Fidel gave me this cane with the silver handle.
Robert Harper
You walk , you talk, you wear a bowler hat and a red scarf. The shirt is straight out the box and the collar is crisp and new. The tie is silk. A gold watch is on the wrist and a walking stick with a silver handle is in your hand. You know everybody at the market, and you make the rounds and puff smoke for the ladies, and smile at them with good teeth. Too good for your age.
To the african boys trying to sell junk stereos you dance a few steps to their jungle music. They laugh at your soft shoe shuffle. You have got the old time steps and they recognise it. You examine the tilt of your hat in a mirror. It is an excuse to talk to the blonde behind the stall. You walk and survey and smile. The sun is kind today, and you tap the ground with the cane given to you by Fidel. The wind from the sea is warm. You blow smoke from your Havana cigar up towards the brim of your hat, and it curls around your ears making you mysterious. Making you young again.
A man stops to talk to you, and you put your hand into your inside pocket and draw out a cigar wrapped in the finest tissue paper and offer it to him. He declines. A mist comes in your eyes and you mention Alberto Juantorena destroying the field in the 400 and 800 meters in the Montreal olympics, much the same as Lasse Viren in the 5000 and 10,000 meters. The man who declined the cigar does not remember. You move on.
After all the hands have been shaked, all the compliments paid, all the greeting been made, all the smiles exchanged you sit outside the antique shop and drink coffee and finish your cigar, and watch people busy themselves with the buying and the selling in the market.
It has been a fine morning for you, and on mornings like these it is good to put on the neatly pressed suit, drape the red scarf around your neck, knot a half -windsor in the silk tie, tip the black bowler back on the crown of your head, feel the silver handled cane worn with age, peel the yellow tissue from a Havana cigar. It all serves to remind you that once apon a time things were even better.
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