The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba

Fear not, nor marvel greatly; for those who sing at your window are your truest friends. So, open wide your doors to me, for behold me in the street. And what will people say, then? Why sure, that you are slighting me! I bring with me four roses fresh – two in every hand; but I'll sing to you no more, because – we all must go elsewhere.

Songs similar to those quoted are usually delivered by negroes and mulattoes at their tertulias or evening gatherings, where, seated on leather-bottomed chairs, or squatting at the portals of their doors, they entertain their black and brown divinities. One of the party accompanies himself upon a guitar, or a primitive instrument formed out of a square box upon which are arranged slips of flexible iron of different lengths and tones. Another has a strangely-fashioned harp, made from a bent bamboo, to which a solitary string is attached. The guitar player is, however, in greater demand than the rest, and is perhaps asked to favour the company with a sentimental song, such, for example, as the popular ditty called La Bayamesa, which commences: —

¿No te acuerdes, gentil Bayamesa,
Que tu fuistes el amor de Fulgencio,
Cuando alegre en tu candida frente,
Beso ardiente imprimí, con pasion? —

that is, a certain 'gentle Bayamese' is reminded that she was the loved one of Fulgencio, who, invited by the lady's open countenance impressed upon it a passionate kiss.

This being unanimously approved of by the company, the dark-complexioned troubadour will probably be called upon for another song, and the following mournful ballad will perhaps be chanted: —

Yo nací solo para padecer;
¡No te acuerdes mas de mí!
No tengo ningun placer,
Desgraciada y sin salud;
Yo nací solo para padecer.
Mira, ¡ay! la virtud
No se consigue así, &c.

I was born a child of tears!
Think thou then no more of me.
Life brings only grief and fears
To one worn and pale with care.
I was born a child of tears!
Ah! can virtue linger where
Dwelleth only misery?

CHAPTER XIV.

MASQUERADING IN CUBA

Deserted! – 'Los Mamarrachos' – A French-Creole Ball – Street Masquers – Negro Amateurs – Masks and Dominoes – The Plaza de Armas – Victims of the Carnival – A Cuban Café in Holiday Time – 'Comparsas' – White and Black Balls – A Moral

It is the twenty-eighth of December, and the thermometer stands at eighty-five in the shade. I rise with the 'ganza grulla' – our bird chronometer – that wonderful creature of the crane species, with a yard of neck, and two-feet-six of legs. Every morning at six of the clock precisely, our grulla awakens us by half-a-dozen gurgling and metallic shrieks, in a tone loud enough to be heard by his Excellency the Governor, who is a sound sleeper, and lives in a big palace half a league from our studio. I descend from my Indian grass hammock, and don a suit of the flimsiest cashmere, in compliment to the winter month, and because there is still a taste of night air in the early morning. I have to manufacture my own café noir to-day, for my companion is absent, and our servants – a stalwart Ethiop and a youthful mulatto – are both abroad, and will not return for the next three days. It is a fiesta and Friday. To-morrow is 'la ñapa,' or day of grace, 'thrown in' to the holiday-makers, to enable them to recruit their exhausted frames, which they do by repeating the pleasurable excitement of the previous day. Then comes Sunday, another fiesta, which, in most foreign climes, is another word for day, not of rest, but of restlessness.

The leading characteristics of a Cuban carnival are the street 'comparsas,' or companies of masqueraders – 'mamarrachos' as they are called in the creole vernacular – and the masked balls. Here you have a comparsa comprised of pure Africans; though you wouldn't believe it, for their flat-nosed faces are illumined by a coat of light flesh-colour, and their woolly heads are dyed a blazing crimson. The males have also assumed female attire, though their better halves have not returned the compliment. Here is another and a better comparsa, of mulattoes, with cheeks of flaming vermilion, wigs of yellow tow, and false beards. Their everyday apparel is worn reversed, and the visible lining is embellished with tinsel, paint, and ribbons. They are preceded by a band of music: a big drum, hand tambours, basket rattles, conch shells, and a nutmeg-grater. The members of this goodly company dance and sing as they pass rapidly along the streets, occasionally halting in their career to serenade a friend. Now, they pause before a cottage, at the door of which is a group of 'mulaticas francesas,' or French mulatto girls. The maskers salute them in falsetto voices, and address them by their Christian names as a guarantee of their acquaintanceship. The girls try hard to recognise the disfigured faces of their visitors. At last: —

'Holá! Musyer Fransoir, je vous conóse!' cries a yellow divinity in creole French.

