I had spent the sabbatical as a gentleman scholar does:  finishing up two new books of poetry, frustrating myself with the last story of a new collection of short fiction and, of course, eating and drinking too much.

I had a couple of bucks in the bank, nothing much was going to happen in my life over the spring break, and an ex-student of Jon's was trying to organize this trip to Cuba.

When I called to ask P.E.N. which writers I was likely to meet if I went to Cuba, the answer was: "None. They're all in prison." I made a quick application to the Research Council to see whether I could get funding. I used the hook P.E.N. had provided. The Council came through, and now I was committed to interviewing as many writers as I could search out in ten days.

March 15, 1985

One of those spring days in Cincinnati just before summer sets in, with its spongy, suffocating humidity; one of those days when it seems strange to leave home.

And so it's 5 p.m. in the Miami Airport bar, and we're getting our first drinks of the evening. Our flight will leave for Havana sometime after midnight… mañana. As Juan, the one-armed fruit seller in Spain, used to say, "There are many days."

We order Cuba Libres, hoping Fidel's men are watching and this act will somehow ingratiate us and give us an inside line to him. We are also nervous about the Cubans residing in Miami. Do they hang out at the airport knocking off returning Cubans, or tourists who pour money into Castro's Cuba? We have our last American supper in the Canterbury Tales Cafeteria, where eight bucks gets you a cheeseburger, fries, a Miller Lite. Things have to be cheaper in Havana, cheaper than this gray cheeseburger. I take a Tagamet for the ulcer I foresee if I keep eating gray things.

The plane is loaded with grandparents. I sit next to a couple who weep nearly the whole way from Miami to Havana. Have they just visited loved ones? Are they returning to Cuba after a weekend? What have they lost?

And now, we must declare what we are bringing into Havana. Except we don't need to declare anything as it turns out—after we have filled out a number of forms. I crush one and shove it into the pocket of my Army-Navy jacket, which I had thought a good sensible purchase, but maybe a U.S. Army jacket is not such a good idea in Cuba—or on this plane. Is that why the couple next to me continue to cry? Because I'm a reminder of the invaders from the north?

We disembark, and there's a welcoming crowd, a hundred people hanging out at the airport to welcome someone; maybe us, maybe everyone. We locate our bus, air conditioned, and our guides, Fernando and Pedrosa, who run us through the obligatory tour yakking:  This is a military base. This is the hospital for the criminally insane… And when we first came to the island… And when the Spanish did this… And when the French, the Americans did that…. All I can think about is getting to the hotel and having a beer. In this three a.m. light, the Hotel Deauville looks like an office complex.

With its one hundred and forty rooms. We've been put on the top floor and, although it is five a.m. and the waves are beginning to lighten as they crash against the sea wall, we note the first woman hanging out the wash, below us on the roof of her apartment building, right here in Havana, Cuba.

March 16, 1985

This is so uncharacteristic of me: Eight a.m.—I'm awake; I'm actually going to breakfast. Starving, oddly enough, so I scarf down some bacon and eggs. Fernando joins us, as does Raphael. I immediately start in on Raphael about the writers. "I've got a list. When can I get together with them?" He says—and I'm sure we're going to hear it a hundred times more before we leave—"Please provide me with a curriculum vitae and I'll get back to you on it." I hustle up to my room, type up the vitae and my list of writers.

I have their phone numbers, but I'd better hold off calling, see whether Raphael comes through. After all, he is the Head of International Relations for Casa de las Americas, and how many writers are visiting Cuba at the moment? One, as Fernando has already told us. And how many Americans are in the country? "Only yourselves, some law students from Columbia University, and a handful of graphic artists from Boston, Chicago." And we all seem to be in the same hotel.

