Vive
The communist country greets the wayward traveler in a manner consistent with socialist ideology and reality. Airplanes unload passengers still rubbing their eyes directly onto the tarmac. Excessive numbers of functionaries guide visitor movement into large square buildings with long hallways smelling of mothballs, mold and starch. Large posters of serious handsome revolutionaries look down onto visitors from main entrances, stairwells, and the walls before turns. The bathroom attendant is smoking. His mop tilts gray and lifeless in the corner with no evidence of cleaning solvent in sight.
Seongeun and I stand at the Jose Marti Airport luggage carousel forty minutes outside of Havana. Boxes and baggage appear at unusually long intervals along the frayed rubber occasionally groaning conveyer belt. I wonder if we shall lose our shoes. Fourteen years ago, it was my blue and gold New Balance running sneakers that failed to emerge after the forty-five minute AirCuba flight from Cancun. I ended up buying on the black market replacement Reeboks with a small hole beneath the right big toe. This was not an uninteresting affair and consisted of a man named William, whom my girl friend at the time and I met while walking along the Malécon, leading us as if we were old friends through the streets of central Havana, through grand arch ways and up fantastically old and crumbling walkways to meet with various family members, acquaintances and connections in living rooms usually stacked with hard back books and antique furniture. There we discussed, not unlike participants in a cabal, the proposition of affordable available foot wear at a time when most goods in Cuba were scarce. 2001 was only a few years removed from El Periódo Especial or the “Special Period”, a time of severe economic and social hardship when the fall of the Soviet Union and tightening of the forty year U.S. embargo under Helms-Burton meant a dire national shortage of medicines, food, car parts, even toilet seats. Cats disappeared from living rooms. The pitchers El Duque and Fernandez defected to the SF Giants and NY Yankees to help them win American World Series. National caloric intake decreased by a third. It was rumored that the $0.25 cent government subsidized pizza now used melted condom for cheese. Elderly mortality rose an astounding 20%. Of course at the time, this stupid American was not aware of any of this. The price that William, the seller and I ultimately settled upon was $5 U.S, which as a poor medical resident was not insignificant, particularly in light of the hole, but not important relative to the real issues facing Cubans. At the time, U.S. currency was the main currency used on the street so no conversion was necessary.
Seongeun and I proceed through customs with our belongings eventually in hand to a large X-ray machine where all incoming goods are viewed if not cooked, past a guard collecting forms while reading the newspaper, through a set of heavy manual doors with frosted windows. Outside there is a large crowd, held back by metals barricades in an upside-down V configuration. The crowd’s anticipation is obvious: Matriarchs hold the railing bar up front with whitened knuckles squinting and scanning at each passerby. Exclamations and high-pitched shouts are heard intermittently. Heads of individuals at the back bounce up up and down like poorly positioned observers in a worthwhile street parade. Seongeun and I walk down the artificial clearing as if participants in this parade. From the expressions of our observers, Cuba is not yet a top destination of Asian tourists. The Matriarchs look disappointed. The men bemused. The children curious. Every once in a while, we hear the calls of “Konichiwa” or “Ni Hao Ma”, which I confess irritates us. Seongeun is Korean and I am Taiwanese. But life quickly moves on amidst this new throng of noises, people, smells, and colors. We are old enough, know enough and are okay enough with the unknown to be comfortable. Suffice to say that Seongeun and I just try to progress with our disheveled heads high. I attempt to saunter with my green duffle weighing down my shoulder. Seongeun tries not to trip on her long sweat pants.
At the end of the line, we meet a group of plain clothed men offering rides to the city at unreasonable rates. I speak Spanish so communication is not the main challenge. The challenge is knowing what words represent here in this foreign place. Does taxi to the city mean a ride in a private car holding someone else’s baby? Does a 30-minute journey really mean a 10-minute drive (you paid too much) or 2 hours when the car runs out of gas or the tire goes flat (you still paid too much). And if you ask to be taken to a “casa particular”, what does a request for a clean room with private bathroom with view of old Havana or the sea which includes breakfast for $35 a night imply to someone who has none of these things? The average Cuban doctor makes $40 a month. The average driver makes less.
We choose a man named Oscar. “Welcome to Cuba! You speak Chinese?” says Oscar in heavily accented English.
“Somos Americanos,” I say, “we are Americans.”
