Oslo City Hall

We embark on a round trip (6 days) that will take us from Drammen to Gjendesheim, where we will hike Bessegen, then drive on to Lom, Aurland, Borgund, Østerbø, hike to Vassbygdi, drive to Bergen, back to the East through Hardangervidda Plateau, Vøringfossen’s waterfall, Geilo, Heddal and back to Drammen.

Norway Round Trip: Drammen-Gjendesheim-Lom-Aurland-Osterbo-Bergen-Geilo-Drammen

We will see Norway’s dramatic, almost lunar landscapes of Hardangervidda, Jotunheimen’s National Park, magnificent waterfalls, fjords of dream-like quality like Sognefjord and Nærøyfjorden, lakes, 3 stave churches and Hanseatic Houses in Bergen’s Brygge district. We will also have a chance to mix with the locals and experience their way (and cost) of living, stay at their traditional hytte and enjoy Norwegians’ open-arms welcome everywhere we go.

We start in Drammen, 40 Km. from Oslo.

Detail of Oseberg Viking Ship's carved underside, Viking Ship Museum, Oslo

Portrait of Vlad Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula

Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was quite unfair with its source of inspiration, Vlad III Prince of Wallachia. It seems to be true that Vlad murdered more than 100,000 people in a country of half a million inhabitants. He seems to have enjoyed ordering slow executions and tortures such as flaying, maiming, dismembering, nail insertion in human flesh, hot-iron branding, cannibal practices and, a favourite pastime, impaling. Despite this, history has never been able to prove that he ever bit any girl’s neck.

Moreover, we should place things in context: he lived at the end of the Middle Ages in what is nowadays Romania, precisely the triple frontier made up by the Ottoman Empire, Orthodox Europe and Catholic Europe. The rulers of Wallachia knew that, no matter what side they took, there would be pounded on by somebody. Amongst the existing medieval system of political pressure there were decapitation, battering and the pillaging of entire towns. The penal code of the time wasn’t a great source of relief either, for among its dispositions were that wizards were to be burnt at the stake, forgers to be boiled in oil, blasphemers to be hung from a hook by their tongue, and whoever cut a tree down without permission had their entrails taken out and then was tied with them all the while he was forced to run around the tree until he was totally tied to it.

Let’s face it: Vlad was a psychopath, but we have to acknowledge that if we were to compare it to an academic degree, 15^th c. Wallachia would be a doctorate.

Vlad’s father, Vlad II, had already lived in such violent times. He was an  Order of the Dragon knight, which had been created in order to combat the Turks, and from there he took the surname Dracul [“dragon”]. In an etymological twist, Dracul in Romanian means “the Devil”. The little Vlad, born in Transylvania in 1431, was nicknamed “Draculea”: the Devil’s son.

With he backing of Hungary’s King, daddy Vlad became voivode (that is, Prince of Wallachia) in exchange of his support in the fight against the impious Ottoman Turks. But the Hungarians used to be involved in so many internal wars that they were not capable of helping him to defend his territory. The Turks, on the contrary, were many and were quite well armed and disciplined. As soon as he took the throne, showing an extremely acute practical sense –as well as poor ethics, daddy Vlad decided to switch sides.  He offered tribute to the Sultan, he paid homage together with 300 of his noblemen, kissed the border of his mantle and, in order to leave no doubt, handed him his youngest sons, Vlad and Radu, as hostages.

Few brothers have been as different as those two. While Vlad was portly, Radu was a weakling. While Vlad showed since early childhood a courage bordering reckless insanity, Radu had a weak character and was a dilettante. Vlad had thick eyebrows, a full lower lip and nasal cavities large as volcanoes; Radu on the contrary was popular for his handsomeness. But, above all, Vlad was austere and a repressed moralist, Rady was sensuality personified. From puberty he attracted the lust of the Sultan’s heir, Mehmed, and despite resisting it at the beginning, in time he discovered the advantages and comforts that the exchange could bring him.

It seems that Vlad did not adapt to his new environment so well. Truth be told, he didn’t stay that long. In 1446 the Hungarians avenged his father’s treason by beating him to death and stripping him of his right to be buried. His older brother, Mircea, had the opposite punishment: he was buried alive. Literally overnight Vlad went from direct heir to Prince of Wallachia.

Nevertheless, the system of election for a voivode was not based on primogeniture. In fact, it used to depend on an assembly of Slavic nobles called Boyar, who elected him amongst the royal family candidates. The election used to be carried out depending on whatever was most convenient at the time, and Vlad was certainly not convenient. His first government with Turkish support lasted two months before being removed of his post. His successor, Vladislav II, was not hostile towards the Sultan, so Turkey did not care with the change of ruler. Vlad lost the Ottoman support. Disappointed and abandoned once more, the young man wandered around Europe for the following 8 years trying to secure political back up in order to regain a throne he considered rightfully his.

His break would come from the most unexpected sides. A commercial dispute with Hungary would cost Vladislav II his throne. The Hungarian King needed a more obliging candidate to govern Wallachia, and remembered about Vlad. Negotiations started amongst the Hungarians –always ready to forget that they had killed the Dracul family- and the boyars –always ready to reach an agreement as long as it didn’t impact their wallets. We all know that politics has a short-term memory.  Not even Vlad himself had conscience issues. In order to get to his longed-for throne he had only two alternatives: become an ally of the Turks, who had already betrayed him, or take sides with his father’s and brother’s assassins. He opted for the latter option.

In 1456, at 25, Vlad entered Wallachia leading a Transylvanian army. It wasn’t too hard for him to take the voivode Vlad as his prisoner and execute him in front of a crowd more eager for violence than to see justice done. Thus Vlad III’s princedom was inaugurated. He would add the nickname Draculea to his Tepes surname (‘the impaler’).

Let’s say I am voivode of Wallachia. On the one hand I am being threatened by a 100,000-man army, on the other, a 70,000-strong army. I cannot count on my boyars, who have come up with a system that limits my power at their will. My farmers are fed up with being exploited and refuse to fight. My ancestors have lasted an average of 3 years, dedicated exclusively to stay in power. I am a penniless political nobody, without an army and without any pull in other states. There is only one thing that can keep me in power: fear. They will not overthrow me as long as they don’t dare to.

Fully conscious of this, Vlad kept a strict order in the administration of violence. Following custom, he organized an Easter feast for any boyar who had any influence in the elections of the principality, around 500 of them. When the party was at its climax he came up with a smart game of questions and answers. The first question was ‘How many voivodes have you seen come and go?’ The nobles were having fun. Several of them answered ‘Six’, ‘Eight’. The oldest ones could remember up until 30. The second question was ‘Don’t you think those are too many?’ At this point the boyars were in stitches. ‘They are more than dishes are on this table, more than the jars of wine one can drink’. They were having a ball. Vlad gave the winning answer: ‘If there have been so many it is due to your infamy and your betrayal’. Some of them cut their laughter short upon hearing him; others started thinking that it was time to go home. But it was too late. The doors of the dining-room were opened and Vlad’s personal guards went in.

The nobles were apprehended effortlessly. They begged for mercy, but nobody was listening to them. They tied their hands behind their back and made them stand with their feet wide apart. They turned them upside down and rubbed their rear exits with oil. Next, executioners inserted sharp sticks which they hammered in until they were 20 inches in. Finally, they planted the sticks on the ground like trees. The end of the stick was round, so that it didn’t pierce internal organs; it was only pushing them sideways as it went in, looking for an exit, while the body descended slowly by its own weight. It took some people 3 days to die.

Impaling had a didactic aspect. It was carried out in busy areas, like squares and roads, as a warning in case anybody should even think of betraying the voivode. The victims were left there for months, their cadavers slowly decomposing.

Vlad distributed the impaled boyars’ properties amongst minor nobles, several monks and many free peasants in order to create a new dominant class loyal to his orders. But we should not infer from this an elitist attitude on his side. Vlad was very democratic in his savageness. His next banquet was for Wallachia’s beggars and panhandlers. This time the questions and answers game was different: ‘Would you like to see yourselves free from poverty and hardship?’ The beggars wanted to. In order to satisfy their wishes, Vlad closed the doors to the room and set them on fire. The poverty issue was solved.

He also offered an effective exit to gypsies. He got 300 together, chose three of them and ordered them to be roasted. Slow fire. To the rest he gave them a choice: they could either eat their friends or join the army. The gypsies formed from then onwards an army of dubious courage.

The problem with evil people is that they always think they are good. Vlad was obsessed with his folks’ virtue, which he promoted with rather drastic measures. If anything made him despair above everything else, it was female infidelity. Women who cheated on their husbands were impaled from their vaginas with hot-iron rods. Their sexual organs and breasts were mutilated, and if their sins were serious, they were skinned before being impaled. Their sons used to generally suffer the same punishment. If they were very young they were impaled incrusted in their mothers’ empty breasts. Vlad knew by his own experience how dangerous in the future a son thirsty for vengeance could be. Infanticide was the most practical way to be on the safe side.

Nevertheless, one cannot accuse Vlad of nepotism. He was willing to impart his peculiar sense of justice even against his beloved ones. Once, upon seeing him depressed and wanting to lift his spirits up, his lover told him she was expecting a child of his. But it was a lie. Vlad made her be checked by midwives. After certifying the false pregnancy he cut her pelvis up in order to look for the supposed baby.

Some biographers, influenced by psychoanalysis, suggest that his unusual display of cruelty was due to the fact that Vlad was impotent and so he used to sublimate his sexual lacking through torture. But he would justify himself saying that his was a legitimate worry for Romanians’ healthy morals. Actually he wouldn’t say anything at all; he would simply order the biographer to be executed. In any case, it has to be said that he was equally cruel towards thieves, whom, apparently, he used to judge as reprobate beings as the poor, women, children and gypsies. Knowing fully well the harshness of his punishments –which included, apart from the famous impaling, the loss of eyes, those who cherished other people’s property did repress their impulses in Wallachia. Vlad was especially proud of the symbol of his authority: the cup to drink from in Tirgoviste Square, which was pure gold and unguarded. But nobody dared to steal it in all his reign. The empire of law and order, they say.

