A Greek Love by Zoé Valdés

Author:Zoé Valdés
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781956763690
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

MY DEAR FRIEND Yocandra,

Today, April 22, Petros turns five. He’s a very smart boy, he loves music, and he’s been studying piano with my Tía Adela since he was three. I’d tell you he’s a virtuoso if I didn’t think you’d take me for a doting mother who’s crazy about her baby. There’s a little of that, what can I do? Petros can play Chopin and Debussy with a degree of piano-playing skill and an emotional depth that are incredible for his age, in the same way he plays Ernesto Lecuona, who you know isn’t treated like a saint by the people in power, though they listen to him in private before trashing him in public.

Petros is a little boy like any other, he plays ball, he runs off to hang out with the guaguancó dancers who live in the nastiest tenements in the neighborhood, where he plays rumba de cajón on the tres. His playing is a huge hit. And, speaking of guitars, Osiris gave him this little one that he treats like a treasure. It belonged to one of her old Greek customers, her Petros, her revolutionary lover, whose name my son inherited. My mother was able to rescue that little guitar, a bouzouki, before they tore apart Osiris’s home.

She’s about to get out of prison. Her trial, as you know, was a real tragedy, shameful, held after they dragged her by the hair from the tenement room where she had set up her Hellenistic brothel, dragged her from her misnamed “triclinium” to Parque Habana. There they beat her, stoned her, humiliated her in every way. Which you’ll remember, as you were a witness. I couldn’t be, I was already living in Matanzas, but my mother told me all the details.

They held the people’s court without delay in the center of the park, amid shouting and physical attacks. They handed down a five-year sentence for her after accusing her of prostitution—not just practicing it herself but also tricking teenagers like me into prostituting ourselves just as she had done—and, of course, of spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda, which was false. I have to reach a catharsis, I’m sorry, that’s why I’m writing about something you saw with your own eyes.

My written testimony supporting her was dismissed as worthless, as was my mother’s, who would also have been found guilty as a lesbian if my father hadn’t used his prestige as a union leader to protect her. My father, who behaved so despicably toward both of them, still wanted to save my mother so he could keep being the kind of father he was: a beater, an abuser, a brute. But on the other hand, he ruined Osiris forever. My mother couldn’t forgive him, and she never wanted so much as to hear about him after that. I hope this will change someday, which will happen when this country becomes different and all the hate quiets down.

Yes, I know you’ll say that those were terrible times, that even though other things still happen, we don’t have to put up with the violence we endured in those years.

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