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diff --git a/38445.txt b/38445.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddd40b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/38445.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4628 @@ +Project Gutenberg's San Cristobal de la Habana, by Joseph Hergesheimer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: San Cristobal de la Habana + +Author: Joseph Hergesheimer + +Release Date: December 30, 2011 [EBook #38445] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA HABANA *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: image of the book's cover] + + + +SAN CRISTOBAL +DE LA HABANA + +_THE WORKS OF +JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER_ + +_NOVELS_ + +THE LAY ANTHONY [1914] +MOUNTAIN BLOOD [1915] +THE THREE BLACK PENNYS [1917] +JAVA HEAD [1918] +LINDA CONDON [1919] + +SHORTER STORIES + +GOLD AND IRON [1918] +THE HAPPY END [1919] + +TRAVEL + +SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA HABANA + +_Published in New York by +ALFRED A. KNOPF +and for sale at all bookshops_ + + + + +SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA HABANA + +BY + +JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER + + "_Many yeeres since I had knowledge by + relation of that great and golden Citie + which the Spaniards call El Dorado._" + + _Sir Walter Ralegh_ + +[Illustration: colophon] + +NEW YORK + +ALFRED A KNOPF + +1920 + +COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY +ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + _To + + H. J. B. BAIRD + + An + Havana + which he is free +to decline in every particular + save the + dedication_ + + + + +SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA HABANA + + +There are certain cities, strange to the first view, nearer the heart +than home. But it might be better to acknowledge that, perhaps, the word +home has a wider and deeper significance than any mere geographical and +family setting. Many men are alien in houses built from the traditions +of their blood; the most inaccessible and obdurate parts of the earth +have always been restlessly sought by individuals driven not so much by +exterior pressure as by a strange necessity to inhabit a barren copper +mountain, a fever coast, or follow to the end of life a river lost in a +savage remoteness, hiding the secret of their unquenchable longing. + +Not this, precisely, happened to me, approaching Havana in the early +morning, nothing so tyrannical and absolute; yet, watching the silver +greenness of Cuba rising from the blue sea, I had a premonition that +what I saw was of peculiar importance to me. I grew at once impatient +and sharply intent on the resolving of a nebulous, and verdant mass into +the details of dense slopes, slopes that showed, from the sea to their +crowns, no break in a dark foliage. The sombreness of the leaves +immediately marked the land from an accustomed region of bright +maples--they were at once dark, glossy, and heavy, an effect I had often +tried to describe, and their presence in such utter expanses filled me +with pleasure. It was exactly as though the smooth lustrous hills before +me had been created out of an old mysterious desire to realize them in +words. + +Undoubtedly their effect belonged to the sea, the sky, and the hour in +which they were set. The plane of the sea, ruffled by a wind like a +willful and contrarily exerted force, was so blue that its color was +lost in the dark intensity of tone; while the veils of space were +dissolved in arcs of expanding light. The island seemed unusually solid +and isolated, as complete within itself as a flower in air, and +saturated with romance. That was my immediate feeling about Cuba, taking +on depth across water profounder than indigo ... it was latent with the +emotional distinction which so signally stirred me to write. + +At once, in imagination, I saw the ineffable bay of Guatanago, where +buccaneers careened their ships and, in a town of pink stucco and +windows with projecting wooden grilles, drank and took for figureheads +the sacred images of churches painted blue. On the shore, under a canopy +of silk, a woman, naked but for a twist of bishop's purple, bound her +hair in gold cloth. From where she stood, in dyed shadow, a figure only +less golden than the cloth, she heard the hollow ring of the caulking +malls and the harsh rustle of the palms. Drawing rapidly nearer to what +was evidently the entrance to the harbor of Havana I considered the +possibilities of such a story, such a character: + +She had her existence in the seventeenth century, when Morgan marched +inland to rape Camagueey--the daughter, without doubt, of a captain of +the Armada de Barlevento, the Windward Fleet, and a native woman taken +in violence; a shameless wench with primitive feelings enormously +complicated by the heritage of Spain's civilization, a murderous, +sullen, passionate jade, wholly treacherous and instinct with ferine +curiosity. The master for her, I decided, must come from the Court of +Charles, the London of the Cavalier Parliament, a gentleman in a gay +foppery masking a steel eaten by a cruelty like a secret poison. It +would be a story bright with the flames of hell and violent as a +hurricane; the pages would reflect the glare of the sand scrawled with +cocoanut palms, and banked with mangroves; and, at the end, the bishop's +purple would be a cerecloth and the gallows chains sound in Xaymaca. +But, above everything else, it would be modern in psychology and color +treatment, written with that realism for which the only excuse was to +provide a more exact verisimilitude for romance. + +The Cuban shore was now so close, Havana so imminent, that I lost my +story in a new interest. I could see low against the water a line of +white buildings, at that distance purely classic in implication. Then it +was that I had my first premonition about the city toward which I was +smoothly progressing--I was to find in it the classic spirit not of +Greece but of a late period; it was the replica of those imagined cities +painted and engraved in a wealth of marble cornices and set directly +against the tranquil sea. There was already perceptible about it the air +of unreality that marked the strand which saw the Embarkation for +Cytherea. + +Nothing could have made me happier than this realization; an extension +of the impression of a haunting dream turned into solid fact. The +buildings multiplied to the sight, bathed in a glamorous radiance; and, +suddenly, on the other hand, rose Morro Castle. That structure, small +and compact and remarkably like its numerous pictures, gave me a +distinct feeling of disappointment. Its importance was historic rather +than visible, and needed, for appreciation, a different mind from mine. +But the narrowness of the harbor entrance, a deep thrust of blue +extending crookedly into the land, the sense of crowded shipping and +massed city, the steamers of the world and broad shaded avenues at my +elbow, impressed me at once with Havana's unique personality. + +Nothing, however, was more ingratiating than the long coraline limestone +wall of the Cabanas on its sere abrupt hill at the left; ponderous and +stained brilliantly pink by time, it formed a miraculous complement to +the pseudo-classic whiteness below. A sea-wall built into a wide +promenade followed the shore, there was a circular pavilion on a flagged +plaza piled with iron chairs, the docks were interspersed with small +public gardens under royal palms, and everywhere the high windows had +ornamental balconies empty in the morning sun. I heard, then, the voice +of Havana, a remarkably active staccato voice, never, I was to learn, +sinking to quiet, but changing at night into a different yet no less +disturbing clamor. + +What I tried to discover, rushed through broad avenues and streets +hardly more than passageways, was the special characteristic of a city +which had already possessed me. And, ignorant of the instantaneous +process that formed the words, I told myself that it was a mid-Victorian +Pompeii. This was a modification of my first impression, a truer +approximation, for it expressed the totality of marble facades +inadmissible architecturally, yet together holding a surprising and +pleasant unity. No one, I thought excitedly, had ever rightly +appreciated Havana; it required a very involved understanding, a feeling +not entirely admirable. No, it wasn't Hellenic, not what might be called +in the first manner; it hadn't the simplicity of great spirit, a true +epoch; Havana was artificial, exotic: Spain touched everywhere by the +tropics, the tropics--without a tradition--built into a semblance of the +baroque. + +It was rococo, and I liked it; an admission, I believe, laying me open +to certain charges; for the rococo was universally damned; the Victorian +period had been equally condemned ... and I liked it. Why, God knew! +Ornament without use, without reference to its surface and purpose, +invited contempt. A woman in a hoop skirt was an absurdity; black walnut +furniture carved and gilded beyond recognition, nonsense. Yet they had +my warm attachment. Havana claimed me for its own--a city where I could +sit at tables in the open and gaze at parterres of flowers and palms and +statues and fountains, where, in the evening, a band played the light +arias of La Belle Helene. + + * * * * * + +To illustrate further the perversity of my impulses: I was so entirely +captivated by the Hotel Inglaterra that, for the rest of the day, I was +indifferent to whatever might be waiting outside. The deep entrance with +its reflected planes of subdued light and servants in cool linen; the +patio with water, its white arches on iridescent tiles; the dining-room +laid in marble, panelled with the arms of Pontius Pilate, the bronze +lustre of the tiling and the long windows on the Parque exactly as I had +anticipated, together created the happy effect of a bizarre domain. The +corridor on which my room opened was still more entrancing, its arches +filled with green latticework, and an octagonal space set with chairs +and long-bladed plants. + +Yet the room itself, perhaps one of the most remarkable rooms in the +world, easily surpassed what, until then, I had seen. There were slatted +door screens, cream-colored with a sapphire-blue glass knob, topped in +an elaborate Gothic scrolling; and the door beyond, inconceivably tall, +opened on an interior that seemed to reach upward without any limit. It +had, of course, a ceiling, heavily beamed in dark wood; and when, later, +I speculated carefully on its height, I reached the conclusion that it +was twenty-five feet above the grey-flowered tiling of the floor. The +walls were bare, white; about their base was laid a line of green glazed +tiles; and this, except for the glass above the French window, was the +only positive note. + +The window, too, towered with the dignity of an impressive entrance; +there were two sets of shutters, the inner elaborately slatted; and over +it was a semi-circular fanlight of intensely brilliant colors--carmine +and orange and plum-purple, cobalt and yellow. It was extraordinarily +vivid, like heaped gorgeous fruit: throughout the day it dominated the +closed elusive interior; and not only from its place on high, for the +sun, moving across that exposure, cast its exact replica on the floor, +over the frigidity of the austere iron bed, down one wall and up +another. + +It was fascinating merely to sit and watch that chromatic splash, the +violent color, shift with the afternoon, to surrender the mind to its +suggestions.... They, as well, were singularly bright and illogical. +Such glass, such colors, had been discarded from present decorative +schemes; but I recalled hints of them in the houses of eighteen seventy; +I seemed to remember them in pagoda-like conservatories, and at once a +memory of my childhood returned. Not that there were, actually, such +windows at Woodnest, sombre under the tulip-poplars; yet the impression +of one re-created the feeling of the other, it brought back disturbingly +a vanished time with its figures long dead. + +Havana was identified as an authentic part of my inheritance. I was--in +a purely inner manner--to understand it, to have for it the affectionate +recognition, the sense of familiarity, of which I have already spoken. +The city was wholly expressed by the fanlight sparkling with the +shifting radiance of the blazing day. It was possible, without leaving +the room, to grasp the essential spirit of a place so largely unseen. +Then it occurred to me that, indeed, I had seen Havana, and that the +wisest thing to do was to leave at once, to go back with my strong +feeling uncontaminated by trivial facts; but a more commonplace impulse, +a limiting materialism, pointed out that, since I had come away for a +change of scene, I had best realize a semblance of my intention. Still +those colors, like a bouquet of translucent tulips, easily outweighed in +importance all that I subsequently gained; they gave the emotional +pitch, the intellectual note, of whatever followed--a mood, an entire +existence, into which I walked with the turning of a sapphire-blue knob. + +For the rest the furniture was scant--a walnut bureau with a long +mirror, necessary chairs, and an adequate bathroom like a shaft with +shining silver faucets at its bottom. From outside, even through the +heat of noon, the sustained activity of sound floated up through the +shutters--the incomplete blending of harsh traffic alarms and blurred +cries announcing newspapers. + +It was later when I went out on my balcony: across the narrow depth of +San Rafael Street the ornamented bulk of the Gallego Club--the Club and +the opera house in one--opposed a corner against the sweep of the Parque +Central; and to the right, between the glitter of shop windows, poured +an unbroken procession of motors. A great pillar of the paseo below was +hung with gaily covered magazines; a bootblack, wrinkled and active, +with a single chair on a high stand, was cleaning a row of white shoes, +obviously from the hotel; and the newsboys were calling La Politica +Comica in a long-drawn minor inflection. + +The sun, that I had seen rising on the undiscovered hills of Cuba, was +sinking behind the apprehended city; it touched the caryatids of the +Gallego Club and enveloped, in a diminished gold like a fine suffusion +of precious dust, the circular avenue, the royal palms, the flambeau +trees and Indian laurels, of the plaza. The whiteness of the buildings, +practically unbroken, everywhere took on the tone of every moment: now +they were faintly aureate, as though they had been lightly touched by a +gilder's brush; the diffused shadows were violet. The shadows slowly +thickened and merged; they seemed to swell upward from the streets, the +Parque; and the buildings, in turn, became lavender, and then, again, a +glimmering white. Only the lifted green of the palms was changeless, +positive, until it was lost in darkness. + +A great many people appeared below, moving with an air of determination +on definite ways. The faces of the men were darkened by the contrast of +their linen; I couldn't see their features; but what struck me at once +was the fact that there were, practically, no women along the streets. +It was a tide of men. This, at first, gave me an impression of monotony, +of stupidity--women were an absolute essential to the variety of any +spectacle; and here, except for an occasional family group hurrying to a +cafe, a rare stolid shape, they were utterly lacking. + +The reason, however, quickly followed the observed truth; this was, in +spirit, Spain, and Spain was saturated with Morocco, a land where women, +even the poorest, were never publicly exhibited. Havana was a city of +balconies, of barred windows, of houses impenetrable, blank, to the +streets, but open on the garden rooms of patios. And suddenly--while the +moment before I had been impatient at the bareness resulting from their +absence--I was overwhelmingly conscious of the pervading influence of +charming women. Here they were infinitely more appealing than in places +where they were set out in the rows of a market, sometimes like flowers, +but more often resembling turnips and squashes. Here, with extreme +flattery, women were regarded as dangerous, as always desirable, and +capable of folly. + +It was a society where a camellia caught in the hair, a brilliant glance +across a powdered cheek, lace drawn over a vivid mouth, were not for +nothing. In the world from which I had come these gestures, beauties, +existed; but they were general, and meaningless, rather than +special--the expression of a conventional vanity without warmth. There +was an agreement that any one might look, the intensest gaze was +invited, with the understanding that almost none should desire; and a +cloak of hypocrisy had been the result; either that or the beauty was +mechanical, the gesture furtive and hard. + +For Havana a woman was, in principle, a flower with delicate petals +easily scattered, a perfume not to be rudely, indiscriminately, spent; a +rose, it was the implication, had its moment, its perfection of eager +flushed loveliness, during which what man would not reach out his hand? +After that ... but the seed pods were carefully, jealously, tended. And +here, in addition to so much else, was another shared attitude drawing +me toward Havana--an enormous preference for women who had the courage +of their emotions over those completely circumspect except in situations +morally and financially solid. + + * * * * * + +My dressing for dinner I delayed luxuriously, smoking the last Dimitrino +cigarette found in a pocket, and leaving the wet prints of my feet on +the polished tiles of the floor. I was glad that I had brought a trunk, +variously filled, in place of merely a bag, as I might have done; for it +was evident that Havana required many changes of clothes. It was a city +which to enjoy demanded a meticulous attention to trifles. For one thing +it was going to be hot, April was well advanced; and the glorietas, the +brightly illuminated open cafes, the thronged Prado and operatic +Malecon, the general air of tropical expensiveness, insisted on the +ornamental fitness of its idlers. + +I debated comfortably the security of a dinner coat, slightly varied, +perhaps, by white flannels; but in the end decided in favor of a more +informal jacket of Chinese silk with the flannels. A shirt, the socks +and scarf, were objects of separate importance; but when they were +combined there was a prevailing shade of green.... I had no inclination +to apologize for lingering over these details, but it might be necessary +to warn the seekers after noble truisms that I had no part in their +righteous purpose. Even noble truths, in their popular definitions, had +never been a part of my concern: at the beginning I was hopelessly +removed from them, and what was an instinct had become, in an experience +of life not without supporting evidence, the firmest possible attitude. +A tone of candor, if my reflections were to have the slightest interest +or value, was my first necessity; and candor compelled me to admit that +I thought seriously about the jacket which finally slipped smoothly over +my shoulders. + +It was an undeniable fact that I was newly in a land of enormous +interest, which, just then, held the most significant and valuable crop +growing on earth. But that didn't detain my imagination for a moment. +The Havana that delighted me, into which I found myself so happily +projected, was a city of promenading and posted theatre programmes, of +dinners and drinks and fragrant cigars. I was aware that from such +things I might, in the end, profit; but I'd get nothing, nothing in the +world, from stereotyped sentiments and places and solemn gabbled +information. + +On top of this I had a fixed belief in the actual importance of, say, a +necktie--for myself of course; I was not referring to the neckties of +the novelists with a mission, lost in the dilemma of elevating mankind. +A black string, or none at all, served their superiority. But for the +light-minded the claim of a Bombay foulard against the solider shade of +an Irish poplin was a delicate question; for the light-minded the choice +of one word in preference to another--entirely beneath the plane of a +mission--was a business for blood, an overt act. And with me there was a +correspondence between the two, a personal exterior as nicely selected +as possible and the mental attitude capable of exquisite choice in +diction. But this was no more than a development of all that I first +admitted, a repetition of my pleasure at being in Havana, a place where +the election of a cocktail was invested with gravity. And, carefully +finished except for the flower I'd get below, I was entirely in harmony +with the envelopment, the adventure, to which my persistent good luck +had brought me. + +The elevator going down was burdened with expensive women, their bodies +delicately evident under clinging fragile materials, their powdered +throats hung with the clotted iridescence of pearls; the cage was filled +with soft breathing and faint provocative perfumes--the special lure of +flowers which nature had denied to them as women. It was, I told myself, +all very reprehensible and delightful: + +Here were creatures, anatomically planned for the sole end of maternity, +who had wilfully, wisely I felt, elevated the mere preliminary of their +purpose to the position of its whole consummation. More intoxicated by +sheer charm than by the bearing of children, resentful of the thickened +ankles of their immemorial duty, they proclaimed by every enhanced and +seductive curve that their intention was magnetic rather than economic. +They were, however, women of my own land, secure in that convention +which permitted them exposure with immunity, and here; in Havana, they +failed to interest me; their voices, too, were sharp, irritable; and +even in the contracted space of the elevator their elaborate backs were +so brutally turned on the men with them--men correct enough except for +their studs--the hard feminine tyranny of the chivalrous United States +was so starkly upheld, that I escaped with a sigh of relief into a +totally different atmosphere. + +The lower hall, the patio and dining-room on the left, were brilliant +with life, the wing-like flutter of fans; and it would be necessary, I +saw, to have my cocktail in the patio; but before that, following a +purely instinctive course, I walked out to the paseo in front of the +hotel. The white buildings beyond the dark foliage of the Parque were +coruscant with electric signs, and, their utilitarian purpose masked in +an unfamiliar language, they shared with the alabaster of the facades, +the high fronds of the royal palms and the monument to Marti, in the +tropical, the classic, romanticism. + +Hardly had I appeared, gazing down the illuminated arcade, when a man +approached me with a flat wide basket of flowers. There were, +inevitably, roses, tea roses as pale as the yellow of champagne, +gardenias, so smooth and white that they seemed unreal, heavy with +odor; those I had expected, but what surprised me were some sprigs of +orange blossom with an indefinite sweetness that was yet perceptible +above the thicker scents. I chose the latter immediately, and the flower +vendor, wholly comprehensive of my mood, placed the boutonniere in my +jacket. The moment, now, had arrived for a Daiquiri: seated near the +cool drip of the fountain, where a slight stir of air seemed to ruffle +the fringed mantone of a bronze dancing Andalusian girl, I lingered over +the frigid mixture of Ron Bacardi, sugar, and a fresh vivid green lime. + +It was a delicate compound, not so good as I was to discover later at +the Telegrafo, but still a revelation, and I was devoutly thankful to be +sitting, at that hour in the Inglaterra, with such a drink. It elevated +my contentment to an even higher pitch; and, with a detached amusement, +I recalled the fact that farther north prohibition was formally in +effect. Unquestionably the cocktail on my table was a dangerous agent, +for it held, in its shallow glass bowl slightly encrusted with +undissolved sugar, the power of a contemptuous indifference to fate; it +set the mind free of responsibility; obliterating both memory and +to-morrow, it gave the heart an adventitious feeling of superiority and +momentarily vanquished all the celebrated, the eternal, fears. + +Yes, that was the danger of skilfully prepared intoxicating drinks.... +The word intoxicating adequately expressed their power, their menace to +orderly monotonous resignation. A word, I thought further, debased by +moralists from its primary ecstatic content. Intoxication with Ron +Bacardi, with May, with passion, was a state threatening to privilege, +abhorrent to authority. And, since the dull were so fatally in the +majority, they had succeeded in attaching a heavy penalty to whatever +lay outside their lymphatic understanding. They had, as well, made the +term gay an accusation before their Lord, confounding it with loose, so +that now a gay girl--certainly the only girl worth a ribbon or the last +devotion--was one bearing upon her graceful figure, for she was apt to +be reprehensibly graceful, the censure of a society open to any charge +other than that of gaiety in either of its meanings. A ridiculous, a +tragic, conclusion, I told myself indifferently: but then, with a fresh +Daiquiri and a sprig of orange blossoms in my buttonhole, it meant less +than nothing. It grew cooler, and an augmented stir set in motion toward +the dining-room, where the files of damask-spread tables held polished +silver water-bottles and sugar in crystal jars with spouts. + + * * * * * + +The wisdom of the attention I had given to my appearance was at once +evident in the table to which the head waiter conducted me. Small and +reserved with a canted chair, it was directly at one of the long windows +on the Parque Central. This, at first sight, on the part of its arbiter, +would not have been merely an affair for money--he had his eye on the +effect of the dining-room as a whole, as an expanse of the utmost +decorative correctness, and there were a number of men with quite +pretty women, a great asset publicly, who had been given places in the +center of the room. Yes, where I was seated the ruffled curtains were +swayed by the night breeze almost against my chair, a brilliant section +of the plaza was directly at my shoulder, and I was pervaded by the +essential feeling of having the best possible situation. + +This was not, perhaps, true of characters more admirable than mine: but +if I had been seated behind one of the pillars, buried in an obscure +angle, my spirits would have suffered a sharp decline. I should have +thought, temporarily, less of Havana, of myself, and of the world. The +passionate interest in living, the sense of aesthetic security, that +resulted in my turning continually to the inconceivable slavery of +writing, would have been absent. But seated in one of the most desirable +spots in existence, a dining-room of copper glazed tiles open on the +tropics, about to begin a dinner with shrimps in the pink--the veritable +rose--of perfection, while a head waiter, a triumph of intelligent +sympathy, conferred with me on the delicate subject of wines, I felt +equal to prose of matchless loveliness. + +The dinner, finally, as good dinners were apt to be, was small, simple, +with--the result of a prolonged consideration--a bottle of Marquis de +Riscal. All the while the kaleidoscope of the Parque was revolving in +patterns of bright yellows, silver, and indigo. Passersby were +remarkably graphic and near: a short man with a severe expression and a +thick grey beard suddenly appeared in the open window and demanded that +I buy a whole lottery ticket; a sallow individual from without unfolded +a bright glazed sheaf of unspeakably stupid American magazines; farther +off, the crowd eddied through the lanes between the innumerable chairs +drawn up companionably on the plaza. At a table close by, a family of +Cubans were supplementing the courses of formal dining with an endless +vivacious chatter, a warmth of interest charming to follow. + +The father, stout, with an impressive moustache of which not one hair +seemed uncounted or mislaid, regarded his short fat wife, his tall slim +son, and his two entrancing daughters with an impartially active and +affectionate attention. The girls were young, one perhaps fifteen and +the other not more than a year or so older, though they both managed +lorgnons with an ease and impertinent frankness that an older woman +might well have envied, while they talked in rushes of vivid Spanish +with an emphases of delectable shrugged shoulders, and, recognizing an +acquaintance, exhibited smiles as dazzling as only youth knew. The boy, +however, engaged me more strongly; a tone darker than the others, in +repose his face, delicate in feature, was grave, reflective; his smooth +black hair grew into a peak on his brow, his gaze was considerate, +direct, and his mouth sensitive. Cuba, I thought, at its best; and here +that was very good indeed. Any such degree of mingled dignity and the +highly impressionable, of reserve and flexibility, was absent from the +cruder young of the north. + +He had, at the same time, an indefinable air of melancholy, a bearing +that, while not devoid of pride, belonged to a minor people, to an +island the ultimate fate of which--in a political word of singular +faithlessness--was hidden in shadow. An affair of mere simple courage, +of execution for an ideal by Spanish rifles in a Cabanas foss, he would +have borne with brilliant success; he'd have ornamented charmingly the +security of a great coffee estate in Pinar del Rio; it was possible that +he might be distinguished in finance; but there was not back of him the +sense of sheer weight, of ponderous land, that gave, for example, the +chance young Englishman his conscious security, the American his +slightly shrill material confidence. + +This Cuban's particular quality, it seemed to me, belonged to the past, +to an age when men wore jewelled buckles and aristocracy was an +advantage rather than a misfortune. He had about him the graceful +fatality now so bitterly attacked by the widening power of what was +heroically referred to as the people. He represented, from the crown of +his lustrous hair to his narrow correct dancing shoes, in his shapely +hands and dark fine skin, privilege and sequestered gold. Outrages, I +had heard, soon to be forever overthrown! It was possible that both the +charges and the threatened remedy were actualities, and that privilege +would disappear ... from one hand to another, and great lawns be cut up +into cabbage patches and Empire ball-rooms converted into communal halls +for village rancor. + +Not much, in the way of benefit, could follow that. And women in +starched linen collars, with starched theories of civic consciousness, +would hardly be an improvement on fragrant memories of satin, moments of +passion and frailty, and the beauty of tenderness. A maze of clipped +box, old emerald sod, represented a timeless striving for superiority, +for, at least, the illusion of triumph over the littorals of slime; and +their destruction in waves of hysteria, sentimentality, and envy was +immeasurably disastrous. All of this I saw reflected in the boy with +peaked hair at the next table. He took a cigarette from a black silk +case, and I was immediately reminded of my cigar. + +It had been chosen with immense care in the Inglaterra cafe for bonbons +and souvenirs, liqueurs and cigars. How remarkable it was, I had +thought, hovering above the case, which contained a bewildering choice +of shapes and colors, to be in a land where all the cigars were, in the +sense I knew, imported. I hesitated for a minute or more between a +Larranaga and a banquet Corona, and finally decided on the former. It +was as long as the cigar called Fancy Tales, but slightly thicker and +rolled to a point at either end; and the first breath of its smoke, +drifting in a blue cloud away from the window, told me that until then I +had known but little of