THE FLIGHT

There was no bathroom in the cell—it was outside—and the detainees were constantly asking for permission to go. The police officer stood by the cell door, padlock in hand, to watch the others. On one of those occasions, while the officer was waiting by the cell door, another officer arrived and announced that he had brought hot espresso, a privilege in Cuba, where coffee is rationed at three ounces a month per person. The announcement started a great commotion at the station; all the police officers rushed to the coveted Thermos bottle. The officer guarding the gate also went, leaving the open padlock on the gate. I quickly unbolted the lock and, crouching, escaped from prison.

I ran out through the back door, which led to the shore, freed myself of my clothes, and jumped into the water. I was a good swimmer then. I swam away from shore and to Patricio Lumumba Beach, near my aunt’s house. Once there, I saw a friend with whom I had had a few erotic adventures. I told him what had happened, and he managed to get me a pair of shorts from one of the lifeguards. Dressed that way, I immediately showed up at my aunt’s house. She was absolutely flabbergasted to see me there; it was only a short time since I had been arrested and taken away in a patrol car. I told her it had all been a mistake that was cleared up right away and I only needed to pay a fine; I had come home to get the money. But my money was no longer there; my aunt had taken it. I demanded, somewhat violently, that she return it. A little intimidated, she gave me back only half of it.

I ran toward the beach to meet my black friend, but it was swarming with policemen. They were evidently searching for me. Luckily, it did not occur to them at first to look for me at home, which enabled me to pick up the money and destroy everything there that might compromise me. The friend who had gotten me the shorts hid me in one of the booths at the beach, then checked my house and confirmed that it was surrounded by policemen with guard dogs. He told me to jump into the water and hide behind a buoy, where the dogs would not be able to find me. I stayed there all day, and in the evening my friend signaled me to come out of the water. He bought me a pizza with his own money; mine was completely soaked. He then hid me in the lifeguard’s booth. The following day the beach was crawling with policemen looking for me; I could not come out of my hiding place. My friend provided me with an inner tube, a can of beans, and a bottle of rum. In the evening we walked through the pines to La Concha Beach. He had also gotten me a pair of swim fins, and the only solution seemed to be that I leave the country on an inner tube. Before jumping in, I hid my money under some rocks near the shore. My friend and I said good-bye. “Good luck, my brother,” he said. He was crying.

I tied the tube to my neck with a piece of rope. He had fitted the tube with a gunnysack in such a way that I could sit on it. A small jute bag held the bottle of rum and the can of black beans. I stowed the bag securely, and got into the water. I had to make my escape from the very beach where I had spent the most beautiful years of my youth.

As I was swimming out, the ocean was turning increasingly rougher: it was the choppy November surf, announcing the arrival of winter. All night I swam out, but at the mercy of the waves my progress was slow. When I was about three or four miles away from shore, I realized it would be difficult to get anywhere. On the high seas I had no way of opening the bottle, and my legs and joints were almost frozen.

Suddenly a boat appeared in the darkness, heading straight at me. I jumped off and submerged so I could hide under the tube. The boat stopped about twenty yards from me and extended a huge claw—it looked like a giant crab—which plunged into the water. Apparently it was a sand hauler trying to dig up sand. I heard voices and laughter, but they did not see me.

Clearly there was no point in going on. Farther out I saw a line of lights: the coast guard, fishermen, or more sand haulers. They formed a sort of wall on the horizon. The waves were getting rougher and rougher. I had to try to get back.

I remember seeing something shiny in the deep and was afraid a shark might take a bite out of my legs, which, of course, I tried to keep out of the water. A few hours before dawn I realized that the whole thing was absurd, that even the tube was a hindrance; that I could almost get to the United States faster by swimming freely than by riding on that tube, without oars or direction. I got off the tube, and swam for more than three hours toward shore, the bag containing the bottle and can of beans tied to my waist. I was almost paralyzed and my greatest fear now was to get cramps and drown.

