I hopped on the big bus, whose air-conditioned interior was as cold as a well-digger’s ass in Maine.
The bus had about fifty seats, so I was able to find two empty seats together and I sat next to my backpack. Sara was behind me, sitting with one of the older ladies.
Tad and Alison boarded, greeted everyone, and Alison said, “Well, that wasn’t too bad.” She introduced our bus driver, José, and led us in greeting him. “Buenos días, José!”
Group travel requires a certain level of voluntary infantile behavior. I had a flashback to my yellow school bus.
José pulled away and we were off to Havana, which my guide book said was twenty kilometers from the airport, giving Tad and Alison time to fill us in on the day’s agenda. Our Cuban guide would join us at the welcome dinner at our hotel and answer any questions we might have about Cuba. Question number one: How do we get to Paris from here?
The bus was comfortable, made in China, and fit for Americans, though the lavatory was temporarily out of order and would probably stay that way until a plumber arrived from Shanghai.
This was Tad and Alison’s second trip to Cuba, they told us, though not together. I hoped they’d hook up and made themselves scarce.
I tuned them out and looked out the window. The area around the airport was rundown—moldering stucco buildings with tin roofs—but the flowering vegetation was lush and tropical, hiding most of the squalor. The bus swerved a few times to avoid donkey carts, and the Yalies shot pictures out the window.
So here we were in hell. There’s a TV series that documents the story of ordinary people who agree to smuggle drugs into or out of some shithole country. They get busted, of course, and I used to laugh at the stupidity of these amateur drug smugglers who risked ten or twenty years in a hellhole third-world prison for a few bucks. What were they thinking? I would never do anything like that.
CHAPTER 14
There was almost no morning traffic on the airport road and no sign of commercial activity—no shops, no gas stations, and no McDonald’s. The only thing for sale was The Revolution, advertised on billboards, most of which showed the familiar Christ-like image of the departed Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and what appeared to be his quoted words praising LA REVOLUCIÓN. The only graffiti I saw was on the wall of a collapsed building—CUBA SÍ—YANQUIS NO.
If the martyred Che was the face of the revolution, Fidel was the man behind the curtain. My Yale info packet said that Fidel Castro had modestly avoided encouraging a cult of personality around him, so we’d see no images of F.C. or his brother Raúl, no statues, and no postcards or souvenirs showing F.C.’s or R.C.’s faces. I think the regime is missing an opportunity to make a few bucks on Castro Brothers T-shirts.
We reached the outskirts of Havana in about thirty minutes.
First impressions color future perceptions, and my first impression of Cuba was of decay. The buildings in Havana, like the ones along the airport road, were mostly in bad repair—except the buildings that were beyond repair. The good news was that the streets were litter-free, maybe because no one had anything to throw away.
There weren’t many private cars on the streets, and the ones I saw were predominantly Soviet-era clunkers belching exhaust smoke, but I spotted my first vintage American automobile, a canary yellow Chevy convertible, maybe a ’56 or ’57. The Yalies took pictures from the bus.
There seemed to be a lot of people hanging around not doing much, including work crews, apparently on break from their twenty-dollar-a-month jobs. No one was in rags, I noticed, but a lot of the women wore the same dark Lycra pants and tank tops. If there was malnutrition in Cuba, as Eduardo said, it wasn’t apparent in Havana, where many of the ladies seemed well-fed. The men, however, were leaner, and they dressed mostly in dark pants, sandals, and T-shirts, most of which sported American logos. I didn’t see any children, but they were probably in school—or not yet born, since Cuba had one of the lowest birth rates in the Western Hemisphere, which is never a good sign of a country’s future.
The bus continued, and Alison announced that we’d make our scheduled stop at the Plaza de la Revolución, which we did, and we all got off the air-conditioned bus into the sweltering October heat of Havana.
