33 Revolutions by Howard Curtis, Canek Sánchez Guevara Page A

us today?” those waiting ask those coming out. “Same as yesterday,” they reply apathetically. When at last it’s his turn, he looks lazily at the military tray: the circle of vegetable stew, the square of rice, the rectangle of sweet potato, the glass in its ring, and the knife, fork, and spoon in their groove. He eats it all in ten minutes and goes out to look for cigarettes. What little shade there is from the noonday sun is unable to allay the heat, let alone the humidity of this jungle of decaying structures and centuries-old beauty. The sea can be glimpsed in the distance, but today its breeze is pure absence. He sends a moan up into the sky and stops outside the store on the corner: A handwritten sign says, “No cigars or coffee.”
    Like a scratched record, he moans once again.

5
    D uty and desire. Angrily, he bangs out his dilemma on the typewriter until the paper is perforated with periods and commas. His desire is to be alone in this office, in this city, in this country, and never to be disturbed. Monotony is expressed in a thousand ways and acquires various signs. Work, radio, news bulletins, meals, free time: I live in a scratched record, he thinks, and every day it gets a bit more scratched. Repetition puts you to sleep, and that sleepiness is also repeated; sometimes the needle jumps, a crackling is heard, the rhythm changes, then it sticks again. It always sticks again.
    He hears loud footsteps beyond the door, and he knows who they belong to. Where’s the report? I’ll have it ready in a while, he replies. The manager glares at him, veins in his nose, a surly look in his eyes, the son of a bitch. The manager reprimands him without a single hair falling out of place (a lot of gel, a lot of cologne, a lot of talcum on the neck, he thinks). He feels like telling him to go fuck himself, and fuck his mother, and while he’s about it, go fuck his whole life, but all he can do is move his head from side to side with no rhythm or meaning, unable to understand why he’s being reprimanded and for what.
    â€œListen to me!” the master roars. “Are you listening to me?”

6
    T he day’s work is over. Eight hours of checking and stamping papers, signing memos, writing reports, making copies, putting up with the manager, and not much more. Eight hours as interminable as summer or solitude. Eight hours devoted to nothing. But today is payday, and that seems to give meaning to the everyday nihilism, the farce of making a contribution, the madness of giving service.
    He sniffs the envelope of rough yellow paper with his name handwritten on it and counts those colored bills whose value, as he well knows, is as relative as our reality. He doesn’t want to go home. He thinks he’d rather go get an ice cream; he walks unhurriedly, watching the scratched records pass with their end-of-month smiles, full of wage-earner’s pride. There’s no silence in the city: Everyone talks at the same time, more than usual, echoing the buzzing of bumblebees—and the women, the buzzing of the queen bee. All the women think they’re queens here. At last he gets to the ice cream parlor, and the length of the line destroys his craving. He walks on past (should he go into the movie theater? Forget it). He turns onto San Lázaro, plunges down a side street, and runs aground in a corner bar, dark and perfumed with men’s urine: a long bar counter, dirty tables, cheap rum: nothing more. Nobody smiles, nobody greets him. Everyone minding his own business.
    In a corner, four guys are playing dominoes, as they do every day of the year and every year of time. There’s never any variation in the parade of white pieces, black dots, double nines, cries, curses. Next to each player, the eternal glass of rum; in the middle, the ashtray full of cigarette butts. This, he thinks, is the scratched record of national culture. In another corner, a taciturn woman, dressed in