Mona and Other Tales

by Reinaldo Arenas

  1967

  Something Is Happening on the Top Floor

  A bird is singing, perched on

  the high electric wires.

  If I could, I would also sing,

  until my voice gave out.

  NOW THE MAN LOOKED down on the street, which appeared to be trapped in a thick network of wires of all sorts. And he started thinking. On the top floor, no city blare reached him to interrupt his thoughts. There were voices rising from the street, and the drone of motors, unintelligible conversations, vituperations, shrieks, music that was not music but clatter adding to the total disharmony, fragmented echoes of marches and demonstrations, gibberish, and whistles. . . . But all that cacophony gradually faded as it passed the lower floors, so that on the top terrace, where he was, only the reverberations from a truly extraordinary noise could reach him, which never happened. . . . A bird was singing, perched on the telegraph or telephone wires or electrical cables. The bird seemed to be glued to the wires, and the man stuck out his tongue and made a threatening gesture, but the bird did not leave and kept on singing. “It doesn’t matter; it will be dark soon, and you’ll have to go away,” the man said aloud. The bird raised the pitch of its singsong, and the man then had to make a great effort to put his thoughts in order within the set time. But the afternoon, except for that stupid bird, was a good one for reflection. Standing next to the void, the man felt his ideas come and go; sometimes they stayed for a while playing in front of him, and he saw them coming at him like tiny sunbursts. Once again, it was time to start the story.

  A chorus of fixed ideas surrounded the man and left him naked. One of them, very wrinkled and heavyset, jumped at his head from the roof of the building, and the man shrank, turning into a boy. Looking down, he saw himself in the street, running, hawking newspapers from his battered bicycle, and trying to escape from his mother, who was chasing after him with a long mop. He laughed uncontrollably and dreamed he was falling. . . . Up high, ideas would appear and disappear, changing their garb and instruments, sobbing or letting out strange bursts of laughter, dragging themselves on the floor or soaring up in the sky, singing or playing trumpets, shaking their buttocks or making undefinable gestures. It all resulted in a struggle among unusual furies which, in their wild commotion, kept falling into the street and, though invisible, crowding the sidewalks. . . . It was noon, and his mother was sitting on the couch, in the middle of the living room. “Your father is dead,” she said when the boy came in. “Your father died,” she said. The boy walked to the washstand to wash his hands, but there was no water; the bowl was empty. He stood on tiptoe to see if there were any drops left at the bottom, and the bowl went crashing to the floor, its enamel cracking and chipping off. “Whose father?” the boy asked. The mother walked over to him and hit him on the head with the bowl, chipping it even more. It looked totally ruined. So much so that its screams were heard as the chips were flying away. “You broke the bowl,” said the mother. “You broke it. . . .” It was that particular time of day when it’s neither day nor night, the time when things change shape, growing bigger or smaller; the time when all the shadows lying at the bottom of things, which had been in hiding during the day, can now escape and stretch until they touch each other and form one single shadow. From his lookout the man could see the sun gasping as it sank into the sea in a cloud of vapor. Below, the boy managed to get across the street without being run over by the heavy traffic. He slid between two tractor-trailers, caused several cars to collide, and knocked down an old man, who, upon reaching the corner, dropped dead in a rage; but the boy was not hurt. . . . He got home, ran to the bathroom, and to his horror verified that he was turning into a monster: he was growing a lot of hair in some unimaginable places. With arms raised, he walked to the mirror, then ran to the sewing machine, picked up the scissors, and did away even with his eyebrows and eyelashes. More at peace, he got out into the patio. But it was the same the next day, and though he couldn’t tell anybody, he felt an enormous urge to start screaming. . . . The screams, which never left his throat, reached up to the man who was struggling with his thoughts on the top floor, since they were extraordinary sounds. The man, outraged, threw a cluster of thoughts into the void, and the boy was transformed. That’s how he flashed back to the distressing period of his adolescence when, without even a dime to go to the movies, he was smoking in secret and masturbating while looking at a girl with a shaved head. “You have to work,” said the mother. “With the English that you know, you could find a job.” “Young man,” his ad read, “fluent in English, seeks position. . . .” The man above had started pacing. He was walking fast from one corner of the terrace to the other, occasionally leaning over the railing. The city lights were beginning to appear. . . . The following day he received a response from a distillery that made cheap rum—firewater, or aguardiente, as people call it. And on his way there, even though he kept telling himself, Damn it, you are not really going to do that to me and start sweating now, by the time he arrived, his hands were already dripping wet. He walked between the columns of bottles that obstructed his path, leaving little puddles behind him. But the job did not work out. Yes, it was true he was fluent in English, but that was not the issue. His knowledge of the language was fine, but just broken English would have been enough; what’s more, it was not useful to know it too well, and especially not with a Shakespearean accent. Of what use was that Elizabethan thespian diction coming from the throat of a youth whose job was (“no matter how”) to persuade tourists from cruise ships to go with him to the firewater distillery, and, once there, to get them drunk? “That’s what your job is. To convince them, lure them, drag them here so that they drink our rum. It pays twenty pesos a month. . . .” The terrace clouded over for a moment with hundreds of ideas of all sizes, their membranous wings grazing the man, lifting and shaking him, raising him up to the ceiling and dropping him again to the floor. The man finally got hold of himself and continued walking. Breathing heavily, he cleared the way with his hands and lit a cigarette. . . . The first day he managed to drag along an American tourist, an old teetotaler who thought the boy was taking him to a museum; the next day he carted away two young men who didn’t drink but were eager to get to a brothel; on the third day he took with him two very leggy, lanky women who did get drunk, didn’t pay, and wanted to have sex with him. On the fourth day he was fired, though he got paid for his three days of work. “He’s no good for this kind of work,” he heard people say while he hid behind the rows of bottles. “The boy has no drive. . . . We need someone lively who can bring people here, no matter how, and doesn’t shy away from anything.” And doesn’t shy away from anything. And doesn’t shy away. . . . Now it all became a dizzying return to the same point where his storytelling had started, or rather, to the point where he would end it. . . . He saw himself going in and coming out of one restaurant after another, one drugstore after another, one cafeteria after another. In short, a whole parade of useless and implacable jobs that would only atrophy the beautiful images of the future that he had envisioned for himself in times past. During the whole review of his life, the most peaceful moment was that of the death of his mother. As soon as he found out, he went out into the patio (the place where he used to let off steam when something important happened). “She died,” he said. “She is dead,” he said. He went back inside and saw her face, so serene: a look that he never had been able to see at all while she was alive. He carried the coffin himself, and paid for the funeral. All his aunts gathered around her tomb, all in black. The scene made him think of vultures devouring a rotten carcass. “Come here, kid,” the vultures said, in tears. And he ran away, in between the crosses, and disappeared into the last bustle of the day. Something was telling him that he had been saved. Someone inside him was shouting at him that he had been liberated, that he would no longer need to become an obscure man who bites his lip, and who often gets phone calls saying that everything is fine. And he ran into the crowd. And he wanted to start screaming, “Mot
