Where the Bird Sings Best (16 page)

Alejandro and Teresa, their hair half standing on end, their feet frigid, lost in a miserable neighborhood of Santiago de Chile, the farthest corner of the world, listened to that extravagant being perorate in the most refined Russian they’d ever heard. About politics, they knew nothing. When they heard the “let us understand one another well” part, they tried to dissimulate their donkey faces by opening their eyes wide and cocking, with an index finger, the pavilion of their ear.

“We are not the sort of anarchists who rebel against God, Science, or the State. None of that. That struggle only garners for the poor a rain of beatings and bullets. The State, and through the State, Capital, whatever form it takes, has for two or three centuries won that war. Nothing will change the course of the Industrial Era. The worms have begun to eat the cheese, and no one can stop them. Production will not cease until the complete deterioration of the planet. Few will survive. In a near future, the poor will perhaps have better clothing, housing, and food, but they will still be poor. Which is to say, more and more in debt to power, if not paying with blood and lungs, then giving away something as precious as their laughter and their intelligence. The poor man will become a comfortable, serious fool. The obvious conclusion? The main thing is to survive! That the collapse of society doesn’t destroy us. But sit down, and let me explain.”

As stools, he passed them two histories of philosophy, one in French, the other in German. Monkey Face gave the children a bag of marbles and sent them out to the street to play. Alejandro and Teresa still understood very little.

“We, labor, instead of continuing to be exploited by the rich, should figure out some way to exploit them. Not robbing them, of course. None of that. We have to act where they can’t, where they don’t know how. This is not a solution for the majority, only for a few fleas with talent. The hog must eat garbage to make blood. The fleas, without getting dirty, suck the blood of the hog. So, when they roast the animal, they also burn the parasites, because the parasites are stupid. They could have jumped off in time and passed to the heads of the butchers. But let’s get to the point. Power is not creative, and rich people get bored. They have everything, but they do not have themselves. And it’s logical. To find oneself, it’s necessary to let go of everything. They, on the other hand, are appropriating everything. See?”

“Yessir! We see!”

“Any man with a known profession—shoemaker, baker, miner, carpenter, painter, watchmaker, doctor, engineer, etcetera—is easy prey for the State, which will exploit him until it sucks out his very marrow. Having a normal profession means losing your freedom. We have to have unknown professions that do not intervene in material life but do produce states of consciousness. We have to create new needs for the rich. To do that, we need no other raw material than our imagination. The pig is dexterous but stupid. We can live off his stupidity until the self-destruction takes place. Please visit my foster brothers. I’ve given them new activities that will enable them to survive any collapse of the world economy. Those so-called crises really only affect the poor and the lesser capitalists. The big ones, the few and supreme, do not lose power, which is to say, they lose nothing. The hog passes through the change in fine style. My disciples, in those obscure moments, will hang on to their sows even more tightly.”

The Russians were about to leave, guided by Monkey Face, who had listened to the peroration, applauding from time to time with hands and feet, when the Anarchist stopped them.

“Brother Alejandro, allow me to ask you something: your companion says you want to be a shoemaker. Is that so?”

“That’s the truth, sir.”

“It isn’t worthwhile. It’s a known profession. The State will end up exploiting you. When you finish making your visits, come back. I’ll create a new profession for you. ‘Sweetener of Voids’ or ‘Corrector of Shadows,’ something.”

“Thank you sir, it won’t be necessary. I think that by the way in which I’ll work, shoemaker will become a new profession.”

Monkey Face led Teresa and Alejandro through the tenement, introducing them to the members of the Society of Free Brothers and Sisters. They met the “Disinfector of Mirrors,” the “Professor of Invisibility,” the “Fantastic Biologist-Body Inventor,” the “Funeral Clown,” and many others who were unable to explain what their activities were because Monkey Face, accepting a drink at every door, staggeringly drunk, forgot not only Russian but also all the other languages and translated their words into a strange tongue composed of belches, hiccups, and drooling. At the beginning, they at least managed to find out what the “Freckle Trainer” did.

