‘What did he do?’ Caterina asked, and her sister said very slowly and with obvious pride: ‘He climbed down from the tower, called for the chief guard who lived in the room over there, and said: “Hand me your keys,” and when he had them he went to the gate, unlocked it, threw it open, and shouted to the slaves who were still afraid to approach the gates: “You are slaves no more. You have earned your freedom. Come bury your dead!” And he strode away, leaving the gate of the barracón ajar. After that morning it was never locked again.’
‘Two years later,’ Roberto said, ‘all Cuba followed his example, but Elizondo paid a terrible price for his leadership. His bold action branded him a traitor to Spain, so that when trouble followed in the years prior to the big revolution of 1898, the one the norteamericanos became involved in, he was shot by Spanish officers who questioned his loyalty.’
The second family spot to which Plácida led them was one with happier memories, for she took them back to an area which had served at the turn of the century as a rural retreat for wealthy families who found the sweltering heat of La Habana insufferable. El Cerro it was called, The Hill, because of the eminence on which it stood, and along its one thoroughfare had stretched some two miles of the most splendid summer homes the Caribbean could provide. Sometimes a dozen mansions stood cheek by jowl along one side of the road, facing fifteen, equally grand, on the other side, and each of the twenty-seven would be fronted by seven or eight or nine of the most handsome marble pillars imaginable. Travelers came from all parts of La Habana to see what a poet had called ‘the forest of marble trees protecting the hiding places of the great.’ One visitor from Spain, after riding past the line of mansions, said: ‘I care not who owns the sugar mills if I can have the monopoly of selling the pillars for their little palaces.’
As young people, the present Calderóns had known El Cerro in the years when it was about to be abandoned, and they had been aware, even then, that some of the mansions had begun to decay, but only now did they realize how widespread the devastation had become. ‘Oh my God!’ Plácida cried. ‘The Count of Zaragón would be appalled! Look at those two lions he was so proud of.’ There stood the lions which had once proclaimed his nobility, heads off, feet chipped and scarred, while the once fabulous house they were supposed to protect lay in ruins behind them.
‘Oh! The Pérez Espinals! We played there. Look! The walls are collapsing!’ And then Caterina pointed to where a mansion, once so stately, so filled with summer voices, had vanished, and the destruction was so great that she asked nervously: ‘What will we see when we reach our swans?’ And she almost dreaded to approach the place once owned by the Calderóns. But Roberto, from his position at the wheel of their auto, reminded them: ‘Look at how many pillars are still standing! There’s a lot left to this street,’ and he was right, for a stranger driving slowly down it would see hundreds upon hundreds of the noble marble pillars still standing in almost military array, still trying to guard houses, some of which had disappeared behind them.
At one set of ten particularly handsome pillars, Roberto halted the car and explained: ‘Even before the revolution of 1959, owners realized they could no longer afford to maintain these mansions, and since no one else had the money to take them over, they were left to go to ruin. Where one distinguished family used to live, now eighteen or twenty entire families crowded in, paid no rent, and allowed everything to go to hell. Look at them!’ and where the houses still remained intact, Caterina and her husband could see evidence that many families had moved in as squatters and were tearing the few remains apart. But before anyone could comment, Plácida cried: ‘Our swans!’ and there, on the right-hand side of the splendid old road, stood one of its more remarkable mansions, walls still good, pillars intact.
What made this place memorable was that between the pillars and around the entire base of the porch, stood wing-to-wing a collection of forty-eight cast-iron swans, each about three feet high, only a few inches wide but designed and painted in such a manner as to create an explosion in the eye. Each swan stood icily erect, wings folded, head and long beak pointed straight down and kept close to the body; in this posture they looked like handsome pencils. Each was painted in three colors: gold for the legs, stark white for the head and body, a brilliant red for the long beak.
That alone would have made the swans unforgettable, but around the legs of each bird, making three complete circuits, came crawling upward a deadly serpent painted an ominous black and so positioned that its lethal head, also painted red, was poised only a few inches below the beak of the swan. Thus the swans were engaged in forty-eight deadly battles with the serpents, and no one who saw this chain of engagements engulfing him from all sides could ever forget it.
