Where the Bird Sings Best (26 page)

Smiling, Icho Melnik shrugged his shoulders and quoted a thought of Maecenas: “Cripple me, make me lame, slap a hump on my back, loosen my teeth, crucify me... if you leave me alive, I’ll feel fine.”

Simón Radovitzky turned red with rage: “This period in Argentina will be tossed into the garbage can of history. In the future, no citizen will want to recall such infamy. Only a few scholars, while reading in some library dusty documents containing these miserable petitions to Congress, will shut their eyes in shame, afraid of catching an infection. How can one human being force another human being to carry two hundred pound sacks fourteen hours a day for a salary he can’t live on? These millionaire parasites have gone insane: they think they are the soul of the nation, when in reality they are devouring the nation!”

At midday, the asphalt began to tremble and a metallic, heavy noise made thousands of stevedores come out of the shadows. In a few minutes, a sea of human bodies filled the docks roasted by the implacable summer. Fatigue and anguish had transformed the workers into a tame flock. Five cars appeared, filled with soldiers and police, who quickly got out to point their rifles at the brutalized mass.

“What insolence!” Simón exclaimed.

From a motorcycle protected by an armored car and a group of thugs came the chief of police, Colonel Roberto Falcón. Some twenty or so men ran toward him to hand him papers. “Disgusting informers!” muttered Simón. “Look at them passing on their abominable blacklists!”

Roberto Falcón jumped on top of a barrel and, with ferocious contempt, stared at the strikers. His impeccable suit without a wrinkle; his black hair plastered down with hair tonic, shining like a helmet; his patent leather boots; his striped tie with pearl clasp; his white silk scarf, all contrasted scornfully with the filth and poverty of the silent workers. Suddenly the colonel began to shout like an animal trainer, as if he were talking to dogs:

“The jig is up, faggots! You lost the battle! The Congress unanimously voted to give us legal powers to launch the largest repressive campaign our country, Argentina, has seen to date! The general strike is liquidated! We’re going to cleanse the nation of anarchists, active militants in trades unions, leaders of workers, the editorial staff of critical press, seats of labor, and the rest! Hear what I said, you jackass gringos? Get back to work immediately and let us, if you want to save your scummy hides, get on with the arrest of the malevolent agitators whose names we have on the lists our wise informers have given us!”

The soldiers penetrated the crowd guided by the squealers, who shouted out the names of the guilty at the top of their lungs. The accused, with their eyes averted and without trying to run away, turned themselves in to the men in uniform, who first beat them with night sticks and then locked them away in black riot trucks. The other stevedores headed for the mountains of sacks and began to carry them. The rays of sunlight made those packages shine and gave them the air of shells transforming the saddened workers into slow-moving reptiles. The ships, shaking off their lethargy, filled up with sailors. The cranes screeched, the gangways stretched out their avid arms, and the port, with the tremors of a woman giving birth, gave out a dismal whine. A compact sphere of flies, flashing green in the sunlight, paused over the colonel’s head. He extracted a thin stiletto from his walking stick and plunged it into the buzzing planetoid. The flies separated and fled to land on the carloads of rotten vegetables.

“Fucking bugs. Only force can pull them apart. The only reason they listen to is the whistle of weapons. Remember my name, you living rag dolls. In the name Falcón, there is a falcon. Anyone who doesn’t obey will fall into my clutches and get the pecking he deserves. If you don’t understand, I’ll reward you with a beating salad. You are the scum of your nations. If you want to live in this country, don’t behave like uppity parasites. Gringos have no rights here. No say, no vote. Be thankful we’ve let you live. Anyone who stops working today, even if it’s to pee, will be shot to pieces. Hard laws only apply to some people, which is the way it should be. Get the hell out of my sight!”

Haughty, the colonel grabbed hold of the shoulders of a young man with the profile of a Greek statue and rode off on his motorcycle, heading for the center of the capital. The strong blast from the exhaust pipe gave Radovitzky chills. He waved a kitchen knife around, muttering, “You get the hell out of my sight and may you rot in hell, Roberto Falcón! I know we shouldn’t hate the dog but the owner of the dog, but you carry out your disgusting task with too much pleasure. You add torture to the legal punishment, only to blow up the stinking balloon of your image of power. One day a knife will burst that balloon and make you go back to being what you’ve always been: a dead man.”

