Dámaso
After I read the note, I crumpled it and threw it in the trash with anger but relieved. I hardly knew the sender. We had only spoken twice in life and adding all minutes of conversation, it didn’t reach fifty. However, these few minutes radically changed my life forever.
Did he deserve my forgiveness?
It had all started three years ago when I had down the stairs of my house cheerfully, but muttering:
“Oh, my God! How much insistent is this guy asking to talk to me about!”
It was the first time I saw him as electricity collector in my area, but I had been his second grade teacher. His name was Dámaso and remember this reassured me. Immediately he recognized me:
“I didn’t know that you were the one who lived here! I imagined other people, but anyway what I come to propose may suit you. Can we talk privately?”
I had just gone down the three floors to prevent him from going up to my house. I used to receive the strangers at the front door to prevent visits from being extended and interrupting my routine and my chores, but this time I felt shame to refuse him and I invited him to go up.
Upon entering the living room of my house, Dámaso made a gesture of pleasure and, like almost everyone who visited me, praised it. It was a cozy space, though much smaller than it seemed. It was built on the top floor of a tall three-story building. Two of the walls were completely transparent glass that pointed to a terrace in the shape of an “L”.
The view through the wall of glass literally encompassed the entire center of the city towards the four cardinal points and this had producing the magical effect of sitting on top of Havana. This image was repeating in a large mirror that hung in front of the glass multiplying the one already extensive urban landscape.
It was a quiet place in the midst of the most brutal bustle. So many years of watching my neighborhood from that height at all hours, it had created a peculiar harmony that dictated the approximate moment of the day. For example, I knew that when the newsboy was turning the corner, it was about six fifty in the morning, and without looking at the clock I used to wake up Malva to prepare her for school. That same vendor invariably had crossing in front of the warehouse with a man in military uniform, the same who I used to saw returning, near dusk lurching by drunk.
I knew many secrets of the people in the neighborhood, it means, I knew which husband had not gone to sleep at home, who one asked for things borrowed from other neighbors, where the guy that the police were chasing was hiding. This strategic position had taught me to be very discreet because otherwise it would have brought me serious problems because they were situations that could only be seen from my location.
Dámaso’s proposal consisted to change my electricity meter clock for another one that would not take registration the consumption of 220v. The cost of the change was for the sum of fifty dollars, equivalent to one thousand two hundred and fifty Cuban pesos. But I said him no, because a sudden low in my electric bill made would send me an inspector and the fine would be bigger than what I could to save.
This response of mine gave rise to another conversation about the difficulty in solving the most basic material deficiencies and the overwhelming number of Cuban laws and measures that are only meant to suppress individual inventiveness, financial autonomy and instill the criterion that everyone who accesses to alternative economic was delinquent or lacks moral values. This, in a country where almost everything was forbidden: satellite dishes, computers and even DVD players. This was another reason why my privacy was so valuable. I was sociable and attentive, but I didn’t like receiving visits of strangers’ people because I had all those “illegal” equipment in my house.
I had to protect me of the president of CDR who visited me once time a year in search of the quotation and, in the face of my refusal to pay, always said the same thing: “I’m going to pay it for you, but if you can, please, give me back the money. Any day you have a problem and you cannot have committee support.”
“I won’t have troubles, Mario. I do not do anything wrong or illegal.” I used to answer with the quiet rejoicing of those who have nothing to hide, because although he had a satellite dish, computer or e-mail account, he never used them for profit. Yes, because in Cuba, one does not “earn money”, in Cuba “one profit”.
Mario used to pay my fee of his pocket because he sold in smuggled goods cleaning products which were stolen of a nearby factory. These products were destined for the national commercial of foreign currency and their prices were high. I was one of the few housewives who bought their disinfectants or “branded” dishwashers. He wanted no to lose a client.
The eagerness to collect the fee of all the neighbors, even at the expense of their own pockets was due to the interest of maintaining a façade and pretending the validity of an organization, long time ago dynamic and active, but now discredited and agonizing.
And about those things I talked to Dámaso who had become a young man not very tall, but with a very nice face. As a child he was calm and shy, now he seemed to be a decent boy, but very talkative.
It was a hot afternoon in June 2009 and the cool air conditioned of the room had dried the sweat on the thick Carmelite uniform. We talked a bit more about my daughter, who had studied at the same school, took a lemonade more and we said us goodbye.
