"What can be better," said Max, "than the threat of catastrophe?"
"Peace, you imbecile, peace."
"I didn't say catastrophe, but the threat of catastrophe. Perhaps politics can ultimately be reduced to aesthetics, just like science. Perhaps the ultimate criterion in the world isn't truth, but beauty."
As they walked along the busy Rampa, which sloped gently down toward the sea, Onno stared pensively at the paving stones, his tongue between his teeth — ideas were always more real to him than what was visible. Max, on the other hand, who had blurted out the thought, absorbed everything greedily. Everywhere families were out walking under the palms; an electronic composition blared from loudspeakers on the lampposts. It reminded him of Luigi Nono's music for Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung, which he had a recording of at home, but it was virtually impossible to remember electronic music; moreover, countless portable radios were competing with it. "Me! Me!" boys shouted at passing mulatto girls, sometimes of such staggering beauty that they took away not only Max's breath but even his lust: it was too beautiful, it was art, one had no need, indeed no right, to add anything to it — the key to eroticism was precisely deviation from perfection.
Policewomen in green uniforms and white berets, no older than seventeen, tried to bring some order to the chaotic traffic at junctions. On the side of a movie theater there was a neon sign thirty feet high, advertising not a commercial product but a political one: the map of Vietnam, with colored facts flashing on and off about American airfields and naval bases, the numbers of soldiers, the campaigns, the occupied and liberated areas, and a bomber flying overhead, releasing dotted lines that ended in bursting red stars, whereupon the airplane suddenly disappeared in a red glow, followed by the latest total of aircraft shot down: 2,263.
"Gracias, tovarich!" a man called to Onno cheerfully, and raised his hand.
Onno thanked him with a gracious bow.
"They think we're Russians."
On the other side of the street, in an open white pavilion, hung a huge painting of the head of Fidel Castro. It consisted of welded sheet iron, with a bunch of rockets between his teeth and a red rose by way of a cigar, the armored head threatened by a bloody eye, with an upturned chamber pot for a helmet, while all around black figures were being beaten to death; the whole thing was covered with sickles, hammers, numbers, buttocks, cigars, fishes, eggs, skulls, books, eyes, and snakes. When Max pointed it out to Onno and said something about "socialist surrealism," they suddenly heard ominous roaring from another world in the pandemonium of music and traffic. A wide staircase, below which orange flamingos stood on one leg in a pool, led up to the next floor of the pavilion. On the terrace stood a cage containing two lions; next to it, a cage with a lamb. Just behind hung an enormous reproduction of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapeclass="underline" the old gentleman waving with his outstretched arm, Adam raising himself laboriously, receiving the spark of life in his outstretched finger via multicolored arcs of light, which flashed from God to his creature like in a Leyden jar — accompanied at full volume and by a constantly repeated stirring passage from the second suite of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, the part about the Montagues and the Capulets.
"I'm dreaming!" cried Max. "I'm dreaming!"
"Ada!"
At the entrance to the Hotel Nacional, a huge building in the old style, she suddenly appeared from a stream of unknown faces, ran to meet them, and fell into Onno's arms. He kissed and cuddled her like a child, encouraged by the passersby. Max gave her a fraternal kiss on both cheeks.
"What do you think of it here!" she cried, proud and excited.
The twenty-four hours that she had been in Cuba already seemed to have made a different person of her: her face radiated an enthusiasm that neither of them had seen in it before. Arm in arm with the two of them, she told them about their reception by someone from the friendship institute, their visit to the conservatory, where they were also able to rehearse, their meetings with Cuban and foreign colleagues. Bruno had arranged to see a habañera orchestra in the old town tonight.
"It's one huge party here!"
This hotel was not cordoned off like theirs. In the crowded lobby they now saw not only the German writers, French philosophers, English poets, and Italian composers, but the space was also part of the street: the twittering townsfolk, whole families with small children, walked in one door and out the other.
"It's just like socialism here," said Onno.
Ada had also seen the writer who had been on the panel that evening in Amsterdam, and the chess grandmaster, who was there for the Capablanca tournament.
"Everyone's here, the whole world. All the left-wing intellectuals."
"You can drop that 'left-wing,' " said Onno, "because the alternative is a contradiction in terms."
On the large terrace at the back of the hotel Onno ordered his first authentic Cuba libre; Ada and Max had milk shakes. When Ada heard what had happened to them, she started laughing.
"Everything's possible here. It's like the fairy tale where an ugly frog is transformed into a handsome prince."
"When we come to power in Holland shortly," said Max, "we shall decree exactly the same kind of semitropical climate as they have here."
"Exactly," said Onno. "Now you're talking. Politics may be aesthetically conditioned, but it's definitely meterologically conditioned too."
"It's fantastic you're here. I've missed the pair of you."
"Not Max, I hope?" queried Onno.
"In a different way."
The night stayed warm. The terrace bordered a great, parklike garden, which led down to the sea. The crowds thinned a little, and Onno announced that he had something important to discuss with Ada, but it was strictly confidential and could only be discussed in private. He would see Max the following day at the opening session.
"Oh yes," said Max. "The New Man as an animal."
Once they had gone off to her room, he strolled into the darkened garden. The motionless sky was framed in the vaulting beneath the gigantic, twisted trees, while other trees, on the contrary, seemed ethereal, with their filigree foliage as delicate as Brussels lace — it was so exotic, and at the same time so familiar to him because of his view of the Botanical Garden from his office in Leiden. The whole island was one huge botanical garden, but without nameplates. At the end, at a lower balustrade, he looked out over the sea. He was met by a cooling gust; the lights of fishing boats here and there on the water; the pandemonium of the city was virtually drowned out by the soft rush of the surf.
Here he was. This was where life had brought him, to this paradisal spot. He thought of his life's history, his parents, his journey to Poland — and then of the words of the Cuban ambassador: "What happens ten thousand miles away has never happened." Had Auschwitz never happened here? The irrepressible starry sky. He was exactly on the Topic of Cancer, the pole star was low in the sky; but the trees behind him obscured his view of the Southern sky, which he had never seen.
Suddenly he heard low voices. He glanced to the side and twenty yards farther on in the dark saw a small group of soldiers around a rapid-firing cannon, with its barrel pointing at the horizon. When he raised his hand, they returned his greeting. He sighed deeply, and an intense feeling of happiness flowed through him.
17. Hot Days
The official opening ceremony of the conference the following morning was conducted by the president of the republic — not to be confused with Fidel Castro, who was to address the final plenary meeting — followed by a reception in the Palace of the Revolution. In the coffee break Max and Onno strolled out of the hotel to gain some impression of the city in daylight.