PRISON
Morro Castle is a colonial fortress built by the Spaniards to defend the Port of Havana against corsair and pirate attacks. It is a dank place, sitting atop a promontory. It had been converted into a prison. The building is of medieval construction, with a drawbridge that we had to cross to enter. We walked through a long, dark tunnel, then the portcullis, and finally entered the prison itself.
I was taken to the booking station, a cell where prisoners are classified according to crime, age, and sexual preference, before being taken inside to serve their time. Strangely enough, neither the officer of State Security who had apprehended me and who was expecting a promotion nor even the high official named Víctor was allowed through the portcullis. They may have been as shaken as I was and for that reason were not able to pull rank to get in; besides, they were in civilian clothes. So in all that confusion, I entered with my ID in the name of Adrián Faustino Sotolongo, the compass, my watch, and all my hallucinogenic pills.
In that cell there were about fifty prisoners; some were in for common crimes, others had been in traffic accidents, and still others were political prisoners. What struck me most in the prison was the noise: hundreds and hundreds of inmates were marching on their way to mess hall; they looked like strange monsters, yelling and greeting each other. It sounded like a unanimous roar. Ever since my childhood, noise has always been inflicted upon me; all my writing has been done against the background of other people’s noise. I think that Cubans are defined by noise; it seems to be inherent in their nature, and also part of their exhibitionism. They need to bother others; they can neither enjoy nor suffer in silence.
That prison was perhaps the worst in all Havana. The toughest criminals were sent there; the prison held mostly common criminals, with only a small section reserved for political prisoners who were awaiting trail or sentencing.
I wanted very much to keep the watch and give it to my mother, so I hid it in my underwear. An older prisoner, whom I later befriended, and who had already been through various jails, advised me to hide the watch quickly. When I showed him the compass, he remarked how amazing it was for me to have entered the prison with that instrument. Eduardo—that was his name—told me that some prisoners had been sentenced to eight years simply for possessing a compass, and that I should flush it down the toilet immediately to remove all proof of ever having had it.
The hallucinogenic drugs that I still had could be lethal if taken in excessive doses. I was afraid of torture, and afraid of compromising my friends, some of whom had taken great risks on my account. I therefore took a number of those pills with a little water. After taking them, I lay down near a rough but good-looking trucker who had committed God knows what kind of transit violation. I did not expect to wake up again, but three days later I regained consciousness in the prison hospital: in a wing full of people with infectious diseases. The doctor told me it was a miracle that I was alive; they had expected me to remain in a coma and die of a heart attack.
From now on, all my old energy, with which I had enjoyed hundreds of youths, would remain locked up next to two hundred and fifty criminals.
The sea seemed to be very remote from the prison, inaccessible beyond a double set of bars. I was just a common prisoner, without the kind of influence that would allow me to get close to the bars and look at the sea, if only from afar. Besides, I did not want to look at it anymore, just as I rejected the sexual advances of the other prisoners. Making love with a free man was very different from making love with an enslaved body behind bars, someone who perhaps chose you as an erotic object because there was nothing better to be had or simply because he was bored to death.
I refused to make love with any prisoner, even though some, in spite of hunger and mistreatment, were quite desirable. There was no beauty in the act, it would have been a degradation. It was also very dangerous: those criminals, after mounting a prisoner, felt they owned him and his few possessions. In jail, sexual intercourse became something sordid, an act of submission and subjugation, of blackmail and violence, even of murder in many instances.
The beauty of a sexual relationship lies in the spontaneity of the conquest and in its secrecy. In jail everything is obvious and miserable; jail itself makes a prisoner feel like an animal, and any form of sex is humiliating.
When I arrived at El Morro I still had Homer’s Iliad with me. I had read all but the last song. I wanted to read it and forget everything around me, but it was difficult; my body refused to accept that it was locked up, that it could no longer run free in the fields. Although my brain tried to explain, my body could not understand that it had to remain for months or years in a bunk full of fleas and in that sweltering heat. The body suffers more than the soul, because the soul can always find something to hang on to, a memory, a hope.
The stench and the heat were unbearable. Going to the bathroom was an odyssey; the bathroom was just a hole in which everybody defecated; it was impossible to get there without having your feet and your ankles full of shit, and there was no water to clean up. Poor body, the soul could do nothing for it under those circumstances.
It seemed as if all the noises that had been torturing me all my life had come together in that place and I was a prisoner. There was no way out for me.
I arrived at El Morro with an infamous reputation not as a political prisoner or a writer but as a rapist, a murderer, and a CIA agent; all this gave me an aura of respectability, even among the real murderers.