I reached the coast at Jaimanitas Beach and noticed some empty buildings. I hid in one of them; never had I felt such intense cold or such deep loneliness. I had failed and would be arrested any minute now. There was only one way for me to escape: suicide. I smashed the bottle of rum and with the pieces of broken glass slashed my wrists. I thought it was the end, of course, and lay down in a corner of the empty house, slowly losing consciousness. I felt that this was death.

Around ten o’clock the following day I woke up thinking I was in another world. But I was in the same place where I had attempted, unsuccessfully, to end my life. Though I had bled profusely, at some point the bleeding had stopped. With the shards of the broken bottle I opened the can of beans; they restored my strength somewhat. Then I washed my cuts in the sea. The inner tube had also washed ashore, not too far away.

I started walking along the beach, without any clear sense of direction, and suddenly came upon a group of men, close-shorn, lying on the sand. They looked at me a little surprised but did not say a word. I realized they were forced laborers, prisoners at a farm in the Flores section. I had walked by them barefoot and with cuts on my arms; they could not have thought I was a mere bather. Finally I arrived at La Concha, and recovered the hidden money.

On my way to the place where I had hidden the money, I heard someone calling me: it was my black friend, who was signaling me to come. I quickly told him what had happened, and he said we could still go at once to Guantánamo; it was his hometown and he knew the area well. Lying under the pines, he traced a map of Caimanera in the sand and told me how I could reach the U.S. naval base.

It was imperative now to get clothes to wear. I saw one of my cousins at the beach, and told him I needed some. He warned me that the police were looking all over for me. The stupidity of the police was incredible; they were searching in vain for me in the very same area where I was. My cousin said he would try to get me something. He left the girl he was with and soon came back with a complete outfit. It was a voluntary, unexpected gesture of kindness I found quite surprising.

I dressed quickly and went with my black friend to his home in Santos Suárez. It was a huge house, full of glass cabinets. He cut my hair very short, almost to the skull; I looked like a different person. When I saw myself in the mirror, I was shocked. Instead of my long hair I now had short hair parted in the middle. He also exchanged the shirt that my cousin had given me for a rougher-looking one. According to him, this was the only way I could avoid being arrested before reaching Guantánamo.

With the money I had, and a little more that his grandmother gave him, we went to the train station. It was not easy to buy tickets for Santiago de Cuba or Guantánamo; you always had to reserve way ahead. But he managed to get them by talking to an employee and slipping him a few pesos.

Again I was in one of those slow, steamy trains to Santiago de Cuba. The black guy immediately made friends with everyone who shared our seat; he had bought a bottle of rum and started drinking. At some point he told me it was a good idea to socialize with everyone around to escape notice.

He spent the whole trip, which lasted three days, drinking and sharing with the others, laughing and telling jokes. He quickly made friends with other black men, some of whom were in fact very beautiful. I would have liked to get off the train and make love with him in any hotel, the way we used to at Monte Barreto; in moments of danger I have always felt the need to have someone close to me. He said it would be difficult to get a hotel room in Santiago, but that we could perhaps find accommodations in Guantánamo.

At Santiago we took a bus for Guantánamo, but first we ate some of those croquettes sold at cafeterias in Cuba and jokingly called “palatial” croquettes because they had a tendency to stick to your palate in such a way that it was almost impossible to dislodge them.

We arrived at Guantánamo, a town that seemed horrendous to me, flatter and more provincial even than Holguín. The black man took me to a tenement, which looked like a den of criminals. He told me to take off all my clothes because he had acquired another set even more rustic than mine. He also asked me to give him all my money; it made no sense for me to take that Cuban money with me if I was going to enter United States territory. I did not like the idea, but I had no choice. He took me to the terminal from which I could take the bus to Caimanera, and refused to accompany me on this trip. He had given me all the necessary instructions: to get off at the checkpoint, turn right toward the river, walk along the riverbank and when the lights of the airport became visible, hide in the bushes till nightfall, swim across the river and proceed on the other side until reaching the ocean; then stay hidden around there all day, and the following night, jump in and swim to the naval base.

