by Carlos Eire, 2003
What a beautiful, amazing, wonderful, educational, painful, delightful book! I LOVED THIS BOOK! Thank you, Jan, for telling me about it. I never knew anything about Cuba and Castro. This biography, by a man who was born in Cuba in 1950 and had to leave in 1962, brings to life the joys and fears of a little boy in Cuba and how it all came to ruin when Castro took over. And by ruin, I mean ruin – destroyed, obliterated, horrified. Thank you, Carlos Eire, for a magnificent story. I’m so glad you won the National Book Award for this book. It is one of the best books I have ever read.
He grew up a privileged child in Havana, attending Catholic schools. He had an older brother, Tony. His Dad he calls Louis XVI and his Mom he calls Marie Antoinette. His Dad believes in reincarnation and believes he was Louis XVI. His Dad is a judge. He collects things like paintings, tea cups, etc., and when Cuba fell to Castro, he could have taken his family and moved to Miami or even back to Spain, but they stayed, even though he knew things were going to be bad under Castro. They were horrible. All businesses were taken over by the State. All the beautiful homes were taken over by Castro and his men, who were all white, no black or brown leaders in the government. All beggars were hidden away. All the street vendors were gone. Thousands of people were lined up against walls and shot, on TV. Castro gave speeches that were broadcast over loud speakers on every street and on TV — they went on and on for hours. Then, many children were airlifted out of Cuba and Carlos and Tony left on an airplane in 1962. Carlos was 11. They thought their Mom would be able to join them in just a few months. It turns out, it took her 3 years and was a nearly impossible feat. Their Dad refused to leave Cuba and he eventually died there in the house with his collections and with the pervert son he adopted, Ernesto.
Tony and Carlos were in orphanages and foster homes and eventually lived with their mom in Chicago in a basement apartment. They worked in factories to make ends meet. They were called spics. Carlos legally changed his name to Carlos N. Eire, his mom’s maiden name, making his Dad’s name, Nieto, just an initial. He didn’t understand how complicit his Dad was in ruining their lives until later. Really, really sad that they could have left Cuba early on and not go through the horrors, sadness, and trauma.
But, this book is so full of precious, funny, beautiful stories of his life as a boy in Cuba before the world changed. He had such a fun, joyful, magical, rich childhood. He describes events, places, people, sights, smells, sounds, thoughts, fears, conversations so well. I learned so much from this book. I knew nothing about Castro and Cuba. Communism is BAD.
The amazing thing is, Carlos Eire went on to get his Ph.D. at Yale in 1979 and is a professor at Yale University. What a special man and he can write! Here is his bio from the Yale University Department of History:
“Carlos Eire, who received his PhD from Yale in 1979, specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for two years. He is the author of War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (2019); and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997); and ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching various topics in the history of the supernatural. His book Reformations won the R.R.Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities in 2017. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.”
Here he is describing how the red Jeep that sprayed insecticide was such a wonderful thing for the children of Havana:
“I remember whirling like a dervish in the thick fog, inhaling with abandon, collapsing onto the street nearly delirious. I thought this was what heaven must be like: thick bluish clouds, and that wonderful smell. I have always inhaled with abandon. The world is so full of wonderful smells. Roasted peanuts. Olives. Popcorn. Bus exhaust. Turpentine. Kerosene. Talcum powder. Gasoline. New tires. Glue. Shoe polish. Bubblegum wrappers. Gunpowder. Thinly sliced potatoes and hot dogs frying in olive oil.”
Here he is describing seeing Jesus looking through his dining room window:
“Demons are doomed to fail: I have defeated evil, and so shall you.”
“Fear not death: You shall live forever, in a wondrous body, just like Mine.”
“Among the infinite messages conveyed by Jesus at my window in Havana, one stands above the rest in times of trial, those harsh, soul-crushing times none of us can escape. I didn’t hear this back then, in my dreams, but I have heard it many times since, and hear it still.
