Children of the Days Page 8

  Her best friend Cecilia testified in court on this day in the year 2008. She told of the agony she had suffered at the military base and admitted she had been the one who gave them Silvina’s name, when she could no longer stand the daily and nightly torture.

  “It was me. I took the executioners to the house where Silvina was. I saw them shove her out the door, hit her with their rifle butts, kick her. I heard her scream.”

  Outside the courtroom, someone came over and asked her in a low voice, “After all that, how did you manage to go on living?”

  And she answered, in a voice even lower, “Who told you I’m alive?”

  June 16

  I’VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU

  Oscar Liñeira was another of the thousands of young men disappeared in Argentina. In military lingo, he was “transferred.”

  Piero Di Monte, imprisoned at the same base, heard his last words: “I’ve got something to tell you. You know something? I’ve never made love. Now they’re going to kill me and I never will.”

  June 17

  TOMASA DIDN’T PAY

  In 1782 the Quito municipal court ruled that Tomasa Surita had to pay the taxes on some cloth she had bought in Guayaquil.

  Only males were legally authorized to buy or to sell, but she was still liable for the taxes.

  “Let them collect it from my husband,” Tomasa said. “The law thinks we’re idiots. If we women are idiots about getting paid, then we’ll be idiots about paying too.”

  June 18

  SUSAN DIDN’T PAY EITHER

  The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony, Northern District Court of New York, June 18, 1873.

  DISTRICT ATTORNEY RICHARD CROWLEY: On the 5th of November, 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony voted for a representative in the Congress of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that. She did not have a right to vote. She is guilty of violating a law.

  JUDGE WARD HUNT: The prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

  SUSAN B. ANTHONY: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women.

  JUDGE HUNT: The prisoner will stand up. The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution.

  MISS ANTHONY: I shall never pay a dollar.

  June 19

  DANGER: BICYCLES!

  “I think bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world,” said Susan B. Anthony.

  Her companion in the struggle, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said, “Woman is riding to suffrage on a bicycle.”

  Certain physicians, like Philippe Tissié, warned that the bicycle might provoke abortion and cause sterility, while their colleagues insisted that this indecent apparatus might lead to depravity because it gave women pleasure when they pressed their intimate parts against the seat.

  The truth is the bicycle gave women mobility, allowed them to leave the house and enjoy a dangerous taste of freedom. And it was the bicycle that sent the pitiless corset, which impeded pedaling, out of the clothes closet and into the museum.

  June 20

  THAT SHORTCOMING

  Her soprano voice lent color to every syllable and won ovations in Rio de Janeiro.

  By the end of the eighteenth century, Joaquina Lapinha became the first singer from Brazil to conquer Europe.

  Carl Ruders, a Swedish opera fan, heard her in the year 1800 in a theater in Lisbon. Enthused, he praised “her good voice, imposing figure and great dramatic sense.”

  “Unfortunately, Joaquina has very dark skin,” Ruders warned, “but she remedies that shortcoming with cosmetics.”

  June 21

  WE ARE ALL YOU

  Today’s soccer match in 2001 between Treviso and Genoa was a surprise.

  One of Treviso’s players, the Nigerian Akeem Omolade, was often greeted in Italy’s stadiums with whistles and jeers and racist chants.

  But today there was silence. The other ten Treviso players had all painted their faces black.

  June 22

  THE WORLD’S WAIST

  In the year 234 before Christ, a sage named Eratosthenes planted a rod at noon in the city of Alexandria and measured its shadow.

  Exactly one year later, at the same time on the same day, he planted the same rod in the city of Aswan and it cast no shadow.

  Eratosthenes deduced that the difference between shadow and no shadow proved the world was a sphere not a plate. Then he measured the distance between the two cities in steps, and with that information tried to calculate the size of the world’s waist.

  He was fifty miles off.

  June 23

  FIRES

  At midnight tonight, big bonfires are lit.

  Crowds gather around them.

  This night will cleanse houses and souls. Old junk and old desires, things and feelings worn out by time, are tossed into the fire to make room for the new to be born.

  From the north this custom spread all over the world. It was always a pagan holiday. Always, until the Roman Catholic Church decided tonight would be Saint John’s Eve.

  June 24

  THE SUN

  Today, starting at dawn, the sun festival known as Inti Raymi is celebrated on the steppes and peaks of the Andes.

  At the beginning of time, the earth and sky were in darkness. There was only night.

  When the first woman and the first man emerged from the waters of Lake Titicaca, the sun was born.

  Viracocha, god of gods, invented the sun so that woman and man could enjoy the sight of each other.

  June 25

  THE MOON

  Chinese poet Li Po died in the year 762 on a night like this one.

  A drowning.

  He fell from the boat when he tried to hug the moon reflected in the waters of the Yangtze.

  Li Po had sought out the moon on other nights.

  I drink alone.

  No friend is near.

  I raise my cup,

  toast the moon

  and my shadow.

  Now we are three.

  But the moon does not drink

  and my shadow only imitates me.

  June 26

  THE KINGDOM OF FEAR

  Today is International Day Against Torture.

  By tragic irony, the Uruguayan military dictatorship was born the following day in 1973 and soon turned the country into one huge torture chamber.

  For obtaining information torture was useless or practically useless, but it was very useful for sowing fear, and fear obliged Uruguayans to live by silence or lies.

  While in exile, I received an unsigned letter:

  Lying sucks, and getting used to lying sucks.

  But worse than lying is teaching to lie.

  I have three children.

  June 27

  WE ARE ALL GUILTY

  Directorium Inquisitorum, published by the Holy Inquisition in the fourteenth century, set down the rules for torture. The most important was: “The accused who hesitates in his responses shall be tortured.”

