Otra vez el mar (Farewell to the Sea) - Arenas

Otra vez el mar

Reinaldo Arenas is perhaps best known for his memoirs Before Night Falls (Antes que anochezca), which was published after his death by suicide in the winter of 1990 in New York City, after a long battle with AIDS. Arenas was, in many ways, the voice of the guajiro who saw himself in a place of equality created by the silver-tongued, young, and idealistic Fidel Castro. Castro’s Cuba promised bountiful resources, equality for everyone, a new government, fair and just, and most of all a new Cuba, one whose revolution would send ripples through the Americas. Ripples that would prove unsavory to many, and opportunistic to others.

The enchantment of Castro’s words was universal. Very much like Castro himself, Arenas was young and idealistic, native of Holguin, a rural province of Cuba, poverty was the way of life during the Batista dictatorship. At a very young age he had a sensitivity for the written word. Which in the world of the campesino of Cuba it never bodes well, the Cuban farmer was supposed to work the field, marry a woman, and have as many children as possible. Arenas quickly realized that this life was not what he wanted, he soon left his family to fight with the revolutionaries, against Fulgencio Batista, the president of Cuba at the time. Eventually after the revolution’s victory, Arenas enrolled in university where he would start writing, and draw significant attention from literary figures of the time.

According to Arenas, Otra vez el mar was written three times, manuscripts were confiscated under Castro’s Cuba several times, sighting dangerous and insidious writings on Arenas’ part. In 1974 Arenas was incarcerated for his writings, his opposition of the government, and his homosexuality. In 1976 he was released after renouncing his works at the request of the Cuban government, but not before being tortured, and abused, by the very same government. During the year 1980 Arenas was able to escape the island during the Mariel Boat Lift. Being a homosexual and dissident he ticked every box that was required to secure a place in one of the boats.

Arenas began writing Otra vez el mar in 1966. In 1971 it was destroyed by Arenas’ own literary agent, later in 1974 when Arenas was arrested, the manuscript was also destroyed, this time by the government. After his release Arenas re-writes the novel and eventually is able to move the novel safely to foreign soil, thanks to his friends Margarita and Jorge Camacho, whom he thanks at the beginning of the novel for “not having to write the novel for a fourth time.”

The novel itself can be read as a standalone, while also being part of a five-novel series called the Pentagonía[1]. It tells the story of a young couple, Hector and his wife, on a six-day vacation outside of Havana. It is written in two parts. The first part, which is further divided into six days, is told through the woman/wife in the relationship, she remains unnamed for the entirety of the novel. The woman/wife is also a mother to a toddler, who is also unnamed. Arenas employs a stream of consciousness style in this part of the novel. The second part, this time from Hector’s perspective, is a kaleidoscope of writing styles. Arenas breaks into poetry, stream of consciousness and cantos. Through these two central characters, Hector and his wife, we also meet two other characters who share their space, an older woman and her teenage son. These four are the central characters of Otra vez el mar.

The following quotes were translated by me from the spanish edition of the novel. They may in fact look very different from the english version of the book which I do not own.

Arenas writes, “nos acostamos. Esta noche como tantas en los últimos años, él pasa despacio su mano por mi pelo, y yo dejo que mi pelo coja la forma de su mano, él se tiende, despacio sobre mi cuerpo y yo dejo que su cuerpo vaya entrando en el mío. Esta noche, como tantas, no es placer lo que siento, sino resignación y cierta angustia al pensar no es en mí en quien piensa…Terminamos. Él se echa a dormir a un lado. Yo voy al baño. Vuelvo, cubro a Héctor con las sábanas, me acuesto a su lado, coloco mi cabeza sobre sus manos. Pienso, cuánto lo quiero, cuánto he esperado para que llegara ese momento, cuántos días, cuántas noches en silencio, sin dar la menor señal esperando a que él se decidiera, y ahora que todo ha concluido, que se ha realizado, descubro, como siempre, que eso solo ha servido para despertar aún más mi soledad y sentirme más angustiada.” Pg. 164

“we laid down. This night like in the last few years, his hand slowly caresses my hair, and I let my hair take the shape of his hand, his body stretches, slowly over my body and I allow his body to come into mine. This night, like many, it is not pleasure what I feel, rather resignation and a certain anguish as I think it is not me who he thinks about… We finish. He goes to sleep on my side. I go to the bathroom. Come back, cover Hector with the sheets, I lay next to him, place my head over his hands. I think, how much I love him, how much I’ve waited for this moment to come, how many days, how many nights in silence, without giving any kind of signal waiting for him to decide, and now that everything is done, that it has been realized, I find out, as always, that this has only served to awaken even more my own loneliness and feel much more anguished.”