“This pain, this cross, shall vanish as quickly as I did in your dreams; these stains on your soul shall be wiped clean, just like that lipstick smudge you once had on your cheek, that smudge you never saw, from the kiss you never felt, you drunken fool.””
Here he is describing what happened to his beloved Cuba:
“God-damned place where I was born, that God-damned place where everything I knew was destroyed. Wrecked in the name of fairness. In the name of progress. In the name of the oppressed, and of love for the gods Marx and Lenin.
“Utterly wrecked.
“I have pictures to prove it, from twenty years ago, when my mother went back to visit for one week, packing a Kodak Instamatic camera. Everything was already so thoroughly ruined then as to be barely recognizable. The entire neighborhood went to ruin, just like ancient Rome, only more quickly and without the help of German barbarians. The entire city. The entire country, from end to end.”
He tells the story of Blackie, the captive chimpanzee in the animal garden of one of his friends, and how he and his friends used to taunt him, throwing things at him as he sat chained in his cage. Then, one day, the boys are playing hide and seek in the menagerie, Carlos is hiding behind the tiger’s cage, feels arms around him and then a painful bite on his butt. It hurt so bad. It was Blackie – he was loose. Carlos screamed and cried. His Mom cleaned up the bite with hydrogen peroxide and iodine. “I would like to think that on that day Blackie became aware of that law of the universe I had discovered on the school playground: bullies are the worst sissies in the world when the tables are turned on them.
“I never, ever taunted Blackie again. Not even when it made me look bad in front of my friends.”
They loved firecrackers and had so much fun setting them off. He describes the fuse being lit and burning toward the firecracker: “Such a perfect way of thinking about those fuses, and also life. You begin at one end, and as you make your way forward, point by infinitesimal point, you give off sparks. And what you leave behind is charred, consumed, transformed. But that glorious voyage towards the end: poets never grow weary of trying to describe it. The end, or telos, as Aristotle or Aquinas would tell you, is the very reason for existence, the purpose of anything that exists. Our telos as humans, yours and mine, is to abide with God for eternity.”
And he describes the explosion: “And those shock waves, the air itself moving, our invisible ocean of gas ripped from top to bottom, just like the veil of the Temple in Jerusalem when Jesus died on the cross, …”
He describes going to birthday parties where the Mom’s didn’t drop you off, they stayed at the party the entire time and socialized with each other while the kids played. “These parties were full of mothers, you see. That was another very Cuban deal. Mothers stayed around for the party. None of this drop-off-the-kid-thank-God-see-you-two-hours-later American kind of stuff. No. These mothers stayed for the whole party, keeping an eye on things and talking to one another.”
On pages 92 and 93, he talks a little about Ernesto. Ernesto was the evil street urchin his Dad brought home one day. No one liked him or wanted him except his Dad. His sweet grandma, who never said anything bad, said to his mom – “don’t even allow this boy to use our bathroom.” She died 15 days later. He doesn’t tell you exactly how evil he is, yet, but Ernesto has just tried to murder him by sitting on his head after he was coughed up on the beach by a huge wave. “Big Butt sat on me for a long time, or so it seemed. Just sat there on my head, his entire weight pinning my head under the sand.”
“I’m not ready to speak about him yet, but I can say this much: he was not our friend. From the very start, from the day he first set foot in our house, none of us kids liked him. And we could tell he didn’t like us very much either. It was one of those vicious circles in human relations that only keep getting worse. If some genius ever figures out how to tap the energy in vicious circles like that one, humankind will have a source of energy more abundant and powerful than cold fusion.”
Page 104, he describes their trip to a museum to see life-size Africans in native dress. They scared him terribly and he screamed, “Get me out of here!” They scared him more than Maria Theresa, Eye Jesus, and Candlestick Lady. These are three things in his Dad’s collection. Maria Theresa is a portrait of the Austrian empress that is on their dining room wall. Eye Jesus is a plate with a picture of Jesus with blue eyes and the eyes appear to follow you. And Candlestick Lady is a candlestick shaped like a woman and he has nightmares in which she is chasing him. He asked his Dad to get rid of her but he wouldn’t.