'Venici! Monte!' calls another; at which invitation, Musyer Fransoir, who has stood confessed, ascends the narrow side steps which give entrance to the cottage, and vanishes through a diminutive door. He appears again hatless, and beckons his companions, who follow his lead with alacrity. Soon, a hollow drumming, rattling, and grating, is heard, varied by the occasional twang of an exceedingly light guitar making vain efforts to promote harmony. A shuffling of slippered feet, and voices singing, signify that a dance is pending. Everybody – meaning myself and my neighbours – moves towards the scene. Everybody passes up the perilous steps, and endeavours to squeeze into the spare apartment. A few succeed in establishing a permanent footing in the room, and the rest stand at the doorway and window, or burst through the chamber by a back door into an open yard. In carnival time, everybody's house is everybody else's castle.

There is a perfect Babel at the French criolla's. Some are endeavouring to dance with little more terra firma to gyrate upon than 'La Nena' had on her foot square of table. Others are beating time on tables, trays, and tin pots. Somebody has brought a dismal accordion, but he is so jammed up in a corner by the dancers, that more wind is jerked out of him than he can possibly jerk out of his instrument. The man with the faint guitar is no better off. Every now and then a verse of dreary song is pronounced by one of the dancers.

Here is a specimen: —

¡Ay! Caridad; ¡ay! Caridad; ¡ay! Caridad,
Cuidao' con la luna si te dá.
¡Ca-la-ba-zon! tu estás pinton.

(Oh! Charity, Charity, foolish Charity.
Beware of the moon, and avoid her clarity!)

There is a pause – an interval of ten minutes or so for refreshments. English bottled ale, at two shillings the bottle, is dispensed, together with intensely black coffee, which leaves a gold-brown stain on the cup in proof of its genuineness; and this is followed by the indispensable nip of the native brandy, called aguardiente. Stumps of damp cigars are abandoned for fresh ones, and the air is redolent of smoke, beer, and brown perspiration. If you remain long in this atmosphere, which reminds you of a combination of a London cook-shop and a museum of stuffed birds and mummies, you will become impregnated by it, and then not all the perfumes of Araby will eradicate it from your system.

I need not go far to witness the street sights in carnival time. Many of them I can enjoy from my position on my balcony. 'Enter' the shade of an Othello in false whiskers. He is attired in a red shirt, top boots, and a glazed cap. In his mouth is a clay pipe; in his hand a black bottle: both products of Great Britain. He is followed by a brother black, in the disguise of a gentleman, with enormous shirt collars and heavy spectacles. In his arms rests a colossal volume, upon which his attention is riveted, and against the brim of his napless hat is stuck a lighted taper. He stumbles along with uneven step, and occasionally pauses for the purpose of giving tongue to his profound cogitations. The crowd jeer him as he passes, but he is unmoved, and the expression of his copper-coloured countenance is ever grave and unchangeable. His eyes – or more correctly speaking, his spectacles – never wander from the mystic page, save when he trims his taper of brown wax, or exchanges it for another and a longer. One cannot help remarking how on all occasions the 'oppressed' negro preserves his natural gravity. Whether it be his pleasure or his pain, he takes it stoically, without any observable alteration in his sombre physiognomy.

How do you reconcile the singular anomaly of a nigger with his face painted black? Here is one, whose face and bare arms are besmeared with soot and ink. His thick lips start out in bright scarlet relief, his eyebrows are painted white, and his spare garments (quite filthy enough before) are bedaubed with tar and treacle. This piece of grimy humanity is worthy of note as showing that the despised nigger is really not so black as he is painted; if the truth were known, perhaps, the man himself has adopted this disguise with a view to prove to the meditative world that there may yet be another, and a blacker, population!

It is not wise to be too contemplative, and to stay at home, on a carnival day in Cuba. All the world recognises you in the character of a moralising recluse, and all the carnival world will surely make you its victim. As I sit, despising these frivolities, as I call them, a great 'comparsa' of whites – the genuine article – comes rushing along in my direction. Out of the carnival season, the dramatis personæ of this comparsa are respectable members of society, in white drill suits and Spanish leather boots. To-day they are disreputable-looking and unrecognisable. Their faces are painted black, red, and mulatto-colour. Their disguise is of the simplest, and withal most conspicuous nature, consisting of a man's hat and a woman's chemise – low-necked, short-sleeved, and reaching to the ground. They dance, they sing, and jingle rattles and other toys, and are followed by a band of music of the legitimate kind. In it are violins, a double-bass, a clarionet, a French horn, a bassoon, a brace of tambours, and the indispensable nutmeg-grater, performed upon with a piece of wire exactly as the actual grater is by the nutmeg. The musicians, who are all respectably dressed blacks, hired for the occasion, play the everlasting 'Danza Cubana.' This is Cuba's national dance, impossible to be described as it is impossible to be correctly played by those who have never heard it as executed by the native. In a country where carnivals are objected to by the police, I have heard but one pianoforte player who, in his very excellent imitation of the quaint music of 'La Danza,' has in the least reminded me of the original, with its peculiar hopping staccato bass and running and waltzing treble; but he had long been a resident in the Pearl of the Antilles.