  June 28

  HELL

  Back in the year 960, Christian missionaries invaded Scandinavia and threatened the Vikings: if you persist in your pagan customs you will end up in hell where eternal fires burn.

  The Vikings welcomed the good news. They trembled from cold, not fear.

  June 29

  THE GREAT HERETOFORE

  Some say it’s said that today is Saint Peter’s Day, and they say he holds the keys to the gates of heaven.

  Who knows for sure.

  Well-informed sources report that heaven and hell are just two names for the world each of us carries around inside.

  June 30

  A NUISANCE IS BORN

  Today in 1819 Juana Manso was baptized in Buenos Aires.

  The holy waters were to set her on the path to meekness, but Juana Manso was never meek.

&nb
sp; Bucking wind and tide she founded secular schools in Argentina and Uruguay where girls and boys studied together, religion was not a required course and corporal punishment was banned.

  She wrote the first textbook on Argentine history plus several other works, among them a novel that derided the hypocrisy of married life.

  She founded the first public library in the country’s interior.

  She got divorced when divorce did not exist.

  The Buenos Aires papers took great pleasure in mocking her.

  When she died, the Church refused her a tomb.

  JULY

  July 1

  ONE TERRORIST FEWER

  In the year 2008, the government of the United States decided to erase Nelson Mandela’s name from its list of dangerous terrorists.

  The most revered African in the world had featured on that sinister roll for sixty years.

  July 2

  OLYMPIC PREHISTORY

  During the 1904 Olympic Games in the American city of St. Louis, a series of special competitions took place over the course of what they called “Anthropology Days.”

  Taking part were Native Americans, Japanese Ainu, African pygmies and other specimens on display in the parallel world’s fair.

  They were not allowed into the formal athletic competitions, begun six weeks earlier and continuing for another three months, although two Zulus in the Boer War exhibit obtained special dispensation to run the marathon and came in fifth and twelfth.

  Fred Lorz, white and male, won that race, which was the most popular event. Shortly thereafter, it came out that he had run half the route in a friend’s car.

  That was the last piece of Olympic chicanery that did not involve the chemical industry.

  From then on, the world of sport went modern.

  Athletes no longer compete on their own. They carry whole medicine cabinets inside.

  July 3

  THE STONE IN THE HOLE

  Three months had passed since King James II outlawed golf in 1457 and still not a single Scot paid any heed.

  In vain, the monarch repeated the order: young men must dedicate their best efforts to the art of archery, essential for national defense, instead of wasting time whacking little balls.

  But golf was born in Scotland’s green pastures back around the year 1000 by shepherds who eased their boredom knocking stones into rabbit holes, and the tradition remained invincible.

  Scotland is home to the two oldest golf courses in the world. They are open to the public and entry is practically free. What a rarity: in most of the world this privatized sport belongs to the few, and golf courses gobble up the land and chug the water that belongs to us all.

  July 4

  THE SOUTHERN CROSS

  On this night in 1799, Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland discovered the Southern Cross.

  Sailing across the immense ocean, they saw these heretofore unseen stars.

  The Southern Cross pointed the way to America.

  Humboldt and Bonpland did not come to conquer. They wished not to take but to give. And give they did, these scientist adventurers who helped us to see and know ourselves.

  Years later, at the end of their trip deep into the South American heartland, Humboldt returned to Europe.

  Aimé, “Don Amado,” chose to remain behind in this land that had become his own.

  To the end of his days, Don Amado collected and classified thousands of unknown plants. He rediscovered lost medicinal herbs from the indigenous store of knowledge and set up free herbal pharmacies for all. He hoed, planted, harvested; he raised children and chickens. He learned and taught, endured prison and practiced love thy neighbor (“starting with the females,” he liked to say).

  July 5

  THE RIGHT TO LAUGH

  According to the Bible, King Solomon of Israel did not have a high opinion of laughter. “It’s crazy,” he said.

  And on happiness: “What good is it?”

  According to scripture, Jesus never once laughed.

  The right to laugh without sin had to wait until this day in 1182, when a baby named Francis was born in the town of Assisi.

  Saint Francis of Assisi was born smiling and years later he instructed his disciples, “Be happy. Avoid sad faces, frowns, scowls . . . ”

  July 6

  FOOL ME

  Today in 1810 Phineas Barnum was baptized in Connecticut.

  The baby grew up to found the most famous circus in the world.

  It began as a museum of rarities and monstrosities that drew multitudes:

  they bowed before a blind slave woman, 161 years old, who had suckled George Washington;

  they kissed the hand of Napoleon Bonaparte, 25 inches tall;

  and they confirmed that the Siamese twins Chang and Eng were truly attached and that the circus mermaids had genuine fishtails.

  Professional politicians of every epoch envy Barnum more than any other man. He was the undisputed master at putting into practice his great discovery: People love to be fooled.

  July 7

  FRIDAMANIA

  In 1954 a Communist demonstration marched through the streets of Mexico City.

  Frida Kahlo was there in her wheelchair.

  It was the last time she was seen alive.

  She died shortly thereafter, without fanfare.

  A number of years passed before the huge uproar of Fridamania awakened her.

  A just restitution or just business? Did this woman, who hated the pursuit of success and prettiness, deserve this? Did the artist of pitiless self-portraits, complete with unibrow and moustache, and bristling with pins and needles and the scars of thirty-two operations, deserve such treatment?

  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?

  July 8

  LEADER FOR LIFE

  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.

  July 9

  THE SUNS THE NIGHT HIDES

  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.

  July 10

  MANUFACTURING NOVELS

  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. T
he 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.”

  July 11

  MANUFACTURING TEARS

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

  Colgate toothpaste presents . . .

  “In Search of Happiness!”

  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.

  July 12