Free Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire

on your face, just before your heart stopped beating? Pretty scary. But not as scary as Chachi’s lipstick. I resolved to stay away from alcohol for the time being, but I felt proud of having experienced something reserved for adults, and even prouder of having made Jorge’s champagne shoot out through his nostrils.
    Jorge and I talked about this for years, until I went away. We’d probably still be talking about it if it weren’t for Fidel and his infernal Revolution.
    Jesus, however, kept coming back again and again, all through my childhood, until I went away and became a man overnight at the age of eleven. He would show up unexpectedly. Right in the middle of other dreams, there I’d be at the table, facing the wrong window, in my father’s seat, begging Jesus to go away. Every time I had one of those dreams, it shook me to the very core of my soul. He didn’t so much read my mind as reveal to me what was there already. These dreams were the opposite pole from Chachi’s aunt’s joyous wedding feast: fear, terror, trembling.
    I had no idea He was there to save me. Save me from what? Lipstick? Lizards? Bullies? Myself? The voodoo brujeros and their demons? I didn’t know what to make of the cross, the crown of thorns, the blood, and the frightening message, “Come, follow Me.” Why couldn’t it have been Eye Jesus at the window, with his blue eyes? He was just a head on a plate. No cross, no crown of thorns, no blood, just a neat trick with His eyes. Now that I think about it, why couldn’t it have been Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana, with His mother the Virgin Mary at His side, nudging Him, bossing Him around? Why couldn’t He have come to turn my water into wine? Or into champagne?
    It seems that Bloody Jesus had something to tell me no one else could.
    My dad, Louis XVI, said you never passed the test in one lifetime. So much to learn, so many mistakes, so much to pay for. You had to keep coming back. You had to pay and pay, and learn ever so slowly, so painfully. A billion revolutions, a billion guillotines, a billion blades slicing off a billion of your heads would not suffice. Oceans of blood would not suffice.
    Sometimes I think Jesus stopped by the window to tell me, as I sat in the place reserved for my dad, that this man who believed in reincarnation, this self-professed former King of France, was wrong. Dead wrong.
    â€œTurn around. Follow Me, not him.”
    My mother, who never actually claimed to be Marie Antoinette until a drug reaction made her lose her mind for two days at the age of seventy-nine, didn’t have much to offer in the way of lessons, especially in metaphysics and eschatology. She simply offered unconditional love. Sometimes I think Jesus stopped at my dining room window because He wanted to point her out to me.
    â€œBehold your mother.”
    Or maybe He wanted to join us for dinner. I’m sure that fried plantains, carne asada, and malanga taste much better than plain broiled fish from the Sea of Galilee. Sí, claro. Yes, surely, Jesus was not just looking at me. He was staring at our food and smelling it.
    Inhaling deeply.
    Who knows what might have happened if God had become incarnate in a place with really tasty cuisine, such as Cuba? Questions like that have made me realize that Jesus was there in my dreams to say an infinite number of things. Messages too vast in number to be understood all at once, or even in a whole lifetime on earth. Vital messages such as:
    â€œBehold your mother.”
    â€œLipstick is wonderful.”
    â€œLizards are beautiful.”
    â€œDemons are doomed to fail: I have defeated evil, and so shall you.”
    â€œFear not death: You shall live forever, in a wondrous body, just like Mine.”
    â€œDrink champagne, and blow it out your nose.”
    When I think back to the Jesus of my dreams I always remember the curly-haired, desperate man we wouldn’t rescue during the