The Havana Psychiatric Hospital, and: Divorce

47 hawkins Hunt Hawkins The Havana Psychiatric Hospital The VA administrator from Seattle is pleased that the rugs in the old Havana Hilton stink, crippled Fords and Studebakers leak blue smoke, Avenida Salvador Allende is pocked with holes. We have come to visit the house of the crazy people, casa de dementes, where they see a world I fear. How patiently the tiny women make paper flowers while the man in the barber's chair jumps back, screaming. "Before and After" photos in the lounge show Batista's days: naked men and women with open scores squat in cages. The head of St. Elizabeth's Hospital gets suspicious. These patients are too clean. Dr. Eduardo Ordaz explains that, down from the mountains, they wished first to save the most wretched. Then medicines were embargoed, even tranquilizers. What the man in the barber's chair must see is death, walking with shining hands along the sunny corridor. How long can idealism last? In a giant mural in the Plaza de la Revolución, Che Guevara, his face framed with curls, gazes at the empty sky. The billboards say: Los hombres mueren pero la patria vive para siempre. I wish to see only what is really there. Are we each alone? The VA man is delighted to find the stores understocked, pants rationed, paint peeling off the houses. He says even tobacco has to be imported. He tells us the docks are crowded with young men who want to get out. I see them myself. They are healthy and strong, their faces bright with the dream of Miami. 48 the minnesota review Hunt Hawkins Divorce Sometimes I think they should have mated like horses, suddenly, and without introducing themselves. Instead, they exchanged names, and wanted to be meant for each other. Thus they were perplexed when he started wiping off the saliva of her morning kiss and she began discussing the grocery list in the middle of intercourse. They didn't know what to do when their bodies became so familiar they lost track of who was which sex. Whenever they bumped into each other in the small house, they said "Hi!" and couldn't see the humor when he started saying it like Donald Duck, she like Lauren Bacali. They gave each other the tail-ends of their days, somehow expecting this time to be bigger than the long hours spent at work. They got confused when she began calling her job as a receptionist3. "career." She admitted she envied his profession, but he claimed proctology wasn't so entertaining. They both expected the baby to unite them, but hadn't realized it would be too inexperienced to tell them what to do. Once they saw they were sinking, they wanted to ask their parents for help, but their parents were all separated. Now knowing where to turn, they believed the book which said making love in chains was a liberating experience. Finally a counselor told them they would have to work on it, but they didn't understand why they couldn't do the same work with anyone else. All people became interchangeable. 49 hawkins Every relation became a contract. They still thought love gave life its meaning, but had no idea where love came from and renewed the search for the perfect one. With all their furniture spread on the lawn, they argued over who would get the dog. Hearing a tremendous commotion overhead, they looked up. Even the birds in the sky were fighting. cinéaste Published continually since 1967, Cinéaste is today internationally recognized as America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema. "A trenchant, eternally zestful magazine," says the International Film Guide, "in the forefront of American film periodicals. Cinéaste always has something worth reading, and it permits its writers more space to develop ideas than most magazines." Published quarterly, Cinéaste covers the entire world of cinema— including Hollywood, the independents , Europe, and the Third World — with exclusive interviews, lively articles, and in-depth reviews. Subscribe now, or send $2 for a sample copy, and see what you've been missing! $7 ($12 Foreign) for 4 issues Cinéaste...