The Fall Read online

303

  Marcel Proust in Jean Santeuil:

  We had such a strong desire to understand John Ruskin’s views on Rembrandt that, for this reason alone, we started studying English.

  What made me understand John Ruskin’s views on Rembrandt was Tito’s cerebral palsy.

  Tito’s cerebral palsy became my second language.

  304

  (Picture Credit 1.17)

  305

  In the previous image: Marcel Proust by the Grand Canal in Venice, looking at my window.

  306

  Marcel Proust travelled to Venice in 1900, taking John Ruskin’s books with him as his guide.

  His walks through Venice and John Ruskin’s books became the central themes of his own books.

  307

  We visited Venice every year.

  In Rio de Janeiro, Tito used to walk with his therapist, but in Venice, in the holidays, he walked only with me.

  He would go ahead of me, with his ungainly steps. I would be right behind him, ready to catch him if he should fall.

  308

  Marcel Proust remarked that a walk in Venice had the power to “educate the spirit,” separating out the “intellectual aristocracy” from the “intellectual proletariat.”

  Throughout In Search of Lost Time, he refers constantly to analogies between the “aristocratic” memories of Venice and the “proletarian” memories of his characters.

  The streets of Combray are mirrored in the streets of Venice. The face of Albert Bloch is mirrored in a portrait of Gentile Bellini. Albertine’s dress is mirrored in a painting by Vittore Carpaccio. Domestic life in Aubervilliers is mirrored in a lost canal.

  309

  In the last volume of In Search of Lost Time, the Narrator stumbles and almost falls in the courtyard of the Guermantes mansion.

  The incident reminds him of Venice’s uneven paving stones.

  Suddenly the events of his past life all fit together like a mosaic and he is filled with a sense of happiness.

  He realizes that his memories of walking in Venice — along with the images and analogies they evoke — could give meaning to his life.

  310

  At that moment, the Narrator decides to write a book about his past life, because in order to interpret his feelings it is necessary, above all else, to transform them into ideas, to transform them into “equivalents of understanding.”

  The book he decides to write is In Search of Lost Time.

  311

  On our walks through Venice, Tito was always stumbling.

  When this happened, I was filled with a sense of happiness. Preventing Tito from falling in Venice gave meaning to my life.

  312

  The book that transforms my feelings into their equivalents of understanding is this one.

  313

  (Picture Credit 1.18)

  314

  In the previous image: Marcel Proust, dead.

  The photo was taken by Man Ray. It dates from 1922.

  315

  In the weeks prior to his death, Marcel Proust ate just one croissant a day.

  To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved to be most harmful to Marcel Proust’s health was the croissant.

  316

  For Marcel Proust, a walk through Venice was the equivalent of reading Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

  317

  In the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri is always counting the number of steps or paces from one place to the next:

  There were less than a hundred paces between us.

  Or:

  We took ten steps to avoid the sand and the flames.

  Or:

  We walked a thousand steps along the solitary path.

  Or:

  We were separated by only three paces.

  Or:

  Even after we had gone a thousand steps, we were as yet as far from them as a good slingsman could throw a stone.

  318

  Walking with Tito in Venice, keeping right behind him so that I could steady him if he should fall, I counted each step he took, as if I were reciting Dante Alighieri:

  Uno … Due … Tre … Quattro … Cinque … Sei …

  Sette … Otto … Nove … Dieci … Undici … Dodici …

  Tredici … Quattordici … Quindici … Sedici …

  319

  When Tito stumbled — and he always stumbled — I would stop him falling and start counting again from zero:

  Uno … Due … Tre … Quattro … Cinque … Sei …

  Sette … Otto … Nove … Dieci … Undici … Dodici …

  Tredici … Quattordici … Quindici … Sedici …

  320

  321

  In the previous image: Tito and I are preparing to ascend — in circular fashion — Dante Alighieri’s Mount Purgatory.

  The drawing is by Sandro Botticelli. It dates from 1480.

  322

  The sixteen steps Tito took on 28 September 2005 became, some months later, twenty-seven steps. Some months later, the twenty-seven steps became forty-four steps. Some months later, the forty-four steps became seventy-one steps. Some months later, the seventy-one steps became one hundred and eighteen steps.

  Each step Tito took was complete in itself. Each step Tito took was a brief chapter of his story.

  323

  On 11 January 2008, Tito took three hundred and fifty-nine steps.

  324

  I commemorated this event in a column:

  Edmund Hillary died on 11 January. On the same day, my son took three hundred and fifty-nine steps. Climbing Mount Everest, as Edmund Hillary did, might seem just slightly more significant than my son taking three hundred and fifty-nine steps, but for someone who has cerebral palsy, as he does, taking three hundred and fifty-nine consecutive steps without help, without falling, without smashing his teeth, is an epic event, at least in our family mythography. If my son is Edmund Hillary, then I must be his sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. He lurches from side to side, progressing slowly and uncertainly meter by meter, I remain in the rearguard, pointing out the smoothest route and saving him from falling. My son walked those three hundred and fifty-nine steps during the holidays in Venice. We are already planning our next challenges. First, we will walk three hundred and fifty-nine steps on Corcovado.

