The Inkwell

By Carlos Tellechea

Evaristo Bergnes arrives in Cuba in the mid nineteenth century. He marries a Cuban woman, Ines Duran, and with her they have eight children. Their descendants collide with the Cuban revolutionary movement, which forever changed their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662937736

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

As the landscape of her life loses its color, so fade her memories. Recollections of events, people and emotions, the fabric of her being, vanishing. Her brother and soul mate, Noly, used to call her Úrsula in jest. Like Úrsula Buendía, she had presided over her family. Her siblings relied on her decisiveness, her energy and her instincts when important decisions had to be made. Now, like Úrsula, she shrinks. Not so much in the physical sense, Úrsula shrinking to doll size. Tragically, what shrinks is her beautiful mind. Gone is the memory of her house in Miami, where she lived with my father for over twenty years. Absent is her dead brother, Gabriel, and missing is her anger toward the Cuban revolution for the damage it caused to the viscidity of her extensive, singular and unusual family. Still, not everything has grown faint. Nearby is my dead father, with whom she was married for sixty-six years. Present are her three children, her grandchildren, her four living siblings, excerpts from her life in Puerto Rico, and most of her childhood and formative years in Caibarién and Havana. These are images that remain and keep her grounded. They keep her happy, optimistic and with a yearning for the joys that life can still offer.

I visit her every Monday and Thursday. It takes me about an hour to get to her townhouse, where I usually find her reading the paper, El Nuevo Herald. Once I asked her if she still worked on the daily crossword puzzle. Without hesitation, she assured me she had not completed one in years, claiming her brain did not have the clarity to do them anymore. Later that day, I opened the paper and, to my surprise, discovered the finished puzzle. The wonderful woman that cares for her, María Elena Torres, confirmed that the crossword puzzle is fully executed on a daily basis. The painful yet humorous truth of dementia, gone is her short-term memory.

During my visits we sing nursery rhymes, I read to her from an old children’s book, Había una Vez, we talk about her life in Caibarién and Havana, we look at pictures of my granddaughter, whom she at times is able to recognize. Noly, who lives in Puerto Rico, calls her twice a week. He is deaf and she is not in command of her memories. Yet, they talk and laugh and joy is palpable for both of them. Their communication has nothing to do with the words they exchange. There is a connection that transcends spoken language. Being witness to it is a special gift for me.

Although still ensconced in her psyche, she doesn’t much care to talk about our first years in exile. My father stayed back in Havana. He had allowed a radio transmitter by the name of Solís to reside in our home. Afraid for our safety, he sent my mother, my two siblings and me to Miami. We settled in an efficiency on Flagler Street, where we lived for three months. While there, my brother and I attended a nearby public school. My sister was four years old, my brother eight and I was seven. For a few days we were joined by my paternal cousin Miguel, who was sixteen. He had been shipped to Miami without his parents, fleeing the revolutionary values. We lived with the uncertainty of not knowing when we were going to see our father again. My mother had brought with her the entirety of their life savings, which totaled eighteen hundred dollars, a veritable fortune in 1961. She set aside one thousand dollars for our education. The rest of the money was used for our daily expenses and as a reserve for the needs of my father if he was ever able to leave Cuba. Her plan was to live frugally and start working as soon as that money began to run out. We never stopped living frugally, she never had to work outside of our home, and all of us attended graduate school.

When the Bay of Pigs invasion foiled, my father left Cuba for Ohio. There, he secured the Toledo Scales franchise for Puerto Rico. He represented them in Cuba, so it was not complicated to obtain this new agreement. My mother, siblings and I packed our few possessions and set off for our new homeland. We initially moved in with my great uncle, Gustavo Bergnes, who had lived in Puerto Rico since the mid 1940s. Before long, my father joined us and, together with my mother’s brother and his family, we rented a house in University Gardens. My uncle Noly and his wife, Mimi, settled in the bedroom with a bathroom. Mimi was pregnant with their fourth child so for practical reasons that made the most sense. My parents took the second bedroom. In the boys’ room I slept in the lower bunk bed with my cousin Nolito. We both were bedwetters. My brother refused to sleep in the bottom bunk afraid that our urine would filter through the thin mattress and sprinkle on him while he slept. There were two other beds in our room. They were occupied by my mother’s brother Carlos and at times by one of my father’s five siblings. The girls’ room was similarly busy. My sister Ili and my cousins Ana and Conchi slept in that space with my aunt María, who was twelve, and Mimi’s niece, Bebita, who was fourteen years old.

