Surrounded by the dead

HAVANA — Guillermo Guillén, a.k.a. Papillón, is a 65-year-old man who, without being a military professional, carries on his shoulders the memories — not at all pleasant — of three wars in the African continent.

People don’t consider him a hero, much less himself. He is just one of 50,000 Cubans who at one time departed for Africa toting an AK-47 to defend a socialism that — paradox of history — no longer exists in any of the three nations where he fought.

He professes no religious belief whatsoever but every day, upon awakening, he thanks life for keeping his heart beating. Recently, he has experienced the premonition that he will very soon be ambushed by death and be unable to escape.

“People are dying like never before and I’m investigating why,” he says, stating categorically that “the crematory at Guanabacoa is working full time.” Twenty cremations a day, beginning at 6 a.m. Even to leave this world you need to form a line.

Papillón’s theory begins with his own neighborhood.

“Olguita with breast cancer; Gudín with a heart attack; Claudio with the same, and diabetes; Ricardo’s wife with something strange, that the doctors call ‘virosis’; Antonio with Alzheimer’s. And now, to make things worse, that 11-year-old girl who was run over while crossing that dangerous boulevard. You look around, and the only thing you see are the dead and acquaintances who are about to die.”

The former warrior has gone to friendly doctors who acknowledge to him that deaths are on the increase — and they don’t say it just to humor an old chatterbox.

“Doctor Maribel has told me to watch out, really watch out for those fruits that some scoundrels ripen with chemicals, because you can catch a galloping form of cancer. It’s best to buy them unripe and let them ripen at home. And watch out for beverages in 1.5-liter bottles. They might be homemade for sale in hard-currency stores.

“And you know what else? Sausages. Anybody can make pork sausages, and those are very dangerous because the makers don’t observe sanitary rules and are only interested in selling the stuff, even if people get sick or die.”

The man’s on-the-field research extends to another health professional, Doctor Mario.

“This friend has told me about the damage caused by stress. Listen, it’s incalculable. Here, everybody lives under stress, and some of them are undernourished. Even a head cold will kill them, for sure.”

I chat with Guillén at his home. He’s my neighbor. For a while now, he’s been nursing a bottle of rot-gut rum whose brand I won’t divulge. He’s not what we call a drunkard or an alcoholic. He drinks like any other mortal and if he does it in front of a journalist it’s because we’ve known each other for years and are good friends.

He seldom talks about the wars he’s fought in. On a few occasions, and after a few drinks, he tells war stories worthy of being made into movies, that’s how original they are. They are real events, never seen in films of that genre.

From someone whose name he won’t disclose he has borrowed a couple of phrases that he sometimes attributes to his own creativity: “We the living are the walking dead, with permission to roam the earth.” Or, “Death is so sure of its victory that it gives you a whole lifetime’s advantage.”

As much as he tries to conceal it, Guillén is a man who fears death, that ghostly figure that he evaded many times during his army years, even in almost suicidal missions.

In sum, on the one hand, we have a man of flesh and blood who, by life’s natural law, has little time left to plan for the future and, on the other, is in a situation not at all impossible, which he can offer as a reason to look for the truth about people on their way to the cemetery or the crematorium.

“I continue to investigate, to study this problem of the many deaths. Yesterday, talking to that doctor fellow who just returned from Venezuela, I told him of my ideas and what some of his colleagues had told me. You know what he said without hesitating?

“‘Look, Guillén, this is a country of old men. And old men, at one time or another, have to die. Forget the rest.'”