Free Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire Page A

shoot-out, and I recall my father’s challenge to all those brought face to face with his Eye Jesus plate: “I dare you: see if you can get away from His gaze.”
    Weird memories, even by Cuban standards. But useful, because the world is weirder than we can imagine, even in our dreams. 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.
    â€œThis 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.”

7
Siete
    B lackie the chimp was on the loose again. Running amok in Miramar, swinging from tree to tree, screaming loudly, scaring people.
    This time he was dressed in olive green lederhosen. Yes, this fine African chimpanzee was dressed in Bavarian lederhosen, those stupid-looking embroidered leather overalls with short pants, running away from his prison in suburban Havana. Leaping from tree to tree, so far from his real home in the African rain forest, saddled with an English name in a Spanish-speaking country, seeking freedom.
    His owner followed him closely on foot, along with a small retinue of servants, watching the chimp’s every move, making sure he wouldn’t get away for good. I saw Blackie in our ficus tree, out on the sidewalk, and his owner looking up anxiously at the branches, pleading with the chimp to come down, holding Blackie’s Alpine hat in his hand. The hat was part of the outfit that must have fallen off, or been tossed away, by the runaway chimp. How vividly I still remember the colored feathers that poked out of the hat band. One red, one gold, one bright green. Blackie screamed loudly from his sanctuary, sounding just like Cheetah in Tarzan movies. Blackie also looked a lot like Cheetah but was a touch neurotic. Even a child could tell this chimp was not quite right in the head.
    But you’d be neurotic too if you were as smart as a chimp and you lived in a little house, about ten feet by six feet, perched on a platform slightly larger than your dwelling, about eight feet off the ground, with a six-foot length of chain connecting your ankle to the platform floor. It looked a lot like Tarzan’s tree house, come to think of it. The concrete supports that held up the platform had been carefully designed to resemble tree branches. They even had a rough barklike surface etched onto them, and truncated pruned limbs poking out helter-skelter. How I stared at those fake branch stumps when I played in that zoo garden. So much work to make something look natural. All for a chimp and its owner.
    And you’d be even more neurotic than Blackie if you also had a bunch of snotty kids taunting you all the time, and throwing hard objects at you and your little house. Among all of those terrible things my friends and I used to do in the neighborhood, I glossed over our treatment of Blackie.
    Poor Blackie, chained to his platform. How we loved to anger him. How we loved to yell at him and imitate his cries, or throw stuff at him. We always thought it was so funny when he yanked on his chain violently and threw around his brightly colored aluminum cup. How we loved it when he threw that blue cup at us, his only possession other than the chain. Hard to tell, then or now, whether the chain belonged to him, or he to the chain. The costumes were also his, I suppose. But he wore them only on special occasions.
    Sometimes, if we made him really angry, he would defecate in his hand and throw turds at us. You can imagine how much a bunch of boys loved this, how we tried to shove one another in the path of those incoming missiles. Whoa, watch it! “Oye, Cuidado!”