HAVANA TIMES – I wasn’t home. I had gone to see a psychiatrist because I’ve been struggling with depression. I thought it would pass with time, but it hasn’t, and I figured it was time to consult a specialist.
My aunt told me that while I was away, a neighbor came looking for me, her hands and arms blackened with charcoal. My aunt told her I wasn’t home and asked what she needed. The neighbor replied, “A book, any book.”
“Any book? Are you sure any book will do?” my aunt asked in surprise.
“Yes,” the neighbor told her. “It’s to burn. The charcoal won’t catch fire, and I have to cook.”
My mother handed her a thick book titled El Bloqueo (The Blockade). The truth is that all of us at home have a visceral aversion to the whole subject of the blockade. It disgusts us. We can’t stand even the slightest mention of it.
The neighbor had some money in one of her charcoal-blackened hands. The charcoal simply wouldn’t light. My mother and aunt told her not to worry about paying and hoped she’d manage to cook her meal somehow.
When I got home, they told me the story. I laughed because my aunt is very funny when she tells a story, and in the end, I completely agreed with their decision not to charge her.
I kept coming back to the incident throughout the day. The situation really is unbearable.
My mother told me she’d given the neighbor one of the volumes of that book called The Blockade. There were two more volumes left. I asked her to show them to me. I looked at them and told her that, judging by the author’s name, he seemed to be Russian. She replied that in that case, it wasn’t the manipulative, oppressive discourse that the corrupt and opportunistic Communist Party of Cuba has used to keep the country under its thumb.
I read a few lines, and no, it wasn’t about “the Yankee imperialist blockade against the sovereign, socialist, internationalist island that wants to help liberate all peoples from the exploitation of man by man that is inherent to cruel capitalism.”
It was a novel by Alexander Chakovsky, which I gathered was about World War II.
“What a shame,” my mother said.
“Indeed.”
We still have the other two volumes. There were three altogether, and they’re in magnificent condition. I suggested that we be more careful next time.
In any case, I’ll set aside a space for those books that are in such poor condition that I can no longer sell them. Instead of sending them off to be recycled, I’ll save them for unfortunate situations like this one.
I’ve always believed that books are meant to be read, not burned and reduced to ashes. But there is a basic human need, and that is to eat.
Between books being burned and a situation that keeps getting worse, we end up even hoping for a war as a solution, because we no longer know what other solution we can come up with.
Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.