‘Don’t expect to eat much where you’re going,’ said the girl in the Kingston KLM office, as she filled in a return ticket to Havana. After eating a quick lunch of curried goat, I rushed to the airport to find the runway swarming with British officials armed with swords, awaiting the arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh. I boarded the plane feeling like a criminal. Then, to the ominous words, ‘We’d like to say goodbye to our disembarking passengers,’ two Germans, a French diplomat and myself stepped on to Jose Martin runway as, with frightened, averted eyes, a Cuban family hurried past to occupy our vacant seats. The customs check was courteous and thorough. Any dollars had to be handed over and changed into pesos, jewellery declared and its value assessed. Fleeing Cubans were not allowed to take out any money or jewellery, and were limited to two pairs of shoes and two dresses. Where was I going to stay? The Inglaterra.
‘We’d prefer you to stay in the Hotel Colina,’ said the ground hostess.
The Hotel Colina was dingy. There was no soap and the basin had no stopper. A previous visitor’s cigarette stub lay under the bed. It was drizzling and there was a strong north wind. I asked the way to the sea. It was bashing the wall that bordered the waterfront and spray spattered the pavement. Every few blocks a militia man dozed over a rifle. On the corner of the main shopping street was a billboard with the message ‘Construct and Defend our Socialist Fatherland’. Posted outside a large office building were a group of militia girls in short-sleeved, sky-blue shirts, khaki trousers and boots, each one taking a turn to comb her hair before a mirror propped on a rifle butt.
That evening, for an hour, I walked in search of a bar. Should it be the Club La Red or the Tokao? Descending some steps I entered a dimly lit cavern. To enliven the place, the barman put on a rumba. Cuban Coca Cola accompanied the Bacardi I ordered. At the bar I tried to read. No candles? A nightlight was produced. The waiters were curious to see what I was reading. They inspected the KLM matches, as Cuban matches did not strike. There was usually a band in the evening, they said, but the permanent staff were off. They have a holiday on Mondays.
‘For the Revolutión,’ someone said and giggled, as if he had made a subversive joke.
‘Is it considered bad for women to come to bars alone?’ I asked.
‘Oh no. They like to dance,’ said a man seated on the adjoining stool. ‘Here it’s alright’ – meaning at the bar – ‘but not in there.’ He pointed to a dungeoned alcove. He said he was a doctor and worked at the university hospital. He’d learnt English at school. His manner was gentle, he was very tall and, as far as one could see, had several teeth missing. His fifteen-year-old son was in America. His brother, a dentist, had also left Cuba. He disapproved of doctors and dentists leaving; they should stay and care for the people. ‘The barman is saying you are a Czech. We haven’t seen any English for two years …’
We took a taxi and went to several downtown bars. In one we asked if there was anything to eat.
‘I’d like to come to your tourist hotel and get a good meal,’ said the barman.
We walked around the harbour for an hour. Above a wharf, opposite the Spanish Embassy, was a large drawing of a donkey and written across it was the word ‘KENNEDY. Underneath it said, ‘All the world is being educated but me, and you can see what I am, a DONKEY.’
There were billboards everywhere with the word ‘FISMINUTOS’, and Léger-like figures were depicted with rolled-up sleeves as if about to perform gymnastics, and the injunction, ‘¡REVOLUCIONARIOS! Increase Production, Eliminate Absenteeism and Help the Country’.
‘And look at them,’ the doctor jeered, pointing to the militiamen posted every few yards, ‘mostly old Batistianos.’ Suddenly he stopped. ‘Hi there!’ he said, and gave a dozing old guard a playful prod with his rifle. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’ They greeted each other affectionately. ‘Old rogue,’ he bantered, and the guard laughed. ‘He’s against the government, aren’t you? And there he is working for them.’ The doctor said his friend had been imprisoned during Batista’s time. He had fought for Castro. ‘But look at him now.’ We passed another poster. He mimicked the pointing finger. ‘And look what we have for entertainment’: Fatherland or Death was showing at the movie house. We crossed some gardens shaded by giant coconut palms. ‘This is called Central Park, because it’s the centre of the city.’ He laughed. ‘But it’s beautiful.’
‘Certainly it’s beautiful,’ I echoed. He pointed to the old limestone buildings festooned with ‘Long Live the International Proletariat’ and the impressive white Capitol dominating the downtown section, now embellished with Fatherland or Death.
