Habana Hergesheimer

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San Cristobal de la Habana*

Joseph Hergesheimer (excerpt)

The Cuban shore was now so close, Havana so imminent, that I lost mystory in a new interest. I

could see low against the water a line of white buildings, at that distancepurely classic in implication. Then it was that I had my first premonitionabout the city toward which I was smoothly progressing I was to find in itthe classic spirit not of Greece but of a late period; it was the replica of

those imagined cities painted and engraved in a wealth of marble cornicesand set directly against the tranquil sea. There was already perceptibleabout it the air of unreality that marked the strand which saw theEmbarkation for Cytherea.

Nothing could have made me happier than this realization; an extensionof the impression of a haunting dream turned into solid fact. The buildingsmultiplied to the sight, bathed in a glamorous radiance; and, suddenly, onthe other hand, rose Morro Castle. That structure, small and compact andremarkably like its numerous pictures, gave me a distinct feeling ofdisappointment. Its importance was historic rather than visible, and

needed, for appreciation, a different mind from mine. But the narrownessof the harbor entrance, a deep thrust of blue extending crookedly into theland, the sense of crowded shipping and massed city, the steamers of theworld and broad shaded avenues at my elbow, impressed me at once withHavanas unique personality.

Nothing, however, was more ingratiating than the long coralinelimestone wall of the Cabaas on its sere abrupt hill at the left; ponderous


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and stained brilliantly pink by time, it formed a miraculous complement tothe pseudo-classic whiteness below. A sea-wall built into a widepromenade followed

the shore, there was a circular pavilion on a flagged plaza piled with ironchairs, the docks were interspersed with small public gardens under royal

palms, and everywhere the high windows had ornamental balconies emptyin the morning sun. I heard, then, the voice of Havana, a remarkably activestaccato voice, never, I was to learn, sinking to quiet, but changing at nightinto a diferent yet no less disturbing clamor.

What I tried to discover, rushed through broad avenues and streetshardly more than passageways, was the special characteristic of a citywhich had already possessed me. And, ignorant of the instantaneousprocess that formed the words, I told myself that it was a mid-VictorianPompeii. This was a modification of my first impression, a

truer approximation, for it expressed the totality of marble facadesinadmissible architecturally, yet together holding a surprising and pleasant


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y unity. No one, I thought excitedly, had ever rightly appreciated Havana; itrequired a very involved understanding, a feeling not entirely admirable.No, it wasnt Hellenic, not what might be called in the first manner; it hadntthe simplicity of great spirit, a true epoch; Havana was artificial, exotic:Spain touched everywhere by the tropics, the tropics without a tradition

built into a semblance of the baroque.It was rococo, and I liked it; an admission, I believe, laying me open to

certain charges; for the rococo was universally damned; the Victorianperiod had been equally condemned and I liked it. Why, God knew!Ornament without use, without reference to its surface and purpose,invited contempt. A woman in a hoop skirt was an absurdity; black walnutfurniture carved and gilded beyond recognition, nonsense. Yet they hadmy warm attachment. Havana claimed me for its own a city where I couldsit at tables in the open and gaze at parterres of flowers and palms andstatues and fountains, where, in the evening, a band played the light arias

of La Belle Helene.

* * *

To illustrate further the perversity of my impulses: I was so entirelycaptivated by the Hotel Inglaterra that, for the rest of the day, I wasindifferent to whatever might be waiting outside. The deep

entrance with its reflected planes of subdued light and servants in coollinen; the patio with water, its white arches on iridescent tiles; the dining-room laid in marble, panelled with the arms of Pontius Pilate, the bronze

lustre of the tiling and the long windows on the Parque exactly as I hadanticipated, together created the happy effect of a bizarre domain. Thecorridor on which my room opened was still more entrancing, its archesfilled with green latticework, and an octagonal space set with chairs andlong-bladed plants.

