A Freewheelin' Time (27 page)

Finally an official handed me a manila envelope with visas and five tickets to Prague for the next morning. After another long wait and more polite smiles, the same young man arrived to drive me back to the café.

Driving once again in slow traffic, I was very antsy because I knew how agitated my fellow travelers would be after waiting so long with their imaginations running. Suddenly, the car in front of us stopped short, and when the Frenchman slammed on his brakes, my knees hit the dashboard forcefully enough to make them bleed. Though it was a mess, I saw humor in the situation. White-faced and tense, Steve and the others were shocked to see me exiting the car with bloody knees. They weren’t sure if Commies or capitalists had been my torturers.

We spent the rest of the day and the evening absorbing a bit of Paris, trying not to worry about anything. I was relieved to see a woman on duty at the hotel.

Everything went smoothly until we landed in Prague and were told we didn’t have the right visas. After much conversation in a language none of us understood, the problem was sorted out and we got on the bus that took us from the airport to the city. Paris had been sunny; Prague was rainy and cool, and the long ride into town through a dreary landscape was depressing. I looked out the window and saw an immense sculpture of a hammer and sickle looming in the middle of a field and tried not to think stereotypical thoughts about Communist countries. As a red-diaper baby, I should know better. Welcome to the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The city of Prague, however, was beautiful. We stayed in the same hotel as the Cuban rowing team, who we would fly with to Havana on Cubana Airlines in a few days’ time. We went to a jazz club where everyone smoked, drank, and looked inscrutable and hip—no different from a Greenwich Village club. The musicians may have been Czech, but they were good.

The next day a middle-aged man who spoke English offered to show us around. He said he was a teacher and his demeanor was intense and a little odd. Thinking of Kafka, I slipped into paranoia as we followed him up and down the narrow cobblestone streets. He took jerky drags off his cigarette and looked around furtively as he hurried us on.

Alan noticed me hesitate.

You got us through London and Paris, he said. We trusted you. Now you have to trust me. This guy is OK—don’t worry.

I believed him and relaxed.

When we arrived at the man’s home—a room cluttered with books and papers—he was noticeably calmer than he had been on the street. Smiling sadly, he told us life was difficult and repressive for intellectuals. He wanted us to understand and think about what he said.

This was anti-Communist talk. The irony was apparent; I thought of the humongous hammer and sickle statue.

Since Cubana Airlines was delayed, we ended up spending five really good days in Prague. I made friends with Manuel from the Cuban rowing team and met a Czech girl my age who was studying English and was engaged to one of the Cubans on the team. She told me she couldn’t get a passport to go to Cuba with him.

A real travel ban. I had more doubts and tried to ignore them.

I concentrated on Cuba and what Manuel told me about how much better life was with Fidel. It is a young revolution and so are we, he said. This country is part of the old, stodgy Communism created by Stalin in the Soviet Union. Cuba will be different. We have hope.

B
y the time we landed in Havana, we were feeling very relaxed and happy. Together with the exuberant rowing team, the five of us were greeted with songs and members of the international press who asked questions and took pictures. When we met up with the Americans who had arrived before us, there was much to discuss.

As North Americans, during the two months we spent on the island, we got a lot of attention. Though many students and businesspeople from all over the world were there as well, it was especially exciting for Cubans to have U.S. citizens visiting their country.

We toured factories and schools all over the island. We learned about sugar cane and visited a nickel mine. We ate rice and beans and deliciously creamy-tasting avocados, and those who wished to smoke Cuban cigars did. We learned Cuban songs and slogans. We went into stores that had hardly anything on the shelves. We traveled around the island by bus and stayed in little and big hotels. Already the shortage of parts for their American cars was a problem, but the Cubans were very resourceful. No matter the shortages, the Cubans improvised. They had energy and spirit and will.

We met Fidel’s brother, Raúl, and Che Guevara. It was exhilarating to sit in a room with the leaders of the Cuban revolution and ask them questions. Che more than lived up to his image. Though he smiled easily and his eyes twinkled, there was no doubt that he was a serious revolutionary. Smoking a good cigar, he leaned back in his chair and explained everything we wanted to know about the hopes, dreams, and concrete plans of the Cuban revolution.

Jerry Rubin, later of the Yippies, was on the trip with us, and at every factory, school, or organization we were taken to he asked very detailed questions. This quiet and intense young man was constantly writing in his notebook in tiny, tight handwriting. Some of us would groan when Jerry got up to ask a question, because we knew it would be long and convoluted, requiring a long and convoluted translation, followed by the reverse for the answer.

He never seemed to enjoy himself; he was all work—a fact gatherer. After his return to the United States, something or someone cut him loose. After taking LSD, he broke out from his constrictions and was ready for Abbie Hoffman and the birth of the Yippie Party.

W
e listened to Che and the head of agricultural planning explain why they decided to continue growing white rice, even though they knew refined rice was less healthy. White flour, white rice, white bread were signs of affluence, and it was psychologically the wrong time to introduce the unrefined flours and grains associated with poverty. It had been a difficult decision, they said. And we heard about the struggle to duplicate Coca-Cola, which Cubans really missed.