The plaza was huge, and Tad told us that a million people—ten percent of Cuba’s population—had come here in 1998 to hear John Paul II say Mass. That’s a lot of bread and wine for the Pope to hand out, and a lot of Porta-Juans. More importantly, for an officially atheist country, that was a lot of people showing up to hear the word of God.
The plaza was surrounded by mostly ugly buildings, one of which had on its façade a colossal metallic outline of a bearded and bereted Che Guevara, with the words HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE, which I thought might be Che’s last words to his wife, Vickie, but which Tad said meant “Always toward victory.” I needed to bone up on my Spanish. Corona, por favor.
Anyway, there were about a dozen tour buses idling around the mostly concrete plaza and groups of tourists snapping iPhone photos that they couldn’t e-mail to anyone until they were out of Wi-Fi-less Cuba.
We’d all hoped to see public toilets, or vendors selling cold drinks in the plaza, as you’d see anywhere else in the world, but apparently cold drinks and toilets were not part of the new five-year economic plan.
A few of our group snuck onto the other buses to use the toilet, and some people got back on our bus to get out of the heat. Our first few hours in Cuba were proving to be a challenge for the less hardy souls, who probably wouldn’t sign up for the Yale educational trip to Afghanistan.
One of the ugly buildings in the square had military vehicles in front of it and dozens of armed soldiers around it. Tad said that was the headquarters of the Communist Party. The Yalies took pictures.
The good news was that the plaza was filled with parked vintage American automobiles, and the drivers of these beautiful taxis were hustling the tourists to have their picture taken next to the cars, many of which had American flags flying from their antennas, which was interesting.
The cars were all pre-1959, of course, the year that time stopped here, and all of them were in mint condition, more lovingly restored and maintained than the buildings around the square. Maybe I’d buy a vintage Caddy when I was rich next month.
Meanwhile, I thought that one of these cars would make a good photo for Dave Katz, so I picked a baby blue Buick convertible that the owner said was a 1956 and I gave him my iPhone. Sara was standing nearby and I asked her to pose with me, but she declined. The Buick owner, who spoke good English, wouldn’t take her no for an answer—and lose two bucks—so he took Sara’s hand and led her to his car. The entrepreneurial and romantic gentleman urged us to get closer and I put my sweaty arm around Sara.
“Beautiful! Smile!”
He took two shots and I said to Sara, “I’ll text these to you. Can I have your number?”
“Maybe later.” As she walked away, I saw that a few of our group had noticed my interest in the pretty single lady whom I’d assisted at the airport. I gave the Buick driver an American five, though the transaction was illegal for both of us.
On that subject, Alison announced that we had to get to the bank to get CUCs because sometimes they ran out of money. We all boarded the bus and Tad advised us that the bank tellers sometimes slipped you counterfeit fifty- and hundred-CUC notes that they’d bought for half price, and they kept the real ones for themselves. “Check for the watermarks,” said Tad. Sara’s grandfather was rolling over in his grave.
We got moving and headed north up a wide boulevard with a landscaped median flanked by art deco structures, most of which needed restoration. In fact, this whole city needed Cuban American contractors from Florida.
The bus turned onto a side street and stopped in front of a small, shabbily constructed building that looked like a welfare office, but was in fact a government bank. We filed out of the bus into the grimy building and stood in line to change our Yankee dollars into Cuban Convertible Currency
.
Carlos had advised me not to change more than five hundred dollars at a time to avoid drawing attention to myself. According to Carlos, half the population of Havana were volunteer snoops called los vigilantes, or los chivatos—the finger pointers—members of the revolutionary watch committees who reported on their neighbors and also reported any suspicious activities of foreigners. Okay, we definitely weren’t in Switzerland, but I had the feeling that Carlos, like Eduardo, exaggerated the degeneration of Cuban society. Somewhere beyond the paranoia and the hate of the regime was a reality that was not easily understood.
