bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2004) — Spring/Summer 2004 // Printemps/Été 2004, pp. 19–21
Havana is a city of antiques. The cars are ancient, the buildings often ruinous and even el Presidente’s famous beard is now grizzled. I like antiques. They remind me of the past and the individual human stories that I can weave around such objects.
Chasing Antiques in an Antique City
After we discovered a mutual interest in decorative art, Ernesto — a Cuban whom I had met a few months earlier and who is a retired tourist guide — volunteered to take me to the Havana Antique Store. He rightly insisted that I would never find it on my own. This store has the blessing of the Government of Cuba and the state receives a large cut of the proceeds. In return the customers receive an official receipt and your purchases will not be confiscated at the airport. Embracing a type of Napoleonic Code for arty bric-à-brac, any object d’art in Cuba is considered national patrimony unless proven otherwise. Cuban officials have a horror of being taken advantage by potential carpetbaggers.
I would never have found the antique shop on my own and I probably would have been too intimidated to go in. The shop’s street, like many other Havana streets consisted of stray dogs and rundown, non-descript houses with people lounging on the front verandas talking to each other and anyone happening on the street. Their Cuban Spanish is absolutely impenetrable for me and my Canadian eye is outraged by this bold and public lassitude. Cubans are shameless in their advanced hanging-out skills. They prize the ability to chat and the street is their living room. In contrast, I imagine that idle Canadians have the good grace to hide indoors and probably drink.
The only indication that the particular house we stopped at was a shop was a paper sign on the door posting hours and the large packing boxes on the front veranda. The proprietress, or at least the person in charge, greeted us and we went through the elaborate rituals of hailing and introducing each other. You would not normally identify this lady as an antique dealer. She wore a lot of untasteful gold jewelry and a very short skirt. In another culture, she looked like she might spend time tending bar in a country-and-western beverage lounge. It was a shock to hear her discuss with Ernesto the relative merits of Mary Gregory cranberry glass and the correct dating of a gigantic piece of nineteenth century Sèvre porcelain on the top floor.
It is a challenge to describe the contents of the shop. Even though there was no electric light to see in much detail, every surface was decorated and each contour of every object swayed with undulation and curve. Rococo, Baroque do not remotely do justice to the spectacle of what was contained in that shop. The stuff dripped with excess. An over-the-top Carribean sensibility had mated with nineteenth-century extravagance.
The scene was not depressing as it was such a riot of colour and form. But underneath, there is a story, or many sad stories, behind each item, someone’s treasure or souvenir. Ernesto explained that Cuba had been very prosperous during and after the World Wars. Suddenly affluent Cubans had gone to Europe or had imported European goods. Although there was interest in antiques, often the taste was nouveau riche. Now, just before Christmas, many middle-class Cubans wanted to sell these family pieces. They just plain needed the money or the stuff no longer fitted into their cramped apartments.
Generally the prices for everything were high, priced in hundreds of dollars. As there is no concept of supply and demand, it is very difficult for Cubans to establish what a thing is worth. I was told that you could make a bid or offer on anything. There is no real sense of bargaining in Cuba and an excessive concern not to be taken advantage of. I had the vague impression that if you made an offer on something, and no one else wanted it in the next few months, then you would get it. However, pricing here is almost impossible to figure out. You pay three dollars US for an imported can of tuna, but only twelve dollars to have a medium-sized engraving matted and framed by a local shop that imports its supplies from Italy.
As a former high school teacher, Ernesto loves to give me informed lectures on a range of topics. Today, on the way home from the antique shop, the subject was the difference in hard and soft paste porcelain and his favorite period of Wedgewood. He prefers the basalt style in the Pompeii colours. In this kingdom of the March Hare, Ernesto is my driver.
The next day only added to a growing sense of unreality. Fidel chose to make one of his now-fleeting appearances. He dropped by a park named after John Lennon on the twentieth anniversary of his death. Is this action just the nod of one twentieth century icon to another, a mutually-shared Andy Warhol pop-art moment? You never know. There is also a Princess Diana park.