“Ah, hablan español. ¡Pero parecen como los chinos¡— Oh, you speak Spanish. But you look Chinese!“
“Usted parece como Mexicano. Los estados unidos es un país que es compuesto do muchos tipos de genta— You look Mexican. The U.S. is comprised of many different types of people. “
“¡Okay, yo lo entiendo¡—I understand. “
“How much to the city?
“$40 Cuc”
“We only have American dollars right now”
“In that case $50.”
“Too expensive, $20”
“Come on my friend. That wont’ take us to next door. $40”
“$30”
“$35”
“Okay but we also need a room for the night.”
“I know just the place.”
“Well, we are willing to go to your place, but if we don’t like it we want to be taken to another place.”
“You will like the place. I am sure.”
“I am sure we might, but if we don’t, are you willing to take us to another place? We have some addresses,” which I show
With furrowed brow Oscar looks at the list of rooms for rent, which Seongeun took off the internet the night prior. “Then the price is $40 U.S.”
“That’s fine but we aren’t going to tip you,”
“Adios Mio.”
“Muchisìmas Gracias.”
Oscar is teaching his son Alejandro to take over the family business. Alejandro is handsome and charming but doesn’t talk. Smiling Alejandro is quiet the entire trip but takes our bags, opens and closes the doors and drives straight and well. The car is a Russian 1970’s Lada, known to be sturdy as a Siberian tank. Lada’s are the highest-selling automobile to be produced without a major design change-- a reported 20 million units sold. This to me only means that the manufacturer AvtoVAZ like its name did not have the capacity to innovate. Indeed the Lada was discontinued in 2001 and Oscar’s version undoubtedly reflects this. Though its color is gripping, the interior is ascetic, the muffler fiction, the shock absorbers petrified, the steering and gears exposed, and the windows opened only through the sharing of a single rusting handle obtenable upon request in the glove box. As we zoom down the street, Seongeun and I are feeling happy and high in part due to the cloud of diesel exhaust flowing through the cabin.
The streets to Havana are bare along the highway, mostly because few own cars. Instead wayward trucks dominate though they too are scarce-- like metal elephants trekking across tundra. Lining the highway are sugar cane fields and curiously placed sidewalks. Closer to the city come railroad tracks, large square factories and roundabouts with well manicured bushes and lawns and signs that say in Spanish things like “yielding rewards” and “safety impresses the community”. Once in the city, we see children in groups returning from school dressed in white button down shirts-- for boys, blue or maroon ties and pants; and for girls, blue or maroon kerchiefs and knee-high skirts. Older men and women stand expressionless at bus stops as if transportation may never arrive. Old style buildings with faded paint jobs and scaffolding stand majestic while Russian Ladas, 1950 Chevy’s in pastel colors, Ford convertible Mustangs, and the occasionally misplaced Hyundai zoom by.
We end up at Oscar’s sister Donna’s 8th floor flat in Vedado. To get to it, we must take an elevator, which holds four intimately with no indication of floor origination or reach. I make the mistake of whispering to Seongeun what happens if the electricity goes out, which obligates us to move the next day—my bad. But for the present the flat is perfect. It is just three blocks from Havana University, has a panoramic view of the city and in the distance, the famous Malécon. The porcelain floor is so shiny it squeaks. There is only occasionally trickling hot water but it is 80 degrees at night and such is the luxury of living far off the ground floor. Most important, from Donna Seongeun gets treated to her first cup of Cuban coffee (strong!), we change with her our money at a rate 5% better than the government banks, get recommendation for food at the local Paladar, and information about where exactly in the old city one can learn to dance.
Cuban salsa is called Rueda or “Wheel” de Casino-- “Rueda” or “Casino” for short-- because of the option of exchanging partners within a song. Dancing pairs position themselves like spokes along a wheel and from the shouts of a caller named the Catante, switch to partners across from them while performing the ordered move. Get it wrong and you’re out, like musical chairs but involving talent. The last two standing wins. The fun of this rhythmic game makes it perfect for family affairs when it is not be uncommon for mothers and grandfathers to dance with their sons and grandchildren; or for an overweight patriarch to bust a move—a roll of the belly, a shimmy of the shoulder—as if courting his septuagenarian wife for the first time. As explained to me, Casino originates from Son, the dance of slaves that was adapted by the bored children of the upper class to eight-count time. Certain moves, especially the swaying of flexed arms from side by side by the men reflect the strength, pride and burden of Son’s first dancers. The female part expresses cooperation and elegance but also independence of self and spirit.
