Walking Cuba: El Camino del Cimarron — Day 5

Viñas-Zulueta (1)

I stayed at the Ariosa for a long time. When I arrived there, the workers asked me, “Hey, where you come from?” And I told them, “I’m a freedman from Purio.” Then they took me to the overseer. He gave me work. He put me to cutting cane. It didn’t seem strange to me; I was already an expert at that. I also cleared the field. That sugar mill was average size. The owner was Ariosa by name, a pure-blood Spaniard. The ariosa was one of the first to be converted to a central site because it had a wide belt that carried the cane to the boiler room. Inside there, it was like all other sugar mills. There were brownnoses and ass kissers for the overseers and masters. (61–62)

— Esteban Montejo

In the middle of the night, while I huddle in the corner of the hut next to the bug infected mattresses, all of the lights hanging high on the thatched roof blaze into luminescent action, from pitch black to bright as noon in a nano second. I see the brightness without opening my eyes, through the pink membrane of the eyelids.

I wrap a shirt around my head to make it black again and prepared to dive back in the dream state. One advantage of having slept under all kinds of conditions is that I can sleep under all kinds of conditions.

But I hear rustlings coming from the other room. I peek and see Alexis walking out of the bohío in the long, forceful strides of a man who is pissed off at having been woken up and is looking for…