Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago

Author:Eduardo Santiago [SANTIAGO, EDUARDO]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316076708
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

chapter ten

Imperio

I was furious. Furious! After the so- called Triumph of the Revolution, it was as if a plague had swept through Palmagria, taking with it all the decent women. Caridad was gone, Cuca Soto was gone, Azucena Martínez was gone, and I had not made any new friends. Por Dios! There was no one to replace them, no one I could trust. Graciela was definitely out of the question. She could rot in her father’s house for all I cared. She had done it to herself, and now she had to pay the price. If things had been different, maybe if she hadn’t been so cheap—quién sabe? But the way things were, with that cloud of shame hanging over her, I knew to keep my distance. It wasn’t just about me, I never much cared what people thought, but I had Mario to consider.

For a time I thought Caridad would return. How long could this son of a bitch in La Habana last? I asked myself. Everyone was wondering the same—even said as much, after they made sure all the windows and doors were shut.

“The Revolution was a success,” people started saying, “but everything after that has been a complete disaster.”

My husband, Mario, owned a restaurant at the railway station. It did a good business and afforded us a good life. But not long after the Revolution, the restaurant was nationalized, along with the trains and anything else in Cuba that smelled of money. No more private enterprise. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice. How did it happen? How did we become like those unfortunate people that sad and senseless things happen to?

Mario didn’t take it well, to say the least. He’d always liked to drink, but now he felt he had every reason. I didn’t blame him; he was heartbroken.

“Let’s just wait it out a little,” I told Mario. “Let’s see what happens with this crazy man in La Habana. Por Dios, somebody’s got to put a bullet between his eyes sooner or later, and then everything will return to normal.”

But while I was waiting for Castro’s assassination, Mario developed a very strange illness. A red rash about two inches wide erupted on his back and continued spreading until it circled around his chest. But rather than itch, the way rashes do, Mario screamed that it was tightening, like a belt or a snake. We took him to the doctor, who prescribed useless ointments while Mario could hardly get out of bed for lack of breath.

I took him to every doctor, looked for every possible explanation. I even took him to a specialist in Yara, who looked him over and over and could find no explanation.

“This is Santería,” he said, and I just looked at him, wanting to kill him. We had traveled all the way to Yara just to be told that nonsense.

Finally Mario’s mother, Liliana, insisted that we take him to see El Haitiano, a man from Jacmel who practiced some superior sort of Santería that was said to be very effective.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.