THE LOTTERY AS A CRITERION OF TRUTH
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
The lottery numbers yesterday in Cuba: 19 fixed, 19 and 86 running.
I should play more.
I should put money on the lottery.
My father spent his last ten years doing that. He was lucky. He played a little, but on a lot of numbers. He would bet with several Lawton number runners. He might end up playing close to fifty numbers a day. “So anything wins,” it annoyed me. It was his final entertainment. And I respected it. “Play, papá, hell, play more,” I would tell him, “Play a hundred numbers in one day, dammit, I want to see the face on the runner…”
Papá. The lottery. Lawton boredom. The garbage of the Nineties in Revolution.
It’s the same thing I should do now, when sadness fills everything and it seems there’s no way out and that everything everything everything has been for nothing because people, the more beautiful and better they are the less they understand. It’s a curse among Cubans. The worst form mafias and get ahead. The best are left alone and run aground.
Today I feel that way. The only thing I can think of is to play. At least it’s forbidden and breaking the law is always something vital.
So give me a number, please.
Give me two.
Maybe I can put a winning bet on a parlé.
January 14 2011
