Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez
From time to time they invite you to be on some comedy show on TV, but
you don't earn a living from this. You prefer to be hired by one of the
exclusive restaurants that have begun to spring up all over Havana.
Being paid in convertible pesos, a plate a food, and the freedom to make
fun of anything you want are guaranteed in these entrepreneurial private
spaces. With the microphone in hand and before a select audience of
wealthy people, you make those jokes prohibited in front of the national
cameras, wisecracks you would never be allowed in a national TV studio.
You blast away sarcastically at the internal emigration regulations, and
comment, snidely, that you've made "three illegal attempts to enter the
Capital."
As the night advances, the drinks come and go and your tongue becomes
sharper, more biting. You start in on the political jokes, veiled but at
times direct, when your hand makes the sign of a beard under your chin.
Later, you launch into a long monologue about the poverty of your
village in the east, clarifying that your mom wants to move to the city
"to be able to get more eggs on the ration." You seem different from the
guy on national television, who just laughs about his own physique.
Between the tables, and with the consent of the owners of the place, you
also joke about the chief of police in some little sugar workers' town
who plays the local tyrant. Then comes the extensive — and coarse —
collection of jokes about sex, race, and homophobia, without mincing any
words and with the same crudeness one hears on the street.
The customers leave the place asking themselves if it was really the
same comedian they'd seen on prime time TV. That one is funny, but the
one they've just discovered here, under the protection of the private
restaurant, is irresistibly comic, visibly free. When they see you again
on some CubaVision or RebelTV program, they will notice that of your
wide repertoire you only include the least uncomfortable part, a
carefully chosen and censored parcel of your humor.
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