I didn’t sleep that night. I spent it running up and down the Prado and Central Park. A lot of people think that if you’re cross-eyed, you see objects differently. But I saw the city as it really was. Even though I’d only seen it for about one month, I could, in an instant, sense danger. There was no light in the public areas. All I could make out was the marquee of the Hotel Inglaterra. The García Lorca Theater seemed like a sylph’s castle. The Payret movie house sign featured Catherine Deneuve. The capitol building was the city’s ultimate reflection. Central Park looked like it does anytime people go out to find the latest gossip. Black guys in colorful shirts looked like they were AWOL from a carnival. Women wearing dresses made by pious seamstresses on Monte Street strolled through the shadows. Sodomites tattooed trees with men’s hearts, and other creatures of the night lost their money on the Chinese lottery.
I was walking through the forbidden city. My hunger chased after the smells, my guts doing somersaults.
A mulatto made me an offer from his selection of sweets: “C’mon, big man, buy a little piece of rum cake.”
“Pain and fate,” I muttered like a fool.
I was thinking about what I’d just said, that phrase that I’d always heard coming from my mother when talking about human travails. Havana was so different from my hometown, the sounds of the night so alien. My hometown didn’t have the nightlife that now spread before me, only a few early commuters taking the train to Camagüey. The great city was like a shop window on display for those who were denied the light of day, creatures who lived in caves in the tenements, in shacks where the daughters’ beauty was discovered too soon by the fathers, shacks where the sky was never seen, where the sun was a curse on the law of switchblades and blood, the law of an Old Havana made for carriages and slaves, for light from bitter firewood, a city still getting used to the workings of the modern era.
In the farthest corner of the park, there was a newsstand with little or no sign of life, a newsstand with an old man selling and buying old magazines: Nat King Cole singing at the Tropicana, Che Guevara with his visionary gaze, Camilo Cienfuegos astride his huge mount, the 1962 missile crisis, Khrushchev with a black showgirl on his arm...People bought the magazines that were the biographies of their souls. And me, I was running from those experiences, from the photos that weren’t of me, and yet were all about me. I wandered aimlessly by the doorways of the tobacco factories, still hearing the echo of the fluttering of leaves from Pinar del Río, the specter of the binnacles whose treasures were Romeo y Julietas, Partagás, Montecristos.
I searched for the Prado again via the sleepy routes of the buildings in ruins, and then, once there, just killed time until it was morning and I had to take my train back to the pastoral world of the provinces, back to my mother, back to the habit of pissing every night at 10 and going to bed, beaten down by obedience and pretense.
I was now standing right in front of the marble bench from which my suitcase had been stolen, the laurel trees placid in the absence of Glenn Miller.
“Get your peanut brittle right here!” chanted a dwarf at the corner of the Hotel Sevilla. He repeated his mantra like a suicide: “Hey, kid, peanut brittle!”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t have one red cent, that I felt like the biggest loser and nothing could save me, except maybe the train, which would take me far away from Havana.
Then the dwarf crossed the street and stood right in front of me, grinning, wearing a corduroy cap, giant shoes, and muslin pants.
“Here,” he said, extending a piece of peanut brittle my way. “It’s on the house. C’mon, c’mon, take it.”
I looked at him and he looked at me.
“Who do you sell to at night?” I asked himy.
“No one. Nighttime’s just fun.”
He left, intoning his chant.
Everyone here’s nuts, I said to myself, and looked out at the abandoned streets, where the only sound was a distant voice coming from the upper floors of the Sevilla, a woman’s voice wailing because of the loneliness that boleros provoke, then this was followed by quieter words of comfort, coming, I think, from another woman.
I woke when a crow’s shit splattered next to me. The sun was coming up and the crow seemed polished with tar. Sparrows flew from their hiding places to initiate anonymous battles in the laurel trees. I checked my pockets and realized I still had the train ticket, the ticket that would spirit me away from all hope.
I started to make my way to the train station when I saw the Prado had come alive. People hurried from one side of the boulevard to the other aimlessly, lining up at bus stops to board nonexistent buses. On my way to the trains, there wasn’t a single restaurant open, not the slightest aroma of coffee. As day broke, the city was a mere geographical point, with no odors, only a fresh breeze that blew in from the sea; that was probably the only smelclass="underline" the morning sea, awakening.
“God exists,” a fifty-something woman said as she passed me near the station.
“So does the devil,” I replied, not giving her another thought.
I was soon showing my ticket to the security guard at the door of the station lobby, then standing in line for the window where they would verify that the ticket was mine. I took out my ID, my stamped photo, which showed my crossed eyes. The woman looked at me, then at the photo, checking my ID number as if it were the number of some domesticated animal, my height in inches, the nervous tic on my mouth, my travel permit.
“The train will leave early for the first time in fifty-two years,” the woman said ecstatically. “Go to platform three, coach fifty-two, seat eighty-one. If you’re traveling with food, it may be confiscated; no animals are allowed; the traveler’s responsibilities include...”
I stopped listening and made my way to the entrance to platform three, where they asked for my ticket again and insisted on seeing my ID. This time it was a short, fat man with a graying mustache. Finally, with a little push, he let me through and I ran down the platform, always terrified that I’ll be late for everything. Where was coach fifty-two? All were there but that one. I started screaming. A crowd of about thirty gathered around me. The locomotive whistled its final warning.
“Coach fifty-two!” I demanded.
The fat man came up to me and explained that because of an unforgivable error, they had not hooked up coach fifty-two. Later, with an asthmatic voice, he told us our fares would be refunded and we could leave the next morning. I drew up to my full height and demanded to see the supervisor, anybody, to claim coach fifty-two. Pulling on his mustache, the man muttered something about the effects of the imperialistic blockade, the need to have a conscience and a spirit of sacrifice.
“Travel tomorrow, folks.”
I decided not to go on. Nobody was paying attention to me anyway. I went back to the cashier and the same woman who’d boasted about an early departure now gave me a refund for my ticket. It barely totaled twenty pesos. At that moment, I reached a decision. I would not leave Havana. Maybe my destiny rested among the two million souls who lived facing the Gulf. If I died trying to make a go of it, nothing of value would be lost. Who would care about a cross-eyed guy? Who would cry for a cross-eyed guy? My mother would be the only one who suffered, but she’d get over it. It would be like when my father died. Days of grieving, days of mourning, and then Christian comfort.
I left the station, headed nowhere in particular. Since I’ve always been a dreamer, I convinced myself someone would take pity on me. But in the meantime, where would I go? Hunger kept tapping at my stomach. I thought that with my twenty pesos I might be able to buy one of those fish fritters they sell down by Puerto Avenue. I only had to go down a few winding alleyways and I’d soon be there. But as I was about to set off, I saw the same dwarf who’d given me the peanut brittle that morning, and he was now standing on top of a manhole cover sticking out of the street like a metal helmet. He recognized me and waved his corduroy cap. I went up to greet him, but he was muttering under his breath. He was saying something about young people, that it was impossible to recruit them these days, that the chosen few would be fewer each time, that the Grail would have to import creatures from another planet.