It was not hard to remain unnoticed inside the bus; the black man had been right in disguising me the way he did. After I got off, to avoid being seen I walked almost on all fours for many hours. Around midnight, while I was crawling through those wild bushes, startled quail and other birds would fly off. I crawled on. Suddenly I heard a thunderous noise; it was the river. It was a great joy to look at the water. My black friend had not deceived me; the river was there. I continued walking along the riverbank; it was very swampy. I still had in my hand a piece of bread the black man had told me not to eat until I was ready to jump in. At dawn I finally saw the lights of the airport; they seemed like party lights to me. They would go on and off, as if they were beckoning me. It was time to get into the water.

While walking next to the river I kept hearing crackling sounds. I do not know why, but it seemed to me that the Moon was telling me not to go into those waters. I continued walking until I got to a place where I did not hear those crackling sounds anymore, and looked for a good spot to enter the river. Suddenly, strange green lights began appearing in the bushes. They looked like lightning, except they did not come down from the sky but sprang out of the ground, next to the tree trunks. I kept on walking and seeing green lights. A few seconds later I heard machine-gun fire; the bullets seemed to be grazing me. I later found out that those green lights were signals; they were infrared lights. The guards had discovered that someone was trying to cross the border; they were trying to locate and, of course, to exterminate the intruder. I ran to a tree with a dense canopy and climbed as high as I could, hugging the trunk. Cars came, full of soldiers with dogs, looking for me. All night they searched, at times rather close to my hiding place. At last, they left.

I spent the whole day and the following night up in the tree. It was hard to get down without being seen, especially since the area was already on alert. At dusk I finally climbed down. Tired, I had to gather all my strength to get back to Guantánamo, and from there plan a different, perhaps less hazardous, escape route that would get me to the naval base. I dragged myself through the mud and, once close to the highway, fell asleep in the shrubbery. Early the next day I washed my face and cleaned my clothes as best I could, returned to the number 1 checkpoint, and took the bus back to Guantánamo. I arrived in town with no idea where to look for my black friend, and wandered aimlessly through the streets, a dangerous proposition in my case. I had no money. At the Guantánamo train terminal I came across the black guy. He looked scared; evidently he thought I was either dead or at the naval base. He told me that it would be impossible to make another try, that the place he had directed me to was really the best one, and that every place was being watched much more closely now, according to his friends. He told me I had been very lucky after all, because some boxes that I mentioned having seen were mines, and if I had stepped on one, it would have blown me to bits. But I refused to give up; a return meant accepting failure. I decided to try again. The area was under closer surveillance, but I had nothing to lose. It had been absurd to listen to the Moon. This time I entered the water and by the light of the Moon I was able to see where the crackling sounds had come from: the river was infested with alligators. I have never seen so many sinister-looking animals in such a small expanse of water. They were just waiting there for me to get in so they could devour me. It was impossible to cross that river. Again I returned to Guantánamo covered with mud. No doubt the bus driver thought I was a coastguardman working for State Security who had been newly transferred to that region.

For three days I walked around Guantánamo, without any food. I didn’t have a penny, and continued to sleep at the train terminal. I never saw the black man again. I met some young men at the terminal who were planning to go by train to Havana as stowaways. They told me all one had to do was to hide in the men’s room when the conductor came by. I had no other choice, so I decided to make the trip that way.

