Where the Bird Sings Best (48 page)

And silence entered the house, like a translucent ghost and filled the rooms with absence. Freed from the oppression of human voices, noises took control of the space. The act of eating—chewing food, the cracking of chicken bones, the bubbling of saliva, the snapping of tongues, the dense act of digestion, the intestinal rumbling—all of that became a symphony. That muteness threw light and shadow into high relief, opened the way to scents that came from the garden and the kitchen to flutter in the dining room like long-legged birds. It erased the bodies, encrusting them in their absence in the chairs.

One morning, when the rooster was crowing, Recabarren woke him by depositing on his legs a large package wrapped in shiny paper. In his left hand, he held a heavy suitcase.

“We’re going on a trip, comrade. I have to take advantage of my position as a member of Congress; they will not dare to kill me. We’re going on a tour of Tarapacá and Antofagasta. We’re going to distribute propaganda translated by you, along with my pamphlet on Russia. It is our political obligation to elevate the low ideological level of the Party directors and militants.”

Wearing trousers of ordinary cloth, a T-shirt, and an old vest, the representative of the people in the parliament took a third-class seat on the Longitudinal and, accompanied by Jaime and Sofía, who joined them as they left the house, he left for the north, subjecting himself to the discomforts of the trip, the heat, the flies, the dust, the anxieties. The lesbian had fallen in love with my father. Even though he rejected her saying, “That is not our contract, comrade. I was only your doctor. I don’t want you to flood me with filthy feelings,” she slept every night on a bench just outside the house, contenting herself with spying on Jaime’s venerated shadow moving behind the curtains.

In Zapiga, the police, alerted by some unknown informer, forced them off the train and made them sleep out in the open, next to the door of the station, all to keep them from visiting the office of the nitrate mine there. Down from the mountains blew a wind so freezing that Recabarren began to tremble as his fingers turned blue. To warm him, Jaime embraced him chest-to-chest, while Sofía warmed his back. That way they managed to withstand the cold for a few hours. But then they all began to tremble. A cavernous, convulsive cough shook the master’s body. His comrades, much younger and therefore much less affected, began to rub him down from head to foot, putting all their energy into the massage.

When the attack passed, Recabarren said to them, “Don’t worry so much, children. I’ve withstood worse things—beatings, torture, forced marches, and hunger. No physical ill can bring me down. And it won’t be my age that conquers me. Let’s walk to the mine. We’ll sleep on foot.”

They divided up the heavy propaganda and advanced like sleepwalkers pursued by an enormous moon. Recabarren was muttering a speech to the dunes, taking them for Party militants:

“It’s insane to use capital with no other goal than increasing your amount of capital, comrades. It only leads to the poisoning of the planet and the death of humanity. The solutions offered within society as it is are transitory and fictitious. We should... ”

The miners received them with profound emotion; seeing them walk toward them, a National Deputy on the point of death, covered by the dust of the road, almost unable to speak because his throat was so swollen, his tongue dry, and his lips split, was something like a miracle. Forgetting Marxist atheism, they fell to their knees and began to pray before him as if he were a saint. Furious, Jaime interrupted them:

“Leave off these superstitions, comrades. Don Luis Emilio is a man just like you. Instead of prayers, give us a mattress to sleep on.”

Recabarren protested, “None of that. There is no time to lose. First we’ll do our duty, then we’ll rest. Gather the militants and fellow travelers in the gymnasium during their lunch break. We have pamphlets of the highest importance that must be distributed.”

Even though he’d walked so far without sleeping, Recabarren spoke with overflowing enthusiasm on the subject “Something of What I’ve Seen in Moscow.” When the siren sounded, calling the workers back, he rushed to finish his speech:

“Workers in Russia have in their hands the strength of political and economic power. There is no one in the world who can strip the people of that power they’ve already conquered. The expropriation of the exploiters is complete. Never again will a thieving, tyrannical regime of the kind we put up with in Chile return to that society.”

The workers were able to lend them a school where they slept a siesta that lasted until the next morning. Recabarren used the principal’s office, while Jaime and Sofía slept in a classroom.

