came away empty-handed. In what appeared to be social-bureaucratic practice, he greeted me at the door but did not invite me in. I asked him to explain to his father that I needed a certificate of good moral standing to present if need be. Petiso duly went in only to come out with a recommendation from his father not to go to Cuba: ‘it is a uniquely Cuban experience that has nothing to do with us. We have our own reality; we need to put our own house in order first.’ That was a no, then. This negative from the party supremo stymied any other possibility. We left with no recommendation whatsoever.
The departure date was 15 April 1961, the same day as the air attack on Havana, a taste of the invasion to come two days later. The ship’s radio had a worrying tendency to interrupt the anodine musak with hysterical communiqués in English on the situation in Cuba. But at one stage during the afternoon, there was a news flash in Spanish which reported the bombing, though with no details as to the consequences. That is why my memory of the first days on board was zero, a black hole, no images. Docking at Callao, passengers were told they had half a day to see the city of Lima, to which we would be taken by a shipping company bus. In Lima I searched for a newspaper to dispel my anxieties, only to find one that talked of an invasion of Cuba by the Yankee navy from Nicaragua. Back on board, there was an atmosphere of euphoria among the passengers and crew. The latter thought the stopover in Cuba would be apocalyptic – all fiery mulattas and rum. The passengers were sorry they would miss the chance to see the barbudos in the flesh, but thanked heaven the communist threat would be over. There was nothing for me to do but watch the coast rising and falling over the bows. The next morning, news flashes came thick and fast then became increasingly sparse as the day went on. The dining room looked like the Titanic as we crossed the Equator. Who knows if the popping champagne corks and bubbling laughter at dinner were celebrating the crossing or a victory for debauchery. Judging by the bulletins, the war in Cuba was still going on. But the paucity and ambiguity of the news, plus the faces of the ship’s officers, revived my hopes. A few days later, we reached Balboa, port of entry to the Panama Canal.
Again they announced that passengers interested in seeing Panama City would be taken by bus to the city’s main street in the morning, and returned in time for dinner. Crossing the city by bus, I noticed a modern building with a sign saying ‘Anthropological and Archeological Museum’ and right beside it a kiosk selling cigarettes and newspapers. We made a bee-line for it. The kiosk, I mean. There was no dark tobacco on board, and the Negros we had brought with us had gone up in smoke amid the bombing and disembarking. I couldn’t smoke American cigarettes, so our first task was to replenish our stock. The kiosk attendant was a garrulous fellow with a Caribbean accent. While showing me his range of dark tobacco, he asked the fatal question. ‘Where are you from, chico?’ ‘Argentina’, I replied with quiet pride. ‘Coño, you’re Argentine!’ he shrieked and proceeded to slag off Argentines and their mothers. He ended up throwing a handful of what looked like dollars onto his magazine counter. ‘Look at that, look what he’s done to our dignity, to our money, coño, your compatriot, that bloody Argentine, that butcher Che.’ And he showed us the new Cuban peso note, on which the president of the Cuban National Bank had merely signed ‘Che.’ He was a Cuban who had fled the Revolution, with a furious hatred for those he blamed for his exile. I paid for the cigarettes to avoid getting involved, and went to the museum next door. In tropical countries, fossils are more trustworthy than lippy street vendors. The newspaper I had bought before the incident carried a complete if somewhat venomous version of the defeat inflicted on the invading forces. It had all ended with the surrender of 300 Cuban mercenaries on a military operation directed and financed by the CIA and the Pentagon, but which had served to strengthen the ties between the Revolution’s leaders and the Cuban masses.
