Yo, Reinaldo!

From the very beginning of Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas, a primary tension is between what Arenas does not have and what he does have, between absence, loss, or lack on the one hand and benefit, sensuality, and enjoyment on the other. For much of his life--and therefore for much of this memoir--the things that Arenas does not have increases, while what he did have or came to have decreases, until it seems he cannot survive the resulting privation. Although, fortunately, privation is succeeded by liberation, there is no happy-ever-after in which benefit outweighs loss. Arenas does not provide a narrative arc in which the tension, after reaching a climax, is resolved.

In the beginning was a father who left a mother who "did not have enough practical sense to be raising a child" (1, 3, Arenas), a house "filled with abandoned women" (4), and a God that did not answer prayers (5). Meanwhile, he was "a skinny kid with a distended belly full of worms from eating so much dirt." (1) In sum--a childhood characterized by abandonment and poverty. Then, at the start of the second chapter, Arenas transitions to those things that sustain and nourish him: "I think the splendor of my childhood was unique because it was absolute poverty but also absolute freedom, out in the open, surrounded by trees, animals, apparitions...." (5) Especially trees, about which Arenas writes this rhapsody:

I used to climb trees, and everything seemed much more beautiful from up there. I could embrace the world in its completeness and feel a harmony that I could not experience down below.... To climb a tree is to slowly discover a unique world, rhythmic, magical, and harmonious, with its worms, insects, birds, and other living things...telling us their secrets. (5-6)

Also at this time, Arenas develops a world of "almost mythical and supernatural characters and apparitions." (6) And--"I created and performed a series of endless songs and staged them all across the fields." (17) In a childhood characterized by poverty and abandonment, Arenas nevertheless discovered both the magic of the natural world and the world of his own imagination.

Arenas' early discovery of the natural world leads, at age six, to his discovery of his homosexuality. "This was the river," he writes, "that gave me a gift: an image that I will never forget" of "over thirty young men bathing in the nude...all those naked bodies, all those exposed genitals...I realized, without a doubt, that I liked men." (8) His sexuality is one of the things that Arenas does have, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, during a short life marked by loss. Sex is a source of enjoyment, as in "I had switched from possessor to possessed and enjoyed it fully." (70) or "...I was able to enjoy those excited guys...." (165) Sex is an adventure, as in his recurring use of the phrase "erotic adventures" (80, 92, 159). Sex is a topic requiring focused attention, as in two chapters titled "Eroticism" (18-20, 93-116). Throughout the book, Cuban politics and homosexuality inevitably and frequently intersect.

The other thing that Arenas certainly has, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, is his writing. His first story, a two-page story titled "The Empty Shoes," gets him out of "Fidel Castro's sphere" and gives him access to the "magical world of the National Library...." (71-73) His novel Singing from the Well brings him into contact with the Cuban writer Lezama Lima who, in turn, gives him inspiration for more writing--a felicitous cycle. Writing is central to "...a great feast. We would all bring our notebooks and write poems or chapters of our books, and would have sex with armies of young men." (101) In New York, a few years after getting out of Cuba, Arenas and friends created a magazine, Mariel, in which they could freely write what they really thought. Arenas assures the reader that, although "the magazine folded," it left behind "issues that are a real challenge to the literature of exile and to Cuban literature in general." (298-299)

Nevertheless, the collapse of Mariel magazine is a loss in a series of many losses for Arenas: the loss of a father, of previously loyal friends, of his manuscripts, and, ultimately, of his freedom. His imprisonment in Morro Castle in the Port of Havana, terrifying to read about (177-201, 207-217), must have been all the more terrifying to experience.

Arenas barely survives imprisonment in Cuba, only to find "really no solace anywhere" (308), including New York, which he experiences more as a place of painful exile than as happy haven. As opposed to, say, the fictional autobiography David Copperfield, depicting the triumphal march of David Copperfield, the memoir Before Night Falls does not present a rosy future for non-fictional hero Reinaldo Arenas.