As a result, I slept on the floor only the first night after my arrival at ward number 7, to which I had been assigned and which was not, in fact, for gays but for prisoners convicted of various crimes. Homosexuals were confined to the two worst wards of El Morro: these wards were below ground at the lowest level, and water seeped into the cells at high tide. It was a sweltering place without a bathroom. Gays were not treated like human beings, they were treated like beasts. They were the last ones to come out for meals, so we saw them walk by, and the most insignificant incident was an excuse to beat them mercilessly. The soldiers guarding us, who called themselves combatientes, were army recruits sent here as a sort of punishment; they found some release for their rage by taking it out on the homosexuals. Of course, nobody called them homosexuals; they were called fairies, faggots, queers, or at best, gays. The wards for fairies were really the last circle of hell. Admittedly, many of those homosexuals were wretched creatures whom discrimination and misery had turned into common criminals. Nevertheless, they had not lost their sense of humor. With their own sheets they made skirts, and with shoe wax obtained from relatives they shadowed their eyes; they even used lime from the wall whitewash as makeup. Sometimes when they were allowed on the roof of El Morro to get a bit of sun, they made it into a real show. The sun was a rationed privilege for prisoners; we would be taken out for about an hour once or twice a month. The fairies attended as if it were one of the most extraordinary events of their lives, which it almost was. From the roof we could see not only the sun but the sea as well, and we could also look at the city of Havana, the city of our suffering, but which from up there seemed like paradise. The fairies would dress up for this occasion in the most unusual ways and wear wigs made out of rope, which they obtained God knows how. They wore makeup and high heels fashioned from pieces of wood, which they called clogs. To be sure, they no longer had anything to lose; maybe they never had anything to lose and therefore could afford the luxury of being true to their nature, to act queer, to make jokes, and even to express admiration to a soldier. For this, of course, they could be punished by not being allowed out into the sun for three months, which is the worst that could happen to an inmate. In the sun one could kill the ticks, get rid of some of the fleas and lice, which lodge in the skin and burrow beneath it, making life miserable and sleep impossible.
My bunk was the last in a row, next to a skylight. It was pretty cold there and when it rained, water came in. The beam of the Morro Castle lighthouse would come in through the skylight; it was difficult to sleep with that intense light shining on my face every two or three minutes. Added to this were the noises the prisoners made, and the lights of the prison itself, which were never turned off.
I slept embracing the Iliad, smelling its pages. To keep busy, I organized French lessons. There were, of course, no books for the lessons, but little by little we managed to get some paper, pencils, and other items. I would give the lessons from my bunk. It was very difficult to pronounce clearly and make yourself understood in French in the midst of the clamor, but they did at least learn a few sentences, and at times we could even have a dialogue in French. The classes had a more or less set schedule, after meals, and on occasion lasted up to two hours. In a prison there are always people, young and old, interested in learning something, and even murderers could enjoy the French language.
On the other hand, not all the prisoners were murderers. There was, for example, an unfortunate father with all his sons, who had been sentenced to five years because they had killed one of their cows to feed the family, something Castro’s laws did not allow. Still others were in jail for killing cows they did not own, to sell the meat on the black market. There is so much hunger in Cuba that people would quarrel desperately over those few pieces of meat on the black market, sold at sky-high prices.
Many inmates in my ward said they were in jail because they had committed “penicide.” This was the name they had given to the rape of women or minors. But penicide included almost anything. For example, one of my fellow prisoners was there because some old ladies had seen him taking a shower, in the nude, in his own backyard and denounced him. There were some who had indeed committed forcible rape with face slashing. For those, the district attorney had requested the death sentence, and they had received thirty-year jail terms. Many prisoners did not know yet how many years they would have to serve; I was expected to get from eight to fifteen years; others, thirty years or death, depending on the district attorney’s request.
Prisoners always managed to find out what crimes others were in for, even from the guards themselves. There was a young man who in full military uniform had entered a house and committed several robberies. This was a serious offense because he wore the uniform of Fidel Castro’s army to commit a crime.
Once a month we had one hour to receive visitors. I had none because my mother was in Holguín; besides, I did not want any visits. I would spend the time watching how other prisoners received their relatives. The relatives of that young man were expecting he would be given a short sentence. Instead, he got thirty years. I will never forget how his family wailed: his mother, his sisters, his girlfriend. He tried to calm them down; his mother’s screams pierced the air. Thirty years.
