Children of the Days (14 page)

What if all this were much more than a profit-making manipulation? What if it really were time's homage to a woman who turned her agony into art?

In 1994 the immortal one died.

His life ended but he lived on.

According to the constitution of North Korea, written by himself, Kim Il Sung was born on the first day of the New Era of Humanity and he was its Eternal Leader.

The New Era he inaugurated carries on. So does he: Kim Il Sung continues ruling from his statues, which happen to be the country's tallest edifices.

In the year 1909 Vitalino was born in Brazil's Northeast.

And the dry earth, where nothing grows, became wet earth to bring forth its children of clay.

In the beginning these were toys shaped by his hands to keep him company in childhood.

The passing of time turned his toys into small sculptures of tigers and hunters, workers with their hoes digging into the hard earth, desert warriors hoisting their rifles, caravans of refugees fleeing drought, guitar players, dancing girls, lovers, processions, saints . . .

Thus Vitalino's magic fingers told the tragedy and the festivity of his people.

On this fateful day in 1844, the French were left with nothing to read. The magazine
Le Siècle
published the final installment of the nineteen-chapter adventure novel devoured by all France.

It was over. What now? Without
The Three Musketeers
, in reality four, who would risk his life, day in, day out, for the honor of the queen?

Alexandre Dumas wrote this work and three hundred more at a pace of six thousand words a day. His envious detractors said his feat of literary athleticism was only possible because he tended to put his name on pages stolen from other books or bought from the poorly paid pen-pushers he employed.

His interminable banquets, which swelled his belly and emptied his pockets, may have obliged him to mass-produce works for hire.

The French government, for example, paid him to write the novel
Montevideo or the New Troy
, dedicated to “the heroic defenders” of the port city that Adolphe Thiers called “our colony” and that Dumas had never even heard of. The book raised to epic heights the defense of the port against the men of the land, those shoeless gauchos that Dumas called “savage scourges of Civilization.”

In 1941 all Brazil wept through the first radio soap opera:

The show had been imported from Cuba and adapted to the local context. The characters had plenty of money, but they were doomed. Anytime happiness was within their grasp, cruel Fate ruined everything. Three years went by like this, episode after episode, and not a fly moved when showtime arrived.

Some villages lost in the hinterland had no radios. But there was always someone willing to ride the few leagues to the next village, listen closely to the episode, commit it to memory and return by gallop. Then the rider would recount what he had heard. An anxious crowd gathered to hear his version, much longer than the original, and to savor the latest misfortune, with that unappeasable pleasure the poor feel when they can pity the rich.

In 1949 Giampiero Boniperti was the top scorer of the Italian championship and its brightest star.

According to what people say, he was born backwards, kicking-foot first, and he began his voyage to soccer glory in the crib.

The club Juventus paid him a cow for every goal.

Altri tempi
.

On this day in the year 2002, organized soccer's top brass announced the result of their global online poll, “Pick the goal of the century.”

By a landslide, the winner was Diego Maradona's in the 1986 World Cup, when he danced with the ball glued to his foot and left six Englishmen foundering in his wake.

That was the last image of the world for Manuel Alba Olivares.

He was eleven and at that magical moment his eyes tuned out forever. He kept the goal intact in his memory and he recounts it better than the best commentators.

Ever since, to see soccer and other things not quite so important, Manuel borrows the eyes of his friends.

Thanks to them, this blind Colombian founded the soccer club he leads, became and remains the coach of the team, comments on the matches on his radio program, sings to entertain the audience and, in his free time, he works as a lawyer.

Helena Villagra dreamed of an immense trunk.

She opened it with a very old key and out of the trunk spilled failed shots on goal, missed penalties, defeated teams. And the failed shots entered the net, the ball gone awry corrected its flight and the losers celebrated their victory. As long as the ball and the dream kept flying, that backwards match would never end.

On this night in 1950, the eve of the World Cup final, Moacir Barbosa slept in the arms of the angels.

He was the most beloved man in all Brazil.

But the following day the finest goalkeeper in the world became a traitor to his country: Barbosa failed to block the Uruguayan goal that snatched the trophy from Brazil's grasp.

Thirteen years later, when Maracanã stadium put in new goalposts, Barbosa took the two posts and the crossbar that had humiliated him. He chopped them up with an ax and burned the pieces until they were nothing but ashes.

