At a secondhand bookstall on the street corner, a sign read "Champion Bookstore." The stall had Spanish textbooks, German joke books, English vocabulary books, Cuban history books, and some pop picture albums from the last century. On the bottom shelf, there were headless dolls, watches without hands, phones with cut wires, and some unidentifiable objects.
We lingered a little too long over a book with Che Guevara on the cover, which drew the stall owner over. He was born in the United States but was mistakenly detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. Without any documents, he was expelled from the U.S. as an illegal Mexican immigrant, but Mexico also refused to accept him, so he wandered all the way to Cuba. (It's easy to think that such misfortune is a result of both American and Mexican racial discrimination.) "I want to go back to the States," he said earnestly, his eyes bloodshot.
We asked to take a photo of him. He pulled out a bottle of colorless liquid and took a few swigs. "I'm nervous," he said, putting on his glasses and pointing to the word "Champion" on the sign, squeezing out a anxious but appropriate smile. He said that yesterday, he read about Sun Yat-sen, and that capable people should return to serve their country.
19
In the garden beside San Francisco Square, a hunched statue of Mother Teresa sat next to a cross, so small that she seemed to be gradually shrinking into an infant. The garden caretaker became excited when she learned we were Chinese. She said her father was Chinese, and her last name was Wang, but she had never learned Chinese.
We took a photo of her. She removed her blue cloth mask, put one hand on her hip, and posed like any Chinese tourist auntie, looking at the camera, but it seemed like she was gazing into the distance. When we said goodbye, she wished us a Happy New Year in Spanish. I taught her how to say it in Chinese. She repeated each word with great effort, and as she turned away, I saw something flicker in her wide double-lidded black eyes.
We stopped on the street, drawn by music coming from a nearby house. A middle-aged man walked out and struck up a conversation with us in English. "I'm so envious of you. We're stuck here, can't go anywhere, everything is terrible." Then he asked if we could give him a few dollars to buy New Year's gifts for his family.
20
At the square in front of the cathedral, we encountered an elderly man with one leg who spoke to us in English. We immediately realized this was yet another premeditated attempt to beg.
He rubbed his ulcerated ankle, the wound dry and pale, like flesh about to peel off his body. He said the hospital couldn’t treat his other leg, so he had to have it amputated, and now he might lose his only remaining one as well. He sat slumped on the edge of the empty square, quickly wiping his eyes. In another corner, two young men were practicing the saxophone, and a cold moon hung over the roof of the Spanish-style mansion once belonging to the Lombillo family. A sleek black cat silently slipped past the old man. My eyes were dry and uncomfortable from wearing contact lenses for too long, so I kept blinking. The old man continued talking about his suffering.
He said, many times I've wanted to give up on living, but I still have a family to support.
I was filled with despair, as all these elements came together—the old man’s pain had nothing to do with anything else: the lovely piña colada I just drank, this incredibly romantic night—he was simply abandoned here, like everyone else from this place. And I couldn't do anything except giving him some coins. It shattered my travel fantasy, and every day after that in Cuba, I was full of sadness.
I saw the same expression on another face later in the National Museum of Fine Arts, where a painting depicted a round-headed child with a blank look in his eyes. The cow beside him had the same expression. The cow's body was covered in lines, like strange internal organs, or like weathered skin, and the ground beneath its feet was a deep red.
23
The driver of the American-made vintage car wore square radiant sunglasses. The sound system often malfunctioned, so he repeatedly reached over to adjust the knobs until it returned to normal. Once, after fiddling with it for a long time without success, he simply twisted the playback system off with one hand and blew hard into the connection point, all while keeping one hand on the steering wheel. The car was so old that the bumps didn’t affect his one-handed operation at all.
During the nearly six-hour drive, whenever he saw a pretty figure ahead, he would press the horn heavily and cast a bold look at the beauty until she turned around. The horn was his only authority. Only in the moment after pressing it would he be noticed—more precisely, be noticed by the beauty.
24
Every night in Havana, I was plagued by nightmares. I don't know if it was the mirror by the bed (yes, the bed had an entire mirror embedded in it), the Jesus and crucifix at the headboard, or the swirling angel ceiling light that had a greater impact on the feng shui of sleep.
I vaguely remember one of the nightmares involved countless Cubans screaming and crying in the darkness underground. In the dream, my heart started to ache violently with theirs. Half-awake, I felt a need to pee, but part of my consciousness told me I had to endure the physical pain along with my Cuban comrades. The physical pain began to parallel the psychological suffering. I tossed and turned until the endless construction noise outside the window at five in the morning, like the wails of a collapsing wall, rescued me from the illusionary pain.