Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“Where?”

“Buy me two more bottles of rum to take home, and I will tell you.”

To this I reluctantly agreed.

“Well, I know he took off to various parts to collect on debts and settle up accounts with his planters. I know he went out west to Pinar del Río for a spell; the best tobacco growers are there. Then he came back here for a few days, but soon left by schooner to the city of Santiago de Cuba, which is at the far southern end of the island, on account of his wanting to sell off his share in some business. Where else he’s gone I can’t say, but my guess is that he went out to Matanzas. He’s owned a share in a sugar plantation there for quite some time — owned it with his brother and an Englishman named Mr. Davis, who has the biggest stake. Used to talk about it as a place he was fond of. But it’s only a guess that he’s there. More than that, I cannot say.”

“And this plantation, Jacob. Where is it?”

“I’ve never seen it myself, but it’s about sixty-five, seventy miles southeast of Havana as the crow flies, somewhere near a town — really just a little settlement — called Limonar, maybe a half day’s ride out from there, through bandit country. And I can tell you something else: The plantation is called the Esperanza.”

And then, asking our pardon, Jacob, toothless and with gums swollen, took another drink and smacked his lips in savory delight. Leaving him, Clemens and I headed back to our hotel.

BEFORE WE SET OUT for Matanzas, Clemens, having come such a long way, wanted to spend a few days in Havana sightseeing. For several mornings, with his guidebook in hand, Clemens would, with some vague itinerary in mind, lead our somewhat haphazard excursions through the city, the main points of interest being the architectural grandeur of the main boulevard of Havana, el Paseo Tacón, named after a past governor of the island; several old convents; and several churches. Foremost of these was the cathedral near our hotel, in the old colonial quarter. The bones of Christopher Columbus were said to be interred there, and Clemens, reading of this, had been most anxious to see the supposed crypt. In that somewhat gloomy place, we had stood for some time facing Columbus’s mortal remains. This comprised the only instance when I had seen Clemens possess a sense of wonder and nearly religious awe for anything: “To be a great explorer who finds a new world,” I heard him say. “Now, that would be worth a thousand years of living.” But on the whole, he remained unmoved by the atmosphere in that church. In this regard, his Presbyterian upbringing notwithstanding, he remained curiously coldhearted about religion and matters such as the afterlife, dismissing them as the wishful fantasies of people trying to make sense of this world.

“Even at my young age,” he told me, “I can see there’s no rhyme or reason to the way things go, or any fairness about it. I’ve only to think of my younger brother to see that.” Then: “As for this ‘Father in Heaven’ business, as far as I am concerned we may as well revert to being cavemen and worshipping the trees.”

Nevertheless he remained particularly interested in the occasional mendicant we encountered — religious folk who preached on the sidewalks and, for a small fee, gave a personal blessing. Whenever we passed such a mendicant, Clemens had to stop and watch the incantations of prayer; in general he seemed quite skeptical — but fascinated just the same — in things supernatural, which were in evidence everywhere. It was unavoidable, as the city had an undercurrent of animistic beliefs.

This was particularly evident at night, when, in alleys and hidden courtyards, groups of Negroes gathered to sing — not church hymns but strange Yoruban chants evoking the African gods, such activities being accompanied by the beating of drums and wild dances. Twice in the course of our nightly wanderings did we see such things — these rituals, I should add, were conducted on streets that the Spanish guards purposely ignored, for, as Mrs. Rosedale informed us, such practices, though against the law, were impossible to repress, so much were they a part of the slave culture.

ON OUR THIRD DAY in Havana, Clemens decided to look up the young lady of his passing acquaintance, Miss Priscilla Hatcher, whose father was doing business in Havana. We went to visit her at her home up on the great hill over the city, where many of the consulates were to be found, and had arranged to do so through Mrs. Rosedale, who had some acquaintance with her family.

Earlier he had confessed to me that he had, some time back, sent her several gushing notes of a somewhat romantic nature, and that she had responded in kind. Though he doubted that he was ready to take any kind of leap, in the morning he had spent an inordinate amount of time in our hotel room, shaving and trimming his muttonchops and mustache, before putting on his white linen suit and polishing his shoes so that he would appear before her as the image of sartorial splendor.

I should add here that Clemens was, in some ways, a sentimentalist: Among the possessions he had brought along with him on our journey, aside from certain practical items, were a cameo of his mother, a small oval photograph of his departed brother Henry, and, in a pouch, a lock of hair from, as he told me, “a girl I once loved in Hannibal, Missouri.” Such an admission aside, he was otherwise circumspect about his dealings with the female sex, his interest in romantic involvements, so he once told me, limited to occasional flirtations and fleeting infatuations that he viewed as pleasant enough ways to pass the time while spending a few days here and there in various towns. Whatever his ultimate intentions — in this instance, to pay the young lady a “courtesy call”—he was in no rush to become involved.

We turned up sometime past noon, and after an introduction to several other family members, and after answering numerous questions pertaining to the reasons we had come to Havana — Mr. Hatcher had indeed heard of Mr. Stanley, without knowing him — and after a discussion about the prospects of war, we dined in a shuttered salon and were then treated to a performance of Chopin, the pianist being the young lady herself. After this, she and Clemens, in the company of her aunt, sat together for some time on a love seat, Clemens charming her with his stories about the Mississippi. Though I was engaged in conversation with Mr. Hatcher about Arkansas, from where he hailed, I overheard much laughter; then, apparently, they entered into some more serious discussions, for their voices quieted. Finally it was time for us to go, and while Clemens had been quite taken by Miss Hatcher’s personality and was glad to have visited her, in the end, as we later retreated back down into the city proper, he seemed somewhat relieved to have finished following that particular thread of fanciful romantic speculation.

“I like her, Henry,” he told me. “And I’m glad to have seen her again; but she would clearly do better with a practical businessman like her father. You see, Henry, for all her refinements, she doesn’t like to read books, which she finds too troublesome, and that holds no appeal for me. And something else, which I did not know: She is a Catholic, and Mother would never like that.”

Later, around dusk, we visited the Plaza de Armas, where it was congenial to sit on a bench and listen to a military band play waltzes. Clemens remarked: “Life doesn’t get much better, does it, Henry?” Then: “This is a curious land. At one in the afternoon, it’s hell: at seven in the evening, pure bliss.”