We have only spoken about peace up to now. Afterwards, there was a war. And things got worse.

Apparently Vlad could have saved himself the fight against the mighty Ottoman Empire. But the thing is, the Prince was quite badly mannered. The emissary in charge of collecting the Sultan’s levy showed up at the palace without taking his turban off. Vlad didn’t like that. He said: ‘I’d like in this instance to honour your customs’, and he ordered for him to have his turban nailed to his head. Needless to say, he did not pay the levy.

To top it all, Vlad devoted himself to attack the Turkish fortresses in the Danube. Perhaps he simply decided to advance himself to the invasion which would take place sooner or later. Or perhaps he was fantasizing with the idea of leading Christianity in its crusade against infidels. At least that’s what the letter he sent to the Hungarian Kind in order to convince him to add his troops to the combat seems to indicate: ‘I have killed men and women, old and young, from Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to which is located near Chilia, from the lower Danube up to such places as Samovit and Ghighen. We killed 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians, without counting those whom we burnt in homes, or whose heads of were not cut by our soldiers […]; 1,350 in Novoselo, 6,840 in Dirstor, 343 in Orsova, 840 in Vectrem, 630 in Turticaia, 210 in Marotim, 6,414 in Giurgiu, 343 in Turnu, 410 in Sistov, 1,138 in Nicopolis, 1,460 in Rahova…’ The letter was delivered with two large bags full of ears, noses and heads. But he didn’t manage to convince anybody. Vlad would have to confront Sultan Mehmed on his own, who was so furious that he had decided to lead personally both his elite guard corps, the Janissaries, and his 100,000 men army. One of his soldiers, interestingly, was an old acquaintance of Vlad’s: Radu the Handsome, Vlad’s brother, the one chosen by the Sultan to occupy Wallachia’s throne after their victory.

As his only possible strategy, Vlad, who only had 20,000 men with him, invented guerrilla warfare: he attacked at night and by surprise, plundered the Turkish rearguard, killed any soldier who set himself apart from the troops. He also developed methods to promote the courage of his own soldiers: he gave prizes and medals to those wounded in action; on the other hand, those who presented wounds on their backs, a clear sign of desertion, were impaled. Moreover, he ordered his subjects to use the strategy of scorched earth. Wallachians left their towns and took cover in the mountains with food supplies and livestock. Turkish soldiers were demoralized at not finding anything to pillage.

The sultan continued his advance towards Târgoviste under a scorching sun and without water. The more he advanced the less he understood what he stood to gain in this war. The march lasted seven days. On the last one they found the forest of the impaled: 20,000 corpses strewn in a 2,500 acre area. Men, women, children, covered by ravens and vultures which had built nests in their orifices. After the forest lay the capital, abandoned and empty.

Mehmed left Radu there, a legitimate heir who soon got the support of boyars, fed up with the excesses of the previous voivode and as anxious for peace as the Turks. Vlad escaped to Hungary. His allies had abandoned him, his brother was on Wallachia’s throne and his wife had committed suicide in view of their imminent defeat. His problems did not end there, though. The Hungarians intercepted some letters supposedly written by him offering his allegiance to the Sultan. He went to Buda in order to look for help but he only managed to get himself arrested.

He was imprisoned for 12 years, although it doesn’t seem to have been a particularly bad time for him. It was rather like a house arrest. The King of Hungary used to show him to his guests, like a circus beast known by its legendary cruelty. Who knows whether Vlad was also amused by it. He had other hobbies. He used to hunt mice to impale them. He bought birds in the market only to torment them and afterwards set them free. Once, a bailiff went into his house without warning, while in pursuit of a thief. Vlad killed him, explaining that that was not the way one should enter the house of a Prince. The Hungarian King found it very amusing.

But politics has a short-time memory. Conflicts in Wallachia went on. Radu died either murdered or in combat, we don’t even know exactly. The Turks attacked once again. The Europeans needed the best military general who had fought against them. Once more, Vlad Dracula went back to Wallachia to fight against Mehmed.

There are three versions of what happened next. The first one states the Vlad died in combat; the second one, that his men mistook him for a Turk and killed him; the third, that a hit man cut his throat from behind. In any case, all had reasons to do away with him. Vlad’s survival amongst Wallachians, Turks and Hungarians was utterly impossible. At Mehmed’s request, he was decapitated. They buried his body in Snagov’s Monastery and sent his head, preserved in honey, to the Sultan so that he could exhibit in stuck on a spear. Years later Vlad’s son, the last Dracula, would reign and be murdered like all his ancestors.

Engraving of Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula, Prince of Wallachia

An engraving of the time shows Vlad having lunch peacefully next to a forest of impaled men. Opposite him, one of his men is cutting up a corpse. Nevertheless, Vlad is neither eating human flesh nor drinking blood, he’s just having lunch. On the table is bread, maybe a stew. The engraving is part of Vlad’s history, which became the first best seller in the world, before the Bible did. German chronicles speak about him as if he were a monster; Russian ones, despite not sparing the reader a single detail about his cruelty, consider him a fair man who defended his people against foreigners and corrupt noblemen. Even many Romanians consider him a national hero, but one of them seems to have been the dictator Ceausescu, which is not precisely a good reference.

Throughout history those legends, which have a lot of oral tradition and probably are exaggerated, never got mixed with vampire tales –filthy undead lacking glamour, which abounded in Romania. That is, until Bram Stoker comes in. He turned the unpleasant spawn into a refined Central European Count, making him more palatable to the Victorian reader, adding a gloss of sex appeal.

It is unclear how much did really Stoker investigate and how much was the product of his feverish imagination. It is clear, though, that Vlad, the blood-thirsty son of the Devil whose head was torn off and place on a spear, the Prince who fought against three religions and whose soul would wander around rejected in all paradises, would make good material for any kind of fable. But there were things that not even Stoker’s literary talent could foresee. In 1931 a team of archaeologists exhumed Vlad Dracula’s tomb in Snagov’s Monastery. All they could find inside it were animal bones.

Cover of Bram Stoker's Novel Dracula

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Translated from “El príncipe de las tinieblas” by Santiago Roncagliolo. Published in El País on 21.08.2005. Available in http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/principe/tinieblas/elpeputec/20050818elpepspor_3/Tes (last accessed 06.11.2010)

Luigi Lucheni, Murderer of Elizabeth of Bavaria, Empress Sisi

His name was Luigi Lucheni, father unknown –perhaps the heir of a well-off family-, son of a humble Italian maid. In other to hide her shame, his mother left her city and went abroad. She gave birth in Paris and abandoned him in an orphanage.

He was therefore rootless since he was conceived. The orphanage gave him some education, but he could never be more than a laborer, although that’s what he was around half of Europe. In a natural way he embraced the international anarchist ideology and joined the fight for the “propaganda of the deed”. In simpler terms, the indiscriminate murder of the powerful who were oppressing the poor.

Photograph of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Empress Sisi, 1867

Her name was Elizabeth von Wittelbasch, known as Sisi, and was Empress of Austria. Wittelbaschs had a streak of madness; her cousin was the mad or crazy King of Bavaria. Sisi was as rootless as Lucheni, she had never fit neither Vienna’s Court nor the family life with her husband, Franz Joseph I of Austria.

She wandered around the world, victim of melancholy. To say that she suffered from anorexia would be to oversimplify things; she used to subject her body to a discipline bordering on punishment, as if she hated it. She had a disturbing beauty –no man could escape being fascinated by it. An infinite sadness, justified by personal misfortunes –her only male child committed suicide. A neurasthenic and morbid personality –she used to enjoy visiting mental hospitals.

Chance made their paths cross in Geneva on the 10th of September 1898.

Locheni used to work as a day laborer in the building of the Post Office Building. He was already on the Swiss police’s records, but was nonetheless considered as “not dangerous”. A huge mistake. One day he found out that the Duke of Orleans was in Geneva and decided to murder him.

The Duke was one of the suitors to the throne of France, that is to say, a nobody from a political point of view. But to the propagandists, by definition any member of royalty, aristocracy or simply rich person deserves the death penalty.

Lucheni had no backing of any organization, or any means of his own. He couldn’t even afford a weapon. He sharpened a thin awl, stuck it in his pocket and went looking for the Duke of Orleans.

The Empress was in Geneva without escort or entourage, as was her custom. She was staying at the Beau Rivage Hotel, and that morning she had wanted to go to the Territet Spa through Leman Lake. She left the Mont Blanc docks followed by only one lady-in-waiting, Sztaray Countess. Nobody recognized her; Sisi mastered the art of going incognito.

Nobody… except Lucheni. Anarchic terrorists used to devour the equivalent of tabloids, illustrated magazines and high-society news, as they had to know their enemy well. The Empress of Austria in his reach! He forgot about the Duke, Sisi ensured bigger headlines. He pretended to stumble and pierced her heart with his awl. Nobody noticed.

Sisi fell to the ground, but was helped up by the Countess. “It was nothing”, she said to calm the lady down, and they went on board. Shortly after that she fainted. “It is nothing but the fright”, she insisted. But once they were sailing the Leman waters she felt a Sharp pain in her chest.

The Countess unbuttoned her dress and saw a stain of blood the size of a coin. The wound looked insignificant, the awl had just pierced her left ventricle, causing a slight bleeding, the blood was falling drop by drop on her pericardium, causing a slow heart failure.

Only then she identified herself to the ship’s captain, who immediately turned around towards Geneva. She was taken to her hotel where she died an hour later, without complaints. Death was perhaps liberating to her.

When Lucheni, who would be sentenced to life, found out about her personality during his trial, he said in dismay: “And for me to think I had killed a person who was arrogantly happy.”

He then committed suicide.