her died at last.” And he did. And he felt as if an enormous carapace that had been crushing him since the moment of his birth had been lifted. . . . He got married, changed jobs, had children, left the country. He kept on moving from one place to another, trying to escape relentless hunger, and eliminating the possibility of any relief, of any chance of doing a genuine act. Always tied to the damned routine that ruled his time, but waiting. . . . And old age was creeping up even into the most minute corners of his body. The press was reporting exciting stories about the latest events in his country. A revolution, what could that be . . . ? So he returned with all his relatives. Up there, the battle against those membranous beings was coming to an end; the majority of them had fled; others had accepted defeat and were vanishing in the air. Only the very largest ones remained, unforgiving, their beaks threatening. Sounds of children yelling were coming from the living room, and of the mother closing the door to the hallway. “They are back,” said the man. And with a gesture, he made all the vermin disappear. But the most powerful ones quickly climbed up the walls, up the drainpipes, and quite intent on staying, they positioned themselves between the man and the door. The clamor of children’s voices was no longer audible. Now only the woman was speaking, but he didn’t hear her either. “I am sure,” he said. “I am fine,” he said. “I am at peace.” And he shooed away the ideas that, adopting mosquito shapes, were buzzing around his ears and biting him on the neck. With great effort, he delved into the retelling of the present days. He had been able to review all of his life in the grip of those vermin, and now he found himself at peace, with the triumph (was that the word?) that alleviates the horrors of getting old. Again he could hear the children’s yells. I am doing fine. Here is home, my home, and behind the door are my wife and kids. I have a decent pension. Here is home. And his hands caressed the walls, as if the house were a domestic animal. . . . The voice of the woman could be heard, calling him. “I’m coming,” he said, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” And he groped in the dark trying to find the door. “This is peace: a home, a pension, and the kind of weather that always remains the same. Always remains the same,” he repeated as if trying to accelerate his steps by means of words. “And the kind of weather that always remains the same,” he said once more, and stopped. Then he leaned over the railing again. Way down there, beyond the jungle of cables, the rush-hour lights were swarming. . . . There were voices that the man did not hear. Moving like a performer, he passed his feet over the railing and, once on the other side, he held on to it with only one hand. Then he let himself go, without haste, like someone sliding in from the edge of a swimming pool. “Aren’t you going to come in?” his wife asked from the dining room as she came out on the terrace. “Oh,” the woman said, raising one hand, not to any part of her face but to her neck. Like that she went into the dining room, and in a reassuring manner, began to serve dinner. . . . The man, bursting through wires, flagpoles, and neon signs, was coming down with an impish smile. Shattering the last lightbulbs, he fell headfirst on a car top, and bounced three times. . . . The boy, standing on the sidewalk, saw him hit the ground and smash into pieces. Then he took his battered bicycle, and continued hawking his newspapers, but with a little more verve. He was glad to have watched that spectacle, which he had seen only in an occasional movie when he had money (rarely) for the ticket.

  The bird, frightened by the thud, flew away, circling the deep red sky that was already fading slowly into the horizon. The bird finally landed, perching on the telephone wires of a neighborhood street. Its song was heard for a while in the dark of night.

  La Habana, 1963

  The Parade Ends

  To Lázaro Gómez Carriles, witness

  NOW SHE’S ESCAPING ME. Again I’m going to lose her in this sea of legs so close together that they seem to blend into a jumble of clothes and compressed bodies, all these bare feet sinking into pools of urine and mud, into mounds of excrement. I’m looking for her; I keep looking for her as if she were (as in fact she is) my sole salvation. But again she is escaping me, the bitch. There she surely goes, miraculously clearing her path, slithering away between the soiled shoes, between bodies so tightly packed they cannot collapse even if they faint, amid the tears and urine, liberating herself from me as she slips away and, at the same time, by who knows what sort of unique intuition, managing to elude being fatally trampled. My life depends on you, my life depends on you, I tell her, slithering along just like her. And I go after her, sinking into the shit and the mud. I continue to pursue her, laboriously but mechanically pushing away bellies, buttocks, feet, arms, thighs; a whole mass of stinking flesh and bones, a whole mélange of screaming, shifting bulges wanting like me to move about, to turn around, to go somewhere else, and causing only greater compression or balancing on the other foot while stretching and convulsing but unable to break through, to take a step, to run, to truly get moving, or accomplish some displacement, some advance; all of us, like prey, caught in the same spiderweb that yields on one side, pulls back on the other, and lifts here, without ever permitting a breakthrough anywhere. So people retreat, advance, move backward, forward, between knee-bumping, kicking and being kicked, now raising arms, heads, noses high toward the sky in order to breathe, to see something other than the fusion of their own stinking bodies. But I proceed, I have not yet lost sight of her, and I continue pushing away bodies, dragging myself, being hit and cursed, but not giving up, still going after her. On this (on her) I’m betting my life. Life above all, life in spite of it all, life under any conditions, deprived of everything, deprived of you (and in spite of you), in the loud noise now rising between the cries and the singing, because they sing and sing again, the national anthem, no less. Life now, while I go after you, stepping through the excrement to the tune (or the screaming) of the anthem, their refuge and justification, instant solution, support; and as for the other things (what other things?), we shall see. Now I care only about that lizard, so crafty and covered with excrement, that damned lizard, again scurrying away from me among the thousands and thousands of feet also mired in shit. Life . . . He had reached again, like so many years ago, that extreme situation in which life is not even a useless and humiliating repetition, but is rather the ceaseless remembering of a repetition that in the beginning was nothing but a repetition; he had reached that place, that ultimate situation, that extreme point at which the fact of being alive stops being a matter to consider, and becomes instead something one cannot even be really sure is true. Standing there, or actually bent over, since his loft did not allow him to stand up straight, he was just staring, in that old room of a hotel that had seen much better days and was now inhabited by people like him, or even worse—screaming creatures with no other concept or principle or dream besides being able, regardless of means or of cost to anyone, to survive, that is, not to end up starving to death. From his motionless position, he was not looking at the past or the future, since both were not merely gloomy, but absurd; he was really looking at the makeshift steps to the “upper floor,” that is, to the loft where he could not even walk scrunched up but had to move on all fours so as not to slam his head into the ceiling. There he was, between the front wall by the hallway and the other wall by the sidewall of another building. Now he moved a bit, and his eyes met unexpectedly with his own image reflected in the mirror bolted to the door (kept provisionally closed) that faced the hallway. He was not the same person anymore; he was this other one now. He no longer ran through the savanna or the grasslands. He ran sometimes now, but through the hysterical mob, trying to climb on a crammed bus or to get a number in the line to buy bread or to buy yogurt. So, with effort, he drew back from his image—the present one—to move two body-lengths to reach the other end of his den, his kingdom, and sit on his makeshift seat, also put together in a combination of misery and necessity. It was like a stool covered by a parody of a cushion. Then, before he could think about a solution, before he could even think of how to think of a solution, there was loud noise: the violent scrap
