Hugs and huevos in Havana
In Cuba, the word for papaya is fruta bomba and it arrives in neat orange squares on Tania’s rooftop deck overlooking the Caribbean. Papaya means something else; it’s a slang word for a woman’s private parts. I’ll forget most everything else I learn in Spanish, but that mistake I won’t make twice.
Fruta bomba! Me gusta! I exclaim as Tania and her pet parrot Coti follow with crusty chunks of white bread and eggs topped with strips of cheese like a row of bookmarks. Every breakfast in her Havana “casa particular” is the same. Two drawers in Tania’s refrigerator are toppling with eggs, dozens of eggs, apparently because in Cuba, when you find huevos, you buy them.
Salt water sprays over the Malecón, Havana’s seaside avenue where people huddle in romantic bunches at night. A red 1950s DeSoto — I think my Dad had one — screeches to a halt, seeking a fare. Every other car in Havana is a taxi. From Tania’s small 3-bedroom flat, “Theme from a Summer Place” floats in. It’s from 1959, when Cuba, from America’s point of view, went frozen in time.
Coti sits on Tania’s flowered sundress like a decorative pin and pecks at my finger with his white beak. We all welcome the game; I speak no Spanish, Tania speaks no English. Every day we signal and laugh and kiss and hug and point and posture as we try to rise above hola and adios. We give up and turn to Coti.
Sometimes we turn to el perro, Tania’s 16-year-old sweet and deaf dog who barely walks or Tania’s mother, Elsa, who doesn’t seem to walk either but soon will surprise us all. In the morning, she meditates. She has a Buddhist guru, rare in Cuba, a chubby bushy-haired man seen in many fuzzy pictures.
Elsa’s eyes are often closed but her eyeballs are cast upward, speaking to her God. She knits me an ivory shawl I wear to the Casa de la Musica, a hot salsa club in town. It’s way too big but I don’t care. We kiss and hug. Me gusta! Me gusta! She talks in a long stream of Spanish. She likes me, says sweet things, I can tell, without words. I laugh. We kiss and hug some more.
Around Tania’s deck is the low, colorful city, grand and luxurious in the heat yet faded and crying for repair. Palm trees stand tall, graceful and elegant no matter what may be crumbling around them.
There’s a leafy palm up on the roof too and green lacy plants, one sprouting from a converted toilet and comfy wicker chairs. A deck as good as you get, with space for me to stretch as the sun rises above the water.
I’m preparing a yoga class I will soon teach with Cuba’s so-called “father of yoga,” Eduardo Pimentel. He’ll translate for me. Twenty-five people will squeeze into a small pastel room with wide-open doors and windows. Good, serious yogis. I wonder what to offer, not speaking the language. My body is tight from walking the dusty streets of La Habana Vieja, from scammers selling fake cigars in Central Havana, from falling prey to scalped ballet tickets at the Gran Teatro, from trying salsa steps, from staying out late because in Havana I forget to sleep.
Tania points at me. Joga, she says, the Spanish “y” sounding like a “j.” “Joga” I repeat, and her hips do a Latin wiggle as her hands join in prayer. Elsa suddenly appears, walking, her scant nightgown covered in a curious apron like a tropical bathrobe.
“Eduardo,” she says, Eduardo joga.” She once knew him, we learn, years ago when she still left her room. Her eyes are now wide.
I stand tall in mountain pose —-- tadasana — my three new students before me. Elsa follows, then Tania, Coti on board. We do a warrior pose, a makeshift downward dog, a standing forward bend, legs straight, chest working toward the legs. I’m testing things out.
I balance in tree pose. Tania gets bubbly, a big broad smile, Coti pecks at her chest, distracted. Elsa raises one leg, the sea bright and calm in the background, and perches on the other. She has surprised herself. Her eyelids close again, the eyeballs cast upward finding her past. Tania glances at me, her mouth is open in awe.
We laugh, we hug, we kiss. I notice my cold scrambled eggs, the sagging cheese. Coti squalks — a high-pitched skraaww. We kiss and hug some more. In Havana, who needs words . . .