Where the Bird Sings Best (11 page)

He hated his grandmother, his mother, and his wife. Three women but at the same time one woman. He sought refuge in the Virgin Mary. He thought that in the solitude of his arboreal hideaway, he would attain sainthood, but one night, when the moon was full, the nightmare began. Possessed by a bestial desire, he was forced to rape and slaughter herds of sheep. Now, after what Cristina had done for him, he realized that beneath the skin of those animals he was seeing the naked bodies of the women who smothered and perverted his youth: Catherine, Maria Feodorovna, and Isabel.

Cristina, her eyes wet with tears, listened without saying a word. It wasn’t an emperor speaking to her, but God. Alexander I picked up a shepherd’s crook, kissed her on the forehead, and bade farewell to her and the world. He would walk to Siberia, and beyond, reaching the polar ice where he would die in the whiteness and purifying cold. Cristina watched him drift away among the trees. The green leaves that hid him also made him disappear from her life. Feeling herself to be pregnant, she returned to her manor; gathered together servants and administrators to announce that she would be living in the forest as a hermit. She promised to visit them every lunar month to see to the proper functioning of the estate, and then she returned to the oak of her dreams.

There, dressed in a white cossack, she prays, bathes in the waterfall, eats snakes, gives birth to Ivan, cuts the umbilical cord with her teeth, and devours the placenta. She goes on living that way for fifteen years. She sprouts a white moustache and a beard of fine, translucent hair. She doesn’t teach her son to read or write. When the boy’s pubis blackens and he starts to get erections every time he looks at the icon of the Virgin, Cristina offers him a sheep so he can vent his passion.

For many days the boy doesn’t touch the animal, but when the full moon comes, he throws himself on top of it, penetrates it, bellowing angrily, ejaculates, bites open its stomach, and enjoys himself while pouring out its guts. His mother thinks it’s a miracle. She believes that within Ivan’s body lives the spirit of the Emperor. She brings sheep until the boy, transformed into a powerful giant, rolls around in the mud and then leaps from tree to tree, making his way to the farms of her servants. At dawn, he returns, covered with blood. Then he sleeps, smiling and satisfied.

In the morning, when Cristina goes to the manor house and delivers her monthly abuse to the servants, she hears talk of the night before, when eight women were raped and torn apart. Cristina takes a knife from the kitchen and gallops out to the oak tree to castrate her son. She’s caught in a blizzard. Dropping from fatigue, she reaches the refuge, where a hungry bear attacks her. Hearing her screams, Ivan comes out of the oak tree just in time to see the enormous beast bite off his mother’s head.

He picks up the kitchen knife and buries it in the bear’s heart. He feels happy as never before. He looks toward heaven and says, “I forgive you, my God.” With the skin of the bear he makes a coat and a mask. He then takes possession of his mother’s estate and chooses ten of the most muscular servants. He cuts off their testicles and makes them his personal guard. So the authorities will suspect nothing, he commits his murders in the Jewish villages, covered by anti-Semitism.

One day, he attacks the school of the Vilna Gaon. When he sees Felicidad, he realizes that his entire being, transformed into a beast, was seeking a tamer. That fragile woman is his soul. To destroy her would mean immersing himself forever in darkness. He gives himself to her as only an animal can. His ferocity now is obedience. Felicidad is the Law. If she unleashes him, he will eviscerate the world.

Felicidad, descendant of countless lion tamers, understands that her existence only acquires meaning by dominating the beast. That beast is a part of her, her home, her foundation. If before she languished, far from the wetlands that could nourish her flower of fire, now, standing before that beautiful monster, she feels herself reborn. By dominating vice, she will bring virtue to the world. Virtue, which is nothing more than putrefaction transformed. In order for the man to become light, the woman will have to extinguish her lamp in the darkness. She will unite her life to that of the murderer to calm his voracity, make him release the prey, convert his roars into prayers, teach him to give and receive at the same time, transform him into a prism that will absorb colors and transform them into a single ray.