He was a pudgy, dark-skinned man who gave off a strong smell of wine, as did all the other goys they’d see in the tenement. A woman with few teeth accompanied him along with eight children who ran around the single room unconcernedly. The trainer beat a small drum and, opening his eyes with strange flashes of light, ordered the beauty mark to move. In effect, many ladies wanted to have their beauty mark next to the place where their lips met or on a cheek or between their bosoms or even in more secret places. The naïve client would be told that, over the course of time, the blemish would move, bit by bit until it reached the desired spot.

Naturally, the drum, the flashing eyes, and the trainer’s hypnotic orders were not enough. The client also had to pray with faith. After a few sessions, the client would be told in no uncertain terms that the beauty mark had indeed moved several fractions of an inch. If the lady became bored with the large number of sessions necessary or if she began to complain about the slowness of their progress, the trainer would shrug his shoulders as if he were terribly offended and answer that the fault did not lie with him but with prayers without faith. And off he’d go in search of another victim. There was no lack of silly ladies to help him feed his numerous offspring. Sometimes, very rarely, the beauty marks did move.

After visiting his comrades, Seraphim, thirstier and thirstier, led them to a room at the end of the corridor, just like all the others, but bearing a large sign:
Happy Heart Bar
. About fifty goys—men and women, shoeless, their tattered clothes stitched together, packed in to form a sweaty block with a harsh stench—were buying, for a few coins, glasses of wine that a short, potbellied Andalucian drew from a barrel painted bright red, which was in the center of the room. With the skill of a sailor, the quasi-monkey threaded his way through that wave of flesh and returned, hopping on his right foot, holding three glasses—two in his hands and the third in the toes of his left foot. He drank from the one in his left extremity and held out the glasses in his upper extremities to the Russians. Alejandro immediately made a sign of refusal. Certain religious principles prohibited him from drinking in a bar. The fifty goys wore offended faces, and one insisted, “Don’t insult us, comrade.”

Sensing a storm brewing, Teresa raised her glass and emptied it down to the last drop. The block of bodies approved with a jolly grunt.

The Rabbi advised my grandfather, “Look here, Alejandro, Hillel the Wise said: ‘When you’re among people wearing clothes, wear clothes; when you’re among the naked, go naked.’ Wine for these people is a kind of communion. I don’t think you can say no. They might kill you. Drink and apply the proverb: ‘As long as you’re going to sin, you might as well enjoy yourself.’”

Then Alejandro took the glass and swallowed the wine with pleasure. He shivered five times, and a stubborn burning followed from his throat to his stomach. He began to cough. General laughter. Applause. Monkey Face returned with three more glasses. And the “Let’s drink to happiness” toasts went on for hours. My grandparents, trashed, crumpled, ended up as part of the human block, humming Chilean tunes amid fits of laughter and vomiting. The party was over when the barrel was empty. They awoke the next day stretched out on the cement floor of their tiny room, with thick tongues and tremendous headaches. The new life had begun. The children were hungry.

Five years went by. Alejandro was a shoemaker, and Teresa a fortune teller. Madame Ochichornia went out on tours that lasted three or seven days, at times two weeks, and always returned with a wide smile and a basket filled with eggs, chickens, loaves of bread, fruit, greens, candy, and other foodstuffs along with a good number of pesos. Thanks to the veneration of Monkey Face, who never stopped idolizing her, she learned Spanish quite well, but of course retained her Russian accent, the better to impress the audience. The fleas told the future with incredible accuracy, and whenever they reached a town, their fame preceding them; the poor lined up to ask, almost always, the same things: Does so-and-so really love me? Did I make a mistake marrying this woman? Will my lost love return? Will I get over this illness? Will I find a better job? What good thing does life hold for me?

