Where the Bird Sings Best (46 page)

In the cotton stuffing of the shoulder pads, Jaime found a lot of money. He gave half to his partner and with the other half bought a navy blue suit and a ticket to Santiago. The hunchback got drunk, burned the gorilla suit, and began to pelt him with hardboiled eggs dyed black. My father had to run to the train to escape his fury. He reached the capital one Sunday at 6:00 a.m. When he entered Benjamín’s apartment, he found him fully dressed, eating breakfast:

“What are you doing here? I’ve got no need for you. You spent almost two years without writing or worrying about my mother’s health. You should be ashamed. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve gone back to divine Poetry, I’d be a goner by now. Thanks to poetry, in these immobile rivers, the crutches of long journeys have become baroque chargers. I gallop mounted on a violet blast between the ancient eyes of men who reflect the geometric formulas of this unbalanced world.”

“Stop, Benjamín. Stop reciting with that diva’s voice and tell me where Teresa is, since she’s also
my
mother.”

“She’s made notable progress. Even though she has serious cardiac problems, the wandering truths have returned to take refuge in the divine architecture of their demolition.”

“You’re busting my balls with your babble! Explain clearly to me!”

“She’s become a nice lady. On Sundays, they let her out of the madhouse in my custody. We have a puppet theater, and we put on shows in the hospital for children with tuberculosis. Will you come? Today we’re debuting ‘The Soldier Who Overcame Death.’ A traditional theme, but I’ve rewritten the dialogue. Art keeps cemeteries alive thanks to the play of its cadavers!”

The puppet theater stood in the somber patio filled with yellowish children, wearing old army jackets with gray blankets covering their shoulders. It was a blue screen emblazoned with the name of the company: The Booloolu. A cloth with a medieval castle painted on it was the only scenery. The small patients shouted, demanding the performance begin. Severe nurses handed out crepe paper balls filled with sawdust. A bullying doctor waved a Chilean flag, asking everybody to sing the national anthem. Jaime couldn’t see Teresa. Benjamín sat him with the mob, and said, “Now you’ll have to concentrate. You’ll see my mother when the show is over. I made the heads of the puppets and she the costumes. The one who acts is me, Teresa is my helper. We make a great couple.” Then he ran to hide himself behind the screen. A cardboard trumpet hooted. Death appeared carrying a young blonde woman with red cheeks, wearing a bridal gown. The girl, fighting to escape the skeleton’s embrace, bowed toward the children, asking for help:

“Don’t let him take me away. Before I die, I want to see my fiancé, a soldier. He promised me he would return from the war.”

The sick children bombarded Death with their sawdust balls. But Death, emitting lugubrious guffaws, held the girl even more tightly. With great stealth, the puppet master removed his hand from the sleeve. The bride hung empty in the embrace of Death. Inside the little theater, Benjamín extended his left hand toward Teresa so she could slip on the soldier. His uniform was filthy and torn. Meanwhile, my uncle began to act in three different voices.

He made a cavernous laugh as Death: “You are mine, forever!”

He exclaimed as a damsel in distress, “No! Help! Oh my love, come help me!”

He shouted in a romantic soldier’s voice, “Oh my bride, hang on! I’m on my way!”

Teresa began to stagger, about to fall in a faint. Benjamín whispered, “Quickly now, slip the soldier on tight. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s nothing. A passing malaise. Go on. Don’t worry.”

Death opened the gates of the castle and locked the sagging bride inside. The soldier appeared.

“Old lady Death, open your eight invisible legs and give me back my bride!”

“Too late! Her soul will dissolve into white butterflies.”

“Never! If she disappears, you would erase me from all mirrors. Instead, I’ll kill you!”

“Kill me? Do you want to cut a sword with a thread? Ha, ha, ha!”

The ragged soldier engaged in a fierce fight with Death. Saber against scythe. Teresa, biting her lips, fell with an unbearable pain in her heart. Benjamín, never leaving off acting with his two puppets, who battled in silence, looked down to where his mother had fallen.

“I’m telling you not to worry, son. The show must go on.”

“But?”

