Discovering Hemingway’s Cuba
I fell in love with Cuba, or at least with the idea of Hemingway’s Cuba, in my mid-teens. I read an article about the writer and was delighted with the romance of a bygone era, the sauce and adventure preserved in time. Perhaps the idea of vintage cars made the historical more tangible. I decided that one day I would go and find out for myself. Twenty years passed before he traveled to The Big Isle in 2008, nearly 50 years after Hemingway’s death.
I was less naive in the romance of Hemingway’s life but still enamored enough to want to know more about the man and the country. Havana was as beautiful as I expected. I had learned a little everyday Spanish, enough to help me get by in the fast food stores and even ask directions.
I was staying in the old town and entertained myself by visiting the usual tourist spots of the cigar and rum factories, and exploring streets of dilapidated architecture, making sense of the many influences from Moors to mobsters. As splendid as the Hotel Nacional, many of the buildings seemed to be returning to nature. Covered perhaps in part by urban gardening established in the special period, when the dissolution of the Soviet Union severely hit the Cuban economy in 1991.
To make up for the shortage of supplies, Cubans grew their own food on whatever land was available: vacant plots, rooftops, parking lots. Times were still hard, or at least the availability of everyday products like soap was limited. I was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of Cubans, the laughter, the dancing and the eternal phrase ‘mojito by day, salsa by night’. But I wanted to know more about Hemingway. ‘Janet, Janet’ was the response to my shaky Spanish. A brisk movement of the hand to the clock and many finger signals left me in no doubt that I should be in the hotel lobby at 9 am the next morning. There he would meet Janet.
Hemingway lived in Cuba between the 1930s and 1950s, where he wrote seven books, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and Islands in the Stream, but his most famous work was The Old Man and the Sea. The Old Man in the title is Santiago, an elderly fisherman who fights a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1952 and helped lead to Hemingway’s receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Some have suggested because it imbued a sense of mortality in him.
Janet arrived in a yellow cab. Like other Cuban women in official functions, she wore an impossibly short skirt but with a welcoming smile and after introductions (thankfully in brilliant English) we were soon heading nine miles out of town, towards the hills and Hemingway’s house. , Finca Vigía, or Lookout. Farm.
Leaving Havana behind, we soon found ourselves in a lush green field looking out to sea. Born a few years after Hemingway’s death, Janet seemed concerned because she had never met the man, but she had researched and met many of her friends. She explained that the Cuban government had spent a million dollars to restore Finca Vigía to its original state, including the grounds, the garage, and the author’s fishing boat, the Pilar. It is the most visited museum in Cuba, we visited it out of season, but still she warned us that we would have to be quick before the crowds arrived. Access to the buildings is limited, but we were free to roam the grounds and walk around the house, looking through the open windows in complete solitude.
Despite the warning, we didn’t rush and Janet’s stories about the larger-than-life character, playing baseball with local kids, and supporting the local community made me feel like I was visiting her friend rather than a famous author. , famous for his womanizing and drinking. I gasped as I saw a giant frog in a jar for Janet to explain how Hemingway had nurtured her back to health only to have her killed by one of her cats. The frog remains chosen for posterity, in memory of Hemingway’s surprising kindness or perhaps the cruelty of life and the harsh years of illness and injury the writer suffered while living in Cuba.
Sure enough, as our taxi pulled away, we saw the first of the buses arrive. We went to Cojimar, a small port six miles east of Havana where Hemingway had kept the Pilar. The town was also the inspiration for the town in The Old Man and the Sea. We got to see a lone fisherman in the bay that would have been crowded in days gone by.
During lunch I took the opportunity to hear more about living in Cuba during the special period. I felt more uncomfortable asking than Janet talking about when she was just a teenager. The government gave each family a pig or chicken to eat depending on the size of the family, she said, but they had never cared for animals before. Janet’s brother was given a pig which he took to his wife in their Havana apartment. What would you do with a pig in a flat in the center of the city? wash it. The wife couldn’t stand the smell. ‘We called it the fish pig she washed so often, it was like she had gills!’
The Old Man and the Sea is a novel about a man’s willpower and spirit of resistance. Santiago is considered “salao”, an extreme form of bad luck. The fisherman goes eighty-four days without catching a fish, but then, on the eighth fifth, he hooks a huge marlin. The novel is like a mirror that reflects human resilience, the humor that sustains it, and the strength and ideas that we cling to in the most difficult moments. Perhaps strength as a larger-than-life character who courted global publicity while openly celebrating life in Cuba. A fan of fishing, Hemingway was well known in Cojímar.
After his suicide in 1961, local fishermen donated the metal from their boats (propellers and cleats) to make a sculpture in memory of the respected man. La Terraza, the bar apparently frequented by Hemingway after a fishing trip, is still there, but we had opted for a quieter break. Of course, a tour to discover Hemingway’s Cuba, unofficial or not, would not be complete without a trip to the bars of Havana. He was well known for his daiquiris at La Floridita and mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio.
The trainers had caught up with us, so after a quick cocktail we kept moving forward. Waves of men parted as Janet walked the streets, ‘I love Hemingway; I spend my time talking about it, researching it. If Hemingway were still alive, my husband says he would think I’m having an affair with him.’
Our last stop was the Hotel Ambos Mundos, curiously since it was Hemingway’s first house in Cuba. He stayed there intermittently between 1932 and 1939 when he moved to the farm. The hotel has designated room 511 as a museum; admission costs $2 CUC – the amount Hemingway used to pay per night. It was closed. With a quick introduction to a friend, Janet soon gained access. The room was small, oddly shaped, with a single bed but it was on the fifth floor and had great views over the harbor and the smiles and excitement of Old Havana. It was easy to see why Hemingway had fallen in love with Cuba.
Glad to have met Janet, hers was a personal journey down memory lane. Although memories of the books and stories of others, the fact that the tales have been passed down almost gave them more credibility. Everywhere we went there was genuine affection for Hemingway, even pride in having chosen the beautiful island to make his home. It was as if he still lived there, that if he quickly turned a corner he would be playing baseball with a gang of kids on the street.
I had traveled to discover a world described by a writer and instead found a writer described by people. Not Hemingway’s Cuba, but Hemingway’s Cuba. “Let him think that I am more of a man than I am and I will be.” Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.
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