The comparsa just described has halted before my balcony, as I guessed it would from the fact that its members were white people, and possibly friends. Oh, why did I not follow Nicasio's example and accept José Joaquin's invitation last evening to make one of a comparsa of wax giantesses! But I preferred seclusion to-day, and must take the consequences! Here they come straight into my very balcony with their 'Holá! Don Gualterio. No me conóces?' in falsetto voices. Do I know you? How should I in that ungentlemanly make-up? Let me see. Yes, Frasquito it is, by all that's grimy! What! and Tunicú, too, and Bimba? I feel like Bottom the weaver when he summoned his sprites. Que hay, amigos? By this time my amigos have taken unlawful possession of my innermost apartments. It's of no use to expostulate. I must bottle up my indignation, and uncork my pale ale. I do the latter by producing all my English supply of that beverage; but it proves insufficient. The thirst of my burglarious intruders is not easily sated. The cry is still: 'Cerveza!' Convinced that I have exhausted all my beer, they are content to fall back upon aguardiente; which very plebeian liquor, to judge from their alcoholic breath, my guests have been falling back upon ever since the morning.

'Musica! Vamos á bailar!' The chemised cavaliers propose a dance. Musica! The musica strikes up with a deafening echo under my spacious roof. At the inspiring tones of 'La Danza,' a dozen spectators from the pavement, consisting chiefly of mulatto girls and white neighbours, invite themselves in. Here's a pretty thing! An extemporised public masked ball in my private dwelling in the middle of the day! If this were Cornwall-road, Bayswater, I would have every one of them prosecuted for trespass. Music – a! Aguardiente! They combine singing with dancing, and mix these with cigar smoking and aguardiente drinking. To save my credit, the genuine white brandy I provide is diluted to ten degrees of strength, and costs only two dollars and a quarter the garafon! I find myself suddenly whirled round by one of my uninvited visitors. I would not have selected such a partner, but I have no choice. Smoke is said to be a disinfectant; so I smoke as I dance. For the closeness of the atmosphere, and the muskiness of mulatto girls, are not congenial to one's olfactory and respiratory organs. At last the final drop of aguardiente is drained, the music ceases, and my friends, and my friends' friends, and the strangers that were without my gate, take their not unwelcome departure.

This has been a warning, which, as I live, I'll profit by. I extemporise and assume a home-made disguise. A strange sensation of guilt, of going to do something wrong, comes over me and makes me quake from the top of my extemporised turban to the sole of my sandal slippers. Whither shall I wander, forlorn pantomimist that I am? I loiter about the least frequented neighbourhoods, until the shades of eve – which in this climate come with a rush – have fallen, and then I mix fearlessly with the throng, among whom I am but as a drop in a Black Sea. In my peregrinations I meet a company of negro masqueraders, who, without the least ceremony, are entering the private dwelling of an opulent Don. The illustrious family are tranquilly seated in the elegant sala; but what care their visitors? It is carnival time and they, serfs of that same house, are licensed to bring themselves and their friends. They bear between them a painted screen, which they unfold and plant in the middle of the saloon. It forms a theatrical proscenium on a small scale. An orchestra of tambours, tin-trays, and nutmeg-grating güiros opens the performances, and then the actors proceed to saw the air. They perform this operation in turn, by reason of the limited proportions of their stage; and one very tall negro, who appears to have been altogether omitted in the carpenter's calculations, has to speak his speech behind the top drop. He speaks it trippingly too; for in the middle of a most exciting monologue, he upsets the whole paraphernalia and himself into the bargain. The entertainment, including refreshments, has lasted some fifteen minutes, when the itinerant troupe (who derive no benefit from their labours save what honour and self-enjoyment yield) pick up their portable proscenium and walk away.

