Cuban Curiosity

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RUNAWAY SLAVE by Esteban Monfejo. Edited by Miguel Barnet. 223 pages. Pantheon. $4.95.

Between matchbook advertising copy and the immaculate fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, there comes a pause in a compulsive reader's occupations known as the literary curiosity. Casually indulged, it often reaffirms the battered belief that reading can be one of life's simpler pleasures.

Esteban Montejo's autobiography is no more and no less than that. Shaped from notes and tape recordings, the recollections of this 107-year-old Cuban, now living in an old soldiers' home outside Havana, have all the rough charm of folk art. Such praise is not patronizing. Behind Montejo's colorful directness is a robust self-consciousness and dignity that should be the envy of his more sophisticated readers. The key to Montejo's attitude toward the ups and downs of his life is his phrase, "This is not sad because it is true."

Hammer on the Tree. Montejo tells how, in 1868, he escaped the whips, chains and involuntary toil of a sugar plantation and lived a jungle-boy existence for twelve years. In 1880, when slavery was abolished in Cuba, he returned to human society. His descriptions of village life resurrect a forgotten world. He recalls work, fiestas, cock fights, fashions and trysts in the cane fields with a simplicity that imparts an aura of vitality and grace. Even the supernatural is treated in a tone as matter of fact as a fried egg: "If a person wants to make a pact with the Devil, the old Congolese told me, he should take a hammer and a big nail, look for a young ceiba-tree in the countryside and hammer on the trunk hard three time. As soon as the bugger hears this call, he come, quite cool and cocky, as if he didn't care a damn."

With a hint of exuberance he tells of his role in the 1895 war of independence against Spain. Fighting first under opportunistic bandits and later as a regular led by patriots, he boasts of pitched battles in which Negro machetes dropped Spanish heads like coconuts under the palms.

An otherwise generous spirit, Montejo seems to have been extremely miserly with his personal independence. With typical Latin machismo, he brags about his womanizing and the fact that no female ever succeeded in tying him down. Indeed, Montejo appears to have made a successful career out of avoiding entangling alliances of any sort. Who can blame him for being a little self-satisfied about it? At 107, Montejo clearly has reason to believe that he must be doing something right.

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