Immortality

For Milan Kundera, death and immortality walk along together. Sometimes I think of death and more than once have felt impelled by Kundera´s thoughts on immortality, fame, transcendence, that is, leaving a trace. On Kundera´s novel, Agnes receives the visit of an individual, a strange man from the other world, from some unknown place, and asks her if she and Paul want to be together in the afterlife. She felt threatened by Paul´s presence. At the end she says no, that she prefers not to meet him again, or better, that they prefer not to find each other again. That chapter ends with a hair-raising phrase: "These words are like a slam-bang to the illusion of love". The illusion of love. As if love was something else but an illusion. And, in that possible illusion, the terror of immortality becomes accentuated before doubt. Without the so-called banalities (that is, if you would have done things the same way, if you would have taken advantage of the opportunities you had) doubt sometimes strengthen us.

Just like immortality and death, doubt and repentance also walk along together. More than once I flew off the handle, more than once I hurt people who loved me, more than once I betrayed, more than once I screwed up again and again. Then, probably, I would draft a huge list of the things I did and those I repent of today, a long list that would go from the Avenida del Puerto all along Malecón, beyond the tunnel and beyond Quinta Avenida and would probably get to Santa Fe and maybe a little further. But if that character from Kundera´s novel shows up one day and asks me who I would like to see in the afterlife, I am sure that her name (that I don´t write here for obvious reasons) would be among the first, if not the first.

That love is what has brought me closer to immortality, to that state of not dying, or living beyond death. If one day, inevitably, I have to be remembered for something, if there was no other chance and immortality was, more than a certainty a condemnation, I would like to be remembered by that love. I think that love is what has made me grow stronger, brave. Love is what has made that my footsteps don´t vanish in the air.

Superhero

I am too slow for being a superhero.

I have thought about it. Sometimes I lie in bed and imagine that I turn into any of those characters that Hollywood has magnified based on comics, most of them valuable objects for collectors. But I lack of material. I don´t have the attributes to become into he who lives life saving the Universe. But Osvalditín, my friend´s son, wants me to become a superhero from time to time. He is five years old. He has no idea of how is the world outside, how rotten and screwed it is. He still holds the innocent illusion that superheroes exist, but he doesn´t know me enough so as to perceive I am some guy whose only virtue is precisely not having any. A superhero who respects himself has two lives: the one when he is a common guy, a bit shy, a gifted or a millionaire, and the other when he disguises and goes out to save the world. I can´t be a superhero, but I cannot even be his alter ego. Osvalditín wants me to be Batman but I can´t be Bruce Wayne. He wants me to be Spiderman but I can´t be Peter Parker. He wants me to be Hulk but I can´t be Bruce Banner. One day he will discover I am just a poor copy of the sum of all the characters in the books I have read. Actually, the sum of all the defects of the characters in the books I have read. Jean Valjean looking for redemption and running away eternally. Ambitious and hypocrite like Julien Sorel. Cold and selfish like Valmont, yet exposed to love. As Grenouille, going unnoticed, only loved for something I don´t really have. Castrated like Cuéllar. Sceptical and without repentance for my actions like Mersault. Devoured by ants like the last of the Buendía´s cast.

I am too lazy for being a superhero. If one day it would be imminent and I had to save your life, I might leave it for another day.

Absolutism

I can´t remember how old I was. Nor the school year. But when I was a kid I studied Ancient History and Contemporary History. I remember the books. Hardcover. I like History. They say that it is always told by the victors but I don´t really care as long as it is attractive, like many passages of the Bible. When I was a kid I read the Bible. I also read the Popol Vuh. Just like I read The Capital. But in the books of history there was always a term that, probably, vanished from the Cuban school leaflets: absolutism, that is, the absolute mandate of a king in accordance with the divine law, that is, for God´s will. If it is God who commands there is no problem. At least He is someone or something we don´t know or see on television. He doesn´t give long speeches or proclaims himself God. The existence of God may be consequence of others´ emptiness who, back in time, needed to believe in something, to cling on to something. The interesting thing is that there are still crowds who believe in God. And it is even more interesting that crowds applaud the existence of a Pope or the kings.

Kings are kings forever, for generations of generations. For some eventful reason that presupposes discoveries or who found who, Canada has a Queen. She and her heir come to visit, sometimes. There are always protests because nobody understands that Canada has a Queen. That is ancient history. Just like the word absolutism exists, there is also the word democracy. Democracy means, plainly, that the people has the capacity and right to vote for that person who will govern, right or wrong, the nation. And Canada never had kings. There were aboriginal chiefs, and it was a vast deserted land, and still is. Recently, the prince and his wife came to Canada. Later the Queen herself showed up. Watching at the protests on TV I started thinking that those protests really make no sense. The Queen or her heir can´t decide on anything regarding Canada. Her absolutism is kind of virtual. With all that pompous scaffolding, they cannot come to tell Canadians what to do.