  Then, three hundred and fifty-nine steps in the Acropolis. Then three hundred and fifty-nine steps along the Great Wall of China. Then three hundred and fifty-nine steps in the Sahara desert. Then three hundred and fifty-nine steps on Mount Everest. My son and I will travel round the world on foot, three hundred and fifty-nine steps at a time.

  325

  Tito’s steps became my unit of measurement. I began calculating all our journeys based on them.

  In Venice during the holidays, the return trip to Bar da Gino took one thousand, one hundred and ninety-four steps. The trip from our house to Fondamenta delle Zattere, via Calle Querini, where Ezra Pound lived, was much shorter: five hundred and twenty-seven steps.

  In Rio de Janeiro, the route from our apartment to Posto 9 on Ipanema beach was four hundred and eighty steps. The route from our apartment to the swimming pool at the Hotel Fasano was five hundred and seventy-one steps.

  326

  327

  In the previous image: Tito and I are walking in Venice. I am counting his steps, one by one.

  328

  A passage from my fourth and last novel.

  The protagonist, Pimenta Bueno, who has injured one foot and is unable to walk, is being carried on the back of his servant, Azor:

  PIMENTA BUENO: Count the number of steps to Utiariti.

  AZOR: One … two … three …

  PIMENTA BUENO: I want to work out how far we are from our goal.

  AZOR: … six … seven … eight …

  PIMENTA BUENO: It can’t be many more kilometers now.

  AZOR: … ten … eleven … twelve …

  PIMENTA BUENO: We’ve been walking for more than six hours.

  AZOR: … fifteen
… sixteen … seventeen …

  PIMENTA BUENO: According to my road map, we should have arrived by now.

  AZOR: … twenty … twenty-one … twenty-two …

  PIMENTA BUENO: Never trust Brazilian maps.

  AZOR: … twenty-four … twenty-five … twenty-six …

  PIMENTA BUENO: We always get the measurements all wrong.

  AZOR: … twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty …

  PIMENTA BUENO: We lack mathematical reasoning.

  AZOR: … thirty-two … thirty-three … thirty-four …

  PIMENTA BUENO: We lack any real familiarity with numbers.

  AZOR: Is it thirty-six or thirty-seven?

  PIMENTA BUENO: What do you mean?

  AZOR: I’ve lost count.

  PIMENTA BUENO: You’ve lost count?

  AZOR: I can’t remember if I’ve taken thirty-six or thirty-seven steps.

  PIMENTA BUENO: Start again.

  AZOR: From zero?

  PIMENTA BUENO: From zero.

  AZOR: One … two … three …

  329

  The novel was entitled Against Brazil.

  It was published in 1998, two years before Tito was born and ten years before he took his three hundred and fifty-nine steps.

  330

  Counting Tito’s steps in Venice, I could still reason, but only “occasionally,” and I could even acquire knowledge, but only the knowledge I could pick up “without stooping, or reach without pains.”

  Counting the steps of Pimenta Bueno in Mato Grosso, though, I was only able to exhibit the kind of academic pride that could be “taught to any schoolboy in a week.”

  331

  For Marcel Proust real life, the only fully lived life, was literature. For me, real life, the only fully lived life, became Tito. After his birth, I rejected literature and went off to earn some money.

  332

  To quote myself again:

  Rimbaud beat up Verlaine. I envy Rimbaud. I would like to have beaten up Verlaine. I would like to have beaten up any symbolist poet. Verlaine took his revenge on Rimbaud some years later in a hotel room, firing two shots at him. I also envy Verlaine. He just wasn’t a good enough marksman. In 1875, Rimbaud rejected literature and went off to earn some money. In only sixteen years, he did everything that anyone with an ounce of integrity would have wanted to do: he plunged into the Ethiopian desert; he bought and sold slaves; he trafficked guns of many calibres, thus facilitating the massacre of thousands of innocents; he got a tumor in his knee and had his leg amputated; he died alone in Marseille in terrible pain and praying to God, who, in his capricious way, refused to help him.

  333

  When Tito walked three hundred and fifty-nine steps on 11 January 2008, I was earning money writing a weekly column for the magazine Veja. I also earned money from Veja Online, writing a weekly comment column, and from Manhattan Connection, taking part in one TV program a week.

  I became the Rimbaud of cerebral palsy. Journalism was my Ethiopia.

  334

  335

  In the previous image: the propaganda from the Action T4 program, comparing the money the state spent each day on an invalid — 5.50 reichsmarks — with the amount spent each day on a family of five — the same 5.50 reichsmarks.

  336

  Alfred Hoche was one of the inspirations behind the Action T4 program.

  In 1920, in a small work entitled Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Being Lived, he calculated the financial burden of invalidity:

  I estimate that the average annual expense of keeping an idiot alive to be one thousand three hundred marks. It doesn’t take much intelligence to calculate the enormous burden this imposes on the national wealth for an entirely unproductive end.