I handed over five hundred greenbacks and my passport to an unsmiling teller and expected to get five hundred CUCs back at the official exchange rate of one for one, but there was a ten percent Screw You, Yanqui charge for American dollars, and they also Photostatted my passport.
After everyone was back on the bus—holding up their CUCs to find the watermark—Tad did a head count and off we went. Alison said our next stop was the Hotel Nacional, where lunch awaited us, then to the Hotel Parque Central, where hopefully our rooms would be ready.
I looked out the window as we made our way north toward the Straits of Florida. Havana. Mildewed magnificence, said the guide book.
When you get to a place that you think you know because it’s been in the news, or because it’s been talked and written about so much, what you discover is that you know nothing about the place. As it said in my travel packet: Put your prejudices aside and discover Cuba for yourself.
Okay, but in the end it didn’t matter much to me what the truth or the reality was of this place, and I didn’t need to leave here wiser; I needed to leave here richer. And alive.
CHAPTER 15
Our tour bus pulled into a long, tree-lined drive that ended at the imposing Hotel Nacional, which according to Alison had been inspired by the Breakers in Palm Beach, where I’d actually stayed once, and when I got my bill I knew why they called it the Breakers. But that was in my carefree days before I sunk my small fortune into The Maine—which I actually didn’t own anymore.
Alison also informed us that the Nacional had been opened in 1930, and that it had been the scene of many important events in Cuban history, including a takeover by a group of revolutionaries, many of whom were later executed—maybe for complaining about their bill. Also, according to Alison, the Nacional had hosted many rich, famous, and powerful people, including royalty, world leaders, and American movie stars. The infamous had also stayed here, including Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, who in 1946 convened the largest meeting ever held of the American Mafia, which gathered in the Nacional under the cover of a Frank Sinatra concert. I wondered if Frank knew what was going on. In any case, I’d heard of the Nacional and it had come to mind as a good place to meet Jack.
We all got off the bus and marched through the ornate lobby, which showed signs of restoration, then out the back doors across a terrace and down the sloping lawn toward the Straits of Florida. We followed Tad and Alison to an open pavilion that was serving lunch to tourist groups.
There were two long tables in the pavilion reserved for the Yale group. We all seated ourselves, and I found myself between two couples who were trying to make conversation. Across from me was the bestselling author and his better-looking wife. Sara was at the other table.
I couldn’t imagine sitting here through a family-style lunch—pass the beans, please—so I excused myself and walked down toward the water to what seemed to be fortifications overlooking the Straits of Florida.
A freelance guide offered me a history lesson for an American dollar, and I promised him two if he kept it under four minutes.
The guide, a university student named Pablo, told me that some of these fortifications were ancient, but that F.C. had ordered new fortifications built on the high ground of the Hotel Nacional during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the regime feared a U.S. invasion.
The so-called fortifications looked pretty pathetic, consisting of some bunkers and a few exposed gun emplacements. As a former military man I knew that these structures could be knocked out in about two minutes by a single salvo of 16-inch naval guns. But sometimes the optics are more important than the substance.
Pablo also thought the fortifications were a joke, and he confided to me that he wanted to go to the U.S. He looked at the Straits and said, “Over there.”
“Good luck.” I gave him an American ten, and he gave me his opinion on the Cuban economy. It sucked.
As I was contemplating heading for the bar, Sara appeared and said something in Spanish to Pablo, who laughed and replied in Spanish, then walked off with his half month’s pay.
“What did you say to him?”
She smiled. “I asked if you were flirting with him, and if not, I’d give you a try.”
“You could have just said, ‘Adios, amigo.’ ”
“Conversation in Cuba has to be clever. That’s all they have.” She suggested, “Let’s take a walk.”
We walked along a park path that overlooked a four-lane road bordered by a seawall that ran along the shore. Sara said the road was called the Malecón, which meant the Breakwater. The Straits were calm, the sun was hot, and there was no sea breeze. Sara asked, “How are you enjoying your Cuba experience so far?”
