By: Sylvia Davila MM
Bogotá
The young generation knows
little about him, but whoever moves in cultural fields will find a trace left
by this man who began his life with a right foot until – in a strange
premonition of his name Hoyos (Holes)
– fell in a dark hole that changed forever his life project.
Everything begins for Bernardino,
his birth name, with the voices of the choir hitting the walls of Santa Rosa de
Osos Church, his hometown. Music would become the arrow that showed the way. In
1953, just four years after the long play was launched, the Head Master of the
University where he studied Law, asked him to conduct a music program for the
institution’s radio station. He was twenty years old. As he studied, he would buy or borrow records to air the
best Jazz of the time. The program was so successful that a Colombo-American
institution gave him a Fulbright
scholarship.
Once in the United States, he
promenaded New York drawn into cultural life that began to define his purposes.
That is why the next step was Europe. He quitted smoking to save money, tightened
up his budget and saved enough to buy a ticket that would take him by ship from
New York to Le Havre, and bring him back, four months later, in Il Uso di Mare from Barcelona to
Cartagena de Indies.
Two months in Paris museums,
theatres, libraries and streets, one month in Spain and another in Italy gave
him a cultural bath in situ that
would feed his solid knowledge. When he returned to his country, he headed to become
an executive in fields that met his personal searches. Here’s when Bernardino
became Bernardo. He worked in Films and Advertising fields until he was offered
a job as PR of a company in New Orleans. The tic-tac of the clock launched a
new departure that would bring him closer to a turning point.
After a while in the city of
Jazz, he bought again a ticket this time to the city that meant for him The Mecca
of his illusions: London. It was there, an autumn night, in a Wimpole Street
bar, that the friends we has sharing some drinks with, told him about a trip
they were going to make to Italy and Yugoslavia. When they realized how much he
knew about Italy, they asked him to join them. Bernardo gave the first “yes”
that would change his life forever.
One morning when he woke up in
a hotel room in Yugoslavia, he saw the equivalent to a “dark coin” installed
right in the middle of his right eye. An urgent check up at a local hospital
diagnosed a rare infection caught somewhere during the trip. They gave him an antibiotic.
Certain that the medicine would work, he continued his travelling until, six
days later, walking imto a church the floor moved as if braking… his sight was leaving
him. Alarmed, he returned to Rome in search of professor Vietti, an authority
in eyes diseases, who agreed to see him the next day. Next day, at six o’clock in the morning, alone, seated in a chair of a hospital corridor, he managed to
keep himself together as professor Vietti approached, examined him and
emotionless sentenced: “Double detachment
of the retina in both eyes”. The busy doctor went on his way leaving breathless
Bernardo with every word bouncing in his mind: he was blind.
Initial fear gave way to a
solid philosophical vain that has always sustained him. He though: “Nobody will be tried beyond his might” -
Saint Paul’s words-, and “I don’t want to
become blind or die in Rome”, his words-. He went back home to begin a
decade of medical odyssey – successful surgeries, not so successful surgeries,
times where his sight seemed to return, periods of total darkness – and the
worst of all scenarios for him: impossibility to read.
But just as life took away
from him, it also compensated him. During one of the few “good” times, he met
Constanza Montes to whom he gave the second “yes” that would again change his
life forever. Constanza became, not his stick - Bernardo has always walked by
himself - but the person that would share his life, literally, for good and bad
in health and sickness. Bernardo kept on working by learning to make mind maps
of the working place – number of steps, doors, turns, voices. The twilight that
his eyes allowed became a reality that he handles with confidence and dignity.
A magnifying glass arrived to help him read with one eye, read especially
Proust whom he recites by heart in Spanish, English and French.
His determination to lead a
normal life led him to gain it. In 1990 he went back to his PR job, and a few
years later he was chosen as an Editor of International Management magazine in London. There he
became international reporter for the BBC where he worked for nine years.
Today, at 76, Bernardo thinks that “life
has given me more opportunities that difficulties”, and believes himself
fortunate to have been able to work all life on what he likes best: cinema,
literature and music. A warm human quality that leads his behavior and his
words, has gained him certain reverence that people gladly offers him. He does
not demand life for the burden given. He has
“always done what is necessary” to honor his family, his work and himself.
The affections he grows around him can be summarized in his son’s words when I
asked him to talk about Bernardo. He answered: “When ever you like. There is nothing I like more than talking about my
father.” April 9/2011 - SYLVIA DAVILA MORALES ® March, 2011 Photo: Bernardo Hoyos archives.
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