Where the Bird Sings Best (20 page)

My grandfather scrambled down from the peak, jumping from rock to rock like a wild dog, and then went his way. He again ate insects and nettles. His skin took on a greenish tone. Catching sight of his reflection in a puddle, he discovered his mane of hair and beard had turned white. As he descended the mountains toward the Chilean side, the three dogs barked, demanding their pieces of overcoat. He handed them over, covering the dogs with kisses. Then he closed his eyes so he would not see them move off to the peaks. Carried along by gravity, he walked blindly. When he opened his eyes, it was already growing dark. Since the mule needed rest, he camped under a fig tree, fighting with all his strength to keep the scent of the ripe fruit from restoring his taste for life.

At dawn he moved on. He fell into a kind of trance, in which, neither asleep nor awake, he advanced as transparent as the wind. At dawn one day, he reached Santiago, crossed half the city, and knocked at the door of the synagogue. A fat watchman, in a nightshirt and bowler hat opened the door, thinking that at this hour it could only be a telegram bearing bad news. In Yiddish, with enormous effort because his tongue felt like wood, my grandfather stuttered, “Adonai sends this holy present to the Chilean Jewish community. Wake up the Rebbe and inform him that the Torah he lacked has arrived.”

“But who are you?”

“No one. It’s the wind speaking. I am a dream of God.”

And Alejandro went off, making leaps and waving his arms, relieved at having fulfilled his mission. The watchman, his eyes veiled by rheum, watched him fly. The dog fur of the overcoat looked like feathers to him. He ran to get the Rebbe out of bed to tell him that an angel had brought them the precious text from heaven. Later the religious folk whispered that it was Moses himself who came to bring them the Divine Book.

Alejandro had no need for recognition. All he wanted was to get back to the tenement and submerge himself forever in the making of his shoes. He did not find the sign
Society of Free Brothers and Sisters. We are not the State
. In its place there was another:
Grand Factory of Warsaw Footwear
. The day was growing brighter. In his room, the four children were sleeping naked, in the company of a dozen cats. Alejandro observed them with tears in his eyes. Asleep like that they looked healthy, bigger. The girls already had brilliant bosoms blossoming. On Fanny’s pubis tiny red hairs were growing. He saw the leftovers from dinner: beans, cheese, pork chops. He felt like throwing up. He sat in the doorway to wait for day to finally come.

No sooner had the first rays of sunlight shone like gold through his white beard than a chauffeur-driven car deposited Shorty Fremberg outside the tenement. Shorty checked the three gold watches on his wrist, hastily opened a box set in the wall, and pulled a whistle. The doors of the rooms shook like filthy tongues, and two hundred women wearing blue uniforms emerged to greet the boss. Then they went back into their cells and the dry rumble of machines resumed. Alejandro grabbed Fremberg by his lapels and shook him. To do so he had to bend over because he was tall and the Pole almost a dwarf.

“Machines? Whistles? Uniforms? Where is the Anarchist? The Free Brothers and Sisters? What happened to the Happy Heart Bar?”

“Let go of me, Alejandro. This is legal, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s very clearly stated in the contract you signed that I am the one who decides everything. You, without doing anything, if that’s what you’d like, earn the same salary as a regular employee. Wake up to reality, artist! We’re living in 1912, the Industrial Era! People no longer want handmade products. Machines are the present and the future. Open your eyes! You’re not in some village! You’re living in a great capital city! Around here no one wants to be a saint, and the only God is money! Anarchist dreams are over. The police came and kicked your friends out. I think the most fanatical were shipped to Easter Island. I’ve rented the entire tenement. In each room there are sewing machines or electric saws to cut leather, make heels. It’s a marvel. The orders just keep pouring in. We make hundreds of pairs of shoes every day. And the women we have working follow orders! For three pesos they work a ten and a half hour day with no right to any social benefits. If an agitator turns up, I have him arrested. What do you think? Lose that cemetery face and be happy. Your children are well, though I almost never see them. They only turn up to eat and sleep, but they look healthy and happy. What more do you want? You can work or not, but you get a salary either way. And that’s not all you should thank me for: I kept your room just as it was. I could have put a machine in it.”