The Havana Book Fair
On an overcast February Saturday afternoon in Havana my husband and I decided to visit the recently-opened book fair. In our car, we crossed the harbour by underground tunnel and emerged to queue in a long line of congested traffic waiting to enter the eighteenth century La Cabana Fortress — the largest in the Americas — where the book fair was located. This scene was further disturbed by the constantly loading and disgorging of broken-down buses. With the press of people, disintegrating cars from the 1950s in no discernible lane, and lingering clouds of bus exhaust, the scene was reminiscent of a frenzied rock concert. Where in the world – let alone the developing world — would there be the same excitement over a book-fair?
The response indicates a great deal about Cuba. First, for a variety of political and geopolitical reasons, too complex for this article, Cubans are starved for information and print. Second, they are highly literate and take pride in their level of erudition. A well-educated Cuban, and education in Cuba is free, is more culturally literate than a North American arts graduate. Finally, in this land of beach, rum and salsa, there is often not much to do on a cloudy afternoon.
The fortress is a magnificent building, layered in colonial and recent history. Here, Che Guevara set up his military headquarters after the triumph of the revolution. Thus it was in La Cabana, Che also presided over the trials and speedy executions of Batista henchmen and loyalists. This set of buildings also saw the launching, in 1960, of the literary campaign to teach one million Cubans to read and write. Perhaps for this reason, it is a particularly appropriate backdrop for the book fair.
Directed by a young Army cadet, we left the car adjacent to a parked missile, seemingly either abandoned or on display. It was difficult to determine which. The elegant elongated and dangerous body of the weapon seemed very out of place in this placid field near a middle-class residential area. Was this one of the missiles of the Cuban Missile Crisis and what was it doing in this hillside? In Cuba, you are always curious but also take for granted the element of magic realism that suffuses quotidian life.
Making our way through the hordes and reminded by a Cuban security lady to put my handbag under my armpit, we entered the fair. The book show was not remarkable. Unfortunately the cavernous military buildings of the old fort were hot and very crowded. The books were displayed on racks and tabletops arranged in alcoves by publisher or country. I bought a scholarly hardback edition by a notable Canadian academic publisher for US$4.00. The sign over the Canadian book display indicated that the books were donated by Canadian publishers and any money received would go to the Terry Fox Fund for cancer research in Cuba.
Ignoring the constant bottle-necks in human traffic management, the crowd was filled with purpose and excitement. Cubans recycle books until they are tattered wrecks. Pathetic second-hand books stalls that resemble semi-permanent garage sales pas bookshops. The thought of fine p-r–,… print and uncracked spines seemed to bring out the roar in the crowd.
At a stand of revolutionary books being lovingly pawed through by an older military gentleman with at least six rows of military ribbons on his causal army tunic, my husband found a book he had been looking for. It is called in English “The People of the Plan” and deals with the struggle against Batista that took place in Cuban cities. While Fidel was in the mountain fastness of the Sierra Maestra, the urban guerrilla campaign, fought in Cuban streets, against a vicious police force and possible informers, was extremely dangerous. We have met the book’s author, a tall handsome gentleman in his sixties. He is an important veteran of this campaign.
In any developing country, there are sights and scenes, like the clouds of pollution or the starving ulcerous street dogs, that are unhappy. Ruefully and with resignation, you turn your head. Other vignettes have a powerful charm. Fortunately, on leaving the book fair I encountered one of the happy reassuring scenes. A mother has bought one of the ubiquitous Cuban ham sandwiches for her son. With obvious pleasure, he was eating his sandwich by the roadside as his mother read to him from a newly-purchased children’s book. Often, you have hope for this island.
