Thursday, June 23, 1921.
We arrived in Havana and went ashore about 10 A.M. Not having so far made friends with anyone on board, Dick, I and Louise went off alone. From the tugboat that brought us off our ship we stumbled on the quay into the arms of a guide, who stood in wait. Unable to speak a word of Spanish, we allowed him to attach himself to us. We were to have his guideship and the services of a Ford car for three hours, $10 complete. They were suffocating hours. The sun beat down on the canvas hood of the little car which bumped and rattled through the uneven, narrow streets. The guide, true to type (it recalled old days in Italy!) was boring and garrulous. I wanted to get a general impression of Havana, and my contemplation was rudely broken into when the Y. M. C. A.‘s building was insistently pointed out to me, and similarly other buildings of no interest.
The Cathedral where Columbus was buried alone stands out in my memory as a thing of beauty, but we got no further than an inner courtyard—the Cathedral itself was closed for repairs. The town seemed to have innumerable, modern marble monuments, each one more in ill taste than the other and each Cuban patriot thus commemorated had to be described at length by our unshaven guide. As for the living Havanians, they seemed to me to be a people asleep. Everywhere they slept at full length on the ground in the squares; in the avenues or leaning in doorways—even our chauffeur was asleep in the car when we came out from stamping letters at the post office! People who walked in the street looked at us wonderingly and sleepily, open-mouthed and heavy-eyed. It may have been the siesta hour of the town. After lunching at the Hotel Ingleterra we made for the quay, and there chartering a motor boat explored the harbor before returning on board. That was the part Dick liked best. He had been very bored with the town, and was greatly relieved to hear that Havana was not Mexico, as he has great expectations of our ultimate destination.
A few new passengers joined the ship in the evening, a few old ones having left. Those that have been on board from New York, seem to have done the usual ship trick, which is to break up into couples and walk round the ship’s angles at dusk, arm round waist. One looks on almost cynically, the thing is so inevitable. My cynicism and aloofness makes me feel old. Dick, however, knows the whole ship—the youngest and the oldest passengers are his devoted friends; the officers, the stewards and the ship hands are his intimates. The captain, who teases him with great earnestness, is taken very seriously and more respected by Dick than loved. But the little girl passengers he treats with almost silent contempt!
The only friend I have on board is the “reliable American,” and he proves to be of the type that confirms all my views about American men. He just is reliable, and thoughtful and infinitely kind. Nor is he a negligible personality. He is the president of an important company—and was arrested and condemned to death by Villa during one of the revolutions. Why he is alive to tell the tale is just a case of luck. He has the simplicity and the national pride of the usual American, but he can speak French, Spanish and Italian, and even read them. It is he, and not the young Mexican architect, who promises to be useful with the luggage at Vera Cruz!
We paused five miles out from Progresso, to unload some cargo and take on some new passengers, all of which was done with infinite labor by steam tug and barge. One of our fellow travelers is a Syrian Jew going ashore at Progresso and invited me to go with him to see the town, but the reliable American assured me the Syrian would delay me sightseeing until after the departure of our ship, and he thought my adventures need not begin quite so soon. Accordingly I remained on board.
I have learned something on the journey already, and that is, to appreciate the sallow ivory complexions of the South Americans; both in the men as in the women it seems to be infinitely more beautiful than the best admired pink and white to which one is accustomed. I noticed it particularly when a fresh fair complexioned man was talking with the olive-skinned Syrian, the fair man looked so pink in comparison, that one felt he had been skinned.
The journey has been perfect, only one night was it too hot, and I had to carry Dick on deck to sleep. For the rest it has been cool and calm, until about two hours from Vera Cruz when we ran into a storm. Then my beautiful jeweled sea became angry and white capped and opaque, and spat forth spray, but it had not long in which to do its worse, and at four P.M. on Monday, June 27th, we landed.
Tuesday, June 28, 1921. Vera Cruz.
I find I am always justified in not fussing beforehand as to the ultimate unravelling of details. In Russia, wherever I needed help, the necessity of the occasion created a friend, and so it is this time: The reliable American, friend of a few days only, could not have done more for me if I had been his sister. He helped me through the customs with my baggage, was joined by his partner, another reliable American who, having known me not more than twenty minutes, gave up his room at the hotel to me, because there was not another to be had. If ever a poet were required to sing praises the American man deserves his poet.