By far the gayest region of the city during a carnival is the spacious square called the Plaza de Armas. Here are the governor's house, the residences of Cuban Belgravia, the cafés, and the cathedral. Myriads of masqueraders, in every variety of motley and domino, congregate in the plaza after their day's perambulations, and dance, sing, or bewitch each other with their disguises. There is a party of masqued and dominoed ladies: genuine whites all – you can tell it by the shape of their gloveless hands and the transparent pink of their finger-nails – endeavouring to hoax a couple of swains in false noses and green spectacles, both of whom have been already recognised. The perplexed youths try their hardest to discover their fair interlocutors by peeping at their profiles through their wire masks, but in vain. At the next quiet tertulia these same ladies will have rare fun with their puzzled victims of the night of the masquerade. Within earshot of where I am standing are a small crew of ancient mariners, Britons every one of them; unless they happen to be Americans from Boston: it does not matter which to a Cuban. They belong to the good ship Mary Barker, lately arrived from Halifax, in quest of Cuban copper. Jack has come ashore to-night to see the sights and collect material for a new yarn, which he will deliver at his native fireside one of these odd days. Some masker has approached the group, and has brought them the astounding information that he – the unknown – belongs to the Mary Barker. Jack turns to his messmates with a bewildered air. Then, addressing the masker, 'What, Joe?' says he at a venture.

'No, not Joe,' says the man behind the mask. 'Try again.'

'Shiver my timbers!' exclaims Jack, 'I give it up. Here, Tom,' says he to a shipmate of that name, 'you're good at conhumdrums; just step for'ard and tell this here lubber who he his.'

Tom tries and fails, but arrives at the possible conclusion that it is 'some o' them 'ere Cubeyans a-making game on us.'

Refreshment stalls stand at intervals along the pavement of the plaza. Each table has a white tablecloth, and is dimly illumined by candles sheltered from the wind by enormous stand shades of glass, or lamps of portable gas. Leather-bottomed chairs are placed invitingly around, and charcoal braziers for warming drinks keep their respectful distances. Egg-flip, bottled ale, café noir, and a kind of soupe à la Julienne, called by the natives 'aijaco,' are dispensed by negress vendors, who charge double for everything, and drive a roaring trade. Approaching one of the tables, I call for a plate of aijaco, and am perfectly understood by the dark divinity, who places before me a pot-pourri of yams, green bananas, cut pumpkins, 'aguacates,' chicken, and broth of the same. I do full justice to this rich and substantial repast, and, by way of dessert, conclude with a very small cup of properly made café noir and a genuine Yara. I then betake myself to the nearest coffee-house. After black coffee cometh what is popularly termed 'plus-café,' and this being an unlicensed spirit, cannot be had in the street. The coffee-saloon is well patronised, and the air of carnival is here very strong. Everybody and everything seem to follow the masquerade lead, the very furniture forming no exception to the rule: for the gas chandeliers are encased in fancy papers, the walls and pictures are adorned by tropical leaves and evergreens, the chairs are transformed into shapes of seated humanity, the marble slabs of the little round tables are partially disguised in robes of glass and crystal. As for the white-jacketed proprietor and his myrmidons, including Rubio, the mixer of liquors, behind the counter, they all wear smiles or holiday faces, while they carefully conceal their natural sleepiness.

'Mozo! garçon! Una copita con cognac!' The waiter hears, but does not obey, having already too many copitas on his mind. 'Allá voy, señor!' he, however, says; and as it is some consolation to know that he will come eventually, I forgive his procrastination, and bide my time. Meanwhile, I watch a group of maskers who surround a guitar-playing improvisatore, who assures his audience in song that he is expiring because of the faithlessness of his mulatto, who has rejected his advances with ridicule.

¡Ay, ay, ay! que me estoy muriendo, si.
¡Ay, ay, ay! por una mulata;
Y ella está reyendose,
Que es cosa que me mata!

In an opposite corner are a pair of moralising Davids gravely descanting upon the frailty of woman to the accompaniment of a windy accordion and a güiro nutmeg-grater, something after this fashion: —

Women there are in this world, we see,
Whose tongues are long enough for three;
They bear their neighbours' skins about,
And twist and turn them inside out.
Pellejo ajeno! lo viran al revés.

This is the whole song, and nothing but the song: for negro melodies, of which the above is a specimen, are essentially epigrammatic.

