Cuba Diaries (35 page)

I say criminals ended up in the United States as well. I quote Thomas Wolfe's line about the Georgia slattern. Then follows a little competition between us:
My country was settled by more dubious types. No, mine. No, mine . .
.

This is the first time I've been able to write in a week.

Felt bad the night after the dinner. It's October, diarrhea time, but better me than the children. Showered in the morning and managed to make it through my time for reading to the third grade at the school. Came home, collapsed on the bed. Switched from Kaopectate to Binaldan. Managed to get
through a cocktail party. Got home, put on my nightgown, and was in bed by 8:30.

Diarrhea again in the morning, more Binaldan. I dropped the children at a friend's house, went home, tried to write, but kept being drawn back to bed for little lie-downs. Went back to bed after not eating the boiled chicken and rice Lorena made me for lunch. I was getting a fever. Maybe it was a stomach virus, not bacteria or parasites. Nick came home. José was about to leave for the day. “Stop, José,” I said. I called Dr. Silvia. She was home and could come. José went in his car to pick her up. Managed to capture a
muestra
in a bottle. There was blood in it. Cramps were coming every few minutes. It was as if someone had shaken four Coca-Colas in my stomach. Dr. Silvia was almost sure it was not a virus. José took her and the sample to the laboratory. Time crept by—one hour, one and a half hours, two hours. Silvia finally called me from her home. I had amoebas, she said, and a high leukocyte count, evidence of infection. I probably had shigella also. She said I should take some medicine she was prescribing against amoebas. As for the shigella, they couldn't do a
coprocultivo
over the weekend, but if on Monday I had a fever and the diarrhea was still liquid, I was to collect another
muestra
so they could do a
coprocultivo
on that. Also, José's car had broken down. It broke down ten blocks from her house. She walked home. José was with his car, she said. A heavy rainstorm was going on outside. I asked Dr. Silvia if she could get some medicine. She said she could. I asked Dr. Silvia if she could get some medicine and walk back to José, and then José could take a taxi back to the house with the medicine. I lay back, listened to the soda fountain in my stomach, and waited. Nick was getting excited. He said I should go to the Institute for Tropical Diseases. He said amoebas could enter the liver. Two more hours passed with me in the bathroom the whole time. José showed up with medicine and oral rehydration salts. I scarfed the medicine, and after about a half an hour there was a definite quieting of the rumbling. Ate some breakfast in the morning, lying back after bites. Cramps and bathroom trips then subsided, until by midmorning I had almost none. It was miracle medicine. Dr. Silvia was a genius. I was exhausted.

Felt almost normal in my stomach the next day but had a migraine headache. Lay in the dark until the sparkle vision was over. Nick called, said he had made an appointment for me at the Institute for Tropical Diseases. I said I felt silly going since I felt so much better. Nick then had a strained sound in his voice, so I said I would go, but I wanted him to go with me so that he could hear with his own ears what they said to me and ask the
doctors questions right then, so that he wouldn't say later, when he heard their diagnosis from me, that it was wrong and the doctors didn't know what they were talking about: it was one of our cultural differences.

LIKE MANY INSTITUTES
in Cuba, the Pedro Kouri Institute for Tropical Diseases was nearly deserted, and the remaining staff wasn't even faking that they had anything to do. Desks visible through open doors had nothing on them; eyes in hallways fixed on us with total interest for the entire duration of our passage through them.

The Pedro Kouri Institute was established in the 1930s and enlarged in the 1970s for the wars of liberation in Angola and in other parts of Africa.

We sat down with the director and with another doctor. We were offered coffee. Nick was offered cigars. I described my symptoms to the director and the other doctor. I showed them the pills I was taking. We then went with the other doctor to an examining room, our steps echoing in the empty hall. The other doctor asked me how many pills I took before starting to feel better. I said two. He said it was impossible that I could feel so much better after just two pills. He said maybe I didn't have amoebas. He said he wanted to make two
coprocultivos
and led us down another empty hallway to the
recepción de muestras
, where a dozing attendant gave us two sterile plastic jars with labels. We were taken back to the director to thank him and say good-bye, then taken on a meandering walk through another empty corridor, the doctor opening the door of one empty office after another, mumbling something that sounded like an apology; we wondered if it meant we were supposed to pay.

