Translated material
The beauty of ruins
Leonid Velekhov
Havana - an open-air museum inhabited by people
Havana - an open-air museum inhabited by people
Cuba is a dark Madonna, Lorca called her. A series of essays by Leonid Velekhov is about this country, about its people who never lose heart, about its cities, many of which are real masterpieces. To be continued, see the beginning in #27
The main, cathedral square of Havana with the cathedral from 1777. Once upon a time, about three hundred years ago, this area was called swamp and served as a city dump site. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )
When you look at old photographs of Havana - from the 50s, say - and then go out onto a Havana street, a strange feeling arises. What an amazing, almost mirror-like resemblance and at the same time what a striking contrast! Finally, you understand: many of the streets of today’s Havana would indeed be exactly like two peas in a pod like photographs taken 50 years ago, only very withered, faded, scratched and peeling.
In the appearance of the historical center of the city - Old Havana - little has changed since those pre-revolutionary times. Nothing here was demolished, built, broken, rebuilt, and at the same time nothing was repaired, not even renovated with a paint brush. Not only are the same buildings as in the photographs from the 50s, but the same signs are still there in some places, the same cars from the 40s and 50s are running around the streets.
The banner advertising H.Upmann cigars floated over San Rafael Street half a century ago, and still hangs today, only it has become frayed and faded to whiteness. Nearby there is a sign on which it is already difficult to make out the inscription in English: “Isaac Habif is here.” For a long time, of course, Isaac is not “here”, but in the best, as Nikolai Erdman said, of all worlds - abroad, somewhere in Miami, where the vast majority of wealthy Cubans left immediately after the 1959 revolution. But the sign is intact and invites clients - either to the atelier, or to the gold shop, or to the denture office of Isaac Abif.
It’s paradoxical: the feeling of being back in the 50s comes over you in a country where the government has declared a break with the past and constantly talks about looking to the future. Havana seems to be refuting this rhetoric, aging and crumbling before our eyes. Some kind of huge portrait of Dorian Gray, not a city.
No brick falls on anyone's head
However, let’s be fair: in recent years, at least something has been done to preserve this unique city, which is literally filled with architectural masterpieces and simply beautiful and original buildings. In the early 90s, Comandante announced that tourism would save the country from the collapse that had already brought down the European socialist camp and was dragging Cuba into tartar. Over the course of several years, with the help of foreign investors - mainly Spaniards and Canadians - a dozen first-class hotels, a new airport were built, and the main, so to speak, tourist sites in Old Havana were put in order.
Today its “core” - Cathedral Square, Plaza de Armas, Old Square, several of the oldest streets like Ofisios, Mercaderes, O'Reilly, Obispo - has been renovated, you can already walk here without fear that a brick will fall on your head, aimed at nothing not by the will of Woland, but simply from the resonance of your steps, sliding from the place where he had been holding on for a long time by pure chance. The fantastic, excessive even for baroque beauty of the Palace of the Captains General and the Palacio del Segundo Cabo has been cleared of centuries-old dust and smudges. Next door is the modest Templete, a small, very elegant church, where the first mass in Havana took place more than three hundred years ago. Next to the elegant, white and blue balconies, buildings in the Spanish colonial spirit like the palace of the Marquis De Aguas Claras or the house of the Count of Lombillo - a strict, elegant building in the art deco style. This is a natural science museum. Previously, before the revolution, the United States Embassy was located here, in the best place in the city.
All this shines after restoration under the rays of the sun. The blue balconies of colonial palaces match the cloudless sky, tourists turn their heads, ooh and ah, the most educated try to give some kind of stylistic definition to this bright and colorful beauty. They apparently forgot that even Carpentier retreated from this task - to determine the architectural style of Old Havana - and got away with the conclusion of a certain “styleless style” and “a special Cuban baroque.”
I recently read that experts have counted 900 historical buildings in Old Havana of significant architectural value, with 144 of them dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, 200 from the 18th century, 463 from the 19th century and 101 from the 20th. And this is only in Old Havana.
Temple of the Virgin of Regla - an amazing Catholic saint. This is a mulatto woman with a white-faced baby in her arms. Pictured: the façade of the Temple of the Virgin of Merced in Old Havana. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )
And besides it there is also Vedado - the modern center of the capital, built mainly in the 20th century according to a completely different principle than Old Havana. She, as Carpentier wrote, always plays hide and seek with the scorching sun, dodging it and hiding in the shadows - hence the crookedness and confusion of Old Havana streets. Vedado was built without regard to nature, with American directness and purposefulness. Strict parallels and perpendiculars of the streets delineated the entire space into perfect square blocks - 100 by 100 meters. However, the strictness of the layout did not prevent architectural diversity, and exquisite, albeit dilapidated, mansions in the Art Nouveau style (of which we, in Moscow, have plenty left, like the Ryabushinsky-Gorky house, and here there are hundreds) coexist with multi-story buildings - magnificent examples of constructivism.
And beyond Vedado begins Miramar - an area of urban estates: you won’t find two identical ones. Behind all this one can feel the spirit of competition that obsessed the local “developers,” wealthy Cuban families of the first half of the century: no one wanted to give in to their neighbors or repeat their project.
