Jack made no move to intercede, for he knew it would only elicit displeasure from his honest father. He vowed not to let it distract him from the intoxication of being in a new land. “It’s the way he is,” he told Paul, who obviously understood.
Across the boardwalk, Pilar located the count quite readily. One of the harbor officials had directed her to a man whose manner of dress seemed more appropriate for attending a ball than for standing around a harborfront. Outfitted in a long satin waistcoat, lustrous pantaloons matching a pink jacket, and a shirt with a fragile high-collared neck, he was surrounded by an entourage of people courting his attention. The sun reflected onto the nobleman’s face and he turned toward her. Pilar recognized him from her youth. Count de Silva had not changed much, she thought, only a little older and he was more pompous in his bearing than she had remembered. With some trepidation yet resolute, Pilar approached the stately gentleman and introduced herself. Immediately the count came to full attention, and greeted her grandly. He said he had come to search for her as soon as he received her letter. He extended every courtesy, making his personal in-town villa available to her and her family until they could get settled on their own. Within minutes, he ordered his servants to go with her to collect her baggage and find her family. He sent one carriage off to the villa with their belongings and invited them to ride there with him in his own carriage; but when the O’Reillys and Paul learned it was only a short distance, they politely declined. They chose instead to walk the few blocks, finding a joyous pleasure in stumbling now and again as they tried to regain their land legs. Jack and his mother delighted in Ethan’s drunken steps and apparent dizziness while the count, holding back his carriage in step with them, tried to keep up a continuous dialogue with Pilar. Jack watched as his mother conversed with this Spanish grandee. He lengthened his torso out of the carriage window, straining to participate in the O’Reillys’ good mood. He tried much too hard, to Jack’s way of thinking, and his elation about seeing Habana was put off by his cautious instinct about the count.
The villa paralleled Jack’s imagination of the Arabian Nights more than the reality of Habana. The entry was guarded by two grand oak doors at least ten feet high. Hexagonal clay tiles led them into an enormous atrium beautifully festooned with exotic plants and flowers. Ornately carved designs framed windows and doors. Servants stood waiting with cool drinks as they were ushered to their rooms. A far cry from Hamden, Jack thought. A far cry indeed.
Settled in the count’s villa, Jack told his mother that he and Paul were headed off to explore the streets of Habana. With a warning to be careful, the young men fairly bounced in their gait, their excitement evident as they took in the exotic environment.
But beneath the exhilaration, their young eyes could not ignore an underlying sense of oppression. The streets were crowded with black Africans, sometimes chained together, herded along as if cattle. Jack noticed Paul’s attention drawn to a side street. An incident was unfolding, a scuffle between some overseers and a procession of African slaves. One slave protested openly to ill treatment and was quickly disciplined, two quick slashes delivered across his face by a riding crop wielded by a heavyset Spaniard. Several kicks from another Spaniard directed the slave, blinded by blood and rage, back to the procession. He staggered, his hands clutching his face, trying, it seemed, to withdraw to a world behind his fingers.
Jack was troubled by the high visibility of the slave trade. Here slavery was not simply a tolerated evil, as in New England—or an institution, as in Virginia—but a booming business, dominating all other forms of commerce. Indeed, almost all the ships entering and leaving port had some degree of investment in human cargo.
Paul had explained to Jack the problems he had with his father’s keeping of slaves. Understanding Paul’s sensitivity to the issue, and given his own discomfort, Jack tried to steer them away from slave-processing areas; his superior height allowing him to see further over the heads of the crowd than Paul. At one point, Jack spied an enclosure in which a number of slaves were being prepared for whipping; he quickly changed direction—and they ended up walking straight into a plaza where an auction was in progress. The vendors handled the Africans like livestock, opening their mouths to the crowd of potential buyers and voyeurs, there to see the latest crop. It mortified Jack that much of the bartering seemed to be carried out in English.
The auctioneer made the women strip and actually squeezed the breasts of one of them to show milk spurt forth, proving her healthy and of child-bearing age. The fact that the child she had borne was to be sold elsewhere seemed of no apparent concern to anyone but her. Jack could not forget her haunting eyes. Her indifference to the humiliation came, he knew, from her realization she would never see her child again.
The seller turned a “buck” to face the crowd, grabbed up his privates and winked. “Imagine as how this will serve to keep yer herd producin’.”
Jack was disgusted at the laughter of the men and the red-faced laughs from some of the ladies. Yet, despite his growing discomfort, he was determined to enjoy the wonders of Habana. He knew he must distance Paul from the auctioneer before his friend’s heart overpowered his brain and there was trouble. He grabbed Paul’s shoulder and turned their stride toward the Casa.
There was to be a party that evening on the waterfront. The Casa, colloquial for Casa de la Contratación, or House of Trade, sat in the center of the excitement. It had been the controlling force for over two hundred years of Spanish trade in the New World, an Iberian predecessor of the East and West India companies that later developed in England and Holland. The count, a peninsulare or native of Spain—not born in Cuba—was a highranking official at the House. The gathering that night was to be held in honor of the newly arrived residents of Habana, who, in the count’s words, would “obtain their just rewards” from Pilar’s birthright. The O’Reillys were to be formally welcomed to Habana, home to people of many nationalities, much like the recently formed United States.
Jack and Paul, dressed for the evening in clean but threadbare attire, sat on the sweeping veranda of the Casa, more interested in the beauty of the Spanish and Creole ladies than the venerable history of the House of Trade. The ladies had a way of either ignoring you or looking through you with measured indifference, Jack felt. He waved and winked but drew only hostile stares from the women’s chaperones. It mattered not; the dark-eyed beauties were unattainable dream creatures. Jack and Paul enjoyed just basking in their presence.
Jack was relaxed conversing in Spanish—even in translating for Paul. He saw that his mother was watching a group of people at the end of the room. A large man stood with his arms spread, enfolding two men of smaller stature. As if sensing he was being spied upon, the figure raised his head and turned slowly. It was the count, who was difficult to miss, as he was an inordinately tall man and again dressed as if to attend a king. A pale cerulean blue waistcoat and tights, red leggings, and black shiny ankle-high boots. The overall effect seemed overpowering and in slightly bad taste; the blue being too young for this fifty-year-old and the leggings and the cravat overly dramatic. His eyes stayed hooded as he drifted back to conversation.
Jack’s mother held tightly to her husband’s arm as they nodded their way across the vast room. Upon seeing them approach, the count excused himself from the group and made his way toward the couple, who looked a bit lost and intimidated by their new elegant surroundings.