Leapfrog and Other Stories

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The author of the two books that make up Leapfrog & Other Stories did everything he could so that none of this would make it into the reader’s hands. His favorite method was fire. I know of at least two great novels and an epic poem totaling over one hundred pages that he threw into the flames. I think it was, above all, an act of courage and not of madness. And I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world, beside his sister Leyma, who can speak with authority about Guillermo. After having written the last word of each of each creation, he seemed to give them a certain life span, and if in a given period of time his editor (or anyone else) didn’t show any interest, then he condemned them, without hesitation, to the flames. It could also have been a reflection of the visceral disdain he felt for the world around him. Destruction at the end of the torturous path to creation seemed a relief to him. But no one knows about the books I am referring to because no one read them. I had had before me the novel Socrates and his epic poem The Hero of Yaguajay, about Commander Camilo Cienfuegos (I can still hear his evil, mocking laughter when he said, “If they only knew I’m doing an imitation of Quasimodo!”). And I had read his novel about the origins of Cuban rum and the wars of independence, with that amusing episode about General Shafter’s landing on Daiquiri Beach, to the east of Santiago de Cuba. And I’d read the story, “Colonel, it’s Puny Speaking,” and another novel no one talks about but that concerns a battle against Batista on an imaginary mountain in the Sierra Maestra — la Taguara — with Camilo Cienfuegos again as the main character. I can’t believe none of them exist now.

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