Hunter of Stories

  Now Sonia celebrates every May 13th, even though her birth certificate says something else.

  Sonia chose it because she liked the story that day tells.

  It tells what a wise elder taught me years ago in the jungle where the Orinoco River is born:

  To see the worlds of the world, shift your eyes.

  To have the birds hear your song, shift your throat.

  IN CHILDREN OF THE DAYS, I ALSO TOLD THE story of an exceptional African, the King of Dahomey, Agaja Trudo, who refused to sell slaves and rose up against the traffickers in human flesh.

  Shortly after publication, I received a letter from Carlos Feo. He had visited the museum in the royal palace in Dahomey’s capital and saw no trace of that king. Agaja Trudo had been erased from history because he had sinned against the most profitable trade of the European powers of his time.

  Carlos also told me that the worst enemy of the rebellious king was his father’s wife, who coveted the throne and was the slave trade’s most fervent defender. When Agaja Trudo outlawed the slave trade, he made one exception: he sold her.

  AMONG THE STORIES COLLECTED IN WALKING Words, there is one that tells of the adventures of a boy and his shadow.

  The story ends with the boy having left his childhood far behind and feeling sorry that he will die and leave his shadow alone.

  One reader, Daidie Donnelle, wrote to tell me not to worry: the shadow would not be left alone because the shadow of the shadow would keep it company.

  IN THE FINAL VOLUME OF MEMORY OF FIRE, I told a story about the daughter of a Uruguayan political prisoner, a five-year-old girl who was named Mylai in homage to a Vietnamese village wiped off the map by the US military.

  After that I received several letters from parents of newborn girls who wanted to name their daughters Mylai but the bureaucracy would not allow it. From the city of Rosario in Argentina, Nélida Gómez told me of her misadventures: “My daughter is still undocumented,” she wrote in March of 1999.

  The unusual name did not appear on the calendar of saints, nor was it on the list of the National Registry of Names. So Mylai had no right to call herself Mylai.

  IN THE YEAR 2012 I WAS SIGNING BOOKS AT the Casa del Libro in Barcelona.

  “Who is it for?”

  Told the name, I would then write it and sign my own.

  Sometimes I would add something, a sketch, a comment, anything to help me feel less like a robot with an artificial hand.

  On it went, book after book.

  Then a young man who had been in line for a long time stood before me. “Who is it for?”

  “For the Paraná River.”

  I had never dedicated a book to a river.

  That was a first.

  MANY YEARS AGO, VISITING THE CAVES AT Altamira, I was astounded by the delicacy of the paintings. I thought, but dared not ask, “These marvels, wouldn’t they be the work of women, not of men?”

  The question had simply popped into my astonished head. When I included it in one of my books, there was no lack of people accusing me of being a dogmatic feminist.

  Years went by and in 2013 an American professor, Dean Snow, completed his lengthy research in several prehistoric caves and concluded that most of the paintings were done by women, not by men.

  He backed up his assertion.

  My question was born of my imagination. Now it had found someone to keep it company.

  For the Record

  An Utterly Complete Autobiography

  I was born on September 3rd, 1940, while Hitler was devouring half of Europe and the world was expecting nothing good.

  From a very young age, I demonstrated a real aptitude for making mistakes. So often did I put my foot in my mouth, it was evident I would make my mark on the world.

  With the healthy desire to deepen my mark, I became a writer, or at least I tried to.

  My most successful works have been three articles that circulate on the Internet under my name. In the street people stop me to offer congratulations, and every time I start pulling petals off a daisy: “I kill myself, I do not, I kill myself…”

  None of the articles was written by me.

  A Few Things About the Author

  I could be the world champion of absentmindedness, if such a championship existed. Frequently I mix up days, times, places. I have trouble telling night from day, and I miss appointments because I sleep in.

  My birth confirmed that God is not infallible. But I’m not always wrong when it comes to choosing the people I love and the ideas I believe in.

  I detest the contrite, hate complainers, admire those who wordlessly roll with the punches. Luckily there is always some friend telling me to keep on writing, telling me that age helps and that baldness comes from thinking too much and is a risk of the profession.

  Writing is tiring, but it consoles me.

  Why I Write/1

  I want to tell you the story of my first real challenge as a storyteller, the first time I feared I might not be up to the task.

  It occurred in the Bolivian town of Llallagua, near the mine where the San Juan massacre had taken place. The dictator Barrientos had ordered his troops to open fire from the heights of the surrounding hills on the drinking, dancing miners celebrating Saint John’s Eve.

