they took the train to Miami. I believe there was a sexual crisis of some kind—Vera told me about it years later—the first infidelity, if you don’t count Gordon, which she didn’t. They weathered the storm through my good offices: the money arrived the next day, and it came as a shaft of grace, for it allowed them to move on and, more important, to buy clothes more appropriate to the climate.
I next glimpse them in Havana—this was before the revolution—living in an apartment at the top of a crumbling pale-blue building with a balcony from which they could see the Caribbean tossing over the seawall if they craned out far enough. There was a covered courtyard, a place of cool shade dappled with sunlight before you hit the glare of the street, a riot of bougainvillea crawling over the peeling walls, the whole a study in texture and tone that Jack was soon attempting to paint, this with the active encouragement of the neighbours, who had at once taken to the young
pintor grande,
him and his
pirata
both.
They slept on a huge bed beneath a headboard of carved dark hardwood and kept the shutters open so as to gather up any breeze that found its way down their narrow street, Calle de Placencia. Jack remembered the vast shining moon that bathed their bed in silver, and always, he said, somewhere nearby, a loud, rapid conversation punctuated by shouts and laughter, or weeping, or screams, or a radio playing dance music, or a streetcar clanking by below, and for a while they were happy. They would lie propped up on pillows, smoking cigars, listening to the night, then fall asleep and dream about painting. They rose early and by eight they were at work.
For several months they lived in the apartment near the seawall. He said he worked hard and came on rapidly. Vera too was working, and Jack watched her closely. At first she painted without interruption, at all hours, for days and nights on end. She painted what she saw on the streets of Havana with a free, loose hand on remnants of cotton duck they picked up cheap in the fabric houses of Havana Viejo, using large brushes and powdered pigment in primary colours they mixed themselves in buckets. Decayed colonial buildings baking in the sunlight, their roofs eaten away by grass. Towering palms with massive finned automobiles gliding by. Plazas and fountains and statues, grand boulevards, gaily dressed
habañeros
gathered on street corners to pass a bottle and dance. Shouting women hanging out of windows to haul up groceries in a basket. Wretched
campesinos
asleep on benches. Parrots, skulls, fields of sugarcane swaying in the moonlight, sun gods, rusting tankers and baroque movie theatres featuring American film stars, all found their way onto Vera’s big canvases.
So he learned from her even if she did not teach him, and just as well, because she could not articulate what it was she did. It’s a mystery, Jack, she said, art’s a mystery, okay?—and laid one finger on her breast and another on her eye. This gnomic gesture was followed by a solemn silence, then a gust of chesty laughter. They got out a few weeks before Batista fled the country, and missed the spectacle of Fidel Castro entering the city after a triumphal journey the length of the island, and his rousing oration to a crowd of half a million in front of the Presidential Palace. Apparently it turned cynics into romantics and romantics into fanatics, and I almost wish I had been there myself. Was that why they moved on? Because of the deteriorating political situation, the escalating violence, the hardening antagonism of the people of Cuba towards the brutal oppression they had so long endured—was that it?
But no, it was all much more banal than that. Jack told me it was because Vera couldn’t handle it any more. After the productive month or so there came a period of inactivity, when she lay on the couch in her studio all day, smoking cigars and gazing at the ceiling. Then she started going out. Soon she
I next glimpse them in Havana—this was before the revolution—living in an apartment at the top of a crumbling pale-blue building with a balcony from which they could see the Caribbean tossing over the seawall if they craned out far enough. There was a covered courtyard, a place of cool shade dappled with sunlight before you hit the glare of the street, a riot of bougainvillea crawling over the peeling walls, the whole a study in texture and tone that Jack was soon attempting to paint, this with the active encouragement of the neighbours, who had at once taken to the young
pintor grande,
him and his
pirata
both.
They slept on a huge bed beneath a headboard of carved dark hardwood and kept the shutters open so as to gather up any breeze that found its way down their narrow street, Calle de Placencia. Jack remembered the vast shining moon that bathed their bed in silver, and always, he said, somewhere nearby, a loud, rapid conversation punctuated by shouts and laughter, or weeping, or screams, or a radio playing dance music, or a streetcar clanking by below, and for a while they were happy. They would lie propped up on pillows, smoking cigars, listening to the night, then fall asleep and dream about painting. They rose early and by eight they were at work.
For several months they lived in the apartment near the seawall. He said he worked hard and came on rapidly. Vera too was working, and Jack watched her closely. At first she painted without interruption, at all hours, for days and nights on end. She painted what she saw on the streets of Havana with a free, loose hand on remnants of cotton duck they picked up cheap in the fabric houses of Havana Viejo, using large brushes and powdered pigment in primary colours they mixed themselves in buckets. Decayed colonial buildings baking in the sunlight, their roofs eaten away by grass. Towering palms with massive finned automobiles gliding by. Plazas and fountains and statues, grand boulevards, gaily dressed
habañeros
gathered on street corners to pass a bottle and dance. Shouting women hanging out of windows to haul up groceries in a basket. Wretched
campesinos
asleep on benches. Parrots, skulls, fields of sugarcane swaying in the moonlight, sun gods, rusting tankers and baroque movie theatres featuring American film stars, all found their way onto Vera’s big canvases.
So he learned from her even if she did not teach him, and just as well, because she could not articulate what it was she did. It’s a mystery, Jack, she said, art’s a mystery, okay?—and laid one finger on her breast and another on her eye. This gnomic gesture was followed by a solemn silence, then a gust of chesty laughter. They got out a few weeks before Batista fled the country, and missed the spectacle of Fidel Castro entering the city after a triumphal journey the length of the island, and his rousing oration to a crowd of half a million in front of the Presidential Palace. Apparently it turned cynics into romantics and romantics into fanatics, and I almost wish I had been there myself. Was that why they moved on? Because of the deteriorating political situation, the escalating violence, the hardening antagonism of the people of Cuba towards the brutal oppression they had so long endured—was that it?
But no, it was all much more banal than that. Jack told me it was because Vera couldn’t handle it any more. After the productive month or so there came a period of inactivity, when she lay on the couch in her studio all day, smoking cigars and gazing at the ceiling. Then she started going out. Soon she
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