RANDOM SKETCHES OF HAVANA
A constant procession of Fords, their mufflers wide open, were
hiccoughing out the Carlos III Boulevard toward the Havana ball-park.
The entrance-gate, at which they brought up with a snort and a sudden,
bronco-like halt that all but jerked their passengers to their feet, was
a seething hubbub. Ticket-speculators, renters of cushions, venders of
everything that can be consumed on a summer afternoon, were bellowing
their wares into the ears of the _fanáticos_ who scrimmaged about the
ticket-window. Men a trifle seedy in appearance wandered back and forth
holding up half a dozen tiny envelopes, arranged in fan-shape, which
they were evidently trying to sell or rent. The pink _entradas_ I
finally succeeded in snatching were not, of course, the only tickets
needed. That would have been too simple a system for Spanish-America.
They carried us as far as the grand stand, where another maelstrom was
surging about the chicken-wire wicket behind which a hen-minded youth
was dispensing permissions to sit down. He would have been more
successful in the undertaking if he had not needed to thumb over a
hundred or more seat-coupons reserved for special friends of the
management or of himself every time he sought to serve a mere spectator.
We certainly could not complain, however, of the front-row places we
obtained except that, in the free-for-all Spanish fashion, all the
riffraff of venders crowded the foot-rests that were supposedly reserved
for front-row occupants. Nine nimble Cubans were scattered about the
flat expanse of Almendares Park, backed by Príncipe Hill, with its crown
of university buildings. Royal palms waved their plumes languidly in the
ocean breeze; a huge Cuban flag undulated beyond the outfielders; a
score of vultures circled lazily overhead, as if awaiting a chance to
pounce upon the “dead ones” which the wrathful “fans” announced every
time a player failed to live up to their hopes. On a bench in the shade
sat all but one of the invading team, our own “Pirates” from the Smoky
City. The missing one was swinging his club alertly at the home plate,
his eyes glued on the Cuban _zurdo_, or “south-paw,” who had just begun
his contortions in the middle of the diamond. The scene itself was
familiar enough, yet it seemed strangely out of place in this tropical
setting. It was like coming upon a picture one had known since
childhood, to find it inclosed in a brand new frame.
I reached for my kodak, then restrained the impulse. A camera is of
little use at a Cuban ball game. Only a recording phonograph could catch
its chief novelties. An uproar as incessant as that of a rolling-mill
drowned every individual sound. It was not merely the venders of “_El
escor oficial_,” of sandwiches, lottery-tickets, cigars, cigarettes, of
bottled beer by the basketful, who created the hubbub; the spectators
themselves made most of it. The long, two-story grandstand behind us was
packed with Cubans of every shade from ebony black to the pasty white of
the tropics, and every man of them seemed to be shouting at the top of
his well-trained lungs. I say “man” advisedly, for with the exception of
my wife there were just three women present, and they had the hangdog
air of culprits. Scores of them were on their feet, screaming at their
neighbors and waving their hands wildly in the air. An uninformed
observer would have supposed that the entire throng was on the verge of
a free-for-all fight, instead of enjoying themselves in the Cuban’s
chief pastime.
“Which do you like best, baseball or bull-fights?” I shouted to my
neighbor on the left. He was every inch a Cuban, by birth, environment,
point of view, in his very gestures, and he spoke not a word of English.
Generations of Spanish ancestry were plainly visible through his grayish
features; I happened to know that he had applauded many a _torero_ in
the days before the rule of Spain and “the bulls” had been banished
together. Yet he answered instantly:
“Baseball by far; and so do all Cubans.”
But baseball, strictly speaking, is not what the Cuban enjoys most. It
is rather the gambling that goes with it. Like every sport of the
Spanish-speaking race, with the single exception of bull-fighting,
baseball to the great majority is merely a pretext for betting. The
throng behind us was everywhere waving handsful of money, real American
money, for Cuba has none of her own larger than the silver dollar. Small
wonder the bills are always ragged and worn and half obliterated, for
they were constantly passing, like crumpled waste-paper, from one sweaty
hand to another. The Platt Amendment showed incomplete knowledge of
Cuban conditions when it decreed the use of American money on the
island; it should have gone further and ordered the bills destined for
Cuba to be made of linoleum. Bets passed at the speed of sleight-of-hand
performances. The _fanáticos_ bet on every swing of the batter’s club,
on every ball that rose into the air, on whether or not a runner would
reach the next base, on how many fouls the inning would produce. Most of
the wagers passed so quickly that there was no time for the actual
exchange of money. A flip of the fingers or a nod of the head sufficed
to arrange the deal. There were no dividing lines either of color or
distance. Full-fledged Africans exchanged wagers with men of pure
Spanish blood. Cabalistic signs passed between the grandstand and the
sort of royal box high above. Across the field the crowded _sol_, as the
Cuban calls the unshaded bleachers, in the vocabulary of the bull-ring,
was engaged in the same money-waving turmoil. The curb market of New
York is slow, noiseless, and phlegmatic compared with a ball-game in
Havana.
Close in front of us other venders of the mysterious little envelopes
wandered back and forth, seldom attempting to make themselves heard
above the constant din. Here and there a spectator exchanged a crumpled,
almost illegible dollar bill for one of the sealed _sobres_. My neighbor
on the left bought one and held it for some time between his ringed
fingers. When at last a runner reached first base he tore the envelope
open. It contained a tiny slip of paper on which was typewritten “_1a
base_; _1a carrera_” (1st base; 1st run). The purchaser swore in Spanish
with artistic fluency. I asked the reason for his wrath. He displayed
the typewritten slip and grumbled “_mala suerte_”; then, noting my
puzzled expression, explained his “bad luck” in the patient voice of a
man who found it strange that an American should not understand his own
national game.
“This envelope, which is bought and sold ‘blind’—that is, neither I nor
the man who sold it to me knew what was in it—is a bet that the first
run will be made by a first baseman, of either side. But the man who has
just reached first base is the rrri’ fiel’, and the first baseman is the
man who struck out just before him. If he had made the first run I
should have won eight dollars. But you see what chance he has now to
make the first _carrera_. Cursed bad luck!”
“Rrri’ fiel’,” however, “died” in a vain attempt to steal third base,
and his partner from the opposite corner of the garden was the first man
to cross the home-plate. Instantly a cry of “Lef’ fiel’” rose above the
hubbub and the erstwhile venders of envelopes began paying the winners.
A lath-like individual, half Chinaman, half negro, whom the _fanáticos_
called “Chino,” took charge of the section about us, and handed eight
greasy bills to all those whom luck had favored, tucking the winning
slips of paper into a pocket of his linen coat. But these simple little
wagers were only for “pikers.” There were men behind us who, though they
looked scarcely capable of paying for their next meal, were stripping
twenty and even fifty dollar bills off the rolls clutched in their
sweaty hands and distributing them like so many handbills.
