Glistening Bread by The Razor's Edge
The morning sun beat down on the city streets and by 10:30 the pavement was hot enough to cook on. Our rented economy car, a box with wheels suffered along with us in a vain attempt to keep the car cool, it's air conditioner worked sometimes and didn't others. This was a didn't day. We were on our way back from shopping and passing the bread store where freshly baked bread could be bought, still hot enough to burn your hand, for 7 pesos.
I jumped out of the car and closed the door quickly so as not to let the little cool air inside escape into the searing heat outside and climbed the steps up to the vendors table wedged between the open doors of the bread store.
"Dos Pan Por Favor" I said in the best Spanish I could muster. I had only been here in Cuba for a less than a month and my Spanish was bad but understandable.
I paid the 14 pesos and jumped back into the car and put the bread on the back seat on top of the box of things we had purchased earlier, put the car in gear and off we went.
About a block from the bread store we passed a strapping young man with his Tshirt slung over his shoulder, the sweat glistening on his bare back. My girlfriend instructed me to pull over to pick up the young man, someone she knew from her barrio. In Cuba, if you don't have a bike you are a hitchhiker and driving any distance with an empty seat is almost a crime, certainly a sign of disrespect especially if you know the person and it doesn't matter if the car is full, there is always room for one more.
I unlocked the back door and the muscular sweaty young man climbed into the back seat, pushing the box and the bread to the other side of the seat. After a short introduction and handshake we started again. Yosvani was a friend of the family.
We lived about 6 kilometers from the city and in a few minutes we turned onto our street, my girlfriend indicating that Yosvani lived on the same street a few houses down.
I parked the car and proceeded to get the things from the trunk while my girlfriend began carting the bags she had stowed in front of her seat. Yosvani grabbed the bread, tucking one loaf under one sweaty hairy armpit and one under the other then grabbed the box and headed into the house a step or two ahead of me. I looked at the bread wedged tightly in each armpit with horror but said nothing. He placed the box on the kitchen table and without so much as a second thought drew each loaf of bread from his armpit glistening with sweat and placed them on the table as well, offered thanks for the ride and was gone.
A little later, my girlfriend made lunch, a bean soup with pork, gourd and sweet potatos. This soup was later to become my favorite dish, adding a few more ingredients to spice it up a bit. When she asked me why I wasn't eating bread, because I always did, I explained to her what had transpired with the bread.
"You're eating the pork aren't you?" she said questioningly
"Well yes" I replied
"Do you have any idea how that got here?"
"No"
"Have you been inside the bread store?"
"No"
"Well someday soon you will and someday you find out about the pork, now eat the bread"
Unfazed by my explanation about the bread, she continued, as did the rest of the family. I did not eat bread that day.