A rush is made to the big barred windows and open doors of the café. An important comparsa of Congo negroes of both sexes is passing in procession along the street. They have just been paying their respects to no less a personage than his Excellency the Governor of Santiago, in the long reception-room of whose palace, and in whose august presence they have dared to dance! The troupe is headed by a brace of blacks, who carry banners with passing strange devices, and a dancing mace-bearer. These are followed by a battalion of colonels, generals, and field-marshals, in gold-braided coats and gilded cocked-hats. Each wears a broad sash of coloured silk, a sword and enormous spurs. These are not ordinary, masqueraders be it known, but grave subjects of his sombre majesty King Congo, the oldest and blackest of all the blacks: the lawfully appointed sovereign of the coloured community. It seems to form part of the drilling of his majesty's military to march with a tumble-down, pick-me-up step, for as each member of the corps moves, he is for ever losing his balance and finding his equilibrium; but whether on the present occasion this remarkable step proceeds from loyalty or liquor, I cannot say. In the rear of his Congo Majesty's officers are a crowd of copper-coloured amazons, in pink muslins trimmed with flowers and tinsel, who march trippingly in files of four, at well-measured distances, and form a connecting link with each other by means of their pocket-handkerchiefs held by the extreme corners. Each damsel carries a lighted taper of brown wax, and a tin rattle, which she jingles as she moves. The whole procession terminates in a military band, composed of musicians whose hard work and little pay are exhibited in their uniforms, which are limited to buttonless shirts and brief unmentionables. Their instruments are a big drum, hand tambours, huge cone-shaped basket rattles, a bent bamboo harp with a solitary string, and the indispensable güiro or nutmeg-grater. There is harmony in this outline of an orchestra, let him laugh who may. No actual tune is there, but you have all the lights and shadows – the skeleton, so to speak – of a tune, and if your imagination be musical, that will suffice to supply the melody. The peculiar measure adopted in the negro drum-music, and imitated in 'La Danza' and in church-bell chiming, has an origin which those who have a taste for natural history will do well to make a note of. There is an insect – I forget the name, but you may hear it any fine night in the wilds of a tropical country – that gives out a continuous croak, which exactly corresponds with this measure.

'Al fin y al cabo,' I have taken my plus-café; and now that it is very early morning, I take the nearest way to my virtuous home. On my way thither, I pause before the saloons of the Philharmonic, where a grand bal masqué of genuine, and doubtful, whites is being held. From my position on the pavement I can see perfectly well into the salon de bal, so I will not evade the door-keeper, as others do, by introducing myself in disguise as somebody else. I observe that the proceedings within have already begun to grow warm. There is no lack of partners in carnival time, as everybody, save the black musicians, is dancing the everlasting contra-danza. Some of the excited toe-trippers have abandoned their masks. One of these, an olive-complexioned señorita, wears a tell-tale patch of blue paint on her left cheek; condemning testimony that at some period of the evening she danced with that 'mamarracho' whose face is painted like an Indian chief! In a dark corner of the billiard-room, where two gentlemen attired in the garb of Philip the Second are playing carambola against a couple of travestied Charles the Fifths, are seated a snug couple – lover and mistress to all appearance. The dominoed lady is extremely bashful, her replies are brief and all but inaudible. The fond youth has proposed a saunter into the refreshing night air, where a moon, bright enough to read the smallest print by, is shining. His proposal is acceded to. His heart is glad now: but what will his feelings be when he discovers that the beloved object is a bearded brute like himself! The orchestra is playing one of Lino Boza's last danzas. Lino Boza is, as I have already stated, a negro composer and clarionet player of great renown in Cuba, and this particular danza is one of the 'pegajosa' or 'irresistible' kind. You have heard it played all over the town to-day, and to-morrow you will hear it sung with a couple of doggerel rhymes in creole Spanish, which fit into the music so well as to 'appear to be the echoes of the melody.' The way in which Lino helps the dancers in their favourite gyrations by his inimitable and ever-varied performance on the clarionet, should be a warning to protecting mammas! The step of 'La Danza' is difficult for an amateur to acquire, but when once it is achieved, and you are fortunate enough to secure a graceful partner, the result is highly satisfactory. I am almost tempted to trespass upon the early hours of the morning, for the sake of the music of 'La Danza' and those open-air refreshment stalls where everything looks hot and inviting. The night breeze is, moreover, cool and exhilarating, and, after all, it is not later than nine P.M. – in Europe. I lead on, nevertheless, in the direction of the heights of El Tivoli, where I reside; stopping not in my upward career, save to pay a flying visit at a ball of mulattoes. A crowd of uninvited are gazing, like myself, between the bars of the huge windows; for the ball is conducted upon exclusive principles, and is accessible only with tickets of admission. Two 'policias,' armed with revolvers and short Roman Swords, are stationed at the entrance-door, and this looks very much like the precursor of a row. Mulatto balls generally do end in some unlooked-for 'compromisa,' and it would not surprise me if this particular ball were to terminate in something sensational.

I am home, and am myself again, ruminating upon the events of the day and night, and I arrive at the conclusion that the despised and oppressed negro is not so ill off as he is made out to be, especially in carnival time. As I enter, our grulla thinks it must be six o'clock, and essays to shriek that hour, as is her custom; but I startle her in the middle of her fourth chime, and she stops at half-past three. Then I climb into my aerial couch, in whose embrace I presently invoke that of the grim masker, Morpheus!