劳拉·普兰

　　Laura Pollan Toledo, teacher and human-rights campaigner, died on October 14th, aged 63.

　　劳拉·普兰·托莱多 —— 教师和人权活动家，于10月14日去世，享年63岁。

　　THE house at 963 Calle Neptuno, in the centre of Havana, was small, but Laura Pollan kept it beautifully. The grey floor-tiles with their snowflake motif were always swept clean, even though her fluffy mongrel terrier shed his long hair everywhere, and though the door was kept open to get some air in from the bike-filled, rowdy, dusty street. In the front living room she had cane chairs with heart-shaped backs, and triangles of lace decorated the shelves. Outside, the tiny back yard was a jungle of pot plants and climbers, with neatly folded washing hung against the ochre walls. And the tower of the Iglesia del Carmen watched over it all.

　　劳拉·普兰住在哈瓦那的中心街区Calle Neptuno 963 号，这虽是一所小小居所，但劳拉始终把它打理得整洁漂亮。有着雪花图案的灰色地砖总是一尘不染，尽管她的长毛geng（反犬旁那个更，这里出不来，悲剧了。）经常会把它的毛发掉落一地，尽管敞开的大门正对着一条满溢尾气、嘈杂的、尘土飞扬的大街。在前面的客厅里有几张藤背椅，它们的靠背是一个心形，三角形的花边装饰着座凳。在屋后有一个很小的庭院，满是盆栽和爬藤植物，如同一个小小丛林，对面赭石墙上的清洁工具挂得整整齐齐。一抬头就能看到伊格莱西亚卡门塔，它似静静观望着小院。

　　But her house was also a cell for liberty. The living-room walls were hung with lists of the names of political prisoners, their photos, and a huge chart that showed them bursting from their chains when her group notched up a success. Prisoners’ wives and daughters crowded there for her monthly Literary Teas. She once got 72 women in, under the slowly turning ceiling fan, and put up 25 overnight. They came from all over Cuba: Pinar del Rio, Santa Clara, Las Tunas, Manzanillo (in the east, where she was born), even from the Sierra Maestra, where Fidel Castro had holed up in the mountains to start his revolution. They gathered at her house because she was central, and had a telephone. After 2003 the phone kept ringing, and she would answer it in a whisper, knowing it was tapped; each call would end with “Cuidado”, “Be careful”. A security camera and floodlights appeared outside her front door, supplementing the plain-clothes men who loitered there. Her bookshelf now held a tiny statue of Santa Rita, the saint of the impossible.

　　但她的房子始终是自由王国的一个组分。客厅墙上挂着一个大型图表，表上列有政治犯的名字和照片，以及他们经历的事件——这些大都是她们集体努力所达成的突破口。政治犯的妻子、女儿们每月雷打不动地相聚于她们的“文学茶座”。某次，她在她那缓缓转动的屋顶吊扇下召集了72名妇女，畅谈了25个不眠之夜。 她们来自古巴各地：比那尔德里奥省，拉斯图纳斯，曼萨尼约（在东部地区，她出生的地方），圣克拉拉，甚至塞拉利昂Maestra。菲德尔卡斯特罗曾躲藏在山上，开始他的革命。她们聚集在普兰的家里，以她为中心，那里有一门电话，从2003年后这个电话总不断响起，伴随的是她低声作答的声音，因为她知道电话已经被窃听了。每次呼叫结束时总相互致以“保重”、“小心”。她家门前被安装了一个聚光灯和一个安全摄像头，不断有便衣在她家门口走来晃去。现在她的书架上放了一尊小小的圣丽塔雕像，圣丽塔是不可能的守护神。（注：不可能守护神，引自天主教故事）

　　What had started all this was the arrest of her husband, Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, for “acting against the territorial integrity of the state”. Seventy-four others were arrested with him in that Black Spring of 2003, and given average prison sentences of 20 years. Ms Pollan knew he had done nothing. The picture of him she wore emblazoned on her T-shirt showed a mild, smiling man, an engineer, who kept his glasses on a cord round his neck. He liked to underline phrases in the newspapers and clip pieces out, organising them under “Politics” or “Environment”. She supposed he was just trying to point out contradictions in the government line. They didn’t discuss it, any more than she took part when his friends from the banned Liberal Democratic Party came round to talk. She would disappear to the kitchen then, making coffee, and leave the men alone.

　　这一切的开始要从她丈夫被捕说起，埃克托·马赛达·古铁雷斯因“妨碍国家领土完整”罪名被捕，和他同时被逮捕还有74人，该事件被称为2003年黑色之春，这些人平均被判20年徒刑。普兰女士相信她的丈夫是清白的。她穿着印有他照片的T恤衫：一个温和而面带微笑的男人，工程师，用绳子挂着眼镜，套在脖子上。他喜欢在报纸上圈圈划划，或做一些剪报，分成“政治”和“环境”二个类别。她猜想他是想指出政府某些自相矛盾的方面。他俩从不谈论这个，她也不参加他和他的被禁止的自由民主党朋友的小聚会。每到此时她会跑到厨房里去准备咖啡，不大理会男人们的高谈阔论。

　　But they were taken away. Husbands, fathers, brothers, disappeared. Ms Pollan came home from teaching evening class to find 12 state security agents invading her house, carrying away the clippings and two old typewriters. One agent stood by even as she and Héctor tried to say goodbye to each other. Two weeks later she started to bring together the women she kept meeting at the Villa Marista barracks and at various government offices, seeking news of their men. They became the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White.