The appropriate office was finally found; in it were a woman and an ornate, open, empty safe with “National Cash Register Company” written along the top of it in flowing golden script. The woman smiled and wrote some numbers down on a pad marked “Cubanacán,” the state tourism company. We were then led down another corridor to a place marked
CAJA
(Cashier). A nurse was called to pull a metal cash box out from the drawer of an empty desk. They were beginning their new operation, the doctor explained, as a place of
tourismo de salud
, where people could come and cure their tropical diseases in a relaxed atmosphere, with experienced doctors who had been in Angola. Some patients had already come, and they were hoping for more.

On the way out, we were led past a series of bulletin boards detailing the history of the institute. On the one marked 1930 there were the words “Cornell
University.” I wanted to look more, but Nick said we had to go. On the board marked
HOY
(Today) there was a picture of a
turista de salud
lying on a gurney, swathed in white cloth with his head raised, smiling, with a circle of doctors and nurses around him.

Cramps returned in the late afternoon, until by bedtime, I could not sleep. Wondered if it was the second generation of amoebas hatching, and found myself routing for Dr. Silvia. Spent the night waiting until 5:30
A.M
., when I could collect a
muestra
that would still be fresh by 8:00
A.M
., when José showed up and could drive it to the institute. Spent the night dreading not the collecting of the
muestra
so much as the having to leave the air-conditioned bedroom and walk down the fluorescent-lit sweltering back stairs, wearing my disgusting bathrobe over my disgusting nightgown, sweat rolling underneath it, saying to Manuel, who would be there kneading bread, “Manuel, it's only me,” and putting an envelope the whole world knew the contents of in the refrigerator door next to the capers.

It's been a week now. I still have cramps and can run to the bathroom four or five times in an hour and then be fine for twelve. Blastocytes, the institute says I have, not amoebas, but the medicine Dr. Silvia gave me works for them, too, and so I have just kept on taking it.

I will be leaving for New York tomorrow. I was planning to stop in New York on the way back to Cuba after a trip to X—— Nick and I will be making at the end of the month, but Nick now says that because of my illness, I should go to New York first and see a specialist there. I tell Nick I think it's overreacting, to change plans, leave the children so soon after the beginning of the school year when I felt so much better, but Nick, lying next to me, drawing an imaginary doodle on my stomach with his finger, says he wants to be
sure
I am well, and besides, he has been talking to Fidel's secretary and the only time Fidel can come for dinner is right after our trip to X——, so there is no time for me to go to New York after X——.

“Fidel is coming for dinner? Coming to this house?”

“Yep.”

“
Caramba
.”

I TRY SURRENDERING MYSELF
to New York anticipation (a prickling in the palms of my hands, as if from the points of tiny Chrysler Buildings) but
I cannot let myself go. A trip to New York
already
, and for
six whole days
. My rule has been that I have to be in Cuba a lot longer to earn a trip to New York—not that there
is
a rule, really (I have Juana), but the last time I came back, Jimmie said, “I cried in computer class because I missed you, Mommy.” According to my rule, I have to be in Cuba for at least three months before I can go to New York and enjoy myself at all.

IT'S NOT BLASTOCYTES OR
amoebas at all that I had, the New York specialist tells me after several kinds of examinations. He does not see the traces amoebas or blastocytes make. Moreover, the medicine they gave me is not the medicine that is given for blastocytes or for amoebas in the first place. I tell him the medicine worked for me. He says he cannot tell me what I had, only that it wasn't blastocytes or amoebas and that whatever it was has gone away.

