La Bodequita

As it turned out John Hefferman could not go to Cuba. He had an illness—or maybe someone in his family was ill, I don’t know. So Bobby Gold came. We flew into Cancun, Fletch, Nick, and Greg arriving from L.A. and Bobby from New York. Hardy was already in Havana having flown in from London. We were supposed to have an early flight from Cancun to Havana but there was some problem with the old Russian YAK-42D—perhaps an engine had fallen off or they didn’t have the fuel; it would not surprise me—and in the end it was midnight before our taxi found its way down the dark deserted streets of La Habana Vieja to the Parque Central.

In the morning it was bright and muggy, and they were sprinkling the Paseo del Prado, the wide boulevard lined with a thick canopy of trees and stone benches that runs down to the Malecón. Already, so early in the morning, it was very hot on the streets surrounding the Capitolio and almost as hot in the shade of the Parque de la Fraternidad where the old men argue over who is the best Cuban pitcher of all time, Luis Padron or Aroldis “El Ciclón” Chapman. We walked through the park to the Partagás cigar factory. The manager of the cigar shop, Abel Expósito Díaz, who usually sold us our cigars and then invited us into the dark VIP room in the back where he would pour us two-fingers each of dark Havana rum and invite us to smoke a Montecristo No. 4, Che’s favorite, on the house, was not there. Hardy bought a box of Cohibas and another of Montecristos, as did Fletch and Greg, and then we were invited into the dark back room with its framed photos on the wall of Fidel and Raul and Oliver Stone and even Steven Spielberg.

We went out into the street again where the men approached us offering to sell us cigars, the real things, they said, for very cheap. These were not the real things. They were cheap tobacco and sometimes they were not even tobacco at all but maybe dried banana skins and would not draw well and tasted of the bottom of a dirty shoe. We took a look at the Baroque Catedral de San Cristóbal where women in Colonial dresses sided up to us and wrapped their arms around our waist and kissed us on the cheek, leaving thick, waxy imprints of their lips before asking for five pesos. Everyone got a kiss so in the end the mahogany-colored women got thirty pesos for their unwanted besos, about the same as what a good cigar roller at Partagás makes in a month. There is no explanation for this. It is just the way it is in Cuba.

Then we went up and down several small side streets looking for La Bodeguita del Medio where Hemingway used to come when he was done working in the morning to drink his mojitos in the afternoon. Hardy thought he knew the way but it only led us back toward the plaza. After awhile I stopped a man selling roasted peanuts wrapped in a paper cone and asked him how to find La Bodeguita.

La Bodeguita is a very mediocre bar at best. It is cramped and crowded with tourists even in the morning and the mojitos are weak and overpriced. If you want a mojito you go to Los Hermanos or even El Templete. Still, it is a legendary bar, a place one always goes to when one is in Havana and we have always stepped inside to quickly down at least one mojito, in honor of Hem, even if none of us thought very much of it. But this day, more than usual, the bar was so busy that they had stopped allowing tourists inside and a line formed in front of the shuttered windows of the bar down the street. We decided to walk on, ending up at the Café Taberna on Plaza Vieja. It was hot, but the café had a cool, fresh smell and it was pleasant sitting at a long wooden table with all the hurricane windows open. A breeze started to blow, and you could feel that the air came from the sea. There were pigeons out in the square, and the buildings around the plaza were yellow, a sun-baked color, and I did not want to leave the café. There was a good son band playing, a blind old-man working the güiro, stroking the dry gourd with a small stick, and a young boy no more than 13 or 14 slapping a leather tumbadora almost as tall as him. Upstairs, over the band, a young man and woman practiced their salsa moves while the band played “Chan Chan.”

We ordered a round of Cristal. We matched and I think Fletcher paid for the beers, and then we ordered another round. The food is not very good here but the food in Havana, in general, is not very good so it did not matter. We ordered what you would order at any of the standard restaurants in the old town: rice with beans and a chicken dish and something with seafood. It did not matter what you ordered for it all tasted the same. You did not come to Café Taberna for the food; you came for the music and the cold beer and to avoid the heat of the day.

We walked back to the hotel, passing by the Floridita. We went inside where the bartenders wear red bow ties and red aprons and there is a large faded mural on the wall of the way the Havana harbor looked back when the country belonged to Spain and a bronze bust of Hemingway in the corner, where he always sat, looking like he is either bored or thinking about landing a right hook against the chin of a provoking tourist who has just told him that he thinks Hem is a macho, Jew-hating misogynist. We were too tired and it was too hot to drink and besides none of us really like daiquiris so we just patted Papa on the head, in respect, and walked back to the Parque Central to take long naps during the heat of the afternoon.