BOOKS
In reality, as often happens, the conspirators were betrayed by a
neighbo r who lived in the ho use o n whose roo f the conspira tors
would meet.
All the consp irators were hanged .
465
The text moves from H iSLOry to legend and from there LO " rea lity."
History, the writing o f Histo ry by a hisLOria n undo ubtedly prejudiced
(he speaks of " the blacks"), pos tula tes an ano nymous upri sing. Legend
seeks to de termine a hero and fixes on the governo r, a sort o f H arun Al–
Rashid keeping tabs on his people. But " in reality," the vigne tte offers
a third solution , more credible for avoiding the abstrac tion of HisLOry
and the personifica tio n of legend. The a no nymous neighbor fun ctions
precisel y o n the leve l on which the book itse lf is written. There a re no
names or da tes, but it is " rea l," with the concrete rea lity o f a charac ter
from tha t fic tion which is the scr ipt of history.
So H isLOry as a n independent reality doesn ' t exist. Writing History
exi sts, and thi s book is secretl y dedica ted LO tha t theme.
In
order to
bring this scriptwriting out, Ca brera Infante makes use o f the common
techniques o f a no ther kind of writing: the cinema tic. The book
consists o f a series o f sho ts (v iews, one might say) o f a rea lity, that of the
island of Cuba, which is presented simultaneously in its permanent
space and its recurrent lime. Eac h view (each vignelte ) o ffers a privi–
leged moment in this series. Many a re na rra tive and a re equivalent to
the usua l sho ts in fic ti ona l cinema . Successive sentences jo in up to
form a na rra tive comple te in itse lf, although fo r its LO ta l effec t it must
be spliced in with the rest o f the views. But there is a whole series o f
sho ts that use a different method. They begin with a still shot (an
engraving, a pho LOg raph ), they describe the moment in its immobility,
and then (as in film s) they anima te it for a few moments before
re turning it to the freeze frame.
He's fa lling, behind the hill : the gray arm ra ised witho ut anger
aga in st th e white sky where there's a whiter sun which you now can 't
see, the gray ha nd , the dark-gray forea rm , the black rifle next to,
stuck to , fu sed with the pa le-gray chest with the black Sla in on one
side, witho ut pa in or surpri se beca use they didn ' t g ive him time,
witho ut knowing tha t he's fa lling o n the black grass, without ever
knowing tha t they 'll see him fa ll aga in and aga in, like this; he hasn 't
yet fa llen but he is falling beca use a black shoulder, the black-gray–
black pa nts (lhere's no longer any color, no o live-g reen uni fo rm nor
red-a nd -black band nor blue eyes: all hues depend o n the eternal,
leve ling sunlig ht ), the gray neck, the gray-gray face, the whole gray–
black left side is faded , fading a nd va ni shed , lea ning towa rd the black
