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Suddenly one of them got up, with a heavy and slow step he reached the boys and began to dance frantically.

Here, this is happiness, I thought. Stop at the essentials.

Why bother to cultivate more land, to fish more than strictly necessary? To go and sell products in Havana and then have cars in the yard instead of pigs and chickens, in the boji uncomfortable furniture to be dusted, feet forced into shoes? Nobody would have patched-up troubles anymore, everyone would be out of breath and dissatisfied.

The guajiro stopped dancing. I walked back slowly and, passing by the basket, I reached out for a banana. Then he crouched against the bojio wall again.

Our guide arrived with a horse. He was the only one available at the moment, he said. We proposed it to my mother, but she preferred to stay on the earth itself, she felt safer. In order not to harm anyone, it was decided to use the horse as a means of transport for our bags and the blankets that we had used to shelter us from the wind and the early morning rain.

Limping in the mud behind the horse, moving the branches of trees at times very thick, jumping from stone to stone to cross a stream, I felt like I was living in a western.

When we reached the plain where we were to take the train to Matanzas, I looked around for the station. No, there was no station, I explained to the guide. This was the line that was used to transport the sugar cane cutters to the plantations and to stop the train was enough to signal one's presence. As soon as I saw the train approaching, I began to skid and scream breathlessly. Puffing and rattling the train slowed down until it almost stopped and we got on it in great haste, pushed by the guide and immediately grabbed by a pair of strong arms, without even having to open the door because on that train the doors did not exist at all.