Article and photos by Nester Nuñez (La Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – The sun is setting and you’re at the Muelle Real in Cienfuegos, the Malecon in Havana, Matanzas or Santiago, for example. You want to watch the sunset today, Saturday, because you didn’t have to go into work. Today, Saturday, you went to visit your parents and on your way home, you treat yourself to these fifteen or twenty minutes just for yourself.
“The kids will be fine,” you tell yourself so you don’t feel guilty. You left dinner ready and they’ve already done their homework. When I get back, I’ll tell them to shower. I’m not doing anything bad…
The sea and beautiful view manage to relax you. You want to have a drink, but coming home smelling of beer would be a bigger problem than coming home late. You close your eyes and you even hear the flapping of a seagull’s wings as it passes by. The fresh air fills your lungs and you remember your grandmother’s voice when she used to sing: “the pajara pinta (painted bird) sat on its green lemon tree. It picks up the branch with its beak, it takes a flower.” A flower that was always white in your head. Later, another song comes along and you have no idea which hidden corner in your brain it came from. You don’t know when you heard it or why you memorized it: “Tomorrow goodbyes will leave for transparent lands, and I’ll stay here like a parachute full of winds to come.”
The boys arrive unreserved, cool, healthy. They strip down to the waist and throw themselves into the water with their teenage spontaneity, zero anxiety and no mind games. They are bodies that need water, to cool down, have fun, get tired. They jump from the highest points. They swim out to sea. They chase each other and laugh as if there’s no tomorrow, as if life were only happening right now and there’s no past or future, just the present. You can see they aren’t worried about anything serious.
Your children will be playing baseball or soccer on the street. You imagine the sweat on their faces, their grimy hands, them shouting, the passion they put into everything, the fit they throw when they lose a game or they don’t hit the home run the team needed. If you were there, they would have come home a while ago to shower. If you were home and not at the Malecon or Muelle giving yourself a few minutes, you wouldn’t realize that you also lived so passionately once upon a time. You wouldn’t realize that you’ve been repressing your desire to play with them and laugh too for many years, like you used to as a child, because adults are supposed to be responsible, restrained, and these needs are secondary, dispensable. You’ve been training for too many years not to show your true self, to meet other people’s expectations.
The sun on the horizon, the wind messing up your hair or somebody passing you by and looking at you for a few seconds with eyes the color of the sea when the sun sets… A boy jumping into the water near you and he splashes you a little, but instead of getting annoyed or drying yourself with a damp towel, you lick the wet parts. Immediately, the salty taste takes you back to your first relationship, your first kiss on the beach. You remember the time you let go of the handle bars when riding your bike at full speed, downhill. The time you made love quickly, intensely, in any dark alleyway after a party. Passages that upset you.
“I feel like my trail up until today has been a long path of honey. Why is it so painful to look at the time when it tells you how late it is.” The unknown song has this sad chorus. Time doesn’t pass by like this for the boys, who are now singing a macho reggaeton song at the top of their lungs. You think about buying yourself that goddamn beer again. You can taste sea water in your mouth.
You’re not unhappy. You love the family you’ve made, it’s just you don’t do the things you used to believe were important anymore. You even hide them from yourself so you don’t get upset. “This is becoming an adult,” you were told and then, that you weren’t in tune and you were a bit annoying, so you don’t sing anymore, not even in the shower. At the end of the day, you don’t need this and that and that. Maybe you’ll do it when the kids are older.
It’s blue o’clock: twilight. The boys get dressed to go home. You also get going. The sky has clouded over. If all of the rain were to suddenly fall from the heavens, you wouldn’t hide in a doorway or take a taxi: you’d carry on walking. “It picks up the branch with its beak, it reaches the flower with the branch.” Oh God, when will my love come home?” You know it’s talking about self-love. You’ve been wanting to walk naked in a downpour for a long time, in the backyard, where only your family can see you. Let the children wait, if they’re hungry. Let them join me, if they want. Let’s all laugh sharing this madness that has overcome you all of a sudden.
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