He writes: “I would feel exactly the same terror, magnified ten thousand times, many years later when confronted with the Evil One himself in a dream. Don’t think for a minute that just because it was a dream it was an illusion. The force behind those diablitos manifested itself to me, in a very real way, and let me know it was pissed at me. Pissed as hell, as only the Prince of Darkness can be. Yes, I did finally get to meet him face to face, the ill-tempered King of Assholes. He’s very large, let me tell you. Huge. And he’s a cranky bastard, the Father of Lies, and an ugly son of a bitch too.”
Page 107, telling about his dad, Louis XVI, visiting him in a dream: “In my dream, I’m asleep. All of a sudden, there he is. He shows up to tell me, while I’m sleeping, that he’s finally at peace, that everything’s all right. He embraces me and tells me that he understands and forgives me for every bad thought I’ve ever had and ever will have about him. He tells me that nothing should frighten me. Grace abounds, goodness prevails. He tells me pain is an illusion, ultimately, a little puff of smoke. He tells me that those spears that impale us and we actually see sticking out of our chests sometimes, those black iron harpoons that pierce our hearts and stay there till we die, and take years and years of practice to ignore, are really gifts of the Holy Spirit, one and the same with tongues of flame. Even those launched by love gone wrong, love unreturned, love thwarted, love unfulfilled, love thrown away.”
When he was little, he was afraid of Judgment Day and Jesus arriving on the clouds: “Of course, instead of inspecting the clouds, I should have been scanning the hills and mountains of eastern Cuba. Doomsday really did arrive that year, when I was in the third grade. And the judge sported a beard all right, just as in Catholic iconography. But the rest was all wrong. He also dressed in olive-green fatigues, sported cool-looking tortoiseshell eyewear, smoked large Cuban cigars, and rode a Sherman tank.”
Later on that page (181): “Any day can turn into Judgment Day, anywhere, when you least expect it. Don’t look for it up in the clouds. Look way down deep, and all around, at all the hells you’ve helped create in and around yourself.
“Expect more than one Doomsday, and one judge, and one end of the world. Expect the unexpected. Expect unjust verdicts and crushing punishments, along with just ones and others that are way too merciful. Expect some sentences to be both fair and unfair at the same time. Expect mercies that are punishingly beautiful and beautifully punishing. And at the very end, the end of all ends, so goes the rumor, all things shall be well.”
On page 191, he talks about his last Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) in Havana in 1958. He just got glasses – he calls them his Fidel glasses – so he can see all the lights and stars and everything is beautiful. They are driving home from his grandma’s house, taking the long way along the ocean, and he can see all the houses’ Christmas lights, the stars, he can hear the waves, smell the saltwater: “God willed that the smell of the saltwater should embrace me, that the soft murmur of the waves should caress me, tenderly, and that the warm tropical air should kiss my hair and make it whirl about in absolute rapture.”…
“God willed that Fidel and his army be close to victory that night, and that the rebels would take over Cuba a few days later, destroying our world.
“God didn’t ask my permission for any of these things. Should He have asked?
“God willed that I should have no clue whatsoever about the way in which He runs His universe, or any say in how He chooses to redeem us, or not.
“God willed it, even, that I should still be asking Him impertinent questions and that I should still be doubting the wisdom of his plans, brooding over the logic of the Virgin’s womb and the Word.
“God wills it all. And it’s our job, our very purpose in existing, to submit graciously, like the lizards who fall off trees onto the shoulders of white-haired grandfathers and are swiftly brushed off.
“Just like lizards, I’m afraid.”
Once Fidel took over, he talks about the changes he wrought in Cuba: (Page 210 and 211) “Yes, I know, everything became the property of all Cubans, to be equally shared, according to need. Yes, I know, Fidel didn’t expropriate anything all by himself, or for his own gain, not even a pencil sharpener, or a discarded shaving from a pencil stub. I also know that Fidel wasn’t as interested in anyone’s house, literally, as he was in their souls. He wanted to rule over every household, totally, and forever. He wanted to own all Cubans, not just their homes.