The Cuban Time Capsule
Lime is a dangerous concept in Cuba. Everything is dated from the Revolution. Or if you are of another political persuasion, time stopped with the Revolution. Most private commercial activity in Cuba petered out in the earlier years of the Revolution as the government nationalized almost all industry. Some foreign businesses were allowed, providing they never closed or never abandoned their offices in Cuba. By happenstance, I recently visited one of these survivors of Cuban free enterprise, a veritable Robinson Crusoe of the insurance industry.
It is hard to think you could become excited by the prospect of visiting the offices of a prominent Canadian insurance company. I did, however, feel anticipation as the car edged its way down through the pedestrian traffic of the most prominent commercial street in Havana. I knew instantly the good-looking man in his 60s was waiting for us. Miguel had been hired by the company that still employed him as an office boy of sixteen in the mid-1950s. Every day or ry day for the last fifty years, he each working day to the same office. The country, Havana. The street, the office building had changed, but Miguel made his way to the office he had known as a youth.
Luckily, we had brought a flashlight as the elevator, the corridor lights, and now the water for the last four months, no longer worked. The company kitchen and bathroom looked like wrecks from a war zone, the Venetian blinds hung broken and tattered but oddly the working area office was still intact, only it looked like it was unchanged from the early 1950s or maybe, since this was the Carribean, the late 1940s. The manual typewriters were still in neat rows on their metal desks. One adding machine still functioned. The old wall clock still worked and the Royal Bank of Bank calendar looked almost crisp, if you overlooked the hand-written cards for the date numbers. A dried-up ink bottle graced the top of a desk.
Miguel was obviously a very sympathetic man and he was thrilled by the attention. He showed us office snapshots from the 1950s showing a Hollywood-handsome Miguel. One of the older female staff members also depicted in the photos survived, but she, being hampered by her arthritis, could not longer manage the flights of stairs. Like Miguel, she continued to be paid out of a local Cuban peso account.
Cupboards were opened and in addition to a trove of canceled Bank of Nova Scotia cheques from the 1920s, there were several retired metal office shields. As each of the insurance company’s regional agents had closed, they had carefully retired their bright blue identifying agent crests to the head Havana office. These must have been of good quality, as they survived immaculate in their cupboard storage.
Finally, we were shown the corner office of the last regional manager, Mr. Chapman. Mr. Chapman carefully-sat formal business photo was also displayed. The portrait brought back Toronto of the 1950s. Chapman was an attractive man with a careful, but sensitive face. The discreet tasteful glasses, the guardsman tie with the diminutive pre- Windsor knot all inspired trust. The photos beneath the glass in Mr. Chapman’s office were postcards from Carribean resorts and scenes of the Canadian Rockies. The view from the office was fantastic, as directly opposite on the other side of Havana Bay, Mr. Chapman would have been able to see vividly the eighteenth-century Cabana fortress.
It must have been lonely and confusing in the early days of the revolution. Did he stare at the fortress and know that here Che Guevara was presiding over the trials and executions of Batista henchmen and loyalists. I wondered if any of these had had insurance with this particular company. Toronto must have seemed a long way away. Chapman stuck it out until almost all business had dried up and the two Canadian banks had been compensated and nationalized. He left, but the office remained and continued to serve the existing policyholders.
This is a story of faithfulness. The revolutionary government, then and now, recognizes the company’s right of occupancy to this floor of commercial real estate. The aged paid-up insurance policyholders still receive their annuities from the Cuban peso company bank account. Miguel continues to ascend the four flights of stairs, reply to the occasional letter and keep the glass top of Mr. Chapman’s desk dusted. He is a touch-bearer for commercial culture. Now, in downtown Havana he continues his vigil.
Editor’s Note:
In Volume 19-1, bout published an article by Denise Jacques titled “Hunting Hemingway.” The article was about the early history of the Canadian official residence in Havana and it received Honourary Mention by the Retired Heads of Mission for writing in 2002. In July 2003, Denise Jacques published “The Tiled Mansion,” an illustrated booklet on the original story of the house and the family that built it in the 1930s.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2004) — Spring/Summer 2004 // Printemps/Été 2004, pp. 19–21. Read the rest of this issue →
