Proyecto completo

No sé cómo andamos de inglés... pero como "Anónimo" me pide el final de Kontinualá... y no lo hay, lo más cercano es el Proyecto que presenté a la Beca berlinesa... Me lo tradujo el gran amigo Peter Besas y... esto es el Tratamiento de "El Sumo y la Cirujana"
Introduction

When does a story become a legend? Is it after the passing of time or, as in the case of miracles, after a number of proofs attest to its having happened, even if it isn’t exactly as it occurred?

Now that I happen to think of it, maybe this story isn’t a legend after all but rather a miracle, an event which cannot be rationally explained and which has something of the supernatural about it.

Certainly, the protagonist of this story has an element of the “supernatural” about him. But this is also a love story. And I think we can all agree that falling in love has an irrational side to it.

So let me put it this way. This is not just a legend, but a miracle as well. For when I see couples around me kissing or holding hands, I still think that love is a miracle.

Historical Background

History tells us that the Berlin Wall came down on the night of November 9th 1989. More exactly, at 11 p.m., when, due to public pressure, the control point at the Bornholmestrasse was opened, followed then by other crossing points.

But the legend (or the miracle) we’re concerned with preceded this event by several hours when, near the Niederkinchnerstrasse, a Chinese Sumo wrestler, aided by a group of Berliners, knocked down the Berlin Wall… for love.

All through 1989 profound political changes were taking place in various East Bloc countries. It was the final stage of the collapse of the Communist regimes in East European countries and the end of the Cold War.

Months earlier in that same year, 1989, the well-known demonstrations had taken place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square when large numbers of Chinese protested the repressive and corrupt nature of the Communist Party that ruled over them.

The world was certainly changing.

Historical Background of Our Story.

Those terrible events in Tiananmen Square, which resulted in the death of hundreds of people living under a repressive military regime, triggered international condemnation and brought the Popular Republic of China’s prestige to its nadir. For this worldwide condemnation resulted in the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to invite their former allies to its shores in order to show them that China was a perfect, compact, progressive country.

The visit of the decadent politicians of the Propaganda Department of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), accompanied as always by members of the East German secret police, the Stasi[1], turned out to be a tremendous success. Like old comrades, all could talk of the “good old Socialist days” with full ostalgie[2].

All this heady palaver of the power-brokers ended in an even headier bout of sake-drinking. At the end of a banquet held in honor of the guests, the hosts presented an exhibition of Chinese wrestling. Among the contestants one stood out as seeming to be almost supernatural in his prowess, not only in respect to his size and the amazing agility with which he was able to throw about his 150 kilos of weight, but also in his capacity to concentrate on the match and in his rivetting gaze which fixed all details of everything happening around him. So great was his prowess that he polished off his rivals in a few minutes.
The leaders of both countries were so taken aback by this extraordinary exhibition of skill and strength that they asked to personally meet this colossus of Red China and his trainer.

The wrestler, who was 26 years old, neither opened his mouth nor took his gaze off some imaginary far-off point. He was a youngster who hailed from a small village in the mountainous region of the Sungari Valley. His proud father had trained him since a lad to become what he felt destiny had earmarked him for, being certain not only that he was the best wrestler in the land, but also an excellent Sumo fighter…

“What?” exclaimed Comrade Xing Kai, pounding his hand on the table and immediately rising from it, albeit being somewhat apprehensive before the intimidating girth of the lad. “A Sumo fighter, the traditional, venerated wrestlers of Japan, our arch enemy?” The ensuing confrontation between the father and the Chinese official rose to such a pitch that it threatened to end in violence. Finally a member of the Stasi, a cripple named Herbert Ulbrichter, intervened and asked for permission to ask the lad what his background was.

“His name is Yông Shì”[3], said the wrestler’s father.

Flashback

When Mr. Nishimura saw that his second son weighed exactly nine kilos and 630 grams upon birth, he ran all around the Hospital crying, “It’s him, the chosen one!”

The baby, Yông Shì, then grew under the strict guidance of his father and the jealous eyes of his sister, Jin[4], who saw how each day his share of the family meals disappeared into the cavernous mouth of his older brother. Yông Shì’s father, in fact, turned him into his Oyakata[5]. He submitted him to a Spartan life, making him rise at four in the morning, train constantly, and fed him with plenty of “chankonabe”[6]. The boy led a life… well, let’s just say it wasn’t much of a life.

