Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

  Appearing out of the shadows, a Cuban fellow who had seen us come in barked out to us that the oficinas were above. A wide stairway at the back led us up to the second floor, where I was immediately elated by the sight of a doorway, alongside which were several signs, among them one that said: STANLEY BROS. & CO. IMPORTERS. Off an inner hallway were about six offices: In the first sat a corpulent Cuban man, his head glistening with sweat, some ledger books opened on the desk before him. He was drafting a letter or some poetry (a national pastime), a plume in hand. When I ventured in and made my introduction, it became quickly apparent that he knew little of the English language: I then tried to explain in my pidgin Spanish that we were looking for Señor Stanley. Shortly he got up, and with some great effort, made his way into another office, then came back with an English-speaking gentleman.

  He was a fellow southerner, an accountant who had his clientele among the American businessmen of the city and to whom had been entrusted the management of such offices. I remember that his name was Mr. Johnson; and this Mr. Johnson, having known Mr. Stanley and his brother in passing, had information that was both helpful and discouraging to me:

  “I last saw Captain Stanley here four months ago,” he said. “But he stopped coming by about then. One of his boys told me he’d caught the yellow fever—or typhoid, I cannot say which. I made nothing of his absence, as he only spent a few days a week here and mainly used this address to receive his mail and to conduct some business. He had another office down by the waterfront. I did see his brother, Mr. Henry Stanley, on one occasion after that. He seemed in some kind of rush to gather up their books, which they kept in a safe, along with some money, I guess. When I asked him about Captain Stanley, he told me that he was still laid low, but that was all. He left one afternoon with a portmanteau, and since then he hasn’t been back. But if he’s still in the city, I would imagine that the best way to find him would be to inquire after him with the American shippers down by the harbor, or you could locate the Yankee consul, though I cannot say that you’ve come at the best of times to do so.”

  “And Mr. Stanley’s office? Where is it?” I asked.

  “Just there, at the end of the hall.”

  The Stanley Bros. & Co. office was but a largish room, smelling still of lingering pipe and cigar smoke, its walls stained with threadlike trails of oil-lamp fumes. Piles of newspapers—old copies of the Daily Picayune and a local English-language Havana newspaper—were stacked in a corner. All manner of documents—bills of lading and such—were scattered about on the floor: Indeed there was a safe, its door still open, as were the drawers of a correspondence cabinet; and there was a big oak desk, and on the desk’s blotter were several crumpled letters written in Spanish, apparently (from what I could tell) regarding some transaction. These Mr. Stanley or his brother had apparently thought were of little importance. The general impression was that Mr. Stanley had left the premises in haste. Thinking myself in the midst of some kind of dream, I could barely speak, but Clemens, coolheaded and curious, decided to ask Mr. Johnson several questions:

  “When you last saw Mr. Stanley, did he seem ill?”

  “I saw him at a distance, and he seemed well.”

  “Did he carry the portmanteau out himself?”

  “I think he had a hand—some black boy, anxious for a wage, assisting him.”

  “We thank you, sir,” Mr. Clemens said, and with that Mr. Johnson accompanied us to the head of the stairs. As we went down, he shouted after us: “Good luck to you both,” and, as an afterthought, “Long live the South!”

  WE WERE INTENT ON MAKING our way to the harbor: If this failed to render useful information, we would inquire after him at the hospitals—there were two in the city—and if that bore no result, we would approach the American consul for help. But in any event, we were briefly detained by a sudden downpour, what the Cubans call an aguacero, according to Clemens’s guidebook, which he had brought along from New Orleans. It was a rain so profound that we were forced to take shelter in a bar at the end of the street. Though it was still before noon, we ordered several glasses of the local beer, and there we remained for about half an hour.

  The downpour, like the torrents of a cataract, cooled things off for a while, but soon a steamy heat followed: Such was the tropical clime. We found a carriage parked out in the street, its driver, in a broad straw hat and rags, hunched over, with his stick in hand, dozing. My Spanish, though consisting of infantile fragments, was sufficient to communicate that we wished to be taken to “los barcos americanos del puerto.” This he took to mean the sector of wharves along the seafront dominated by the warehouses and docks of various North American shipping companies, toward the southern end of the harbor. Taken down the paseo to the waterside and south along the ship-glutted docks, we came upon a scene reminiscent of bustling New Orleans, except that few of the frigates we saw were taking freight. Most, in from gulf ports, were being unloaded by fiercely worked slave gangs. Bales of processed cotton and crates lay out along the piers; and while the overseers barked out commands, a group of well-dressed Americans was gathered on the pier and engaged in heated discussion with some Cuban customs officials.