Sisi used to exercise, trek until total exhaustion, she used to sleep on a bed without a mattress and used to purge herself in order to always be less than 110 lbs. Since she was tall, 5ft 6in, she had the best figure in Europe, as well as the most beautiful mane of hair, to which she used to look after as much as she punished her body. She was a narcissist who did not allow anybody to take a picture of her so the passage of time would not tell on her, although at 30 she looked 15, and at 50, 30. Nevertheless, a week before she was murdered a Street photographer took a picture of her. Perhaps that was the picture which allowed Lucheni to identify his victim.

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Translated from “Asesinato de una emperatriz melancólica” by Luis Reyes. Published in ‘Tiempo’ on 21.11.2008. Available in http://www.tiempodehoy.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=50&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=36243&idseccion_PK=618&h (last accessed 11.11.2009)

Portrait of Franz Joseph I of Austria, 1885

Fate conspired for Franz Joseph of Habsburg, Franz Joseph I of Austria, to become the last Emperor. He first became king despite not being in direct line to the throne. Next, he was left without a successor, for all his heirs died tragically. Finally, a chain reaction would culminate in a world war and in the disintegration of his Empire: in less than two years both Emperor and Empire had disappeared -he died towards the end of 1916, having been on the throne for a whopping 68 years minus 11 days. True, one of his grand-nephews inherited the Imperial robe, but who remembers Charles I of Austria? He was appointed at the last minute and the only role left for him was to abdicate and go into exile. Perhaps fate felt sorry for Franz Joseph, and after overwhelming him with a life of misfortunes it decided to spare him the suffering of having to write the full stop to a monarchy which went back a thousand years, and which he had embodied like no one else. Having said that, Franz Joseph was crowned by a revolution; a revolution and his terrifying mother…

In 1848 a political schism spreads throughout Europe. The monarchy falls in France, the Pope-King has to leave Rome and in Germany a certain K. Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto. In Vienna, students take over the Imperial Palace and street fights erupt. It is the moment for Princess Sophie of Bavaria, married to one of Emperor Ferdinand’s younger brothers, to carry out a coup d’état. “In order to save the dynasty”, she easily convinces Ferdinand to abdicate –he is mentally handicapped and fortunately has no offspring. It proves to be harder to convince her own husband, next in line to the Crown, to give it up, but Sophie is as clever and energetic as her husband is lacking in character. For she has decided that the new Emperor will be her 19-year old son Franz Joseph. Sophie has been plotting the move for some time, and in fact has brought Franz Joseph up to be an Emperor.

It looks like this original sin, this way of accessing the throne trampling on his father’s rights, determines the many misfortunes in his long reign.

The first is the cruelest one because it starts as a happy situation. Franz Joseph marries the beautiful Sisi out of love, an extraordinary privilege for a monarch. Nevertheless, his mother, who has given him the throne, will take away his happiness very soon: she is a terrible mother-in-law, who oppresses Sisi and separates her from her babies to educate them herself. In fairness, though, Sisi has a difficult nature, and she abandons her husband once she decides she cannot stand her mother-in-law.

From his marriage breakdown onwards, Franz Joseph’s family life will be an agony. Of his three brothers, Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, is shot by Mexicans; the next in line dies of typhus; and the youngest one is caught seducing an underage boy in the public baths and has to go on exile. The fate of the only son and heir of Franz Joseph is even worse: Rudolph commits suicide together with his lover. Next to die is Sisi, who has become a neurasthenic, wandering aimlessly abroad; she is victim of an Italian anarchist. Finally, the last to ensure the succession after Rudolph’s death, his nephew the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is murdered in 1914 by a Serbian radical in Sarajevo, triggering the Great War and bringing about the end of the Empire.

Coin of Franz Joseph I 20 Kreuzer, 1868

Nevertheless, one has to be give it to Franz Joseph: nobody bears misfortunes like him. Due to his long reign he becomes the embodiment of Majesty, the living symbol of the Monarchic Idea. The old Emperor –he did look old very early on; misfortunes age you- bears on his shoulder the tremendous complexity of an Empire which is a labyrinth of races, religions and languages. Despite this, his efforts are useless when having to face the rise of nationalisms in the 19th c., a centrifugal force incompatible with his Empire. His sincere devotedness for his subjects is also to no avail: the social spasms of the time and the demands of the masses are no longer quieted with patronizing gestures.

Franz Joseph had been the perfect ruler in the 18th century Enlightened despotism, but as far as the evolution of History in the 19th century is concerned he becomes an unbearable reactionary, dead weight, and much more so in the 20th c. His personal life is faultless during his almost seven decades reign. Despite being surrounded by the riches of an empire almost a thousand years old, he lives in perfect austerity. He eats the same every day, taffelspil, a popular ox and vegetable stew, and he is as discreet in his love affairs as in his diet.

Nevertheless, he is convinced he has been appointed by God; he considers himself Charlemagne’s heir and, through him, the heir of Roman emperors. Moreover, despite his profound Catholicism he believes himself to be above the Pope. In 1903, for the last time in history, the emperor exercises his right to veto in the conclave, thus preventing cardinal Rampolla, elected by the rest of cardinals, to become Pope.

His death in 1916 is as discreet and contained as everything else in his life has been. Despite being 86, he is in good physical shape -still walks with his famous athletic stride- and keeps a superhuman working schedule, overwhelmed by a war which is going from bad to worse. Three days before dying the painter Franz von Matsch finishes a portrait which, with the realism of a photograph, depicts Franz Joseph at his desk. On the day of his death he goes to mass and after that deals with official matters as usual. After his sudden demise, the crypt of Capuchins, the modest pantheon of the Habsburg in a Franciscan convent, opens its doors for the last time in order to take in imperial remains. As befits the last Emperor.

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Translated from “El último emperador” by Luis Reyes. Published in Tiempo on 21.11.2008. Available in http://www.historiarte.net/articulos/art066.html (last accessed 11.11.2009)

Portrait of King Edward VIII, 1936

Edward VIII was on the throne for less than a year. It was all he needed to undermine the prestige of the Victorian monarchy. He abdicated right before World War II in favour of a sadomasochist relationship. His father, George V, had already predicted it: ‘After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months’^[1]. He happened to be wrong, for Edward managed to do so in only eleven months. Nevertheless, nobody could imagine, back on the 28^th of January 1936, that George V ‘s burial would be the last splendorous occasion of the British Empire.

Back then, England was indisputably the world’s first nation, her immense empire spawning half of the planet. Its monarchy was universally respected and admired. But as the cortège in the procession to George’s Lying in State in Westminster Hall turned into New Palace Yard, the diamond cross on the Imperial State Crown fell from on top of the coffin, landing in the gutter.

Although the English are not particularly superstitious, it was impossible not to see it as a bad omen. If we think about it, World War II was just a few years away, which saw England losing both its spot as a top nation and its Empire. As far as the prestige of the British monarchy, it wouldn’t last as long. As George V had foreseen, Edward would destroy it in less than a year.

His funeral proceedings were surrounded by the majesty that the Royal family projected. The widow, Queen Mary, dignity flowing from her rigorous black figure; the monarch’s four dashing sons escorting the casket, impeccable in their military uniforms… They were, despite everything, like sinister characters of a Shakespearean drama: their presence can only end up in tragedy. Queen Mary, first of all, so imposing… too imposing. They say that she had never kissed her children, perhaps resenting the fact that her marriage had been a ‘hand-me-down’ affair. She had been engaged to George’s eldest brother, but when her fiancée died from syphilis, he was substituted by George.

The affection deficit in which the Royal children grew up goes far to explain their sickly character. The first born suffered from a clear sexual sadomasochist deviation, which turned him into a slave of the first woman who abused him. Bertie, who would succeed Edward as George VI, was pathologically shy, so much so that he couldn’t help stuttering every time he faced an audience. He chain-smoked and would die from lung cancer aged 56. With regards to the youngest one, Prince George, Duke of Kent, he was simply fascinated by brown shirts and swastikas; he would perish in 1942 during a mysterious flight. Rumour has it that he was headed for Sweden in order to break a deal with Hitler.

There is a last macabre detail surrounding the funeral of the virtuous, dutiful King. His death after a long-lasting illness, on the 20^th of January, had been caused by a lethal injection, an overdose of cocaine and morphine administered -supposedly, on Queen Mary’s authorisation- by the Royal doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn. It was not a case of euthanasia in order to ease a dying man’s suffering so much as the need of controlling the time of his demise: in order to be able to be announced by The Times, the respectable newspaper, it had to take place before midnight. Otherwise it would only make it on the evening newspapers, of a more yellow journalism. Reasons of state went above everything, right up to the end.

We can nowadays interpret all those circumstances as bad omens, but 30 years ago public opinion received the new reign with optimism. Edward was the image of the ‘modern’ monarch, somebody who would bring in fresh air. Aside from the small circle of people who knew him well –back then the royals’ private lives were not under the press’ scrutiny–, it made sense the British public thought that way. Edward, who was really known as David, had been a perfect Prince of Wales. Handsome, kind, lacking the stiffness of the Victorian Royalty but always dressed extremely elegantly, showing off like nobody else his military uniform or the suits which were designed for him –the Prince of Wales check– he had benefited from the development of the press: he was one of those people the camera falls in love with.

He was the most photographed person in the world, and he always came out well in pictures. Despite the fact that television did not exist yet, he appeared constantly in cinematographic news clips attending official events, competing in several sports, enjoying  himself in happy parties… He always conveyed friendliness, charisma and savoir faire. Chroniclers referred to as the man every man wanted to be and whom every woman wanted to marry, the pre-war David Beckham. One of his charms was his boyish face: he looked younger than he was. Perhaps that was the reason why the nation was unaware of the new King’s serious flaw.

He was already 42 and hadn’t married yet. The first dynastic obligation of a monarch is to ensure legitimate descendants. At the time of accessing the throne Edward should have already been married for 20 years and fathered several children. But the Prince of Wales had expressed himself as opposed to the marriage institution as in favour of enjoying the company of married women. At 23 he had taken his first official lover, Freda Birkin^[2], wife of the Right Honorable William Dudley Ward and later of the Spanish Pedro José Isidro Manuel Ricardo Mones, Marqués de Casa Maury. It was a long-lasting relationship, which started as lovers and evolved to confidantes.

