CHAPTER I
The tired old whistle of the small steamship manages to let out a piercingly loud blast soon followed by another, then another. Julián is suddenly awakened by these raucous sounds. Startled, he opens his eyes, and from where he is, lying right on the ship's deck, he can see through a misty early morning fog what appears to be a lush tropical shore gently gliding by.
Guatemala at last? he asks himself.
Eager to take a closer look, he quickly begins to stand up, and then he has to smile at himself. Since he is a young man of just twenty-six, strong, muscular, with broad shoulders, and with a body chiseled by hard labor, he had thought that sleeping on the ship's deck -- something he has been doing for the last twelve nights -- would not be too hard on him. But, Was I wrong! he tells himself as he stretches his sore muscles. His entire body seems to be aching all over. To save money he has been sleeping a costilla pelada -- on nothing but his ribs -- on the deck of El Futuro, the small freight steamship that is bringing him from the port of Veracruz, in Mexico, to this new land, Guatemala. Having been exiled nine years from his home in Cuba, he now seems to be always on the move, constantly going from one place to the next, with no country -- and with no job -- rarely being able to afford a comfortable bunk, not even on this very inexpensive freight steamship.
He quickly unfolds the jacket to his black suit, which he had been using as a pillow, and, after he brushes it carefully and smooths out the wrinkles as best he can, he puts it on, hurries to the railing, and looks intently at the shore of this land he is about to enter, wondering what it is that makes it seem so different from the shore of his native Cuba. Certainly one sweats as much here as one sweats there, he thinks. It is still very early in the morning, and yet, the heat is already stifling, even though it is not quite the end of March. So far 1877 is turning out to be a very hot year, Julián tells himself, as he wipes his forehead with his handkerchief while his eyes focus on the pale blue mountains barely visible in the far distance, framed by the luxuriant greenery of the rain forest near the shore.
And then, all of a sudden, Julián realizes what makes this place seem so different from his own Cuba. Where are the tall slender royal palms of his native land? he asks himself as he turns his head, scanning the opulent tropical shore of Guatemala, looking for -- dreaming of -- a Cuban royal palm. And as he does, while he stretches his sore arms once again, and again massages the back of his neck, he asks himself the very same question he has been asking from the moment he set foot on another ship, a ship very much like this one, a ship that nine years ago took him away from his homeland: When will I be able to go back home?
Suddenly, the tired old steamship whistle of El Futuro lets out a second set of piercing blasts, and a bell begins clanking and clanking loudly. Responding to its urgent call, sailors appear all over the ship, as if from nowhere, scurrying around the deck, shouting orders to each other, and throwing ropes to the men on shore, who shout back at them as the steamship begins its docking operations.
Leaning against the railing of the ship's deck, his face covered with thick drops of sweat, Julián admiringly watches the ship's crew helping each other, each of them knowing exactly what to do, each of them a piece of a very complex and well-oiled machine.
One of the men rushes by Julián's side, and as the man reaches for a rope, he accidentally bumps into Julián. Julián quickly moves out of the man's way and mechanically, almost unconsciously, pats the small leather bag he hides under his vest, next to his revolver, to make sure he still has the little money he was given by Señor Fermín -- a Guatemalan man Julián had befriended in Mexico City.
Ten weeks ago, Julián decided to leave Mexico behind. Or, rather, it was decided for him. After the latest military coup d'etat in Mexico City, three and a half months ago, the members of the new conservative Mexican regime did not like at all what a young liberal Cuban writer in exile with the burning passion of individual freedom running wild through his veins was saying about them. Before things got worse, Julián's friends begged him, "Please, Julián, either quiet down or get out of Mexico." But quieting Julián down was totally out of the question. After all, his own family had not been able to quiet him down in Cuba; that was why he was in exile in Mexico City -- where Julián had barely been able to eke out a living by writing political essays for La Revista Universal, an ultraliberal literary publication. It was then that Señor Fermín suggested that Julián try his luck in Guatemala.
"I believe there's a future in Guatemala for you, Julián," Señor Fermín said. "I took the liberty of writing to a friend of mine, Professor Saavedra, about you. He is an exiled Cuban man, like you. He was teaching in New York City when the consul of Guatemala hired him and he is now the principal of the Escuela Central, the most exclusive girls school in Guatemala City." He paused as he extracted an envelope from one of the inner pockets of his impeccably tailored, elegant, silk faille frock coat. "And here's his answer," the old man added, showing Julián a letter from Professor Saavedra, in which the professor said that a full-time teaching position was open at his school for a man with the proper credentials, and that he would try his best to hold it open for as long as he could to help his fellow Cuban, Julián, get that position. But, the professor stressed, it was essential -- and in his letter Professor Saavedra underlined that word essential not once but twice -- essential that Julián got to Guatemala City as soon as he could, and definitely prior to the end of the current school year, for by that time teaching appointments for the next school year had to be proposed, approved by the minister of public instruction, signed, sealed, and completely settled.
