a journal of...

A journal among friends...
art, words, home, people and places

Monday, June 17, 2019

Our man in Havana


Like all good explorers, I had the advantage of advice from those who went before, and a guide who came along to help me see better.

My sister-in-law Jean, along with her sister Pat, had cruised to Havana for a day last February, and sent along the name of a man who had made their few hours in Cuba a whirl of information and sights.  "I think he's a professor of something at the University," Jean told me when she passed along his e-address.  "He was so interesting and knew so much, my head was spinning when we got back to the ship.  We had a great time with him."

I wanted a guide especially because that ambitious itinerary I had set for myself included interviews with artists in small, younger places I might need an introduction to.  Though I am a wanderer by nature, welcome to the surprises and unsuspected discoveries along the way (hence tours frustrate me), I also thought a little help would shorten the time it took me to find the places and people I wanted to meet.  So a few months before I left for Cuba, I began an email conversation with Leonel Quesada vera, to let him know what I had planned for my visit.  In pretty much perfect English (it's what he teaches, Linguistics and Philology), he absorbed my ambitions and went along with them.  "Wow! We're going to be pretty busy," he wrote.

Initially, I thought to hire him for a few hours a day, a few days of the time I was there.  But it became apparent, both before and after my arrival, that his expertise and excellent company was too good to shortchange.  On the second day in Habana Vieja, he arrived just before our meeting time of 10 a.m. at the Blue Doors, where I stayed, and, introducing himself, announced that we would go to the cafe in the Plaza and talk about a plan for the days ahead.  As we walked, he told me he'd been doing some research into the art and artists I'd sent him, and also had arranged a tour of a photography studio, where I could talk to the artists there.


At the cafe, which, by the way, roasted their own beans into superb rich Cuban coffee ("My sister's favorite!" Leonel enthused), we watched the city square open up to school children, workers, and tourists.  Both waiter and guide looked a bit askance when I ordered what I usually drink first thing in the morning:  a cup of hot water with lemon (they didn't have lemon or lime, but the water would do).  Much earlier, tiptoeing past the sleeping apartment, eager to get out into the streets, I'd already had coffee at a little paladar I found a few blocks down Calle Merced, called El Porton, where the young woman who served me and the man who owned it, were happy to see their first customer of the day, and promised that if I came back later, I could have some soup for supper, even though it wasn't on their menu.  They would, they said, be happy to make me anything I wanted.


As I told Leonel the story, he explained how the paladares came to be the places to eat and drink in the city, and, noting that I had written him about my interest in eating locally, he promised that the paladares would be the places we would seek out.  As a guide, he had his own agenda, he said, but he could easily incorporate mine.  "But first," he said, "you need to know our history."  That would be today's excursion, to which I acceded readily.  I, too, like to begin in a city's historical museums and foundations, so that, as other explorations continue, I know where I am and how the city came to be.  He explained the genesis of the city, its 500 year age, and the way the old city is structured.  In the plaza, we looked at the varying architecture, "So little else so widely authentic in the Americas," he claimed, and pointed out  the way to tell the centuries of windows and balconies; the patterns of the railings, it had been long ago decreed, could not duplicated.


He warns me that Havana is not the rest of Cuba:  "Here, people want something from you, but elsewhere it is different and kinder."  And yet it seems to me a universal story.  Most cities are like that:  I think immediately of the man in the Temple bar in Dublin, from Galway, who said exactly the same thing, "Dublin is a mercenary place; the west of Ireland is generous and beautiful."  I smile thinking of the parallel, and also of the fact that, though I had to agree about Dublin, which I would have called indifferent at the time, Havana has been so far pretty kind and open with me.

And so Leonel and I began our getting to know one another, a day by day exchange of experience, histories, family, life stories and views on the world.  Cheerful, knowledgeable, and open to adventure, he was the best treasure I would find in Havana, not only for the sites and people he could bring me to, but for the generation of ideas and slowly put-together pieces of similarities and differences that shaped a vision of Cuba for me.


Leonel wasn't, however, from the city, so he was staying for the week with his brother just outside Havana.  His home was in Matanzas, "City of Bridges," he told me, with a good deal of pride about its recent restoration.


As he described it, I thought the first of many thoughts that, really, I wish I had given more time to this trip so that I could leave Havana and explore the other parts of the island...the Zapata swamp, for another, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba; finding them on the map and reading about them, I realized what I might be missing.  Cuba is a country of many different topologies, histories, cultures, and resources both rich and poor.  Havana is its northwestern center, but it isn't, as Leonel indicated and Guelo and Nilda asserted, the whole like of Cuba,  In hindsight, I feel genuinely stupid for not simply giving up my return airline ticket and taking another week to go into the country further.  But, as everyone tells me, there is always the next time.  (If only...)


