Where the Bird Sings Best

Restless Books | Brooklyn, NY

 

“A bird sings best in its family tree.”
—Jean Cocteau

While
all the characters, places, and events in this book are real, the chronological order has been altered. This reality was further transformed and magnified until it achieved the status of myth. Our family tree is the trap that limits our thoughts, emotions, desires, and material life, but it is also the treasure that captures the greater part of our values. Aside from being a novel, this book may, if it is successful, serve as an example that all readers can follow and, if they exercise forgiveness, they too can transform family memory into heroic legend.

—Alejandro Jodorowsky

In
1903 Teresa, my paternal grandmother, got angry: first with God and then with all the Jews of Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk, in Ukraine) who still believed in Him despite the deadly flood of the Dnieper. Her beloved son José perished in the flood. When the house began to fill up with water, the boy pushed a chest out to the yard and climbed on top, but it didn’t float, because it was stuffed with the thirty-seven tractates of the Talmud.

After the burial, carrying all the children she had left, four toddlers—Jaime and Benjamín, Lola and Fanny—who were conceived more out of obligation than passion, she ferociously invaded the synagogue with her husband hot on her heels. She interrupted the reading of Leviticus 19: “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them—”

“I’m the one who’s going to speak to them!” she bellowed.

She crossed over into the area forbidden to her as a woman and pushed aside the men who, victims of an infantile terror, covered their bearded faces with prayer shawls, silken tallises. She threw her wig to the floor, revealing a smooth skull red with rage. Pressing her rough face against the Torah parchment, she cursed at the Hebrew letters:

“Your books lie! They say that you saved the entire nation, that you parted the Red Sea as easily as I slice my carrots, and yet you did nothing for my poor José. That boy was innocent. What did you want to teach me? That your power is limitless? That I already knew. That you are unfathomable? That I should test my faith by simply accepting that crime? Never! That’s all well and good for prophets like Abraham. They can raise the knife to their sons throats, but not a poor woman like me. What right do you have to demand so much of me? I respected your commandments, I thought of you constantly, I never hurt anyone, I gave my family a holy home, and I prayed as I cleaned, I allowed my head to be shaved in your name, I loved you more than I loved my parents—and you, you ingrate, what did you do? Against the power of that death of yours, my boy was like a worm, an ant, fly excrement. You have no pity! You are a monster! You created a chosen people only to torture them! You’ve spent centuries laughing, all at our expense! Enough! A mother who’s lost hope, and for that reason doesn’t fear you, is talking to you: I curse you, I erase you, I sentence you to boredom! Stay on in your Eternity, create and destroy universes, speak, and thunder, I’m not listening any more! Once and for all: out of my house. You deserve only contempt! Will you punish me? Cover me with leprosy, have me chopped to pieces, have the dogs eat my flesh? It doesn’t matter to me. José’s death has already killed me.”

No one said a word. José wasn’t the only victim. Others had just buried family members and friends. My grandfather Alejandro, from whom I inherited part of my name—because the other half came from my mother’s father, who’s name was also Alejandro—dried with infinite care the tears that shone like transparent scarabs on the Hebrew letters as he bowed again and again to the congregation; his face crimson, he muttered apologies that no one understood and led Teresa out, trying to help her with the four children. But she wouldn’t let go and hugged them so tightly against her robust bosom that they began to howl. A hurricane wind blew in, the windows opened, and a black cloud filled the temple. It was every fly in the region fleeing a sudden downpour.