The game itself was little different from one at home. The Cuban players
varied widely in color, from the jet-black third baseman to a shortstop
of rice-powder complexion. Their playing was of high order, quite as
“fast” as the average teams of our big leagues. Cubans hold several
world championships in sports requiring a high degree of skill and
swiftness. The umpire in his protective paraphernalia looked quite like
his fellows of the North, yet behind his mask he was a rich mahogany
brown. His official speech was English, but when a dispute arose he
changed quickly to voluble Spanish. The “_bucaneros_,” as the
present-day pirates who had descended upon the Cuban coast were best
known locally, won the game on this occasion; but the day before they
had not scored a run.
Baseball—commonly pronounced “bahseh-bahl” throughout the island—has won
a firm foothold in Cuba. Boys of all colors play it on every vacant lot
in Havana; it is the favorite sport of the youthful employees of every
sugar estate or tobacco _vega_ of the interior. The sporting page is as
fixed a feature of the Havana newspapers as of our own dailies. Nor do
the Cuban reporters yield to their fellows of the North in the use of
base-ball slang. Most of their expressions are direct translations of
our own vocabulary of the diamond; some of them are of local concoction.
Those familiar with Spanish can find constant amusement in Havana’s
sporting pages. “Fans” quite unfamiliar with the tongue would experience
no great difficulty in catching the drift of the Cuban reporter, though
it would be Greek to a Spaniard speaking no baseball, as a brief example
will demonstrate:
EL HABANA DEJO EN BLANCO
A LOS PIRATAS
José del Carmen Rodríguez realizó varios doubleplays sensacionales
BRILLANTE PITCHING DE TUERO
El catcher rojo, Miguel Angel González, cerró con doble llave la segunda
base a los corredores Americanos
Primer Inning
Bucaneros—Bigbee out en fly al center. Terry, rolling al short, out en
primera. Carey struck out. No hit, no run.
Habana—Papo out en fly al catcher. Merito muere en rolling al pitcher.
Cueto lo imita.
Segundo Inning
Bucaneros—Nickolson, rolling al tercera, es out al pretender robar la
segunda. Cutshaw batea de plancha y es safe en primera. Barber out en
rolling á la segunda, adelantando Cutshaw. Carlson out en fly al
catcher. No hit, no run.
Habana—Juan de Angel Aragón out en linea al center. Hungo se pasea.
Calvo hit y Hungo va a segunda. Torres se sacrifica. Acosta, con las
bases llenas, es transferido y Hungo anota. González out en foul al
pitcher. Un hit, una carrera.
Thus the Havanese “reporter de baseball” rattles on, but his reports are
not snatched from the hands of newsboys with quite the same eagerness as
in the North. For the Cuban _fanático_ is not particularly interested in
the outcome of the game itself. A bet on that would be too slowly
decided for his quick southern temperament. He prefers to set a wager on
each swing of the pitcher’s arm, and with the last “out” of the ninth
inning his interest ceases as abruptly as does the unbroken
boiler-factory uproar that rises to the blue tropical heavens from the
first to the last swing of the batter’s club.
* * * * *
The visitor whose picture of Havana is still that of the drowsy tropical
city of our school-books is due for a shock. He will be most surprised,
perhaps, to find the place as swarming with automobiles as an open
honey-pot with flies. A local paragrapher asserts that “a Havanese would
rather die than walk four blocks.” There are several perfectly good
reasons for this preference. The heat of Cuba is far less oppressive
than that of our most northern states in mid-summer. Indeed, it is
seldom unpleasant; but the slightest physical exertion quickly bathes
the body in perspiration, and nowhere is a wilted collar in worse form
than in Havana. Moreover, one must be exceedingly nimble-footed to trust
to the prehistoric means of transportation. The custom of always riding
has left no rights to the pedestrian in the Cuban capital. The chances
of being run down are excellent, and the result is apt to be not merely
broken ribs, but a bill for damages to the machine. Hence the expression
“cojemos un For’” is synonymous with going a journey, however short,
anywhere within the city. Your Havanese friend never says, “Let’s stroll
around and see Perez,” but always, “Let’s catch a Ford,” and by the time
you have succeeded in slamming the door really shut, there you are at
Perez’s _zaguan_.
Fords scurry by thousands through the streets of Havana day and night,
ever ready to pick up a passenger or two and set them down again in any
part of the business section for a mere twenty-cent piece—a _peseta_ in
Cuban parlance. More expensive cars are now and then seen for hire; by
dint of sleuth-like observation I did discover one Ford that was
confined to the labor of carrying its owner. But those are the
exceptions that prove the rule, and the rule is that the instant you
catch sight of the familiar plebeian features of a “flivver” you know,
even without waiting to see the hospitable “Se Alquila” (“Rents Itself”)
on the wind-shield, that you need walk no farther, whatever your sex,
complexion, or previous condition of pedestrianism. They are
particularly suited to the narrow streets that the Spaniard, in his
Arabic avoidance of the sun, bequeathed the Cuban capital. There is many
a corner in the business section which larger cars can turn only by
backing or by mounting one of the scanty sidewalks. The closed taxi of
the North, too, would be as much out of place in Havana as overcoats at
a Fourth of July celebration. A few of the horse carriages of olden days
still offer their services; but as neither driver, carriage, nor steed
seems to have been groomed or fed since the war of independence, even
those in no haste are apt to think twice or thrice, and finally put
their trust in gasolene. Hence the Ford has taken charge of Havana, like
an army of occupation.
Unfortunately, a Ford and a Cuban chauffeur make a bad combination. The
native temperament is quick-witted, but it is scantily gifted with
patience. In the hands of a seeker after pesetas a “flivver” becomes a
prancing, dancing steed, a snorting charger that knows no fear and
yields to no rival. Apparently some Cuban Burbank has succeeded in
crossing the laggard of our northern highways with the kangaroo. The
whisper of your destination in the driver’s ear is followed by a leap
that leaves the adjoining façades a mere blur upon the retina. A traffic
jam ahead lends the snorting beast wings; it has a playful way of
alighting on all fours in the very heart of any turmoil. If a pedestrian
or a rival peseta-gatherer is crossing the street twenty feet beyond,
your time for the next nineteen feet and eleven inches is a small
fraction of a second over nothing. Brake linings seem to acquire a
strangle hold from the Cuban climate. If the opening ahead is but the
breadth of a hand, the Havana Ford has some secret of making itself
still more slender. I have never yet seen one of them climb a palm-tree,
but there is no reason to suppose that they would hesitate to undertake
that simple feat, if a passenger’s destination were among the fronds.
The newspapers run a daily column for those who have been “Ford-ed” to
hospitals or cemeteries. What are a few casualties a day in a city of
nearly half a million, with prolific tendencies? There are voluminous
traffic and speed rules, but he would be a friendless fellow who could
not find a _compadre_ with sufficient political power to “fix it up.”
Death corners—billboards or street-hugging house-walls from behind which
he may dart without warning—are the joy of the Cuban chauffeur. Courtesy
in personal intercourse stands on a high plane in Havana, but automobile
politeness has not yet reached the stage of consideration for others.
