When I return, they ask me, “So, what’s Cuba like?
Come on, tell us what you saw, what it’s like there, is it different from here?
What did you eat, what were the people like?
And were the actors better? But tell us, did you see Castro?
Did you meet him?”
The questions are mixed with those that the Cubans had asked me.
On the last evening,
sitting in single file in a corridor covered in graffiti
because it was raining outside –
outside, the plastic chairs and tables of the Caffè Teatro del Puerto were sinking deeper and deeper into the mud of the surrounding bush, getting soaked and soaking us, and if that one piece of sausage slipped off your plate, it was over. The earth sucked it up like quicksand. The earth in Cuba – I mean the earth itself – not earth as a floor, or earth as a metaphorical universe – I mean the very substance of which the island is made. A land that absorbs you and makes you sink to your roots,
and the water soaks you, drenches you, saturates you, washes you, but does not refresh or cool you. The water slides off you along with the sweat that continues to form on your skin.
What have you learned from this experience, what are you taking away with you, what are you leaving behind, what are you sharing, what would you change?
I begin to tell my story. Bit by bit.
Incoherent speeches that start on one subject and jump from one thing to another. An irrational and confusing stream with overlaps and inconsistencies
A jet, a barrage of words that, as soon as they form on the tongue, call for others – but not those that present a reassuring succession of adverbs, subjects and verbs such as “we normally ate at 8 o’clock”.
Or I can’t even think of a single word.
But how can I talk about the black smoke
blowing in my face from lorries and buses
the guagua –
which looks like there’s a Cuban earning his daily bread by shovelling coal into the engine
of our driver starting the car
with dishwashing liquid,
of empty shops where you pay in pesos
and those next door, full, in dollars
of those where on the whole counter
you see only a bolt or a head of garlic or a button
and those that sell fake flowers instead,
talcum powder and laundry soap that you cut with a machete