After reading him Professor Saavedra's letter, Señor Fermín gave Julián, in addition to some money for the trip, a letter of introduction recommending Julián to the new liberal president of Guatemala, Gualterio Rubios, a former schoolmate -- and a personal friend -- of Señor Fermín. "Being in the right political circles can never hurt a young man," Señor Fermín added as he winked at Julián.
Still leaning against the ship's railing, Julián sees Yubirio, an older Cuban sailor who works on this small steamship, rush by. Effortlessly and with almost animal perfection, Yubirio, who is tall and black as ebony, and who has huge, bare, muscular arms glistening with sweat, throws a thick rope to one of the other sailors already on the shore, who grabs it and ties it to a wood post just as Yubirio begins to sing at the top of his lungs one of those bawdy Cuban songs popular at the time.
The man who doesn't know how to drink
and doesn't know how to make love,
What good is a man like that? Eh?
What good is a man like that?
Julián smiles at the way Yubirio puts an emphasis on the word Eh as he sings, creating a lilting syncopation that puts rhythm into his movements, making what he is doing seem more like a pleasant dance than the strenuous job Yubirio and all the rest of the sailors are undertaking. The power of music! Julián thinks. Leave it to a Cuban man to put rhythm to everything so he can dance through life. Julián remembers when not yet seventeen he was imprisoned in La Habana, sentenced to forced labor, and had to work the stone quarries of San Lázaro just for publishing in his school paper a poem saying that Cuba should be free from Spain. Barely a man then, and already a political prisoner! Quarrying the heavy stone had seemed so much easier when the men sang as they worked, he remembers. Yes, the power of music! Julián repeats to himself. It makes life so much easier.
Standing nearby on the shore and watching the ship as it docks are dozens of men -- stevedores. These men are short and stocky, of Mayan descent. They all have slightly slanted, almost Oriental eyes; long, black, coarse hair; huge, muscular arms; and their dark-honey skin has been made darker by the scorching sun. Barefoot and wearing nothing but well-worn white cotton pants tied around the waist by thick jute ropes, and old wide-brimmed palm-leaf hats sheltering their heads, they are waiting expectantly for the ship to dock so they can begin to unload its cargo.
Julián looks at them as Yubirio, with the help of another sailor, places a large gangplank noisily into position and gives a loud commanding whistle, making Julián turn to Yubirio, who smiles at him.
"Hey, Julián," the black man shouts, a smirk in his voice as he points to the Guatemalan shore with a nod of his head, "don't get too drunk down there."
"I'll try not to," Julián shouts back, a matching smirk in his voice, and pauses briefly just to add jokingly, "unless I have to," which makes Yubirio laugh a loud belly laugh.
Yubirio waves good-bye to Julián, a powerful, manly wave, and gets back to work, dancing as he sings.
Julián nods his head and, admiringly, smiles back at Yubirio, for he sees in the old Cuban sailor a proud Negro man who has managed to escape from the infamous whips and shackles of Spanish slavery. He must have had it a lot worse than I ever had, Julián tells himself, and yet, look at him, singing and dancing. Then, unaware that he is doing it, Julián begins to hum the catchy tune of Yubirio's song as he begins to exit down the ramp, limping ever so slightly -- a limp he owes to the heavy iron ball he had to wear while in prison.
Still humming, Julián goes to the corner of the dock where he retrieves his battered leather suitcase, a suitcase that has accompanied him to so many places in his constant and useless search for an adopted home: Isla de Pinos. Madrid. Zaragoza. París. London. Progreso. Ciudad México. Veracruz. Contoy. Isla Mujeres. Belize.
And now, Guatemala.
It seems to Julián that all he has been doing for the last nine years of his life is packing and unpacking, just to repack everything once again. Not that he has that much to pack and unpack. The worn black suit he is wearing has been everywhere, as well as the companion twin suit -- his "better" suit -- which he carefully keeps, neatly folded, inside his suitcase, waiting for "special" occasions. A few changes of underwear. Toiletries. A bottle of quinine to fight malaria. A flask of gin to make the quinine palatable.
And his books.
He picks his suitcase up. He had forgotten how heavy it has become. That is why it is so heavy, he thinks, because of his books. He has tried to leave them behind but he has found out that he cannot. In moments of despair -- and he has had plenty of those -- it has been only his books that have provided him with the strength to live through one more sleepless night and face one more hopeful dawn. Thucydides. Plato. Plutarch. Cicero. Cervantes. Shakespeare. Whitman.
His books are his friends -- the friends who talk to him.
Just as his diaries are his friends -- the friends who listen.
As if all his books were not heavy enough, Julián also carries in his old suitcase his voluminous diaries -- nine of them by now -- each page filled top to bottom, front and back, including all spaces that might have been margins, using the finest pen and the smallest handwriting, the letters as tight to each other as he can make them, so small and so tight against each other that at times he himself cannot decipher what he has written. But paper is so expensive and so difficult to find! And memories are so valuable! How could he leave his diaries behind? Besides, he uses most of the material in those diaries to write articles about his trips. That is how he has been making a living, by writing travel articles for magazines and newspapers. Barely enough of a living for himself -- and definitely not enough of a living to support a wife.
And yet, having a wife is what he yearns for. Having a woman by his side to share his bed, his life, and his dreams.
