The Sensual Death of Cuba

And here I am. With absolutely nothing to do. Relaxing on my terrace. Drinking rum at dusk. I want nothing more to do with intimate relationships. I’m so scarred that another attempt could prove fatal. I’ve decided to live alone. My normal life, but on my own. Obviously, every now and then a woman catches my eye. One who really shines. I like that. Nothing lasts forever. But a man doesn’t live by love and solitude alone. You’ve got to do something to earn a bit of money, to eat and to buy yourself a beer come evening. I’ve now lost my job at the abattoir – the one grinding soya – and there’s nothing else on the horizon. It’s 1995 and the crisis has reached a fever pitch. Everything is in crisis: ideas, pockets, the present. As for the future, don’t even get me started.” Thirty-one years have passed since Pedro Juan Gutiérrez wrote these lines in his "Trilogia sporca dell’Avana", the novel in the form of short stories that introduced the Cuban writer to the rest of the world. In Italy it was published by e/o, translated by Stefania Cherchi, and marked the start of a frenzy that resurfaced every time a new title by the writer appeared; at the time, he was something of a mystery, known only from a vaguely vampiric photograph (a sort of Nosferatu with a cigar, in a vest) on the cover of "Animal Tropical"; and then came "Il Re dell’Avana", "Carne di cane" and "Malinconia dei leoni". Faced with those foul-mouthed pages, dripping with sex and profanity, one imagined a sort of tropical Bukowski, a Henry Miller with no desire whatsoever to go to Paris. That was how the press sold him to us; it suited their purposes. Then it emerged that Gutiérrez didn’t like Bukowski at all and had read little, if anything, by Miller. If anything, what they had in common – apart from a purely literary devotion to the meticulous recounting of sexual encounters – was a monstrous ability to captivate the reader. Gutiérrez is, to paraphrase him, a true ‘narrative animal’. Whatever he tells, be it true, false, exaggerated, banal or surreal, he tells it brilliantly; his style goes down like a glass of water. "The Dirty Havana Trilogy" was accompanied by a telling subtitle: "With Nothing to Do". A necessary interpretation? A warning? A manifesto? A quip? Thirty-one years on from those lines, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is still, in all likelihood, with nothing to do. And thank goodness for that. Because it is from this void – from this chronic Cuban absence of a future – that his writing springs.

An interesting story, about which we knew nothing, apart from what had been passed down to us through the scant chronicles, tinged with legend.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez had held a thousand different jobs, including ice-cream seller and labourer. In the 1990s, during the so-called ‘período especial’ – the first major economic crisis of the Castro revolution, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and support for the island, regarded as a satellite state, faltered considerably – he found himself unemployed in a top-floor flat in a block of flats in ‘Centro Habana’.

Anyone who’s been to the Cuban capital knows what this is: it’s the most run-down, fascinating and dimly lit part of the city. In any other city in the world, it would be a dreadful place to avoid, but not here, because on one side lies the Malecón seafront promenade, and on the other stands a row of tower blocks whose brutalist concrete clashes with a sky of shifting colours and the vibrant Caribbean vegetation. And beneath the windows, life teems with activity: street stalls, stories, old, battered American cars, and loudspeakers blaring out salsa and boleros. For three years, Gutiérrez – in a vest and with a cigar – wrote the story of a certain Pedro Juan – his namesake – who loves rum, women and, needless to say, doing absolutely nothing. The typewritten manuscript circulates amongst Cuban publishers, who reject it. It is a defeatist and obscene text; it would not pass the regime’s censorship. Let us remember that Fidel Castro and his clan are in power, thousands of dissidents are in prison, for three decades more than a million people have set out in boats and dinghies trying to reach Florida, food is rationed, the chemists’ shelves are empty; with your ration card, you can collect a loaf of bread every morning; and the sugar cane plantations – for reasons that aren’t entirely clear – are producing less and less. But another industry has taken off: tourism. The city is full of Russians, Italians, French and Canadians looking for a bit of fun. In short, there are two Cubes: the official, strict, ideological one, which resists the onslaught of imperialism and the devastating US blockade – for example, by imprisoning homosexuals and students who take to the streets; and then there is the one that nobody sees, which rears its head when the lights go down, and which Gutiérrez chronicles. On the one hand, desperate debauchery: “I don’t know why, but the nurses are all shameless. They’ll shamelessly suck you off, strip in front of you, drink rum, masturbate, and whisper dirty stories in your ear. Autobiographical stories, I mean.” On the other, the daily struggle for survival: “I spend a few days in the countryside and come back loaded down: lobsters, beef and twelve litres of rum. The police search the bus twice. Both times they nearly make me throw up. My reputation as a respectable person saves me. The unlicensed taxis charge sixty pesos for the short journey to Central Havana. And if I try to haggle, they always reply with the same old line: ‘I’ve got to at least cover the cost of the petrol. And it’s expensive… getting more and more expensive’.”

