The harbor itself was protected by a large castle that stood on a rocky outcropping, its parapets fitted with cannons that, as we came in, were firing off a volley into the air to summon the day. Church bells were ringing from the interior of the city, and all along the shore were a hundred majestic buildings with yellow and red and blue facades, most of them ornately designed, with parapets and twisting balconies, some being private residences and others warehouses and places of commerce. Spanish flags flew everywhere, but then the flags of many other nations, from every clime, were fluttering off the forest of masts before us, as there were frigates, brigs, schooners, and steamers from all over the world jammed along the docks. Altogether the city seemed booming and in decline; beautiful but aging; a gem and a rough stone; florid with scents and repugnant with rot at the same time.
Clemens remained busy with his notebook, scribbling down some impressions, when we dropped anchor at a place called Regla, which was across the bay from the city proper. Because the yellow fever had come to Cuba from New Orleans that past year, our ship was boarded by a health official, who conducted an interminably slow appraisal of all the passengers, whom he looked over for signs of that illness. This took up most of the morning. Then another official, accompanied by several soldiers, set up a table and chair on deck to check our credentials against the names he had from a passenger list. I still had my old English passport, wherein I was still listed as John Rowlands, and it was in that name that I was given a visitor’s permit — what was called a cédula: Clemens had a Missouri passport, a holdover from the days when he had planned a journey to Brazil some years before. Altogether he had seemed very pleased that at long last, after so many travels out East, and up-and downriver, he was finally about to set foot in a foreign land.
During the transfer of documents he noticed the name written in my passport and said to me:
“So your birth name is John?”
“It was.”
“Well, then, how is it that you’ve never mentioned it to me?”
“I thought I had. But the truth is, Samuel, as far as I’m concerned John Rowlands no longer exists.”
“No matter: I prefer Henry, at any rate; but it is strange to think that happenstance has given you a name most special to me.”
Disembarking on a small lighter, we were taken to shore by locals so thin and emaciated that we thought they’d certainly suffered from the fever, for their limbs were shrunken and their feet were shriveled down to the bone. As happens in any port, after we had passed through the customhouse — I had hidden away my Bible, as I’d heard from a passenger aboard ship that Bibles were contraband in that country — we were assailed by persons anxious to sell every service. Were we of a different bent of mind we could have gone off with some very friendly ladies or taken up residence in some private home, for there were several poor-looking persons soliciting passengers to stay with them, cheaply. Availing myself of my few phrases of Spanish — I would learn the language well in Spain years later — we hired a carriage and driver to take us around to the city.
Within the hour we were making our way along the densely packed streets of Havana, a city unlike any I had ever seen before: New Orleans, for all its mazes, had many a street that opened wide to the sky and air, but here the buildings seemed narrowly separated from one another, the passageways between them barely wide enough for two carts to pass side by side. Where movement was not slow it had stopped completely, for those streets were congested with carriages and donkey-drawn carts and poor farmers pulling along their mules, their woven cane panniers filled with bunches of bananas, oranges, and the local favorite, a tuber called plantain. And many of them were on foot, hauling chickens tied by their feet and hung off sticks on their backs. There were slaves here, too, none rushed in his labors and all of a generally poorer condition than the slaves of New Orleans. Many of them, steeped in misery, were going shoeless or were huddled off, sickly and malnourished, in some shady cubbyhole with their loads at their sides. Occasionally we saw a fancier kind of slave, usually a postilion in attendance of an expensive silver-rimmed carriage, dressed in white leggings, long spurs, and a bright red jacket (but that was more the exception than the rule). Beggars, deformed and diseased, were everywhere, and lepers, too, their hands wrapped in rags or covered in worn mittens.
Striking as well was the abundance of Chinese — many of them, Clemens noticed, missing their right ears — conscripted former criminals, we would later learn, brought to Cuba under strict seven-year contracts as indentured servants. These Chinamen were valued by the planters for their resourcefulness and tenacity at labor (and because they were cheaper to keep than slaves). Their imprint on the city came from the exotic flavor of their shops and restaurants, for alongside the Spanish stores called bodegas and the usual haberdashery and ladies’ dress establishments — my clerk’s eye could not fail to notice such places of commerce — there would be a window scrawled with Chinese characters, a dim doorway, and, in the half-light of day, one could see high shelves stocked with all manner of exotic-looking goods. These shopkeepers wore their hair in long black braided pigtails, or they shaved their heads completely, their white pantaloons and coolie hats common among the Chinese of that city.
Strange to say, Clemens was generally delighted with the colorful attractions of the place, whereas I, having seen both the highs and lows of what a locality could afford, remained somewhat mystified by Mr. Stanley’s attraction to the city, for from what I could observe, the first impressions I had of impending decline and neglect were reinforced at nearly every turn. Still, despite its apparent chaos, there seemed some promise to Havana — for there were many fine buildings to be admired, some of them tranquil-looking places set back behind palm-filled, marble-floored courtyards, off the street. There were bars and billiard halls, and we noticed that virtually every Cuban man of commerce was quite well — if not practically — dressed, in dark suits with cravats and heavy French hats. And the Cubans we saw — whether lowly peasant or aristocrat — smoked, either small cigarillos or the Cuban cigars for which the island was famous.
WE ENDED UP at a hotel owned by an American woman in the old city, not far from the city’s Plaza de Armas, where the gardens were in bloom. It was called the Hotel Cubano, and it was where Mr. Stanley had occasionally stayed while visiting that city, as its guests were mainly southerners like himself. Indeed, when Clemens and I finally arrived — in midafternoon, in the extreme heat of the day — a group of southern gentlemen was shooting billiards in a room off the reception area. The owner, a certain Mrs. Rosedale, late of Savannah, Georgia, was the sort of lady in perpetual bloom despite her middle-aged years, gracious of manner and friendly. When I signed the register, she asked me if I was a relation of Mr. Stanley. When I said that I was, she chanced to remark: “Oh, how is he?”
“I imagine that he is well, ma’am — it is my hope, anyway; you see, we have had some difficulty in communications. But I hope to find him. Surely he is known around here?”
“He is. Last I saw of him, he was in that very bar conducting some business — a few months ago, I believe it was. I spoke to him then: It seemed he was in attendance of some urgent matter involving his brother.” Then: “But I am sure you will find him shortly if he is in Havana. Here the community of southern folk find each other, and quickly, especially now, with the probability of war.”