Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
I delighted in entering the spacious indirectly-lit lobby, I loved those
seats that reclined. I begged my mom to leave me in the Rex watching the
cartoons and shorts while she walked through the shops. In the Duplex I
saw Waltz for a Million something like four times, a Czech film,
Spartacus, with a catchy musical theme that came after many battles and
many tears to refresh the film industry of the sixties.
But time and the eagle of the sea passes, and the first Cuban multiplex
was closed to renovations, the renovations never happened, the place
lost the box office, the carpets, chairs, ceiling and was turned into
the dump of the old Bristol Hotel, reinvented as multi-family housing.
The plumbing system of the old hotel, also old and lacking maintenance,
couldn't stand up to the onslaught of residents, and they chose to
dispose of their excrescences out the window… right into the space of
the Rex and the Duplex.
In the first repairs tackled on the Boulevard, they thought to save the
building, but except for the facade there was nothing left. They chose
to block the entrance with glass and aluminum doors, and not even the
glass survived.
By size, the strongest impression comes from Fin de Siglo, Flogar or
Cuervo y Sobrinos, then the Praga jewelry store, dark and dirty premises
that let you search among their repetitive merchandise sold in national
currency for a past splendor. Walking along San Rafael, almost no one
under forty might suppose, fleeing from the plague that identifies the
place today, the existence of those agreeable little movie theater rooms.
December 5 2011
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