Yet the room itself, perhaps one of the most remarkable rooms in theworld, easily surpassed what, until then, I had seen. There were slatted


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door screens, cream-colored with a sapphire-blue

glass knob, topped in an elaborate Gothic scrolling; and the door beyond,inconceivably tall, opened on an interior that seemed to reach upwardwithout any limit. It had, of course, a ceiling, heavily beamed in dark wood;and when, later, I speculated carefully on its height, I reached theconclusion that it was twenty-five feet above the grey-flowered tiling of thefloor. The walls were bare, white; about their base was laid a line of greenglazed tiles; and this, except for the glass above the French window, wasthe only positive note.

The window, too, towered with the dignity of an impressive entrance;there were two sets of shutters, the inner elaborately slatted; and over itwas a semi-circular fanlight of intensely brilliant colors carmine andorange and plum-purple, cobalt and yellow. It was extraordinarily vivid, likeheaped gorgeous fruit: throughout the day it dominated the closed elusiveinterior; and not only from its place on high, for the sun, moving across thatexposure, cast its exact replica on the floor, over the frigidity of the austereiron bed, down one wall and up another.

It was fascinating merely to sit and watch that chromatic splash, theviolent color, shift with the afternoon, to surrender the mind to itssuggestions.... They, as well, were singularly bright and illogical. Suchglass, such colors, had been discarded from present decorative schemes;but I recalled hints of them in the houses of eighteen seventy; I seemed toremember them in pagoda-like


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conservatories, and at once a memory of my childhood returned. Not thatthere were, actually, such windows at Woodnest, sombre under the tulip-poplars; yet the impression of one recreated the feeling of the other, itbrought back disturbingly a vanished time with its figures long dead.

Havana was identified as an authentic part of my inheritance. I was ina purely inner manner to understand it, to have for it the affectionaterecognition, the sense of familiarity, of which I have already spoken. Thecity was wholly expressed by the fanlight sparkling with the shiftingradiance of the blazing day. It was possible, without leaving the room, tograsp the essential spirit of a place so largely unseen. Then it occurred to

me that, indeed, I had seen Havana, and that the wisest thing to do was toleave at once, to go back with my strong feeling uncontaminated by trivialfacts; but a more commonplace impulse, a limiting materialism, pointed outthat, since I had come away for a change of scene, I had best realize asemblance of my intention. Still those colors, like a bouquet of translucenttulips, easily outweighed in importance all that I subsequently gained; theygave the emotional pitch, the intellectual note, of whatever followed amood, an entire existence, into which I walked with the turning of asapphire-blue knob.

For the rest the furniture was scant a walnut bureau with a long

mirror, necessary chairs, and an adequate bathroom like a shaft withshining silver faucets at its bottom. From outside, even through the heat ofnoon, the sustained activity of sound floated up through the shutters theincomplete blend-ing of harsh traffic alarms and blurred cries announcingnewspapers.

It was later when I went out on my balcony: across the narrow depth ofSan Rafael Street the


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ornamented bulk of the Gallego Club the Club and the opera house inone opposed a corner against the sweep of the Parque Central; and tothe right, between the glitter of shop windows, poured an unbrokenprocession of motors. A great pillar of the paseo below was hdhg with gailycovered magazines; a bootblack, wrinkled and active, with a single chair

on a high stand, was cleaning a row of white shoes, obviously from thehotel; and the newsboys were calling La Politica Comica in a long-drawnminor inflection.

The sun, that I had seen rising on the undiscovered hills of Cuba, wassinking behind the apprehended city; it touched the caryatids of theGallego Club and enveloped, in a diminished gold like a fine suffusion ofprecious dust, the circular avenue, the royal palms, the flambeau trees andIndian laurels, of the plaza. The whiteness of the buildings, practicallyunbroken, everywhere took on the tone of every moment: now they werefaintly aureate, as though they had been lightly touched by a gilders brush;the diffused shadows were violet. The shadows slowly thickened andmerged; they seemed to swell upward from the streets, the Parque; andthe buildings, in turn, became lavender, and then, again, a glimmeringwhite. Only the lifted green of the palms was changeless, positive, until itwas lost in darkness.

