The Days of the Rainbow

by Antonio Skarmeta

  ALSO BY ANTONIO SKÁRMETA

  The Dancer and the Thief (2008)

  The Postman (Il Postino) (1987)

  Copyright © 2011 by Antonio Skármeta

  Originally published in Spanish in 2011 as

  Los días del arcoíris by Planeta Publishing

  Translation copyright © 2013 by Mery Botbol

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  Billy Joel, “Just the Way You Are,” from The Stranger (1977),

  Columbia Records.

  Los Prisioneros, “La voz de los ’80,” from La voz de los ’80 (1984),

  Capitol Records.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Skármeta, Antonio.

  [Días del arcoíris. English]

  The days of the rainbow / By Antonio Skármeta; Translated from the Spanish by Mery Botbol.

  pages cm

  Originally published in Spanish in 2011 as Los días del arcoíris by Planeta Publishing.

  eISBN: 978-1-59051-628-7

  1. Chile—History—20th century—Fiction. 2. Dictators—Chile—Fiction. I. Title.

  PQ8098.29.K3D5313 2013

  863′.64—dc23

  2013008403

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  TO

  Roberto Parada Ritchie and his family

  TO

  Manuel Guerrero and his family

  TO

  Raúl Alarcón

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Erano i giorni dell’arcobaleno,

  finito l’inverno tornava il sereno.

  Those were the days of the rainbow,

  When the winter ended, clear skies returned.

  —NICOLA DI BARI

  ON WEDNESDAY, they arrested Professor Santos.

  Nothing unusual these days. Except that professor Santos is my father.

  Our first class on Wednesdays is philosophy, followed by gym class and then algebra for two periods.

  We normally go to school together. He makes coffee and I make fried eggs and put the bread in the toaster. Dad likes his coffee strong with no sugar. I have mine with a lot of milk, and even though I don’t use sugar either, I stir it as if I do.

  This month the weather is bad. It’s cold and it drizzles, and people cover their noses with their scarves. Dad has a light-colored raincoat, beige, like the ones detectives wear in the movies.

  I put my black leather jacket on top of my uniform. The raindrops slide down over it, and I don’t get wet. The school is only five blocks away. As soon as we get out of the elevator, Dad lights his first cigarette and smokes it slowly until we get right to the school door.

  He makes his cigarette last exactly that long, then he throws the butt to the ground and makes a theatrical gesture so I crush it with my shoe. Then he goes to the teachers’ lounge to pick up the class book, and when he gets to our classroom he asks where we left off last time.

  Last time we were discussing Plato and the allegory of the cave.

  According to Plato, men live like zombies watching moving images on the wall of a cave, images that are nothing but the shadows of the real things outside projected by a fire against the wall. Those men, who have never seen the real things, believe that these shadows are real things. But if they came out of the cave and saw everything in plain sunlight, they would realize that they had lived in a world of shadows and that what they thought to be true is only a pale reflection of reality.

  Professor Santos takes attendance before getting back to Plato, and if a student is absent he puts a red dot next to his name. Although we walked to school together, when he gets to S, immediately after “Salas” he says “Santos,” and I have to answer, “Here.” My father argues that the coincidence of having to take philosophy with him does not release me of any of my responsibilities, even the absurdity of having to answer the roll call. He says that if I don’t study, even though I’m his son, he’ll fail me.

  I like philosophy, although I wouldn’t like to be a teacher like Daddy because then I’d have to get up early in the morning, smoke black cigarettes, and, on top of all that, I wouldn’t make much money.

  Before starting the lesson, my father brushes off his lapels just in case he dropped ash on them. And then he says his favorite phrase: “Why is there Being rather than Nothing?” And adds: “That’s the million-dollar question. And that is, after all, the only question and the big question of philosophy.”

  The question that worries me lately is that, if there is Being, there must be a meaning for it, because if there were no meaning, it would be irrelevant whether or not there was Being.