ing of a kitchen pot, a child’s shriek or howl (to give it some name), the blare of voices from a television at full volume and several radios, from someone also pounding on the elevator door, and from a man endlessly yelling out, at the top of his lungs, at someone who evidently was not in or was deaf, didn’t want to respond or had died; that is, at neighbors, at his fellow human beings, which made him forget whatever had crossed his mind like a brief gust of wind, or that he had tried to conceptualize—what was it, what was it. And as he listened to the incessant pandemonium, a tremendous calm invaded him, a pervasive feeling of impotence and resignation that submerged him in a kind of stupor, or inertia, well known to him for many years. It was an overwhelming sensation of abandonment, of mortal dejection (or consolation), that made him feel beyond all resistance, all capability and vitality (a quiescence, a weariness), a certainty of real and irrevocable death. Yes, all of that was true, except for a saving grace: he had a friend. And therefore he could still breathe. Not with ease but with a lot of difficulty, by lifting his head, his nose; by opening his mouth toward the sky, by raising his arms, too, and separating himself, for only in this way could he take in a bit of the entirely contaminated, foul air, and go on, that is, dive back into the cacophony and the sweaty bodies, and again drag himself through the slippery, heavily trodden muck, pushing away legs, bundles, feet, trying to get to wherever his friend was, because he was certain that he was there, of course, in that mob, somewhere within that mob, as a part of that mob; that was why he pushed, lifted his head, inhaled, scrutinized the crowd, and continued pushing bodies and bundles away, without saying “excuse me” (who would apologize in this situation?), and he went on, at times calling out to him, trying to make himself heard over the ruling pandemonium. And the worst of it was that to continue was becoming more difficult by the minute. More people came, they kept coming, more and more people were jumping over the fence to get in. The gate had been closed already, but they were getting in at all costs, kicking and hitting. What a scandal, what an uproar. Through the dust and the shootings they kept coming, climbing up and vaulting the fence: old people, fat women, children and youths, mostly youths, all trying to reach the wire fence, while the rows of soldiers were becoming denser. More policemen, militiamen, people in uniform or in civilian disguise, were coming to stop the others—the crowds outside—from getting close to the fence. It was no longer a police cordon, but a triple cordon of fully armed officers. Now there was machine-gun clatter, and shouts of “Bastard, stop right there!” accompanied by the commotion and howls of those who, right there, in front of everybody, were being gunned down before climbing the fence, before touching it, before even getting close to it. Immediately, many men (soldiers in and out of uniform) hurriedly exited their Alfa Romeos, dragged the dead into their cars, and sped down Fifth Avenue. Now it was not only dangerous for the agitated masses outside who wanted to break the cordon (rather, cordons) and get in by any possible means, but for those inside, also being gunned down. Someone, one of the top dogs, a pincho, a mayimbe, abruptly stopped his car close to the fence and, enraged beyond control, started firing. Screaming in horror, the masses retreated, although they actually couldn’t, squeezing even more tightly against one another, and hiding their heads; they folded back as if trying to recoil into themselves. Anyone who was felled by a bullet, or who had simply slipped, could never stand up again, but would instead have as a last vision the thousands upon thousands of feet crossing overhead again and again, in circular stampede. “The national anthem, the national anthem,” somebody shouted. And suddenly, out of the immense mass of people under siege, came a strong, unanimous voice, a loud chant, impudent, out of tune, one of a kind, projected beyond the fence and into the night. This is absurd, absurd, he told himself, but for a moment he interrupted his search, he stopped; absurd, absurd, he repeated, that anthem again, absurd, absurd, but he was crying. . . . Horrendous, it was horrendous, because everything was horrendous, frightening, now, again, and forever and ever; but worse, much worse now, because he couldn’t afford the luxury, as before, of wasting time, his own time. His body bent within the narrow, low-ceilinged cubicle, he reviewed and reviewed once again the time he had lived, the time he had wasted, and he stopped there, as always, on the essential, makeshift steps, under the ceiling, also essential and makeshift, before the essential and makeshift table (a vat cover on top of a barrel); makeshift, makeshift, makeshift, everything was makeshift, improvised; and besides, he himself, and everybody else, had to be always improvising and accepting. Listening to improvised and incessant speeches; living in an improvised misery, where even the terror he suffered today would be replaced provisionally tomorrow by a new one, renovated, reinforced, augmented just like that, unexpectedly. Suffering from improvised laws that suddenly fostered crime instead of decreasing it; suffering improvised angry attacks against him, naturally, and against those who lived like him, at the margin, in a cloud, in another world, that is, in a room like this, ten by twelve, makeshift, on a makeshift loft, alone . . . To go out, to go down the stairs littered with garbage (the elevator was never working) and get to the street, what for? To go out was to prove once more that there was no way out. To go out meant to learn again that there was no place to go. To go out was to run the risk of being asked for his ID, for information, and, in spite of his always carrying all of the regime’s calamities—ID, syndicate ID, working ID, Obligatory Military Service ID, Committee for the Defense of the Revolution ID—in spite of his being, in fact, like a meek and noble beast, with all the cattle markings that his owner had firebranded on him, to go out meant the risk of failing to look good enough in the eyes of any policeman, who could designate him (just by moral impression) as an individual of doubtful character, suspicious, not solid-looking, untrustworthy, which was enough to land him in jail, as had already happened on several occasions. And he knew what that meant. On the other hand, what kind of scene would he find outside but the anatomy of his own sadness, the overwhelming spectacle of a city that was crumbling, of taciturn figures, either evasive or aggressive, all of them starved and desperate as well as harassed? Figures, in addition, already alien to any form of dialogue, any intimacy, any possibility of communication, and simply ready, out of vital necessity, to grab other people’s wallets, wristwatches, even eyeglasses from their owners’ faces, if they had been imprudent enough to go out with them on, and then to start running, without a word, into the dilapidated surroundings. Besides, it was not completely true—and this was his triumph, his anchor to salvation, his consolation—that he felt, or was, totally alone. . . . And with this consolation, this joy, he remained where he was: one foot on the makeshift steps, face blurred in the ramshackle mirror, head bent so as not to hit the low ceiling of his loft—serene, still, and waiting, because he was sure that his friend would arrive any minute now, as he did every morning. Yes, that was the way it would be; his friend would come. Finally he stepped into his makeshift room and sat on his makeshift seat. But where was he, where was he headed, where could he have gone; yet you must keep moving, he told himself; you must forge ahead, you must find him somewhere, on the roof, up in a tree; he cannot have vanished, he must be in this tumult, within this immense crowd that is growing bigger and becoming more hysterical. Now the people have captured someone, and they are throwing him up in the air and catching him so as to keep bouncing him back up; it’s a policeman who had infiltrated their ranks, they say, someone who was trying to lower the Peruvian flag from its pole. And now hundreds of desperate people’s arms, thousands of closed fists, are going after him, hurtling him back and forth. Let’s lynch him, Execute him, Off with his head, people are shouting, while the man disappears and reappears, to be swallowed again by the sea of desperate people, until he is hurled outside the fence. There the shooting continues, at the trees, in the air, at the cars which from a considerable distance and at great speed are trying to break through the barriers and get closer. I go where the furor is most intense, I look around, and push my way through,
