 |
"From the balcony, here on Calle Cienfuegos, I’m looking down on a large red bus that has just pulled up. I’m in Central Havana, in the middle of the city and the bus, if the big sign atop the front window is to be believed, is going to, er, Havana.
A young couple in Olive-green military fatigues flirt and studiously avoid potholes and puddles as they idle by, careful not to take the edge off their shiny shoes. The only other thing shiny here is the refinished, restored and polished parade of tourist taxis. It is said that Cuba has the best mechanics. Certainly, they’re resourceful and it’s nothing short of a miracle that they can take these rusting hulks, sometimes seventy, eighty, even a hundred years old and send them back out onto the streets looking as if they were made yesterday. The last time I was here, I got a long taxi ride to the beaches of Havana del Este in a shiny, new-looking Model T Ford from the nineteen-twenties. It croaked and groaned at little more than a walking pace. It took hours, wheezing and coughing and eventually after an age dropped us at our location before turning back around and wobbling off into the distance.
Everybody seems to have somewhere to go - and in a hurry too. The incongruity is that we’re in the Caribbean, a sphere that operates at a, well, Caribbean pace. But this isn’t the languorous slow shrug of Santiago - the second city on the other side of the island, closer to Haiti than Havana - no this is La Habana, a huge Capital city whose tension rods are cranked as tightly as New York.
Down in the street, a battered ex-Soviet Russian Lada splutters, put-puts and pops past followed by a sparkly be-finned Firebird. A Chinese three-wheeler, a bright yellow invention with a sort of bulbous plastic pod and a seat for two, nips along briskly. Then an ingenious tropical fruit transportation device - attached by a few screws to a motorbike - heads along hastily to deliver its cargo to a nearby banana outlet - Oh, and here comes the water truck… at last.
It wouldn’t be good form to complain that the internet here doesn’t work but I’ll certainly join in with the growing grumble of everybody else on the block that we haven’t had running water now for three days. It is possible to perform some of the daily ablutions with bottled drinking water but I’d rather save that commodity for, well, drinking. We made a complaint to Wendy, the landlady, but I felt bad a few hours later when an out-of-breath skinny old man emerged at the top of the steep stairs having somehow, with the aid of a nine-year-old schoolboy, carried a full ten-gallon plastic drum to the top of the landing for our benefit.
Over the road at number 60, another man and a boy are carrying full buckets through an old hand-carved door, struggling with the weight but not spilling a drop. Presumably, they’re lugging them slowly up to the apartment of the balcony opposite, across the street, where a thin lady in a spotless, white dress is hanging up equally spotless and newly-washed children’s clothes and enough white T-shirts for a junior football team. The expansive verdant fronds of her decorative ferns, four of them overflowing from hanging pots look very healthy, and I must say, very well watered and now she’s mopping the floor generously, a veritable tidal wave. Could she perhaps be the water-hogger, is she the culprit, the reason that everyone else’s H20 has dried up?
 |
Oh, here come three more water bucket men over at number 60. She must be going into mopping overdrive and one can only guess at how much more lush, fecund fernage is hanging inside desperately gagging for a pint or two. I wish the water bucket men would come over here, then I’d be able to flush the toilet for the first time since Friday. The smell of urine is no stranger in Havana but I’d rather that it was at sidewalk level and not circulating within olfactory reach of my bed for the next few nights.
Our gigs are done and the rest of my band - the American part, has returned to the forbidden North (yes, New Orleans is considered North here). I’m lingering on for a few extra days to recharge my funk battery with some Antillean wattage, to soak in the sounds and, yes, smells of a city I love dearly but find more confounding with every trip. Despite the hardships, the people here are always so generous and friendly, though the tedious and unsolicited ‘Where do you fron, my fren?’ by now has me groaning inside at every unsolicited approach.
