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FROM
CUBA
One
hundred years of solitude
PINAR DEL RÍO, August (www.cubanet.org)
- They prepared a grand birthday party for the
old man. There are few people who turn 100 years
old. That's why the old man deserved a good party.
No one knows who's idea the celebration was. That
is least important. What's important is that nearly
everyone in the neighborhood contributed something
for the centenary birthday party of old Leoncio
Paredes.
A neighborhood confectioner took charge of making
the birthday cake. The confectioner did his best
preparing the cake to place the 100 little lighted
candles representing each year of the old man.
Leoncio lives alone. His family left the island
and lives in exile, although the elderly man has
outlived a good number of his relatives.
The afternoon of the celebration they went for
him at the elderly home where he passes the whole
day until he returns home at nighttime. A group
of neighbors undertook to go and pick him up.
They made jokes which made him happy on the way
back home. Now in his house, I noticed he was
sad and we sat down under a lemon tree he himself
had planted a long time ago. I asked him about
the sadness which had come over him. He responded
with the clarity that his 100-year-old mind still
retains.
"I must be sad. Of my 100 years it's been
my lot to live the last ones alone. I didn't have
the courage to leave Cuba with my relatives and
get out of here. My only great grandson lived
with me and that helped me not to be aware of
my loneliness. Then came the misfortune and all
the silences suddenly came down on top of me."
The memory returns to me of that morning the
old man came to tell me his great grandson had
left together with other men toward the coast
with the idea of going into exile in a raft. The
important thing was to reach Florida. Leoncio's
great grandson had stayed with his grandfather,
and later decided to join his relatives abroad.
By then it had become very difficult to leave
Cuba. The departure occurred in the year 1994
during that memorable summer's stampede of rafters.
The sad part of the case is that nothing more
was known of the group that escaped the island
in that rotten raft. Since then the old man wasn't
the same. Later he applied for admission to the
elderly home.
They called us then to cut the cake. I told him
to make a wish before blowing out the candles,
but he couldn't tell anyone his request because
tradition requires it that way. I saw him with
his sadness, standing in front of the cake, and
he blew out the candles. Then they served the
cake and some refreshments to the guests. I was
the last to leave. When I was already in the doorway,
the old man said to me:
"Do you want to know the wish I made before
I blew out the candles, journalist?"
I told him if you tell the wish you made, it
won't be granted. The old man breathed deeply
and said to me: "Nothing in life interests
me now, that's why I asked that bastard death
to come get me and remove all at once this 100
years of solitude that won't go away."
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