tobacco. Coffee so black that it stained the +white shell of its cup; a diminutive glass of Grand Marnier, the +distilled last saturation of oranges and fin champagne; and the +Larranaga, the color of oak leaves freshly brown, combined in a +transcending magic of contentment. + +The point was--my special inhibition as a traveler--that I didn't want +to move; I had no wish to speak to anyone or see what, particularly, I +should have hurried away to view. That impatience I had served when I +was twenty-one, in Naples; a city uniquely planned for morbid and +natural curiosity. There the animated frescoes of Pompeii had been +posed, at two lire a figure, before my assumption of mature experience. +But now, past forty, I was without the ambition and desire to follow the +cabs of the American business men who, in the company of patient and +fatigued Cubans, were, in the interest of vague appointments, bidding +their families elaborate good evenings. + +Later it was inevitable that I should get to the theatres, hear whatever +music offered, and see all the dancing, Spanish and Cuban, in the city +of Havana, but not to-night. My present pleasure was not to be wasted in +the bother of movement and a probable mistake. The cigar continued to +veil me in its reflective smoke for another half hour, there was more +coffee in the pot. The tempered heat of the day lay over me like a +spell, like an armor against the chill, the gaunt winds and rain, of the +north. The scent of the sprig of orange blossoms was just perceptible, +at once faint and laden with the potency of a magical grove. + + * * * * * + +The weather, the temperature and special atmospheric envelopment of +Havana, was, I was certain, different from any other, its heat modified +by the winds that moved across the island at night, at least from this +shore, and the days flooded with an incandescent sunlight like burning +magnesium. Stirring slowly about my room before breakfast, the slatted +shutters bowed against the already blazing day, a thread of cigarette +smoke climbing hopelessly toward the far ceiling, I thought of the +idiotic popular conviction that the weather was a topic for stupid +minds. The reverse, certainly, was true, since, inbound with all the +settings of life, all nature, the weather offered an illimitable range +of suggestion. + +It had been the great discovery of imaginative prose--the novel for +which we care most had been largely the result of that gained +appreciation; and its absence in older books, placed in a vacuum, +entirely accounted for their dry unreality. What, for instance, were the +novels of Thomas Hardy but splendid records of the countryside weather, +for nature and weather were one. This, more than any other force, +conditioned men, stamping them out with an ice age, burning them black +in Africa ... setting royal palms by the doors of the Hotel Inglaterra +and willows along my lower lawn. + +The difference between Havana and West Chester was exactly that +difference in their foliage, in the low April green of one and the harsh +high fronds of the other. The quality, the weather, that made the trees +made equally the men, just as it dictated their lives, the houses they +lived in, their industries and planted grains. This was true not only +of the country but of the city, too, of George Moore as well as Hardy; +for though Moore belonged principally to salons and the discreet +interiors of broughams, a good half of the beauty of his pages was due +to his response to the quality of spring against a smoke-blackened +London wall, the laburnum blossoming in his Dublin garden. + +The slightest impression of Havana must be founded on a sensitive +recognition of the crystal light and printed shadows which, in addition +to its architecture of fact, brought another of sweeping illusion. In +the morning the plazas glittered in a complete revelation of every hard +carving and leaf and painted kiosk, but later the detail merged in airy +diagonal structures of shade. Modified, infrequently, by the gorgeous +cumulous clouds drifting from the upward thrust, the anchorage, of the +Andes, the entire process of the hours was upset. This was not simply a +variation of inanimate surface, it had an exact counterpart in the +emotions: bowed by an insuperable blaze or upright in the veiled sun, +the attitude of harmony was profoundly affected. The night was +altogether separate, a time, I gathered, when it seldom rained; and +there was never another city that took advantage of the night like +Havana. Released from the resplendent tyranny of the sun, everyone, it +appeared, disdaining sleep, lingered in the plazas, the cafes, and along +the sea-walls, until dawn threatened. Here the dark was not alone a +stage for nocturnal plans and figures: it was without strangeness or +fear for the Cubans thronging abroad, on foot and in motors, early and +late. The whiteness of the buildings, too, even where they were not +illuminated, defined spaces never obscure; the city was never wholly +lost, obliterated by the imponderable blackness of the north. All this, +every aspect of Havana's being, was the gift--the dangerous gift--of its +situation, its weather. The blinding day, the city folded in a sparkling +night, like a vision in blanched satin with fireflies in her hair, were +nothing more than meteorological. + +For myself, my entire attitude was different in the room I now inhabited +from the inherent feeling, in New York, of the Algonquin. I was, in +white flannels and brown Holland, with roses against the mirror of the +bureau, another man; not only my mentality but my physical bearing was +changed. Here I was an individual who, moving about for an hour or so in +the morning, spent the day until late afternoon in some quiet and cool +inner spaciousness. That, I appreciated at once, was one of the +comfortable peculiarities of Havana: it was always possible to be +cool--in a cafe with the marble floor sprinkled with water; at the +entrance of the Inglaterra, where, however, the chairs were the most +uncomfortable in the world; or, better yet, with a book, a naranjada, +and pajamas, transiently at home. + +For the iced refrescos of Cuba I had been prepared; and at breakfast, +though that, I found later, was not its hour, I chose, rather than a +naranjada, a pina colado--a glass, nearly as large and quite as thin as +possible, of the chilled essence of pineapple. A remarkable, a +delightful, concoction. Later I heard the refrescos referred to +contemptuously by Americans whose attitude toward the Cubans paralleled +their opinion of the local drinks. They elected whiskey, at times +condescending to gin, and the effect was portentous. Some sat near me +now, with breakfasts of bubbling ham and crisped eggs, lamenting the +coffee. + +It was doubtless part of the hypnotism of my liking for Havana that +reconciled me to the coffee, poured simultaneously with hot salted milk +into the cup. I accepted it at once, together with a cut French roll +ingeniously buttered. Other efforts were made, through a window, to sell +a wallpaper of lottery tickets; the vendor of magazines now put forward +the Havana Post, printed in English; the curtains hung motionless, a +transparent film on the bright space beyond. + +There was nothing I had to do, or see, no duty to myself to fulfill; +and, watching the stir of tourist departure, I was thankful for my +total lack of uncomfortable incentive. I had, for instance, no intention +of ascending the height of Morro Castle, which--I had hardly needed the +assurance--included a fatiguing number of stairs; nor of becoming +familiar with Cabanas fortress. It had been quite enough to see in +passing that long pink wall and know that there were old batteries of +cannon embossed with the sovereign names of Spain. There were no picture +galleries; and in Havana the churches were rich in neither tradition nor +beauty, and the convents of early days had been turned into warehouses. +It was, on the whole, a city without obtrusive history; even its first +site was on the other side of the island; the wall, except for a +fragment or two, had gone; its early aspects were practically absorbed +by the later spirit that had captivated me. Here, if ever, was a place +in which honesty of mood could be completely indulged. + +A state not innocent of danger to the Puritan tradition--lately +assaulted with useless vigor--of suppression; for to the Latin +acceptance of the whole of life had been added the passions of the +tropics. Cuba had cynically realized this, and multiplied a natural +frankness with a specialized attention to the northern masculinity I had +seen leaving the hotel at odd hours last night. I felt even so soon, +with prohibition a reality, that our national prudery was a very +unfortunate influence indeed in Havana. The season was at an end--only a +few days of the racing remained--so I had missed the obvious worst; but +traces of the corruption of the dull, the dull themselves in diminishing +numbers, lingered. + +Havana, in common with other foreign countries, and with so many golden +reasons to the contrary, had no general liking for Americans. The few +who had understood Cuba, either living there or journeying with +discretion, were most warmly appreciated; and, characteristically, it +was they more than the natives who were principally disconcerted by the +released waggishness of Maine and Ohio and Illinois. But the majority +were merely exploited. There was, certainly, something on the other side +of the fence, for the Cubans were morbidly sensitive about their land, +their monuments and martyrs, not necessarily impressive to the +Anglo-Saxon heritage and temperament. There were fundamental racial +differences, with a preponderant ultimate weight in favor of continents +as opposed to islands. The fascination Havana had for me wasn't +inevitable; I was only considering with regret, aesthetic rather than +moral, the effect on Cuba of any prostitution. + + * * * * * + +As, in a temporary stoppage of its circular traffic, I walked across the +Parque Central, its limits seemed to extend indefinitely, as if it had +become a Sahara of pavement exposed to the white core of the sun; and I +passed with a feeling of immense relief into the shade of a book-shop at +the head of Obispo Street, where the intolerable glare slowly faded from +my vision as I fingered the heaps of volumes paper-bound in a variegated +brightness of color and design. In any book-shop I was entirely at home, +contented; and here specially I was prepossessed with the idea of +buying a great number of the novels solely for their covers--in short, +making a collection of Spanish pictorial bindings. But the novels, I +discovered, were, even in paper, almost a peso each; and since I was +reluctant to invest two hundred or more dollars in a mere beginning, the +idea vanished. Their imaginative quality, however, the drawing and color +printing, were excellent, far better than ours; in fact, we owned +nothing at all like them. + +They had a freedom of cruelty, a brutality of statement, of truth, +absent in American sentimentality: where women were without clothes they +were naked, anatomically accounted for, as were the men; and the +symbolical representations of labor and injustice were instinct with +blood and anguish. A surprising number of stories by Blasco Ibanez were +evident; and it struck me that if I had read him in those casual bright +copies, without the ponderous weight of his American volumes and +uncritical reputation, I might have found a degree of enjoyment. There +were a great many magazines, mostly Spanish, gayly covered but with the +stupidest contents imaginable--the bad reproductions of contemporary +photographs on vile grey paper; although one, La Esefa, admirably +reproduced, in vivid color and titles, the Iberian spirit of the lighter +Goya. + +Though I had been on narrow streets before, I had never seen one with +the dramatic quality of Obispo. Hands might almost have touched across +its paved way, and the sidewalks, no more than amplified curbs, hardly +allowed for the width of a skirt. It was cooled by shadow, except for a +narrow brilliant strip, and the open shops were like caverns. The +windows were particularly notable, for they held the wealth, the choice, +of what was offered within: diamonds and Panama hats, tortoise shell, +Canary Island embroidery, and perfumery. There were cafes that +specialized in minute cakes of chocolate and citron and almond paste set +out in rows of surprisingly delicate workmanship, and shallow cafes +whose shelves were banked with cordials and rons, gin, whiskies, and +wine. There were bottles of eccentric shape holding divinely colored +liqueurs, squat bottles and pinched, files of amber sauternes, miniature +glass bears from Russia filled with Kuemmel, yellow and green chartreuse, +syrupy green and white menthes, the Cinziano vermouth of Italy, Spanish +cider, and orderly companies of mineral waters. + +These stores had little zinc-topped bars, and there were always groups +of men sipping and conversing in their rapid intent manner. The street +was crowded and, invariably allowing the women the wall, it was +necessary to step again and again from the sidewalk. They were mostly +Americans: the Cuban women abroad were in glittering automobiles, +already elaborate in lace and jewels and dipping hats, and drenched in +powder. They were, occasionally, when young, extremely beautiful, with a +dark haughtiness that I had always found irresistible. + +In my early impressionable years it had continually been my fate to be +entranced by lovely disagreeable girls with cloudy black hair and skin +stained with brown rather than pink. Imperious girls with elevated chins +and straight sensitive noses! They had never, by any chance, paid the +slightest attention to me; and the Cubans passing by with an air of +supreme disdain called back my old interest and my old desire. I felt, +for the moment, very young again and capable of romantic folly, of +following a particular beauty to where her motor--a De Dion +landaulet--disappeared into a courtyard with the closing of the great +iron-bound doors. + +A marked, not to say sensational, transformation of my own person had +been a conspicuous part of that young imaginary business; for, though I +was fat and clumsy, I managed to see myself tall and engaging, and dark, +too; or, anyhow, a figure to beguile a charming girl. Something of that +hopeless process had taken place in me once more, now the vainer for the +fact that even my youth had gone. The quality which called back a past +illusion was very positive in Havana, and my feeling for the city was +greatly enriched, further defined. It was charged with hazard for what +men like me had dreamed, leaving the actuality for the pretended; the +pretended, that so easily became the false, was, in Havana, real. + +The Obispo under its striped awnings, with its merchandise of coral and +high combs and pineapple cloths; the women magnetic with a Spain that +had slept with the East, the South; the bright blank walls, lemon +yellow, blue, rose; the palms borne against the sky on trunks like +dulled pewter; the palpable sense of withdrawn dark mystery, all created +an atmosphere of a too potent seductiveness. The street ended in the +Plaza de Armas, with the ultramarine sea beyond; and as I sat, facing +the arched low buff facade of the President's Palace, my brain was +filled with vivid fragments of emotion. + +What suddenly I realized about Havana, the particular triumph of its +miraculous vitality, was that it had never, like so much of Italy, +degenerated into a museum of the past, it was not in any aspect +mortuary. Its relics of the conquistadores were swept over by the flood +of to-day. Yet I began to be vaguely conscious of the history of Cuba, +of that Cuba from which Cortez had set sail, in the winter of fifteen +hundred and nineteen, for Mexico. Later this would, perhaps, become +clearer to me; not pedantically, but because the spirit of that early +time was still alive. I made no effort to direct my mind into deep +channels. What must come must come; and if it were a gin rickey rather +than the slavery of the repartimento system, I'd be little enough +disturbed. + +The gin rickey proved to be an immediate reality, in the patio of the +Inglaterra--a stream of silver bubbles shot into a glass where an +emerald lime floated vivaciously. I had no intention of going out again +until the shadows of the late afternoon had lengthened far toward the +white front of the Gomez-Mena building across the plaza; and after lunch +I went up to the quiet of my room. I should, certainly, write no +letters, read--idly--none of the few books published about Cuba, which +were on my table; and I began the essays of James Huneker called +Bedouins. His rhapsodies over Mary Garden, as colorful in style as the +glass above the window, I soon dropped and picked indifferently among +the novels that remained. A poor lot--the thin current stream of +American fiction, doubly pale in Havana. + +The day wheeled from south to west. I was perfectly contented to linger +doing nothing, scarcely thinking, in the subdued and darkened heat. +There was a heavy passage of trunks through the echoing hall without, +the melancholy calling of the evening papers rose on the air; I was +enveloped in the isolation of a strange tongue. To sit as still as +possible, as receptive as possible, to stroll aimlessly, watch +indiscriminately, was the secret of conduct in my situation. Nothing +could be planned or provided for. The thing was to get enjoyment from +what I did and saw; what benefit I should receive, I knew from long +experience, would be largely subconscious. I had been in Havana scarcely +more than a day, and already I had collected a hundred impressions and +measureless pleasure. How wise I had been to come ... extravagantly, +with--as it were--a flower in my coat, a gesture of protest, of +indifference, to all that the world now emphasized. + + * * * * * + +However, the tranquillity of the afternoon was sharply interrupted by my +going, unexpectedly, to the races at Oriental Park. I had to dress with +the utmost rapidity, leaving the choice of a tie to chance, for the dun +car of the United States Military Attache was waiting for me. The +Attache, handsomely bearing the brown seal of Philippine campaigns, +abstracted in manner, sat forward with an imperturbable military +chauffeur, while the back of the car was flooded by the affable speech +of a Castilian marquis whose variety of experience in the realms of +expert and dangerous games had been limited only by their known forms. +It was unquestionably the mixture of my commonplace Presbyterian blood +and incurable habit of romance that gave me a distinct satisfaction in +my surroundings. I was glad that the Marquis was what he was and that +he held a trans-continental motor record; it pleased my honest +democratic instincts when other cars were held back for our progress; +and, finally, the deep chairs on the veranda of the Jockey Club were +precisely right for a lounging afternoon in an expensive sporting +atmosphere. + +The race track seemed to me long--was it a mile?--and, with the horses +at a starting post across from the grandstand, I couldn't tell one from +another. The grandstand was on the right, and beyond the park were low +monotonous lines of stables. It had been raining, the track was heavy, +and the race that followed the blowing of a bugle covered the silk of +the jockeys with mud. My pleasure, as always, slowly subsided at the +persistent intrusion of an inner destructive questioning. Incontestably +the racing, the horses lining fretfully and scrambling through the muddy +pools, left me cold. The sweep of the Jockey Club, too, was +comparatively empty of interest; the spectators there, though they were +more or less intent upon the results posted on the board opposite, were +not the immemorial onlookers at such affairs of sweepstakes, selling +plates and furloughs. + +The Cuban women present, elaborately dressed for shaded lawns and salons +de the, were largely foreign to the wide-spread open spectacle. I +remembered English races where groups of dukes with ruddy features, in +rough tweeds, sat through drizzling afternoons on their iron-shod seat +ricks, and women of title, in waterproofs and harsh brogues, tramped +through the sloshing turf ... an attitude far removed from Havana. A +group of royal palms, lifted in the middle distance, alone gave the +races an exotic air; though they were, of course, promoted and ridden by +Americans, and their mechanics were quite those which operated in New +Orleans and Butte and Baltimore. Now I was annoyed because I had, +thoughtlessly, come; I might as well have gone to the baseball game in +what had formerly been the bull ring. + +Yet I could retire to my speculations for escape, and I thought how +peculiarly modern outdoor games, sport, belong to the British--to them +and their relatives beyond the sea. I remembered, in this connection, +the story of a French vicomte I knew, a man of imposing build, who, in +yellow gloves, shot field larks attracted by the flashing of a mirror +manipulated by his valet. Le sport! But the Spaniards, bred to the +delicate agility of bull fighting, trained in endurance on the +inconceivably fast pelota courts, were more athletic than the French; +though, as a race, they were inclined to delegate their games to +professionals. The sporting amateur, in spite of the Marquis, was a +rarity; rather they chose to be lookers-on at brilliant diversions which +retained an appreciable amount of a mediaeval cruelty diversified from +our own brutal strain. + +This, naturally, had been influenced, strengthened, in Cuba by the +climate, the breath of the tropics; even the winters were not conducive +to violent exercise, aside from the fact that that was the prerogative +of stolid temperaments. It was the deliberate, the unexcitable, who +most excelled at trials of personal muscular skill; and neither of them +were at home below certain latitudes. For myself, I was grateful, for I +hadn't much in common with the exemplifications of field skill I had +met. They were very apt to pay for their success by the absence of the +attributes I particularly admired; often they were snobs of a very +exasperating type--monuments of college beef with irreproachable hair, +sacrosanct pins, and insensate conventional mentalities. + +A race at an end, the jockeys, carrying their saddles, trooped to the +judges' stand to be weighed, and I was shocked by their wizened, +preternaturally cunning faces. They were like pygmies of a strange breed +in red and yellow and blue satins; faultless for their purpose, on the +ground they were extraordinary, leather-skinned, with puckering eyes, +drawn mouths, and distorted bodies. They wrangled among themselves in +shrill or foggy voices--a very depressing specialization of humanity. +But the horses were magnificent, slender and shining. I admired them +from a distance, glad that it was no part of my responsibility to ride. +Long ago, under the pressure of an untender emotion, I had learned to +sit on a horse through his reasonable moments; but I had never become at +ease, and I stopped riding when, on the country road of a May Sunday +noon, a tall sorrel ran away with me so fast and so far that we passed +three churches with their scattering congregations. + +There were, on the veranda, drinks, and even they--the Scotch +highballs--translated into Spanish, had an unfamiliar and borrowed +sound. It was on my return, stopping at the Telegrafo Cafe, that I +learned the delightful possibility of a Daiquiri cocktail. It was twice +as large as ordinary, what in the north was called a double; but no +Daiquiri out of Cuba could be thought of in comparison. Only one other +drink might be considered--a Ramos gin-fizz. My extreme allegiance had +been given to the latter. I was not willing, even in the Telegrafo, to +depose it from first place; but the Telegrafo was a pleasanter spot +than the New Orleans Stag bar. I could see the beginning of the Prado, +with the swirl of cars on their afternoon round to the Malecon. Some +arc-lights, just turned on, were sources of color, like great +symmetrical lemons, rather than of illumination. After another rain the +bare flambeau trees would burst into fiery bloom. + +I was alone, and, sauntering back to the Inglaterra, through the gallery +that had once been the Paseo Isabel, I came on my flower man, who +advanced with a smile and a close nosegay of gardenias. A curious +flower, I thought, getting water for them in a glass. They didn't wilt, +as was usual, but turned brown and faded in the manner of a lovely +pallid woman--a simile I had used in Linda Condon. A flower that +belonged less to nature than to drawing-rooms, to rococo salons and the +opera loges of eighteen forty, and not at all to the present in the +United States. But worn low on the neck, it was entirely appropriate to +the black hair of the Cuban woman. Gold hair, the fair temperament, had +no business with gardenias: bouquets of white sweet peas looped with +pale green and silver ribbon, yes; and dark bunches of moss roses; the +old bouquets of concentric rings of buds in lace paper! They were the +property of the girls I had known, the frank girls with clear grey eyes +and the appealing girls with eyes like forget-me-nots. Something more +poignant, a heavier disturbing perfume, was necessary against a figure +seen only from a balcony or with a vague fleetness behind a grille +gracefully wrought out of iron. + +My shutters now were opened, and I could make out, against the dimming +sky, the languid folds of the Spanish flag above the entrance of the +Centro Gallego--the standard that had conquered the western tropics, +only, in turn, to be subdued by a freedom of the wind mightier than His +Most Catholic Majesty. + + * * * * * + +There was some question of where I'd go for dinner, for in Havana there +were many cafes to explore--the Dos Hermanos, the Paris, the Florida, +the Hotel de Luz, the Miramar; but, finally, I walked down to the Prado, +to the sea and the Miramar, a little because of its situation, directly +on the Malecon, but principally for the reason that it had one of the +most beautiful names possible, a name which called up the image of a +level tide so smooth that it held in shining replica the forts, the +ships, and the clouds. Tables were prepared for dinner in the +restaurant, while those on the terrace were without cloths; but there I +determined to sit, and the waiter whose attention I captured, after a +long delay, agreed. + +A solitary couple had their heads together by the window, and they, with +myself, were the only diners. It was, evidently, not now the place to go +to at this hour. Beyond the dining-room, a patio, or rather an open +court, was set for dancing, melancholy as such spaces can be, deserted +and half-lighted; but I saw that a considerable activity was expected +much later. + +I was glad that the terrace was empty, for, with the light now faded +from the sea and its blueness merging into black, the remote +tranquillity of evening was happier without a sharp chatter of voices. +The Miramar, considering its place--the most advantageous in all +Havana--and fame was surprisingly small: scarcely more than two stories +high, the sombre maroon walls with their long windows hardly filled an +angle of the Malecon. The dinner was slow in arriving, the silver made +its appearance, a goblet was brought separately, a plate of French bread +was later followed by its butter. The minute native oysters were no more +than shreds adhering to their shells, but they had a notable flavor; a +crawfish was at its brightest apogee; and an omelet browned in a +delicate perfection of powdered sugar. + +I deserted Spanish wine, the admirable Riscal, for champagne; for there +was about an air of departed charm, the whisper of old waltzes and +tarleton, that demanded commemoration. The Miramar had been the gay +center of that mid-century life which had folded Havana in the lasting +influence of its memories. A gaiety not even at a disadvantage compared +to the feverish society of to-day! The bodices then had been no more +than scraps of chambery gauze and Chinese ribbon below shoulders to the +whiteness of which the entire feminine age had been devoted. The +flounced bell skirts had swung airily on gracious silk clappers. + +The automobiles on the Malecon multiplied, for the night was hot; soon +there was a solid double opposed procession on the broad sweeping drive. +This was a triumph of American engineering and, I had no doubt, an +improvement on the informality of rocks and debris that had existed +before. Yet I should liked to have seen it when the promenade had not +yet been laid down with mechanical precision, in, perhaps, the early +seventies. Then there were sea baths cut in the live rock at the end of +the Paseo Isabel, at the Campos Eliseos, where the water was like a +cooler liquid green air, and where, after storms, a foaming surf poured +over the barriers. There were no motors then, but volantes and the +modern quintrins, with two horses, one outside the shafts, and a riding +calesero in vermilion and gold lace; and, latest of all, as new as +possible, the victorias. + +Neither, then, was the Prado paved, but the trees were infinitely +finer--five rows there were in fifty-seven--when the clamor of the city +was, in great part, peals of bells. This was a familiar process with me, +to leave the present for the past in a mood of irrational regret. But +never for the heroic, the real past; the years I chose to imagine lay +hardly behind the horizon; in Italy it had been the Risorgimento, at +farthest the villeggiatura of Antonio Longo or the viole d'amore of +Cimarosa in churches. And now, drinking my champagne on the empty +flagged terrace of the Miramar, facing, across the parade of +automobiles, the blank curtain of the night, starred on the right by the +lights of castellated forts, my mind vibrated with grace notes no longer +heard outside the faint distilled sweetness of music boxes. + +As if in derision of this, a loud unexpected music rose from the +bandstand in the Plaza, and I saw that a flood of people, seated or +moving along the pavements and through the lanes of chairs, had +gathered. Nothing, I thought, could have delighted me more; but my +anticipation was soon smothered by the absurdity of the selections: they +were not from Balfe nor Rossini, neither military nor the accented +rhythm of Spain ... the opening number was Parsifal, blown into the +profound night with a convention of brassy emphasis. + +At the total destruction of my pleasure I cursed the pretentious +stupidity of the band-master and a great deal else of modern Cuba. I +remembered particularly some regrets, locally expressed, that the +Spanish domination was no more. Things, it was said, were better ordered +then. But this was a position the vainness of which I couldn't join: it +was no part of my disposition to combat, or even regret, the inevitable. +My course--quite other--was to project myself into periods whose very +loss formed most of their charm. Gone, they took on the tender memories +of the dead, and were invested with the dignity, the beauty, of a warm +fragility. + +Two girls were now seated at a table by the entrance, and, though they +were alone for the moment, it was evident that they had no intention of +remaining in that unprofitable state longer than necessary. Their fleet +appraising glances rested on me and the silver bucket by my chair, and +one permitted the shadow of a discreet smile to appear on her carmined +lips. She was pretty, lightly dressed in a flowery summer stuff, but she +was as gold in coloring as corn silk; an intrusion in Havana I seriously +deplored. The other was dark, but she was, at the same time, +disagreeable; something had annoyed her excessively, and I made no move. +Such company was occasionally entertaining, in a superficial +conversational sense; but, I was obliged to add, not often. + +I went over all the informal girls I could recall who had been worth the +effort to cultivate them, either charming or wise or sensitive, and my +bag, unlike Chopin's or what George Moore reported