Traffic policemen, soldierly fellows widely varied in complexion,
looking like bandsmen in their blue denim uniforms, are efficient, and
accustomed to be obeyed; but they cannot be everywhere at once, and the
automobile is. They confine their efforts, therefore, to a few seething
corners, and humanity trusts to its own lucky star in the no-man’s-lands
between.
The private machines alone would give Havana a busy appearance. All day
long and far into the night the big central plaza is completely fenced
in by splendid cars parked compactly ends to curb. Toward sunset,
especially on the days when a military band plays the _retreta_ in the
kiosk facing Morro Castle and the harbor entrance, an endless procession
of seven-passenger motors files up and down the wide Prado and along the
sea-washed Malecón, two, or at most three, haughty beings, not
infrequently with kinky hair, lolling in every capacious tonneau.
Liveried chauffeurs are the almost universal rule. The caballero who
drives his own car would arouse the wonder, possibly the scorn, of his
fellow-citizens; once and once only did we see a woman at the wheel.
There is good reason for this. The man who would learn to pilot his own
machine through the automobile maelstrom of Havana would have little
time or energy left for the pursuit of his profession. Moreover, the
Latin-American is seldom mechanic-minded. The cheaper grades of cars are
not in favor for private use. Wire wheels are almost universal;
luxurious fittings are seldom lacking. Even the unexclusive Ford is
certain to be decked out in expensive _vestiduras_,—slip-covers of
embossed leather that remind one of a Mexican peon in silver-mounted
sombrero.
The cost of a car in Havana is from twenty to thirty per cent. higher
than in the States, which supplies virtually all of them. A dollar
barely pays for two gallons of gasolene. Licenses are a serious item,
particularly to private owners in Havana, for the fee depends on the use
to which the car is put. Fords for hire carry a white tag with black
figures and pay $12.50 a year. Private cars bear a pink _chapa_ at a
cost of $62.50. Tags with blue figures announce the occupant a
government official or a physician. Then, every driver must be supplied
with a personal license, at a cost of $25. In theory that is all, except
a day or two of waiting in line at the municipal license bureau. In
practice there are many little political wheels to be oiled if one would
see the car free to go its way the same year it is purchased.
Once the visitor has learned to distinguish the tag that announces
government ownership, he will be astounded to note its extraordinary
prevalence in Havana. Even Washington was never like this. Government
property means public ownership indeed in Cuba. If one may believe the
newspapers of the Liberal party,—the “outs” under the present
administration,—the explanation is simple. “Every government employee,”
they shriek, “down to the last post-office clerk who is in personal
favor, has his own private car, free of cost; not only that, but he may
use it to give his babies an airing, to carry his cook to market, or to
take the future _novio_ of his daughter on a joy ride.”
* * * * *
The new-comer’s impressions of Havana will depend largely upon his
previous travels. If this is his first contact with the Iberian or the
Latin-American civilization, he will find the Cuban capital of great
interest. If he is familiar with the cities of old Spain, particularly
if he has already seen her farthest-flung descendants, such as Bogotá,
Quito, or La Paz, he will probably call Havana “tame.” The most
incorrigible traveler will certainly not consider a visit to this most
accessible of foreign capitals time wasted. But his chief amusement will
be, in all likelihood, that of tracing the curious dovetailing of
Spanish and American influences which makes up its present-day aspect.
Both by situation and history the capital of Cuba is a natural place for
this intermingling of two essentially different civilizations, but the
mixture is more like that of oil and water than of two related elements.
The ways of Spain and of America—by which, of course, I mean the United
States—are recognizable in every block of Havana, yet there has been but
slight blending together, however close the contact. Immigrants from old
Spain tramp the streets all day under their strings of garlic, or jingle
the cymbals that mean sweetmeats for sale to all Spanish-speaking
children. Venders of lottery-tickets sing their numbers in every public
gathering-place. On Saturdays a long procession of beggars of both sexes
file through the stores and offices demanding almost as a right the cent
each which ancient Iberian custom allots them. The places where men
gather are wide-open cafés without front walls, rather than the hidden
dens of the North. Havana’s cooking, her modes of greeting and parting,
her patience with individual nuisance, her very table manners are
Spanish. Like all Spanish-America, her sons and daughters are highly
proficient in the use of the toothpick; like them they are exceedingly
courteous in the forms of social intercourse, irrespective of class. As
in Spain, life increases in its intensity with sunset: babies have no
fixed hour of retirement; midnight is everywhere the “shank of the
evening”; lovers are sternly separated by iron bars, or their soft
nothings strictly censored by ever vigilant duennas.
[Illustration: Vendors of lottery tickets in rural Cuba]
[Illustration: The winning numbers of the lottery]
[Illustration: Pigeons are kept to clear the tobacco fields of insects]
[Illustration: Ploughing for tobacco in the famous Vuelta Abaja
district. The large building is a tobacco barn, the small ones are
residences of the planters]
The very Government cannot shake off the habits of its forebears,
despite the tutelage of a more practical race. Public office is more apt
than not to be considered a legitimate source of personal gain. As in
Spain, a general amnesty is ever smiling hopefully at imprisoned
malefactors. The Spanish tendency to forgive crime, combined with the
interrelationship of miscreants and the powers that be, has not merely
abolished, in practice, all capital punishment; it tends to release
evil-doers long before they have found time to repent and change their
ways. Men who shoot down in cold blood—and this they do even in the
heart of Havana—have only to prove that the deed was done “in the heat
of the moment” to have their punishment reduced to a mere fraction of
that for stealing a mule. The pardoning power is wielded with such
Castilian generosity that the genial editor of Havana’s American
newspaper wrathfully suggests the “loosing of all our distinguished
assassins,” that the enormous _cárcel_ facing the harbor entrance may be
replaced by one of the hotels sadly needed to house Havana’s
“distinguished visitors.”
Amid all this the island capital is deeply marked, too, with the
influence of what Latin-America calls “the Colossus of the North.” One
sees it in the strenuous pace of business, in the manners and methods of
commerce. The dignified lethargy of Spain has largely given way to the
business-first teachings of the Yankee gospel. Billboards are almost as
constant eyesores in Havana and her suburbs as in New York; huge
electric figures flash the alleged virtues of wares far into the soft
summer nights. Blocks of office buildings, modern in every particular,
shoulder their way upward into the tropical sky. With few exceptions the
sons of proud old Cuban families scorn to dally away their lives,
Castilian fashion, on the riches and reputations of their ancestors, but
descend into the commercial fray.
One sees the American influence in many amusing little details. The
Cuban mail-boxes are exact copies of our own, except that the lettering
is Spanish. Postage-stamps may be had in booklet form, which can be said
of no other foreign land. Street-car fares are five cents for any
distance, with free transfers, rather than varying by zones, as in
Europe. Barbers dally over their clients in the private-valet manner of
their fellows to the north. Department stores operate as nearly as
possible on the American plan, despite the Spanish tendency of their
clerks to seek tips. Cuban advertisers struggle to imitate in their
newspaper and poster announcements the aggressive, inviting American
manner, often with ludicrous results, for they are rarely gifted with
what might be called the advertising imagination. In a word, Havana is
Spain with a modern American virility, tinged with a generous dash of
the tropics.