It slowly came out that actually Leonel comes from a quite talented family.  You have already seen his sister Leysis' work on this blog; her older daughter, 15, a ballerina at the famous Cuban National Ballet School, had recently won an international competition.  Early in her life, she had been selected to attend the famous ballet school (Cuba is known for ballet) we passed along our way, and there spent both her academic and dance education since.  Another of Leonel's sister and brother were also in other ways creative.  And Leysis' seven-year-old daughter, often posing herself for her mother's fine art, promised (she reminded me of Alexander) to be something the world took notice of, too.



Mother's Day was soon, and the family, except for a sister living in Scandinavia, would be gathering in Matanzas to celebrate the day with their mother.  "We like getting together to cook, with family and friends," Leonel had told me in an early email.  "If you were here, you could join us for my birthday and my mother's."

He was as good as his word about showing me Havana's and Cuba's history first, though we did revisit the galleries I had seen the previous day.  A second look, with a non-artist in tow, drew my attention to other pieces and their significance.  Poignant and replete with subplots we can only guess at, they were now illuminated from their quieter places.


In the next days, we found the Governor's Palace, now the City Museum, full of histories real and mythic.  Leonel pointed to the wooden street just outside and told its story...a governor who couldn't stand the clop of horses' hooves all night outside his windows, or, it was hinted, perhaps it was the governor's wife who complained?



On our way down the wide stone stairs to sit in the courtyard for a while among the cool, lovely greenery and contemplate Columbus' role in the Americas.


Suddenly the peace is interrupted by two men who arrive and spend more time than you would expect chasing a peacock around the thick garden plots.  We asked them what the exercise was all about (the peacock was mostly winning the chase), and were told there would be a concert soon:  no one would appreciate music punctuated by the bird's screeches, so he, like his mate, were going to be removed for a while.


All the while we walked the streets, he pointed out this statue, that harbor, the stories behind buildings and historic figures, parks and buildings.  I found out that he teaches once a week at the University, but, as other Cuban professionals have found, linking to the visitors to Cuba's shores pays bills.  Hence, most of the week (and months of the year) find him touring with people like me, though mostly in groups.  And yet, from his conversation and the way he takes hold of the country's history, people, places, monuments and future and renders it visible to a stranger's sight, that he must be an excellent teacher.

After the day is over, I set out again on my own back to the cafe where early in the morning I had had my coffee.  I was tired, and my airline cold was dragging me a bit, but I promised to return to the soup I knew they would be making just for me.  As I arrived at the tiny Porton paladar, I met the owner's wife (and cook) coming in with groceries. They greeted me enthusiastically.  Once again, I was the only customer, but this time, settling in to my table, I waited for the soup to be cooked, and meanwhile got to enjoy two little girls, Adreanna, 3 or 4 years old, and her cousin Areanna, about 18 months old, romping around back and forth between the stoop and the kitchen while their mothers, the waitress from this morning and her sister, pregnant, drew up the menu for tomorrow on the board outside.  The little girls danced to the Cuban music videos up on the wall, and the little one, discovering the mule head on my cane, danced closer to it until she could reach out for it.  I show her what it is, having to explain what a mule is, but finally one of their mothers says, "Ah!  Mulo!"  And we make believe that the "horse" is talking to them.


When the soup comes it is a huge bowl full of everything...chicken pieces, carrots, celery, onion, pepper and rice in a rich broth...surrounded by cucumber, tomato, a kind of room-temp cheese and a whole peeled banana. Though I don't eat chicken at home, when away, one is grateful for a host's offering.  Still, I can barely eat half the soup...in the Havana heat, it's hard to eat much...but the broth is exactly what I need, and when they ask how it is, I nod, perfecta.

The owner and his wife consult with the waitress a few minutes, then come back to the table to ask if I will come for breakfast in the morning.  I waffle a bit, because breakfast is more like lunch for me, but they offer eggs, toast, fruit, coffee, and hope I will be there.  Cafe? I suggest, and the waitress smiles, Si, con crema!  remembering my morning order.

El Mulo and I get up to leave, and say goodbye.  At the door, Areanna hides in her mother's lap (Adreanna is still skipping in the street), but I wave my cane at her and say, El caballo dice "Adios!", and she smiles.  They help me down the steep, short steps, and I head in a different direction, this time toward the docks and some fishermen, a game of neighborhood soccer, well attended by local residents, parents of the boys, friends and passersby.  I am not finished with the day, I feel, so head up toward the Plaza San Antonio and the Vieja in a roundabout way, finally asking directions of a group of men comparing the virtues of one car over another, to return to my Calle Merced place.

I sleep really well.


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