There is someone’s unattributed description of the sensuous life in Cuba before Fidel. Perhaps we were smoking cigars. “In Havana,” it reads, “the woman takes the cigar in her palms and warms it over a lamp. Then she dips it in a decanter of dark rum and rolls it again. Then she puts the end in the flame of the lamp. The man takes two puffs . . .” I try to imagine who was delivering this alluring account.
