Where the Bird Sings Best (50 page)

“Let the action begin!”

Lion Tamer
: “Come along! Get up on that chair!”

Beast
: “Grrr!”

Lion Tamer
: “It’s your property!”

Beast
: “Yes, it is mine! I sit on it. Few beasts manage to own their own chair. I’m happy!”

Lion Tamer
: “Take a look at this chair.”

Beast
: “It’s the same as the other.”

Lion Tamer
: “Apparently it is, but actually it’s very different. Generations of noble beasts have sat on it. It’s an honor to own it!”

Beast
: “I want it for myself!”

Lion Tamer
: “Impossible. It belongs to the director of the circus!”

Beast
: “I’ll trade the one I have for that one!”

Lion Tamer
: “Yours is vulgar.”

Beast
: “I’ll give you all my money too!”

Lion Tamer
: “You don’t have enough money.”

Beast
: “What can I do? I’m ashamed of living on an ordinary chair.”

Lion Tamer
: “If you kill the director of the circus, I can get it for you.”

Beast
: “I’ll get the chair, but what will you earn?”

Lion Tamer
: “I’ll get to direct the circus!”

Beast
: “Perfect! I’ll rip his guts out! Let’s go!”

The bureaucrat Elías and Jaime, the colonel, went over to a corner where Sofía, the circus director, dressed as the president of the republic, was standing. Jaime would give her a shove and throw her to the floor. Elías threw himself on her, biting her stomach, pulling out of the vest a long intestine made of rags. With a tricky sleight-of-hand it looked as if he’d eaten it. Teresa, sitting in the audience, would applaud and shout, “Bravo! Great, magnificent, they killed him! Now the circus will work really well!”

Lion Tamer
: “Take the second chair. You’ve earned it.”

Beast
: “Grrr. It’s delightful to sit in it.”

Lion Tamer
: “Even so, your first chair, despite being ordinary, had a warmth the other does not possess.”

Beast
: “That’s true. My new chair is cold.”

Lion Tamer
: “The first is so agreeable that other beasts have decided to buy it.”

Beast
: “Never! It must be mine again!”

Lion Tamer
: “But you already have a chair.”

Beast
: “I want both of them!”

Lion Tamer
: “I can get it for you.”

Beast
: “How?”

Lion Tamer
: “First, obey me blindly.”

Beast
: “Give me orders!”

Lion Tamer
: “Fight, shoot cannon, gas them, invade, destroy, massacre!”

Beast
: “Grrr! Ready! What next?”

Lion Tamer
: “Take the chair you want by force!”

Elías would then leap toward the chair, imitating the attack of a ferocious soldier, and, after liquidating his invisible enemies, would take control of the chair, place it next to the other, and lie down on both with his hands under the nape of his neck.

Beast
: “Now I’ve got both! Now I’m happy!”

Lion Tamer
: “This place is full of people in chairs. What are your two chairs next to all these? You’ve got to expel the audience so that the entire circus is ours!”

Elías would then leap toward Teresa and hustle her around to drag her off the floor. Then he would return and stand on top of his chairs.

Beast
: “We’ve expelled the audience! The circus is ours!”

Lion Tamer
: “Stupid beast! You deserve a thousand lashes! Who do you think you are? The circus belongs to me!”

Beast
: “Oh dear! Forgive me! You keep the circus. I’ll be happy with my two chairs.”

Lion Tamer
: “Why? Have you got two backsides? This chair where generations of noble beasts have sat belongs to the person who gives the orders. I’m taking it back.”

Beast
: “Oh, first chair of mine, I’ll find you again. I never should have abandoned you.”

Lion Tamer
: “Delusional beast: not even this chair belongs to you. I’ve decided to appropriate it. Animals don’t need to sit down. Stretch out on the ground.”

Beast
: “So what are you leaving me?”

Lion Tamer
: “Freedom!”

Beast
: “Freedom to do what?”

Lion Tamer
: “Freedom to eat just enough to stay alive. Freedom to obey me without arguing. Freedom to move around within a square yard. Freedom to receive the blows I might want to give you. Freedom to die for me!”

And Jaime would then take out a rifle and fire at Elías. He would fall down dead with red ink pouring from his mouth. Then my father, in anguish, would lament:

“And now what do I do alone in this enormous circus?”

Teresa would pass around the hat, whispering into the ears of the spectators, “Without a beast, there is no lion tamer.”

Dressed as miners, Elías, Jaime, and Sofía would appear with guitars to sing a cueca. The public would abandon their chairs and start dancing.

At dawn, March 15, 1927, the Communist Party was declared illegal. Radio Mercury transmitted the high-pitched, incisive voice of Carlos Ibáñez:

The definitive moment for settling accounts has come. The malevolent and socially corrosive propaganda of a few professional agitators along with a handful of daring outsiders is no longer acceptable. We must cauterize society above and below. The time has come to break completely the red ties to Moscow. The Communist press will be shut down. All the organs of the Party, beginning with the Central Committee, will be under strong and constant siege by the police. We shall jail hundreds of their militants and leaders, relegate them to the most inhospitable places, submit them to severe torture, and assassinate some of them. After this operation, the nation will be at peace: happy within, and respected abroad.