“Too early to tell.” I added the mandatory, “The people seem nice.” Actually, they seemed listless and indifferent. “I need another day before I become an expert on Cuba.”
She smiled, then said, “They’re good people who’ve been badly served for five centuries by inept, corrupt, and despotic leaders. That’s why Cuba has had so many revolutions.”
They might have better luck picking a government out of the phone book. I asked, “How do you feel about being here?”
“I don’t know.” She confessed, “I feel some ancestral connection . . . but I don’t feel that I’m home.”
“How many Cubans in America would return if Cuba was free?”
“Fewer than those who say they would. But all of us would like to travel freely back and forth, to see family, and maybe to buy a vacation house—and to show our children and grandchildren where their parents and grandparents came from.”
“That would be nice. But not on that airline we flew in on.”
She smiled. “Within a year, there’ll be regularly scheduled airline service from the U.S. And by next spring there’ll be cruise ships at the Sierra Maestra Terminal filled with Americans.”
“Two nations, one vacation.”
“That’s clever. Did you make that up?”
“I did.”
We walked in silence awhile, me wondering why Sara skipped lunch to be with me, and she knowing why.
We reached the end of the park where a monument stood that Sara said was the Monumento a las Víctimas del Maine.
Well, that was ominous.
We turned and began walking back toward the hotel.
She asked, “How do you feel about the U.S. seeking improved relations with Cuba?”
“Well . . . I understand why it’s time to do that. But we need to get something in return.”
“We won’t get anything from these bastards. Except lies. Nothing will change here until the regime changes.”
“It’s a process. Cuba needs a half million American tourists and business people with money and big mouths spreading the idea of freedom.”
“Which is exactly what the regime is afraid of. There’s nothing in it for them, and they’ll pick some fight with the U.S., or . . . arrest some Americans on trumped-up charges in order to set back the process.”
“Is that what you’d like to see?”
“Yes, to be honest.”
“Well, as long as it isn’t us who are arrested.”
She didn’t reply, so I changed the subject. “I’m not sure I’m understanding our supposed relationship.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. As you know, we need to look like we’re having a holiday romance, so that when
we disappear—”
“I understand. Happens to me on every vacation.”
“Yes, I’m sure, but not with a tour group in a police state. So to keep Tad and Alison from panicking and calling the embassy, we’ll leave them a note saying we’ve gone to the beach in Mayabeque Province—which is not where we’re going, of course—and we’ll be back in time for the return flight. As Carlos probably told you, we’ll leave our luggage in our rooms as though we’re coming back.”
“Right.”
She continued, “But even if Tad and Alison don’t call the embassy, our Cuban tour guide will report our disappearance to the authorities, who may or may not consider this a serious issue, and may or may not circulate our names and our airport photos to the police in Mayabeque—or all the provinces.”
“I’m listening.”
“Europeans, Canadians, and South Americans are allowed to travel independently around the country, so we won’t stick out in the countryside, and even if we’re stopped by the police I can probably talk us out of getting arrested.” She glanced at me. “We’re just starry-eyed lovers, off on a romantic getaway.”
“Hot as chili peppers.”
She smiled, then said, “We’ll probably be expelled, or possibly just returned to the group.”
“Sort of like catch and release.”
“I like your sense of humor.”
“Thank you. Here’s what’s not funny—if we have the sixty million dollars on us when we’re stopped—”
“Obviously that would be a problem. That’s the critical period—between the cave and The Maine.”
“Right. And if we get arrested with sixty million American dollars, you’ll get your wish about an incident that would set back diplomatic relations.”
“I don’t think our arrest would be enough to refreeze the Cuban Thaw. We’d also have to be executed.”
I saw she was smiling, but I didn’t think that was actually funny.
She said, “We need to take it a step at a time, and worry about it a step at a time. We need to be smarter than the police. Very soon we will be on The Maine, with the money, heading for Key West. That’s what I see in our future, and that’s what you need to see.”