Zeta’s parents met by chance and her mother passed away when she was giving birth to her: ‘I was born standing and I was about not to be born; for many reasons, I am the living stamp of a chance’.
1 Spanish original: ‘yo nací de pie y por poco no nazco, por muchos motivos soy la viva estampa de la casualidad’; Cien botellas, p. 33. Her accidental birth anticipates her delirium: ‘So, I’m crazier than a goat’.
2 Spanish original: ‘O sea, que estoy más loca que una cabra’; Cien botellas, p. 100. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez refers to these types of characters in his own work as lonely individuals who are disengaged from the political issues on the island:
Those who have to scratch the ground every day to find something to eat, have no time or energy for anything else. Their only goal is to survive. Whatever. Anyway. Neither they know why or what for. They aim to survive one more day. Only that.
3 Spanish original: ‘Los que tienen que arañar la tierra cada día para buscar algo de comer, no tienen tiempo ni energía para nada más. Su objetivo único es sobrevivir. Como sea. De cualquier modo. Ni ellos mismos saben por qué ni para qué. Se empecinan en sobrevivir un día más. Sólo eso’; Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Trilogía sucia de la Habana (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1998).Gutiérrez’s approach to his iconic protagonists brings us back to Portela’s views on her own lack of engagement with the situation on the island: ‘I don’t hate anyone, nor am I interested in changing the world at all. I am an individualist’.
4 Spanish original: ‘Ni siento odio por nadie, ni me interesa en absoluto cambiar el mundo. Soy individualista’; López and Portela, ‘Entrevista’, p. 51. Zeta is an individualist too.
When her mother dies, she is left in the care of her father, who is ‘so free, so unstable, so incapable of guarding anyone’.
5 Spanish original: ‘tan libérrimo, tan inestable, tan incapaz de custodiar a nadie’; Cien botellas, p. 33. She therefore lacks a male role model for the ‘new man’ designed by the regime in the early 1960s – a patriot who may have taught her the revolutionary values.
This experience anticipates Zeta’s loneliness and disengagement from the political situation on the island. She concludes: ‘For truculence I have more than enough with real life’.
6 Spanish original: ‘Para truculencias tengo más que suficiente con las de la vida real’; Cien botellas, p. 100. She never mentions Fidel Castro, and her approach towards historical events at such a crucial time in Cuban history is vague and
inconsequential. For example, Zeta refers to the so-called ‘crisis of the rafters’ in Havana as a collateral event to her own problems, giving the impression that it does not really affect her existence:
On one of the days of the hectic August 1994, when the brawl, the fight, the tumult in the streets (I locked myself in my room because I am a coward, but someone told me about a night parade of tanks for a certain avenue).
7 Spanish original: ‘En una de las jornadas del movido agosto de 1994, cuando se formó la rebambaramba, el salpafuera, el tumulto en las calles (yo me encerré en mi cuarto porque soy muy penca, pero alguien me habló de un desfile nocturno de tanques por cierta avenida)’; Cien botellas, p. 102.Yet, Zeta’s lack of interest in political events is a mask for protecting herself. She explains that she needs medication to withstand the political repression in educational centres:
I took a diazepam for the pain, against the iron fist that returned in waves, and another to see if my nerves calmed down a bit. […] The police detaining a girl, taking her out of school? What the hell was that? Now things have changed.
8 Spanish original: ‘Me tomé un diazepán contra el dolor, contra el puño de hierro que volvía a oleadas, y otro a ver si me calmaba un poco los nervios. […] ¿La policía deteniendo a una niña, sacándola de la escuela? ¿Qué rayos era eso? Ahora las cosas han cambiado’; Cien botellas, p. 103.Zeta’s reaction is indicative that only those with the ability to evade and repress their feelings could overcome the increasing repression of citizens at the time. She develops the idea as follows:
I felt that the floor beneath my feet was being taken away, that I was living a nightmare, that the world had gone mad. I took a third diazepam against the nightmare and fell on the bed like a log. The trunks don’t dream.
9 Spanish original: ‘yo sentí que […] vivía una pesadilla, que el mundo se había vuelto loco. Me tomé un tercer diazepán contra la pesadilla y caí en la cama como un tronco. Los troncos no sueñan’; Cien botellas, pp. 61–62.As dramatic as the events may be, Zeta takes a satirical approach towards them. Chaos and delirium thus allow her to endure the harsh reality on the streets of Havana.
In Cien botellas, Havana offers a picturesque and eclectic background for Zeta and her friends. From the balcony of Linda’s apartment, Zeta enjoys the panoramic view of the city and the sea:
[…] so white, so beautiful from afar, from the height that hides the devastation, which casts a veil of modesty over misery and horror, Havana shimmering in the pink twilight, with its cars like beetles, its ant-sized passers-by, the Malecón interrupted by the Focsa tower and, beyond, the bay. Pure air, feeling of fullness. Vertigo.
10 Spanish original: ‘[…] tan blanca, tan bella de lejos, desde la altura que oculta la devastación, que tiende un velo de recato sobre la miseria y el horror, la Habana tornasol y en el crepúsculo rosa, con sus carros como escarabajos, sus transeúntes del tamaño de hormigas, el Malecón interrumpido por la torre del Focsa y, más allá, la bahía. Aire puro, sensación de plenitud. Vértigo’; Cien botellas, p. 98.From a height, the passers-by are insignificant. They have no power. In the background, there is the sea – the only way out from there. This is a metaphor for the political system, which has condemned local citizens to silence and anonymity. The city, which was splendorous and full of life in past times, is collapsing at present. There is an indication that it is luminous and pure only if you manage to keep yourself distant from its devastation.
In
Cien botellas, the city also appears as a space full of hungry, creative and violent people with no present, nor possibility for change. The city does not give options ‘but a fucking heat and tremendous filth and buildings about to collapse and others already fallen down and rubble and dirtiness and plague and blackouts and a pile of bugs’.
11 Spanish original: ‘y sí un calor del coño de su madre y tremenda porquería y edificios al punto del derrumbe y otros ya derrumbados y escombros y churre y peste y apagones y una pila de bichos’; Cien botellas, p. 175. Ruinous Havana mirrors the ravages of the authoritarian system, which trapped citizens. The pure air gives Zeta a sense of freedom and tempts her to commit suicide:
I wanted to fly. A tingling all over my body, a crunching desire to sit on the railing again, turn back to the street, stand up on the eaves, slowly, all very slowly, in slow motion, take a deep breath and then… fly.
12 Spanish original: ‘me entraron ganas de volar. Un cosquilleo por todo el cuerpo, crujientes deseos de sentarme otra vez en la baranda, voltear de nuevo hacia la calle, ponerme de pie en el alero, despacio, todo muy despacio, en cámara lenta, respirar hondo y entonces… volar’; Cien botellas, p. 175. Imagining jumping through the window shows Zeta’s desire for freedom. Yet liberating herself from societal constraints would need courage to start from scratch in a new system that perhaps is not as inclusive as one could expect. This prevents Zeta from leaving. Instead, she takes refuge in the guaridas (dens), which are spaces where Cubans can exercise their sexual identities freely, as we shall see later.