THE
Men’s Adventure
Library JOURNAL R E T H G U A L S D N A , X E S SUGAR,
BOOK PREVIEW
Cuba and Castro in Men’s Adventure Magazines EDITED BY
ROBERT DEIS & WYATT DOYLE
The stories published in men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) from the late 1950s through the late 1970s were notorious for their eye-popping, politically incorrect, often lurid artwork, their tough, unapologetic pulp fiction, and their exposé-style “news” articles designed to shock and titillate. Mixing fact with fiction and supplemented with sexy, violent pulp illustration art and photos, the magazines published hundreds of stories about Cuba and Fidel Castro, chronicling, illuminating, and dramatizing the earth-shaking events in Cuba in those explosive years in ways no other American print or electronic media did at the time—or has dared to since! Men’s Adventure Library Journal editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle follow their acclaimed I WATCHED THEM EAT ME ALIVE with the second installment of a new kind of anthology. An expertly curated selection of fast-paced, testosterone-boosted fiction and artwork with history and context supplied by the editors, CUBA: SUGAR, SEX, AND SLAUGHTER’s highlights include an exclusive pictorial reminiscence by men’s adventure supermodel Eva Lynd, who reveals details of her time as an American showgirl and model in Havana in the final days before the revolution … a portfolio from pantheon illustration artist Samson Pollen (POLLEN’S WOMEN) ... and a thrilling account of international intrigue, adventure, and escape by Robert F. Dorr (A HANDFUL OF HELL), the celebrated and controversial author (and retired senior diplomat) to whom the book is dedicated. CUBA: SUGAR, SEX, AND SLAUGHTER is available as a 158page softcover and as a 178-page expanded hardcover with additional content—20 more color pages of hard-hitting fiction and outrageous artwork.
Buy the 158-page softcover via Amazon: https://amzn.to/2IIteif Buy the 178-page expanded hardcover with additional content via Amazon: https://amzn.to/2IIS3dK
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SUGAR, SEX, AND SLAUGHTER
Men’s Adventure
Library JOURNAL
Cuba and Castro in Men’s Adventure Magazines
MensPulpMags.com “I Saw Havana Go Berserk” essay by Robert Deis
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“Havana’s Amazing Flesh Market” by JL Pimsleur
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“Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter” by Joseph Hazlitt
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“Viva Eva! Men’s Adventure Supermodel in Cuba” memoir by Eva Lynd
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“Bayamo’s Night of Terror” by Don Hogan
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“Brotherhood of the Scar” fiction by Jack Barrows
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Galería pictorial
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“Castro’s Commie Blueprint to Take Over Latin America” by George Vedder Jones
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Portfolio: Norm Eastman: “Master of Red Torment”
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“Terror! Cuban Hell-Cats Scare Castro’s Cutthroats” fiction by Miguel Gonzales
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“Squirm in Hell, My Lovely Muchacha!” fiction by Jim McDonald
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Preview: The Art of Samson Pollen pictorial
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“Kiss the Skull of Death, My Beautiful Muchacha!” fiction by Jim McDonald
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“Castro’s Bacterial Warfare Chief Wants to Defect—My Job, ‘Get Him’” fiction by Robert F. Dorr
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The Men’s Adventure Library Journal: Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter is a New Texture publication. ISBN 978-1-943444-19-9 Covers and artwork are reproduced via arrangement with The Robert Deis Archive. © 2018 Subtropic Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. NewTexture.com MensPulpMags.com The editors can be contacted at WeaselsRippedMyBook@gmail.com
“The Secret Plot to Kill Fidel Castro!” LANCER September 1960
Art by John Kuller
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“I SAW HAVANA GO BERSERK” Cuba and Castro in Men’s Adventure Magazines
