Places: Explosion in a Cathedral

Home Explosion in a Cathedralof Carlos, Esteban, and Sofia. Havana residence of the three orphaned young-adult members of a prominent, although never named, merchant family. Both the dwelling and the offspring have been neglected by the late father, and in her new role as female head of the household, Sofia decides to refurnish the home completely. The result is a material avalanche of furniture, crockery, books, and musical instruments that turns their living quarters into a labyrinth of stacked packing cases and narrow passageways. Carlos, Esteban, and Sofia move among these as if gingerly exploring a strange new world, while delighting in their random encounters with this profusion of worldly goods.

The bizarre manner in which these mostly European objects are treated, and in particular the many descriptions of how Havana’s heat and humidity lead to the rapid deterioration of the new furnishings, exemplifies the novel’s related theme of the breakdown of meaningful communication between Europe and its New World colonies. Although Carlos, Esteban, and Maria are initially delighted with the imported luxuries that their colonial wealth enables them to buy, they soon tire of this essentially meaningless pastime, and welcome the help of the Haitian merchant Victor Hugues in restoring their family’s place in the world. Subsequent plot developments will provide many additional examples of colonial frustration with an inappropriate imperial heritage, and the novel’s graphic portrayal of Old World materials literally destroyed by New World conditions makes this point with telling immediacy.

*Havana. Capital of colonial Cuba and bustling commercial center where the novel begins. Business activity, and particularly the exchange of raw materials for manufactured objects, is a major component of the novel’s colonial settings. The novel’s characteristic delight in material profusion is here demonstrated by an exhaustive inventory of the family firm’s warehouse that seems to revel in its mounds of salted fish, spices, grains, and many other articles of commerce.

*Paris. Capital of France and center of the French Revolution. Here Esteban and his political mentor Victor, a Haitian businessman turned revolutionary activist, participate in a tumultuous world that sees one day’s dictator become the next day’s victim of the guillotine. The novel stresses the apparent randomness of these events, while visualizing them on a cinematic screen across which surging crowds and impassioned public meetings struggle for dominance.

*Guadeloupe. French-ruled Caribbean island to which Victor is sent as governor, taking Esteban as his chief clerk. Protracted warfare between the incoming revolutionary officials and the old colonial regime, during which Guadeloupe’s capital city is largely destroyed, leads Victor to introduce the guillotine and other aspects of the Parisian terror as a means of defeating his opponents. Although Victor eventually succeeds in establishing his control, the death and destruction that have resulted suggest that European revolutionary methods may not be the best solution to colonial problems.

*Cayenne (ki-EN). Capital of French Guiana on the northeastern coast of the South American mainland. Esteban stops there on his return journey to Havana and is shocked by an authoritarian government that has established its own reign of terror on the Parisian model. Victor is subsequently appointed the colony’s new governor and is forced to implement reactionary French laws that reinstitute slavery and negate the positive accomplishments of the Revolution. When many of the local subjects revolt and flee into the jungle regions inland, their defeat of the military expeditions sent against them again indicates that European practices are not necessarily effective outside their place of origin.

*Madrid. Spanish capital where Esteban and Sofia spend their final days. Initially depicted as a haven from the instability of Caribbean and French societies, the murder of Sofia and Esteban in a riot makes the ironic point that there are no safe havens in a world where change is both inevitable and unpredictable.