Diogo Mainardi - The Fall - A Father's Memoir in 424 Steps

I had ceased to exist.

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In the previous image: the little man with the egg-shaped face is happy — cosmically happy.

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According to Giacomo Leopardi, happiness is always to be found in the past or the future — never in the present.

I was cosmically happy in 2004.

If I had to choose a moment in my past when I was even happier, however, I would choose the next year — 2005.

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Nico was born on 16 June 2005.

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Nico’s birth, in Rio de Janeiro, was the opposite of Tito’s birth.

He was spared Dottoressa F. He was spared the amniotomy. He was spared cerebral palsy.

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After experiencing a birth that was the opposite of Tito’s, Nico became the opposite of Tito.

If one is behind, the other is ahead. If one is bent, the other is upright. If one falls, the other is always standing. If one is the comedian, the other is the straight man. If one is Lou Costello, the other is Bud Abbott.

Like Lou Costello, Tito is a baaaaad boy.

Nico is the opposite.

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In the previous image: Tito meets Nico in the maternity ward.

It was the best act in our domestic vaudeville.

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Karel Bobath and Berta Busse recommended that, during therapy, the child with cerebral palsy should look at himself in a mirror.

Nico was Tito’s mirror. Tito was Nico’s mirror. Nico could see his mirror image in Tito. Tito could see his mirror image in Nico.

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Tito’s cerebral-palsy world was Lewis Carroll’s looking-glass world: time went backward, inanimate objects came alive, the laws of Nature were subverted.

In Tito’s cerebral-palsy world, Nico played the part of Alice.

He was a “sensible” boy. He was exactly the same as other people — “two eyes … nose in the middle, mouth under.”

Tito was exactly the opposite of other people.

He was the little man with the egg-shaped face from the communicator. He was Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall. He was Humpty Dumpty losing his balance and falling off the wall.

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Until Nico was born, Tito was practically mute.

His dyspraxia meant that he couldn’t coordinate the movements of his vocal apparatus.

After Nico was born, he never stopped talking.

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Tito’s first words, like those of Humpty Dumpty, had “a temper, some of them — particularly verbs.”

If Humpty Dumpty mastered the language of “Jabberwocky,” the poem written in mirror-writing, Tito’s language was Jabberwocky itself.

He reversed the order of the letters in a word. He reversed the order of the words in a sentence. He reversed the order of the sentences in a paragraph.

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Over time, Tito’s Jabberwocky became less impenetrable.

I could understand him. My wife could understand him. Nico could understand him.

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In the latter part of 2005, Tito abandoned his communicator.

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In the previous image: Nico examines President Lula.

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For Christmas 2005, Veja asked me to write a column looking back over the year.

This was illustrated by Nico’s photo, at six months old, examining Lula.

The caption:

In June, my younger son was born .

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A passage from the article:

I spent all year poking fun at Lula. I devoted more than thirty articles to him. I promised to bring him down in 2005. I failed. Now I promise to bring him down in 2006. People said that my campaign against the President of the Republic was ideologically motivated. Not at all. I was only doing it for sport .

Some people fish. Some people hunt. I just try to bring down Lula. He is my paca. He is my tapir .

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Giacomo Leopardi described his own times as “stupid” and “dull.”

My work as a journalist consisted in repeating week after week that my own times were stupid and dull.

Giacomo Leopardi called the inhabitants of his own town “asses” and “rogues.”

My work as a journalist consisted in repeating week after week that the inhabitants of my own country were asses and rogues.

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In the early years, I was able to reconcile my work as a journalist with my work as a father.

That changed after 2005.

I gradually lost interest in the asses and rogues of my country. All that remained was my interest in my home life.

The photo of Nico examining the President of the Republic was a way of declaring the supremacy of private life over public life.

Fatherhood became my ideology.

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In the previous image: Tito picks Lula up by the ears.

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In the same review of the year in which I published the photo of Nico examining Lula, I also published the photo of Tito picking Lula up by the ears.

The caption:

In September, my elder son managed to take sixteen steps .

If the most important event of 2005 was Nico’s birth, then Tito’s sixteen steps were the second most important event of the year.

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I published a photo of Tito at Christmas 2005. David Cameron published a photo of Ivan at Christmas 2008.

Ivan was David Cameron’s eldest child. Like Tito, he had cerebral palsy.

The decision to publish Ivan’s photo became one of the big talking points of the electoral campaign in the UK. David Cameron was accused of exploiting his son’s cerebral palsy.

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David Cameron stopped being accused of making political capital out of Ivan’s cerebral palsy only when Ivan died.

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I exploited Tito’s cerebral palsy and I continue to exploit it.

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The reason I started exploiting Tito’s cerebral palsy was the subject of one of my columns:

Montaigne was a devoted father. In one of his most famous essays, he wrote about paternal love and flaunted his daughter Léonor. Montaigne flaunted his daughter Léonor just as I flaunted my son Tito and Tom Cruise flaunted his daughter Suri. Léonor was the Suri of the Renaissance. In another of his most famous essays, Montaigne argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. I learned how to die with fatherhood .

From the day Tito was born, I was completely cancelled out by him. I lost my will. I ceased to exist. Only a dead person can cease to exist. If philosophizing is learning to die, then fatherhood is the philosophy of the ordinary man, the philosophy of the poor in spirit, the philosophy of the masses .

It is the only philosophy within the grasp of people like Tom Cruise and me .

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In 1635, Rumbertus was born, the first child of Rembrandt and his wife, Saskia. When he was less than two months old, he died.

In 1638, two and half years after Rumbertus’s death, Rembrandt and Saskia had a daughter. Her name was Cornelia. She died before she was two weeks old.