned away and went back to watching the tourists. I hadn’t mentioned God, or holidays.

 

YamiliaPicI thought of this story recently. Yamilia is gone. Permanently? I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for four years, although I am in fairly regular contact. She’s in Ecuador. I’m not sure why. And I’m with someone else, Yuri, as different from Yamilia as it’s possible to be. I will be in Cuba for the whole of August. I remember the days with Yamilia with affection but they are in the past; I am sure I will see her again but the three years we were together are a memory now: unforgettable, amazing but gone. During the month I spend in Havana I will write the second part of the memoir started in 1999. It will include Yamilia and bring the story up to, perhaps, 2010. Although I can never repeat the times of 1999 to 2002 (I not sure I’d want to), the next chapter awaits.

………..

Chris is the author of Caliente, a memoir of escape, love and trouble. Lots of trouble.

‘Yamilia waits in Havana. She is astonishingly beautiful and of volatile temperament. Her enemies, and even some of her friends, think she is unstable, even dangerous. José, Hilton’s closest friend in Havana, agrees, ‘She is a bad woman. Do not stay with her,’ he pleads. Hilton disagrees; he’s in love, he doesn’t see her that way – Yamilia is natural, honest, a force of nature. Like a hurricane. He will create a new life with her in Cuba. What could possibly go wrong?’

“There are 150 books which contain everything that literature has to offer”

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In the film Before Night Falls, about the life of poet Reinaldo Arenas, his poor background and persecution at the hands of security police in Cuba, there is a scene where he visits the library of a wealthy Cuban writer, José Lezama Lima.

Arenas has just come second in a national competition; according to the film he should have won. Limas says to him:

‘People that make art are dangerous to any dictatorship. We create beauty, and beauty is the enemy. Artists are escapists. Artists are counter-revolutionary and so you are counter-revolutionary, Reinaldo Arenas, and do you know why? Because there is a man that cannot govern the terrain called beauty, so he wants to eliminate it. So, here we are: 400 years of Cuban culture about to become extinct, and everybody applauds.’

‘There are 150 books that contain everything that literature has to offer. Read them and you don’t have to read anything else.’

‘So what will be the first?’

‘The Bible. You have to read the Bible. Just read it like a novel. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you five books. Correction, I’m going to lend you five books. You return them and I’ll give you five more.’

The five books chosen by Lima are Sentimental Education, Flaubert; Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust; Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka; Moby Dick, Herman Melville; Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Now, I have read the Bible, not much, but some and I liked it. But I am not able to judge it either way and am happy to take the word of those who have read it and decided that it is great literature.

Sentimental Education is said to be best novel of the nineteenth century. I’ve read it twice, find it acceptable, but without its reputation I don’t think I would bother with it. There is too much that lacks interest; everybody is too concerned with financial dealings; I couldn’t (even after two readings) keep track of everybody; a revolution was going on while the second half of the main story played out, but I remained as unaffected by it as the author. I know Flaubert was obsessed with finding the mot juste – the perfect word; that he was one of the first authors to ‘show don’t tell’. He once said

‘Around man all is shadow, all is emptiness. The moment I don’t have a book on hand or dream of writing one I could howl with frustration. Life is tolerable to me only if one can conjure it away.’

I didn’t care about Frédéric, about Madame Arnoux or Sénécal; his novel had no effect on me.

Remembrance of Things Past, I’m trying to like, people keep saying you must read this but I don’t like it. I don’t want to go too deeply into why I don’t like these books; perhaps it’s because I see them as anti-life – especially Kafka – just to say here that I do not like them. I have tried three times to get into Proust (I will probably re-try the other authors, but Kafka has probably defeated me). I was just thoroughly bored.

Metamorphosis is difficult. I find all of Kafka unreadable (apart from his letters to his girlfriend). I can barely read one sentence of him. I’ve attempted to read other stuff. I’ve tried The Trial; I appreciate the sentiment, one man caught up in a swirl of bureaucracy, but I can’t read it. I’ve even tried the graphic novel. Believe me, I’ve tried. I don’t like Kafka.

I read Moby Dick when I was still at school, then recently tried again. I enjoyed parts of it but they were few and far between. As Clive James said,

‘Melville’s ocean clung like tar. It’s one of those books you can’t get started with even after you have finished reading.’

But the filmmakers chose those five. After seeing the film (which is great), I tried to read Lima’s Paradiso. It was the only novel he wrote (he was a poet) and I can see why. Arenas too, was a poet, but he wrote some fiction too, all of which I find unreadable. This is not to say that I am right and the writers or their critics are wrong. It is a matter of opinion.

Treasure Island I’ve only read once (and fairly recently). I liked it, maybe because it was meant to be a children’s story or a tale to be taken at face value, perhaps because it’s a

‘tale [that] sprang, effortlessly, from his pen at the rate of a chapter every morning.’

Perhaps I liked Jim’s sneaky heroics, Long John Silver’s survival instincts or Dr Livesey’s steady, cheerful demeanour. It doesn’t matter why I liked it or why I disliked the others.

They could have chosen five different books for the film, for example, The Wings of the Dove, Little Dorrit, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch and The Great Gatsby, to name just five; there are many more I could have chosen. I won’t name them here because I’m sure you have your own choices. I’d like to hear what they are. And Lima chose 150 books; he chose five at random. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that three of the five are my least favourite books, a fourth very close and only the fifth rescued the scene (in my eyes).

There is something life-denying about four of the books, excepting Treasure Island (and the Bible of course). Perhaps it’s an attitude to life; an attitude that life isn’t worth living. I would like to add other authors to the list. My list is very conservative; I wanted to make sure that my writers were literary greats: I think James, Eliot, Dickens, Tolstoy and Fitzgerald are greats in anyone’s language.

Perhaps story should be king, as it is (I think) with the five writers I have mentioned. Perhaps I am too stupid to ‘get’ Kafka, Melville, Proust and Flaubert. I don’t know. But the scene in the film stayed with me; it’s now seven years since I saw it and I return to it every two years or so.

What do you think?