10 steps to the side
In general, there is a lot of beauty in Havana, but so far only an insignificant part of it has been put in order and saved from further destruction. A sort of historical reserve, the central “patch” of Old Havana, through which tourists are led like sheep, warned not to stray from the “herd.”
If they fight back, let them blame themselves. Ten meters from all this museum beauty is a completely different Old Havana, dirty, noisy, full of the color of living life and fraught with adventures and even dangers for a stranger. No, the dangers of criminality should not be exaggerated: you can walk along these streets all day without meeting a single sideways glance. But here the notorious brick can easily fall on your head, there are holes at every step, and a pot can easily be thrown out of the window, as in a medieval city. One day, before my eyes, a two-story house collapsed - it didn’t even collapse, but somehow almost silently, raising only a cloud of dust, it folded and crumbled, it was so dilapidated. Thank God, no one lived in it anymore. However, this also happens with residential buildings.
But, at the risk of sounding like a barbarian, I will say that I prefer this living, crumbling and crumbling beauty of the inhabited streets, alleys and corners of Old Havana to the one that sparkles in several squares restored for tourist viewing. The beauty of three- and two-hundred-year-old buildings is much more varied when it is animated by the presence of people, and not turned into a museum. The elegance of the balconies, decorated with peerless trellises in the form of arabesques, peacock tails and floral patterns, becomes even more sophisticated when they are hung with washed linen. Or when, leaning on a unique grate, a beauty stands and talks throughout the street with a friend who has stopped below, on the pavement. Or an ancient old woman, looking into nowhere, sits on the balcony. The unique color scheme of round patterned windows, in the upper part of which are stained glass windows - the so-called mediapunto, which are designed to disperse and soften the rays of the merciless local sun penetrating into the house - seems warmer and more humane when the stained glass window is dusty, smoky and as if reluctantly playing with its colors.
That's life. There are many museums in the world. The uniqueness of Old Havana is that people live in the huge museum here, consisting of hundreds of “halls”-houses. They live by adapting masterpieces of architecture, artistic casting and stained glass art to their everyday needs. They live without appreciating the surrounding beauty, and more often than not even blame it, because, of course, in houses built two centuries ago there are no basic amenities, and water is delivered here in tanks and lifted to the balconies in buckets, on ropes, with the help of which some antediluvian pulleys. The houses are overcrowded; from one spacious “colonial” room, several have long been “cut up”, and it is often cut not only vertically, but also horizontally. The five-six-meter-high ceilings make it possible to divide one floor into two, building a so-called barbacoa on top - something like a large perch (in fact, a bed is most often placed there).
But at the same time, they live here in some kind of inner harmony with this age-old beauty. I am sure that the gracefulness of local women has been brought up largely thanks to the constant, from childhood, contemplation of the beauty of architectural forms, fabulous patterns of stained glass windows, fancy cast-iron and wooden ornaments and weaving that are dotted with window shutters, balcony and staircase grilles and mamparas.
Yes, mamparas are another indispensable element of the old Havana house - low and not reaching the floor screens that are hung on door hinges. They stage the interior space of the house in a special way, creating cozy corners in it and at the same time not tightly fencing them off and without interfering with the traditional communication for Cubans - at the top of their voices, shouting from one end of the house to the other. Life with doors closed does not exist in Havana. Doors, windows - everything is wide open and closed only at night. The Cuban nature is too hot and too active to isolate itself within four walls, to isolate itself from what is happening on the ever-busy street, seething with a thousand gossips and minor incidents.
The balcony in a Havana house is not just an architectural element. A significant part of the life of every inhabitant of the capital passes here. A balcony is a bridge connecting the house and the street, an observation platform that allows you not to miss a single more or less noticeable event in the area. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )
Dear Cadillac
If, following the example of my friend Carlos Padron, about whom I wrote in a previous essay, I was compiling a “list” of the main values of Havana, then from his version, which included, let me remind you, a mulatto, rum and a cigar, I would leave only one, the first position. Cigars and rum, being a non-smoker and not considering rum to be the drink of the gods, I would push aside. In second place I would put the city’s own beauty. And thirdly, incredible cars from the 40s and 50s, mostly American-made, which not only still drive on Havana streets, but make up almost the majority of the city’s vehicle fleet.
I am not at all an avid motorist, but I cannot help but appreciate the beauty, stylishness of these “engines” (as the Cubans themselves call them) and, most importantly, the “will to live” embodied in them. These Chevrolets, Dodges, Cadillacs, Fords and Opels, which over the decades have not been eaten away by rust, have not been destroyed by the terrible mixture poured into them under the guise of gasoline, have not been immobilized by the lack of spare parts - more than cars. They are akin to the local people who survive and do not lose their presence of mind in inhumanly difficult conditions. It’s time to declare such a “motor” a national symbol along with the royal palm tree and the tokororo bird. I don’t know what the bird represents, other than the richness of the local fauna, but an “engine” that has lasted for more than forty years could become a symbol of national character.
