One can be almost a child and take a supposedly wrong course, to continue (following), straight, the steps of an older brother, perhaps even disregarding the revealing silence of the family.
One can set aside the safe comforts of the home turf to start walking, all the time to come, on fields undermined by dangers and adversities.
For what personal gain? None more material than the ideas, values and convictions brought in vein, from the cradle, from the roots?
And to adjust well the boots and spurs to sink the flanks of time, by means of “divinely crazy follies” like assaulting fortresses of pure death artillery up to the teeth, winning the game to the Model of the penitentiary, leaving behind the beloved land, polishing like diamond the difficult art of putting eye and bullet in the same point, while all over the world others, of equal age, empty full loaders in conquests of love…
A man, still so young, can swallow the nausea of a hellish swing in rough seas, asking permission to one foot to give rest to the other, aboard a small yacht, in which only a miracle could “accommodate” 162 more boots -with the bodies they were wearing-, backpacks and everything useful to defy death in who knows how many armed combats.
And to be baptized not only with the colored waters of the reddish mangrove, chest and chin, but also with irreverent gunpowder, in shrapnel of low-flying aviation. And to save his skin by the grace of the future, and then to meet again under Cinco Viriles Palmas with that same brother -and a handful of followers- sure, now yes, of the victory in a war lost by all (dark) lights?
It is possible, of course, to snatch from the boastful enemy even the faith he never had; to walk, command and command from the front; to pave new life in the old mountain and give the plain all its rightful height; to conquer peace, convinced that one cannot lose the same war that one will continue to win under the pure and peaceful concept of avoiding it at all costs, preparing solidly for it.
A man can rest his head on his pillow for fewer hours than many others, even in the midst of real “pains” that millions of heads cannot even imagine.
A man can do all that and much more. He can continue to be the same witty and jovial serrano of yesterday and the day before yesterday, he can outwit the physical and mental tripwires of the 80s, he can jump like a 20-something the rod of the 90s. And he can, three calendars later, keep his boot firmly planted in the stirrup, ready to ride and say ¡voy! when Cuba calls him.
Edited by Liubis Balart
