THE ABREU BROTHERS

While working desperately on the second version of Farewell to the Sea I met the Abreu brothers (Juan, José, and Nicolás). They gave me a lot of support to write the novel again. I promised that every week I would read to them one more canto from the novel. We met in the most out-of-the-way places in Lenin Park to hold our literary gatherings. In those days, even while under surveillance and suffering persecution, we wrote indictments against the regime. Then we wrote mainly poetry; it kept us from going insane or falling into the sterility that had already dragged other Cuban writers down.

To get to Lenin Park was an odyssey. One had to take three or four different chock-full buses. It was the only park that had lakes and woods, in a huge section outside Havana’s city limits. It was evidently a park for high officials of the government, privileged people who had cars and were able to drive there in order to buy chocolates and cream cheese, not available elsewhere. There was even a luxurious restaurant called Las Ruinas, a name singularly appropriate because any average person having a meal there would surely face financial ruin; the prices of the entrées were way beyond the reach of our pocketbooks. But Castro’s high officials would arrive in their cars and eat at the restaurant. We would meet, not too far from there, to read poetry, novels, and plays. Those gatherings, which we held every Sunday for over four years, were attended by José Abreu, Juan Abreu, Nicolás Abreu, Luis de la Paz, and myself. It was undoubtedly a time of the most intense creativity for everyone in the group.

The police naturally searched my room now and then, but I did not let it bother me too much and I kept writing. There was no reason for them to lift the tiles on the roof where my manuscripts were hidden.

These gatherings in Lenin Park lasted until 1974. I remember reading there El central [El Central: A Cuban Sugar Mill], “To Die in June, Gasping for Air,” and “Leper Colony,” as well as all the rewritten cantos from Farewell to the Sea. One day, the five of us decided to start an underground magazine. We would type it, making six or seven carbons, and circulate it among ourselves and the few trusty friends we had left by then. We named it Ah, La Marea [Oh, The Tide], and in that first number, if I remember correctly, we included some of my translations of Rimbaud, poems contributed by everyone, and a chapter from a novel by Juan Abreu. Though we were only able to publish two numbers of the magazine and we were the only ones who read it, it was one of the few consolations available to us.

But we had little hope by then that the system would change, or that our works would be published or there would be any kind of opening. We had given up on that possibility years ago and, I believe, for good reason.