“The Story of a Stick (With Some Additional Comments by Mrs. Campbell)”
a chapter from Three Trapped Tigers
by G. Cabrera Infante
translated by Donald Gardner and Suzanne Jill Levine with collaboration by Infante
The Story
We arrived in Havana one Friday around three in the afternoon. The heat was oppressive. There was a low ceiling of dense gray, or blackish, clouds. As the boat entered the harbor the breeze that had cooled us off during the crossing suddenly died down. My leg was bothering me again and it was very painful going down the gangplank. Mrs. Campbell followed behind me talking the whole damned time and she found everything, but everything, enchanting: the enchanting little city, the enchanting bay, the enchanting avenue facing the enchanting dock. All I knew was that there was a humidity of 90 or 95 percent and that I was sure my leg was going to bother me the whole weekend. It was, of course, Mrs. Campbell’s brilliant idea to come to such a hot and humid island. I told her so as soon as I was on deck and saw the ceiling of rain clouds over the city. She protested, saying they had sworn to her in the travel agency that it was always, but always, spring in Cuba. Spring my aching foot! We were in the Torrid Zone. That’s what I told her and she answered, “Honey, this is the tropics!”
On the edge of the dock there was this group of enchanting natives playing a guitar and rattling some gourds and shouting infernal noises, the sort of thing that passes for music here. In the background, behind this aboriginal orchestra, there was an open-air tent where they sold the many fruits of the tropical tree of tourism: castanets, brightly painted fans, wooden rattlers, musical sticks, shell necklaces, earthenware pots, hats made of a brittle yellow straw and stuff like that. Mrs. Campbell bought one or two articles of every kind. She was simply enchanted. I told her she should wait till the day we left before making purchases. “Honey,” she said, “they are souvenirs.” She didn’t understand that souvenirs are what you buy when you leave a country. Nor was there any point in explaining. Luckily they were very quick in Customs, which was surprising. They were also very friendly, although they did lay it on a bit thick, if you know what I mean.
I regretted not bringing the car. What’s the point of going by ferry if you don’t take a car? But Mrs. Campbell thought we would waste too much time learning foreign traffic regulations. Actually she was afraid we would have another accident. Now there was one more argument she could throw in for good measure. “Honey, with your leg in this state you simply cannot drive,” she said. “Let’s get a cab.”
We waved down a taxi and a group of natives—more than we needed—helped us with our suitcases. Mrs. Campbell was enchanted by the proverbial Latin courtesy. It was useless to tell her that it was a courtesy you also pay for through your proverbial nose. She would always find them wonderful, even before we landed she knew everything would be just wonderful. When all our baggage and the thousand and one other things Mrs. Campbell had just bought were in the taxi, I helped her in, closed the door in keen competition with the driver and went around to the o
ther door because I could get in there more easily. As a rule I get in first and then Mrs. Campbell gets in, because it’s easier for her that way, but this impractical gesture of courtesy which delighted Mrs. Campbell and which she found “very Latin” gave me the chance to make a mistake I will never forget. It was then that I saw the walking stick.
It wasn’t an ordinary walking stick and this alone should have convinced me not to buy it. It was flashy, meticulously carved and expensive. It’s true that it was made of a rare wood that looked like ebony or something of that sort and that it had been worked with lavish care—exquisite, Mrs. Campbell called it—and translated into dollars it wasn’t really that expensive. All around it there were grotesque carvings of nothing in particular. The stick had a handle shaped like the head of a Negro, male or female—you can never tell with artists—with very ugly features. The whole effect was repulsive. However, I was tempted by it even though I have no taste for knickknacks and I think I would have bought it even if my leg hadn’t been hurting. (Perhaps Mrs. Campbell, when she noticed my curiosity, would have pushed me into buying it.) Needless to say Mrs. Campbell found it beautiful and original and—I have to take a deep breath before I say it—exciting. Women, good God!
We got to the hotel and checked in, congratulating ourselves that our reservations were in order, and went up to our room and took a shower. Ordered a snack from room service and lay down to take a siesta—when in Rome, etc. . . . No, it’s just that it was too hot and there was too much sun and noise outside, and our room was very clean and comfortable and cool, almost cold, with the air-conditioning. It was a good hotel. It’s true it was expensive, but it was worth it. If the Cubans have learned something from us it’s a feeling for comfort and the Nacional is a very comfortable hotel, and what’s even better, it’s efficient. When we woke up it was already dark and we went out to tour the neighborhood.
