An occasional writer's journal

It’s difficult to think of a statue that better achieves its aim of bestowing greatness on the humblest of people than Havana’s extraordinary “Gentleman from Paris”.

The Caballero de Paris. immortalised in bronze in the old colonial quarter of the Cuban capital, was not a Frenchman at all but a well-spoken Spanish vagrant by the name of José Marí­a López Lledí­n who arrived on the Caribbean island as a boy in 1913.

The Gentleman from Paris (photo: Maria)

He became a memorable character in 1950s Havana where he wandered the streets like a contemporary Quixote, his hair and beard grown long and matted and a cape thrown over his tatty suit, musing lyrically about life and returning the kindness of others with the gift of a decorated pencil or a hand-made postcard.

It is written that he spent his life searching for some lost Dulcinea, perhaps a Cuban woman with French airs whom he loved and lost, but his life as a vagabond reportedly began after being wrongly jailed for a crime long forgotten. His decline into mental illness was gradual and in 1977 he was admitted to Havana’s Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital where he died eight years later, aged 86.

A memorable description of El Caballero is given by Cuban actor Juan Carlos Roque who met him while working at the hospital’s Enrique Nuñez ward. Roque’s comments, from an interview reproduced by CubaNow, carry the sense of privilege that any student of character might feel from having known the old man.

“He was an incredible persona, a Quixote. He treated you according to rank: one day you may well be a prince, and the next a count. He addressed nurses as if they were noble ladies. I remember he cried a lot when he had his long beard cut because it was very dirty. He was a child in a fantasy world.”

In 1991, the statue by sculptor José Villa Soberón was erected on the sidewalk outside the convent of San Francisco de Asis, now a museum and concert hall, as part of a restoration of Havana’s old colonial quarter. It portrays him with an outstretched left index finger, which children are said to have tugged as they followed him on his wanderings, possibly in the hope of a small gift.

As reported by the Baltimore Sun in an article revived by CubaHeadlines, visitors to Havana have since taken to touching the statue for luck, so much so that the bronze of the left hand gleams brighter than the rest of the darkened patina.

You might think some imaginative Havana tourist guide had fed an over-enthusiastic American journalist with the very description of the Caballero that his writing required. I choose to believe every word, confident that Cubans and visitors alike will find Soberón’s sculpture as inspiring as his John Lennon memorial in Havana, which compelled me to write an earlier post.

Discussion of El Caballero’s story continues at CubaGenWeb.