The line inched ahead and soon, without saying a word to me, Chutsky stepped up to the window, and shoved his passport in through a hole at the bottom. I could not see or hear what was said, but there were no wild shouts and no gunfire and after a moment he collected his papers and vanished on the far side of the booth, and it was my turn.

Behind the thick glass sat a man who could have been the twin of the nearest gun-toting soldier. He took my passport without comment and opened it, looked inside, looked up at me, and then pushed it back to me without a word. I had expected some kind of interrogation -1 suppose I'd thought he might rise up and smite me for being either a capitalist running dog, or possibly a paper tiger and I was so startled at his complete lack of response that I stood there for a moment before the man behind the glass jerked his head at me to go, and I did, heading around a corner the way Chutsky had gone and into the baggage claim area.

“Hey buddy,” Chutsky said as I approached the spot he had staked out by the unmoving belt that would soon, I hoped, bring our bags out. “You weren't scared, were you?” I guess I thought it would be a little more difficult than that,” I said. I mean, aren't they kind of mad at us or something?” Chutsky laughed. I think you're gonna find out that they like you,” he said. “It's just your government they can't stand.” I shook my head. “Can they really separate them like that?”

“Sure,” he said. “It's simple Cuban logic” As nonsensical as that seemed, I had grown up in Miami and knew perfectly well what that was; Cuban logic was a running joke in the Cuban community, placed right before being Cubanaso in the emotional spectrum. The best explanation I'd ever had was from a professor in college. I'd taken a poetry course in the vain hope of learning to see into the human soul, since I don't have one. And the professor had been reading aloud from Walt Whitman —I still remembered the line, since it is so utterly human. “Do I contradict myself? Well then —I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” And the professor had looked up from the book and said, “Perfect Cuban logic,” waited for the laughter to die down, and then gone back to reading the poem.

So, if the Cuban people disliked America and liked Americans, it involved no more mental gymnastics than I had seen and heard nearly every day of my life. In any case, there was a clatter, a buzzer blasted a loud note, and our baggage began to come out on the belt.