Miguel Barnet
Translated by George Henson
The sky at this hour melts into the ocean. The egrets are dark specks against the backdrop. A single blinking yellow beacon lights up the rocky strip along the malecón. The taste of saltpeter coats my tongue, and I savor the night with a sense of modesty. The night is long and bustling, and while I wait for the Moro, I dive into the pulp of bodies. The members of the tribe know me. They know I’m a queer fish, a loner.
After looking me up and down and asking me stupid questions, they offer me a drink from the bottle of rum they’re passing around and invite me to sit on the wall: that immense sofa that we habaneros share almost every night; where we organize our lives; where sex and small talk are always within reach; where danger can be felt like a wave on the jagged rocks.
They speak in a low voice:
“That’s not the watch you wore yesterday. What brand is it?”
“It’s a Seiko. It’s not worth much.”
“But it’s a diver’s watch, no? You mean you can really wear it in the ocean?”
“I dunno. It says waterproof, but I’ve never gotten in the water with it.”
I ask about Yoandry. They tell me he had to go to Consolación because his grandmother got sick.
“Grandmother my ass! His French pal came to visit, and they went there on vacation,” the pícaro of the tribe whispers in my ear.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell myself. Anyway, Yoandry is a sucked orange. It’s midnight, and the Moro is nowhere to be found.
The police are on the prowl, and I’m about to leave. To throw them off, I parked my ’51 Ford on the street, a ways from here. I don’t want anyone to know I have a car even if it’s a piece of shit; they can say what they want, it’s still a car: a magnet, a status symbol.
It’s cooler now, and a group of trovadores has arrived from Holguín, or so they say, but they’re probably from up in the monte. I ask them to play songs from the vieja trova and instead they play Manzanero and ugly ballads with cheap lyrics. For them, the vieja trova is the Stone Age: the generation gap digs into my back like a meat hook.
I try to sing a few, but I’m off-key; they have a different way of singing, more nasal, with screeching high notes, accompanied by a copper-string guitar that produces a frightening dissonance that pierces my eardrum.
Mayito arrives with his trumpet and joins in. Mayito is a musician, the best, but he’s not part of the tribe; he only comes here to make a living, with two gaiteros and an old black man who plays the tres. The malecón is a free concert, with a bit of teatro buffo. If someone gets bored in Havana, it’s his own fault. Every night, the malecón attracts the most peaceful crowd in the world.
I’m about to leave now because the police have started to ask for IDs, and I don’t want to get mixed up in anything. I did twice before. But tonight I need to watch my step. The patrol car drives toward the spot where I’m standing. I put on my shoes and say goodbye.
“Okay, Boss, I’ll catch you later.”
I don’t know what I’m the boss of, but I prefer that epithet to brother or buddy because I’m not a member of that tribe, or any other. I’m an appetizing prey and nothing more.
I give the trovador a tip.
“It’s for both of you,” I clarify.
“Of course, Boss, we’re brothers, can’t you see how well we get along?”
The mulatto slaps the guitar player’s ass, and they lose themselves in the crowd. The malecón is a hive of people from all over the country who want to escape the dog days of Havana’s sweltering summer. And a lot of other things. They sing, debate, trade clothes, sometimes they even fight but things never get out of hand. There’s self-control, a retaining wall; it’s a smart and cautious crowd, whose only aspiration is to immerse itself in the leisure of the unthinkable.
I head toward Humboldt Street in search of my blue Ford, with a missing tailpipe and a dying battery. It’s the third time I’ve come to look for the Moro, and I’m leaving disappointed again. This Moro, what does he do during the day? How many masks does he wear? Where is he now?
The car doesn’t start. I try it again. Nothing. To make matters worse, I have to make an ass of myself and ask for help. The heat is scorching. Suddenly, I hear a voice that pierces my left ear.
“Time to trade up, spend some cash, Champ.”
The Moro arrives carrying the sword of the Orisha Changó. He’s Changó himself, but with big white teeth and a gold grill. He shows up, cool as a cucumber, smelling like lavender, his frizzing hair shiny.
“I’ve been looking for you all over Havana, Moro. Where’ve you been?”
“I have to lay low, Champ, the streets are dangerous, you know.”
The Ford finally starts. With the prey now in the trap, I ask him if he wants to go for a ride. There’s something special about the Moro. I don’t know, it’s as if he always wants to tell me something, as if we understand each other. We talk about everything. I ask him questions, and he opens up. Maybe it’s because he trusts me or because I lay my cards on the table, and he plays along. I know he’s capable of anything, but I want to believe that I’m different to him. That’s why I prefer him.
“So tell me, Moro, how’re you doing?”
“Getting by, Champ, getting by.”
I don’t have the slightest interest in getting the Moro in bed anymore. I only ask out of morbid curiosity. Who’s more used up, him or me?
The Moro has kids scattered all over the country. He came to Havana from a small town, with some song and dance about one daughter having vitiligo and the other I don’t know what and so…
“Take this, Moro, and don’t tell me any more stories.”
He puts the money inside his waist pocket. For years, I’ve been helping raise daughters who probably only exist in his head.
He tells me the story again about how they stole all his clothes from the rooming house, how the only thing he has left is what he’s wearing and the watch I gave him more than two years ago.
