light filter through its surviving color insets, the rainbow passing through to his face and chest.
Instantly, he felt the light waves oscillating somewhere deep inside him. At that moment, Usnavy could surrender to the splendor; he could believe, like Pythagoras, that everything could become bright by its own force of nature.
Light! Light!—marveled Usnavy, there on his knees, the lamp lifted to the heavens—the closest thing to infinite speed, a mystery to Plato and Euclid, Alhazen and even Einstein.
There was a commotion somewhere behind him but Usnavy was enraptured: The light swarmed around him, lapped at his face and shoulders.
“Usnavy! Usnavy!” came the screams.
He turned around in time to see his neighbor Yamilet running wildly after the two bikes, miraculously unhinged from the theft-proof American lock and whirling down the narrow streets. The bandits were two young men, their long hair tousled like action movie stars, one of them wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. They laughed and disappeared into the maze of Old Havana, while Yamilet and a gaggle of kids trailed behind them yelling insults and profanities in their direction.
“Shame on you, you bastards, you’re stealing from a harmless old man!” she shouted at them.
A flabbergasted Usnavy stood alone in the middle of the collapse, the broken lamp in his hands while the American lock mocked him from a muddy puddle, gleaming like new, its tiny key still embedded in the slot. Had the simplicity of it confused him? Had he been so distracted …?
“Of all the rotten …!” Usnavy burst, kicking the lock against a shattered wall, stomping through the building’s remnants and accidentally ripping and loosening the sole of his right shoe. The lock bounced away, unharmed, the key like a bell’s clapper.
“Salao! Salao! Salao!” he ranted, hitting the air, booting rocks and debris all about the ruins.
Yamilet watched, stunned, as an exhausted Usnavy finally dropped to the ground, folding himself into a filthy fetus, a kaleidoscope of light in his bloody hands.
II.
F or days afterward, Usnavy strolled like a tourist through Old Havana—looking up at the buildings as if for the first time—his eyes searching for the dazzle of color he’d found in the lamp in the ruins. He’d peek between the arms and legs of the invisible giants that held up the city; through the unlit frames of balconies, the tall bars on the windows, the iron balustrades, searching for the spark that indicated the possibility that, somewhere inside, there was another nugget of color—a flame, a spark, a rainbow burst.
In the library he looked in dusty magazines and catalogues from before the Revolution and studied the lamps: avatars of modernism, designed for electricity, so popular in Cuba precisely for those reasons. After all, the Cubans—in this case blessed instead of cursed by U.S. intervention—had electricity before most of the American South and other rural areas. But, to Usnavy’s chagrin, there was that constant confusion of the U.S. and modernity, as if living in the twentieth century were inextricably tied to the island’s northern neighbor, an undercurrent more powerful than any storm. To have an electric lamp in Cuba in the Republic’s early years didn’t just mean comfort or affluence, it meant an implied intimacy with the colossus of the north.
Usnavy closed a catalogue he had been examining and flipped through some old issues of Bohemia magazine instead. There were stained-glass lamps in those too, depicted in ads and illustrations, dropping from the ceilings of mansions, at the elbow of a banker at his desk, or with the banker’s wife, posed with a floor model for the society pages. Usnavy set the magazine down and ran his fingers through his hair. There was only so much he could absorb, only so much he could take in without feeling his stomach grow queasy and his hands begin to tremble.
After a few hours of trying to understand the lamp—the
Instantly, he felt the light waves oscillating somewhere deep inside him. At that moment, Usnavy could surrender to the splendor; he could believe, like Pythagoras, that everything could become bright by its own force of nature.
Light! Light!—marveled Usnavy, there on his knees, the lamp lifted to the heavens—the closest thing to infinite speed, a mystery to Plato and Euclid, Alhazen and even Einstein.
There was a commotion somewhere behind him but Usnavy was enraptured: The light swarmed around him, lapped at his face and shoulders.
“Usnavy! Usnavy!” came the screams.
He turned around in time to see his neighbor Yamilet running wildly after the two bikes, miraculously unhinged from the theft-proof American lock and whirling down the narrow streets. The bandits were two young men, their long hair tousled like action movie stars, one of them wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. They laughed and disappeared into the maze of Old Havana, while Yamilet and a gaggle of kids trailed behind them yelling insults and profanities in their direction.
“Shame on you, you bastards, you’re stealing from a harmless old man!” she shouted at them.
A flabbergasted Usnavy stood alone in the middle of the collapse, the broken lamp in his hands while the American lock mocked him from a muddy puddle, gleaming like new, its tiny key still embedded in the slot. Had the simplicity of it confused him? Had he been so distracted …?
“Of all the rotten …!” Usnavy burst, kicking the lock against a shattered wall, stomping through the building’s remnants and accidentally ripping and loosening the sole of his right shoe. The lock bounced away, unharmed, the key like a bell’s clapper.
“Salao! Salao! Salao!” he ranted, hitting the air, booting rocks and debris all about the ruins.
Yamilet watched, stunned, as an exhausted Usnavy finally dropped to the ground, folding himself into a filthy fetus, a kaleidoscope of light in his bloody hands.
II.
F or days afterward, Usnavy strolled like a tourist through Old Havana—looking up at the buildings as if for the first time—his eyes searching for the dazzle of color he’d found in the lamp in the ruins. He’d peek between the arms and legs of the invisible giants that held up the city; through the unlit frames of balconies, the tall bars on the windows, the iron balustrades, searching for the spark that indicated the possibility that, somewhere inside, there was another nugget of color—a flame, a spark, a rainbow burst.
In the library he looked in dusty magazines and catalogues from before the Revolution and studied the lamps: avatars of modernism, designed for electricity, so popular in Cuba precisely for those reasons. After all, the Cubans—in this case blessed instead of cursed by U.S. intervention—had electricity before most of the American South and other rural areas. But, to Usnavy’s chagrin, there was that constant confusion of the U.S. and modernity, as if living in the twentieth century were inextricably tied to the island’s northern neighbor, an undercurrent more powerful than any storm. To have an electric lamp in Cuba in the Republic’s early years didn’t just mean comfort or affluence, it meant an implied intimacy with the colossus of the north.
Usnavy closed a catalogue he had been examining and flipped through some old issues of Bohemia magazine instead. There were stained-glass lamps in those too, depicted in ads and illustrations, dropping from the ceilings of mansions, at the elbow of a banker at his desk, or with the banker’s wife, posed with a floor model for the society pages. Usnavy set the magazine down and ran his fingers through his hair. There was only so much he could absorb, only so much he could take in without feeling his stomach grow queasy and his hands begin to tremble.
After a few hours of trying to understand the lamp—the
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