Volver/Return | The Montreal Journal

Every time I return to Cuba, even after only two or three weeks of absence, I sing to myself the most moving song by Richard Desjardins: And I slept in my tank : “…Returning from exile/Involves risks/Like inserting a needle/Into an old record/ […] I wonder who I would be/If I had stayed here. » Who I would be, in fact, today if I had remained in Cuba in 1974, rather than transporting my exile and my little suitcase to France then, five years later, to Quebec, my dreamed and sublimated country ? Would I have blended into the background, a little more swarthy and Cuban, or would I, like today, still be the foreigner who is easily recognized despite his efforts to go unnoticed?

Sometimes it’s the romantic and sad song Volver, a moving tango from the thirties sung by Carlos Gardel, which I remember, not without sometimes shedding a tear: “Volver/Con la frente marchita/Las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien/Sentir/Que es un soplo la vida/Que veinte años no es nada/Que febril la mirada/Errante en las sombras, te busca y te nomra. » (Come back/the forehead a little withered/while the snows of time/have colored my temples with gray/Feeling/That life is only a breath/twenty years is nothing/as in a feverish gaze /who wanders between the shadows, seeks you and calls you).

I am happy to find the small apartment that I rent in the Vedado district, my plants that we took care of during my absence, the owner’s cat who always comes to my house for the table scraps that I give her or to chase away the sparrows that I feed bread crumbs every morning, and especially my neighbors who come to greet me with many handshakes, hugs and “ congratulations for the new year ! “. Everyone asks me how I spent the end of the year there, in the north, in the cold, and how are the children and the family? We take the opportunity to have a little sweet coffee, the gateway to any self-respecting conversation.

I also take the opportunity to catch up on current trends. What happened during these three weeks? Few things have disrupted the daily routine. The difficult situation has remained the same and for the end of the blockade, we will come back. Biden is showing no sign of relaxing, especially not at the end of his mandate where a serious threat looms: the re-election of a dangerous madman, Donald Trump. Everyone agrees that prices have increased terribly and it’s not over yet. Here in Cuba, as in Quebec or elsewhere, no one seems to be able to escape this accelerated race of rising prices for food, among other things.

In Cuba, a small, underdeveloped country without great natural resources – fortunately there is the sea and its beaches – these price increases are somewhat dramatic, but fortunately, everyone is getting by as best they can in inventing some stratagem. Is this what we call resilience? One day we will have to write a book on the thousand and one ways that Cubans have invented to succeed. There is a word that keeps coming up here: “ resolver “. The Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez had promised it, but this promise remained on his work table. Yet, despite shortages of all kinds, dignity and pride are everywhere and people, adults, young people and children, are always well dressed.

The seller of “ frozen bocaditos » (ice cream sandwich) is still there, crisscrossing the streets of the capital with his tricycle and his eternal recorded refrain that can be heard everywhere in the four corners of the city, just like the other sellers: tamales, ice cream pies, guava or coconut, brooms, etc.

And this blue sky with its omnipresent sun which I missed so much in Montreal-la-grise and its poorly cleared sidewalks where I risked falling to the ground with every step. ” Fatal ! ”, as they say here. In short, Havana vibrates and lights up with its thousand lights. And the work ? We’ll talk. There is my daughter who calls me for a video conference on WhatsApp.