  We approached one of these Americans, a tall and lanky man in a stovepipe hat, as to the whereabouts of the Stanley Bros. & Co. concern, but he seemed to have never heard of them, being new to the island. A second gentleman, however, directed us to the offices of the Ward Line Company, and there we spoke to an official who knew something of the Stanley brothers’ business, the Ward Line being their landlords. He then instructed one of his underlings to take us to a man named Jacob, who sometimes worked for the Stanleys. We passed through several warehouses and long, slop-filled alleys to reach the smallish room at the back of a loading dock that had apparently served as Mr. Stanley’s place of business in the harbor. Jacob, a somewhat dissipated-looking man, had been asleep on a cot: The room smelled vilely of urine and liquor. When roused, he was at first annoyed and unfriendly, his cantankerous manner no doubt influenced by the fact that he was jaundiced and probably not long for this world. But once I explained the purpose of our visit there, he told us, with the gleam of self-interest in his rheumy eyes, “Yes, there are ways that I can help you and things that I can relate, but I won’t do it here. First you must buy me some drinks, for I have a horrid headache and ain’t in no mood to speak to strangers otherwise.”

  And so it was that we spent the remainder of that afternoon in a dingy harborside saloon, drinking from dirty glasses, and tolerating for several hours what seemed the incoherent ramblings of Jacob.

  “What of Mr. Stanley?” I would ask, but he would go on—speaking of his own fatherless childhood and of beatings at the hands of ruffian urchins when he was a young boy; of jails and a long stint as a sailor and of somehow ending up in this sorry state in Cuba.

  “But what of Mr. Stanley?” I asked again.

  Finally, just when the saloon had filled up with a great number of unsavory types who had begun to regard our nice clothes and good shoes—and Clemens’s gold watch chain—with menacing interest, then did he speak of the man.

  “Mr. Stanley was my one saving grace,” he said with sadness. “Worked for him and his brother, the captain, for nearly ten years. The captain was not a kindly man; he never understood why Mr. Stanley—who, it seemed, had a soft spot for lost souls—would give a drunk like myself a job. I worked hard for them, looking after their shipments out of port—that little office, that hovel, was my only home—and it is only through the indifference of the managers that I keep it even now.”

  “But do you know where Mr. Stanley is?”

  “The captain liked to give me a good beating for no good reason from time to time. Heaven help me if he whiffed a drink on my breath. Down would come the cane. So I was very happy that he caught the fever and died. Yes, he is dead. But then Mr. Stanley himself got the fever, and in his sickness he became a different sort of man—or maybe he was all grieved over his wife’s death, but I know
that when I last saw him, a few months ago, he didn’t have much concern for me. Just gave me a few gold coins and told me that he was done with Havana and with many other things. But first he said that he would have to tidy up after some of his business affairs: You know, he and the captain had traveled all over this island. The very day he set out, I had the feeling I wouldn’t see him again, but I know where you will probably find him, if he’s still alive.”

  “Where?”

  “Buy me two more bottles of rum to take home, and I will tell you.”

  To this I reluctantly agreed.

  “Well, I know he took off to various parts to collect on debts and settle up accounts with his planters. I know he went out west to Pinar del Río for a spell; the best tobacco growers are there. Then he came back here for a few days, but soon left by schooner to the city of Santiago de Cuba, which is at the far southern end of the island, on account of his wanting to sell off his share in some business. Where else he’s gone I can’t say, but my guess is that he went out to Matanzas. He’s owned a share in a sugar plantation there for quite some time—owned it with his brother and an Englishman named Mr. Davis, who has the biggest stake. Used to talk about it as a place he was fond of. But it’s only a guess that he’s there. More than that, I cannot say.”

  “And this plantation, Jacob. Where is it?”

  “I’ve never seen it myself, but it’s about sixty-five, seventy miles southeast of Havana as the crow flies, somewhere near a town—really just a little settlement—called Limonar, maybe a half day’s ride out from there, through bandit country. And I can tell you something else: The plantation is called the Esperanza.”

  And then, asking our pardon, Jacob, toothless and with gums swollen, took another drink and smacked his lips in savory delight. Leaving him, Clemens and I headed back to our hotel.

  BEFORE WE SET OUT for Matanzas, Clemens, having come such a long way, wanted to spend a few days in Havana sightseeing. For several mornings, with his guidebook in hand, Clemens would, with some vague itinerary in mind, lead our somewhat haphazard excursions through the city, the main points of interest being the architectural grandeur of the main boulevard of Havana, el Paseo Tacón, named after a past governor of the island; several old convents; and several churches. Foremost of these was the cathedral near our hotel, in the old colonial quarter. The bones of Christopher Columbus were said to be interred there, and Clemens, reading of this, had been most anxious to see the supposed crypt. In that somewhat gloomy place, we had stood for some time facing Columbus’s mortal remains. This comprised the only instance when I had seen Clemens possess a sense of wonder and nearly religious awe for anything: “To be a great explorer who finds a new world,” I heard him say. “Now, that would be worth a thousand years of living.” But on the whole, he remained unmoved by the atmosphere in that church. In this regard, his Presbyterian upbringing notwithstanding, he remained curiously coldhearted about religion and matters such as the afterlife, dismissing them as the wishful fantasies of people trying to make sense of this world.

  “Even at my young age,” he told me, “I can see there’s no rhyme or reason to the way things go, or any fairness about it. I’ve only to think of my younger brother to see that.” Then: “As for this ‘Father in Heaven’ business, as far as I am concerned we may as well revert to being cavemen and worshipping the trees.”