“And he succeeded.” …
“Fernando Chan and his family would end up in the United States, too, like so many in the crowd that January day. In less than two years his store would be taken away from him by the state. About the same time, all of his savings would be declared nonexistent, too, just like everyone else’s. It would be Che Guevara’s idea, to wipe out all the bank accounts and level the playing field. His ultimate plan was to do away with money altogether, but that proved impossible.
“Too bad for Che that Fidel set him up for a tragic death in Bolivia. He had such a nice Mercedes-Benz and such a nice mansion, just three blocks from my house. It was so huge an estate, it took up an entire city block…”
Page 213, describing Fidel’s first speech to the nation: “He stood where he’d stand hundreds of times later, perhaps thousands, at the base of the towering monument to the Cuban poet and patriot Jose’ Marti’, at what came to be known as the Plaza of the Revolution, a vast, open space that could hold tens of thousands of people. Batista had built it, but Fidel turned it into the navel of his universe, the place from which he would fill Cuba with empty words that far outnumber all the black holes in the universe.”
People were rounded up and shot to death on television: (Page 214) “There must have been a lot of very thick walls in Cuba, because they never seemed to run out of paredones against which to line up people and shoot them dead. Lots of pock-marked, bloodstained walls in Cuba in early 1959. The blood came off easily enough, but the bullet holes were harder to expunge. The bodies were entombed easily enough, or incinerated, or whatever, but the memories were harder to bury on both sides–memories of the crimes committed by Batista and his people, and memories of all the killing that took place under Fidel, in the name of justice.”
Page 220, he talks about how his dad did nothing, nothing except buy more stuff: “The judge, my father, watched at home on his television and did nothing. I don’t mean to say that he should have tried to stop the killing, as a judge, as a representative of the law. Only a suicidal maniac would have placed himself between the firing squads and their victims. This wave of executions was a giant tsunami, stirred up in an ocean of hate and pain. There was no stopping it. Everyone knew that. No, what I mean is that he should have thought of fleeing the instant the first bullet tore through the flesh of an esbirro, as Batista’s supporters were known. It still makes me wince. He did nothing but buy more stuff.”
Page 235: “At the same time that he was sweeping the beggars off the streets, Fidel was silencing all opponents with an iron fist.
“The long and short of it is that the legless woman disappeared from the church steps because begging became illegal. Did she receive enough to eat or get adequate care for her drooling boy? I don’t know, but I suspect not. Nothing else I saw at that time, and nothing I’ve heard from those few relatives who still live there leads me to believe that the Revolution could give anyone anything adequate to meet their needs.”
Page 244, his dad wants to take him to see 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, at the filthy theater, Roxy, with the disgustingly filthy bathrooms. They have been in the past, but this time they are told no:
“Still, the Roxy holds a special place in my memory. It was there, on that sidewalk, standing next to a well-worn poster for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, bathed in the light of the marquee, that I first felt that repulsive feeling of someone trying to invade my mind and soul. It was the first lancing. The blade of Fidel’s scalpel had attempted the first incision, the first step towards the gradual head transplant.
“Sorry, you can’t bring these children into the theater. Sorry, it’s not suitable for minors. Sorry, the rules say I can’t allow anyone under eighteen years old to see this movie. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Sorry, sorry, sorry…go home.”
Instead, his dad takes them to get a milkshake and he gets his favorite, a mamey shake. “The color and taste of mamey were sublime. Some kind of bright red with an infusion of crazy pink that I have never seen duplicated in nature, except for a few tropical flowers. I won’t even attempt to describe the taste: it would be as hard as trying to explain color to someone blind from birth.”
…”I have no idea what they look like, mamey blossoms, or how they smell, or feel, or taste. Fidel drove me out of Eden before I could find out, and he stands there still, clutching a fiery sword, to keep me from reclaiming the knowledge that should be mine.”