We boarded the train and the three of us hid in the men’s room when the conductor came. It was not long before they became sexually aroused, so I was able to enjoy those excited guys while the train moved slowly through the hills of Oriente. The train would stop at every town and I would get off. Then the train continued, and whenever the conductor passed by, about every four hours, we would hide in the men’s room, they would get excited, and those beautiful legs would get entangled with mine. I told them I was a draft evader trying to return home to Havana. They were real draft evaders who wanted to go to Havana because they thought it would be easier to escape notice there than in Guantánamo, their hometown. At one of the stops where we got off, Adrián, one of the young men, gave me an ID. He told me he had another one, and that it might come in handy. The ID had his picture on it, but those photos are so unclear and impersonal that they could look like anyone. From then on I was Adrián Faustino Sotolongo. At Cacocún I left the train and started walking toward Holguín. It was a long stretch. I finally hitched a ride on a truck full of laborers who did not ask any questions. I arrived home at daybreak.

I was returning home alone, persecuted, defeated. My mother opened the door; she screamed at the sight of me, but I asked her to keep quiet. She began to cry silently, and my grandmother fell to her knees and started praying, asking God to please save me. My mother brought me a piece of chicken and said it pained her greatly to see me like this, under the bed like a dog, hiding to eat. All this distressed me so much I could not have a bite, even though for several days I had had no food at all.

My grandmother was still on her knees, asking God to help me. I had never felt so close to her; she knew that only a miracle could save me. At some point there was an opportunity for me to talk with her, but I did not know what to say. I had not seen her since my grandfather died; she had loved him very much even though he beat her quite often. When she came into the room for a moment, I crawled out from under the bed and hugged her. She told me she could not live without my grandfather Antonio, who had been such a good man. I cried with her; he had beaten her almost every week, but they had lived together for fifty years. Evidently, there had been a great love between them. My grandmother had suddenly aged.

The following day my mother and I left for Havana. Vidal, one of my uncles by marriage, walked us to the train station and lent us some money. I had hoped that perhaps Olga, to whom I had given the address of the Abreu brothers, had been able to make some contacts abroad on my behalf. I had already sent her the Mayday telegram we had agreed upon: “Send me the flower book.” She knew that meant I was asking them to get me out by any means.

I was able to sleep on the train. I had never taken a train trip with my mother, and never traveled in a sleeper. She said, “How sad to take such a beautiful trip under these circumstances.” My mother was always complaining about everything, but this time she was right. I thought about how beautiful it would have been to enjoy the scenery without the feeling of being persecuted. How pleasant it would have been to travel at my mother’s side if I had not been in such a predicament. The simplest things now acquired extraordinary value for me. During the entire trip my mother tried to persuade me to give myself up; she said it would be best for me. She was telling me that one of her neighbors who had been sentenced to thirty years had been released after only ten, and now was free and walked by her house every day, singing. I could not see myself singing in front of my mother’s house after ten years in jail; this was not a really promising future. I wanted to get out of that hellhole in any way possible.

When we arrived at the Havana train terminal I was arrested by two undercover cops. My mother was terrified. Her skinny body was shaking. I took her thin hands in mine and told her to wait for me, that everything would be all right. The policemen took me to a small room and asked a few questions. I told them that I had come from Oriente and that my name was Adrián Faustino Sotolongo, and showed them my train ticket and ID. They told me I resembled someone they were looking for who had escaped from a police station in Havana. I answered that it would not be logical for me to be the suspect because I had just arrived in Havana, and the person they were looking for would obviously try to get out of Havana, not come to the city. My reply made sense and I had produced proof of a different identity, so they let me go, after having taken God knows what measurements of my neck. My mother was out there trembling, looking more pathetic by the minute. I told her that we had to separate, that she should stay with my aunt Mercedita, who lived in East Havana. I would call and let the phone ring once. If she received that signal, it meant that she should return to the terminal, where we could meet to work out some plan.

I would try to hide in the home of a friend. I had hopes that if somebody talked with the French ambassador, perhaps he could arrange for me to be granted political asylum at the French embassy; perhaps the ambassador could hide me in his home and obtain an exit permit for me. After all, all my books had been published in France. I was hoping that my mother would go to the home of a French citizen who had been one of my professors, and with whom we had established a certain friendship; it would be easy for him to speak with the ambassador. We had left Holguín with a letter addressed to the ambassador; it was a crazy idea, but perhaps it might work.

