HAVANA’S KID CHOCOLATE : PART TWO

My First Underwater Girlfriends

Long live that revolution, at least. But not Fidel, was the consensus. “Socialism or Die,” they grimaced. “Our life,” they said, “should be ‘Live well, Love a Lot and Well, and then Die.’”

At least Fidel knew to keep the tourists away from the Cubans. The Habaneros might want hotdogs and learn to have Nescafe for breakfast. 

And the tourists might learn to love samba, dancing before sex, mountain coffee beans ground minutes before brewing over a wood fire. And the feel of old stones heaped up around them at midnight in perfect colonial architecture. Or a full tropical moon illuminating the loneliness of the Malecon and the ghostly figure of a Santeria god.

The one that lives in sugar cane and turns it into rum.

At least that is what the parrots in the faded old beach conservatory in the hotel asked me. What happened to all guests dressed in wide- lapelled gaberdine double- breasted Gary-Cooper suits as they hold in the crook of their arms Viscounts, Death in Venice ruffled countesses, and Myrna Lowe-draped flappers in off white silks? 

The tall and handsome security guard cooed at and scratched the ear feathers of my brilliant macaw with whom I was conversing. The same guard who the evening before had stuck his tongue almost down to my companion’s knees when he kissed her on his way out of the hotel and her way in. Then he asked for her room number, exactly as I told her he would do. 

After all, if security is not allowed upstairs who is?

Off we set in the Lada again, this time to see all the famous painters of Havana in their studios, particularly a stop at the Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plasticas to see the Ernesto Garcia Pena show. I bought one called A caballo regalao no se le mira el colmillo.

          “If you are given a gift horse, don’t look at its teeth.’

Or in its mouth.

For recipes, more text and photos become a paid subscriber.