Outside the hotel we found a cab driver who offered to be our guide. He said his name was Raymond something and showed us a faded and dirty ID card to prove it. Then he took us around that stretch of street Cubans call La Rampa, with its shops and neon signs and people walking every which way. It wasn’t too bad. We wanted to see the Tropicana, which is advertised everywhere as “the most fabulous cabaret in the world,” and Mrs. Campbell had made the journey almost especially to go there. To kill time we went to see a movie we wanted to see in Miami and missed. The theater was near the hotel and it was new and air-conditioned.
We went back to the hotel and changed. Mrs. Campbell insisted I wear my tuxedo. She was going to put on an evening gown. As we were leaving, my leg started hurting again—probably because of the cold air in the theater and the hotel—and I took my walking stick. Mrs. Campbell made no objection. On the contrary, she seemed to find it funny.
The Tropicana is in a place on the outskirts of town. It is a cabaret almost in the jungle. It has gardens full of trees and climbing plants and fountains and colored lights along all the road leading to it. The cabaret has every right to advertise itself as fabulous physically, but the show consists—like all Latin cabarets, I guess—of half-naked women dancing rumbas and singers shouting their stupid songs and crooners in the style of Bing Crosby, but in Spanish. The national drink of Cuba is the daiquiri, a sort of cocktail with ice and rum, which is very good because it is so hot in Cuba—in the street I mean, because the cabaret had the “typical Cuban air-conditioning” as they call it, which means the North Pole encapsuled in a tropical saloon. There’s a twin cabaret in the open air but it wasn’t functioning that night because they were expecting rain. The Cubans proved good meteorologists. We’d only just begun to eat one of those meals they call international cuisine in Cuba, which consist of things that are too salty or full of fat or fried in oil which they follow with a dessert that is much too sweet, when a shower started pouring down with a greater noise than one of those typical bands at full blast. I say this to give some idea of the violence of the rainfall as there are very few things that make more noise than a Cuban band. For Mrs. Campbell this was the high point of sophisticated savagery: the rain, the music, the food, and she was simply enchanted. Everything would have been fine—or at any rate passable; when we switched to drinking whiskey and soda I began to feel almost at home—but for the fact that this stupid maricón of an emcee of the cabaret, not content with introducing the show to the public, started introducing the public to the show, and it even occurred to this fellow to ask our names—I mean all the Americans who were there—and he started introducing us in some godawful travesty of the English language. Not only did he mix me up with the soup people, which is a common enough mistake and one that doesn’t bother me anymore, but he also introduced me as an international playboy. Mrs. Campbell, of course, was on the verge of ecstasy!
When we finally left the cabaret, after midnight, it had stopped raining and wasn’t as hot and sticky outside. We were both pretty loaded, but I didn’t forget the stick. So I gripped it with one hand and grabbed Mrs. Campbell with the other. And the cab driver took it upon himself to take us to another kind of show which I wouldn’t be talking about if I didn’t have the excuse that both Mrs. Campbell and I were dead drunk. Mrs. Campbell found it very exciting—as she did almost everything in Cuba—but I have to admit it was pretty boring and I think I even slept through half of it. One of the by-products of the Cuban tourist industry is that the cab drivers double as salesmen. They carry you off somewhere without asking you and before you realize it you’re inside. This was a house like any other, but once you’re inside they take you through to a hall with seats on all sides, like one of those theaters that were fashionable in the early fifties, a theater in the round, except that there’s no stage in the center, only a bed, a circular bed—or rather, in the round. They serve drinks—which are more expensive than in the most expensive cabarets—and then when everyone has found their seats, they turn off the lights and switch on a red light, and also a blue one above the bed, but you can see everything perfectly, and then two women come in, stark naked. They lie down on the bed and start caressing each other, making love and other things which are disgusting and unhygienic. Then a man comes in—a Negro, of course, but looking blacker than usual in this lighting—with an excessively long member and all three of them seem to get a big kick out of all sorts of variations on the theme. Some naval officers were also watching, which I thought was very unpatriotic, but they seemed to be having a good time and it’s none of my business if they get their kicks in or out of uniform. When the performance was over someone turned on the lights and—what a nerve!—the two women and the Negro greeted the audience. This fellow and the women made some jokes at the expense of my tuxedo, about the fact that I was wearing black and that the walking stick was black too. They were standing right in front of us stark naked and the naval officers laughed a lot and naturally Mrs. Campbell seemed to think it was funny. Finally the Negro went up to one of the officers and told him in a very Cuban English that he simply hated women, and then made some obscene suggestions, but the sailors roared with laughter and Mrs. Campbell laughed too. A round of applause.
