By Thomas Swick
Travel Editor

The carcass of the city was laid out under a leaden sky. Houses and apartment towers fused into a brittle, deteriorating mass, a petrified settlement. A few moppish
trees were all that subverted the grid of peeling surfaces and darkened windows. Some carrier pigeons occupied one of the low flat roofs like lone survivors. It was a
landscape of unparalleled bleakness (why have the names Beckett and Havana never been linked?) and, like a car wreck, horribly riveting. I could not turn away
from my ninth-floor window.

Where the concrete ended the ocean pounded. It crashed against the seawall and fell in startled waves onto the empty street. Fluid, limitless, undefiled; no wonder so
many Habaneros are drawn to the Malecón along its edge. Surely it is not just the mirage of America that attracts, or the cooling breezes, but the balm of an
immaculate, blameless vista.

And the water is so close you can touch it (or be touched by it). I had never seen a city and an ocean in such fervid contact before. Usually there is a beach (Río) or
a bay (Sydney) to cushion the blow; here the high seas swell outside your window. Looking down from my hotel room, I imagined myself on the bridge of a fantastic,
decrepit freighter.

The flight from Miami had taken less than an hour. Inside the terminal, long lines sprouted under mounted TVs showing music videos and slapsticky sitcoms. Nobody
laughed. I glanced quizzically at the flier I'd been given for Cohiba cigars, and then, opening it up, found on the inside page my entry form for immigration. The wait to
get through lasted longer than the flight.

Outside a crush of eager faces stared. They displayed the heightened anticipation of people looking for loved ones bearing bags of necessities. One woman stood
out, her bright smile like a beauty contestant's, masking an inner anxiety. She didn't need to wear the organization's T-shirt; it was obvious she was our tour guide.
"Welcome to Cuba!" she greeted me warmly.

The van pulled out into tropical green countryside under a Baltic gray sky. Goats nibbled on a bank of grass and billboards advertised the revolution. People walked,
or pedaled bicycles. The first vintage Chevy rolled past like a runaway photographer's prop. A flight measured in minutes had carried us back decades.

"Who wants their Cuba Libre without rum?" Silvia asked. No one raised a hand. We moved en masse to the Presidente bar, off to the side of the elegant lobby.

Twenty minutes later, we regrouped for the drive to the restaurant.

"Do you have hot water?"

"We don't have any water."

"Our TV doesn't work."

Each failing was mentioned, surprisingly, in a tone of surprise.

The Centro Vasco sat a dozen blocks from our hotel, a sad, hushed, tired establishment; a fluorescent rebuff to the joyous, blaring, fiery Cuba of renown. (One
stereotype shattered in the first two hours.) I sat with Ellen and Sonia, two friends from college now living in California and Idaho. We ate canned fruit cocktail (in the
tropics!) followed by a thin tough cutlet of beef.

Then we ditched the group and headed back on foot. The streets were poorly lighted; the houses maquillaged by darkness. Vedado had started as the western
suburb, and in the shadows we could discern traces of a once-elegant neighborhood: faded villas rounded by classical pórticos, ratty apartments fit with art deco
edges. Pushing through the gate of one building, we gazed in at a family in a bright yellow room, watching their own wonders on a black-and-white TV.

Nothing bored us. There was not just the everytrip attraction of the new, but the jolt of hearsay made tangible combined with the thrill of the forbidden. It didn't
matter that we were here legally, on a cultural tour licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department; or that I was geographically closer to home than my home is to either
Ellen's or Sonia's; what mattered was that we had made it to the source of exquisite rancor and nostalgia.

We walked up Avenida de los Presidentes (who could sleep?) and then turned down a leafy side street. A wrought-iron fence enwrapped a gracious, white-pillared
mansión; blue lights dripped from a banyan tree. The Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, its Blue Ferret club in full, al fresco swing. We paid $5, found a table in the
courtyard, and ordered mojitos. A woman sang boleros -- soft, romantic ballads; the emcee recited poetry.

"This is lovely," said Sonia, as a breeze rustled the banyan leaves above us.

"It's good to get away from the group," said Ellen. "I was already starting to feel a little too much togetherness."

"I was sitting next to Phyllis on the bus in from the airport," Sonia confided. "She said to me: `I'm a complainer.'"

"What did she have to complain about so soon?"

"The reading list. She was upset there was no Castro biography."

"She's a librarian," said Ellen. "It's not like she couldn't have picked one up."

We left around midnight. On the way out, Sonia confessed that she had received two taps on the shoulder, and meaningful looks from the admiring men.

"I'm hot in Cuba," she said.

Our hotel the next morning was surrounded by khaki. Students sat under the statue-less pedestal on the avenida, while others stood with their teachers in fidgety
rows. Many of them carried flowers, in memory, we were told, of Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos, whose plane disappeared into the ocean 42 years earlier. A
small band marched by and everyone followed it excitedly to the sea.