Benjamín, Jaime, Fanny, and Lola would hear her coming because of the jingling bells on Whitey and Blacky and would run up the street, shouting with joy, to meet her. They, too, spoke Spanish because they went to the public school, as was required by law. Along with lessons, they were also given a free breakfast. Alejandro, on the other hand, had only been able to learn one word of our language: “Wednesday.” Whenever a customer asked him when his shoes would be ready, he would answer, “Wednesday.” When they asked how much the repairs would cost, he’d say, “Wednesday.” If someone said the weather was fine, he’d say, “Wednesday.” But if he had no talent for languages, he had exceptional skills as a shoemaker.

He rejected the Anarchist’s proposition and did not sweeten voids or correct shadows, but he proposed, on the other hand, to develop his shoemaker’s vocation in an unusual way, that is, by making shoes to measure not only for feet but for the soul as well. And also with no fixed price: “Let each customer pay what he wishes or can. That will oblige him to take a moral position, to chose between paying the minimum, the proper price, or the maximum. This will help him know himself.” The Anarchist liked those ideas and granted my grandfather the title “Professor of Shoeology.”

Alejandro went to the city dump and picked up every piece of leather and thick fabric he could find. Also, the skins of rats, cats, and dogs. And pieces of wood and boards. All of that would be material for creating new models or making repairs. Back in his wretched room, he would stretch out to meditate and allow the boots and army shoes he’d shined while in the army for those five years to march through his mind. He saw how they were made and analyzed their parts:

“First and foremost a sole, a portable platform, protective support that should be invisible so that the sole of the foot would feel its existence as a second skin, safe, invulnerable, sensitive, and above all full of love. Soles like mothers, giving birth to each step with an iron will, giving full hope of arriving where desired; constant producers of the road, soles that were nations. And the heel? It should support with strength, inspire absolute confidence, be a wall that cuts away from the past and sets the step right in reality, the resplendent now, allowing the proud foot to conquer the place, to penetrate, to take full possession, to become the center of the joyous explosion of life. But it should not, at the same time, be hard or cutting, rather as delicate as it was powerful, not only pushing the foot forward to the future but also absorbing the oceanic impact of the past. And the tips? They should be fine without damaging the precious toes, so those toes might penetrate with the greatest ease into the future, which awaits us up ahead, which is always a prize because the end of all roads is God and not death, itself only a transformation. May each step a person takes in my shoes carry them to happiness, blessed be they.”

His first customers were poor devils who came to have their shoes repaired. Alejandro accepted all jobs, no matter how humble, and from those jumbled patches he made luxurious slippers. Slowly but surely middle-class customers came, and finally, aristocratic ladies and gentlemen appeared, with an air of adventure. Alejandro had to recruit helpers. He chose them from the tenement, and that way they worked without having to leave their rooms. Anyone who had no job could participate in the making of entirely handmade shoes, sewn and glued, no nails used, and made from simple but noble materials. My grandfather swore he would never use one of those impersonal machines. Each pair of shoes had to be a task carried out with love and completely different from the others. A man has fingerprints that are exclusively his, unique in the Universe, and that’s the way his shoes should be, for him and for no one else. The money received—“How much do they cost?” “Whatever your good will determines.”—he divided equally among himself and his workers. He earned, despite working an astonishing number of hours each day creating new styles, no more than the lowliest of his helpers, the one who prepared the molds in cardboard. Ultimately he came to have more than a hundred partner-workers, laboring with faces smiling.

Teresa, returning from each tour wearing more and more baroque turbans, more rings, bracelets, and necklaces, more mascara on her eyes, and with long, violet nails, would become furious: “This is stupid! There is something in your head that doesn’t work properly. That damned Rabbi must be the reason. How is it possible that you have an ever-growing number of clients, that a hundred people work for you, and yet you always earn the same amount, a pittance? Five years have gone by, and you still aren’t getting any richer. The rich people exploit you. It amuses them to pay you less than they would a beggar. They don’t see you as a saint but as a fool. It isn’t right! I have to wear out my fleas making them see the hopeless future for thousands of indigents so that between what you earn and what you give us we can live in a style barely different from misery. You still try to go on earning merit in the pitiless eyes of the Grand Villain. By wanting to be a just man you don’t enjoy life. You’ve sunk all of us in your mystical tomb. God only loves the dead! You have to return to reality!”