by ROBERT DEIS Hundreds of stories about Cuba and Fidel Castro were published in the men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) that flourished between the late 1940s and late 1970s. With their unique mix of fact and fiction, and artwork and photos offering prurient appeal, these stories chronicle, illuminate, and dramatize what was happening in Cuba in those years in ways no other American print or electronic media did at the time—or since. The classic MAM format that crystallized in the 1950s kept some earlier pulp traditions such as painted covers, interior illustration art, and action/ adventure fiction yarns. Added to these were elements from other genres, including news magazines, outdoor sports periodicals, true crime and detective mags, men’s “cheesecake” pin-up photo mags, and celebrity gossip and scandal rags. More than 160 different men’s adventure magazines were published, though some only lasted for a few issues. In their heyday, MAMs were read by millions of American men, especially military veterans and blue-collar workers who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s reading classic pulp fiction magazines. By the ’70s, the classic men’s adventure format seemed increasingly outdated and square to younger generations of men. By 1980, MAMs were extinct. Today, MAMs are both derided by critics and sought after by collectors for their eye-popping, politically incorrect, often lurid artwork (like the Norm Eastman painting featured on this book’s cover), their adult-level pulp fiction tales, and their exposé-style “news” articles designed to shock and titillate readers. For better or worse (depending on your viewpoint), MAM stories about Cuba have all of those elements. But they also offer something else: a unique, gut-level appreciation for the passionate support of the revolution Fidel Castro led against dictator Fulgencio Batista—and for their equally passionate 3
ARGOSY November 1959 opposition to Castro that developed after he himself became an iron-fisted dictator. Early MAM stories about Cuba tended to focus on the “fun in the sun” aspects that made the island one of the hottest Caribbean destinations for American tourists from the late ’40s through the late ’50s. Among the earliest is an article in Argosy, April 1948: “Fabulous Havana—on a Shoestring,” illustrated with travel-brochure-style photos by Earl Leaf (who went on to become a famous photographer of celebrities and pinups, and a publicist for The Beach Boys). The Argosy article is restrained compared to later MAM pieces on Havana, which tend to spotlight the city’s legendary brothels and the glitzy Mob-run casinos and nightclubs that flourished under Batista. It says simply: Havana’s night life is terrific, wonderful, marvelous, disgusting, notorious, or disgraceful—depending on how you were brought up, and what you’re looking for. Some other early MAM stories about Cuba are essentially exposés—stories like “Cuba: Vice Trap for the Reds” in the May-June issue of His magazine, “Havana: Sex for Sale” in Fury, August 1957, and “Havana’s Amazing Flesh Market” in Sir!, June 1958 (pg. 19). Contrary to what you might expect, these aren’t nudge-nudge-wink-wink accounts of sexual escapades. Instead, they tend to shed harsh light on the extreme poverty, vice, and corruption that fueled the 4
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REAL ACTION FOR MEN June 1957 Artist uncredited
MAN’S LIFE March 1962 Art by Earl Norem
“Carmen Reyes, Cuba’s Call-House Counterspy”
BLUEBOOK FOR MEN March 1963 Art by Robert E. Schulz
From the pages of MALE, SEPTember 1959
“Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter” Story by JOSEPH HAZLITT
COVER art by Mort Künstler 27
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The script is always the same in Cuba. A liberator sweeps in, cleans out the butchers, becomes a hero. But then the brothels open and the executions begin, and all that gets liberated is the national bankroll.
Just after 8:00 PM when it grew dark, the small boats came in close to the Cuban shoreline, and 1200 bearded rebels waded through the shallow water. They held their guns and cartridge clips high as they marched in formation toward the curving line of sand. Over 1000 of them were Cubans who had fled from the dictator’s police only months before. But there also were 150 American volunteers, men who had fought in other, recent wars. Nobody looked around as the boats pulled away, back to the United States. At the head of the rebels was a swarthy, fast-talking, incredibly courageous young man who had promised to liberate Cuba with his small band of volunteers and throw the dictator out. They would have to fight their way across the largest island in the Caribbean to get to the well-fed man in the white, heavily-guarded palace in Havana. Nobody spoke as the arrowhead formation moved onto dry sand and began to spread out. They were advancing along a wide front when orange flames flared in bursts behind the heavy vegetation, 50 yards from the sea, and bullets sang through the blackness. The war for Cuba was on. Castro, 1958? Not quite, though the circumstances were almost the same. This was the invasion of Cuba 100 years ago by the rebel Narciso López, and the name of the tyrant in Havana was not Fulgencio Batista, but Don Miguel Tacón. The history of Cuba, “the blood island,” has been one revolution after another, each more violent than the one before. This is the pattern: The island falls into the hands of a dictator, like Batista or Tacón, who drives the population to breaking point. A rebel leader comes out of the hills or in from the sea, bringing with him “an army of liberation.” After he has liberated the people, he liberates the funds in the treasury. Then the new dictator chops down all 30