The exorcism did not save him from damnation.

White was Brazil's jersey. But once the 1950 World Cup showed white to be unlucky, it was never white again.

The final match was over, Uruguay was world champion and the fans would not leave. Two hundred thousand Brazilians had turned to stone in Maracanã stadium.

On the field a number of players still wandered about.

The two best crossed paths, Obdulio and Zizinho.

They crossed paths. They eyed each other.

They were very different. Obdulio, the victor, was made of steel. Zizinho, the vanquished, was made of music. But they were also very much alike: both had played nearly the entire championship injured, an inflamed ankle in one case, a swollen knee in the other, and not a complaint was heard from either.

Now, at the end of the match, they didn't know if they should give each other a slug or a hug.

Years later, I asked Obdulio, “Do you ever see Zizinho?”

“Sure. Once in a while,” he said. “We close our eyes and we see each other.”

The Queen said:

“There's the King's Messenger. He is in prison now and being punished and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course, the crime comes last of all.”

“Suppose he never commits the crime?” said Alice.

One hundred and twenty years it took to build the temple to the goddess Artemis in Ephesus, one of the wonders of the world.

In a single night in the year 356 BC it was reduced to ashes.

No one knows who built the temple. The name of its assassin, however, still resounds. Herostratus, the arsonist, wanted to go down in history. And he did.

Portuguese Prince-Regent João, son of Queen Maria, visited the beach at the port of Rio de Janeiro on his doctor's advice in 1810.

The monarch jumped into the water with his shoes on, wearing a barrel. He was terrified of crabs and waves.

His audacious example did not catch on. The beaches of Rio were noxious garbage dumps, where at night slaves deposited the waste of their masters.

By the time the twentieth century rolled around, the waters offered a much better swim, but take note: ladies and gentlemen were kept well apart, as the rules of modesty required.

One had to dress up to go to the beach. On shores that today are a geography of nudity, the he's went in covered to below the knees, and the pallid she's swaddled head to foot for fear the sun would turn them into mulattas.

In 1950 a photograph published in
Life
magazine caused a stir in New York's artistic circles.

The top painters of the city's avant-garde appeared together for the first time: Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and eleven other masters of abstract expressionism.

All men, except for an unknown woman in a black coat and a little hat, with a bag on her arm, standing in the back row.

The men could not hide their disgust at her outrageous presence.

One tried, in vain, to excuse the interloper. He praised her saying, “She paints like a man.”

Her name was Hedda Sterne.

On this day in 1969, every newspaper in the world had the photo of the century on the front page: astronauts, lumbering like bears, had walked on the moon and left behind the first human footprints.

But the principal protagonist of the feat did not receive the congratulations he deserved.

Werner von Braun had designed and launched their spaceship.

Before taking up the conquest of space on behalf of the United States, von Braun had worked on Germany's behalf for the conquest of Europe.

Engineer, officer of the SS, he was Hitler's favorite scientist.

The day after the war ended, he used his smarts to make a prodigious leap and land on his feet on the other side of the sea.

He became an instant patriot of his new homeland, began worshipping at a Texas evangelical church and got busy in the space lab.

The astronauts weren't the first.

Eighteen hundred years before, Lucian of Samosata visited the moon.

No one saw him, no one believed him, but he wrote about it in Greek.

Back around the year 150, Lucian and his sailors set off from the Pillars of Hercules, where the Strait of Gibraltar now lies, and a storm caught the ship, whirled it up into the sky and dumped it on the moon.

On the moon, no one died. The oldest of the old lunatics dissolved into thin air. They ate smoke and sweated milk. The rich ones wore glass clothing, the poor no clothing at all. The rich had many eyes and the poor, one or none.

In a mirror the lunatics watched all the terrestrial comings and goings. For the duration of their visit, Luciano and his sailors kept tabs on the daily news from Athens.

In 1944, in the tourist resort of Bretton Woods, it was confirmed that the twin brothers humanity needed were in gestation.

One was to be called International Monetary Fund and the other World Bank.

Like Romulus and Remus, the twins were nursed by a she-wolf until they took up residence in the city of Washington, cheek by jowl with the White House.

Ever since, these two govern the governments of the world. In countries where no one elected them, the twins impose obeisance as if it were destiny: they keep watch, they threaten, they punish, they quiz: “Have you behaved yourself? Have you done your homework?”