‘Olé for our swans!’ Plácida cried as the Calderóns left the car to renew their acquaintanceship with their loyal birds. ‘Not one serpent has ever made its way into our mansion,’ Roberto boasted as he patted the down-cocked head of a swan. ‘Faithful to the death, but they couldn’t protect the place from this,’ and he pointed to the area behind the pillars and the porch. There the Calderóns saw the door hanging limp from its hinges, the grand stairway in ruins, the interior doors behind which families in untold numbers now lived, the whole tragic affair which must soon collapse like its sister mansions along the way. Plácida, patting the swans she had loved so dearly as a child, whispered: ‘You served us so much better than we served you,’ and she hurried to the car, where she sat head down like her swans, unwilling to look any further at the ruin which had overtaken her childhood.
Perhaps it was because Roberto Calderón had lived for the past twenty-nine years under a dictatorship, but he was the first to detect that wherever he and his brother-in-law went they were being followed at a respectable distance by at least one car and sometimes two whose occupants were apparently spying on them, and this became so irritating that one morning as they were being trailed into La Habana he checked his Russian car to see if it had been obviously bugged, then asked: ‘Estéfano, are you here under secret orders? Or anything like that?’
‘No! Why do you ask?’ and his cousin replied: ‘Because that first car back there is from the office of your American representative, and the one behind him, unless I’m mistaken, is from our police.’ When they reached La Habana, the trailing cars followed until the Calderóns parked and walked to Roberto’s office.
On their drive home they were again followed, but this time only by the police car, and this experience, repeated on subsequent days, encouraged the Calderóns to ventilate the questions which seemed to obsess all Miami Cubanos: ‘Tell us, Roberto, what’s the state of civil liberties on this island?’ and Roberto said quickly and with apparent conviction: ‘Exactly the same as in the States. We have courts and fine lawyers, newspapers, public debate. This is a free land.’
But Estéfano felt that he must, at this point, reveal his true feelings about Cuba and its communist leadership: ‘No matter what you say, Roberto, to me, Castro will always be a monster and his movement a retreat from human decency. But I see the land of Cuba and people like you two as the permanent representatives of the island, so I do think that some kind of rapprochement must be engineered. I want to see the day when I can fly openly to La Habana and you can fly with me back to the States.’
‘You mean … to emigrate?’ Roberto spoke with such strong accents of rejection that his cousin, realizing that this was not the proper time to pursue that delicate matter, made a hasty denial: ‘Oh no! I meant free travel back and forth,’ and when he uttered the magical words for which so many of the world’s people yearn—‘free travel’—each Calderón visualized what a rich experience it could be to journey easily and without visas between their lovely twin cities, Miami and La Habana.
Finally Estéfano said: ‘I do believe that if you Cubanos could see the benefits of democracy as they exist for all Cubanos in Miami, you’d change your policies down here.’ Roberto and his wife just laughed, and Plácida made what was for her
an uncharacteristic political observation: ‘We think that one of these days the rest of the Caribbean will follow our route to strong socialist government. We feel sure Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo will join us, and then probably most of the rest. Jamaica almost did, some years ago.’
This was too much for Estéfano: ‘Surely no nation in its right senses would elect to align with Castro, considering the conditions on this island.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ll tell you exactly what I mean. A dictatorship that provides very few amenities for its people. Nothing in the stores. No toilet paper. No toothpaste. No dresses for little girls. No decent automobiles. No paint for the houses. No new buildings to replace the crumbling ones on El Cerro. And no freedom for the young men to do anything but fly to Angola and die in the jungle.’
Plácida chose to respond, and she did so vigorously, drawing Estéfano’s attention to an article in Granma: ‘It tells here of the experiences of a Cubano in Miami, minor health problem. Asthma attack. Listen to what doctors like you, Estéfano, do to the people of your country.’ And she read a horrendous account, fortified with photostats of the actual bills from doctors, consultants, nurses and diagnosticians totaling $7,800 for a two-night stay in a hospital for what was essentially a trivial matter. When hectored by the Cuban Calderóns, Estéfano as a doctor and Caterina as a nurse had to acknowledge the probable accuracy of the report.