I keep searching every anguished face, among those who have fainted, whether from the beatings or because of lack of food, among those who are asleep on their feet. . . . But nothing, nothing, I don’t see you, though I know, I know very well, that you’re somewhere around here, probably pretty close and also searching for me. We are here, we are both here, though we have not been able to find each other yet, with the threats and the shootings, with the awful smells becoming more intolerable all the time, and with the riots, the beatings, the fights, the conflicts that hunger and desperation, and this melding together, are causing; but at least we’re able to scream, now, right now, to scream, to scream. . . . To leave, to get out, that was the question. Before, the concern had been to join the rebels, to seek liberation, to revolt, to go into hiding, to find emancipation and independence. But now, none of that was possible, not because it had been achieved or was no longer necessary, but because now it was not advisable to express any of those ideas out loud, or even in a whisper, and so both of us keep talking while we walk in fear along the Malecón, now practically deserted though it’s not yet ten o’clock. The problem is not to say “We must leave.” I know that as well as you do, his friend said. The problem, the question, is how to get out. Yes, we agreed, how to get out. Maybe in one, or two, truck inner tubes, you say, with a canvas cover and a pair of oars. And then set out into the open sea. There’s no other way out. That’s true, that’s true, I said, there is no other possible solution. I can get the inner tubes, you say, and the canvas. You have to keep them in your room. My family must not know anything. But that is not the hard part, you said. It’s the other stuff. The surveillance. You know there is surveillance everywhere, and one cannot even get near a beach at night. The biggest problem is precisely how to get to the shore with two inner tubes and food and a few water bottles. Yes, I was saying. That’s right. First we have to inspect the place, study it, that is, go there without carrying anything, and see which is the best spot. I heard that maybe in Pinar del Río, you were saying. At least the currents are stronger there, they can pull us out, take us far. Some ship will pick us up. They have to; once we’re out at sea, someone will detect our presence and pick us up. But listen, I say, maybe we’ll get picked up by a Russian ship, or Chinese, or Cuban, and we’ll be brought back, except not here, to the Malecón or to the street, but to jail. . . . It’s five years now for what they call “illegal exit,” you say. And where is the legal exit? I asked. Would it be possible, perhaps, that if we wanted to leave, we could do it normally, as people do anywhere in the world, or almost anywhere? Of course not, you said. But they, they are the ones who make the laws here, and the ones who put us in jail. That’s true, I said. Not only is there the problem of getting out to sea, but also of getting to the other side of that sea. Have to get there somehow, you say. Without their finding out that we are thinking about leaving. They, they, I was saying. But no matter how much they watch, they cannot keep track of everything; they can’t, even if that’s all they do with their lives, watch over us, check on us every minute, nonstop. Perhaps you’re right, you said. And on the way back (it was better not to talk about this in my room), we finished rounding out our plan, our escape, our possibility, our attempt, but now she has disappeared again, she sneaked out, slipping out from below, through the mud and the excrement. Changing color, she has escaped from me again. In the crowd someone squeals. A woman jumps about hysterically, putting her hands to her thighs. “A bug, a bug,” she says, “a bug crept inside.” And the woman keeps on jumping. Until she scurries out of her skirt. There she goes, fleeing again, changing color and trying to hide, the bitch, in between the muddy shoes and bare feet, climbing up someone’s thigh, jumping onto somebody else’s back, now sliding between the sweaty necks pressed to one another, over the tumult that recedes, forming a single mass on the ground. I go over them too, I step on the face of someone (a woman, a child, an old man, I don’t know) who doesn’t have the energy to protest, and I go on, crouching on all fours now, sometimes raising a noisy chorus of complaints, besides getting kicked, shoved about, but watching her still, following her, keeping her in sight, now much closer. . . . But they, it was true, they did control everything, watch everything, listen to everything. They had thought of everything. That’s why they came very early. I went down in a hurry from the loft, thinking it was you. It was them. In one moment it all happened, it continues happening, it feels as if it had already happened. I had thought about it (expected it) so many times, imagined so often how it would happen, that now, when they come in and say, “Don’t move, you’re under arrest,” and begin their search, I don’t really know if everything is happening this instant, if it already happened, or if it keeps always happening. Since the space is so small, they don’t need much time for their search. Two of them up in the loft turn everything upside down; one of them stays below, guarding me; the others look under the cushions, in the double ceiling, in the improvised closet. And there they are, of course, the inner tubes and canvas, and something that I didn’t even know you had been able to get (which is now the most damaging): a compass. The search is quick and thorough, all done in front of me, but as if I didn’t exist. Papers, letters, books, the inner tubes, the canvas, and, of course, the compass, which I didn’t even know you had put in the closet; every object at this point becomes evidence, motive, probable cause, degree of guilt. A photo and a foreign pullover become for them convincing proofs, “instruments” of the same crime. They finally order me to take off my shoes in order to inspect the soles of my feet, then ask me to get fully dressed again. “Let’s go,” one of them tells me, putting his hand on my neck. We leave that way. The hallway is now totally empty, though I know that behind their doors, kept ajar, my neighbors are all there, fearful, watching. A woman who lost an eye when someone threw a stone at her, a man whose arm had been blown away by a bullet, another whose legs are swollen, almost bursting, a woman who presses against her belly and shouts that she doesn’t want to have her baby, because when she does, they’ll force her out of here; someone who is groping blindly because he lost his contact lenses. “Quiet, quiet, let’s see if we can listen to the Voice of America.” There are shouts, and more shouts demanding silence, but nobody shuts up; everybody has something to say, something to discuss, some solution, some complaint, some urgent business. “Let the ambassador speak, let the ambassador speak.” But nobody listens. They all want to be heard. “We’re going to starve to death, going to starve to death. Those bastards want to starve us.” There are shouts, and more shouts, and I’m also shouting: I’m calling out to you, pushing away people who are constantly getting angrier, hitting anyone in my way, proceeding through the excrement, the urine, the mangled bodies and the noise (the shooting outside, the shooting again), still looking for you. . . . At night—is it night already? Who can tell whether it is night or day now . . . ? Night, night, it’s night. Now it’s always night. In the middle of this medieval tunnel and with an enormous lightbulb that is never turned off over one’s head, of course it must always be night. Everybody brought down to the same uniform, the same shaved head, the same shout at roll call three times every day. Every day? Or every night? If I could at least get closer to the triple-barred window, I could find out what it really is now, night or day; but in order to get there one must belong to the “ruling class,” be one of the “bullies.” Little by little, time passes, we pass, I pass. It’s not that I’m getting used to it, or adjusting to it, or resigning myself. I’m just still surviving. Fortunately, on your last visit you were able to bring me some books. Light, we have plenty of that here. Silence, silence, that is really something I can hardly remember. But the problem, you tell me, is being able to endure, to survive, to wait. I was lucky they didn’t catch me in your room. At least I can bring you a few things. Here is some roasted cornmeal, crackers, sugar, and more books. Time passes, time passes, you say. Time, I say, does it pass? . . . It passes when you know that outside there are streets and trees, people dressed in different colors,