Ivan had all the furniture in the manor house piled up in the garden and set it all on fire. Then he ordered his eunuchs to paint the walls, ceilings, and floors white. White was the only color he could stand now; all others made him sick. Felicidad’s spotless skin made even snow seem filthy. He locked himself up in that dazzling space with his tamer. She resolved never to go out again. Her mission, in this profound solitude, was to fabricate the stone that would transform base metals into gold: a prophetic son.

Ivan and Felicidad prepared for months, perhaps years, without speaking, staring into each other’s eyes, stock still for entire nights. He only ate fruit; she, raw meat. When she felt the spiritual union had been consummated, Felicidad stretched out on the white floor and ordered Ivan to give himself over to the only sexual act both would have during their entire lives.

Slowly, delicately, tenderly, the man entered the woman, who in turn opened wider and wider until she lost all boundaries and fused with the entire Earth. The semen descended to the core of the planet, fell into a dark abyss where the galaxies dance. The Universe absorbed the rain of fire. Felicidad was pregnant. Now Ivan could disappear.

“I want you to cut me into pieces and eat me,” he said to his lover and softly expired in her arms. She buried his body in the snow, and for the nine months of her pregnancy nourished herself on it.

The child arrived in a breech birth. The midwife brought him, feet first, into the world in a single great pull. “His feet will be more important than his head,” she declared. Felicidad understood: Alejandro Prullansky would be a great dancer, not a prophet. For humanity, art was more important than an unreachable God—art that transformed matter into soul. His family tree told of the struggles of sensitive souls in search of the beauty, the glow of the hidden Truth. Thanks to the sacrifice of the murderous instinct, violence could metamorphose into poetry. And there was no poem greater than a dancing body. When the boy was five years old, Felicidad sent him to the Imperial Ballet School in Moscow.

That morning, Felicidad opened the windows and let in the frozen, fragrant air from the snow-covered park. All the hair on her body had turned white. “You will never see me again,” she said to Alejandro. “I’m not going to die, but I am going to dissolve into the whiteness. Always remember me.” The boy saw his mother, so pale she looked like a plaster figurine, remove all her clothing, press against the wall and blend into the white stucco. When she closed her eyes (the only dark spots on her body), he could no longer see her at all. He ran to the wall, groping it desperately. All he felt was a smooth surface.

The giant dancer began to weep in Jashe’s arms—for the lost maternal kisses, for the tortures of apprenticeship in classical dance, for the boys who had their sexes kissed in the dressing rooms, for that old choreographer who raped him behind the piano when he was eleven. Whenever he was given a room with white walls, he would hurl himself against them until his forehead bled. He could have died of sadness had it not been for Abravanel’s red shoes. Those century-old, impervious boots that changed size, adapting to the child’s feet and stretching as they grew, proved to him that he was the bearer of a collective soul that would allow him to reach the end of Time, beyond all space, where only Truth exists.

Jashe placed the red shoes on top of the violet bag containing the Tarot, and with those sacred objects next to her, coupled with her husband to give my mother, Sara Felicidad, the chance to incarnate herself in a place of love.

The alarm clock did not work. The newlyweds ran out of the hotel only half dressed and just managed to reach at the station in time for the train that would carry them to the port of Bremen. There they boarded the
Weser
, an impressive ship whose first-class passengers included members of the Imperial Ballet, on their way to Buenos Aires for their debut in the famous Colón Theatre. The
Weser
boasted cabins in Chinese-French style, dinners enlivened by a string quartet, steam baths, spacious entertainment rooms, and long passageways with wood paneling that imitated ebony. In third class—that is, in the hold or on the poop deck—were packed 1,200 Russian Jews accepted by the Argentine government on the condition that they work on the pampa as farmers.

No sooner had Jashe set foot on the packet boat’s ladder than she sensed a threat to her happiness. Someone, one of the group of dancers who leaned on the railing of the upper deck, was watching them with a look like an invisible larva full of hatred. Alejandro too felt the ominous attack. His face pale, he said between his teeth, “Walk behind me and carry the bags as if you were a servant. I’ll explain later.” When they entered the spacious bedroom assigned to him as a principal dancer, the giant embraced Jashe, muttering apologies.