It was one in the morning. He thought he knew of a place to eat, the other side of the park. We entered an open bar with a horseshoe-shaped counter, around which men and prostitutes sat and joked about food.
‘What would you like? Macaroni? Dry rice or potatoes?’ One man crouched over his plate of macaroni, jovially raised his fork and shouted something in Spanish, before filling his mouth with the gluey mixture. Everybody laughed. ‘He said he’s imagining it’s ham.’ The doctor found me a taxi, patted my cheek as he said, ‘Goodnight’ and vanished through Central Park. At the door of the Hotel Colina the taximan asked if I like to dance, as he knew of a very good rumba club.
For breakfast there was orange juice, chunks of guava jelly and excellent expresso coffee. The hotel was full, from families on their way out to the country, who attended meals with shopping bags, to militia girls and students. I took a bus to the British Embassy. The ticket had a little figure of an alarm clock with a face on spindly legs and underneath: ‘Down with Absenteeism. Worker … Arrive punctually at your job, because that is the way we will construct Socialism.’
Cubans then had charming manners. I never had to stand on a bus. And they took a lot of trouble when showing the way, silently walking you to your destination and depositing you right on the doorstep. To attract attention, whether hailing a friend or a waiter, they would go ‘pisst’, lingering on the hiss with an abrupt end on the ‘t’ sound. The Embassy was a solid haven of out-of-date newspapers. They said it was not necessary to report there, but advised me to go immediately to the immigration bureau for permission to leave the country, otherwise my departure might be held up for weeks.
Walking around Havana remained a continuous source of pleasure, with the streets lined with ceiba trees, and everywhere squares and gardens were filled with exotic plants. At one of the bookstalls in the Paseo del Prado, amongst the paperbacks by Marx and Lenin, and The Diary of Anne Frank, I found a 1953 guide. Sitting in Central Park, I read that ‘cuba’ means jar of oil and that Cuba is the only West Indian island to retain its name; that Columbus loved every island he saw, calling each one beautiful, but Cuba was the most beautiful that eyes have ever seen; and that Havana, founded in 1519, had the oldest university of the Latin-American countries.
On Avenida de las Misiones, a fresh shipload of tractors gleamed in the sun, parked in regimental files around the statue of General Gomez. Students with armfuls of books poured in and out of the Havana Libre, which used to be the Hilton. The hotel restaurant had become a canteen serving macaroni, rice and potato, with an occasional blob of fish. The dessert was always the same – guava jelly or sweetened coconut purée. On the twenty-fifth floor, the highest point in the city, Congress groups surged in and out of the Havana Libre bar, or conversed in whispers.
‘An American,’ one member said, nudging her companion and pointing at me, as if the wonders of Havana would never cease.
At Floridati, the photographs of Hemingway had been removed from the bar and the restaurant was empty. There were no Morro crabs, no menu.
‘Fishermen don’t go out as they used,’ said the waiter, ‘and when they do, they have to be accompanied by an armed guard.’
Albert came into the bar. He was eighteen, very tall, pale and spotty. He spoke a little American. He had come to lend a hand with the drums, as the regular drummer was ill. His father was in Miami and his younger brother in Ohio. He lived with his mother, who worked in a restaurant. Why didn’t he get a regular job? He wanted to be a drummer. He couldn’t get a job in a band, as he lacked cymbals and you couldn’t find them in Cuba any more. Why did he carry a lucky charm? Someone had given it him when he came out of prison. Four years previously he had been one of Castro’s guerrillas and had planted home-made bombs in factories at night. Now he got odd jobs cleaning cars. He was a kind of dead-end kid. He liked smoking thirty-five-cent cigars, said he had $1,000 in the bank, but there was nothing he could buy with it.
‘Supposing you wanted to buy a new car?’
‘The new cars go to the government.’
He was going on to a jazz club. Did I like jazz? His friend Amando had just started a club. We ran into Amando, who was very handsome, with a small blond beard and gentle manner.
‘It’s very existentialist,’ he said, ‘just a converted old movie studio. There are four of us: sax, piano, bass and drums.’
The jazz club was like a stalactite cavern, with dim lighting and midnight-blue walls, and a high, arched ceiling. Bearded militiamen sat with their arms round coloured girls who had peaked-wig hairsets, straight cotton dresses and patent-leather shoes.