I have said that the two opposing influences do not mix, and in the main
that rule strictly holds. A glance at any detail of the city’s life, her
customs, appearance, or point of view, suffices to determine whether it
is of Castilian or Yankee origin. But here and there a fusing of the two
has produced a quaint mongrel of local color. Havana bakes its bread in
the long loaves of Europe, but an American squeamishness has evolved a
slender paper bag to cover them. The language of gestures makes a
crossing of two figures, a hiss at the conductor, and a nod to right or
left, sufficient request for a street-car transfer. The man who occupies
the center of a baseball diamond may be called either a pitcher or a
_lanzador_, but the verb that expresses his activity is _pitchear_.
Shoe-shining establishments in the shade of the long, pillared arcades
are arranged in Spanish style, yet the methods and the prices of the
polishers are American.
* * * * *
Barely had we stepped ashore in Havana when I spied a man in the
familiar uniform of the American Army, his upper sleeve decorated with
three broad chevrons. I had a hazy notion that our intervention in Cuba
had ceased some time before, yet it would have been nothing strange if
some of our troops had been left on the island.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” I greeted him. “Do you know this town? How do
I get to—”
But he was staring at me with a puzzled air, and before I could finish
he had sidestepped and hurried on. I must have been dense that morning,
after a night of uproar on the steamer from Key West, for a score of his
fellows had passed before I awoke to the fact that they were not
American soldiers at all. Cuba has copied nothing more exactly than our
army uniform. Cotton khaki survives in place of olive drab, of course,
as befits the Cuban climate; frequent washings have turned most of the
canvas leggings a creamy white. Otherwise there is little to distinguish
the Cuban soldier from our own until he opens his mouth in a spurt of
fluent Spanish. He wears the same cow-boy sombrero, with similar
hat-cords for each branch of the service. He shoulders the same rifle,
carries his cartridges in the old familiar web-belt, wears his revolver
on the right, as distinct from the left-handed fashion of all the rest
of Latin-America. He salutes, mounts guard, drills, stands at attention
precisely in the American manner, for his “I. D. R.” differs from our
own only in tongue. The same chevrons indicate non-commissioned rank,
though they have not yet disappeared from the left sleeve. His officers
are indistinguishable, at any distance, from our own; they are in many
cases graduates of West Point. An angle in their shoulder-bars, with the
Cuban seal in bronze above them, and the native coat of arms on their
caps in place of the spread eagle, are the only differences that a close
inspection of lieutenants or captains brings to light. From majors
upward, however, the insignia becomes a series of stars, perhaps because
the absence of generals in the Cuban Army leaves no other chance for
such ostentation.
The question naturally suggests itself, “Why does Cuba need an army?”
The native answer is apt to be the Spanish version of “Huh, we’re a free
country, aren’t we? Why shouldn’t we have an army, like any other
sovereign people? Poor Estrada Palma, our first president, had no army,
with the result that the first bunch of hoodlums to start a revolution
had him at their mercy.”
These are the two reasons why one sees the streets of Havana, and all
Cuba, for that matter, khaki-dotted with soldiers. She has no designs on
a trembling world, but an army is to her what long trousers are to a
youth of sixteen, proof of his manhood; and she has very real need of
one to keep the internal peace within the country, particularly under a
Government that was not legally elected and which enjoys little
popularity.
There were some fourteen thousand “regulars” in the Cuban Army before
the European War, a number that was more than tripled under compulsory
service after the island republic joined the Allies. To-day, despite
posters idealizing the soldier’s life and assuring all Cubans that it is
their duty to enlist, despite a scale of pay equalling our own, their
land force numbers barely five thousand. Many of these are veterans of
the great European war,—as fought in Pensacola, Florida. Some wear
fifteen to eighteen years’ worth of service stripes diagonally across
their lower sleeves; a few played their part in the guerilla warfare
against the Spaniards before the days of independence, and have many a
thrilling anecdote with which to overawe each new group of “rookies.” In
short, they have nearly everything in common with our own permanent
soldiers—except the color-line. I have yet to see a squad of white, or
partly white, American soldiers march away to duty under a jet-black
corporal, a sight so commonplace in Havana as not even to attract a
passing attention.
* * * * *
Havana has just celebrated her four-hundredth birthday. She confesses
herself the oldest city of European origin in the western hemisphere.
Her name was familiar to ocean wayfarers before Cortés penetrated to the
Vale of Anáhuac, before Pizarro had heard the first rumors of the
mysterious land of the Incas. When the Pilgrim Fathers sighted Plymouth
Rock, Havana had begun the second century of her existence. In view of
all this, and of the harried career she led clear down to days within
the memory of men who still consider themselves youthful, she is
somewhat disappointing to the mere tourist for her lack of historical
relics. This impression, however, gradually wears off. Her background is
certainly not to be compared with that of Cuzco or of the City of
Mexico, stretching away into the prehistoric days of legend; yet many
reminders of the times that are gone peer through the mantle of
modernity in which she has wrapped herself. From the age-worn stones of
La Fuerza the bustle of the city of to-day seems a fantasy from
dreamland. In the underground passages of old Morro, in the musty
dungeons of massive Cabaña, the khaki-clad soldiers of Cuba’s new army
look as out of place as motor-cars in a Roman arena. The stroller who
catches a sudden unexpected glimpse of the cathedral façade is carried
back in a twinkling to the days of the Inquisition; Spain herself can
show no closer link with the Middle Ages than the venerable stone face
of San Francisco de Paula. The ghosts of monks gone to their reward
centuries ago hover about the post-office where the modern visitor files
his telegram or stamps his picture postals. The British occupied it as a
barracks when they captured Havana in the middle of the last century,
whereby the ancient monastery was considered desecrated, and has served
in turn various government purposes; yet the shades of the past still
linger in its flowery patio and flit about the corners of its capacious,
leisurely old stairways.