Our teacher is named Nicholas and his studio is kind of what one would hope for in Cuba with high molded ceilings and clear acoustics emanating from smooth pale-yellow occasionally chipped stucco. Simple stained glass sets above each doorway. Three large wooden shutters open out to a patio overlooking narrow Ignacio street and my and Seongeun’s favorite restaurant, Number 103. The main room is bright with all day sunlight connected to an anteroom from which a steep staircase descends to the front door, which can be opened with the pull of a jerry-rigged rope. Also from the anteroom, a long open-air passageway extends to four smaller rooms, three of which Nicholas is renovating to provide future rent. Nicholas is an excited man who shares freely and optimistically in rapid-fire heavily accented Spanish, French and English. He is married to a French woman and now has French citizenship, which gives him freedoms not afforded to most Cubans. He can travel. He has the money to do construction on his home, which involves bribing government officials for the permit. He charges $20 per person per hour for private lessons.
I am the first to go. Seongeun is not feeling well this day but she will get her own lesson later. Nicholas for a male is petit, has amazing curly brown abundant hair and his skinny legs exacerbate his knee high shorts. I am relatively tall, my hair is the opposite and in the environment of a dance studio, my baggy pants awkward. In sum, Nicholas and I are a funny looking dance pair—as extreme as fatty and skinny. Initially we stand in front of the mirror side-by-side practicing the quick-quick-slow quick-quick-slow cadance of Casino with music blaring and Nicholas tapping out the beat with two loud wooden blocks. “You must feel the rhythm,” he says, “One…four, five, six...eight… One…four, five, six...eight.”
I confess feeling nothing. I danced Mexican salsa for years in my thirties but this doesn’t seem relevant now. When I move my hips, I forget the shoulders. When I move my shoulders, my head moves incorrectly like the lever of a cuckoo clock. My swinging of the arms is the opposite of macho. I might as well dance with a cane. It is hot and the one lone fan in the corner only seems to mock the absence of temperature control. Sweat pours down my face. I cannot help but smile and giggle nervously at the ludicrousness of me upsetting such a beautiful art form through poor implementation. Once in a while I see Seongeun’s expression as we turn and I see amusement but horror too. This is disturbing because Seongeun is always supportive.
Nicholas meanwhile is dry as a bone, smiling and smelling strong of cologne. He is loving it. Dancing and teaching is obviously his life. As we move into couple positioning, he closes his eyes while assuming the female role. I hold his right arm up and out with flat palms at about the level of his forehead. I support his left hand on my right shoulder by cupping his left torso. Because of Nicholas frame and muscularity, I can’t but help feel I am holding the side of a medium-sized horse. “You must be firm but gentle when you lead,” says Nicholas, “Suave y fuerte juntos. You are firm or not firm and this is incorrect. Again.” We do this for some time.
The next day, Seongeun has her own private lesson, which affords me physical and psychological respite as well as opportunity to go buy Cigars from the guard we met at the tobacco factory behind the Capital. I had wanted Cohiba Esplendidos, the Cigar of Fidel Castro, but the guard and his partner said that these were currently hard to procure. Instead they showed me Cohiba Siglo VI’s. The box and packaging were unique and elegant and the smoking experience supposedly as special. Monte Cristo No. 2’s were an easy choice. They are the cigar of Chè Guevara, so I would get two boxes of 25. Like Chè, the No. 2’s have the reputation of being everyman’s Cigar: Smooth, relaxing, but with a complexity of spice and fruit that develops over the 1½ hour smoking experience. In the U.S. Cohiba Siglo VI’s and Montecristo No. 2’s sell for thirty and twenty dollars a piece, respectively, if you can get them which you usually can’t. As is my style, I won’t sell these cigars which I will smuggle—one in a Cheetos bag, another under Seongeun’s bras and the final in my shift caddy-- -but put them in my “gift closet” for friends and future events. I imagine repeatedly someone offering me $100 dollars a cigar and I don’t budge. When is the next time I will be in Cuba?