I called on Ismael Lorenzo, who lived with his wife. He was very generous and told me I could stay with them. He and I had planned our escape many times, thinking of the Guantánamo naval base. He said it was a miracle that I did not get caught, because when the infrared rays send their signal, the army men do not stop until they have captured their man. He explained to me the real advantage of those infrared rays, that the signal is triggered by heat and the heat source can be any living creature near the detectors. The search team probably thought it had been an animal and therefore had given up.

Lorenzo’s home was under surveillance because he had submitted an application for a permit to leave the country, and the Committee for the Defense paid him frequent “friendly” visits. I did not want to endanger his position. After spending a night there, I went to see Reinaldo Gómez Ramos. He looked at me, terrified. He knew of my escape, of course, and told me it would be absolutely impossible for him to take me in, that I had to leave immediately.

I returned to the terminal and called my mother. We agreed to meet at a nearby park. My uncle Carlos had arrived from Oriente; he was aware of my situation. Carlos was a member of the Communist Party, but for him the family came first and he was good to me. He offered to go with my mother to see the French professor and show him my letter.

They returned a few hours later. They had seen the professor, who was very responsive and within a couple of hours had taken my mother and Carlos to the ambassador. But the ambassador’s reply was absolutely negative; he said he could do nothing for me, though he kept my letter. That was the news they brought me.

I gave my mother and Carlos the address of the Abreu brothers. It was absurd for me to remain at the bus station; that was the center of police activity, where they asked for everyone’s ID. At night, when I saw the patrol cars, I had the feeling that they were all looking for me. I decided to hide in Lenin Park; it was a park used for many official events and perhaps the last place where the police would look for a political fugitive. I wrote a short message to Juan Abreu. I gave him a date and time when we could meet on the left side of the amphitheater in the park. The amphitheater was surrounded by bushes where I could hide safely.

I did not have to explain much to Juan about my plans to escape with Olga’s help. I told him that perhaps she would send someone over from France to get me out of the country. Abreu looked at me and replied, “That person is already here; he arrived three days ago. We were all desperately looking for you. I stopped by your aunt’s and she almost had me put in jail.” He added that he would see the person the following day; that he seemed to be a very intelligent Frenchman who spoke perfect Spanish.

The Abreu home was being watched closely; everybody knew they were among my best friends. The Frenchman had shown up there with a bottle of perfume, and said that he had a message from Olga about the “flower book.” He had managed to give the hotel police the slip and, without knowing Havana, after taking three or four different buses to confuse the police, had reached the home of the Abreus. Juan Abreu told him the truth, that I was a fugitive and my whereabouts were unknown. The Frenchman’s entry permit allowed him to stay a few more days. I had reappeared at just the right time.

My friends in Paris, Jorge and Margarita, informed by Olga of my situation, had decided that it was necessary to immediately find someone unknown to the Castro regime who could go to Cuba and try to get me out. They had contacted Joris Lagarde, the young son of friends of theirs, who was an adventurer and spoke perfect Spanish. He had traveled all over South and Central America hunting for treasure supposedly buried by Spanish conquistadors or lying at the bottom of the sea. He theorized that certain galleons had gone down off the coast of Maracaibo and that there was plenty of gold and sunken treasure just waiting for an expert diver. He was an excellent swimmer and also knew a lot about sailing. Lagarde was the right person to come to my rescue. Jorge and Margarita had purchased a sailboat and a compass, and Olga added some hallucinogenic drugs to keep me high. They bought Lagarde tickets to Mexico, as a cover-up, with a stopover in Cuba. He was to explain to the authorities that he was going to take part in sailing races in Mexico, and that he would like to train along the Cuban shoreline. That plan would justify the boat. He had arrived in Havana at the same time I was attempting to escape through the Guantánamo naval base.

