Where the Bird Sings Best (28 page)

Alejandro, with his minimal Spanish, tried to open their awareness and reveal to them that God inhabited them and to convince them to yield their bodies to mystery so they could carry out movements reason was unable to imagine. Useless! Locked within their proud mediocrity, they could not allow their legs, arms, torsos, or hips to live their own lives as autonomous organisms fed by the wisdom of the stars. My grandfather, at times right in the middle of this inept group, would fall to his knees sobbing desperately. His female students fought to dry his tears with delicate licks accompanied by such hot sighs that shame would burn their cheeks. He would arise in a rage to shake his body, trying to shake off those sexual meanings as if they were fleas.

Jashe gave birth helped by the bordello midwife, an old German woman, Bettina the Turtle. She’d acquired that nickname because a jealous Argentine had clipped her ears and nose. My mother, Sara Felicidad, was born, a baby as white as marble with two huge lapis lazuli eyes and four nipples, which would later become, I think, four large breasts where I could suck, unless it’s a false memory, a double portion of milk. Alejandro didn’t realize he’d become a father. He was so stubbornly intent on his work that around the dance, the world vanished. He no longer saw people but misty shapes. He marched through the world without belonging to it, listening to the interminable river of phrases God dictated to him: “
I am the summa of your calls. Present is the complete perception of yourself. Don’t try to be another, allow the other to exist in you. Never express more than what you feel. To give is to know how to receive.
”

A tranquil Jashe fed her invisible daughter, preparing monumental fruit salads that Alejandro, now a vegetarian, devoured directly from the plate, on all fours like a ruminant. The woman had to buck up her courage because my grandfather, trying to express his animal nature freely, took it upon himself to defecate in corners or on an armchair, sometimes under the table. Jashe, in the moment these things were happening, saw them as past and, thinking about the future of sanity and happiness that awaited them, cleaned up those eccentricities with good will.

On her own, she devoted herself to educating Sara Felicidad. On the wall next to the cradle, she tacked the seventy-eight Tarot cards so her daughter would quickly learn to count by pointing to the cups, coins, clubs, and swords. At six months, the child said her first word “MAT,” and by one, she already knew how to speak some Russian and a lot of Spanish. Instead of saying “papa,” she loved to say “paradise” and instead of “mama” she would say “marvel.” At eighteen months, she began to sing, first imitating Marla’s nightingale, then the violin from the tango quartet, later the she-cats in heat, and finally Bettina the Turtle, who during the Catholic festivals of the month of May intoned “Come, and let us all go with flowers to Mary” so the Virgin would grant her the miracle of allowing her to grow another nose and two new ears.

The high, crystalline voice of the baby made the dust fall off the mirrors and, for a few seconds, calmed the wrath of drunken clients. As soon as they started flashing their knives, Jashe would come down with Sara Felicidad so she could sing “Canción Mixteca,” thus transforming rage into nostalgia and then into beatitude. The bestial masks would fall off, and the little boy faces would appear.

Meanwhile, Alejandro, who remained blind and deaf to the fact of his daughter, was beginning to lose hope about the realization of his dance. Whenever a girl managed to learn the intricate steps, she would fall in love, get married, become pregnant, and abandon art forever. If it was a young man, he would get his law or architecture degree, or kill himself, or run off with some low-class lover and his mother’s jewels. He would get furious over nothing, a slice of apple with a seed in it, someone looking distracted when he was speaking about his problems with the dancers. He would threaten to beat his wife to a pulp. Then he would fall to his knees to kiss her feet, begging forgiveness. One day, at three in the afternoon, his breakfast time, Yumo Melnik burst into the dining room, waving a blue telegram:

“Girls, eat quickly and run to fix yourselves up and slip into your sexiest clothes! Two hours from now, the chief of police, Roberto Falcón, will honor us with a visit! He’s coming to throw a party for his twenty bodyguards. Every year, as a bonus, the chief grants them a wish. This year they asked to screw Jewish whores. Dearhearts, you are model professionals. It’s extremely important for the future of our business that you not reject any whim. They are murderers, yes, of course, but they see sex like boys. If you don’t contradict them and give in, smiling to their oddities, they will become as tame as little lambs. And swallow these pills, which will keep you awake until the stiffest pricks collapse!”

