Mirrors (63 page)

Then . . .

THE AGES OF SANTOS DUMONT

At the age of thirty-two, Brazilian argonaut Alberto Santos Dumont, inexplicably alive after multiple flying disasters, receives the title of chevalier of France’s Legion of Honor. The press declares him the most elegant man in Paris.

At thirty-three, he is the father of the modern airplane. He invents a motorized bird that takes off without a catapult and climbs to an altitude of six meters. When he lands, he declares:

“I have the utmost confidence in the future of the airplane.”

At forty-nine, shortly after the First World War, he warns the League of Nations:

“The feats of flying machines allow us to foresee with horror the great destructive power they could have, sowing death not only among combatants but also, lamentably, among people who are defenseless.”

At fifty-three:

“I don’t see why dropping explosives from airplanes could not be outlawed, when dropping poison into the water system is.”

At fifty-nine, he wonders:

“Why did I invent this thing? Instead of spreading love it has become a cursed weapon of war.”

And he hangs himself. Since he is so tiny, practically weightless, practically heightless, his necktie does the trick.

PHOTOGRAPH: A FACE IN THE CROWD

Munich, Odeonplatz, August 1914.

The imperial flag waves overhead. Under its shelter, a multitude exults in the ecstasy of being German.

Germany has declared war. “War! War!” shout the people, crazed with joy, eager to march straight into battle.

In the photograph’s lower corner, lost in the crowd, is the face of a man in a state of bliss, eyes raised toward heaven, mouth agape. Those who know him could tell us his name is Adolf, he is Austrian and rather ugly, his voice is screechy, and he is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He sleeps in an attic room and ekes out a living in bars, going table to table, selling his watercolors of pastoral scenes copied from calendars.

The photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, does not know him. He has no idea that in that sea of heads his camera has recorded the presence of the Messiah, the redeemer of the race of the Nibelungs and the Valkyries, the Siegfried who will avenge the defeat and humiliation of this great Germany that will march singing from the nuthouse to the slaughterhouse.

KAFKA

As the drums of the first world butchery drew near, Franz Kafka wrote
Metamorphosis.
And not long after, the war under way, he wrote
The Trial.

They are two collective nightmares:

a man awakens as an enormous cockroach and cannot fathom why, and in the end he is swept away by a broom;

another man is arrested, charged, judged, and found guilty, and cannot fathom why, and in the end he is knifed by the executioner.

In a certain way those stories, those books, continued in the pages of the newspapers, which day after day told of the progress of the war machine.

The author, ghost with feverish eyes, shadow without a body, wrote from the ultimate depths of anguish.

He published little, practically no one read him.

He departed in silence, as he had lived. On his deathbed, bed of pain, he only spoke to ask the doctor:

“Kill me, or else you are a murderer.”

NIJINSKY

In Switzerland in 1919, in a ballroom at the Hotel Suvretta in Saint Moritz, Vaslav Nijinsky danced for the last time.

Before an audience of millionaires, the most famous dancer in the world announced that he would dance the war. And by the light of candelabras, he danced it.

Nijinsky spun in furious whirlwinds and left the ground and broke apart in the air and fell back, thunderstruck, and he rolled about as if the marble floor were mud, and then he began to spin again and, rising once more, again he broke apart, and again, and again, until finally the remains of him, a mute howl, crashed through the window and was lost in the snow.

Nijinsky had entered the realm of madness, his land of exile. He never returned.

ORIGIN OF JAZZ

It was 1906. People were coming and going as usual along Perdido Street in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans. A five-year-old child peeking out the window watched that boring sameness with open eyes and very open ears, as if he expected something to happen.

It happened. Music exploded from the corner and filled the street. A man was blowing his cornet straight up to the sky and around him a crowd clapped in time and sang and danced. And Louis Armstrong, the boy in the window, swayed back and forth with such enthusiasm he nearly fell out.

A few days later, the man with the cornet entered an insane asylum. They locked him up in the Negro section.

That was the only time his name, Buddy Bolden, appeared in the newspapers. He died a quarter of a century later in the same asylum, and the papers did not notice. But his music, never written down or recorded, played on inside the people who had delighted in it at parties or at funerals.

According to those in the know, that phantom was the founder of jazz.

RESURRECTION OF DJANGO

He was born in a gypsy caravan and spent his early years on the road in Belgium, playing the banjo for a dancing bear and a goat.

He was eighteen when his wagon caught fire and he was left for dead. He lost a leg, a hand. Goodbye road, goodbye music. But as they were about to amputate, he regained the use of his leg. And from his lost hand he managed to save two fingers and become one of the best jazz guitarists in history.

There was a secret pact between Django Reinhardt and his guitar. If he would play her, she would lend him the fingers he lacked.

ORIGIN OF THE TANGO

It was born in the River Plate, in the whorehouses on the outskirts of the city. Men danced it among themselves to pass the time, while the women attended to other customers in bed. Its slow, stuttering melodies echoed in alleyways where knives and sadness reigned.

The tango wore its birthmark on its forehead, harsh life in the lower depths, and for that reason was not allowed in anywhere else.

But what was unpresentable managed to pry open the door. In 1917, led by Carlos Gardel, the tango turned up downtown in Buenos Aires, climbed onstage at the Esmeralda Theater, and introduced itself by name. Gardel sang “
Mi noche triste
” and tango’s isolation was over. Bathed in tears, the snobbish middle class gave it a raucous welcome that washed away its original sin.

That was the first tango Gardel ever recorded. It still gets played and it sounds better and better. They call Gardel “the Magician.” It is no exaggeration.

ORIGIN OF THE SAMBA