In addition, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be perfectly sanitary in mind and body, any more than I was certain of the complete desirability of a perfected world, of heaven. At once, there, my lifelong occupation would be gone—novelists never stopped to think what would happen to them if all the reforms for which they shouted should go into effect; and I had a disturbing idea that a great deal of my pleasure in life came from feelings not always admissible in, shall I say, magazines of a general character. A clean mind and a pure heart were not without chilling suggestions of emotional sterility. Since men had hopelessly and forever departed from the decency of simple animals, I wanted to enjoy the silken and tulle husks that remained. If there was a sedative in cigars, an illusion in a Daiquiri cocktail, I proposed to enjoy it at the expense of a problematic month or year more of life always open to the little accidents of pneumonia or spoiled milk or motors.
* * *
What might be called the minor pleasures of life, though in their bulk were vastly more important than the great moments, Havana had carried to a high state of perfection; yet with, where I was concerned, an exception not in favor of the theatre. I went, as I had determined, to whatever offered, swept along by the anticipation of Spanish dancing and music: the first was immeasurably the best in existence, and I liked the harsh measures of Spanish melody, both the native songs of the countryside and the sophisticated arrangements by Valverde. A great many skilful writers had described the dancing, and their accounts were well enough, but, politely, they all lacked the fundamental brutality of the jota and malagueña, just as the foreign operatic variations on Spanish themes were reminted in a smooth and debased universal coin.
I purchased a ridiculously flimsy scrap of paper, which, I was assured, made me the possessor of a grille principal at the Pairet Theatre—a box, as huge as it was bare, within the stage. I could see, under the hood, the long dramatic hand of the prompter waving to the droning monotony of his voice through the stupidest performance I remembered. It was, by turn, a comedy, a farce, a pantomime, and a comic opera, and a complete illustration of the evils of departing from national tradition and genius—a dreary attempt at the fusion of Vienna and New York, planned, obviously, for a cosmopolitan public superior to the rude familiar strains of gypsies.
At intervals a chorus of young women, whose shrill excitement belied their patent solidity, made an incongruous appearance and declamation; they grouped themselves in feeble designs, held for a moment of scattered applause, and went off with a labored lightness that threatened even their ankles. This was bad, but a revista—I could think of nothing else to call it—at the Marti was, because it was so much better, worse. There I had an ordinary palco, enclosed by a railing from the promenade and elevated above the body of an audience composed of every possible shade from fairest noon to unrelieved midnight. The evening was divided into two performances, for the second of which, Arco-Iris, a largely increased price was demanded. This was, again, Vienna and Broadway, but with, in addition, an elaboration of color and lighting ultra-modern in intent.
I had seen the same effort ten years before in Paris, and the failure was as marked in Spanish as in French. Mr. Ziegfield, assisted by the glittering beauty of the girls he was able to secure, had made such spectacles brilliantly and inimitably his own. The Latins knew nothing, really, about legs: they showed them with what was no more than a perfunctory bravado, while it was a peculiarity of shoulders—the art of which they so daringly comprehended—that their effect was lost in mass. The display, the extravagant settings and costumes, of Arco-Iris, were, throughout, mechanical; the coryphées were painfully aware of their dazzlements; and an Andalusian number, looked forward to with weary eagerness, had been deprived of every rude and vigorous suggestion of its origin.
When I returned to the Inglaterra I demanded of a clerk where I could find a vulgar performance of, for instance, the habanera, but he shook his head doubtfully. At intervals, he admitted, Spanish dancers came to the National Theatre; but—his manner brightened—Caruso was expected in May. I had no intention of staying in Havana through May; and, had I been there, I'd have avoided Caruso ... a singer murdered by the Victrola. Already the seats for his concerts were a subject for speculation, and it was clear that they would reach a gigantic price, between forty and sixty dollars for a single place in the orchestra. In this depressing manner Havana made it evident that it was a city both fashionable and rich.
There had been a time, too, I was informed, when all the uncensored moving pictures of the world found a home in Cuba; pictures where embraces were not limited to a meagre number of feet, nor layettes, the entire ramifications of procreation, prohibited. But these were gone from the general view. The films, though, had not been destroyed, and for some hundreds of dollars a private performance might be arranged. But this I declined. The moving picture industry had been brought entirely from America, the theatres plastered with Douglas Fairbanks' set grin, William Farnum's pasty heroics, and Mary Pickford's invaluable aspect of innocence. Never, in the time I was in Cuba, did I see a Spanish actor or film announced; although a picture, appropriate to Lent, of the Passion, hinted at a different spirit.
I became, then, discouraged by the formal entertainments. As usual, I was too late; the process of improvement had everywhere marched slightly ahead of me, substituting for the genuine note a borrowed false emphasis. To-morrow I should hear the Salvation Army bawling in Obispo Street. In a state of indifference I went to Carmelo, a dancing pavilion with an American cabaret, and drifted to the table where the singing and dancing profession were having their inevitable sandwiches and beer. A metallic young person with brass hair, a tin voice, and a leaden mind, conversed with me in the special social accent of her kind, ready in advance with a withering retort for any licentious proposals. Beside her sat a Mexican with an easy courtesy and an enigmatic past. He was, I gathered, the son of an official who, in one of the exterminating changes of government, had escaped over a wall in his pearl studs and dinner coat but little else.
I liked everything about him but his indulgence for soda blondes; yet in the serious conversation we at once opened—connected with a projected trip of mine to the City of Mexico—we forgot the girl until, exasperated by our neglect, she lost some of her manner in an inane exclamation made, she announced, for the sake of Christ. Her companion immediately returned to his engagement, and I watched the Americans more or less proficient in that dance the name of which had been borrowed from a woman's undergarment. It had begun as a chemise, but what it would end in was problematic.