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FROM
CUBA
Chronicle of a suicide foretold
Rafael Ferro Salas
PINAR DEL RÍO, September (www.cubanet.org)
- José Mas Llanes did some calculations
before killing himself and was able to verify
that sometimes life puts one on the good
side, and other times it puts us in the
worst places.
José stood in the door of his house
with a surgeon's scalpel placed at the level
of his neck, and told his neighbor he was
going to kill himself. The neighbor looked
at him incredulously and smiled at him indifferently.
Then José dealt himself the brutal
cut from ear to ear. It was the gush of
blood on the wall that removed any doubts
from the horrified neighbor.
Who was José Llanes and why had
he killed himself with his own hand in such
a brutal manner? José was a man who
lived a good life. For a time he was the
personal chauffeur of the president of the
government of the province of Pinar del
Río. In Cuba, to drive for the president
of the government in a province is a true
privilege amidst the poverty that is suffered.
The chauffeur of a provincial governor has
many things within hand's reach.
When José's boss was removed from
his position, José lost his job as
chauffeur. Then life showed him its ugly
side. For a good while, José walked
the streets of the city without work. At
that time he had few friends left, but when
the decade of the nineties arrived, things
changed for many people. Amidst the corruption
and licentiousness that entered Cuba after
the fall of the Socialist bloc, some took
advantage and others lost everything. The
legalization of the dollar was decreed and
tourists hungry for sex arrived on the island,
now converted into a paradise of lustfulness.
One of José's daughters had the
bright idea to get an Italian man to fall
in love with her, and the European, pleased
with the girl from head to toes, wanted
to marry her and take her back to his native
country. That was when everyone in the girl's
family began to see their chance. After
a time, José and his wife went to
Italy to visit at the invitation of their
daughter.
They were issued a one-year visa, but five
months later, José began to miss
the winds of the Caribbean and decided to
return to Cuba. Without knowing it, he was
starting to weave the fabric of his own
misfortune.
He brought back quite a lot of money and
squandered it on girls for paid sex. Each
youth he took to bed to share his 55 years
seemed to him to be a blessing from heaven.
His wife was on the other side of the Atlantic
and she had sworn that she wouldn't go back
to Cuba until her visa expired. It was then
that one morning, for reasons unknown, José's
wife arrived in Cuba without advance warning,
accompanied by their daughter. They surprised
him the midst of an orgy of boozing and
group sex. The daughter hugged her mother,
filled with horror and disappointment towards
her father. And she pronounced a phrase
similar to a doctor's scalpel: "Now
I'm going to take away everything. You won't
receive any more money from my hand as long
as I'm alive."
José felt as if a surgeon's scalpel
had suddenly cut his throat, and he wanted
to die. Overnight he lost everything and
was also abandoned by his wife who returned
to Italy with their daughter. The days began
to slow down for him and the years cruelly
piled up on him. He took stock of his life,
and one September morning he decided to
stand in front of the door of his house
(now desolate) and announce to his neighbor
that he was going to cut his own throat
and bleed to death.
Versión
original en español
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