One day Yông Shì arrived from school in tears. He lamented that nobody played with him, that his schoolmates all called him fatso, fatso, fat…

Upon hearing his son’s woes, his proud father explained: “You are not like the others. You are a “rikishi”, a Sumo wrestler. I knew it from the day you were born.”
“Because I’m fat?” the boy asked sobbing.
“No, my son, no”, said the father, hugging him. “Because it’s what I wanted you to be all my life... and because there were signs…”
“My weight?” the downcast boy queried, catching his breath between sobs.
“No, my ‘Yokozuna’ of the future, because you were born on the first day of the ninth month, which was the first time the Emperor Shomu, back in the 8th century, recruited the Sumotori to wrestle in the Imperial Palace for the Fiesta of the Sechie…”
“But father… This is China, not Japan. We haven’t had an emperor since…”
“My boy, I’m going to tell you a tale which you must keep deep in your heart… You are the grandson of a great wrestler: the Great Nishimura!

“Many years ago, in 1931, the Japanese troops invaded China and got as far as Manchuria. This invasion and the Japanese ‘victory’ brought out the worst in people.

“Your grandfather was a Japanese soldier, Kensuke Nishimura, a short and lank man. When he got to our village, he took your grandmother under his protection, for he had fallen in love with her at first sight, and secretly carried on a relationship with her. One day, a cruel lieutenant, seeing that the most beautiful woman in the village was your grandmother, suggested that a Sumo fight be held to see who would win her hand.

“It was an unequal match, for all the other men were far more corpulent than your grandfather. But what they didn’t know was that he had a strength that arose from a far deeper source, that makes even the smallest man swell and that can move mountains: love. Only a single day was set aside for the contest. It seemed as though your grandfather wouldn’t be able to hold his own against any of the others, but one by one, midst moments of weakness, coughing and much perspiration, he managed to polish off twenty of his adversaries and win the hand of your grandmother.

“However, what he could not avoid was that all of the internal wounds resulting from all those matches should not debilitate him, and he died six months later, knowing that I was already on the way. So he made your grandmother promise that she would see to it that I became a wrestler. He said to her, ‘A heart that doesn’t fight is not a heart.’”

“But he wasn’t fat and I don’t want to be fat either”, Yông pleaded.

Naturally, the father didn’t tell this whole story to the ministers and delegates in Beijing after the match. Herbert Ulbrichter sat down in his chair, drained the last drop of his sake and asked Oyakata if he thought his son was invincible. To which his father answered that he knew he was.

“Could he hold his own against professional Japanese Sumo wrestlers?”

“Absolutely, if they agreed to the match,” said the father.

“Comrade Xing Kai, what would you say to us organizing a Sumo match in East Berlin? Your wrestler versus the capitalistic Japanese? Their arrogance against our latest discovery? And probably our last Victory also”
***

Over 7,000 kilometers away, years earlier, in East Berlin, Dr. Wolfgang von Schönenburg, son, grandson, great grandson and great great grandson of the von Schönenburg dynasty of the famed Schönenburg Clinic in Zehlendorf, West Berlin, expressing himself with his usual succinctness and German “Gründlichkeit”[7], informed his closest aides, “A surgeon has been born.”

Katharina, for so he called the child, grew up being fed a normal balanced nutritional diet. However, her schooling was carefully supervised. Indeed, her father never addressed his children by their Christian names. For him, they were “my son the ophthalmologist, my son the cardiologist, the pediatrician, the oncologist, the intern, the neurologist, the ear specialist, the podiatrist and his daughter was always referred to as the “little surgeon.” At dinner table, any non-vegetarian dish immediately became a study in dissection for the whole family.

One day little Katharinchen came home from school in tears. Her father was in the Clinic, but he took a breather between an appendicitis and a gall bladder operation to return to his house.
“They haven’t given me the part of the fairy godmother in the school play,” the little girl sobbed disconsolately to her father.
“And what part did they give you?” asked the modern Galen.
“That of a doctor, with a big black mustache, top hat and black satchel. Daddy! I’m a girl and want a pretty white airy dress and a magic wand,” said Kathi with spirit.
“My dearest little surgeon,” said the father, taking her hands in his, “these hands are your magic wand. This is your life and that of many others who will be saved by them.”
“But that’ll be in a long time. Couldn’t I meanwhile be a fairy godmother?” she said teasingly.