Around midnight Lagarde and Juan arrived at Lenin Park. He was really a fearless young man and did all he could to get the sailboat into Cuba, but the airport authorities told him that although he was allowed to visit Cuba, the sailboat had to remain in custody until the time of his departure for Mexico. A boat was, of course, a forbidden mode of transport in Cuba. Only high officials were allowed to use boats, and some of them had left in those boats for the United States.

Again my hopes to leave Cuba were dashed. Joris Lagarde gave me his own lighter and all the foreign cigarettes he had, as well as the compass and the boat’s sail. He promised he would go to France and come back for me somehow. We talked all night. He felt bad about leaving me stranded and told me we would meet again in four days, before his departure.

The next day Juan brought me a razor, a small mirror, Homer’s Iliad, and a small notebook so that I could write. I immediately wrote a communiqué that began: “Havana, Lenin Park, November 15, 1974.” It was a desperate appeal, addressed to the International Red Cross, the UN, UNESCO, and the countries still privileged to hear the truth. I wanted to report all the persecution I was being subjected to, and began as follows: “For a long time I have been the victim of a sinister persecution by the Cuban regime.” I went on to list the censorship and harsh treatment that we Cuban writers had suffered, and to name all the writers who had been executed; the case of Nelson Rodríguez, the imprisonment of René Ariza, the fact that the poet Manuel Ballagas was held incommunicado. In one paragraph I explained the desperate situation I was in and how, as persecution was escalating, I was writing those lines in hiding, while waiting for the most sinister and criminal state apparatus to put an end to my existence. And I stated: I want now to affirm that what I am saying here is the truth, even though under torture I might later be forced to say the opposite.

Lagarde arrived at the appointed day and hour to see me, and I gave him the communiqué with instructions to have it printed in every publication possible. I also gave him a letter to Margarita and Jorge, asking them to publish all the manuscripts I had sent them in which I openly denounced the Cuban regime. The Abreu brothers also took advantage of Lagarde’s visit to get as much of their work as possible out of the country. We agreed that I would stay in hiding as long as feasible, until Lagarde could return and rescue me somehow.

He returned to France with the news of my situation, and all my friends mounted a campaign on my behalf. The document was published in Paris in Le Figaro, and also in Mexico City. I had conceived the idea that Margarita and Olga send telegrams with my signature to various government officials in Cuba, telling them that I had arrived safely. Thus, while I slept in the culverts at Lenin Park, Nicolás Guillén received a telegram reading: “Arrived OK. Thanks for your help. Reinaldo.” The telegram was sent from Vienna.

All this confused them for a week, but then they realized that I had not escaped, and they tightened their surveillance of my friends. The Abreus’ home was surrounded and the terror led them to unearth the manuscripts of all my novels and burn them, together with all the unpublished work they had written—approximately twelve books. Nicolás and José felt they were being so closely watched that they did not dare come to see me in the park.

Several of my friends who were now informers (Hiram Prado was one) had called on Nicolás Abreu where he worked as a movie projectionist, to inquire about me. The police not only were watching José; they threatened to put him in jail if he did not disclose my whereabouts. The person directing the group in charge of capturing me was a lieutenant by the name of Víctor.

Once an undercover cop sat next to José Abreu on the bus. The cop started to praise the United States and then added that Reinaldo Arenas was his favorite author. José just changed seats, without saying a word. When the surveillance intensified, Juan would go to the place where we had agreed to meet and instead of waiting for me, he would just leave me something to eat.

I started writing my memoirs in the notebooks that Juan had brought me. Under the title “Before Night Falls” I would write all day until dark, waiting for the other darkness that would come when the police eventually found me. I had to hurry to get my writing done before my world finally darkened, before I was thrown into jail. That manuscript, of course, was lost, as was almost everything I had written in Cuba that I had not been able to smuggle out, but at the time, writing it all down was a consolation; it was a way of being with my friends when I was no longer among them.