All of us shared a small bathroom at the end of the hallway. Mornings were hectic, showers were always short and shared, meals were fractured and disorderly. Javi was born in that chaos and to this day he is everybody’s brother and everybody’s son. We lived intersected lives for two years, everyone searching for the unfamiliar lane of their newly upended lives. So began our diaspora and that of thousands of displaced Cubans.

CHAPTER 2

Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas is born in Barcelona in 1801. He studies philosophy and letters but most of his knowledge is self-instructed. He is a polyglot, editor, writer, humanist, teacher, politician, and an important figure in the diffusion of culture in nineteenth century Spain. In 1828 he starts the Biblioteca de Conocimientos Humanos with the purpose of educating the uninstructed public of lesser means. He makes scientific information accessible by presenting it in simple and understandable language. For the same purpose, he establishes the Diccionario Geográfico Universal.

In 1831, Bergnes de Las Casas opens a printing press that bears his name, Antonio Bergnes y Cía. By this means he prints, edits or collaborates in the publication of more than 250 works. An accomplished linguist, he is Professor of Greek in the Universidad de Barcelona. While there, he is promoted to the Deanship of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras and ultimately to the Rectorship of the University. He translates works from English, German, French and Greek, and publishes grammatical works related to all those languages.

Bergnes de Las Casas is a liberal with progressive ideas. Early in life he becomes a member of the Milicia Nacional Voluntaria and in 1820 he participates in the assault of the prison of the Inquisition. In the latter years of his life he is a senator representing Barcelona in the Spanish government.

At twenty-seven years of age he marries Concepción de las Casas y Prat, his first cousin, and they have twelve children together. Of interest to this story is the fourth child, Evaristo. As an adult, he marries Carmen Fontanet and they in turn have five children, Enriqueta, Zaida, Evaristo, Rosina and María. These are names that will appear again in the coming generations. His only son, Evaristo, is a gifted student at the Universidad de Barcelona. He is diligent, disciplined, devoted to the task of learning. He is the pride of his grandfather. Evaristo is also known for his mercurial personality and temper. While at the university he has an altercation with another student. The dispute escalates when his rival brings Evaristo’s mother’s name into the quarrel. The insult is of such magnitude that the slandered loses his composure. He grabs an inkwell and launches it with tremendous force at the offender. The inkpot hits the student on the head and lands him in the hospital with what appears to be a significant brain injury. To avoid a scandal and prison time, Antonio, the grandfather, ships Evaristo to Cuba. One of his old students owns a plantation in the province of Las Villas, at the time known as the province of Santa Clara, and that is where Evaristo writes the story of the rest of his life.

Shortly after this tragic incident, on November 17th of 1879, Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas perishes at seventy-eight years of age. Evaristo does not receive news of his grandfather’s death until months later when he settles in his final destination, the island of Cuba.

CHAPTER 3

In 1868, the parish priest of the Catholic church La Purísima Concepción in Caibarién is Father Bartolomé Vintro. He is a Basque Jesuit priest in his thirties. Sturdy, vigorous, pleasant looking with a robust nose. He is likable, amiable, and has a very engaging personality. The town likes him. He is everyone’s confessor and everyone’s spiritual counselor.

