When a Driver Said – “No charge”
HAVANA TIMES – The street was empty, with the bulk of the crowd scattered along the avenue waiting for a collective taxi to take them to their destinations. I had just left the physical therapy room at the clinic, my bones laced with tiredness and my mind clouded by medical routines and prognoses. Still, over and above the physical fatigue, a tangible, tight-fisted worry was eating at me: the problem of money.
There on the sidewalk, under a pitiless sun, I decided to examine the money in my wallet and count it mentally – once, twice, three times. The arithmetic of a Cuban’s survival is cruel and never balances. I needed to go see someone important to me, a visit that’s balsam to my soul, even if the trip there and back in a collective taxi threatened to leave me nearly broke. I breathed deeply. The precariousness of transportation in Cuba isn’t an occasional complaint – it’s a daily fact that molds you into mute resignation.
Thus resigned, I raised my hand, and a spotless blue car stopped. I approached it with the question already formed on my lips, the same one as always: “Hey how much to go to ..?”
The driver, a man of maybe 40, with a cap and a serene smile, glanced through the side mirror at me and before I could finish the phrase uttered the two most subversive words I’ve heard in a long time: “No charge.”
I thought I had heard wrong. Custom has taught us to distrust, to wait for the trick, the excessive price, the refusal. “Excuse me?” I asked, lowering my voice as if the very air itself could give us away.
“I said it’s free,” he repeated, and his smile grew wider. “Get in. I’m not going to charge you.”
A wave of incredulousness pierced me from head to toe. I got in the car, still distrustful, as if at any moment he was going to correct himself and charge me a fortune. I settled into the back seat.
The trip had barely begun. At the next corner, a woman with a small child and two bulky bags was gesturing. The car once again stopped.
“How much to la Ceguera?” the woman asked, her voice echoing the same caution that I had felt.
“Nothing,” was the answer. “Get in.”
The woman stood there paralyzed for a second. Then a smile of pure astonishment lit her face. “Seriously? God bless you!” she exclaimed, while she settled herself inside with her son. The boy, unaware for the rarity of the moment, also smiled.
The ritual repeated itself. A young guy with a student’s backpack, an old woman with her wheeled shopping cart – with every stop, the same choreography: the raised hand to ask for a ride, the worried question about the price, the response that disarmed them, and finally the expression of surprise morphing into a deep, nearly disbelieving gratitude. The car filled with bodies and silent stories, all united by that invisible thread of necessity, and now by this act of crazy generosity.
Inside the car, a strange and enchanted atmosphere reigned. It wasn’t the uncomfortable silence of other forced trips together, but a quiet communion. We passengers commented amongst ourselves in low voices, like a secret: “Who is this man?” “Why is he doing this?” There was no answer, only the fact of it, pure and final. It was the living proof that kindness, that endangered species in the Cuban ecosystem, was still alive and breathing. The wheel was still turning.
I observed the driver’s profiled face, his concentration on the road, the naturalness with which he was carrying out his small personal revolution. He wasn’t seeking applause or recognition. It was an act of pure faith in the other, a reminder that, despite everything, we could still do good without expecting anything in return.
When I got to my destination, I got out of the car with a sensation I’d almost forgotten. It wasn’t only the relief of having saved some pesos. It was something bigger, warmer. It was the certainty that in the middle of “every person for themselves,” someone had decided, in a very simple way, to save us all a little, by offering us the gift of a ride. And, in passing, a piece of hope.
The blue car was lost in the traffic of the avenue, carrying with it other amazed and grateful people. I stood there on the sidewalk, holding the weight of a day that had been transformed. Sometimes, therapy doesn’t only occur in a clinic. Sometimes it arrives in the form of a free ride from an anonymous driver who, for a moment, gave us back our faith in ourselves.
Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzalez here on Havana Times.