I knew what a prison was like. René Ariza had gone insane in one; Nelson Rodríguez had to confess everything he was ordered to and then he was executed; Jesús Castro was held in a sinister cell in La Cabaña; I knew that once there, I could write no more. I still had the compass Lagarde had given me and didn’t want to part with it, although I realized the danger it posed; to me it was a kind of magic charm. The compass, always pointing north, was like a symbol: it was in that direction that I had to go, north; no matter how far away it might take me from the Island, I would always be fleeing to the north.

I also had some hallucinogenic drugs that Olga had sent me. They were wonderful; however depressed I was, if I took one of them, I would feel an intense urge to dance and sing. Sometimes at night, under the influence of those pills, I would run around among the trees, dance, sing, and climb the trees.

One night, as a result of the euphoria that those pills gave me, I dared to go as far as the park amphitheater, where none other than Alicia Alonso was dancing. I tied several branches to my body and saw Alonso dance the famous second act of Giselle. Afterward, as I reached the road, a car stopped all of a sudden in front of me and I realized that I had been discovered. I crossed near the improvised stage platform, which was on the water, dove in and came out on the other side of the park. A man with a gun was following me. I ran and climbed a tree, where I stayed for several days not daring to come down.

I remember that while all the cops and their dogs were searching for me in vain, one mutt stood under my tree, looking at me happily without barking, as if it did not want to let them know where I was. Three days later I came down from the tree. I was ravenously hungry; but it would have been difficult to contact Juan. Strangely enough, on the very tree in which I had been hiding there was a poster with my name, information about me, my picture, and in large letters the heading: WANTED. From the information supplied by the police, I learned that I had a birthmark under my left ear.

After those three days of hiding, I saw Juan walking among the trees. He had dared to come to the park. He told me my situation was desperate, that in order to mislead the police he had spent the day switching buses to get to the park, and that there appeared to be no way out. Moreover, he had not heard from anyone in France, and the international scandal caused by my escape was amazing; State Security had sounded the alarm. Fidel Castro had given the order to find me immediately; in a country with such a perfect surveillance system, it was inconceivable that I had escaped from the police two months before and was still on the loose, writing documents and sending them abroad.

In water up to my shoulders, I would fish with a hook and line that Juan had brought me. I would make a little fire to cook the fish near the dam, and try to stay in the water as much as possible. It was much harder to find me that way. And even in that situation of imminent danger I had my erotic adventures with young fishermen, those always ready to have a good time with anybody who cast a promising glance at their fly. One of them insisted on taking me home—he lived nearby—so that I could meet his parents. I first thought it was because of the wristwatch I had, another present from Lagarde, but I was wrong; he simply wanted to introduce me to his family. We had dinner, had a good time, and later returned to the park.

The hardest part was the nights. It was a cold December, and I had to sleep out in the open; occasionally I would wake up soaking wet. I never slept twice in the same place. I hid in ditches full of crickets, cockroaches, and mice. Juan and I had several meeting places because a single spot would have been too dangerous. Sometimes at night I would continue reading the Iliad with the help of my lighter.

In December the water behind the dam dried up completely and I sought protection against its great walls. I kept a sort of mobile library there; Juan had brought me a few more books: From the Orinoco to the Amazon River, The Magic Mountain, and The Castle. I dug a hole at the end of the dam and buried them there; I took care of those books as if they were a great treasure. I buried them in polyethylene bags, which could be found all over the country; I think they were the only item the system had produced in abundance.

While hiding in the park I got together now and then with the young fisherman I had met there; he was alarmed by the excessive surveillance of the place. He told me that, according to the police, a search was in progress for a CIA agent hiding there. He also told me that other fishermen and State Security were spreading various stories to alarm the people of the area so they would inform State Security if they saw any suspicious-looking character. They were saying that the person they were looking for had murdered an old lady, raped a little girl; in short, he was supposed to have committed such heinous crimes that anyone would inform on him. It was unbelievable that he had not been captured yet.