Herald Staff Report

 HAVANA -- Family, classmates, a government functionary -- but no Fidel Castro
 -- greeted Elián González with hugs and tears Wednesday, capping a
 choreographed campaign to contain Cuban glee over the resolution of the
 6-year-old's seven-month shipwreck saga.

 No popular street parades were held.

 No press conferences were called.

 Not even Castro came to the arrival ceremony.

 All three had been near daily fixtures of the child custody drama since soon after
 the boy was found in November floating on an inner tube, near Fort Lauderdale.

 Instead, the child's grandparents and about 800 flag-waving schoolchildren
 greeted a slightly dazed looking Elián as he emerged from a chartered jet at José
 Martí International Airport.

 Relatives swept up the boy with hugs, some smoothing down his hair.

 Cuban television captured Elián, who recently lost his two front teeth, nibbling his
 grandfather's ear -- before he waved to the crowds from inside a small sedan car
 that carried him, his father, stepmother and half brother away.

 Elsewhere, the people of Cuba stuck to a more-or-less ordinary daily routine --
 class, work, baseball chatter in Havana's Parque Central -- against a backdrop of
 nearly minute-to-minute broadcasts of the denouement of the international child
 custody drama.

 ``We await with tranquillity the triumph of justice and the end of the kidnapping,''
 said a headline in Wednesday's Granma, the official daily of Cuba's Communist
 Party.

 The low-key reaction by Cubans was clearly part of a government effort to make
 Elián's return a stark contrast to the so-called ``circus'' atmosphere that officials
 here scorned as surrounding the boy's life in the United States.

 The highest ranking Cuban official spotted at the airport was Ricardo Alarcon,
 president of Cuba's National Assembly, who the official Cuban media said had
 befriended the boy's father, Juan Miguel González.

 Earlier, Granma instructed the public:

 ``Now more than ever, our people must behave with the greatest dignity, serenity
 and discipline. The pertinent exhortations will be made regarding the manner in
 which we must behave.''

 But, privately, people said while they were glad the child was back with his
 immediate family they weren't inclined to celebrate anyway: A Cuban family's
 tragedy had exploded into a political tug-of-war and in the end, they said, it was a
 family affair.

 ``Since the revolution was triumphant, we've been in a war with the United States
 and celebrated each victory. But there's no reason here'' to celebrate.

 ``It may be a victory for the politicians but this is a family case,'' said University of
 Havana law student Yadarigo Castillo, 24.

 ``What emotion! My heart is racing. I can't take the happiness,'' said Andrés
 Soroa Hernández, 62, who runs an amusement park-style shooting gallery in
 Central Havana, where children shoot BB guns at old cans.

 Soroa, whose father fought in the Cuban War of Independence, clamped his ear to
 a radio throughout the day, then closed up shop early to watch what he called ``a
 historic moment'' on TV.

 ``I'm Cuban,'' said Soroa, who was sporting a Communist Party pin and cast the
 struggle for Elián as a patriotic battle.

 ``Elián is Cuban and you can't take the homeland away from anyone.''

 Former elementary schoolteacher Tamara Garcia added that Elián would likely be
 ``too nervous'' for a big celebration.

 Throughout the day, official Cuban television and radio offered a minute-to-minute
 stream of updates:

 The Supreme Court decision, the family's departure for the airport, the plane's
 takeoff, and finally the arrival. In between, they offered local reports, interviews
 with Elián's classmates, live readings from U.S. Web pages and, at one point,
 television broadcast a taped Channel 7 interview from Miami with Ramón Saúl
 Sánchez, standing outside Lázaro González's former Little Havana rental house.

 People could hardly help but pay notice. A home on the Prado, a main street in
 Havana, had a sign hanging on its second-floor balcony early Wednesday:

 ``Let's Save Elián,'' it said.

 Sometime after the U.S. Supreme Court had its say in Washington, the sign was
 switched:

 ``At Last Elián'' it said.