Adiós - Part I: The Necrópolis Cristobal Colón

They arrived at the necropolis at 1:00 pm, when the sun singed arms, and the day’s vapour panted on the back of necks. The necropolis, like most of Havana, remained unchanged, tattered, architecturally stuck somewhere between the late 1800s and 1950s. Drastically different to the headstone-peppered, pristine lawns of resting places from Tania’s step-home, the necropolis was its own city. Streets and avenues lined its insides, flanked by towering mausoleums, angelic statues, and shade trees.

Two rising iron-clad gates below limestone arches guarded its resting residents.

Aside from the wandering souls, Tania and her fiancé Pierre appeared to be the only ones there. Soaked in sweat, Tania put on her best face to speak to the cemetery clerks. “Hi, I am here looking for my great aunt’s tomb. She died in 2009,” she wheezed at an open window in the white lime-walled office near the entrance.

“In 2009? No month or day?” The man on the other side of the window scoffed. “Look, you understand what we do here? All we have is records. Records, and records. So much paper!” He fully fanned his left arm in a sweeping gesture from the window all around the room. “Do you see?”

But all she could see was a rusted electric fan, with three blades, whirring away slowly. It was inefficiently placed in the middle of the table, where three women, one of whom already had a fan she was slowly waving, waited for the time the electric fan would turn its head and grace their faces with relief. 

The day’s heat melted the minutes into stagnant uncertainty. Tania said nothing and instead made the heaviest, most distraught face she could muster.

He begrudgingly asked, “What’s the name of your great aunt?” The face had worked.

Dolores Gerpe García.” The break in Tania’s voice said thank you, but that exasperated him more. Face works; voice-breaking doesn’t. She made a mental note.

“Wait, here,” he warned, as if he would have to find them among the invisible sea of people waiting to part with the deceased, and he already had enough work for the day. Five minutes later he emerged.

“Look, there is no Dolores Gerpe García in our books. She must not have died in 2009.” 

“Could you look in 2010?”

“Do you think we’re computers?”

With a loud thud, he closed the window on her face as the electric fan crept toward the women.

Part 1/3

Maria Rosales Gerpe is a writer and a watercolour artist. Her work focuses on her experiences as a woman during postpartum, grief, and love, with the aim of challenging Western perceptions of beauty and being. She can also be cheerful. IG @ohla_mar