“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.
Now the car had come out onto the waterfront itself where the ferry that ran across to Regla docked and where the coastwise sailing ships tied up. The harbor was brown and rough, but the sea that was running did not make whitecaps. The water was too brown. But it was fresh and clear brown-looking after the black foulness of the inner parts of the bay. Looking across it, he saw the calm of the bay that lay in the lee of the hills above Casablanca where the fishing smacks were anchored, where the gray gunboats of the Cuban navy lay, and where he knew his own ship was anchored, although he could not see her from here. Across the bay he saw the ancient yellow church and the sprawl of the houses of Regla, pink, green, and yellow houses, and the storage tanks and the refinery chimneys of Belot and behind them the gray hills toward Cojímar.
“Do you see the ship?” the chauffeur asked.
“Not from here.”
Here they were to the windward of the smoking chimneys of the Electric Company and the morning was as bright and clean and the air as clear and new-washed as on the hills of the farm. Everyone moving about the docks looked cold in the norther.
“Let’s go to the Floridita first,” Thomas Hudson said to the chauffeur.
“We are only four blocks from the Embassy here.”
“Yes. But I said I wished to go to the Floridita first.”
“As you wish.”
They rode straight up into town and were out of the wind and, passing the warehouses and stores, Thomas Hudson smelled the odor of stored flour in sacks and flour dust, the smell of newly opened packing cases, the smell of roasting coffee that was a stronger sensation than a drink in the morning, and the lovely smell of the tobacco that came strongest just before the car turned to the right toward the Floridita.
This was one of the streets he loved but he did not like to walk along it in daylight because the sidewalks were too narrow and there was too much traffic and at night when there was no traffic they were not roasting the coffee and the windows of the storehouses were closed so you could not smell the tobacco.
“It is closed,” the chauffeur said. The iron shutters were still down on both sides of the café.
“I thought it would be. Go on down Obispo now to the Embassy.”
This was the street he had walked down a thousand times in the daytime and in the night. He did not like to ride down it because it was over so quickly but he could not justify himself delaying in reporting any longer and he drank the last of his drink and looked at the cars ahead, the people on the sidewalk, and the crossing traffic on the north and south streets, and saved the street for later when he could walk it. The car stopped in front of the Embassy and Consulate building and he went in.
Inside you were supposed to fill out your name and address and the object of your visit at a table where a sad clerk with plucked eyebrows and a moustache across the extreme lower part of his upper lip looked up and pushed the paper toward him. He did not look at it and went into the elevator. The clerk shrugged his shoulders and smoothed his eyebrows.
Perhaps he had emphasized them a little too much. Still they were cleaner and neater that way than wooly and bushy and they did go with his moustache. He had, he believed, the narrowest moustache it was possible to achieve and still have a moustache. Not even Errol Flynn had a narrower one, not even Pincho Gutiérrez, not even Jorge Negrete. Still that son of a bitch Hudson had no right to walk in like that and ignore him.
“What sort of maricones have you on the door now?” Thomas Hudson asked the elevator operator.
“That’s not a maricón. That’s nothing.”
“How’s everything here?”
“Good. Fine. The same as always.”
He got off at the fourth floor and walked down the hall. He went in the middle door of the three and asked the Marine warrant officer at the desk if the Colonel was in.
“He flew down to Guantánamo this morning.”
“When will he be back?”
“He said he might go to Haiti.”
“Is there anything for me?”
“Nothing with me.”
“Did he leave any message for me?”
“He said to tell you to stick around.”
“How was he feeling?”
“Awful.”
“How did he look?”
“Terrible.”
“Was he plugged at me?”
“I don’t think so. He just said to tell you to stick around.”
“Is there anything I ought to know?”
“I don’t know. Is there?”
“Cut it out.”
“Okay. I suppose you had it pretty dusty. But you weren’t working for him in this office. You get out to sea. I don’t give a goddam—”
“Take it easy.”
“Are you staying out in the country?”
“Yes. But I’m going to be in town today and tonight.”
“He won’t be back today or tonight. I’ll call you out in the country when he comes in.”
“You’re sure he’s not plugged at me?”
“I know he’s not plugged at you. What’s the matter? Have you got a bad conscience?”
“No. Is anybody else plugged at me?”
“As far as I know not even the Admiral is plugged at you. Go on out and get drunk for me.”
“I’m going to get drunk for myself first.”
“Get drunk for me, too.”
“What’s the matter? You’re drunk every night, aren’t you?”
“That’s not enough. How did Henderson do?”
“All right. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. I just asked you. You have any complaints?”
“We don’t make complaints.”
“What a man. What a leader.”
“We formulate charges.”
“You can’t.