Teresa removed the hammer and sickle that adorned the hood of the truck and began to paint it black. They went on giving performances without changing a thing, but with other costumes, more innocent in appearance. Elías would wear a tiger suit. Jaime would exchange his colonel’s uniform for a blue lion tamer’s costume, and Sofía, the circus director, would wear a tuxedo. Teresa would introduce the show dressed as a clown.

For months, along the roads on the pampa, they passed gray trucks full of soldiers. They passed them by without being bothered. The truck, now decorated with circus designs, aroused no suspicion. From time to time they were stopped and, after a rapid scrutiny, would be asked to tell a few jokes. Which was something Sofía knew how to do very well; she had a repertoire, learned from the whores at the port, that was so obscene she made those insensitive male pigs wet their pants with laughter. Then they’d be sent on their way. Those same soldiers, if they saw a miner walking the hills, wearing a white cotton outfit, would shoot him just to watch him wave his arms like a dove. The vultures, attracted by the abundance of carrion, began to darken the sky as they followed the army patrols.

After each show, Teresa would invite Party members and, in secret, dodging informers, meet with them in some mine tunnel. For long hours she would recount her conversations with the man she’d venerated. Soon her gaze wandered, her voice would change along with her rhythm and gestures, and she would begin speaking as if she were Recabarren. Calm, profound, she would quote Engels, Lenin, Marx, and others to show her comrades the roads they ought to follow in the future. Elías would sit down near her legs, and she, never ceasing to lecture, would massage his hairy head, always shedding tears. Jaime and Sofía Lam, respectful, their bodies dried out after so many trips in the arid mining zones, would listen to her realizing that through a love that did not recognize death as a limit, that faithful woman kept the thoughts of the master alive.

One Saturday night, so starry that they could see one another’s faces without lighting a lamp, forty comrades gathered secretly a half hour away from the Huara nitrate mine, listening with religious respect to the words of the “old lady.” They were interrupted by a messenger who arrived almost out of breath, madly pedaling his bicycle:

“We’ve been betrayed, comrades! We caught an informer telephoning the soldiers at San Antonio. We made him confess; he gave them a list of our names and descriptions. All of us are marked men. He also squealed on our four friends, telling about the subversive labor they were carrying out. Right now, a truckload of soldiers is coming to arrest us. If we surrender, they’ll shoot us. If we run away, we’ll die of thirst in these arid hills or we’ll be shot by the patrols out ‘pigeon hunting.’ It’s better we fight, even if we have to throw rocks and die on foot!”

Like a single man, they all began to pile up stones and dig a trench in the soft soil.

“You, friends, do not have to sacrifice yourselves. Take your truck and run for Arica. If you get there, burn the truck and hide out in the home of some sympathizer—you’re all on the list.”

Teresa embraced the miners one by one, sat in the truck, and, with painful rage, drove off. Her three collaborators, their eyes lowered, got in too, not wanting to see for the last time those men who would be massacred. Sofía began to cry:

“They’re going to die, and it’s our fault. We brought them together.”

Teresa abruptly changed direction; instead of driving north, she turned onto the road to San Antonio. “They won’t die. I can save them. You three get out! I’m going to ram the soldiers’ truck!”

“I will accompany you, ma’am. I want to be worthy of my father. In any case, the police know who I am. Sooner or later, it’s all the same.”

“The soldiers have killed off almost all my friends, of both sexes. Being homosexual in this idiotic dictatorship is a crime. One of these days, they’ll tie a stone to my ankles and toss me into the sea. I too will accompany you, Teresa.”

“Allow me to sacrifice my life for the freedom of this country, which is now mine. We started out together, let’s end the journey together.”

And with that my father, seated next to the door, locked it and held on to the seat. Far in the distance, the two headlights of military transportation blinked.

“We’ll soon see you, Luis Emilio,” said Teresa, pressing hard on the accelerator. The stones from the desert valley began to run backward like rabbits. With savage hunger, the truck ate up the road. Sofía howled with enthusiasm, kissed Elías and Jaime on the mouth, lit four cigarettes and distributed them. They smoked avidly. Jaime smashed a fist through the windshield so they could feel the mountain air. Their blood was so hot they didn’t even feel the biting cold.

The collision was imminent, and the body of my future father was going to be destroyed. I began to protest. All my efforts to get him to La Tirana, where the woman I wanted as a mother awaited him, would be in vain. I might need centuries to find another couple appropriate for my plans. Damn it! This young man was heading straight to his death, AND I WANTED TO BE BORN!

Desperate, I emerged from the hiding place I’d made in Jaime’s testicles and sought out the Rabbi. He understood the situation immediately. He was horrified. My father was breaking many of the 613 commandments of his religion.
It is forbidden to kill.
When He created the world, God ordered men to increase and multiply so it would be inhabited. To destroy others and oneself is to destroy the world.
Abstain from all labor on Saturday.
Causing a collision is work.
It is forbidden for any tribunal to sentence anyone to death on Saturday.
The Eternal One has desired, in honor of that holy day, that even criminals and sinners find repose and tranquility on Saturday.
It is forbidden to take vengeance.
What happens to us, be it agreeable or annoying, has been desired by the Lord. The men who hurt us are instruments in the hands of the Creator. Our faults constitute the first cause of what happens to us.
It is forbidden to hold rancor.
It is unworthy to fix the offender in our memory and later imitate his conduct.
It is forbidden to cut one’s own flesh…