his, was +discouragingly slim. They had been, but perhaps of necessity, +materialists, valuers only of the expensively concrete; yes, the +majority of such adventures had been sordid. It was due, without +question, to certain deterrent qualities in my own personality; but even +more, I was convinced, to the fact that, in America, girls, or at least +those of my youth, regarded emotion as portentously synonymous with +ruin. Emotion, for nice girls, was deprecated; their sense of modesty, +of shame, was magnified at the expense of everything else. This, +together with the tragic difference in the age of marriage in nature and +in society, had condemned the United States to very low levels of +feeling. + +Unfortunately I had been born into the most rigid of all societies--a +prosperous and Presbyterian middle-class; an influence that succeeded in +making religion hideous before I was fifteen, planting in me, too, the +belief that man was, in his instinctive life, filthy. I outgrew the +latter, but never the first; and now, looking back, I could recognize +how that lauded creed had nearly damned me to a hell far surpassing in +dreadfulness anything of its own bitter imagining. The cold metaphysical +fog had saturated us all alike.... How dreary my early experience was +... what detestable travesties of passion! A carful of young men soon +stopped at the curb of the Miramar, and the two girls, dark and gold, +were immediately invested with the politest attentions. There was a +chorus of laughter and protests and suggestions, in which a privileged +waiter joined; and afterwards they vociferously left to dance at +Carmelo. + + * * * * * + +Walking generally in the direction of my room, I left the Prado for an +especially dramatic, no, melodramatic, street, where the bare walls and +iron bolted doors were made startling by the white glare of electric +lights. Fixed to the walls, infrequently, were the wrought-iron brackets +of the earlier lanterns, converted, it might be, for the period before +the present, into gas jets. In that watery illumination such streets +must have seemed less amazing than now, and entirely natural with only +the oil lanterns lifting a small surface of masonry or an isolated angle +out of the night. Indeed, whole districts were dark, except for a rare +lamp privately maintained as an obligation of grace. That darkness, like +the streets, was mediaeval; they belonged one to the other--ways through +which it was congruous to carry a flare and a sword, practical measures +both. + +These precautions had been long discarded, but the passages themselves +were unchanged, not a stone had shifted; they were, particularly at +night, the Middle Ages. And it was as though a sudden blaze had been +created by unholy magic; a sparkling and infernal radiance, throwing +into intolerable clearness the decent reticence of the time. The arc +lights gave the streets an absolute air of unreality and tragic +strangeness. Moving in them, I had the feeling of blundering awake into +a dream, of being irretrievably lost in an illusion of potential horror. +An open door with its glimpse into an inner room only increased the +oppression: it, too, was brilliant with electricity, a room of +unrelieved icy pallor, except for a warmer blur under an Agony on the +Cross, where a small company of men and women sat in a rigid blanched +formality that might have been death. + +It was quite natural, a commonplace of Havana; but rather than a picture +of familiar life, it resembled the memento mori of a grotto. My thoughts +turned to the symbols and representations of the Catholic Church--a +business of blood and torment and flame, of Sebastian torn with arrows +and a canonized girl, whose name I forgot, carrying her eyeballs in a +hand. Curiously enough, the spirit which had given birth to this +suffering had been popularly lost, together with any conception of the +ages in which it occurred; and all that remained was a pathological +horror. Italy and Spain were saturated by it--Italy in the revolting wax +spectacles of Easter, and Spain with the veritable crucifixions of +to-day. + +It was, I supposed, to a certain extent unavoidable in an establishment +whose hold on the ponderable present depended on threats and promises +laid in the future. But it seemed to me unfortunate, to say the least, +that a church whose business was life should be so concerned with smoky +death. Threats and promises! The early history of Cuba, I remembered, +was inbound with the administrative and protective powers of the Church: +in fifteen hundred and sixteen the native Cubenos were put in the charge +of the Order of Jeronimites, localized in La Espanola--Santo Domingo. +The double motive of the Spanish Christian kings in the western +hemisphere had been conversion and gold, but which of these was +uppermost it was impossible to determine. However, when the gold, the +temporal interest, decreased in one locality, the spiritual concern of +Seville shifted to the more productive regions. + +That was a period, a conquest, when a violent death was a greater +blessing than living in a state of damnable heresy; and so, between the +saving of their souls and the loss of their bodies in the king's mines, +the natives were thoroughly cared for. It must be said, though, that de +las Casas, a priest whose spirit was above any intimidation or venality, +denounced the outrages against the Cuban Indians to the shining heavens, +the cerulean sea, the Audencia, and the Throne. But his humanitarianism +was ineffectual against a system founded on the belief that a god had +given the earth and its recalcitrant people for the profit and glory, +the servants, of a single religious dogma. + +It was, possibly, a mental imperfection which gave impressions, +emotions, such a great suggestibility. Returning toward the Inglaterra, +I had no intention of losing myself in the mazes of applied theology; +and I speedily dropped such a sombre topic from my thoughts. Turning +back to the Prado, I found the walks filled with men, progressing slowly +or seated on the flat marble benches along the sides. Whenever a woman +did pass on foot, their interest and speculations were endless: heads +turned in rows, sage remarks were exchanged, and tentative simpaticas +murmured. Her mother--if she had the slightest pretensions to youth or +good looks--was fervently blessed for so fetching a daughter. Here, of +course, was the defect of the local attitude toward women--it put the +emphasis perpetually on a gallantry affecting the men more even than the +women. There was a constant danger of becoming one-sided. + +The Telegrafo and the Louvre were crowded, with more refrescos and ices +on the table than authoritative drinks; the cigarettes of the discursive +throngs in the Parque Central were like a sheet of fire-flies, and the +Marti and Pairet theatres were spreading abroad the audiences of their +second evening shows. The patio of the Inglaterra was well filled, and I +stopped there; not, however, for a naranjada. Some late suppers were +still occupying the dining-room, and a drunken American was gravely +addressing a table and meeting with a mechanical politeness that I +admired for its sustained patience. He left, finally, and wandered +unsteadily, a subject of entertainment for his fellows and a mark of +contempt to the Cubans present. Beyond me were some beautifully dressed +English--two men in the final perfection of easy masculine garb and a +girl, flushed with beauty, in pearls. On the other hand a young +Frenchman, decorated with the most honorable of war ribbons, and two +women, all in mourning, were conversing in the difficult Parisian idiom. + +I should have liked to be at either table--their attractions were equal; +but, forced to remain alone, I thought of how rude the English would +have been had I moved over to them. The English would have been boorish, +and the French would have met me with an impenetrable polite reserve. +Both would regard me as an idiot or an agent; to have spoken to them +would have been an affront. And yet I was confident that we should have +got on very well: I was not without a name in London, and the French +were delightfully sensitive to any practising of the arts. The English, +I gathered from their unguarded talk, were cruising on a yacht now lying +in Havana harbor; and I saw myself, the following morning, going off to +them in a smart tender and sitting under the white awning spread aft, +with a whisky and soda, talking or not, but happily aware of the shining +brass and mahogany fittings, the immaculate paint and gay pennants. + +I had always liked worldly pomp and settings, marble Georgian houses +with the long windows open directly on closed greens and statues of +lead; and to linger, before going down to dinner, on a minstrel's +gallery above a stone hall and gathered company. I'd rather be on a +yacht than on an excursion boat; yet I infinitely preferred reading +about the latter. For some hidden or half perceived reason, yachts were +not impressive in creative prose; there the concerns and pleasures of +aristocracy frequently appeared tawdry and unimportant. Even its +heroism, in the valor of battle and imperturbable sacrifice, was less +moving to me than simpler affairs. Yet there was no doubt but that I was +personally inclined to the extremes of luxury; and this apparent +contradiction brought to my life, my writing, the problem of a devotion +to words as disarmingly simple as the leaves of spring--as simple and as +lovely in clear color--about the common experience of life and death, +together with an absorbing attention for Manchu women and exotic +children and emeralds. + + * * * * * + +The following day, hot and still, with the exception of capricious +movements of air in paved shaded places, was overcast, the brilliancy of +Havana, of the white and green plazas, subdued. And this softening of +sharp lines and blazing facades seemed to influence, too, the noises, +the calls, of the streets, so that it was all apparently insubstantial, +like the ultimate romantic mirage of a city. I wandered along Neptuno +Street to Belascoin, and then to the Parque Maceo, where I ignored the +massed bronze and granite of its statue for the slightly undulating +shimmering tide. In the distance the sea was lost in the sky--a nebulous +gray expanse such as might have existed before the beginning of +comparative solidity. I lost all sense of time, the centuries were +jumbled together like mangos in a basket. Yes, they were no greater, no +more important or stable, than tropical fruit. + +The vivid spectacle of Cuba, for example, contracted to a palm's +breadth, the island became nothing more than the glimmer of a torch in +illimitable dusk. It had been discovered by Columbus, a presumptuous +term used arrogantly in the sense of created; an Arcadian shore where, +because food grew without cultivation, without effort, and the gold was +soft for beating into bracelets, the natives lived easily and +ornamentally and in peace. They wore, rather than steel and the harsh +shirts of the Inquisition, the feathers of birds with woven dyed quills +and fragrant grasses. They sang, they danced with a notable grace, loved +and died in the simplicity of bohios of palm board and thatch under nine +Caciques. + +Then, in the drawing of a breath, they were all destroyed, gone, killed +by slavery, in the name of God on the points of swords, by the +rapacity, the corruption, the diseases, of civilization. A Spanish Cuba +rose--Iberian and yet singularly different--a business of +Captain-General and Teniente Rey, of alcalde and alcaide, of Santiago de +Cuba and San Cristobal de la Habana. The French under Jacques Sores, and +the English under Drake, sailed over the horizon. In less than a second, +the expiration of a sigh, Diego de Velasquez and Narvaez, Isabel de +Bobadilla, Rojas and Guzman, the merchant Diego Perez in vain laying the +guns of the Magdalena in defense of the past, had gone. The Cedula from +Madrid, in eighteen hundred and twenty-five, began the conspiracies, +Tacon came and went, the fiscals beat free colored men to death and +entertained the negro women naked at balls. The Lopez rebellion was +followed by the ten years' war of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight and +the peace of Zanjon, the great rebellion and Weyler. + +There remained now the indefinite sea and a city withdrawn, secretive, +made vaguely beautiful by intangible voices, all its voices that had +laughed and shouted, whispered and cried; and by the towers and walls +merged in a single pattern, the old and the new drawn together by an +aspect of impermanence, freed from the deceptive appearance of solidity. +Suddenly its history had been shown to me in a flash of emotion, a mood +of feeling. I hadn't come to Cuba ignorant of the land, but I had +determined to slight what was but written inanimate fact. I had no +disposition for instruction: books were powerless to create La Punta for +me, it must bear its own credentials ... it might become, to my +uncertain advantage, as important as a Daiquiri cocktail, as a Larranaga +cigar, but hardly more. + +In any other case I should have cheated myself, not only of pleasure, +the relaxation possible to honesty of mind, but of any hope of future +material. The creative habit was the most tireless and frugal in +existence: there was nothing--no experience, person, disillusionment, or +pain--not endlessly sounded for its every note and meaning. No one could +predict what would be indispensable, just as it was impossible to +foresee, in the projection of a novel, where its fine moments occurred. +And, returning to the descriptive and historical books on Cuba, left so +largely unread at the Inglaterra, it was probable that they had omitted, +in their effort for literal and conventional emphasis, what might in +their subject be vivifying to me. + +This, however, was beyond spoiling--a history so picturesque, as I have +intimated, that its very vividness, its commonest phases, had become the +threadbare material of obvious romance. But, outside of all that, the +other Havana, the mid-Victorian Pompeii, a city that none could have +predicted or told me of, offered the incentive of its particular and +rare charm. In the Parque Maceo, on the sea wall, my imagination stirred +with the first beginnings of a story: it would take place in the period +when the avaricious grip of Spain was loosening, a story of secret +patriotism and the idealism of youth, set in marble salons, at the +opera and the cafes. It would not concern itself with any love except +the fidelity between two men, a story of friendship. + +There it would be different from The Arrow of Gold and Dona Rita; no +peignoirs, thank you, but a formality, a passionate propriety, in +keeping with the social gravity and impersonal devotion of the very +young. There must be crinoline--would I never escape from that!--and +candelabra with glittering prisms; Spanish soldiers in striped linen and +officials with green-tasselled canes. My youth, he'd come from the +United States, would have his little dinners at the Restaurant +Francaise, in Cuba Street number seventy-two, and his refrescos at the +Cafe Dominica. In the end he'd leave Havana, having accomplished nothing +but the loss of his illusions for the gain of a memory like a dream, but +his friend, a Cuban--I had seen him that first night at dinner in the +Inglaterra--would be killed. How.... + +It was time to go back to the hotel, and the story receded. I walked +too far on Belascoin Street, all the way to Salud; and, past the Tacon +Market, came out on the Parque de Colon, where now there was a hot dusty +wind, like a localized sirocco, and I was glad to reach my room. The +reflection of the colored glass above the window was hardly discernible +on the tiles; the interior was permeated by a shadow which made the +ceiling appear high beyond computation; and my wardrobe trunk, standing +open, exhibited a rack of limp neckties. I turned again to the novels on +the table and again let them drop, unattended, from a listless hand. +Tepid water! And I wondered--a constant subject with me--when we should +have a new vigorous American literature, a literature absolutely native, +by men who had not, like myself, been to school to Turgenev and the +English lyrical poetry. Henry James had found the United States lacking +in background; the lack was evident, but not in the country of his +birth. + +This was not a complaint against The Velvet Glove except as it equally +applied to me; but an intense desire for a fresh talent, an ability to +which we could, without reserve, take off our hats. The fact hit me that +I was forty, although it was still the fashion among reviewers to speak +of me as a promising young man, and that there were patches of grey hair +on my temples. Yet I had been, everything considered, remarkably +successful; there was no need for sentimental regret, a trait of mental +feebleness. + +I decided to do something positive that evening, to go to the theatre, +or, if it were playing, to see the Jai Alai. The latter was possible, +and, by way of the Telegrafo, I reached the Hotel Florida for dinner; a +restaurant which, because of the windows looking down on it, had the +pleasant individual air of a courtyard. The music played, diners came +and went, and I gazed up at the shallow balconies in the hopefulness of +an incorrigible imagination. The Fronton Jai Alai--in Havana the game, +pelota, had taken the title of its court--was a long way from Obispo +Street, but I knew when we had reached it by the solid volume of +shouting that escaped from the high concrete building into the dim +neighborhood. + + * * * * * + +Inside, the court was an immense expanse with granite-laid walls, a long +rectangle, one side of which was formed by the steeply banked rows of +spectators. Regular spaces were marked by white lines on the playing +floor, and at one end the score was hung against the names of the +players, now two teams--the Azules and the Blancos. The boxes were above +the cement ledges packed with standing men, by a promenade, where the +betting was conducted, cigars sold, and a small active bar maintained. +It was the night of a gala benefit, for the Damas de Caridad, and I had +been fortunate in getting a single box seat. I was late, though, and the +game progressing; still, I was the first in our railed space; but the +others, who proved to be Americans, soon followed--three prosperous men, +manufacturers I thought, with wives in whom native good taste had been +given the opportunities of large resources. + +One of the women--who, in the arrangement of the box, sat beside +me--smiled with a magnetism that had easily survived the loss of her +youth; she was rather silent than not, but the rest swept into a +conversation in their best public manner. A man accompanying them, it +developed, knew Cuba and Jai Alai, and he secured for the amusement of +the others a cesta, the basket-like racquet worn strapped to the arm. It +was from him I discovered that the court was two hundred and ten feet +long and thirty-six feet wide; while the service consisted in dropping +the ball and, on its rebound, catching it in the cesta and throwing it +against the far end wall. From there, with a sharp smack audible all +over the Fronton, the ball shot back, if not a fault, within a marked +area, and one of the opposing side caught it, in the air or on the first +bounce, and returned it against the end wall. At first I could see +nothing but the violent activity of the players, frozen into statuesque +attitudes of throwing; vigorous figures in, mostly, white, with soft red +silk sashes. I heard the ball hit, and saw it rolling out of play; and +then, with some slight realization of the rapidity of its flight, I was +able to follow the course from cesta to wall and floor. + +There had never been, I was certain, another game in which instantaneous +judgment, skill, and endurance had been carried to such a far point. +There was seldom a fault or error; the ball, flying like a bullet, was +caught and flung with a single gesture; again and again it carried from +one end wall to the other, from which it was hurled on. Angles of flight +were calculated and controlled, the long side wall was utilized.... Then +a player of the Azules was hit in the ankle, and the abruptness with +which he went down showed me a possibility I had ignored. + +During this the clamor of the audience was indescribable, made up, for +the most part, of the difficulties of constantly shifting odds and +betting. The odds changed practically with every passage of the ball: +opening at, say, five to three against the favorites, as they drew +steadily ahead in a game of twenty-five points it jumped to eight to +four, ten to three, anything that could be placed. On the floor a small +company of bookmakers, distinguished by their scarlet caps, shouted in +every direction, and betting paper was thrown adroitly through the air +in hollow rubber balls. Those who had backed at favorable odds the team +now far ahead were yelling jubilantly, and others were trying, at the +expense of their lungs, to cover by hedging their probable losses. + +There was, however, toward what should have been the end, an +unlooked-for development--the team apparently hopelessly behind crept +up. An astounded pause followed, and then an uproar rose that cast the +former sound into insignificance. Soon the score was practically tied: +there were shrill entreaties, basso curses, a storm of indiscriminate +insults. Now the backers of the lesser couple scrambled vocally to take +advantage of the betting opportunities forever lost--the odds were even, +then depressed on the other side. When the game was over the noise died +instantly: men black with passion, shaking with rage, crushing their +hats or with lifted clenched fists, at once conversed with smiling +affability. My eyes had been badly strained, and I was glad to leave the +box and stroll along the promenade. The betting counters were jammed by +the owners of winning tickets, the men behind the bar were, in their own +way, as active as the pelota players. + +The majority of the boxes were occupied by Cuban families, but yet there +was an appreciable number of foreigners. A slender girl, in a low dinner +dress, was sitting on the railing of her box, swinging a graceful +slipper and smoking a cigarette--New York was indelibly stamped on +her--and, among the masculine world of Spanish antecedents, she created +a frank center of interest. For her part, she studied the crowd quite +blocking the way below her with a cold indifference, the personification +of young assured arrogance. + +A quiniela followed, with six contestants, one against the other in +successive pairs; but my eyes were now definitely exhausted by the +necessarily shifting gaze, and my interest fastened on the woman beside +me. She was at once intimately attached to the people with her and +abstracted in bearing: a woman not far from fifty, but graceful still +and, in a flexible black silk crepe with a broad girdle of jet, still +desirable. It seemed to me that, in spite of an admirable manner, she +was a little impatient at the volubility around her; or it might be, in +contradiction to this, she was exercising a patience based on fortitude. +It was clear that she hadn't a great deal in common with the man who had +evidently been married to her for a considerable length of years. They +spoke little--it was he who had fetched the cesta--both immersed in +individual thoughts. A woman, I decided, finely sensitive, superior; +who, as she had grown older, had found no demand for the qualities which +she knew to be her best. + +A painful situation, a shocking waste, from which, for her, there was no +escape, for she had patently what was known as character. She at once +was conscious of the absolute need for spiritual freedom and bound by +commitments paramount to her self-esteem. But even if she had been more +daring, less conscientious, what could she have gained; what was there +for her in a society condemned to express the spirit in the terms of +flesh? She had too much charm, too great a vitality, to be absorbed in +the superficial affairs of women, the substitute life of charity. And +once married, probably to a man the model of kindly faith, she was +caught in a desert of sterile monotony. Even children, I could see, if +they existed, had not slain her questioning attractive personality. + +She smiled at me again, later, her narrow slightly wasting hands clasped +about a knee--a smile of sympathetic comprehension and unquenchable +woman. She would have been happier chattering in the obvious strain of +stupidity behind her: any special beauty was always paid for in the +imposed loneliness of a spoken or unspoken surrounding resentment. To be +content with a facile compliment, the majority of tricks at auction +bridge, mechanical pleasures, was the measure of wisdom for women in +her situation. The last quiniela over, plainly weary she gathered a +cloak about her shoulders and left the box, without, as I had hoped, +some last gesture or even a word: and I pictured her sitting listlessly, +distraught, in the cafe to which they were proceeding. + + * * * * * + +The pelota immediately vanished from my mind before the infinitely more +fundamental and interesting problem of marriage; and--remembering the +ominous sign of a woman's club on the Malecon--I wondered if the Cuban +women were contented with the tradition as it had been handed down to +them. In the life that I knew in the north, an infinitesimal grain of +sand irritating in the body of the United States, the sacredness of +matrimony had waned very seriously; it would, of course, go on, probably +for ever, since no other arrangement could be thought of conciliating +the necessities of both dreams and property; but, subjected to the +scrutiny of intelligence rather than sentimentality, it seemed both +impotent and foolish. The impotence certainly, for whereas my +grandfather had thirteen children and my mother four--or was it five?--I +had none. There had always been individuals unrestrained by the +complicated oaths of the wedding service--a strictly legal proceeding to +which the church had been permitted to add its furbelows--dissatisfied +ladies, and gentlemen of the commercial road. I wasn't referring to +them, but to the look, at once puzzled, humorous, and impatient, that +lately I had seen wives of probity turn on their husbands. + +They expressed the conviction that the purely masculine aphorism to the +effect that home was the place for women meant nothing more than a +clearing of the decks for unrestricted action. This was beautifully +displayed, confirmed, in Havana, where decks were without a single +impediment; and I speculated about the attitude of the Cuban women in +houses barred with both actual and metaphorical iron. Tradition weighed +heavily on their outlook; but there was that club on the Malecon. +Tradition had bound the farm wives of Pennsylvania, yet they were +progressively rebelling against the insanity of endless labor and +isolation. But, perversely, the married groups I saw in Havana were +remarkably close, simple, and happy. They sat in rows at the concerts on +the plazas, went off on small excursions, in entire harmony--a thing +impossible to the born American, with whom such parties began in +exasperation and ended in nervous exhaustion. An American husband, of +the class largely evident in Havana, escorted his family abroad with +truculence and an air of shame at being exposed in such a ridiculous +situation. If there was more than one household implicated, the men +invariably drew away together: there was a predominance of cursing and +the wails of irritably smacked children. The truth was that the citizens +of the United States, in their feverish passage through life, had +decidedly a poor time--either restlessness or ambition or +dissatisfaction destroyed their peace of mind. Labor, more highly paid +than at any other place or time, got less satisfaction for its money +than a Cuban mestizo with a peseta. + +My thoughts returned abruptly to the point where they had started, to +marriage, and I hoped that Cuba wouldn't be disorganized by the present +ferment; that the feminine element, discovering their wrongs, wouldn't +leave their balconies and patios for the dusty publicity of the street. +Already a decline had been suffered, first in the loss of mantillas and +combs, next in the passing of single-horse victorias for unrestrained +tin locomotives, and then in the hideous flood of electric lighting. +Still, a great deal of the charm, the empire, of Havana women remained; +while nothing but utter disaster approached them from the north. + +This was no new position for me, and it had never failed to be attacked, +usually with the insinuation that, spiritually, I was part of Turkey in +Asia ... a place of gardens where it was not inconceivable that I'd be +happy: certainly the politics there were no worse than those to which I +had been inured from birth, with murder on the streets at noon +distinguished by a white ribbon in its buttonhole. The Armenians were no +more precariously situated than the Albigenses under Innocent III. I had +heard, as well, that the governments of Cuba had not been free from +suspicion, but it was hoped that elections supervised from the United +States would institute reform. Rare irony! Elections, I should have +said, going back once more to the beginning, opening to emancipated +women. + +Gathering, in imagination, all the feminine world of Havana into a +fragrant assembly, I begged them not to separate themselves from their +privileges; I implored them even--against my personal inclination, for +there, at least, I was no Turk--not to grow slender, if that meant agile +excursions into loud spheres of lesser influence. Those others, I +proceeded, would rapturously exchange a ballot for a seductive ankle, a +graceful breast, or a flawless complexion. Complexion, or rather its +absence, brought immeasurably more supporting votes to the women's party +than convictions. And I added, reprehensibly, some of the things I had +been privately told, as a writer, by women newly in the professions: I +exposed the secret of a lecturer on civic improvement--or it might have +been better babies; I couldn't recall which--who carried a handbagful of +apostrophies to Paolo and Francesca, and that illogical lot, on her +travels. She permitted me to read them in a sunny orchard where the +apples were already, more than ripe, on the ground; and her gaze had +persistently strayed to the wasting fruit. + +The audience melted away--I was unable to discover if they were +flattered or annoyed--and I found myself actually seated at one of the +small tables on the fringe of the the dansant at the Sevilla. The +Cascade Orchestra from the Biltmore, their necks hung with the imitation +wreaths of Hawaii, were playing a musical pastiche of many lands and a +single purpose; and there, foxtrotting intently among girls from the New +York Follies and girls on follies of their own, colliding with race +track touts from Jefferson Park and suave predatory gentlemen of San +Francisco, I found a whole section of young Cuba. + +They returned, in the intermissions, to chaperons complacent or secretly +disturbed, where they had, principally, refrescos; but their attitude +was one of progress and conscious, patronizing superiority to +old-fashioned customs. The daughters of what, in many aspects, was the +Spanish-Cuban aristocracy of the island, were dancing publicly in a +hotel. Here, already, was an example of emancipation. I disliked it, +naturally, not on moral grounds, but because it foreshadowed the +destruction of individuality, the loss, eventually, of Havana, of Cuba, +of Spain ... of everything distinguished that saved the world from +monotony. + +They danced--the Cuban youth--with notable facility, adding to the +hesitation waltz something specially their own, a more intense rhythm, a +greater potentiality; their bodies were at once more fluid and positive; +they were swept up into a mood unknown to the adamant ornaments of +Country Club verandas in the north. A cosmopolitan waiter, anxious to +have me finish