to go to Cuba after Oxford, which was a complete eye-opener because it was the first time I was exposed to a Latin culture, and they loved me, they completely got me. There was absolutely none of this Protestant bullshit, this Puritanism which infests the northern soul. They just know how to live and they live out on the streets, everything there was outdoors and in color. People drank, people ate, they made music, it was fabulous . I had this little room above a café, very simple, and I was reading a lot of Marx and Lenin, and thinking that you could only have successful communism in warm countries, hot countries. These very gray granite left-wing ideas have to be mitigated by a strong pleasure principle. The Soviet Union was the last place a revolution was ever going to work.
âOf all the places I would love to go back to, itâs Cuba, because you can live very cheaply there and one thing it did for me was that eventually I stopped reading Marx and Lenin. When I was at Oxford it was Ivan who was the anarchist, not me, I thought those ideas were really woolly, but in Cuba I didnât become an anarchist, I just dropped all ideology. I lost interest in it.
âWhat happened to me in Cuba was that I fell in love. We moved in together, it was so crazy, this little place we had, and we spent all our time in bed. He was teaching me Spanish and I was teaching him English and we were each learning all the sex words before the words you couldnât use with anyone but a lover. God, I was so happy. I would watch the shadows on the walls thrown by the heavy old mahogany furniture, the shadows that looked like hunchbacked women crossing the room. The dust motes in the sun beams. The torn ivory lace of the curtains. The meals he cooked me of beans and rice. The strong morning coffee. The rum in theevening. The taste of his skin with the cheap horrible perfume he used. Him playing his guitar, badly, sitting on the edge of the bed. His toothbrush drying on the cracked sink. The ceaseless sound of people in the street.
âWhen I look back, thatâs how I see myself. Iâm twenty-two and Iâm in that room and no one has the address. However hard they look theyâll never find me. I painted the walls browny red, the color of an old lipstick, and the room seemed to hum and vibrate with the heat of it. We went out sometimes on the back of a motorbike he borrowed, out to the sea, to the Atlantic coast. You could see ships on the horizon, their black funnels clear against the blue sky, which was always salted with clouds. Thatâs what he said, a sky without clouds is like a steak without salt. I told him in England we have a roof of clouds, but he had no idea what I meant, he just laughed.
âHe could be very mean and moody. Heâd go off and not tell me why or where. I said, âWhy donât you just admit you have another girlfriend?â But he shook his head. So I thought maybe he was a government spy, he was spying on me, but then they arrested him. They took him away and told me I had to pack up and come to the airport right away.
âHe must be over sixty now. Maybe heâs a fat old Cuban living in Florida with his fat wife and Republican children. Or maybe he got out of jail and went back to his old life before he met me and heâs a broken-down old man who still remembers some English to speak to the tourists because he had an English girl once.
âNo. I wonât tell you his name. I feel that if I release it with my breath, Iâll lose it. I canât explain why. I just know that he is all Iâve got, me, him, that room. The red walls. The shadows. The curtain. Itâs more real to me than your fucking two-million-pound house, or however much you say itâs worth at your dinner party conversations.â
Brown Rice, Brown Sugar, Brown Days
T his is my wedding day, Andrea thought. Sooner than I expected.
They gathered outside the register office with Ivan
âOf all the places I would love to go back to, itâs Cuba, because you can live very cheaply there and one thing it did for me was that eventually I stopped reading Marx and Lenin. When I was at Oxford it was Ivan who was the anarchist, not me, I thought those ideas were really woolly, but in Cuba I didnât become an anarchist, I just dropped all ideology. I lost interest in it.
âWhat happened to me in Cuba was that I fell in love. We moved in together, it was so crazy, this little place we had, and we spent all our time in bed. He was teaching me Spanish and I was teaching him English and we were each learning all the sex words before the words you couldnât use with anyone but a lover. God, I was so happy. I would watch the shadows on the walls thrown by the heavy old mahogany furniture, the shadows that looked like hunchbacked women crossing the room. The dust motes in the sun beams. The torn ivory lace of the curtains. The meals he cooked me of beans and rice. The strong morning coffee. The rum in theevening. The taste of his skin with the cheap horrible perfume he used. Him playing his guitar, badly, sitting on the edge of the bed. His toothbrush drying on the cracked sink. The ceaseless sound of people in the street.
âWhen I look back, thatâs how I see myself. Iâm twenty-two and Iâm in that room and no one has the address. However hard they look theyâll never find me. I painted the walls browny red, the color of an old lipstick, and the room seemed to hum and vibrate with the heat of it. We went out sometimes on the back of a motorbike he borrowed, out to the sea, to the Atlantic coast. You could see ships on the horizon, their black funnels clear against the blue sky, which was always salted with clouds. Thatâs what he said, a sky without clouds is like a steak without salt. I told him in England we have a roof of clouds, but he had no idea what I meant, he just laughed.
âHe could be very mean and moody. Heâd go off and not tell me why or where. I said, âWhy donât you just admit you have another girlfriend?â But he shook his head. So I thought maybe he was a government spy, he was spying on me, but then they arrested him. They took him away and told me I had to pack up and come to the airport right away.
âHe must be over sixty now. Maybe heâs a fat old Cuban living in Florida with his fat wife and Republican children. Or maybe he got out of jail and went back to his old life before he met me and heâs a broken-down old man who still remembers some English to speak to the tourists because he had an English girl once.
âNo. I wonât tell you his name. I feel that if I release it with my breath, Iâll lose it. I canât explain why. I just know that he is all Iâve got, me, him, that room. The red walls. The shadows. The curtain. Itâs more real to me than your fucking two-million-pound house, or however much you say itâs worth at your dinner party conversations.â
Brown Rice, Brown Sugar, Brown Days
T his is my wedding day, Andrea thought. Sooner than I expected.
They gathered outside the register office with Ivan
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