A Cuban press photo inscribed by Manuel

Fidel loved American baseball and we went to a game between Cubans and a team of international players. On an especially hot day, a few of us sat on benches on the edge of the field. Someone had given me a straw hat with a wide brim and I looked down, not out, at the game. Daydreaming, I suddenly noticed a circle of feet around me.

When I looked up, a crowd of people, players, and press surrounded me and Fidel Castro was sitting next to me, smiling. I was overwhelmed by his presence. The air around him seemed to pulsate. He had a magnetism that easily explained his mythic status. When he asked me something—probably my name and where was I from—I stammered a reply as everyone laughed and the photographers clicked away. As quickly as he appeared, he was gone. I remained frozen in place. Manuel, who replaced Fidel on the bench next to me, found my shocked demeanor, while understandable, hysterically funny.

In Havana with Manuel

T
he trip home was easy. We flew to Spain and then to New York. When we arrived at JFK Airport, wall-to-wall agents met us, but nothing happened that we hadn’t expected when we violated the ban on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens: our passports were stamped “Invalid.”

Avenue B Mob

While I was
in Cuba for two months, my friend Sue Zuckerman sublet the Avenue B apartment. Once I returned I had it to myself again, but there were people in and out all the time. Members of the Cuba contingent now joined the old regulars. Albert Maher was the magnet for them, because he had been one of the organizers of both Cuba trips.

A sketch I made of Albert Maher

We discussed everything going on in the world, in addition to music, movies, and books, and what was happening in our lives. The Civil Rights Act had finally been passed in June, and many university students had gone down South that summer to work with the voter registration drive. In Mississippi three young workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were missing and had most likely been murdered. In August, Congress had passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, resulting in an all-out escalation of the Vietnam War; and of course, we talked of Cuba. We were concerned and affected by all of it.

With a Vietnam War protest coming up, we debated the dress code at demonstrations—whether we should dress as we usually did or consider jackets and ties for the guys and skirts for the girls. I thought we should dress up, believing that if we presented ourselves as upstanding citizens it would be harder to write us off as long-haired beatnik hippies of dubious moral character.

After much back and forth, we left it up to the individual, but we agreed to look presentable. The right-wing take on the burgeoning youth culture was that it was made up of “long-haired degenerate free-love Communist fags” who were easily identifiable by style of dress. A decent young girl never had a hair out of place, and no self-respecting boy had hair growing down his neck. Everyone should be slicked up and locked down. The Beatles appeared clean-cut, but they had long hair. Confusing. Something was in the wind that just might get out of hand.

N
ot long after my return from Cuba, the FBI began showing up at Avenue B. The agents climbed five flights of stairs and knocked on my door in the early morning, asking to speak to me. They pretty much visited everyone who’d gone to Cuba, on the off chance that someone would unwittingly—or possibly willingly—divulge information. For the FBI it was important to begin a conversation and develop a relationship any way they could. They did their job well; their tenacity was impressive. One agent would act friendly while the other remained expressionless with a cold-eyed stare—good cop, bad cop.

Dealing with children of Communists wasn’t easy, however. Many of us had lived through early-morning FBI visits to our homes when we were children. We had all been schooled about the FBI—their tactics and our rights—at a very young age. We knew we weren’t obligated to respond in any way. And who else would knock on my door at 7:00 a.m.? I just ignored them and after a while they didn’t bother me anymore.

Some years later when I was living in Italy they knocked on my sister’s door looking for me. This was right after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Her reaction to their inquiry was that it was no wonder they were so inept at finding the killers of civil rights leaders if they still had no idea where her sister might be living.

One lazy evening while I was sitting around listening to music and talking with a mix of friends, the phone rang. My friend Sue picked it up and when the caller asked for me, she said, Yes, speaking, given that we have the same name. The man was from England, so she handed me the phone to speak to someone who said his name was George Harrison. He was holed up in the Delmonico Hotel with his band mates and Bobby Dylan, he told me. He suggested I bring some girls and come up: He’d leave my name with the people at the desk.

Though I didn’t think anyone could get through the mob of fans surrounding the hotel, I figured it was worth a try.

I wasn’t sure how to handle the crowd at the apartment, though. Everyone wanted to come with me—even the politicos. I figured I’d play the whole thing by ear once I got there.

The Delmonico Hotel was impenetrable. I finally managed to convince a guard to at least go to the desk and check for my name. The crowd pressed close, hungry and eager. The guard returned shaking his head. Oh well, nice try—if he even bothered to check.

Albert had an idea. From a pay phone he called the hotel and, feigning an Irish brogue, conned the operator with a story about a very ill wife in a hospital or some such desperate tale. When he finally got through and asked for Dylan, he talked to him a bit, then handed the phone to me. Bob was annoyed that I had brought other people with me. We both got testy, and I told him: Oh, never mind. Or maybe he was the one who said it. Either way, the implication was clear. We weren’t ready to deal with each other easily quite yet. Beatles be damned: I hung up the phone and went home.