On a ship whose name I do not want to remember, we crossed the Atlantic from Spain to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A lot of monotonous and hectic days. There was no television and the radios only clearly picked up stations with Arabic music. The only distraction was playing chess with my friend "the canary", who always beat me. Little by little I learned his way of attacking and one day I beat him. It must have made him feel quite bad because he never wanted to play with me again.
We entered the Mississippi River, leaving New Orleans behind. Along the way I saw some huge barges heading out to sea. Intrigued, I asked the pilot about them and he told me that they carried "strategic" food and that when it expired they would dispose of it at sea. These same barges would then be filled with food and parked in safe places. Strategic for what? For a war? For bad harvests? It didn't seem like a bad idea at all. However, it was still food in good condition that was not enough to alleviate the hunger of many who were dying from having nothing. Paradoxes.
We docked in Baton Rouge at a port on the right bank. It was a small neighborhood with industrial warehouses, factories and a few shops where you can find all kinds of things. The real city was on the opposite bank.
The next day my friend from the Canary Islands and I wanted to go to dinner on the other side and we took a small ferry that looked like something out of a museum: a boiler and a reciprocating machine that pushed huge wooden connecting rods that drove huge side paddle wheels that propelled it. This machinery was in the center and surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped bench where we sat. All the passengers were black except for the two white guys who were my friend and me. More than twenty pairs of eyes looked at us curiously. I felt intimidated and realized what they felt when the opposite happened. We walked around Baton Rouge, had dinner and returned to the boat.
The next day we were leaving at ten o'clock and a little earlier I went to buy something at the little shop. On my way back I met the pilot who was also heading to the ship. About ten metres before arriving a lady I hadn't noticed before stopped me and said to me in her American accent: Is Antonio here? I was taken aback because I didn't know any Antonio. And this lady hugged me, put her head on my shoulder, murmured something I couldn't understand and kissed me on the lips. The pilot had remained at our side without flinching and so I asked him in my poor English if he knew her. He replied yes in his acceptable Spanish, that she was a woman who had had a Spanish "good friend" called Antonio and apparently hadn't forgotten him yet.
The following days on my way to Spain I thought that I, a young man in my early twenties, had been mistaken, or not, for a woman who could have been my mother but who kissed me as if she were kissing Antonio. What was that woman's mental state? Obsessed? Disillusioned? Her look said it all but I still haven't been able to find out what was going through her head or where Antonio, the love of her life, was.