‘The man in the house at our corner,’ Plácida continued, ‘had to have major heart surgery. Nineteen days in hospital, emergency care. Total cost? Not one peso. Dental treatment for his wife? Not one peso. World’s best health care for his three children. Not one peso.’ Sternly she concluded: ‘We may not have the white paint you keep lamenting about, but we have the best health care in the world and the best schools for our children, both free. And that means something.’
All four Calderóns realized that their discussion had entered upon perilous ground, so Roberto, always the conciliator, diverted to a question which nagged him: ‘Take a refugee like our cousin Quiroz. No special skills as I remember him. How does he make a living in Miami?’ and Estéfano explained: ‘You must understand one thing, Roberto. There’s an immense amount of Cuban money flowing about our city. Some of it real income, like what my bank handles, some of it cocaine money. But it’s there and it’s available.’
‘But how does a worthless fellow like Quiroz get his share?’
‘People who hate Castro, and that’s ninety-nine percent of us, they see to it that fellows like Máximo are kept alive. They feel he’s doing their work for them, keeping Castro off balance.’
‘Would he lead another Bay of Pigs invasion?’
‘Tomorrow, if the American government would allow it.’
This occasioned a long pause, after which Roberto said, surprisingly: ‘Estéfano, I do wish you’d break the careless habit of using the word American as if you had stolen it from the rest of us. Use norteamericano, because we Cubans and Mexicans and Uruguayans, we’re also Americans.’
Up till now—the beginning of their second week in Cuba—the visit had been what it was supposed to be, an amiable family reunion. But Estéfano had been nervous all along as to how he could approach Roberto about getting to see Castro. One night he said to Caterina: ‘I can’t ask Roberto outright: “Can I see your leader?” but you might drop a suggestion to your sister, something like: “Any chance of seeing Castro? To confirm he really exists?” ’ but she replied: ‘I’d feel safer if we didn’t see him at all. No rumors flying back to Miami.’
But, finally, Estéfano did open the subject with Roberto, saying, rather casually: ‘While I’m here, I’d sure like to get to meet Castro,’ and his cousin replied: ‘I’ll see what I can do to arrange it. He’s pretty open to visitors.’ But then he went on to say that Castro had the habit of keeping people on the hook for days, then without warning sending for them at midnight for a talk that lasted till dawn. So night after night, Estéfano delayed going to bed early.
Then, on Tuesday night it happened. A senior official from Castro’s office dropped by the sugar mill to inform Roberto that if he cared to bring his cousin to the presidential quarters at eleven that night, Fidel would be pleased to chat with him about Cuban affairs in Florida, and without betraying that he had been awaiting just such a summons, Estéfano said without undue eagerness: ‘I’d be honored to meet him.’
Not knowing whether the invitation at that odd hour would include dinner, Estéfano informed Caterina of the impending visit and then ate lightly: ‘To protect myself either way. If there’s to be a full dinner, I’ll be able to cram it in. If not, I won’t starve.’
At ten-fifteen a chauffeured car accompanied by a police escort arrived, and as they sped through a lovely moonlit September evening, Estéfano assured his cousin: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell him exactly what I told you. I oppose his politics, but I do look forward to the day when there will be free exchange between our countries.’
‘I’m sure that’s what he would like to hear.’
‘But on our terms, not his.’
‘For the past quarter of a century your country has been trying to dictate to him and you’ve always failed, miserably. Maybe it’s time to try some other tactic,’ and Estéfano laughed: ‘Maybe, but not on your terms, either,’ and Roberto said as they approached the presidential palace: ‘Agreed.’
It was made clear as the cousins entered the waiting area, a large and handsome hall, that Roberto’s role would be limited to introducing his cousin and then withdrawing to await the end of the conference, and he was not surprised at the arrangement. Both men remained in the outer hall for about two hours, after which the door to Castro’s quarters broke open with a bang and a huge bearded man in rumpled army fatigues slammed his way forward to extend both hands, one to Estéfano, one to Roberto: ‘Welcome to the honorable children of our great patriot Baltazar Calderón y Quiroz.’ With that, he took Estéfano warmly by the hand, leading him into his quarters and leaving Roberto in the outer hall.
