Where the Bird Sings Best (19 page)

One night he met a group of men mounted on mules. They had machetes hanging at their waists and rifles hanging from their saddles. One got down to touch him. He wanted to take Alejandro’s coat and boots, but the smell they gave off made him grimace with disgust.

The man asked the one who seemed to be the chief, “Should I cut his throat?”

The robber answered, “Better leave him alone. He’s a madman. Jesus protects madmen because he too was mad. Ask him to bless us.”

“Hear that, you holy bastard? Bless us!”

Alejandro, who did not understand what they were saying to him, spread his arms with his hands held out to show he understood nothing. The thieves took his gesture as a sacred sign, crossed themselves, and went their way. Alejandro realized he would have preferred to be murdered. He was no longer himself. He’d lost himself. The wound was eating him up. He tried to see himself and found in his place a complete stranger.

Bit by bit, he forgot Russian and Yiddish. Actually, he simply stripped himself of those languages as if they were dead skin. He no longer thought, simply letting his heartbeats pray. He barked. So, a dog among dogs, he scavenged for eagle eggs, ate lizards and snakes, drank in muddy puddles. Finally, he reached the end of the mountains and the beginning of the Argentine pampa. Joy, Sadness, and Indifference stood on the last rock, raised their muzzles to the sky, and howled as if someone had died. They were mountain animals and could not survive on the flat lands. The peasants would shoot them dead. My grandfather also howled to express his sorrow at saying good-bye. Then he pulled three pieces of skin out of the inside of his overcoat, from the sweatiest parts, and tossed them to his comrades. Each one caught his in the air, and carrying it in his teeth, went back to the mountains.

Once again, Alejandro was alone. He prayed with more intensity, adding “I-put-my-faith-in-you” to his cardiac rhythm. From there to Mendoza and from Mendoza to Buenos Aires he did not feel the road. He traversed it sleeping awake. He passed through cornfields, vineyards, apple orchards, rivers, creeks. Some peasants, seeing him pass by making the bubbling sounds of a mute or a moron gave him pieces of bread, dry meat, and also yerba maté. People regarded him with superstitious respect. They let him pass, crossed themselves, and from time to time a rider would gallop to catch up to him and toss a bottle of milk or wine. He reached Buenos Aires not knowing if he’d been walking for days, weeks, or months. A cloud of flies, like a black mist, surrounded him, endlessly biting him. Tired of brushing them off, he let them settle on his face, so his eyelids were covered with them. That way, asking from a distance because the people held their noses, he reached the Israelite Club, site of the synagogue.

At first, confusing him for one of the many vagrants who came from the hinterlands to beg in the capital, they tried to throw him out, drenching him with a garden hose. But when, possessed by the Rabbi, who was trying to help him out of trouble, he began to recite from memory, word for word, the first tome of the Talmud, they understood he was a compatriot. That caused a commotion. The Jewish colony, concerned about showing the Argentines a good face, was ashamed of this pariah. They bought him clothing and offered him towels, soap, scissors for his hair, and free access to the baths. He rejected all of it. He remained at the door of the synagogue, reciting now the second tome of the Talmud.

A young rabbi opened a window and asked him directly, “What’s your name? Where do you come from? What do you want?”

My grandfather could not answer the first two questions, because he’d forgotten his name and his past. The third glowed like a point of fire in his awareness: “I want one of the two Torahs you possess for the synagogue in Santiago de Chile.”

The young rabbi laughed. “Is that all? It is true we have two. I suppose you want to buy it. It’s expensive. Very old. It was brought here from Poland.”

“I’ll pay with my labor.”

“You could work twelve hours a day for the rest of your life, and you still wouldn’t make enough.”

“I’ll work twenty-four hours a day.”

“No more jokes. I can do nothing. The Rebbe is locked away studying the commentaries of Rashi to the Holy Book and won’t appear in public for two months.”

“I’ll wait here.”

The decision was final. How would the dignified members of the Club react to seeing a lunatic like this one stretched out on the synagogue stairs? Expelling him by force was impossible: he was a Jew, and a wise Jew, because, intermixed with his conversation, he was now reciting the third book of the Talmud. He consulted with two other young rabbis. They offered him a room and three meals a day. He didn’t accept, but, making a titanic effort, spoke to them in Yiddish: “Do you have guard dogs?”