WHICH TAKES BRINGS US UP TO THE PRESENT

In November 1989 the Schoenenfeld Airport in East Berlin is lavishly decked out to receive the delegation of the People’s Republic of China.
In the presence of members of the Central Sports Committee and the Chinese ambassador in Berlin and after the playing of the Chinese anthem, “Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqús”[8] and the German “Auferstanden aus Ruinen”[9], the great Chinese hopeful Yông Shì Nishimura makes his way to the Grand Hotel Potemkin, formerly known as the Grand Hotel Lenin and originally as the Grand Hotel Bismarck.
At the wheel of a souped-up yellow Trabbant limousine is a Japanese driver and interpreter called Oda. What is a Nippon doing in the East German Republic? Well, he’s living there because of… love, which is to say, his obsession with large, blue-eyed blondes. Upon first coming there he had his eye on someone called Dagmar Schmidt. After that he ran after and caught up with Brigitte, Elfrieda, Ute, Gabi…
As the car crosses the deserted, dimly-lit East Berlin streets, Oda points out to Yông each of the monuments they pass by. But Yông is absorbed in his far-off dreams. What does it matter, one city or another? He’s here to do what he always does, wrestle.
The following evening the first match is held. The Japanese Sumo fighters really look impressive and are eminently sure of themselves. Their spectacular and showy Mawashis (belts) and their Oichos (top-knots) are veritable works of art. In the center of the dohyo[10], the challenger, Ashaszuma, engages in the usual preparatory ritual of holding out his arms, stamping the ground with his feet, and throwing handfuls of purifying salt on it, some of it falling on Yông’s side of the ring. Yông in turn goes through his warm-up slowly, methodically, his eyes lost in the distant reaches of the Max Schmeling Halle, one might almost say reaching to beyond the limits of this world.

The match is over in a few seconds. At the very beginning Yông Shì takes a rapid, skillful jump forward, hitting the Nippon’s back with his open hand, so that he’s catapulted over to the fifth row, landing on top of an official of the Stasi, to the cheers of the crowd. Yông has beaten the Japanese and has also metaphorically crushed the Stasi.
During the tournament[11], Yông beats one contestant after another. In fact, spectators even start betting, not on how many minutes each challenger will last in the ring, but what part of the ring each humiliated Nippon will fall in.

On the morning of the 12th fight, Monday, November 6th 1989, as Yông and his father are being driven to the gym by Oda, their Trabbant runs into a traffic jam. To while the time away, Oda starts talking to his passengers about his last conquest, the 12th in twelve days. Somewhat irritably, Yông’s father tells the driver that his son doesn’t need to be distracted with tall stories and obscenities.
The reason they can’t get through the traffic is that a group of children are crossing the Karl Marx Allee. Yông is watching them cross and his eye catches a chubby boy who is having difficulty getting across the avenue. Just then, a hand reaches out to help the boy and a young girl kneels down in front of him. The boy is crying. The young girl is more beautiful than any girl Yông has ever seen. Coddling the child, she takes him in her arms. As she does so, her dress rises slightly allowing Yông to see a bit of her thigh and the design on her stocking. Yông feels he is blushing and sits up a bit further in his seat, so that the whole Trabbant rocks. The father, realizing what is happening, urges Oda to drive on.

That morning Yông doesn’t train as usual. That far-off look in his eye seems somehow to be much closer today. His father reminds him what all these years have been for. To which, for the first time in his life, the Sumo wrestler answers, “For what, father? For whom? Not for me.” The Oyakata leaves. Oda then goes up to him and tells him that he can find out the name of the girl. Yông, with an enormous smile on his face, slaps Oda on the back, knocking him down.

That night naturally Yông wins again.

The following morning, Tuesday, November 7th, Yông receives news from Oda. Her name is Katharine von Schönenburg. She’s a surgeon… and an endocrinologist. Each week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she has special permission to cross the Wall and visit children in schools in East Berlin.

