Free Happy Ant-Heap by Norman Lewis Page A

neuralgia, rheumatism and tuberculosis, and tended to have short lives. Their main problem, however, was dietary. The island of Kamaran could not support one blade of grass—nothing could be induced to grow there. The pearl-divers lived on oysters and a little seaweed, and although these resources were said to contain the minerals necessary to sustain life, the local medical evidence was that the divers possessed an abnormally low sexual drive and a low level of fertility, to which was ascribed the fact that one-child families were the rule. If a child died, the only hope of replacing it was for the would-be father to slip away illegally for a few weeks to an oyster-free diet in the Yemen.
    Kamaran was then a British possession with an administrator from England. ‘But don’t you eat oysters?’ I asked him, and he shook his head in amazement at the idea. ‘In a cold climate and in moderation perhaps,’ he said, ‘but not here. I don’t recommend you to try them either. They have an inconvenient effect.’
    What exaggerations are committed even by the most sophisticated of us in the pursuit of love!
    I came across further telling evidence against the aphrodisiac properties of seafood, this time on a trip to Cuba in 1960. I was there to interview Ernest Hemingway when I stumbled on a prawn-eating craze that had taken hold of Havana. He seemed to be the man responsible for Havana’s sudden rush to prawns.
    Hemingway had sunk quietly into the background towards the end of the Batista regime, to re-emerge with Castro’s entry into the capital and be photographed in a congratulatory hug with the Maximum Leader. His first reappearance in the press was to lecture the Cubans on their eating habits, reminding them that shortages of rice and beans, the nation’s staple diet, were always possible, and that rich resources of seafood remained largely unexploited in their coastal waters. He assured them that the best prawns in the Caribbean awaited harvesting off the Isla de Juventud (Youth), where they were currently eaten only by the natives with a well-known result that had given the island its name.
    Of all the many bars in Havana, one called Sloppy Joe’s was then the most celebrated, largely because it was Hemingway’s custom to put in an appearance there every day at about 1 p.m., accompanied by his admirers. They would then perform the daily ritual of prawn-eating that attracted so many sightseers. I went to Sloppy Joe’s one day, and although a bout of influenza had kept Hem at home, the prawn-eating ceremony, Hemingway-style, went ahead as demonstrated by his friends.
    The scene was very Cuban. The regulars, their high-heeled boots polished for the second time that day, sat sipping their Hatuey beer waiting for the performance to begin. Two or three decorous and extremely beautiful mulatto prostitutes were hanging about, flapping their fans in the background. The sweet smell of the shore blew in through the open windows, carrying with it the twitterings of canaries in the shade trees. These birds were the descendants of the thousand or two released in celebration of a birthday by the dictator Batista. From the distance another sound inseparable from the old Cuba could be heard—the incessant tapping of drums.
    At exactly one o’clock, the door was flung open, and in trooped the men who had come to eat prawns. The newcomers lined up along the counter; the bartender selected a fine and extremely active prawn from his tray, brushed it with oil and dropped it on the hotplate. Here it squirmed and snapped, emitting the faintest of hisses, before being snatched away to be presented on a blue saucer to the first of those in the line.
    The recipient took it in a tissue between his fingers and bit off its head. This he dropped on the immaculate floor before he thrust half the body into his mouth and began to crunch. It was Hem’s contention that all that was most valuable in a prawn was in immediate contact with the inner