Cubans, unsentimental people, treat these cars in a special way. Gone, of course, is the era when cars were given names, but here, for example, many respectfully name their “engines” by the year of manufacture. I once heard from the driver who was giving me a lift:
- My grandfather bought my Forty-four, brought it from Chicago, when no one in Havana had such a Cadillac. Not a single woman, when her grandfather pulled up next to her on the street and offered her a ride, found the strength to refuse.
It’s time to turn to the 56-year-old Cadillac, like Chekhov’s Gaev to the closet: “Dear Mr.”
Habana Kabatska
Havana, of course, has always been what is called a hot city. A port city, and also a tropical one, abounding in beauty in all its possible manifestations, cannot be anything else. It is no coincidence that the center of hot spots before the revolution was that part of Old Havana that is adjacent to the port - the Belem quarter. He held the lead in the capital in the number of bars, taverns, casinos, brothels and, paradoxically, churches per capita. Apparently, the inhabitants and, above all, the inhabitants of the Belen quarter sinned a lot, but they also repented often. Moreover, the churches here - Belen, Espiritu Santo, Merced - are the most wonderful in all of Havana, cozy and humane, unlike the gloomy solemn Cathedral or the cold, monumental Sagrado Corazon.
After the revolution, the new government tried to put an end to Havana's bad reputation at once. Prostitution was prohibited, and former Magdalenes were urgently retrained. They say it was Che's idea: to retrain them as taxi drivers. Retrained. But the newly minted taxi drivers outwitted the revolutionary authorities - they began to combine their former profession with their newly acquired one. Those very spacious American cars with their incomparably comfortable sofas - back then the engines were also brand new - were perfect for this purpose. Che, they say, laughed for a long time when he found out how the blue whiting had fooled him around his finger.
Back in the 80s, I met these taxi drivers with traces of their former beauty on their faces and their former profession in their habits. They drove wildly. True, only one admitted what she did before the revolution. Of course, in the 80s they no longer practiced “part-time work”.
So, of course, it was not possible to remove the “birthmarks of the past” at once, but gradually the glory of the “big brothel” that Cuba enjoyed before the revolution was over. All sorts of “intergirls,” of course, were on duty in the lobbies of Havana hotels in the 70s and 80s, but that doesn’t count. There were practically no tourists from capitalist countries in Cuba, while the “socialists” for the most part were concerned about “the appearance of morality.”
But in the early 90s, when the Comandante ordered the development of tourism and all kinds of Spaniards, Italians, Germans and Latin Americans poured into Havana, all the “birthmarks” came out again.
Havana was filled with prostitutes - now they began to be called jineteras ("horsewomen" in literal translation) - and the indispensable "attachment" to them: pimps, owners of underground brothels and gambling houses, drug sellers. It was the most difficult time for Cuba - the “special period” - and many women really went to the panel like Dostoevsky’s characters: so as not to starve and not let their family perish. In the mid-90s, tourists returning in the evening to the Havana Libre Hotel and going down the most “secular” street of the city, La Rampa, passed by priestesses of love of all ages and skin tones standing in trellises. Cuba began to turn into a second Thailand, attracting lovers of sex tourism, pedophiles and other global rabble. The capital is overwhelmed by crime. The authorities realized that the “development of tourism” could only be ruined, and in a matter of days they “cleaned out” the city. The training of the Cuban police and state security is excellent.
Today, Havana is flooded with police officers at any time of the day, and tourists can feel completely safe. All sorts of “frostbitten” people who love too many thrills have stopped coming here. But it was not possible to completely put the genie back in the bottle. Once you go outside, it begins:
- Quie'n tu heres? Spanish? Argentino? Italiano? Que' queres? Una chica? Un chico? Puros habanos mas baratos que en la tienda? (Who are you? Spaniard? Argentinean? Italian? What do you want? A girl? A boy? Havana cigars, cheaper than in the store?)
You hear this a hundred times a day. Once, irritated by the pestering of a particularly impudent boy of about fifteen, who kept asking who I was, I snapped: “Who are you?” Not at all embarrassed, he answered:
- Yo soy jinetero! (I am a prostitute.)
The city is deteriorating. Havana, which I knew as poor but proud, again learned to sell itself and beg. She lives in anticipation of a dollar - in the hope of earning it, begging for it, stealing it. A picturesque old woman with a cigar in her mouth, sitting on the threshold of her house, instantly turns away when she sees that I want to photograph her. He puts forward his index, crooked, senile finger: “One dollar - one photo!”
People “go crazy” at the sight of a “green piece of paper,” Havana housewife Eudymia tells me. The Havanese have become mercantile, which was not typical of them before, echoes my friend, university professor Reynaldo. What a cruel joke fate played on Comandante, such a fierce opponent of the United States, in the fifth decade of his power, turning the American dollar into a fetish for Cuban citizens...
The capital's Malecon promenade is one of the most famous places in Havana. People come here to breathe the sea air, watch the sunset, “walk” the children, have a drink and snack, chat, and kiss to their heart’s content. A single woman who would like to meet someone is one of the most popular characters on the Malecon. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )