The heart laughed and the heart cried, and its mood often altered with each of its beats. The yearning face of a child, hand eagerly extended for a penny pack of gum, touched it, as did, in a different way, the tale of a flight to freedom that ended in death. The hotel maid, a mother of three, melted it with the smile she wore while accepting a candy bar or a box of cookies, and the cabdriver chilled it with words as true as they were numbing. ”The bad eyes are everywhere”-those were his words.
A patchwork quilt of images is what the Pan American Games wove, and some of its most memorable swatches, some of its most arresting colors, were viewed far from those playpens where the athletes frolicked. They were the reasons so many journeyed to this rarely glimpsed island. yet no matter the prowess of a performance, no matter the tautness of a game, it was often overshadowed by the setting itself.
Cuba, Fidel Castro`s Cuba, was the setting, and rarely did it fail to surprise or shock, to alarm or amaze. Once a swashbuckling place that openly welcomed gangsters and authors and everyone in between, it is now a faded beauty, an aged queen, a place rife with intrigue and only hints of its opulent past.
The soaring buildings that dominate its capital city of Havana are now chipped and tattered, ravaged by time and neglect, and so many of those who move about them endure an existence that tears at a visitor`s entrails. Lines are omnipresent, lines for bread and buses and gas and taxis, and on any Sunday morning in Coppelia Park, three lines at least 125 deep move slowly toward the promised land, the chance to buy a dish of ice cream.
Down the block, in a plaza, there is another line, this one of children waiting for their precious 15 minutes behind a Nintendo machine, and when some see a writer scribbling in a notepad, they rush up and beg for his pen. Gum is a godsend, such a godsend that a single square of Chiclets is broken into pieces and passed around, and when a writer buys a helpful interpreter a can of orange Fanta, the interpreter pops open the can, holds it up, stares longingly at it and says, ”You know. This is the first time in my life I will drink Fanta.”
Yet there is, surprisingly, no meanness, no hardness, no bitterness in the eyes of most encountered here, only that languid look of acceptance. They were forced to sacrifice so these Games could go on, their meager supplies cut back even further so tourists could be tended. Yet even under that strain, they respond with courtesy and an eager desire to please. They respond with that, and always with caution.
”Where did you get that T-shirt?” one asks, referring to the Games souvenir on one writer`s chest.
”In the hotel store,” says he of a place the typical Cuban cannot enter, let alone afford.
”May I ask, is it expensive for you?” the Cuban shyly goes on.
”Nah. Ten bucks,” says the writer, seeing clearly now the agony in the Cuban`s face. ”You want one, I`ll bring you one tonight. No problem.”
”That would be so kind,” says the Cuban. ”But when you bring it, please, put it in a bag so no one can see.”
When issues of Time or Sports Illustrated are offered, the same request is made, and taxi drivers who are so garrulous while moving clam up when they stop for a light. A policeman is standing there on the curb, and it would not be wise to be seen speaking to a foreigner.
”Are you a grandfather?” a writer asks as he settles into one of their cabs in front of a hotel.
”Yes. Twice,” says the driver.
”Here,” says the writer, proffering a handful of Tootsie Rolls.
”Don`t give them to me here,” says the driver, still in plain view in front of the hotel.
”Now give them to me,” he says later, and as his car rolls through traffic.
A young boy, seen accepting a pin from a writer, is pulled away, interrogated and robbed of his souvenir, and a young woman, seen too often with a U.S. writer, is arrested and strip-searched and shown pictures of her in the writer`s company.
”I`ll have a Cuba libre,” says another Cuban, now sharing a watering hole table with a group of U.S. writers.
”You know what that means?” he asks after the waiter trots off.
”Free Cuba,” says a writer.
”That,” says the Cuban, ”is why here we call the drink `The Laugh.` ” Spaceship Stores is what the Cubans call those well-stocked places open only to foreigners.
Why?
”Because to us,” they say, ”everything in them is from another planet.”
That is part of the planet on which the 11th Pan Ams landed, where they were very much a circus served up to a population with little bread to enjoy. Cubans were admitted free to all events, and there-for an interlude-they were able to forget the holes in their bellies and cheer their country`s athletes, the best group of athletes that competed here.
They collected more gold medals than the United States, and embarrased it on the track, overwhelmed it in boxing, dominated it in weightlifting, outshone it in gymnastics and defeated it in baseball, women`s basketball, water polo and team handball. Many of those successes were not unexpected, for they were home, competing in a little fest where their national honor was at risk, and often facing less than the United States` best.
But the high standards of the playpens they performed in, they were a surprise, and so too were the few problems, the few squabbles that arose. Some politics dirtied them, they always do, and some crowds were as boorish as those at Yankee Stadium. Yet more common was the reception given the U.S. men`s basketball team when it accepted its bronze medals. Its players were politely applauded even though they had just defeated Cuba in a rowdy game.
Castro was not there that afternoon, but he did appear frequently and almost always when a Cuban team was going for the gold. ”He`s worth a run in a baseball game and 10 points in basketball,” says U.S. Olympic baseball coach Ron Fraser, who was here scouting. Security was a vise then, which was expected, but when he pushed himself up and joined the fans in the wave, that was as unexpected as a World Series in Chicago.
The crowds would cheer Castro then, cheer him lustily. Yet away from public view, hidden from prying eyes, the sounds of Cuba are much different.
”Are you Canadian?” asks an eager young girl who has run up to Spanish-speaking U.S. writer.
”No. Why?” says the writer.
”My brother defected to Canada two years ago, and I wanted to know what Canada is like,” she says, her disappointment now palpable. ”I just wanted to talk to someone about Candada.”
Along the Malecon, a major boulevard bordered by the Atlantic, younger Cubans born after the revolution talk far into the morning of their frustrations and their hopes and their desire for liberty. Others, encountered everywhere, talk with wide-eyed amazement when accepting even the lowliest of offerings (”This is not too expensive for you?” says one when handed a pack of Chiclets). And then-most poignantly-there is the sight of a young boy rubbing an empty can on the sidewalk, rubbing it until he can rip off the top and take it home for his family to use as a cup.
Finally, a highly educated Cuban in his late 20s is asked what keeps everyone going.
”I don`t know about everyone else, but what keeps me going is here,” he says, lightly tapping his forehead. ”Here I dream of someday coming to your house in Chicago carrying a six-pack, knocking on your door and not worrying about who`s watching me. Maybe, someday, I can do that.”
