Havana

Outside the boys and men walk with shirts open to the waist in the middle of the street as the light settles in over the broken building tops and empty cans of beer that stand in attention across the street from the local branch of the Committee for Defense of the Revolution. They walk silently, almost in defiance of the constant thrum of noise and music that erupts from every open doorway and window for miles. It’s Monday morning and music must be played and rum must be drunk and there are white women to impress on the Malecón and there are Estonians swaying to Bésame Mucho on the Prado and every where tourists take snap shots on Japanese cameras of Spanish era buildings that crumble in Caribbean sea air. And all this is happening.

Inside there is a pot of expresso simmering on the stove next to a pot of chicken next to a pot of rice next to a pot of yucca sandwiched in between a pot of beans and if it weren’t already breezy from the coming afternoon cold front, the house would smell like heaven. Instead, it smells of a fine layer of dust that blows steadily in through the slatted windows from the construction site across the road, where canvas bags of Chinese concrete lay half-opened amongst rebar and a few bags of garbage that a short dog roots around. They should change the coat of arms of the revolution. It shouldn’t be a hammer and sickle anymore, it should be a bag of Chinese concrete and a pile of broken window shades that still sit in the courtyard of the new building that no one will have removed because ultimately it’s not for them to say and anyway it’s probably better to not start problems.

But the expresso smells good and it’s sweet and hot and that’s what one wants from coffee in the tropics so we sip it and listen as the day slowly congeals outside the open windows and doorways.

Now the family gathers around the Television playing news from the potato harvest which looks to break 2011 records, and though that’s exciting it’s nothing in comparison to the news from the ministry of transportation which is glad to announce the improvement of almost 300km of roads none of which could possibly be in the city based on how things appear. Then the broadcast switches to sport and how the Industriales are trying to climb their way back to supremacy but the short stop seems to be underachieving and it looks like hustle has nothing to do with ideology.

There is conversation about nothing and then a few long breaks as everyone smiles and basks in the warmth of family and friends new and old. G___ smiles deeply with two gold caps on his bottom teeth and lifts a hand for a high five exclaiming “¿increible, no?” And, of course, he’s right. Whether it’s the smile on his three year old, or his wife that’s half his age, or the music that now plays from the television, or the stillness of the air, or the cold front that’s coming and will sweep the Malecón with wild waves and sea spray, whatever he means he’s right.

Soon M____ arrives with a smile and his 72-year-old frame that looks like he may as well be 40 and from High bridge or Fordham. He needs to use the intranet for a minute to email a tío or auntie or somebody that the Committee doesn’t mind him being in contact with, so G____ leads him into the back room and while he types away G____ plays him the newest music from the band that everyone’s talking about and they laugh at the singer who references the old ways in the kind of way that is invisible to only those that are versed in the deep history of the music here. The revolution se gusta música y las bellas artes. The revolucion se gusta beautiful things and socialism. The revolution is crumbling on Crespo street near the fading façade of the Hotel Deuville where right now a couple from Hamburg argues over the cost of a taxi ride to the bar where Hemmingway drank Daquiries while a few young men watch wearing open shirts and shoes without socks and that’s how you can tell who’s a tourist and who’s not anyway.

But it’s unspeakably beautiful.

Havana is the kind of place that you return from and want immediately to go back to. It’s the kind of place that you want to speak about but speaking about it pushes it further from your memory, it dissipates it into a fine mist and you can’t remember if that corner still exists, if that bread will ever taste that way, if the banner proclaiming “Socialismo o Muerte” was actually ever really there.

By the Hotel Nacional, we walked past movie theaters and people wandering up long stretches of streets where only a Lada struggled up the hill. If you squinted and blurred the edges you could believe you were in East Germany in the 70s but then it’s warm and there’s music and the smell of cigar from the balcony and we’re running out of time and the sun is setting and we should get a drink before it’s too late, before the tourists return from their day trips. We don’t want to fight for a table, we don’t want to be elbow to elbow with the rest, we want our illusion to last as long as it can: that we are the only tourists in the only city on Earth.

Later, in my room while writing this, I’ll try to make a story up. To tell the truth in fiction that I cannot communicate in description. I’ll invent a barely fictionalized version of me and Naomi walking along the same road on that same day.

They turned up past the memorial and then walked past the other memorial and then up the boulevard with the banner that stretched across exclaiming “Socialismo ó Muerte.”

“Where are we going again?” He had been distracted over breakfast and over lunch and now, in the shadow of one of the old hotels — the ones that sparked the revolution and now serve some of the best Mojitos around, you really ought to try one – he couldn’t remember where they were headed.

“I want to see the inside. I’ve always pictured it and now I want to see it. We can sneak in past the security guard and ride the elevator and pretend we’re Meyer Lansky and some hot broad that he picked up outside the Tropicana.”

They turned past a transvestite waiting outside the underground cabaret across from the Hotel Nacionál onto the grand driveway.

“It’s beautiful,” she said and pulled their camera out and snapped a dozen photos off in rapid succession. “Isn’t it just…I’m not sure what to even call it. It’s like architectural driftwood.”

“Yes.”

“It’s like that’s what all of this is. You know the difference between here and say Grenada, for example? Here it’s architectural driftwood. It once was and now it’s not. There it was pretty much always not.”

He smiled, he liked when she talked like that. “Let’s get a drink.”