From then on, Alejandro said nothing. He sat at his bench, surrounded by the mechanical screeching, and made shoes by hand and to order for the few clients he still had. Few not because his work wasn’t of interest but because he was so stubbornly insistent on making perfect shoes that it could take him a year to make one pair. He would put them together, make corrections, take them apart, start all over again, incessantly, never satisfied. The buyers, fed up with coming back to try them on so many times, ended up never coming back. The perfect pairs of shoes, covered with dust, were stacked in a corner of the room.

Shorty Fremberg was moved. He could not stand to see his partner sunken in such solitude. Now he had six gold watches, two cars, a chalet in the outskirts of the city, and four lovers, drawn from among the workers, who went along with his caprices for a pittance.

“Come on, Alejandro. You’re wasting your time. Perfection is not of this world. Accept that reality has changed. Come along and take a look with me. You’ll see just how beautiful our machines are. And sometimes the girls who run them, too. You’re still young. Not even fifty yet. Make an effort.”

And the Pole pulled my grandfather along by the hand toward the end of the corridor, to the room where the bar had been. He wanted to proudly show him the machine that cut patterns into the leather. It was run by Fresia, the youngest of Shorty’s lovers, thirteen years old, freckled, and with big eyes.

“Why don’t you try to work it, Alejandro? You’ll see how easy and gratifying it is. You push a couple of buttons and the pattern engraves itself. Try it, please. Let’s see now, Fresia, let this gentleman take your place!”

Fresia showed my grandfather how to produce the finished pattern and left him sitting at the machine while she followed Shorty behind a curtain to give him the oral caresses he’d requested by making an imperious gesture with his pudgy fingers. Just when he was ejaculating a flood of warm magma into the young lady’s throat, he heard a howl. The machine coughed as if clogged up. Fresia and Shorty quickly ran over. They found Alejandro in a faint, his right hand caught in the machinery. To get it out they had to take apart much of the machine. My grandfather woke up in the hospital in intense pain. The doctors requested authorization to amputate his hand, but Alejandro refused.

He went back to the tenement with his hand hanging at his side, dead. He sat in his doorway and stayed there, mute, not even communicating with his children. Fremberg continued to send Bertita, one of his lovers, a woman of forty with whiskers and the backside of a mare, to cook for the children. They would arrive like famished shadows, eat, and then go back out on the street. Alejandro, in another world, gave nothing, asked for nothing. When it began to grow dark, he would light a candle and, with a nimble movement of his left hand, catch nocturnal moths in order to devour them. One morning, they found the doorway empty. No one in the tenement could imagine where he’d gone. He returned after midday and sat down again, but something had changed in his eyes. A vehement fire was burning in his pupils. On the back of his paralyzed hand, he’d had the machine tattoo a heart and inside it the name
Teresa
.

The first people to realize that Alejandro could work miracles were the homeless children. One fell at his feet, twisted in pain after eating garbage. Alejandro put his dead hand on the child’s stomach, and the pain disappeared. A few days later, a boy with mange on his legs appeared. The dead hand cured him too. The rumor began to spread. A little girl brought her cat, crushed by an automobile. The cat revived. A boy showed him his face covered with pimples dripping pus. After five minutes of the cold contact, he walked off with clear skin.

Adults began coming. They submitted to his paralyzed hand tumors, fevers, impotence, all kinds of physical disorders. With a sweet smile and with fire in his eyes, always mute, Alejandro would slowly raise his right hand, kiss the tattooed heart, and place it with a profound, humble delicacy on the sick parts, which always healed. A fetus, condemned to be born feet first, he made turn around and emerge headfirst.

He accepted no payment, no money, objects, flowers, or food. Hearing the words “thank you” made him close his eyes and turn pale. His love for Teresa had overflowed the dikes and spread now toward all of humanity. Because he understood better than anyone what emotional pain was, he also managed to calm depression, jealousy, rage, and hatred. A mere touch of his hand to a martyred chest and that person left with new hope. There on that miserable threshold Alejandro stayed for two years, curing without interruption every sick person who asked for help.