That very afternoon, on the other side of the Wall, Katharina is coming out of the Clinic run by the von Schönenburg family. At the exit, Jürgen Maximillian von Riedemann is waiting for her. Objectively speaking, he is handsome but dim-witted, the heir to the von Riedemann chemical empire. The von Schönenburgs are pleased their daughter is seeing a von Riedemann. It is a good match for the girl, they feel. If would, indeed, be good, were if not for the fact that Katharina doesn’t love him.

Jürgen has prepared a surprise for her. After she gets into his Porsche, he speeds off to the Brandenburg Gate and crosses over to East Berlin. His “Daddy” has managed to get him a special pass to visit the Max Schmelling Halle where some hugely obese fellows are programmed to push each other around until one of them is pinned to the straw.

Meanwhile, Yông has coddled his vision of the girl with the fat boy in her arms and, in his dreams, he is that boy… until he rudely awakens in midst of the clamor of the arena. Sharaku has a hold on him and is trying to trip him and knock him down on the straw. Suddenly, in the front seats, he sees Jürgen Maximillian, who is holding Katharina’s hand, pushing past others to get to his seat. Upon seeing this, Yông violently succeeds in throwing his adversary into the ringside seat area, and he lands just on the seat Jürgen is planning to sit down on. Yông’s heart is beating fervently and Katharina’s also begins to beat as their eyes meet. The wrestler’s father, realizing what is happening, drags Yông away. Katharina has been impressed.

It is 6 a.m. on Wednesday, November 8th 1989. Oda’s door is about to be knocked off its hinges. Yông want to be taken to the office of Dr. von Schönenburg. It is the day she comes to East Berlin.

In her office, Katharina is shuffling through some files and perhaps also evaluating her former life, for her eyes have that faraway gaze which we have seen before. She’s remembering that glance yesterday from the huge man, the Sumo wrestler who… now stands just just in front of her! Oda is babbling away while Katharinchen is watching the immense man as he bursts out in tears while talking a mile a minute, interrupted only by Oda’s simultaneous, sentimental translation of what he is saying. Oda, too, is crying. Katharina, without knowing why, also starts to weep.

“In short, Miss von Schönenburg, what Mr. Yông Shì Nishimura wishes is to become slim and he asks if you yourself haven’t at some time in your life wanted to be someone different.”

Katharina starts to sob again. “Tell him that my whole life long I’ve wanted to be only one thing: a fairy godmother… And today you are enabling me to be one and that is why I grant your wish.”

With her ballpoint pen, she gives a magic-wandlike touch to Yông’s stomach. But there’s a problem. To follow this treatment, it must be done in her clinic in West Berlin. Yông Shì must seek political asylum in order to achieve dietetic asylum.

That same evening, the night of the 14th match, Yông eliminates his next-to-last contender in five seconds. One more match remains to be fought. As it turns out, his next adversary has similarly won every one of his matches. Hence, whosoever wins this final match will be declared the champion. As the Japanese are about to catch the bus to take them to their hotel in West Berlin, Oda and Yông go over and ask to speak to the Japanese Yokozuna, Goufeng.

The morning of the final match, Thursday, November 9th 1989, has arrived. The Sumo wrestler embraces his father and tells him he must remember what his grandfather fought for. For love, right? He shall do the same. And he asks him to pay attention and listen carefully.

That decisive night the top brass of the East German government are on hand for the event, along with the Stasi and Herbert Ulrichter as well as the leaders and representatives of the Chinese People’s Republic. The Max Schmelinghalle is packed to the rafters. The wrestlers come out to the dohyo as the crowd cheers deafeningly. Ulrichter notices something strange. Yông’s father is not in his corner.

At that moment Katharina is watching the combat in a bar in West Berlin.

The match begins. The contestants seize each other firmly. But something happens between them. While Yông lets himself be pushed into a corner of the dohyo, Goufeng fails to push him hard enough. The referee calls a mizuiri[12]. Goufeng, puffing away, catches his breath… Yông, does the same, but never takes his eyes off his opponent. Joining together his hands, he gives a signal to the Japanese Yokozuna. The referee orders the wrestlers to start the match over again. Whereupon Goufeng lunges out so violently at Yông that he throws him out of the ring and makes him land on top of Herbert Ulrichter, crushing him.