opposition, establishes a rule of terror—and the cycle begins again. It could be the same with Castro. We still don’t know if he will follow the pattern or break it, and set up the first honest government Cuba has ever had. Cuba is a beautiful island, favored by nature with delightful weather, fertile soil and a fun-loving people, truly the “pearl of the Antilles.” But it is a blood-red pearl. No place in the world has managed to pack so many dictators, liberators, revolutions, up-risings and punitive occupations into a short four-anda-half centuries. THE first white men to set foot on the island established the pattern. Sword in hand, they clambered out of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María and waded ashore looking for gold and women. They found both, and took them by force from the Indians who had come out to greet them. The peaceful, friendly Indians were the first of Cuba’s victims. As soon as Christopher Columbus had brought word back to Spain of the rich and balmy island that lay on the route to the Indies, the rush began. Adventurers, soldiers of fortune, hangers-on, and drifters begged or stole their passage to Cuba. Once there, they forced the natives to clear fields for them and build houses. To attract ships to the island, they rounded up the youngest and prettiest of the native women and forced them into brothels that lined the shore of the island’s best natural harbor. Word spread rapidly from ship to ship that there was a pleasant new port of call in the Caribbean. Its name was Havana, and by 1520, the brothels had been joined by taverns and dance halls where rum, made from sugar cane, was cheap and plentiful. The Indians died off quickly, and were replaced by Negro slaves brought in from Africa. Blackbirding, the importing and trading of slaves, became a profitable business. Enough so that Spain began to take official notice of Cuba. Until now, there had been no government on the island. Every man came and was his own ruler, which is to say he did precisely as he pleased. But then Spain sent a royal governor to Havana, and tyranny became official. The first governors were either relatives or favorites of the king. One of these early governors, Juanes Dávila, was so greedy and free with his lessons that, in 1543, the people rose up against him. Armed with clubs and stones, they swarmed over the soldiers and broke into the governor’s mansion. Dávila had managed to run away, and in their frustrated anger the mob began tearing the house apart. Under the floorboards, they found a cache of gold bars. Apparently, Dávila introduced another custom for Cuban dictators, which was to linger to our own day. But he had managed to take some of the loot with him, because he showed up in Spain, bought off some judges and was acquitted. Meanwhile, when word reached Spain of the revolt, a new governor was dispatched. His first act was to summon the leaders of the insurrection. When 31
they came, they thought he would thank them and reward them for having rid Cuba of a thief and a scoundrel. Instead, they were arrested and publicly drawn and quartered. The new governor and his successors took up where Dåvila had left off. They invented new ways to collect taxes, and the more the better, because whatever they could collect in excess of what they had to send back, they could keep. There was another organized armed force in the Caribbean. It was the fleets of pirates and buccaneers which plied the Spanish Main and feasted on the slow, gold-laden galleons trudging home to Spain from the South American mines. In desperation, Cubans turned to the most famous and most blood-thirsty of the pirate captains, Henry Morgan. If he would land his forces on the island and help them overthrow the soldiers, they would reward him royally. It probably had not occurred to Henry Morgan that he would ever be cast as a great liberator, but he knew there was an enormous amount of wealth in Cuba. If they wanted to help him collect it, he would be happy to oblige. THE Cubans who approached Morgan had figured that he would land in Havana and fight right there. Afterwards, his men would celebrate their victory in the honeycomb of alleys which made up the red-light district. Henry Morgan himself would leave and peace would come to Cuba. That was what the Cubans hoped for. But Morgan outsmarted them. Instead of attacking Havana, he led his ships to the other side of the island. Once ashore, he set up a government of his own. To be sure, his men hunted down soldiers and killed them, but then they went out and collected the taxes for themselves. They had their own ways to make people pay. The revolution failed, or rather, never took place. Instead of one tyrant, Cuba now had two. Each knew about the other, but was careful not to clash head-on. There was plenty for all, it only had to be extracted from the longsuffering natives. Eventually, Morgan got bored, packed up his booty and went back to sea, one of the few dictators ever to leave Cuba of his own accord. At about the same time, Luis Olvieda, who was then governor, had a bright idea. It was nothing new. The emperors of ancient Rome had used it to good advantage, but nobody had tried it in Havana before. Olvieda decided to take people’s minds off their troubles. Instead of bread and circuses, he gave them rum and women, dancing, cockfighting, and gambling. Visitors to Havana in the 1600s rubbed their eyes. The town was one huge, roaring pleasure pit. People danced in the streets, wrapping their arms around each other and twirling their bodies together in sensuous movements that were very much like the modern rhumba. Every imaginable sexual diversion, for women as well as men, was available. It worked like a charm. 32