A prisoner who had been in jail several times for political reasons, and who was now serving time for a common crime, helped me a little to survive in those circumstances. His name was Antonio Cordero. This man knew all the tricks; the first thing one had to learn was how not to die of starvation. He advised me not to eat my bread during mealtime but to save it. Inmates ate the small amounts of food they received ravenously—a little rice, a little spaghetti without salt, and a piece of bread. Lunch was at ten in the morning and dinner not until six or seven in the evening; if you did not save your bread, you would get very hungry on the miserly rations we received. Sometimes, for reasons never explained, there was no dinner, and it was unbearable to be without food for such a long time; it was then that a piece of old bread was a treasure, not to be eaten all at once but in little bites, every three hours, followed by a little bit of water. To get some sugar was a real triumph; sometimes they would allow in a pound or two from a food bag that had been brought at visiting hours; a sip of sugar water was one of the greatest pleasures at El Morro. My friends, my students of French, formed a cooperative to which I had nothing to contribute, but they made me a member. All members would contribute whatever their relatives brought during visiting hours to a common pool to be shared by all as collective snacks.
Needless to say, it was not easy in that place to hold on to water or sugar, or even to pillows or blankets. The most dangerous criminals and the prisoners who ranked as ward “chiefs” would steal everything. Sometimes you had to go to mess hall carrying your few possessions—a piece of bread, a little bit of sugar, even your pillow. I did not let go of my Iliad, which I knew was much coveted by other prisoners, not for its literary value but because with its fine paper they could roll “cigarettes” by using the stuffing of bunk mattresses or pillows. Books were in great demand; prisoners used them as toilet paper, in those toilets full of shit and flies that fed on the shit, and then buzzed around us all the time. My ward was near the toilet and I had to bear not only the stench but also the noise of the bowel movements. Sometimes a special kind of herb was used in the food, on purpose I think, to cause diarrhea among the prisoners; it was horrible to have to listen from my bunk, surrounded by flies, to those furious discharges, those incessant farts, excrement falling on excrement, right next to my ward. Our bodies were so impregnated with the stench that it became part of us. Taking a bath was something almost theoretical. Every other week, on visiting days, the ward chiefs would fill some tanks with water and we would have to line up naked and walk by those tanks, where the chiefs would fill a jug with water and pour it over each of us. We would continue to walk, soaping up until we again passed by the chiefs, who would throw another jug of water at us. But even that sort of bath was a great comfort to us. The ward chiefs would stand on top of the tanks, sticks in hand, and if anyone tried to take a second bath, they would beat him up. Needless to say, within that group of men there were some queers who would check out the young men with good physiques and proposition them later; there was also an occasional faggot who had managed to be there with his lover. At the baths I once saw all the ward chiefs fucking an adolescent who was not even gay. One day the boy asked to be transferred out. He spoke with one of the guards and explained his predicament, but the soldier ignored him, so he had to keep on making his ass available, against his will, to all those people. Moreover, he had to wash all their clothes, take care of their things, and give them part of the food allotted to him. Like slaves, the poor fairies and defenseless adolescents had to shoo away the flies and fan those criminals.
Whenever new boys came in—“fresh meat,” as they were called—they got raped by those thugs. The ward chiefs had sticks with metal spikes at the end, and whoever refused was jabbed on the legs with those spikes; it was difficult to say no. First they had to suck cock and then let themselves be fucked; if they refused, they got their legs pierced by the spikes. Some prisoners, unable to bear this torture, committed suicide. Inside the prison, suicide was difficult, but some took advantage of the occasion when they were taken out into the sun on the rooftop of the fortress. If you jumped off, you would smash yourself to pieces on the rocks at the base of El Morro. Many inmates did just that. One boy I knew did jump but miraculously survived; he broke both legs and became paralyzed. A month later I saw him back in the ward in a wheelchair.
When these boys complained to the prison authorities or to the guards about the abuses they were subject to, little or no attention was paid to them. There was also a cell with adolescents only, and that was the most infernal place in prison. Those kids were really vicious and ruthless.
The boys who were not homosexual but were raped repeatedly by the men would eventually declare themselves queer so that they would be transferred to the queer wards, where at least the fairies would not rape them. But they found no peace there either; for one reason or another, the fairies hated and envied those who came in for having been fucked by men, and always managed to cut up and mark their faces. Besides, the quarrels among the queers verged on the macabre; there was always a feeling of violence in the air and it was usually vented on the most wretched inmate.
The queers made themselves a very effective weapon which consisted of a stick studded with razor blades; no matter where someone got hit by one of them, he was wounded.
The inmates who were criminals but not queers used sticks with a nail at the end, switchblades and daggers, or any piece of iron sharpened on one edge. The queers favored the stick with razor blades because with this weapon it was difficult to kill a person, but the victim could be disfigured. Once someone got hit with it, he was covered with superficial cuts that left permanent scars. When two queers fought with these weapons, the goal was to pull the blades several times across each other’s face. Their heads turned into balls of blood.
