Eduardo Galeano - Voices of Time - A Life in Stories

Catalina had many visible friends, but they weren’t portable.

The invisible ones, on the other hand, went with her everywhere. She said there were twenty. She couldn’t count any higher.

No matter where, she took them along. She’d pull them out of her pocket, put them in the palm of her hand, and talk to them.

Then she’d say bye, see you tomorrow, and she’d blow them toward the sun.

The invisible ones slept in the light.

The sun corners him; Morgan gets away. He flies over the sand, swerves around the waves, and you feel like applauding.

But Morgan’s name comes from his pirate ways, and his victims are less admiring. Pouncing and stealing, Morgan gets chased not only by the sun but by the owner of the tennis ball or sandwich or sneaker or underwear he grabs before diving under water, booty between his teeth.

He’s never managed to mend his manners. No one has ever seen him sit still or show even the slightest hint of fatigue or regret.

Morgan had been making his dogged way in the world for four years when Manuel Monteverde, the same age, sat on a rock and thought about it. “Yes,” he decided. “Morgan misbehaves. But he makes you laugh.”

For Ricardo Marchini the moment of truth had arrived.

“Come on, Leo,” he said. “We have to talk.”

And off they went up the street, the two of them. They wandered for a while around Saavedra, turning corners in silence. As usual, Leonardo fell behind, then had to hurry to catch up to Ricardo, who walked with his hands in his pockets and his brow furrowed.

At the plaza, Ricardo sat down. He swallowed. He took Leonardo’s face in his hands, looked into his eyes, and let loose a torrent: “Look Leo forgive me for telling you but you’re not Mom’s and Dad’s and Leo better you should know the facts you got picked up off the street.”

He took a deep breath. “I had to tell you, Leo.”

Leonardo had been plucked out of a garbage can as a newborn, but Ricardo spared him that detail.

Then they went back home.

Ricardo was whistling.

Leonardo stopped at the foot of his favorite trees, greeted the neighbors by wagging his tail, and barked at the fleeing shadow of a cat.

The neighborhood loved him because he was brown and white, same as the Platense, the local soccer team that almost never won.

In one of the many parking lots of Buenos Aires, Raquel heard him cry. Someone had tossed him between two cars.

He joined the household, was named Lord Chichester. He’d been born not long ago, and his fur was dull and his head was big. He ended up one-eyed later on, after he grew up and fought a duel over the she-cat Milonga.

One night, wild screeching tore Raquel and Juan Amaral from the deepest of slumbers. It sounded like Lord Chichester was being skinned alive. Strange, since though ugly he was usually quiet.

“Something hurts bad,” said Juan.

They followed the yowls to the end of the corridor. Raquel listened closely. “He’s letting us know there’s a leak.”

They wandered about the big old house until they found the gloop-gloop of a drip in the bathroom. “That pipe always dripped,” said Juan.

“It’s going to flood,” Raquel feared.

And they discussed it — yes, no, who knows? — until Juan looked at his watch, nearly five in the morning, and yawning he begged, “Let’s go back to sleep.”

And he concluded, “Lord Chichester is nuts.”

They were about to enter the bedroom, still persecuted by the cat’s screeching, when the old, cracked ceiling above their bed collapsed.

Pepa Lumpen was worn down by the years. She no longer barked, and when she tried to walk, she fell over. Martinho the cat came up close and licked her face. Pepa had always put him in his place, growling and showing her teeth, but that last day she let herself be kissed.

The house went quiet, emptied of her.

In the nights that followed, Helena dreamed she was cooking in a pot with a broken bottom, and that Pepa called her on the phone, furious because we’d put her underground.

When Mariana Mactas turned six, a neighbor on Calella de la Costa gave her a little blue chick. Not only did the chick have blue feathers, which gave off violet sparks in the sunlight, it also peed blue pee and peeped blue peeps. A miracle of nature, helped along perhaps by an injection of blue dye in the egg.

Mariana baptized it Perez. They were friends. They spent hours chatting on the terrace while Perez walked about pecking at breadcrumbs.

The chick didn’t last long. And when that brief blue life came to an end, Mariana lay sprawled on the floor as if she would never get up again. Staring at a tile, she intoned, “Poor world without Perez.”

Soledad, five, daughter of Juanita Fernandez: “Why don’t dogs eat dessert?”

Vera, six, daughter of Elsa Villagra: “Where does night sleep? Does night sleep here under the bed?”

Luis, seven, son of Francisca Bermudez: “Will God be angry if I don’t believe in him? I don’t know how to tell him.”

Marcos, nine, son of Silvia Awad: “If God made himself, how did he make his back?”

Carlitos, forty, son of Maria Scaglione: “Mama, how old was I when you weaned me? My psychiatrist wants to know.”

When Manuel was a year and a half, he wanted to know why he couldn’t hold water in his hand. And when he was five, he wanted to know why people die: “What is dying?”

“My grandma died because she was old? So why did a kid younger than me die? I saw it yesterday on TV.”

“Sick people die? So why do people who aren’t sick die?”

“Do dead people die for a while, or do they die for good?”

At least Manuel had an answer for the question that most troubled him: “My brother Felipe is never going to die because he always wants to play.”

Luiza Jaguaribe was playing in the yard of her house on the outskirts of Passo Fundo. Jumping on one foot, she counted the buttons on her dress: “One, two. The captain will do.”

Counting buttons, she tried to guess which husband fate would bring her. Would she marry the captain or the king, with a bonnet or a ring? “Three, four. A bonnet I’ll adore.”

“Five, six. The captain plays tricks.”

She leaped spinning into the air, spread her arms, and sang, “The king will give a ball. ‘Cause I counted them all!”

When she spun around, she bumped into her father’s legs and fell to the ground. Her father, immense against the sun, said, “Enough, Luizinha. It’s over.”

That’s how she learned Uncle Moro was no more.

He went to Heaven, they told her. And they told her she had to stay still and not speak.

A few days went by, the holidays came.

That Christmas Eve the entire family got together. Luiza met relatives she’d never seen before, a crowd dressed in mourning.

Aunt Gisela sat at the head of an endless table. She looked beautiful in her black dress with the high buttoned collar, a queen. But Luiza didn’t dare tell her so.

Her head held high, her gaze fixed on nothing, Aunt Gisela did not eat a thing or say a word. Then at midnight, right in the midst of all the hubbub, she spoke: “They say we have to love God. I hate him.”