and move on, hovered about the table, ignorant of a +traditional courtesy as well as of the requirements of the climate. All +the objectionable features of Broadway cafes, of public ostentation, +mingled servility and insolence, dishonesty--my pina colado was diluted +beyond taste--were being flung, with the air of a favor, into Havana. +Although, for the best, I was even then a little late, I was glad that I +had seen the city when I did, just as I was glad to have known Venice +before the Campanile fell, and the Virginia Highlands when they had not +been modernized. The change of Havana within itself, from palm thatch to +marble, was entrancing; but the arbitrary imposition of stupid habits, +standards, conduct, from outside, damnable. + +In the end the waiter was more forceful than my determination to remain +until my drink and thoughts were at an end, and I rose with them +uncompleted, in a very ill temper. If Cuba hadn't enough innate taste +and nationality to save herself, she must go the popular way to +obliteration. So much else had gone! But later, at the Hotel de Luz, +untouched yet by the hand of imported cupidity, my happiness in Havana +returned. + + * * * * * + +The Hotel de Luz, inimitably Cuban, with the shipping lying vaguely +behind an orderly foliage at the Muelle outside, had a dining-room +partly divided by wooden screens that merged informally into the +surrounding halls and spaces, and an air that was an accumulation of +tradition, like an invisible film lying over everything. A +multiplication of unexpected adventitious detail accomplished, in its +entity, the strangeness, at once enticing and a little sinister, +characteristic of Havana. There was, lurking about, in the darker +corners and passages, a feeling almost of dread, uncomfortable to meet. +And, exploring, I passed a room without windows, largely the color of +dried blood, the quintessence of a nightmare. The third floor, laid in a +triangle of, perhaps, ninety degrees, raised immense corridors paved in +black and white marble blocks, down the long perspective of which moving +figures were reduced to furtive mannikins and voices were lost in an +upper murmur. + +I sat, for a while, in a walnut rocking chair at an end of the sweep, +which amazed me by an architecture, the impressiveness of which +approached oppression. A wall was broken by a file of slatted doors, and +from one of these came the minute irritable clatter of a typewriter; the +bell at the finish of a line sounded like the shiver of a tapped glass, +and a child spoke. It was difficult to think of the Hotel de Luz as a +place of normal residence, as existing at all except in the mental +fantasias of Piranesi--it resembled exactly one of his sere vertiginous +engravings. Yet it was, I knew, the favorite hotel of travelers from the +Canary Islands. + +Continuing to rock slightly and smoke, I pursued the extremely recondite +subject of just such impressions as I had there received: a very +important inquiry, for it had to do with the secret, the unintelligible +heart, of my writing. There was, obviously, in the Hotel de Luz nothing +intrinsically terrifying, strange. My attitude toward it would be +dismissed as absurd by the Canary Islanders. But the effect it produced +on me was tangible, ponderable; it tyrannized over my imagination and +drove it into corridors of thought as sombre as that in reality before +me. I had seen the Piranesi engravings when I was very young and +painfully susceptible to mental darkness and fears; and they had +undoubtedly left their indelible mark ... now brought out by the black +and white marble squares diminishing with the walls in parallel lines. + +The reality of what I felt, then, lay in the combining of the +surroundings and my imagination--a condition, a result, if not unique, +at least unlikely to be often repeated. The sum of another emotional +experience and the Hotel de Luz would be totally different, but equally +true with my own; and from that confusion misunderstanding arose. The +actuality was neither concrete nor subjective; yet, woven of these +double threads, it was absolute. The individuality of places and hours +absorbed me; there was no word in English to express my meaning--the +perception of the inanimate moods of place. It belonged, rather than to +the novel, to the painter, and possibly occupied too great a space in my +pages. Certainly houses and night and hills were often more vivid to me +than the people in or out of them. + +But it was no longer possible, if it had ever been, to disentangle one +from the other, the personal from what seemed the impersonal; for, while +nature was carelessly free from beauty and sentiment and morals, it had +been invested with each of these qualities in turn by a differently +developing intelligence. The elements of nature, partly in hand, were +arbitrarily and subconsciously projected in set forms. I stopped to +think how the mobility of mind perpetually solidified, like cement, +about itself; how fluid ideas, aspirations, always hardened into +institutions, then prisons, then mortuary vaults. Religion had done +this signally, both profoundly and superficially--it was impossible to +picture the faith of John Fox under the frescoes of La Merced Church, a +Methodist exuberance in St. Michael's at Richmond; the Roman ritual was +as much a thing of its silver altars as the Episcopal Church in Virginia +depended on historic communion services and austere box pews. + +Not only was I specially intent on these values: my inability to see men +as free from them, as spiritual conquistadores, had been a cause of +difficulty in the popularity and sale of my books. I lacked both the +conceptions of man as an Atlas, holding up the painted globe, or an +individual mounting securely into perpetuity. If the latter were true, +if there were no death, the dignity of all the great tragic moments of +life and art, the splendor of sacrifice, was cheapened to nothing. I +would have gladly surrendered these for the privilege of continued +existence--in a sphere not dominated by hymnology--but, skeptical of the +future, all I possessed, my sole ideal, was a passionate admiration for +the courage of a humanity condemned to the loss of warm life. + +I had grown more serious than I intended, than, in Havana, was +necessary; what I had set out to discover was simply the explanation of +my feeling about the Hotel de Luz; but undoubtedly it was better for me +to accept emotions, merely to record them, than attempt analysis. + +I had had very little schooling in processes of exact thought, +practically no mental gymnastics. But this was not an imposed hardship +on which I looked back with regret--I had been free to fill my life with +scholastic routine, but balked absolutely: in class rooms a blankness +like a fog had settled over me, from which, after a short half-hearted +struggle, I emerged to follow what, namelessly, interested me. That, for +example, was precisely the manner of my stay in Havana. A course for +which the worst was predicted, specially since I persisted in writing. +And I could see how I'd be censured by the frugal-minded for such a book +as I was more than likely to bring to San Cristobal de la Habana. + +There was, in reality, no practical reason to write about it at all, +since it had been admirably and thoroughly described, the sights, +pleasures, and sounds, in reputable and laudatory paragraphs, a source +of pride to the natives. Here no one could predict, in my search, what +would seem important, to be transcribed--the colored glass above a +window, the sugar at the bottom of a cocktail--and my moral sense, of +course, would be as impotent as my political position was negligible. +Yet the qualities ignored by a more solemn intelligence than mine were +precisely what formed the spirit of Havana; their comprehension was +necessary to that perception of an inanimate mood of place. + +I was constantly in a disagreement with the accepted opinion of what +were, at bottom, the more serious facts, the determining pressures of +existence; and it had always been at the back of my head to write a +novel built from just such trivialities as, it seemed to me, enormously +affected human fate. A very absorbing idea that had gone as far as an +introduction called A Preface of Imperishable Trifles; but the +realization that I had begun in that manner--a suspicious circumstance +in a novel,--where no shadow of an explanation, a justification, was +permissible, led me to put it away. It was the serious defect of the +novel that it commonly resembled the mechanism of an ingenious lock in +which the key turned smoothly for the flinging open, at the appropriate +moment, of a door upon a tableau of justice. It lacked almost entirely +the fatalities of sheer chance, of inconsiderable accidents, which gave +life its characteristic insecurity. + +I had left the Hotel de Luz for echoing stone galleries and streets and +empty paved plazas when I told myself that mine would have simply been a +story of shifted emphasis, for which I should have used my own memories, +since I recalled the wallpaper of a music room after thirty years more +clearly than the details of my father's death, happening when I was +practically mature. The unavoidable conclusion of this was that the +paper, in a way I made no pretence to explain, bore upon me more deeply +than my father; and, with that in view, it was perhaps as well that the +story had remained unwritten. + + * * * * * + +Some of these considerations returned to my mind the following +afternoon, when my fancy had been captured by a woman on a balcony of +the Malecon. The house was small, crushed between two imposing +structures that had been residences but were now apartments, scarcely +two stories and set back of the line, with the balcony at a lower +window. The woman was neither young nor lovely, but, folded in a shawl, +it might have been one of the lost mantillas, she was invested with a +melancholy dignity. It was possible, in the briefest passage, to see not +only her history but the story of a decade, of a vanished greatness +lingering through a last afternoon before extinction--a gesture of Spain +finally submerged in the western seas of skepticism. + +I was extraordinarily grateful to her for standing wrapped with the +shawl in immobile sadness. That was all I wanted from her, the most +indeed, she could give: apart from the balcony, hurrying along the +street with the black lace drawn closely about her head, she would have +been meaningless. The hour in which I saw her, too, the swiftly fading +radiance, had its inevitable part in the effect she produced. I had, I +realized, no wish to restore her to either youth or happiness, I didn't +want to improve her, or the case of Spain, in any way; she was perfect +for my purpose, so eminently selfish, as she was. In begging, in +imagination, the women of Havana to remain on their balconies, I hadn't +given a thought to their welfare or desires. + +The truth was that I regarded them as a part of their iron grilling, +figures on a canvas, the balconies and women inseparable from each +other. It might well be that this was no more than the intolerable +oppression of the past incongruously thrust upon the present, and that +at any minute the women, in righteous indignation and revolt, would step +down into life. But if they were to do that, I hoped it would be put +off until I had returned to the land of the feminine free; I didn't want +to be present when the balconies were definitely deserted for the +publicity of the Sevilla. I should regret their loss heavily, those +points of vantage gracefully ranged across the brilliant facades of +Havana. For there was no other city where balconies were so universal, +so varied, and so seductive. I recalled a balcony high over the Rond +Point de Plain-palais, in Geneva, where, on the left, could be seen the +blue line of the Jura and on the right, through the mounting Rue de +Carouge, the abrupt green cliff of the Salve. Curiously, there were a +great many balconies in Geneva giving on many beautiful prospects--the +Promenade des Bastions and La Treille, the Cite and bridged water; but +they were no more than pleasant, they had no deep significance whatever. +The balconies of Charleston were rather galleries turned privately on +gardens and not upon the streets; while those over the banquettes of New +Orleans, of the vieux carre, had long ago been emptied of their +flowered muslins. + +The popularity of balconies, their purpose, had remained, until now at +least, largely unchanged in Havana. On Sol Street, in the neighborhood +of Oficios and where it met the harbor, they solidly terminated their +tall windows, reached the heights of discreet tradition. There the way +was so narrow that a head above must be bent forward to see what was +passing, affording a clear view of high comb and bright lips, +provocative in the intimacy of their suggestion. The balconies of the +Malecon looked out, conversely, across the unbroken tide of the sea--in +the afternoon, when it was fair, a magical sweep of unutterable blue. +Yet they had suffered a decline--as though the constant noise of +automobiles had rent an evanescent spirit. + +The women there might see, as they chose, either the parade of fashion +or the grey walls and the far horizon; but from the balconies of the +Prado only the former was visible, the whirling motor cars and the +pedestrians in the rows of India laurels. Here the balconies through the +early and late evening were crowded; the chatter, the gesticulations and +smiles, evident on the street. The clothes, however, were no longer +Spanish in characteristic detail, but Parisian; while the essential +atmosphere, the color, of the balconies remained. In carnival--I had +just missed it--they were hung with serpentine and exchanged +bombardments of roses and compliments with the street; but now their +fastness, except to the flutter of a hand, was absolute. + +I saw a group of girls at an impressive window of the Prado, on the +corner of either Trocadero or Colon Street, all in white except for the +clear scarlet of one, like a blazing camellia among gardenias; and, for +a day after, their dark loveliness stayed in my mind. They had had tea, +probably, in the corner of a high cool room with a marble floor, +furnished in pale gilt. I had no doubt that a piano had been played for +a brief explanatory dancing, the trial of new steps neither French nor +Spanish, but American. Some of them, I knew, had been at school in New +York--probably Miss Spence's, where balconies were not cultivated--and I +wondered what they thought about the Havana to which they had returned. +Well, if the Cuban men, the fathers and suitors and husbands, preferred +to keep the historic architecture of their society, of their climate, a +convent of some Sacred Heart would be wiser than a celebrated American +finishing school. + +The New York scene, however carefully veiled and chaperoned, was a +disquieting preparation for the Prado, or even Vedado. What the life on +an estancia was, I couldn't imagine; I had been told that, for a woman, +oftener than not, it was still a model of Castilian rigidity. It had, in +fact, been suggested to me that I write the story of such a girl, shut +away from everything that she had been permitted to see and desire. +Unquestionably a splendid subject, one of the vessels that would hold +everything an ability could pour into it. I realized at once which, in +that individual struggle, must conquer--the heredity of Cuba would be +more powerful than an isolated feminine need. The other women, the +elders, who surrounded her, would be as relentless as any husband, and +in the end she'd become fat and listless. + +Widely different balconies held my attention--on one, flooded with the +morning sun, two women with carnation cheeks and elaborately dressed +hair, but for the rest strikingly informal, laughed an invitation to me +that took no account of the hour. They were, I suppose, tawdry, the +cheap familiars of a cheap street; but the gay orange wall where they +lounged like the painted actors of a zarzuela, their yellow satin +slippers and shoulders impudently bare above chemises pink and blue, all +gave them a certain distinction. Again, in the section of Jesus del +Monte, there were buildings brilliantly and impossibly painted, usually +with cafes on the ground, whose balconies, exposed to an intolerable +heat, overlooked dingy sun-baked fields. They were always empty.... I +could never imagine their use--for there was not only nothing to see, +but no one to be seen by. The houses of Havana, admirable in the +closeness of the city, possible in a bougainvillia-smothered suburb, +were depressingly inappropriate to any contact with the country. They +were lost, detached or strayed away from their fellows; for the happy +plan of the country house was that of exposure to all the favorable +winds that blew, to verandas and open halls rather than balconies and +patios: it was merged into vistas and not relentlessly and jealously +shut on every face. + +A fact that had nothing to do with the tropics or the outskirts of +Havana, where wide dusty stone avenues dropped abruptly in soft roads, +and the balconies were added purely from habit. My own balcony, at the +Hotel Inglaterra, was ideally placed, with its command of an angle of +the Parque Central. I often sat there before dinner, or past the middle +of night; there was always, then, a wind stirring over San Rafael +Street; but the balconies on either side of me, above and below, were +invariably empty, their purpose, it was plain, mistrusted. + + * * * * * + +The patios of Havana, turned so uncompromisingly from the street, were, +perhaps for that reason, even more engaging than the balconies. I saw +them, except those of the government buildings and others semi-public, +through opening or half open doors, or sometimes I looked down into them +from superior heights. They, too, were countless in variety, from the +merest kitchen areas and places of heaped refuse to lovely garden rooms +of flowers and glazed tiling and fountains. This sense of privacy, of +enclosure, in a garden was their most charming feature; and the +possibilities and implications of a patio created a whole social life +with which I was necessarily unfamiliar. They were, usually, in the +hours I knew them, empty but for passing servants ... obviously their +time was late afternoon or evening: fixed to the inner walls were the +iron brackets of lamps, and it was easy to imagine them dimly lighted +and flooded with perfume, with the scent of magnolias and the whisper of +the fountains. + +These details, separately, were not rare, but shut into the masonry of +Havana, their beauty shown in momentary glimpses on streets of blank +walls, their fragrance drooping into unexpected barren places, the +patios stirred my inherent desires. As usual, I didn't want to be gazing +at them from without, but to be a part of their existence: I wanted to +sleep on one, in a room nothing but a stone gallery, or watch the +moonlight slip over the leaves of the crape myrtles and the tiles and +sink into the water. But not to-day, for there were discordant sounds +through the arches with slender twisted Moorish pillars--the subdued +harshness of mechanical music, the echoes of that dissatisfaction which +was everywhere now recognized as improvement. I demanded guitars. + +The masculine chords of the guitar, the least sentimental of +instruments, as the Spaniards were the least sentimental of people, the +deep vibration of resinous stopped strings, was the perfect +accompaniment to that color visible and invisible. Invisible! Always +that, first and most potent. The perpetuity of atmosphere through +transmitted feeling was far more absorbing than the other chimera, of +incorruption. It was tradition, more than moonlight, that steeped the +patios with kindled obscure romantic longings. Within their formal +squares they held the spirit of a great history and of two great races, +two continents. They, the patios, were the East in the West, the +Moroscos on the Peninsula. + +The dress of the present, even the floating films of the women, was +misplaced; these were, in reality, the courtyards of the Orient, and +they needed the dignity of grave robes and gestures, bearded serenity. +In them, initially, women had been flowers lightly clasped with bands of +rubies and dyed illusory veils; there had been no guitars then, but +silver flutes. However, I had no desire to be a part of that time; it +was Spain that possessed me, and not in Grenada but Cuba, during the +Captain-generalship of the Conde de Ricla, in the seventeen sixties +when the British conquests under Albemarle were returned to the island. +That was a period of building and prosperity, the fortifications of San +Carlos and Atares were established, Morro and the Cabanas refashioned, +and the streets and houses of Havana named and numbered. The decline of +Spain, a long imperceptible crumbling, had already begun, but its effect +was not visible in Cuba; there still was a Castilian arrogance burned +more brown, more vivid, by the Caribbean. + +A little late for the plate ships sailing in cloudy companies and +filling Havana with the swords of Mexico and Peru; but my mind and +inclinations were not heroic; I could dispense with Pizarro's soldiers, +fanciful with the ornaments of the Incas, for the quiet of walled +gardens, the hooped brocades of court dresses; all the transplanted +grace of the city and hour. Climate was greater than man, and the first +Cubenos, dead in the mines of Cobre, were being revenged for the +usurpation of their happiness and land; the negroes of the slave trade, +too, were repaying their chains to the last link of misery. But these +counter influences were not perceptible yet in the patios, just as the +French Revolution had still to scatter the polite pastorals only to +survive in the canvases of Boucher and Watteau. + +It was, in Havana as well as Seville, the farewell of true formality, +for after that it became only a form. No one, afterwards, was to bow +instinctively as he left a room or dance to the measures of Beethoven +and Mozart. A useless plant cut down by a rusty scythe! The elegance of +Cuba, however, changing into later Victorianism, was, in the time of de +Ricla, greatly enhanced by its surrounding, by the day before yesterday +when there had been only thatched bohios where now were patios of +marble. Those quiet spaces were sentient with all this, just as the +patios of the churches held the sibilant whisper of the sandals of the +Inquisition, an order already malodorous and expelled from the island by +Antonio Maria Bucarely, the following Captain-general. + +But even yet it would be possible, with the details carefully arranged, +to find an emotional situation in a patio undisturbed since the middle +eighteenth century; for the revenge of the Cubenos and of Africa, of the +red and the black slaves, was that, with the faint or full infusion of +their bloods into their conquerors, dwindled unintelligible desires and +dreamlike passions entered as well. A discoloration of the mind as +actual as the darkening of the skin! And I pictured an obscure impulse +buried in the personality of a sensitive and reserved man, such a trait +as, at moments of extreme pressure, would betray him into a hateful +savagery; or it might be better brought out by a galling secret +barbarity of taste. The Spain of Philip, primitive Africa, and a +virginal island race constrained into one body and spirit must be richly +dramatic. + +It was imperative to regard the patios in such a light, with a strong +infusion of reality, for, half apprehended, they produced that thin +tinkling note of sham romance; they evoked, for a ready susceptibility, +the impressions of opera bouffe ... a danger constantly present in my +thoughts. As it was, I should be accused again of avoiding the actual +and the difficult for an easy unreality; but there was at least this to +be said for what I had, in writing, laid back in point of time--no one +had charged me with an historical novel. + +There was another, perhaps safer, attitude toward the balconies and +patios of Havana: to regard them in an unrelieved mood of realism, to +show them livid with blue paint and echoing with shrill misery, typhoid +fever, and poverty. If I did that, automatically a number of serious +critical intellects would give me their withheld support, they would no +longer regard me as a bright cork floating thoughtlessly over the opaque +depths of life. Well, they could--they'd have to--go to the devil; for I +had my own honesty to serve, my own plot to tend--a plot, as I have +said, where, knowing the effort hopeless, I tried only to grow a flower +spray. If I could put on paper an apple tree rosy with blossom, someone +else might discuss the economy of the apples. + +Or, in Havana, of the oranges. In the meanwhile the patios gave me an +inexhaustible pleasure. Sometimes the walls were glazed with tiles and +the octagonal surface of the fountain held the reflected tracery of +bamboo, while a royal palm towered over the balusters of the roof and +hanging lamps were crowned with fretted metal. Another, with its flags +broken and the basin dry, was deserted except for the soundless +flame-like passage of chromatic lizards; still another was bare, with +solid deep arcades and shadows on the ground and a second gallery of +gracefully light arches. There was, in one, a lawn-parasol in +candy-colored stripes with low wicker chairs and gay cushions; on a +table some tall glasses elbowed a syphon, English gin, and a silver dish +of limes, and a blue-and-yellow macaw was secured to a black lacquer +stand. + + * * * * * + +That, evidently, was not characteristic of Havana, and yet the city +absorbed it, made it a part of a complex richness, a complexity as +brilliantly blended as a rainbow. At first I had been entranced by the +sudden colorful display, it had seemed to be in one marvellously high +key; but now I recognized that it was composed of the entire scale, and +that there were notes profoundly dark. I should have known that, for I +had been, when I was much younger, a painter, and I had learned that +surfaces which seemed to be in one tone were made up of a hundred. The +city, of course, was an accumulation of the men who had made it, the +women who had lived there; and it was possible that Havana had as +intense and varied a foundation as any place that had existed. + +Not in the sense, the historical importance of, for example, Athens; I +had already said that Havana was a city without history, which was true +in the cumulative, inter-human meaning of that term. But it had, within +its limits, on its island like a flower in air, an amazing and absorbing +past. In the beginning, where Spain was concerned, Cuba, a fabulous +land, had promised fabulous gold; but the empires of the Aztecs and +Peru, incalculably richer, and the fatal dream of eternal youth in +Florida, had robbed it of royal interest, of men, food, and ships. It +had settled back, lost to most concern beyond a perfunctory colonial +administration, into a region of agriculture, affected only indirectly +by, and affecting not at all, the universal upheaval elsewhere. Within +Havana itself, then, moulded by the burning sun, the cooling night +winds, and the severing water, a peculiarly essential human development +had taken place. And its history was, for this reason, elusive, most +difficult to grasp; hopelessly concealed from a mere examination of +bastions. + +One by one the colors of its fantastic design grew clearer to me; period +by period the streets and people became intelligible, until they reached +the middle-century era to which I was so susceptible. To arrive, with +the ingredients of a tropical Spain and the pirates of the world, at an +early Victorianism was a mystery which demanded a close investigation. +That air enveloped all the center of the city, its paseos and plazas +and buildings, and still influenced the social life. This, I finally +decided, came from the fact that the architectural spirit which +dominated Havana was of the period before Eastlake; or at least I was +not familiar with any structures erected in such a style, so lavishly +marble, since then. + +There was no absence of modernity in the wharfs and streets, but that +loud impetuous tide poured through the ways of a quieter water, and in +the side passages the sound diminished. Havana was a great port, but the +steam shipping along its waterfront was incongruous with the low +tranquil whiteness, the pseudo-classicism, of the buildings that held +along the bay. The latter particular, elaborated from my first +impression, carried the city back to the end of the eighteenth century +and the beginning of the nineteenth. I had no intention of examining the +dates of numerous structures, but the stamp of their time was on the +Ionic entablatures. Then women, as well, had copied in their dress the +symbol of the Greek column, of sculpture instead of painting, except +for the charming and illogical innovation of turbans; and they went +about in sandals and gowns falling straight from their looped breasts. +Such a figure, with her head bound in vermilion, must have been enticing +in the great shaded bare rooms. There must have been, too, an +extraordinary assemblage of negro pages and majordomos in ruby silks and +canary and velvet. + +The feminine silhouette changed remarkably in thirty years, from a +column to a cone, from the ultimate in flowing lines to a bouquet-like +rigidity; and the severity of furnishings, of incidentals, expanded in +queer elaborations. It was, notably, a period of prudery, of all which, +objectively, I disliked; while at the same time there had been the +undercurrent of license that always accompanied an oppressive hypocrisy. +This, I could see, was true of its age in Havana: men--the real +prudes--had been heavily whiskered at home with a repressed morality, +and betrayed in another quarter by heredity and the climate. Two periods +that, except for some beautiful books, had been steeped in an ugliness +from which the world had not recovered. Indeed, while it was now +fashionable to deride them, the present was, in some ways, perceptibly +worse: Literature was, perhaps, bolder in scope, but it showed hardly +more than a surprise at the sound of its comparative liberty of speech. +The art of painting had burst into frantic fragments that might or might +not later be assembled into meaning; the architecture had degenerated +into nothing more than skilful or stupid adaptation. + +In the large disasters that were sweeping the world, the mad confusion +of injustice and revolt, of contending privilege, the serene primness of +Havana, its starched formality of appearance, offered a priceless +quietude. It was, at once, static and mobile, a place of countless moods +that merged at the turning of a corner, the shifting of a glance from La +Punta to the circular bandstand at the foot of the Prado. Never +pedantic, it was a city more for the emotions than the intellect; +intellect, in its astigmatic conceit, had largely overlooked Havana; +and Havana had missed little enough. Its monuments and statues, where +they were complacently innocent of art, had been brought into harmony of +tone by the atmosphere vivid like the flambeau trees, the inconceivable +blueness of its sea. The colors of the houses, glaringly or palely +inappropriate, were melted and bound into inevitable rightness. Even the +cemetery, frosted with tombs like a monstrous iced cake, its shafts that +might have been the crystallized stalagmites of the caves of death, +resembled nothing more disturbing than the lacy pantalets of the time it +celebrated. It was the final accomplishment of mid-Victorian horror, +with its pit of mouldering bones and solemn ritualistic nonsense; yet +the thought of the ponderous gold and black catafalques rolling in +procession between the horizontal white slabs, of the winking +candles--all the ghastly appendages of religious undertaking--and the +clergy in purple and fine cambric, with amethyst rings on their fat or +their thin fingers, gave it the feeling of a remote mummery. + +The cemetery from which I