In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

2

Of course it is possible to see Cuba in a more pleasant light. There is much glamour over Cuba if you half close your eyes. It is an ideal place for a wicked elopement. The hero of the Hergesheimer novel thither resorts. It is certainly the place for a good cigar. Cuba has become a sportsman's island, the place par excellence where an American can get a drink. The characteristic sound of the towns is the rattle of ice in the inverted metal tumblers where the cocktail is coming to birth. The cocktail and the cigar are the first emblems of Habana. Then comes the Cuban girl sans peur, and then the gamblers' dice. Horse racing and boxing and cockfighting and betting and gambling are tremendous human interests—stronger in the Cuban than in the visiting American. Even the ice-cream venders carry dice boxes on their barrows and will "shake you for one" as soon as sell you straight.

You can go back and forth to Florida, not like Ponce de Leon, but by airplane in an hour or so. You read in the Habana News how over at Tampa the Floridians are trying to enforce even the blue law which makes the blues compulsory on Sundays, and you realize what a contrast the Cuban sporting resort affords.

Among many places of pleasure one stands out in my experience as both novel and fascinating, and that is the Galatea Lawn Tennis Club, on the Prado. Here is played all the evening and until late into the night a game of human roulette.

Gay lights adorn a pleasantly painted wooden structure which possesses a doorway but no windows, and a rapturous thundering Cuban band clamors from the interior; men stroll in and out all the time as if it were a drinking saloon, but there is nothing outside to indicate the nature of the entertainment. "Probably a cabaret with screened rooms and suppers and dancing girls," you surmise. But once inside you are aware that it is nothing of the kind.

Instead, behold a closed asphalt tennis court and six beautiful girls in white with racquets. They play, and on all four sides in tiers and in the gallery above are men gloating upon the game. There is the greatest animation. Up on its perch rattles the band. Down below, at a series of counters, men are constantly buying tickets and going back to their seats. Negroes are going about collecting money and talking to men in the audience. The girls slash the balls, the bells on the top of the net tinkle, the men cheer. And there does not appear to be one woman among the spectators—they are all men. I turned to an American and asked what was the interest. Was it a tennis tournament?

He laughed.

"It's a betting camp; that's all there is to it," he replied.

I took a seat.

The girls were named Margot, Justine, Esther, Norma, Tosca, Nena, and their names in bright-colored letters gleamed on the scoring board. Before each girl's name was a square of color to indicate her favor, and this corresponded to the color of the ribbon girdle which each girl wore on her white dress. Margot was blue, Justine was white, Esther was red, Norma was green, Tosca was yellow, and Nena was brown.

Chalked on a panel of slate after each girl's name was the number of dollars and cents laid on her winning. And electric star lights showed the score, point by point.

I at once chose Margot as my favorite, not because of her play but because of her style, her form, her glittering dark face. I imagine most newcomers did the same. For I soon realized that though she did not win she was a rapturous favorite of the men, who applauded every good stroke she made and were almost ready to leap over the nets with excitement when she was leading.

It was not the ordinary game of tennis, but one in which directly you lost a point you returned to your seat and gave way to the next in turn. The games were singles. Six points was the game. The scorer was mounted at a table on which were electric buttons, and when a girl won a point he pressed the corresponding button on the table and a star light appeared opposite her name on the scoring board.

All the girls played well, but there was no winning or losing on service. The ball had to be bounced first and then struck over the net for the service. This precluded fast skidding services. After that the play was quick and clever and very fascinating, for each girl had a different style of play. And not one was so much better that you could be sure she would not at last miss a stroke. Frequently three of the girls would reach four points, and once all six stood level at four, and three got to five before steady little Norma captured the sixth and took all the dollars which had been bet on the others and shared them with those who had bet on her.

It seemed to me there was a greater thrill and allurement than at a roulette table. For the figures of chance were not of ivory, but living and human. If you wished strongly enough you might make them win. But what of the girls themselves in this camp of betting men—they were always expressionless toward them. That was part of the fascination. No girl showed by her face that she knew any one of them or was interested in anything else but the game. And they never seem to tire, and the courts are never empty and two girls are always playing. And the drums and horns of the band are clashing, and the Negro bookies are collecting the bets. Each man chooses his own little white goddess to win—six Galateas and six hundred Pygmalions, the Galatea Lawn Tennis Club.