Another day without power? Of course it’s another day without power. And Father knows it because it’s another day that he’s covered in sweat.
How many mornings can he wake up covered in his sweat?
Cabrón…
He’s an old man now. For people who are his age it’s a trip to go to the bathroom, wipe his face clean, give his armpits a wash in the sink. At least there’s water. Though knowing how things are that could run out at any moment too. His wife’s in the other room praying.
Gloria al Padre, al Hijo y al Espíritu Santo.
She’s saying it so loudly that he can hear her despite the sounds of the water rushing from the faucet. He turns it off just to look at her. There she is, on the other side of the dining table, under the painting of Jesus. She’s a bronzed skinny woman with sweat-drops dangling from the curls of her hair. She’s as covered in sweat as he is, but she doesn’t move.
How does she do it each and every day, with no light, only candles?
Father’s tempted to go up and wipe her but the last time he did it she slapped her and began to curse . She doesn’t like it when her prayers get interrupted. He ought to know that after over forty years of marriage with her but the heart responds how the heart responds. He loves her, he wants to do everything he can to help her, especially when a loved one is suffering, and even though the help isn’t really a help at all.
What does Father know about help in the first place? All those years he was in the hospital helping, and now the hospital isn’t taking in new patients unless they are about to die. And of course even sometimes those patients die because the hospital has no power. If there’s no power how can the hospital get a dialysis machine running, or conduct a surgery?
Father wonders if the Americans want them to die out. There are Cubans in the USA however. Some of them deeply believe that starving the island of gas is for the best. But how? Did these Cubans forget that they were once citizens of this country? Politicians are politicians. They live in their self-powered homes and can take expensive flights to other countries to outlast these political conflicts.
But making normal people spend weeks with barely any access to electricity… who does that help?
He’s so sleepy. He’s slept a full night and he can barely struggle to keep his eyes up. It’s the dehydration from the heat… porque hace tanto calor… He tries to sit down on the other side of the dining table so he doesn’t disturb his wife but he almost misses the chair. He ought to know this home he’s lived in for over four decades as if it were the curly hairs on the back of his hand. And he does. But he’s in the darkness except for the candle light and the candles are close to the depiction of Jesus because that is where Mother prays and Mother barely even notices that he almost fell because she’s that deep in her prayers, saying them out loud as if it’s the background noise the radio or television used to be.
Luckily he didn’t fall. He lands into the chair that he was next to and it hurts his ass a little but at his age if he had fallen onto the floor or hit his knee against the wood of the chair he might have needed a surgery, but there’s no way to have a surgery when there’s no surgeons able to work in any corner of the island. He’d instead get stuck moaning in pain at his own home, using water in a bag that was once hard ice and medicines that expired many years ago to numb whatever it could.
« ¿Amor, Por qué te ríes? »
So she does hear him as he started to laugh. Or perhaps Father is laughing loudly enough that Mother is concerned for his mental health. He probably does look a little crazy. How can she even see him? Father can still make out that she’s still over at the prayer room, based at the distance from which the voice resounds.
« It’s nothing, nothing. » Father says, but then he can’t help it. He starts laughing louder.
Now his wife must be wanting to confirm what’s going on. She’s coming closer to him and he can smell it because she’s having the smell of the sweat all over herself. As she comes closer he can start to make out the white frills of her nightgown, the black bouncy curls of her hair, bunched together against the background of the darkness like wool against grass. She’s coming up to look at his face, a lot of fear and confusion in her face.
And that makes him laugh even more. He has to bend over, he is getting lost in the laughter. Because once laughter starts it is hard to end. It’s not just that laughter is infectious, and keeps you in it for a long time. It’s that Father is in the dark, literally, physically, and metaphysically. And in the dark he finds that the only thing that’s coming out of him is laughter, and that’s the only thing he wants for himself.
His wife doesn’t know what to say. She murmurs something under her breath that Father doesn’t hear, then picks up one of the candles, uses it to go to the kitchen. Father doesn’t know what Mother can cook in the darkness, and that makes him laugh, laugh so hardly that he starts to cough.
Mother says: « You’ve gone crazy »
« No, no, that’s not it. »
The laughter ends, and Father cals himself.
It’s a blackout but one thing is clear. He’s a Cuban and he’s survived so much and he’ll continue to survive. A little darkness is nothing compared to the things he’s been through, and if the United States thinks that taking away electricity is going to destroy the will of the Cuban people, well, they ought to get ready to see far funnier things.
