Espresso Tales (29 page)

80. Dogs and Cuban History

Two days later, Pat knocked on Domenica's door. Domenica had never appeared to be anything but pleased to see her younger neighbour, and today was no exception. Of course it was convenient; of course Pat must come in and have coffee.

Pat realised, of course, that Domenica liked conversation, but she had always felt that their encounters had been somewhat one-sided, with Domenica doing most of the talking. And that was because Domenica had just done so much more than she had; more happened in sixty years than in twenty, as a general rule, although naturally there were exceptions. Some people did very little in their lives, and such habits of inaction could last for generations. She had read in a newspaper somewhere of the work of Professor Sykes, who had used the techniques of modern genetics to look at the roots of people who bore the surname Sykes. People called Sykes, he discovered, tended to come from a small village in England, and there were still people of that name there–families that in eight hundred years had moved no more than a few hundred yards. That was stability on a thoroughly heroic scale.

On this visit, Pat had rather more to say than usual, as the previous two days had been full of incident. There had been the reported incident of Cyril's biting of Irene; there had been the visit of Janis to the gallery and the resulting row with Matthew. And finally there had been the outing with Peter to the nudist picnic in the Moray Place Gardens, an occasion which she needed to talk about.

They sat in Domenica's study, Domenica in the chair that she liked to occupy at the side of her desk, flanked by a pile of books, Pat in the chair normally reserved for visitors underneath Domenica's framed photograph of her father.

Domenica had not heard from Angus Lordie of Cyril's disgrace, and was delighted with the tale.

“I wouldn't normally wish a dog-bite on anybody,” she said. “However, in this case there is an element of poetic justice. I myself have wished to bite that woman for some time, and I can thoroughly sympathise with Cyril. I wonder whether she's learned anything from the experience. I doubt it.”

“Matthew says that she provoked him,” said Pat. “She insulted him in some way.”

“Dogs are sensitive to insult,” said Domenica. “And, you know, it's an interesting thing–dogs from highly sensitive cultures are more prickly about how they're treated. There's been a very interesting piece of research on that. Somebody from Stanford got it into his head that the behaviour of dogs reflected the national characteristics of the human culture in which the dogs lived. I think that the idea came to him when he visited New York and found that the dogs he saw were all highly-strung and neurotic–just like their owners. So that set him off thinking that these differences might be manifested at a national level too. A very interesting bit of research, but highly contentious, of course; almost eccentric.”

Pat was intrigued. “And what did he find out?”

Domenica smiled. “He found out what he had set out to find out,” she said. “Which always makes research a bit suspect. You have to keep an open mind, although you can have a hypothesis, of course. He looked at dogs in Spanish-speaking cultures–Colombian dogs, I think–and then he looked at Swedish, Australian and Japanese dogs.”

“And?”

“Well,” continued Domenica, “Swedish dogs showed themselves to be quieter and more cautious. Their behaviour, in fact, showed signs of depression. They sat around rather mournfully and did not bark to the same extent as other dogs. The Colombian dogs were very excitable. If you subjected them to stress, they made a terrible fuss. They were always dancing about and chasing things.”

“And the Australian dogs?”

“They behaved in a fairly boisterous way, too,” said Domenica, “although not as markedly as the Colombian dogs. They seemed less concerned about their appearance–they were much scruffier–and they were very outgoing. They were also very good at chasing balls.

“The Japanese dogs” she continued, “were very interesting–from the animal behaviour point of view. They were very sensitive. Very concerned with face.”

Pat laughed. “All rather like their owners?”

“You could say so. And I suppose it shouldn't surprise us. Animals with whom we live in close proximity are bound to throw our behaviour back at us, aren't they? I'm not sure if we should be surprised by such findings.”

“No,” said Pat. “But it seems a little bit far-fetched.”

Domenica looked thoughtful. “I had occasion to reflect on this myself,” she said. “Last year, when I was in Havana. I recalled that bit of Stanford research while I was there. And I must say I thought that he had a point. But I'm not sure if you want to sit there and hear all this from me. You have that picnic to tell me about.”

Pat wanted to hear about Havana. There would be time enough for Moray Place later on.

Encouraged to continue, Domenica picked up one of the books from the pile, glanced at it thoughtfully, and replaced it. “I wanted to go to Havana,” she said, “before two things happened. The first of these is before the place fell down altogether. Do you know that over one hundred of their lovely old buildings collapse every year? And the second is before the Americans got their hands on it. I am not one of those people who are uncharitable about the Americans, but the truth of the matter is that the United States has been breathing down Cuba's neck since the early nineteenth century and continues to do so. I cannot believe–I just cannot believe–that if the average person in the United States knew how that lovely island has been treated over the years they would feel anything but shame. Pure shame. Indeed, everybody has bullied Cuba. The Spanish were simply murderous. Then they looted the place. We had a go at it. Then the Americans tried to buy it. They occupied it. They treated it as a private playground. Organised crime ran the place. They built big hotels. They had their meetings there. And then Castro and his crew appeared and we all know what happened then. Thousands and thousands imprisoned and held under the thumb. Poor Cubans. It's ever thus.”

