the day for tourists (at no time were they numerous) but on a bench under a weeping fig tree two youths were sharing a cigarette and, we sensed, measuring us up as a possible source of convertible pesos. One joined us adults while his friend asked the Trio where we were staying and how much paying? When Rachel enquired about the nearest Cambio both offered to escort her up steep Calle Aguilera. The Trio stayed with me; they were developing a group allergy to queues.
As we lay under a palm drinking pints of water I told the girls about another Trio, Santiago sisters aged eight, nine and ten, whose ordeal is still remembered because Graham Greene recorded it. One night in 1957, soon after their father had joined Fidel’s guerrillas in the nearby mountains, they were lifted from their beds by Batista’s soldiers and, still wearing pyjamas, carried off to a military barracks to be held as hostages. In Greene’s words:
Next morning I saw the revolution of the children. The news had reached the schools. In the secondary schools the children made their own decision – they left their schools and went on the streets. The news spread. To the infants’ schools the parents came and took away their children. The streets were full of them. The shops began to put up theirshutters in expectation of the worst. The army gave way and released the three little girls. They could not turn fire hoses on the children in the streets as they had turned them on their mothers, or hang them from lamp posts as they would have hanged their fathers. What seems strange to me was that no report of the children’s revolt ever appeared in Time – yet their correspondent was there in the city with me. But perhaps Henry Luce had not yet made up his mind between Castro and Batista.
Some of Greene’s Santiago contacts – including Armand Hart, later to become Fidel’s Minister of Education – were outraged by an arms deal then being negotiated: the sale of British fighter jets to Batista’s air force. Back in England, Greene prompted a Labour MP to ask a question which brought from Selwyn Lloyd, the Foreign Secretary, an assurance that no weapon of any grade was being sold to Cuba. Months later, shortly before Batista’s defeat, Lloyd was cornered and forced to admit that he had indeed sanctioned the sale of several ‘almost-obsolete’ planes. Allegedly, when this deal went through Britain’s Foreign Secretary hadn’t yet heard about Cuba’s then two-year-long civil war, though all foreign visitors were being confined to Havana province because everywhere else was ‘insecure’. Our Man in Havana is not entirely a work of fiction.
Rachel was soon back, having been thwarted by one of Cuba’s legendary power-cuts; the Cambio couldn’t open that day. What did I say earlier about the Computer Age? Previously, currency exchanges could take place with the aid of pen and paper.
When the noon heat forced the Trio and me back to our fan-cooled rooms, for many games of rummy, Rachel visited Cuba’s most famous Casa de la Trova on Calle Heredia, a few minutes walk from No. 197.
Later, we went shopping and at first were baffled. As tourists it seemed we couldn’t buy bread (easy in Havana) and two tiendas denied us water – visible in both fridges. That evening Irma explained; when items are in short supply (delivery problems because of petrol problems) regular customers get preference. Fair enough!
Outside one tienda a middle-aged mulatta – diminutive, worried-looking – whispered a request to Rachel for CP 0.45 to buy soap. (The monthly ration is rarely adequate.) Because a policeman stood nearby, and begging from tourists is strictly forbidden, Rachel shook her head and moved on – followed by the woman’s angry younger companion (daughter?) whose loud abuse included repetitions of ‘ Puta !’ (whore).That sound greatly appealed to the Trio who only reluctantly excluded it from their rapidly expanding Spanish vocabulary.
After sunset,
As we lay under a palm drinking pints of water I told the girls about another Trio, Santiago sisters aged eight, nine and ten, whose ordeal is still remembered because Graham Greene recorded it. One night in 1957, soon after their father had joined Fidel’s guerrillas in the nearby mountains, they were lifted from their beds by Batista’s soldiers and, still wearing pyjamas, carried off to a military barracks to be held as hostages. In Greene’s words:
Next morning I saw the revolution of the children. The news had reached the schools. In the secondary schools the children made their own decision – they left their schools and went on the streets. The news spread. To the infants’ schools the parents came and took away their children. The streets were full of them. The shops began to put up theirshutters in expectation of the worst. The army gave way and released the three little girls. They could not turn fire hoses on the children in the streets as they had turned them on their mothers, or hang them from lamp posts as they would have hanged their fathers. What seems strange to me was that no report of the children’s revolt ever appeared in Time – yet their correspondent was there in the city with me. But perhaps Henry Luce had not yet made up his mind between Castro and Batista.
Some of Greene’s Santiago contacts – including Armand Hart, later to become Fidel’s Minister of Education – were outraged by an arms deal then being negotiated: the sale of British fighter jets to Batista’s air force. Back in England, Greene prompted a Labour MP to ask a question which brought from Selwyn Lloyd, the Foreign Secretary, an assurance that no weapon of any grade was being sold to Cuba. Months later, shortly before Batista’s defeat, Lloyd was cornered and forced to admit that he had indeed sanctioned the sale of several ‘almost-obsolete’ planes. Allegedly, when this deal went through Britain’s Foreign Secretary hadn’t yet heard about Cuba’s then two-year-long civil war, though all foreign visitors were being confined to Havana province because everywhere else was ‘insecure’. Our Man in Havana is not entirely a work of fiction.
Rachel was soon back, having been thwarted by one of Cuba’s legendary power-cuts; the Cambio couldn’t open that day. What did I say earlier about the Computer Age? Previously, currency exchanges could take place with the aid of pen and paper.
When the noon heat forced the Trio and me back to our fan-cooled rooms, for many games of rummy, Rachel visited Cuba’s most famous Casa de la Trova on Calle Heredia, a few minutes walk from No. 197.
Later, we went shopping and at first were baffled. As tourists it seemed we couldn’t buy bread (easy in Havana) and two tiendas denied us water – visible in both fridges. That evening Irma explained; when items are in short supply (delivery problems because of petrol problems) regular customers get preference. Fair enough!
Outside one tienda a middle-aged mulatta – diminutive, worried-looking – whispered a request to Rachel for CP 0.45 to buy soap. (The monthly ration is rarely adequate.) Because a policeman stood nearby, and begging from tourists is strictly forbidden, Rachel shook her head and moved on – followed by the woman’s angry younger companion (daughter?) whose loud abuse included repetitions of ‘ Puta !’ (whore).That sound greatly appealed to the Trio who only reluctantly excluded it from their rapidly expanding Spanish vocabulary.
After sunset,
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