HAVANA — At the Salon Rojo, one of Havana’s most popular nightspots, where the reggaeton usually blares into the early hours, the music stopped abruptly.

An announcement was made: Fidel Castro had died.

The police waved along young women in miniskirts and young men with gelled mohawks as they spilled into the streets. No one was weeping. No one was chanting.

Some said the country would be better off, freer now, though they said it quietly, wary that someone might overhear such hopes. A hearse, repurposed as a taxi, happened to drive by.

“Take him with you,” one of the young men shouted with a smile as a friend cheered him on. The young women with them looked embarrassed, but not angry.