and the sea. Visiting time is over. We say good-bye. Going back in, that is the worst moment, when (duly escorted in the all-blue line, heads shaved) we enter the tunnel, the long, narrow, stone vault leading us back to that circular cavern, which incessantly exudes bedbugs, mildew, urine, and the particular steamy smell of excrement accumulating, overflowing; and to that din, that constant shouting of the prisoners, those beatings on the bunks and against the walls, to that powerlessness, that caged violence that somehow has to come out, manifest itself, burst. If only, I think while taking cover behind the last bunk, if only they would kill each other in silence. But this din, this deafening and monotonous exploding, this cackle, this jargon, in which, like it or not, one has to participate, participate or die. Oh, if there were anyone who had a bit of interest in my soul, if anyone would like to have it forever, in exchange I would . . . But it’s totally impossible to keep on thinking, with all this commotion, this dissonance, now rising and expanding its offensive. . . . As if struck by a unique plague, the trees have unexpectedly dropped all their leaves; one by one they have been yanked off and swallowed at lightning speed. Now, with their nails, with pieces of wire, with the heels of their shoes, everybody starts to rip the bark off the tree trunks; the roots, the grass, also disappear. “He who hides a piece of bread is playing with his life,” I hear someone warn. That is why I’m following you; that’s why, and for much more than that. You are my goal, my salvation, my reprieve, my motivation, my love, my big, my only and true love forever. And now once again you are provoking an uproar when you slither inside the pants leg of someone who was sleeping standing up, supported by the crowd. “An ass-fucking lizard,” somebody shouts, since in spite of, or because of, everything, people are still holding on to some of their sense of humor. “No, it’s a pansy,” pipes in someone else. “I drove her away when she was getting to my fly.” “It might be a macho,” a woman says, “because it got underneath my skirt.” “Let’s catch her; hey, it’s fresh meat.” And upon hearing that battle cry, they all jump on you. I, howling out, cross over their heads. I won’t allow it, I won’t allow it, I won’t allow the others to be the ones who get you, even if they kill me (I already see their faces eyeing me furiously, hungry, delirious, crazed); I keep pushing, making my way, coming to get you. “The food, the food.” The alarm sounds. Shrieks. Now, forgetting about you, we all try to reach the fence, where they say the guards are beginning to leave small cardboard boxes with food rations. The crowd is growing increasingly unruly, despite some people’s efforts to keep order. We know the delivery will be of only eight hundred rations, for more than ten thousand people gathered here now. There are beatings and rioting again, a lot of shouting. For the first time they have saved me, they have saved us, you and me; and so now, more urgently and with free rein, I am coming after you. I arrive. Finally I arrive again at the place I hate so much and nevertheless missed: my makeshift den. Everything seems resplendent. The dilapidated, peeling walls now seem to glisten; the sidewall of the next building looks like solid marble. I touch the improvised seats, the improvised stairs; the few crude furnishings around me all seem new, and I look at them and feel them, I would say, with something akin to love. Five years in that cavern, you remind me. Of course everything must seem wonderful to you. And you also recount all you had to suffer: investigations, persecution, and all the rest, but now we must forget it all and go on, you say. Now we must be under heavier surveillance. That’s why, you say, it’s best to forget about escape for a while. To pretend you have adapted, and not to tell anyone what you think. When you have to let off steam, talk only to me. Not a word to the others. All this happened to us for not being cautious enough. Yes, I say, though I had never spoken to anyone about the matter. But they are very shrewd, you say, more than you think. They might not have been able to develop the shoe industry or the food production or transportation, but when it comes to persecution, they are masters. Don’t you forget it. . . . I’m not forgetting it, I’m not, how can I ever forget it . . . ? They are outside, some in uniform, others as civilians, all of them well armed, beating, abusing, murdering those hidden in trees, in the sewers, in the empty houses, those who are trying to get closer, to get in with us. And now the guards over there are putting the boxes with food (a hard-boiled egg, a bit of rice) at their feet, on the outside of the fence. They feel gratified seeing us inside. When one of us sticks out an arm to grab a box, the guard lifts his foot and steps on the hand, or quickly lands a spry kick in the chest. When somebody screams, the guards’ laughter just gets louder, much louder than the screams. If they are more sadistic, or refined, they wait until one of us reaches a box and is trying to take it inside, to beat him until they break his arm. And their laughter is heard again. But you are not among those who, after being shoved and kicked, reach the fence, nor among those now withdrawing their stomped, empty hands. Perhaps you’re up there, on the roof of that building, or inside, with the ambassador himself, taking care of those who are very ill, or the women who just had babies, or the elderly. Yes, surely I should have gone there first, because, that’s it, you are with the sick, or undoubtedly sick yourself, seriously sick, and that’s why I have not been able to find you. Otherwise you would have located me before I could find you. Going back, going back, to recede, to go back between shoves and kicks, and to return, to enter that building by whatever means, going back, going back. . . . I had arrived. Finally I had personally reached that point in which life not only makes no sense at all, but in which it’s no longer a question whether it ever did. My tone may sound grandiloquent in the middle of this dilapidated room, but that doesn’t make this fact less tragic. And I go on, because one cannot afford even to feel sad. Even sadness itself gets canceled out by the uproar, and by the constant invasion of cockroaches, by the sirens of the patrol cars, by the cries of, What shall I eat today? What shall I eat tomorrow? Yes, even sadness needs its space. At least a bit of quiet, a place where we can keep it, exhibit it, show it around. In hell one cannot feel sad. One simply lives (dies) day by day, I say, I said. And you answered: Write, write about it all, begin writing right now what you are suffering, and you will feel better. Actually, for quite a while I had been thinking about doing that, but what for? For you, for you yourself, for both of us, you say. And you’re right. In a thorough, delirious, and angry manner, I am incessantly letting out all my horror, my fury, my resentment, my hatred, my failure, our failure, our helplessness, all the humiliation, the mockery, the swindles, and lastly, simply all the beatings and kickings, the endless persecution. All, all of it. All that terror goes onto the paper, the blank page, which, once filled, is carefully hidden in the double ceiling of the loft, or inside dictionaries, or behind a cabinet: it is my revenge, my revenge. My triumph. Jail to bite, jail to shipwreck and never be able to resurface; jail to give all up once and for all, forgetting, not even imagining, that the sea ever existed, and, much less, the possibility of crossing it. . . . My triumph, my triumph, my revenge. Walking along streets that collapse into sewers that have burst and crumbled; going past buildings to be avoided because they might fall on you; past grim faces that summarily judge you and sentence you; past closed shops, closed movie houses, closed parks, closed cafeterias, some displaying signs, excuses, now covered with dust: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION, CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. What type of repairs? When will such renovation, such repairs, be completed? When, at least, will they start? Closed, closed, closed. Everything closed . . . I arrive, open the countless padlocks and run up the makeshift stairs. There she is, waiting for me. I find her, remove her canvas cover, and stare at her dusty and cold features. I wipe some dust away and caress her again. With my own hands I clean her back, her base, her sides. Desperately happy to be with her, I sit down, run my fingers over her keyboard, and, suddenly, it all starts up. With the tat-tat, tat-tat-tat, the music begins, haltingly, then faster, now at full tilt. Walls, cathedrals, trees and streets, beaches and faces, jail cells, tiny cells, huge cells; bare feet, pine stands, starry nights, clouds; a hu