“Calm down, boy, and hide that knife,” said Icho. “What you say about the colonel is valid for all living beings. What is life if not a slow death?”

My grandfather woke up very rested, but it took him ten minutes to recover his senses. Meanwhile Jashe combed her blonde hair and made a braid down to her nape. Then she examined that piece of work with intensity. Seeing the dancer’s transparent beauty, his blue eyes like a constant dawn pouring an immemorial love onto the world, that smile of a newborn, that powerful chest breathing with such delicacy that the foul air left his mouth transformed into a balm, my grandmother wept with rapture and thanked heaven Alejandro hadn’t seen the atrocious beating. She would have wanted to be a magician to cleanse the world of ugliness and offer this divine man a life equal to his purity.

The first-class passengers began to disembark. The Imperial Ballet was received by an elegant committee that filled the arms of the ballerinas with roses of all different colors. Marina Leopoldovna, making her way down the gangplank, cast a rapid look toward the emigrants crowded together on the deck. When she saw the blond giant shining like a lotus flower in the pool of pitch formed by the Israelites’ black overcoats, she murmured malignantly, “Your career is over. You will never dance again. My father will have your legs cut off.” They all got into a dozen taxis and left the port for the colonnaded Colón Theatre.

As the procession passed, the workers took off their caps and saluted the ballerinas as if they were magical abstractions, butterflies made of human flesh, ambassadors from a paradise yet to come. Seeing the tremendous impression they made, Vladimir Monomaque thought to satisfy the multitude by tossing out handfuls of coins, which for dignity’s sake no one picked up. Marina Leopoldovna, refusing to flash her famous smile, preferred to sink into the seat of the car and, under the pretext of an attack of sneezing, hid her face in her shawl.

When the Ballet and the committee disappeared, eight immigration inspectors entered the ship to receive the Jewish farmers. Seeing those bizarre costumes, those long beards, those interminable sideburns, they were astounded. Then they burst into curses: “We asked for farmers, not a bunch of lunatics! These skinny worms couldn’t even lift a shovel!”

The immigrants shook their pale hands to show the calluses they’d acquired on the voyage by rubbing their hands with ropes.

The chief inspector howled, “Captain, send barbers! No one gets off this ship wearing a beard, sideburns, and long hair! And to salute our flag, they all have to take off those ridiculous little hats!”

When some of the stewards appeared waving razors and scissors, the women went down on their knees howling doggish lamentations, and the men gathered behind them intent on dying before they let anyone cut off a single hair. Not knowing what to do, the immigration authorities went up to the bridge to communicate with their superiors by telegraph.

Icho Melnik said, “Our compatriots worry a lot about something that matters little. After all, how important can it be to avoid for more or less time what is inevitable? They’ll end up shaven!” He spread his arms to receive his brother Yumo, who came to Buenos Aires three years earlier. It was he who sent the tickets. He ran a bordello for the wealthy in the center of town. All the girls were foreigners, preferably Jews, because they were the most sought after.

The fat pimp spoke with his brother in hushed tones, and then said to his new friends, “Alejandro, Jashe, Simón, following what my master teaches, the site where we stop matters little, as long as we can arrange a good exit. For the moment, you have no place to stay. It would be better if you came to our bordello. There, no one will bother you and, in exchange for some small services, you can stay as long as you need. There are lots of empty rooms. While Jashe helps in the kitchen and Simón makes the beds and brings fresh towels to the rooms, Alejandro can give dance classes to our protégées so their backsides fatten. Agreed? Well? Then come along with us. The authorities, with regard to whores and money discretely allotted, will provide all the facilities we need to disembark.

In the car that carried them to the center of the city, distancing them from miserable neighborhoods and bringing them closer to baroque constructions where myriad styles and luxurious materials all mixed together, Alejandro was discovering within his spirit an infinite field of new possibilities. Unable to contain himself, he poured into the ears of my terrified grandmother words so optimistic that in this world, sinister for being so unknown, they glittered like demented jewels.