Old Havana may be likened in shape to the head of a bulldog, with the
mark of the former city wall, which inclosed it like a muzzle, still
visible. The part thus protected in olden days contains most of Havana’s
antiquity. Beyond it the streets grow wider, the buildings more modern,
as one advances to the newer residential suburbs. Amusing contrasts
catch the eye at every turn within the muzzled portion. Calle Obispo,
still the principal business street, is a scant eighteen feet wide,
inclusive of its two pathetically narrow sidewalks. The Spanish builders
did not foresee the day when it would be an impassable river of
clamoring automobiles. They would be struck dumb with astonishment to
see these strange devil-wagons housed in the tiled passageways behind
the massive carved or brass-studded doors of the regal mansions of
colonial days, as their fair ladies would be horrified to find the
family chapels turned into bath-rooms by desecrating barbarians from the
North. Office buildings that seem to have been bodily transported from
New York shoulder age-crumbled Spanish churches and convents; crowds as
business-bent as those of Wall Street hurry through narrow _callejones_
that seem still to be thinking of Columbus and the buccaneers of the
Spanish main. Long rows of massive pillars upholding projecting second
stories and half concealing the den-like shops behind them have a
picturesque appearance and afford a needed protection from the Cuban
sun, but they are little short of a nuisance under modern traffic
conditions. Old Colón market is as dark and unsanitary as when
mistresses sent a trusted slave to make the day’s purchases. Its long
lines of cackling fowls, of meat barely dead, of tropical fruits and
strange Cuban vegetables, are still the center of the old bartering
hubbub, but beside them are the very latest factory products. One may
buy a chicken and have it killed and dressed on the spot for a _real_ by
deep-eyed old women who seem to have been left behind by a receding
generation, or one may carry home canned food which colonial Havana
never tasted.
The city is as brilliantly lighted as any of our own, by dusky men who
come at sunset, laboriously carrying long ladders, from the tops of
which they touch off each gas jet as in the days of Tacón. Ferries as
modern as those bridging the Hudson ply between the Muelle de Luz and
the fortresses and towns across the harbor; but they still have as
competitors the heavy old Havana rowboats, equipped, when the sun is
high, with awnings at the rear, and manned by oarsmen as stout-armed and
weather-tanned as the gondoliers of Venice. Automobiles of the latest
model snort in continual procession around the Malecón on Sunday
afternoons, yet here and there a quaint old family carriage, with its
liveried footmen, jogs along between them. Many a street has changed its
name since the days of independence, but still clings to its old Spanish
title in popular parlance. A new system of house numbering, too, has
been adopted, but this has not superseded the old; it has merely been
superimposed upon it, until it is a wise door indeed that knows its own
number. To make things worse for the puzzled stranger, the two sides of
the street have nothing in common, so that it is nothing unusual to find
house No. 7 opposite No. 114.
Havana is most beautiful at night. Its walls are light in color, yellow,
orange, pink, pale-blue, and the like prevailing, and the witchery of
moonlight, falling upon them, gives many a quaint corner or narrow
street of the old city a resemblance to fairyland. But when one hurries
back to catch them with a kodak in the morning, it is only to find that
the chief charm has fled before the grueling light of day.
The architecture of the city is overwhelmingly Spanish, with only here
and there a detail brought from the North. The change from the wooden
houses of Key West, with their steep shingled roofs, to the
plaster-faced edifices of Havana, covered by the flat _azoteas_ of
Arab-Iberian origin often the family sitting-room after sunset, is sharp
and decided. Among them the visitor feels himself in a foreign land
indeed, whatever suggestions of his own he may find in the life of the
city. The tendency for low structures, the prevalence of sumptuous
dwellings of a single story, the preference for the ground floor as a
place of residence, show at a glance that this is no American city. Yet
the single story is almost as lofty as two of our own; the Cuban insists
on high ceilings, and the longest rooms of the average residence would
be still longer if they were laid on their sides. To our Northern eyes
it is a heavy architecture, but it is a natural development in the Cuban
climate. Coolness is the first and prime requisite. Massive outer walls,
half their surfaces taken up by immense doors and windows, protected by
gratings in every manner of artistic scroll, defy the heat of perpetual
summer, and at the same time give free play to the all but constant sea
breezes. The openness of living which this style of dwelling brings with
it would not appeal to the American sense of privacy in family life.
Through the iron-barred _rejas_, flush with the sidewalk, the passer-by
may look deep back into the tile-floored parlor, with its forest of
chairs, and often into the living-rooms beyond. At midday they look
particularly cool and inviting from the sun-drenched street; in the
evening the stroller has a sense of sauntering unmolested through the
very heart of a hundred family circles.
Old residents tell us that Havana is a far different city from the one
from which the Spanish flag was banished twenty years ago. Its best
streets, they say, were then mere lanes of mud, or their cobbled
pavements so far down beneath the filth of generations that the
uncovering of them resembled a mining operation. Along the sea, where a
boulevard second only to the peerless Beira Mar of Rio runs to-day, the
last century left a stenching city garbage-heap. The broad,
laurel-shaded Prado leading from the beautiful central plaza to the
headland facing Morro Castle was a labyrinthian cluster of unsavory
hovels. All this, if one may be pardoned a suggestion of boasting, was
accomplished by the first American governor. But the Cubans themselves
have continued the good work. Once cleaned and paved, the streets have
remained so. Buildings of which any city might be proud have been
erected without foreign assistance. In their sudden spurt of ambition
the Cubans have sometimes overreached themselves. A former
administration began the erection of a presidential palace destined to
rival the best of Europe. About the same time the provincial governor
concluded to build himself a simple little marble cabin. Election day
came, and the new president, after the spendthrift manner of
Latin-American executives, repudiated the undertaking of his
predecessor, which lies to-day the abandoned grave of several million
_pesos_. The governor of the province was convinced by irrefutable
arguments that this half-finished little cabin was out of proportion to
his importance, and yielded it to his political superior. It is nearing
completion now, a thing of beauty that should, for a time at least,
satisfy the artistic longings even of great Cuba. For it has nothing of
the inexpensive Jeffersonian simplicity of our own White House, fit only
for such plebeian occupants as our Lincolns and Garfields, but is worthy
a Cuban president—during the few months of the year when he is not
occupying his suburban or his summer palace.
Havana has grown in breadth as well as character since it became the
capital of a free country. While the population of the island has nearly
doubled, that of the metropolis has trebled. Víbora, Cerro, and Jesús
del Monte have changed from outlying country villages of thatched huts
to thriving suburbs; Vedado, the abode of a few scattered farmers when
the Treaty of Paris was signed, has become a great residential region
where sugar-millionaires and successful politicians vie with one another
in the erection of private palaces, not to mention the occasional
perpetration of architectural monstrosities. Under the impulse of an
ever-increasing and ever-wealthier population, abetted by energetic
young Cubans who have copied American real-estate methods, Havana is
already leaping like a prairie fire to the crests of new fields, which
will soon be wholly embraced in the conflagration of prosperity.
* * * * *
One of the purposes of Cuba’s revolt against Spain was the suppression
of the lottery. For years the new republic sternly frowned down any
tendency toward a return of this particular form of vice. To this day it
is unlawful to bring the tickets of the Spanish lottery into the island.
But blood will tell, and the mere winning of political freedom could not
cure the Cuban of his love for gambling. Private games of chance
increased in number and spread throughout the island. The Government saw
itself losing millions of revenue yearly, while enterprising persons
enriched themselves; for to all rulers of Iberian ancestry the
exploitation of a people’s gambling instinct seems a legitimate source
of state income. New palaces and boulevards cost money, independence
brings with it unexpected expenditures. By the end of the second
intervention the free Cubans were looking with favor upon a system which
they had professed to abhor as Spanish subjects. The law of July 7,
1909, decreed a public revenue under the name of “Lotería Nacional,” and
to-day the lottery is as firmly established a function of the Government
as the postal service.