“I’m surprised you haven’t sold it.”
“I don’t sell gifts from good friends.”
Sometimes I think I’m out of my mind. What am I doing tonight with the Moro if I don’t want to go to bed with him? Why did I wait for him so long? What the hell is he hiding behind that shell that intrigues me so much?
We head straight for the docks. He doesn’t care where.
“So, Moro, tell me something new, something you haven’t told me before.”
The docks aren’t what they used to be, what they were when I discovered them in the fifties, with bars like the Eva or Two Brothers, full of American sailors and whores, but as usual there’s rum and bad music. And even a Russian basilica with onion domes.
I’m determined to find out more about his life. And he gives me what I want. It’s not his daughters this time. It’s his new conquest, a dancer who needs a blood transfusion following an abortion.
The reggaetón is deafening. Reggaetón and more reggaetón, when what I want is romantic music, so we can talk, so I can hear something, anything, so we can tell each other lies.
This Moro is streetwise; he’s not someone you mess around with. He humiliates me by paying for the first round with a wad of bills he takes out of his pocket. He tries to gain my confidence with stories that even he doesn’t believe.
The bar reeks of dried piss. But the Moro doesn’t have a sense of smell, so he keeps talking, his mouth full of smoke. The broken blood vessel that runs across his left eye scares me. Could it be a premonition?
“Moro, aren’t you tired of this life? How do you get by?”
“How else am I going to make a living? I’m committed to this, Champ. I want to get ahead, and I’ve got to take the bull by the horns. The money I was making in the cemetery wasn’t enough to even buy a shot of rum. Now I can buy you a drink.”
“But Moro, youth doesn’t last forever.”
“That’s why I have to make the most of it while I can, because later the buzzards won’t even look at me. Let’s toast to friendship, how ‘bout it?”
“Sure. Let’s toast.”
The Moro’s icy stare insinuates that his time is money, and I’m causing him to lose it.
“So now what? Where is this headed?”
“No. Moro, you and I are friends, I just wanted to see you, talk to you a little. I’m leaving town, and I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Don’t shit me, you’re my buddy, besides men don’t say goodbye.”
“The thing is, I’ve enjoyed being with you.”
“Sure, I understand, I understand.”
The ceiling fan intensified the humidity and stench of dried piss. The reggaetón droned on, and the bar was about to close.
The Moro was returning from a string of mornings at a string of police stations, from a string of fat old broads and decrepit old farts.
He was wearing a white shirt that outlined the muscles in his back, a smooth, sticky back that always tasted like pine resin. And the diver’s watch with a blue face that I gave him and which he looked at constantly.
Sometimes I think a person’s eyes look like the eyes of certain animals. I can’t exactly say if the Moro’s eyes that night looked like a hawk’s or an iguana’s, but they were inexpressive, fixed, and hard.
When we got to the car, he gave me a cold, distant hug.
“I’ve got something to take care of around here, so I’m gonna stay. I’ll see you around.”
The humidity was thick in the early morning and fogged the Ford’s windshield. “What a strange night!” I told myself.
The Moro slipped away, with the carnal lust of an animal on the run, through the narrow streets of Old Havana. I could barely make him out. Mist is the worst enemy of feelings. And he’s just one more, and I’m not going to fix anyone’s life. So I asked the saints to keep my car battery from giving me another headache, and I drove along the malecón with the same taste of saltpeter on my tongue, anxious to get home. I looked in the bathroom mirror and swore to never get involved in anyone’s life again.
A few days later the mulatto trovador told me that the Moro had been arrested.
“It’s serious; they say he killed a Mexican in order to rob him. When they caught him, he didn’t put up a fight.”
“Do you believe he’s a murderer?” The mulatto looked me in the eye with a confused expression of sympathy and doubt.
“It could cost him his life,” he told me.
“Sure, of course, his life, his fucking life,” I answered turning around.
The gray patrol car was approaching the malecón. The night’s humidity stuck to me like a decal. In two more days, I was flying to Miami. And I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything.
Miguel Barnet (Havana, 1940) is one of Cuba’s most celebrated authors. An ethnologist by training, he is the author the novels Rachel’s Song, Gallego, A True Story, and Oficio de ángel, as well as numerous collections of poetry. His most important work, however, is the testimonial novel The Biography of a Runaway Slave. His work has received national and international awards, including the Cuban National Prize for Literature (1994), and the International Poetry Award of Trieste (2005). In 2006, his short story, “Fátima, Queen of the Night,” also translated by George Henson, earned the Juan Rulfo Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Literature. Barnet lives in Havana, where he presides over the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and directs the Fernando Ortiz Foundation.
George Henson is a literary translator and assistant professor of Spanish Translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. He is the translator of Cervantes Prize laureate Sergio Pitol’s The Art of Flight, The Journey, and The Magician of Vienna, as well as fellow Cervantes recipient Elena Poniatowska’s The Heart of the Artichoke. His translations have appeared previously in Your Impossible Voice as well as other literary venues, including The Literary Review, Bomb, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Words Without Borders, and World Literature Today, where he is a contributing editor. He is also the Translation Editor for Latin American Literature Today. His translation of Pitol’s Mephisto’s Waltz: Selected Stories is due out in the fall.