…”And maybe, as you stand in line [at Disney], you will catch a whiff of Cuban cigar smoke, wafting at you from a faraway island where mamey plants are ever in bloom; a lizard-shaped island where no one gets to choose freely and the only idiocy allowed is that which is sanctioned by Fidel.” (page 248)
Page 271: “Fidel has declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and proclaimed the Revolution and the country Communist. No more private property. No more mine and thine. No more exploitation of the masses by capitalists. Share and share equally. And if anyone fails to work, then he or she will have nothing to eat. And you can’t work just for yourself or for your family. Everyone has to work for everyone else. And everyone owns everything, all together.
“So he says.
“The Chinese hot dog man has lost his hot dog stand. The Revolution won’t tolerate anyone claiming a business for himself. Not even a hot dog stand. The hot dogs have vanished along with a lot of other stuff. Like Coke and Pepsi.”
Page 272: “Everyone has lost whatever real estate they owned.
“The state has compensated them, but with such paltry sums as to make the whole deal stink.
“Besides, one fine morning, recently, Che came up with the great idea of doing away with money altogether. I’ve had it a few times myself, especially when short on cash. No money at all. Let everyone share and share alike. To each according to his or her needs. So all the banks have been closed, and all accounts have been seized. This is the first step. Everyone who had a bank account can keep some arbitrary low sum–a few hundred pesos, I think. All else is gone, obliterated.”
Page 273: “I still expect all the money in America to disappear someday, the same way…I spend every cent I earn and then some. I’m always in debt, always ready for the day when everyone else will lose their money…”
Page 275: “Everyone has to stand in line, except the leaders of the Revolution. No one ever sees them or their servants standing in line. Yes, they have servants.”
Page 276: “The priests have vanished too, along with the monks and the nuns. All religious orders have been banished from Cuba.”
Page 277: “But they are crying, those priests, on the day they say good-bye to us.
“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…
“It seems to go on all day long, for all time. It’s the sound of sledgehammers pounding on sacred symbols at the former convent and school of the Ursulines, one block away from us. The school where Tony had attended preschool and kindergarten. Sledgehammers demolishing crosses. Sledgehammers pulverizing images of Jesus and Mary and the angels and other saints. Sledgehammers demolishing Gothic spires, too, just because they are Gothic and look religious.”
Page 278: “As we ride our bikes to Che Guevara’s palace, we can hear the pounding getting louder and louder…
“…We also like to keep an eye out for Che. Sometimes we can see him pulling in and out of the giant mansion in his Mercedes-Benz. He’s always dressed in his military uniform with the beret, the man who wants to do away with money. So is his chauffeur.
“Such a beautiful house. So huge. Such beautiful grounds. Such great palm trees. Such a fabulous set of wrought-iron gates. Such a nice Mercedes. It looks bulletproof. …
“We don’t know who owned this house before and we don’t care. The number-two guy in Cuba lives down the street from us. He might have done some terrible things, like wiping out everyone’s money, but he is famous. And kids always like to say they’ve seem someone famous. And they like to see their limousines. And their chauffeurs. And their mansions. Even if they realize what big fat hypocrites they are.”
Page 299-300: “Marie Antoinette [his mom] had decided that she had to get us out of Cuba as quickly as possible. My father didn’t agree with her, but somehow he was persuaded to agree with her plan. We were to be sent to the United States on our own.
“It was the only way to get us out quickly. Children didn’t need security clearances to enter the States and were given visa waivers. The parents had to wait many months for their visas, sometimes a year or more.
“Thousands of families were doing this. By the time Fidel and John Kennedy put a stop to it in October 1962, fourteen thousand children had been sent to the States all alone. So it wasn’t too weird, as far as these things go. But, of course, when a world falls apart, everything is so strange that nothing is strange. So two pampered boys who have never spent a night away from home can be sent to live in another country, where they don’t know a soul.
“I was ten years old, but I had just learned how to tie my own shoelaces, and I had never cut my own steak or buttered my own toast…”
A short while before they had to leave Cuba, they have a breadfruit war. Five little boys throwing breadfruit at each other, covering the neighborhood with breadfruit. Their dad made them clean it up (page 327).