I've got Monday and the following weekend to do my interviews—if Raphael comes through. I don't like this journalistic bullshit:  making connections, appointments, catching up with people. This isn't my schedule; this isn't the way I work. I'm not used to relying on others for my materials or access to my materials. I usually crawl into my study with my angst and my ennui, and wander into the mess of dream images, without concern for metaphor or coda; those things come later. The first thing I do is let the words rise from the blank page like small dark flowers. Then, they germinate if the soil is to their liking and, if I'm very lucky, I'll have a profusion of dark flowers at the end of the day.

We decide to wander down the Malecón, the 5-km-long main thoroughfare which runs along the harbor and leads into the Vedado, the older section of the city—it is indeed a beautiful, clear morning to stroll—and note the erosion which has taken its toll on the apartment buildings. Everywhere scaffolds and reconstruction, sandblasting and cement being mixed. The marble entryways with their elaborate mosaic tiles, dusty now, suggest the grandeur of the old days of Meyer Lansky, and the Mafia, and the rich Americans, and the few wealthy Cubans. The cars—Chevies, Buicks, Fords, of the forties and fifties—lock us in time, the time before the Revolution. Durable cars. Patching against the salt water goes on in most of the side streets off the Malecon. One patch over the last patch. Reminds us, some people left here in a big hurry.

We reach the statue of Antonio Maceo and his horse, trying to get off the ground and fly toward Santiago; trying to get away from Spain; trying to get away from Teddy Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, William Randolph Hearst; trying to get his black army together with José Martí, get this land back into the hands of the people, before he gets killed again in 1896. "The bronze Titan," riding his rearing horse up through the blue skies beyond politics and love. We shoot our photos like good tourists and return to the hotel for lunch, which includes the now nauseating fruta bomba, and our first Cuban beer, with its wonderful, glaring polar bear.

Old Havana, with its Christ looking down over the harbor entrance. Along the way, we notice many bases to statues which have no figures. Fernando explains: "When people fall out of power here, we take away their images as well." We are led to the Museum of the City of Havana, which seems to be closed to us—although it is open for a group of Russian sailors. The Museum of Colonial Art is also closed, so we move on to the Cathedral. Also closed. This is some tour.

In one corner of Cathedral Square, I spot fighting cocks enclosed behind barbed wire. "Oh, no, we don't fight them. It's against the law. We sell them to foreign countries," Fernando explains, as our attention turns to school children in military uniforms, the scarves indicating their status. But what if a child doesn't want to be a young Communist? "Everyone has a choice," Fernando tells us.

We move on to Revolution Plaza and Sicre's 426-foot sculpted tower to José Martí, which looks like a peculiar hornet's nest or an elongated star fruit. It is here that Fidel gives his larger speeches, as he looks across the way to huge portraits of Ché and General Cienfuegos. Painted on the front of the Ministry of Defense building, they seem to float there, keeping an eye on their people. And where is Fidel? Will he give a speech while we are here? His omnipresent spirit is orchestrating, choreographing the sky, the harbor, the daily lives in place.

March l7, 1985

After a scrambled eggs breakfast washed down with much Cuban coffee, Bill decides to accompany me to the regular Saturday poetry reading which is held in front of the Poesía Moderna book store. Old Havana, at noon.

Young boys calling, "Cambio!" surround us everywhere we go. The ritual:  They ask you for the time and, as you're bending down to look at your watch, they ask whether you're willing to part with greenbacks for pesos. The two are roughly equivalent, but the Cubans want the foreign money so they can buy foreign goods from the hotels, the luxury items which are not available on the street; so important, they'll give five pesos for a dollar.

We come upon the Gramma monument, isolated on its block, and immediately Jim starts shooting pictures of the boat which brought Fidel and his men to Cuba from Mexico. The guard starts getting itchy, so the rest of us just keep walking; Jim tags along behind shooting pictures over his shoulder. We should get some good pictures if Jim doesn't get shot. We pass Sloppy Joe's, one of Hemingway's hangouts, closed forever, but the name in the ceramic tiles as clear as it was fifty years ago.

