Humboldt: Fish, Cucumbers, Wars – and Friendships
Fish among friends? (Photo: Renata Beltrão)
3 September 2009
Guillermo’s best friend is named Arnoldo. Or was, for Guillermo hasn’t seen him in decades. The story of the two chums can be found in the anniversary issue of Humboldt magazine, which centres entirely on one topic.
Humboldt is turning fifty. In its anniversary issue, the magazine – committed to cultural dialogue between Germany, the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America – focuses on a particularly suitable topic: friendship.
Nothing simpler, thought Humbodt-makers Ulrike Prinz and Isabel Rith-Magni. “Yet then we were amazed to find,” they relate, “that although it is universal, friendship is also an unencoded element.” But what is good chemistry, really? Countless articles and essays examine the issue. In the end, “there is no formula for friendship,” Prinz and Rith-Magni sum up. “But, this issue makes one thing clear: friendships are always worth fostering.”
The articles and photos submitted for the anniversary contest also illustrate particularly lovely examples of wonderful friendships. Renata Beltrão earned first prize in the photography category for her bagged goldfish. A brief column about his best friend written by Argentinean television journalist Guillermo Rodríguez, born in 1931, was chosen as the best article. Read it for yourself:
Wars and Cucumbers
By Guillermo Rodríguez
My best friend ever is – was – named Arnoldo Waitman. We were twelve years old and attended the last grade of primary school in the village in the pampa gringa when a mediocre Argentinean writer, who advanced to educational minister under the 1943 military government, had the idea of introducing lessons in the Catholic religion to schools.
Arnoldo was Jewish. The Waitmans were the only Jews in our town and since the males of the family were circumcised, they became the target of jokes.
The Spanish Civil War had ended a few years earlier. My parents and grandparents – as far as I could learn, all of my ancestors were Spanish – had collected wheat and sent it to the hungry Republican soldiers attempting to keep Franco from taking Madrid. In 1939, my parents and grandparents lost the war from afar.
They were still wearing the tricolour (of the Republic) in their hearts in 1943 and bore an irreconcilable rancour against the enemies: Franco and his accursed generals and colonels and the priests, those blasted priests who had helped to subdue their own people. These were powerful reasons for me to need a best friend.
My father was able to exempt me from religion lessons – since religion is the opium of the people and the priest of his village in Zamora had had the village schoolteacher executed –, and since Arnoldo was Jewish, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from ten until eleven in the morning Arnoldo and I, while all of our classmates were sitting through religion, Arnoldo and I were in the schoolyard without really knowing what we should do with ourselves, alone, different from the others, segregated, mocked, our honour injured and, from that point on, friends.
We were also friends because my and Arnoldo’s mothers agreed to bring us huge sandwiches on these baleful Tuesdays and Thursdays and hand them to us through the broken fence: Arnoldo’s mother made them with cucumbers and mayonnaise and my mother’s were with cheese and corned beef (from tins that were almost magically opened with a key).
Humboldt-Magazin: The latest issue (German)
Chess came later. Arnoldo taught me the game and by the end of the year I was even able to win a few games. I played scholar’s mate since Arnoldo wanted me to.
Needless to say, we were the talk of the village. The people were offended: how could the Waitmans and the Rodríguezes dare to belittle God and insult the church? How could we dine while the others were praying? And chess? Why were we playing chess?
Arnoldo and I – and we were quite aware of it – soon belonged to a marginalized population along with the two homosexuals and three prostitutes of the village, deserving only of all sorts of malice and attacks. Eventually our friendship reached its climax: some smart aleck told me that Jews have a different willie; that they cut it. Ask him, make him show you, ask him then you’ll see!
And I actually did ask Arnoldo to show me his willie and Arnoldo obligingly pulled down his trousers – and at that moment I saw the pain and fear of five-thousand years of persecution blaze in his eyes and knew that he was my friend and always would be and that it didn’t matter at all to me that his glans was uncovered. “It’s exactly the same,” I observed, “as everyone else’s.” The pain and fear of five-thousand years, I was certain now, were suddenly cut to half size.
A year later, the Waitmans moved away. I finally left the village following my twentieth birthday as well. There were no Internet and mobile phones yet and Arnoldo and I soon lost touch with one another.
In 1957, I travelled to the volcanoes in Guatemala and met with the followers of the toppled president Arbenz, who were offering resistance in the mountains. In 1976, I read that three guerrillas were killed in Buenos Aires during an “encounter” with the military troops. One of them was named Arnoldo Waitman, but I assume that it was not “my” Arnoldo Waitman, for in 1976 he would have been 45 years old – too old for a guerrilla.
I still play chess and I still spread mayonnaise on bread and place cucumber slices on it. Or I rub corned beef on the bread and lay slices of cheese on top. “That tastes peculiar,” my son says. People know nothing of true rituals or religions today. Sometimes I even let him beat me with scholar’s mate. “Hey, play properly!” he says then, “You’re not paying attention.” “I am playing properly,” I then reply. And bow my king, I hope, with the same elegant grace that Arnoldo always had.
Humboldt is a cultural journal published by the Goethe-Institut that promotes and participates in the cultural dialogue between Germany, Latin America, Spain and Portugal. It provides a platform for writers from the Iberian and German language areas as well as other parts of the world. Humboldt takes up current concerns on subject matter from intellectual and cultural life on both sides of the Atlantic. The magazine is issued twice a year in two versions: Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
