with an aunt in North Carolina. Eventually Wei-Wei and her husband got out, through Mexico, and joined the children. But Pedro Pan tore apart many families.
We arrived at the house of some cousins, two twins, small men now in their 50s, one with a mustache and one without, who live with their mother, whom they tend to hover about protectively. Their father died after having walked himself to the hospital, after a heart attack. Nobody had a car, nobody’s phone worked. The revolution is famous around the world for its health care, but for a Cuban, that care can be hard to access, especially if you live far from one of the major cities.
The six-year-old and her cousin were sitting on the sofa, ignoring everyone. They were holding up dolls to each other in different poses, sort of: “What do you think of this? Do you approve of this?” We unloaded the presents we brought for the twins. They handed my wife a book of socialist Cuban film reviews from before the revolution, actually a rare and useful book—one of them is a from-home bookseller, and he had come across it somewhere.
As we were standing around he said, “Did you know that my brother”—the one with no mustache—“was on a game show?”
They brought forth a VHS tape and started reconfiguring the wires to make the VCR work. Soon a picture of the studio appeared, three contestants behind their buzzers. The tape had been recorded over many times. There was a constant flickering of white meteors across the image. Felipe to the far left, smiling, looking confident in a light green short-sleeved shirt. The game had to do with rhyming. They would say, “Two words: one of them describes a fruit, one describes a family member.” Answer:
lima
and
prima
. Felipe didn’t win, but did well enough, as I understood it, to be invited back. He looked onscreen like he was having a great time. The show had a carefree attitude, compared with something similar in the United States. The stakes were very low. You can’t have games of chance or leisure games involving any amount of money, they said. It was outlawed by the revolution, as part of the purifying backlash against the mob-led casino power. So the prizes were things like a signed poster of a famous Spanish pop singer or a decorative mirror. Nobody was going to cry over losing. We congratulated Felipe on having held his own. He brought out the small metal lamp-sculpture he won.
Before we left the country, we spent a last day and night in Havana. Heaven weather. We stepped into the grand cathedral, on one of the main squares in the old part of town, and listened to a women’s choir that was practicing for the pope. I saw blue-and-red signs announcing his impending visit, VIENE EL PAPA! The women and girls were dressed in their everyday clothes. They sang beautifully. I’m sure that they were the best that Cuba had.
In the evening, we stood on the Morro, the Spanish castillo across the bay from the Malecón, and looked at the city. There is a Havana—this was the second time I saw it, a confirmation—that cannot be captured in photographs, because it involves a totality of light from symphonic Caribbean clouds and the way they play on the whole city, and that appears often enough to represent one of the characteristic faces of the city. The diffused light turns all the buildings a range of pastels. Then as the sun reddens, it becomes rose-colored.
It was 9:30 by the time we got back to our hotel. Normally that would have been past the six-year-old’s bedtime, but my wife had a telephone interview—meant to happen during the day, it got bumped—so she needed us out of the room for an hour.
Downstairs we sat and listened to the band do the inescapable (in Havana) “Hasta Siempre, Comandante,” with its strange lyrics, “Here lies the clear/the precious transparency/of your dear presence/Comandante Che Guevara.” Cats were slinking around. The people going by were of every shade, and many with striking
We arrived at the house of some cousins, two twins, small men now in their 50s, one with a mustache and one without, who live with their mother, whom they tend to hover about protectively. Their father died after having walked himself to the hospital, after a heart attack. Nobody had a car, nobody’s phone worked. The revolution is famous around the world for its health care, but for a Cuban, that care can be hard to access, especially if you live far from one of the major cities.
The six-year-old and her cousin were sitting on the sofa, ignoring everyone. They were holding up dolls to each other in different poses, sort of: “What do you think of this? Do you approve of this?” We unloaded the presents we brought for the twins. They handed my wife a book of socialist Cuban film reviews from before the revolution, actually a rare and useful book—one of them is a from-home bookseller, and he had come across it somewhere.
As we were standing around he said, “Did you know that my brother”—the one with no mustache—“was on a game show?”
They brought forth a VHS tape and started reconfiguring the wires to make the VCR work. Soon a picture of the studio appeared, three contestants behind their buzzers. The tape had been recorded over many times. There was a constant flickering of white meteors across the image. Felipe to the far left, smiling, looking confident in a light green short-sleeved shirt. The game had to do with rhyming. They would say, “Two words: one of them describes a fruit, one describes a family member.” Answer:
lima
and
prima
. Felipe didn’t win, but did well enough, as I understood it, to be invited back. He looked onscreen like he was having a great time. The show had a carefree attitude, compared with something similar in the United States. The stakes were very low. You can’t have games of chance or leisure games involving any amount of money, they said. It was outlawed by the revolution, as part of the purifying backlash against the mob-led casino power. So the prizes were things like a signed poster of a famous Spanish pop singer or a decorative mirror. Nobody was going to cry over losing. We congratulated Felipe on having held his own. He brought out the small metal lamp-sculpture he won.
Before we left the country, we spent a last day and night in Havana. Heaven weather. We stepped into the grand cathedral, on one of the main squares in the old part of town, and listened to a women’s choir that was practicing for the pope. I saw blue-and-red signs announcing his impending visit, VIENE EL PAPA! The women and girls were dressed in their everyday clothes. They sang beautifully. I’m sure that they were the best that Cuba had.
In the evening, we stood on the Morro, the Spanish castillo across the bay from the Malecón, and looked at the city. There is a Havana—this was the second time I saw it, a confirmation—that cannot be captured in photographs, because it involves a totality of light from symphonic Caribbean clouds and the way they play on the whole city, and that appears often enough to represent one of the characteristic faces of the city. The diffused light turns all the buildings a range of pastels. Then as the sun reddens, it becomes rose-colored.
It was 9:30 by the time we got back to our hotel. Normally that would have been past the six-year-old’s bedtime, but my wife had a telephone interview—meant to happen during the day, it got bumped—so she needed us out of the room for an hour.
Downstairs we sat and listened to the band do the inescapable (in Havana) “Hasta Siempre, Comandante,” with its strange lyrics, “Here lies the clear/the precious transparency/of your dear presence/Comandante Che Guevara.” Cats were slinking around. The people going by were of every shade, and many with striking
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