There are two advantages in a state lottery—to the government. It is not
only an unfailing source of revenue; it is a splendid means of rewarding
political henchmen. _Colectorías_, the privilege of dispensing
lottery-tickets within a given district, are to the Cuban congressman
what postmasterships are to our own. The possession of one is a
_botella_ (bottle), Cuban slang for sinecure; the lucky possessor is
called a _botellero_. He in turn distributes his patronage to the lesser
fry and becomes a political power within his district. The whole makes a
splendidly compact machine that can be turned to any purpose by the
chauffeur at the political wheel.
The first and indispensable requisite of a state lottery is that the
drawings shall be honest. Your Spanish-minded citizen will no more do
without his gambling than he will drink water with his meals; but let
him for a moment suspect that “the game is crooked” and he will abandon
the purchase of government tickets for some other means of snatching
sudden fortune. The drawing of the Cuban lottery is surrounded by every
possible check on dishonesty. By no conceivable chance could the inmost
circle of the inner lottery councils guess the winning number an instant
before it is publicly drawn. But there is another way in which the game
is not a “fair shake” to the players, though the simpler type of Cuban
does not recognise the unfairness. The average lottery, for instance,
offers $420,000 in prizes. The legal price of the tickets is $20,
divided into a hundred “pieces” for the convenience of small gamblers,
at a _peseta_ each. Thirty thousand tickets are sold, of which 30% of
the proceeds, or $180,000, goes to the government or its favorite
henchmen. That leaves to begin with only fourteen of his twenty cents
that can come back to the player. Then the law allows the vender 5% as
his profit, bringing the fractional ticket up to twenty-one cents. If
that were all, the players would still have even chances of a reasonable
return. But the “pieces” are never sold at that price, despite the law
and its threat of dire punishment, printed on the ticket itself. From
one end of the island to the other the _billeteros_ demand at least $30
a _billete_; in other words the public is taxed one half as much as it
puts into the lottery itself to support thousands of utterly useless
members of society, the ticket-sellers, and instead of getting
two-thirds of its money back it has a chance of rewinning less than half
the sum hazarded. The most optimistic negro deckhand on a Mississippi
steamboat would hardly enter a crap game in which the “bones” were so
palpably “loaded.” Yet Cubans of high and low degree, from big merchants
to bootblacks, pay their tribute regularly to the _Lotería Nacional_.
Barely had we arrived in Havana when the rumor reached me that the
_billeteros_ could be compelled to sell their tickets at the legal
price, if one “had the nerve” to insist. I abhor a financial dispute,
but I have as little use for hearsay evidence. I concluded to test the
great question personally. Having purchased two “pieces” at the
customary price, to forestall any charge of miserliness, I set out to
buy one at the lawful rate. A booth on a busy corner of Calle Obispo, a
large choice of numbers fluttering from its ticket-racks, seemed the
most promising scene for my nefarious project, because a traffic
policeman stood close by. I chose a “piece” and, having tucked it away
in a pocket, handed the vender a _peseta_.
“It is _thirty_ cents,” he announced politely, smiling at what he took
to be my American innocence.
“Not at all,” I answered, blushing at my own pettiness. “The price is
twenty cents; it is printed on the ticket.”
“_I_ sell them only at thirty,” he replied, with a gesture that invited
me to return the ticket.
“The legal price is all I pay,” I retorted. “If you don’t like that,
call the policeman,” and I strolled slowly on. In an instant both the
vender and the officer were hurrying after me. The latter demanded why I
had not paid the amount asked.
“The law sets the price at twenty cents,” I explained. “As a guardian of
order, you surely do not mean to help this man collect an illegal sum.”
The policeman gave me a look of scorn such as he might have turned upon
a millionaire caught stealing chickens, and answered with a sneer:
“He is entitled to one cent profit.”
“But not to ten cents,” I added triumphantly.
The guardian of law and order grunted an unwilling affirmative, casting
a pitying glance up and down my person, and turned away with another
audible sneer only when I had produced a cent. The vender snatched the
coin with an expression of disgust, and retains to this day, I suppose,
a much lower opinion of Americans.
This silly ordeal, which I have never since had the courage to repeat,
proved the assertion that the Cubans may buy their lottery-tickets at
the legal price, but it demonstrated at the same time why few of them do
so. Pride is the chief ally of the profiteer. The difference between
twenty cents and thirty is not worth a dispute, but the failure of the
individual Cuban to insist upon his rights, and of his Government to
protect them, constitutes a serious tax upon the nation and enriches
many a worthless loafer. With some forty lottery drawings a year, this
extra, illegal ten cents a “piece” costs the Cuban people the neat
little sum of at least $12,000,000 a year, or four dollars per capita.
The drawings take place every ten days, besides a few _loterías
extraordinarias_, with prizes several times larger, on the principal
holidays. They are conducted in the old treasury building down near the
end of Calle Obispo. We reached there soon after seven of the morning
named on our tickets. A crowd of two hundred or more heavy-mouthed
negroes, poorly clad _mestizos_, and ragged, emaciated old Chinamen for
the most part, were huddled together in the shade at the edge of the
porch-like room. A policeman—not the one whose scorn I had
aroused—beckoned us to step inside and take one of the seats of honor
along the wall, not, evidently, because we were Americans, but because
our clothing was not patched or our collars missing. At the back a long
table stretched the entire length of the room. A dozen solemn officials,
resembling a jury or an election board, lolled in their seats behind it,
a huge ledger, a sheath of papers, an ink-well and several pens and
pencils before each of them. At the edge of the room, just clear of the
standing crowd of hopeful riffraff, was a similar table on which another
group of solemn-faced men were busily scribbling in as many large
blank-books, with the sophisticated air of court or congressional
reporters. Between the tables were two globes of open-work brass, one
perhaps six feet in diameter, the other several times smaller. The
larger was filled with balls the size of marbles, each engraved with a
number; the smaller one contained several thousand others, representing
varying sums of money.
Almost at the moment we entered a gong sounded. Four muscular negroes
rushed forth from behind the scenes and, grasping two handles projecting
at the rear, turned the big globe over and over, its myriad of little
balls rattling like a stage wind-storm. At the same time an individual
of as certain, if less decided, African ancestry, solemnly shuffled the
contents of the smaller sphere in the same manner. Then the interrupted
drawing began again. Four boys, averaging eight years of age, stood in
pairs at either globe. At intervals of about thirty seconds two of them
pulled levers that released one marble from each sphere, and which long
brass troughs or runways deposited in cut-glass bowls in front of the
other two boys. The urchin on the big globe side snatched up his marble,
called out a long number—in most cases running into the tens of
thousands—and as his voice ceased, his companion opposite announced the
amount of the prize. Then the two balls were spitted side by side on a
sort of Chinese reckoning-board manipulated by another solemn-faced
adult, who now and again corrected a misreading by the boy calling the
numbers.