Simón Radovitzky, his face solemn, went over to Marla, taking advantage of the fact that she was drinking her coffee in the shadow because daylight irritated her eyes.

“Marla, I know you’re going to be very busy with those killers. Even so, and with the greatest respect, I’m going to ask a favor. My life won’t be long. Maybe it will be over before the sun comes up tomorrow. Don’t interrupt me, please! What I’m telling you is serious, because I’m talking to you as if I were sentenced to death. Look: in this jacket I have all the money I’ve been able to save. I’m giving it to you. It’s more than you earn in a month of work. Initiate me, Marla! I’m a virgin. Make me a man. I want to learn in the two hours we have before the police come the depth of pleasure, to pour out the semen of an entire life, to fornicate in different positions and through all doors, to give you my heart like an animal on the sacrificial altar. I want my spirit to bury itself in yours and die there so that later they shoot what is only an empty body. Oh, Marla, forgive me. I think I love you.”

The prostitute said nothing. She slowly put the money into her black satin bag, finished her coffee, took Simón by the hand, led him to the third floor where he entered the room decorated like an underwater grotto, stripped him, bathed him in the big marble conch, dried him with a towel cut in the shape of a sardine, got into bed with him under silk sheets stamped with breaking waves, and gave herself to him in body and soul.

After those two hours, a different Simón Radovitzky walked down the stairs. The adolescent had become a mature man. His footsteps were heavy, intense, decisive, but his eyes were veiled, like those of a dead man. He sat down next to the armoire filled with clean sheets and waited with the patient calm of a dog sleeping in the shade on a summer day. Roberto Falcón offered his followers a party without limits. They devoured three roast pigs and emptied uncountable bottles of brandy. While they danced the house tango, they allowed themselves to tear the dresses and underpants of their partners, to carry them again and again to the private rooms. Finally, staggering, they possessed them right there in front of everybody, on the salon carpet or on the bar chairs. Falcón drank, accompanied by his driver, without touching the girls. When he saw all of them awkwardly go through the motions like swings, fall, vomit, and snore in surfeit, their testicles empty down to the last drop, he made a sign to the boy with the Greek profile, and the two of them, with the discretion of shadows, locked themselves away in the preferential suite on the second floor.

Marla, squashed under an orangutan who’d wet his pants, saw Simón, barefoot, make his way up the stairs and enter the luxurious apartment. She felt her heart was breaking, forever, like a crystal vase, and she bit her lips trying not to sob. A red drop slipped down her chin until it fell into the open mouth of the hairy client who, without waking up, savored it smiling. The next day, she would have her left breast tattooed with the letters S.R.

Simón committed the first murder in ten seconds. Falcón was on his knees, with his head buried in a pillow, while his assistant penetrated him, giving rapid and violent thrusts of his hips. The shrieks of pleasure-pain silenced the steps of the anarchist, who, with a wisdom derived from his animal nature, cut the lover’s jugular vein with one slice of a kitchen knife. He did it so decisively that he almost separated the head from the body, and without stopping, like the harmonious continuation of the same movement, drove the knife between the two bodies and cut off the driver’s member, which remained stuck in the chief’s anus. While the body fell, pouring out bright red spurts, Simón put the knife in his other hand, took out his revolver, and pointed it at Falcón: “Don’t scream or I’ll blow your brains out! Stand up in front of me, because I’m your death, faggot!”

The colonel, whiter than the corpse of his lover, stood up next to the bed. The piece of phallus slid out of his anus and, with a watery noise, fell between his feet like a mollusk without a shell. He vomited.

“Lick up your garbage!”

Falcón went down on his knees and passed his tongue over his puke.

“Swine! I should give you a contemptible end, stick this knife into that stinking hole and open you up right to your guts, pull out your tripes, and tie you with them to your boyfriend, then break your skull, empty out your brain and shit in it, as if it were a toilet bowl! Give thanks to anarchism, you moral dwarf. I don’t want to dishonor my comrades by exterminating you with the same viciousness you used to torture and murder so many innocent workers just to satisfy your vanity. I’ll give you a clean ending.”

“Have mercy. A sack of diamonds for my life.”