There's a new class in business travel: funky first. That's the unofficial name of the class I am in, on the Cubana de Aviación flight, paid for by Nick's firm, from Europe to Havana, with a stopover in Santiago de Cuba. The only other travelers in funky first are two Cuban bureaucrats in polyester business suits and basket-weave loafers and one non-Cuban woman. The non-Cuban woman is the only other woman on the flight besides myself and the stewardesses. All the other first-class seats are empty, and all the other passengers, in
class tropical
and economy, are male.

The men, about eighty of them, are between the ages of twenty and fifty-five, not ugly, and you wonder what it means, that they have to go so far. The men appear to be utterly undisturbed at seeing almost no women on the flight; some men, in fact, look so serene that you feel as if their wives, mothers, or girlfriends ironed their clothes, then dressed them, packed their suitcases, and sent them off with kisses, saying, “Now run along and play, dears!” and then sat themselves down, with sighs of relief, to glorious, solitary cups of coffee and cigarettes at their kitchen tables, their feet up.

No champagne, no tablecloths. Silverware in plastic bags. I try to prop my legs up with two triangular bolsters put together, but they keep sliding. None of this would be so bad if the ticket, one-way, did not cost sixteen hundred dollars. Chipped paint everywhere. The grime is so built-up in corners that you would need a trowel, then a wire brush with Ajax, to dig it out. The aisle
carpet, where not worn through, sports shiny black stains. The seat bottoms of two seats in funky first are completely gone, and many of the armrests show only metal supports. I try to go to the one bathroom in first class, but the handle has fallen off the door.

“There's no handle on the bathroom door,” I say to the stewardess.

“
Ven pa'ca
,” she says in Cuban (meaning “Go over there”), jerking her head to the back of the plane, where ten men are waiting in line in front of the only bathroom that seems to be working.

“There's a line back there. Can't you fix the door handle?”

“No.” The expression on her face is one of absolute contempt.

Later I see the crew putting the door handle on the door and using it to open the door every time they need to go, then taking it away again when they finish.

We view a newsreel of Fidel reaccepting the presidency of the country, the leadership of the armed forces, the chairmanship of the Communist Party, and Raúl reaccepting the vice presidency. This is followed by an announcement of the name of the film we will be viewing during our flight. The film is
Absolute Power
, starring Clint Eastwood.

We deplane for refueling in Santiago. It is one o'clock in the morning, European time; six o'clock in the evening, Cuban time. A salsa band blares in the single waiting room. I look around the edge of the room for deep angles or halls to wait in, but there is no escape. “Do we
have
to listen to this music?” I ask a guard.

“
Ven pa'ca
,” he says, indicating a gift shop with the doors wide open.

I pay fifty cents to an attendant sitting at a table outside the bathroom for four squares of toilet paper, which she keeps in a stack in front of her. I roll them into balls, stuff them in my ears, and wait, as far away from the salsa band as I can, for the plane to reload.

I promised the children before I left that when I got back we would go, the three of us with a friend of theirs, Megan, to Varadero. Nick will be returning from X—— in three days, and Fidel's office called while we were away and said Fidel will not be coming for dinner for another ten days, so there's time.

We have not been back to Varadero since the time soon after our arrival in Cuba three years ago. After we had admired the color of the sand (white) and
the water (turquoise) and swum in the sea, Varadero got pretty boring. No shops to speak of. No restaurants that weren't empty (of food) or grim or dirty, except in tourist hotels blaring salsa.
Jineteras
galore. No shade. Nick had said he never wanted to go back. Even the children had said they were bored.

Varadero, though, has taken on an allure for the children since their friends have reported going there many times. We have also heard that it is less squalid. The police rounded up
seven thousand jineteras
in Varadero several months ago and put a barrier across the road, and visitors are now charged two dollars to get onto the peninsula and two dollars to get off. Tourism dropped 30 percent after the
jinetera
roundup.
Paladares
were also banned and there was a clampdown on people renting out rooms. Friends said there are still a few
jineteras
, though, but very discreet, just enough to make it not a total cemetery, and people still rent out rooms, but they have to be very careful. I will do anything twice.