The situation was complicated: in a sense, he belonged to the Imperial Ballet, and the members of the
corps
were not allowed to marry. This of course was not written in their contracts, but it was accepted as an unspoken rule. The Director General, whose real name no one knew, went by Vladimir Monomaque in honor of the ancestor of the princes of Moscow. In the eleventh century, one had distinguished himself with his talent as an organizer and administrator. He enforced a ferocious discipline on the dancers, making them to rehearse all day long, never giving a thought to whether they had time for satisfy their emotional needs.

Monomaque’s possessiveness kept outsiders from the intimate life of the Ballet. Equally possessive was the sublime Marina Leopoldovna, the prima ballerina and the tyrant’s pampered pet, whose many caprices were tolerated because the success of the tours depended on her. Her immense talent and technical perfection attracted multitudes in every country.

Well, he was telling her all this because there was something very unpleasant he had to confess. One afternoon, yielding to the demands of the temperamental diva, Vladimir Monomaque entered Alejandro’s dressing room and, after reminding Alejandro of everything he owed him and the school—a refuge for the orphan such as him—ordered him to satisfy Marina’s sexual appetites, which seized her on the twenty-first day of every month. No one argued with the Director General. Unfortunately, because of the precipitous nature of events, Alejandro had not had the time to communicate to—let’s call things by their proper names—his lover the news of their marriage.

The news—he was sure of it—was going to cause a lot of trouble. Knowing Marina as he did, he knew she would faint and then wake up a few seconds later, foaming with rage. Then she’d refuse to dance, and finally, forced by the steely Director, she waged silent war by spreading animosity among the troupe until she made their lives impossible. All this could stop if Vladimir only found her another lover in the group—impossible, as they were all effeminate.

“I’m very sorry, Jashe. You have to eat and sleep in the servants’ area. The crossing will be long; it will last thirty-five days, and the tour will last six months or more. Aboard the ship, we will make love when you bring me my breakfast, and on land, if they give us a day off each week, we’ll go to some discreet hotel. When the tour is over, when we’re back in Moscow, we can finally return to normal. But if the star of the show finds out the truth and we have a crisis, Monomaque will instantly find someone in the school to replace me.”

Jashe held in her bitter tears, knowing that there was no solution but to accept the arrangements for now. The only thing she couldn’t understand was how her husband could have lied to her and said she was his first. He lowered his eyes in shame for five minutes that seemed like five hours. Finally, he whispered in a broken voice, “Tomorrow is the twenty-first. Marina Leopoldovna’s desire comes on with mathematical precision. Any moment now she will walk into this cabin. You should leave without looking back and wait in your place until the next day. I suggest you not talk with the servants, because they will fill your ears with obscene gossip. Ah, Jashe, how we suffer! You have to believe that this repulses me and that I suffer as much as you.”

Jashe’s love knew no limits. They threw themselves into each other’s arms and made more passionate love than ever. A gong sounded, announcing dinner. The liner was now rocking on the high seas. They said goodbye with a deep and furtive kiss, and Jashe, despite her seeming fragility, showed her impeccable moral strength. She picked up her suitcase, went to the servants’ quarters, accepted the suspicious looks of the little old ladies in charge of costume, and did not argue when she was given a tiny cabin with no windows that smelled of rotten beets. Impassive, she turned on the faucet, ran water onto the floor, and set about cleaning until everything sparkled. Every once in a while, some stagehand would open the door and look her up and down obscenely or mockingly.

The foreman, a fat Ukrainian who breathed through his mouth, emitting a slight but perpetual whine, escorted her to the dining room and gave her a place at the shared table. Barely able to keep from vomiting, she had just tossed a sack of gelatinous beets overboard. Now, as the only accompaniment to her breaded cutlets, she was served a few of those red tumors. A sour wine, made from powder and water, was passed around freely. Men and women, drunk, began to mimic a ballet. Showing their backsides, which they kept bare under heavy, long skirts, the assistants, the makeup women, and the seamstresses all spread their legs shamelessly so the workers could slip their calloused hands into the dark stains of their sex and raise them like awkward swans.