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One day, we were resting, sitting on some logs that were there at the door of the house, and the old man began to talk to us while we ate those sandwiches that we had brought from our homes, and that we enjoyed so much, given how tired we were.
He sat with us and as if he were thinking aloud, he suddenly told us that he had been a soldier in his youth.
“Really? Where? In the civil war?” we asked curiously.
“No boys,” he said, “I’m very old.”
“Then where?” we asked again.
“In the Cuban war,” he answered quietly.
“Whaaat?” we all said in surprise. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Yep, I told you, I’m very old,” he answered and he remained very thoughtful, no doubt remembering those times.
Our curiosity wouldn’t leave him to his thoughts and we immediately asked him:
“Then you’ve crossed the sea? Tell us, tell us.”
“Sure, twice,” he told us, “one way, and fortunately back again, because others who were less fortunate than I was went over there and stayed there forever, they never returned.”
“And tell us, what was that like?” we all insisted with curiosity.
“Very pretty,” he said, “well, the place, not the war. It was always sunny, although sometimes we were so hot that we could hardly stay on our feet.”
He was telling us, but you could tell he was reliving it in the meantime.
“Such exaggeration!” said Jorge and immediately added: “Sorry.”
“No son, when it’s so hot, the body becomes dehydrated, and we didn’t have water, well, not even food. Also, bear in mind that we weren’t accustomed to that kind of heat, to the kind of high temperatures they had over there,” he said with a sadness in his eyes.
“Then why did you tell us before that all of that was pretty?” he asked.
“Well, because it didn’t rain like it does here.” Ending the talk, he was starting to get up and we said to him with curiosity:
“More, more, don’t leave us hanging.” Now that he had started, he had to tell us more things.
“Well, there’s nothing more, we had to retreat,” he told us.
“How did they win the war?” we asked him curiously.
“Wait, don’t you study those things? Then what do they teach you in school? That we went on to win it? We lost it, but I didn’t stay until the end. I had more luck. I was wounded and being on the right no longer served them, well, that’s what I think anyway. The fact is that they brought us all back a few months before the end of the war on a ship full of sick people. Well, there were sick and wounded people, and none of us were needed there anymore. Actually, we were a nuisance. A ship came from Havana to Spain to bring more soldiers and instead of making the crossing empty, it came full of those who would be useless in battle, who only ate what little food they had there, or at least that’s what we thought. They didn’t tell us that, but there are things you don’t need to be told to know.”
He suddenly fell silent; it was plain to see how he remembered those painful times. We were all silent, expectant. He took a breath, and continued talking.
“Here, the most serious cases were allocated to different hospitals. Of course, just the ones who made it back, because some fell by the wayside.”
The old man was silent and looking at the ground with deep sadness. He continued, saying:
“Both family and friends.”
“Family? Did you also have a relative with you?” Antonio asked curiously.
“Yes, we’d gone as three cousins. We wanted to leave the town so we enlisted, thinking that it would be easier, that there would be no danger. Yes, it was a war, we knew that, but nobody told us that there were other worse things there,” he was telling us all, but when he got to this point, we became aware of the upset tone in his voice.
“What worse things?” I asked, surprised. “What could be worse than a bullet?”
“Well, diseases, you can’t protect yourself against those, and those struck us more than bullets and decimated us without warning. One of my cousins died of a fever within a few days and the other came back on the boat with me also sick, but he didn’t make it, he succumbed on the journey. So out of the three of us who left, I’m the only one who can tell you about it.”
“And what did they do with those who didn’t make it?” Simón asked without being able to contain himself.
“Well son, what do you think they did? They tossed them overboard for fish food,” he said quietly and his eyes filled with tears.
“Whaaat?” we said. “No way! And nobody protested?”
“But how were they going to transport them with the time it took to get back?” and he stopped talking for a while.
Surely he was remembering all that he had experienced on that terrible voyage.
We remained silent so he would continue, but his wife who had approached him to listen to him said:
“Yes, but thanks to that we met one another. As the saying goes, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ Come on, stop remembering the sad stuff, which doesn’t do you any good.”
“Really?” we asked curious. “But surely there’s more, come on, tell us, tell us.”
Also sat on another log and seeing us sitting there, she began to tell us:
“I was helping out in a hospital. At first I swept and scrubbed the floor, but one day they didn’t have enough hands to tend to all the soldiers that had arrived, and a doctor told me:
‘Young lady, drop that broom and come here right now, I need you, run.’”
“Surprised, I looked around me, thinking he was talking to someone else, but when I didn’t see anyone else, I went over, and before I knew it, he took my hand and put it on a bloody rag, applying pressure to stop the blood flowing from a wound.”
“When I saw the blood I almost fainted, but the wounded man lying there, looking at me and smiling, said:
‘Thank you pretty girl,’ and it was he who then passed out.”
“I was all scared and I told the doctor:
‘He died.’”
“‘No, stay here, he’s not going anywhere, press hard.’”
“‘How is he going to go anywhere if he just died?’ I asked the doctor, because I hadn’t understood what he’d meant.”
“‘He only fainted from the pain,’ the doctor said, smiling, ‘but right now I’ll stitch up that scratch and you’ll see, in two or three days you’ll be walking around out there together.’”
