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

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Counting Tito’s steps in Venice, I could still reason, but only “occasionally,” and I could even acquire knowledge, but only the knowledge I could pick up “without stooping, or reach without pains.”

Counting the steps of Pimenta Bueno in Mato Grosso, though, I was only able to exhibit the kind of academic pride that could be “taught to any schoolboy in a week.”

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For Marcel Proust real life, the only fully lived life, was literature. For me, real life, the only fully lived life, became Tito. After his birth, I rejected literature and went off to earn some money.

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To quote myself again:

Rimbaud beat up Verlaine. I envy Rimbaud. I would like to have beaten up Verlaine. I would like to have beaten up any symbolist poet. Verlaine took his revenge on Rimbaud some years later in a hotel room, firing two shots at him. I also envy Verlaine. He just wasn’t a good enough marksman. In 1875, Rimbaud rejected literature and went off to earn some money. In only sixteen years, he did everything that anyone with an ounce of integrity would have wanted to do: he plunged into the Ethiopian desert; he bought and sold slaves; he trafficked guns of many calibres, thus facilitating the massacre of thousands of innocents; he got a tumor in his knee and had his leg amputated; he died alone in Marseille in terrible pain and praying to God, who, in his capricious way, refused to help him .

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When Tito walked three hundred and fifty-nine steps on 11 January 2008, I was earning money writing a weekly column for the magazine Veja . I also earned money from Veja Online , writing a weekly comment column, and from Manhattan Connection , taking part in one TV program a week.

I became the Rimbaud of cerebral palsy. Journalism was my Ethiopia.

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In the previous image: the propaganda from the Action T4 program, comparing the money the state spent each day on an invalid — 5.50 reichsmarks — with the amount spent each day on a family of five — the same 5.50 reichsmarks.

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Alfred Hoche was one of the inspirations behind the Action T4 program.

In 1920, in a small work entitled Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Being Lived , he calculated the financial burden of invalidity:

I estimate that the average annual expense of keeping an idiot alive to be one thousand three hundred marks. It doesn’t take much intelligence to calculate the enormous burden this imposes on the national wealth for an entirely unproductive end .

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Twenty years later, these calculations were submitted to a detailed analysis by the economists of the Third Reich.

A chart preserved in the euthanasia center at Schloss Hartheim — that’s right, under the command of Franz Stangl — calculated that the killing of 70,273 invalids by 1 September 1941 had saved the economy 245,955 reichsmarks and 50 reichspfennigs a day.

This was the equivalent, over a period of ten years, of 400,244,520 kilos of food, among which: 189,737,160 kilos of potatoes, 13,492,440 kilos of meat and sausages, 3,794,760 kilos of margarine, 531,240 kilos of bacon, 12,649,200 kilos of flour, 5,902,920 kilos of jam and, lastly, 33,731,040 eggs.

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To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved most harmful to the health of the people with cerebral palsy who were killed under the Action T4 program was the food they stopped eating.

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In the case we brought against Venice Hospital, we had — just like those Third Reich economists — to add up all the money spent on Tito’s cerebral palsy.

What with physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, equitherapy, a classroom assistant, an orthopedic specialist, a neurologist, an anesthetist, medical tests, Botox, a communicator, a walker, orthopedic callipers, the hospital in New York, the hospital in Boston, plus legal expenses, Tito cost, on average, 230 reais a day.

That is the equivalent, over ten years, of 3,497,916 eggs.

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Because of the money they were taking from society, the people with cerebral palsy who were killed under the Action T4 program were called “bloodsuckers” or “parasites.”

My parasite was Tito.

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According to Ezra Pound, the Jews were the real parasites draining money from society.

When he was sent a letter asking him to assist in protecting a German-Jewish pianist being hounded by the Nazis, he replied:

GET down to USURY / the cause WHY western man vomits out the jew periodically / the JEW won’t take responsibility for civic order he WONT organize a state / he is a god damned Iriquois Indian / necessary defense against parasites / JEW parasite on principle / IF you are content to be sheep all right / but MAN declining to be GOY to jewish shearer will defend himself .

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I was content to be Tito’s sheep. I was content to be sheared by my Jewish usurer.

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Besides calling Jews “parasites,” Ezra Pound also referred to them as “oily,” “savage,” “indolent,” “filth,” “worms,” “lice,” “cankers,” “plagues,” “snakes,” “warts” and “syphilis.”

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In Canto XLV, published in 1936, Ezra Pound singled out the architecture of Pietro Lombardo as representing Good and usury as representing Evil:

Pietro Lombardo / Came not by usura

In the broadcasts he recorded between 1941 and 1943 for Radio Roma, he singled out Benito Mussolini as representing Good and the Jews as representing Evil.

For Ezra Pound, usury was a Jewish plot to enslave the world — “Jewsury.” The “Hebraic monetary system,” according to him, was “a most tremendous instrument of usury,” and rather than a “war of the Jews against Europe,” it was, in fact, a “war of usury against humanity.” “When a nation dies,” argued Ezra Pound, “Jews multiply like bacilli in carrion.” That is why he recommended a purge of the Jews or a “pogrom UP AT THE top.”

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(Picture Credit 1.19)

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In the previous image: Ezra Pound walks along the Fondamenta delle Zattere in Venice.

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On 6 August 2009, I went for a walk with Tito along the Fondamenta delle Zattere.

On that trip to Venice, I had decided to give up our old apartment in the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff.

In order to earn money for Tito — my Jewish usurer — I would have to stay in Rio de Janeiro forever, working as a journalist, and would never be able to come back and live permanently in Venice.

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When we reached the Fondamenta delle Zattere, I received a phone call from my lawyer, Romolo Bugaro.

He said: “3,012,761 euros!”

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Romolo Bugaro phoned me again a minute later to correct that figure: “3,162,761 euros!”

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After seven years, the case brought against Venice Hospital had finally reached a conclusion.

Tito had been awarded 3,162,761 euros.

On the way back from Fondamenta delle Zattere, Tito and I passed Calle Querini, where Ezra Pound had lived.

My parasite had ceased to be a parasite.

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