We slept until ten o’clock Saturday morning and at eleven we went off to this resort called Varydero, which is about fifty miles from Havana, and spent the whole day sprawled on the beach. The sun was scorching, but the sea with its changing colors and the white sand and the old wooden bathing huts seemed ideal for color film. I took a lot of pictures and Mrs. Campbell and I had a very pleasant day. But in the evening my whole back was covered with blisters and I was suffering from indigestion because of all that Cuban cooking crammed with shellfish. We returned to Havana with Raymond at the wheel, and he left us in our hotel after midnight. I was happy to find my walking stick waiting for me in the room, though I hadn’t needed it all day because the sun and the sea and the fact that the heat was less humid had made my leg much better. Mrs. Campbell and I sat drinking in the hotel bar till very late, listening to more of that absurd music Mrs. Campbell finds so enchanting, and I felt very good because I’d come downstairs walking stick in hand.
The next day, Sunday morning, we sent Raymond off until it was time to return to the hotel and collect our things. The ferry left at two o’clock. So we decided to take a walk through the old part of town and have a look around to buy some more souvenirs, for the benefit of Mrs. Campbell. We bought some things in a store for tourists opposite the ruins of a Spanish fort which is open every day. Then, since we were loaded down with packages, we decided to stop at an old café and have a drink. Everything was peaceful and I liked the old-fashioned, civilized atmosphere of Sunday in the old part of town. We sat there drinking for an hour or so and then we paid and left. After a couple of blocks suddenly I remembered I’d left my walking stick in the café so I went back to pick it up. Nobody had seen it, which didn’t surprise me: this sort of thing happens. I returned to the street, too upset for words and much more than so insignificant a loss could justify. But then I was equally surprised and overjoyed when as I turned the corner of a narrow street and walked toward a taxi stand, I saw an old man with my stick. When I caught up with him I saw that he wasn’t old but of indefinable age, and definitely mongoloid. There was no possible way of communicating with him in English or even in Mrs. Campbell’s precarious Spanish. The fellow didn’t understand a thing and stuck to the stick.
I was afraid a slapstick situation would develop if I did as Mrs. Campbell suggested as a last resort and grabbed hold of the stick, because I could see that the beggar—he was one of the many professional beggars that infest countries like this was no weakling. I tried to make him understand by signs that the stick was mine, to no avail—all I got for an answer was some strange noises from his throat. For a moment it reminded me of those native musicians and their guttural songs. Mrs. Campbell suggested that I buy the stick from him, but “It’s a matter of principle, dear,” I told her, trying to block the beggar’s retreat with my body at the same time. “That stick belongs to me.” I wasn’t going to let him keep it just because he was a congenital idiot and still less was I going to buy it from him, because that would have been submitting to blackmail. “I’m not the kind of guy who gives in to chantage,” I told Mrs. Campbell, as I stepped off the sidewalk into the street, because the beggar looked like he was trying to cross over to the other side. “Of course you’re not, honey,” she said.
Soon we had a small crowd of local residents around us and I was getting nervous because I didn’t want to be the victim of a lynching mob, especially since I must have looked like a foreigner who was abusing a defenseless native. The people, however, were well-behaved, considering. Mrs. Campbell explained the situation as well as she could and one of them, who spoke very little and very primitive English, offered to act as mediator. He tried, without success, to communicate with the idiot. The latter made no response except to grip the stick tighter and make signs and noises to indicate that it was his. Like all crowds, the people were sometimes on my side and sometimes on the beggar’s. My wife, however, still tried to explain the situation. “It is a matter of principle,” she said, more or less in Spanish. “Mr. Campbell is the rightful owner of the stick. He bought it yesterday, he left it in a café this morning, this gentleman,” she said, pointing to the cretin, “took it, and it doesn’t belong to him, no, amigos.” The crowd was now on our side.