I think of my country. I wonder what is the word that better suits to whatever prevails over there. It is not absolutism, because those who rule the country don´t even believe in God. There was a time when believing in God was a crime in the Island. It shouldn´t be democracy because I never voted for he who governs. Or those who govern. I voted for someone in my neighbourhood who would go later and vote for some other person who would vote for another person who would get to the National Assembly to decide who would be the President. But certainly, between absolutism and democracy, the first word gets closer. Anyway, the existence of God is a relatively questionable matter.

History

There are 169 municipalities in Cuba. In every municipality there is a museum. There are even small museums in towns that are not municipalities. Supposedly, museums treasure the history of those places. In Colombia, once named Elia, the municipality where I was born, there is a museum. In Amancio Rodríguez, once named Francisco, the town where I grew up, there is also a museum. I can barely remember the one in Colombia. I was a little kid when I left and in the poetry readings I offered later in that space the administration used to remove the objects from the main cloister fearing that writers (collectors of anything that shines, like güijes) would steal them. I remember the museum of Amancio. There were objects that, allegedly, belonged to the aboriginal people of the area. To the aboriginal people of yesteryear, the ones who wore loincloths. The ones from this time also, sometimes, have to wear loincloths, an innocent (and perverted) reader, like you, would think. But I mean the ones who were colonized. The ones from this time (you would think) have also been colonized. But I mean the ones colonized by the Spaniards. There are Spanish men living in Amancio, they have colonized certain mulatas that walk almost naked along the main street of the town. Or village. I guess its inhabitants are harvesters, or hunters, or both. I guess sometimes they are cannibals. But there is not much of the aboriginals of this time in the museums. There are objects of the aboriginals of yesteryear: carved stones, pieces of wood that were hunting and fishing utensils, remains of axes. To defend themselves. To rebel. The yesteryear aboriginals used to rebel and then, as a result of those rebellions, they were burnt. There are also objects of the mambises, who also rebelled. Rifles, pistols, machetes, sabres, bullets, gun belts. Phrases written or said by them against the colonial yoke, the one from yesteryear. In the museum of Amancio, I can still remember, there was a little chick with four legs. We didn´t understand what did the little chick had to do with the national or the municipal history. Not the little chick or its four legs. It was kind of sad to see it there, glued to a piece of wood. The little chick was sad, maybe because it was surrounded by too much history. There were other animals, also sad. Too much history, I suppose. I imagine that children still go to the museum in Amancio and look at the four-legged little chick, if it is still there, and they cannot understand what it has to do with the history of the Homeland. A four-legged little chick is just a poor animal with a deformity. The history of the homeland is just a poor little animal.

The (radiant) future of the Homeland

When I was a little kid, they announced the radiant future of the Homeland. I used to imagine it, by the time I was very young, with twinkling lights, phosphorescent streamers, fireworks. Later on, I dreamt that what they were announcing like the radiant future of the Homeland could be a sort of clean country like those you see in a movie, or this country where I live in now, without cracked walls, without stony, dusty streets, without people with faces disturbed by hopelessness. I used to imagine it really glowing, almost a blinding light. But I was growing up and my parents were getting old gradually and the so-announced future didn´t arrive, and I was pretty sure that it was going to surprise us one day we were always ready for. That certainty was turning into a vague hope and later into the cruel uncertainty. There were always people who never believed in a future and least luminous. They were called sceptical, faithless men. Afterwards, those men disappeared and inhabit now in cities more or less bright. About a year ago I left Cuba and I still believed, naively, that one day the future would come and I was not going to witness it. There were even friends who confirmed it: the radiant future of the Homeland was already near and I would be too far. I was accused many times for being pessimistic: I could only see the dark side, the rotten part of everything, and for men like me the future of the Homeland was taking so long to shine once and for all. Before coming to Canada, the Island was slashed by one of the worst hurricanes in our hurricane-like history, just when it was expected at least a spark of that longed future. I heard people say that God had abandoned us in the middle of the sea and others that not even Nature (the god of atheists) was with us. I was already living here when the blackouts returned, and that confirmed, once again, my suspicions. The dreamt advent is still a chimera. The ration card may fade and those things supposed to be government kindnesses (the essence of all those years of resistance) are now aimed against the people: is the people´s fault having got used to those free things, it´s their fault having sucked the kind breast of the Motherland and it´s the people´s fault that now she is like that, starving and with bags under her eyes. I always heard that the future of the Homeland would never come, but as innocence is not a capital sin, I was always holding the innocent hope that, suddenly, the heavens and seas would open and there would be light all over the Island. Ah, the future... I still close my eyes and I can almost smell it, touch it, taste it.

Nostalgia

There is a tiny Cuban insect that, in the island´s countryside, is called chichí. It stings so hard that you even get to feel like losing the sensation of that pain. Sometimes it even feels like you have been anesthetised in that area as it is a very deep pain. It has another peculiar characteristic: when you crush that little creature, it gives off an unbearable stench. I don´t even know if it is a defence mechanism used when threatened or if it only stinks to annoy, to screw you after being crushed. That little bug reminds me of nostalgia, nothing is more similar to nostalgia, that weird and imperceptible sensation that lands in our skin, bites and leaves a deep, lasting pain and, besides, stinks.

