Cohima

Yesterday we journeyed by bus ride to Cohima, Hemingway's municipality of choice. We went to visit Jose's friend Rafael, who will be moving to the States in January.

To find Rafael, we went to Lily's house. Lily is Rafael's girlfriend of three years. They're neighbors and sleep at each other's houses every night. Lily is half Russian, her Mom came here in the 80's, met a Cuban man, and never left.

When we arrive, House is on TV. The illness this episode is a man who can only say rude things, or maybe, who can only say what's actually on his mind.

Rafael and Jose talk for a long time about Jose's new idea for a project to collect wood and carve them as spears. He wants to crisscross the spears into a sort of blockade, filling the gallery with the installation. The space he has in mind has two separate doors from which he wants people to be able to enter and then exit out of. The point would be that they can't cross through the blockade. The idea strikes me as decently interesting, though it's hard for me to imagine discussing the logistics of it as passionately as they did for an hour straight.

After their debate about spearheads and House are over, we wait another hour for Lily to 'get ready' to go out to the ravine. In all, she keep us waiting an hour and a half, which to me seems incredibly rude. I tell this to Jose when we're alone.

-Yea, she's malcreada, but you have your things too, like not eating the food her mom offered.

This makes me both angry and embarrassed, since I knew it was kind of an insult that I couldn't finish my cracker with pink horrible mayonnaise, but I thought it at least counted for something that I drank the juice she offered. To me, not being able to force myself to eat all the things Cubans like to snack on seems like protecting my health, whereas making people wait an hour and a half without explanation just seems bratty. Yet another cultural difference.

Finally, we make our way to the ravine after walking through a bunch of brush. Watch out for snakes, Rafa warns me, and as usual with Cuban men, it's hard to tell if he's teasing me or being serious. FInally we make it to a swap like area with lots of mud and mosquitos, branches and no water.

'Isn't it pretty?' they ask me, and I lie through my teeth, yes. Personally, I'd rather go up to the rock and look at the sunset, or the ocean, or really anything else. I know that to them, this clearing seems more interesting because it's a different sort of landscape than they're used to. It's damp, dark and mysterious. To me, it's the type of hole I might find after taking a wrong turn at a park in Northern California.

Eventually we make our way back up to the rock, and vista I find beautiful. I get to share a Monte Cristo cigar with the group that Rafa's Dad gave him for our walk. Rafa's Dad sells cigars, and he tells me I'll be able to buy a box from him for 25 before I leave, which I know will please someone back home very much.

We sip on pear wine and our gifted cigar and look out at the landscape. Rafa asks me a bunch of questions about New York, where he wants to move after he works for a year in Miami.

--How do you get into Julliard? How much do you have to pay? Do you have to pay it right away? How much does a studio apartment cost? In Manhattan? IS the Bronx dangerous? What's New Jersey like? Ugly? Like Regla?

Rafa doesn't seem too phased by my somewhat discouraging answers. After all, he's about to embark on not just the adventure of a lifetime, but a new life. As much as I have a grudge against Lily for being a prima donna, I have to wonder how she feels listening us talk. She remains mostly silent, chewing on the cigar. She's slipped the paper ring off of it, and put it on her finger. Later, when the topic turns to Cuba, she finally speaks.

--To me, Cuba is a museum.

We talk about the foreign perspective of Cuba, the way people eroticize it, like to think of it as a place frozen in time. When Lily says Cuba is a museum, she doesn't mean it fondly, romantically. Yet that's one of the main reasons people visit this Island. The fantasy: return to a simpler time, simpler place. While I never was so delusional as to believe that fully the first time around, part of this trip's harshness has been the further crumbling of that myth.

Rafa says that although he wants to see the world, live outside of Cuba, one day,he wants to come back here and build a house. Right here, he gestures towards the vista. Lily chimes in, saying what you can build a palace in Cuba with 30 thousand dollars-- two patios, two, maybe three bedrooms. You can tell they've talked about this dream house before.

I finally ask the question that's been one my mind all day. What will happen to them when Rafa leaves?

The answer is nonchalant. Rafa will leave, and he and Lily don't have a plan, they decided its better not to make some plan that might be broken. But because Lily has Russian citizenship too, they hope it will be easier for her to leave and for them to eventually get married, Allá.

Later, when I ask Jose what he thinks will happen, he says he's certain they'll make it, saying they have 'Un amor fuerte, un amor de verdad'. They're the most stable couple he knows.

I of course am not so sure, and feel a great sadness for Lily, upon leaving Cohima. I imagine that in a month, he'll be gone. Her neighbor, her lover, her best friend, the person she sleeps with every night. Suddenly, totally, utterly absent.

And if she decides to believe in their future, she'll have to wait. And wait.

And suddenly it occurs to me why she might have felt entitled to keep us waiting, to keep Rafa waiting. At the end of the day, for us, it was only an hour.