  337

  Twenty years later, these calculations were submitted to a detailed analysis by the economists of the Third Reich.

  A chart preserved in the euthanasia center at Schloss Hartheim — that’s right, under the command of Franz Stangl — calculated that the killing of 70,273 invalids by 1 September 1941 had saved the economy 245,955 reichsmarks and 50 reichspfennigs a day.

  This was the equivalent, over a period of ten years, of 400,244,520 kilos of food, among which: 189,737,160 kilos of potatoes, 13,492,440 kilos of meat and sausages, 3,794,760 kilos of margarine, 531,240 kilos of bacon, 12,649,200 kilos of flour, 5,902,920 kilos of jam and, lastly, 33,731,040 eggs.

  338

  To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved most harmful to the health of the people with cerebral palsy who were killed under the Action T4 program was the food they stopped eating.

  339

  In the case we brought against Venice Hospital, we had — just like those Third Reich economists — to add up all the money spent on Tito’s cerebral palsy.

  What with physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, equitherapy, a classroom assistant, an orthopedic specialist, a neurologist, an anesthetist, medical tests, Botox, a communicator, a walker, orthopedic callipers, the hospital in New York, the hospital in Boston, plus legal expenses, Tito cost, on average, 230 reais a day.

  That is the equivalent, over ten years, of 3,497,916 eggs.

  340

  Because of the money they were taking from society, the people with cerebral palsy who were killed under the Action T4 program were called “bloodsuckers” or “parasites.”

  My parasite was Tito.

  341

  According to Ezra Pound, the Jews were the real parasites draining money from society.

  When he was sent a letter asking him to assist in protecting a German-Jewish pianist being hounded by the Nazis, he replied:

  GET down to USURY / the cause WHY western man vomits out the jew periodically / the JEW won’t take responsibility for civic order he WONT organize a state / he is a god damned Iriquois Indian / necessary defense against parasites / JEW parasite on principle / IF you are content to be sheep all right / but MAN declining to be GOY to jewish shearer will defend himself.

  342

  I was content to be Tito’s sheep. I was content to be sheared by my Jewish usurer.

  343

  Besides calling Jews “parasites,” Ezra Pound also referred to them as “oily,” “savage,” “indolent,” “filth,” “worms,” “lice,” “cankers,” “plagues,” “snakes,” “warts” and “syphilis.”

  344

  In Canto XLV, published in 1936, Ezra Pound singled out the architecture of Pietro Lombardo as representing Good and usury as representing Evil:

  Pietro Lombardo / Came not by usura

  In the broadcasts he recorded between 1941 and 1943 for Radio Roma, he singled out Benito Mussolini as representing Good and the Jews as representing Evil.

  For Ezra Pound, usury was a Jewish plot to enslave the world — “Jewsury.” The “Hebraic monetary system,” according to him, was “a most tremendous instrument of usury,” and rather than a “war of the Jews against Europe,” it was, in fact, a “war of usury against humanity.” “When a nation dies,” argued Ezra Pound, “Jews multiply like bacilli in carrion.” That is why he recommended a purge of the Jews or a “pogrom UP AT THE top.”

  345

  (Picture Credit 1.19)

  346

  In the previous image: Ezra Pound walks along the Fondamenta delle Zattere in Venice.

  347

  On 6 August 2009, I went for a walk with Tito along the Fondamenta delle Zattere.

  On that trip to Venice, I had decided to give up our old apartment in the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff.

  In order to earn money for Tito — my Jewish usurer — I would have to stay in Rio de Janeiro forever, working as a journalist, and would never be able to come back and live permanently in Venice.

  348

  When we reached the Fondamenta delle Zattere, I received a phone call from my lawyer, Romolo Bugaro.

  He said: “3,012,761 euros!”

  349

  Romolo Bugaro phoned me again a minute later to c
orrect that figure: “3,162,761 euros!”

  350

  After seven years, the case brought against Venice Hospital had finally reached a conclusion.

  Tito had been awarded 3,162,761 euros.

  On the way back from Fondamenta delle Zattere, Tito and I passed Calle Querini, where Ezra Pound had lived.

  My parasite had ceased to be a parasite.

  351

  352

  In the previous image: the report in Il Gazzetino about Tito versus Venice Hospital.

  Headline: “Child left quadriplegic receives millions in compensation.”

  353

  Il Gazzetino reported that the civil court had ruled that the Hospital Santi Giovanni e Paolo should pay more than 3,000,000 euros in compensation to a child born in September 2000.

  They also reported that the court had accepted all the arguments presented by the lawyer Romolo Bugaro, highlighting “improper conduct by the medical staff,” “an entirely unnecessary amniotomy” and “a delay in removing the fetus.”

  354

  Antonio, William Shakespeare’s merchant, frees himself of his debt to Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, because he is represented in the Venice courts by Portia, a rich heiress disguised as a lawyer from Padua.