In the letters the Prince used to write to Freda, which have been published, one can already detect disturbing character traits. Many of them are written in a grotesque style imitating the half-language of small children, but what their content is tremendous. The Prince of Wales wishes to die young, is afraid of going crazy and suffers from anorexia. His next adulterous relationship tied him to Lady Thelma Furness, an American socialite, amongst whose lovers was the Aga Khan. Through her he met the woman which would destroy his career, Wallis Simpson, an adventurer whose first husband had sexually educated her in a Chinese brothel. Wallis realised at first sight that the Prince was an eager masochist; she abused him and turned him into her puppet. The public was completely unaware of this. When a palace servant found Edward on his knees varnishing Wallis’ toes as if he was her lady-in-waiting, he didn’t sell the exclusive story to the tabloids, as he would nowadays. Instead he requested a leave of absence, because he couldn’t stand seeing his sovereign posing as a sexual slave. The King George V, though, was totally aware of what was going on, since he had ordered the secret service to keep an eye on Wallis.

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

‘I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children’^[1], George V even went to say, foreseeing what was to come. He turned out to be right, as Edward’s project was to marry Wallis Simpson as soon as she could divorce her second husband. The political cataclysm caused by the intentions of the new King was enormous. What Edward VIII pretended was utterly inconceivable in the British reality of the time. According to dynastic law, the simple fact of not having royal blood invalidated Wallis to marry the King. On top of that she was divorced, which automatically meant Anglican Church veto, of which Edward himself was the head. To make matters worse, she had a terrible social record.

The country’s forces, headed by Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, opposed to the royal whim. It was fine if the King wanted to keep her as a lover -after all almost all were so inclined. But in order to allow the wedding to take place the King would have to give up his crown. All of this took place under secret cover, since the British press at the time had a sense of national responsibility which did not allow to publish anything like that, such was the discredit for the Crown.

On the other hand, U.S. newspapers had zoned in on what an American journalist called ‘the best story since Jesus Christ’s resurrection’. But the world was not globalised yet: the U.S. belonged to suburbia, while the British nation was blissfully oblivious. Finally, on the 3^rd of December 1936, when the abdication was clearly inevitable, the British press published the constitutional scandal. On the 11^th of December, in a castle called Fort York King Edward VIII met with his three brothers in order to resign. They signed all the necessary documents for his abdication and transfer of the Crown to poor Bertie, from then onwards George VI. After that, His Royal Highness –he was no longer His Royal Majesty– read a message to the nation through the microphones of the BBC, explaining his reasons for such an embarrassing retirement. The discourse had been written for him by Churchill, who, just for the sake of going against the grain, had supported Edward VIII. It had been 10 months and 21 days of the time period forecasted by George VI for his son to ruin his life.

'London Herald': Edward VIII Abdicates

*******************************

[1] Ziegler, Philip (1990), King Edward VIII: The Official Biography, London: Collins, p. 199, ISBN 0-002-15741-1 (Translator’s note).

[2] Born Winifred May, she was universally known by her first married name as Freda Dudley Ward. (T.’s note).

Translated from “Eduardo VIII, un reinado de culebrón”, by Luis Reyes. Published by ‘Tiempo’ on 30.01.2006. Available in http://www.historiarte.net/articulos/art021.html (last accessed 10.11.2009).

Portrait of Mary Tudor, 1516

Mary Tudor (1516-1558) was the main character of one of the bloodiest periods in English history. Hammer of heretics, she re-instated Catholicism in her kingdom, prosecuting Protestants mercilessly, filling the Tower of London with prisoners and ordering the execution of hundreds of Calvinists. The atmosphere of terror and fanaticism she created earned her the nickname of ‘Bloody Mary’.

Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary, Queen of England, was born in 1516. Her mother was Catherine of Aragon, the Spanish Catholic Kings’ daughter, and her father was the famous Henry VIII. In 1533 Henry managed to have the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declare his marriage to Catherine null and void, causing England to plunge into a break with Rome and the creation of an Anglican Church at the following year. Mary’s parents’ divorce had two direct consequences: she lost her place in the succession line, and the court increased the pressure for her to abandon Catholicism. The latter would mean that she had to accept the fact that her parents’ marriage had taken place against God’s law. As a result, she spent her youth as a recluse, under a permanent state of vigilance and threat, defending her mother’s memory. During this period she turned to Catholicism as her only salvation, in the middle of an environment of ever-growing heresy and hostility towards her person. Without a doubt, the only thing which saved her from a physical elimination (plotted more than once by her enemies) was the sympathy of some sectors of the English aristocracy. They were not inclined to the implementation of Protestantism, but they were also fearful of the reaction of Mary’s powerful cousin Charles V.

When Henry VIII died in 1547 the crown fell upon his son, Mary’s step-brother[sic], Edward VI, under whose ruling Protestantism kept on spreading, leading to the destruction of imagery and other repressive measures taken against Catholics. This earned the young ruler Calvin’s effusive congratulations. During his reign, Mary lived in a golden reclusive state but suffering from several illnesses, which eventually became chronic ailments. Despite having been dispossessed of the title of Princess of Wales, she occupied the second place in the succession line, something she had managed to achieve three years earlier, right after having been reconciled with her father, thanks to, in part, the intervention of one of his wives, Jane Seymour, who had been Catherine of Aragon’s lady-in-waiting. When tuberculosis killed the childless Edward VI, Mary gained access to the throne. She had to face a Protestant conspiracy, but she managed to suppress it due to the popular support London’s citizens gave her.

At long last, at 37, she became Queen of England. She felt that it was time to put things back the way they should, and this went through restoring Catholicism. To start with, she did not hesitate in executing the head of the Protestant conspiracy, the Duque of Northumberland, together with two of his accomplices. A few days later she restored Latin masses, and excluded married priests. Catholic bishops had their positions restored at the expense of their Protestant counterparts -several of them were actually sent to prison. Among the latter was Cranmer, who was interned in the Tower of London, accused of having participated in the conspiracy plot.

Despite being able to carry out these changes, Mary was aware of the fact that she had to get married urgently and provide offspring if she wanted to be successful in her implementation of Catholicism and to thwart her enemies’ plans. It was the only thing she could do in order to push her Protestant step-sister Elizabeth out of the accession line completely. Nevertheless, this was not an easy task. Mary was already of an age and she had lost her youth and the beauty which, according to some, she had had in the past. Apparently, and given her preference to sweets, she had barely any teeth, although without a doubt she was in possession of other positive aspects, like an exquisite formal education and an undoubtedly resilient character forged in the face of adversity.

Mary accepted Charles V’s proposal to marry his son Philip just a month after she was crowned. Philip was 11 years her junior and recently widowed. Her powerful cousin was evidently a good catch: a young and handsome man, a perfect support in her determination to defend the throne from Protestant ambitions. All of this also coincided with the Emperor’s interests, who aimed to unite the territories of Flanders, Bourgogne and England under a common flag, so as to be able to better defend his continental possessions from French coveting. On his part, though, the young Philip was in the least interested in marrying Mary, but he agreed to it as an order being given by his father, as well as a necessary state mission: to produce an heir for the crowns of Flanders and England.

As expected, the Protestant factions firmly opposed themselves to the wedding, encouraged and supported by the French agents who were weary of what the wedding might bring about. Especially fearful of the Spaniard were all those nobles who had enriched themselves with the expropriation of ecclesiastical properties. Having said that, all their attempts at dethroning Mary failed, and several noblemen, among them the Duque of Suffolk, ended up on the gallows of the sinister Tower of London. Undoubtedly, this managed to convince the English Parliament to finally approve the wedding. Despite their agreement, matrimonial surrenders were very strict and established, among other dispositions, that were Mary to die childless, her husband lose any right to the throne. While negotiations were taking place, the Queen requested a portrait of her future husband. She was sent one signed by Titian; legend says that she fell in love with Philip upon seeing it.

The wedding finally took place in June 1554. A few weeks earlier Mary had had to suppress yet another Protestant revolt. People were not prepared to allow her to marry the ‘Demon of the South’, as the Spanish prince was known. She ordered the execution of all its leaders. It was becoming more and more obvious that as long as heresy had a place in England she would never be safe in the throne. For his part the groom, conscious both of his state role and of the hornets’ nest he was walking into, made efforts to please the English: he brought with him a million ducats in cash to give away, he drank stout, took part in a tournament in which he fell to the ground and he even managed to mumble a couple of sentences in English. His behaviour greatly pleased the English. He presented his bride with magnificent precious stones, which she wore on their wedding day. Mary was seen to be happy and the chronicles state that, after their wedding, both spouses devoted themselves intently to the task of producing the longed-for heir.

Catholicism was restored officially in November 1554. This meant going back to Roman obedience, which the English Parliament would endorse in January of the following year.  At the same time, and in order to pacify the nobility, it was announced that no expropriated lands would be reclaimed by the Catholic Church -only the assets which had gone to the Crown would be returned. Despite these concessions, Mary, feeling strengthened by her marriage, perhaps moved by revenge and determined to defend her throne, devoted herself in earnest to prosecute Protestants. After successfully achieving Parliament to restore anti-heresy laws in December of the same year, she devoted herself completely in her purifying task.

The few arrests were carried out in January 1555. The first person to be executed was canon John Rogers, a married priest, for not retracting his predicament. It was the 4th of February. John Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, followed him. Years before he had not avoided telling whoever he pleased that every single Catholic priest should be drowned. He was not drowned but burnt alive at the following month, right in front of his own Cathedral. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, followed next. He was an example of a convert and fanatic in any situation: years earlier, behaving as the perfect Catholic, he had not hesitated to send to the stake all of those who refused the dogma of transubstantiation. After converting to Protestantism, he had done the same to all of those who stood by it. Later on Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, bishops of Worcester and London respectively, were also sentenced for refusing to retract from their beliefs, despite being tortured. Another victim was John Philpott, archdeacon of Westminster. It goes without saying that several thousands more were imprisoned for having been found in possession of heretical writings. All of those who showed compassion or sympathy for the executed ones were arrested.

