Eduardo Galeano - Voices of Time - A Life in Stories

Here is how it works:

At night, bees raised on Potion Z ram their stingers under the skin of an innocent sleeper.

At dawn, the inoculated victim can’t get up.

At noon, he goes out like a candle.

At dusk, his loved ones carry him on their shoulders to the cemetery.

At midnight, the deceased opens his tomb and returns to the world.

The returnee, a zombie, will have lost his passion and his memory. He will work all day at no pay, grinding cane or raising walls or carrying wood, his eyes a blank, his mouth clamped shut. He will never complain or demand a thing. He won’t even ask.

She lived in obedience to God and Tradition.

She swept, polished, lathered, rinsed, ironed, sewed, and cooked.

At eight on the dot she served breakfast, with a spoonful of honey for her husband’s eternal sore throat. At twelve on the dot she served dinner: consommé, mashed potatoes, boiled chicken, peaches in syrup. And at eight on the dot supper, the menu unchanged.

She was never late, never early. She ate in silence, voicing neither questions nor opinions, while her husband recounted his exploits present and past.

After supper, she took her time washing the dishes and later crept under the covers praying to God he was asleep.

By then the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, and the female orgasm, all of which had arrived shortly after penicillin, were fairly common, but she never heard the news.

She only listened to soap operas on the radio and rarely left the sanctuary of peace that kept her safe from the violence of the world.

One afternoon she went out to visit a sister who was ill.

When she returned at dusk, her husband was on the floor, dead.

Several years later, this woman confessed that the story hadn’t ended exactly like that.

She told the other ending to a neighbor named Gerardo Mendive, who recounted it to his neighbor, who in turn told it to yet another, who then passed it on again. When she returned from her sister’s, she found her husband on the floor, trembling, panting, cross-eyed, beet-red. She walked on by into the kitchen, where she prepared a sumptuous feast of squid in its ink and hake ô la Basque, with a tower of fruit and ice cream, over which she poured a vintage wine she kept hidden. And at eight on the dot, as was her duty, she served supper, ate and drank her fill, then confirmed he was still on the floor and definitely not moving. She crossed herself, put on her black dress, picked up the phone, and called the doctor.

Two world soccer championships were held in Asia in the year 2002. One was played by athletes of flesh and blood, the other, at the same time, by robots.

World robot tournaments take place in a different city every year. Their organizers hope someday to compete against human players. After all, they say, a computer defeated Gary Kasparov on the chessboard, and it doesn’t take much to imagine mechanical athletes achieving a similar feat on the soccer field.

The robots, programmed by software engineers, are powerful on defense and quick on the attack. They never tire or complain. They carry out the coach’s orders without kidding around, and not for an instant do they ever entertain the lunacy that players are supposed to play. And they never laugh.

Correction: not two, but three. In 2002 there was also a third World Cup.

It was a single match, played amid the peaks of the Himalayas on the same day that Brazil was crowned champion in Tokyo.

No one heard about it.

The contest was between the two worst teams on the planet, last and next-to-last in world rankings: the kingdom of Bhutan and the Caribbean isle of Montserrat.

The trophy, a great silver-plated cup, waited at the edge of the field.

The players, none famous, all anonymous, with no duty but to enjoy themselves, had a grand time. At the end of the match, the cup, glued down the middle, was split in two and shared by both teams.

Bhutan won and Montserrat lost, but that detail didn’t matter in the least.

In one way they are all alike. In Brazil and everywhere else, eminent politicians, soccer idols, TV stars, popular musicians, and all other celebrities have one thing in common: they are all mortal.

Jaime Sabino took careful note of this. And every time someone famous met his fate, Jaime was first to find out and first to turn up. No matter where the funeral was held, Jaime, who worked as a lowly clerk in a government office on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, would drop everything and be there at the speed of light.

“I come representing the two hundred thousand inhabitants of Nilópolis,” he would say, and thus move smoothly past all checkpoints and security barriers. Anyone can stop a man alone, but no one can deny entry to two hundred thousand.

Instantly, Jaime would find the right spot at the right time.

Just when the TV cameras started rolling and the photographers’ flashes lit up the air, he’d heft the casket holding the glory that left behind a vacuum impossible to fill, or he’d appear among the family and closest friends, on tiptoe straining to see. His stricken expression was always featured in the coverage on TV and in magazines and the papers.

Reporters called him “the pirate’s parrot.” Out of envy.

Living is a fatal habit; nobody gets around that. Even Dona Asuncion Gutierrez died, after a long century of life.

Relatives and neighbors held the wake at her home in Managua. The wailing had long since died down and tears had given way to drinks and laughter when, at the height of the evening, Dona Asuncion sat up in the casket.

“Get me out of here, you idiots,” she ordered.

Then she tucked into a tamale, without so much as a nod to anyone.

The mourners slipped silently out. Stories no longer had anyone to tell them; cards had no one to play them; the drinks had lost their pretext. A wake without a body just won’t do. Everyone disappeared up the dirt streets uncertain what to do with what remained of the night.

One of the great-grandchildren grumbled, “This is the third time the old bag does this to us.”

He’d been skinny all his life, but in death he was a blimp.

To get the lid of the casket nailed down, the entire extended family had to sit on it. A diversity of opinions emerged regarding his sudden spread.

“Death makes you swell.”

“It’s the carbonic gas.”

“It’s his rotten moods.”

“It’s his soul,” sobbed the widow. “His soul is trying to get out of that suit.”

The suit, an English tweed, was the only luxury the dead man had ever allowed himself. When owls were hovering near and the end was in sight, he had it made to measure, so at least he could clothe his death in something.

He left no inheritance. Nothing. The family had always lived in poverty and detected no change.

Many years later, Nicola Di Sàbato attended her uncle’s exhumation.

Not much was left of the body, just bones and the suit in tatters.

The suit was stuffed full of money.

The bills, many thousands of them, were by then worthless.

He did not cry when evoking his underprivileged childhood. He did not kiss babies or sign autographs or have his picture taken alongside invalids. He did not promise a thing. He did not inflict interminable speeches on the voters. He made no proposals from the left or the right or the center. He couldn’t be bribed; he turned up his nose at money, although bouquets of flowers made him smack his lips loudly.