Here and there squads of soldiers might appear, burst into a house and drag out protesting people. But the raids barely interrupted the carousing, and if the victims were never seen alive again, well, it was their fault if they meddled in politics. In time, governor Olvieda retired and was replaced. He had extracted his share of booty, but he had done it painlessly. His successors were smart enough to use the same tactics. For a century, Cuba enjoyed an uninterrupted drunken binge. Travelers came for a visit, and settled for good. Ships swarmed in and out of Havana’s harbor. The city grew. By 1810, it was as large as New York. The slave market was booming, too. Excellent prices were being paid for sturdy field hands at the auction blocks of New Orleans and Savannah. Not all the slaves ended up there, however. Havana’s newspapers were filled with ads of young Negresses for sale, described as “healthy, without blemishes and good for house use.” At 250 pesos a head, they were picked off and sent to the mansions in the better part of town, where they waited on the lady of the house and, whenever he felt like it, the master. IT SEEMED as if Cuba had found the secret of paradise on earth. Then, almost overnight, everything changed. A new governor arrived from Spain, Don Miguel Tacón. His last name, in Spanish, means “heel,” and the reputation of Él Tacón was known far and wide in the New World. A career soldier, he had fought in the unsuccessful wars against Simón Bolívar. Once, he had been captured. To repay him for his own cruelties, Bolívar’s men castrated him. For a while, there was nothing he could do about it. Ordered back to Spain after his defeat, he became a laughingstock. Not only had he lost South America, but, ladies giggled to one another behind their fans, do you know what else he had lost? Then, unfortunately for Cuba, King Ferdinand VII died in 1834. His wife, María Cristina, was a dried-up, hypocritical old creature who wanted to atone for her own flaming youth by stamping out, with the help of the clergy, all the pleasure she could. Cuba had always been a thorn in her side—people were having too much fun there. As one of her first official acts, she appointed Él Tacón to be her new governor there. He shook Cuba up and then shook it down. A curfew was installed. Police patrolled the streets that had once been choked with revelers, with dogs whom they would unleash against passers-by. Dance halls and gambling houses were closed. Cockfighting was abolished. Prostitutes (by definition, any single women seen on the streets) were arrested and brought before Tacón to be stripped and beaten. He enjoyed watching the punishment, and his lieutenants vied with each
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VIVA
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men's adventure
Supermodel in
Cuba Photos by Sepy Dobronyi 41
Pinup photos of Eva Lynd and artwork she modeled for appeared in many men’s magazines. Artist Al Rossi often posed her with popular male artist’s model Steve Holland, as in the reference photo and artwork above, for a story in For Men Only, July 1964. I was born Eva Inga Margareta von Fielitz, to Countess and Count Asti von Fielitz in the city of Göteborg, county of Örgryte, Sweden. My mother was a singer, and she had always wanted to go to America. She did so in 1948, and lived in New York City with her half-sister. I stayed with my grandparents until she sent for me in 1950. After high school in Ohio and working as a waitress for a while in New York, I started my career in TV, doing various small roles at first, and appearing many times on live TV between 1955 and 1958—The Steve Allen Show, The Ernie Kovacs Show, and others. The name Eva von Fielitz seemed too complicated, and probably sounded more German than Swedish—which, in the postwar years, was not a good thing. So, I picked Eva Lynd, since that sounded more Swedish. I did some small parts in films and worked as stand-in. I worked in a lot of industrial shows also, and did various commercials, both live and on film. I also became a photo model. Starting in 1956, I worked for a multitude of photographers, including Peter Basch, Charles Kell, Earl Leaf, and many more. So I ended up on the covers of—and in—a lot of men’s magazines. 42
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Artist Norm Eastman used Eva as the model for dozens of his MAM paintings, such as the machine-gun-toting, Nazi-fighting femme on the cover of New Man, December 1968.