A great many people appeared below, moving with an air ofdetermination on definite ways. The faces of the men were darkened bythe contrast of their linen; I couldnt see their features; but what struck me


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at once was the fact that there were, practically, no women along thestreets. It was a tide of men. This, at first, gave me an impression ofmonotony, of stupidity women were an absolute essential to the varietyof any spectacle; and here, except for an occasional family group hurryingto a

cafe, a rare stolid shape, they were utterly lacking.The reason, however, quickly followed the observed truth; this was, inspirit, Spain, and Spain was saturated with Morocco, a land where women,even the poorest, were never publicly exhibited. Havana was a city ofbalconies, of barred windows, of houses impenetrable, blank, to thestreets, but open on the garden rooms of patios. And suddenly while themoment before I had been impatient at the bareness resulting from theirabsence I was overwhelmingly conscious of the pervading influence ofcharming women. Here they were infinitely more appealing than in placeswhere they were set out in the rows of a market, sometimes like flowers,but more often resembling turnips and squashes. Here, with extremeflattery, women were regarded as dangerous, as always desirable, andcapable of folly.

It was a society where a camellia caught in the hair, a brilliant glanceacross a powdered cheek, lace drawn over a vivid mouth, were not fornothing. In the world from which I had come these gestures, beauties,existed; but they were general, and meaningless, rather than specialthe expression of a conventional vanity without warmth. There was an


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agreement that any one might look, the intensest gaze was invited, withthe understanding that almost none should desire; and a cloak of hypocrisyhad been the result; either that or the beauty was mechanical, the gesturefurtive and hard.

Tomado de: Joseph Hergesheimer. San Cristbal de La Habana.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. 13 23.

San Cristbal de La Habana

Joseph Hergesheimer (excerpts)

As, in a temporary stoppage of its circular traffic, Iwalked across the Parque Central, its limits seemed toextend indefinitely, as if it had become a Sahara ofpavement exposed to the white core of the sun; and Ipassed with a feeling of immense relief into the shadeof a book-shop at the head of Obispo Street, where the

intolerable glare slowly faded from my vision as Ifingered the heaps of volumes paper-bound in avariegated brightness of color and design. In any book-shop I was entirely at home, contented; and herespecially I was prepossessed with the idea of buying agreat number of the novels solely for their coversinshort, making a collection of Spanish pictorial bindings.


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But the novels, I discovered, were, even in paper,almost a peso each; and since I was reluctant to investtwo hundred or more dollars in a mere beginning, theidea vanished. Their imaginative quality, however, the

drawing and color printing, were excellent, far betterthan ours; in fact, we owned nothing at all likethem. They had a freedom of cruelty, a brutality ofstatement, of truth, absent in American sentimentality:where women were without clothes they were naked,anatomically accounted for, as were the men; and thesymbolical representations of labor and injustice wereinstinct with blood and anguish. A surprising number ofstories by Blasco Ibaez were evident; and it struck me

that if I had read him in those casual bright copies,without the ponderous weight of his American volumesand uncritical reputation, I might have found a degreeof enjoyment. There were a great many magazines,mostly Spanish, gayly covered but with the stupidestcontents imaginablethe bad reproductions ofcontemporary photographs on vile grey paper;although one, La Esefa, admirably reproduced, in vividcolor and titles, the Iberian spirit of the lighter

Goya. Though I had been on narrow streetsbefore, I had never seen one with the dramatic qualityof Obispo. Hands might

almost have touched across its paved way, and thesidewalks, no more than amplified curbs, hardlyallowed for the width of a skirt. It was cooled byshadow, except for a narrow brilliant strip, and theopen shops were like caverns. The windows were


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particularly notable, for they held the wealth, thechoice, of what was offered within: diamonds andPanama hats, tortoise shell, Canary Island embroidery,and perfumery. There were cafes that specialized in

minute cakes of chocolate and citron and almond pasteset out in rows of surprisingly delicate workmanship,and shallow cafes whose shelves were banked withcordials and rons, gin, whiskies, and wine. There werebottles of eccentric shape holding divinely coloredliqueurs, squat bottles and pinched, files of ambersauternes, miniature glass bears from Russia filled withKummel, yellow and green chartreuse, syrupy greenand white menthes, the Cinziano vermouth of Italy,

Spanish cider, and orderly companies of mineralwaters. These stores had little zinc-topped bars,and there were always groups of men sipping andconversing in their rapid intent manner. The street wascrowded and, invariably allowing the women the wall, itwas necessary to step again and again from thesidewalk. They were mostly Americans: the Cubanwomen abroad were in glittering automobiles, alreadyelaborate in lace and jewels and dipping hats, and

drenched in powder. They were, occasionally, whenyoung, extremely beautiful, with a dark haughtinessthat I had always found irresistible.

