The Mass of the Bread Line

The Mass of the Bread Line / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez
Posted on May 6, 2015

Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Havana, 4 May 2015 – His shirt, once white and
elegant, has turned yellow with age. He wears frayed pants and well-worn
dress shoes, perhaps a size or two larger than ideal. Contrasting with
his clothes, on his head he wears a black beret with an embroidered red
star, and slung over his shoulder the tiniest bag emblazoned with the
Cuban flag.

The old man reads today's Granma newspaper in a loud voice alongside the
line to buy bread. Excited, he maintains a grandiloquent tone more
mocking than declarative, and pauses when he wants to impart gravity to
a phrase. Adding some of his own details, such as news of past decades
and great failures that have left their mark in his deceptive memory.

His voice fades at the end of an official announcement. Few are those
who take their role so seriously. Among those who could not help but
listen to him, some smile and gaze at him with expressions of
complicity, others remain serious, absorbed in their own problems. Most
don't even pay attention to the nutcase. "Poor thing," whispers a woman.

Then the old man, feeling that he's done a favor to the public and after
the oven beeps, offers plastic bags at one Cuban peso each to carry the
hot bread. The line moved, and even the most worried faces come alive a
little. The fantasy ended and the rhythm of the city hurries everyone,
even the least sane.

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