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PINAR DEL RIO, May (www.cubanet.org) - He remembers that morning his mother
went to meet him at the Havana airport. They had lowered the wounded from the
airplane. The ambulances were parked to one side of the runway, close by the
Cubana de Aviación airliner. Some government officials went to welcome
the soldiers arriving from Angola. A cold wind was blowing. It was a morning in
January, 1986.
Braulio Murguía Ceballos, wearing a brand new camouflage uniform, was
lying on a stretcher, ready to be taken to one of the military ambulances. He
looked at the sky with a desire to cry for having returned alive. It is strange
to see a soldier who returns from war alive cry out of sadness.
He hated being alive, hated the man he was from his waist down as a result
of the anti-tank mine that pierced his life just a week before the return home.
He also cried out of hate when he saw the man who had sent him to that
distant and alien war approach his stretcher. He shook his hand out of duty. He
listened to his voice welcoming him and it all seemed like a well-planned joke
to him. The man finished greeting him, slowly letting go of his hand, as if
understanding all that hate Braulio felt.
Then Braulio the soldier lowered his gaze and could see the shine on the
commanding officer's boots, the same officer who, from an office in Havana, had
conducted that war where so many Cubans have died and others like him were left
crippled for life.
The same man who, from a government bunker and facing an enormous map of
Angola, had moved them at a distance like mere chess pawns.
Almost two hours later, lying in one of the beds of the military hospital
where he was taken, Braulio received his mother's visit. He saw her arrive
slowly, as if in fear of waking him. Then he smiled, encouraging her, and said
to her:
"I'm awake, old woman. I'm also alive and still have the smell of the
war."
The mother caressed his hand with tenderness, and he felt a trembling, a
portent of what came next when she spoke without realizing what she was saying.
"You also smell of urine, son."
He closed his eyes feeling himself dead again. She tried to fix the phrase,
but it was too late now. He realized he was to be condemned to that smell.
Braulio remembers all of that. Sixteen years have passed. His mother died
fulfiling the pact of bewailing her son's misfortune until death.
From his wheelchair, all the impotence on earth keeps Braulio company at the
entrance of the public washroom where today he works as a janitor.
Versión
original en español
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