Curiously enough, Philip tried to placate the harshness of Mary’s prosecutions, in contrast to how, years later and once a king, he would behave in Flanders and Spain. Through his confessor he sent messages to Catholic bishops advising them benevolence and tolerance. His goal was to earn the sympathy of his new subjects, whether Catholic or Protestant, and an excessive repressive rigour was not in his best interests. Of all his arrangements, one was particularly significant: he managed to convince Mary to free his sister-in-law Elizabeth, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London accused of conspiracy. Months later, his pleas were decisive for her not to be imprisoned again, or for her to be pushed out of the succession line. The truth is that, despite the founded misgivings she felt towards her step-sister, Mary was incapable of refusing any petition coming from her husband, for whom she felt a blind love. Who was to tell the future Philip II that he had possibly saved the life and position in the throne of a woman who in time would become one of his most bitter enemies!

With retrospect, the Queen’s harsh treatment of Protestants cannot be understood without taking into account her enormous frustration for not being able to get pregnant. In a serious case of wishful thinking, at one point the miserable Mary was convinced that she was expecting a child: she did not menstruate, had a swollen belly, suffered from fainting spells, felt generally unwell and she could swear that she could feel the fetus move. It was even announced that the longed-for heir would be born in April 1555. She was so convinced of it that she used to spend hours sitting on the floor with her knees pressed against each other in order to help accelerate the birth, while at the same time she had her sister Elizabeth knit clothes for the future baby. But alas, the date arrived and the Queen’s belly deflated. Some Catholic fanatics, like Bonner, bishop of London, attributed the let down to a divine punishment for not having been more assertive against Protestants. Mary’s reaction to this was an immediate re-doubling of their prosecution. For years it was thought that she suffered psychological pregnancies caused by a presumed hysterical nature, but nowadays we know the true cause: she had an enormous tumor in her ovaries, which was slowly and painfully killing her. Meanwhile her husband, disillusioned by the lack of heirs and tired of a marriage of convenience, slowly started to get further away from her, finding shelter in the arms of young ladies-in-waiting. After a while, with the excuse of the Emperor’s abdication, he flew to Flanders in August 1555. This only increased the despair and sadness of a woman who found herself lonelier every day: her husband did not correspond her love, the son she so longed for did not arrive and she was surrounded by conspiratorial heretics.

When, after having been away for a year, Philip, already King of Spain, went back to England in March 1557, he only did so in order to request men and money for his war against France. Mary waited for him by the Greenwich docks, carefully made up and wearing a brand new dress for the occasion. Contrary to what her husband felt, she still believed in the possibility of having a child. She devoted herself earnestly to the task of procreation.

After spending four months with her, and having secured the help of the English, Philip II returned to Flanders in order to direct the war against France. His wife, crying a river, kissed him farewell asking him to return soon. A song has survived from such an emotional moment: ‘Gentle Prince of Spain / Come, oh, come again…’ ^[1]

They never saw each other again. Either out of desperation or madness, a few weeks later Mary sent him a messenger reassuring him she was with child. Philip II did not believe it and sent the Duke of Feria^[2] to verify that claim. The latter denied the rumour explaining that it was caused by the fact that the Queen found herself sadder and sicker by the day. She spent all day praying for the son which would never arrive and for her husband’s health, to whom she sent love letters on a daily basis, and to which he replied using cold and formal sentences. Thus, month after month, barely leaving her chamber, Mary languished. The only thing helping her soothe the aches in her body and soul was laudanum, which she took while staring ceaselessly at her beloved’s portrait next to her bed. The upsetting news of the loss of Calais at the hands of the French, the last of England’s stands in the Continent, worsened her illness. She only recovered slightly weeks before her death, coinciding with the arrival of Philip II’s confessor. He was there in order to make sure that Mary would nominate her sister Elizabeth as heiress, since the king used saw his sister-in-law as the best of the worst, and even considered the possibility of marrying her. Poor Mary thought that her husband’s arrival would follow shortly the priest’s, going through a feeble recovery for a few days, but after a while, disillusioned, she broke down again. She died in November 1558, aged 42.

All in all, from January 1555 until right before her death Mary sent to the stake to 283 Protestants, 51 of which were women. Many others who died while imprisoned. A few thousands had to go on exile and despite the fact that initially the Queen let them be, her progressive radicalization took her to send spies overseas. The orders were to murder the most prominent dissidents. Interestingly, though, despite several prelates losing their lives, not a single nobleman was executed. In fact, the vast majority of her victims were humble people who had enthusiastically or fanatically devoted themselves to the new faith, which meant that her prosecution created a deep solidarity towards the victims. Both her cruel repression, and the loss of Calais had discredited Mary and provoked, after her death, the fall of the Catholic structure she had helped re-build. England was never to be Catholic again, but the horror of the religious prosecution she created left such a deep imprint in just four years that, when she died the opposite religious prosecution caused relatively few executions: under Protestant rule since 1535, including Henry VIII’s reign, until 1679, only 379 people were executed on religious grounds, a proportionately small number if we compare it to the amount of people Mary ordered to be executed. She was given the nickname of Bloody Mary, although nowadays it only remains as a reference to the delicious cocktail based on tomato juice.

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[1] ‘The Lamentable Complaint of Queen Mary for the Unkind Departure of King Philip, in Whose Absence She Fell Sick, and Died’
The tune is ‘Crimson Velvet’. Available in http://www.archive.org/stream/earlyenglishpoet15perc/earlyenglishpoet15perc_djvu.txt

Mary doth complain;

Ladies, be jou moved
With my lamentations

And my bitter moans:
Philip King of Spain,

Whom in heart I loved,
From his royal queen

Unkindly now is gone.
Upon my bed I lie,
Sick and like to die:

Help me, ladies, to lament!
For in heart I bear,
He loves a lady dear

Better can his love content.
Oh Philip! most unkind,
Bear not such a mind,

To leave the daughter of a king:
Gentle Prince of Spain,
Come, oh come again,

And sweet content to thee I’ll bring.

(Translator’s note).

[2] Gomes III Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba was at the time V Count of Feria (1552–1567); it was not until 1567 that he was created Duke of Feria by King Philip II of Spain (1567–1571). (T.’s note)

———- Translated from “La reina sanguinaria”, by Juan Carlos Losada. Published in El País on 16.10.2005. Available in http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/reina/sanguinaria/elpeputec/20051016elpepspor_9/Tes (last accessed 10.11.2009)

Enjoy!

Girona City | 1 Day Trip | infocostabrava.com

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‘On the sixteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, I was in Madrid, fresh from the carnage at Valencia. At 10 A.M. Jacopo, at No.– Calle de la Cruz, handed me a telegram: It read, ‘Come to Paris on important business.’ The telegram was from Mr. James Gordon Bennett, jun., the young manager of the ‘New York Herald”. The reporter Stanley states later that two hours were sufficient for him to get ready for the trip. It was the beginning of his great adventure in search of doctor Livingstone, although, truth be told, he did not receive the telegram on the 16th of October, but on the 15th of September. That day he was not in Madrid, but in Valencia, and he did not leave towards Paris until the 27th of October.

Portrait of Henry Morton Stanley

By the way, Jacob was in reality Jacinto, his landlord. Too many lies in such few lines.

That’s what Henry Morton Stanley was: a pathological liar, someone who obscured reality, a man who was utterly insensitive to the pain and tragedy of others and a tale-teller of himself. But the story of this tormented and weak character who hated Africa, despite eventually becoming one of its greatest explorers, cannot be understood without knowing of his difficult origins. If we agree on the premise that childhood becomes the blueprint of adulthood, John Rowlands, his real name, started out in life with a labyrithical cartography of which he was barely able to get out.

Let’s start with his surname, Rowlands: it was bought for a few guineas from one of the town drunkards of Welsh Denbigh, where he was born in 1841. His mother, Elizabeth Parry, wouldn’t possibly work out who in town had fathered her child, so the inscription in his birth certificate reads the following: ‘John Rowlands. Bastard’. She couldn’t provide for him either, so he was allocated to a family member, who, in turn, got rid of the child when he was six by placing him in Saint Asaph’s Hospice, where he lived until he turned 15. ‘The Rowlands child’, wrote an elderly Stanley in the best of his styles, ‘had the Satanic mark of Cain branded in his forehead’. Once he reached the age limit to live in the hospice he stayed in various family homes, working in several trades, until he enrolled as a cabin boy in the ‘Windermere’, destined to New Orleans. It was 1858 and he was only 17.

He arrived in America, the place of promises and opportunities. He was just an immigrant more. By letting go of a family which never loved him and which considered him a burden, he was now free to make himself from scratch. After holding several jobs he stumbled upon the merchant Henry Hope Stanley, for whom he worked for a while. At this point versions differ (incidentally, a constant feature in his life), depending on whether it’s his own in his Autobiography, or whether we read the versions provided by biographers who have taken the time and interest to investigate his real life.

In the former version, he states that this merchant behaved towards him like a true father, giving him affection, support and his surname, eventually adopting him. The latter versions are a different kettle of fish; despite confirming that the kid worked for him, they deny that he behaved like a father towards him. The differences had been so many that even after their working relationship came to an end he would’ve forbidden his family to even mention him. He had not adopted him either: he already had two adopted daughters and did not want a third one.

That is how the young Welsh John Rowlands became Henry Stanley, a pure unilateral act, 100%  American. Having said that, this complex conversion process towards a new identity didn’t happen overnight. It would still take some years to completely set itself, for his middle surname, Morton, as if revealing the intimate doubts he had on himself, would vary quite often and become Morelake, Moreland or Morley. This identity split and feeling of rejection were to become his own life-long tyrants. Henry Stanley was the strengthened survivor of John Rowlands’ unhappy childhood. Much to his regret, person and persona would always go hand in hand.