Soon we became a public nuisance and a policeman arrived. Fortunately it was a policeman who spoke English. I told him what had happened. He tried to disperse the crowd, but the people were as interested as we were in the solution of the problem. He spoke to the idiot, but as I’ve already explained there was no possible way of communicating with this character. Of course the policeman lost his patience and pulled out his gun to threaten the beggar. There was a sudden hush and I feared the worst. But the idiot seemed to understand and he handed the stick back to me, with a gesture I didn’t like. The policeman put his gun back and suggested I give the moron some money, not as compensation but as a gift “to the poor man,” so he said. I refused point-blank: this would be agreeing to a social blackmail since the stick belonged to me. I explained this to the policeman. Mrs. Campbell tried to intervene, but I saw no reason for giving in: the stick was mine and the beggar had no right to take it, to give him money was like paying someone for not stealing. I refused to budge. Someone in the crowd, Mrs. Campbell explained, had suggested a collection all around. Mrs. Campbell out of pure simpleminded generosity wanted to contribute from her own pocket. It was time to put an end to this ridiculous situation so I gave in, although I shouldn’t have. I offered the idiot some small change—I don’t know how much exactly but it was almost as much as the stick had cost—and I was ready to give it to him without showing any hard feelings, but the beggar wouldn’t take it. Now
it was his turn to act as the offended party. Mrs. Campbell tried to mediate. The man seemed on the point of accepting the money, but then he thrust it back, making his usual guttural sounds. Not until the policeman took the money and offered it to him did he accept. I didn’t like his face at all, because he stood there staring at the stick when I took it with me, like a dog watching a bone. The disagreeable incident was finally brought to a close and we took a taxi on the spot—which the policeman hailed for us with dutiful courtesy—and someone cheered as we drove off and a few even waved us a friendly good-bye. I was glad I couldn’t see the expression on the cretin’s face. Mrs. Campbell didn’t say a word the whole journey and she seemed to be counting her purchases mentally. I felt great now that I had my walking stick back, since it had risen to the category of souvenir-cum-anecdote, much more valuable than the mountain of presents Mrs. Campbell had indiscriminately collected.
We got back to the hotel and I told them in the lobby that we were checking out in the afternoon but we would have lunch in the hotel. I asked them to make out the bill for us and we went upstairs.
As always, I opened the door and let Mrs. Campbell in first, and she turned on the light because the curtains were still drawn. She went through our sitting room and into the bedroom. When she turned on the light in there, she gave a sharp cry. I thought she might have had an electric shock, knowing how dangerous high voltages can be in foreign countries. I also thought she might have been bitten by poisonous vermin or discovered a thief. I rushed into the bedroom. Mrs. Campbell was rigid, unable to speak, she was on the verge of hysteria. At first, seeing her there in the middle of the room in a catatonic state, I couldn’t understand what had happened. But she made some noises with her mouth and pointed to the bed with her hand. There, on the glass top of the night table, black against the pale-green painted wood, was another walking stick.
Mrs. Campbell’s Comments
Mr Campbell, who is a professional writer, got the story wrong, as usual, of course.
Seen from the boat Havana was dazzlingly beautiful. The sea was calm, a pale blue, almost the color of the sky at times, with a broad purple belt across it which someone explained was the Gulf Stream. There were a few little waves with crests of foam, looking like sea gulls in an inverted sky. The city came up suddenly, breathtakingly white. There were a few ominous clouds in the sky, but the sun was shining and Havana wasn’t a city but a mirage, or the ghost of a city. Then it opened at both sides and a rapid catalog of colors appeared which merged in the general sun-drenched whiteness. It was a panorama, a CinemaScope of reality, a real-life Cinerama: I say this to please Mr Campbell, who is a movie-lover. We sailed between buildings that were more mirrors than buildings, reflections that could swallow the eyes of those who gazed at them, past parks where the grass was either burnt or intensely green, on toward another city, older, darker and still more beautiful. Slowly, inevitably, a pier moved toward us.
It is of course true that Cuban music is primitive, but it is nonetheless lively and enchanting, flavored with so many delights and then always, up pops a violent surprise. It is an indefinable poetic quality which goes up and up, propelled by the rattlers and the guitar, while the drums beat it down to the ground and the claves—two sticks which make music—are like a stable horizon linking them.
Why all this fuss about his bad leg? Maybe he wants to sound like a war veteran. What Mr Campbell suffers from is rheumatism.
The walking stick was a perfectly ordinary walking stick. It was made of a dark-colored wood and it may or may not have been beautiful, but it certainly didn’t have any grotesque carvings on it or an androgynous head for a handle. It was a walking stick of the kind you can find anywhere in the world, of unpolished wood, with a certain picturesque charm: that’s all, nothing special. I imagine many Cubans carry a similar stick. I never said the stick was exciting: this is a blatant Freudian insinuation. Besides, I wouldn’t commit the obscenity of buying a walking stick.
