Eduardo Galeano - Voices of Time - A Life in Stories

When it reached the Red Sea, the ship caught fire. Albert had to come on deck, where he was pushed and shoved into a lifeboat. A short distance from the wreck, Albert smacked his forehead, screamed “My book!” and jumped overboard. He swam to the burning ship, somehow clambered on board, and dashed into the flames, where his book was ablaze.

Neither of them were ever heard of again.

Alberto Villagra was a glutton for the papers. At breakfast, hot off the griddle, the news rustled in his hands.

One morning he vowed, “Someday I’ll read the paper riding an elephant.”

His wife, Rosita, was game. They scrimped and saved until they could travel to India. Alberto didn’t have breakfast on the back of the elephant, but he managed to read a Bombay paper without falling off.

Helena, his daughter, is also a newspaper addict. Her first cup of coffee has no aroma, flavor, or meaning if it doesn’t come with the paper. And if the paper is missing, the first symptoms of withdrawal set in — trembles, nausea, stuttering.

Helena doesn’t want flowers on her grave. Her will specifies, “Bring me the paper.”

General Francisco Serrano of Mexico was settled in an easy chair at the Sonora army casino, smoking and reading.

He was reading the news. The paper was upside down.

President Alvaro Obregón was curious. “Do you always read the paper upside down?”

The general nodded.

“And could I ask why?”

“From experience, Mr. President, from experience.”

A thousand years ago, the sultan of Persia said, “How delicious.”

He was eating his first eggplant, sliced and dressed with ginger and Nile herbs.

The court poet praised the eggplant for the pleasure it brings to the palate and the bedroom, for the miraculous feats of love that outshine the wonders of powdered tiger’s tooth or grated rhinoceros horn.

Mouthfuls later, the sultan said, “What garbage.”

The court poet then cursed the perfidious eggplant for the torments it wreaks on stomach and brain, for the delirium and insanity that brings virtuous men to ruin.

“A minute ago you had eggplant in paradise; now you’re sending it to hell,” commented one astute observer.

And the poet, an early prophet of mass media, set things straight: “I am the courtier of the sultan, not the courtier of the eggplant.”

The ideas in the weekly Marcha tended to be red; its balance sheet was a whole lot redder. Hugo Alfaro, besides being a journalist, sometimes filled in as manager and had the demoralizing task of paying the bills. Once in a great while Hugo would jump for joy: “We’ve got the issue covered!”

Advertisers had come through. In the world of independent journalism, a miracle of that order is celebrated as proof that God exists.

But the editor, Carlos Quijano, would blanch. Horror of horrors; there was no news as bad as that news. To run advertisements meant sacrificing a page or more, and he needed every sacred column inch to question certainties, yank off masks, stir up hornets’ nests, and help make tomorrow more than just another name for today.

After thirty-four years in print, Marcha ceased to exist when the military dictatorship that overran Uruguay put an end to such lunacy.

The telephone rang. I heard a gruff voice say, “I can’t believe the mistake you made. Listen, I’m not kidding, mistakes happen and can happen to anyone, but not like that…”

My heart sank. I couldn’t speak. My book on soccer had just come out, and in my country everyone has a Ph.D. on the subject. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst.

“The 1930 World Cup,” said the raspy, relentless voice.

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“It was in July.”

“Yes.”

“And what’s the weather like in Montevideo in July?”

“Cold.”

“Very cold,” the voice corrected. Then the attack: “And you wrote that the stadium was a sea of straw hats! Straw? Felt! They were felt!”

The voice calmed down, recollected: “I was there that afternoon. We won four-two, I can see it now. But that’s not why I’m calling. I’m calling because I’m a hatmaker, have been all my life. . and a lot of those hats were mine.”

Whenever he wore his hat, Manuel Zequeira looked in the mirror and saw nothing but his hat.

The poet knew that it made him invisible. The rest of Havana disagreed, but the poet didn’t think much of other people’s opinions.

With his hat on, Manuel would barge into homes and bars, kiss forbidden lips and eat the food of others without the least concern for the furies he unleashed. And in July, when the city boiled, he would walk the streets wearing not a stitch besides the hat and pay no attention to the stones thrown at him. As long as they missed his hat, he felt nothing.

The hat, sauntering through the air, was the only part of him that would live on after he died.

He wasn’t born within her, but for her he crossed the sea and lived his life in her streets.

People called him the Gentleman from Paris, though he was a Galician from Lugo.

He accepted no handouts. The sunshine with which she blessed him more than satisfied his hunger.

As a sign of his love, he vowed never to cut his hair or shave his beard, which reached down to his feet. And to show due obedience, he promised to move every once in a while. Carrying his belongings in a couple of old canvas bags, the gentleman shifted from a bench in Christo Park to the steps of Sagrado Corazón Church, or set up his castle in some hidden corner of Caballeria Dock.

On that dock, his dock, one historic afternoon he publicly pardoned the guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra for copying his beard, and he finished by reciting a few verses dedicated to his queen and lady.

To serve her and her many charms, the gentleman appointed himself her king of kings and lord of lords. To defend her, he declared war against her covetous enemies. Standing before the lions of the Paseo del Prado, surrounded by his halberdiers and a few curious passersby, he vowed to fight to the death and called out his fleet of gunships and armies of the dawn, the day, the dusk, and the night.

Now he lies in the ground at San Francisco convent alongside bishops, archbishops, clerics, and conquistadores.

He was buried in the place of honor he deserved by Eusebio Leal, who was always crazy about her too.

The Gentleman rests within her now, the haughty bedraggled lady Havana, who watches over his sleep.

José Miguel Corchado’s body is chock-full of questions. Years ago he lost count of the relentless questions that pester him, but he remembers the day the first one worked its way inside him.

It happened in Seville on a sunny afternoon redolent, as you might imagine, with the fragrance of orange blossoms: an afternoon like all others, at the end of a working day like all other working days. He was alone, walking home through the crowd, immersed in a solitude like all other solitudes, when up popped the first question, buzzing like a fly. He tried to chase it away, but it kept circling around until it got under his skin and refused to come out. That night he couldn’t sleep.