Island that Dared by Dervla Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

greenery, life-size plaster statues of a smiling black couple wore nineteenth-century cane-cutters’ attire. On three sides stretched long corridors tiled and pillared, their walls replete with stags’ heads. Our accommodation took us aback: two enormous bedrooms, each ‘en suite’ with two double-beds, bedside lamps, a large fridge and efficient (unless the electricity went off) standard fans. One motive for our journey had been to introduce the Trio to another way of life and this was another way in the wrong direction – incomparably more luxurious than their own spartan home near the top of a mountain in the Dolomites. However, the water supply was sluggish at best, non-existent at worst and the electrical fittings – mostly in unexpected places – made sounds not normally associated with plugs and switches.  
    The Trio devoured their four-course breakfast in a long narrow dining-room across the patio from our bedrooms. This was also the family living-room where Irma and Antonio watched TV in the evenings, seeming genuinely interested in what Fidel (or Ricardo Alarcón, his possible successor) had to say. In the nearby kitchen, from early morning, Irma’s two daily helps were busy – both black, we noticed, as was Candida’s cleaning lady. But those relationships were free of any whiff of ‘mistress and servant’, the women addressing one another as ‘compañera’.  
    On the way to Parque Cespedes Rose noted approvingly, ‘Here’s much cleaner than Havana’. She was right, Santiago’s municipality is either better funded or better managed than Havana’s (or both).  
    Zea observed, ‘It’s too much hotter than Havana! Why?’ The adults didn’t know why – maybe something to do with the nearby mountains?  
    Clodagh scrutinised my face and exclaimed, ‘Look at Nyanya’s sweat! She’s leaving drips behind her on the ground!’  
    Parque Cespedes (originally, and more accurately, Plaza de Armas) is Cuba’s first town square, a space left free of buildings for the convenience of the military, and never encroached upon over four centuries. But would those sixteenth-century town planners recognise it today? Trim shrubs surround neat little flower beds, a few trees provide inadequate shade and as we arrived the grey and red flagstones were being thoroughly swept with grass brooms. While the Trio romped Rachel and I, feeling Viazul-lagged, shared the sparse shade of palms with Carlos Cespedes on his pedestal. ‘They’re like a litter of puppies,’ I remarked, ‘the energy seems limitless.’ ‘Who are you telling!’ rejoined their mother.
    On all sides stood buildings so often photographed I almost felt I’d been here before. The sonorously named Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, built in 1922 on four-hundred-year-old foundations, has quite a pleasing neo-classical façade but can’t compete with Casa de Diego Velazquez. This Andalusia-flavoured stone building has a fortress-like solidity, relieved by many Moorish gratings, and wooden lattice-work shutters and balconies. It took fourteen years (1516–30) to build, as the conquistador’s official residence, and in 1965 was intelligently restored. Santiago presents it as Cuba’s oldest surviving residence, a claim contested by Havana though it seems not implausible. Less convincing is Santiago’s assertion that Velazquez’s bones lie beneath the cathedral.
    On the Park’s west side rises the dazzling white four-storey Hotel Casa Granda, a tourist base since 1920, agreeably conforming to Cuba’s eclectic style of colonial architecture. The blue and white Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), simple and dignified, was built in 1950 to replace an earthquake victim but had been designed two hundred years earlier by an anonymous architect whose drawings were found by chance in the Indies Archive. From its short central balcony, on 1 January 1959, Fidel first spoke to the Cubans as their new (twelve-hours-on-the-job) leader.
    It was too early in