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c h a p t e r f i v e CHE’S CHEVY & FIDEL’S OLDS I wake up every morning in Havana by seven, with no need for an alarm clock. This may be the capital city and the most cosmopolitan place on the island, but it is not an urban sparrow’s chirping or pigeon’s cooing that greets the dawn. It is a rooster crowing upstairs in full throat that wakes light sleepers every day. Habaneros tend to think of themselves as worldly-wise and sophisticated and of the rest of the island as lush green countryside peopled with guajiros and guajiras, hardworking but gullible country people with no style. Nevertheless, the Habanero who lives on the second floor of the house where I rent a comfortable room in the ground-floor flat, has a sow living on his patio, in addition to hens, a rooster, rabbits, and pigeons. All that livestock smells bad and brings bugs, my landlady tells me, but it is worth it to him in exchange for the assurance that there will always be some meat and eggs around. Oftentimes, I encounter the rooster, a lean, stringy, high-combed cock, pecking away at the narrow verge of grass between sidewalk and curb in front of the house. The bird has a mean look in his eye when he glances up at me, and I am always careful to give him a respectful berth. Once awake, I take a while to heave myself out of bed to face the morning, and another while to have my breakfast coffee—leavened with chicory—along with bread, butter, and a plate of fresh mango, papaya, and watermelon. By the time I leave the house, it is nine, and the day is already hot enough so that it envelops me in a big, wraparound hug as soon as I step outside. I break a sweat within the first sixty seconds of my Tseng 2004.6.1 06:48 7102 Schweid / CHE’S CHEVROLET, FIDEL’S OLDSMOBILE / sheet 180 of 247 fifteen-minute walk out along Paseo to the Plaza de la Revolución and the José Martí National Library. Not only does the walk have a series of interesting way stations, but during the course of it, as during the course of any walk through Havana, a high possibility exists of seeing on the street a car that most North Americans think is extinct. I have heard of folks who maintain a life-list of cars in much the same way that other people have a life-list of birds, keeping track of every model they have ever seen. A trip to Havana is, for an automologist, the equivalent of an ornithologist’s trip to the highlands of Guatemala in search of the quetzal or to southern Spain to scan the azure sky for a glimpse of an imperial eagle. Each day in Havana holds the possibility of becoming luminous and rare with a Detroit sighting that makes the heart beat faster. One day it may be a 1957 Edsel convertible struggling to fit its broad, long self into a narrow parking space along the curb, or a 1939 black, four-door, elegant Packard touring car comingdownthestreet,oraflawless1956StudebakerGoldenHawkwith what looks like the original dusky gold paint, purring along Paseo. The next day might bring a 1954 Ford woodie station wagon parked in front of the Capitolio, or a red 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible with white, pleated seatcovers, waiting for a light to change on La Rampa. My route to the library takes me by a big ceiba tree out on the sidewalk along Paseo. Ceibas, closely related to the African baobab tree, have oddly segmented, almost wavy trunks, can grow up to 150 feet tall, and have been venerated in Cuba for a long time. The tree is sacred in both the Santería and Palo Mayombe religions brought from West Africa, and it has been reported that in some parts of the island newborn babies are taken and presented to a ceiba tree. The buoyant kapok fibers from the ceiba tree’s fruits were once used as stuffing in things like automobile seats and life jackets, although they have now been replaced by synthetic fibers. At the bottom of the trunk of this ceiba on Paseo, tucked in among one of the folds of its base, offerings are frequently left—a pile of rice, a handful of bananas, a mango, a half-smoked cigar...

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