‘The trouble is, people won’t come here; being jazz, they think it’s American. Man, I’m hungry.’ The waiter brought Bacardis and a dish with one boiled egg. The three of us shared the egg. Amando asked for another. But the waiter said there weren’t any. Amando had been earning good money in the States. He’d only been back four months. Why did he come back? His wife kept writing to say she and the baby were starving. ‘I don’t get on with my wife, but I love my little girl.’ The sax player joined our table. He wore a beret, came from Chicago and was a nutty American communist. He’d been to London.
‘What were you doing there?’
‘Visiting Marx’s tomb, of course. What else?’
Parallel to the coast, beyond the Havana Riviera Hotel, along Fifth Avenue, was the section where, everyone liked to tell you, the millionaires used to live. It stretched for some miles, a beautiful, tree-lined avenue of small palaces that had been turned into student quarters. The Casino nearby had been converted into a school. Along the sandy coast, known as the Concha, the luxury clubs had been turned into public beaches, the gardens were luxuriant with flowering trees, and bordering each drive was a boathouse filled with jacked-up sailing-boats and motor launches with peeling paint, sad emblems of the departed rich. Lying on the sands in the shade of a dwarf coconut tree facing a palatial, white club building, one could focus on a banner with ‘Viva Internacionalismo Proletario’ strung across the portico. ‘With Fidel til Death’ was notched into the barks of the palm trees. One swam to the continuous strains of the International.
On Sundays, endless busloads were disgorged at the beaches. The women still seemed uncertain as to how to react to their good fortune and cringed, fully dressed, on the edge of the sea in a state of joyful bewilderment, until the heat drove them into purple celanese bathing costumes. They rarely ventured into the water, but lay giggling on the fringe like basking limpets, while the men flung fistfuls of sand or buried one of their companions and then thrust a stick in beside or on top of him as a phallic symbol. A waiter who used to be a member of one of the luxury clubs said his property had been confiscated and one day I was kept bobbing at the end of a pool for an hour listening to an aristocratic old gentleman telling me about his losses, including his daughters, one of whom had emigrated to Folkestone. He spoke about it gaily. One of their old servants, aged seventy, who had spent her life savings on a small retirement house, had had it taken away and now didn’t have enough to live on. That can’t be right, he said. But he was going to stay, just to see the regime change. After all, Batista had been bad enough.
A retired naval officer who had lost his pension and home described himself as a pauper and laughed. A pauper, he repeated. I said I was too. But I was used to it. Things will change, he said, everyone was convinced of it. They dreamt of being rescued by the Americans one day.
One night, in the hotel lift, an air-force officer remarked on my cold. He said he had had a cold for days.
‘I’m a pilot and fly at very high altitudes, and experience a constant change of temperature.’ Whisky had cured him. He had some whisky in his room. Would I like some? I accepted a toothglass and drank it standing in the passage. Suitably enough, it was Cuban whisky and tasted of cough mixture. He said wouldn’t I come in? He wanted to show me his Czech machine-gun. See how easy it is to handle, he said. Joking, I asked him not to keep pointing it in my direction. He was very simple and charming, and brought out a copy of Playa Girón, the book about the American invasion. It contained references to himself. ‘Here I am, you see, here it refutes all the lies the Americans said about me, that I’m a traitor.’ In 1959 he had been smuggling arms into Cuba from Miami. ‘We used to store them in a disused theatre, the Rainbow. What’s more,’ he said, ‘I know the exiles are using the same theatre right now, for the same purpose.’ He liked the English, he said. What did they think about Cuba? Why are the Americans giving arms to all the Latin-American countries? To invade Cuba?
Over breakfast one morning, a Chilean joined my table; very small with black hair and the excitable manner of a recent arrival, he was wearing tropical army uniform and ‘beaten-gold’ bracelets, bought in Mexico, whence he had come to seek political asylum. He said he was an underground communist and had an American passport. He seemed to have chosen this moment to leave in order to avoid the clutches of the army. He was aggressive about the Royal Family. Why did England keep it? It was just a question of time … the world would see … Would I like to accompany him to the immigration bureau? First he was going to see a friend. The friend was Guatemalan. He had come from America.
