THE CAPTURE

Since I scarcely had eaten in the last ten days, I ventured down a path leading to a little store in the town of Calabazar with the Iliad under my arm. I think at that moment I felt suicidal. That, in any case, is what a friend whom I had met in the park had already told me. His name was Justo Luis, and he was a painter. He lived nearby and was aware of everything that was happening to me; the night I saw him he brought me something to eat, cigarettes, and some money, and said: “Here you are giving yourself away; you have to go somewhere else.”

In Calabazar I brought ice cream and quickly returned to the park. I was finishing the Iliad. I was at the point when Achilles, deeply moved, finally delivers Hector’s body to Priam, a unique moment in literature. I was so swept away by my reading that I did not notice that a man had approached me and was now holding a gun to my head: “What is your name?” he asked. I replied that my name was Adrián Faustino Sotolongo, and gave him my ID. “Don’t try to fool me, you are Reinaldo Arenas, and we have been looking for you in this park for some time. Don’t move, or I’ll put a bullet in your head,” he exclaimed, and started to jump for joy. “I’m going to be promoted, I’m going to be promoted, I’ve captured you,” he was saying, and I almost wanted to share in the joy of that poor soldier. He immediately signaled other soldiers nearby and they surrounded me, grabbed me by the arms, and thus, running and jumping through the underbrush, I was led to the Calabazar police station.

The soldier who had captured me was so grateful that he selected a comfortable cell for me. Although my mind told me I was a prisoner, my body refused to believe it and wanted to continue to run and jump across the countryside.

There I was in a cell, the compass still in my pocket. The police had taken the Iliad and my autobiography.* Within a few hours the whole town was gathered in front of the police station. The word had spread that the CIA agent, the rapist, the murderer of the old lady, had been captured by the Revolutionary police. The people were demanding that I be taken to the execution wall, as they had so loudly shouted for so many others at the beginning of the Revolution.

Those people actually wanted to storm the police station, and some of them climbed on the roof. The women were especially incensed, perhaps because of the rumored rape of the old lady; they threw rocks at me, and anything else they could find. The cop who arrested me yelled that Revolutionary justice would take care of me and succeeded in calming them down a little, although they still remained outside in the street. At that point it was dangerous to take me out of there, but the police finally managed to do so with a heavy escort of high-ranking officers. I then met Víctor, who had been interrogating all of my friends.

Víctor had received orders from the high command to transfer me immediately to the prison at Morro Castle. As we drove through the streets of Havana, I saw people walking normally, free to have an ice cream or go to the movies to watch a Russian film, and I felt deeply envious of them. I was the fugitive now captive, the prisoner on his way to serve his time.