Caibarién, in the province of Santa Clara, has not yet received the denomination of village. With a population of less than six thousand people, it is known as La Villa Blanca for its white sands and pristine beaches. Fish is abundant and fresh as well as a wide variety of shellfish and mollusks. They are an important part of Caibarién’s gastronomy. The town was founded in 1832 and like the rest of Cuba, the vast majority of its population is Catholic. The city is situated on the north coast of Cuba and built around the Bay of Buena Vista. The church sits in the middle of town and faces the central plaza. This area is the heart and soul of Caibarién. The town converges in the plaza at the end of each day for conversation, socialization and gossip. Mass is held daily and multiple times on Sunday. In order to celebrate mass, Father Vintro, and anyone wanting to receive communion, has to fast for twelve hours. Consequently, weekday service is held at sunrise. On Sundays, the priest cannot eat or drink until the last mass at noon. He offers daily confession, visits the sick, gives last rites to the dying, and is regularly invited for dinner to the homes of prominent townspeople. He has very busy days but enjoys his deployment in Caibarién. Here, a large segment of the population is made up of immigrants from Spain, many of whom come from the Basque country.

Father Vintro keeps his church tidy and clean. A townswoman, Rafaela Aguiar Iturriaga de Durán, helps him with the chores. She is married to a Spanish captain by the last name of Durán and they have a daughter together.

On March 17th of 1868, Rafaela gives birth to twin girls. One of the twins dies soon after birth and the mother succumbs to infection a couple of weeks later. The surviving baby is baptized on April 3rd and is given the name Inés María del Carmen Aguiar de Durán. The name of the mother appears on the certificate of baptism. The name of the father, his country of origin and the name of the paternal grandparents are all curiously absent. Peculiarly, the priest that signs the baptismal certificate is Father José Fucinos Sotolongo. The entire town knows that the father of the girl is Father Vintro.

Captain Durán packs his belongings and moves with his natural daughter back to Spain. Inés is adopted by a well-to-do local widow that raises her as her own. With the death of Inés’ natural mother, Mamá Crucita has to confront the precarious outlook of feeding a newborn baby without access to maternal milk. The infant is moved to Mamá Crucita’s home on what years later becomes Máximo Gómez Street. A female goat that has recently delivered is ushered to the house and kept there. During feeding times, the baby’s mouth is directly attached to the goat’s udders while the goat is standing on a table. Inés thrives and gains a healthy amount of weight and, at the age of three months, she is started on cow’s milk and solid foods. Everyone is relieved when the goat is taken back to its farm. Mamá Crucita has an older daughter that dies at seventeen years of age and Inés grows up as an only child. Surprisingly, Father Bartolomé Vintro stays in Caibarién as a priest for five more years.

This sleepy coastal town is where Inés settles for most of the rest of her life. The house in Máximo Gómez Street becomes Inés’ home for the next forty years. This tiny village where everyone knows everything about everybody is the foundation of who she becomes: an affectionate, caring and accepting woman. Conversely she is vigorous, sure of herself, and with an iron will, likely the result of growing up as an outcast in this rumor-riddled town where gossip is an integral part of the inhabitants’ daily activities. Mamá Crucita’s influence as a loving adoptive mother is crucial to her development and, by fourteen years of age, she has turned into an attractive young woman. Slight, delicate and sweet, she will enter the world of important families in Caibarién, never looking back, never pondering about her curious origins and not allowing that to be an impediment in her life.

CHAPTER 4

The same year that Inés is born marks the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, also known as La Guerra Grande. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes declares Cuban independence and frees the slaves in his plantation in what has come to be known as El Grito de Yara. The goal is to free Cuba from Spanish rule and establish a government that recognizes white, black, mulatto, Cuban and Spanish as equals. These were the same ideals espoused by Padre Félix Varela almost fifty years earlier. La Guerra Grande eventually engages over twelve thousand men but ultimately fails because of tensions between rebel leaders. Máximo Gómez approaches the war with a scorched-earth attitude. He calls for the burning of sugar plantations as a way of weakening the Spanish economy. This strategy creates dissent among plantation owners. The other popular secessionist is the Afro-Cuban leader Antonio Maceo. Well liked by Cuban blacks but suspect among white nationalists who worry about the consequences of a racial rebellion. The war ends with the signing of the Pact of Zanjón in 1878, which officially marks the surrender of the rebel forces.

In 1879, Calixto García leads the efforts for independence from Spain by declaring a new war against the colonizers. This is known as La Guerra Chiquita since it ends in defeat just one year later. A period of peace lasting seventeen years and remembered as The Rewarding Truce follows. These will also be years of preparation for the final conflict between Cuba and Spain.