ndred, a thousand, a million parrots, low stools, a creeping vine; it all comes back, it all returns, they all attend. The walls recede, the roof vanishes, and quite naturally you float, float, uprooted, dragged off, uplifted; you are carried in arms, transported, immortalized, saved by that subtle, constant cadence, by that music, by that endless tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. . . . My revenge, my revenge. My triumph . . . Bodies armor-clad in excrement, children sinking in it, hands that search, stirring the shit. Hands and more hands, round, slender, flat, bony, palms up, palms down, joined, apart, making fists, closing; scratching hair, testicles, arms, backs; hands clapping, raising, dragging, hanging down in exhaustion; black, yellow, purple, white, translucent after days and days without food; inflamed, bruised, mutilated by beatings from trying to secure a ration box outside the fence where police cars, now with loudspeakers and on constant patrol, blare their thunder endlessly. “Anyone who wants to ask for the protection of the Cuban authorities can do so and return home.” And day and night, day and night, the shootings, the thirst, the threats, the hunger, the beatings. And now, unexpectedly, a rain shower is coming down in torrents, dissolving the cloud of dust, blurring the images of trees, cars, tents and military units, soldiers at their posts hiding behind parapets, all on the alert, all surrounding us. . . . A typical spring shower, sudden, torrential. Some people inside try to cover themselves with their hands; others, lowering their heads, seem to crouch as if they wanted to shrink, retract within themselves. For many who are asleep, the rain keeps running down their faces, their foreheads, their closed eyes, without waking them. Some who try to bend down, to seek protection under the others, cause an avalanche of protests, rebukes, and an occasional random kick. I take advantage of the confusion, the moment of calm that the unexpected shower has provoked in the stunned crowd, to make my way, scrutinizing the wet faces, the constricted and soaked bodies that occasionally suffer tremors and pulsations, and I continue, I continue inspecting them, watching them and trying to decipher their dripping faces, in my search for you. I know that here, not far from me, a step away perhaps, is where you are, where you must be. “They want to defeat us through starvation, sickness, terror. This shower is surely their doing, one of their tricks,” a woman declares, crazed under the deluge, while she makes crosses and strange signals in the air. . . . And I return, energized, my arguments replenished, my horror. I run up the sordid steps, open the countless padlocks. Fueled up, I climb to the improvised loft. My treasure, my treasure, I’m looking for my treasure, which I am going to expand right now; my vengeance, my triumph, which has been growing and it’s no longer just a page, or ten, or even a hundred, but hundreds. Hundreds of pages robbed from sleep and rest, from horror and fear; wrested honestly from the asphyxiating heat, the clamor of the street, of the neighbors; won through a battle against mosquitoes, against perspiration, against the steamy, foul smells coming from upstairs, downstairs, everywhere. Thousands of pages won over the squeals of sinister children who seem to tacitly agree to interrupt in concert with their devilish brawls the moment I sit in front of my keyboard. Pages and more pages conquered out of punches, kicking, beating my head in fury against the wall, out of enraged blows in the struggle against television sets, record players, transistor radios, noisy motors, shouts, jumping about, and pots being scraped, unexpected visitors, unavoidable bodies and figures, incessant blackouts . . . Blows, blows, in the dark, fast, fast, faster and faster, blows, blows, before they come back, fast, fast, more blows: triumphal, victorious in the darkness . . . And again the uproar: beams, searchlights, flares now seem to burst everywhere, illuminating Fifth Avenue and the whole zone as if it were midday. Someone, a taxi driver with a Chevy, has managed to break the barriers, the cordons of guards, and has crashed at incredible speed into the ambassador’s own car, which was parked at the entrance. The wounded man finally gets out of his demolished vehicle and begins to drag himself slowly toward the fence, where we watch him pulling at the grass to propel himself. Then the official government cars come forward and direct their headlights at him, while soldiers carrying flashlights surround him, joined by guards, other soldiers, judo experts, policemen from the three cordons around the embassy. They circle him but allow him to continue dragging himself. The driver is very close to the fence now, where everybody, myself included, keeps looking at him. Finally, when his hands are touching the wire fence, the circle of light closes up on him, the men advancing slowly, their guns aimed at him. Two of them bend down to lift him, gripping his belt and shirt, and carry him away. He looks at us and we see him opening and closing his mouth but saying nothing; nothing is heard, though all around, at this moment, there is total silence. . . . Nothing, nothing, there is nothing, not a page or fragment, nor even the latest, the unfinished one, left in the typewriter. I empty the drawers, turn over the mattress, the clothes in the closet, the improvised seats, I pull out the false ceiling, the covering on the improvised stairs; in consternation I examine and shake all the books. Nothing. From all the hundreds of scribbled pages, there is not a trace, not even a vestige of how they disappeared. . . . They, they, of course they did it, you tell me, while I, accepting my defeat, stop turning things over. No doubt they did it, you go on. Then they’ll come back and arrest me, I say. Maybe so, maybe not, you tell me, just as worried as I am, though trying to pretend, trying without arguments to encourage me, to console me. Maybe they will not come, you say. Everything was in perfect order, nothing was disturbed. How on earth were they able to get in? Don’t be naive, What is it that they can’t do? They are the masters of the whole country, of all of us, they know every step you take, what we talk about, and maybe, even what we think. Don’t you see? That is why they did it, so that you would know that they know. Don’t you realize that what they want is precisely for you to become aware of that? For us to recognize that we are in their power, that there is no escape. That just as they took those papers and no one knew about it, not even you, they can also secretly dispatch you. You could be strangled or hanged somewhere, or you could appear to be a suicide, or to have died of natural causes—thrombosis, heart failure, whatever—and the door and the room, as well as everything else, will remain intact, in perfect order, in its place. And maybe a letter will materialize, composed and signed in your handwriting, as your farewell. . . . He stops talking. For a while both of us remain crouched over the pile of books in disorder. Now he takes a blank sheet of paper at random and brings it to his lips slowly, holding it between his teeth as if it were a blade of grass. Then you tell me, now in a whisper, I don’t think they are coming to get you, to get us. This was only a demonstration, a refined showing-off. No more than a proof of their shrewdness, their power, their control . . . And now what are we going to do? I say. Play their game, go lower. Listen to this: play their game or perish. Let’s go for a walk, you tell me now, softly. We’ll fix all this mess together afterward. And we go out. . . . So at this point he was again where he had been many times before, in the same place, the same extreme, his hand on the makeshift stairs, his eyes contemplating the stark panorama, the four improvised seats, the bolted mirror (at that moment the closest blaring radio became intolerable), but he was still there, at that extreme point, on the edge, in the apparently incessant remembrance of a repetition, cautiously bending down, contemplating the vista that ends abruptly a few steps away: the dilapidated sidewall of the building next door and the old closed-off door leading to the hallway, where now someone, or a group of people, is uselessly calling out at full lung capacity for an elevator that never comes up. They shout and beat the door. What a pounding they are giving the old artifact, the cage, which of course does not respond. Elevator! Elevator! And the beating continues. And again, Elevator! The ruckus continues; it’s all noise, but there are no signs of life. . . . So, thinking, commenting in a low voice, protesting, at times with irony but with great caution, they validated their existence only when out of the room, in a deserted spot along the Malecón, on an empty street or in a field, and even so, with both of t
