Reinaldo Arenas
(Cuba, 1943-1990)
El mundo alucinante (fragmento)
" El verano. Los pájaros derretidos en pleno vuelo, caen, como plomo hirviente,
sobre las cabezas de los arriesgados transeúntes, matándolos al momento.
El verano. La isla, como un pez de metal alargado, centellea y lanza destellos y
vapores ígneos que fulminan.
El verano. El mar ha comenzado a evaporarse, y una nube azulosa y candente cubre
toda la ciudad.
El verano. La gente, dando voces estentóreas, corre hasta la laguna central,
zambulléndose entre sus aguas caldeadas y empastándose con fango toda la piel,
para que no se le desprenda el cuerpo.
El verano. Las mujeres, en el centro de la calle, empiezan a desnudarse, y echan
a correr sobre los adoquines que sueltan chispas y espejean.
El verano. Yo, dentro del morro, brinco de un lado a otro. Me asomo entre la
reja y miro al puerto hirviendo. Y me pongo a gritar que me lancen de cabeza al
mar.
El verano. La fiebre del calor ha puesto de mala sangre a los carceleros que,
molestos por mis gritos, entran a mi celda y me muelen a golpes. Pido a Dios que
me conceda una prueba de su existencia mandándome la muerte. Pero dudo que me
oiga. De estar Dios aquí se hubiera vuelto loco.
El verano. Las paredes de mi celda van cambiando de color, y de rosado pasan a
rojo, y de rojo al rojo vino, y de rojo vino a negro brillante... el suelo
empieza también a brillar como un espejo, y del techo se desprenden las primeras
chispas. Solo dándole brincos me puedo sostener, pero en cuanto vuelvo a apoyar
los pies siento que se me achicharran. Doy brincos. Doy brincos. Doy brincos.
El verano. Al fin el calor derrite los barrotes de mi celda, y salgo de este
horno al rojo, dejando parte de mi cuerpo chamuscado entre los bordes de la
ventana, donde el aceite derretido aun reverbera.
(…)
Pero las revoluciones no se hacen en las cárceles, si bien es cierto que
generalmente allí es donde se engendran. Se necesita tanta acumulación de odio,
tantos golpes de cimitarra y redobles de bofetadas, para al fin iniciar este
interminable y ascendente proceso de derrumbe.
(…)
Las manos son lo mejor que indica el avance del tiempo.
Las manos, que antes de los veinte años empiezan a envejecer.
Las manos, que no se cansan de investigar ni darse por vencidas.
Las manos, que se alzan triunfantes y luego descienden derrotadas.
Las manos, que tocan las transparencias de la tierra.
Que se posan tímidas y breves.
Que no saben y presienten que no saben.
Que indican el límite del sueño.
Que planean la dimensión del futuro.
Estas manos, que conozco y sin embargo me confunden.
Estas manos, que me dijeron una vez: -tienta y escapa-.
Estas manos, que ya vuelven presurosas a la infancia.
Estas manos, que no se cansan de abofetear a las tinieblas.
Estas manos, que solamente han palpado cosas reales.
Estas manos, que ya casi no puedo dominar.
Estas manos, que la vejez ha vuelto de colores.
Estas manos, que marcan los límites del tiempo.
Que se levantan y de nuevo buscan el sitio.
Que señalan y quedan temblorosas.
Que saben que hay música aun entre sus dedos.
Estas manos, que ayudan ahora a sujetarse.
Estas manos, que se alargan y tocan el encuentro.
