Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [7]
Childhood was short for little Roberto.Vargas may have been the man of the house, but almost from the time he could work Roberto needed no one to look after him. Often a regular at El Parque Santa Ana, Duran also danced for coins in the streets and shined shoes for pennies in a neighborhood bar. “When Duran was five years old, he used to be in the street a lot and all the money he would make he would take to his mother,” said Vargas. “He was good with his mother. They were living there with his mother, him and his brother, and at the age of eight he started to box.
“I never mistreated Roberto, as a stepfather I never hit him. I do not like to abuse children who are not mine. He never even misbehaved with me in a way he would deserve to be mistreated. I used to advise him not to do the wrong things, but he always used to be out there with Chaflan. We had a very humble room, but we lived there. He would leave the house and be away for a couple of days, and then he would return with food for his mother.”
Though Toti was older, Roberto often acted like a guardian to his younger siblings. “When Isabelle was born, Roberto asked me whether the baby had any clothes,” said Clara. “So he went to see a woman who sang, Ana Maria de Panama was her name, and she gave him a tub filled with clothes for Isabelle. He was a very curious child and he went over all these things and chose a couple, including a hat, which he brought to the hospital so that we could come out with the baby nicely dressed. After I had my daughters, Roberto was a father for them and for us all.”
At the age of seven, he told his mother, “Don’t worry mamma. You’ll see. When I am older, I will help you.” He remembered, “At the time there were three children in my family and I didn’t have anything to eat. I had to go out and clean shoes. Me and my other brother had to go out and sell newspapers while my sister Marina stayed home. That’s what we had to do to survive.” Christmas and New Year were the worst; the children would go to bed early because there was not even enough money to buy candy.
From selling the newspaper La Estrella de Panama to cleaning shoes, to cleaning dishes in restaurants, to painting jobs, to dancing and singing in night clubs, Duran skipped childhood: he had no choice. The hunger would never leave him. “He grew up fast,” said Toti. “I would stand up for him when he was younger, but soon he could do it on his own.”
THE MOST important man in Robertito’s life, at least until his late teens, was neither his father nor his stepfather but a smiling urban gypsy in colorful, ragged clothes called Candido Natalio Diaz. Known throughout Panama City as “Chaflan,” which loosely translates as “punchy,” he was an eccentric, a short, well-built, wide-eyed negrito in a sailor’s cap, exactly the type of poor, shiftless Panamanian that the snooty rabiblancos, the light-skinned social elite, despised.
“I used to live in Chorrillo in a house made of stone, near a bar called La Almenecer,” said Duran. “I used to polish shoes and a person came in and started to dance. There were dozens of people peeking through the spaces from the wooden walls in the cantina. He would make all of these funny faces. When he was finished dancing, he would collect money.”
Chaflan was a kind of Fagin to the children of the slums, finding them work, teaching them to survive. He watched out for them, though many adults questioned his motives and some even hinted that his interest in young boys was suspicious. He took a special liking to Roberto, taking him to dance on street corners or in nightclubs for money. He often arranged fights