Sometime during the period of La Guerra Chiquita, Evaristo Bergnes arrives in Cuba. Because of the circumstances of his exit from Barcelona there are no records of his arrival. It is likely he leaves the Port of Barcelona in a steamer and enters Cuba through the Port of Matanzas. He brings a letter of presentation from his grandfather addressed to Antonio’s old student. His father, who is the owner of a prestigious watchmaker shop in Barcelona, has given him an important sum of money so that he can start a new life in Cuba. He heads to the prescribed address, a sugar plantation in the province of Santa Clara. Evaristo is well received and settles there while he plans his next move in this new and exotic land.

Evaristo is quickly alarmed by what he experiences in the plantation. The hacienda where he lives is luxurious and equipped with all the comforts of the era. It faces a central courtyard known as the batey. Surrounding the batey are the barracks where slaves are kept. Known as bohíos, they house more than one hundred slaves and about thirty to forty Chinese workers. The bohíos are made of wood, cane and straw with dirt floors and thatched roofs. They have a small window for ventilation, but the heat inside the dwelling is intolerable and offers deficient protection against inclement weather. There are also mills and boiler houses as well as kitchens and an infirmary. There are nurseries where the slaves’ offspring are cared for while their parents work for up to twenty hours per day. There are guards to keep the slaves in check and a mayoral who supervises the slaves and distributes responsibilities. In the tumbadero, slaves are flogged and discipline is enforced.

In the mid-1700s, the entire slave population of Cuba totaled about forty thousand. Sugar production was carried out in small water-powered mills known as trapiches, and the majority of the white rural population worked as salaried landless laborers. Cuba was a slaveholding society but far from the industrialized sugar monoculture system that depends on slave labor for its sustenance. With the collapse of the sugar industry in Haiti during its war of independence, there was a need for increased sugar production. This sudden vacuum was filled by Cuba with its own industrialization of the sugar manufacturing complex. The shift started in the second part of the 1700s. By the early part of the next century, Cuba was the largest producer of sugar in the world and responsible for supplying one third of the world’s sugar consumption.

Although in 1807 the British abolished transatlantic slave trade and in 1820 Spain agreed to terminate its own involvement in the activity, the flow of slaves into the island continued. Spain’s lack of enforcement of the ban was responsible for the continued importation of Africans into Cuba.

In the nineteenth century more than six hundred thousand slaves were brought to the island. Plantations and ingenios (sugar mills) started appearing through the western part of the island and their number grew exponentially. This sudden growth in sugar cultivation created a need for labor and the need was filled by the importation of massive numbers of slaves. By the mid-nineteenth century, the nonwhite sector, which included slaves, freed blacks and mixed-race Cubans, comprised the majority of the island’s population.

The need for manual labor, especially after restrictions, made it more difficult to import slaves and forced the sugar industry to look elsewhere for help. The Philippine experience with Chinese workers encouraged Cuban sugar growers to seek access to Chinese labor. A plan promoted by Pedro Zulueta, a former slave trader, was put into action and thus started the importation of Chinese hands into Cuban sugar plantations. Even though they were brought under contract as paid laborers, the treatment they received was not much different than that extended to slaves. In the second half of the nineteenth century, one hundred twenty-five thousand Chinese peasants entered the Cuban sugar industry’s workforce. They were mostly men between the ages of sixteen and forty and contracted to work on Cuban plantations for four to ten years. The promised minimum wage was significantly reduced by immoral stratagems. The only saving hope for the Chinese was that their bondage had time limits. At the termination of their contract many moved back to China or to neighboring islands, but many were displaced to the cities and established residency in Cuba.

The construction of an efficient railway system specifically created for the transportation of sugarcane and its final product, sugar, was a massive endeavor undertaken by Cuba in the nineteenth century. Unlike the sugar industry, the workforce for the railroads had a more varied mixture of races and cultures. Laborers consisted of slaves (both owned and rented), Chinese contract workers, convicts, free blacks and white paid hands.

