KEY WEST

As I was leaving my building on Monserrate Street, the president of my CDR approached me and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t inform on you; what I want from you is that if you see my son, you tell him that I am all right.” Strangely enough, when I arrived at Key West, her son was one of the first persons I met, so I was able to deliver his mother’s message. He then took me to a warehouse where Cuban exiles in Miami had stored all donations for the arrivals from Mariel, and he gave me a new pair of shoes, jeans, and a resplendent new shirt. He also gave me a cake of soap, and a huge amount of food. I took a bath, shaved, and started once again to feel like a human being.

Later I met a dancer from Alicia Alonso’s ballet company, who told me that shortly after I left Mariel, my name was being paged over all the loudspeakers; the police were after me. Still later I found out that they were checking all passports at boarding time, and were even stopping all the buses and asking for me. The Cuban State Security and UNEAC had been alerted and, believing I was still at El Mosquito camp, had organized an intensive search to prevent my leaving the country.

We were lodged in Key West, waiting for immigration to decide where to place us. In the midst of that crowd I ran across Juan Abreu; we could finally embrace outside Cuba, at last free.

Upon reaching Miami I tried to contact Lázaro, as well as Margarita and Jorge Camacho, who were then in Spain. I was lucky to meet Lázaro when I arrived at my uncle’s house; he was waiting for me, and we found it still hard to believe that the two of us, with only a week’s difference, were now in the United States. I wrote Margarita and Jorge Camacho; they knew about my escape from a news cable in the Spanish press. I was now trying to recover my manuscripts, and I knew Jorge and Margarita, who were in their country home, did not have them there. They had delivered them to Severo Sarduy in Paris. I called him, and on that first call Severo told me that he did not have them either. I wrote a desperate letter to my friends the Camachos. They told me not to worry; they had the originals and Severo only had copies. It was fortunate they had taken such precautions, because apparently it seemed that Severo Sarduy had no intention whatsoever of returning those manuscripts to me.