They expressed the conviction that the purely masculine aphorism to the effect that home was the place for women meant nothing more than a clearing of the decks for unrestricted action. This was beautifully displayed, confirmed, in Havana, where decks were without a single impediment; and I speculated about the attitude of the Cuban women in houses barred with both actual and metaphorical iron. Tradition weighed heavily on their outlook; but there was that club on the Malecón. Tradition had bound the farm wives of Pennsylvania, yet they were progressively rebelling against the insanity of endless labor and isolation. But, perversely, the married groups I saw in Havana were remarkably close, simple, and happy. They sat in rows at the concerts on the plazas, went off on small excursions, in entire harmony—a thing impossible to the born American, with whom such parties began in exasperation and ended in nervous exhaustion. An American husband, of the class largely evident in Havana, escorted his family abroad with truculence and an air of shame at being exposed in such a ridiculous situation. If there was more than one household implicated, the men invariably drew away together: there was a predominance of cursing and the wails of irritably smacked children. The truth was that the citizens of the United States, in their feverish passage through life, had decidedly a poor time—either restlessness or ambition or dissatisfaction destroyed their peace of mind. Labor, more highly paid than at any other place or time, got less satisfaction for its money than a Cuban mestizo with a peseta.
My thoughts returned abruptly to the point where they had started, to marriage, and I hoped that Cuba wouldn't be disorganized by the present ferment; that the feminine element, discovering their wrongs, wouldn't leave their balconies and patios for the dusty publicity of the street. Already a decline had been suffered, first in the loss of mantillas and combs, next in the passing of single-horse victorias for unrestrained tin locomotives, and then in the hideous flood of electric lighting. Still, a great deal of the charm, the empire, of Havana women remained; while nothing but utter disaster approached them from the north.
This was no new position for me, and it had never failed to be attacked, usually with the insinuation that, spiritually, I was part of Turkey in Asia ... a place of gardens where it was not inconceivable that I'd be happy: certainly the politics there were no worse than those to which I had been inured from birth, with murder on the streets at noon distinguished by a white ribbon in its buttonhole. The Armenians were no more precariously situated than the Albigenses under Innocent III. I had heard, as well, that the governments of Cuba had not been free from suspicion, but it was hoped that elections supervised from the United States would institute reform. Rare irony! Elections, I should have said, going back once more to the beginning, opening to emancipated women.
Gathering, in imagination, all the feminine world of Havana into a fragrant assembly, I begged them not to separate themselves from their privileges; I implored them even—against my personal inclination, for there, at least, I was no Turk—not to grow slender, if that meant agile excursions into loud spheres of lesser influence. Those others, I proceeded, would rapturously exchange a ballot for a seductive ankle, a graceful breast, or a flawless complexion. Complexion, or rather its absence, brought immeasurably more supporting votes to the women's party than convictions. And I added, reprehensibly, some of the things I had been privately told, as a writer, by women newly in the professions: I exposed the secret of a lecturer on civic improvement—or it might have been better babies; I couldn't recall which—who carried a handbagful of apostrophies to Paolo and Francesca, and that illogical lot, on her travels. She permitted me to read them in a sunny orchard where the apples were already, more than ripe, on the ground; and her gaze had persistently strayed to the wasting fruit.
The audience melted away—I was unable to discover if they were flattered or annoyed—and I found myself actually seated at one of the small tables on the fringe of the thé dansant at the Sevilla. The Cascade Orchestra from the Biltmore, their necks hung with the imitation wreaths of Hawaii, were playing a musical pastiche of many lands and a single purpose; and there, foxtrotting intently among girls from the New York Follies and girls on follies of their own, colliding with race track touts from Jefferson Park and suave predatory gentlemen of San Francisco, I found a whole section of young Cuba.
They returned, in the intermissions, to chaperons complacent or secretly disturbed, where they had, principally, refrescos; but their attitude was one of progress and conscious, patronizing superiority to old-fashioned customs. The daughters of what, in many aspects, was the Spanish-Cuban aristocracy of the island, were dancing publicly in a hotel. Here, already, was an example of emancipation. I disliked it, naturally, not on moral grounds, but because it foreshadowed the destruction of individuality, the loss, eventually, of Havana, of Cuba, of Spain ... of everything distinguished that saved the world from monotony.
They danced—the Cuban youth—with notable facility, adding to the hesitation waltz something specially their own, a more intense rhythm, a greater potentiality; their bodies were at once more fluid and positive; they were swept up into a mood unknown to the adamant ornaments of Country Club verandas in the north. A cosmopolitan waiter, anxious to have me finish and move on, hovered about the table, ignorant of a traditional courtesy as well as of the requirements of the climate. All the objectionable features of Broadway cafés, of public ostentation, mingled servility and insolence, dishonesty—my piña colado was diluted beyond taste—were being flung, with the air of a favor, into Havana. Although, for the best, I was even then a little late, I was glad that I had seen the city when I did, just as I was glad to have known Venice before the Campanile fell, and the Virginia Highlands when they had not been modernized. The change of Havana within itself, from palm thatch to marble, was entrancing; but the arbitrary imposition of stupid habits, standards, conduct, from outside, damnable.
In the end the waiter was more forceful than my determination to remain until my drink and thoughts were at an end, and I rose with them uncompleted, in a very ill temper. If Cuba hadn't enough innate taste and nationality to save herself, she must go the popular way to obliteration. So much else had gone! But later, at the Hotel de Luz, untouched yet by the hand of imported cupidity, my happiness in Havana returned.
* * *
The Hotel de Luz, inimitably Cuban, with the shipping lying vaguely behind an orderly foliage at the Muelle outside, had a dining-room partly divided by wooden screens that merged informally into the surrounding halls and spaces, and an air that was an accumulation of tradition, like an invisible film lying over everything. A multiplication of unexpected adventitious detail accomplished, in its entity, the strangeness, at once enticing and a little sinister, characteristic of Havana. There was, lurking about, in the darker corners and passages, a feeling almost of dread, uncomfortable to meet. And, exploring, I passed a room without windows, largely the color of dried blood, the quintessence of a nightmare. The third floor, laid in a triangle of, perhaps, ninety degrees, raised immense corridors paved in black and white marble blocks, down the long perspective of which moving figures were reduced to furtive mannikins and voices were lost in an upper murmur.