Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Then, as she parted:

“But do avoid drinking the water. And if you see the count, do not be alarmed. Now, good day, gentlemen.”

THAT FIRST EVENING, AFTER CLEANING ourselves up, we went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, where we partook of a large meal of all kinds of freshly caught fish in a stew, consumed with a sizable quantity of claret and local staples, among them some tasty plantain fritters that were heavily doused in lemon and salt.

Soon enough, we made the acquaintance of several southern gentlemen who invited us to join them after our meal for some billiards. Because I did not know how to play, I remained content to watch Clemens, who seemed to have an endless capacity for the game. Occasionally he would sit down beside me and thusly apprise me of the personalities he encountered.

“A lot of these gentlemen,” Clemens told me, “own various and many businesses in Havana and elsewhere on the island. That old gentleman with the silver beard, Henry, is ninety years old — but he doesn’t look it, does he? He claims that his mingling with the Cuban ladies of ill repute has been an elixir of youth. He owns six hundred acres of a sugar enterprise. That gent, a retired politician named Morgan, was greatly involved, in the 1850s, in some kind of movement in the South to invade and annex the island of Cuba as a state. That gentleman runs one of the biggest banking concerns in Havana. Owns fifty thousand acres of timberland somewhere in the East. These businessmen are so many in number that there are several southern commercial associations in Havana — along with lodges and clubs and cultural groups, all distinct from the Spanish variety. Among these, I was pleased to find out, dear Henry, is a literary society situated in the mansion of a gentleman who lives in a verdant neighborhood in the heights of the city, an area known as the Cerro, where the embassies of foreign nations are located. Apparently this man has one of the largest English-language libraries on the island, one at which strangers are welcome. And I’ve eavesdropped on much talk about the presumed Southern victory in the event of a war, which they can’t see lasting much longer than a year. Once that happens, in regard to Cuba itself, it is said that the South will take upon itself what the federal government hasn’t been able to do in years past, which is to annex Cuba as a Southern state — to buy it from Spain outright.

“It seems that there are several thousand well-armed American soldiers from Southern regiments already here; troops brought in to protect Southern interests and help fight rebel insurgencies in the eastern part of the island. These fellows, I was told, are ready to declare themselves for the South should the war come.” Then, as he was pleased with himself: “I should teach you billiards, as there is much to learn over such a game.”

As he told me such stories, his words brought to mind something else that Mr. Stanley had told me about Cuba: Given Southern ownership of its greatest estates and concerns, Cuba might as well have been an extension of the South. (In fact, some months later, the Spanish-controlled government of Cuba, much under the sway of the Southern diplomatic corps there, would declare war on the North.)

But the behavior of these gentlemen struck even a youth such as I as somewhere paradoxical, for while it would seem that they should have been wary of strangers — as if Yankee spies might be afoot — they made no secret of the fact that a fleet of ships out of New Orleans and other ports along the gulf — from Brownsville, Texas, to St. Marks, Florida — was heading to Havana to fill the city’s warehouses with supplies that would, in the unlikely event of a future Southern reversal, be vital to the continuation of the war. As a merchant, hearing their boasts, I was fascinated by the difficult logistics of such a feat, and I found myself admiring the confidence and organization of such men. I need not further pursue the theme other than to say that as that evening and others like it unfolded, Clemens and I found ourselves among the converted when it came to the belief that the South would easily win the war.

AT SOME LATE HOUR WE RETIRED to the discomforts of our beds and tried to sleep. But sleep was somewhat of an impossibility, for even under the best of circumstances, both Clemens and I were prone to insomnia. As I remained awake, in speculation over Mr. Stanley, Clemens, giving up the fight, had gotten up for a smoke or two by the open window. It was his way. When, at some later hour, we finally managed to doze off, what rest we took was brief enough, for at six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by bells and cock crows, and by the loud conversation of some cleaning women mopping the dust off the marble floors outside our door and carrying on a discussion about a woman of their acquaintance named María Josefina. Hearing the clipped locutions of their Spanish, of which I had only a fledgling knowledge, and with the sun beginning to stream in through the shutters, and with a great feeling of the strangeness of that place, I finally realized that we had indeed arrived in Mr. Stanley’s Cuba.

I WILL NOW SPEAK of my search for my father. We had, on the first day, visited his office, which, I remembered from his correspondence, was located on a street called O’Reilly. Along that commercial stretch of warehouses and stores, much like Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans, hung many signs in the English language. When we arrived on foot, around ten in the morning, after having partaken (at Clemens’s insistence) of a large and fortifying breakfast at the hotel, I was heartened to see that there was much activity along its street and pavements — all manner of carts being emptied and loaded from a countless succession of doorways; a strong smell of manure, coffee, and raw tobacco permeated the air; and there were the usual contingents of blacks at work and Cuban gentlemen to give them orders, while others were lying low in the shadows, a sight typical to that city. There were also some military constables milling about. Then, as we looked for the building numbered 7A, my heart quickened, for I saw a sight that was gratifyingly familiar, that of a tallish and bearded man sitting in front of one of the warehouses reading a newspaper. Believing that this man was Mr. Stanley, I rushed ahead to greet him, but I was sadly mistaken: “If you are looking for Mr. Stanley,” he told me, “you will find his offices over there.” And he pointed to a darkened doorway across the way: This was apparently the aforementioned 7A, though there would have been no way of telling, for it had no marking. Entering the premises through a long passageway, we found ourselves in the recesses of a warehouse.

Appearing out of the shadows, a Cuban fellow who had seen us come in barked out to us that the oficinas were above. A wide stairway at the back led us up to the second floor, where I was immediately elated by the sight of a doorway, alongside which were several signs, among them one that said: STANLEY BROS. & CO. IMPORTERS. Off an inner hallway were about six offices: In the first sat a corpulent Cuban man, his head glistening with sweat, some ledger books opened on the desk before him. He was drafting a letter or some poetry (a national pastime), a plume in hand. When I ventured in and made my introduction, it became quickly apparent that he knew little of the English language: I then tried to explain in my pidgin Spanish that we were looking for Señor Stanley. Shortly he got up, and with some great effort, made his way into another office, then came back with an English-speaking gentleman.