ABSTRACT
In The Book of Embraces, the Latin American author, Eduardo Galeano, tells the following story, entitled “Celebration of Fantasy”:
It happened at the entrance to the town of Ollantaytambo, near Cuzco. I had detached myself from a group of tourists and was standing alone looking at the stone ruins in the distance when a small boy from the neighborhood, skinny and ragged, came over to ask if I would give him a pen. I couldn’t give him my pen because I was using it to write down all sorts of boring notes, but I offered to draw a little pig for him on his hand.
Suddenly the word got around. I was surrounded by a throng of little boys demanding at the top of their lungs that I draw animals on their little hands cracked by the dirt and cold, their skin of burnt leather: one wanted a condor and one a snake, others preferred little parrots and owls, and some asked for a ghost or a dragon.
Then, in the middle of this racket, a little waif who barely cleared a yard off the ground showed me a watch drawn in black ink on his wrist.
“An uncle of mine who lives in Lima sent it to me,” he said.
“And does it keep good time?” I asked him.
“It’s a bit slow,” he admitted. 1