A French journalist takes the manuscript to Paris and hands it over to the publisher Seuil, who rejects it: it is unpublishable. Too extreme. What does that mean? Too much masturbation and too many vaginas? Or too unpalatable for the ‘caviar left’ who, with a photograph of Che Guevara behind their desk, still live the dream of the revolución that landed from the yacht Granma in 1959? We’ll never know. What we do know is that a Spanish agent took the manuscript to Madrid, where it ended up on the desk of the editor at Editorial Anagrama, who, having read the book, picked up the phone – which rang out on a terrace in Havana. The upshot: in 1998, the book was published in twenty countries and the Cuban slacker was forced to drop the pretence. He was not the idler that legend had portrayed, but a refined intellectual with twenty-six years’ experience as a journalist under his belt, even a tad snobbish. When asked who his favourite author was, he replied Grace Paley, an American short-story writer from a very niche circle, and then went on to mention Chekhov, Rilke, Carver and Truman Capote’s "Breakfast at Tiffany’s". The Trilogy is the result of a vast accumulation of experience; it is a sensational exercise in style, for whilst highly polished, it does not sacrifice authenticity or the most poignant naturalism. It is strange that Gutiérrez has never mentioned Émile Zola. On this subject, he has stated: “Writing is like haute couture: you mustn’t see the seams”. Journalism, he says, was his greatest school. How so? “Choosing the topics and fighting with my editors to get them published.” For years, Gutiérrez wrote for the magazine *Bohemia*, tackling unwelcome subjects: racism, violence, prostitution. No propaganda, but a raw portrayal of human beings.

The blurring of the lines between author and character continues in subsequent books, notably "Animal Tropical", which recounts the adventures of a Cuban writer who, taken by surprise by his international popularity, seduces a Swedish professor. Pedro Juan and Agneta, an unlikely romance, unbridled sex, a beautiful novel: a great novel about life, freedom (“which is like happiness – you never quite reach it”), the world and cultural misunderstandings. “I arrived in Stockholm looking presentable. A pair of worn-out jeans, a rather heavy beige shirt and a brown blazer, like a typical liberal intellectual. And I put on my best manners. A twenty-hour flight from Havana. And shitting myself with fear every time we took off and landed.”

The success of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez? He had transformed the ordinary Latin American man into Casanova, a hero who was neither pessimistic nor optimistic and who, just like the Venetian seducer, was not merely a libertine but an observer of his era – elusive and subversive. Gutiérrez has always been keen to make clear his distance from politics, but is it really true that his writing is not political? After all, even the Venetian’s Memoirs can be read as a treatise on 18th-century politics.

In any case, the Gutiérrez phenomenon petered out in the 2000s – like all literary fads. Meanwhile, the island’s situation was getting worse and worse. At the start of the new millennium, everyone remembers the brutal wave of repression by the regime in crisis, the increasingly massive emigration of young people, the internal divisions amongst the dissidents in exile in Miami, and the flood of petitions signed by European left-wing intellectuals who had been jolted back to reality. In 2016, the líder máximo died at the age of ninety – a death that had been predicted many times (this year marks the centenary of his birth) – even though power had already been in the hands of his faded brother Raúl since 2008. Attempts at economic reform followed, with tentative concessions to private enterprise and on the civil rights front, leading to the handover of power in 2018 to Miguel Díaz-Canel, the party’s top leader, who was recently re-elected for a second term as president. Then came two disasters: the pandemic – which decimated the country’s most reliable source of income, namely tourism – and Donald Trump’s second term, which since last January has further tightened the embargo, particularly regarding energy supplies. The current economic crisis is perhaps the most devastating ever. In July and August alone, there were three near-total blackouts lasting several days, and power cuts have now become the norm. Tourism had been recovering, but is now once again in a deep crisis: without diesel, the power stations cannot operate, planes cannot land and hotels stand empty. There is talk of over twenty thousand workers with no prospects. Street protests have become increasingly frequent in recent months, and the regime fears a US-led intervention modelled on the Venezuelan scenario. Gutiérrez’s words still ring sadly true: “As for the future, don’t even mention it.”

Well, we’d lost track of our Don Giovanni in Havana. But, surprise, surprise, a few years ago he started writing short stories again, which were then collected under the curious title "Meccanica popolare", and are now due to be published in Italy by Castelvecchi, edited by Gino Tramontana.

Once again, Gutiérrez surprises us, because, although he still lives in his ramshackle flat in Central Havana, he has chosen to go back in time and tell the story of his childhood as a boy born in 1950. He uses a new alter ego, Carlitos (who had already been mentioned here and there in other books), but this time the work verges on a memoir, and without too many disguises. The disclaimer makes this clear: “These stories refer to situations that actually took place. The places have since changed beyond recognition and the people are no longer with us. The story is set in the cities of Matanzas, Pinar del Río and Havana (Cuba) during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The radical and dizzying changes that took place in Cuba during those years turned everyone’s lives upside down, for better or for worse.”

The cities mentioned are precisely those that have shaped his life. Matanzas, where he was born; Pinar, where he lived for a long time (working as a building technician, radio editor and journalist); and Havana, where he eventually decided to take refuge at the age of forty-four, “with nothing on my hands”. This is where his writing began; now, in these stories of his later years, he explores the son of pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba – the father who owned a bar and an obsessive yet dearly loved mother. "Meccanica popolare" was a magazine that arrived from abroad and which people of modest means read to learn trades with which to make ends meet, such as uranium or gold prospecting. The lonely young boy spends long periods with his grandmother, abandoned by her husband – a inveterate womaniser – who lives with their other son, Carlitos’s uncle, who introduces him to crab fishing, walks through the mud, and a connection with the island’s natural world. Then comes military service, when the revolution clears entire hillsides of trees with dynamite to create training grounds. And then his first loves, sex experienced first as a mirage and then as an addiction. Gutiérrez delves into his memory and brings to life a rarely depicted cross-section of humanity: neighbours with their own stories, half-Lebanese people, sailors, soldiers, people who arrived and then vanished, single women – often men’s best friends – whilst the men themselves stab each other with knives, steal from one another and betray one another. “When he was seventy-two, that is, fifty years later, he sat down to write this story. He thought of calling it “La donna che mi ha cambiato la vita”. But it seemed too dramatic to him. Carlitos was seventy-two, but at times he felt as though he’d actually lived a hundred and fifty years. Or more. Life is not a matter of chronology but of kilometres.”