By Lien Estrada
HAVANA TIMES – This house really caught my attention. Some homes made of wood do exist in Holguin, although they’re not very common. But they all only have one floor. Two-story wooden houses aren’t ever seen here. Hence, I couldn’t resist the temptation to go ask the owner if they would be so kind as to show it to me. I decided to go up the stairs – also wooden, and in regrettable condition.
I knocked on the door, and noticed a list of prices tacked there, for laminating documents, pioneer emblems, ID cards, or anything else. A tall, broad-chested, grey-haired man came out to meet me. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“Sir, excuse the annoyance, but I’m from Holguin and I’ve never seen a house like this, so I wanted to ask you – if it isn’t too much trouble – to let me look at the inside. The floor, for example, that I see is also of wood.”
The man was very kind to me. His name is Fulgencio, a name I’ve only encountered in history books, because Fulgencio Batista was the name of the dictator who ruled Cuba before the Castro’s. However, it’s quite common in the town of Banes. The owner was a retiree from the field of education, who now ran a small laminating business in his house.
He showed me the entrance hall. There was one part where you couldn’t walk, because it was very deteriorated. It had been constructed with cedar and piñon wood.
The front windows were the original ones. The house was enormous; even now that it’s been divided up, it’s still large. It had a hanging passageway that led to the back patio, now made of masonry. One room was hermetically sealed. They’d tried to restore part of the living room floor, but with unfortunate results. The State had supplied wood that was destroyed right away.
Fulgencio’s father was the owner of the pharmacy here, and his brother had been born in that house. On one occasion, he told me, his father had decided to remake the staircase using brick and cement, but the inspectors came after them with scolding and a fine. You couldn’t do that, because the house was considered national patrimony. Now Fulgencio finds himself with the challenge of repairing at least the most important parts of his house, like the stairway. But when he asked the government for help with these essential repairs, and help as a national patrimony, they told him it was no longer so, and that it would have to be by his own means.
He’s faced with a mess, in which currently a sack of cement costs 7,000 pesos – over four times his monthly retirement pension. Even adding in what he earns from his laminating business, he still can’t obtain that money. In his father’s time, when they told him the house was patrimony and he couldn’t use bricks and mortar, a sack of cement cost 3.50 pesos. That’s just one of the stories of a house that’s 122 years old.
I wished him the best of luck. I told him that if I had a lot of money, I’d buy it and restore it completely, because the truth is, the American dream always persists, practically robbing us of our needed night’s sleep.
He laughed and said yes, his eldest son has already left to leap over the borders, his other son is heading in the same direction, and, behind them, well, his wife and himself would be leaving. I told him I was happy for him, and hoped everything would go well – maybe when I come back to Banes, he’ll no longer be there, but if he were, I’d come visit.
“No problem,” he answered me pleasantly, but that I should please be careful going down these stairs, because with my weight they might be dangerous.
I laughed. I didn’t tell him that, for me, everything might be blessed, and everything might be dangerous. Those matters of destiny. I don’t believe they’re so uniquely mine. In the end, he shouldn’t worry so much.
We parted with a cordial goodbye.
Read more from Lien Estrada’s diary here.