For Alejandro Levi (at that time our family name was Levi), his wife’s break with Tradition was just one more nasty blow. Nasty blows were an insoluble part of his being: he’d put up with them stoically throughout his life. They were like an arm or an internal organ, a normal part of his reality. He wasn’t even three when the Hungarian maid went mad. She walked into the bedroom where he slept hugging his mother Lea and murdered her with an axe. The hot spurts dyed his naked little body red. Five years later, in an outburst of hatred over the myth that Christian children’s blood was used to make matzoh, a swarm of drunken Cossacks poured into the streets of Ekaterinoslav: they burned the village, raped women and children, and beat Jaime, Alejandro’s father, to a bloody pulp because he refused to spit on the Book. The Jewish community of Zlatopol took him in. They gave him a bed in the yeshiva. There they taught him two things: to milk cows (at dawn) and to pray (for the rest of the day). That milk was the only maternal scent he knew in his childhood, and to feel a feminine caress, he taught the ruminants to lick his naked body with their huge, hot tongues.

Reciting the Hebrew verses was torture until he met the Rabbi in the Interworld. It happened like this: Alejandro davened so much, chanting passages he didn’t understand, that his feet were numb, his forehead boiling, and his stomach filled with an acidity. He was afraid he would gasp like a fish out of water and faint right there in front of his classmates, who understood the texts (unless their fervent expression of faith was nothing more than an act to earn them a good supper). He made a supreme effort, and, leaving his body to its davening, he moved outside himself and found himself in a time that didn’t elapse, in a space that didn’t extend. What a discovery that refuge was! There he could languish in peace, doing nothing, only living. He felt intensely what it was like to think without the constant burden of the flesh, without its needs, without its various fears and fatigues, without the contempt or pity of others. He never wanted to go back, he only wanted to remain in eternal ecstasy.

Piercing the wall of light, a man dressed in black like the rabbis, but with Oriental eyes, yellow skin, and a beard with long, slack whiskers floated next to him.

“You’re lucky, little man,” he said. “What happened to me won’t happen to you. When I discovered the Interworld, there was no one there to advise me. I felt as fine as you do and decided not to go back. A grave error. Abandoned in a forest, my body was devoured by bears. And then, when I needed human beings again, it was impossible to return. I was condemned to wander through the ten planes of Creation without stopping. A sad bird of passage. If you let me plant roots in your spirit, I’ll return with you. And to show my thanks, I’ll be able to advise you—I know the Torah and the Talmud by heart—and you’ll never be alone again. What do you say?”

What do you think this orphan boy was going to say? Thirsty for love, he adopted the Rabbi, who was from the Caucasus and steeped in Kabbalah. And seeking out the wise saints who, according to the Zohar, live in the other world, he got lost in the labyrinths of Time. In those infinite solitudes, he, a contumacious hermit, learned the value of human companionship, understood why dogs always long for their masters. He discovered that others are a kind of sustenance, that men without other men perish from spiritual hunger.

When he regained consciousness, he was stretched out on one of the school benches. The teacher and his classmates were gathered around him, all pale, because they thought he was dead. It seems his heart had stopped. They gave him some sweet tea with lemon and sang to celebrate the miracle of his resurrection.

Meanwhile, the Rabbi was dancing around the room. No one but my grandfather could see or hear him. The joy of the disincarnated man to be once again among Jews was so great that, for the first time, he took control of Alejandro’s body and recited (in hoarse Hebrew) a psalm of thankfulness to the Lord:

Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Everyone panicked. The boy was possessed by a dybbuk! That devil would have to be flushed from his gut! The Rabbi saw his error and leapt out of my grandfather’s body. And no matter how hard Alejandro protested, trying to explain that his friend promised never again to enter his body, they went ahead with the exorcism. They rubbed him down with seven different herbs; they made him swallow an infusion of cow manure; they bathed him in the Dnieper, whose waters were many degrees below zero; and then, to warm him up, they gave him a steam bath and thrashed him with nettles.

Even though they considered him cured, they still felt a superstitious mistrust for a while. But as my grandfather grew they got used to his invisible companion. They began to consult him: first about Talmudic interpretations, then about animal illnesses, and then, seeing the positive results in the first two instances, they moved on to human maladies. Finally, they made him a judge in all their disputes. The entire village praised the Rabbi’s intelligence and knowledge, but they had no regard whatsoever for Alejandro. Timid by nature and essentially humble, he had no idea how to capitalize on his position as an intermediary. People invited the Rabbi, not him. Whenever he came into the synagogue, they’d ask for the Rabbi, because from time to time the man from the Caucasus would disappear to visit other dimensions, where he’d converse with the holy spirits.