“Do you know, Jashe, until now I never thought. I lived like an animal, only feeling things. But that young anarchist’s speech caused a moral earthquake in my soul. You said my body was a temple, and you were right because within me God has appeared. He speaks to me ceaselessly. Listen to what he says:

My son, you are what you are in the present. Leave the past behind; don’t carry blame. Eliminate all anxiety about the future. Prepare to work for your evolution until the last instant of your life. Let no one be your judge; be your own judge. If you want to triumph, learn to fail. Never define yourself by what you possess. Never speak about yourself without allowing yourself the possibility to change. Think that you do not exist individually, that what you do does itself. Only by accepting that nothing is yours will you be the owner of all. Become a total offering. Give, but oblige no one to receive. Make no one feel guilty; you are an accomplice to whatever happens. Stop asking for things and start thanking. Obtain in order to give away.”

With tears in her eyes, Jashe kissed her giant even though he was unable to cut off his monologue. Their four lips stayed together, and he deposited in her throat his incessant necklace of phrases:

“Discover the universal laws and obey them. Don’t eliminate; instead transmute. Teach others to learn from themselves. With the little you have, do the most you can. Give a hungry man something to eat, but don’t keep him at your table. Don’t ask yourself where you are going; just move ahead taking proper steps. Leaping is as beautiful as crawling: don’t compare yourself; develop your own values. Change your world or change worlds.”

Alejandro said so much that Jashe, to her profound regret, was only able to remember a tiny bit. They reached the bordello. A sumptuous house surrounded by rose bushes, quite proper looking, but with a red light at the door. They were received by twelve girls dressed in bright costumes, wearing exaggerated makeup, which, even at that time of day, could not hide their dry faces. They passed through a salon covered with golden drapes, containing furniture with red velvet upholstery. They marched up four flights. There they were given an attic decorated in bohemian style with lots of cushions and a grand but low bed opposite a huge mirror. Alejandro, still in a trance, was aware of nothing. Like an infinite river, he spoke without eating or sleeping for three solid days:

“What is necessary is possible. If you want to end the vices of others, purify yourself. What you see is what you are. Sicknesses are your teachers. Do not touch another’s body to get pleasure or to humiliate him; touch him to accompany him. Don’t boast of your weaknesses. Act for the pleasure of acting and not for the favorable results it may produce. Forgive your parents.”

Then he slept for three days. Meanwhile, my grandmother, who had already learned, while still on the ship—from the lips of Marla, who spoke Ladino—the words necessary to survive in this country. With unbreakable energy, she had flyers printed up praising the qualities of the ex-first dancer of the Imperial Ballet and distributed them among the people who formed immense lines outside the ticket office of the Colón Theatre. In the neighborhood of the bordello, she found a large study, rented it, and received the inscriptions of enthusiastic girls and effeminate young men who wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to learn classical dance with a high-ranking professor.

On the fourth day, she woke her husband, bringing him breakfast in bed, fresh fruit. Waiting for him in the gymnasium were 150 students. Alejandro ate an entire pineapple, threw on his clothes, and noted with surprise that one of his red shoes, the right, had turned blue.

“The grand change is beginning. From intervention I’m passing on to reception. I will not teach classical techniques, because they correspond to the limitations society imposes. To the contrary, I shall liberate their bodies so they once again find their natural expression. Animals are a continuous dance. So is man. God creates the gestures, which is why every sincere movement is a revelation.”

The Argentine students, the children of the rich, knew little about the history of dance and did not intend to dedicate their lives to art. What they were looking for was some cultural varnish to justify their idle lives. And for that, the classes given by the Russian were perfect. Alejandro, without realizing how frivolous his students were, dedicated his entire being to the exercise. He felt a constant interaction between his body and the Cosmos, coming to believe that the slightest movement of his fingers could influence the Destiny of the galaxies. One night he excitedly embraced Jashe and declared, “I’m going to recount a miracle. Today I made a chain of dance steps so beautiful that up in heaven two suns were born.”