escaped with relief and the cafe that I +entered with pleasure--again the Telegrafo--flowed together in the +city's general impression. I could see the statue of Marti, and, as I +looked, it changed into the statue of Isabel; then that, too, vanished. +The broad paved avenue, the flagged walks, became a gravelled plaza +about which the girls promenaded in one direction to pass constantly the +youths circling in the other. The vision flickered and died, and I went +on to lunch through the Havana of so many days smoothly packed into one. + +I felt that my first sense of instinctive familiarity had been +justified; yet, in the corridor of the Inglaterra, asked by a traveler +how to get to a restaurant, the Dos Hermanos, I was unable to reply; and +a third American, brushing me aside, gave him voluble instructions. It +ended by his being taken out and seated in a hack, while the other, in +angry execrable and fluent Spanish, told the driver where to proceed. +Whatever I had learned, it seemed, was of no practical value; my +multiple sensations were not reducible to the simplest demand. A woman +passed with a copy of an ultra popular novel, and this recalled the long +struggle of my early books for the smallest recognition. If that dark +frame of mind had fastened on me in the north, it would have burdened me +for a day; but in Havana, with the Marquis de Riscal and a Por +Larranaga, I envied no mediocre novelist her stereotyped laurels. It was +impossible to get anywhere a better wine or a cigar that changed more +soothingly from the brown of fact to blue fancy. + + * * * * * + +The Cuban cigarettes, however, were too strong for pleasure; for, while +the preference for a strong cigar was admissible, cigarettes should be +mild. All those famous were. Strangely enough, good cigarettes had never +been smoked in the United States, a land with an overwhelming preference +for the cheap drugged tobacco called Virginia. No one would pay for a +pure Turkish leaf; with the exception of a few hotels and clubs it was +not procurable. There was a merchant on the Zulueta with a large +assortment of Cuban cigarettes, made in every conceivable shape and +paper, hebra and arroz and pectoral. They had tips of gilt or silver +paper, cork, straw, and colored silks, and were packed in enticing ways +and odd numbers. But, after trying their apparent variety, they all +seemed alike, as coarse and black in flavor as their tobacco. + +There were, of course, men who disagreed with me--though women never +liked a Cabanas or Henry Clay cigarette--and a connection of mine, a +judge, long imported from Cuba, through Novotny of New York, the +Honoradez tobacco for his cigarettes. He had been in Havana during the +Spanish occupation, and later; and, recalling him, I could see that he, +like myself, possessed an ineradicable fondness for it. In his case, +even, his memories might have affected his exterior, for he had a lean +darkness more appropriate to the Calzada del Cerro than to Chester +County. In summer particularly, with his immaculate linens, and the +brown cigarette casting a pungent line of smoke from his long sensitive +fingers, he was the image of a Spanish colonial gentleman. + +He had known Havana at a better time than now, when it was more +provincial, simpler; the hotels then were uncompromisingly locked at ten +in the evening, and if he returned later he was forced to call the negro +sleeping in the hall. I don't remember where he stayed--probably at the +Inglaterra. I was young and ignorant of Cuba when I saw him, with a +certain frequency, before he died; and I heard his talk about the Parque +Central with no greater interest than his discussions of salmon fishing, +of Sun and Planet reels and rods split and glued. I realized sharply +what I had missed, both in the way of detail--the detail most important +to a mental picture and always missing--and in intimate understanding of +Cuban affairs. For he had a tonic mind, rare in America, unsentimental +and courageous, and touched with a satirical quality disastrous to sham, +social, religious, or political. + +The cigarettes came to him in bright tin boxes of a hundred; and, after +his death, I bought seven from Novotny and smoked the contents almost by +way of memorial; for he was a personality of a type almost gone. Judges +of County Courts no longer wore immaculate high hats to the Bench, with +the vivid corner of a bandanna handkerchief visible in the formality of +their coat tails. + +The silk-tipped cigarettes were for women, but the silk was principally +a villainous carmine, a color fatal to the delicate charm of lips, and I +hoped that I should see none so thoughtless as to smoke them; while the +cigarettes all of tobacco were, frankly, impossible. Why, I couldn't +say; they simply wouldn't do. What women I saw smoking in public, in the +cafes and at the races, were not Cubans. They, on view, neither smoked +nor drank anything but refrescos. But a different feminine world, at +their doors or over the counters of bodegas, enjoyed long formidable +cigars. + +An amusing convention, a prejudice really; an act, in women, condemned +from the associations in men's minds, synonymous with that gaiety they +so painstakingly kept out of their homes. Yet, in spite of them, women +smoking had become a commonplace in the United States. In Havana men +were still paramount ... and Victorian. On the Obispo cigarette-cases +from Toledo, of steel inlaid with gold, were for sale; but I'd had +experience with Toledo work--the steel rusted. For years I'd bought +cigarette cases and holders before I finally learned that the former +were a nuisance and that the latter destroyed the flavor of tobacco. I +had owned cases in metal and leather and silk, patented and plain, and +one by one they were mislaid and given away. I had smoked with holders +of ivory and jet and tortoise shell, wood and amber and quills, and +they, too, had disappeared. All that could be said for them was that +they looked well and saved the fingers from nicotine stains. + +The Turkish cigarettes in Havana were unremarkable, yet, for the Cuban +youth, the sign of worldliness. They disdained the local brands, but +even Cuba was powerless to depreciate her cigars, the best of all +countries and all times. Here was an accomplishment, a possession, of +unique importance and excellence, for tobacco belonged to the +irreducible number of necessities. I had survived prohibition, with the +assistance of a forethought unhappily limited in execution; but if the +absurdity of my country abolished tobacco, I should be forced to move to +England; that would be too much. I could imagine, in this case, what +comments would appear in the press, reminding the virtuous and patriotic +that my books had always been chargeable with immorality and a blindness +to the splendor of our national ideals. + +In the past I had suffered a particularly wretched nervous breakdown--it +hit me like a bullet in the Piazza della Principe in Florence; and when +I had politely been sent to Switzerland to die, an English doctor at +Geneva cured me, for most practical purposes, by impatience, black +coffee, and Shepherd's Hotel cigarettes. I had no doubt that smoking +was, in many ways, a very deleterious habit; but life itself was a bad +habit condemned to the worst of ends. I was, as well, very apt to have +little in common with men who didn't smoke, or, I should say, with men +who had never smoked. They were, with practically no exceptions, +precisians, and ate, lived, for their health rather than for the tang of +delicate sauces and sensations. And a long while ago a wise and charming +woman had lamented to me the fact that all the generosity and +attractiveness she met in men belonged to what were colloquially called +drunks.... Her feeling was the same as mine. + +I wasn't defending drunkenness or attacking the statistics against +smokers; what I felt, I think, in such men was the presence of a +fallibility to which, at awkward or tragic moments, they yielded and so +became companions of sorrow and charity, the great temperers of +humanity. At any rate, I demanded enough liberty, at least, to fill my +system with smoke if I willed. The possibility that my act might hurt +someone else failed to excite me--why should I bother with him when I +wasn't concerned about myself! There was too much officious paternalism +in the air, too many admonitions and not enough lightness of heart--of +tobacco heart if necessary. + +In addition, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be perfectly sanitary in +mind and body, any more than I was certain of the complete desirability +of a perfected world, of heaven. At once, there, my lifelong occupation +would be gone--novelists never stopped to think what would happen to +them if all the reforms for which they shouted should go into effect; +and I had a disturbing idea that a great deal of my pleasure in life +came from feelings not always admissible in, shall I say, magazines of a +general character. A clean mind and a pure heart were not without +chilling suggestions of emotional sterility. Since men had hopelessly +and forever departed from the decency of simple animals, I wanted to +enjoy the silken and tulle husks that remained. If there was a sedative +in cigars, an illusion in a Daiquiri cocktail, I proposed to enjoy it +at the expense of a problematic month or year more of life always open +to the little accidents of pneumonia or spoiled milk or motors. + + * * * * * + +What might be called the minor pleasures of life, though in their bulk +were vastly more important than the great moments, Havana had carried to +a high state of perfection; yet with, where I was concerned, an +exception not in favor of the theatre. I went, as I had determined, to +whatever offered, swept along by the anticipation of Spanish dancing and +music: the first was immeasurably the best in existence, and I liked the +harsh measures of Spanish melody, both the native songs of the +countryside and the sophisticated arrangements by Valverde. A great many +skilful writers had described the dancing, and their accounts were well +enough, but, politely, they all lacked the fundamental brutality of the +jota and malaguena, just as the foreign operatic variations on Spanish +themes were reminted in a smooth and debased universal coin. + +I purchased a ridiculously flimsy scrap of paper, which, I was assured, +made me the possessor of a grille principal at the Pairet Theatre--a +box, as huge as it was bare, within the stage. I could see, under the +hood, the long dramatic hand of the prompter waving to the droning +monotony of his voice through the stupidest performance I remembered. It +was, by turn, a comedy, a farce, a pantomime, and a comic opera, and a +complete illustration of the evils of departing from national tradition +and genius--a dreary attempt at the fusion of Vienna and New York, +planned, obviously, for a cosmopolitan public superior to the rude +familiar strains of gypsies. + +At intervals a chorus of young women, whose shrill excitement belied +their patent solidity, made an incongruous appearance and declamation; +they grouped themselves in feeble designs, held for a moment of +scattered applause, and went off with a labored lightness that +threatened even their ankles. This was bad, but a revista--I could +think of nothing else to call it--at the Marti was, because it was so +much better, worse. There I had an ordinary palco, enclosed by a railing +from the promenade and elevated above the body of an audience composed +of every possible shade from fairest noon to unrelieved midnight. The +evening was divided into two performances, for the second of which, +Arco-Iris, a largely increased price was demanded. This was, again, +Vienna and Broadway, but with, in addition, an elaboration of color and +lighting ultra-modern in intent. + +I had seen the same effort ten years before in Paris, and the failure +was as marked in Spanish as in French. Mr. Ziegfield, assisted by the +glittering beauty of the girls he was able to secure, had made such +spectacles brilliantly and inimitably his own. The Latins knew nothing, +really, about legs: they showed them with what was no more than a +perfunctory bravado, while it was a peculiarity of shoulders--the art of +which they so daringly comprehended--that their effect was lost in +mass. The display, the extravagant settings and costumes, of Arco-Iris, +were, throughout, mechanical; the coryphees were painfully aware of +their dazzlements; and an Andalusian number, looked forward to with +weary eagerness, had been deprived of every rude and vigorous suggestion +of its origin. + +When I returned to the Inglaterra I demanded of a clerk where I could +find a vulgar performance of, for instance, the habanera, but he shook +his head doubtfully. At intervals, he admitted, Spanish dancers came to +the National Theatre; but--his manner brightened--Caruso was expected in +May. I had no intention of staying in Havana through May; and, had I +been there, I'd have avoided Caruso ... a singer murdered by the +Victrola. Already the seats for his concerts were a subject for +speculation, and it was clear that they would reach a gigantic price, +between forty and sixty dollars for a single place in the orchestra. In +this depressing manner Havana made it evident that it was a city both +fashionable and rich. + +There had been a time, too, I was informed, when all the uncensored +moving pictures of the world found a home in Cuba; pictures where +embraces were not limited to a meagre number of feet, nor layettes, the +entire ramifications of procreation, prohibited. But these were gone +from the general view. The films, though, had not been destroyed, and +for some hundreds of dollars a private performance might be arranged. +But this I declined. The moving picture industry had been brought +entirely from America, the theatres plastered with Douglas Fairbanks' +set grin, William Farnum's pasty heroics, and Mary Pickford's invaluable +aspect of innocence. Never, in the time I was in Cuba, did I see a +Spanish actor or film announced; although a picture, appropriate to +Lent, of the Passion, hinted at a different spirit. + +I became, then, discouraged by the formal entertainments. As usual, I +was too late; the process of improvement had everywhere marched slightly +ahead of me, substituting for the genuine note a borrowed false +emphasis. To-morrow I should hear the Salvation Army bawling in Obispo +Street. In a state of indifference I went to Carmelo, a dancing pavilion +with an American cabaret, and drifted to the table where the singing and +dancing profession were having their inevitable sandwiches and beer. A +metallic young person with brass hair, a tin voice, and a leaden mind, +conversed with me in the special social accent of her kind, ready in +advance with a withering retort for any licentious proposals. Beside her +sat a Mexican with an easy courtesy and an enigmatic past. He was, I +gathered, the son of an official who, in one of the exterminating +changes of government, had escaped over a wall in his pearl studs and +dinner coat but little else. + +I liked everything about him but his indulgence for soda blondes; yet in +the serious conversation we at once opened--connected with a projected +trip of mine to the City of Mexico--we forgot the girl until, +exasperated by our neglect, she lost some of her manner in an inane +exclamation made, she announced, for the sake of Christ. Her companion +immediately returned to his engagement, and I watched the Americans more +or less proficient in that dance the name of which had been borrowed +from a woman's undergarment. It had begun as a chemise, but what it +would end in was problematic. + +Was it a healthy rebellion against the prudery of repression or the +adventitious excitation of imminent impotence? Whatever had brought it +about, it was stupid, an insensate jiggling of the body without +frankness or grace. I hadn't yet seen the Cuban rumba, with its black +grotesque negrito and sensual mulata; but I was confident that if a +rumba were started at Carmelo, the shimmy would resemble the spasmodic +vibrations of a frigid St. Vitus dance. The men and women doing it, +galvanized by drink and the distance from their responsibilities, +animated by the Cuban air, were prodigiously abandoned. They were, +mostly, commercial gentlemen and stiff brokers investigating sugar +securities, or the genial obese presidents and managers of steamship +companies. The presidents, the managers and brokers, were invariably +accompanied by their wives, who, for the most part, endeavored to +re-create the illusions and fervors of earlier days; but heaven knew +from where came the women for whom the representatives of Yankee +merchandise were responsible. + +Their origins were as mysterious as their age--strange feminine +derelicts stranded by temperament and mischance, caught in the +destructive web of the tropics. The dresses they wore were either +creations or makeshifts, but their urbanity was as solidly enamelled as +their hair was waved or marcelled. There was still another variety--I +had seen them before at expensive fishing camps--tightly skirted, +permanently yellow-haired, with stony faces and superfine diamonds. +Drunk or sober, their calmness was never changed by so much as a +flicker; they caught sail fish in the Gulf Stream, danced, ate, talked, +and now, certainly, were flying, with the same hard imperturbability and +display, in gold mesh bags, of their unlimited crisp money in high +denominations--the granite women on the wall of the Gallego Club. + + * * * * * + +My interest, however, in the American in Havana had vanished, my +position in life, avoidance rather than protest, and I surrendered him +to the hospitality of Cuba and the gambling concessions. I wanted, from +then on, only the local scene: there were cities where the foreigners, +the travelers, made an inseparable part of the whole, but this was not +true of Havana; it remained, in spite of the alien clamor, singularly +undisturbed, intact, in essence. But a few streets, a plaza or two, knew +the sound of English, and beyond these the voices, the stores, the +preoccupations, were without any recognition of other people or needs. I +began to wander farther from the cafes of the Parque Central, the open +familiarity of the sea, and found myself in situations where, in my lack +of Spanish, I was limited to the simplest, most plastic, desires. + +It was in this manner that I found ear-rings which I secured with a +sense of treasure--they were in the shop of a woman who sold embroidered +linen from Madeira and the Canary Islands, lying haphazard in the lid of +a paste-board box. The patio opened directly from the front room, the +store, an informal assemblage of dull white folded cloths and frothy +underclothes, and outside a very large family indeed was eating the noon +breakfast while a pinkly naked pointer dog lay on the cool tiles with +his feet extended stiffly upward. + +I was paying for some towels, and regretting--in a singular composite of +inappropriate words and banal smiles--the interruption of the meal, when +I saw the ear-rings; and immediately, in the face of all the warning and +advice wasted on me, I exclaimed that I wanted them. At this they were +laid on the counter, a reasonable price murmured, and the transaction +was over. I gathered that they had been left for sale by some member of +an old Cuban house, perhaps by a Baeza y Carvajal or Nunez: they were of +pale hand-carved and drawn gold, aged gold as yellow as a lemon--one +pair of open circles an inch in diameter, with seed pearls; the other +the shape of small delicate leaves, with pearls and topazes. + +A store unmarked in exterior but surprising within attracted me by some +Chinese-Spanish shawls, mantones, in a dusty show-case; and I discovered +a short, heavily-built Spaniard stringing the hair of a wig against a +background of scintillating costumes for the carnivals, balls, and +masques. We were unable to understand each other, his wife wrinkled her +forehead in desperation over my Spanish; and then, gesticulating +violently, she vanished to reappear with a neighbor, a woman who seemed +to have suffered all the personal misfortunes reserved for school +teachers, who made intelligible a small part of what we said. + +They had, it developed, other shawls, shawls worth my attention; one, in +particular, finer even than any of Maria Marco's. This engaged me at +once, for Maria Marco was the prima donna of a Madrid company which had +sung in the United States two years before, and which had given me, +perhaps, as great pleasure as anything I had seen on the stage. But not +so much for the singing--it had been the dancer, Doloretes, who +captivated me, a woman as brilliant as the orange-red shawl draped +before me over a chair, and suddenly, tragically, dead in New York. + +The wig-maker had had charge of the wardrobe of The Land of Joy, and he +assured me again that not Maria Marco.... Abruptly there was spread the +sinuous fringed expanse of a blazing green shawl heavily embroidered in +white flowers. I had never encountered a clearer, more intense green or +a whiter white; and, before I had recovered from the delightful shock of +that, a second shawl of zenith blue was flung beside it. The body of the +crepe-de-chine, the weight of its embroidery, the beautiful knotting of +the short fringe--long fringe was an error--and their sheer loveliness, +made them more desirable than jewels; and, prepared to buy them at once +at the price of whatever fiction anyone wanted me to write and would pay +absurdly for, I was lifting their heavy folds when a third mantone was +produced burning with all the gorgeous and violent colors imaginable. + +It was, I suppose, magenta--a magenta of a depth and wickedness +impossible for any but Eastern dye; the magenta of a great blossom of +hell--and it was embroidered with flowers like peonies, four spans +across, in a rose that was vermilion, a vermilion that was scarlet; and +the calyxes were orange and gamboge, emerald and peacock blue and +yellow. There were, too, golden roses, already heavy and drooping with +scent in the bud, small primitive blossoms with red hearts, dark green +leaves, and dense maroon coronals starred in white. The dripping fringe +was tied in four different designs.... + +I asked its price at once, in order to dispose of what couldn't help +being painful in the extreme, and he told me with an admirable +appearance of ease and inconsequence. The shop, that had been only half +lighted by the door, was now tumultuous with color, with China and +Andalusia; the shawl was the Orient and Spain, brutal in its superbness +and as exasperating, as audible, as castanets. However I might act, +hesitate, visibly, I knew that I'd buy it--in an instant it had become +as imperative to me as a consuming vice. It belonged, rightfully, to the +mistress of a Zuluoga or of a Portuguese king, to someone for whom money +was not even an incident; I couldn't afford it even if I wove it into a +story with a trace, a glimmer, of its splendor; but the next day the +shawl was in my room. + +Oppressed by a sense of monetary insanity not unfamiliar to me--I was +very apt to buy an Airedale terrier or a consol table with the sum +carefully gathered for an absolute necessity--I set about turning my new +possession into paragraphs and chapters; and it occurred to me that it +had a justified place in the Havana story I had already, mentally, +begun. The polite young men of the time, the decorative youth of all +times, were apt to have collectively a passion for a fascinating or +celebrated actress; and I saw that such a person--Doloretes--would be +important to my plan. Yes, my young figure and his fellows would go +nightly to see her dance. + +Afterward, crowded about a marble-topped table and helados, they would +discuss her every point with fervent admiration. Yet she would be too +vivid, too special, to take the foreground--I had wanted no paramount +women in the first place--and I decided ... to kill her almost at once, +to have her as a memory. My boy, most certainly, would find her shawl +exactly as I had; and, bringing it to his room, solemnly exhibit it to +his circle. More than that, I realized, it had given me a title, The +Bright Shawl. I instantly determined to cast the story in the form of a +memory told me by an old man of his youth; and that time, torn by +unhappiness, indecision, and hopeless aspirations, should be made, in +remembrance, brilliant and desirable, wrapped in the bright shawl which +transformed the lost past. + +A remarkably good story, I thought enthusiastically; and I fell to +speculating if George Lorimer would print it. He would give it, I told +myself, a wide margin of chance; but, in writing, uncomfortable +necessities often turned up in the course of narrative--I could leave +them out, and damn myself, or keep them and, maybe, damn the story in +the sense of its making possible my writing at all. Not that Mr. Lorimer +personally had any regard for emasculated chapters, but he was addressed +primarily to another integrity than mine; our purposes were not +invariably coincident. A fact which he, with his energetic candor +scoring pretentiousness, had made clear in his generous recognition of +where our paths met. + + * * * * * + +What was noticeable in The Bright Shawl was that I hadn't gone out for +material, but it had come to me, scene by scene, emotion by emotion. I +had never been able deliberately to set about collecting the facts for a +proposed story; I could never tell what impulse, need, would be strong +enough to overcome the laborious effort demanded for its realization in +words. For this reason I was free to see what I chose without reference +to any ulterior purpose; and when, on a Sunday morning with the heat +tempered by a breeze lingering from the night, I started for the +cock-fighting at the suburb of Jesus del Monte, I was completely at +ease. I had decided in favor of the cock-pit both because it was +essentially Cuban and because I had always detested chickens, +particularly roosters. + +It was a thing of total indifference to me what--with steel spurs or +without--roosters did to each other. Alive, they were a constant galling +caricature, a crude illuminative projection, of men at their ridiculous +worst. Their feathered tails, their crowing, their propensity to search +for bits in the dung, their sheer roosterness, together with the sly +hypocrisy of hens, had always annoyed me individually. And, rather than +not, I looked forward to seeing them victimized by their own belligerent +conceit. + +I had to leave my cab for an informal way behind some buildings and +across grass, and, as I approached a false stucco facade, a determined +ringing crowing filled the air. Beyond the arched entrance there was an +area of pavement with tables and a limited cafe service; and, seated +near, was a grave individual with a shovel beard and a thoroughly +irritated rooster upside down in his lap. He was cementing a natural +spur over one that had been injured, and drinking, now and again, from a +cup of coffee at his hand. Beyond was the pit, like, as much as +anything, a tall circular corn-crib, painted white, with a cupola. There +was place for about three hundred, with box-like seats whose low hinged +doors opened directly on the sawdust of the arena, more casual chairs, +and--as at the pelota--space for standing on the middle tiers. There was +a box above the entrance, and another opposite, and this an enormous +woman in white embroidery and carpet slippers, and I occupied. + +A main had just been finished, and there was a temporary lull in the +noise inseparable, in Cuba, from sport. The sawdust was being freshly +sprinkled when a negro entered the ring with an animated bag; and, +noting the elaborate polished brass scales that hung from the center of +the roof, I gathered that the birds were to be weighed. The second was +produced, tightly bagged, by a highly respectable-appearing man of +unimpeachable whiteness and side whiskers, and the roosters were left to +dangle from the yard. It was to be a battle al peso, by weight and equal +spurs; the first condition satisfied, the spurs were measured, by a +graduated set of pewter tallies; and the uproar was released. + +It was deafening--a solid shouting of bets offered in a voice of fury, +together with acceptances, repudiations, personalities, and the frenzied +waving in air of handfuls of money. The two men with the roosters +advanced toward each other and wooden lines laid in the pit, prodding +and otherwise increasing the natural ill humor of their birds, and held +the shorn heads close for a vicious preliminary peck. The roosters' +legs, shaved to an indecent crimson, were bare of hold, every +superficial feather had been clipped; and when they hit the sawdust +there was a clash as of metal. The methods of their backers were +different--the negro, in one of the local coat-like shirts with a +multiplicity of useless pockets and plaits, squatted on his heels, +impassive, fateful, and African; but the man with the orthodox +side-whiskers became at once the victim of a hoarse whispering +excitement. As the other's bird reeled drunkenly about--they were badly +matched and the main no affair at all--his pallid face flushed and he +suggested new atrocities to his champion. + +This, it seemed to me, was totally unnecessary, for a wickeder rooster I +was convinced never lived. He was deliberate in his tactics, unwilling +to be robbed of his pleasure by a chance coup de grace, and confined +himself to the beak. Soon his opponent leaned helplessly against the +wall of the pit, while the victor methodically pecked him to death in +small bloody pieces. The negro's face, couched on a charcoal-black palm, +was as immobile as green bronze; but the white was positively epileptic +with triumph. And, when the defeated bird sank in a spoiled dead knot, +he picked his up and, with expressions of endearment, sucked clear its +angry eyes. The preliminaries were again gone through with, and two +large handsome roosters were confronted by each other. As the surging +clamor beat about them I saw that one was undecided in his opinion of +what promised. He flapped his wings doubtfully; and then, as the other +made a short rush forward, he turned and ran as fast as his shorn legs +could carry him. This, considering the contracted round space of his +course, was very fast indeed; the second, pursuing him with the utmost +energy, was unable to get closer than a fleet dab at the stripped tail. +It was a flight not without a desperate humor; but this, it was clear, +was appreciated by no one besides me. + +The execrations, the screams, that followed the retreating bird were +beyond belief; the entire banked audience was swept by a passion that +left some individuals speechlessly lifting impotent fists. Unaffected by +this, the rooster, slightly leaned toward the center of gravity, went +around and around the pit with an unflagging speed that should have +commanded an independent admiration for itself. Occasionally the +pursuer, in a feat of intelligence, cut directly across the sawdust, and +a collision threatened ... but it never quite arrived. I lost interest +in the hurled curses, the hats twisted in excesses of rage, in +everything but the duration of the running rooster. It was remarkable; +he had settled down to putting all he had of strength and reserve into +his single purpose. + +He had no will to fight, and, personally understanding and sympathizing +with him completely, I hoped his wish would be respected: while he had +provided no main, he had faithfully substituted a most unlooked-for and +thrilling race; making for all time and nations and breeds of chickens a +record for a thousand times around a cock-pit. In some places he would, +perhaps, have been released, returned to the eminence of a barn-yard; +but not in Cuba. When it had been thoroughly demonstrated that he was +uncatchable by his rival, he was incontinently seized and both roosters +were carried, panting and bald-eyed, to a subsidiary ring beyond, not +half the size of the principal pit, where running, or any discretion, +was an impossibility. + +I