The soldiers took no part in those battles; they rather enjoyed watching the queers cut each other up. Such events usually occurred before meals and in the yard, perhaps because there was more room. Inside the cells, space was tight and you risked your life sometimes, climbing down from a bunk. Should you accidentally step on the hand or face of someone sleeping below, he could take offense and kill. To get out of my bunk I would jump down or slide down the post at the headboard without inconveniencing anybody too much. On reaching the floor you also had to be careful, because someone without a bunk could be sleeping there and you might step on him. I determined that most of those people, including the murderers, were mentally retarded; for that reason rampant violence was provoked by just about anything; the most insignificant argument could become explosive. But the government was not interested in taking them to a mental hospital.
There were queers who, in spite of all this, enjoyed themselves by having sex with everyone in the ward. They ran great risks, however, because prisoners eventually fell in love with the queer they fucked; they would get jealous and, to show their “manliness,” would slash him or cut his face, merely because the queer had looked at someone else’s fly, or because someone had offered him a sip of coffee, or because he said hello to one of the other “macho men” in the prison. Moreover, if you were seen with a real man, you would be subject to blackmail and had to let yourself be fucked by everyone in the jailhouse. An envious queer could attack you or initiate a whole series of intrigues against you, the worst one being to accuse you of acting as a stool pigeon for the guards.
I had no sexual relations while in prison, not only as a precaution but because it made no sense; love has to be free, and prison is a monstrosity where love turns into bestiality. In any case, I was also the hard-core criminal who had raped an old woman, murdered God knows how many people, and was a CIA agent. So I arrived with a great criminal aura and in a state of euphoria produced by the pills I had taken. The other inmates never thought that I had tried to kill myself, but that I had taken those pills to escape from the reality of imprisonment. I was called Pillhead because for weeks I staggered around; in mess hall, carrying the food tray, I would sometimes totter back and forth and drop the tray.
But in time everything becomes known; they found out that I was a writer. I do not know what the word writer meant to those common prisoners, but many came asking me to write love letters to their girlfriends for them or letters to their families. The fact is that I set up a sort of desk in my ward, and they would all come to have me write their letters. Some had two or three girlfriends show up at the same time on visiting days, and I then had to make up two or three different explanations, always apologizing to the women. I became the literary boyfriend or husband for all the prisoners at El Morro.
When those women came and hugged their husbands or boyfriends, I felt glad because I had made the reconciliations possible. Many prisoners wanted to pay me for writing their letters, but money had no meaning in prison and besides, it was not allowed; the best form of payment was with cigarettes; in jail a good cigarette was a special privilege. It was difficult to have cigarettes because we were allowed only one pack every two weeks and had a hard time obtaining from the outside anything not permitted by prison rules. Before and after visits we were all subjected, naked, to a rigorous inspection.
I had always wondered why so many soldiers wore dark glasses. It took me a while to figure it out: Some of them would get sexually aroused, and with dark glasses, they could look freely at the naked bodies of the inmates. It must have been a great pleasure for those men to see us walk by in the buff. Sometimes the inspection became meticulous and for no reason they made us go down on all fours, pull our buttocks apart, and lift our testicles and penises. Apparently they feared that we could be smuggling messages, pills, or other forbidden items into the ward, particularly money. It was usually the younger and better-looking prisoners who were subjected to such inspections. The guards wanted not only to look at them but to humiliate those masculine young men by making them pull their buttocks apart in such a fashion.
There was, however, a way to outwit such inspection; this was done by a group of highly skilled queers called “porterettes.” The inmates would give the porterettes whatever their relatives had brought them: cigarettes, money, pills, crucifixes, rings, anything. A porterette would place all this in nylon bags, go to the bathroom, and stick the whole thing up “her” ass. Some of them had an astounding capacity, and were able to transport five or six packs of cigarettes, hundreds of pills, gold chains, and many other objects. Obviously, no matter how closely the porterette was inspected, it was impossible to determine what she had up her ass. They would shove it in deep and, as soon as they got to their ward, run to the bathroom and unload the merchandise. They naturally charged for this service—ten, twenty, sometimes up to fifty percent of the smuggled merchandise—but the transport was safe.
On one occasion a fairy called La Macantaya refused to give up a pack of cigarettes she had transported for some prisoners, and a big melee ensued. She was able to keep the prisoners at bay using one of those sticks with razor blades and another one with a nail at the end. There was such an uproar when La Macantaya slashed the face of one of those claiming his merchandise that she was sent to the penalty cell.
