Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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 pro-
tectively. Their father died after having walked himself to the hospital, after a heart attack.
Nobodyhadacar,nobody'sphoneworked.Therevolutionisfamousaroundtheworldforits
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?”
TheybroughtforthaVHStapeandstartedreconfiguringthewirestomaketheVCRwork.
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.Thestakeswereverylow.Youcan'thavegamesofchanceorleisuregamesinvolving
any amount of money, they said. It was outlawed by the revolution, as part of the purifying
backlashagainstthemob-ledcasinopower.Sotheprizeswerethingslikeasignedposterofa
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
listenedtoawomen'schoirthatwaspracticingforthepope.Isawblue-and-redsignsannoun-
cinghisimpendingvisit,
VIENEELPAPA!
Thewomenandgirlsweredressedintheireveryday
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 Ma-
lecón, and looked at the city. There is a Havana—this was the second time I saw it, a con-
firmation—thatcannotbecapturedinphotographs,becauseitinvolvesatotalityoflightfrom
symphonic Caribbean clouds and the way they play on the whole city, and that appears often