Pat wondered what this had to do with dogs, and Domenica sensed her puzzlement.

“You're obviously wondering where dogs come into this,” she said.

“A bit,” said Pat.

“Dogs have everything to do with this,” said Domenica. “Cuban dogs are rather special, you see.”

81. Havana

“I arrived in Havana at night,” said Domenica. “That's a good time to arrive anywhere, because you don't see very much and then you wake up in the morning and open your shutters to an entirely new world. That's how I felt. There was a balcony to my room and this looked out over the rooftops to the most gorgeous tower I have ever seen. A tower on top of an ornate palace of some sort, with small arches and windows painted in that light blue they go in for in Cuba–almost a turquoise. And when I looked down and along the street to the front of my building, I saw nothing but three- or four-storey buildings with decorated stucco facades, all in faded white or yellow or pink. Ironwork balconies. I have never seen such beauty in a city. Never. Not even in Italy. Not even in places like Siena or Vienna. It's a wonderful, very feminine architecture.

“But the problem with the beauty of Havana is that it's so decrepit. So many of those wonderful buildings are on their last legs. The people can't afford to fix them. They have no money. When you don't even have enough money for food or soap or any of those things, then you won't have enough money for your buildings, will you?

“And so you walk past these buildings in which whole floors, or rooms within floors, have collapsed. And yet people who lead their lives in the rooms next to those that have simply fallen to the ground continue to live where they are. So you will see gaps in buildings, like missing teeth, and right beyond the gap will be a lighted window which shows that others are hanging on in the midst of the falling masonry.

“I had a friend who lived in one of those buildings. I had met her at an anthropological meeting in Jamaica a few years earlier, and we had kept in touch. They are desperate for friends, the Cubans. They are loveable, charming people and they want to belong to the world like the rest of us. And so they write when they can afford the stamp.

“She asked me to her flat, which was on the edge of the old city. The staircase which took you up to the top floor, where she lived, was distinctly suspect and there were large holes in it. You had to watch where you put your feet. And her flat had three rooms. A kitchen, and two other rooms. She lived in one with her young son, and her husband, from whom she was divorced, lived in the other. Yes, she was divorced from him on the grounds of his adultery and cruelty, and yet they were trapped together because you just can't move in that society unless you go through a very complicated and expensive system of exchanging flats. They couldn't afford this. So they still had to live under the same roof and share the kitchen and the bathroom, such as it was. And in order to get to his room, he had to go through hers, at any time of the night and day. Can you imagine it?

“And yet, like so many other Cubans, she had a dog, a little dog called Basilio. She wanted her little boy to have a dog, and so they had one. Every Cuban gets a ration of food, and you can't get anything else unless you have a lot of money to spend, which she didn't. So Basilio had to be fed out of the wretched, barely adequate food ration that she had. In other words, she gave him her own food.

“And when you went out in the streets or the plaza, you saw these bands of little dogs walking around with such good spirit. They were not really strays–they all had owners–and all of them were loved by somebody. In other cities, you would expect to see collarless dogs persecuted. Rounded up. Taken to pounds. And then executed by lethal injection. These dogs just wandered about perfectly happily.

“And in a way I thought of it as a metaphor for the society. These cheerful small dogs, these
perritos
, all getting by in the face of terrible material privation. And putting up with it in such good spirit, just as the people about them seem to do. All of them, dogs and people, smiling in the face of constant, grinding poverty.

“Which may be part of the problem, of course. Communism has failed miserably in Cuba, just as it seems to have failed elsewhere. It just does not seem to have been able to provide for the material needs of people. It has only survived through the denial of freedom–there are many charges one can levy against it. And if the people weren't so nice about it, then they would have risen in anger and demanded their freedom, demanded some more effective response to material needs, just as they did in Eastern Europe. But they haven't. They've continued to dance and play music and keep their sense of humour. It's quite remarkable, and really rather sad–sad to think that there must have been many people who genuinely wanted to create a decent society, people who believed they were doing the right thing, and then they found that everything went so wrong, the whole thing involved lies and distortion and repression, and had become so utterly shabby. And that happened. Even the signs that claim victory are falling down. And if people are given half a chance, they flee, out of sheer desperation, braving no matter what dangers.

“And waiting in the wings are those who are rubbing their hands and saying that it's only a question of time before the whole place is covered in fast-food restaurants, the ports crowded with the cruise ships full of spoiled tourists, the prostitutes and the pimps triumphant, and that charming, beautiful culture crushed in the deluge.

“Globalisation, my dear. And in this way, is our wide and entrancing world, our vivid world of songs and music and cultural difference, brought to an end by the crude, the false, the mindless, the imposed.”

Domenica became silent. She was looking down at the floor now. Pat had not even begun to tell her what she wanted to tell her, but could not now, after a story of such sadness. So she finished her coffee in silence and asked Domenica to excuse her until another moment, another day. Domenica understood.