With a brand new surname he started a new, action-packed existence, which saw him become a farmer in the South and later a volunteer in the confederate army,which he deserted as soon as he entered combat. The man who justified his activities in Africa as a spokesperson of a higher civilisation who would eradicate slavery among other evils, was during those years such a Southerner and racist so as to state the following: ‘I could not manage to comprehend how a snouted, soot-skinned being, brought from a far away country, could create so much tensions among white brothers.’ After enrolling in the Marine, deserting once more and attempting to travel around the world, he left, like so many others, to try his luck in the West.

Intuitively, he had already understood a couple of things about himself: first, that he loved action-packed situations and guns, which made him feel the adrenaline rush of his power. The second thing was a consequence of his loneliness and uprootedness: since in his private life there was nobody special listening to him, he had to look for some means of communication. One of them could be journalism. Stanley, through a strange compensation mechanism, developed during those years a writing style that was both light and precise, vibrant and full of colour. He had been born with a gift for narration. Indeed above all, Stanley was a first-class writer. He used to collaborate for several local newspapers, earning a living as a journalist describing war scenes. The main characters of his articles were General Grant, General Sherman and Colonel Custer. Like him and in the same trenches of the Wild West, writers like Joseph Pulitzer and Mark Twain were also setting the foundations of journalism.

One day he decided that he had to aim higher, so he went to the ‘New York Herald’ offices, the newspaper founded by James Gordon Bennett in 1835, which had acquired a vast readership by always searching for the appropriate angle, whatever it might be, to surprise and hook its audience. The perfecting of such a sensationalist style made him become the undisputed leader of the times. Directing the newspaper was his 26 year-old son, incidentally Stanley’s age. Gordon Bennett had already taken notice of him. He had been pleased with his chronicles on the American Natives, and the day Stanley went to ask for a job he greeted him personally.

His first assignment for the ‘Herald’ marked the beginning of a long-lasting relationship. He was sent to Aden to write about a British expedition to punish the Negus in Abyssinia. His British colleagues, who tripped him up more than once for being American, were astounded at finding out that Stanley’s chronicle had become the world exclusive on the resolution of the conflict. As always when he felt the spears of mocking, he displayed a sound capacity for revenge. His colleagues found out afterwards that Stanley had got on board a ship, managing to get ahead of them, had bribed the telegraphist, and by a stroke of good luck, the submarine cable had broken down right after transmitting his chronicle, which prevented anybody else from doing so. He kept this latter fact away from the knowledge  of his boss.

His second big mission, after covering several military confrontations in Greece, Turkey and the Near East, took him to Spain. The country was going through a particularly tumultuous period after General Prim’s coup d’état and the overthrowing of Queen Isabel II. All in all, Stanley lived in the country for two periods between 1868 and 1873. The fact that he didn’t leave any written record of this experience does not detract the importance of a situation which proved to be pleasant in personal terms and pivotal from a professional point of view.

Right after arriving in the country he interviewed Prim, who came across as some sort of fussy butler. He attended the drafting of the new Constitution and the steely conflicts between monarchics and federalist republicans, he followed passionately Emilio Castelar’s tirades on freedom of cult,  and he was on the scene at Carlist confrontations. In general, he tried to adapt to the strange lifestyle of Spaniards, which according to him was based on being up all night, drinking straight black coffee and taking part in political debates. ‘What time might these people go to bed, if they ever do so at all?’, he pondered, taken aback.

He wasn’t a celebrity yet, but he was about to become one. When he showed up at his boss’ call in Paris he was only a reliable and smart journalist, with good observation skills, who only craved going up a bit higher in the journalistic world. This would allow him to earn more money, be able to marry and become relatively popular among his readership. In turn, this would to mitigate the annoying need for being accepted, one of his obsessions, which took hold of him with the same fixation as a hungry man has towards food.

The fact that his boss was sending him to Africa for the second time in a row with the excuse of finding Livingstone and interviewing him was seen by Stanley as an opportunity to reach his goal faster. Nevertheless, the assignment took his breath away: the whole Livingstone thing would be towards the very end of his mission, because before that he had to attend the inauguration of the Suez Canal, after which he had to go up the Nile, write a touristic guide, gather information about the Bakers and write up a report on his exploring of the area. Next he had to head towards Jerusalem and report on the archeological excavations, continue towards Constantinople in order to write about the tensions between the Sultan and the Jedive (Viceroy) of Egypt and continue towards Crimea in order to report about the Russo-Turkish War (Crimean War). On the way he was to cross the Caucasus until reaching the Caspian Sea to write about a Russian expedition. Later on he was to reach Persia via the Euphrates Valley. From there he was to go to India, where he would board a ship and head on to Africa’s West Coast to find Livingstone. Once done, he would  head to China, on a last mission. The bewildered reporter’s answer seems to have been quite simple: ‘I’ll do all that is humanely possible.’

He fulfilled his mission beyond expectations, except the one in China. The international commotion which took place after he met the most mediatic character of the time, the explorer and missionary David Livingstone, prevented him to complete his assigned route. At reaching Zanzibar after an exhausting sailing trip from China, the thought of having to get into deep Africa largely depressed him. In contrast to what other explorers, merchants or missionaries who had chosen their route felt, for Stanley this was an annoying obligation of his journalistic work: ‘I felt dejected. Had I not been given the formal order I received, I would have gladly resigned from the mission.’ From the island he thought about the African continent as ‘an immense swamp.’ Stanley never loved Africa, he merely benefited from it. Whenever towards the end of his days he expressed a nostalgia for the continent, he only referred to an idealised space, a place without norms or restrictions, where nobody could reproach anything to him and where he could let his instincts loose, whatever their nature were.

Leaving Bagamoyo on the 21st of March 1871 he had  191 men with him. He also had the usual necessary gear for an expedition, which included a camping bed, a bathtub, silverware, a Persian carpet and several Sillony champagne bottles so as to be able to toast and celebrate his finding Livingston. The Scottish explorer survived hardships trying to find the last fringes of the start of the Nile, which had been left undiscovered by the explorers Speke and Burton. Livingstone was in fact a sweet-tempered man, who enjoyed a solid popular esteem back in England. He was the exact opposite to Stanley, for whom the African adventure was only a newspaper report to be written. Free from any kind of moral obligations, the journalist advanced through Africa leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. He reached Lake Tanganyika in just 231 days, which was unthinkable at the time: to other explorers it took years to manage to reach their objectives. His return trip was ever faster. As with all his other trips, none of his white colleagues survived the harshness of his methods. It is easy to imagine the desperation of one of them when, crazed with suffering and agonizing, he shot his boss’ tent -the latter being inside. There was never a single witness who could provide an alternative version to the vibrant tales that Stanley used to publish after his trips – which nowadays still arise in the reader conflicting emotions.

Stanley returned to England after spending a few months with Livingston, only to realise that, despite the price he had paid for his efforts the English still held a deep contempt for his feat -due to the fact that he was just a vulgar American journalist, or was he perhaps a Welsh penniless bastard who emigrated to America? The scientific community dealt with the former issue, projecting his arrogance, and the yellow press, just as it does now, commented on the latter, airing the most painful issues for someone of such a fragile personality: his humiliating origins, which he had taken such pains to hide.

His reputation sky-rocketed after that. Interviews here and there, headlines and more headlines. James Gordon Bennett exploded in a jealous fit: ‘Shut up!’, he yelled at him in his telegram sent from New York. It had proven to be too much for such an egocentric and mean personality, as was the New York Herald’s, who was witnessing the unstoppable rise to fame of his journalist. If Stanley was a soulless person, he certainly could be a pupil to his boss: a true fool. Upon the journalist finishing his exhausting mission and reaching Zanzibar he found out that Bennett hadn’t sent the necessary funds to set up the search expedition. The North-American consul in the island had to sponsor it in the end; the documentaries and articles that Stanley was sending to the newspaper were never published with his name, and only when he successfully found the Scotsman did Gordon give the order to add his name to his articles. Gordon Bennett’s bad manners reached paroxysm when he published a terrible criticism of his most brilliant employee’s book (In Search of Dr Livingstone), which as a consequence saw Stanley’s US conference tour cancelled.

Incomprehensibly, their working relationship followed its course. Gordon Bennett sent him on a short mission again to Ghana’s coast, and Stanley, breaking a sacred norm in journalism, was not only happy to write about it: he fought and shot as well. We know it through general Woseley’s comment, in charge of the operation, who unashamedly praised “the sang-froide and good aim of the reporter”.

Undoubtedly, though, his greatest exploit was his third great trip to Africa, where he finished defining the origins of the river Nile, proving, by circling Lake Tanganyika, that it has not only one but multiple beginnings. The expedition had been sponsored between ‘The London Daily Telegraph’ and the ‘New York Herald’, and during its course he travelled toward the riverbed of Lualaba River in order to advance through the centre of Africa until he reached the imposing waters of the Congo River, of which he drew a map. He had spent 999 traveling in Africa from the western to the eastern coast, as he tells in his book Through the Dark Continent, a crazy race that helped him advance at an even more frantic rhythm, for in his tons of equipment he carried a destructive arsenal made up of single- and double-barrelled rifles, as well as small revolvers. His men advanced in record time, true, because they did so shooting to kill and abandoning the ill to their fate.

Criticism worsened at his return to London. Human rights organisations attacked the man, reporting that his effectiveness was rooted in inhuman and intolerable methods used against the native people’s dignity. He was also brought down by the old suspicions on the part of the scientific community with regards to his status as a journalist, and the juicy garbage about his true identity flooded press pages. Fame was a whirlpool which stirred inside him feelings of bitterness, humiliation and loathing. How did his wayward boss react? After taking good benefit of the publicity that befell his newspaper, he proposed Stanley something even more difficult. The ultimate test. Something which would mean an even bigger bomb to his readership, or which would become the most heroic of sacrifices. He commissioned him a docu-expedition to the North Pole! Stanley didn’t take it any longer and angrily resigned from his job. He would never live in the US again.

The disappearance of Gordon Bennett from his life gave  way in turn to the apparition of one of the worst villains which humankind has had to suffer: the Belgian King Leopold II, who, according to Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost, turned the Congo region into ‘one of the largest death camps of our contemporary era’.