‘I came here six months ago. I knew no one and felt so miserable that I at once fell sick.’ Would I like to visit the Isle of Pines? I said I had arranged to go to Pinar del Rio that day. They were delighted and took me to the bus terminal. ‘The Transportes Populares is a unit in itself,’ the Guatemalan said, ‘they have their own stores, dentists and doctors for the staff and their families.’ Did I know about the LTP services for the people? ‘Well,’ he related like someone telling a wondrous tale, ‘when the rich people left Cuba, all their cars were taken by the LTP, and all the women who had been working for the rich fifteen hours a day like slaves were put in a school and trained as drivers. We gave them uniforms, the cars were painted red and now anyone can take one of these cars for twenty cents.’ Later, someone explained that these taxis follow the same route as the buses, which are always breaking down. And since no more spare parts could be got for American cars, the service would eventually become extinct.
Hairdressers had run out of bobby pins, rollers and hairnets. In order not to deprive them of the satisfaction of using hairspray, which they did still have, I let them tease my hair into a wig. But it was not this, nor the sweetened cigarettes (due to processed sugarcane paper), nor the endless topic of Cuba so much as the monotonous diet of starch that made me glad to leave. There was one good restaurant in Havana, the Miami, with a high ceiling, mirrored walls lined with potted plants, a vase of tuberoses on a white cloth at every table, pale green curtains and chair covers. On one side was a cigar counter and a bar where pineapples and mameys were stacked. I would go there expressly to drink large draughts of fresh pineapple juice with a dash of citron and the pastries were delicious.
‘After all,’ said the waiter, ‘we do get flour from Russia,’ adding that the mameys were only good for icecream.
Though the return flight was scheduled to depart at 12.25, all passengers other than diplomats had to report to the airport at eight in the morning. When the luggage had been checked, I ran into a Reuter correspondent. He was awaiting the arrival of prisoners taken hostage during the American invasion. He took me up to the press balcony overlooking the deserted runway. The prisoners were due to arrive from the prison at 9.30. We kept scouring the horizon for some sign of life. In the distance, a Canadian plane took off, having deposited a cargo of meat that got flown into Havana twice a week. When the first car pulled up on the runway, the negotiators stepped out and some time later Castro’s car drove up. When the Pan Am plane landed to take the prisoners away, two journalists got out. They were not allowed up into the press room, so they stood on the runway shouting up at fellow reporters. Jokes were made to the effect that the delay must be caused by Kennedy’s cheque having bounced. A French reporter shouted down that he was no longer allowed to telephone. Another kept shouting down scraps of information. The prisoners had been well treated … there was still a small colony of Americans in Havana, living quietly and unmolested.
‘I hope you don’t get into trouble,’ someone said to me, ‘but you should have reported to the snakepit downstairs an hour ago.’ A few days back a woman journalist had been searched and had missed her plane for having a stack of hotel notepaper in her suitcase; it was thought that she had made notes in invisible ink. I remained long enough to see two buses draw alongside the Pan Am plane, and the sick and wounded, wearing odd trousers and shirts, some with missing limbs, sadly and silently boarded the plane which took off immediately. The vacated runway instilled a sense of desolation. There was chaos down in the lobby. It took an hour for everyone’s papers to be scrutinised. Cubans were having to exhibit their valueless baubles. One decrepit old Negress said, ‘I’ve got to leave, I’m sick, you see.’ Men’s breast pockets were stuffed with cigars but their suitcases were practically empty.
I had thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The Cubans I had met had struck me as being very gentle, humorous and friendly. But it was a relief to get back to Kingston and see Jamaicans in flowered hats contentedly trooping off to church as a fashion show was being held round the hotel swimming pool.
Then I boarded a cruise ship. On arrival in Miami I left my passport stamped with a Cuban visa in the care of the cruise ship’s Greek purser and entered the United States with an immigration card.
Back in New York, I stayed in the Hotel Fourteen, or in Charlie’s little house on Long Island. He was then passionately attached to Joan Fontaine. Though still pretty, the actress had become rather stout and most exacting, it was said. I came upon them at a party given by the journalist, Gavin Young, who always invited people from various milieux and gave large, amusing parties in New York. Some wondered how he managed it on Observer pay. Intending to be friendly, I went up to Joan Fontaine. I cannot remember what I said, but she immediately took offence and flounced out, leaving Charlie at the party. Though known to be incapable of retaining the simplest employment, the incident increased my popularity, for it looked as though I had scored over this glamorous lady. Even Gavin, whom I wrongly assumed to be a misogynist, seemed impressed and embraced me with abandon on his doorstep when I left – as a gesture, alas, that was never repeated. But eventually we became good friends.
