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

to have to stand
the whole weekend?
” Thea persists.
    â€œThea . . .”
    Lunch, we are told, is ready for us on the table.
    Ladisel and Flora reveal during lunch that this is the first time they have been in Varadero since their honeymoon, and their children are now twelve and fourteen. Ladisel says he has been to the Soviet Union, though.
    I ask Ladisel what Cubans thought of the Soviet Union when they got there. Did they really like it? I say that I went there in the time of Ronald Reagan, and that before I got there, I heard what Reagan said about the Soviet Union, and since my politics are left of center, I thought, of course, that what he said was an exaggeration . . . but then when I got there and I saw how it was, I thought,
Dios mío
. . .
(My God . . .)
.
    He says most Cubans thought,
Dios mío
, about it, too.
    Thea and Jimmie go into the garden of the guest house after lunch and pick large, flexible, waxy leaves, which they drape over the rims of the toilet bowls in every bathroom. “There!” they say.
    â€œ
Genial
” (“Very smart”), Ladisel and Flora, who have been pulled by Thea and Jimmie to inspect the toilets, say.
    Nick steers Jimmie and Thea into their room. He shuts the door. Nick gets down at eye level with them and tells them that if they are ever in a Cuban’s house again—and this, too, is a Cuban’s house—and they see that something is broken or that something is missing, they are not supposed to complain about it or even mention it, that it is not nice to point out to people what they are lacking.
    â€œBut
Mommy
talked about it . . .”
    â€œMommy talked about it among
us
, but Mommy shouldn’t have talked about it at all. Mommy was a little bit naughty, but more than being naughty, she was tiresome, which is kind of like being naughty.”
    â€œIt’s true, I was tiresome,” I say.
    DRIVING HOME PAST the U.S. Interests Section, we see the SEÑORES IMPERIALISTAS sign has been taken down.
    â€œThey’ve taken it down!” I exclaim.
    Ladisel and Flora smile uncertainly.
I. 28
    There is no flour in the Diplo, no sugar, and no salt.
    Lowering her voice and looking around, Lorena says she is sure she can
conseguir
some flour for us.
    Resolver
(to resolve) and
conseguir
(to get, obtain, attain, find) are two of the most frequently used verbs in Cuba and are used more often than the word
comprar
(to buy), for more often than not, it is not mere buying that you have to do in order to acquire material things.
    A REPAIRMAN WHO VISITS the house regularly, lowering his voice, says his brother-in-law’s uncle’s second wife’s present husband can get us three-hundred-dollar boxes of cigars for twenty dollars.
    THE SEÑORES IMPERIALISTAS SIGN has been put back, freshly painted and with its trusses reinforced.
    The flour arrives, Lorena dragging a big sack in through the door.
    Manuel tells me later in another room, also in a lowered voice, that I shouldn’t buy flour from the
calle
(street). They cut it with poor-quality flour and chemicals and it can be bad.
I. 29
    Even though Nick said “no ideology,” Olga, the Spanish teacher, still sometimes tries to fit it in, in little phrases we have to practice, and we encourage her with our repartee.
    Us: “In the United States, there are more goods.”
    Olga: “In Cuba, there is more equality among people.”
    Us: “But some are more equal than others.”
    Olga looks around. “I just read
Animal Farm
,” Olga whispers in English. “Oh, how perfect it is for the present situation . . .”
    Olga was a committed party member at one time, she tells us. She worked as a translator for the Venceremos Brigades of American college students when they came to cut cane in the seventies.
    â€œThey’re all stockbrokers now. Or real estate agents,” we say.
    Olga purses her lips. “I don’t want to hear about it,” she