The King hired Stanley in order to establish the commercial basis which would allow him to take hold of that enormous territory, and commercially exploit it under a slavery regime for his own personal benefit. Under a cunning cover of humanitarian interests, Leopold tricked the European scientific and exploring community for over 21 years (between 1885 and 1906), and committed what Vargas Llosa qualifies as a genocide, comparable to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Mark Twain, who was part of the international movement against slavery in that region of Africa, spoke of a horrifying number of deaths: between 5 and 8 million lives.

Yet Stanley set up the commercial bases, earned a generous salary from the Belgian coffers and looked the other way. This time, though, there was a white witness who would live to tell of Stanley’s stony sensitivity with which he treated the African population. This man was Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, an Italian with French citizenship, educated, sensitive and of such refined manners that he used to advance in the Western territories of the Congo basin, named nowadays after him, more with the artificial fireworks and pyrotechnia of a patient negotiator rather than authentic firearms. ‘Make the effort’, he used to harangue his men, ‘to understand the black mentality. Mix with them. No firearms and no bodyguards. Don’t forget that you are the intruder.’ Brazza was repulsed by Stanley’s methods, and for this reason he made his position clear to the press: ‘I travel around the region as a friend, not as a thug.’

After this experience Stanley still carried out a last expedition in Africa in search of Emin Pacha, a German Jew called Eduard Schnitzer who worked as a doctor in the Egyptian army. His biographers say that this was his most violent, cruel and bloody expedition, although in its course he identified the Ruwenzori Range in the famous Mountains of the Moon. He accepted the commission simply because his third girlfriend, Dolly Tennant, had rejected him when he proposed, although she ended up accepting when he returned. They married on the 12th of July 1890. Stanley was almost 50 and it was the first time he was having an intimate experience with a woman. His previous two girlfriends, Katie and Alice Pike, not only had abandoned him while he was writing them steamy love letters from Africa, but on his return he had found them successively married. He died 15 years after his wedding, leaving an unfinished autobiography, so we do not know whether he managed to achieve what we nowadays call internal peace. Did his ghosts leave him alone?

Some definitely didn’t. His old boss, James Gordon Bennett sent a ‘New York Herald’ reporter to Stanley’s door with the mission of finding out if, after being married, there was any truth in the rumour that his most famous reporter and his wife not only slept in separate beds, but that he also abused her. Dolly denied the rumours and the reporter left to cover his next assignment. With regards to Gordon Bennett, he ended up his days like those villains whom life punishes with forgetfulness, abandonment and loneliness.

Translated from “Metiroso patológico”, by Pilar Rubio, published in “El País Semanal”, 5^th June 2005 (available in http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/Mentiroso/patologico/elpeputec/20050605elpepspor_17/Tes)

One of the things that seems to give you this “a lot of character” is to want things your way. But, doesn’t everybody like that? Especially in the things that matter?

Of course there is a line between liking things being done your way and imposing your way on other people. When the latter happens, you’re either in possession of “the best way” (it sometimes is the case) or you’re just close-minded and incapable of accepting the fact that there are “other” ways of doing the same thing and as respectable and correct as yours.

I have been accused of behaving like that. I have behaved like that (and chances are I will behave like that). Especially when it comes to friendships.

You meet somebody, you feel an affinity, you want to meet more often, you seem to agree on basic issues and behaviours with that person, you meet more often and suddenly you go through a bad patch. This somebody offers you support and consolation and there you have it, a friend.

You get over your affliction and keep on with your friend. Now you’ve been shown that there is somebody that cares about you. And we (people) like that. Whether we like saying it or not.

Then, for women with a lot of character, things get complicated. Normally such women tend to have strong feelings towards things that matter to them (friendship being one of them), and tend to take things to heart. They remember, too.

Friends to them become a sacred thing, something to protect. Limits start getting blurred and friends become kin.

Beware then of having an opinion and exercising your right to express it. Women with a lot of character do not tend to take very well any criticism towards themselves -I think I can claim to know what I’m talking about here. But they do not take at all any criticism, independently of the aim it is being delivered with, of their friends. Beware of being your own person, of having your own character and of meaning them well.

Because then you’ll not only get into trouble, you will lose that friend. And if you happen to be geographically close to your friend, it is going to be a long and painful process. Like losing your partner. It is the same thing.

A woman I know tells her daughter: “Real friends don’t dump you”. The child is only 5 and is not allowed to go further from her street with her older friends. You should hear her wailing when the other kids go away (they have more flexible parents) and she is left behind.

Very true. But very sad too.

It is sad to have to degrade people from “real friend” to “friend”. What’s more, you wish you could automatically downgrade them to “nobody, actually”. Because in that downgrading process, like with a break-up, there is always the little but gradually larger deceptions, the hope, the thinking you’ve lost all hope, the regaining of hope, the next deception.

And on, and on.

What scares me is that I, having established I have a lot of character, have done that. Have deceived a person like that, have hurt and inflicted pain in such a way.

I hope I have never done so for not letting other people (other friends) have their own opinions, be it on religion, politics or on other people. It is not compulsory to like people. It should be acceptable too.

I think I better go and concentrate on having less character -how’s that for a corporate goal? It will probably get me a pay rise, actually.

I don’t know what to talk about. Death or love? Or is it the same? About what?’

We had married recently. We still walked down the street holding hands, even when we were shopping. Always together. Used to tell him ‘I love you’. But I didn’t know yet how much I loved him. I could not imagine it. We lived in the building blocks of the firefighters’ unit, where he used to work. In the flat at the top. There were three other young families; we had a kitchen to share. And downstairs there were the cars. Red firefighting lorries. That was his job. I was always aware of everything: where he was, what was going on.

I heard a noise in the middle of the night. Shouting. I looked out the window. He saw me: ‘Close the windows and go to bed. There is a fire in the plant. I’ll be back soon.’

I didn’t see the explosion. Only the flames. Everything looked lit up. The whole sky. Tall flames. And soot. A horrible heat. And he was not back yet. The soot was caused by burning tar; the plant’s ceiling was covered in tar. Over which people used to walk, he remembered later, as if it was resin. The flames were suffocating, and all along, he was crawling. He went up the reactor. They were throwing out the burning graphite with their feet. They went there without wearing their canvas suits; they left with what they were wearing, in their shirts. Nobody warned them, they called them as if it were a normal fire.

Four. Five. Six. At six we were to go and see his parents. To plant potatoes. There are 40 Km from Pripiat city to Sperizhie, where his parents used to live. We had to go to sow and plough. It was his favourite job. His mother often remembered how neither herself nor her husband wanted to let him go to the city; they even built him a new house.  But the Army took him. He served in Moscow, in the firefighting troops, and when he came back he only wanted to be a firefighter. He didn’t wish for anything else. [She goes silent].

Sometimes I think I can hear his voice. Alive. Not even photos have the same effect on me like his voice. But he never calls me. And in dreams, it is me calling him.

Seven. At seven they told me he was in hospital. I ran there, but the hospital was already cordoned off by the militia; they didn’t let anybody through. Only ambulances were allowed through. Militians were screaming: the cars are contaminated, do not get close. I was not alone, all the women, whose husbands were that night in the plant, came over.

Do not trespass.

I ran looking for somebody I knew who worked as a doctor in that hospital. I grabbed her by the uniform as she was getting out of a car. ‘Let me get in!’ ‘I can’t! He’s bad. They’re all bad.’ I was still grabbing her. ‘Only to see him.’ ‘Fine’, she says. ‘Quick, fifteen, twenty minutes.’

I saw him. He was swollen all over. He almost didn’t have any eyes. ‘Milk! Lots of milk!’ said my friend. ‘Let him drink at least three litres.’ ‘He does not drink milk.’ ‘Then now he’ll have to.’

Many doctors, nurses and especially assistants in that hospital would be ill after a while. They would die. But back then nobody knew it.

At ten in the morning the technician Shishenok died. He was the first one. On the first day. Then we found out that underneath the rubble another one had been trapped, Valera Jodemchuk. They didn’t manage to get him out. They were trapped between concrete. Back then we still didn’t know that all of them would be the first ones.

I ask him, ‘Vasia, what will I do?’ ‘Leave! Leave! You’re expecting a child.’ I am pregnant, it is true. But how am I going to leave him? He asks me ‘Go! Save the child!’ ‘First I’ll bring the milk and then we’ll see.’

My friend Tania Kibenok arrives. Her husband is in the same room. She has come with his father, who has a car. We all get into the car and we go to the village to get milk. About 3 kilometres from the city. We buy many 3-litres containers of milk. Six of them, so that there was plenty for everybody. But the milk was provoking them to vomit horribly. They kept on losing consciousness constantly; they put them on a drip. Doctors assured us, I don’t know why, that they had been poisoned by the gases; nobody was talking about the radiation.

In the meantime the city was filled up by military cars, all the roads were closed. You could see soldiers everywhere. Short-distance trains stopped running. They washed the cars with a white powder. I felt alarmed. How was I going to get to town at the following day to get fresh milk? Nobody was talking about the radiation. Only military men were wearing masks. City people carried the shops’ bread, muffin bags open. On the shelves there were cakes. Life went on as usual. They washed the streets with powder.

At night they didn’t let me into the hospital. A sea of people around it. I was standing in front of his window; he got close to it and shouted something at me. He looked so desperate! Among the crowd somebody made out what he was saying: they were taking them to Moscow that night. The wives got together in a circle. We made up our minds: we are going with them. Let us be with our husbands! You have no right! We tried to get through by pushing and scraping. The soldiers, soldiers had already formed a cordon of two rows, and they prevented us from getting through by pushing. Then the doctor came out and confirmed that they were being taken to Moscow that night on a plane, that we had to bring them clothes; what they were wearing in the plant had already been burnt. Buses were not running already, and we went on foot, running, home. When we came back with our bags, the plane had already left. They had lied to us. So that we didn’t shout, nor cry.

Night fell. On one side of the street, buses, hundreds of buses (they were already preparing the city’s evacuation), and on the other, hundreds of firefighting cars. They brought them from everywhere. The entire street was covered in white foam. We were treading on that foam. Shouting and swearing.