Common prisoners do not forgive those who have offended them, and they practice the ethics of vendetta. Those prisoners swore to get even with the queer; they set up a quarrel among themselves, stabbing each other lightly, and were sent to the penalty cell with La Macantaya. That same night they cut her head off; that is, they guillotined her. The headless body of the queer was discovered three days later because of the stench. The soldiers did not enter penalty cells, and from a distance the body of La Macantaya could be seen and she seemed to be asleep. All the culprits were taken to the prison at La Cabaña and later executed; executions no longer took place at El Morro. As a result, whenever someone was taken to the penalty cell, it was feared that he would be transferred to La Cabaña to be shot.
Accounts were constantly being settled at El Morro on matters of honor. Those criminals, many of whom had committed a number of serious crimes, were possessed by a sort of exaggerated puritanism. If someone touched their behind or insulted their mother, they swore to kill the offender, and usually carried out their threat. Naturally, in case a prisoner requested and obtained a transfer to another ward, the inmate who had sworn vengeance would manage to watch for his victim until he came across him somewhere—during visiting hours, in the mess hall, or on the roof on sun day—and would kill him at the first opportunity by stabbing him with a sharpened metal rod or a knife.
Once during visiting hours I was in a line and had exchanged a few words with a prisoner. Everything then happened so fast that I barely had time to realize what had actually occurred. Another prisoner came up, pulled out a large sharpened metal rod, and stabbed the inmate beside me in the chest. He raised his hand toward his chest, doubled over, and died. What amazed me most was the face of the murderer, and his attitude once he had carried out his vengeance. He stood there, motionless, pale, with the metal rod in his hand. When a guard came to disarm him, he made no effort to resist, as if in a trance. Probably he was later executed.
Sometimes prisoners would direct their violence against themselves. I woke up one morning to find that a young man had hanged himself. They said he had political problems and had gone mad, which was not difficult in that jail; I thought I was half crazy myself. It was strange that he could string himself up in a ward of two hundred people. I really think he was executed by a group of inmates who were his enemies, perhaps because of sexual problems; he was a very good-looking young man. Perhaps they first killed him and then strung him up to make it look like suicide.
Even in cases of apparent suicide, the long arm of the State was sometimes involved. In our own ward, full of common criminals, officers of State Security had been planted; it was difficult to identify them because sometimes they lived for a year surrounded by excrement, beaten like the rest of us, but they were undercover agents for State Security whose job was to inform on any political activity that we prisoners might engage in. Often they were after a particular prisoner who had been placed in the ward of common criminals but was actually a political prisoner, such as myself. Later, when I was in the workers’ ward, I found out who a few of those agents were. Strangely enough, some prisoners did not sleep in the ward and the guards did not seem upset, which made me realize that they had been given permission to visit their families. These were frightening creatures; they could stab anyone and nobody would know that they were officers of State Security; they appeared to be no different from other prisoners who would stab one another. Once an inmate was murdered, the culprit would, of course, be removed from the ward, supposedly to be executed, and we never saw him again. He had been promoted from lieutenant to captain or something like that.
But there were also genuine suicides, such as the one of La Maléfica [the Evil One], a black queer who would straighten his kinky hair right there in prison; he had a horrible face. He was said to have killed a few people. He made fun of everybody, did not even respect the guards, and was therefore treated accordingly, with kicks and bayonet beatings. One day at mess hall La Maléfica pulled out an iron bar that he had been sharpening against the cement floor for months. Everybody thought he was going to kill another inmate, but warning everyone not to get close, he swung the sharpened bar round and round and then, turning it with a fast sweep, cut his own throat. A self-beheading. One witnesses such a scene once in a lifetime. The other queers caused an enormous uproar. While bleeding profusely, La Maléfica kept on brandishing the bar still in his hands and yelling for everybody to stay away, until he collapsed and died. The soldiers laughed and had a lot of fun with all of this. Then they pulled the bloody body of La Maléfica away, presumably to bury him.
The guards were sadistic types, perhaps chosen for their jobs because they possessed that particular virtue; on the other hand, it’s possible they had become sadistic in that environment. They enjoyed torturing us. There was an Asian man about twenty years old who would get sexually aroused by beating the prisoners, and he made this obvious by even grabbing his huge penis. It was impressive to behold the erection of that enormous penis under his pants while a prisoner was being beaten.
If, for example, a weapon was found in the ward, the soldiers tried to get the inmates to tell them whom it belonged to. Obviously no prisoner would say a word, because it could cost him his life. Punishment was then collective, and really draconian. We were taken to the yard and made to lower our pants; then a guard would thrash us on the back or buttocks with a stick until he was tired out. The men controlled themselves and kept silent, but the fairies screamed wildly as they were being beaten. The Asian guy with the big prick would get really excited watching all this.