There is a reason why Arenas keeps the woman, Hector’s wife, unnamed. She’s faceless, we as the reader are able to project ourselves onto this woman. The stream of consciousness style which Arenas uses aids the sense of helplessness that this woman feels. Through her narration we learn of her overbearing mother, the remnants of her Catholicism projected onto her own daughter, the guilt ever present from a life half lived. Hector’s wife is also his cousin, which adds to the strangeness of it all. The woman narrates her story, as if in a delirium, often going off into her past, it becomes confusing at times, just like she feels. Her yearning for Hector has been her life’s purpose. To her, Hector, is the only man in her life, the love of her life. But to Arenas, Hector is no more than the means to show the woman that there’s no such thing as love. Arenas creates her world, her fantasy, her escape and encapsulates it in Hector. To her, her only escape is Hector. To her, there’s only one way out. But she doesn’t realize that Hector is not her way out. On the contrary, he takes her deeper into her own loneliness.

Arguably the woman acts as an emblematic representation of Cuba before and after the revolution. Yearning for change, the woman, just like Cuba, waits on someone, anyone to provide the freedom she so rightfully deserves. Hector is the Fidel Castro of the woman. He, very much like Castro, saved her from the tyranny of her oppressor, in this case her mother. Yet after this liberation, this moment of triumph, reality seeped into the woman like the falling rain Arenas so eloquently describes, leaving behind pools of murky water. These murky waters make up the river of the woman’s life, never truly reaching the sea. Hector invaded her, took her, made her his, gave her a son, a new life, a purpose. This invasion of the woman by Hector mirrors the invasion of Castro’s troops which ended on the 8th of January as Castro arrived in Havana to the new Cuba. Poetically enough, the woman dies in a crash as they enter Havana.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a character created by Arenas must always be in need of a good character study. Hector from Otra vez el mar is no different. Arenas writes:

“Una luna

ojerosa. Vasta y condenatoria

como mujer que ya no encuentra hombres

y utiliza pedazos de madera, frutas

largas algo sólido y

doloroso

Él no dice nada. Echa a andar.

Dobla, tomando un trillo dentro

del pinar

Una luna

de ojos como cuentas

borrosas y pestañas

lamentables” Pg 394

"A moon

haggard. Vast and condemnatory

like a woman who no longer find men

and utilizes pieces of wood, fruits

long something solid and

painful

He doesn’t say anything. Starts walking

Turns, taking a small road inside

the pine trees

a moon

of eyes like erased

words and lamentable

lashes"

It is difficult to isolate the character of Hector from its creator. Like God himself, Arenas created Hector in his image, rather than making him into a perfect being, Arenas imbued into Hector everything ugly that dwelled deep within himself. The crude ideology of a revolutionary, the cursed pretentiousness of an academic, the spoils of the patriarchy and Caribbean machismo. Everything lives within Hector, everything laden with guilt and shame. This particular quote is taken from a scene where Hector leaves the cabin to meet the teenage son of the woman from their neighboring cabin. Hector is not alone however; he’s being followed by the moon. The moon is not simply an object in the sky, to Hector, the moon is the spotlight that illuminates his wretched path towards his dark secret, his homosexuality. To Hector the moon is his wife, his aunt, his own mother. This tired moon high up in the sky, ever watchful, reminiscent of the moon in Bodas de Sangre by Federico Garcia Lorca, is the judge of everything that goes bump in the night, including Hector and his young lover.

Despite the lack of love Hector feels for his wife, and arguably his son, he can’t escape her, nor can he escape that young lover who leads him to his secret. Arenas however has a few tricks up his sleeve. It is in the very last few lines of the novel when we realize, the reader and by extension Hector himself, that there is no wife, or son, or young lover or mother. These characters are just that, characters that Hector has created as part of his world. These characters are a manifestation of Hector’s psyche, and by the same token, projections of society. Hector is a product of the Cuban society at the time, the rest of the characters in his world are the remnants of what is left of Hector’s very own person. Very much like Hector, Arenas, left pieces of himself, his depraved, dissident self, scattered throughout his writings. Like Hector he had no other choice than to escape through his writings, Hector did so through his fictitious wife, and lover.

Like most of his work, Otra vez el mar is a composite of a life half lived. A snapshot of a life of a man who through his own pain and shame dealt with it the best way he could. Otra vez el mar is equal parts psychological study and sociopolitical commentary. It is also Arenas’ love letter to Cuba, a love letter to a country, an island, that saw him be born, grow, nursed him and later exiled him. Perhaps others may read this novel and take something else from it, all that left within me was a yearning, numbing pain for a country that I’d never be able to call my own.

[1] A clever combination of the word pentagon, the five angled shape, and the word agonía, which means agony.