hem watching carefully on all sides. Because the question now, as his friend, his only friend, had told him, was not simply of having to suffer, but of having to praise out loud all the suffering, of having to vociferously support all the horrors, of not writing anything critical or borderline, but finding everything in favor, unconditionally, and leaving the pages carelessly on the improvised table, in a discreet but evident place, in case they came in. And in the afternoons, in a natural, normal voice, not too loud (the enemy is very skilled, very skilled, the other said), which could cause suspicion that they were pretending, the two would comment on the “benefits,” the “achievements,” the “noble endeavors” of the regime, its endless “progress.” They would also read Granma aloud. But not so loud, please, or they might think we’re poking fun. The opening of the latest Soviet film, The Great Patriotic War! (was it this one?), A True Man! (or that one?), Moscow, You Are My Love! (could that be it?): how marvelous, how many positive elements, a real piece of art . . . But no, not so loud, please, they may suspect, they may realize we’re being sarcastic. We Are the Soviet Men! Lower, still lower. They Fought for the Homeland! . . . Shut up, shut up. The Ballad of the Russian Soldier! . . . Sssh. And we applauded. At the block meetings or at the plaza, while we observed how we were being observed with a look of disdain and mistrust or with an ironic, condescending expression on their faces, since they will never be satisfied; not even when, after so much pretending, you may forget your true expression, who you are, your place in the world . . . But at this moment, half-dressed, just a few minutes after getting up, descending the improvised vertical stairs toward the improvised bathroom in that improvised cubicle, bent down between loft and “ground floor,” he stopped: suddenly he had the certainty (once more, yes, but always anew) that not only was it impossible for him to get to that box of a bathroom, but he was also unable to take a step through that junk, and moreover, he could not even move his hand from one step to the other (to go down or up his improvised stairs he needed to support himself with his hands). Thus immobilized, he looked not to the past or the future (what was that?), but at the dilapidated boards, at the spots on the wall (was it dampness?), and lastly, unexpectedly but without surprise, at his own image reflected in the mirror. To the tune of that pot again being scraped with a vengeance (coming from upstairs? downstairs? across the hallway?), he was overcome by inertia. And in that din, alienated and helpless, he felt he was finally dissolving, becoming paralyzed, disappearing, no longer pretending defeat in order to gain time, to go on, to be able later to stand on his own, but feeling clearly routed, done for. Right then—at that precise moment—there was a knock at the door. It was he, his friend, knocking as he always did before entering, though he had, of course, the keys to all the padlocks. After closing the door, he whispered in his ear: Haven’t you heard? Heard what? That people are entering the Peruvian Embassy. The guards have been withdrawn since yesterday. They say the place is crammed. I’m going there. Let’s go, I told him. No, you said. Wait; you have too much of a record. I’ll go first and see how things are. And if it’s true the place is not guarded, I’ll come for you. Wait for me here. And he left. But he could not just stay there on the improvised stairs. He had something to do: get dressed, and wait. And I waited all through midday and all afternoon. Until dusk. In the hallway people were running, sliding, trying not to make noise, something never attempted before; even the radios had been turned off. I open the door, go down. In the street no one is talking, but everybody seems in communication somehow. I hurry to catch a bus toward the embassy. The bus feels more crowded than ever, something hard to imagine. Nearly all are young people. Several even dare to speak openly of their intent: to get inside the embassy quickly. Before they close it. It will surely be closed any minute now, someone next to me says. The problem is to get there, I say; then we’ll see. Yes, to get there, another answers. And to stay, because anyone who leaves will get that on his record, besides getting kicked and arrested. And the passengers keep talking. Now I know why you couldn’t come back. I’ve been stupid. I should have realized it sooner; if you didn’t return, it’s because it was impossible. And you probably thought that if you didn’t come, I was not going to be that dumb and stay in my room. Quickly, the problem now is to get in quickly. To find you, to find you fast before you think of coming for me and get arrested, if you haven’t been already. And it is all my fault, what an idiot. Quickly, quickly, for I’m sure now you’re waiting for me, that you weren’t trying to leave me behind, that you thought that if you couldn’t come back, I would, of course, come to see what was going on . . . In packs, amid the stone-throwing, the dust and the bullets, people are getting in, we are getting in. All sorts of people. Some of them I know, some I have seen somewhere, but now we are all greeting each other with euphoria, feeling a sincere and mutual connection never experienced before, as if we were all great old friends. People and more people, from Santo Suárez, from Old Havana, from El Vedado, from all the neighborhoods, people and more people, especially young ones, jumping over the fence, dodging the blows or receiving them, running through the frenzy of bullets and the blare of police cars and loudspeakers; people jumping over in a terrorized parade, kicked and shot at, beaten with rifle butts; bodies collapsing, a woman dragging a young child by the arms, an old man using his cane to make way. A motley crowd, jumping over the gate, over the wire fence, already filling the gardens, the trees, even the roof of the embassy building. This way, in the immense cloud of dust, among hands that push and pull, amid shrieks, threats, explosions, we still manage, now in a single impervious mass, to break through the ever-tightening surveillance, and we jump, get in, and fall in with a crowd that can barely move, here, on the other side of the fence, surrounded by a circle of government cars and patrol cars that keeps growing: Alfa Romeos, Yugos, Volgas. All the elite class, the civilian and military top brass, have come in their brand-new cars to see, to try to contain, to repress, to try by any means possible to put an end to this spectacle. To top it all, they have just blocked with their cars and barriers all streets leading to the embassy, and hundreds and hundreds of soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, as everybody knows, have been deployed throughout the zone to prevent anyone from getting close to us. Now a motorcycle policeman skids violently in front of the army ring surrounding the whole embassy. “Bastards,” he shouts at us. Then he draws his gun. All of us here recede as best we can, attempting to get away from the fence. The policeman, gun in hand, reaches the fence, jumps over, and lands among us. Frantically he takes off his uniform, wraps the gun in it, and throws the bundle over the fence, to the other side, where they are. Here, inside, there is applause, shouts of “Viva.” The cordon around us triples. It’s beginning to get dark. The noise we are making acquires such proportions that even the tumult and the shootings outside briefly stop. “They’re going to gun us down, they’re going to gun us down,” a woman suddenly screams. And the massive crowd, ourselves, again tries to retreat any way it can. The trees disappear, the roof of the building disappears. It’s all a swarming anthill, people crawling, climbing, eagerly holding on to one another. Screaming. Some are falling, wounded. Panic is now generalized, because somebody is in fact shooting those inside. But that is not what I’m concerned about. I’m making my way back because I need to find you; I must find you, get to where you are, to wherever you may be. In the middle of this terrorized throng, practically without being able to move, and in the dark of night, I must find you, so that you can see that I also came, that I had the courage to get in, that I did not shrink at the challenge, that they could not completely destroy me—destroy us—and that here I am, here we are, making another attempt again. Both of us. Alive, still alive . . . That is why I don’t mind stepping on this human mound that now seems to be asleep, here at the entrance of the residence. Maybe, surely, you are inside. This is the one section that I haven’t yet searched, and you must be here, sick, no doubt. The commission in charge of maintaining order tries to stop me, but I push them asid
