FROM
CUBA
The candy man
Rafael Ferro Salas
PINAR DEL RIO, July (www.cubanet.org) -
I woke up early today and accompanied my
neighbor Felipe on his daily route around
the city. He's a 68 year-old retiree who
devotes himself to selling candies made
by his wife. Felipe is an electrician by
trade and he worked for thirty years.
"Retirement doesn't even begin to
be enough to maintain a family," he
tells me.
Felipe has a daughter who doesn't work.
The girl was left sick after the birth of
her second child and now she suffers from
nerves. Selling candies barely maintains
his wife, his ill daughter and his two grandchildren.
It looks like today will be a good day
for the "business." The sky is
clear and a soft breeze is blowing. The
birds sing. I help Felipe with one of his
boxes of candies.
"Everything has its trick. The hardest
one of all is that of life," he says
to himself.
I smile. We arrive at the city park and
we sit down on the bench, looking for the
best angle of sight to look for buyers among
the passers-by.
"You had a good trick for living.
What happened is they found out about it,"
he comments.
"I don't understand you. What trick
are you referring to?"
"That of a writer, pal."
This writing thing seems easy to him. I
could explain to him it's all the opposite,
but I'd take a lot of time and for now what's
important is selling candies.
A lady with two children arrives, inquiring
about the price of the merchandise.
She buys and goes away. The children go
together with her, tasting the candies,
content and thankful. The world always takes
the form of an enormous piece of candy for
children.
"I respect your profession. I said
that about the trick because you do it in
an easy manner; at least that's how it seems
to me, but I respect it. You began to get
entangled when you got into politics."
He keeps talking and recounts the day they
mentioned my name on the "Round Table"
television program, in which various journalists
comment about national and international
current events, from the official viewpoint.
From time to time they criticize the work
of dissidents and the opposition. What they
said that day about me was reason enough
for them to remove me from the radio station
where I'd worked for more than twenty years.
"Politics is garbage. What concerns
me is maintaining my family. The rest doesn't
matter. I worked for thirty years and at
the end of the day, retirement barely provides
me to shop for the garbage they sell with
the ration book. You have to come up with
things to keep living and that's what I
do," he says to me pointing to his
boxes of candy.
Felipe is now getting into politics and
doesn't realize it, but I don't interrupt
him. He offers me a cigarette. We smoke
and watch the people who cross the park.
Several buyers came, but not all those
whom Felipe would have desired. Two hours
later a policeman appeared.
"The permit papers for selling those
candies, citizen."
From that moment on things get complicated.
Felipe explains to him that he doesn't have
papers and the uniformed man decides to
take him to the police station. I prefer
to risk the same fate as my neighbor and
I go with him.
A while later we leave the police station.
It's been a definitively bad day. Felipe's
candies were confiscated and they imposed
a 500 peso fine on him.
"It's an abuse what there is in this
country. Now I have to work full time for
three months to be able to make the money
for that fine. I feel sorry for my wife.
She got up early in the morning to make
those candies and we lost all of it."
At the door of my home Felipe offers me
his hand.
"It makes me glad there are men like
you in that politics thing. I don't have
a head for those things, but yes, I think
something needs to be done to fix things
in this country."
Versión
original en español
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