Jaime was dreaming that a panther was biting his skull without hurting him, in the way cats play with mice, when Sofía woke him, naked, straddling him and trying to swallow his penis in her sex.

“You are raping me, Comrade Lam. That’s not right.”

“Things belong to the person who needs them. Go back to sleep, Comrade Lautaro. I’ll do all the work. Your instrument has been expropriated.”

“But... ”

“Shut up. Don’t distract me. I have almost no feeling, and it takes a lot of work to have an orgasm. Let me concentrate.”

And she began to move with deep and regular moist kisses that captured him to the root. Jaime opened his eyes wide and looked at her face, hoping that her resemblance to a Pekingese would deflate his erection. But her hard breasts and abundant backside added to the woman’s energy as she pumped up and down on the axis, giving tail switches like a hungry shark, passing from moans to roars, and ending by vomiting out a string of obscenities that would make a saloon drunk blush. It all kept him erect. Amid all this brawling, he tried to say, “Remember, comrade, you are a lesbian.”

But a sucking kiss covered his mouth and absorbed his entire tongue, obviating such an important revelation. His will began to weaken, and the vital liquid began to boil. He was chilled by a strange object that began to work its way into his anus. The comrade was trying to give a humility lesson to his manly pride by introducing a rubber phallus to his sanctum sanctorum.

“Here, there is neither masculine nor feminine, my dear. Let’s be like snails; let’s penetrate each other and simultaneously allow ourselves to be possessed. Equality is born from love.”

In a rage, Jaime tried to push her off, but it was then he realized his wrists were tied with a length of chain. Sofia, with insane strength, immobilized his legs and, despite his groaning, begging, and protesting, penetrated his anus with the thick object. To his shame, all that promiscuity brought him closer to explosion.

“That’s it, that’s it, my androgyne! Come on, give me your syrup! We’re going to make a champion child!”

Desperate, Jaime broke his chains, gave a leap backward, shook off the vampire, fell on top of the propaganda, and ejaculated onto “The Left Wing, an Infantile Sickness of Communism,” translated from the selected works of Lenin. He pulled out the rubber phallus and in disgust threw it at Sofía’s head. He hit her right in the center of her forehead, raising a lump that looked like a bite from a mountain flea.

“The flies have flooded your head, comrade. Too much of a good thing is no good. Your motto ought to be ‘Praise Marx but pass the Lautaro.’ I’ll be a father some day. I feel in my balls a spirit asking me to engender it, but I’ll deposit my seed in the uterus of a woman who shines like the planet Venus, not in a dyke like you.”

Sofía Lam roared out, slamming the door so hard that three tiles fell off the roof. Then, muttering insults, while at the same time slicing the air with a long, sharp stone, cutting off invisible penises, she headed for the coast, entering the immense pampa. I can’t say that I breathed a sigh of relief, because at that time I had no lungs, but I did swing around in joy because there was no way I wanted that woman as a mother.

But I didn’t view her as severely as Jaime did, and I thought his way of cutting her off was exaggerated, this sticking the label “dyke” on her. It was denigrating. She was no hypocrite and had obeyed her instincts without opposing them with prejudices or fears. Her authenticity deserved a more courteous separation, but— and this is what horrified me—when I was on the point of landing in her ovaries, I saw that they were already inhabited by three spirits ready to pass through the frustration of miscarriage. They need to be engendered, to accumulate a few months of hope and only then receive the lesson of failure. They were three prophets wanting to view the promised land from a distance without entering it. Souls that in previous, egoistic lives did not know how to sacrifice themselves to themselves.

Without Sofía, my father and Recabarren continued their travels to Iquique. The people received Recabarren like a hero, and a public event was organized in Plaza Condell. When the leader, standing in the kiosk, was giving his speech, the shout
Long Live Chile! Death to Communism!
rang out and several shots came from the public. One bullet left a red line on the speaker’s cheek. The workers dove to the ground to avoid the shots.