Farther along on Zuleta we come to Central Parque with its statue of Martí pointing to the heavens, to something:  to the place where he landed in 1895, to Dos Rios, the place where he was killed, to the States:  I know the monster, I have lived in his entrails. Wearing a long coat, a suit, pointing, speaking from his Simple Lyrics:

I want to leave the world
by the natural gate:
in a cart of green leaves
they are to take me to die.
Don't put me in the dark
to die like a traitor:
I am good, and like a good man
I shall die facing the Sun.

He may also be pointing to the Centro Commercial building, just across the way, bullet holes in its upper two storeys—another revolution in Cuba. But it is not forbidden to take photographs of these buildings, strafed as they are. Another reminder not to get into politics or business unless nominated. If nominated, run as fast as you can… the other way.

I've got my headphones on, I'm listening to Mozart's Divertimenti; if I get shot today in the beautiful sunlight of Havana, I will be carried off by Mozartian angels.

Twenty metal chairs have been set out in front of La Moderna Poesía for the expected audience. Ida, a woman of, say, forty-five, introduces herself, and wants to talk about the U.S. Most of her relatives are there, and she has visited them in Miami and in Michigan. She says she loves poetry, particularly Nicolas Guillen. She's talking a mile a minute. I'm getting a headache listening to her explain the migration of her relatives, and the fertility of the family. I tell her I've got to go into the store.

I can't find the poetry section so I ask at the information desk, and the young lady points me in a direction which I follow, and I'm at another information desk where three people are yakking away, and couldn't care less about me. I say excuse me, and explain that I want books by the authors on my list, which I show them, and they muse a bit, and yes, maybe they have this one, and no, maybe they don't have this one, and they don't know whether they've heard of that one, and then they go back to talking about what they are going to have for lunch.

I have to break in again to ask where I might find the books I'm looking for. They indicate they will take care of it, but still, first I have to listen to them exchange dinner menus. Finally, one woman indicates I should follow her. We wander around the small poetry and fiction section, and I'm finding the books faster than she is. Most of the titles are 1982, and forward. My guide indicates a table where a woman writes out in long-hand each of the titles I am buying, noting their prices, their authors, etc. After ten minutes of this, she points me toward another woman who must run through the individual slips, finally totaling the whole big deal. I'm an impatient man:  If I had to go through this in the States, I'd quit reading, pronto.

But I've got my bag of twenty books, and it's cost me less than twenty dollars. Evidently state subsidies extend to the book publishing trade, but where are the Retamar, the Diego, the Fayad Jamis books? There is the work of César Lopez and nothing by Padilla. I really didn't expect to find any of his work:  It wouldn't seem appropriate in a revolutionary country to promote works which are counter-revolutionary, but he was one of the most widely-known poets to rise from the ashes of the revolution, and he did edit the first large anthology of poetry to come out of the Revolution.

Wouldn't the text be more important than the ideology of the editor? What is the line one can't cross without being considered anti-revolutionary? Why can some people leave without problems, and others are thrown into prison? I can't find the rationale in the work; it seems as though these decisions are made according to the personality of the writer and the particular moment in history. It seems nearly capricious, and that's what is troubling. What's troubling anywhere.

And I expected to find more books by the authors on my list. I stumble out into the hot sun with my thoughts, and find Bill finishing his interview with a school teacher. Ida has left. I show Bill around the bookstore. He wants to know why there aren't any Hemingway books.

I'm going back to the hotel and grab a nap; Bill wants to stay out on the streets and nose around, see what he can find. I stroll leisurely back past the guards watching over the Gramma memorial and I don't sense any hostility; a few kids stare at my headphones and Yankees cap and shades and a few people want to make change, but no hostility—certainly not the anxiety one would feel in any U.S. city when the temperature gets up into the nineties, and the humidity is above seventy-five per cent. It's odd to be in a city where a guy feels he's not going to be mugged; it must be the feeling one gets when one is in heaven or in hell.