  I arrived about a year later, in 1968, and stayed on thanks to my abilities as an artist. You see, I had always felt an urge to draw, though my sketches never managed to close the gap between myself and the world.

  The bigger abyss was between my skills and my aspirations, though some of my portraits turned out all right and I was good at lettering. In Llallagua I drew portraits of the children of the miners and I painted posters for the carnival, for public events, whatever was needed. So the town adopted me, and the fact is I had a great time in that miserable frozen world, where the cold intensifies the poverty.

  The night of my departure arrived. The miners were my friends and they gave me a goodbye party with lots of drink. We downed chicha and singani, a sort of tasty but somehow terrible Bolivian grappa. We were celebrating, singing, telling jokes, each worse than the one before, and all the while I knew that at five or six in the morning, I don’t remember which, the siren would blast, summoning them to work in the mine, and there it would all end. We would say goodbye.

  When the moment approached, they surrounded me as if about to accuse me of something. It wasn’t to accuse me of anything, rather to ask, “Now, tell us about the sea.”

  I was speechless. The miners were condemned to an early death from silicosis in the bowels of the earth. In those days life expectancy in the shafts was thirty or thirty-five, no more. They would never visit the sea, would die with no chance of laying eyes on it, were fated by poverty to remain in that stricken little town of Llallagua. My duty was to bring the sea to them, and find words capable of soaking them through.

  That was my first test as a storyteller, and it convinced me that the pursuit is worth something.

  God’s Little Angel

  I was once a child, one of “God’s little angels.”

  At school, the teacher taught us that Balboa, the Spanish conquistador, standing on a hill in Panama, had seen the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Atlantic on the other. He was, the teacher said, the first man to see both oceans at once.

  I raised my hand: “Miss, miss.”

  And I asked, “Were the Indians blind?”

  That was the first time I got kicked out.

  Why I Write/2

  If I’m not mistaken, it was Jean-Paul Sartre who said, “Man is a useless passion.” I would add that so is writing.

  You write without really knowing why or what for, but I suppose it has to do with your most deeply held beliefs, the things that won’t let you sleep.

  Those few articles of faith provide a basis for writing, but they are not always convincing. In my case, my capacity to believe fluctuates according to the time of day.

  Normally until about noon, I feel rather optimistic. Then from no
on to four, my soul plummets. Toward dusk, it nestles back into place. At night, my soul falls and rises a few times more. And on it goes.

  I don’t trust full-time optimists. In fact, I think they come from a mistake of the gods.

  According to the Maya, we were all made from corn, which is why, like corn, we come in so many colors. Before that, the gods idiotically tried out other recipes and the results were atrocious. Once they made man and woman out of wood.

  These wooden people were just like us but with nothing to say or even a way to say it, since they had no breath, no courage. The gods grew terribly bored. I have always suspected that it was their lack of courage that kept the wooden people from getting discouraged. Discouragement is proof you have courage, you have the breath. So, it’s not so bad if your soul plummets. It is one more indication of being human, nothing but a puny human being.

  And as a puny human, twisted around by courage and discouragement according to the time of day, I continue writing, practicing that useless passion.

  Silence, Please

  I learned a lot from the Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti when I was starting out.

  He taught me flat on his back, smoking. He taught me with silences or lies, because he loved to add some luster to the few words he spoke by attributing them to ancient civilizations.

  On one of those nights of silences and cigarettes and wine that caused instantaneous cirrhosis, the master was lying down, as always, and I was seated by his side. Time passed without us noticing in the least.

  That was when Onetti told me a Chinese proverb: “The only worthwhile words are ones that improve upon silence.”

  I suspect the proverb was not Chinese, but I never forgot it.

  Neither did I forget what I was told by one of Gandhi’s granddaughters, who years later visited Montevideo.

  We met up at my café, El Brasilero. Recalling her childhood, she told me about her grandfather’s word-fasts: for one day a week Gandhi neither listened nor spoke. Not at all.

  The next day, words sounded different.

  Silence, which speaks without a sound, teaches us to speak.

  The Craft of Writing

  From Onetti I also learned the pleasure of writing by hand.

  By hand, I work and rework every page, who knows how many times, word after word, only typing it up on a computer when I have the final version, which always turns out not to be the final version after all.