Even though the Moret Law of 1870 granted freedom to slaves who served in the Spanish army, slaves born after 1868, slaves that were over sixty years of age and all slaves owned by the Spanish government, Evaristo is shocked by the deplorable conditions in which slaves live in his benefactor’s plantation. It is not the same to call the devil than to see him coming. He is confronted by the devil face to face, with the unavoidable reality that the world is complicit in this atrocity. He himself is an avid consumer of sugar and its products. A deep and painful sorrow overcomes him and for weeks he can’t escape the nausea that overwhelms him. This leads to a number of confrontations between Evaristo and his host, some bordering on violence. He is dismissed from the plantation and forced to relocate. Caibarién is the chosen town. There he lands in a guesthouse and starts plotting the course of his next moves. It is here where Evaristo learns of his grandfather’s demise and this swells the magnitude of his sorrow.

CHAPTER 5

The port of Caibarién is teeming with activity. Upward Laguna Street are the docks and warehouses. Parallel to Laguna and one street to the west flanking Triana are the rail tracks for trains from Remedios to the port. Some railways bifurcate and veer to the east before reaching the port. They enter directly into warehouses from where goods are taken to the docks by cart. There are private docks exclusively serving the needs of specific companies and there are public docks for everybody else. To the east of the docks on a semicircular bay is the anchorage for the fishing fleet. On the eastern edge of the town is the fishermen’s village.

All trade is carried out by sailing vessels. The Caibarién harbor is only nine feet deep but Cayo Francés, sixteen miles off, has a safe and deep anchorage. This is where all vessels arrive to unload their ballast. The unloading of ballast is carried out under the care of a ballast supervisor in specific designated areas. All vessels load and unload their cargo in Cayo Francés. Small lighters come and go from the Caibarién harbor and move merchandise to and from the cay. Steamers don’t anchor here because loading them with lighters is cumbersome and takes too much time.

Caibarién is the seaport of the landlocked municipality of Remedios. Products from the province of Santa Clara arrive by train to Remedios and from there to the port via the Ferrocarril Remedios-Caibarién. The board of directors of Ferrocarril becomes combative when negotiating with its users. Julián Zulueta, the sugar baron, tries to land a favorable contract for the transport of sugar from his sugar mill in Placetas. He fails and decides to build his own narrow gauge line directly from Placetas to the port of Caibarién. In l878 this new railway is inaugurated as a private railroad and is authorized to serve the public. This spells disaster for the Ferrocarril Remedios-Caibarién Company and ultimately leads to the merger of the two lines, forming the Empresa Unida de los Ferrocarriles de Caibarién. This interconnection between the port and major production centers in the province of Santa Clara creates a boom in the town that lasts for many years.

In the Caibarién piers there are stevedores loading and unloading lighters. Impressive men who carry three hundred and twenty five pound bags of sugar from the warehouses through planks and into the lighters. There are stories of men that are able to perform this feat while carrying two bags at a time. Sailors, captains, merchants, government officials, fishermen and vendors abound in the port. Around the trains’ terminal there is a myriad of laborers moving goods from trains into carts, which then transport their cargo to and from the docks. Sugar is the queen of the harbor, but tobacco and all kinds of tropical fruit like mango, papaya, avocado, guava, pineapple and mamey are brought from all corners of the Santa Clara province. Sponges and some coffee also make their way into the port. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba starts importing natural ice from the Tudor Ice Company in New England. It then becomes possible for fish from Caibarién to reach local and far away markets. Multiple varieties of snapper, grouper, hogfish, wahoo and kingfish pass through the local docks and into Cuban and American tables.

In 1879, the town is elevated from village status to an independent municipality. In the early 1880s, Caibarién has stores, public and private schools, and churches. It has a population of about twelve thousand with around eight thousand whites, two thousand five hundred colored and five hundred Chinese. The town is bisected by two main avenues, one horizontal and the other parallel to the port. The rest of the streets are gridded and parallel to these two major arteries.

