Holding the negative between the sun and his eye, he could make out his father. The then-athletic mulatto looked white and the reflection of the sun off the asphalt was black. It took him a few moments to identify the objects surrounding him: they were car tires on fire. The smoke coming out of the burnt tires was the same transparent white. It was an extraterrestrial landscape, like the one Neil Armstrong had marked with his boots that same year. In that strange land, as far away as the moon, José Alfredo was fighting against the class structure, against the Balaguer dictatorship, against the hired thugs who were murdering his friends. His arm was outstretched, hurling a Molotov cocktail toward a police force that did not appear in the photo. He exuded the strength and agility of a Muhammad Ali, and the tight pants and tense biceps could have passed for those of Johnny Ventura. José Alfredo was not a student; he was a leader in the Dominican Popular Movement who had only gotten as far as eighth grade. Back then he was a kind of living god. He had trained in Cuba, he knew Che and was friends with Caamaño, he had recruited hundreds of young people for the constitutionalist side during the war of 1965. Aged fourteen, he had gotten the scar that crossed his forehead from a machete, during a strike, completing the legend.

He returned the negative to its place, the reception suddenly improved, and they heard the pastor on an evangelical station requesting donations for a brother. Argenis felt serene and happy thanks to the dollars in his wallet and the things that filled his suitcase and backpack: new clothes, food, presents. The cell phone Niurka had loaned him rang once more. It was his mother. He listened to her for a few minutes. The more obsolete her advice, the more Argenis loved her. She was happy for him, happy he had sold some pieces, but she didn’t understand why he had rejected his father’s offer. It was a good opportunity – cultural attaché in a Dominican embassy in Europe.

When he’d hung up he turned off the device and stuck it into Niurka’s pocket. Since he still had time they stopped by a coconut vendor. The man poured the water from the coconuts into two Styrofoam cups with ice and, after cutting the flesh free, he passed them the open shells to eat from. They went down to the rocky shore and found a couple of stones to sit on. The white coconut flesh reminded him of Céspedes’s paintings again, the light everywhere.

“Why are you going back to Cuba?” Niurka asked, and he told her that he had left something undone. She stood up and ceremoniously opened her arms to the sea, then put her hands on Argenis’s head without saying a word, just as his grandmother Consuelo had done so many times. He didn’t know what to do, so he fixed his gaze on an enormous anthill. Life bubbled from that hole, flowing like blood, in and out. Some ants were carrying immense pieces of coconut, like slaves; some were scaling the hills of even bigger pieces.