  Why I Write/3

  A confession, to begin with. As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a soccer player. I was good, the best of the best, number one, but only in my dreams. Once I woke up and took a few steps, I kicked some pebble and discovered I wasn’t made for soccer. It was obvious I would have to seek some other profession. After trying my hand at several unsuccessfully, I began to write, to see if something would come of it.

  I tried, I still try, to learn how to fly in the dark like a bat in these somber times.

  I tried, I still try, to accept that I cannot be neutral or objective, because I refuse to turn myself into an object, indifferent to human passion.

  I tried, I still try, to write about women and men who have a will for justice and an urge for beauty, unbound by the borders of maps and time, for they are my compatriots and my contemporaries, no matter where they were born or when they lived.

  I tried, I still try, to be stubborn enough to continue believing, in spite of all evidence, that we humans may be poorly made but we are as yet unfinished. And I continue believing that the human rainbow has more color and sparkle than the rainbow in the sky, but that we are blind, or rather blinded by traditions that have mutilated us.

  In sum, I would say that I write hoping to make us all stronger than our fear of failure or of punishment when it comes to choosing sides in the eternal battle of indignation against indignity.

  I Crave, I Covet, I Yearn

  Living Out of Curiosity

  The word “enthusiasm” comes from ancient Greece, where it meant “having the gods inside.”

  Whenever a gypsy woman grabs my hand to read my fortune, I always pay her double to leave me alone. I do not know my future, nor do I wish to.

  I live and survive out of curiosity.

  It’s that simple. I don’t want to know what awaits me. The best thing about my future is that it’s unknown.

  Last Door

  After he lay down for the last time, Guma Muñoz had no wish to get up again.

  He did not even open his eyes.

  In one of his rare moments awake, Guma recognized his daughter, who was holding his hand to give his sleep some peace.

  Then he spoke, or rather murmured, “Strange, isn’t it? I used to be afraid of death. Not anymore. Now it makes me curious. What will it be like?”

  Wondering how it would be, he let himself go, into the heart of death.

  Nightmare

  The mountain told a friend and he told me.

  A man was climbing, driven by who knows what yearning and hunger. On he pressed, more and more determined, though with every step the hill grew longer and his legs weaker.

  “No slacking allowed,” he muttered, giving himself orders so inaudibly he appeared tight-lipped. On he went. The nearer he got to the summit, the greater his fear of the afterward calling to him from the distant depths.

  Finally, he let himself fall; he let himself go.

  The steep mountainside was endless.

  Everything receded, his world, his people, and though it was a matter of fate he could not stop blaming himself: “chickenshit,” “coward.” Now at the end of the final voyage, his hands, torn to shreds by rocks and thorns, lost their last grip and he was carried off, off toward the void, with no chance to say goodbye.

  At the End of Each Day

  The sun always offers an astonishing goodbye. Today’s sunset is never a repetition of yesterday’s or a harbinger of tomorrow’s.

  The sun is the only one who departs in such an extraordinary way.

  It would be so unfair to die and see it no longer.

  At the End of Each Night

  A Maya god greets the rising sun.

  Hoisting it onto his back, he takes it home to the Lacandón jungle and feeds it beans, tortillas, fish, and squash seeds, and he pours it coffee.

  When it is time to say goodbye, the god carries it to the other horizon, which is the hammock where the sun goes to sleep.

  To Live, to Die

  “I am sending you this photo of me, for my daughter who is so far away. I want her to come see me, and when she gets here I want to die in her presence.

  “I am old and sick, already walking with the wind.”

  —Collected by David Acebey from a Guaraní Indian in Bolivia

  I Crave, I Covet, I Yearn

  In beauty may I walk.

  May I find beauty before me

  And beauty behind

  And below

  And above

  And around me more beauty

  Beauty the entire length of the trail

  That comes to an end in beauty.

  —From “Night Song of the Navajo”

  EDUARDO GALEANO (1940–2015) was one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers. A Uruguayan journalist, writer, and novelist, he was considered, among other things, “a literary giant of the Latin American left” and “global soccer’s preeminent man of letters.” His works published in English include the three-volume Memory of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Days and Nights of Love and War, The Book of Embraces, Walking Words, Upside Down, Voices of Time, and Children of the Days. Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for eleven years before returning to Uruguay in 1984. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He is the recipient of many international honors, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the Most Illustrious Citizen of the countries of Mercosur. Galeano once described himself as “a writer obsessed with rem
embering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.” Isabel Allende, who said her copy of Galeano’s book was one of the few items with which she fled Chile in 1973 after the military coup, called Open Veins of Latin America “a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling.”

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