Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez
My small end-of-year tribute to the commentators
Water* falls from the balconies. It's midnight and sonorous waterfalls
spill from the windows and doors that give on to the street and
terraces. It is the overflowing liquid of a slow scrubbing, the residue
of a national bath taken under tossed buckets and without soap. The body
of the country badly washed, with filth here and frustrations there,
smelling of sweat but still with the coquetry of talcum-powdered
armpits, perfume over the stench, an elegant handkerchief wiping the
forehead. If that torrent of midnight could talk, if instead of ending
up on the asphalt and the on-lookers it could say something. It would be
a scream, a death rattle. Water has been a permanent feature of every
New Year's Eve, the most constant. When there was no pork, no tomatoes,
when even a pound of rice cost half a month's salary, we still had this
elemental and complex liquid to get rid of the anger, the frustration,
the fear. Parents spread the food out on the plate to make it look like
more, but when the time came to take a bucket and throw its content into
the darkness, no one skimped. It was full, overflowing, like our monotony.
A few days ago on TV a white-coated scientist explained that water has
memory, it carries the impressions and traces of where it has been.
Thus, the streams that run every Saint Sylvester Night* by our facades
give us away. If we put them under the scrutiny of a microscope that
would reveal particles in the shapes of paddles and rafts, molecules
that have adopted the profile of a mask, of a red card that some prefer
to hide in the back of a dresser drawer. It carries our morning grimace,
the sound of our knuckles in the washtub, the bubbling of water boiled
for tea. Every drop of this substance is the most complete report that
can be written about us today. The journey through the plumbing, the
oxidation and holes of some; the new ones of plastic and teflon. The
faucet that turns on with a single touch and another fixed with wire so
it won't drip all night. And, later, falling on the warped metal plates
of many, or aerated by pressure above the pristine dinner service in
some house in Atabey.
The child is bathed in a basin because the suds must then be used to
clean the floor, and the bent-backed retiree drags a water cart from the
hydrant to the shack where he lives. The jacuzzi jets in some hotel, the
stillness of of the blue waves of one of those swimming pools that can
only be seen on Google Earth, so hidden are they behind the hibiscus
hedges and watchdogs of certain residences. It is not the same water.
Evaporating in a pool from which a stray dog might drink, making a wet
spot on a roof that won't last another year before it falls in. That
making concentric circles caused by the voice of the interrogator in
some cell in Villa Marista.** "Do you want a drink? Are you thirsty?" A
question and the prisoner knows that a sip of "that" might make him sing
like a canary, or give him a crushing pain in the chest. But there is
also another, cold with ice that we are offered on entering the home of
a friend. The newcomer wants to know if it is boiled so as not to be
left with amoeba that will remain for years, but prefers the risk to
showing his distrust. Water with honey and egg white that dampens our
feet in any doorway in Reina Street, because the "bad" must be thrown
out, to put little footprints or droplets in the street is all the same.
And then, in unison, without being advised or ordered by anyone, we take
a pot, a bucket, and wait until the clock strikes twelve. Our most
reliable and free ritual of every year, the baptism with which we try to
make this island ready for the twelve new months that lie ahead. But the
water doesn't reach far enough, it is not enough to cleanse and expel
the accumulated waste. Purification is far from complete. We have to
repeat it every December 31st, eager to empty the contents of our
containers at the exact second of the new day. The pools down below
continue to reveal us, the torrent speaks and in these diminutive atoms
of hydrogen and oxygen we leave the mark of our desires. The most
complete account of our aspirations will disappear in the morning, dried
up by nothing more than the rising sun.
Translator's notes:
*It is a Cuban tradition to throw a bucket of water out the door at
midnight on New Year's Eve to wash away all the bad things of the year
that is ending. New Year's Eve is Saint Sylvester Night in Cuba and
other countries with a Catholic tradition.
**Villa Marista: Headquarters of Cuba's security services/political police.
No comments:
Post a Comment