If the Rabbi accompanied him, they’d seat him in the first row. If not, no one bothered to speak to him or offer him a chair. The man from the Caucasus had said that what he liked most was to see children. So whenever people came to consult him in Alejandro’s modest room next to the stable, they brought along their offspring, bathed, combed, and dressed for the Sabbath. This exhibition was all the pay he got. No one bothered to bring an apple pie, a pot of stuffed fish, a bit of chopped liver. Nothing. Only the Rabbi existed; my grandfather was the real invisible man. From the cradle he was never accustomed to being indulged, so this made him neither sad nor happy. He milked the cows, prayed, and at night, before sleep overcame him, he had long conversations with his friend from the Interworld.

One day, at the first light of dawn, Teresa approached him. She was small but with robust legs, imposing breasts, and an iron will. She fixed her dark eyes, two coals swimming feverishly in sunken sockets, on him and said:

“I’ve been observing you for a while. I’m of age to have children. I want you to be the father. I’m an orphan like you but not as poor. You’ll come to live in the house my aunts left to me. We’re going to organize these consultations so that we can feed the children. You will be paid. The Rabbi needs nothing because he doesn’t exist. He’s the product of your madness. Yes, you’re crazy! But it doesn’t matter: what you’ve invented is beautiful. What you think he’s worth, that’s what you’re worth. That knowledge only comes from you. Learn to respect yourself so others will respect you. Never again will they speak directly with the phantom. They will tell their problem to you and will have to come back later to hear the answer. They will no longer see you entranced, talking to an invisible being. I’ll set the prices, and we will not accept dinner invitations where they try to take advantage of you. The Rabbi will stay home. He will never go out on the street with you, and if he doesn’t like that, he can leave—if he can. But as soon as he leaves you, he’ll dissolve into nothingness.”

And without awaiting an answer from Alejandro, she kissed him full on the mouth, stretched out with him under the udders of the cows, and took permanent possession of his sex. He, after gushing forth his soul in his seed, squeezed the udders and bathed the two of them in a shower of hot milk. When they married, she was pregnant with José. The community accepted the new rules, so never again did the family table lack for chicken soup or fried potatoes or a fresh cauliflower or a plate of porridge. Ten months after José’s birth, they had twin boys. The year after that, twin girls.

In the corset shop, in the presence of her neighbor ladies, Teresa would brag about living with a holy husband who never stopped praying, even during his five hours of sleep. Moreover, he would always eat, no matter what the dish happened to be, with the same rhythm so he could chew without ceasing to recite the psalms. And when he wasn’t praying, he only knew how to say two words: “Thank you.”

Everything was going so well and then, catastrophe! José dead! An extraordinary son, good among the good, obedient, well mannered, clean, with an angelic voice for singing in Yiddish, of resplendent beauty. Yes, his natural joyfulness brightened sorrows; he was a dash of salt in the tasteless soup of life, a shower of color for the gray world. Whenever he strolled past the trees at night, the sleeping birds would awaken and start to sing as if it were daybreak. He was born smiling, he blessed anyone who crossed his path, he never complained or criticized, he was the best student at the yeshiva. Why did a ray of sunshine have to die?

Teresa clung violently to her grief. Forgetting it, she thought, would be a betrayal. She refused to accept that he was gone, and she held him there swallowing muddy water, blue from asphyxiation, an incessant victim, a lamb in eternal agony. This she did to justify her hatred not only of God and her community but also of the river, the plants, the animals, the dirt, Russia, all of humanity. She forbade my grandfather from solving the problems of others and demanded—otherwise she would kill herself—that he never again mention the Rabbi.