HAVANA TIMES – I went into the kitchen right after lunch to make coffee. At that moment, I noticed a slight dizziness combined with a chill, and I had to lean against the table because I suddenly felt weak. The expression on my face must have changed, because my partner, who had just entered the kitchen, felt my forehead and shoulders and said: “You have a fever.” I looked at him with a certain mockery and repeated something I say a lot: “I never get sick – I haven’t had a fever for over 20 years, and any bug never lasts me more than 24 hours. I don’t need a doctor; I’m made of iron.”
That’s not how it went this time. Oropouche fever had arrived, although I was unaware of it. I knew nothing about it, but it had chosen me as host. Even if you think you can just look away, the virus has no mercy. It won’t let you get by.
I ran for the thermometer then, to prove I was fine. The one we have measures the temperature in Fahrenheit, so that after using it I had to go online to see what the equivalent was in Celsius. Indeed, my temperature was over 38 [100.4⁰ F], but I was ready to wait for it to leave by itself, in the same sudden way it had arrived.
“I’ll go rest for a while,” I told myself, and despite the tremendous heat of a July noon in Cuba, I lay down and fell asleep.
I dreamed I had died in that same bed. I wasn’t afraid or even sad, only deeply worried. I knew that the person who would discover my lifeless body would see me through the window that gives out onto the side hallway of the house. From outside, they’d see that I wasn’t moving; that I didn’t respond to their calls. The lack of attention didn’t bother me, but it tormented me to think that they’d find me with my mouth hanging open. The mere idea of my jaw dangling and all my teeth showing, caused me infinite shame. I remembered a children’s movie in which the skeleton of a dead queen was able to remove and replace her lower jaw. It’s a disturbing image that’s accompanied me all my life, and in the dream, I was horrified to realize it could be repeated with my own body.
Between fever dreams, I tried to turn onto one side, in order to prop my face against my arm and keep my mouth from opening. It was a task I repeated during that nap, without knowing if I was asleep, awake, or if, in truth, I had died without waking. I think this process went on for about two hours and only ended when I opened my eyes. I put in the thermometer, still half under the influence of my dream, and learned that my temperature hadn’t dropped – on the contrary, now it was over 103 degrees. Without knowing exactly how much that was, I knew it was high.
When I tried to get up to take an analgesic, I discovered how hard it was to move. It was hard to understand how I had g