Blackouts, Revolutionary Mosquitoes, and Magic Solutions

Photos and Text By Nester Nuñez (Joven Cuba) 

HAVANA TIMES – Sitting on the curb of the neighborhood, with my back against the post, I wait for the hours, the heat, and the shame of this dark night to pass. CarlitosMal, or Jotafinley, as we’ve called him since childhood, arrived a while later and sat beside me without saying a word… What’s the use anyway? One word says nothing, and at the same time, it hides everything, sang the other Carlitos, Varela, and we’ve already learned that complaining at the CDR (neighborhood watch committee) level is pointless; take my word for it. 

So we continue quietly, trying to find something in the darkness to fix our gaze on. But all we manage to see is that these blackouts are the continuation of those from 1994. It’s unbelievable. Then I feel a column of air around me: 

“As if it weren’t enough, the bugs have arrived,” I warn Carlitos, “I have one perched on my neck, right in the middle of a scar.” 

I feel the pressure of its six legs and the odor emanating from its entire repugnant being. It moves slowly. It brings its feeler closer to me: 

“Now it’s going to bite me. It’s a mosquito.” 

“Don’t kid around, brother,” Jotafinley replies. “That’s less than ten millimeters, if it’s one of the big ones, and it weighs nothing.” 

Maybe it’s the insomnia I’ve been suffering since the blackouts… Maybe it’s the lack of bread and the hunger for something more than food… Maybe the chicken no longer sits well, or the lack of transportation, the shoes that break, the crying of a child without toys, the pain of an old man without medicine, or the rest of the senses that awaken when you lose the ability to see… 

“I swear I can feel it, it hasn’t gone away. Lately, I don’t know why, I’ve had this hypersensitivity to bugs,” I respond. 

“Hypersensitive? You’re off, bro. You’ve caught the Beriberi epidemic, but in reverse. It must be the minced meat you ate.” 

“Psss, shut up. It’s already biting me.” 

The mosquito’s proboscis pierces my skin. I feel pain when the blood vessel breaks, and when the mosquito finally sucks, I know the exact number of cells, the exact amount of life passing from my body to its. 

“It’s done. It’s about to burst from being so fat”

Then I perceive the immediate allergic reaction to the anticoagulant the mosquito injected me with, the inflammation in the epidermis, the formation of the rash where other mosquitoes have bitten me throughout my life. I don’t tell Jotafinlay so he doesn’t think I’ve gone crazy. Anyway, he suspects something: 

“If that’s true, brother, you’ve become a masochist or an idiot,” he says. “You didn’t even try to scare it away.”

“I’d rather it bite me than sneak into old Fefa’s house and bite her, poor thing, with how gossipy and anemic she is; or into yours, and bite your kid. I understand mosquitoes must live off something. It’s the law of nature. What can we do about it?” 

“Yeah, that’s true… There will always be mosquitoes.  What’s happening is that lately they’ve become very gluttonous.” 

“Don’t even mention it! This bug that bit me almost got an earful”, “Hey, man, with all due respect, step aside and give someone else a chance to suck too, come on. Remember you’re a mosquito, don’t try to fatten up like a tick.”

Carlitos laughs. 

“Are you laughing? How many millennia was that thing there sucking my blood?” 

“Mosquitoes take advantage because we let them. If you knew you wouldn’t even swat at it, you would’ve come out here wrapped in a sheet with your head inside and all, bro, like a ghost.”

“Oh, CarlitosMal, it’s unbelievable that you’re saying this. It’s impossible to be more ghostly than we already are. Yet, mosquitoes see us and go after us.” 

The lights of a car suddenly blind us. When it passes, we see it’s a white Lada. A few meters behind it is a military truck, and a patrol car closes the parade. 

“Do you know what I just remembered?” —I say to Carlitos—. “The insistent buzzing of the mosquitoes stuck there, in the ear. It was like a siren warning you of danger, and you had the option to defend yourself. This one that just passed by, it came, took what it wanted, and flew away, all the while staying quiet. That’s very odd.” 

CarlitosMal looks towards the “wolf’s mouth” where the procession of cars disappeared: 

“Imagine if genetics had them changing, or if they invented a wing silencer.” 

“I’d still prefer them silent than having one stick to my ear and whisper to me: ‘You and I want the same thing, got it?’ I’m doing this for your own good. Creatively resist to get out of this as quickly as possible. Plant your little piece.” 

“Brother, speaking of being self-sustainable, I’ll never donate blood again. Do you happen to know if they’re still giving out the yogurt and those delicious ham sandwiches?” 

“Jotafinley, brother. How can you talk about food at this hour?” 

But when he gets on an interesting train of thought, there’s no stopping him: 

“We humans should demand that mosquitoes open a blood bank. The people closest to them, those who deliver the most to that species, should go and make donations. That way, we get rid of the problem of disease transmission. No more yellow fever, dengue, or chikungunya… Banked blood! I’d burst out laughing seeing a mosquito lining up to withdraw a liter of plasma from an ATM. 