“Whatever begins must end. Go on.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s this worn-out heart. My time has come.”

“No!”

“Go on, I’m ordering you!”

Amid the shouting with which the consumptive children cheered on their hero, the soldier, who dodged Death’s scythe by sinking down into the invisible floor only to pop up like a spring to surprise his adversary from the back. He pierced Death through and through with his saber, proudly exclaiming, “I’ve killed Death! Here I am, my bride! I got here in time!”

The hero, furiously applauded by the audience but worn out by the fight, made a supreme effort, opened the gate, and entered the castle. The stage was empty. The children asked their frowning nurses whether the soldier was going to find the girl dead or alive. Benjamín, with the soldier on one hand and the bride on the other, kneeled next to his mother.

“Don’t quit on me. I still need you.”

“Now you see you can’t finish the show on your own.”

The impatient children began to call to the hand puppets, “The bride and groom! We want the bride and groom!”

Benjamín made Teresa comfortable on the floor, shouted with the bride’s voice, “We’re on our way!” Then, with the voice of the soldier, “We’re enjoying a kiss!” He imitated the noise of a huge smack and sighed: “OOOOH!” General laughter broke out.

Teresa pressed her chest with her open hands. “I’ll hang on until the end. All you have left is the dance. Get up. Do it!”

Benjamín, his eyes filled with tears, raised the puppets. The soldier and his bride left the castle. The children received them with a warm ovation. He hugged her in his arms and said, passionately, “Tattoo my chest! Cover it with flames!”

And she answered, “Tiny needles grow on my lips, which for you spurt ink like little squids!”

And he: “Let me introduce the Universe between your lips!”

And she: “I have pieces of gods at the back of my tongue!”

The two papier mâché heads made a tremendous kiss. The children howled hysterically. The bride and groom separated and fell at the edge of the stage, worn out, panting. Then they jumped up and kissed again. The kiss made them spin around. More howls. Laughter. They began to dance a waltz: “We have conquered Death! Children, say it with us!”

The consumptive audience, like a single actor, exclaimed, “We have conquered Death!”

“Now together forever!”

The curtain fell. Jaime waited for the sick children to leave, not knowing that behind the screen, his mother, in his brother’s arms, was dying.

“Do not suffer, Benjamín. We aren’t born, and we don’t die. Life is eternal.”

“I know it. I’ll have to be the soldier who conquers Death.”

“You already are, and you have conquered it. We shall remain forever alive. Together forever. We shall go from transformation to transformation, never ending. We lose nothing because we are everything.”

My uncle could no longer hold back and began to sob.

“Don’t cry. My form is nothing more than an illusion.”

”Yes, an illusion but so beautiful.”

“Benjamín, I want you to bury my body next to your father’s. Under the same stone.”

“I promise I will.”

“Finally I know peace. How marvelous, how marvelous, how mar—”

And she expired sweetly. Jaime found her smiling in the arms of his brother, who kissed her with devotion. He attempted to come close, but Benjamín made a violent gesture of rejection.

“Get out of here. Her death is mine. I will bury her. You never did anything for her. You were born an orphan with no father or mother. You aren’t even my brother.”

Jaime said nothing. He’d tortured Benjamín when they were small by making fun of his weaknesses, so he understood that hatred. He felt compassion for Benjamín: until the end of his days, he would be married to Teresa’s ghost, with no wife, no children, making his language harder and harder to understand until he severed all communication with the world. Poetry would gag him. He left his brother there, clinging to the smiling body, and went to see Recabarren.

He crossed the Mapocho River, which flowed with chocolate-colored water, as if grumbling about the passage of time, stubborn, not wanting to leave the past, denying the city, showing with its mild current the difficulty of passing, going toward itself, dense in its fight not to move forward, trying to turn itself into a liquid lance, seeking immobility without ever finding it, and raging because it had to dissolve in the gluttonous ocean.

