Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez

 


"Art only matters if it's irreverent, tormented, full of nightmares and desperation. Only an angry, obscene, violent, offensive art can show us the other side of the world, the side we never see or try not to see so as to avoid troubling our consciences."

Tell it like it is, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez!

Anclado en tierra de nadie (Marooned in No-Man's-Land) is the first novel in the author's Dirty Havana Trilogy. Pedro Juan doesn't hold back in letting readers know just how desperate, raw and gritty the day-to-day grind following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a time (the Special Period, 1991-1995) when nearly everyone in Cuba lived on the edge of starvation.

GRIMY, GRUNGY AND DOWNRIGHT FILTHY
The tale's narrator shares the author's name and age (forty-four-years-old in 1994). And how down and dirty is life in the city of Havana during that time? A trio of snips sets the foul, soiled stage when Pedro Juan called a rooftop apartment home:

“I went back to my room on the roof with its common bathroom, the most disgusting bathroom in the world, shared by fifty neighbors.”

“On the roof he kept a chicken coop with two pigs. They were obsessed with those animals, he and his wife. They spent hours sitting by the cage, staring at them, mesmerized, feeding them vegetable peelings.”

“The smell of the chicken and pig shit started to attract more cockroaches. There had always been cockroaches, but now there were more. And rats: huge animals that came up from the basement of the building, almost eighty feet below.”

NEW TIMES, NEW MAN
“Now I was training myself to take nothing seriously. A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking them seriously.”

And what did Pedro Juan do now that he stopped taking himself seriously? He listened to music since, as he tells us, he didn't have to think when he listened to music. He also drank rum and smoked marijuana whenever given the chance. Above all, Pedro Juan had sex, lots and lots and lots of sex. “I fucked a lot: sex helped me escape from myself.” This is undoubtedly the prime reason why the Cuban author brings to mind Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. Oh, yes, Pedro Juan delights in sharing sensual and sometimes romantic encounters with the beautiful ladies. “Sex isn't for the squeamish.”

JOYLESS JOURNALIST
“I was earning an unhealthy and cowardly living as a journalism, always making concessions, everything censored, and it was killing me because each day I felt more like I was prostituting myself, collecting daily ration of kicks in the ass.” PJG goes on to say, “For more than twenty years as a journalist, I was never allowed to write with a modicum of respect for my readers, or even the slightest regard for their intelligence. No, I always had to write as if stupid people were reading me, people who needed to be force-fed ideas. And I was rejecting all that.” But there came a time when enough was enough. “And I was kicked out of journalism because each day I was more reckless, and reckless types weren't wanted.”

SHIT JOBS, SHIT RAFTS
Now that he no longer earned a living as a journalist, where does that leave our main man? And the belly flopped Cuban economy in the early 90s didn't help (understatement). Pedro Juan gives us a glimpse: “I spent months hauling bags of cement and buckets of mortar. By the end of the day I was a wreck.”

But what's the alternative for thousands of poor Cubans looking for a better life? One answer: leave Cuba and head for Miami, even if that means a homemade raft. Thus we have the 1994 Cuban rafter exodus where more than 50,000 Cuban men, women and children set out in makeshift rafts. Result: 35,000 Cubans made it to the United States and more than 15,000 were lost at sea. Would you take your chances in a tiny raft on a 3-4 day voyage in shark-infested waters where you might have to deal with a ferocious storm?



ZEN AND THE ART OF NOT DRIVING YOURSELF CRAZY
Marooned in No-Man's-Land, a picaresque novel consisting of twenty-two stories makes for one compelling, absorbing, gusty, entertaining read. We follow Pedro Juan through his Havana odyssey where, for example, he gets stuck in an old elevator that leaves him claustrophobic. “The claustrophobia was so awful that sometimes at night I would wake with a start and jump out of bed. I felt trapped by the night, by the room, by my own self, on the bed.” PJG couldn't breathe and the only relief was going out on the roof so he could take in the salt air. Many more episodes await a reader but I'll conclude with one of my favorite parts: a daub of Zen and also references to several authors:

“My quest for balance was always unballancing itself. All I asked was for inner peace. I thought I would read a little from Zen: A Way of Life. But it was not good. I read it, and nothing stuck. I found one of Pedrojoan's (PJG's son) notebooks lying around. He had been reading lots of books all at once. The notebook was full of quotes, copies from Hermann Hesse, García Márquez, Grace Paley, Saint-Exupéry, Charles Bukowski, and Thor Heyerdahl. A good mix. That combination, plus rock, will keep a fifteen-year-old boy in a state of constant torment, and he'll never be bored. Which is good, I say. The important thing is not to be bored.”



"All of us were creeping out of our cages and beginning to struggle in the jungle. That's what it was. We were stiff coming out of our cages, sluggish and fearful. We had no idea what it was like to fight for our lives. But we had to try."

Nothing to Do (Dirty Havana Trilogy, Vol 2) picks up where the first volume left off. Very much like the author, narrator Pedro Juan turns forty-five and is still fighting for survival in economically shattered Cuba.

Nothing to Do features eighteen grisly but exuberant episodes where Pedro Juan does things like witness a brutal stabbing while standing in line for his weekly government allotment of rum, bet money on a teenager risking death by performing stunts on his bicycle as he weaves in and out of high speed traffic and work a disgusting job in a slaughterhouse (but not for long!), all the while drinking rum, smoking marijuana and having sex at every possible opportunity.

