Blue Sky

Photo: Leandro Feal

The blue sky is so intense it blinds me. It’s not hot. The sea below, and the line of the horizon perfectly straight. Today Havana is beautiful. This island doesn’t deserve this, I say out loud without realizing it. I smile and think I don’t deserve it either, nor the guy who crosses the sidewalk in front of me. No, he doesn’t deserve this either.

Power, the worst drug in the world. I imagine Raul Castro renouncing his positions at the Party Congress... dreams cost nothing. I walk through Lennon Park and a teenager tells a group of girls that she took part in the repudiation rally against the Ladies in White last Sunday, that she insulted them. I stop short. I’m wearing earphones to avoid hearing the stupidity of people like this, but it manages to get into my ears and drill into my brain.

I turn off the music, walk back and ask her, “Why did you scream at the Ladies In White?”

She’s afraid.

“I don’t know, everyone was screaming.”
“No, not everyone. I never screamed. Why did you scream?”
“I don’t know.”

She was ashamed. Her friends were perfectly silent.

“Next time think better of it,” I say and leave.

The sky was as blue as blue, and although I could no longer see the ocean I sensed it -- we islanders always sense it -- and it still wasn't hot. Paradise, I thought, paradise in hell. I look at the girls from afar. No, they don’t deserve it, not even they deserve it.