In my early impressionable years it had continuallybeen my fate to be entranced by lovely disagreeable


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girls with cloudy black hair and skin stained with brownrather than pink. Imperious girls with elevated chinsand straight sensitive noses! They had never, by anychance, paid the slightest attention to me; and the

Cubans passing by with an air of supreme disdaincalled back my old interest and my old desire. I felt, forthe moment, very young again and capable of romanticfolly, of following a particular beauty to where hermotora De Dion Landauletdisappeared into acourtyard with the closing of the great iron-bounddoors. A marked, not to say sensational,transformation of my own person had been aconspicuous part of that young imaginary business; for,

though I was fat and clumsy, I managed to see myselftall and engaging, and dark, too; or, anyhow, a figureto beguile a charming girl. Something of that hopelessprocess had taken place in me once more, now thevainer for the fact that even my youth had gone. Thequality which called back a past illusion was verypositive in Havana, and my feeling for the city wasgreatly enriched, further defined. It was charged withhazard for what men like me had dreamed, leaving the

actuality for the pretended; the pretended, that soeasily became the false, was, in Havana, real. TheObispo under its striped awnings, with its merchandiseof coral and high combs and pineapple cloths; thewomen


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magnetic with a Spain that had slept with the East, theSouth; the bright blank walls, lemon yellow, blue, rose;the palms borne against the sky on trunks like dulledpewter; the palpable sense of withdrawn dark mystery,all created an atmosphere of a too potent


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seductiveness. The street ended in the Plaza de Armas,with the ultramarine sea beyond; and as I sat, facingthe arched low buff faade of the President's Palace,my brain was filled with vivid fragments ofemotion. What suddenly I realized about Havana,the particular triumph of its miraculous vitality, wasthat it had never, like so much of Italy, degeneratedinto a museum of the past, it was not in any aspectmortuary. Its relics of the conquistadores were swept

over by the flood of to-day. Yet I began to be vaguelyconscious of the history of Cuba, of that Cuba fromwhich Cortez had set sail, in the winter of fifteenhundred and nineteen, for Mexico. Later this would,perhaps, become clearer to me; not pedantically, butbecause the spirit of that early time was still alive. Imade no effort to direct my mind into deep channels.What must come must come; and if it were a gin rickeyrather than the slavery of the repartimento system, I'd

be little enough disturbed.


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The gin rickey proved to be an immediate reality, inthe patio of the Inglaterraa stream of silver bubblesshot into a glass where an emerald lime floatedvivaciously. I had no intention of going out again until

the shadows of the late afternoon had lengthened fartoward the white front of the Gomez-Mena buildingacross the plaza; and after lunch I went up to the quietof my room. I should, certainly, write no letters, readidly none of the few books published about Cuba,which were on my table; and I began the essays ofJames Huneker called Bedouins. His rhapsodies overMary Garden, as colorful in style as the glass above thewindow, I soon dropped and picked indifferently among

the novels that remained. A poor lot

the thin currentstream of American fiction, doubly pale inHavana. The day wheeled from south to west. Iwas perfectly contented to linger doing nothing,scarcely thinking, in the subdued and darkened heat.There was a heavy passage of trunks through theechoing hall without, the melancholy calling of theevening papers rose on the air; I was enveloped in theisolation of a strange tongue. To sit as still as possible,

as receptive as possible, to stroll aimlessly, watchindiscriminately, was the secret of conduct in mysituation. Nothing could be planned or provided for. Thething was to get enjoyment from what I did and saw;what benefit I should receive, I knew from longexperience, would be largely subconscious. I had beenin Havana scarcely more than a day, and already I hadcollected a hundred impressions and measurelesspleasure. How wise I had been to come . . .

extravagantly, with

as it were

a flower in my coat, agesture of protest, of indifference, to all that the worldnow emphasized. p. 48 56