Recabarren, unperturbed, remained standing and speaking. Five young fascists wearing military shirts, boots, and riding trousers tried to scare the audience. Jaime detached the sickle from the red screen used for decoration and, scrambling around the flattened bodies, went up to the aggressors. One of them, fired up with the power his pistol gave him, tried to empty it at Recabarren’s head. Jaime jumped like a cat and, still in the air, cut off the man’s hand. A steaming spurt poured out of the stump all over those on the ground. Never fearing the bullets, my father ran toward the other fascists, but they, scared out of their wits, fled, carrying their mutilated comrade who never stopped screaming.

Jaime picked up the hand that still held the pistol and placed it on the table behind which Recabarren was standing. He interrupted his speech, removed the pistol from the stiffened fingers, and pointed it at the workers. They ducked their heads in shame.

“Comrades, you have to learn to give your lives so you can make a living as you should. No one is separated. We are a group, not individuals. Individuals are mortal, groups are eternal. When we stop fearing death, the gods fall off their pedestals. They tried to stop me from speaking with bullets, and all they achieved is that their shots turned into my words. Each one said
Freedom!
”

An ovation exploded, and in one voice they sang “The International” at the top of their lungs. Then Sofía Lam appeared, falling down drunk, hugging a prostitute dressed in red:

“Bastards! This long-suffering woman has more balls than all of you, poor he-men who know how to sing silly songs with the voice of a hot burro, but you abandon your leader when a rich boy starts shooting!”

She tore her Communist Party membership card to pieces.

“I’m leaving the Revolution for prostitution, that’s my song!” And she fell into the arms of her lover, who picked her up like a baby and carried her off to the bars at the port. Paying no attention, the demonstrators finished singing the anthem, and to keep Recabarren and Jaime from being beaten by the police, who most certainly would be waiting for them at the train station, they gave them two mules and a guide who led them through the hills to Antofagasta. They took the Longitudinal and returned to Santiago. Before they went in, the master passed the revolver wrapped in a handkerchief to Jaime, saying, “Lautaro, you keep it so Teresa doesn’t see it. Always keep it clean and loaded. You never know.”

The portrait of Lenin went on peeling. By now it no longer had a face. During their silent meals, from time to time they heard the small sounds of the paint hitting the oilcloth table cover. When, in January 1924, the news came from Russia of the death of the great revolutionary, all that was left of the portrait was a white stain, rather like a ghost. Recabarren, without showing his emotions, went to the chamber, delivered a verbal portrait of Lenin, and asked that a condolence telegram be sent to Moscow. His proposal was rejected.

That night, back at home, Recabarren did not eat. He was sitting in the garden until 3:00 a.m. Teresa, always like a ship slicing through water, brought him hot tea every half hour. When the eighth cup came, the man broke his silence:

“Don’t sacrifice yourself, Teresa, go to bed. You listen to my silences as if they were screams. Do I have to explain what’s wrong with me? You know that ever since I was a boy I’ve given my life to the people. I’m not even fifty, but people call me ‘the old man.’ I’m no dreamer; I’ve only asked for what is right. It’s not crazy to demand an end to war and the exploitation of man by man. Those who deny that are the ones who live outside reality, giving the orders, massacring innocents to preserve their power, making themselves owners of the Earth’s riches, exacerbating consumption, leaving the workers hungry. It’s insane! I never should have gone to Russia. I saw things. Errors I don’t want to remember. Lenin died because he could not go on living that way. Now, Comrade Stalin... terrible... Well... Don’t make me speak, woman. I no longer know what man is.”

“We don’t know what man is when he’s asleep, Luis Emilio. The man who is awake is sublime. If you don’t believe me, just look at yourself.”

They embraced tenderly. He rested his head on Teresa’s strict bosom and, without making a sound and with his jaws clenched, dominated the weeping that shook his shoulders. Jaime, hidden by the curtain, heard everything from his window, listening avidly to his master’s words, and felt ashamed to be spying on such an intimate scene. He stepped away, went to look at himself in the mirror, and gave himself a couple of good slaps.