Estas manos, que me piden, cansadas, que ya muera. "
Antes que anochezca (fragmento)
" Oh Luna! Siempre estuviste a mi lado, alumbrándome en los momentos más
terribles; desde mi infancia fuiste el misterio que velaste por mi terror,
fuiste el consuelo en las noches mas desesperadas, fuiste mi propia madre,
bañándome en un calor que ella tal vez nunca supo brindarme; en medio del bosque,
en los lugares más tenebrosos, en el mar; allí estabas tu acompañándome; eras mi
consuelo, siempre fuiste la que me orientaste en los momentos más difíciles. Mi
gran diosa, mi verdadera diosa, que me has protegido de tantas calamidades;
hacia ti en medio del mar; hacia ti junto a la costa; hacia ti entre las costas
de mi isla desolada. Elevaba la mirada y te miraba; siempre la misma; en tu
rostro veía una expresión de dolor, de amargura, de compasión hacia mí; tu hijo.
Y ahora, súbitamente, luna, estallas en pedazos delante de mi cama. Ya estoy
solo. Es de noche. "
The Parade Ends
" Paseos por las calles que revientan,
pues las cañerías ya no dan más
por entre edificios que hay que esquivar,
pues se nos vienen encima,
por entre hoscos rostros que nos escrutan y sentencian,
por entre establecimientos cerrados,
mercados cerrados,
cines cerrados,
parques cerrados,
cafeterías cerradas.
Exhibiendo a veces carteles (justificaciones) ya polvorientos,
CERRADO POR REFORMAS,
CERRADO POR REPARACIÓN.
¿Qué tipo de reparación?
¿Cuándo termina dicha reparación, dicha reforma?
¿Cuándo, por lo menos,
empezará?
Cerrado...cerrado...cerrado...
todo cerrado...
Llego, abro los innumerables candados, subo corriendo la improvisada escalera.
Ahí está, ella, aguardándome.
La descubro, retiro la lona y contemplo sus polvorientas y frías dimensiones.
Le quito el polvo y vuelvo a pasarle la mano.
Con pequeñas palmadas limpio su lomo, su base, sus costados.
Me siento, desesperado, feliz, a su lado, frente a ella,
paso las manos por su teclado, y, rápidamente, todo se pone en marcha.
El ta ta, el tintineo, la música comienza, poco a poco, ya más rápido
ahora, a toda velocidad.
Paredes, árboles, calles,
catedrales, rostros y playas,
celdas, mini celdas,
grandes celdas,
noche estrellada, pies
desnudos, pinares, nubes,
centenares, miles,
un millón de cotorras
taburetes y una enredadera.
Todo acude, todo llega, todos vienen.
Los muros se ensanchan, el techo desaparece y, naturalmente, flotas,
flotas, flotas arrancado, arrastrado,
elevado,
llevado, transportado, eternizado,
salvado, en aras, y,
por esa minúscula y constante cadencia,
por esa música,
por ese ta ta incesante. "
Mi amante el mar (fragmento)
" Sólo el afán de un náufrago podría
remontar este infierno que aborrezco.
Crece mi furia y ante mi furia crezco
y solo junto al mar espero el día. "
Autor: Reinaldo Arenas
Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, 2002 (378 págs.)
Reinaldo Arenas
(Cuba, 1943-1990) es ya una leyenda en la literatura de finales del siglo XX,
tanto por sus obras como por su trágica existencia que terminó por sus propias
manos en Nueva York, víctima de Sida. Tusquets Editores presenta de nuevo esta
obra, siguiendo la revisión hecha por el propio autor sobre el texto publicado
en 1982.
Dividida en dos partes, Otra vez el mar tiene como protagonista a un joven
matrimonio que obtiene permiso para pasar unos días en un lugar de veraneo. La
narración transita mediante dos voces. La primera es la de la una mujer anónima,
temerosa de perder a su marido, frustrada por la carga de la maternidad e
incapaz de soportar la sociedad cubana bajo el sistema comunista. Sus
pensamientos, entrelazados con lo cotidiano, revelan su tormento y el doloroso
amor que siente por su marido, de quien sospecha que le es infiel, sobre todo
cuando un hermoso y taciturno adolescente se instala con su locuaz madre en el
apartamento contiguo. En la segunda parte es la voz de Héctor, su marido, poeta
y revolucionario desencantado, la que de una forma alegórica nos habla de la
historia cubana y de sí mismo. Arenas expresa así las frustraciones y la
añoranza de la libertad de esos dos seres e ilumina, página a página, al lector
en el laberinto de insatisfacciones y anhelos de la pareja.
