Read Online Cuba Diaries by Isadora Tattlin - Free Book Online Page A

meat—but there are practically no clothes or shoes.”
    Flora is wearing a shirtwaist of flowered cloth. It looks brand-new.
    â€œThat’s a nice dress.”
    â€œThis cloth was given to me by a friend who traveled to Spain. It’s the only way.”
    We drive over a rise, and a thick black plume of smoke appears. It is an affront in the middle of the orange groves. The smoke is not behaving in the same way as other paleoindustrial smoke we have seen in Cuba, though. It is intermittent but regular, and it is coming toward us. I am trying to think of what it could be or where I have seen smoke like it before, when suddenly, a huge black . . . thing appears in an alley between the orange trees. I feel my hand go up to my throat and my mouth drop open. “Look!” we yell to the children.
    It’s got a bulbous burner, a gaping funnel, a cowcatcher, a big number on the side, arms pushing the wheels round and round, and an engineer hanging out the side, and it’s pulling ten railroad cars on a track I haven’t noticed before. It’s huge, it’s magnificent, and it’s every cowboy movie I’ve ever seen and every American history book, and it’s in front of us in the bright light ofthe middle of the day, in the middle of an orange grove in Cuba, just as casual as you please.
    â€œDoes it burn wood? Does it burn wood?” we ask Ladisel. We are practically bouncing up and down on our seats.
    â€œWood. And also sugarcane fibers.”
    â€œFantastic!” Nick says.
    Ladisel smiles.
    The engine is gliding majestically in front of us now, metal screeching against metal, an operatic aria out of the Industrial Revolution, and I want to remember everything about it, forever. It is matte black, there is not a spot of rust on it, the number 1 is painted on the side of the engine with nineteenth-century flourishes, and the smoke and soot (of the kind Grandma used to make, with cinders in it) is blowing back on the soot black railroad cars.
    There’s paleoindustry, and then there’s paleoindustry.
    â€œIt’s like something out of a museum!” I yell over the noise.
    Ladisel’s smile turns sheepish and he gets the beat-up, hollow-chested, chain-smoking look that some Cuban officials have. “It’s just for freight, you know,” he says. “Passenger trains are more modern.”
    â€œMy wife’s never seen one,” Nick says, “but in X—— we had them up until a few years ago. I used to ride them when I was a little boy.”
    â€œBut it’s beautiful,” I say quickly, “and it’s exciting for us to see it.”
    I want to look and look—there is never enough time—but the steam engine is curving away from us now. It is at the angle trains are always at when Indians or robbers jump onto them in movies.
    â€œYou realize what you have, don’t you?” Nick asks Ladisel.
    Ladisel looks at us looking at him. He nods uncertainly.
    â€œYou musn’t throw it away. Even after things change.”
    Ladisel still looks beat-up.
    â€œIn the United States, an engine like that would be very valuable.”
    Ladisel sits a little straighter on the seat.
    THEA AND JIMMIE RETURN breathlessly to us in the downstairs hall of the government-protocol house we have been given in Varadero, complete with cook and maid, for the remainder of the weekend, informing us that there are no toilet seats on any of the toilets, just like I had said there wouldn’t be!
    Ladisel and Flora mercifully do not speak any English, nor do the cook or maid, who are standing by.
    â€œ
Disculpe
” (“Excuse me”). I take Thea and Jimmie by the wrists and lead them to the far end of the hall.
    â€œThey’re so
cold
. . . ,” Thea says, meaning the rims of the bowls.
    I tell Thea and Jimmie that they will have to stand over them every time, then, like they do over public toilets.
    â€œYou mean I am going