Key West

Key West is the final refuge Aurelio reaches on foot before attempting a perilous sea crossing from the United States to Cuba. In September 2014, its position at the southern tip of Florida turns the place into a threshold: a desperate traveler finds an abandoned boat there and stakes his life on the chance of reaching home.

Setting and Arrival

Aurelio arrives in Key West after days and nights of moving cautiously through Florida. Disguised in a hooded jacket and dark sunglasses, he hides by day, travels at night, avoids main roads and open places, and keeps away from contact and scrutiny. He speaks halting English and begs as a wandering Latino, trying to pass unnoticed while evading either the sect’s leaders or the police.

At the southern extremity of Florida, he searches until he finds an old boat apparently stranded on the beach and poorly secured to a tree. The boat offers no assurance of safety; it is simply the means by which he might leave the land behind and avoid being forced back toward the sect.

The Crossing Begins

In the depth of night, Aurelio quietly pushes the boat into the dark water of the Straits of Florida. His intended destination is his native country, roughly 150 kilometres away, but he has no certainty that he will make it. A light wind blows toward Cuba, and he seizes what may be his only chance. He rows with a rotten piece of board, while the boat pitches on the water.

The crossing is presented as a wager with death rather than a planned journey. Sharks, jellyfish, coral, and the possibility of capture make the open water dangerous; Aurelio is left to the mercy of Providence. He would rather die than return to the hell he has escaped, placing the salvation of his soul before whatever may happen to him physically.

Escape and Narrative Significance

Key West is the hinge between Aurelio’s escape from the sect’s facilities near Miami and his eventual arrival in Cuba. In Rodrigo Lerbier’s account to Loïc and Laurence, Aurelio’s flight begins when a conversation he overhears between a sect leader and a high-ranking Freemason makes him understand, as if for the first time, the beliefs to which he has long assented. He spontaneously invokes Jesus Christ, then uses subterfuge to get out of the sect’s compound and commits himself to flight. Key West is where that decision becomes an irreversible passage across the water.

Aurelio does not complete the journey alone: recreational boaters find him adrift and tow his boat to the boundary between the United States and Cuba. Exhausted but alive, he reaches a deserted shore near Varadero. Laurence reads his survival as evidence that Providence watched over him; Loïc distinguishes the good Providence that saved him. The place thus marks the point at which escape becomes possible, while the crossing—and not the safety of the shore—remains the test that gives Key West its narrative force.