Bob then took me to live with him in a large airy apartment over Carnegie Hall that the pianist, Peter Duchin, had lent him for the summer. Not that I saw much of Bob. He spent nights on 33rd Street rewriting articles for Harper’s. He would turn up for breakfast with ‘Hello, Kiddo’ and slip into the bed as I was stepping out. Infinitely more sympathetic and kinder, but with less energy (in order to keep going he took stimulants that he handed on to me) and a slogger in more ways than one, Bob struck me as being very similar to Weidenfeld. Determined to lure Bob into his publishing firm, W. surfaced again at this point, saying to Bob, ‘Don’t think for a moment that I minimise the difficulties that you would face in making the major change of leaving Harper’s and coming to work for us … as to financial terms I of course sympathise with your point of view looking at figures from an American angle.’ In spite of W.’s persistence when he was out to get what he wanted – ‘Perhaps we can collaborate all the same by your acting as an adviser …’ – Bob remained uninterested. It was only after a lengthy newspaper strike that Bob left Harper’s to become an editor on the newly founded New York Review of Books.
As to W., he faded out altogether until over twenty years later when, to my surprise, he rang me up from London. I was living in Seine-et-Marne.
‘Your voice hasn’t changed at all,’ he said. ‘I hear you’re writing an autobiography.’
To reassure him, I replied, ‘Yes. But I haven’t got on to you yet.’
‘I’m in the throes of writing mine,’ he confided, ‘and I’ve said some very nice things about you.’ The conversation was brief and terminated by him saying, ‘As you live in the country I expect you’d like me to send you some books.’ My voice might not have changed. Neither had his character. It was about this time that he was aligning himself with Getty and opening up a branch of his publishing house in New York.
No books arrived. So I wrote a rather snappy note saying ‘How typical!’ A month later, two parcels arrived simultaneously. The books had been sent in duplicate and included two art books and two copies of A. J. Ayer’s Wittgenstein, together with two copies of a first novel by Paul Pickering, Wild About Harry – none of them, alas, readable. Since then, Taki has written in The Spectator that he ran into Weidenfeld in Italy where ‘our noble lord, since receiving a knighthood at the same time as the Beatles’ honour, has been staying at a house taken by two rich and ageing but very elegant American ladies. No sooner had he arrived than a native reported he had seen an escaped baboon and the fuzz arrived. Upon closer inspection of the property, the “baboon” turned out to be nothing more lethal than our George, sunning himself in the nude. Apparently, this noble lord’s secret charm – published here for the first time – is that he is covered with hair from head to foot, including his buttocks.’ Weidenfeld is quoted as saying that Taki would never have been able to get away with what he does if it weren’t for the protection he gets from four people: Gianni Agnelli, David Somerset, Tony Lambton and John Aspinall.
‘But I do understand why the great publisher feels the way he does. After all, protection comes to him naturally. He married one of America’s richest, La Payson, and now is friendly with an even richer one, La Getty. Protection is his middle name …’
After Taki wrote this, inquisitive people kept ringing me to check on W.’s buttocks.
Whether it was tit-for-tat or merely incidental, Joan Fontaine vamped Bob’s-your-uncle and afterwards Charlie told me she had found it very heavy going. By then I had moved into an apartment on East 83rd, delegated by Earl, who had upgraded to the fifties. Known as a railroad apartment that you entered through the kitchen, with a sitting room on one side and a slit of a bedroom on the other, it was quiet and had a view of the sky. Opposite was a wasteland. In fine weather, one could climb on to the roof and sunbathe in a deckchair. The rent was $75 a month. Although I always referred to the building as a slum, I was very happy living there throughout the next two years. Those prepared to mount five dun flights smelling of cats and cabbage were pleasantly surprised on entering to see a Sidney Nolan, ‘Bird Over Harbour,’ and some pretty English furniture.
