“There is a call for you from the Catholic church in Versalles,” he said.
I quickly changed out of my nightshirt and went down to his booth near the main gates, the one with the two phones.
“It’s Lázaro; we met at your aunt’s house in Havana on Monday…you left your cable charger behind, so I brought it to Matanzas to return to you. I am the church secretary. Can you come to get it before noon?”
That church is resplendent in the early-morning light, and it turns a magnificent shade of pink every evening at dusk. I had never been inside it; I had only taken photos of it, such as the one above, from the seminary.
The most direct route between the two points is down a street that is all stairs, past the zoo, and over a lovely footbridge that crosses one of the two rivers emptying into the Bay of Matanzas.
Upon arrival at the grand Versalles Cathedral, Lázaro introduced me to the priest, an Italian who spoke heavily accented Spanish, and I was given a brief tour of the sanctuary, including several statues of Cuba’s patron saint, the Virgin de la Caridad de la Cobra, and one large crucifix rescued by a nun from a church in Havana after the Revolution.
I returned from Versalles to Matanzas center over a much larger bridge. I stopped at one store to buy a few blank CDs (to copy a very good TESOL video program called Inglés sin Barreras, or English without Barriers, to put on the seminary server) and in a cute little sundries store called La China (to buy jingle bells for a hand-knit collar for Semi, my Cuban Siamese kitten who eats like a lion, so that he won’t catch and eat a Cuban woodpecker or one of the many chickens that roam around the campus).
I arrived back at the seminary through the rear gate, and I ran into three women visitors who had just entered through the main gate. I recognized one to be an American tourist and introduced myself in English. They responded in kind and asked where I’m from. Their mouths dropped open when I said, “I’m from Philadelphia.”
“You’re kidding! What a coincidence! So am I,” said Shari, a dentist who graduated from Penn a decade after me, and lives and practices in University City. Immediately, my Cuban Pony Express light went off in my head, and I told them to give me 5 minutes while I run to fetch my latest stash of Cuban-made items.
I grabbed the pink gingham-and-hand-knit dress for my granddaughter Jade; a bunch of trinkets and not-so-junky souvenirs with Che Guevaras and the Cuban flags, a leather cigarette lighter case with a crocodile (for Ron), and the handmade greeting cards made by the seminary photographer Chuchi (whose real name is Jesús, thus the common nickname).
I quickly wrote down my Philadelphia daughter’s name and address with the message: “Happy Chanukah to the Ostroff family!”
With love from Cuba,
Elisa
December 1, 2011
Matanzas
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