The New Ones Are Different

2001, September (approximate date). La Rampa and G, Havana. 22:51 h.

The bus has not arrived.

Ten or twelve students are waiting, and finding them reassures him, because all day he has been afraid of missing the transport and being stranded in Havana with no idea how to get back to the school. One is playing a guitar. Two are arguing about an Iranian film. An Argentine girl is asleep, leaning against her backpack.

He looks at the print.

One of the students comes over.

“Did you go?”

“Where?”

He points to the Virgin.

“To the descarga.”

“No.”

He takes it from his hand.

“Who gave it to you?”

“A young man on the Prado.”

He looks at the front.

Then turns it over.

“How strange.”

“What?”

“This one’s old.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know. Old.”

He gives it back.

“The new ones are different.”

“There are new ones?”

The student is already looking toward the avenue because the bus is coming.

“Get on.”

“Different how?”

He does not hear him.

Or pretends not to.

On the way back he sits by the window. Havana falls away behind him, and he thinks of Bernardo, of the party, of the possibility of having stayed. Then he thinks of New York. He begins to miss his apartment on Riverside again with ridiculous intensity: the snow that is no longer there because it is summer, and above all the Japanese garden. Strangest of all: Carl, the roommate who invited his dealer to live with them in the apartment.

He takes out the print.

There is something he did not see before.

Beneath Pilgrims, written almost on the edge, is a number:

3841.

It means nothing.

He puts it away.