A trio of scenes from Nothing to Do are screaming out to me - I can almost see the Cuban author raising his glass of rum in tribute as I create a highlight for each -

VIOLENCE AND REVENGE
Working in a hospital, Pedro Juan has a fling with one of the nurses by the name of Rosaura. The nurse proves a fiery one. She catches a doctor drinking from her glass of ice water and calls him a pig. The doctor, thinking he's being funny, spits some water in Rosaura's face. Rosaura flies into a rage and slaps the doctor. Still thinking this whole thing a big game, the doctor, a karate champ, grabs Rosaura in a headlock. The two struggle and Rosaura falls squarely on his ass and fractures her spinal cord. Tragic consequence: Rosaura will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Her two brothers sneak into the hospital and go after the doctor with butcher knifes. The doctor escapes unharmed but the two brothers are sent to jail. Rosaura's mother pleads with Pedro Juan to bring her some belonging from the doctor so she place a curse on him.

STIFLING FREEDOM
We're told about two transvestites living in the same building with Pedro Juan, sweet guys, always friendly, always happy. One of the transvestites dreams of becoming a famous singer and cultivating a Marilyn Monroe-like persona called Samantha. Anywhere else, so Pedro Juan tells us, the guy would be a star but in Havana he's a poor pathetic slob who has to support himself by cutting people's hair in his own apartment. The transvestites performed an act at a small theater but when the morality police got wind of their show, they shut down the theater. So much for freedom.

Thinking about the fate of these two guys has a negative effect on Pedro Juan himself. When he has some free time, he sets about writing. Only there's a problem: He has trouble making sense to himself and realizes he can't write. He tells us, “All I do is repeat one sentence: I love scars not wounds. Why do I keep repeating that like a paranoid freak? I love scars, not wounds.”

DOWNRIGHT DRUDGERY
In case anybody thinks Pedro Juan does nothing but sit around all day drinking rum and having luscious sex, one chapter sets the record straight. Oh, yes, our Cuban author tells us there was that year where he signed a contract with a company drilling for oil. He was forced to work twenty-five days a month in a town on the outskirts of Havana, work ten hours a day lugging pipes, iron, mud bricks and drills, backbreaking work where he walked around covered with grease and mud and stinking of sulfur. At night he'd retreat to a trailer park where he'd flop down like a beaten dog. Why do such a thing? In his own words: “When it comes down to it, I prefer suffering to squalor.” A woman, one of the locals, tried to seduce him but no dice – he was simply too exhausted to have anything to do with her. After the year was up, Pedro Juan knew he became a little rougher and tougher although his tanned skin now has wrinkles.

Pedro Juan returns to Havana squalor where, among other incidents, he's beaten up so badly he's taken to the hospital. To get the full blood and guts of this and many other misadventures, you'll have to read for yourself.




Essence of Me, Volume 3, the concluding novel forming Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's Dirty Havana Trilogy picks up where Vol 2 leaves off - Pablo Juan is still living in Havana squalor, only here, to add even more insult to disgusting injury, the opening chapter finds the author in jail. So much grime and grit. Rather than offering a synopsis or overarching observations, I'll let the author speak for himself. Here are six snapshots:

"I had a bad time at first. I got claustrophobic and I went berserk. When I realized I was locked up, rage built up inside of me, and I started to shout and foam at the mouth. I hit two guards who were trying to restrain me, and they beat me right there until I passed out. When I woke up, it was worse: I was in a cage, a small box with bars on all six sides, in which it was impossible to stand up or stretch out full length. You always had to be curled in a ball. The cages were on the roof of the building. And I was left there for days, out in the open, in the sun. How many days went by, I don't know. They brought me out limp, half-dead. I'm making a short story of it, because I don't want to remember the details."

Eventually Pedro Juan is sent away. He reflects, "I didn't have anything to do. What's more, I had no idea what to do the next day, next month, next year, or next century. Maybe not knowing is the best way to keep from worrying or sinking into despair. You don't know how you'll survive, but it doesn't matter. you live like a kite blowing in the wind, and you feel all right. But then sometimes there isn't even any wind."

"I had to make a few pesos. After a year as a garbageman, I left the job. It was too much work. Night work too. The money was good, but it wasn't worth it. I could make just as much or more in a day, selling any old thing. Anyway, the stink of rotting garbage was driving women away. They'd run from me in disgust."

"I woke up with a hangover from the rum I had drunk the night before. It had to be nine or ten o'clock already. Looking out the little window, I saw a tourist snapping photos of crumbling buildings on the Malecon. Her husband was videotaping the same scene. Tourists love the sight of decay. From a distance, it makes a wonderful picture."

"When you're single in the jungle, you've got to be constantly on the prowl, every single day. a man doesn't need much: a little money, food, some rum, a few cigars, a woman. Being without a woman makes me neurotic, but having one of them, awkward and stupid, always by my side, gets on my nerves."

"I had a pigeon trap on the roof. Two boxes, really, with a decoy pigeon to lure unsuspecting birds. On the nearby roofs, there were lots of messenger pigeon houses....Each day I'd catch one or two pigeons and sell them for twenty pesos to a guy...For all I care, he could have been frying them and selling them as chicken. I was just trying to make a living."