Buying cigars on the Black Market is a little dicey but my past shoe experience informs. First, they can be counterfeit. Second, if real they are stolen by factory workers usual in the crotch—best not to think about this. Third, if you can get them out of Cuba, the penalty for bringing them into the U.S. can be up to $250,000 dollars and ten years in jail. This makes me less scared than angry about U.S. foreign policy priorities fifty-years after the end of the cold war. The guard is Juan Carlos and his supplier is Tomas, whose coco taxi, named for its shape though it’s neither brown nor white, gives me plentiful access to tobacco customers. I decide Juan and Tomas are legit, because they have stable jobs and can be found. Also, Tomas is an encyclopedia of cigar types, including how it they are rolled, their reputation and taste. When I ask Juan Carlos any of these details he says he doesn’t know because he doesn’t smoke, which paradoxically reassures.
The deal goes down behind a wooden wall, behind a set of bathrooms under renovation. Juan Carols pulls the products held in separate thick plastic bags out from behind a mounted poster. He shows me the content of each of the boxes. “Bella” or beautiful he says and he leans into smell them as if saying goodbye to a friend for the last time. Once I have approved (and taken pictures), Juan Carlos affixes to each box a “Hecho en Habana” label at a diagonal to the right upper corner and a light green and white label with registration code at a vertical across the space made by the box lid and body ½ centimeter to the right of the left lower edge. I put the contraband in my bag and feel no less cool than Billy the kid gone overseas.
I arrive at the studio just in time for Seongeun and my couple’s lesson but end up making everyone late when one of the three bottles of seven-year-old Havana Club rum I purchased at the government store falls out of my bag onto the floor. Seongeun exclaims, “You bought cigars and alcohol?” Nicholas exclaims, “Ici ést en Cuba une bon chance!—this is good luck!” I want to fall to my knees and cry out melodramatically at the loss.
We spend a song reviewing the basic movements then another song where I dance with Nicholas and Seongeun with a former ballerina named Lisbet, who makes Seongeun look tall. Nicholas then claps his hand and declares with formality, “It is time for Seongeun and Wilson to dance.” Like fleshly robots we assume our positions.
I have always thought I was a decent lead, but I soon realize that this is delusion. In Mexican salsa the male partner frames the female like a show and the dance can be acrobatic. But in Casino, the dance is more a tease; a rendition of hard to get, where the lead might recommend a move, but the female is free to elaborate, including subverting the suggestion all together. Instead the lead must convince his partner to dance as a pair. Decisive means being confident of the dance conversation you want to have but not insisting through any tug, twist or push. Because of this intimate interaction, Cuban’s can dance Casino in a very small space. Mexican and Puerto Rican salsa takes place along a slot. Dancers of Cuban Casino move and groove more in circles looking at each other as they go round and round.
“You must see into each others eyes,” yells Nicholas, “remember you are husband and wife. You are in love!” Seongeun and I have only the wherewithal to concentrate on ourselves. Our eyes dart out of each other’s visual quadrants trying to look up instead into our brains for images of what we want to do versus what is happening currently. Disaster is iterative. As I try to exert control, Seongeun loses trust. Instead of submitting, she protects. Seongeun’s loss of confidence erodes my confidence and the consequent limp initiation of move number 5 or move “how can you say no” only confuses. We are now dancing autistic. We don’t feel sexy. We have become uncoupled. Nicholas and Lisbet grimace and they crouch and hold their arms out, manipulating their torso and hips, as if rooting at a game of underdogs in hopes that we may be able to feel their virtual guidance, which we can’t.
Nicholas has an obvious idea. I dance with Lisbet and Seongeun with him. This makes things much better, saving subsequent dances, the lesson and it feels like my and Seongeun’s relationship. Lisbet is stern but knows exactly what I want to do while telling me the right way to do it. Nicholas has the correct balance of leader and responder, which Seongeun quickly understands. We will go back to our original couples and Seongeun and I will improve but we are in temporary custodianship. The music is loud for all in and out to hear. The mirror occasionally shows grace; how deliberate controlled movement in partnerships are as artistic as free form. Our professional partners allow participation into conversations we have never had. Seongeun becomes a Casino dancer of years. I lead a woman who can paint a room sky blue. Intermittently, we are no longer conscious of ourselves but only our bodies relative to the music though the medium of Nicholas and Lisbet. Time flies. The light swirls. I see Seongeun laugh. I roll the sound of the cow bell in my chest. Together in the hot, we do this on the one.
