Walking two hours under the rain was not enough. It was not enough though thighs to get tensed till paralyzing you, although the five-minute break asked you to stay one more, although reaching Machuca would have seemed a feat. It was nothing.
-¡¿Do you want to call to Havana?! Well you’ll have to climb that hill there… -the peasant told us-behind the banana plantation there is a huge stone. When people want to call by cell phone they go up there.
It was still raining cats and dogs and the hamlet received us transformed into mud. Someone was listening to a reggaeton hit in the clinic. “That disease has even reached this place.” In the distance, four or five children were kicking a ball. They turn into reddish when slipping. But that does not seem to care them, in seconds water purified their skins. “Well let´s climb that hill’.
We had to call anyway. We had remained another day engulfed by the mountain. The river level rose as ever since we got there and the ridge our volunteer guide pointed us served as the only communication tower nearby. The clouds licked the top under an overcast sky.
Here it rains every day ‘explained the farmer as he moved slightly and with long strides – but after seeing soccer games in the Video Room we formed teams despite thunders.
Sport is common language in the countryside and the city. The World Cup was the pretext to come up with the best goals, the worst faults, false whistles, bad refereeing, etc, etc, etc.
The talk distracted us while we crossed a bridge hanging over troubled waters. The river had widened three times its level beneath our wet feet. It dragged trunks and a family of ducks. Rest in peace. The handmade bridge was a pride in the town. The river, deep and wide at the bottom of an abyss, told not to anyone who would want to move from one bank to another. More than ten meters of sawn royal palm tree had saved the village from isolation. “The belly up, so that the wood does not get rot,” revealed our guide when someone complained about slipping too much with the polished bark of the national tree.
Although regret was also partially right. In truth there was danger of slipping and falling into the water: one wire per rail and the bridge was inclined. “Nobody has dead until today” said the peasant as usual. Living on the edge of danger is his everyday life. He gave us some guavas like billiard balls. The plants were full of them and no one paid attention. “And how do you get to where we’re going?” Our teeth sank into the soft pulp of the fruit.
-The girlfriend of someone from went on mission to Venezuela. In a week he went crazy of being without her. He makes a pause on the steep hill we are climbing, looks back with his nervous little eyes and a wicked grimace. It is true that there are mares that become a horse crazy!
For a few seconds he was amused by his own joke. The laughter echoed through the mountains, until the eco itself laughed with the boy.
-He sold for minutiae his entire crop of pineapples. He left a bit of money in the house and went down to Quiñones without mule. He spent outside Machuca over a week. Neither the Virgin knew where he was.
The top was close, but the rain did not cease. We had done well to take the only cell phone with charge wrapped in a thick nylon. A rattle electrified us; coldness announced that the night was near.
-And one evening he appeared bearded, dirty, with the clothes of the first day … -our guide stopped and without looking back raised an arm, with a cell phone.
-How much further? Someone asked. Military pants and pullovers stuck to our bodies in a wet pray.
-‘That was the same that boy said when he traveled section by section all these mountains-the peasant continued walking-. Who the hell think of bringing that modern stuff to the end of the world? There is no signal here… there isn’t…
Network coverage
-And he had no other than walking up and down the hills. He spent weeks on that. Until one day he did not go down before nightfall. ‘Our guide took a breath, as if about to plunge himself a long time. The raindrops were conjured against us up to cause chills. We seek solid rock to further advance uphill, now towards an intense fog, going into a labyrinthine banana plantation. We could barely see the silhouette of the nearest walker.
-My cousin Majin and I went to look for him. We thought we had fallen from the hill; that the river had swallowed him. And when we are around here we heard him talking loudly, perched on that stone there, moving the arm with the cell, looking for…
-The coverage.
-Yeah, that! If you see how overjoyed he was when he managed to speak with the girlfriend!
The village was linked to the world for the love of that anonymous peasant. After that many people in Machuca bought a mobile and when they miss someone come up here to talk.
My friend trotted up the stone and started dialing numbers; all with unusual speed. Someone coughed, I coughed, and we all coughed at the end. We did it with the last forces that the walk left us. It was clearing up; needles were falling from the sky. A chorus of cicadas, frogs and crickets received the night. “Hey! … Do you hear me? …»
On the roof of the West breath misses and words are useless. On this side of the island, only Guajaibón (almost 700 meters high) was above our heads. Below, a mustard and opaque line cut the dark green up to become nothing between the thick foliage. You feel yourself really tiny; it makes you wanting to call someone and say “I love you”, “do not go”, ” come with me”. We are invisible at this time and moment. A cloud approaches the wall and we melt into it.
