An Advertisement?
By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez
HAVANA TIMES – I’ve spent several gloomy weeks with some kind of flu-like illness, at least I’ll call it that – a set of symptoms that causes me to lose all joy in anything. That’s why I dragged my feet to the clinic, despite not being a person easily inclined to turn myself over to the uncertain results of the medications derived from industrial and academic pharmacology. These, based on a dangerous flirtation between trial and error, also known as the risk-benefit relation, even more so in today’s almost total absence of medicines in Cuba.
My mind was suddenly extracted from such dichotomies by an enormous sign without any spelling errors, with good lettering, drawn with dedication in white chalk on a piece of packing cardboard of a dark ocher color.
It was right by a stand that sold food, vegetables, greens, and even fruit – a mobile place of business very well positioned on a promising spot, if we consider that it was on 12th Street, very possibly the broadest street in Lawton, at the intersection of Dolores Avenue, today called Camilo Cienfuegos, an artery which has always been well trafficked. Since no one was buying, the two people apparently in charge – a man and a woman who were still young – were sitting on some stools and talking.
It was a common-place scene, even though it was Sunday, a little past two in the afternoon. They were there looking to earn a spare peso.
Did I say that the sign caught my attention? Well yes, but not for the price of the malangas, or of anything, even though obviously that would be a necessary declaration from someone to someone else, judging as I already said from the spelling, but also from the handwriting and the size of the letters, since the words could be read from over thirty meters away.
The presumed business owners had made an effort to make their message clear, but – for whom? It seemed odd to me that such a proclamation could mobilize buyers to the site because it didn’t claim to be cheaper than other locations, and the products showed no sign of being discounted, but just the opposite.
Later I thought maybe it was a matter of a ruse to get the inspectors or the police off their backs. These often harass the ambulatory peddlers, asking for their papers, permission, contracts, proof of the legal origin of their products, and so on. But that didn’t seem right to me either, because in any case the sign was like hanging a hundred-watt bulb above you on a dark night.
Right then, my neurons finally sparked, and for a few seconds I forgot my flu malaise. I swear I was just about to pull out my cellphone and take a couple of photos, because it was the most picturesque and surreal scene that anyone could imagine.
But I restrained myself. You know – I was just a tiny bit afraid. I imagined the movie playing out:
“Hey, Hey, what’s this picture-taking business? Who’s having a birthday here?” And they’d be well within their rights.
Then I’d say, “No. It’s just that your sign caught my attention.” Because they wouldn’t believe it if I told them I was taking pictures of their squashes to show my Aunt Filomena.
But then they might say: “Uh huh, the sign got your attention. What? You don’t agree?”
And with that, things could begin to go in an unpredictable direction. And in truth, I wasn’t in shape to be conversing a lot. I’d start coughing; and why get tangled up in this anyway, since I’m heading to the doctor’s, I don’t even know for what.
They’re going to tell me to drink a lot of water, to drink hot homemade teas, and inhale steam – the same things I’ve been doing for more than a week, and I’m still the same. In the end, there’s no medicine, and the doctor can’t cure you just by looking at you.
The sign said: “I love my Revolution! Long live Fidel, Raul and Canel! We Are Continuity. Long live Socialism.
At that moment, I was left stunned, thinking that whatever anyone could think about the matter, it would fit perfectly, within the logical calculation of the real possibilities.