“Of course.”

“Then I want to sleep and eat with those animals. Whatever you give them will be fine for me.”

No one could change his mind. He responded to all arguments by carrying on his recitation of the Talmud. When they heard him reach the fourth book, they gave in and let him move into the kennel. The dogs, perhaps because of his coat, received him as a brother.

There, for two months, praying with his heartbeats, he remained, curled up without closing his eyes, gnawing on bones, scraps, and leftover food. Sometimes, when Teresa reappeared to him, naked, with a hot, euphoric face, he would explode in desperate howls that knocked him out. The young rabbis, thinking he was howling from hunger, tossed him pieces of raw meat, which he swallowed without chewing, as dogs do, perhaps trying to choke himself to death.

The Rebbe finished his annual reading of Rashi’s commentaries and with a luminous face, beautiful clothes, doused in cologne, he visited the synagogue. The inspection satisfied him: his helpers kept the place orderly, without a speck of dust in the corners. He decided to check the patio, where the kennels were, to see if they’d received the same treatment. The young men began to tremble. They hadn’t dared to tell him about the smelly madman surrounded by a cloud of flies, who was now reciting the fourteenth book of the Talmud.

When the Rebbe entered, Alejandro stood up tall and straight and, with eyes burning, stretched out his hands so far it seemed he wanted to pull his arms from his shoulders.

“I want one of the two Torahs for the synagogue in Santiago de Chile.”

The old man turned pale and, bursting in to tears, not thinking about the grime or the flies, embraced the scarecrow to the complete surprise of the other rabbis. “Winding and strange are the roads of God. Last night, I fell asleep next to the Scriptures, blessed be they, and I dreamed that a being, half-man and half-dog, emerged from the scrolls. A voice ordered me: ‘Do not disdain my emissary, because he is the crown of my heart! Give him what he requests! Through the mouths of the mad I speak!’”

Alejandro left Buenos Aires mounted on a mule, carrying the Holy Book wrapped in fine blankets inside a luxurious box. By order of the Rebbe, he was given two more mules loaded with sausages and all sorts of kosher food of long duration. He retraced the same road he’d used to reach Buenos Aires, only stopping to rest his mules. Very often he shared his food with tramps who were walking over the pampa going nowhere in particular. Bored, they abandoned their work and began to travel the world with empty pockets. There was something in them—perhaps the humble peace of hearts devoid of hope—that gave Alejandro a bit of calm.

It was night when he reached the foot of the Andes, his food sacks almost empty. The two extra mules were now a useless worry. He saw a farmhouse where a candle was fluttering. He approached the house to give away the mules. No one came out to receive him. He pushed the door open and entered. On a miserable cot lay a woman whining. Alejandro touched her forehead: it was burning. He summoned the Rabbi. “You know medicine. Help me cure her. This woman represents Teresa. Perhaps she, somewhere in the world, is also suffering.”

The Rabbi examined the woman. “It’s very serious. Contagious. You could catch the illness.”

“No. It’s a human sickness, and I’m a dog.”

They spent a week with the woman, lowering her fever with rags soaked in cold water and placed on her abdomen. They gave her liters of juice made from herbs the Rabbi picked on the rocky terrain. When her temperature fell too low and she began to tremble, Alejandro took her in his arms and slept with her. He gave her the tenderness he never knew how to give his wife. On the eighth day, the woman recovered consciousness. She was a widow, without children, who had just buried her husband.

Without waiting for any thanks, my grandfather pointed to the two mules, made a gift-giving gesture, then another of farewell, and went off on foot, leading the mule carrying the Torah. After a few minutes, he heard the footsteps of the woman. She was running toward him, barefoot, carrying something wrapped in a blanket. When she reached him, she unwrapped the package and offered him a cross with a Christ made of lacquered wood. While Alejandro did not want to take it, she tied it to the ropes holding the Torah and ran off.

