Round and round went the wheels of the tape recorder. The blind balladeer listened to the whirr without comment, until at last he asked what was buzzing.
“It’s a machine that keeps voices alive,” explained Ayestaràn. He rewound the tape, and the verses rang out again.
For the first time in his life, the old man heard his own voice.
He didn’t like the imitation one bit.
The Idol
Some nights in the cafes, the competition was fierce.
“Me, when I was a child, I got peed on by a lion,” one said in a low voice, making light of his tragedy.
“Me, what I liked best was walking on walls,” said another, complaining that at home this pastime was forbidden.
And another: “Me, as a kid I wrote love poems. Then I lost them on a train. And who do you think found them? Neruda.”
Don Arnaldo, an orthodontist, refused to be cowed. Elbows on the bar, he let slip a name: “Libertad Lamarque.”
He paused for impact, then, “Sound familiar?”
And he recalled his meeting with the woman known as Latin America’s Sweetheart.
Don Arnaldo wasn’t lying. One morning back in the thirties, the singer and actress was taking an awful beating in a hotel in Santiago, Chile. Her husband was slapping her across the face, just to keep her in line, and in between two punches Libertad screamed, “Enough! It’s your doing!” and dove out the fourth-floor window. She bounced off an awning and landed on top of the orthodontist, who was walking on the sidewalk below, on his way home from visiting his mother. Libertad landed in one piece, along with her damask robe embroidered with Chinese dragons. But Don Arnaldo, crushed, was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Once his broken bones had healed and his mummy’s bandages came off, Don Arnaldo began telling the story that he went on telling until the end of his days, in cafes and anywhere else he could find an ear. The shooting star had thrown herself, from the heavens above, from the high clouds where the goddesses of ether and footlights dwell, down to Earth, and of the millions of men walking the planet she had chosen him. Yes, him. And had collapsed in his arms, so she wouldn’t die alone.
The Movies
Geraldine was working on a film in a village in the mountains of Turkey.
The first afternoon she went out for a walk. Practically no one was about. A few men, no women at all. Then, turning a corner, she found herself face-to-face with a gang of teenagers.
Geraldine looked left, looked right, looked behind her. She was surrounded, no escape. Her throat refused to scream. Speechless, she offered what she had: watch, money.
The boys laughed. No, that wasn’t what they wanted. And speaking something more or less like English, they asked if she was really Chaplin’s daughter.
Astonished, she nodded. Only then did she notice that they all had little charcoal mustaches, and that the sticks they carried were meant to be canes.
The show began.
And they were all him.
Movie Buffs
There was a crowd of people at the entrance to Havana’s Yara cinema, and a policeman was trying to get them to form a line. His intentions were laudable, even heroic, but not very realistic. Every time he managed to get them lined up, they would spill out once again.
The officer was on his own, impotent against their passion for the movies and for chaos. Then his commanding voice made itself heard: “Back!” the policeman barked. “Ladies and gentlemen, the line begins behind the wall!”
“What wall?” people asked, bewildered.
The guardian of order explained, “If there’s no wall. . just imagine one.”
Television
At the end of 1999, the president of Uruguay cut the ribbon at a brand-new school in Pinar Norte.
Since it was a neighborhood of the working poor, the country’s chief executive came to add some luster to the ceremony.
The president appeared from the heavens, by helicopter, accompanied by a TV crew.
In his speech he paid homage to the children of the fatherland, our most valuable asset, and he underscored the importance of education, the most profitable investment we can make in such a competitive world. After that everyone sang the national anthem and released a raft of colored balloons.
Then came the climax, when the president presented each student with a toy.
This was all broadcast live.
When the cameras stopped rolling, the president ascended back to the heavens. And the school officials proceeded to collect the toys he’d given out. It was not easy to pry them from the children’s hands.
The Theater
Aristophanes wandered all over Chiapas, chatting with the locals. Anton Chekhov trekked through the desert of San Luis Potosi, his characters in tow.
They had never been to such places before.
It was the actors of El Galpón who took them from one end of Mexico to the other.
The entire El Galpón company was there in exile. Those were years of filth and fear under Uruguay’s military dictatorship, and when the troupe left Montevideo, they took along everything but their theater.
The theater, which they’d built themselves without a cent of help from the government, stayed behind, but El Galpón did not and neither did the audience. The generals put on their shows for the empty seats. Shadow without a body: body without a soul; no one went.
The Theatergoer
Gonzalo Munoz, whose sepia photo is in my family album, was born to live by night and sleep by day.
His nights were spent wide-eyed, keeping the ghosts company, but during the day he always had a lot to do, so he had to settle for catnaps. He’d drop off at any moment, and upon waking he wouldn’t know the time of day or even what sort of being he was. Sometimes, Don Gonzalo, who lived like an owl, crowed from the roof in the middle of the afternoon, like a rooster greeting the dawn. This did not go down well with the neighbors.
One evening he attended the opening of a play at Montevideo’s Solis Theater. It was a formal affair with a company from Europe. During the second act he fell asleep. He nodded off just when the main character, a foul-tempered husband, crouched behind a screen, pistol in hand. A short while later, when the unfaithful wife came onstage, the husband sprang from his hiding place and fired. The bullets brought down the sinner and woke up Don Gonzalo, who stood in the middle of the audience, threw his arms wide, and exclaimed: “Hold it right there! Don’t anybody move! Ladies and gentlemen, don’t be afraid, please stay where you are!”
His wife, seated at his side, sank into the depths of her chair.
The Actor
Horacio Tubio built his house in a valley called El Bolsón.
The house had no electricity. Horacio had come from California with all his modern gadgets, but the computer, fax, television, and washing machine refused to work by candle power.
Horacio found the right office. An engineer received him. The man consulted several unfathomable maps and informed Horacio that electric service was already up and running in that area.
“Sure, it’s up and running,” Horacio allowed. “It’s all over the forest. The trees are happy as clams.”
The engineer took offense and fumed, “You know what your problem is? You’re arrogant. Talking like that you’re never going to get anywhere.”