Cuba Diaries: Part 1
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July 1st 1999
The beginning of the end of a journey that had to wait 40 years
to start.
We awoke at 5 a.m. Thursday morning, gathered ourselves together
– Juli, Ives, Evonne, Gilberto and myself. We had rented
a tiny car the day before along the Malecon. Still finishing dreams,
lingering from the night before, we now climbed into the car.
The early morning of Habana revealed a ghostly world of sleepy
socialist workers, poor people, hungry people, starting yet another
day of work. We traveled through Acerbo to get to the Autopista
(Ocho Via). We let out at 130 to 140 kilometers per hour, blazing
by the countryside waiting for the sun to rise, and in about two
and a half hours we arrived at the exit for Cienfuegos.
We drove a two-lane road for a few miles and stopped by a roadside
stand for biscuits fried in water and a cup of quarapo, a fresh
juice crushed directly from sugarcane into a most unsanitary pot.
(“Unsanitary” applied to most things to do with food
or banos, but no one really seemed to care.)
Onward we drove to Cienfuegos to see Violetta, another of my
Father’s cousin’s and her daughter Marialena, who
I will always remember as a most beautiful little girl, I am rocking
her on a Casilda park rocking horse. Suddenly, here we both are,
40 years later, staring into each other’s eyes over the
vast gulf of a lifetime, looking for our childhood in each others
faces. Our stay was brief, over laughs and espresso and a bittersweet
goodbye, knowing we would never see each other again.
From Cienfuegos we drove on to Trindad. The journey now seemed
endless. Along a long, winding road it was getting hotter now
as the sun reached its highest point. The heat started to bake
us inside our un-air conditioned car. We traveled on a narrow
two-lane road passing slow-moving vehicles, trucks, horse-pulled
wagons, tractors, bicyclists, and people on foot selling their
wares of garlic strings, cakes and papayas. All the vehicles belching
their black foul, smelly exhaust into our car, adding to the agony
of sore bottoms, confinement and heat.
Finally we arrived in Trinidad, part time home of my father’s
family. The streets were of ancient stones with more space between
them now than in my childhood. Leaving more room for our tires
to bounce even higher and harder.
We got out in the blistering heat seeking relief and something
cold to drink, a Coke, some water. We found the old convent and
church Santissimo Trinidad, the spot were the first Catholic Mass
was said in Cuba over 500 years ago.
Then we entered an Italian Restaurant designed in the old Spanish
colonial style, were we had drinks and cooled ourselves for the
last leg of the journey….. CASILDA!
A few kilometers down the road, we arrived almost silently; not
one person could be seen in the streets at midday. I suppose after
40 years of absence anything would appear different, changed…
It’s just that in this instance everything was in ruins.
The little row of wood houses on the left hand side of the street
was barely standing. Their original island weathered charm had
turned to decay and despair.
We got out of the car. I watched with a mixture of anticipation,
wonder, an eerie sense of timelessness; overheated and squinting
as Gilberto walked up to the door of his grandfather Toma’s
house (his grandmother’s name was Isabel) and knocked. I
held my breath…
We didn’t know who would answer or what we would find,
but finally a middle-aged woman opened the door. My God! Her eyes
exploded! What surprise we brought with us.
She was my father’s cousin, Rosalina. Surprisingly there
were no obvious tears. They embraced and started talking immediately.
The Cuban people I met seemed to conceal their enormous sentimentality
but not their passionate love of life; at least my particular
family does.
The interior of the house was unchanged from when I stayed there
as a child. The same courtyard, in the back, was green and lush.
However, the inside was blackened from cooking grease over the
years; the wood beams and walls aging in the humidity and salt
air wore so many visible attempts at repair. The roof was patched
countless times. The walls were streaked with cracks and chips
in the discolored paint. We walked upon a floor of tiles seemingly
unwashed in ages. There were old darkened family portraits, family
ghosts in the hallways, miniatures, framed in florid, intricate
silver or brass filigree, and a dog barking wildly in the background.
Oozing sweat, wiping my face again and again of the oil and dirt
that seems to accumulate instantly with so much history closing
in;
I am hushed and listening…
Somewhere, someone unseen is sweeping the hardened dirt floor
of the exterior courtyard, humming a Cuban folk song.
The gap in time slamming shut again, and there we are, re-experiencing
a place that was once our family home and summer paradise.
Rosalina took us down the street to see Celida, yet another cousin
& her invalid brother, Guida in his wheelchair. He was listening
to a roaring TV blurting staccato Cuban; he was almost deaf. Again
the home was much the same as it was in great-grandfather Toma’s,
time including, standing in the courtyard, a gleaming white marble
statue of the Virgin Mary, arms open and pleading it seemed for
mercy and relief.
We easily found my grandparents Faustos and Elvira’s house
and store, now decrepit along with the ruins of the church of
Santa Elena in Casilda, destroyed by the youthful horror of communisms
gleeful annihilation of religion.
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"I am Home"
Gilberto & Ives
click to enlarge |
Too much in too short a time. We finally went to the beaches
of Ancon out on a sandbar about four kilometers from town, found
a thatched-roofed beachside grill, awoke the owner who was asleep
in a hammock, and toasted the end of the pilgrimage over cold
cerveza and grilled lobster. Dad walked down on the narrow white
sand beach and dipped into the crystal clear Caribbean waters
of his boyhood and pronounced: “This is my Cuba… this
is my home!”
We drove back to Habana quietly digesting our encounters and
observations. It rained from whirling dark tropical clouds. A
serious cleansing was in store. |