Singing
from the Well by
Reinaldo Arenas
This first novel in Arenas's "secret
history of Cuba"-- a quintet he called the
Pentagonia--is a powerful
story of growing up in a world where nightmare has become reality, and fantasy
provides the only escape.
"One of the most beautiful novels ever written about childhood, adolescence, and
life in Cuba." --Carlos Fuentes
Farewell
to the Sea : A Novel of Cuba by
Reinaldo Arenas, Andrew
Hurley (Translator)
A young Cuban couple gain permission
to spend a week at a beach resort. They spend most of their time sitting by the
ocean, silent in private thought. We get inside her head for the 7 days and then
into his, receiving different perspectives and views on the vacation, and on
their current lives. Arenas does a fantastic job of expressing both her and his
frustrations at their station in life, and in the freedom they feel has deserted
them. She laments the burden of motherhood and the loss of her personal sense of
self. He laments his loss of freedom as the Castro government clamps harder down
on writers and artists. Also, driving his frustration is his own frustration as
a closet homosexual in a straight, macho world. Arenas does not overtly state
his themes, but reveals them like one peeling an onion. There is layer after
layer to discover.. and the underlying themes of the novel come across through
reverie and daydreams.. hallucinations of the young couple as they stare at the
water. It is this non-linear dual-narrative style of writing that is so
effective as through their private thoughts, we start to understand the true
essence of the lives of this young, but jaded young couple. -- Brett A. Davis
by
Reinaldo Arenas, Andrew
Hurley (Translator)
The final work from "one of the few
truly great writers to come out of Latin America in this century" (Chicago
Tribune)
Critics worldwide have praised Reinaldo Arenas's writing. His extraordinary
memoir, Before Night Falls, was chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book
Review as one of the fourteen "Best Books of 1993" and was hailed as "one of the
most shattering testimonials ever written" by Mario Vargas Llosa. His fiction
"reveals a profoundly original writer . . . Reading Arenas is like witnessing a
bare consciousness in the process of assimilating the most universal, but
powerful, human experiences and turning them into literature" (The New York
Times Book Review).
The Color of Summer,
Arenas's finest comic achievement, is the fourth novel in a quintet he called
the Pentagonia. Although it
is the penultimate chapter in his "secret history of Cuba," it was, in fact, the
last book Arenas wrote before his death in 1990. (The final volume,
The Assault, was written
first and published in 1994.) A Rabelaisian tale of survival by wits and wit,
The Color of Summer is
ultimately a powerful and passionate story about the triumph of the human spirit
over the forces of political and sexual repression
Arenas, Reinaldo (1943-1990)
Raised in extreme poverty in Cuba, as a
young man Arenas committed himself to Fidel Castro's revolution but grew to
despise the repressive politics that resulted, especially as they pertained to
the persecutions of lesbians and gay men. After the publication of a novel in
1967 he was blacklisted by the government and smuggled his manuscripts abroad.
Upon leaving Cuba in 1980 he celebrated his
freedom through publishing and public appearances but later became critical of
Cuba's emigrant community and of American gay men. After being diagnosed with
AIDS in 1987, Arenas exerted a tremendous effort to finish several of his works
he considered to be important statements he had to make as a writer.
Arenas's work includes: Arturo, la
Estrella Mas Brillante (The Brightest Star), Singing From the Well,
Hallucinations, El Central and Antes que Anochezca (Before Night Falls) an
autobiographical account of the harrowing conditions of life in Cuba as well as
rundown of dozen's of his estimated 10,000 sexual encounters completed in 1990,
shortly before he committed suicide.