saw him go with regret; he deserved a greater consideration, and I +hoped that, metaphorically in a corner, he would turn and be victorious. +A new individual, a small brown man in soiled linen, had entered the +box, and he at once, in a slow, painful, but intelligible English, +opened a conversation with me. He had, he said, a consuming admiration +for Americans, and as an earnest of his good will he proposed to let me +in on what, in the North, was called a good thing. It was no less than +the cautious information that in the next fight a dark chicken, a +chicken carrying a betting end as long as the Prado, had been entered by +President Menocal's brother. I could, with a wave of the hand, make a +small fortune: for himself, he was unfortunate--he possessed but eleven +dollars and odd pesetas. + + * * * * * + +I made some non-committal remark and turned a shoulder on his +friendliness for Americans, conscious of a distinct annoyance at having +been mistaken for, well--a tourist. There was no inherent inferiority in +that transient state of being; but it was a characteristic of the +settlers of any given place--settlers of at least forty-eight +hours--that they should regard with tolerant amusement the new and the +uninformed. He did, I thought, my clothes, my cigar, my whole air of +sophisticated comprehension, an injustice; he should have recognized +that I was not an individual to accept readily public confidential +information. + +The birds were brought in and weighed, and the person in the box with me +and the billowing white embroidery and carpet slippers excitedly +indicated a lean cream-colored rooster with brown points. I fancied the +other more, and thought something of betting on him when the main +began--the brown bird of the brother of Menocal flashed forward, +launched himself into the air with a clash, and drove both spurs +through the head before him. It had occupied something more than five +but less than ten seconds. Too bad, a deferential voice murmured in my +ear, that I hadn't taken advantage of such an excellent opportunity to +get the better of all the too-wise ones. With but eleven dollars and +some silver he had been cramped.... My interest in cock-fighting faded +before an annoyance that drove me away from the Puente de Agua Dulce, +calculating how much, at the odds I missed, I should have gained. + +Money won at sheer gambling, at games of chance which involved no +personal skill or effort, always seemed hardly short of miraculous to +me--magical sums produced at the waving of a hand. Their possession gave +me a disproportionate pleasure and glow of well being; they seemed to be +the mark of a special favor; the visible gesture, the approbation, of +fortune and chance. I had had a lucky night at the Kursaal in Geneva, +playing baccarat, and the changier, a silver chain about his neck, had +reconverted my bowl of chips into heaped gold and treasury paper. But +with that exception, and for some small amounts, I was unlucky. The +occasion just past was an illustration--I was never really disastrously +overtaken, but equally I never reached sensational heights. + +There were, certainly, numerous places in Havana for roulette, and +always the American Club for auction bridge and poker; but I found my +way to none of these: there were men who could hear the soundless turn +of a wheel, soundless but for the fillip of the pith ball on the wood +and metal, through the streets and walls of a city; and there were +others who, merely pausing in a hotel or club corridor, would +immediately form about them all the adjuncts of poker--the cards, the +blue and yellow and white chips, the bank president, the shifty polite +individual with pink silk sleeves and a rippling shuffle, the rich +youth.... But, indebted, I suppose, to my spectacled benevolent +appearance, such occasions let me pass unnotified. + +I made, however, some effort to find a billiard academy, with the hope +of seeing the professional games and their audiences built up on the +four sides of the tables, common to the Continent; but if there were any +in Havana, they, too, eluded me. I hoped to see bearded champions +embrace each other after chalking their cues and then drive the ivory +balls in red and white angles across the deep green or nurse them about +the intersections of the balk lines. It was very different in America, +where the billiard parlors were a part of hotel life--great rooms with +the level green of the tables fogged in smoke through which the lights +resembled the diminished moons of Saturn; the audience, entirely +masculine, seated on the high chairs about the walls. + +The types of women lingering outside, waiting patiently on convenient +benches, were far different from the Latins. Occasionally a youth would +put up his cue, dust the chalk from his fingers, assume his accurately +fitted coat, his soft brown hat, and go out to some girl with whom he +would plunge into a subdued council marked by a note of expostulation. +Strange youth and unpredictable girl! A term of endearment would escape, +there'd be a quick clinging of hands; and, from an imitation gold purse, +some money would be transferred to an engulfing pocket. + +But the men of Havana, it seemed, were quite contented to talk, to sit +in a cafe over refrescos or in a parque with nothing at all but cigars, +and discuss eternally, with a passionate interest, the details of their +politics and city. Their contact with life at every point was vivid and, +in expression anyhow, forceful; they argued in a positive tone to which +compromise, agreement, appeared hopelessly lost; and there was in the +background the possibility of death by quarreling. That, in itself, gave +their whole bearing a difference from the conduct of a land where a +drubbing with fists was the worst evil to be ordinarily expected. They +looked with contempt on a blow, the retaliation of stevedores, and we +regarded with disgust a concealed weapon. But where we might still, in +simpler places, defend what was locally called purity with pistols, no +one, to-day, took his politics seriously. + +Politics, in the United States, was looked on with cynical indifference, +where it was not a profession, but in Cuba it was invariably the cause +of fiery oratory and high tempers. This had been true of America; even +in my own memory, in the Virginia Highlands, shotguns had been out for a +difference of principals; but patriotism of that stamp had fallen away +before civilization, as it was optimistically termed--the end finally +brought about by prohibition. Discussion in general, that rose in such +volume on the Cuban night, had little part farther north; my own +friends, the men specially, almost never said anything except as a +direct statement; we never met to talk. + +They had a particular, a concrete, interest in living, but no general. +Further than that, there was almost no individuality of opinion; the +subjects which made good conversation were definitely and arbitrarily +settled, closed. To open them, to challenge public opinion, was not to +invite argument, but to send men away to the greater safety, the +solidity, of the herd. A good story, the humor of the latrine, was a +better key to respectability than an honest doubt. For those reasons I +wanted to join the arguments, the orations really, flooding the circles +of green-painted iron chairs on the Havana plazas; and, solitary, I +passed envying the ingenuous welding dissent. + +I imagined myself suddenly and completely changed into a Cuban, slight +and dark, in white linen, with my hat, a stiff English straw, carefully +laid beside me on a ledge of the paving, smoking a cigar of rough shape +but excellent tobacco. Not rich, certainly, but securely placed in life! +I was, in fancy, the proprietor of a small yet thoroughly responsible +oculist's establishment on Neptuno Street. Since I was no longer young, +and a member of organized society, with a patron or two from the Prado, +I was conservative, but little heated by patriotism; and in favor, +rather than not, of annexation to the United States. My private view was +that Cuba hadn't been conspicuously worse off under Spain than +liberated. The politics of the present, when office-seekers descended +to the nanigos.... Here was the substance of violent argument and +recriminations; the voices, the ideals, of young men beat on me in a +high indignant storm; the names of Cuban patriots, martyred students, +and Spanish butchers were shouted in my ears. Sacred blood flowed again +in retrospect, which should never be allowed to sink infertile; but when +the words Free Cuba were pronounced I waved my cigar with hopeless +derision. + + * * * * * + +How significant it was, I thought, that, in imagination, I had pictured +myself at fifty. I saw the Havana oculist clearly; his name, by all +means, was Rogelio, Rogelio Mola, and he had a heavy grey moustache +across his lean brown face which gave him an air of gravity that largely +masked the humor, the satire, in his quick black eyes: Spanish eyes with +no perceptible trace of the soft iris of Africa. It was past one o'clock +when his tertulia scattered, and I accompanied him toward his +home--walking to get rid of the stiffness of long sitting--over +Dragones Street, in the direction of Vedado. Not yet, never now, would +he have a house in Vedado itself; that was reserved for the bankers, +planters, and Americans; but he was nicely situated in a new white +dwelling of the approved style, overlooking a common that in turn +commanded the sea. + +The approved style was white plaster, a story and a half high, with an +impressive portico--a portico, attached to a small private residence, +that would have done honor to a capitol building. There was but little +ground, principally extended in a lawn across the front, and banked, +against the house, with the spotted leaves of croton plants, purple +climbing Fausto, and Mar-Pacifico flowers deeply crimson. He had, it was +plain from his walk, a touch of rheumatism, of sciatica really, and he +halted in the Plaza de Dragones to press his thin hand to a leg and +curse, by the Sacred Lady of Caridad, the old age overtaking him. + +That, it seemed to me, would not carry his mind toward his dwelling, his +wife grown inordinately fat, and their three daughters, all long ago +asleep; no, it would send his thoughts backward, over the way he had +come--not from the Parque Central, but from youth. He would brush his +moustache reminiscently, I was confident, at a train of gallant +memories, chiefly of New York, where, on the pier of a fruit importing +house, he had spent some tremendous months. That experience had given +him an advantage, an authority, in everything that touched the great +republic, and lent his politics an additional sagacity, his cynicism an +edge difficult to turn. He had intended to stay in America, a journey to +Havana was to have been but a temporary affair; but there he had +attached himself to a wife, the daughter of a grinder of lenses.... And +here he was at fifty, going back, after listening to a lot of nonsense +in the Parque, to his family--in the general direction, too, of the +cemetery. + +It was sad, and, for a moment, there was a debate, a conflict, in his +mind: though his age was beyond denial, and his hip troubled him--but +only after he spent an evening on the cold iron chair of a plaza--he +showed no signs of having passed the middle of his life. The grey hair +was distinguished; Madame Nazabal, who was a Frenchwoman, had assured +him of that. The handsome girl in El Corazon de Jesus, the Vedado bakery +where English was spoken, flushed when their hands accidentally met over +the counter. But this mood, his courage, was fictitious; it sank and +left him limping palpably, with an oppressed heart. He was, simply, an +old fool, he told himself, vindicating the humorous comprehension of his +gaze. + +If he wasn't careful, the young men of his establishment, over whom he +kept a strict parent-like discipline, would laugh at him behind his +back. They were inclined to be wild as it was, and he suspected them of +going to the carnival balls, the danzons, in the opera house. God knew +that he had seen them in the company of no better than the girls from +the cigar factories. When he was younger--young--that dangerous company +had given a dance on the last Thursday of every month, except when it +fell in Lent, and he had held his place there with the most agile among +them, once even pressing an argument with a man who was reputed to have +been an espada of Castile. A knife had grazed his throat and slit the +left shoulder of his coat through to the skin; the mark remained, a +livid welt under his collar, but the assailant had vanished before he +could kill him. All memory of the girl had gone; but she was beautiful, +he was certain of that, or else why should he have noticed her? + +The girls of those days had a--a quality, a manner, lacking in the +present. Their hearts had been warmer, they were less mercenary. Rogelio +Mola detested mercenary women. Now, as far as he could make out, nothing +was possible but rounds of the expensive cafes: the fact was, the girls +only wanted to be taken to the Dos Hermanos, or the Little Club, where +the Americans could see them, and, perhaps.... Then, in about eighteen +eighty, there was some fidelity, some honor, some generosity. There was +romance--that had disappeared more utterly than anything else: he was +more than a little vague in meaning; his romance was an indefinite +state; the glow, in reality, of his own youth. + +At that time, in such discussions as had passed this evening, he had +been on the side of revolution, of expeditions to the Trocha, secret +associations; but simply because his blood was hot, his age appropriate +to revolt. He had been, without doubt, difficult; his elders had +predicted a cell in Cabanas as an ante-room, a sort of immediate +purgatory, to hell. He raised expressive shoulders slightly at the +thought of the holy legends: a business for women and priests. The +Church, temporarily, had had some rare pasturage; but the fathers were a +shade too greedy; they had gobbled up so much that it was necessary to +drive them out. Women and priests, priests and women! The latter had +suffered no diminution of their privileges; they had too much for which +the young men, for all their self-opinion, got nothing or next to +nothing in return. Rogelio Mola wondered if the old houses of pleasure +were unchanged. + +He had not thought of them for years, and he was contemptuous of men of +his age who did, still, consider them. Not that he was puritanical and +condemned all such institutions, though he had a strong suspicion that +they had deteriorated. For the youth of his day they had been very +largely places of meeting and conspiracy, where traditionally the +sentiment supported attacks on authority. Yet a girl from Lima had +betrayed Mario Turafa, his friend, in hiding, to the Spanish Government. +It was said that Mario had been deported, perhaps to the very Peru from +which came his Delilah, but it was more probable that he had been shot. +There had been one whom he, Rogelio, had liked.... Her name came back to +him, Ana, and the fact that she sang quite beautifully ... nothing else. +The words of a song formed from the melody for a moment audible among +his memories: + + "Clavales, clavales + de mi Andalucia! + Mujeres, mujeres-- + de la Patria mia!" + +It was evident from this that she had come from Andalusia. Thirty years +ago! He wished her the best of luck. Hadn't they been young together, +with at least the innocence of true affection? His thoughts turned +guiltily to his wife, to his daughters white like flowers of the Copa de +Nieva. The twinge in his leg resembled a hot wire; and resolutely he +marshalled his attention forward. How dark, how depressing, certain +reaches of Havana were, and he pictured the cemetery ghostly, icy, in +the night; women, with their confessional, their faith in the +forgiveness of sins, were fortunate. Yet no one must say of him that he +was a coward, that, at the last, he had been borne into oblivion on the +oil of the priests he had disregarded in life. Deep under his +skepticism, however, a low inextinguishable hereditary flame of hope +burned, independent of his intelligence. + + * * * * * + +My mind returned once more to Rogelio Mola as I was standing outside an +impassive door, waiting for admittance, not far from the Arsenal. It +was the entrance to what he had called a house of pleasure, and, long +established in Havana, unknown to America, one that he might easily have +frequented in the reprehensible period of youth. I had adequate abstract +reasons for my presence, but Rogelio, correctly insistent on a saving +generosity of emotion, had needed no ponderous explanation. Indeed, I +was there in his interest, since, after all, I had imagined him; I +wanted very much to have completely the material of his setting, of the +surrounding from which his friend, betrayed by the Peru that had +centuries before despoiled Cuba, had been led out to be, doubtless, +shot. Not that, pressingly, I felt the need for an excuse, or that I was +essentially making a descent. The very bitterness, the revilement in +solemn terms, of my early instructions, had, reacting, defeated itself. + +What was before me, in a world where the pure and the impure were +inexplicably mixed in one flesh, was inevitable; its ugliness lay not +with it, but in a society which, constantly tearing it down, as +constantly projected again the penalty, the shadow, of a perfunctory and +material estate. In addition, as long as the age of marriage, of love, +was so tragically different in society and in nature, an informal +interlude was unavoidable. But I had no need to apologize for anything. +I had been spared the dreary and impertinent duty of improving the +world; the whole discharge of my responsibility was contained in the +imperative obligation to see with relative truth, to put down the colors +and scents and emotions of existence. What, pretentiously, was called +the moral must shift for itself; that depended on what, beneath +consciousness, I was--the justice and sympathy, the comprehension, of my +being. + +A slide opened mysteriously on the blank darkness before me, a bolt was +drawn; and immediately I had left the street for a little entresol +filled with lamplight, the breath of scented powder, and the notes of a +piano played by a girl whose cigarette burned furiously on the scarred +ebonized top of the instrument. She half turned, scanning me +indifferently, and went on with her unelaborate music. The woman who had +admitted me, a figure whose instant scrutiny resembled the unsparing +accuracy of a photograph by flashlight, after a polite greeting, ignored +me absolutely, and I was left to follow my fancy. + +This led to the patio, larger and more entrancing than any I had before +seen; it was paved in blocks of marble, and the white walls, warmly and +fully illuminated, made a sharp contrast with the night, the sky and +stars, above. There was a tree growing at one side; what it was I didn't +know, but it hung large intensely green leaves into the light before +climbing to obscurity. A great many people, it seemed to me, were +present; and, as I found a seat on an ornamental iron bench, the +formality of a civil greeting was scrupulously observed. The company +was, to every outer regard, decorous to the point of stiffness. +Opposite, two officers of the Spanish navy, in immaculate white with +gilt epaulettes, were drinking naranjadas and conversing with two girls +who nodded in appropriate sympathy. Farther on, a Cuban exquisite, his +hands, in spite of the heat, cased in lavender grey gloves, was staring +fixedly at the shining toes of his shoes. Others--yes, Rogelio in his +youth--their hair faultlessly glossy, were more animated; their gestures +and voices rose irrepressibly and sank in confidences to ears close +beside them. + +A row of doors, I then saw, filled one side of the patio, the interiors +closed by swinging slatted screens; the wall at my back was blank, an +exit at the rear, while on the right was the entrance. Scattered about, +with the benches and chairs, small tables held a variety of glasses and +drinks ... the entire atmosphere was pervaded, characterized, by utter +ease. That was, to me, the most notable of the effects of that +enclosure--an amazing freedom from superficial obligations, from the +burdensome conventions which, so largely a part of existence, had come +to be accepted either subconsciously or as a necessary evil. I realized +for the first time the inanity of imposed pretences, the thick, the +suffocating armor of triviality that criminally and ludicrously muffled +life. + +There were present, of course, all the poses of humanity, and a great +many of its conventions; the girls were not hippogriffs, but +girls--timid, bold, religious, skeptical, feminine, sentimental, happy +and unhappy, hopeful and hopeless. Yet, in contradiction to this, the +air offered a complete release from a thousand small irritating +pressures. It came, partly, from the sense that here I was outside the +order, the legality, the explicit purpose, of the forces organizing the +world. I had stepped, as it were, from time, immediacy, to timelessness. +The patio into which I was shut might have been on that earth the +ancients conceived of as round and flat as a plate. No discovery, no +wisdom accumulated by centuries and supreme sacrifices, had any bearing, +any importance, in my circumstances now. I was contemporaneous with the +lives precariously spent between the ebb and flood of the ice ages. The +animals knew as much. But if I had nothing to gain from all that was +successively admirable, nothing was lost that had been implicit in the +beginning, nothing at the last end would be changed. + +The conversation fluctuated about me, the glasses were carried away and +brought back refilled; the smoke of cigars and cigarettes floated +tranquilly up and was lost above the illumination, and I completely +dropped the embarrassment which came from an uncertainty in such minor +customs as existed. I was, in fact, extremely comfortable when I +understood that I was left entirely to my own desires. These included +the offer, in clumsy Spanish, of a general order of drinks; and there +was a revival of polite phrases. Not all, by a half, accepted; the +others bowed, gravely or cheerfully; and I retired again to my +speculations. + +These were mainly gathered about the regret that the scene before me was +practically forbidden to American novels. It had, in reality, no place +in the United States, and, therefore, could claim no legitimate page in +American literature. There, anyhow, it could be said for public morals, +such things were nearly all that the word vice implied. What, exactly, I +was lamenting, was the old fundamental lack of candor in the American +attitude. This, beyond question, proceeded from the people themselves, +and not from commissions; an enormous majority, except for that national +whispered currency of obscenity, was prudish beyond reclamation. For +them, it was probable, the innocence of the body had been branded +eternally. And I was neither a martyr nor a reformer. The loss to me was +considerable--as it was, dealing with only the outer garments of fact, I +had been accused of lasciviousness or something of the kind--and I +envied the French the cool logic of their mentality, the cultivation of +the French audience. + +My mind reverted to Jurgen, the remarkable narrative of James Cabell's, +that had been suppressed; a summary act of disturbing irony. For Mr. +Cabell had spent a life, practically, reaching from the imagination of +childhood to the performance of maturity, in a mental preoccupation +with disembodied purity. He had set up, in his heart and in his books, +the high altar of mediaeval Platonism--an image of desire never to be +clasped, reached, from earth; a consolation, really, for the +earth-bound. But that, in the mind, the characteristic mind, of America, +had not had the weight, the value, of a dandelion's gossamer seed. It +was, definitely, a land that cared nothing for literature, the casting +of transient life into the permanence of beautiful form. As the world +advanced in years, the general importance of literature, it seemed to +me, diminished; the truth was that people didn't care for it. + + * * * * * + +The ladies of pleasure--the merest identifying phrase, since, in the +first place, they were practically all at the age of immaturity--were +dressed in evening satins, cut generally with an effective simplicity, +or the lacy whiteness still better adapted to the young person. In the +tropical patio with its canopy of broad green leaves and night, the +marble pavement and alabaster walls, they were brilliantly effective; +it was only after an extended regard, carefully casual, that I +appreciated the amazing diversity of their individuality, the gamut of +bloods run. There were no Anglo-Saxons--they were faithful to the +traditions of their latitude--and there was no positive Africa; but +there was Africa in faint dilutions, in attenuations traced from lands +remote as Tartary: + +There was, for example, a girl so blanched that I saw she wasn't white +at all; her face, even without its drenching of powder, was the color of +the rice-paper cigarette she smoked, walking indolently by; and her hair +was a blazing mass of undyed red. Her features, her nose, and the +pinched blue corners of her eyes, the crinkling tendency of her piled +hair--its authenticity unmistakable in a strong vivid sheen--showed the +secret that lay back of her exotic appalling splendor. Her progress +across the patio was a slender undulation, and her gaze was fixed, her +attention lost, in an abstraction to which there was no key. No +imagination could have pictured such a striking figure nor placed her so +exactly in the ultimate setting: + +Here she was artificial--there were long jet ear-rings against her +neck--and savage. In her silk stocking, I had every reason to suspect, +there was a knife's thin steel leaf; but who could predict the emotions, +no--instincts, to which it was servant? Who, trivial with the +trivialities of to-day, could foretell, trifling with her, what +incentive might drive the steel deep up under his arm? Hers would be a +dreadful face to see, in its flaming corona, in the last agonizing +wrench of consciousness. + +Seated, and talking earnestly to a Cuban with worried eyes, was a small +round brown girl in candy green, whose feet in childish kid slippers and +soft hands bore an expression of flawless innocence. Clasped above an +elbow was an enamelled gold band, such as youth no longer wore, with a +hinge and fine gold chain securing the lock. She touched it once, +absent-mindedly, and I wondered what was its potency of association; +when, at a turn of her wrist, she drained a glass of brandy, an act of +revealing incongruity. She was, I recognized from her speech, Spanish, +from the Peninsula; and another, who told me that her city was Bilbao, +dispassionately, for a little, occupied my bench. Bilbao, she explained, +was not beautiful ... a place of industry and money. Nor was she +charming, she was too harsh; but her personality had an unmistakable +national flavor, like that of Castell de Remey wine. I was relieved when +she rose abruptly and disappeared into the entresol, where the piano was +still being intermittently played. + +The screen door to a room swung open, and a large rosy creature; +negligent and sleepy, appeared momentarily, gazing with a yawn, a flash +of faultless teeth, over the assemblage. She was without a dress, but +her hair was intricately up, and a froth of underclothes with knots of +canary yellow ribbons and yellow clocked stockings made a surprising +foreground for the painfully realistic Crucifixion hanging on the wall +within. The cross was ebony and the figure in a silver-like metal, the +Passion portrayed by a gaunt rigidity of suffering. The screen closed on +the tableau of contrast, and the patio resumed its appearance of a +vaguely distorted formal occasion. + +Whatever my feelings should have been, there was no doubt that--if for +the extreme pictorial quality alone--my interest was highly engaged. My +interest and not my indignations! I was not, it must be admitted, +commendably outraged, or filled with the impulse to rescue, to save, +anyone, however young. I seriously questioned my ability to offer +salvation, since I lacked the distinctly sustaining conviction of +superiority; I couldn't, offhand, guarantee anything. Suppose, for +argument, I took one--the youngest--and haled her away from her +deplorable situation: what was open to her, to us? Would she have +preferred, stayed for an hour in, any of the tepid conventional Magdalen +homes, if there were such establishments in Havana? + +I had a vision of appearing with her wrapped in a frivolous cloak, +before the experienced wisdom of the Inglaterra manager, in the +corridor of American salesmen, among the wives of the vice-presidents of +steamship companies, and explaining that I was delivering my companion +from the wage of death. I should have been, and very properly, put under +restraint and Dr. Laine hurriedly summoned. In all probability, and with +the utmost discretion, they'd have sent Pilar, or Manuelita, back to the +patio with the doors, explaining to her that I was demented. + +There were, undoubtedly, better places for girls of fifteen, and they +would have been the first to choose them if a choice had been +possible--some would have been wives and some opera singers and all, +with wishing so free, uncommonly beautiful. I had an idea that a number +of them would have gone no further than the last, and, as well they +might, left the rest to chance. But their ideas of beauty must have been +stupid compared to what they actually possessed. + +There was a girl with a trace of Chinese in the flattened oval of her +countenance, and heavy black hair, as severe as a metal casing, +redolent with fascination. She sat withdrawn from the others with her +hands clasped in the lap of a fine white dress. She was delicate, but +not thin, though her neck was so slender that the weight of her head +seemed bent a little forward. I had never before seen skin so faintly +and evenly golden; there wasn't a flush, a differently shaded surface, +anywhere visible. A sultry air hung about her mouth, the under lip +brushed with carmine. Her eyes, lowered and almost shut, were large, and +their lids were as smooth as ivory. But she wasn't, otherwise, +suggestive of that; she more nearly resembled the magic glow of an apple +of Hesperides. + +If I had encountered her twenty years earlier, my experience would have +been richer by a glimpse of her involved image-like charm. She was, +conceivably, to the superficial West, dull: it was evident that she +almost never talked--the girls about were not her friends--but she had +qualities, aspects, infinitely preferable to a flow of words. I should +have asked of her hardly more than, at present, she was, sitting quite +a distance from me and fundamentally unaware of my existence. I debated +whether she would be more attractive in the sleeve coat and jade pins of +China or in her virginal white muslin.... That now was the circumference +of my duty toward her--to put her in such colors, such surroundings, as +would infinitely multiply her mystery. + +It was, I realized, time for me to leave--I wasn't Rogelio Mola in his +youth--and I paid the inconsequential price of the drinks I had ordered. +There were adieux, as civil and impersonal as my welcome, and the door +to the street was opened to let me, together with a breath of the +scented powder, out. The arcade before me sounded for a moment with the +smooth falling of a latch, and then all trace of the near presence of so +much lightness was obliterated. In memory it seemed slightly unreal, a +dangerous fantasy of murmurs and subdued, knife-like passions--the +bleached soul of Africa with massed red hair; a frivolity of yellow +ribbons against a silver tormented Christ; the inertia of the East in a +heavy-eyed child; but, to balance this, I remembered the girl, like a +harsh native