Evacuating the city

They said on the radio the city would be evacuated for three, maybe five days. Take winter and sports clothes with you, for you are going to live in the woods. In tents. People were even happy: they are sending us to the countryside! We will celebrate the First of May. Something unusual. People were preparing roasted meat for the trip, they bought wine. They took guitars, tape-recorders. The wonderful May celebrations! Only those women whose husbands had suffered the misfortune were crying.

I can’t remember the trip. When I saw his mother it felt like I was waking up. ‘Mother, Vasia is in Moscow! He was taken there in a special flight.’ We had just sowed the orchard. Potatoes, cabbages (and in a week’s time they’d evacuate the village!) Who was to know it? That night I threw up violently. I was six months pregnant. I felt so ill.

At night I dream he is calling me. While he was alive he used to call me in his dreams: ‘Liusia, Liusia!’. But after he died he didn’t call me a single time. Not a single one. [She cries]. I wake up in the morning and  tell myself: I am going to Moscow on my own. I that… ‘Where are you going to go, in your condition?’ his mother asks me, crying. My dad also came with me: ‘It is better if I go with you.’ He took all the money they had in their account, all of it…

I can’t remember the journey. The entire trip has been erased from my memory. Once In Moscow we asked the first militian we saw to which hospital the Chernobyl firefighters had been taken to, and he told us; I was even surprised, for they had scared us we wouldn’t be told, it was a state secret, ultra secret.

To the Clinic number 6. To the Schúkinskaya.

The hospital was specialized in radiology, and they did not let you in without a pass. I gave money to the guard and he told me ‘Go ahead.’ He told me the floor I had to go to. I don’t know who else I implored and begged to. The truth is that I had already arrived to the radiology section manager’s office: Anguelina Vasílievna Guskova. I still didn’t know her name, I could not remember anything. The only thing I knew was that I had to see him. Find him.

She quickly asked me: ‘But, on God’s name! Child! Have you got any children?’

How was I to tell her the truth? It was clear I had to hide my pregnancy. She wouldn’t let me see him! Thankfully I am thin and it was not showing at all.

Yes, I answered. ‘How many?’ I think to myself ‘I have to say I have two children. If I only have one, she won’t let me through.’

‘A boy and a girl.’

‘Well, if you have two, I don’t think you’ll have any more. Now listen: his central nervous system is completely damaged; his spine is totally destroyed.’

‘Well’, I thought to myself, ‘this will make him more nervous.’

‘And listen to me well: if you start crying, I’ll send you home straight away. It is forbidden to embrace and kiss each other. Don’t get too close to him. I’ll grant you half an hour.’

But I already knew I wouldn’t leave. If I did, it would be with him. I had sworn to myself!

I get in…I see them sitting on their beds, playing cards, laughing.

‘Vasia!’, they call him.

He turns around. ‘Good Lord! She has even found me here! I am lost!’

It was funny to see him with his size 48 pajamas for his is a 52. Too short in the sleeves and legs. But the swelling in his face was gone. They were injecting them with some kind of solution.

‘You, lost?’ I ask him.

And he wants to hold me.

‘Sit down’ the doctor doesn’t let him get any close to me. ‘No embracing here.’

I don’t know how, but we made a joke out of that. And a minute after everybody got closer to us, even people from other rooms. All of them were our men. From Prípiat. For they brought 28 of them in that plane. What’s the story? What’ s going on in the city? I tell them that they have started to evacuate people, that they are taking all the city to the country for three to five days. The men grow silent; but there were two women there, one of them was on duty at the entrance the day of the accident, and she starts to cry: ‘My God! My children are there. What will become of them?’

I wanted to be alone with him; well, even if it was only for a minute. The guys noticed and each of them came up with an excuse in order to get out to the corridor. Then I held him and kissed him. The he pulled away.

‘Don’t sit close to me. Take a chair.’

‘That’s nonsense’, I told him, giving it less importance. ‘Did you see where the explosion came from? What was that about? Because you were the first ones to arrive.’

‘The most likely explanation is that of sabotage. Somebody has done it on purpose. All the guys agree on this.’

Back then that’s what they said. That’s what they believed.

When I arrived at the following day they had separated them, each in a different room. They had categorically forbidden them to go out to the corridor. To talk to each other. They communicated among themselves by knocking on the walls. Stop-hyphen, stop-hyphen. Stop. Doctors explained that each organism reacts differently to the radiation doses, so that what one can stand might kill the another. Where they were, even the walls reacted to the Geiger. To their left, their right and the bottom floor was emptied of people. They took everybody else out, they did not leave a single patient inside. Not even on top, nobody else was left. (…).

His death

One night I’m sitting on a chair beside him. At eight in the morning I tell him ‘Vasia, I’m going out for a while. I’m going to rest a bit.’ He opens and closes his eyes, he lets me go. Once I get to the hotel and to my room, I lie on the floor –I couldn’t lie down in bed, I was so sore all over- I am called by a nurse: ‘Go! Run to see him! He’s calling you nonstop!.’ But that morning Tania Kibenok had asked me so many times, she had begged me: ‘We’re going to the cemetery together. I can’t do it without you.’ That morning they were burying Vitia Kibenok and Volodia Právik.

He was very close to Vitia. Two friendly families. A day before the explosion we had taken a picture together in the residence. How handsome our husbands look there! Happy. The last day of our past life. The time before Chernobyl. How happy we were!

I come back from the graveyard and I hurriedly call the nurse: ‘How is he?’ ‘He died about fifteen minutes ago.’  What? I’ve spent all night beside him, I’ve only been away for three hours! I was beside the window, screaming ‘Why? Why?’ I was staring at the sky and screaming. Everybody in the hotel could hear me. They were scared to get close to me. But I got over it and told myself that I would see him for the last time, that I would go to see him. I flew down the stairs. He was still in the chamber, they had not taken him away yet.

His last words were ‘Liusia! Liusia!’ The nurse tried to calm him down telling him that I had just left, but that I would be back soon. He sighed and went quiet.

I did not leave his side again. I went with him to the grave. Although what I remember is not the coffin, but the polyethylene bag. That bag. In the morgue they asked me whether I wanted to be shown how they were going to dress him, and I said I did. They dressed him with his uniform, and they put his hat on his chest. They did not put his shoes on. They could not find adequate shoes, because his feet had swollen. It looked like he had bombs instead of feet. They also had to cut up his uniform, they could not put it on him.

A shattered body

His body was shattered. He was a big bloody wound. During his last two days in hospital I would take his hand and the bone moved inside, it was separated from the flesh. Bits of lung and liver would come out of his mouth. He was drowning in his own entrails. I would cover my hand with a surgical gauze and I would put it inside his mouth in order to take all that from inside of him. This can’t be told! This can’t be written! It can’t be borne! All my beloved…all so mine. No shoe size would fit him. They put him in the coffin barefoot.

In front of my very eyes. Dressed formally, they put him into a plastic bag and they tied it up. And once in that bag, they put him inside the coffin. They also put the coffin inside another bag. A transparent film, but thick as a tablecloth. And all of this was put inside a zinc coffin. They could barely fit it in. Only the hat was left on top.

Everybody came. His parents, mine. We bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. An extraordinary commission received us. All of us were told the same: we cannot give you back your husbands’ bodies, your children’s bodies, they are extremely radioactive and they will be buried in a Moscow graveyard in a special way. Inside soldered zinc coffins, beneath reinforced concrete. You have to sign these documents. We need your consent. And if somebody, outraged, wanted to take the coffin home, they convinced him that they were heroes, they said, and that they did not belong to their families. They were official people. And they belonged to the State now.

We got into the bus. Relatives and a few military men. A colonel with a radio. I could hear coming from the radio: ‘Wait for orders! Wait!’ We drove around Moscow for two or three hours, through the belt road. Then we went back to Moscow. And from the radio: ‘We cannot enter the graveyard. Foreign correspondents have surrounded it. Wait a bit longer.’ The relatives were silent. Mother was wearing the black handkerchief. I feel myself losing consciousness.

I have a hysterical attack: ‘Why do we have to hide my husband? Who is he? Is he an assassin? A criminal? A common prisoner? Who are we burying?’ My mother tells me ‘Hush, hush, my daughter.’ And she caresses my head, she holds my hand. The colonel informs through the radio: ‘Requesting permission to enter the graveyard. The wife has had a hysterical attack.’

Translated from “Voces de Chernóbil, 20 años después”, by Svetlana Alexievich, published in “El País Semanal” on 9^th April 2009 (available in

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/reportajes/Voces/Chernobil/anos/despues/elpdomrpj/20060409elpdmgrep_8/Tes)

Belarus after the catastrophe

‘Belarus. To the rest of the world we are a terra incógnita, unknown land, still to be discovered. The White Russia, that’s more or less how our country’s name sounds in English. Everybody knows about Chernobyl, but only as related to the Ukraine and Russia. Belorussians still have to tell their story…’

(Naródnaya Gazzette, 27^th of April 1996).

On the 26^th of April, 1986, at 1:23’58” a series of explosions destroyed the reactor and building of the 4^th energetic block of Chernobyl’s Nuclear Central Plant (ACP), located near the Belorussian frontier. Chernobyl’s catastrophe became the most serious technological disaster of the 20^th century.

For the small Belarus (with a population of 10 million inhabitants) it meant a national cataclysm, despite Belarusians not having any nuclear plant within their territories. Belarus was still an agricultural country, with a population mainly rural. During the Big Patriotic War, German Nazis destroyed 619 Belarusian villages and their inhabitants. After Chernobyl the country lost 485 villages and towns: 70 of them are buried forever. During the war one out of 4 Belarusians died; nowadays, one out of five lives in a contaminated territory. We are talking about 2.1 million people, 700,000 of them being children. Among the causes of the demographic fall, radiation is at the top. In the regions of Gomel and Mogilyov (the most affected by Chernobyl’s accident), the death rate is a 20% higher than the birth rate.

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