Children of the Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

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
L EADER FOR L IFE
    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
T HE S UNS THE N IGHT H IDES
    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
M ANUFACTURING N OVELS
    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. The 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
M ANUFACTURING T EARS
    In 1941 all Brazil wept through the first radio soap opera:
    Â 
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Colgate toothpaste presents . . .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “ 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
C ONSECRATION OF THE T OP S CORER
    In 1949