A vendor in the street below is loudly proclaiming his presence, his vocal ejaculations interspersed with a shrill and very loud football whistle - the same one that’s been driving me nuts at regular half-hour intervals all morning. He’s pushing a rickety cart which has seemingly, from my second-storey balcony perspective, nothing on it. No, now that he’s directly beneath me I can see that his cart is not entirely bereft. It is decorated with what appears to be an occult pentagram and he does in fact have a cargo - though I can’t really tell if what he’s attempting to shift is two loaves of bread or two old bricks. Bread would make more sense, but I think he actually is (and has been all morning) engaged in the brick-selling trade to the tune of two - without, it would seem, much luck. I must admit that I admire his efforts; his capitalistic tenacity not flagging as he pushes his cart relentlessly against the tide of socialism and perhaps, if by tomorrow his entrepreneurial spirit hasn’t generated a return on his investment, I might be tempted to buy one of his two bricks myself and take it home to ‘She who must be obeyed at all times’ as a tender souvenir.
If you were hungry and could eat Cuban tobacco for breakfast you’d have been very full and very happy this morning at Havana airport.
Cigars in their boxes are for sale every few feet as I walk from the luggage X-ray machine past the duty-free rum and cigar shops into the departure lounge/cigar shop mall. Regrettably, though I like the occasional cigar, I generally prefer to smoke them than to eat them. As a consequence, I’ve been forced to chance the only available alternative: an alleged cheese and ham sandwich at the airport Cafeteria, the sole item available on the menu.
The 'Bocadillo de Jamon y Queso', though burnt, cremated and crispy on the outside, emerged from the toaster relatively unscathed (and uncooked) on the inside. Both its primary ingredients were of interest re colour and texture. The synthetic pinkness of the ham made me wonder if pork products can be photoshopped before being toasted and its rubbery stretch marks suggested it could double as an efficient pencil eraser. The yellow of the cheese was, well, cheesish, even if the taste on the tongue bore no resemblance to any known dairy product.
It’s been half an hour and I’m not yet showing any signs of food poising - but that might be because I could only manage one bite before my digestive equipment immediately registered a panicked and formal complaint, this prior to the masticulatory equipage shutting down completely - a form of defensive lockjaw.
Old Havana’s rictus grin,
is shades of dust and bone
while pastel tracing purple clings
to cracked and crumbling stone…
 |
They’ve announced the commencement of boarding. Time to buckle myself into a seat of the winged metal tube that will deposit me in one hour, a distance of ninety miles and a world away.
This morning I turned a key in a lock behind me of a crumbling house in the old town of Havana, in just a few hours I’ll be turning a key in the lock of the front door of my crumbling house in the old town of New Orleans - adrift in and out of the nineteenth century.
Back to the other land that care forgot
It’s still early but the February sky has turned metallic grey over the city of New Orleans and the sun has decided it’s done for the day; the shine has had enough and is clocking off early. Rain is testing its toes with a light drizzle and a black Crow glides lazily over the roof of a rickety house across the road where my neighbour, an old jazz drummer used to live.
I miss him, old Barry, leaning heavily, dangerously on the rotting wood of his balcony, waving me good morning in his drawers, shirt and socks; laughing and complaining, talking inaudibly of old gigs, old songs, old musicians, old glory days - just out of earshot, mumbling with a big cigar stub in his mouth…
I’ve been back home for only a few days but Cuba already seems like a memory from far away. It’s been busy. I’ve played a couple of shows, I’ve had band rehearsals and recording sessions, and I’ve been to the doctor for the sore throat that I brought back with me after ten days of inhaling the diesel fumes that take the place of oxygen in the dirty streets of Old Havana. And life is going on - and Cuba is once again behind me. But, as always, it’s also present in the future too. The idea of Cuba lingers on my horizon like a vague cloud of exhaust smoke in the distance, signalling and asking when I’ll next go down.
I don’t how he’d do it, but my friend, Jesus, is confident that if I do decide to go, he’ll find a way to procure the gas to drive us the six or seven hundred miles across the island to Santiago - my favourite town in the world except New Orleans (though in reality, it is New Orleans - just floating in a different century).
Gas is in short supply, Cuba’s national fuel tank is dry and its internal plane flights are grounded. Ernan said the Carretera Central, the only highway is fucked too: you can’t even get to Santiago by car, - but Jesus is confident he can find a way. If Jesus can’t find a way, who can?
So, here I am. I only got home three days ago but I’m already looking forward to going back. Back to Cuba, again." [c] joncleary.com
No comments:
Post a Comment