“My father went out the door, took a look at the street, and made two phone calls of his own, one to the parents of Manuel and Rafael, the other to Eugenio’s parents. Within a half hour or so, there we were, the five of us, cleaning up the mess with hoses, brooms, mops, and shovels. It took the rest of that afternoon to remove every trace of our glorious breadfruit war.
“We worked harder than we ever had…Funny, I don’t remember complaining about working really hard for the first time in my life. I only remember inhaling deeply and laughing.
“And now, whenever I feel the rage rising within me, I force myself to smile and breathe deeply. Nine times out of ten I smell breadfruit. Nice and ripe.”
Page 335-336, he is describing what he is seeing in the ocean:
“The color of the sea was changing, as if some giant brush were being applied from beneath. Or was it from above? I stared long and hard at the wild cloud-shaped rainbow in the water. There were splashes of tangerine in there too, little bits of sunset at midday, along with splashes of blood red hibiscus blossoms.
“And it moved. The colored cloud inside the water kept moving to and fro, twisting and turning with great speed.
“It was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen, and perhaps the most beautiful. I stood there on the dock of a formerly private beach club, under the sun and the clouds, transfixed. I thought surely this was a vision sent directly from heaven–one that spoke to me without scaring me to death. All the visions I’d heard until then had been frightening: Jesus and Mary and the saints appearing to children and giving them messages that none of the adults around them would believe. I’d heard of statues in churches moving, or breathing, or talking. I’d also seen a very scary movie about a boy named Marcelino who struck up a friendship with a crucifix that came alive. The Italian priests across the street had screened that movie outdoors one night, but none of us kids dared to put our hands in front of the camera for that one, much less a middle finger. Talk about scary! The thought of Jesus coming to life on his cross and speaking to me seemed worse than Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon put together…
“But this fast-moving storm of shapes and colors within the turquoise water was a good miracle. It moved and moved without stopping. Sometimes it split into two and the halves circled around to form a whole again. And in the meantime, as the halves danced with each other, the contrast between the cloud and the turquoise sea grew even more intense.
“Truth, beauty, goodness, and eternity were out there dancing with the sharks and all the other creatures that feed upon one another–and sometimes upon humans–with sharp teeth or stinging venom. Love was there too, unencumbered by self-centeredness, possessiveness, doubts, or jealousy. Trouble-free love, squirming inside a wondrous sea–a sea already too beautiful to take in.
“Was this a farewell vision of everything that was beautiful in my birthplace, all wrapped into one?
“This was so much nicer than Window Jesus or Eye Jesus coming to life. This was grace, pure grace, out there, embodied amidst the sharks.”
…”Parrot fish. It’s a whole school of them,” said the man behind me. “Hundreds and hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. I’ve never seen that many all at once.”
Page 342, getting a ride home through Miramar at one or two in the morning, after a party at Kika’s, “the daughter who had attracted Fidel’s attention.”
“La madrugada, that magic time before sunrise when the entire world seems asleep and you think you are the only one who’s truly awake. The best time in the world. The only time that truth appears, uninvited. Still you have to be careful; you mustn’t let truth overtake you. Some truths are best left buried.
“If you don’t bury some truths, they’ll have a chance a burying you.
“I confess to being an idolater, and to performing sacrifices daily, even hourly, at the altar of the god of denial. I sacrifice painful truths constantly, especially about myself, and bury them without reading their entrails first. It’s a means of survival I learned on the fly, when my world was stripped away, bit by bit. Somehow I learned to cling to one piece of fiction that floated calmly above the wreckage, undisturbed: I am still the same.
“I’m still the same even though my friends have all vanished.
“I’m still the same even though my favorite school will never exist again.
“I’m still the same even though my first childish love vanished overnight.
“I’m still the same even though I have no comic books, ice cream, baseball cards, Coca-Cola, chewing gum, toys, good movies, or decent shoes.
“I’m still the same even though I don’t have the right to say what’s on my mind inside my own house, let alone in public.
“I’m still the same even though my father has adopted a pervert who is now my brother.