Tonight, it's fish of some sort. Fish was not part of the Cuban diet until the Revolution, when the fishing industry began to flourish, and someone told the Cubans fish wasn't bad, wasn't bad at all. Fernando fills in the details for us; he's our 'color' man. He tells us he will take his girlfriend to see a new Dustin Hoffman movie tonight, The Graduate. Not quite twenty years old—the film; younger than the cars, certainly.

Saturday night in the city, and all the girls look so doggone pretty; nearly a lyric from my youth:  Saturday night in Havana  .  .  . On Agramonte, five teenaged boys with a huge ghetto blaster are singing along with Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You." They have their arms around each other's shoulders, another practice common among friends in Spain, that physical touching so uncommon in the U.S. among boys of that age, and so common in Spanish cultures; and something I've never understood, since homophobia is so rampant in those cultures. Across the street, a group of girls approach the boys and together they all continue to sing the lyrics of the Stevie Wonder song, until the girls disappear onto their bus. The boys have had their date for Saturday night.

It is like seeing a moment in someone else's life that will never be repeated.

March 18, 1985

In the afternoon, we are driven to Playa de Santa Maria, twelve miles outside Havana. On the way, we pass by a huge complex of apartment buildings which house 50,000 workers and their familes—instant village.

The beach stretches for six miles of white sand. Just a few feet from our blanket, a young woman sits with several younger girls. They are playing with a guinea pig. Are these her children? Her sisters? I smile and ask if I may take her picture.

And she is attracted to me, but frustrated since there seems to be no lingua franca available and I have a hard time believing that my joie de vivre is going to cover this situation. I assume Raphael from the Casa de las Americas will help; he does like women, and can be found in our bar at the hotel each night chasing some visiting tourist. Or her mother. Through him I find out that Lourdes, an unemployed model, did fashion shows similar to the one we saw at La Maison. She is twenty-seven.

She got the job as a model by taking an examination through the minister of work. Before that, she worked in the personnel department of the national circus. Oh no, she is not married; she will get married when she is about thirty and it's time to have children.

Her favorite song at the moment? "I Need Somebody." So do I. "Has she ever been to Rio, do you think?" I ask Raphael. He laughs. "Of course not." Hmm, why not?

Another elaborate buffet in a huge dining room. Chicken, ham, fish, fresh vegetables, some sort of pasta, and more. But Lourdes, overwhelmed by the spread, only picks a few little things to eat. She doesn't want to take advantage of the situation, or appear to be hungry.

On the ride back to Havana, she reaches for my thigh, and we entwine fingers, and kiss, and babble in the language of near-language, the language of pre-language. Through Lino, I set up a date for that evening; she will come to the hotel and she will be allowed to visit with me in the lounge. Does she wish to have a chaperone along to translate? No, just the two of us. But she keeps asking Lino whether she'll get into trouble, and her hand is squeezing my thigh, and her dark eyes caress mine, and I feel as though I'm no longer carrying my winter belly, as though I'm twenty years younger. I ask Lino whether she will show up, and he looks at her and says, "She will be there." I give her an awkward kiss goodbye, which she doesn't return. Perhaps I have overstepped the bounds of propriety. Has language fallen apart? Did I come to this country without language, without myself?

The rest of the crew heads off to the Floridita after dinner, and I wait outside the hotel as I have told Lourdes I would. I wait from 9 until 10:15, and then give up. I check the desk for messages. She said she would call if there were any problems. I go to the bar and find Raphael chasing after a blonde German woman. He says, "Your model was probably afraid she would be picked up by the police. A single woman might be seen as a prostitute."

I drink my first and second mojito, and then have a third, and pretty soon I'm ready to return to my quiet, breeze-filled room, where I read a recent issue of Gramma in English translation.

I take all of these people into my dreams. And I spend the rest of my night flying over Havana searching for Lourdes, and for what she could tell me, about the people—not the fictive ones, the real ones.

[Part Two continued in this issue.]