wine, from Bilbao, an industrial city and very rich: she +restored to the scene its ordinary normal reality. + + * * * * * + +The high empty austerity of my room enveloped me in a happy +tranquillity; its effect was exactly that of increasing age, +substituting for the violent contrasts of life an impersonal spacious +whiteness. I very placidly prepared for the cool fresh linen of my bed, +my mind filled with fresh cool thoughts. More definitely than ever +before I was accepting and accommodating myself to the passage of time. +I was not only reconciled to having left forty forever behind, but I +welcomed a release from the earlier struggles of resentment and desire. +The joys of youth, or anyhow in my case, had been out of proportion to +their penalties: I had failed at school, at the academies of art, and, +more conspicuously still, as a citizen. I was even incapable of +supporting myself, a task so easy that it was successfully performed by +three quarters of the fools on earth. + +The failure as a painter was serious, but I had never had the least +interest in those qualities included in the term a good citizen. I knew +nothing about the government of the United States, and made no effort to +find out; as an abstraction it had reality for me, but as a reality no +substance. The priceless right of vote I neglected for whoever it was in +the Republican machine that regularly discharged that responsibility for +me. All that interested me, that I deeply cared for, was first the +disposal of paint on stretched canvas and then the arrangement of words +with a probable meaning and possible beauty. + +An extremely bad period, that, when I tried to write without knowledge +or support, reaching from twenty until well after thirty, when I managed +to sell a scrap of prose. From then until forty the time had gone in a +flash, a scratching of the pen: it seemed incredible that the seven +books on a shelf bearing my name had been the result of so brief, so +immaterial, a time. Now, stranger still, I was in Cuba, gazing +peacefully into the dim expensive space of a room in the Hotel +Inglaterra, congratulating myself on the loss, the positive lapse, of +what was called men's most valuable possession. + +No better place for the trying of my sincerity than Havana existed; no +other city in the world could so perfectly create the illusion of +complete irresponsibility, of happiness followed for its own sake, as an +end, or as the means of forgetfulness. Its gala walls and plazas and +promenades, its alternating sparkle and languor, like flags whipping in +the wind or drooping about their staffs, always conveyed a spirit of +holiday and of a whole absence of splenetic censure. At the bottom of +this the climate, eternally sunny, with close vivid days and nights +stirring with a breeze through the galleries, concentrated the mind and +body on pleasure. + +Night had always been the time for gaiety, when the practical was veiled +in shade; and Havana responded with an inimitable grace to the stars. +It was constructed for night, like a lunar park of marble and palms and +open flooding radiance; with, against that, streets packed with darkness +and doors of mystery to which clung the faint breath of patchouli. The +air was instinct with seduction, faintly touched by the pungency of Ron +Bacardi and limes, and bland with the vapors of delightful cigars. The +clothes, too--the white linens and flannels and silks of the men; the +ruffled dresses on the balconies, the flowery laces, like white +carnations, in the automobiles; the wide hats of Paris and the satin +slippers tied about the ankles, with preposterous heels; the fluttering +fans--all, all were in the key of light sharp emotion, of challenge and +invitation and surrender. + +Yes, any strictness of conduct in Havana, any philosophy in the face of +that charm, was unaffected beyond dispute. I had been, in a farther +development of this, tacitly left to my own devices and thoughts, as if +there were a general perception of my remoteness from the affair in +hand. I was suffered to come and go without notice; no one, much, spoke +to me; even those not unaware of the possibility of a book, of San +Cristobal de la Habana, in which their city would find praise, were +hardly stirred to interest. The moment to go to Havana was youth, the +moment for masked balls and infidelity and champagne: its potency for me +lay in its investment of memories; I regarded it as a spectacle set in +the tropics. I was an onlooker and not a participant. But I had, as I +have shown, no regret; I had become reconciled not only to the fleetness +of time, but equally to the fact that my role was necessarily a +spectator's. Hour after hour, year after year, I sat writing at the low +window which looked out over my green terrace and clipped hedge, to the +road, to life, beyond. + +Above everything, then, I was satisfied with the Havana I knew. From the +standpoint of actuality my comprehension was limited--I was familiar +with only a certain narrow part of the city, for it was my habit to go +back to what I had found rather than discover the new--perhaps ten +streets and a handful of houses, parks, and cafes. Too much to get into +a score of books. What I had lost, I thought further--if, indeed, I had +ever possessed it--was a warm personal contact such as I should have had +dancing with a lovely girl. I never danced, but remained outside, +philosophically, gazing at the long bright whirling rectangles. + +At the Inglaterra there were many men older than myself who danced +persistently and had the warmest sorts of contacts; they too, wore +flowers in their coats, but aggressive and not reminiscent blooms. They +formed most of the element of foreign gaiety; there wasn't much youth +among them, but I didn't envy them in the slightest. They were, if +possible, more absurd than the women unmindful of thickening waists and +dulled eyes. Their ardor was febrile and their power money; and every +time they escorted with a quickened step their charmers past young dark +men, the charmers glanced back appealingly. It was different with the +Cubans, who regarded such things more naturally, and did not, +practically, in consequence, get drunk. + +The noise from San Rafael Street never slackened, the clamor of the +mule-drivers and the emptying cans of refuse took the place of the motor +signals; the slats of my lowered shutters showed streaks of dawn. I +turned once, it appeared, and the room was filled with indirect +sunlight, the hands of my watch were at ten. It was eleven before I was +dressed, with the morning cup of black coffee empty on a table; at +twelve I had breakfast, and until five I idly read. The evening as well +was idle--a thoroughly wasted day, judged by obvious and active +standards. I thought, with no impulse to return, of the house near the +Arsenal, which had, in effect, been open for centuries and which, unless +life were purified, would never close. The purity I meant was not a +limitation of passion, but its release from obscene confines. It didn't +matter what I meant and, again, I was becoming too serious ... or not +serious about the correct things. There was perpetually the danger of +being overtaken, in spite of my impetuous early flight, by the +influences, the promptings, of my heredity and strong first +associations. What an amazing climax to my records of chiffon textures +and moods of chiffon that would be: shouting the creed of a bitter Scots +induration from the informal pulpits of the streets! Or I might publish, +to the dismay of every one intimately concerned, a denunciatory +sermonizing book. But what the subject was wouldn't matter, as it had +not mattered with Jeremy Taylor, if it were written with sufficient +beauty. Disagreeable books, too, in spite of the accepted contrary +belief, were always very highly esteemed. + + * * * * * + +It was easy enough to account for Jeremy Taylor by the vague +generalization of beauty, and I forced myself to a closer scrutiny of +that term and my meaning. The words beauty and love, and a dozen others, +like old shoes, had grown so shapeless through long mis-wear that they +would stay on no foot. I tried to isolate some quality indisputably +recognizable as beautiful and hit, to my surprise, on intellectual +courage. The thought of an undeviating mental integrity was as +exhilarating as the crash of massed marching bands. Then, searching for +another example, I recalled August nights at Dower House, with the +moonlight lying like water between the black shadows of the trees on the +lawn. There was a harsh interwoven shrilling of locusts and the +echo--almost the feel rather than the sound--of thunder below the +horizon. This, too, stirred me profoundly, brought about the glow +transmutable into creative effort. + +Another excursion found nothing but a boy and a girl, any boy and any +girl, fired by shy uncomplicated passion.... A mental, a visual, and a +natural incentive, each with the same effect, the identical pinching of +the heart and thrust to a common hidden center. What had they each +alike? Perhaps it was this: that they were the three great facts of +existence, the primary earth, the act of creation, and the crowning +dignity, the superiority of men who, somehow, had transvalued the sum of +their awarded clay. Somehow! I had no intention of examining that. The +fact was, for me, enough. + +There was, however, another phase of beauty still, one peculiarly the +property of novelists, which had to do not with life at all, but with +death, with vain longing and memories and failure. All the novels which +seemed to me of the first rank were constructed from these latter +qualities; and while painting and music and lyrical poetry were +affirmative, the novel was negative, built, where it was great, from +great indignations. Yet, while this was obvious truth, it failed to +include or satisfy me; for there were many passages not recognizable as +great in the broadest sense, both in literature and life, that filled me +with supreme pleasure--there were pages of Turgenev spun out of the +fragile melancholy of a girl, a girl with a soul in dusk, far more +enthralling than, for example, Thomas Hardy. It may have been that there +was the perception of a similitude between Turgenev's figure and myself; +certainly I was closer to her mood, her disease of modernity, than to a +sheep herder; and there was a possibility, for my own support, that the +finest-drawn sensibilities, not regarded as emotions in the grand key, +would turn out to be our most highly justified preoccupation. + +I was, at present, in Havana, submerged in its fascination, and when I +came to write about it there would not be lacking those to say that I +had been better occupied with simpler things. Hugh Walpole had warned me +of the danger, to me, of parquetry and vermilion Chinese Chippendale; +and I was certain that he would speak to me again in the same tone about +idling in a mid-Victorian Pompeii, celebrating drink and marble touched +by the gilder's brush of late afternoon. Perhaps Walpole--and Henry +Mencken's keen friendly discernment--was right; but, damn it, my +experience was deficient in material essentials; I was dangerously +ignorant of current reality, and I doubted if my style was a suitable +instrument for rugged facts. + +What remained for me, an accomplishment spacious enough for anyone, was +the effort to realize that sharp sense of beauty which came from a firm +delicate consciousness of certain high pretensions, valors, maintained +in the face of imminent destruction. And in that category none was +sharper than the charm of a woman, so soon to perish, in a vanity of +array as momentary and iridescent as a May-fly. The thought of such a +woman, the essence, the distillation, of an art of life superimposed on +sheer economy, was more moving to me than the most heroic maternity. I +couldn't get it into my head that loveliness, which had a trick of +staying in the mind at points of death when all service was forgotten, +was rightly considered to be of less importance than the sweat of some +kitchen drudge. + +The setting of a woman in a dress by Cheruit; a part of the bravery of +fragile soft paste Lowestoft china and square emeralds that would feed a +starving village, on fingers that had done no more than wave a fan; the +fan itself, on gold and ivory with tasselled silk--the things to which +the longing of men, elevated a degree above hard circumstances, +turned--were of equal weight with the whole; for it was not what the +woman had in common with a rabbit that was important, but her +difference. On one hand that difference was moral, but on the other +aesthetic; and I had been absorbed by the latter. + +This, however wide apart it may seem, was closely bound to my presence +in Havana, to my delight and purpose there. It was nothing more than a +statement, a development, if not a final vindication, of my instant +sense of pleasure and familiarity--a place already alive in my +imagination. My special difficulty was the casting of it into a +recognizable, adequate medium. There, in the plaiting of cobwebs instead +of hemp rope, I particularly invited disaster. It wasn't necessary that +I should sustain anyone, but only that I should spread the illusion of +the buried associations and image of a brain. That, if it were true, I +held, would be beauty. + +Here, at least, I was serious about the correct things, direct rather +than conventional; all that mattered was the spreading of the illusion, +the spectacle of what part of Havana I did know interpreted, realized, +not in the spirit of an architectural plan, but as sentient with +reflected emotions. Otherwise the most weighty charges against me were +absolutely justified. If I couldn't make Havana respond in the key of my +intrinsic feelings, if I had no authentic feeling with which to invest +it, my book, almost all my books, were a weariness and a mistake. + +Novels of indignation or of melancholy, of a longing for the continuity +of individual passion confronted with the inevitable--it was that, the +perishability of all that was desirable, which gave to small things, a +flower in the hair, their importance as symbols. The love story, once +the exclusive province of fiction, had disappeared; it was now +practically impossible for the slightest talent to fill a book in that +manner. The romantic figment, like a confection of spun sugar with a +sprig of artificial orange blossoms, had been discarded; the beauty of +love, it had been discovered, wasn't the possession of a particular +heart, but the tenderness, the pity, that came from the realization of +its inescapable loss. No man could love a woman, no woman could love a +man, who was to live forever; a thousand years would be an insuperable +burden. The higher a cultivation, a delight, reached, the more tragic +was its breaking by death; the greater knowledge a mind held, the more +humiliating was the illimitable ignorance, the profound night pressing +in upon every feeble and temporary human lamp. + +Yes, the novels, the books I wanted to write, were composed, now, not so +much from among the brasses, the tympani, as from the violins. The great +majority, like the great books, were dedicated to the primary chords; +but my reaching the former had been always hopeless. I didn't mind this, +for I told myself that, while the structure of approbation I had +gathered was comparatively modest, its stones and masonry were +admirable; it was, if not a mansion, a gratifying cottage firmly set on +earth--what was in England called, I believe, a freehold. It was mine, +and there was no lease dependent on the good will--or on my +subserviency--of any landlord. + + * * * * * + +Most of this went through my mind as I sat looking at my trunk, open on +end in an alcove near the door, for I was gathering my clothes and +thoughts in preparation for leaving Havana. One thing only that I wished +to see now remained--the danzon at the National Theatre. I kept out a +dark suit, one that would be inconspicuous in a lower spectator's box; +for I had been told that it was desirable to avoid unnecessary +attention. There was, briefly, an element of danger. This I doubted--I +had heard the same thing so often before without subsequent +justification--but I could believe it possible if there was any violent +discharge of primitive emotion. Here the spirit of Africa burned remote +and pale, but it was still a tropical incomprehensible flame. + +A strip of red carpet led from the outer steps, across a large +promenade, to the circular wall of the theatre; and though it was past +eleven, the ball hadn't yet assumed an appearance of life. But just +within the entrance a negro band began suddenly to play, and in the +music alone I immediately found the potent actuality of danger. I was +without the knowledge necessary to the disentangling of its elements: +there were fiddles and horns and unnatural kettle drums, and an +instrument made from a long gourd, with a parallel scoring for the +scrape of a stick. The music was first a shock, then an exasperation +hardly to be borne, but finally it assumed a rhythm maddening beyond +measure. + +It was Africa and something else--notes taken from the Moors, splitting +quavers of Iberian traditions, shakes and cadences that might have been +the agonized voice of the first Cubenos; with an unspeakable distortion, +a crazy adaptation, of scraps of to-day. There was no pause, no +beginning or end, in its form; it went on and on and on, rising and +falling, fluctuating, now in a harsh droning and then a blasting +discord--the savage naked utterance of a naked savage lust; it was a +music not of passion, but of the frenzy of rape. Nothing like it would +have been possible in writing, allowed in painting; only music was free +to express, to sound, such depths. Nothing but music could have conveyed +the inarticulate cries of the stirred mire that flooded the marble space +of the opera house. It had lost the simplicity of its appropriate years, +the spring orgies in the clearings of early forests; time had made it +hideously menacing, cynical, and corrupt. + +At an aisle to the boxes within, a negro woman with a wheedling tainted +manner tried to sell me a nosegay; and two others, younger and pale, +their faces coated with rice powder, went past in dragging satins. They +were chattering a rapid Spanish, and their whitened cheeks and +dead-looking mat-like hair, their coffee-colored breasts and white kid +gloves, gave them an extraordinary incongruity; and behind them, as +sharp as the whisper of their skirts, a stinging perfume lingered. +Leaning forward on the rail of my enclosure, I gazed down over the +floored expanse of the auditorium: + +The stage was set with the backdrop and wings of a conventional operatic +design--a scene that would have served equally Aida or La Favorita: it +towered, like a faded dream of pseudo-classic Havana, into the +theatrical heavens, expanses of bistre and sepias and charcoal grey, of +loggias and peristyles and fountains; while in close order about its +three sides were ranged stiff chairs in a vivid live border of dancers. +They were of every color from absolute pallor, the opacity of plaster, +to utter blackness. The men, for the most part, were light, some purely +Spanish, the negritos, at least to me, conspicuous; but I could see no +indisputably white women. There was a girl in a mantone of bright +contrasting colors, a high comb and a rose in her hair, about whom there +was a question. However, her partner was one of the few full negroes +there; and, as they revolved below my box, it seemed that her skin had a +leaden cast. + +The danzon itself had, at first, the appearance of a sustained gravity: +it was danced slowly, in very small space, following the music with +arbitrary reverses, and pausing. There might have been, to the +superficial view, a restraint almost approaching dignity had the dancers +been other. The men, without exception, wore their stiff straw hats and +smoked cigars through every evolution; and the dresses, the dressing, of +the women were fantastic: a small wasted girl, dryly black, had copied +the color and petals of a sunflower. As she revolved, her skirt flared +out from legs like bent bones, and a hat of raw yellow flapped across +her grotesque ebony countenance. + +The danzon, for a moment, in spite of the music played continuously and +alternately by two orchestras occupying a box on either side of the +stage, seemed formal. Then, abruptly, a couple lost every restraint, and +their maddened spinning and furious hips tore the illusion to shreds. +And slowly I began to be conscious of a poisonous air, a fetid air as +palpable as the odors and scents--the breath, the premonition, of the +danger of which I had been warned. It lay in an ugly hysteria of rasped +emotions that at any illogical accident might burst into the shrillness +of a knife. It wasn't dangerous so much as it was abjectly wicked--the +deliberate calling up of sooty shapes that had better be kept buried. It +was unimportant that the men below me were, in the daytime, commonplace +clerks; the women could be anything chance had made them: here, to the +spoiled magic of Carabalie nights, they were evoking a ceremonial of +horror. + +Personally, since I had no hopes to save or plans to protect, I hadn't +the desire, like Sampson, to pull down the pillars of the roof on their +debased heads. I enjoyed it remarkably; the more because I saw, +scattered among the crowd, figures of unreal and detrimental beauty--a +creamy magnificence in creamy satin with a silver band on her forehead; +a yellow creature with oblique eyes in twenty white flounces and a +natural garland of purple flowers; a thing of ink, of basalt carved by +an opulent chisel, on whose body clothes were incidental; and corrupt +graces perfect in youth and figure weaving the patterns, the wisdom, of +Sodom. + +One o'clock passed, then two and three, but there was no abatement in +the danzon. A middle-aged man, with an abstracted air, danced without +stopping for an hour and fifty minutes. His partner, flushing through +her dark skin, was expensively habited: her fingers and throat glittered +coldly with diamonds and her hat was swept with long dipping plumes. She +had a malignant mouth and eyes a thick muddy brown, and it was clear +that she hated the man in whose arms she was turning. I wondered about +her hatred and the patience, the indifference, of the other: how +revolting she would be in a few hours, livid and ghastly in the morning. +He, probably, would then be standing at a high desk, counting dollars +with integrity or adding columns of figures, precise and respectable in +an alpaca coat. An older man still was dancing by himself, intent on the +intricate stepping of his own feet. His agility soon won an admiring +circle, and his violence increased with the applause: he jumped in the +air, clapping his heels together, and his arms waved wildly--a +marionette pulled convulsively by wires in strange merciless hands. + +I imagined a fetish, a large god, on the stage, drooping over his +swollen belly, with a hanging lip and hands set in his loins. His legs +were folded, lost in flesh ... a squatting smeared trunk of hideous +service. Around him were the seated rows of worshippers, on either hand +was his jangling praise; and before him revolved the dancers in his +rite. The music throbbed in my brain like a madness that would have +dragged me down to the floor. I speculated fleetly over such a +surrender, the drop, through countless ages, of that possible descent. + + * * * * * + +It was, however, only just to add that the idol of Guinea suffered +unduly from his surroundings and the age in which he was exposed; in his +place, his time, he had been neither a monster nor unnatural, but +nothing more than the current form of worship. He, Bongo, had had the +misfortune to be catapulted, together with his congregation, through +twenty, forty, centuries, in a breath, on the magic carpet of greed, and +put down in a day where he was not only obsolete, but repudiated. Men +saw him with the sense of horror generated by a blasting view of their +own very much earlier selves. For the difference between the negro, the +Carabalies, or Macua, and the Spaniards of the sixteenth century in Cuba +was, at heart, historical in time only. They were members--we were all +members--of one family. The innocence of a bare black, torn like a +creeper from the support of his native tree, tatooed with necessary +charms, medicines, against jungle fears and fevers, had more to dread +from Amador de Lares than any later Christians owed to an arbitrarily +imported savagery. What, in reality, occurred, was implied on the wide +floor of the opera house, was that the negroes, unable to change their +simplicity as easily as they superficially diluted their skins, kept +their innocent habits, their tastes in noise and religion and +misconduct; but, in the dress of civilization, these took on the aspect +of a grotesque defiled horror. With this, too, in an earnest effort to +assimilate as much as possible of their enforced land, they caught such +bright fragments of life as struck them--the glass beads and bits of gay +cloth--and copied them prodigiously. The confusion which followed was a +tragedy in the comic spirit--a discordant mingling that provoked +laughter, quickly stopped by a deeper understanding and by pity. The +past vital still: with the entrance of the African slave into the West, +it was exactly as though a figure in the paint and feathers of voodoo +had been thrust into a polite salon. + +The spectacle had none of the comfortable features of a mere exhibition; +for the revulsion came from a spiritual shudder in the beings of the +onlookers; while the other injured individuals saw that, as clothes, the +crude partial imitation of a rooster was insufficient. They, the latter, +commendably hurried into trousers and pot hats, into satin trains and +pink tulle and white kid gloves; but the transition was too hurried, too +optimistic, and the resulting incongruity ... I was not a student of +ethnology, I had no theory of races, but, gazing down from my box, it +seemed to me that yesterday could not be instantly combined with to-day; +it was evident that there was no short way by a long and painful +business of evolution. + +Nothing more unfortunate could well be imagined; for, in the retributive +manner I had already mentioned, the Africa buried in the West, so long +forgotten, took life again, and the danger to everyone had been acute +through a long period of Havana's years. We, in temperate zones, in +weathers that had no need of the protection of a special dark pigment, +had been lucky; but we were trying our luck very severely by subjecting +it to the old potencies not yet entirely lost. The danzon was, actually, +in a way beyond legislation, a masked ball in black and white, where the +unmasking was involuntary and fateful. + +One, I thought, spoiled the other, like an incomplete experiment in +chemistry where nothing but an opaque liquid and an intolerable stench +was evolved. Perhaps, with acute necessity, a successful clear result +would reward the future with peace; but it wouldn't happen in my +knowledge; I hadn't a thing in the world to do with it. What occurred to +me then was the useful fact that the present scene afforded the right, +the only, ending for my story, The Bright Shawl. It would have to be +tragic, but only indirectly; nothing, I had decided, should happen to my +principal character beyond a young moment of supreme romance. No, the +mishap, death, must envelop his friend, the patriotic Cuban. He'd be +killed by a Spanish officer, through a woman--a woman in the bright +shawl of the dancer that had been preserved as a memento of tender +regard. + +Some arrangement was necessary, perhaps a prostitute. Well--I had seen +her, in virginal white muslin, with the weight of her head, its oval +flattened by the hand of China, her heavy hair, inclined on its slender +neck: a figure, in my pages, impassively fateful, remote as I had seen +her seated in a gay company. That finished the story, for the youthful +American, after a vain public effort to secure for himself the dignity +of a heroic end, would be ignominiously deported from Cuba. I had been +often asked how I arrived at my plots, but more often accused of never +reaching an intelligible plan, and, until now, I'd been incapable of +giving an explanation satisfactory even to myself; but here was one +accounted for to a considerable degree. It had begun by an instinctive +attachment to a city, to Havana; and the emotions brought into being had +crystallized into a plan, for me, unusually concise. + +There was a temptation, to be avoided, to tell it in the first person; a +version that had come to be disliked almost as universally as a set of +letters. Some celebrated stories had been written that way--Youth--but I +felt that it was an unnecessary charge on sympathy. While the creation +of character was no longer the tyrant it had been, a certain air of +veracity was most desirable, and the limited scope of a single +intelligence discussing, explaining, himself was too marked. The great +trouble with the romantic novels up to the very present had been that +there was never a doubt of the ultimate happiness of all who should be +happy and the overwhelming misery of those who should be miserable. No +peril was the father of a thrill, because from its inception it was +plainly impotent to harm the lovely and the brave. The pleasure had from +witnessing a dexterous job was lost in an artifice that seldom +approached an art. But we'd improved that, an improvement expressed in +the utter loss of the word hero; no man, or woman, was now entirely safe +in the hands of his romantic author; the two manners had come creditably +together. + +I had become, subconsciously, interested in a girl pausing on the floor, +and, in response to my scrutiny, she glanced up with a shadowy smile. I +gazed with instant celerity and fixedness at the ceiling, then at the +upper boxes opposite, since below, indiscretion was laid like a trail of +powder, of explosive rice powder. There was no cutting in at that ball. +She was more than charming, too, with her mixed blood evident in her +carriage, her indolence, rather than in feature. She wore blue, a wisely +simple dress that showed small feet, like butterflies in their +lightness, and the instinctive note of a narrow black velvet band on her +throat. + +An air of sadness rested on her, on, principally, a superiority anyone +could see. Her fan opened and shut in a thin pointed hand. A maid, I +told myself, reflecting the aristocracy of the closets of delicate +clothes in her charge, scented from the gold-stoppered bottles of her +mistress. She was another phase of what had been going on at such length +through my mind--a different catastrophe, since she was denied the +reward of the virtues in either of the races that had made her. In +Boston she would have become a bluestocking, a poet singing in minor +cadence to traditional abolitionists become dilettantes, but in Cuba, +tormented by the strains of the danzon: + +There, her flax burning in resentment and despair, she might be +extinguished in the tide restlessly sweeping to the troubled coast of +Birrajos: or, at Havana, carried into the secrets of the Nanigos: in the +black cabildo of that society, provision was made for a woman. + + * * * * * + +It was significant that the first organization of naniguismo in Cuba was +purely African, for the hatred of its members, Carabalies, for the white +race made the admission of even mulattos impossible. This +society--tierra or juego--was formed during the administration of +General Tacon, in the village of Regla, and called Apapa Efi. It was, +against the protests of its originators at sharing the secret with too +many, enlarged, and spread through the outskirts of Havana. There the +mulattos greatly outnumbered the blacks, and they formed a society of +their own, its oath sworn in Ancha del Norte Street, named Ecobio Efo +Macarara. They insisted on a common brotherhood and their right of +entering the fambas, the ceremonial rooms; but there was a determined +opposition, open battle and