The only time one could sleep in that ward was after one of those beatings. Nobody was in the mood for talking, we were so beaten up.
A prisoner by the name of Camagüey improved his chances for survival by getting hold of a fish hook; he baited it with bread balls, and then, through the skylight next to my bed, he would fish for sparrows, which apparently were as hungry as we were. Sometimes he would catch a totí [a small black bird] or a swallow; he was a fisherman of birds who fished in the air instead of in the sea. Camagüey had a special gift for getting along with everyone and for being respected, perhaps because he had tried to leave Cuba on about five different occasions and had been caught every time. So he was able to prepare his sparrow soup and no one bothered him, not even the ward chiefs. He had developed a knack for survival and had a sense of humor. I enjoyed his sparrow soups; they helped me through.
Although I did not have any sex while in jail, as I already mentioned, I did have a platonic love affair with Sixto, a black man from Oriente who was our cook. Some said that he was a murderer, but others said that all he had done was to kill a few cows illegally. Sixto took a liking to me, and after he finished his work in the kitchen, he would invite me to eat. I think that he probably was a murderer, because those jobs were not given to people unless they had a strong character; a murderer who had killed a few was the ideal person to dish out food in the kitchen. He was implacable but honest, and would not give an extra grain of rice to anybody, even if threatened with death. Sixto would sit on my bunk and talk about any minor matter; we developed an affection for each other, but he never propositioned me, never even proposed a “shot,” which was a sort of telepathic sexual act, very common in prison. The shot was something mysterious, almost impossible to detect. Two people would agree to do a shot; the passive partner would lower his pants while in his bunk, and the active partner, who could be at a considerable distance, would masturbate. When the active partner ejaculated, the passive one would cover his buttocks. Sixto never asked me to do this. After I left El Morro, I learned that he had been killed with a huge kitchen knife in an argument; I think it was with another man who had also been a cook and to whom Sixto had refused an extra spoonful of soup.
Though I did not witness Sixto’s death, I did see that of Cara de Buey [Ox Face], who was a famous El Morro faggot; I think he was there because he had raped some boys. It was even said that after raping the kids, he had stuck them into a tank filled with lime so that they would not complain to their parents.
Cara de Buey was apparently expecting a death sentence, but Cuban courts sometimes take a long time before granting death. Since he was one of the prisoners who commanded respect, he was in charge of the kitchen and of the baths. When the prisoners were on their way to take a bath, he would position himself behind a low wall and get a kick out of watching them. Some prisoners complained, saying that Cara de Buey was jerking off behind the wall while they were taking a bath. This was true, I saw him once; he was old but had a large prick. His only pleasure was to watch the men and masturbate. This cost him his life; another prisoner caught Cara de Buey masturbating while watching him and killed him in the kitchen by stabbing him in the back.
Cara de Buey was always nice to me. He never talked about murders or crimes of any kind; he talked to me about his wife, but nobody ever came to visit him. He was not a violent man; his only moment of joy was at the baths when he jerked off looking at the buttocks of other men. He paid dearly for his sin, but sexual pleasure often exacts a high price; sooner or later we pay with years of sorrow for every moment of pleasure. It is not God’s vengeance but that of the Devil, the enemy of everything beautiful. Beauty has always been dangerous. Martí said that everyone who is the bearer of light remains alone; I would say that anyone who takes part in certain acts of beauty is eventually destroyed. Humanity in general does not tolerate beauty, perhaps because we cannot live without it; the horror of ugliness advances day by day at an ever-increasing pace.
Speaking of beauty, I remember a boy at El Morro who was beauty personified. He was about eighteen and said he was serving time for military desertion. Others said he had been a drug dealer or had raped his girlfriend, which was absurd because that boy had no need to rape anybody; if anything, he was the one likely to incite rape in others. He was called El Niño [the Kid], perhaps because of his smooth skin, wavy hair, and a face where terror had not yet left its mark. He did not take part in any sexual activity; he remained aloof and, at the same time, friendly. But the prisoners could not tolerate so much beauty in the midst of all that horror. The ward chiefs tried to seduce him without success; that in itself was already dangerous.
El Niño’s bunk was in the row opposite mine. I found great pleasure in being able to look at his body, his perfectly shaped legs. I imagine he was aware of the dangers of being so beautiful in that place; when he lay down to sleep he looked like a god. One day at roll call El Niño did not get up; while he was sleeping, someone had shoved a metal rod into his back and it came out through his stomach. Those metal rods were made by the prisoners from thick wires. Someone had gone under his bunk—all of them were made of canvas—and rammed the rod through him. No one heard any scream, so he evidently died instantly.
