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light eyes, blond hair, she had a lot of vitality and a brilliant conversation. It was demanding. In instances of conflicting opinion, she was quick to introduce into the conversation even plates and glasses which, since her friends were now skilled in foreseeing and dodging, sometimes ended upon the heads of the unsuspecting customers of the elegant places she frequented.

Gianfranci and/or I often joined Marita's group which included her calm and philosophical husband Antonio and her admirer Jaime Marquis of Campoflorido, who often ended up making her nervous. And this made the evenings interesting because you knew how they started, never how they would end.

I had the impression that Papa, while openly declaring his sympathy for Marita, was a little afraid of her all-Latin vivacity. In fact, one day he said to me: "In war it is simple because you more or less know when to expect a flurry. With Marita you move out into the open."

So I was not surprised that one afternoon Papa was preparing for Marita's arrival by swallowing one Daiquiri after another. Obsessed by the insistence of some highly refined, highly educated French snobs who wanted to meet Ernest Hemingway, she had decided to take them to the Finca: "So I take them off the cojones*" she concluded on the phone.

When the Sanfelice group arrived with the very refined and at that moment intimidated French, Marita immediately made the point: "No te preocupa de esta gente de mierda**" she said in Spanish to reassure Papa. Ben knew how he always and categorically refused to meet the various waves of people who, pleading with mutual friends, tried to get to know him in order to then be able to recount it while passing through Havana they had shook hands with Ernest Hemingway.

Papa, standing on the steps, smiled at Marita and immediately suggested that we go and take a look at the little circus that had been waiting for a few days just outside the gate of the...

* testicles (as if you didn't know).

** You don't care about these shitty people