Arenas's
Major Published Works:
Celestino antes del alba (La
Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1967), republished as Cantando en el pozo (Barcelona:
Seix Barral, 1982), English translation by Andrew Hurley published as Singing
from the Well (New York: Viking, 1987); El mundo alucinante, una novela de
aventuras (Mexico: Editorial Diógenes, 1966), originally published in France as
Le monde hallucinant (Paris: Editions Du Seuil, 1968), English translation by
Gordon Brotherston published as Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Life and
Adventures of Friar Servando Teresa de Mier (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); El
palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (Barcelona: Editorial Argos Vergara, 1983),
first published in France as Le palais des trés blanches mouffettes (Paris:
Editions Du Seuil, 1975), English translation by Andrew Hurley published as The
Palace of the White Skunks (New York: Viking, 1990); El Central (Barcelona: Seix
Barral, 1981); Termina el desfile (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981); Otra vez el
mar (Barcelona: Editorial Argos Vergara, 1982), English translation by Andrew
Hurley published as Farewell to the Sea, a Novel of Cuba (New York: Viking,
1986); Arturo, la estrella más brillante (Barcelona: Montesinos Editor, 1984),
English translation by Andrew Hurley published as "The Brigthest Star" in Old
Rosa: A Novel in Two Stories (New York: Grove Press, 1989); Necesidad de
libertad (Mexico: Kosmos - Editorial, 1986); Persecución (cinco pieza de teatro
experimental) (Miami, Ediciones Universal, 1986); La loma del angel (Barcelona:
DADOR / ediciones, 1987), English translation by Alfred MacAdam published as
Graveyard of the Angels (New York: Avon Books, 1987); Voluntad de vivir
manifestándose (Madrid: Editorial Betania, 1989); El asalto (Miami: Ediciones
Universal, 1990); Leprosorio (Trilogía poética) (Madrid: Editorial Betania,
1990); El portero (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1990), English translation by
Dolores M. Koch published as The Doorman (New York: Grove Press, 1991); Viaje a
La Habana (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1990); El color del verano o nuevo jardín
de las delicias (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1991); Final de un cuento (Diputación
Provincial de Huelva: El Fantasma de la Glorieta, 1991); Antes que anochezca
(Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1992).
Book of stories charts Reinaldo Arenas' hope, rage
By SUZANNE FERRISS
MONA AND OTHER TALES.
By Reinaldo Arenas.
LAST year the film Before Night Falls introduced
American audiences to the life and career of Reinaldo Arenas, the writer who
fled persecution in his native Cuba to live and write in exile in the United
States.
While the film, based on Arenas' memoir, stressed his
poetry and a single novel, Hallucinations, he had a prolific career,
publishing eight additional novels as well as plays, essays and three books of
short stories. The 14 stories collected in Mona and Other Tales offer an
accessible introduction to Arenas' fiction.
The collection includes stories written over the course
of Arenas' writing life, from early experimental works written in Havana during
what he called "the joyful sixties" to others written while imprisoned for
"subversive" behavior -- homosexual and literary. The last were written in the
1980s, after Arenas' escape to Miami Beach, Fla., and then New York. Suffering
with complications from AIDS, he committed suicide in 1990.
Inevitably, life in Cuba under Castro figures
prominently in several stories. The Parade Begins (1965) focuses on a
14-year-old would-be revolutionary who, too young to fight, can only envision
serving alongside the freedom fighters. In The Parade Ends, written 15
years later, disillusionment with the revolution is total, and Arenas invokes
his own experiences to document Cuban oppression. The narrator plots to escape
by raft, is caught and imprisoned, and writes as psychological relief:
In a thorough, delirious, and angry manner, I am
incessantly letting out all my horror, my fury, my resentment, my hatred, my
failure, our failure, our helplessness, all the humiliation, the mockery, the
swindles, and lastly, simply all the beatings and kickings, the endless
persecution. All, all of it. All that terror goes onto the paper, the blank
page, which, once filled, is carefully hidden in the double ceiling of the loft,
or inside dictionaries, or behind a cabinet: it is my revenge, my revenge.
