Cuban
Wall, A Collection of Essays
Cuban Wall During a holiday in Cuba, something odd occurred to me. I was enjoying a delightful Cuba Libre on the rocks, sat in the refreshing shade of an enclosure wall. Two people were speaking on the other side of the wall. Their voices were so loud I was now trying to tune in their dialogue. I understood that one of them had offered a cigar to the other and they were both smoking now. A long silence followed and while I was thinking of the gorgeous "chica" that I had met the night before, the dialogue started again, so strange and even dramatically ridiculous that seemed so much a joke: "Every time I smoke a cigar, I think of how destiny has been ironic with my late grandfather", said one of them. "What are you saying? What the hell happenned to your grandpa?" asked the other. "Well, I’m going to explain you…" he took his time while puffing "my grandfather had a wish in his life: dying in his own bed." "And didn’t he?" "Yes… he died in his bed, murdered by the husband of the woman that was making love with him!" "My goodness! What a dreadful thing! You never told me that! It’s terrible, it seems a thriller!… But why did you say that you remember it when you smoke a cigar?" "Well, it’s because my grandpa wished to be cremated when he will have died, but…" "Didn’t they respect his will? Did they bury him instead?" "Yes, my friend, they hid the corpse in a tobacco plantation!"
Marketing While thumbing with the mouse the multimedia catalogue he had found in the mailbox, he yielded to that painful sadness which was pouring in his soul. Dreams have got over, he thought. Everything is planned. Life is an anguishing bureaucracy, from the cradle to the grave. It was just a few days from my birth, when they sent my fiscal code to my folks. How carefree were the first days of my life, when I didn’t know to be a debtor of my Country! Perhaps I’m too pessimist now. Yeah, maybe I’m wrong. And then, is it not by any chance seeing how things are really going that makes us free? After all, at this precise moment I’m reflecting on all that, I’m taking my own liberty. Better taking it with philosophy, till you can. We can't do anything, the world is going faster and faster. Think about it: it’s all relative! My father was distressed simply ‘cause he had to book his holidays six months before. Once, it was the first week of august, he was hurt only because he had gone to a supermarket to buy a pair of sandals for walking in the sand, but there were no more and they wouldn’t have been there until June of the next year. Instead of the sandals, in the same place there were school items and this had been sufficient to make him feel the blues. It’s all relative, indeed. He kept on thumbing the electronic catalogue and stopped upon an item of a twinkling ebony shade, already customised with his initials. After all it’s no bad this coffin, he thought.
Delight Food Co. "The folks of our folks would have turned up their nose…", says Maurice while dismembering a hamburger, showing the white blade of his teeth under the sunglasses. "Turned up their nose for what?", asks Mustafa while examining the chip he’s keeping with his fingers. "They’d have turned up their nose, if they had thought about DF’s hamburgers." "What do you mean?" "Damn, what the hell did they teach to you at school? Didn’t you know that the folks of our folks, they themselves who had such problems as overpopulation, third world’s hunger, social security and other bullshits, they thought that in the future average life would have been longer. They were so stupid they didn’t suspect that their descendants, once reached the age of fifty, would have been good for appeasing the new generations’ hunger".
Cold Dish The twin turbo props were buzzing like enormous hornets, as the wing tipped resolutely towards the smoke column. One minute or just a bit longer and he’d have been above Marco’s property in a blaze. Memory lighted the flames of wrath. Paolo saw that scene again, from beneath upwards, sharply, as if he had recorded it. He saw Marco laughing at him unseemly, leaning out of the hayloft, and there were also Katia and Anna, both laughing at him too! Paolo saw himself again; his frail child’s body that a plastic bag full of water had knocked down. He saw one more time Marco’s burst of laughter, then suddenly smothered as if overwhelmed by a water mountain. For the thousandth time, he saw the boaster get small and dumb. For the first time, Marco’s eyes had been loosing in front of his. He remembered those eyes. They looked terrified like the eyes of a tiger faced by the fire. Again, Paolo heard himself cry: "I’ll make you pay for it! I swear it!" In the meanwhile, the water-carrier aircraft arrived above the fire and began to descend. From above, Paolo saw Marco gesticulating and shouting. He clenched his fist around the lever that would have dropped tons of water. They’ll call it casualty, he thought.
Copyright (c) 1999 Alessandro Menegazzo |