murder in Perserverancia and Lagunas +Streets. After this there was a general meeting at Marianao, the early +bar to color, as distinguished from black, removed, and the infusion of +the dark ritual of Efi into white blood began. When, ten years after, an +indiscriminate society, the Ecobio Efo, was terminated by the +authorities, Spanish nobles and professional men were assisting in the +rites. + +What had started upon the African river Oldan as a tribal religion took +on, in Havana, a debased version of Rome, and the veneration of Santa +Barbara was added to the supreme worship of Ecue, a figure vaguely +parallel to the Holy Ghost, created in the sounding of a sacred drum. +And what, equally, in the Carabalie Bricamo was Dibo, God, became in +Cuba an organization of criminals and finally, when its more obvious +aspects were stamped out, a corrupt political influence. There, in the +clearest possible manner, was traced the eventual effect of so much +heralded superiority, such enormous advantages, on native belief. + +There could be no doubt, though, of the fact that, in any pretence of +civilization, the nanigos were detrimental; it was unavoidable that they +should have degenerated into a savage menace, not only in overt acts, +which were not lacking, but in practices of mental and emotional horror. +Their ceremony, with its strange vocables and distortions of meaning; +the obscene words that were but symbols for obscenities beyond +imagination; the character of their dance, which gave them the name +arrastrados, men who dragged themselves, reptilian, on the ground--all +combined in a poison like a gas sweeping from the morass of the past. It +held, beneath its refuge and defiance of society, the appeal of a +portentous secret, bound in blood, the fascination, the fetishism, of +orgiastic rituals, and, under that, stronger still, delirious barbarity. + +Its legend was not different from the others which formed the primitive +bases of subsequent elaborate beliefs: the miracle, with an attending +baptism, was consummated by a woman, Sicanecua, who found a crying +fish--the fish was a sacred Christian sign--in her jar of water. In +recognition of this she was sacrificed and her blood put to a holy use, +and the fish skinned for the drum, sounded by the fingers, used in his +praise. Here Ecue, the divine, was baptized by Efo in the Oldan, who in +turn signed his disciple. And about that tradition, guarded--with its +instrument--in the altar, Ecue sese, the degenerate elements and +characters of modern naniguismo gathered. There were, necessarily, +changes in the Cuban form of worship--the skin of a goat was substituted +for the unprocurable variety of fish, and the timbre of the original +drum secured by an artifice. The need, as well, of finding another +anointment than human blood, difficult to procure in Havana, led to the +sacrifice of the rooster or a goat. This, now, had a crucifix, with the +profession that God, Dibo, must be over everything, and a sacramental +singing; but not the Te Deum or Laudes ... Efore sisi llamba, and the +reply Ho Isueribo engomo ... Mocongo! while the Empego, the clerk of +the service, shifted brightly colored curtains and enveloping +handkerchiefs and marked with yellow chalk the head and body and palms +of the initiates. + +A diablito had in charge the offices of the catechism--Come with me; +where did you leave your feet; where I left my head! Enter where Bongo +is and cry with your brother! Look at your brother because they want to +choke him. He conducted the sacrifice of the goat, which, in a memorial +of Guinea, was eaten with pointed sticks, with the drink Mucuba, made +from sugar-cane rum and bitter broom. A strange procession followed, led +by the Insue, with a woman in a shift, Sicanecue, and the diablito +skipping backward. The sese, a silver crucifix with four black feathers, +was carried, and later the remains of the feast were thrown into a +cemetery. + +The effort to end naniguismo in Havana began in eighteen hundred and +seventy-five, when its gatherings were forbidden; but, deeply +traditional, it flourished in hidden places, in the jail where nanigos +were confined and the cellars of Jesus Maria. Long before that the poet +Placido had been killed; within a few years the Llamba named Hand on the +Ground was judicially executed; and following the assassinations during +the carnival of eighteen hundred and sixty-five, sweeping deportations +were enforced. In Maloja Street a juego, Acaniran Efo Primero, with +officers drawn from reputable quarters, was surprised; the next year the +Abacua Efo was exterminated; a public clash of diablitos resulted in +apprehensions; and twenty-five nanigos were taken on Vista Hermosa +Street. + +It was, in reality, Africa in Havana, brought against its wish and to +its tragic misfortune; and, planted in an alien soil, but among a common +genus, the mysteries of religion, it grew into an aberration of all that +gave it birth. Aside from this, its significance, for me, lay in its +amazing language, an idiom, specifically, composed of the Carabalie +Bricamo and a Spanish without articles or conjunctions, equally +incapable of exact images and the expression of abstract thought. But +taking the place of its omissions, was a congealing power of suggestion, +of creating, through, apparently, no more than the jumbling of common +terms and sounds, sensations of abject dread. The four bishops of the +ritual, in their order, were Insue, Illamba, Mocongo, Empego. In +naniguismo man was momban, an idiot was sansguere, a knife icua +rebesine, a pistol etombre, immortality embiguei, the night erufie, war +ochangana, the sun fanson, and worms cocorico. The language took short +rigid forms, phrases; it had little if any plasticity: Amandido +amanllurube, The day goes and the night comes. Efiquefi que buton efique +Ename onton Ellego Efimeremo Iboito, Eurico sangacurici eurico sanga +quimagua sanga nampe, nampe sanga mariba, The owl drinks the blood of +the dead and flies to the sea. + +The terms of the acts of worship were particularly heavy, sultry, and +held in their sound alone the oppressive significance of fetishes as +black as the night from which they were shaped. The minister of death +to Sinanecua, a ceremony which became traditional, was named +Cuanon-Araferrobre, and the act of sacrifice the Acua Meropo. The +singers before the altar, making visible the sacred stick, Baston +Mocongo, intoned Mocongo Machevere, Mosongo moto cumbaba eribo, and +Erendio basi Bome, I believe in God and God is great; with, at the last, +silencing the profession of faith, the voice of the drum, tarinibongo. + +The nanigos had been driven from the streets through which, at first, on +King's Day, Dia Reyes, they were permitted, once a year, to parade with +native costumes and instruments--atables and marugas and ecous, a +flattened bell struck by a thin stick. Their fambas were destroyed and +hysteria cooled; but I wondered about both the secretiveness and the +persistence of the primitive spirit and the delicate melancholy that +veiled the girl so faintly tinged with carabalie, resting below my box +through the rasping strains of the danzon. Had her gain been greater +than the loss, the ruin, of her simplicity; had she, dragged abruptly +from saurian shadows, been made white by an arbitrary papal sun? + + * * * * * + +A glimmering dawn, faintly salt with the presence of the sea, was +evident in the Parque Central when I walked the short distance, not more +than a few steps, from the opera house to the Inglaterra, my head filled +with the resonant bos and bongos of naniguismo. Havana, for a moment, +seemed like a cemetery--its own marble cemetery of Colon--where a black +spirit, buried in a secret grave, walked and would not be still. I +speculated about that same spirit in another connection--in its +influence on painting and music, on Western literature. It had affected +dancing profoundly, making it, in the United States, almost wholly its +own; and the Spanish, with whom, in the richness of a tradition and +perfect expression, no others could compete, owed a great debt to +Africa. Our music, too, it had influenced to such a degree that it was +doubtful if we had any outside the beat of negro strains. + +Stephen Foster, a great composer in that he had enclosed the whole +sentiment of an age within his medium, was often but a paraphrase of a +darker melody. Foster, like Havana, was Victorian, a period that dreamed +of marble halls, set in a pitch impossible now, and yet, curiously, +charged for an unsympathetic world with significant beauty. This negro +contribution was in a melancholy and minor key, the invariable tone of +all primitive song; in poetry, as well, a lyrical poetry nearly +approaching music, there was an analogous coloring between the race and +its shadowed measures. + +The reminiscent emotions that, with us, were mainly personal, in the +negro were tribal; he had not been individualized, brought to a separate +consciousness; and, in consequence, his song, practically lacking in +intellect, dealt only with instinctive feelings. Growing shrill with +passion and sinking to the monotonous laments of formless sorrow, it +belonged equally to all the men, the women, who heard it--it was their +voice and comprehensible triumph or pain; without artifice it wasn't +artificial nor ever insincere; and, as a means of gold, a medium for +lies, it had no existence. The voice of all, an instrument of natural +beauty, shared by villages, its pure quality, brought in slave ships +that rotted with their dead on the sea, gave the shallow and vitiated +West a fresh earthen tonic chord. + +The negro, naturally, hadn't grown more cheerful in his new imposed +setting; and it was possible that his music had gained an added depth, +at any rate for our perception, from the weight of banishment and +shackles. He had not turned with any success to creative accomplishment +that needed mental independence and courage, or to forms, like the +novel, wholly modern. On the other side, the novel, with all its +trumpeted young freedom, had never, with even relative truth, expressed +the negro in the Americas. This, a subject of appalling splendor, had, +in the United States, been turned over to the comic spirit and short +impressions--stories, superficially, falsely, pathetic. The fact was +that we had enormously harmed the negro, and for that reason, in the +familiar process of human self-esteem, nationally we were uneasy, +resentful in his presence. We saw him, when we escaped from absolute +hatred, as a figure, a subject, without dignity: we lacked there the +penetrative sympathy which was the soul of imaginative fiction. Such a +novel, I thought, was perhaps of everything that offered the best worth +writing. + +Certainly nothing more difficult could be well attempted; my knowledge, +in Havana and through the nanigos, had been perceptibly enlarged, and I +was not unfamiliar with the state in which, I decided, the story must be +laid--not in Virginia, but upon a level grey reach of Louisiana, cut by +tideless bayous and saturated with the fever of cane and cypress brakes. +A bitter novel like the broom herb put in the ceremonial drink Mucuba, +pages from which it would be hard to exclude a fury of hopelessness! And +what an angry disturbed wasplike hum it would provoke! No magazine, of +course, would touch it--it would be sold, for a week or ten days, from +under counters, and then we, my novel and myself, metaphorically burned. +A magnificent project: + +A huddle of cabins at the edge of a wall of black pines beyond a deep +ruined field--but perhaps this was South Carolina--infinitesimal ragged +patches of corn, a sandy trail lost abruptly in the close forest, and +half-naked portentous shapes. There would be a town back in the country +with a desolate red square of great sprawling water-oaks smothered in +hanging moss, a place at once old and raw, and ugly with vindictive +ignorance.... The negroes were infinitely happier in Havana, where the +heat, the palms, were their own; and I was surprised that they didn't +desert the United States in a body for a suaver spirit in the air and +man. Cuba, to a large measure, with what final result I wasn't +concerned, had absorbed them in the manner that Spain had absorbed the +Moors. Havana made some denial of this, and prided itself, with entire +justice where it was true, on unmixed Castilian blood; but the other was +perceptible in the gait, the very whiteness, of Cuba's principal +city--the whitest walls on earth. This didn't bother me; I liked Havana +from its farthest view to its most intimate facade, and I was grateful +to whatever had made it. + +In my room the negro, with the danzon, faded from my mind; and I only +paused to speculate dimly about his overwhelming preference, where a +choice existed, for the Protestant religions instead of Roman +Catholicism. I should have thought that the color, the imagery and +incense, of the Catholic Church would be irresistible. Yet there were, +in the United States, thousands of colored Methodists and Baptists for +one adherent of Rome. It might be that the hymns of Methodism, +sufficiently melancholy and barbarous in figure, God knew, were the +reason--the character of the hymns and congregational singing, the loud +pictorial shouts. The later religion of the negroes, in addition to what +I had already considered, was a subject to be avoided; but running +through my mind was the memory that in Richmond, not long ago, it was +common in the evenings of spring for bands of negroes to go through the +streets singing spirituals and constantly gathering others who dropped +their work, their responsibilities, to join the passing chorus of hope. + +That was lost now, I understood, a vanished custom, killed by +self-consciousness; but it would have been a fine thing to hear +approaching and receding through the dusk, a stirring resinous volume or +a mere vibrant echo, a dying whisper. Perhaps that, a dying whisper, +would be the solving of the whole tragic difficulty--disease and winter +and relentless natural laws. The latter moved with great deliberation +through unlimited centuries, but the impatience of men demanded instant +release from trouble. They wanted black black and white white, with no +transition, no blurring of the edges; this was their dream, but they +constantly defeated it, betrayed their ideal. Yes, it might be that the +humility of that defeat, in the far future, would accomplish a +universally white city. Only one other way offered: a different humanity +from any which had yet appeared outside rare individuals ... but that +vision seemed, to me, as fantastic as the sentence in Carabalie Bricamo +that gave it expression, Eruco en llenison comunbairan abasi otete +alleri pongo--We of this world are all together. The truth was, honestly +at heart, that I couldn't commit myself to all, or even a quarter, of +what this would have demanded. Impersonally I was able to see that, as +an idea, it was superb, I realized that something of it must inform my +pages; but it was useless to pretend that I could begin to carry it out +or that I was, in practice, a Christian. I was tired, and my thoughts +grew confused, but dimly in my mind was again the consciousness of the +remote fate of the creative writer, an individual without even the +desire to be a part of that for which he cried. + + * * * * * + +Certainly I had no marked love of humanity the following morning, caught +with a small mob in a narrow passage of the wharf where I was waiting to +board the steamer for Key West. I was between the water and a wooden +partition, the heat was savage, and a number of youthful marines, +returning home from Camagueey, were indulging in a characteristic +humor--the dealing of unsuspected blows, of jarring force, among +themselves. They shoved each other, in a crowd shoulder to shoulder, +disregarding entirely the indirect results of their vigor, and exchanged +threats of fulminating violence. They were not more annoying than the +others, but only more evident; and, as the advertised time of departure +was past by an hour, and then a second hour, and the sun found its way +into our walled space, even the marines subsided. Every trace of +dignity, in that heat, ran away from the people about me. While, on the +whole, they were uncomplaining, even relatively considerate of others' +discomforts, wondering, with weary smiles, when the boat would be off, +I had no such kindly promptings.... I hated them all, the ugliness of +the women and the men's dull or merely sharp faces, with an intensity +that wasn't normal. When I was very young indeed, scarcely past two, I +had been nearly crushed in a throng after the Sesquicentennial parade in +Philadelphia; long afterward I had been, to all practical purposes, +asphyxiated in a train that broke down in an Apennine tunnel; as a +result, I had an unreasoning fear of crowded bodies or limited space; +and this dread, before long, on the Havana wharf, turned into an acute +aversion for every individual and thing about me. + +The surrounding insistent good nature developed in flashes of exchanged +homely wit, varied by the attitudes of restraint, and, of them both, I +couldn't tell which I resented more. The present position of the waiting +people, the long exposure to the intolerable sun, was the result of +their patience; of that and their personal inefficiency reflected in +their official management. All the bad governments in the world, the +dishonesty and universal muddles, were nothing more than monuments to +the immeasurable stupidity and greed of the people; they were betrayed +politically not by powerful and unscrupulous parties and men, but by +themselves; perpetually and always by their own laziness and +superstition and jealousy. + +The Cubenos, the original inhabitants of Cuba, were parcelled in the +bondage of encomiendas, exterminated by the passion of the Spanish Crown +for gold; when they had been sacrificed, Africa was raked by slavers for +labor in the mines and planting; beneath every movement, instigated by +hope or supported by returns, riches were the incentive and power. Men +had never, within history and their secret hearts, cared for anything +else: an ineradicable desire. There was a facile public gabble about the +qualities of the spirit, about soul; but the solid fact of money, both +as an abstraction and what conspicuously it brought, was what the people +worshipped, wanted, what they schemed or stole for, or in the service +of which they performed the most heroic toil. + +This was not, necessarily, an ignoble or negligible pursuit, but it was +corrupted by an attending hypocrisy which forced a fervent denial, the +pretense of an utterly different purpose, to be worn like a cloak. It +was possible that, admitted, the sovereignty of gold would be the most +beneficial rule applicable to man. It was preeminently the symbol, the +signature, of power; with the late sugar crops it had revolutionized +Cuba. Havana was for the moment, in a very strong sense, the capital of +the world, and the visible mark of that was the stream of automobiles on +the Prado and Malecon; individually, money was counted by the +million--the recognition, the desired reward, of the fact that Cuba +controlled a necessity of life. The instinct to profit by such turns of +fortune was deeper than any charitable impulse; there was a tendency to +speculate in wheat more general than the impulse to give loaves to the +starving. + +There was a sudden surge toward the gang plank of the City of Miami, and +I was borne onto the steamer, away from Havana, in an exasperated and +bitter spirit. I had entered the harbor happily, saturated by its +beauty, but I was leaving blind to the marble walls on the blue water. +However, it was cooler on an upper deck; and with my back +uncompromisingly turned on humanity, on my fellow passengers over a sea +like a tranquil illusion of respite between stubborn realities, I picked +out from the panorama of the city across the harbor, diminishing in its +narrow entrance, familiar buildings and marks. Havana vanished, I +thought, far more rapidly than it had come into view; soon nothing of +Cuba could be seen but the dark green hills and thinly printed +silhouettes of mountains. I had it, though, in my memory; Havana was now +woven into the fibre of my being. + +The Inglaterra Hotel took its place with all the remembered spots where +I had lived: the bare pine-sealed room in the Virginia mountains, the +tall narrow house in Geneva, the courtyard in the Via San Gallo, the +brick house in a suburb from which, in a rebellion against every +circumstance of my life, I had escaped. I recalled days on end when I +had tried to write without the ability to form a single acceptable +sentence, when the floor was heaped and littered with pages crushed and +flung away. Then, it had seemed, I should get nowhere, and see, do, +nothing.... Havana was a singularly lovely city. A rush of small +mementos of its life flooded my mind--the aroma of the cigars, the +coolness of the Telegrafo Cafe and the savor of its Daiquiri cocktails, +the burning strip of sunlight that, at noon, found its way into Obispo +Street. It was still possible to get Ron Bacardi in the United States. I +was carrying back a large provision of exceedingly fine cigars, not from +the Larranaga factory, but a slender Corona, a shape specially rolled +for a discrimination as delicate as any in Cuba. Yet, away from Havana, +they wouldn't taste the same; in the United States they'd deteriorate; +and, where I lived, there were no fresh, no emerald-green limes, and +without them a Daiquiri was robbed of its inimitable flavor. + +But what, more than those, I should miss was the atmosphere of Havana +itself, the gay urbanity and festive lightness of tone. It had almost +wholly escaped the modern passion for reform changing America, pretty +much all the western world, into a desert of precept and correction; in +many senses Havana was an oasis in an aridity spreading day by day. Any +improvement wouldn't occur during my life--the habit of lies and +self-delusion had become a fundamental part of society--and all I could +hope for was the discovery of rare individuals and cities in which +existence was more than a penalty for having been born. I wanted them as +a relaxation, as short escapes from a tyranny from which, really, I was +powerless to turn: + +I didn't want to live in Havana, nor to be surrounded by exceptional +people; for they were both enemies of what, above everything, I wanted +to do--to write into paper and ink some permanence of beauty. For that, +Chester County and the solid stone block of my house were necessary, a +temperate climate indispensable. At heart, in spite of my constant +fault-finding, my threats of leaving, I was bound by associations deeper +than mere intelligence. No, nothing so powerful as an obsession had +overtaken me approaching Havana; I was not, in actuality, an adventurer, +but only a seeker for charm, for memories, to carry back to the low +window to which I had already referred. The charm of Havana was its +strangeness, the vividness of its sudden impression on me, the temporary +freedom, grace, it offered. It was characteristic of freedom, too, that, +in the end, it became slavery; while slavery had, at times, +extraordinarily the appearance of freedom. Not a month ago I had +dropped, with a sigh, a gasp of relief, a pen heavier than anything else +on earth, and now I could scarcely restrain the eagerness--the +confidence, at last, of success--with which I wanted to take it up +again. + + * * * * * + +When I turned, looking back, Cuba had vanished, sunk below the line of +the sea. The Gulf Stream was indigo; along the side of the steamer, foam +hissed with a sharp whiteness, and at the bow miniature rainbows hung +shimmering in the spray. The perpetual soft clouds of the Gulf Stream +were very high and faint. In my imagination Havana assumed a magic, a +mythical, state--a vision that, I was certain, had no absolute +ponderable existence. It was a city created on a level bright tide, +under lustrous green hills, for the reward of cherished and unworldly +dreams. It was the etherealized spectacle of the sanguine hopes of all +the conquistadores who had set sail for the rubies of Cipango; they had +had great desires of white marble cities in which the women were lovely +and dark, and gold was worked into the forms of every day. + +They, different from the frugal Dutch, making, with no less daring, the +Eastern Passage in the interest of associated merchants and of +commonwealths, sailed, in a more picturesque phrase, for their Catholic +Majesties and for Spain. The Dutch names, Bonteke and Schouten and +Roggeveen, had a solid bartering sound compared with Francesco de +Cordoba and Miruelo and Angel de Villafane. Holland had its deathless +tradition of the sea, sufficiently colored with extravagant adventure; +but its spirit was sober, the visions of its navigators would never have +lingered in a marble city. + +Havana was, perhaps, a Saragossa of souls, with the acts and thoughts of +its early vivid years, of Carenas, forever held in the atmosphere, +audible in the restless volume of sound that was never still. Its +history had flashed through my mind with the turn of a wheel, its +duration seeming no more than the opening and shutting of a hand; but +now I had an impression not of the transient, not of walls and names and +voices, but of qualities impersonal and permanent, of something which, +while individual men died, resisted death. It had existence, that was, +as long as humanity drew a continuous thread of memory through time. +Havana had, outwardly, changed from its first huddle of bohios and +fortified tower; but the form it had taken, so different from the +discovered reality, had beyond any question that odd similitude to Marco +Polo's reports of the Grand Khanate. Its final architecture, +pseudo-classic, was more abstract than any other imaginable order: all +the dress that had ever paraded through the successive stages of the +city--the Cacquies, girdled in feathers, the brocades of Maria de Toledo +and her lady-in-waiting, Captain Godoy in steel and lace, the floating +crinoline of the Prince of Anglona's year, painted black nanigos--was +equally possible against a background at once fantastic and restrained. + +There was never a more complex spirit than Havana's, no stranger +mingling of chance and climate and race had ever occurred; but, +remarkably, a unity of effect had been the result, such a singleness as +that possessed by an opera, in which, above the orchestra and the +settings and the voices, there was perceptible a transcending emotion +created from an artificial and illogical means. For while Havana had a +record dignified in its sweep, it could never be long dominant either +as a city or in its men; it had ruled an island but not the world, it +had never been--in that latitude--a Captain-general of a hemisphere. No, +it wasn't symphonic, but the lesser, more pictorial, performance; it +had, I thought, very much the appearance of a stage. + +This, however was not a denial of the reality of the blood it shed, nor +of the sharpness and danger of its emotions; it had been a profusely +bloody city with tropical passions often reaching ideals of sacrifice. +It had, too, suffered the iron of oppression, spoken its word for +liberty, the state which, never to be realized, by its bare conception +elevated life. Now, in addition, it was a great port ... and yet, though +it might have been the fault of my limitations, I continued to see +Havana as more dramatic than essential; I heard persistently the +overture with the themes of Seville, the crying native airs, the drums +of Guinea played with the fingers. The shining crooked bay was filled by +the plate ships of Mexico and Peru, with their high-decked sterns and +yellow cannon. The curtain fell to rise again on Don Miguel Tacon! + +It was impossible to determine what I had seen of Havana and what was +merely my reflected self; even hard to decide if I had seen Havana +objectively at all, since my attitude toward it had been so purely +personal. My memory was composed of what I'd experienced and the +reflections, the thoughts, that had given birth to; and, of them, the +latter were the more real, solider than the Prado, more tangible than +the dining-room of the Inglaterra. Without them Havana would have been +meaningless, sterile, simply a museum about which nothing could be +written but a catalogue. It was its special charm to be charged with +sensations rather than facts; a place where facts--not, of a kind, +absent--could be safely ignored. Further than that, ignoring them was, +for any measure of pleasure, absolutely needful: the pedantic spirit in +Havana was fatal. + +What, almost entirely, I had been told to view, expected to enjoy, I had +avoided; yet not that, for it implied a deliberate will, and such a +planning or triumph of character had been as far as possible from my +drifting: I had seen what I preferred and done what I was; anyone, +following me in Havana, could have judged me with exactitude. I had +spent money lavishly--as though I were rich instead of extravagant--for +visible returns that would have only provoked the other passengers on +the City of Miami. They, where they were not driven to staterooms by the +dipping of the steamer, were vociferous with knowledge about Cuba, their +bags were heavy with souvenirs--the Coty perfumes from France and the +table-linen of the Canary Islands. The pervasive salesmen, flushed with +success and Scotch whisky, smoking the cigars long familiar to them in +northern hotels, hinted together of the Parisian girls and criollos, to +whom they referred as creoles in the meaning and vocabulary of American +burlesque. Some officials of transportation and sugar manipulators sat +aside, with double Coronas, exchanging in short sentences their hardness +of knowledge, speaking of Cuba as an estancia of which they were +absentee owners. A flight of winged fish skittered over the sea, and the +clouds following the Gulf Stream turned rose with the dropping of the +sun; the horizon bore a suggestion of Florida. Once Cuba, regarded as +the shore of India, had been the center of the West, and Florida no more +than a chimera: how ironic such errors and reversals were! Now it was +Juana that was legendary, and Florida resembled the significant hooked +finger of an imponderable power. The day slid rapidly into water that +had lost its blueness for expanses of chalky shallow green, and the flat +roofs of Key West and masoned arches became slowly visible across the +sea, and a stir of departure filled the decks. + +I was, for a moment, depressed at the definite leaving behind of +Havana--for the tranquil passage had seemed only an extension of its +spirit--and by the imminent reshouldering of my burden of +responsibility. I had never wanted that, but, without choice, it had +been abruptly thrust on me--a responsibility, impossible of fulfilment, +which I couldn't put down. When I was young I had looked in vain for a +perpetual Havana, hoping for nothing more; and now, when my youth was +dead, I had found the perfection of my desire. But, as always, the +discovery was too late; I couldn't stay in the covered paseos, the +plazas with flambeau trees and royal palms or idle in a room of Moorish +tiles with a dripping fountain, over a magic drink; my time for the +actualities of charming liberty, the possession of uncounted days, was +gone. But this mood was nothing more than a gesture, a sentiment, thrown +back to romance. + +[Illustration: image of the book's back cover] + + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +beginninng of the Prado=>beginning of the Prado + +like a harsh native wine, from Balbao=>like a harsh native wine, from +Bilbao + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's San Cristobal de la Habana, by Joseph Hergesheimer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA HABANA *** + +***** This file should be named 38445.txt or 38445.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/4/4/38445/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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