Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Translator: Claudia D.
That propagandist title has always seemed a little terrifying to me: The
Night of the Books…
It sounds as if the sun had set for books, as if brightness and clarity
had disappeared, as if we had come across literary darkness and the
letters had to wait sleepless for the light to hit them again. Merd Licht…
The first of July there will be another one of those parties through the
course and bore of 23rd Street, in El Vedado of Havana. Anything else
that happens on that Friday the 1st (although right now I can't think of
anything important), will be left on the shadows of the already shady
Night of the Books.
I remember a scene in the University Student Federation (FEU) House, the
usual chaos to buy some culture, chaos that seems so vain to me. I also
remember a quarrel among the poets of Café G and 23 and the cooks in the
place, who were determined to throw them out because they didn't spend
one dirty penny while they occupied the tables with the feast of their
post-reading. I remember kaloied flags and fabric posters. Learned
devils and ex-presidents of bookish institutes. Little plastic chairs
(the dissidence and the official side share the fragility of legs that
break very easily). Snacks. Poses. Everyone wants to be considered an
author (Cuban literature is soporific to the point of being unbearable).
But, I'm sorry; I better stop talking. It sounds like a resentful
paragraph, but it's not. It's a post that doesn't really know where it's
going. So don't even look for yourself; typing your name here isn't
worth it.
One of those Fridays of the world, 6th day of the 7th month, I walked so
sadly that I thought I wouldn't survive the summer (year 7). The Night
of Orlando Luis. A friend passed me by in the street by the AIN (that
blue agency with a smell of Coppelia — the ice cream place) and walked
past me because he did not recognize me. Then he turned around, and it
was he who almost started to cry a river (in the 7 Seas): he told me my
features were disfigured by anguish, that I was no longer myself. But
then I remembered that exactly that was what José Lezama Lima told
Lorenzo García Vega* on another night without a night, though a
republican night. And the parody made me feel better despite the
impossible weight on my cheekbones and sternum.
Next Friday, 1st of July of 2011, Year of No One in Cuba Cares, at 4 in
the afternoon, to give a random example, I will walk again among the
packed kiosks, looking without being able to decide what to buy (I
haven't bought a book in months; I haven't read one in years). I will be
whistling, perhaps mimicking the birds, or I will spend my time filming
the suspect security agents that always swarm cross-dressed as civilians
in those days of massive crowding. I might buy a beer, a Bucanero (every
day they taste less like Bucaneros) or I might try to seduce a pretty,
young emo girl from the post-presidential parks that reach down to the
sea by G Street.
If I fail, I will go to 23 and 12, confusing myself among the anonymous
moviegoers in any given erotic cycle presented without much pathos by
Frank Padrón (why do I have to mention anyone in my posts?). If I
succeed, if she picks the daisy petal that says Yes, I will take her
where no one sees us, where the Chinese cameras of national security
don't reach, where the spy coverage of Cubacel cannot betray our desire,
where language is free and not ritual, to an arid territory where the
Suzukis of the securitycrats run out of their faithful fuel; there,
where I can ingeniously invent to her the twenty-some years of
difference that I will surely have on her (no one I can love now in Cuba
was born in 1971).
I am sure my tale will sound better to a beautiful emo of limp hairstyle
and eyes hollowed by black make up. Better than all that Cuban
shiterature that each first Friday of July sets down among more and more
books.
*Translator's note:
José Lezama Lima and Lorenzo García Vega are both distinguished Cuban
writers.
Translated by: Claudia D.
June 24 2011
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