The (Tropical) Samizdat

To walk down Obispo Street was my favourite sport. In fact, if anyone who knows me well read this will say that it was, basically, the only sport I practiced. And that was a sort of compulsory rite demanded by the fact of having worked, during so many years, in the Cuban Book Institute, located on the Palacio del Segundo Cabo. Now I think that after working for over six years in that magical space (the Palacio, I mean), the best thing I could do was leaving it behind, because, as they have announced, the Institute will have another seat in the intersection of Obispo and Aguiar streets, a sort of bunker where I sadly saw, just weeks before coming to Canada, how the police was taking out the body of a man who had died the night before. Bad omens for Cuban literature that will have its location in that space that since that morning is, for me, somehow sinister. The Palacio del Segundo Cabo still has such appealing magic that compels you to get there at least to sit in the patio and admire the amazing colonial architecture. It is a beautiful building turning into pieces but it still has some enchantment and undeniable magic.

I used to walk down Obispo street and stopped at my friend´s art galleries, where I had special gatherings with Álvaro Almaguer, Silvio (not Silvio Rodríguez), Julia Valdés, Ronaldo Encarnación. From those places I could see Cubans juggling to survive. From those places I tried to unravel the dynamics established among any sort of characters that mill around that street. In the middle of that predominant sepia in Havana, the colors were surprising: prostitutes, policemen, artists, professionals, students, peddlers (those who hawk and those who whisper), dogs (scabby and some with pedigree), madmen and beggars (scabby and with pedigree). Everything I saw in Obispo Street, that was a constant anthill, called my attention and, almost a voyeur, I looked at all, cautiously, because they could also take me by an undercover agent, and no possible explanation on literary purposes would save me from a problem with the marginal mafia of Old Havana. And one of the things that really called my attention in that ancient artery (I like to call it artery because blood runs through it, just like in Obispo Street) is the way information moves all along that street. Since you start walking down in front of the Floridita and you go getting into what is supposed to be a boulevard, you can get to know the most recent events that interest the common Cuban: the last artist or baseball player who deserted, what TV station or team hired him, how much they are paying him, and you can listen to any of these information or see how they smuggle printed emails and internet pages, compact discs or flash memories.

In Cuba is very common the traffic of movies, TV series and soap operas. The one who does not have a satellite or a satellite connection (for the reasonable price of 10 CUC a month), has a DVD player and someone who supplies (for the reasonable price of 5 Cuban pesos) all kinds of materials that can be series like CSI, Dexter or The Tudors, or a soap opera where César Évora is the main character, or a compendium of the Univisión newsreals, or the last game of the White Sox where Alexey Ramírez made a grand slam or the fight where Yuriolkis Gamboa got his first professional world title, and even a TV show where some former agent of the Cuban state security reveals secrets of the Commander in Chief himself. That personage who supplies those materials goes walking by the street with his backpack, just like a common citizen, and gets into your house like a family member or a close friend and announces the highlights. I met some who even use pens with invisible ink so that when they are caught there are no written proofs left.

On Obispo street, I saw people, from door to door, winking eyes and talking in codes to interchange those materials. On that street I even saw people smuggling with books of writers banned in the Island (Cabrera Infante, Zoe Valdés, Jesús Díaz, Norberto Fuentes), films and documentaries about Cuba that are not screened in the movies or television. As little kids, Cubans love whatever is prohibited and anything coming with the label of proscription generates immediate temptation. I have a friend who used to live, before leaving the Island, in a building that was connected (every single apartment) to the cable television of someone who lived three or four buildings away from his. He told me that when the guy came to install the wire, he doubted because there was a family of "integrated" people (that is, communists) and of course they didn´t have a penny to pay the illegal service, besides, there was a possibility of denunciation. And the solution was that every house would pay an additional dollar to defray their connection and they received it gladly. I also know the story of an old man who fell from a third floor and died trying to rip off the wires after he heard that the police was coming to the building to carry out a raid. The Cuban television, now with five channels, shows most of the so-criticized North American series (I mean criticized by the national media), but people keep on renting other series and shows and sports events. And people still keep on printing emails and internet pages with polemic subjects on the Island, and they still listen to the music, watch the TV shows, movies, games and fights of those who defected. Cubans have thirst of information, especially when it has to do with their own people´s achievements abroad.

When the Soviet Union erected as the center of the international socialism, this practice of publishing and distributing banned texts was called "samizdat". A novel printed this way was The Master and Margarita, by Mijaíl Bulgakov, published in Cuba (I don't know if by mistake). I sold my copy when I was living in Las Tunas and recently I found a similar one being advertised on eBay for 60 dollars, maybe mine. By the time, the reproduction used was that one by means of carbon paper, with those old stencil machines still on some Cuban institutions. The policy of the Soviet state to fight any ideological disassociation was the famous "glasnost", that is, the informative transparency: a total governmental control on publishing houses, newspapers and magazines. Same thing still happens in Cuba. There is a sort of "samizdat" in the Island (of course, now helped by novel technologies) impossible to be controlled by the government. I am aware that the regime has tried to deactivate every underground network but it has been impossible: for every network they deactivate, ten more emerge, although I have to say that in many cases, almost the majority, those networks are held by economic problems, as a way of living, and not as a mere exercise to dissent.