My grandfather wanted to get rid of that sacrilegious doll, but he noticed that at its bleeding feet was an inscription in Hebrew. He asked the Rabbi to translate it.

The Rabbi read in Russian, “Father, why have you abandoned me?” Then he corrected himself: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Alejandro stifled a heartrending wail and continued on his way, keeping the crucifix but wrapping it in the blanket the woman had left behind. Leaping among the snow-covered rock, came Joy, Sadness, and Indifference. For the dogs it was a moment of almost unbearable happiness. They trembled, put out their tongues, rubbed against Alejandro’s boots, whipped him with their wagging tails, put their paws on his chest, covered his face with saliva. Suddenly they ran toward a cave and, after looking around inside, returned at top speed, each one with his piece of Alejandro’s coat in his jaws. Their master kept them as gifts, and they went on together along the steep trail. They brought him what they’d hunted, and he divided it into four equal parts.

They were passing through a narrow gorge, when a rain and windstorm broke out. In a single downpour, entire lakes fell. Torrents of muddy water like giant spider feet leapt over the rocks. To protect the Holy Book, Alejandro, guided by his dogs, took refuge in a crevice and unloaded the mule. The cave was immense, and the light of a candle was shinning in its black depths.

There were the robbers, waiting for the storm to pass. They approached my grandfather with mocking smiles on their faces: “The old lunatic again. It seems he likes the pure mountain air. He should be more careful. After all, he’s already lost his head, and he just might lose his guts. There are beasts that get pleasure tearing people up. Ha, ha!”

They patted the mule. They looked over the bundle next to it.

“Well, well, old boy, it looks as if you got rich. What’s in this big package and in this little one? Presents for us?”

They unwrapped the Torah. They opened the box, which was encrusted with gold, their brutal faces shining with greed. The Hebrew letters made them step back. Their illiterate instincts recognized the power of those letters.

“I think this is witchcraft,” one of them muttered. They opened the small package. By the light of the candle, the Christ revealed his pain. The lacquered finish resisted the water that penetrated the blanket, but the red paint, perhaps of a different quality, was dissolving. Like drops of blood, it ran out of the wounds on Jesus’s forehead and side, from his hands and his feet. The thieves fell on their knees. The chief whispered, “I told you this madman was a saint. Now I think he’s also a wizard. He’s got the wounds of our Lord.”

The cold had split open the skin on Alejandro’s forehead and the palms of his hands. He opened his arms like the crucified Jesus and gave himself over to the murderers. Ever since God had forsaken him, he felt pierced by lances, nails, and thorns. Without Teresa, his soul was bleeding like Christ’s body. The two of them, the sculpture and the man, were one. The same disillusionment united them. If they wanted to gut him, they should do it now. After all, his mission was a failure. These men without faith would use the crucifix and the Holy Book to make a fire to keep warm.

“The storm is calming. Let’s get out of here before Heaven gives us the punishment we deserve.”

The thieves left at Alejandro’s feet six apples, a bottle of wine, and a piece of dried beef. They disappeared in the shadows of the mountains. My grandfather hugged the Christ against his chest and fell asleep with it in his arms, covered himself by Joy, Sadness, and Indifference. He woke up three days later. The sky was clear and a splendiferous sun transformed the wild flowers into jewels. Everywhere the yellow was bursting into bloom, and the buzzing of bees, multiplied by the echo, transformed the morning into a festival. On the ground were three dead hares, and his friends, wagging their tails, were waiting for their portion.

Alejandro, perhaps because he was rested, felt a bit better. The pain had disappeared from his guts, but even so, despite the drunken jubilation of nature, a thick sorrow overtook him, as if his lungs were full of oil. He gave each dog a dead hare, and he contented himself by sucking on a round stone. He realized he would never again be able to eat red meat. Not understanding why, he thought it seemed like devouring Teresa. With great tenderness, he carried the Jesus to the highest peak and arranged it facing the immense landscape.

“My friend, I bless the Earth just as you blessed it. And also like you, I bless humanity. Someday our sacrifice will be useful. You are made of wood. I know that soon you will throw down roots and then branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits. I’m leaving, but I’ll still be here with you.”