Lost somewhere in the early pages of last year's diary, he wrote,
The night is long and silence presses painfully over my heart.
Why does this emptiness weigh so heavily upon my soul?
But even the longest of nights must come to an end.
The sun calls me to work. I must let go of my pain
and fold over my tired shoulders the wounded wing of the poet.
Less than a month after those lines appeared in his diary, he was rereading them, and it seemed to him as if those lines had been written by some-one else. The desperate loneliness he saw in them overwhelmed him.
It was then he said to himself, All right Julián, When are you going to marry?
After all, he told himself at the time, he was already a man of twenty-five, and a man that age is supposed to start thinking seriously about getting a wife, starting a family, and settling down. Everybody knows that.
That very same night, after supper, he called on Lucía, the daughter of a well-to-do exiled Cuban lawyer who for the last eleven years has been living in Mexico City and the only unmarried Cuban woman he knew in that city.
In her house, Lucía, her father, and her two aunts had provided a Cuban oasis for Julián. There, Julián no longer felt a foreigner in a strange land, because there he no longer had to feel embarrassed about his speaking Spanish with a Cuban accent. During the few moments he spent there, at Lucía's house, he could close his eyes and feel that he was back home, with his sisters, with his mother. Even with his father, his Spaniard-to-the-core father, who would no longer talk to his rebellious son because Julián, through his writings demanding liberty for Cuba, had shown great disrespect for the Spanish Crown -- and thus for him. But a father whom Julián loved and admired, a man who taught Julián about what it takes to be a man: about integrity. And honor. And truth. And about keeping to one's word, no matter what.
Lucía was not expecting Julián to call on her that night; he never called on Thursdays. But if she was surprised by his appearance -- and at such a late hour -- her face did not show it. She welcomed him politely with a smile, the same way she had always welcomed him, accompanied him to the parlor, gently asked him to have a seat, and told him she would be right back. Moments later, she came back and began to pour the divine-smelling hot chocolate she had the family's Mexican Indian cook prepare for Julián. With it, Lucía served a large tray of churros -- crisp deep-fried pastries covered with powdered sugar -- which she knew Julián loved so much.
Julián took the cup of hot chocolate she offered him and began to stir the hot drink to cool it, his eyes fixed on the swirling liquid. Still not daring to look up at her, standing tall by his side, he blew gently on the steaming chocolate, as if gathering his strength, and then he said, his tense voice barely audible:
"Lucía, would...would you marry me?"
Not pausing, not even for the briefest moment, Lucía answered, "Why, of course," her voice calm and firm. Then, without adding another word, she proceeded to pour herself a cup of the hot chocolate, after which she sat quietly on the rocking chair opposite Julián's, the way she always did when he was there calling on her.
Julián had not expected her quick response.
Almost spilling his cup of chocolate, he raised his eyes to her, looked at this tall, thin, rather prim woman stiffly sitting across from him as she delicately sipped her steaming hot chocolate -- a woman of whom he knew very little, almost nothing; a woman whose eyes had seldom if ever met his -- and wondered, What have I done!? He had asked her on an impulse. On an urge. Out of desperation. The nights of a man with no country can be very, very long, and very; very lonesome -- books or no books.
But what was done was done.
And now that he has done it, he cannot wait to have Lucía in his bed, by his side. That is the reason he is here now, in Guatemala. To get that job he has been offered so he can send for her. A teacher may not make that much, he knows, but the security of a monthly salary will allow him to marry her. That is precisely what he told Lucía he would do when he left Mexico City over two months ago, the day he gave Lucía his most sacred word of honor that he would come back for her to make her his wife.
Anxious to get started on the long journey that remains to get to Guatemala City, the inland capital of Guatemala, Julián picks up his battered old suitcase and asks a stevedore on the dock where he might purchase one of the palm-leaf hats such as the one the man is wearing.
"Allí, señor," the short, stocky Mayan stevedore answers, pointing to a small palm-leaf-roofed stand, just a little past the customs house.
"Gracias," Julián says.
Minutes later, wearing his badly wrinkled three-piece black suit, a Guatemalan stevedore's wide-brimmed palm-leaf hat, and carrying an old battered suitcase, light with clothes but heavy with books and diaries, Julián enters the small Mayan village of Puerto Dulce, by the Caribbean Sea, the first stop on his long, long way to his future: The wondrous, mysterious, and magical Guatemala City, which lies way up in the mountains, miles away to the west.
He takes a deep breath, raises his eyes, looks ahead of him, smiles broadly, and then, walking as fast as his limp will allow, he decisively starts for the center of the village, looking for an Indian cantina where he has been told he can make arrangements to catch the next train of mules to leave for Guatemala City. And as he does, he begins to sing Yubirio's bawdy Cuban song to himself, heavily underlining the Eh, just as Yubirio did, and letting the power of music -- that makes life so much easier -- put a rhythmic lilt to his steps.
The man who doesn't know how to drink
and doesn't know how to make love,
What good is a man like that? Eh?
What good is a man like that?
Copyright © 1998 by José Raúl Bernardo