As soon as a wave splattered onto the street, minions would run and toss their flowers over the wall, then scurry back before the next spill. Or try to. Often, the sea
rose up and drenched a unit right in the middle of its release. This caused the hundreds of spectators to roar with laughter. More students charged the wall, crisp and
determined, and retreated dripping. Even the policemen were chuckling. It was a riotous, endlessly repeated scene of flying flowers, dancing spray and clinging
uniforms. I had never seen a more joyous memorial service.

Back on the terrace of the Presidente, Carlos began the meeting. He was from the Orwellian-sounding Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.

"We read a poem by Che in our office, in honor of Camilo," he said. "It was our idea."

We listened obediently, 17 Americans, only a few of whom could not remember a Castro-less Cuba.

"We are a social organization," Carlos continued. "We are not governmental. So we tell you our personal views. ... Tourists who come here sometimes say to me:
`Carlos, we want to meet real Cubans. And I tell them: You can talk to anybody you like. But remember: I am a real Cuban, too. Silvia and Gustavo," he said,
looking at our guides, "are real Cubans." And they were: young, nicely dressed, the next generation. (Though those weren't their real names. And, for the sake of
consistency, I've changed the names of everyone in the story.)

"The only thing that is forbidden in Cuba," he concluded, "is to be uncomfortable. We want you to be comfortable."

Our van rolled along the sea.

"This is the U.S. Interests Section," Gustavo explained as we passed a stout office building. "During the week you will see lots of people standing around here,
waiting to get in."

Next to it was a large stage.

"Political rallies are held here. It was built to welcome Elián back. Do you remember that boy?"

The van groaned a yes.

Gustavo then directed our attention to a statue of José Martí, holding a child in one arm, and pointing with the other. "You see where he is pointing?" It was directly at
the U.S. Interests Section. He had an angry, accusatory glare, quite removed from the intelligent regard I'd seen in portraits of the refined poet and statesman. Dissing
public sculpture.

We plunged through low canyons of tottering colonialism. We weren't in Old Havana yet, but there were arches and niches and weathered facades, all running
together in a kind of symmetry of decline. The living conditions were abominable -- cramped and airless, without any trees -- but the overall effect was not as grim as
the view from my window. The architectural flourishes gave everything a Neapolitan air of romantic squalor.

I was surprised at how grand the city was -- not just in size, or in style, but in the combination of the two. I had seen a lot of pictures, and half expected that they had
captured, if not everything, at least the finest things. How often have you visited a place, your imagination fired by photographs, only to find that they left little to the
reality? Havana seemed the exception; it stretched outside one's expectations, and showed itself to be beyond the conjurings of a camera.

A large opening appeared in the form of the Plaza de la Revolución. It had that vast, vacant, portentous look (no place to hide) of public spaces in communist
capitals. You thought of Red and especially Tiananmen Square, while the trickle of traffic, the lazy roll of bicycles along the edges, reminded me of Hanoi. It seemed,
too, something of a museum piece, with the famous steel frieze of Che branding one of the surrounding buildings.

"The pope had a Mass here," Gustavo said.

"Did many people come?" someone asked.

"Yes, because he's a personality. But Cuba is not a Catholic country. Most people believe in African gods."

We took our pictures and got back in the van, which dropped us at a rum factory, right in the city, with a store conveniently situated on the second floor. Bottles lined
the shelves and cigar boxes sat atop the counters.

"Do you smoke cigars?" I asked Gustavo.

"No," he said. "It's just old men."

Outside, I mentioned this to Sonia.

"I guess that whole retro thing," she said, "hasn't really caught on here."

"Well, when you're already living in the past ..."

Bernie wandered up to me.

"I like the people here," he said. "They have a dynamic spirit."

I stood speechless. I hadn't seen it; I hadn't noticed anything remotely close to it. I am a travel writer; my job is to pick up on these things, to read the messages in
postures and gaits, expressions and clothing. A woman came walking by, carrying a plastic bag. I looked closely and still could not detect a dynamic spirit. All I
could make out was a kind of languid acquiescence. This is one of the reasons I hate traveling with a group.

Back in the van, Wanda from San Jose said: "The Cubans in Miami, they paint a different picture. They tell you people here are hungry ... dirty."

"You don't see tattoos," said Chip approvingly. "Or graffiti."

Lunch was at the Café del Oriente opposite La Lonja del Comercio. I sat with Wanda, Daisy and Parker, the young man we had deposited at the Hotel Nacional.
He was wearing a Puerto Rico sweatshirt and a Panamá hat.

Silvia came by and said we had a choice of beef, chicken or fish.

"Polio," said Parker, making an attempt at Spanish rather than humor. "And black beans."

"They don't have black beans here," Silvia informed him.

"I see Castro's doing everything to make the Cubans dislike us even more," said Daisy.

"How's that?" I asked.

"By making us eat in places Cubans can't afford."

I didn't tell her that almost any restaurant would be out of the price range of the average Cuban.

"That's why so much of the world hates us," she said.

"If I were independently wealthy," said Parker, "I'd come down here and get a place to live for a couple of months. I love salsa. I went to the Casa de la Música last
night. It was great. There's something about salsa that relaxes me."

