Translating Cuba

Who can forget their toys, or the things that served as toys?

Who can forget their toys, or the things that served as toys? A cigar box from which I cut out an entire paper city, which I assembled and disassembled in my living room. Some plastic soldiers from World War II—they appeared under my bed one Three Kings’ Day, a tradition that communism failed to eradicate—with binoculars and flags, rampant or rolling in the trench, belonging to imaginary states.

A pair of astronauts, with their spacecraft, armed with detectors for lunar dust, who I now remember as the forerunners of Daft Punk. (Much later, on the beaches of Valencia, I saw dozens of searchers moving their instruments on the sand, like those little figures in spacesuits.) I also had a crossbow, a bow that shot arrows, coloring books—one of them only had the frustrating silhouette of Lassie, the collie—light swords made from radio antennas, magic wands.

There were toys left behind in Cuba that I should have brought. Toys that were so old they were considered relics. An American wooden box with ten miniature bowling pins, which one could knock down with a ball hanging from a pole. The Lone Ranger, whose hat eventually became toasted in the tropical heat, harder than the Western one. To keep it covered, I put a bottle cap on it: it looked like a horseman with his charro or an Arab with his fez.

George Washington, in a blue jacket and tricorn hat—that one survived—was his unlikely expedition companion, both on horseback. There was also a clarinet, made of fine black plastic, with a small notebook of melodies. Almost everything else was lost.

At least once a year, my entire town allowed itself to indulge in toys and imaginary life.

At least once a year, my entire town indulged in toys and imaginary life. It was the month of revelry, March, although in some years it was held in August. I hated and still hate that atmosphere. At seven in the morning, the hammering and welding began. The sparks from the tips of the rods crackled on the iron frames. When everyone left, I went out to play in that rusty fortress, on top of which the carriage was built.

In none of my novels have I recreated that world, which has brought so much money to the cheap folklorists who proliferate like midges in that place. Everything frightened me. The crush of people, the glitter, the makeup, the immobility of the characters in the wings.

There were always half-naked girls – often classmates, the only incentive to go and see the float – and a voice- over narrating some corny legend: Troy: Blood and Fire, The Sun of Austerlitz, Sissi Empress, Prayer in the Desert, The King and I, Beyond the Sea , A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a thousand silly things, all financed by the exiles.

I didn’t like going out but staying in my room, knowing that all the houses in the town were going to be empty at that moment.

I didn’t like going out, but rather staying in my room, knowing that every house in town would be empty at that moment. What a wonderful feeling. I’d take out my toys, my books, whatever, and start inventing that phrase whose wickedness only a Cuban can accurately gauge. Then the firecrackers would explode, rise into the night sky, and descend like kamikazes onto the rooftops. Scared to death. My cats would protest. The neighbors’ dogs would howl.

Five in the morning. Total drunkenness, trash, urine. Toy enthusiasts—and sometimes me too—scaled and looted the float. They stole cranes, cobras, monkeys, tea and smoking tables, marvelous lamps, thrones, and dragons. Everything stuffed with Styrofoam, an entire world of Styrofoam. Everything designed to shine once and die, like naked girls, like flying cars, like the child one once was.

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The second one who died was Harold Cepero and I will never forget the devastation his death caused in the circles in which I moved

The second death was Harold Cepero, and I’ll never forget the devastation his death caused in the circles I moved in. Harold had studied to be a priest, a term that carries with it an ethical and cultural background. He had dropped out of the seminary, found a girlfriend, and I think he raised pigs—a detail that touched me, I don’t know why—and all his friends remembered him as a lovely man.

Payá and Harold, Harold and Payá. How many times have I heard their names without having seen their faces, which the news was careful not to publish. Religious magazines, on the other hand, published photos and testimonies from Harold’s former seminary classmates, heart-wrenching testimonies, and I am still friends with those who offered them.

With one of those friends, a close friend of mine, I got in a car headed for Remedios. I’ve always had an irrational fear of any means of transportation other than the train. Later that year, and with the rumor that the political police had “cut the wires” of Payá’s Hyundai, the tension escalated to its peak. My destination was the Remedios Parish Church.

That is where the Franciscans lived, who, in some ways, shaped part of my sentimental upbringing. They were Mexican, but completely overwhelmed. My friend and I would meet one of them for lunch. In fact, my entire circle began holding these “chance” Masonic meetings, of the third kind, to talk about Payá. No one would have trusted a landline—those in churches are tapped: the ABC of caution—so we had to travel and whisper.

It was a conspiracy, and I was involved in it. I knew it, I accepted it, I savored it. Thanks to the priests and nuns, when I was 14, I heard Dagoberto Valdés and witnessed a human rights protest in Placetas. I’ll never forget the priest, steadfast and in his white cassock. I wondered which policeman would have the courage to remove him from the scene to search for those who had taken refuge in the church.

During the after-dinner conversation in Remedios, over coffee, my friend and the friar began to talk in code

Over coffee at the Remedios table, my friend and the friar began to talk in code. At 17 and coming from where I came from, I was above suspicion, but even I had to learn to speak that way. And I did.

“What did you think of that man?” the priest said. “Terrifying,” my friend said. “Did you turn on the television last night?” “Yes, for a while,” the other replied, “no one believes those little cartoons.” “It seems they’re scared.” “Yes, scared, very, very scared.” “And with the sick old man, even more so.” “And that wasn’t all,” the friar theorized, “an order in extremis from you know who?” “I couldn’t believe it,” my friend replied.

But it didn’t end there, in that easy-to-decipher dialogue. Payá’s death, at the heights of politics, had consequences at every level. What’s above, so it is below. “And our friend?” my friend asked with a small smile. “He hasn’t reacted,” the priest replied, “he knows how to pretend very well, he’s intelligent.” Our friend was one of the agents that Security had infiltrated into the Franciscan ranks. They’ve done the same with the Jesuits and the Dominicans and every religious order that has passed through that country.

What was expected of our friend—I learned from that conversation—was a flash of conscience, a turmoil that would make him confess, feel guilty, and die of shame for Payá and Harold, whom he surely knew. The human improvement, no less, of the unbeatable New Man!

The human improvement, no less, of the unbeatable New Man!

But the epiphany never came, it never would, and that was the second lesson I learned in Remedios, after the coded language. As Creole wisdom warns, the snitch is the most vile animal of the tropical fauna; and as Dr. House emphasizes, people don’t change.

I think of Payá and my humble beginnings as a conspirator, in that time that seemed so full of possibilities, to console myself for the mediocrity in which we live. When everything falls apart, who will I vote for? When there are political parties, what will the options be? When there is freedom, what quality will conversation have? What privileges will those who struggle today, those in exile, those in prison, demand? What country is this, that the closer it gets, the more frightening it becomes?

I think that with that blue Hyundai, raising a cloud of yellowish dust in the East, many answers were lost.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.