The Rabbi had nothing to do with those miracles. His journey had brought him to sainthood. Out of discretion, the Rabbi left him alone during that time, but now he had to deliver sad news: “Good Alejandro, the final moment has come. Your heart has deteriorated completely. You are going to die.”

“I’m ready. I’ve lived all I had to live because God taught me to love. For great evils we need great remedies. I was a man of stone; He made me feel pain. I am infinitely grateful.”

After breaking his silence, he asked that the design machine be removed, that his bed be brought into what had been the Happy Heart Bar, and that they place a big barrel of wine next to him. He went to bed and entered into a placid dying. The worker girls and their companions began to arrive and drink in a block, as in the old days. The Anarchist, who had been in hiding, suddenly appeared wearing dark glasses to hide his missing eye. He said nothing, but on his knees alongside Alejandro’s cot, he kissed the dead hand.

The bar began to fill up with wildflowers. They forced their way through tiny cracks in the cement and covered the grayness with a multicolored blanket. Benjamín, Lola, Fanny, and Jaime, accompanied by Fremberg and his four girlfriends, entered, nicely combed, clean, and sad. Alejandro smiled. The Rabbi told him, “At the end everything returns.” Alejandro smiled again. The crowd parted slowly in order not to trample the flowers. A slim silhouette hesitated at the door. The children shouted “Mama!” and ran to clutch her in their avid arms. Teresa’s head was shaved, she was skin and bones, dressed as a man, and wearing no makeup. She did not cry, but tears ran ceaselessly down her torpid face, a face you’d say was paralyzed.

Alejandro extended his right hand, and his inert hand came to life. The white fingers recovered the color of living flesh and, losing their cold, moved slowly to call Teresa. The woman approached without separating herself from the children and, on her knees, placed her face in the revived hand. Alejandro touched her devotedly, trying to give the hollow of his hand the sweetness of a cradle. He whispered:

“I’m not going to forgive you, because there is nothing evil to forgive. You obeyed life. Everything natural is good. Your soul is pure light. I thank you for existing. Don’t tell me why you’ve returned. There’s no more time. You’ve come, and that’s enough. I am going to die for you, not because of you. You became my teacher. The only thing I did well in this world was to learn to love you. I depart satisfied. Don’t put my name on my grave. I want a simple stone with a six-pointed star. In the center of the two interlaced triangles have inscribed:
I Am Yours And You Are Mine.
”

Teresa kissed his forehead. My grandfather smiled again and began to give up his soul. The Rabbi, nervous, shouted to him, “Wait! Hold out a little longer! You want to go, but I want to stay here. The eternal nothingness is not for me. Pass me on!”

“Pass you on?”

“That’s right! I am your best inheritance: tradition. Give me to one of your children.”

“To which one?”

“The way things are going, your twin girls will never be mothers, and Benjamín will die chaste. The only one who will be able to pass me on to one of his children is Jaime.”

Alejandro signed to Jaime that he should come close. Jaime was not moved. A dull resentment kept him from suffering. He’d often tried to approach his father, always crashing against a barrier of incomprehension. They were different, and that was that. Jaime had the right to not want to be a just man. In a society of thieves and exploiters, egoism was not only allowed but it was also the only intelligent thing a person could do. Nevertheless, once, to please his father, Jaime took on the task of making a pair of boots. For three months, in secret, he dedicated himself to that painful work. The result was not unworthy of Alejandro himself. Proud of himself, he showed his father his work and expected that after the congratulations he would keep the boots in a dresser as a souvenir. That did not happen. The next day, his father sold them to a poor client for an absurdly low price.

“Good shoes should be on feet and not in a dresser. We don’t make them to exalt ourselves but to serve. Remember, son, serving is the greatest human value.”

Jaime never forgave him. He felt that Alejandro held his work in contempt, that he refused to give him the recognition he deserved. He swore he’d never again make a shoe, never again serve anyone.