“You’re mistaken, colonel. I’ve always wanted to live in noble poverty,” Simón answered with a sweet smile and killed him with a perfect shot right between the eyes. Then he sat down opposite the two dead men, put a finger in the pool of blood, and drew the
A
of Anarchy on his forehead. The bodyguards, aroused by the shot, quickly kicked open the door. Radovitzky was beaten to a pulp—broken nose, three broken ribs, and six broken teeth. They dragged him down to the bar and tortured him in front of the prostitutes. Even though they slowly but surely ripped off all his skin, he died without betraying any member of his group. The police arrested all the witnesses, cursing them the whole time.

The crime stirred public opinion. The authorities blamed the Jewish community, especially the Russian immigrants: “The government is firmly resolved to take energetic measures to avoid the entry into this country of dangerous people and to eliminate those found here.” This the new chief of police declared, and protected by the state of siege, began a search for anarchist leaders among the non-naturalized Jews. By virtue of the Residence Law, several hundred were expelled from the country. Among them were the Melnik brothers and their whores, who, without a cent (the police had confiscated their savings as the price they’d have to pay for the “favor” of not sending them back to Russia), were put on a train that took them directly to Uruguay.

When they got out in Montevideo, Icho rubbed his enormous belly and said good-naturedly, “If the wise man thinks above all about poverty, even if he is amid wealth, we, amid poverty, will think above all about wisdom. Courage, girls! Every man is a possible client. Don’t ask God to give, but that he put you where they are.”

The Turtle, who had been set free because she was a pure German and an Argentine citizen, came to the study, passed through the rows of students, and with her strange, noseless voice urged Alejandro to run to the jail to get his wife and daughter before they were both shipped to Europe. The news of his friend’s death had shaken my grandfather and made him come down from the clouds. He suddenly felt alone and realized that he had a daughter and a wife who felt a great love for him, and it was thanks to their love he went on living. To lose Jashe and Sarita would mean becoming a tree without roots, floating aimlessly in a river of turbid water. He reached the prison waving press photographs, programs from the Imperial Ballet where his name appeared in large letters, his Russian passport, and his marriage license. In the room where he spoke to the police, he showed what he meant by giving the three highest leaps of his entire career, along with the most sublime suite of steps. His blond mane brightened the somber building. The guards admired him open-mouthed and released his small family.

Out on the street, Alejandro fell to his knees and kissed the feet of his wife and daughter, begging their forgiveness. The shoe that was still red turned blue. Jashe, her breath short from emotion, raised him up to offer him her mouth. He kissed it as never before, trying to press his lips to hers forever. Sara Felicidad began to sing the tango Simón Radovitzky had brought to the bordello. The melody began heartrendingly only to fill with triumphal tones. Alejandro felt his heart full of light. “You are my soul,” he said to the child and, putting her on his shoulders, began to leap along the street, trying to fly. After twenty blocks, he fell exhausted next to a garbage can. Sarita went on singing. The passersby gave them coins. They piled up before them. When Jashe reached them, she silenced her daughter and, her face burning with shame, picked up the coins.

Alejandro took her by the waist, looked at her with infinite tenderness, and said, “You gave me a daughter, you brought me out of madness. A great change has just taken place in my spirit.

Simón’s marvelous sacrifice and this charity have made me understand that as an artist I’ve been a parasite. My dancing is only entertainment for rich people who applaud as long as you don’t show them anything real. I mean, human misery and the industrial destruction of the planet. I’ve been training my entire life for an audience that requires beauty without truth. I’ve submerged myself in myself, becoming an island of form without mind, in an exhibitionist of naïve vanity. The Imperial Ballet separated me from the people, and Vladimir Monomaque separated me from human feelings. I grew up like someone mutilated, with no relationship with others, drunk on my own limitations. That dancing is a trap that makes us collaborate with exploiters and murderers. The money they gave me and the money I’ve earned giving classes to frivolous students is stained with blood. We should give it away. If I want to be a real artist, I have to know poverty, share life with my brother workers. I know, Jashe, that I’m asking both of you to make a great sacrifice, that you and Sara Felicidad put up with misery, I don’t know for how long. For that reason you have to decide immediately: either you leave with the child and you make a new union with a sleeping man who will give you comforts obtained by robbing the health of others or you come with me to the poor neighborhoods to redeem the injustice of this world with the sacrifice of your life, as Simón Radovitzky sacrificed his.”