　　但他们还是被带走了，她们的丈夫、父亲、弟兄，从此消失于她们的视线。普兰女士上完晚间课回到家里，发现有十二个国家安全人员闯入了她的房子，他们带走了一些剪报和两个老式打字机。甚至她和她丈夫告别的时候都有人盯着，不给他们一刻独处的时间。两个星期后，她开始召集相关的妇女，她试图与利亚马里斯塔营房和多个政府部门会晤，以取得她们的男人的消息。她们成立了人权团体“达马斯·布兰科”，也称为“白衣女士”。

　　Marching through Miramar

　　米拉马尔的示威游行

　　Ms Pollan came brand-new to campaigning. She was a mother (of Laurita), a housewife and a teacher: someone who loved literature and had taught peasants to read in the early years of the revolution. She had never done anything wilder. Short, blonde and stout, she was not cut out to be hauled into a bus by the police. All she wanted was to see Héctor back, and all the others. Her group would meet each Sunday at the church of Santa Rita in Miramar, Havana’s grandest district, say the rosary, hear mass, and then walk ten blocks in silence along Quinta Avenida on the green verges under the palm trees. The women wore white, symbolising pure intentions, and carried gladioli, a single stem each.

　　普兰女士组织了新一轮示威活动。她是一个母亲、一个家庭主妇、和一名教师：一个喜欢文学的女子，早些年在革命时期还教农民认字读书，她没有做过什么出格的事情。小小的个子，金发碧眼，天生不是会被警察拖进车里的那种人。她的所有愿望是便让她的丈夫埃克托回家，和所有的其他妇女一样。她的团体每个星期天都在米拉马尔区（哈瓦那的最大的一个区）的圣丽塔教堂会面，做祷告，听弥撒，然后沉默地沿着Quinta Avenida路的绿地在棕榈树下走出十个街区。妇女们身着白色衣裙，象征着纯净的意图，每人手执一根剑兰支干。

　　Yet politics crept in. At the end of every march the women would chant “Libertad!”—for Cuba as a whole, as much as for their men. They would throw out pencils with Derechos Humanos on one side and Damas en Blanco on the other, hoping that, slowly, people would pick them up. Enemies called them “mercenaries” and “Ladies in Green”, in the pay of the United States, and Ms Pollan had to admit that they did get American dollars and American parcels for their imprisoned men. Shock mobs of other women were especially bused in to attack them, beat them and pull their hair. Ms Pollan could fight back with the best: when a man called her “Puta!” once, she threw her gladioli in his face. In one battle in September she was crushed against a wall, which may have set off the breathing troubles that killed her.

　　然而，民主总姗姗来迟。每年三月末，示威的妇女们总会呼喊着“自由！”——为古巴全体人民，也为她们的男人们。她们分发铅笔，铅笔一头印着“白衣女士”，另一头印着人权联盟的标志，希望通过宣传使民主慢慢地深入人心，能得到人们的支持。而她们的对立方称她们为 “雇佣军”和被美国收买的“绿色女人”（大概意指美元是绿色的）。普兰女士不得不承认，她们为了被监禁的丈夫们的确得到了美国的美元和物资支持。被盲目驱使的其他妇女受到煽动来袭击她们，打她们，拉扯她们的头发。对于这些，普兰女士可以强忍着不作还击，但一次当一个男人骂她“母狗”时，她终于忍无可忍，把手里的剑兰扔在他的脸上。 在9月在一次示威活动中，她被猛地撞到一堵墙上，这可能引发了她的呼吸系统障碍，最终导致了她的死因。

　　By then, the 75 prisoners they were campaigning for had been released; most by the intervention of the Catholic Church and the government of Spain, but around 20 by their own efforts. Héctor, gaunt and thin, came out only last February. The numbers of Ladies dwindled, to 15 or so, as their work seemed to be done. But for Ms Pollan it was not done. Her Ladies had to go on marching as long as the laws remained that could fill the prisons again. As long as Cuba was not free, she would go on sitting at her computer with her little dog stretched out on the tiles beside her, alert for the telephone, with her front door open and Santa Rita at the ready, and the ceiling fan turning slowly in the smothering air.

　　到此时，她们为之抗争的75名囚犯已经被释放，大部分人释放是由于天主教会和西班牙政府的干预，其中有20人的释放是通过她们的努力。憔悴而瘦弱的赫克托在去年二月才被释放。此时她的团体慢慢变小了，现只剩下15人左右，她们的目的似乎实现了。但是对于普兰女士来说，只要那些把人民随意投入监狱的法律仍然存在，“白衣女士”会持续她们的抗议示威。只要古巴还不是自由之国（民主国家？），普兰女士仍将坐在她的电脑边上，她的小狗躺在她的脚边，灰色地砖花纹延伸开去，她还在等着电话，她的家门仍旧敞开，圣丽塔雕像已经备好，在沉闷的空气中屋顶吊扇正缓缓地转动着……