  Nevertheless he remained particularly interested in the occasional mendicant we encountered—religious folk who preached on the sidewalks and, for a small fee, gave a personal blessing. Whenever we passed such a mendicant, Clemens had to stop and watch the incantations of prayer; in general he seemed quite skeptical—but fascinated just the same—in things supernatural, which were in evidence everywhere. It was unavoidable, as the city had an undercurrent of animistic beliefs.

  This was particularly evident at night, when, in alleys and hidden courtyards, groups of Negroes gathered to sing—not church hymns but strange Yoruban chants evoking the African gods, such activities being accompanied by the beating of drums and wild dances. Twice in the course of our nightly wanderings did we see such things—these rituals, I should add, were conducted on streets that the Spanish guards purposely ignored, for, as Mrs. Rosedale informed us, such practices, though against the law, were impossible to repress, so much were they a part of the slave culture.

  ON OUR THIRD DAY in Havana, Clemens decided to look up the young lady of his passing acquaintance, Miss Priscilla Hatcher, whose father was doing business in Havana. We went to visit her at her home up on the great hill over the city, where many of the consulates were to be found, and had arranged to do so through Mrs. Rosedale, who had some acquaintance with her family.

  Earlier he had confessed to me that he had, some time back, sent her several gushing notes of a somewhat romantic nature, and that she had responded in kind. Though he doubted that he was ready to take any kind of leap, in the morning he had spent an inordinate amount of time in our hotel room, shaving and trimming his muttonchops and mustache, before putting on his white linen suit and polishing his shoes so that he would appear before her as the image of sartorial splendor.

  I should add here that Clemens was, in some ways, a sentimentalist: Among the possessions he had brought along with him on our journey, aside from certain practical items, were a cameo of his mother, a small oval photograph of his departed brother Henry, and, in a pouch, a lock of hair from, as he told me, “a girl I once loved in Hannibal, Missouri.” Such an admission aside, he was otherwise circumspect about his dealings with the female sex, his interest in romantic involvements, so he once told me, limited to occasional flirtations and fleeting infatuations that he viewed as pleasant enough ways to pass the time while spending a few days here and there in various towns. Whatever his ultimate intentions—in this instance, to pay the young lady a “courtesy call”—he was in no rush to become involved.

  We turned up sometime past noon, and after an introduction to several other family members, and after answering numerous questions pertaining to the reasons we had come to Havana—Mr. Hatcher had indeed heard of Mr. Stanley, without knowing him—and after a discussion about the prospects of war, we dined in a shuttered salon and were then treated to a performance of Chopin, the pianist being the young lady herself. After this, she and Clemens, in the company of her aunt, sat together for some time on a love seat, Clemens charming her with his stories about the Mississippi. Though I was engaged in conversation with Mr. Hatcher about Arkansas, from where he hailed, I overheard much laughter; then, apparently, they entered into some more serious discussions, for their voices quieted. Finally it was time for us to go, and while Clemens had been quite taken by Miss Hatcher’s personality and was glad to have visited her, in the end, as we later retreated back down into the city proper, he seemed somewhat relieved to have finished following that particular thread of fanciful romantic speculation.

  “I like her, Henry,” he told me. “And I’m glad to have seen her again; but she would clearly do better with a practical businessman like her father. You see, Henry, for all her refinements, she doesn’t like to read books, which she finds too troublesome, and that holds no appeal for me. And something else, which I did not know: She is a Catholic, and Mother would never like that.”

  Later, around dusk, we visited the Plaza de Armas, where it was congenial to sit on a bench and listen to a military band play waltzes. Clemens remarked: “Life doesn’t get much better, does it, Henry?” Then: “This is a curious land. At one in the afternoon, it’s hell: at seven in the evening, pure bliss.”

  We were planning to head for Matanzas the next evening, but it was my misfortune to come down with a renewed attack of the ague—and so it was that we lost three days. During those nights while I was laid low, Clemens began to frequent a large café just outside the old city walls called the Louvre, a haunt favored by the American shipping fraternity. Which is to say that Union and Confederate sailors and their captains and mates gathered uneasily there, for by that first we
ek in April, 1861, the war seemed inevitable.

  In that café, Clemens had found a southern captain whom he wanted me to meet: a surly bear of a man named Captain Bailey, who had a dead eye and had apparently known my father well. And so it was, when I had gotten better, that Clemens took me there. Why Clemens thought it important for me to meet Captain Bailey I cannot say, but shortly we found ourselves sitting across a table from the man, his left eye ghostly dull.

  “I understand from your friend here that you are close to Mr. Stanley. Now, before I say my words, I must ask you what you know of him.”

  It was a curious question.

  “Well, sir—he is an old Georgia gentleman of refinement and education, a former minister who had become a commissions trader; he is a pious widower, with no children of his own. I am his adopted son, or will be, when I find him.”

  “That is all well and good that you think this: But here is what I know of him—and I am telling you this, young man, to correct any mistaken notions you have of him.” He finished a glass of rum and filled it again from a bottle.