Pat wondered what this had to do with dogs, and Domenica sensed her puzzlement.
“You’re obviously wondering where dogs come into this,” she said.
“A bit,” said Pat.
“Dogs have everything to do with this,” said Domenica.
“Cuban dogs are rather special, you see.”
81. Havana
“I arrived in Havana at night,” said Domenica. “That’s a good time to arrive anywhere, because you don’t see very much and then you wake up in the morning and open your shutters to an entirely new world. That’s how I felt. There was a balcony to my room and this looked out over the rooftops to the most gorgeous tower I have ever seen. A tower on top of an ornate palace of some sort, with small arches and windows painted in that light blue they go in for in Cuba – almost a turquoise. And when I looked down and along the street to the front of my building, I saw nothing but three- or four-storey buildings with decorated stucco facades, all in faded white or yellow or pink.
Ironwork balconies. I have never seen such beauty in a city.
Never. Not even in Italy. Not even in places like Siena or Vienna.
It’s a wonderful, very feminine architecture.
“But the problem with the beauty of Havana is that it’s so decrepit. So many of those wonderful buildings are on their last legs. The people can’t afford to fix them. They have no money.
When you don’t even have enough money for food or soap or any of those things, then you won’t have enough money for your buildings, will you?
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“And so you walk past these buildings in which whole floors, or rooms within floors, have collapsed. And yet people who lead their lives in the rooms next to those that have simply fallen to the ground continue to live where they are. So you will see gaps in buildings, like missing teeth, and right beyond the gap will be a lighted window which shows that others are hanging on in the midst of the falling masonry.
“I had a friend who lived in one of those buildings. I had met her at an anthropological meeting in Jamaica a few years earlier, and we had kept in touch. They are desperate for friends, the Cubans. They are loveable, charming people and they want to belong to the world like the rest of us. And so they write when they can afford the stamp.
“She asked me to her flat, which was on the edge of the old city. The staircase which took you up to the top floor, where she lived, was distinctly suspect and there were large holes in it. You had to watch where you put your feet. And her flat had three rooms. A kitchen, and two other rooms. She lived in one with her young son, and her husband, from whom she was divorced, lived in the other. Yes, she was divorced from him on the grounds of his adultery and cruelty, and yet they were trapped 268 Havana
together because you just can’t move in that society unless you go through a very complicated and expensive system of exchanging flats. They couldn’t afford this. So they still had to live under the same roof and share the kitchen and the bathroom, such as it was. And in order to get to his room, he had to go through hers, at any time of the night and day. Can you imagine it?
“And yet, like so many other Cubans, she had a dog, a little dog called Basilio. She wanted her little boy to have a dog, and so they had one. Every Cuban gets a ration of food, and you can’t get anything else unless you have a lot of money to spend, which she didn’t. So Basilio had to be fed out of the wretched, barely adequate food ration that she had. In other words, she gave him her own food.
“And when you went out in the streets or the plaza, you saw these bands of little dogs walking around with such good spirit.
They were not really strays – they all had owners – and all of them were loved by somebody. In other cities, you would expect to see collarless dogs persecuted. Rounded up. Taken to pounds.
And then executed by lethal injection. These dogs just wandered about perfectly happily.
“And in a way I thought of it as a metaphor for the society.
These cheerful small dogs, these perritos, all getting by in the face of terrible material privation. And putting up with it in such good spirit, just as the people about them seem to do. All of them, dogs and people, smiling in the face of constant, grinding poverty.
“Which may be part of the problem, of course. Communism has failed miserably in Cuba, just as it seems to have failed elsewhere. It just does not seem to have been able to provide for the material needs of people. It has only survived through the denial of freedom – there are many charges one can levy against it. And if the people weren’t so nice about it, then they would have risen in anger and demanded their freedom, demanded some more effective response to material needs, just as they did in Eastern Europe. But they haven’t. They’ve continued to dance and play music and keep their sense of humour. It’s quite A Great Sense of Purity
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remarkable, and really rather sad – sad to think that there must have been many people who genuinely wanted to create a decent society, people who believed they were doing the right thing, and then they found that everything went so wrong, the whole thing involved lies and distortion and repression, and had become so utterly shabby. And that happened. Even the signs that claim victory are falling down. And if people are given half a chance, they flee, out of sheer desperation, braving no matter what dangers.
“And waiting in the wings are those who are rubbing their hands and saying that it’s only a question of time before the whole place is covered in fast-food restaurants, the ports crowded with the cruise ships full of spoiled tourists, the prostitutes and the pimps triumphant, and that charming, beautiful culture crushed in the deluge.
“Globalisation, my dear. And in this way, is our wide and entrancing world, our vivid world of songs and music and cultural difference, brought to an end by the crude, the false, the mindless, the imposed.”
Domenica became silent. She was looking down at the floor now. Pat had not even begun to tell her what she wanted to tell her, but could not now, after a story of such sadness. So she finished her coffee in silence and asked Domenica to excuse her until another moment, another day. Domenica understood.
82. A Great Sense of Purity
Pat reflected, in private, over what had happened. Peter had left a note that afternoon, pushed through the letter-box at the flat, with her name written on the outside of the folded paper. That picnic – remember? – it’s on! I’ll come and collect you at five. If you can’t make it, give me a call at this number.
She had retired to her room – there was no sign of Bruce –
and re-read the note. When he had issued the invitation she had certainly not accepted it there and then. After she had overcome 270 A Great Sense of Purity
her initial surprise – it was not every day that one was invited to a nudist picnic, and in Moray Place Gardens too – she had said that she would think about it. That was all. And she had thought about it, and although she might have decided to go, she had not yet told him that.
She looked out of the window. It was a warm enough day –
much warmer than one would expect for early September – and this must have encouraged the nudists to go ahead with their picnic. But the weather in Edinburgh was notoriously change-able and sunlight could within minutes become deep gloom, empty skies become heavy with rain, snow give way to warm breezes. There was simply no telling.