For the hour we remained this monotonous formality went steadily on, as
it does every ten days from seven in the morning until nearly noon,
ceasing only when all the balls in the smaller sphere have been
withdrawn. Each of these represents a prize, but as considerably more
than a thousand of them are of one hundred dollars each—or a dollar a
“piece”—the almost constant “con cien pesos” of the prize-boy grew
wearisome in the extreme. The men at the reporters’ table scribbled
every number feverishly with their sputtering steel pens, but the “jury”
at the back yielded to the soporific drone of childish voices and dozed
half-open-eyed in their chairs—except when one of the major prizes was
announced. Then they sat up alertly at attention, and inscribed one
after another on their massive ledgers the number on the ball which an
official held before each of their noses in turn, while the patch-clad
gathering outside the room shifted excitedly on their weary feet and
scanned the “pieces” in their sweaty hands with varying expressions of
disgust and disappointment. Now and then the boys changed places, but
only one of them, of dull-brown complexion and already gifted with the
shifty eye of the half-caste, performed his task to the general
satisfaction. The others were frequently interrupted by a protest from
one of the recorders, whereupon the number that had just been called was
emphatically reread by an adult, amid much scratching of pens in the
leather-bound ledgers. If the monotony of the scene was wearisome, its
solemnity made it correspondingly amusing. An uninformed observer would
probably have taken it for at least a presidential election. Rachel
asserted that it reminded her of Alice in Wonderland, but as my
education was neglected I cannot confirm this impression. What aroused
my own wonder was the fact that some two score more-or-less-high
officials of a national government should be engaged in so ridiculous a
formality, and that a sovereign republic should indulge in the nefarious
profession of the bookmaker. But to every people its own customs.
If I had fancied it the fault of my own ear that I had not caught all
the numbers, the impression would have been corrected by the afternoon
papers. All of them carried a column or more of protest against the
“absurd inefficiency” of the boys who had served that morning; most of
them made the complaint the chief subject of their editorial pages. The
_Casa de Beneficencia_—an institution corresponding roughly to our
orphan asylums—was solemnly warned that it must thereafter furnish more
capable inmates to _cantar las bolas_ (“sing the balls”) on pain of
losing the privilege entirely. Not only had the “uninstructed urchins”
of that morning made mistakes in reading the numbers—a dastardly thing
from the Cuban point of view—but had pronounced many of them in so
slovenly a manner that “our special reporters were unable to supply our
readers with correct information on a subject of prime importance to the
entire republic.” Beware that it never happened again! It was easy to
picture the poor overworked nuns of the asylum toiling far into the
night to impress upon a multi-complexioned group of fatherless gamins
the urgent necessity of learning to read figures quickly and accurately,
if they ever hoped to become normal, full-grown men and perhaps win the
big prize some day themselves.
Winning tickets may be cashed at any official _colectoría_ at any time
within a year, but such delays are rare. Barely is the drawing ended
when the venders, armed with the _billetes_ of the next _sorteo_, hurry
forth over their accustomed beats to pay the winners and establish a
reputation not so much for promptitude as for the ability to offer lucky
numbers. The capital prize, $100,000 in most cases, is perhaps won now
and then by some favorite of fortune, instead of falling to the
Government, collector of all unsold winners, though I have never
personally known of such a stroke of luck during all my wanderings in
lottery-infested lands. Smaller causes for momentary happiness are more
frequent, for with 1741 prizes, divisible into a hundred “pieces” each,
it would be strange if a persistent player did not now and then “make a
killing.” But even these must be rare in comparison to the optimistic
multitude that pursues the goddess Chance, for on the morning following
a drawing the streets of Havana are everywhere littered with worthless
_billetes_ cast off by wrathy purchasers. Wherefore an incorrigible
moralist has deduced a motto that may be worth passing on to future
travelers in Cuba:
“Buy a ‘piece’ or two that you may know the sneer of Fortune, but don’t
get the habit.”
Three days before the wedding of my sister, mama, she and I went to
the house of my future brother-in-law to put Alice’s things in
order. The _novio_ was not there. He had discreetly withdrawn to a
hotel and only came home now and then for a few moments to give
orders to the servants. If he found us there he greeted us in the
hall and did not enter the rooms except as we invited him. As there
were no women in his family we had to occupy ourselves with all
these matters.
“Listen, my daughter,” said mama, one night, after the _novio_ had
gone, “when to-morrow you take leave of your fiancé do not pass
beyond the line marked on the floor by the light of the hall lamp.”
My sister started to protest, “But, mama, what is there wrong in
that?” “Nothing, daughter, but it is not proper. Do as I tell you.”
Alice, though slightly displeased with the order, always obeyed it
thereafter.
These two quotations from one of Cuba’s latest novels give in a nutshell
the position of women in Cuba. Like all Latin-American countries,
especially of the tropics, it is essentially a man’s country. One of the
great surprises of Havana is the scarcity of women on the streets, even
at times when they swarm with promenading men. The Cuban believes as
firmly as the old Spaniard that the woman’s sphere is strictly behind
the grill of the front window, and with few exceptions the women agree
with him. The result is that her interest in life beyond her own
household is virtually nil. The “Woman Suffrage Party of Cuba” recently
issued a pompous manifesto, but it seems to have won about as much
support on the island as would a missionary of the prohibition movement.
In the words of the militants of the sex in Anglo-Saxon lands, “the
Cuban woman has not yet reached emancipation.”
The clerks, even in shops that deal only in female apparel, are almost
exclusively male. The offices that employ stenographers or assistants
from the ranks of the fair sex are rare, and those usually recruit such
help in the United States. Except on gala occasions, it is extremely
seldom that a Cuban girl of the better class is seen in public, and even
then only in company with a duenna or a male member of her immediate
family, and few married women consider it proper to appear unaccompanied
by their husbands, despite American example. As another Cuban waiter has
put it, “One of our greatest defects is the little or entire lack of
genuine respect for women. Though we are outwardly extremely gallant in
society and sticklers for the finer points of etiquette and courtesy, we
almost always look upon a woman merely as a female and our first thought
of at least a young and beautiful woman is to imagine all her hidden
perfections. The instant a lady comes within sight of the average Cuban
gathering all eyes are fixed upon her with a stare that in Anglo-Saxon
countries would be more than impertinent, which pretends to be
flattering, but which at bottom is truly insulting.” He does not add
that the women rather invite this attention and feel themselves
slighted, their attractions unappreciated, if it is not given. Yet of
open offenses against her modesty the Cuban lady is freer than on the
streets of our own large cities. Even in restaurants and gatherings
where those of the land never appear, an American woman is treated,
except in the matter of staring, with genuine courtesy by all classes.