Most of the stories situate Arenas as a participant in
the astonishing period of literary creativity in Latin America from 1962 to
1970. In an essay that closes the volume, "The Joyful Sixties in Latin American
Literature," Arenas singles out the extraordinary novels of Alejo Carpentier,
Julio Cortazar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García
Márquez and José Donoso. His own novel, Hallucinations, was smuggled out
of Cuba and published in 1968 in France, where it was nominated for a Prix
Medicis.
Like his contemporaries, Arenas experimented with magic
realism. While many of the early stories seem more like exercises in
experimentation than fully realized pieces of fiction, Mona represents
Arenas working at the height of his form.
In this story about da Vinci's Mona Lisa, life
and art gradually merge seamlessly. To reveal details of the plot would diminish
its shocking -- but satisfying -- surprises. It is not the plot alone that
charms, however, but the form. Arenas uses Borgesian devices such as invented
translators and editors who comment on the text, undermining the narrator's
authority and casting doubt on his fantastic tale.
Arenas combines his attachment to Cuba with magic
realism in the final story, End of a Story. A Cuban immigrant, standing
at the southernmost point on Key West, recounts a visit to New York with a
friend, a new arrival. From the top of the Empire State Building, they look down
on the city:
I leaned over. I saw the Hudson River widening,
extending out of sight. The Hudson, I said, how huge! What an idiot! you said,
and kept staring: the blue ocean was breaking against the Malecón. In spite of
the height, you felt the crashing of the waves and the incomparable freshness of
the sea breeze. This consciousness, divided
between America and Cuba, meant that, in his words, Arenas led "double and even
triple lives at the same time." A child of the "joyous sixties," he saw his
dreams for a world without prejudice dashed in Cuba and abroad. Instead,
speaking for his generation in 1988, he claimed, "We live on fury, indignation,
rage, alienation, and the desperation of trying to hold on to a world that
exists only in our hopes. We are nourished by the memory of an ocean at sunset,
of a unique book that understands us, read in a park under a tree, of the scent
exuded by our houseplants when we come into a home that no longer exists."
This ghostly existence, a fusion of exuberance and
rage, speaks to us in his stories.
Suzanne Ferriss teaches literature at Nova
Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Jaime Manrique
*read
for DIVA TV an excerpt from his memoir
"A Sadness As Deep As The Sea" in EMINENT MARICONES
about the last days of the Cuban-born Reinaldo Arenas
"This plague -- AIDS -- is
but a symptom of the sickness in our age."
Transcript:
Reinaldo lived on 44th Street between
8th and 9th Avenues. He had visited my apartment many times yet had never
invited me into his home. So when Thomas Colchie phoned in December 1990 and
asked me to check on Reinaldo, I thought I'd better get in touch with him right
away. Too many friends had died before we had a chance to say things we wanted
to say. I called him, and we made plans for me to stop by late that afternoon.
I climbed the steps of Reinaldo's
building and rang his buzzer. The building was a walk-up, and Reinaldo's
apartment was on the top floor, the sixth. At the top of the steep stairs I
knocked on his door. I heard what sounded like a long fumbling with locks and
chains, which even in Times Square seemed excessive. The door opened, and I
almost gasped. Reinaldo's attractive features were hideously deformed: half his
face looked swollen, purple, almost charred, as if it were about to fall off. He
was in pajamas and slippers. I can't remember whether we shook hands or not or
what we said at that moment. All I remember is that, once I was inside the
apartment, he started putting on the chains and locks, as if he were afraid
someone was going to break down the door.
We went through the kitchen into a
small living room. Besides an old-fashioned sound system and a television set, I
remember a primitive painting of the Cuban countryside. A table, two chairs, and
a worn-out sofa completed the decor. Reinaldo sat on the sofa and I took a
chair. I felt that if I sat too close to him, I would not be able to look him in
the eye. Stacks of manuscripts lay on the table--thousands and thousands of
sheets, and Reinaldo seemed like a shipwreck disappearing in a sea of paper.
