Having spent 20 years or so of his adult life here, Hemingway spent a lot of time in old Havana, now a walkway, in the pub, La Bodeguita Del Medio. Opened in 1942, and now maintained and managed by Grand Carribe, a government tourism company, they have carefully preserved a scrawl by Hemingway on the wall it goes, “My Mohito in La Bodeguita, My Daiquiri in El Floridita.” The walls are full of writing, graffiti, and proprietors go in for a whitewash every five years, preserving of course, signatures of any interesting people who may have bothered to write on the wall.

Hemingway patronised this pub, as did several other writers and bohemians of the period, as it was close to a prominent printing press of the time (now moved to another venue). Writers and aspirants of the time waited here, Mohitos and Daiquiris — popular cocktails flowed, and Hemingway is said to have sipped away in the corner, to your right, just as you enter — a place where he could be as close to the barman as possible, and yet get a glimpse of what was going on the little road outside.

Joel, a post-graduate in English Literature and Grammar finished his Master’s in 1991 from Havana University. He now works at the La Bodeguita, and says “it is a very enjoyable job.” Having read The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bells Toll, he says he is attached to this little pub. Catching him at a time when several people are dancing, swaying to a live guitar and a drum two-some is difficult, but he manages to make some time. He says “people here left notes for their friends, fixing up meeting times in those days, as they had a problem exactly saying which La Bodeguita, the reference, ‘medio’ was added to the name of the pub, ‘medio’ meaning middle — middle of the printing press and the start of the road here, so it became, ‘La Bodeguita Del Medio.”

But Hemingway’s days ended in a tragic suicide in Idaho, in 1961. The pub doesn’t have any of the melancholy on the face of it today. But we push Joel a bit, asking him about contemporary Cuba, and if it is true that people are fed up and fleeing the country. Says Joel, “Migration happens everywhere, if people want to better their lives, they leave for more opportunity. This is economic migration, not political. The political migration took place when the Revolution took place, those who had to leave have gone. Now that is not the case, even I spent many years in Jamaica. Now I am back here.” On the US Blockade enforced since 1961, and the economy being under tremendous pressure since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, Joel says, “They don’t let us get by. For example, an Italian liner had started a cruise to Cuba every fortnight recently, which was bringing us business, the Americans bought it, and said, no Cruises to Cuba.” It is a small example, he says, but all totalled up it makes the situation dismal. Joel is religious and goes to church as often as he can, he says.

It is nearly midnight as we make our way out of the pub, looking to see if we, as we are foreigners, are being followed. We can’t spot anyone, except for several couples and groups of youngsters lining the famous Malecon seafront; some chattering loudly — sunny, like Joel, sharing a bottle of drink they have got along but a few quiet and contemplative, maybe waiting for their ship to come in. Wonder what Companero Ernest would have thought of them.