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REAL MEN December 1961 Artist uncredited
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ADVENTURE December 1963 Art by George Gross
NEW MAN November 1964 Art by Norman Saunders
From the pages of ADVENTURES FOR MEN, JULY 1959
“Brotherhood of the Scar”
Story by Jack Barrows
COVER art by George Gross 61
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ILLUSTRATIONS by BRUCE MINNEY
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From inside blood-drenched Cuba comes this exclusive eye-witness story of an ex-GI who was brutally tortured by Batista’s savage Gestapo and lived to join the secret underground army that swore vengeance at any price.
Not only because he burned the American flag into my back, all 48 stars and 13 stripes, but also because of what he did to Lucha Moreno, and how he did it to her, I thought up something really special for Chief Warden Valenzuela when I got my chance. Word came through the grapevine on New Year’s Day that President Batista had suddenly deserted his government and left Cuba. All 400 of us in Él Príncipe prison immediately overpowered the guards and took control. Though we could have left the prison at any time during the next 12 hours, we stayed inside. We had work to do. We had 100 guards to kill, and that takes time. But what we did to the wardens took all night. We tortured them to death. We managed to keep Valenzuela and his assistant warden, Ruiz, alive until dawn, and not only alive but conscious most of the time we were working them over. The dungeons of Él Príncipe echoed with the wardens’ terrible screams as we took turns, each prisoner doing to them what they had done to him. One man thumbed out Valenzuela’s left eye. It was my cellmate, Chuck Barlow, whose own left eye was gone, leaving an ugly red hole. Another prisoner twisted Ruiz’s right foot off at the ankle with a gadget which the assistant warden himself invented and named the bota japonesa, or Japanese Boot. The warden had also used it to rip off hands at the wrist and to tear out fingers at the roots. Ruiz went into shock after this, and died a few minutes later. I missed my chance at him, but since I had him to thank for nothing more important than ripped-out fingernails, it didn’t matter too much. I turned to Valenzuela instead. For the Stars and Stripes, which the chief warden had burned into my back, I carved his epitaph across his chest and belly. And then I read it to him. When he understood it, he screamed long and 64
beautifully, for the epitaph promised him a death more horrible than any he had devised for the many prisoners he butchered. It was for Lucha Moreno that I killed him the way I did—a death that will give me nightmares until the day I meet my own. I don’t know why I cared that much about Lucha. I picked her up in a crummy little Havana saloon about six months before all this, when I was taking my annual two weeks’ vacation. Lucha was one of those black-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned Cuban women with more of everything than their Stateside sisters ever hope to have—beautiful and well-built, the way Cuban girls get when they’re 19 and feeling tropical. She was sitting at the bar of this rum joint when I walked in, so I took the stool next to her and made my pitch. She wore a tight red gown that fitted her like her own skin. Very low at the neck. “Habla inglés—speak English?” I began. I’d heard her talking to the bartender in Spanish when I walked in, but most Havana hustlers speak a little English after their first hundred American tourists. “Sí, señor!” she said. We got along fine after that, and before we finished our third Cuba Libre we were heading for her place. She lived in a one-room wooden shack just off the road that leads out of town to the airport. Her two younger sisters lived with her, carbon copies of Lucha but a couple of years younger. Their names were María and Celia. They kept house for their older sister while she went out and hustled their living. The hut was very comfortable and pleasant, with a parrot and a beat-up old tomcat, flowers everywhere, and a sheet strung across the middle of the room to shut the younger sisters out if Lucha had a guest for the night. Lucha had a good, soft bed. By morning I felt as if this were my home. I knew I liked Lucha, and what’s more, I could afford her for the two weeks I’d be in Cuba. At her rate of 10 bucks a day, it would come to $140 for 14 days. Not much, considering. As a master carpenter in Miami, making a lot of overtime pay, I could afford to live well. Especially being a bachelor. And a year’s savings came to quite a lot. I’d been spending my yearly vacations in Havana for the past three years, and I’d pretty well covered Havana. I wanted to take a little trip into the interior of the big island, and I had the idea Lucha would make me a very nice traveling companion for two weeks. I even had the small idea in the back of my mind that I might take her to Miami with me afterwards if we were still getting along well together. Her sisters brought us breakfast in bed, and I put the proposition to Lucha. “Will you make a tour of the island with me? It’ll take about two weeks.” 65