A piece on Cuba came out in The London Magazine and was picked up by an American monthly, Atlas, under the title, ‘In the Streets of Havana’. Atlas, the magazine of the World Press, dealt only in current affairs in translations and reprints from abroad. This resulted in a fan letter from Mr Morrow, a West Coast publisher, friend of the poet Kenneth Rexroth, whom I had met in San Francisco. Morrow Books specialised in mysticism and religion. Alan Ross went on encouraging me to write. Like someone ordering a baker’s dozen, he sent postcards saying, ‘Another short story, please. How many does that add up to now? I think your last is one of your very best, though perhaps the last line is a bit flat.’ Whereupon, I would sit down and mint out another one. When Morrow came to offer me a job as his secretary, I was bent over the typewriter and looked so ashen that before committing himself he insisted on my having a check-up with his doctor. At that time, future employers demanded a certificate of health, exonerating you from any venereal disease, as nowadays it might be AIDS. Then Morrow took me to meet his wife. The Morrows lived out of New York on a turnpike, where they eventually found me a dismal bedsit. Morrow had a tiny office. His room was next to mine. From where I sat, with earphones attached to my head, I could see him through a glass pane and when not questioning his spelling (as we know American and English words do not always tally) I typed to his dictation. To my horror, in less than a month, I once more became deaf. I could see his lips moving, but could not decipher a word. Morrow lost no time, which is probably why he now has a flourishing publishing house. He dismissed me kindly, recommending his analyst.
Soon after, I received the following: ‘Dear Barbara, You are a very wonderful person and you should learn to respect yourself as much as those who love you do. The name of my psychiatrist is Dr Grace Baker 214 E. 61st.’ It was signed ‘the Rev Dr McKelway’, a manic-depressive writer on the New Yorker.
It was Caroline’s psychiatrist who got me in the end. What attracted me was that he analysed with the aid of LSD. He was lanky, like my father, and had a small brush moustache. I had no trouble in getting a transference, which is supposed to be so important, once you go in for that sort of thing. The first session, Longman (I think he was named) questioned me about my childhood relationship with Daddy.
‘For something got fouled up somewhere along the line and we’ve got to set you up so that you can fend for yourself.’
‘Daddy used to take me for walks,’ I confessed, ‘but we never had any conversation.’ From then on, when I entered his room, Longman merely handed me a glass of water and the LSD pills, and sat waiting for a latent repression to surface (what is known as an ‘abreaction’ – resolution of a neurosis by reviving repressed or forgotten ideas of an event). The night after the first session, I dreamt of Daddy covered in blood rushing to attack me. Each session lasted four hours, during which I lay on the couch occasionally seeing goblins or breasts that turned into roses; but apart from that, nothing much. LSD affects the vision. The most ordinary object, like a necktie, can take on peculiar patterns and vivid colouring, and paintings appear magical. ‘You’ve got to get right in there,’ Longman kept saying each time he increased the dose. He got so little out of me that he would put on a Tchaikovsky symphony and leave the room. At the end of each session, with blazing eyes, I would be helped like an invalid into a taxi by his assistant-mistress, who was a reformed drug addict. Once she was out of sight, I dismissed the taxi and strode euphorically downtown to Caroline’s, and we sat up half the night ridiculing Longman and comparing our reactions. Longman was very indiscreet. In between sessions, he seemed to enjoy revealing the idiosyncrasies of other patients, one of whom, apparently, hoarded excreta in the rectum for weeks. It was due to him, Longman boasted, that Cary Grant had turned to heterosexuality and fathered a child. Once he got on to the fact I was paranoid, on arrival I would be put at the end of the queue and when my turn came, Longman poked his head round the door and said, as though referring to a female Tom Thumb, ‘Has anyone seen Miss Skelton today?’ All it did was to paralyse me with inferiority. Then, one day, after a session, I went straight on to a party. When I entered the room all the men appeared to have long flowing beards. In the taxi going home, I looked into the windscreen mirror and glimpsed Mummy as a toad. Longman merely whistled when I told him. But I could see he was excited. At last we seemed to be getting somewhere. The session over, he asked for money. When I said I didn’t have any, that was that. Psychiatrists claim that if they are not paid, analysis will never do a patient any good. All the experience taught me was that depression is due to the repression of an impulse and that a penchant for corpulent men implied a subconscious desire to abnegate poor Daddy, who had been as slim as a rake.