When I asked if they were copies of a manuscript he had just finished, he
informed me that the three manuscripts on the table were a novel, a book of
poems, and his autobiography, Before Night Falls.
Reinaldo spoke with enormous
difficulty, his voice a frail rasp. "The novel, El color del verano,
concludes my Pentagony. It's an irreverent book that makes fun of everything,"
he mused. "Leprosorio is a volume of poems. And Antes
que anochezca," he pointed to the
third pile, "is my autobiography. I dictated it into a tape recorder and an
amanuensis transcribed it. It's going to make a lot of people mad."
It seemed to me absolutely protean the
amount of writing he had managed to do, considering what a debilitating disease
AIDS is. I said so.
"Writing those books kept me alive," he
whispered. "Especially the autobiography. I didn't want to die until I had put
the final touches. It's my revenge." He explained, "I have a sarcoma in my
throat. It makes it hard for me to swallow solid foods or to speak. It's very
painful."
"Then maybe you shouldn't talk. I'll do
the talking," I offered, moving to the sofa.
"But I want to talk," he said curtly.
"I need to talk."
I said, "Reinaldo, if there is anything
you need, please don't hesitate to let me know. Whatever it is...cooking your
meals, getting your medicines, going with you to the doctor, anything." I
mentioned the the PEN American Center had a fund for writers and editors with
AIDS and offered to contact them.
"Thanks so much, cariño," he
said in the plaintive singsong in which he spoke. It was a sweet, caressing
tone: melodious like a lazy samba but also mournful, weary, accepting of the
hardships of life. This was a typically peasant trait. "There is a woman who
comes to help three days a week. She does all my errands. Besides, Lazaro [Lazaro
Carriles, his ex-lover who had remained his closest friend] comes by every day."
Just in case he wasn't aware, I
mentioned other sources where he could go for help.
He snapped, "I don't like those men who
serve as volunteer. I can't stand all that humility."
From where I sat I could see a bleached
wintry sunset over the Hudson.
"But if you contact the PEN Club that
would be good," he conceded. "I would like to get away from here before winter
comes. My dream is to go to Puerto Rico and get a place at the beach so I can
die by the sea."
To encourage him, I said, "Perhaps your
health will improve. People sometimes..."
"Jaime," he cut me off, "I want to die.
I don't want my health to improve...and then deteriorate again. I've been
through too many hospitalizations already. After I was diagnosed with PCP [AIDS
pneumonia], I asked Saint Virgilio Piñera," he said, referring to the deceased
homosexual Cuban writer, " to give me three years to live so that I could
complete my body of work." Reinaldo smiled, and his monstrous face showed some
of his former handsomeness. "Saint Virilio granted me my request. I'm happy. I
do wish, though, that I had lived to see Fidel kicked out of Cuba, but I guess
it won't happen during my lifetime. Soon, I hope, his tyranny will end. I feel
certain of that."
I knew better than to disagree with him
when it came to discussing Fidel Castro. Once, in the mid-eighties, I had tried
to tell him to put behind him his years of imprisonment and persecution, to
forget Cuba, to accept this county as his new home and to live in the present.
"You just don't understand, do you?" he had shouted, shaking with anger. "I feel
like one of those Jews who were branded with a number by the Nazis; like a
concentration camp survivor. There is no way on earth I can forget what I went
through. It's my duty to remember. This," he roared, hitting his chest, "will
not be over until Castro is dead. Or I am dead."
We talked for a while about the
collapse of the communist states. The last thing I wanted was to upset him in
any way, yet I had to defend my belief in socialism as the most humanistic form
of government. So I spoke to that effect.
"On paper socialism is the ideal form
of government," he said, not altogether surprising me. "It's just that it's
never worked anywhere. Perhaps some day." Becoming thoughtful, almost as if
talking to himself, he added, "Jaime, what a life I've had. Even before the
revolution, it was bad enough the agony of being an intellectual queen in Cuba.
