Trinidad, in the northern coast of Cuba, is like a little village at night. It is also like a little village during the day, but at night there's those poor lamps with cheap lightbulbs. These lights give a sense of darkness and distance from everything.
(I miss that sensation now, sitting in my Manhattan terrace and having sushi take away dinner for the seventh night this week. The blue and red lights in the walls of the Empire State building are impressive the first time you see them. After a while they're tedious).
That night it was four of us sitting by the stairs of the Cathedral. It was a curious group: Amaya Gomez, a Basque girl from San Sebastian; Vladimir Irizarri, a friend from La Habana; Andrijana Brnjak, a Serb from Montenegro, and myself. We had managed to sneak a few Mojitos out of the Casa del Son and Vladimir had his guitar. He started playing Contigo en La Distancia, a sad song about someone missing someone, as usual.
`I'm sick of those broken hearted songs. Why don't you play some revolution stuff?, said Amaya.
'That's what we need here, mi amol, a revolution!,' said Vladimir.
'Hey, let's not get political, we are all on holidays,' said Ana, 'I have enough of that shit back home.' Ana sipped her mojito. 'I don't know what's worst, love songs or national anthems: Both raise bad feelings.'
'If in 1891 the Spaniards had not screwed the Cubans in the Battle of Holguin you would be in a better situation now,' Amaya said.
'Hey, don't make me feel collective guilt tonight. I still have four days of holidays to go,' I said. 'Why you nationalists know history so well anyway? You should specialise in Bio-chemistry, Environment protection or something useful.'
'We know history because we believe we have something to gain out of it. If anything, we are optimistic,' said Ana, and Amaya smiled.
'But let's face it, half of this historical things are just crap: nothing is what it seems. Even more, nothing was what they say it was,' said Ana. 'It's less painful to forget and move on, I tell you (and I wish some of my friends back home agreed).'
'There are lots of nations in our blood, but only one country. Would the world be in the mess it is now if we were loyal to love and not to countries?,' I said.
'Brother, that's from Our Man in Habana, of Graham Greene,' said Vladimir.
'O.K., you busted me. I always read books about the places I am traveling on, and that's the one I found in the airport library,' I lied (I read that stuff years ago).
'Love is just another form of war, anyway. Probably the most destructive kind,' said Amaya.
'You are right, heroes committ atrocities for the love of God or the masses, or maybe just to be in the papers, who knows,' said Ana.
Vladimir laughed and started playing Comandante Che Guevara in his guitar. A dog crossed the square wagging his tail. There were lots of stars in the sky at that point. The Los Pinos de Trinidad band had stopped playing and the bar was closing down. We had nothing else to drink, and went back home to sleep.
