As for the Yalies, they didn’t know that their proudly patriotic Cuban guide was just another guy on the take. Five hundred bucks. Two years’ salary for Antonio. But for what? Information? A shakedown? One way to find out.
Sara, however, on our walk to the museum told me she didn’t want us to meet Antonio. She was in charge, but my instincts said we should meet him. It was possible, of course, that the meeting was some kind of entrapment and we’d get arrested. But in Cuba you could get arrested for no reason, so we may as well get arrested while having a drink. I needed to talk to Sara.
We went inside the huge palacio. Antonio was excited about showing us something, so we followed him to a lobby space near the grand marble staircase. He said, “This is the Rincón de los Cretinos—the Corner of the Cretins.”
And who were the cretins in the corner? Well, they were cartoonish murals of ex-President Batista, plus George Bush and Ronald Reagan in cowboy clothes, looking like characters out of Mad magazine. In fact, George looked like Alfred E. Neuman.
Even the Yalies thought this was a little over the top, and I didn’t think Cretin Corner would help improve relations.
We climbed the sweeping staircase and moved on to other rooms, all of which glorified La Revolución, though many of the exhibits were in bad taste, including grisly photos of revolutionaries being tortured and executed by former Cuban regimes. Also on display were blood-stained military uniforms that looked unsanitary. Unfortunately, there were a number of school-aged groups viewing all of this. That’s probably how Antonio got his little head screwed up.
We entered the former executive office of the late President Batista, and Antonio pointed out a gold-plated rotary-dial phone that AT&T had given to their important customer, then he launched into a diatribe about American imperialism. Sara thankfully kept her mouth shut.
Tad, to his credit, said to Antonio, “We should move on.”
So we checked out more of the Museum of the Revolution, which was deteriorating like most of Havana, and like the revolution itself.
Antonio showed us a secret staircase that Batista had used to save himself when a group of university students stormed the palace and tried to kill him. Antonio said, “Many of the students were arrested, tortured, and executed.”
Apparently they take student protests seriously here. The group moved on without us and I said to Sara, “Let’s escape down the secret staircase.”
“Try to learn something while you’re here.”
“Okay. I learned from Antonio at lunch that his interest in you was personal.”
“It was never personal. You know that.”
“Don’t be modest. Also, you shouldn’t have pressed him on why he was asking about you.”
“Sometimes, Mac, you just have to confront people who are causing you anxiety.”
“Right. Well, I think you smoked him out. Now he wants to talk to us.”
“We’re not talking to him.”
“You and I need to talk about that.”
“Later. Maybe.”
We caught up to our group, and Antonio escorted us into a room that had been turned into a stand-up movie theater, and we watched film clips of La Revolución in color and black and white, narrated in Spanish. I saw on the screen a young Fidel and a young Che Guevara, and a lot of other bearded guys moving through the bush carrying rifles. They looked like Taliban.
The scene shifted to Havana, New Year’s Day 1959, and a convoy of rebel fighters in trucks and Jeeps was moving through the city, and crowds of Habaneros were cheering in the streets. Next was a scene at the Hotel Nacional and I looked for Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth jumping into their getaway cars, but they must have left already.
The Riviera Hotel appeared on the screen and, as Antonio promised, there was a newsreel of guerrilla fighters and civilians smashing up the casino, including the bar. This was a sad ending, so I left the theater.
Sara joined me and said, “My father told me that was the most frightening day of his life.”
I guess it would be if you were a young boy waking up in a mansion on New Year’s Day, wondering why the servants hadn’t brought you your breakfast. I pointed out, “Everyone else looked happy.”
“Yes . . . It started out with high hopes for the Cuban people . . . but then it turned into a nightmare.”
“Right.”
The Yale group filed out of the theater, and Antonio led us outside to what was once the back garden, and was now the Granma Memorial—a massive glass structure that preserved the yacht, named Granma, that had brought Castro and his small band of revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba in 1956. The rest, as they say, is history.
Sara informed me, “When Cuba is free, this is all coming down, and this garden is where my memorial to the martyrs will be built.”
And Eduardo could use the garden walls to shoot all the Commies. I said, “Good location.” I was really feeling like an outsider now, caught in a family feud that went back to Christopher Columbus.
Anyway, around the Granma Memorial were some bullet-riddled military vehicles and a jet engine that Antonio said was from an American U-2 spy plane that had been shot down during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I wasn’t born then, but I knew that this crisis had taken us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And if that had happened, I wouldn’t be standing here. It occurred to me that Cuba had always been a thorn in America’s ass, and that America had always tried sticking it up Cuba’s ass.
This was not a happy garden, so Sara and I left the group and walked out to the street. Our next stop was the nearby National School of Ballet, where we were scheduled to see a rehearsal, and we headed that way.
As we walked, I said to Sara, “We need to meet Antonio.”
“If we meet him, that’s an admission that we’re not innocent tourists.”
“I follow that logic, but if you’re at the craps table you have to throw the dice.”
“No, you can pass.”
“Let’s try another cliché—you can’t ignore the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.”
She stayed silent as we walked, then said, “I’ve already agreed that you can meet Jack tonight. I’m not agreeing to meet Antonio.”
“Aren’t you curious about what he has to say?”
“I know what he has to say. He wants five hundred dollars. It’s just another shakedown of a Cuban American tourist.”
“You know there’s more to it.”
“Yes. It could also be a sting. We give him five hundred American dollars, and the police appear and arrest us for bribery and currency violations—or, worse, trying to recruit a spy.” She added, “That’s happened before. And espionage is a capital offense here.”
“I can go alone.”
“You will not.”
“All right . . . but—”
“You don’t understand the Cubans, Mac.”
“Compared to the Afghans, the Cubans are Boy Scouts.”
“If we ever go to Afghanistan, you’re in charge.”
“Sí, comandante.”
“Not funny.”
We reached the National School of Ballet and sat on the front steps sharing a bottled water and waiting for our group. I said to Sara, “Antonio wants to tell you what interest the police have in you.”