With a wide swing of his big right foot, he slammed the door closed, indicated a chair for his American guest and fell easily into his own. He was full of restless energy, his agile mind leaping from one subject to another, his tireless hands waving a big unlit cigar as he talked.
‘A temptation and an obligation,’ he said, indicating the cigar. ‘Doctors told me: “Fidel, you’ll die ten years too soon if you continue smoking,” so I quit. But then our cigar manufacturers reminded me: “Fidel, you and your cigar are the best advertisement for Cuban cigars, and that’s where our foreign exchange comes from. Please keep smoking.” So I obeyed both sets of advisers this way,’ and he jammed the big, cold cigar into the corner of his mouth.
They talked for five hours, barely interrupting for a meal of soup, chicken sandwiches and a remarkable sweet: ‘Do you, as a doctor, warn your patients against too much sugar, the way ours do?’
To Estéfano’s surprise, he asked this and occasional other questions in English, and Estéfano answered in that language, but when he finished explaining that yes, when he was a practicing doctor he did warn his patients against sugar, Castro leaped from his chair, wagged an admonitory finger, and cried in Spanish: ‘Well, stop it! We Cubanos want you to eat as much sugar as possible, and buy it all from us.’
When the serious conversation started, Estéfano was astounded at the breadth of Castro’s knowledge of things American, but he was also aware that the dictator was hitting these topics to make himself seem an amiable fellow: The knowing baseball jargon ‘Why do the Red Sox always lose the big series?’ The inside knowledge of American entertainment ‘How do they take it in Georgia, a Negro like Bill Cosby dominating television?’ The awareness of intricate situations ‘How are the two Koreas handling the Olympics?’ And a dozen little questions that quietly needled the Americans: ‘Did your government arrest any of those crazies who tried to tease our athletes into defecting at Indianapolis?’
Cald
eron, well aware that this pleasant chatter was preamble, waited for the politics to begin, and he was prepared when Castro shot out a barrage of questions regarding the attitude of Miami Cubanos on conditions in Haiti, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Cuba itself. He was especially concerned with two problems on which he pressed Estéfano almost to the point of rudeness: ‘If Manley wins the forthcoming election in Jamaica, will that reawaken anti-Americanism on the island?’ and ‘What do you hear in Miami about racial unrest in Trinidad, like what’s been happening in Fiji?’
He also wanted to know how the Miami Cubanos had reacted to the American invasion of Grenada, and was not surprised to hear: ‘Among our people I heard not one adverse comment and a thousand cheers.’ But he was irritated to learn: ‘Most of us were convinced that communist Cubano infiltrators were about to take control of Grenada.’
‘Rubbish!’ he said, using a Cuban word that could be translated more vulgarly. Then he leaned back, twisting his cigar between thumb and forefinger, summoned a waiter to bring more drinks, and asked: ‘Now, Dr. Calderón …’ and Estéfano noticed that whenever he began the exploration of a new topic, he spoke formally, and invariably used the title Doctor: ‘Explain in careful terms, because I know you’re informed on these matters, what does the word Hispanic mean in various parts of the United States,’ and Estéfano also noticed that when Castro rolled out those magnificent syllables Los Estados Unidos, he did so with a certain respect, as if honoring the size of his northerly neighbor if not its politics.
Now the two Cubans settled down to another hourlong discussion, with Estéfano reviewing various experiences he’d had with the Spanish-speaking peoples of America: ‘I’ve had to travel a lot as a Hispanic banking leader and chairman for the election and reelection of President Reagan.’ Here he broke into a quiet laugh: ‘The Anglo politicians running the campaign apparently said: “Look, Calderon speaks Spanish. And he has a good blue suit. Let’s use him widely to get the others lined up.” So they shipped me off to New York, California and Texas.’