The stick cost very little. The Cuban peso is worth the same as the American dollar. The beach near Havana is called Varadero not Varydero—which he pronounced predictably Verydeer-o.
There were plenty of things I found enchanting in the city but I’ve never been ashamed of my feelings and I can say exactly what they were. I liked the old part of the city. I liked the nature of the people. I liked Cuban music very much, of course. I liked the Tropicana—despite the fact that it is a tourist attraction and knows it: beautiful and exuberant and evergreen, a perfect image of the island. The food was passable and the drinks the same as anywhere else but the music and the beauty of the women and the unbridled imagination of the choreographer were unforgettable.
Mr Campbell attempts, in his narrative, to make me the prototype of the average woman: in other words, a spiritual cripple, with the IQ of a moron and the importunity of a pawnbroker at a wake. I have never said things like Honey, this is the tropics or They are souvenirs! He’s been reading too many “Blondie” comic strips—or else he’s had an overdose of “I Love Lucy.”
The word “native” appears many times in the course of the narrative but Mr Campbell shouldn’t be blamed for this. I suppose it is inevitable. When Mr (it must bother him that I omit the period after his title since he is absolutely obsessed with punctuation) Campbell heard that the management of the hotel was “ours” as he called it he smiled a connoisseur’s smile, because in his eyes people who live in the tropics are perpetually lazy. Also, they’re difficult to tell apart. For example: the cab driver said quite clearly that his name was Ramón García.
I never thought it funny that he took this stick every time he went out into the city. When he left the Tropicana, he was completely drunk and in the short time it took to cross the entrance hall he dropped the stick three times. It was embarrassing. He was enchanted, as he always is, that they mixed him up with the Campbells, who are multimillionaires and he still insists that they are relatives of his. It wasn’t the bit about the international playboy that made me laugh but his phony disgust when they called him “the millionaire of the soup industry.”
It’s true that Raymond (I gave up in the end and called him that) suggested the excursion to see the tableaux vivants, but only after Mr Campbell’s insinuations. He forgot to mention that he had bought a dozen pornographic books in a French bookstore, among them a complete edition of a novel of the last century published in English in Paris. I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the show.
He didn’t “find” the stick in the street, walking by the side of a man like one of Gogol’s thing-people: it was in the café itself. We were sharing a table (the café was full) and upon getting up Mr Campbell grabbed a walking stick that was leaning against the table next to ours. It was dark and knotty: similar to his own. As we were leaving we heard someone running after us making noises: it was the rightful owner of the stick, only we didn’t know it then. Mr Campbell wanted to give it back and it was I who opposed the idea. I told him he’d bought the walking stick with good money and that even if the beggar was an idiot, he wasn’t going to take advantage of us, using his mental condition as a pretext. It is true that a small crowd gathered round us (mostly regulars of the café) and that an argument followed, but they were on our side the whole time: the beggar could not talk. The policeman (he was a tourist policeman) was passing by chance, I think. Naturally, he also took our side, so much so that he arrested the beggar. Nobody proposed a collection and Mr Campbell didn’t pay any recompense: I wouldn’t have allowed it in any case. The way he tells the story it sounds as if the walking stick was a magic wand which suddenly turned me into a fairy godmother. None of this is true: in actual fact it was I who insisted that he shouldn’t give up the stick. It should be obvious by now that I never suggested he grab hold of the stick. (The whole “sequence,” as Mr Campbell describes it, sounds like something out of an early Vittorio de Sica film.)
My Spanish is not perfect, but I can make myself understood.
There was never any melodrama. Nor lynching mobs nor cheers, and if the beggar did make an ugly face, we didn’t see it. Nor did I scream when I saw the other stick (I find these dramatic italics of Mr Campbell in very poor taste: “other stick.” Why not simply “other stick”?). I merely pointed at it without any hysteria or catatonia. I thought it was terrible, obviously, but then I also thought that error and injustice were easy to correct. We went out again and found the café and learned from the clientele where the precinct was, since they’d arrested the beggar for theft: it was Mr Campbell’s ruined fortress. He wasn’t there. The police officer had released him at the gate, to the accompaniment of the laughter of the other policemen and the tears of the thief, who was himself the only one who had been robbed. Nobody, of course, knew where we could find him.
We missed the boat and had to return by plane, together with the two walking sticks.
Biblioklept 