Text and Photos by Nester Núñez (Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – By 3 PM on Sunday, June 12, 1988, there wasn’t much left to do. In just six hours, we had already crashed a Russian bicycle into a poorly parked taxi because Yoe, who was riding with two of us on the frame and the rack, let go of the handlebars to show off in front of the girls crossing the street.
We had also enraged half the neighborhood with little bombs made from the back parts of water faucets filled with match heads; we electrocuted frogs to hear them meow in their agony, dissected them to see their internal organs, and launched two cats from the rooftop with parachutes we improvised, and which worked perfectly, after catching them with traps.
After that, since invention and mischief make one hungry, we pooled our money and bought sandwiches with croquettes, meatballs, meat empanadas, chiviricos, matahambres, and a glass of yogurt or ice cream syrup for each. So, we were almost dozing, our bellies full, in the living room of a half-constructed family doctor’s office in one of the many neighborhoods filled with straight, boring buildings built by microbrigades.
We were eight or nine skinny, dirty, sunburned kids, with scratched knees or elbows, new and old scars under our scalps, no sign of mustaches yet, nor hair on our buttocks, except for Damian the Repeater, who already had hair on his back. It was precisely him who suggested, because we were teenagers and weren’t supposed to be lying around like old men, that we go to the stadium. Someone opened an eye and replied, “Not yet, the sun and the crowd.” Then Damián said, “Of course, you’re lying there thinking about the kiss you didn’t dare give the girl last night.”
Remembering Saturday night reactivated us all. Someone leaned against the wall, and I stroked my jaw as if searching for an imperfection. Someone said, “I was making out hard and would have gone all the way, but the fight interrupted me.”
Those words distorted our sense of space and time, and in the many seconds of silence that followed, I remembered the beautiful Maria Elena dancing casino to something by Los Van Van while internally singing, “This cowardice of my love for her makes me see her like a star, so far, so far away in the immensity, that I never hope to reach her.” Then I relived the shouting, the panic in her eyes, and saw myself grabbing the braided cable I had “stashed” in a tree hole to defend myself if anything happened.
I remembered removing my Soviet Electronika 5 digital watch from my left wrist at precisely 12:17 and putting it in my pants pocket. I saw myself running back, cable in hand, along with Maria Elena’s group, absorbed by the crowd, to protect her even if she didn’t know it, while the police sirens grew louder in the minds of all of us who weren’t Jacinto or El Habanero, the two wielding those knives whose blades shone even in the darkness.
However, Maria Elena was rescued by her older brother, and my silent act of heroism only served to see me dragged by the tumult of those fleeing, those wanting to see the outcome up close, those pickpocketing in the hysterical, enraged, violent, fearful crowd, increasingly away from the safe place in the park where those of us from the neighborhood were supposed