“Would you leave some money with my sisters?” she asked. “Of course,” I said. “Then I’d love to go. Do you have any place in mind?” “I thought you might suggest something,” I said. “We could go to Boca del Rio,” she said. “I come from there. . . . Could we take my sisters?” “I’d rather not,” I said. “Does it matter?” “No,” she said. “Maybe it’s better. Our parents are dead anyway. It might upset the girls.” “I don’t understand. . . .?” “They were killed,” she said. “Batista’s soldiers.” “And you want to go there?” “Yes. I still have relatives there—cousins, friends. . . . And it’s a very pretty little town, a fishing village.” “Where is it?” I asked. “Across the bay from Cienfuegos.” “Isn’t that in rebel territory?” “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. I objected, “But it’s forbidden to travel in rebel country!” “Never mind,” Lucha replied, “I know how we can get there.” After breakfast and a cold shower in the flower-filled patio behind her hut, we dressed and walked through town to the Malecón, Havana’s harbor front and promenade. The Caribbean sun blazed fiercely in the sky’s electric blue, and the brilliant light glared upon the water. Even with the prevailing westerly breeze, it was hotter than the paving stones of hell. Real rum weather. Fishing boats were moored along the Malecón, idle because of the country’s bankruptcy. Why fish when no one has the price of a mackerel? Smuggling had become the basic occupation of the fishermen now that the market for fish had dwindled to nothing. “I thought we’d look for a fisherman I know,” Lucha said as we walked along the docks. She walked up to a weather-beaten old seadog with a malicious eye and began jabbering with him for a few minutes. “Look,” I broke in, “you got a boat?” “Sure,” he replied. “You want to go fishing, take a ride around the harbor, out by Morro Castle?” “No,” I said, “around the island, to Cienfuegos Bay.” He gave me a sharp look and whistled through broken teeth. He said something in Spanish to Lucha, but it happens I understand the language, I just don’t like to speak it. The fisherman said, “No parece loco, pero claro que sí es!” Which means, “He doesn’t look crazy, but he sure is!” 66
I said, “Okay, I’m crazy enough to pay you twenty bucks for the trip! How’s that?” He seemed surprised I understood him. “Well,” he said, “everyone’s a little crazy these days. When do you want to go?” “Now!” I said. “You got enough gas in the tank?” “In daylight?” He asked. “If we get stopped, we’ll say we’re just taking a joyride. And we’ll be several hours getting to Cienfuegos, so we’ll come in at night.” “I’ve got to see my sisters first,” Lucha said. “I’ll wait here with the captain,” I said. “Here’s some money. When you come back, don’t carry a suitcase or come in a taxi. That’s too obvious. Come back walking like everyone else. Carry whatever you need in a small bag. And bring me a toothbrush and a razor.” I waited with the captain in order to watch him. You don’t trust everyone along any waterfront and, so far as I knew, this man now might choose to sell us out to the cops for a small fee. We went aboard his boat, a dirty old fishing boat with an old-fashioned tiller and a ragged piece of sail in case the ancient motor gave out, or perhaps didn’t even start. We sat in the shade of the ragged sail while we waited for Lucha. I wondered briefly whether she’d show at all. She did. She came swinging down the Malecón about an hour later, followed by half a dozen hopeful young men. She came aboard, and we shoved off, like any joyriders out for a sail in the sun. Not that there were many. We saw three or four small boats in the harbor, for the tourist traffic had dropped off to almost nothing because of Batista’s trouble with rebel bombings in gambling casinos, running gunfights with the cops right in the streets of Havana, and so forth. The other fishermen along the Malecón were frankly envious of our captain’s good luck in netting a gringo tourist—and of course this gringo’s luck in having Lucha, for none of them could afford her. She had brought a basket of food with her, including a bottle of rum, so we were set for the journey. The trip westward along the Cuban coastline was uneventful and hot, but by sunset we rounded the western tip of the island and headed east again towards Cienfuegos Bay, still several hours away, but by night now and cooled by the fresh sea breezes. We passed between Pinar del Río and the Isle of Pines, through a thousand small palm-studded islands, all bathed in shimmering moonlight. Then we saw the lights of Boca del Rio, only a few yellow lanterns on a wooden dock. It was close to midnight, and in fishing villages most people are safely in bed at that hour. We coasted in with motor dead and running lights doused, and we slid up alongside the pier without a bump. I handed our fisherman his $20 and shoved his boat clear of the pilings. 67