At the Airport, in East Berlin, Yông’s father, his eyes tearing, watches the end of the match on television.

We now see a bus driving through the streets of East Berlin[13], heading towards Checkpoint Charlie. Sitting in it, midst the Japanese Sumo wrestlers, is Yông, who has taken the place of the champ, Goufeng. The latter has remained behind in the arena talking to the press. At a discreet distance, the bus is followed by Oda in his car. With the help of a walkie-talkie he is translating for Yông as he talks to another Sumo wrestly, Sheotong, who is telling him how difficult if was for them to win this way but who assures him that… being free is more important than anything else.

When they get to the checkpoint, the police board the bus. All they see are fat men with slanted eyes who all seem to look alike. However, as bad luck would have it, one of the policemen is a Mongolian and a great fan of Sumo wrestling. He notices that Goufeng is missing and orders the wrestlers out of the bus. In the street he starts checking the identity of each, one by one. When he gets to Yông, the policeman tells an interpreter who has travelled with the group in the bus to ask him something simple in Japanese [14]. He asks Yông a question, to which they have previously agreed upon for an answer. The Mongolian looks suspiciously at the two, and just as Yông is about to climb on the bus, he wishes him good luck in Chinese. Yông falls into the trap and answers him in the same language. A great hullabaloo ensues, with the Japanese Sumo wrestlers, who are already sitting back in the bus, banging on the windows, Oda intervening, waving his hands frantically and shouting “Diplomatisch Konflikt, Nein!”. But it is to no avail. The police guards let the bus pass through to the West but bar passage to Oda and Yông.

Just at that moment, a phone call is received at the police control tower which causes a great stir and consternation among the guards. Something is happening in East Berlin[15].

Presently, Oda and Yông are released by the guards, and they drive to a pre-arranged spot in the Niederkinchenstrasse, near the Wall, in the East. On the other side of the Wall, in the Western sector, Katharina is waiting for Yông. When he arrives at the spot opposite her, he starts shouting her name along with other words in Chinese. Oda translates his wail into German… It is an avowal of love.

For a while all is silence on the other side. Just when the two men are about to leave, they hear a cry. It is Katharine, who is calling back from the other side of the Wall saying that she, too, would liked to have loved Yông.

It is 10:50 p.m. on November 9th 1989. Upon hearing Katharina’s last words, Yông sets off in a fast run and throws himself against the barbed wire in front of the Wall, breaking through it. He then runs right up to the Wall and with all his might smashes against it. Like a great wave, a strange tremor resonates through the air as the Wall starts to shake. For a few seconds, which then become minutes, the “tremor” quivers through the whole length of the Berlin Wall. Yông takes a few steps back. He has only managed to open a small crack in the Wall, but it is enough for him to look through and see Katharina on the other side. Suddenly the tremor returns. A group of Berliners have run up to the Wall beside him, and all start to chip away at the mortar and brick, opening a breach large enough for Yông to climb through.

Yông falls into the arms of Katharine, who virtually disappears in his embrace.

On November 9th 1989, the people of Berlin tore down the Walls with every tool at hand: pick-axes, shovels, hammers…

And maybe also with Love.

The end

[1] Stasi. The Secret Police of East Germany
[2]A word combining Ost (East) and Nostalgia.
[3] Meaning “fighter” in Chinese.
[4] Means to “remain silent” in Chinese.
[5] Master of The Sumo School.
[6] A stew containing veal, pork, diced chicken; the stock of the foregoing. Also quelpo, highly nutritious algae, soya, tofu, soya cheese, small pieces of fish, vegetables rich in vitamins and minerals, all served as one dish.

[7] Methodical and detailed.
[8] The march of the volunteers.
[9] Risen from the Ruins
[10] A raised circle of straw on witch the match is fought.
[11] A tournament comprises 15 days of daily matches. The champion is he who wins most matches.

[12] An exceptional interval to allow the wrestlers to rest before ending the match.
[13] Tibute to the bus sequence in Alfred Hitchcock´s “Torn Courtain” (1966)
[14] Tribute to a scene in John Sturges “The great Escape” (1963)
[15] Somebody said on TV that the Wall was going to be opened in hours and hundred of people went there.