The custom of living almost exclusively in the privacy of her own home
has given the Cuban woman a tendency to spend the day in disreputable
undress. Their hair dishevelled, their forms loosely enveloped in a
_bata_ or in a slatternly petticoat and dressing-sack, usually torn and
seldom clean, their toes thrust into slippers that slap at every step,
they slouch about the house all the endless day. Unless there are guests
they never dress for lunch, seldom for dinner, but don instead earrings,
necklaces, bracelets, and an astonishing collection of finger rings,
powdering their faces rather than washing them. During meals the
favorite topics of conversation are food and digestion; if one of them
has had any of the numerous minor ailments natural to a life of
non-exertion, it is sure to be the subject of a cacophonous discussion
that lasts until the appearance of the inevitable toothpicks. Servants,
with whom they associate with a familiarity unknown in Northern homes,
are numerous, and leave little occupation for the mothers and daughters.
The women never read, not even the newspapers, and their minds, poorly
trained to begin with in the nun-taught “finishing schools,” go to seed
early, so that by late youth or early middle age their faces show the
effects of a selfish, idle existence and a life of continual boredom.
But lest I be accused of being over-critical, let me quote once more the
native writer already introduced:
In one of the interior habitations a piano sounded, beaten by a
clumsy hand that repeated the same immature exercise without
cessation. There was general discussion in the dining-room at all
hours of the day, mingled with the shrieks of a parrot which swung
on a perch suspended from the ceiling and the constant disputes of
the children, who were snatching playthings from one another,
heaping upon each other every class of verbal injury. The mother
sewed and the older children tortured the piano during entire hours,
or polished their nails with much care, rubbing them with several
kinds of powders. When they had finished these occupations they
slouched from one end of the house to the other, throwing themselves
in turn upon all the divans or into the cushioned rocking-chairs and
yawning with ennui. Their skirts fell from their belts, loosened by
the languid and lazy gait. The mother did not want the girls to do
anything in the house for fear they would spoil their hands and lose
their chances of marriage. On the other hand, in the afternoon when
the hour of visits drew near the time was always too short to
distribute harmoniously the color on their cheeks and lips and to
take off the little hair papers with which they artificially formed
their waves or curls during the day.
This continual hubbub seems to be customary to every household; all
intercourse, be it orders to servants or admonitions to the insufferable
children, being carried on by yelling. And there are no worse voices in
the world than those of the Cuban women. Whether it is due to the
climate or to the custom of reciting in chorus at school, they have a
timbre that tortures the ear-drums like the sharpening of a saw, and all
day long they exercise them to the full capacity of their lungs. Under
no circumstances is one of them given the floor alone, but the slightest
morsel of gossip is threshed to bits in a free-for-all whirlwind of
incomprehensible shrieking.
On the other hand, the Cuban woman accepts many children willingly, and
in accordance with her lights is an excellent wife and mother. Indeed,
she is inclined to be over-affectionate, and given to serving her
children where they should serve themselves, with a consequent lack of
development in their characters. The boys in particular are “spoiled” by
being granted every whim. The men are much less often at home than is
the case with us, and seldom inclined to exert a masculine influence on
their obstreperous sons. The result is a lack of self-control that makes
itself felt through all Cuban manhood, a “touchiness,” an inclination to
stand on their dignity instead of yielding to the dictates of common
sense.
But if she is slouchy in the privacy of her own household, the Cuban
woman is quite the opposite in public. The grande toilette is essential
for the briefest appearance on the streets. American women assert that
there is no definite style in feminine garb in Cuba, and I should not
dream of questioning such authority, though to the mere masculine eye
they always seem “dressed within an inch of their lives” whenever they
emerge into the sunlight. But it does not need even the intuition of the
sometimes unfair sex to recognise that a life of physical indolence
leaves their figures somewhat dumpy and ungraceful, seldom able to
appear to advantage even in the best of gowns. Nor is it hard to detect
a sense of discomfort in their unaccustomed full dress, which makes them
eager to hurry home again to the negligée of _bata_ and slippers.
If the men monopolize other places of public gathering, the churches at
least belong to the women. There are few places of worship in Havana, or
in all Cuba, for that matter, that merit a visit for their own sake.
Though most of them are overfilled with ambitious attempts at
decoration, none of these is very successful. A single painting of worth
here and there, an occasional side chapel, one or two carved
choir-stalls, are the only real artistic attractions. But several of
them are well worth visiting for the side-lights they throw on Cuban
customs. As in Spain, every variety of diseased beggar squats in an
appealing attitude against the façades of the more fashionable religious
edifices during the hours of general concourse. Luxurious automobiles,
with negro chauffeurs in dazzling white liveries, sweep up to the foot
of the broad stone steps in as continual procession as the narrow
streets permit, but the passengers who alight are overwhelmingly of the
gown-clad gender. Within, the perfume of the worshipers drowns out the
incense. A glance across the sea of kneeling figures discloses
astonishingly few bare heads. The Cuban men, of course, are “good
Catholics,” too, but they are apt to confine their church attendance to
special personal occasions. The church has no such influence in public
affairs in Cuba as in many parts of the continent to the southward; so
little indeed, that public religious processions are forbidden by law,
though sometimes permitted in practice. If the Jesuits are still a power
to be reckoned with, so are _los masones_, and the mere proof of
irreligion is no effective bar to governmental or commercial preferment.
[Click anywhere on map for high resolution image.]
[Illustration: WEST INDIES]
* * * * *
A deaf person would probably enjoy Havana far more than those of acute
hearing. I have often wondered why nature did not provide us with
earlids as well as eyelids. A mere oversight, no doubt, that would not
have been made had the Cuban capital existed when the first models of
the human being were submitted. Havana may not hold the noise
championship of the world, but at least little old New York is silent by
comparison. Unmuffled automobiles beyond computation, tramcars that seem
far more interested in producing clamor than speed, bellowing venders of
everything vendible, are but the background of an unbroken uproar that
permeates to every nook and cranny of the city. Honest hotel-keepers
tell you frankly that they can offer every comfort except quiet. Even in
church you hear little but the tumult outside, broken only at rare
intervals by the droning voice of the preacher. It is not simply the
day-time uproar of business hours; it increases steadily from nightfall
until dawn. In olden days the _sereno_, with his dark lantern, his pike,
pistol, bunch of keys, whistle, and rope, wandered through the streets
calling out the time and the state of the weather every half-hour. His
efforts would be wasted nowadays. The long-seasoned inhabitants seem to
have grown callous to the constant turbulence; I have yet to meet a
newcomer who confesses to an unbroken hour of sleep. If you move out to
one of the pensions of Vedado, the household itself will keep you
constantly reminded that you are still in Havana. The Cubans themselves
seem to thrive on noise. If they are so unfortunate as to be denied
their beloved din, they lose no time in producing another from their own
throats. After a week in Havana we took a ferry across the harbor and
strolled along the plain behind Cabaña Fortress. For some time we were
aware of an indefinable sensation of strangeness amounting almost to
discomfort. We had covered a mile or so more before we suddenly
discovered that it was due to the unaccustomed silence.