In the van, Gustavo had told us that housing is "the main problem in Cuba today." He said that, after two years of marriage, he still lived with his in-laws, one of 14
people in six rooms.

My fish arrived, along with a salad of tomato, cucumber and shredded cabbage, the same vegetable combination I had gotten in Lithuania. I had noticed vestiges of
the old Soviet friendship in the streets -- Havana must be the only city in the world where you can see a '56 Pontiac parked next to an '81 Lada -- but hadn't
expected to find them on my plate.

We strolled through Old Havana, around the leafy green Plaza de Armas and up to the blue-shuttered Plaza de la Catedral. Daisy accompanied me across the
cobblestones, still moved by the morning memorial service. "When have you seen," she asked me, "that much spirit in the United States?"

The van drove us in darkness along the Malecón. The sea was still raging, peppering the street with salt, and keeping away dreamers.

"Gustavo," Sonia said, "with all the old cars here, being a mechanic must be one of the best jobs in Cuba."

"The best job in Cuba," he said, "is to have a private business. People who rent apartments -- they do very well."

"You're a capitalist," Sonia said, laughing.

"No," he said. "I'm a realist."

We filed into La Zaragozana, just down the street from El Floridita. I wondered if the high-end tours get the old Hemingway hang-out.

"You have a choice of pork, chicken or fish," said Silvia.

We were the only people in the restaurant. A band materialized. It was our first hearing of Guantanamera. Our first discussion, too, of the inevitable opening up of the
country, and its subsequent ruination. People moaned about how Starbucks will come in, and then McDonald's, and the place will lose all of its color and authenticity.
Such talk always annoys me. It puts too much of an emphasis on externals, forgetting that what's important is not buildings, but the people inside them; and not how
they look -- now that louche is pretty much universal -- but what they think and feel. More importantly, this attitude almost always ignores the best interests of the
locals. There is something maddeningly haughty in being chauffeured in an air-conditioned van through crumbling streets to ample meals and then expressing the hope
that things never change. It is a kind of anti-imperialistic imperialism, wanting to keep a place disfranchised, in stasis, just to satisfy outsiders' cravings for the antique.
There is nothing more self-serving, and often destructive, than the tourist in search of a pure experience.

The group packed off to the Tropicana; I took a right at El Floridita and headed down Obispo Street. A young woman walking arm-in-arm with her boyfriend turned
and said hello. She had a beautiful, surprisingly lingering smile. She asked if I were Italian, then French. No one expects Americans; Havana is the place to come if
you want to be made to feel Continental.

"This is my brother," she said. I couldn't see any family resemblance. He was stocky and brutish (especially in the sunglasses); she was svelte and delicate, with
darker skin. I was now seriously doubting my abilities as an observer.

"My sister is a dancer," the brother said. This seemed to make sense.

We walked along together. My Spanish, never stellar under the best circumstances, was struggling to follow a language emptied of `s's. They asked if I wanted to go
for a drink. I started to doubt that the sister was a dancer; that they were brother and sister. I suspected that she was a jinetera, or jockey. It is the term for people,
not just women, who offer foreigners services, not necessarily sexual. What began meaning "prostitute" has been stretched to embrace "hustler" or even, considering
the times, "entrepreneur."

We turned around, exited Obispo, traversed the Parque Central (the capitol looming on the left, the brother pointing out landmarks) and headed along a street of
closed-up shops and shadowy forms. Every few yards he would stop and shake someone's hand.

"My brother knows a lot of people," the sister said. "He was a famous boxer."

They led me up a darker, emptier street. When I hesitated, the brother cajoled me. "Nothing's going to happen. It is totally safe. Policemen are everywhere." His
voice had a counterproductive vehemence. Finally, he took out his wallet, extracted a business card, and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. His sister pulled me forward;
her palms were unexpectedly coarse.

Around the next corner a glow appeared. The entrance to Chinatown: red paper lanterns and swarthy Cuban waiters in emperor jackets. We sat at an outside table
and ordered mojitos; when they arrived, the brother and sister both poured a little onto the pavement.

"For the santería spirits," the sister explained. Then she took off her sweater, revealing a bandeau top and spilling her drink.

"The spirits will be very happy," I said, and they both laughed.

She ordered another. Her brother downed his and said he had to get going. It was a little after midnight. Surely, I thought, our bureau chief will now walk by.

"He is a very good brother," the sister said. "He comes and plays with my son."

"You have a son?" I asked. She looked awfully young.

"Yes. He is 10 months old."

"Where is he now?"

"With my mother."

She asked if I wanted to go somewhere; I said I had to get back to my hotel. We retraced our steps. At one point she pulled me into a dimly lighted shop so I could
buy her some cookies. As soon as we were outside, she tore the bag open and started eating, stuffing one into my mouth as she chewed and walked.

At the park we said our goodbyes. Then I climbed in a taxi while the young mother sauntered back out into the night. It was hard not to think that she'd be better off
working at the Gap.

Next week: More meetings, official and unofficial, in Havana.