Island that Dared Read Online Free PDF Page B

(if not sexual) intercourse. This suspicion was confirmed later by visits to areas where the Soviets had had bases and left bad memories.
    Military precision marks the organising of Coppelia’s hordes. Neatlyuniformed stewardesses/sergeant-majors stand at strategic points, counting the departing customers, then beckon an equal number to replace them. Should five leave together, and the first five in the queue include only one member of a group of friends, that group must either separate or give way to those behind them. No one seemed to object to this regimentation. But I (otherwise conditioned) felt exasperated when a security guard forbade me to sit on the ledge of nearby railings. Momentarily I was tempted to pull up my trouser leg to show him what long queues in hot weather can do to varicose veins.
    Once admitted to the high globe we were directed to a table and Rachel had to join two other queues – to pay for the docket listing our order, then to hand it to a server from whom a waitress soon after took our tray. The Trio pronounced that these gargantuan ice-creams were very good indeed, well worth waiting for – and they, being residents of Italy, are connoisseurs.
    Not far from Coppelia we noticed a plaque identifying the site where Fidel first labelled the Revolution ‘Socialist’ – on 16 April 1961, the eve of the US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion.
    Surprisingly, the Cubans have no regular siesta-time but that afternoon the younger generations rested briefly while I refuelled in what was to become my favourite Malecón café. Small and shabby, approached by a shaky wooden step-ladder, it was dual-currency; Cubans paid for drinks and one-course meals in national pesos, convertible pesos were expected from foreigners.
    Miguel, the manager-cum-barman, kept Hatuey beer, brewed for the national-peso market, under the counter and filled the fridge with Buccanero and Kristal, favoured by tourists. The price difference was slight – NP18 and CP1 – yet my wish to sample Hatuey worried Miguel; he would get into trouble should a snooper from the local Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) chance to notice a tourist drinking Hatuey on the premises. I could however have lots of Hatuey to take away, concealed in my knapsack. Thus I discovered that this brew is less palatable than the tourists’, though equally potent.
    On my first visit, the previous day, Miguel had been discussing Wilma with a hurricane-damage inspector. The café, raised above the street, had escaped flooding though it lost one side of its roof – quickly replaced by the municipality. Now his three-roomed home, behind the café at pavement-level, was the problem: a waist-deep torrent had swept through, ruining all the family’s possessions. He had a pregnant wife and three-year-oldtwins yet the authorities were being slow to act. When the inspector had left Miguel glanced around at the only other customers – two young couples in far corners – then confided, sotto voce, ‘For the government this place makes tax money, a little home doesn’t. In times before – before ’92 – all little homes soon got fixed.’
    In January I was to hear about Miguel’s uncle-sponsored migration to Florida; otherwise I wouldn’t feel free to record that conversation.
     
    In some quarters the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Revolution ) have a bad reputation as groups of spies and bullies, ever ready to punish those who fail to uphold Revolutionary standards. While this may not be a baseless slander, it is certainly a wild over-simplification. When Fidel invented the system in 1960 he meant it to affect everyone’s daily life as an important instrument of civil defence and socialist reform. The president (unpaid) of each CDR is responsible for three hundred or so citizens (a barrio) and it is his or her duty to find out how people earn their money, what they spend it on, who does or does not march in demos, who is absent from home, where