CONTUMBRISM: A RUSSIAN CAR

      A RUSSIAN CAR

    There are memories you never forget and even dream frequently with them. That was the case of my car Moskovich brand, of course Russian, and flooded the city, as a stimulus for medical professionals in the late 80's.
     Saying "they gave me" a car is a euphemism for what had to buy my wife and I peso to peso and costing dearly for the salary of a doctor. But there was the Moskovich in the garage at home, bright and shiny as morning coffee with milk.

I felt privileged because medical professionals and others had no car but ancient American machines that survived as antediluvian dinosaurs.
   The car represented a breakthrough in our lives. It served to go to work and to the beach or the field on Sundays. Until we put it a name: Lester.
   I bathed and shinning Lester whenever I could, I took him to the mechanic as a lady carry on to the dentist to maintain good teeth. It had a good engine, the Soviets had copied the Renault on that, otherwise, as the carburetor was like a cavity that hurts again and again.
   It was a member of the family, was the first child I had, then came Jennifer and Orlandito who enjoyed it a while. A Orlandito loved to enter the garage with me sitting on my lap and driving, it was his greatest happiness.When I decided to go into exile I knew that Lester would be lost because my wife could not stay with it. So the authorities took it because it was in my name and it was a car delivered by Castro although we had paid until the last penny. Things of the tyranny.
    When I went to Guantanamo 18 years later I did not want to ask about the fate of Lester. One of my brother told me he had seen the rest of the body over there in a lost west of Guantanamo, Villorrio. He reconnacied the plate, It was a den of cats, they had rickety.
   The news hurt me as when you lose a close relative, Lester the car of my dreams in exile in Uruguay had died. I only have the memory of my babies laughing on Sundays glad when taking them to the beach and Lester took them like a car that ignored his final destination.

DR ORLANDO VICENTE ALVAREZ

CUBAN URUGUAYAN

GENIUS