The ship’s captain received orders to cancel the stop-over in Cuba. Instead, he stopped in Curaçao, then doubled back to Maracaibo, in Venezuela. We anchored there the following morning but the passengers were not allowed off, as it was to be only a short stay. By noon the passengers were getting restless, wondering what was going on. Around three in the afternoon, the captain summoned me to his cabin, as if I were an aristocrat travelling below the decks. To put it bluntly, there was an insoluble problem. The ship had to sail straight for England now that the stop in Cuba had been cancelled. He could not alter his orders for the sake of two passengers. However, the situation was complicated because the Venezuelan immigration authorities refused to allow passengers without Venezuelan visas to disembark, least of all those bound for Cuba. I argued that our contract said we had to be taken to Cuba, not Venezuela, and that getting us there was his responsibility, not ours. He said his company would pay the cost of whatever means of transport we used. He thought by air would be most suitable, if we agreed. In that case, I insisted, he could use his authority to get us a visa. He mumbled a form of acquiescence. I couldn’t help but imagine Captain Cook boiling with rage in his place. British phlegm had increased proportionately with the loss of empire. He added that he was waiting for one last demarche in Caracas which, he assumed, would solve the problem. The ship had to leave no later than five. ‘And what happens if it isn’t solved?’ I asked. ‘You can visit Sussex’, he answered. A couple of hours later, the delegated official arrived with two military looking characters. The solution, conjured up between the British authorities and Venezuelan immigration, was to allow us to disembark but be kept under house arrest until the next flight to Cuba. Naturally, flights had been suspended for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, we disembarked with all our luggage. The Venezuelans broke the agreement and two days later we had to leave our hotel in Maracaibo, not with any great regret I might add, since sharks patrolled the other side of the metallic mesh protecting the hotel’s little bay. We were taken to Caracas over a mountain range in a police van and dumped in a far from exclusive hotel. The next day, we were taken to Maquetía airport and put on a plane to Mexico, via Guatemala. The reason for deportation was our visa for Cuba, the bad boy island with which Venezuela had just broken off diplomatic relations.
Cuba’s international airport is called Rancho Boyeros. I got a stiff neck straining to look out of the plane’s window to see the island through the cumulus and nimbus clouds that moved like a flock of sheep under the fuselage. We dipped through the white wool and lost sight of it until the clouds suddenly parted and we saw the sea of palm trees waving in the breeze to welcome us. We were in Cuba. The flight had been a fiesta; the handful of euphoric passengers sang and danced in the aisles, shouting revolutionary slogans and ‘Viva Fidel!’ They were people on official business abroad, trapped by the suspension of flights after the Bay of Pigs invasion and now returning to their posts. Flying over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, they gave us a crash course in revolutionary fervour, anticipating what proved to be the norm on terra firma.
When we finally got permission to disembark, the humidity embraced us like the Revolution itself, enveloping our bodies, sticking to our skin, dripping down our necks – an all-embracing way of life, breathing, sweating, tongues dry, hearts beating, yet exultant, exuberant, enthusiastic. Huge drops of rain fell here and there, raising clouds of vapour as if on a hot tin roof. And the voices! Cubans talk at the tops of their lungs. Incongruously, in the midst of the din, a quartet struck up with Cuban folk music, guajiras and sones, to welcome the new arrivals. What with the Tannoy and the cries of the porters and umbrella sellers, it was like running the gauntlet to get to a safe haven, but with no escape. The journey down the motorway to Havana was the visual equivalent of the airport racket. Multicoloured posters shouted victory slogans about the aborted invasion, imperialism, Cuban exiles, and the departed bourgeoisie. Rifles held aloft by olive green arms, above beards like continental forests, caricatures of guerrilla fighters giving the Miami mercenaries a kick up the bum, with Uncle Sam cowering, green with fear. Nothing solemn, nothing tragic.
Havana was a splendid city, a mixture of colonial style and modern architecture, built against a natural background of palm trees and bourgainvilleas, with narrow multi-coloured streets, crossed by wide avenues, surfed by huge luxury cars speeding and hooting, controlled by coordinated traffic lights, with planned agility. Convincing the taxi driver we did not want a plush hotel, but a family pension, took the whole journey and proved fruitless; nothing would convince him we belonged in the Old City.