[...] There was some question of where I'd go for dinner,for in Havana there were many cafes to explorethe


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Dos Hermanos, the Paris, the Florida, the Hotel de Luz,the Miramar; but, finally, I walked down to the Prado,to the sea and the

Miramar, a little because of its situation, directly on theMalecon, but principally for the reason that it had oneof the most beautiful names possible, a name whichcalled up the image of a level tide so smooth that itheld in shining replica the forts, the ships, and theclouds. Tables were prepared for dinner in therestaurant, while those on the terrace were withoutcloths; but there I determined to sit, and the waiterwhose attention I captured, after a long delay,agreed. A solitary couple had their heads togetherby the window, and they, with myself, were the onlydiners. It was, evidently, not now the place to go to atthis hour. Beyond the dining-room, a patio, or ratheran open court, was set for dancing, melancholy as suchspaces can be, deserted and half-lighted; but I sawthat a considerable activity was expected muchlater. I was glad that the terrace was empty, for,with the light now faded from the sea and its bluenessmerging into black, the remote tranquillity of eveningwas happier without a sharp chatter of


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voices. The Miramar, considering its placethe mostadvantageous in all Havanaand fame was surprisinglysmall: scarcely more than two stories high, the sombremaroon walls with their long windows hardly filled anangle of the Malecon. The dinner was slow in arriving,the silver made its appearance, a goblet was broughtseparately, a plate of French bread was later followedby its butter. The minute native oysters were no morethan shreds adhering to their shells, but they had anotable flavor; a crawfish was at its brightest apogee;and an omelet browned in a delicate perfection ofpowdered sugar. I deserted Spanish wine, theadmirable Riscal, for champagne; for there was aboutan air of departed charm, the whisper of old waltzesand tarleton, that demanded commemoration. TheMiramar had been the gay center of that mid-centurylife which had folded Havana in the lasting influence ofits memories. A gaiety not even at a disadvantagecompared to the feverish society of today! The bodicesthen had been no more than scraps of chambery gauzeand Chinese ribbon below shoulders to the whiteness ofwhich the entire feminine age had been devoted. Theflounced bell skirts had swung airily on gracious silkclappers. The automobiles on the Malecon


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multiplied, for the night was hot; soon there was a soliddouble opposed procession on

the broad sweeping drive. This was a triumph ofAmerican engineering and, I had no doubt, animprovement on the informality of rocks and debristhat had existed before. Yet I should liked to have seenit when the promenade had not yet been laid down withmechanical precision, in, perhaps, the early seventies.Then there were sea baths cut in the live rock at the

end of the Paseo Isabel, at the Campos Eliseos, wherethe water was like a cooler liquid green air, and where,after storms, a foaming surf poured over the barriers.There were no motors then, but volantes and themodern quintrins[sic], with two horses, one outside theshafts, and a riding calesero in vermilion and gold lace;and, latest of all, as new as possible, thevictorias. Neither, then, was the Prado paved, butthe trees were infinitely finerfive rows there were in

fifty-seven

when the clamor of the city was, in greatpart, peals of bells. This was a familiar process withme, to leave the present for the past in a mood ofirrational regret. But never for the heroic, the real past;the years I chose to imagine lay hardly behind thehorizon; in Italy it had been the

Risorgimento, at farthest the villeggiatura of AntonioLongo or the viole d'amore of Cimarosa in churches.And now, drinking my champagne on the empty


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flagged terrace of the Miramar, facing, across theparade of automobiles, the blank curtain of the night,starred on the right by the lights of castellated forts,my mind vibrated with grace notes no longer heard

outside the faint distilled sweetness of musicboxes. As if in derision of this, a loud unexpectedmusic rose from the bandstand in the Plaza, and I sawthat a flood of people, seated or moving along thepavements and through the lanes of chairs, hadgathered. Nothing, I thought, could have delighted memore; but my anticipation was soon smothered by theabsurdity of the selections: they were not from Balfenor Rossini, neither military nor the accented rhythm of

Spain . . . the opening number was Parsifal, blown intothe profound night with a convention of brassyemphasis.

[...] p. 63 67 Joseph Hergesheimer. San Cristbal de La Habana.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.

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