The odor of the sea and the taste of salt are firmly entrenched into the townspeople’s identity. It is on their skin and in their soul. The presence of the ocean permeates the streets and buildings like an invisible and powerful spirit. The smell of fish penetrates the town from the seafood markets on the east, and during the zafra (sugar harvest) the brume of molasses from the east, west and south blends with ocean vapors creating a mystical cloud of scents that permanently imprints those who inhabit this magical place. Evaristo Bergnes feels a certain comfort the moment he sets foot on this town he would call home until his death. From the very beginning he knows he is here to stay. Something about this place pulls, hypnotizes and intoxicates him.

Industrious, he immediately makes his presence known. He visits the municipal government building and introduces himself to the mayor, Hipólito Escobar Martel, to the entire city council and to other important government officials. He visits the church and talks to the parish priest. He walks to the docks and calls on the captain of the port, Juan B. Sollosso, and on José G. Fuentes, the vice-commercial agent of the United States Commercial agency. A good number of the important people in town are involved with the sugar industry but he is not interested in establishing business relationships with them. In a very short time he settles his enthusiasm in Caibarién and starts conjuring ideas for his new business ventures.

The town’s central plaza, better known as el parque, is rather busy on this unusually hot day in 1882. People swarm here in the evening seeking the relief of the afternoon ocean breeze. There are benches where the elderly sit and enjoy the end of the day, but mostly people walk. Women and adolescent girls walk in one direction and men and adolescent boys walk the opposite way. Adults talk about town events, politics, business or simply gossip. They are also there to chaperone the younger crowd who use these walks to flirt and to cement relationships with the opposite sex. The girls laugh and giggle and the boys encourage each other to start conversations with the girls they like. Once conversation has started, the exchange can continue when the interested parties meet each other as they continue to walk around the edges of the park. These encounters are often the preamble to more serious relationships.

The focus of conversation today is the handsome, tall, educated Peninsular that has recently arrived. During this era of Cuban history, people born in the Iberian Peninsula are known as Peninsulares and those born in Cuban shores are Criollos. Everyone has a story about who he is, where he is from and why he has landed in Caibarién. The adults want to invite him to their homes, rub elbows and find out more about this new personage in the social circles of town. The single girls discuss his looks and ways in which they can get close to him.

On this day, and for the first time, Evaristo participates in the social merry go round about the park. He finds people that he has met over the past few years. He recognizes doctor Antonio López, the lawyer Abelardo Pardo, town merchants Eduardo Barquinero and Enrique Cueto García, and fellow Catalonian Juan Palau Serra. He is approached by Antonio Romanach, who has a wholesale supply business. They had met at the port and immediately hit it off. They walk together in lively conversation and on their way he is introduced to other prominent townspeople. As they do the roundabout, a beautiful adolescent girl catches his eye. She is slight and short with dark hair and brown eyes. There is something about her that is different. She has a captivating smile giving her an air of complaisance and charm. Nevertheless, and strangely, she conveys a sense of strength and grit that is difficult to reconcile with her charm and beauty. Evaristo asks for an introduction and Antonio complies.

The duo approaches an older woman walking behind the beauty and Antonio introduces Evaristo to Mamá Crucita. Inés stops and looks at the pair with great indifference. Antonio capitalizes on the opportunity and introduces Inés Durán to his companion. Her apathy is chilling, Antonio is left speechless and the two men walk away confused and embarrassed.

Every day for the next two months Evaristo finishes his day at the park. He meets a number of businessmen and starts cementing his place in the community. Amongst the people he meets is a fellow Catalonian by the last name of Alegret. Together they start developing a business model for the formation of a shoe manufacturing and import company. Neither the cool ocean breeze nor developing relationships is what brings him back to the park evening after evening.

Evaristo is twenty years old and Inés only fourteen. The age difference does not afford him any degree of self-confidence. Every time he walks past Inés he loses his nerve and is unable to find his voice. She never even grants him the semblance of a smile. They walk past each other, he greets Mamá Crucita and while circling around the park, punishes himself for being such a coward. After two months of this roundabout farce, Mamá Crucita decides to take matters into her own hands and invites Evaristo for dinner.

Marriage age for girls is somewhere between fourteen and eighteen. Mamá Crucita is well aware of Evaristo’s intentions and considers him a solid match