"A completely original view of culture prevails here," said Onno.
Max burst out laughing. "Maybe it's a conference about the birth of the revolution from the spirit of futurism."
They registered, and a girl from the organization asked whether they wanted to freshen up before going to the conference office. However, Onno wanted to get everything over with quickly and then go immediately to Ada, who would be amazed that her two friends were suddenly representing Dutch culture in Cuba. They left their luggage and followed the girl to the gallery, which used to house boutiques selling crocodile-leather bags and snakeskin shoes. Some of them were boarded up; others had changed into storage areas for carpenters and painters. The name Cartier was still vaguely legible on the window of the office. Amid shouting and jostling, the girl arranged their registration, handed them conference packs with the title "Primera Conferencia de La Habana" and badges with their names typed on them: MAX DELIUS, HOLANDA, DELEGADO; ONNO QUITS, HOLANDA, DELEGADO.
"The official opening is tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, and we'd like to know immediately what working parties you are thinking of sitting on."
As they walked back toward the hall and pinned on their badges, Onno said: "There's bound to be a working party on the New Man. I know an enormous amount about that, because I'm one myself. In a glowing speech I shall give Rousseau the honor that is his due, albeit as an insignificant dwarf in the mighty shadow of Marx and Engels. Man is basically good — he is only made bad by bad circumstances, which hence must be improved."
However, once they had found a seat on a soft sofa and opened the packs, they found that the working parties were not devoted to the cultural and philosophical aspects of this lofty aim but to its practical side: the Armed Struggle; Urban Guerrilla Warfare; the Role of the Peasants in Seizing Power; the Communist Parties.
They looked at each other open-mouthed.
"My God," said Onno.
"This isn't a cultural conference at all."
They began rummaging through the papers, and a minute later everything became clear. The conference was a highly political meeting of guerrilla organizations from Latin American and African countries and the Vietnamese Liberation Front on the one hand and on the other hand Black Power from the United States and of revolutionary student groups from the Western European countries, consistently ignoring, as emerged from the lista oficial de participantes, official party Communists loyal to Moscow; Maoist groups had obviously not been invited, either. It was an extremely exclusive meeting for the flower of the revolution, as this had been achieved only in Cuba. There was no Dutch delegation listed. The girl at the airport was for some reason obviously convinced that they were delegates; and because Holland was not on the list — while it was obviously a country that needed liberating — she had put it down to bureaucratic carelessness and included them.
Now they saw something that might have struck them earlier: not only were the cultural celebrities with whom they had shared the airplane nowhere to be seen in the lobby, but neither did any of those present have the weak, defenseless, clownlike features that artists and intellectuals tend to sport. The white, black, and yellow faces showed expressions of steely determination, although there was occasionally a glimpse of a certain melancholy — perhaps because their steeliness was rooted, hopefully, not in evil but in good. For that matter, some of them looked like ascetic saints in an El Greco painting. They were also senior Cuban officers, comandantes— majors, that is, because all higher ranks had been abolished after the revolution — heroes of the first hour — about forty — in battle dress without insignia but recognizable from their beards and from the bustle around them: they had succeeded in doing something that the others still had to achieve.
"So now," said Max, "we've been promoted to leaders of the revolution in Holland."
As soon as he'd said this, he was overcome by a fit of giggling. He dropped sideways onto the sofa and gasped for breath: their new status amid the most dangerous and most wanted men and women in the world, now assembled here in one room, films that showed the same atrocities in one unbroken loop, music… it was as if suddenly a vein had been tapped deep inside him, from which living water suddenly burst. The tears ran down his face, but Onno fiddled nervously with the badge on his lapel.
"Don't laugh, you idiot! We've got to put this right straight away, explain everything and beat it. We're in mortal danger, man."
"Live dangerously?" said Max, sitting up with a red face.
"What do you think will happen when they find out that we don't belong here at all? Look. These are not the kind of guys you play around with. Just suppose they get the idea that we're from the CIA."
"And you were going to change Holland."
"Yes, but not like that!" said Onno, pointing to the stockade of weapons. "I'm a revisionist social fascist, concerned only to prevent revolution and keep the proletariat in eternal servitude — a worm, a hyena, a capitalist lackey, in the pay of the CIA, and I'll finish up on the rubbish heap of history. That kind of vulture is put up against the wall here without mercy."
The last sentence just slipped out. He glanced quickly at Max, but he nodded and smiled.
"And quite right, too. Perhaps you can look at it another way. You're a good Dutch Social Democrat, who wants to change Holland in the only way that's possible in Holland, namely the Dutch way. That will be very well understood here, I think — especially if it results in development help for Cuba. And just so you know, compañero, I'm going to sit on the fourth committee. I'll see how it goes. I'd never forgive myself if I shirked this one. Anything can happen in life — this is another example of it. Maybe the Americans will bomb the hotel tomorrow morning during the plenary session, and that will be that, because of course Moscow would prefer to be rid of these kinds of people. If you ask me it's pure Trotskyism here."
"But, Max," said Onno. "What if my father hears about this? His son in devilish Havana as a delegate at a conference of the world revolutionary elite!"
"The fact that it's an elite would appeal to him. You're crazy if you let this chance escape. You'll get to know people, and you'll have a chance to see politics from a different angle than that Dutch nursery school of yours. Apart from me, you'll soon be the only person who knows what he's talking about in this kind of matter. Perhaps in a few years a lot of these fellows will come to the Netherlands on a state visit, Onno Quist, and perhaps you'll then have to review the guard of honor with them."
"Okay, okay," said Onno in resignation, opening his information pack. "I'll let you talk me into it once again. But the results will be your responsibility. Anyway, the ambassador here is married to a second cousin of mine, one of the Van Lynden girls, so that may help if things go wrong. And as a Jacobin, I'm obviously not going to sit on a wishy-washy committee like you, but in the first one, La lucha armada! The Armed Struggle!"
After registering and changing currency at the cashier's, they took off their badges and walked out into the sultry evening. Obliquely opposite, in a park, there were long lines in front of a large ice-cream parlor, Coppelia, which looked like a flying saucer that had just landed. On the grass next to it a manned anti-aircraft battery had been set up; and on the roof of their own hotel they saw the long barrel of a cannon.