A child passes by with his mother, at 5 am. They probably ran out of charge on the rechargeable fan and can’t sleep. That, and every second of these seven hours without electricity has accumulated on my neck and eyelids, changing my mood: 

“Jotafinley, I’m going to ask you for something. Just like we once said that complaining here at the sidewalk level is worthless, we’re not going to allow ourselves to come up with magic solutions either, as if the problem with mosquitoes were trivial. Memes and jokes relax us for a moment, but I think we need to take this seriously.” 

“Perfect, bro. Let’s do like the mosquitoes, who take your blood seriously.” 

“CarlitosMal, brother, I’m not joking! In fact, if I were face to face with the boss of all of them right now, I’d say,” “Look, mosquito brain, for this inevitable relationship between you and us humans to work more or less well, we have to cover all the basic needs, and in addition to that, be sure that we can, with each one’s own effort, reach where we want. I know you know that, and it even suits you to keep us happy, but it’s evident that it’s not within your wings to give us what we need…”

“Why are you talking like that, looking up?”

“CarlitosMal, damn it, you had to interrupt me!” I look up, “I don’t know, because that’s where they always are, in the water tanks on the rooftops…”

“Well, they also live in the sewers, but I understand the reference. Go on.”

“Nothing… If I met their boss, I’d look him in the eyes and say,” “Man, from one living being to another, answer me sincerely to this question I’m about to ask you, because I can’t take it anymore: If you were me, if you were in my place, what would you do?”

“And you’re the one who says that magical solutions don’t work? You’re in bad shape, brother. Ours and theirs are two completely different languages. Besides, if they wanted to communicate, they would have already done it.”

“Yeah, right? You’re right about that. The same thing happens with aliens. I also thought that the solution was to throw a frog up there. They say there are some good ones in Eastern Cuba.

“I respect all that, brother, but I just want to get out of here. Are there bigger and more dangerous bugs out there? Okay, I accept it. But when they get close to your ear, they recite your rights as a human and say, “Excuse me, sir, sorry,” and they sting you just the same, but before that, they inject real anesthesia, although they’ll charge you later.”

“So, am I going to be here alone leaning against this post in the summer? You’re no good, bro. In the summer is when the mosquitoes and the blackouts get really tough.”

“Nah, bro, I’m not going to leave you stranded like that… Look, when I get there, we’ll start a small business between the two of us. Imagine: “The Redeemer Spray” business. We’ll import tons of repellent, and even a ship of oil to fumigate again with those bazookas.

“I appreciate it, Jotafinley, but no. The mosquitoes could understand that the external enemy is financing the opposition, and that’s more dangerous than letting them sting you.”

Suddenly, some lights come on, and my eyes hurt. The white Lada has us focused. The driver signals us to go home, to clear out. Since Jotafinley and I ignore him, the guy honks the horn, which coincidentally sounds like a patrol siren. Fefi, the busybody, must have jumped in bed and must already be peeking through a crack. Jotafinley points to the Lada driver:

“Do you want me to explain what that is?” —he says as he takes off his shirt and lies down on the sidewalk, relaxed, as if he were on a beach waiting for dawn. “That one has completed the full cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and now it’s a revolutionary mosquito.”

“So, it’s also a disease transmitter…”

The driver-mosquito-revolutionary agent gets out of the Lada without turning off the lights, of course, and starts walking the few meters that separate him from us.

Like CarlitosMal, I also take off my shirt and lie down, all peaceful.

Looking at the sky, I can’t help but compare the darkness up there with the one we suffer down here, in our land.

“Brother, do you think there are mosquitoes on some planet? And does God finally exist?”

“CarlitosMal, damn it, don’t put God and mosquitoes in the same sentence, because, look, I’m hypersensitive and I’ll get upset!”

The officer is very close now. More than seeing him, I feel that he also wants to land on my neck, on the scar where so many mosquitoes have already bitten me.

“No complaints at the neighborhood level” —Jotafinlay says quietly, and I add:

“No complaints or magical solutions.”

So, the light doesn’t come, as we wished. The agent crosses his wings over his chest, and since we don’t say a word or move, he uses his portable proboscis, the walkie-talkie, the old-fashioned intercom:

“Home Base, I’ve got a couple of citizens here…”

Fefi opens the door. She’s thin and with disheveled gray hair. I wasn’t wrong in thinking she’d be awake. She hands her phone to Jotafinley:

“Oh, son. I don’t know much about this… Record this business, there’s a huge mosquito that didn’t let me sleep all night. Let’s see if I can make a video and send it to my daughter, because I tell her things that happen here, and she doesn’t believe me.”

Then she pretends to see the agent:

“Hey, officer, how are you? Do you want some water or something? They haven’t brought the coffee to the ration store, so I can’t offer you any. And with this blackout, the water is hot…

The portable proboscis of the revolutionary mosquito emits an unintelligible sound.

CarlitosMal tells me:

“I told you, you speak two different languages.”

Then he hands the phone to Fefi and tells her that it is recording.

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