e and go in. There are people lying on the floor, the elderly, women on the verge of giving birth, little babies, the infirm; in short, those that were allowed to be here, under a roof. I go on; I go on looking for you, opening doors to rooms, cubicles, pavilions, or whatever damned names they call this hell. “Boy,” a half-naked woman says to me, “get out of here, the ambassador is hopping mad because people ate even his parrot.” But I keep searching all the compartments. I push open a door to find two bodies entangled in a strange way. I get close to them; mechanically I separate them and look at their faces, which look back at me in puzzlement. I leave. “It’s incredible,” an old man tells me, his legs bandaged with assorted rags, “to feel like fucking when we have gone without any food for a whole two weeks.” . . . I go out again, crossing this sea of people, people about to collapse or barely holding up, tottering, looking for support from one another, and who, if they finally do collapse, can never reach the ground, because it doesn’t exist. Covering the ground is the shit, the urine, the feet, all the feet, sometimes standing on others’ feet, and sometimes supporting a person’s whole body on only one foot. Thus, in this immense jungle of feet trying to move, I move. I keep after you. You’re not going to get away from me. You’re not going to get away. Don’t think, you bitch, that you’re going to escape. Definitely not now. Now that no one is even noticing you—well, they can scarcely look at anything—this time you really won’t escape me, and I keep on, I keep on trailing her, as she (the sneak) is running toward the fence, toward the outside. But I continue, day and night, scrutinizing all the faces. You could be one of these. Is that you? Are you one of these? Hunger changes faces. Hunger can alter even our own brother beyond recognition. Perhaps you are also looking for me and don’t recognize me. Heaven knows how many times we might have bumped into each other without realizing it. Really, are we still able to recognize each other? Fast, fast, we are getting more disfigured by the minute, and it will be more and more difficult to meet, to discover each other. That is why it’s best to shout. Loudly. As loudly as possible. Louder than those damn loudspeakers outside. I’m calling you as loud as I can. But if I shout, how am I going to hear you if you’re calling for me? I shout; then I keep silent for a moment, waiting for an answer from you, and then I shout again. Though we might not recognize each other, we’ll be able to hear each other’s shouts, to hear our names, to hear each other’s calls. And finally, we’ll meet. . . . So I go on shouting in the tumult, which is again agitated now. “Food, food, they are distributing food,” people scream. And again the crowd, with renewed miraculous energy, moves toward the fence. It’s the same ritual again, the same beatings. “They are going to bring the fence down,” someone screams. If this happens, we won’t be in Peruvian territory anymore. But the throng of people cannot be contained. Who can make his way through this crush? But I try, and I also push and advance between punches, slaps, kicks. Pushing away their faces, and bodies that roll over, I continue to the end. Now I am sure I will be able to find you. Yes, you must be there, by the fence; that’s what an intelligent person like you would logically do, so you could be the first there to get whatever is distributed, the first there to hear whatever they say, and the first to see danger when it comes, and move back. I should have thought of that. Of course that’s where you must be. So, pushing and shoving, kicking, biting, dragging myself through this witches’ Sabbath of bodies that are also dragging themselves, I finally get to the wire fence and I hold on to it. Nobody can yank me away, damn it. Nobody is going to pull me out of here, I shout, beginning to observe the faces of all those who are managing to get here. But you are not among those who, like me, are now risking their lives to reach the fence. I look and look again at those desperate faces, but, certainly, none is yours. I see bloody hands that don’t want to loosen their grip on the wires, but they are not your hands. Defeated, I stop looking at the fence and instead look through, out where the soldiers are, well fed, bathed, well armed, in uniform or civilian clothes, now getting ready to “serve” our food. And I discover you, finally I discover you. There you are, among them, outside, in uniform and armed. Speaking, making gestures, laughing, and having a conversation with someone who is also young, also armed and in uniform. I stare at you again while they begin, you begin, to distribute the small food boxes. Now they (you) go up to the corners, along the sides of the fence. The gun in one hand, the small box in the other. The distribution begins. The uproar and the blows from those next to me are now much heavier than before. They crush me, they want to crush me, they want to stand on top of me to reach one of those filthy boxes being handed out. Idiot, I call myself, while people kick me, climb over my body, use me as a springboard to get up like on a promontory, and desperately stretch their hands over the fence. Idiot, idiot, I call myself; and while everybody is walking over me, standing on me, jumping on me, I begin to laugh out loud, as if all those feet, all those legs covered with shit and mud were tickling me. . . . “That guy has gone crazy,” somebody says. “Leave him alone, he might be dangerous,” someone else says. And they move away from me, climb down off my body. Outside, the soldiers, also laughing, are methodically distributing the food boxes all along the fence. They place a box on the ground. They stand next to it and wait until someone reaches out for it, in order to smash that hand with a quick stomp. . . . I could right now stretch out my hand and grab that box. Whether they step on my hand or kick me in the chest, I won’t starve anyway. So let no one imagine that I’m going to give them that satisfaction. And don’t you start thinking I’m going to please you; don’t let them think, don’t you for an instant dream, that I’m going to eat that shit, that garbage, that filth. And least of all, that I would allow you to step on my hand in exchange for a hard-boiled egg. That is why, in order not to allow them that pleasure, I will remain here, motionless, triumphant, looking at them (at you) out there, playing games with that filth. So here I am, looking at them and laughing, while arms over my head are trying desperately to reach out. Then I actually see you for the first time. I discover you, also there, outside, trying to evade a shiny boot, running, dragging yourself silently across the asphalt and coming in, what a wild idea, with the throng of people, here with us. Here she goes, there she goes, almost in a daze, almost without the energy to keep trying to escape, but still moving, under the bodies, over the hands and faces barely blinking when she crosses them. She can’t keep going. She can’t keep going anymore after so many hours of trying to escape from me. And now she’s stopping as if stunned, her mouth open, over somebody’s back, someone who is lying facedown on the ground. She’s desperately trying to jump somewhere. . . . I finally get you, you bitch, because even covered with filth, there is no escape left for you now.