It was almost the end of the morning. The rush to complete to buy the most essential foods of the day, we had achieved. But days ago, almost a week, we did not give to be able to complete the money and buy a decent dishwasher. Of those that appear in television ads.
In the last months we could only buy the yellow cap. Those Chinese second or third category, that no matter how much you spend and review the dishes and cutlery, they are all oily.
While we were in the car, talking to my wife, he came up with the great idea to check the cell phone to see if the fortnight had already been deposited. Nothing to her, but to me. -Little more than 500 thousand, my love. - That is, we can already buy the dishwasher. - Yes! It was his cheerful and very cheerful response. - We can finally complete to buy our dishwasher!
But the joy did not last more than a minute. - You realize what we have fallen into. It was my response. There was a silence like those that the pious say when a conversation pauses and someone jumps up and says: "An angel just happened.
But no angel passed here. It was the battered consciousness that placed us in the here and now. The happiness we experienced for a moment was to know that we could complete our fortnight and buy a "piaso 'e dishwasher." We went "to the Chinese" of Las Amapolas. We enter. We walked through the shelves full of almost nothing. Then the conscience returned to do of his. - It is necessary to buy eggs. -Also a little white cheese. -Leche and perhaps bread.
Total. We approached the shelf of delicacies where the brand-name dishwashers were. All passed 300 thousand bolivars. Turn around. Direct to the last shelf where the yellow lid is. There we convinced ourselves that these products of rare brands and that no one knows where they are packaged, "something they do". -Look -looking at my wife out of the corner of her eye- this looks good. -It has a little more "body" and is even thicker liquid. -Ah And it smells a little.
We convinced ourselves (-self-deceived) of its virtues and we went to cancel. So the account was higher than what I received per fortnight, being a retired teacher from a Venezuelan university. Total, my wife, with the title of doctor and almost retired, as any good administrator, gathered the "three quarts" missing, and we could go out with our dishwasher.
On the way home we stopped to buy cheese from the man who has sold us for years. Only a small piece of cheese cost us just over a quarter of a million bolivars. -I can cancel it by transfer. And we went straight to take refuge in our house.
The country where I live gets his sores everywhere. Sometimes absurdly. Others with sick clown smiles. The country where I live is a presence stuck in my back like a leech. It weighs so much!
One loads it knowing that its weight bends and hurts. -But we must move forward. -We have to reinvent ourselves. They affirm the most deluded, and perhaps they are right. And I see. I observe. I let my eyes and ears, and even my skin, be imbued with hundreds of images, voices, smells and tastes. Then at each traffic light. Every time I see a black plastic bag, I am assaulted by a movement that I often confuse with dogs and cats. They are human beings rummaging through black bags. Ragged kids jumping from metal dumpsters, at midnight.
I flip On the other side, elders in long lines. Sitting on the edge of the sidewalks, waiting for the next day to be able to collect a meager pension at the bank. Garbage and more garbage through streets, avenues, squares and squares. Destroyed public and private buildings, with poor lighting. Everything stinks.
I am assaulted in this country by any corner. This daily presence, permanent, lacerating. Like me, also others, thousands, millions of citizens, we carry this country on our backs. It does not stop for more. This is a miserable country. Although I know we will come out of this. Those of us who have experienced this humiliation, this vexation and this aggression against our human condition, will never be able to return to being normal men and women.
The sadness. The crying contained. The feeling of years of abandonment, have created a very deep sore. It is impossible to go on forgetting this horror. This damage to the national soul.
I think that behind the international relief agencies, which have been prepared for months with their humanitarian aid and that this despotic and depraved regime denies entry, they will necessarily have to have a huge group of psychologists, psychiatrists, assistants in psycho-pedagogy and other specialists in sociology and social anthropology, to serve an absolutely deranged population. Paranoid and incredulous.
The current Venezuelan population does not believe in anyone or anything. We walk the streets just looking for food, medicine, healthcare, begging to find someone who can "sell" us money to have cash. This is the country of contradiction. Of the absolute ambiguities. Bakeries where there is no bread, but they sell detergent. Pharmacies where there are no medicines, but you find refrigerant for vehicles. Butchers without meat, but they sell you dishwashers.
For many years I affirmed that I wanted to be alive to see the end of this seedy novel. Today I reaffirm this desire. But I know that I will be marked forever. Although I will soon be out on the streets to celebrate the fall of this regime, I will carry on my back the tragedy of a country that snatched the most sacred: the ancestral innocence of their society.