“What about the division that General Benitez was going to lead into battle in Europe?” he asked the chauffeur. “Has that division left yet?”
“Todavía no,” the chauffeur said. “Not yet. But the general is practicing learning to ride a motorcycle. He practices early in the morning along the Malecon.”
“It must be a motorized division then,” Thomas Hudson said. “What are those packages that the soldiers and officers are carrying as they come out of the Estado Mayor?”
“Rice,” the chauffeur said. “There was a cargo of rice came in.”
“Is it difficult to get now?”
“Impossible. It’s in the clouds.”
“Do you eat badly now?”
“Very badly.”
“Why? You eat at the house. I pay for everything, no matter how far the price goes up.”
“I mean when I eat at home.”
“When do you eat at home?”
“Sundays.”
“I’ll have to buy you a dog,” Thomas Hudson said.
“We have a dog,” the chauffeur said. “A really beautiful and intelligent dog. He loves me more than anything in the world. I cannot move a foot that he does not want to come with me. But, Mr. Hudson, you cannot realize nor appreciate, you who have everything, what this war means in suffering to the people of Cuba.”
“There must be much hunger.”
“You cannot realize it.”
No, I can’t, Thomas Hudson thought. I can’t realize it at all. I can’t realize why there should ever be any hunger in this country ever. And you, you son of a bitch for the way you look after the motors of cars, you ought to be shot, not fed. I would shoot you with the greatest of pleasure. But he said, “I will see what I can do about getting you some rice for your house.”
“Thank you very much. You cannot conceive of how hard life is now for us Cubans.”
“It must be really bad,” Thomas Hudson said. “It is a shame I cannot take you to sea for a rest and a vacation.”
“It must be very difficult at sea, too.”
“I believe it is,” Thomas Hudson said. “Sometimes, even on a day such as today, I believe it is.”
“We all have our crosses to bear.”
“I would like to take my cross and stick it up the culo of a lot of people I know.”
“It is necessary to take things with calm and patience, Mr. Hudson.”
“Muchas gracias,” said Thomas Hudson.
They had turned into San Isidro street below the main railway station and opposite the entrance to the old P. and O. docks where the ships from Miami and Key West used to dock and where the Pan American airways had its terminal when they were still flying the old clippers. It was abandoned now that the P. and O. boats had been taken over by the Navy and Pan American was flying DC-2’s and DC-3’s to the Rancho Boyeros airport and the Coast Guard and the Cuban navy had their sub chasers tied up where the cuppers used to land.
Thomas Hudson remembered this part of Havana best from the old days. The part that he loved now had then been just the road to Matanzas; an ugly stretch of town, the castle of Atares, a suburb whose name he did not know, and then a brick road with towns strung along it. You sped through them so that you did not remember one from another. Then he had known every bar and dive around this part of town and San Isidro had been the great whorehouse street of the waterfront. It was dead now, with not a house functioning on it, and had been dead ever since they closed it and shipped all the whores back to Europe. That great shipment had been the reverse of how Villefranche used to be when the American ships on the Mediterranean station would leave and all the girls would be waving. When the French ship left Havana with the girls aboard, all the waterfront was crowded and it was not only men that were saying goodbye, waving from the shore, the docks, and the sea wall of the harbor. There were girls in the chartered launches and the bum-boats that circled the ship and ran alongside her as she went out the channel. It was very sad, he remembered, although many people thought it was very funny. Why whores should be funny he had never understood. The shipment was supposed to be very comic, though. But many people were sad after the ship had gone and San Isidro street had never recovered. The name still moved him, he thought, although it was a dull enough street now and you hardly ever saw a white man or woman on it except for truck drivers and delivery cart pushers. There were gay streets in Havana where only Negroes lived and there were some very tough streets and tough quarters, such as Jesús y María, which was just a short distance away. But this part of town was just as sad as it had been ever since the whores had gone.