He didn’t start the motor but got out a pair of oars and began rowing out to sea again. So far I was having one hell of a fine vacation. It went along like that for a few more hours. We left the dock and walked up a cobblestone street to the town’s little plaza, where Lucha said she knew a pensión where we could stay. It was a twostory house overlooking the plaza, but completely dark now. I rang the doorbell and heard the answering buzz somewhere inside the house. In a moment the door opened. A big fat Cuban woman in a nightgown and housecoat and her hair done up in curlers stood in the doorway for an instant as I started to say, “We’d like a room with a bath—” Then she recognized Lucha. “My god!” she cried. “Come in, quick!” We did and the woman shut the door quickly behind us. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Were you seen?” she demanded. “Lucha! What are you doing back here?” “Has there been more trouble?” Lucha asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. . . .” “About a month after they killed your parents, they came back,” said the fat woman, “and they were looking for you—and the two little ones, your sisters. Are they all right? Do you still live in Havana? Is there work? Nothing here, nothing! Everything has stopped!” “Yes,” Lucha said, “we’re all right. I have a little house in Havana, and my sisters take care of it while I work. We often speak of you and the old days here in Boca del Rio.” “And you are still a public stenographer like before? There is work?” “It isn’t the same in Havana,” Lucha said, “but there’s work. . . . Oh, I’m sorry! Señora Claudia Ramírez, this is Señor James Greaves.” “Your husband, my dear?” the señora asked. “I’m very pleased to know you, señor. My house is your house, as we say in Cuba. . . .” So I signed the official register as Señor James Greaves and señora, which made the landlady happy. She gave us a front bedroom upstairs, where we could see the little plaza and the waterfront down a flower-lined cobblestone street. There was only one light in the plaza, but by its dark yellow glow we could distinguish details now that we hadn’t noticed before, when we came up from the dock. There were bomb craters in the square, also the black scars where incendiary bombs had burned. I saw enough of that in the war, so I know them when I see them. They’re dirty marks. You see them and you know people have been torn to bits by fragmentation bombs and others burned to death by the phosphorus incendiaries. “What the hell’s going on here in Boca del Rio?” I asked. “Looks like there was a big battle here.” “The government’s planes,” Lucha said, “they come over and drop bombs on 68
the towns. Everybody’s with the rebels now, and Batista knows it.” “Makes him sore, eh? Knowing his people hate him.” “We shouldn’t have come here, Jim,” she said then. We were standing by the window, and she turned to me, saying, “They’re killing Cuba! There’s nothing left! I wish I could go away with you. Would you. . .? Do you like me?” “Yes,” I said. “I do. We’ll see. . . .” We were wakened at dawn next morning by the roar of trucks rumbling into the plaza. From our window we could see troops filing out of the trucks and forming up into three platoons in the little square. Lucha said, “Jim, we’ve got to get out of here!” “Get dressed!” I told her. “Then we’ll get out—if there’s a way out. . . .” As we dressed we heard the company commander bark orders to search every building in town. He dismissed the troops, and the search began. We were still dressing when we heard the heavy tramping of boots downstairs and a loud man’s voice snap an order: “Muchachos, search the rooms!” There was no way out, but at least we were dressed when the troops banged on our door. I opened, and they held guns on us while they searched us for weapons, going through Lucha in a way I would have broken their jaws for if it hadn’t been for the guns. Then they shoved us downstairs, where their officer, a young lieutenant, demanded our identification papers. All I had was a Florida driver’s license. Americans don’t need passports for Cuba. We’ve been walking around the island as freely as Cubans, or more so, ever since the Spanish-American War—until Batista gave out the order forbidding foreigners to travel in the interior. Anyway, I was breaking the law, if a dictator’s word can be accepted as law. “You’re under arrest!” the lieutenant said. “Follow me!” I did, with Lucha hanging onto my arm, and both of us scared plenty as we walked past the bomb craters in the plaza. The lieutenant took us to his company commander’s headquarters, which had been hurriedly set up in the church. We came in just as the priest was winding up a speech. He was a big redhaired Irish Jesuit, and he looked like he could flatten a man with his fist if argument didn’t serve his ends. “And finally, Capitán Gamboa,” he shouted in a voice like Gabriel’s trumpet, “I warn you not to defile the Church!” Then he strode rapidly out into the morning sun, giving us a quick appraising glance as he passed. He disappeared in the crowd that was gathering now. The people could see inside the foyer of the church, and they watched with sullen faces. Captain Gamboa turned to us, and his lieutenant explained the case. “Here
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for Robert F. Dorr 1939–2016
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