Prisoners feared this kind of death the most, a treacherous death while you slept, an attack behind your back. A death like this was the result of some vendetta, but the only crime that boy had committed was knowing how to smile, with such a perfect mouth, and having both a wonderful body and an almost innocent look.
Summer came and the unbearable heat exploded. Heat in Cuba is always unbearable: humid and sticky. But if one happens to be in a prison by the sea, with walls more than a yard thick, no ventilation, and two hundred and fifty people in one room, the heat becomes really intolerable. The bed ticks and lice of course reproduced at alarming rates; there were clouds of flies in the air, and the stench of shit became even more pungent.
Outside in the city, and along the Malecón Shore Drive, the 1974 carnival festivities were taking place; this was the festival Fidel had made into a party in his own honor around the 26th of July. The prisoners all wanted to get out and be able to drink beer and dance to the beat of the drums; it was the greatest happiness those men could dream of, and yet many of them would never again be able to experience such joys.
The fairies organized their own little carnival in their ward, with drums made from pieces of wood or iron. They would dance the rumba in that hot ward; the highlight was when someone sang Cecilia Valdés. He sang very well and his soprano voice echoed through the prison to the words: “Si . . . Yo soy . . . Cecilia Valdés” [Yes . . . I am . . . Cecilia Valdés]. He could have been the star of any zarzuela or musical comedy.
The inmates were impressed listening to that queer, who said his name was Yma Sumac. Gonzalo Roig would have been proud to have such an accomplished interpreter. The carnival would last until daybreak, when the soldiers entered the gay ward and beat them into silence, thus ending the celebration. On one occasion, Yma Sumac was dragged out all covered with blood; it was said that another queen, who also wanted to do Cecilia but did not have the voice for it, had stabbed him. We never saw “her” again.
After six months at El Morro I still had not been brought to trial; others had been waiting for more than a year. One day a guard called me to the gate. I walked out with no idea why they would be calling me. I was then escorted to a small room where I saw my mother; she had managed to get in to visit me. When my mother came close to me and hugged me, she was weeping. Feeling my prisoner’s uniform with her hands, she said, “Such heavy material . . . how you must be suffering from the heat.” Those words moved me more than any other remark; mothers always have that enchanting way of treating us as if we were children. We hugged each other and cried; I took advantage of the opportunity to ask her to see my friends and warn them to be careful with those manuscripts of mine they were keeping for me; she promised to visit them. I could not explain to her what that place was like, but told her that I felt good, that I would probably be out soon, and that she should not come to see me again but wait for my release. When she stood up, I realized how old she had become in those six months; her body was bent and her skin had lost its smoothness.
I always thought that, in my case, it was best for me to live far away from my mother so that I would not make her suffer; perhaps every son should leave his mother and live his own life. To be sure, we have here two conflicting selfish concepts: our mothers who want to mold us according to their wishes, and our desire to fulfill our own aspirations. My whole life had been a constant running away from my mother: from the country to Holguín, from Holguín to Havana; then, trying to run away from Havana to another country. I did not want to see the expression of disappointment on my mother’s face because of the life I was leading, though her advice, practical and basic, was always unquestionably wise. But I had to leave my mother or become like her—that is, a poor, resigned creature full of frustrations with no urge for rebellion. Above all, I would have had to smother my own being’s innermost desires.
That day, when my mother left, I felt lonelier than ever in my life; when I returned to the ward, the prisoners began asking me for cigarettes but realized that I was so disturbed that even the hardened criminals fell silent. When I got back to my bunk I noticed that someone had stolen my copy of the Iliad; it would have been useless to try to look for it; most likely, Homer had already gone up in smoke.
The next morning someone shouted my name at the gate and said that I had five minutes to get ready with all my belongings. The prisoners crowded around my bunk, making all kinds of conjectures. Some said I would be set free, others yelled that I would be taken to the mountains to work on a farm; still others said I would be sent to an open prison or to La Cabaña. What they really wanted was for me to distribute among them whatever little I had, the pillow, the cup, the water bottle. Camagüey came up and told me that no one was called to be set free at that hour, and besides, my case had not yet gone to trial. He also did not think I would be taken to the mountains, because when that happened they always called several prisoners at the same time; he thought I would be taken to State Security. He was a wise man. I said good-bye to the people I knew and distributed my belongings. In such moments the mood in jail was always a mixture of euphoria and sadness, because the person who was leaving would probably never be seen again.
With no explanation I was taken to a penalty cell, and once there, the officer escorting me pushed me in, locked me up, and left. It was the worst place in the whole jailhouse, a way station for the most intractable criminals soon to be executed; the men consigned to those cells were awaiting the “little stick,” meaning the post to which prisoners were tied at the execution wall. The cell was a sordid place with a dirt floor; I could not stand because it was only one meter high; there was no bunk, only a metal bedspring and no mattress. You had to relieve yourself in a hole in the ground, and there was not even a cup for drinking water. The place seemed to be the warehouse and supply center for fleas and lice; those insects leaped on me in happy welcome.
