blanket Daniel Diaz (Havana, 1970)
shut up, boy
does not carry the wind here, no time passes. The window is a gap narrow, high reveals only a fragment of covered walkway, the door, a hole protected with thick rough bars painted black. There side, another narrow corridor leading to dens similar wet: just three by four meters in darkness, cold concrete niches with space for six legged bay.
Fortunately, tonight we are only four. Everyone in your niche, looking at the ceiling or walls, thinking at the time that passes without us and trying out useless measure as we try to come alive the next minute. All hope is reduced to this: moving from one minute to the next seamlessly, without losing control stand without falling. Any hope, however, can be a trap for these bipeds now, cornered, we await the next minute.
But the next minute does not arrive or, if it is merged with the former in an amorphous substance, elastic, with more events that feverish flow of ideas, anger iridisciendo eyes and a tension that increases at every moment , the surprise ending to exist within the world outside in a cold and dirty niche somebody away, sheltered in comfort, designed to deprive us of any condition other than that of bipeds.
"My name is Luis Emilio Guzmán Valdivia," says a voice at my left. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm turning twenty-eight and took ten days here without my family knowing.
listen without moving. The tone is resigned, almost peaceful.
- Why are you here? He asks.
"They say that the slaughter of cattle, but I only bought the meat. You have to eat, he says, imagine.
Try to find a face to that voice and not successful. While it is an abstract way, I think, will be negligible in its grayness. A name, a face, a pain, get you closer to me. I have stared at the bulb: a light source built with clumsy yellow a hole in the wall at ceiling height, protected by steel bars, covered with soot and cobwebs. Almost hostile that light, almost its own antithesis. That is the face of Luis Emilio, this is also my face today.
"I am Leandro Azcuí another voice whispers in front of me, I'm of Rancho Las Mercedes, in the mountains, and killed my wife. I killed her, "he repeats with strength and the echo resounds in the hall with no sign of regret or sorrow.
Silence. I think my house away, my friends outside this unusual piece of reality for them, for me, we are meek my friends and I, good people that have seen only on television prisons, and although At times we feel caged, our cage is metaphorical.
"My name is Daniel," I say without thinking, "I am a writer. I went to El Valle. The bus stopped at the terminal and went to eat something. I was arrested, they say that I was leaving the country.
- And what the Valley is a writer, if I may ask? Asks the fourth voice below me. Say
writer imposes some respect, what you write can get away and that's a weapon. If you have tried to intimidate you into signing a ridiculous indictment and when you refused brought you here, no crime, no right to a phone call, maybe your gun be used against you, it's easy to reduce you to a bipedal cornered, very easy maybe. So maybe tomorrow Probe by the pen-and-desist fearful.
- And what you were going to the Valley? "He asks the captain.
I do not know, I think to see.
- Oh yeah, see what?
"Let's see what there is to know.
- What did you ask who you permission?
- Why do I have to ask permission?
"Because I feel like me. To go to the Valley or anywhere in this county must ask permission to me.
I look. It is a sad man this master, a prisoner of circumstances that will never reach to understand, so secure in his prison, with his gun at the waist and emptiness in the soul. If I were his son also would say: you have to ask permission to me. But I'm not your son or your friend, or his subordinate. I shrug my shoulders and looked at him without speaking.
"I am in July and I live in The Valley," says the fourth voice. What I'm about to tell is to write it, if you are as brave as you say.
"Speak," I ask. July
is twenty years. He moved with his wife and only son remained empty apartment in the building. All the people agreed, but police evicted them.
-waited until I was not to come, "mutters Julio, ¬ Zaron Nena entertaining that I would not see his face if he did not come out and thrown around outside. Now they say I threatened the captain.
- And the apartment? I ask.
"I have answered them," Julio, say that to make a dungeon to the people of the Valley.
"Shut up, boy," advised the guard beyond the bars.
Open the gate and called me. I follow him back to the room where they made me enter. Wet and without windows, is almost the antechamber of hell, I think as cordoned off my boots. Pick up the backpack and go. At the door the captain offered me an apology
"All men are mistaken," he says.
-some more than others, "I reply, but there's no point: it is a sad man, a prisoner of circumstances never understand. Outside is
morning. The people sleep protected from the cold of January. The street is tough on my feet. Unhurried way to the gate, thinking about the challenge of July. I want to get to the Valley, see what there is, tell the tale.
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