“I’m still the same even though another pervert has tried to drag me down to hell.
“I’m still the same even though I’ve been shot at and bombed.
“I’m still the same even though my parents have decided to send me away…”
On page 344-345, a nun at the camp in Homestead, Florida, tells him the Gospel:
“Nuns ran the camp at Homestead. Don’t ask why. It was a camp established by the Central Intelligence Agency and run by Cuban nuns. Anyway, it was Holy Week, and one of the nuns told us, a room full of about eighty boys and girls who had just left all of their family behind in Cuba and were now in a foreign land, that when Jesus willingly embraced the cross on his way to Calvary he saw in it every sin that had ever been committed and would ever be committed in the entire history of the human race, including each and every sin that each one of us in that room would ever commit in our entire lifetime. Somehow she looked us all in the eye at the same time, with a look I’d never seen before, not even in a priest’s eye. I knew this nun had been somewhere none of us had ever been, and probably would never, ever go, at least before death. Her eyes were living flames, hotter than the Cuban sun, and they sent out rays more concentrated than those that pass through a magnifying glass at high noon at the Tropic of Cancer. She didn’t talk to us about our present situation. Though she could have very easily dwelt on very particular, and very immediate problems, like the shrapnel in the ravioli, she talked to us in universal terms about our faults and about redemption from them. She went for the biggest problem of all, and the biggest solution. She told us that Jesus was actually very happy to take up His cross and that He wept with joy upon seeing all of the world’s sins embedded in those mean, raw pieces of wood that meant death for Him at the age of thirty-three. She told us Jesus was God made flesh, a God who loved us and had suffered and died so we could choose redemption freely. She spoke of Free Will redeemed by grace and of eternal life.
“I walked out of that metal Army surplus prefabricated building in a stupor, wondering what had hit me. What she had said, and the way she had said it pierced me and stuck with me like no other religion lesson I’d had or any Mass I’d ever attended.”
Page 358, he’s talking about his older brother, Tony, who swam way far out into the ocean shortly before they left Cuba:
“I see my brother’s head out by the horizon, a speck bobbing in an ocean of turquoise tears, poised over an invisible chasm. Invisible to me, alluring to him. He made me laugh, but now he makes me cry. He was brave; he was reckless. And his recklessness was often paid for by others. He lived for the moment, and loved it. He searched desperately for substances that would reproduce the abyss, and loved the strongest ones way too much. He was drawn to the dark by the dark itself. In the dark you see no images. None at all. In absolute darkness, there is no remorse, nothing to forget. Nothing at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Nada, nada, nada.
“Which, by the way, also means “swim, swim, swim” in Spanish.
“My seventh proof for the existence of God: a boy swimming out to the abyss from a house with an empty, unfinished pool. Seventh and final proof.”
All through the book from beginning to end, he has a thing about lizards. He thinks they are evil, evil, evil. They torment them and hate them, he and his friends. On page 372, he is coming to terms with lizards and he is describing Jesus and lizards:
“I’m sure there were even lizards at the foot of the cross, keeping you company, and that artists have left out that detail for nearly two thousand years, too…
“You must have said plenty about them. All those people out there, in Your day, believing that this earth and everything upon it were created by an evil deity; all those people out there, in Your day, who saw lizards, snakes, and crocodiles as the ultimate proof of the existence of an evil creator.
“People just like me.
“You must have set them straight. It was the biggest mistake of all, wasn’t it: Thinking that some creatures prove that the Father is evil? The most awful mistake of all, mistaking the serpent for the Creator?”
Page 373:
He’s talking about a dream in which his father comes to him with Immanuel Kant and Kant is holding a lizard:
“Kiss the lizard, Cuban boy,” says Immanuel Kant.
“I stare with delight at the green chameleon Kant is holding. Wordlessly, on behalf of all lizards, the creature says, “We forgive you, we really do.”
“In this, my dream of dreams, I kiss it fondly, and let go forever.”
Beautiful, wonderful book. Thank you, Carlos Eire! God bless you forever!
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