In The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando I had written about a monk who had been in several sordid prisons, including El Morro. Once there I decided that in the future I would be more careful about what I wrote, because I seemed destined to live through whatever I had written.
The first day no one came to see me or bring food; since most of the prisoners there were about to be executed, there was no great interest in feeding them. You could not even complain to anyone; it was utter isolation and despair. Two days later they brought me some food and had a roll call, which was absurd because from those maximum-security cells no escape was possible.
There was a prisoner who sang day and night, imitating the voice of Roberto Carlos to perfection. Those sad songs had been like hymns for the Cuban people; in some way they had become everyman’s private screams. And the prisoner sang the songs with more authenticity and more pain than even Roberto Carlos himself.
A week later, the same officer who had brought me to the penalty cell opened the gate and ordered me to follow him. We retraced the route taken the week before, and he led me to an office in which Lieutenant Víctor awaited me; he stood up and shook my hand. He said he regretted that I had been confined to that cell, but they had isolated me because they wanted to ask me all kinds of questions and thought it would be best to hold me incommunicado so as not to attract the attention of the other prisoners.
I realized immediately that all this business of taking me to El Morro had been nothing but a scam; that State Security wanted to confuse foreign public opinion by labeling me a common criminal, but at the same time they actually wanted to question me. From friends who had been in the hands of State Security I knew what this meant: torture, every kind of humiliation, and incessant questioning until one ended up informing on one’s friends. No way was I going to do that.
The officer continued talking, always in a friendly manner. He told me he was there to help me and that the length of my stay in the penalty cell would depend on my behavior. He got up, walked around the office, and scratched his testicles. I imagine he knew I was gay, and for him to scratch his testicles in my presence was like a proof of his manliness, like stating that he was the only man there. Víctor was thirty-something, tall, and good-looking. It was a pleasure for me to watch him walk while he grabbed his balls; it was a real joy, especially considering that I had not had any sex for six months. Back in my cell, I was able to masturbate, despite my weakness, with a pleasant fantasy: Víctor, with his hand on his crotch, would approach me and open his fly; I would go down on him. That night I slept peacefully.
Víctor came to El Morro every day for a week to question me, and continued rubbing his testicles. State Security wanted to know how I had smuggled out my manuscripts and the communiqué to the International Red Cross, the UN, and UNESCO. My friends Margarita and Jorge Camacho had stirred up an enormous campaign with the French press concerning my situation. Le Figaro reported that I had disappeared five months ago. Now Security wanted to know who had been in contact with that newspaper, who my friends were in and out of Cuba. In my room at home I had a few automobile tires and also some inner tubes; my aunt had informed the police of this when my room was searched. Merely to own a floating object was proof enough that one wanted to leave Cuba, and this could mean eight years in jail. My case was complicated. Víctor told me that one night, while I was a fugitive, a mine had exploded and a young man had been blown to bits; they thought I was responsible. They knew of my trip to Guantánamo and wanted to know who had helped me get there. In short, if I confessed, I would have to inform on more than fifteen or twenty friends who had made sacrifices for me. I could not do that. Therefore, after a week of interrogations, I tried suicide again, which was not easy in those penalty wards; there were no knives, not even shoelaces. I stopped eating, but the body resists fiercely and often prevails.
One night I tore my uniform, made a sort of rope with it, and, crouching on the bed board, hanged myself. I hung there for four or five hours and finally lost consciousness, but apparently I was not very good at hanging myself, because I did not succeed in dying. I was found by the guards, who opened the cell and took me down, throwing me on the ground. The same prison doctor who had taken care of me six months earlier when I swallowed all those pills told me, “You’re out of luck, you failed again.”
They came for me with a stretcher. I was naked and the soldiers made fun of my buttocks; they were good for a fuck, they said. Those soldiers were not bad-looking; they were all buggers, and they were touching my bottom while the prisoners on death row laughed. For about two hours I was on the floor, in full view of those prisoners in death row. They were euphoric; someone was showing his ass, someone was lying there naked, in front of them.
I was finally taken to the hospital, given IVs and medication. The next day the doctor came to see me. He was a rather cruel man, and said to me that he did not think I would be in El Morro much longer because State Security did not want any suicides before confessions. In fact, on the third day, Víctor returned with two other officers; they ordered me to get up and follow them. They took me out of El Morro, put me in a squad car, and, escorted by armed soldiers, quickly drove me through Havana.