For every ten Indians who entered the mouths of the shafts, seven never came out. The killings occurred in Bolivia, which did not yet have that name, so that the dawn of capitalism, which also did not yet have that name, could occur in Europe.
Today, Cerro Rico is hollow, his silver long gone.
In the Indians’ language, Potosi, or Potojsi, means “ to thunder” or “to explode.” Tradition has it that the mountain would thunder when wounded. Now emptied, he remains silent.
First Lessons
From moles we learned to make tunnels.
From beavers we learned to make dams.
From birds we learned to build homes.
From spiders we learned to weave.
From tree trunks rolling downhill we learned about wheels.
From tree trunks floating and adrift we learned about boats.
From wind we learned about sails.
How did we learn our evil ways? From whom did we learn to torment our neighbors and subdue the earth?
Judgment Day
I can’t get the feeling out of my head that at some point we’ll all face Judgment Day. I imagine being interrogated by prosecutors who point their fins or branches, accusing us of turning the kingdom of this world into a desert of stone. “What have you done to the planet? Did you think you’d bought it at the supermarket? Who gave you the right to kill us?”
I see a high tribunal of flora and fauna handing down the sentence, eternal damnation, to the human species.
Will the innocent pay as well as the guilty? Will we all spend eternity in Hell, roasting on a slow fire alongside the fat cats who actually poisoned the earth, the water, and the air?
I used to think Judgment Day was God’s business: black sun, blood moon, divine rage. If worst came to worst, I’d have to share an interminable barbecue with serial killers, TV stars, and book critics.
Now, by comparison, that seems like nothing.
Map of Time
Some four and a half billion years ago, give or take a year, a dwarf star spit out a planet now called Earth.
Some four billion two hundred million years ago, the first cell took a sip of sea broth and liked it. Then the first cell divided in two, so it would have someone to offer a drink.
Some four million years ago and a bit, woman and man, all but apes, rose up on their legs and embraced, and for the first time experienced the joy and panic of looking into each other’s eyes while doing so.
Some four hundred fifty thousand years ago, woman and man struck two stones together and lit the first fire, which helped them battle fear and cold.
Some three hundred thousand years ago, woman and man spoke the first words and believed they understood each other.
And there we are stilclass="underline" wanting to be two, dying of fear, dying of cold, searching for words.
Silence
A long table of friends in a restaurant called Plataforma was Tom Jobim’s refuge from the noonday sun and the noisy streets of Rio de Janeiro.
One day, Tom sat in the corner drinking beer with Zè Fernando Balbi. The two shared a straw hat which they wore by turns, Tom one day, Zè Fernando the next, and they shared a few other things as well.
“No,” said Tom, when someone came by, “I’m in the middle of an important conversation.”
And when another friend approached: “You’ll have to excuse me, but we have a lot to talk about.”
Once more: “Sorry, but we’re discussing a serious matter.”
Off in their corner, Tom and Zè Fernando said not a word. Zè Fernando was having one of those rotten days that ought to be crossed off the calendar and erased from memory, and Tom was keeping him company with silent beers. They stayed that way, immersed in the music of silence, from noon till dusk.
The restaurant was empty when they got up and ambled to the door.
The Word
In the jungle of the Upper Parana, a trucker warned me to be careful. “Keep your eye out for savages,” he said. “There are still a few on the loose.”
He told me this in Spanish. But that wasn’t his language. The trucker spoke Guarani, the tongue of the savages he feared and scorned.
Strange thing: Paraguay speaks the language of the vanquished. And stranger stilclass="underline" the vanquished believe and continue to believe that words are sacred. A lie insults whatever it names, but truth reveals its soul. The vanquished believe the soul resides in the words it speaks. If I give my word, I give myself. The tongue is not a garbage dump.
The Letter
Enrique Buenaventura was drinking rum in a Cali bar when a stranger approached his table. The man introduced himself as a bricklayer, please forgive the disrespect, pardon the intrusion. “I need you to write a letter for me. A love letter.”
“Me?”
“I was told you can do it.”
Enrique was no expert but his heart swelled. The bricklayer explained that he was not illiterate. “I can write. But not that kind of letter.”
“Who is the letter for?”
“For. . her.”
“And what do you want to tell her?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you.”
Enrique scratched his head.
That night he got down to work.
The next day the bricklayer read the letter. “This,” he said, and his eyes shone, “this is it. But until now I didn’t know that this was what I wanted to say.”
The Letters
Juan Ramón Jiménez opened the envelope on his bed in the sanatorium on the outskirts of Madrid.
He looked at the letter, admired the photograph. “Thanks to your poems, I am no longer alone. I think of you so often!” confessed Georgina Hubner, his unknown admirer writing to him from afar. The pink paper of that first letter smelled of roses, and the picture of a smiling lady in a rocking chair in a Lima rose garden was tinted with rosaniline.
The poet wrote back. Sometime later a ship carried another letter from Georgina to Spain. She reproached him for his ceremonious language. Juan Ramón’s apology journeyed to Peru. “Pardon me if I sounded formal, believe me when I point to my old enemy shyness.” One letter followed another, traveling slowly between north and south, between the sick poet and his impassioned reader.
When Juan Ramón was released and returned to his home in Andalusia, the first thing he did was to send Georgina a heartfelt expression of his gratitude. And she answered with words that made his hands tremble.
Georgina’s letters were a collective effort. A group of friends wrote them from a bar in Lima. It was all made up: the photograph, the name, the letters, the delicate handwriting. Every time something came from Juan Ramón, the friends got together, considered how to reply, and set to writing.
With time and the to-ing and fro-ing of letters, things began to change. They planned one letter and ended up writing another, much less constrained, inspired, perhaps dictated by their collective daughter, who was nothing like any of them and would bow to none of them.
Then came the letter announcing Juan Ramón’s trip. The poet was coming to Lima, to the woman who had restored him to health and happiness.
An emergency meeting. What to do? Confess? How to inflict such cruelty? They debated long and hard and they made up their minds.