What a sad an hypocritical world that was," he paused. "Finally, I leave that
hell, and come here full of hopes. And this turns out to be another hell; the
worship of money is as bad as the worst in Cuba. All these years, I've felt
Manhattan was just another island-jail. A bigger jail with more distractions but
a jail nonetheless. It just goes to show that there are more than two hells. I
left one kind of hell behind and fell into another kind. I never thought I would
live to see us plunge again into the dark ages. This plague -- AIDS -- is but a
symptom of the sickness of our age."
As night fell, the neon of the
billboards of midtown Manhattan and the lights of the skyscrapers provided the
only illumination. We chatted in hushed tones, more intimately than we ever had
before. I was aware of how precious the moment was to me, how I wanted to
engrave it forever in my memory. When I got up to leave, Reinaldo had difficulty
finding his slippers in the darkness, so I knelt on the floor and put them on
his calloused, swollen, plum-colored feet. We went again through the kitchen,
where he mentioned he would have broiled fish for dinner. Then he unchained the
numerous locks, slowly, one by one. We didn't hug or shake hands as we parted --
as if neither of those gestures was appropriate.
"Call me any time, if you need
anything," I said.
"You're such a dear," he said.
As I was about to take the first step
down, I turned around. The door to the apartment was still open. In the
rectangular darkness Reinaldo's shadowy shape was like a ghost who couldn't make
up its mind whether to materialize or to vanish.
The following day Reinaldo called to
ask me if I could get him some grass. He said he had heard it helped to control
nausea after meals. I told him that I would try to get some. I called a couple
of friends and mentioned Reinaldo's request. Bill Sullivan suggested that I
contact the Gay Men's Health Crisis because he thought Reinaldo sounded
suicidal. I dismissed this possiblilty. Because his wish was to die by the sea,
I thought he would try to make it to Puerto Rico if he received the grant from
PEN. The next day, around noon, Tom Colchie called to say the Reinaldo had taken
his life the night before; that he had used pills and had washed them down with
shots of Chivas Regal; that he had left letters -- one of them for the police,
clarifying the circumstances of his death -- and another one for the Cuban
exiles, urging them to continue their fight against Castro's rule. Reinaldo had
died in the early hours of December 7, and his body had been found by the woman
who came by to help with his chores. He was forty-seven.
Home Up HOMOSEXULISMO EN LAS LETRAS CUBANA REINALDO ARENAS
entrado
por la ventana del cuarto y me había robado la máquina de escribir. Fue un robo
serio, porque para mí aquella máquina de escribir era no sólo la única
pertenencia de valor que tenía en aquel cuarto, sino el objeto más preciado con
el que yo podía contar. Sentarme a escribir era, y aún lo sigue siendo, algo
extraordinario; yo me inspiraba (como un pianista) en el ritmo de aquellas
teclas y ellas mismas me llevaban. Los párrafos se sucedían unos a otros como el
oleaje del mar; una veces más intensos y otras menos; otras veces como ondas
gigantescas que cubrían páginas y páginas sin llegar a un punto y aparte. Mi
máquina era una Underwood vieja y de hierro, pero constituía para mí un
instrumento mágico"
Su obra quedó marcada por su vida. Quien ha leído su biografía, puede reconocer
muchos pasajes de sus libros en los eventos de su azarosa existencia. 
Durante sus once años de exilio Arenas elaboró casi toda su obra, compuesta por
numerosos libros, entre novelas, cuentos, poemas y obras de teatro. Destaca la
famosa "Pentagonía" (juego de palabras inventado por el propio Arenas compuesto
por «pentalogía» o serie de cinco novelas y «agonía»). La Pentagonía está
compuesta por las novelas Celestino antes del alba, El palacio de las
blanquísimas mofetas. Otra vez el mar, El color del verano y El asalto.