He shook his head to stop identifying himself with the river, using it as a mirror, and tried to find number 360 on Andrés Bello Street. It was a modest house with a well-tended garden. A bronze fist at the center of the blue door was the knocker. Jaime began to tremble. Something was telling him that when he stepped over the threshold his life would change. He needed to find a root to draw him out of madness, to drop the anchor in solid ground, to find beings without illusions, building on rock instead of sand, knowing someone honest on this planet full of crooks and vampires. He made only one knock, which tried to be discreet but sounded like a pistol shot.

An amiable woman with intelligent eyes opened the door: Her hair was cut short like a man’s, and her face was mature but without wrinkles. She wore no makeup. Her goodness was clearly the result of her tenacious, direct spirit, which had abandoned the mirages of seduction. Even though everything about her was feminine, the narrowness of her hips showed she’d never had a child.

“What do you want?”

“I’m Jaime Jodorowsky. Mr. Recabarren offered me a job.”

“Ah, the young man who speaks Russian! Luis Emilio has already told me about it. Come in. I’m his companion, Teresa.”

Teresa! This woman had the same name as his mother. He’d just lost one, and the magic of chance was giving him another, perhaps better, as if the first had been the rough stone uncarved and this one the geometric form, realized. He knew he was going to love her, without sex, without demands, with an unlimited admiration. All he needed was to see her this way, so complete, to take her as a model for all women. She hadn’t said she was the “wife” of the leader, but his “companion.” This woman could never accept anything other than love and political ideals to unite her to her man. Marriage for her had to be one more farce in the capitalist system. The house seemed as clean as a warship. The furniture was solid and in the strictly necessary quantity. There were no pictures on the walls, no adornments. Nor were there any crucifixes or other religious images. But covering the entire ceiling of the living room was a portrait of Lenin painted in tempera.

“You can move in here.”

She gave him a room with a narrow bed, a chair, a dresser, a bathroom, and a pitcher full of water.

“I’m going to serve bean soup, bread and butter, and coffee. After you eat, you can begin to put the books in order. They’re still in boxes. What with all these sad events, we haven’t had time to unpack them.”

Was she referring to the betrayal involved in the way the government of Alessandri thanked the people for the support they’d given him? Five hundred miners murdered in the San Gregorio nitrate mine, coal miners shot by the police in Curanilahue, demonstrations broken up by beatings, massacres of workers in El Zanjón de la Aguada, women fired for holding a meeting in Santiago at the site of the O’Higgins monument, peasants from the La Tranquilla ranch in Petorca murdered? The denial of the right to gather, jailings, deportations, torture… Or was she talking about the internal squabbles that broke out immediately after the founding of the Communist Party?

Jaime ate with a good appetite, washed his dishes and silverware in the kitchen sink, and opened the boxes. He was so excited to touch the books that formed Recabarren’s spirit that he forgot his internal vigilance, which the Rabbi took advantage of by appropriating his personality. What the Rabbi loved above all things was books. Under Teresa’s astonished eyes, he organized the books, capturing the essence of their contents in two or three pages, while emitting exclamations of pleasure in Yiddish.

He separated literature from pure philosophy and gave a preferential place to political texts. He put poetry on the highest shelf. He did not order the books alphabetically but by theme, not concerned in the slightest about which language they were written in. He understood everything. He read paragraphs in Russian, Italian, German, and French. Also in Spanish.

Each new idea filled his mouth with saliva, as if he were sampling an exquisite dish. For the pleasure of feeling the miraculous structure of a sentence, he recited it, giving musical intonations. He sang the books, or rather, he stored them in his mind, whistling their rhythms. He fluttered about with the open books in his hands, looking like a bird.

“The songs of my language have eyes and feet, eyes and feet, muscles, soul, sensations, the grandeur of heroes, and small, modest customs. Mmm... Touch her body, touch her body, and your miserable fingers will bleed! Great poet! Oy vey! The signs by which the gods revealed themselves were often very simple: the noise of the sacred oak’s leaves, the whisper of a fountain, the sound of a bronze cup caressed by the wind. This aesthetic isn’t bad. God appears, man is nullified: and the greater divinity becomes, the more miserable humanity becomes.
Ase méne dermante zir in toite!
When you think about death, it’s because you aren’t sure about life. These anarchists who grind up God so much make holy sausages.”