  My girlfriend, Patricia Bettini, says that the meaning of Being is just being; that’s it, without any purpose of any kind. She asks me not to complicate things so much and to be more spontaneous. She’s kind of a hippie.

  That very Tuesday night, before they arrested him, I explained to my Dad Patricia Bettini’s thoughts, and he got outraged. He put salt twice in his soup and then he pushed it to the side and said he wouldn’t eat it because it was too salty.

  I turned on the TV, but the first image was of Pinochet kissing an old lady and I turned it off before Daddy could see it.

  He then used the occasion to tell me that I shouldn’t trust Patricia Bettini so much because if she thinks that Being is nothing more than what Being is being, she’s missing something that no intelligent girl would ever forget, that men have consciousness, that men are Being and, simultaneously, they think about Being, and therefore they can give Being a meaning and a direction. That is to say, they can set values and can aspire to those values. Goodness is goodness. Justice is justice, and the
re is no such thing as “justice as far as possible.”

  According to my daddy, what matters most is ethics, that is, what we do with Being.

  ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON, Adrián Bettini got a letter. It was not delivered by his usual mailman but by two young officials with police badges under their lapels. They rang the bell briefly and smiled to the maid while they asked to hand deliver the letter to the owner of the house. The young Nico Santos, invited that day to have tea with the family, watched the scene from the dining room and then noticed the look that Patricia Bettini gave him when her father, with a casual and uncomplaining stride, went to the door dressed in a discolored wool coat.

  After signing and writing his ID number on the notebook the two unconcerned young men gave him so that he could sign for the document, he opened the envelope and immersed himself in its contents.

  As if guessing that his daughter and Nico would ask him about the missive, Mr. Bettini told them it was a subpoena from the Department of the Interior to report in person tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. at General Pinochet’s government office.

  Patricia Bettini couldn’t help being surprised. Her father had been in jail twice, and he had been kidnapped and beaten unconscious once by some unidentified thugs.

  The man asked his wife, Magdalena, to join them at the tea table, and after stirring his teacup for a long while, confessed that he didn’t know whether to attend the meeting with the dictator the following day or immediately pack some clothes and hide in some of his friends’ houses for a few days.

  Patricia Bettini recommended that he hide.

  His wife recommended that he attend the meeting. It was better to face the situation than to live in hiding.

  Nico Santos carefully spread guacamole on his toast. The silence was so deep that even that slight movement of the knife over the piece of bread seemed raucous to him.

  AND THEN IT HAPPENS that on Wednesday we were discussing the allegory of the cave when two men with short hair and clean shaved walked into the classroom and asked Daddy to accompany them.

  My father looked at the chair where he had left his raincoat, and one of the men told him to take it with him. My father took it and didn’t look at me.

  That is, I don’t know how to explain it, but he looked at me without looking at me.

  And it was weird, because when the two men took my daddy with them, all the other students in the classroom were looking at me.

  I’m sure they thought I was afraid. Or they believed I should have jumped on the men and attacked to prevent them from taking my father.

  But Professor Santos and I had foreseen this situation.

  We had even given it a name: We called it the Baroque situation. If they took Daddy prisoner in front of witnesses, that meant they couldn’t make him vanish like they did to other people, people who are put in a bag with stones and are thrown into the ocean from a helicopter. There are thirty-five students in my class and we all saw with our own eyes that they took my father. He says that that’s an optimal situation, because they won’t kill him. In cases like this, he’s protected by the witnesses.

  According to the Baroque plan, when they take Daddy prisoner I have to make two phone calls to two numbers I learned by heart, although I don’t know the names of the people who are going to answer. Then I have to keep living a normal life, going home, playing soccer, going to the movies with Patricia Bettini, going to school as usual, and at the end of the month, I have to go to the treasurer’s office to pick up his paycheck.

  So when they took Professor Santos, I began to trace circles on a piece of paper while I felt silence growing around me like a spiderweb. I’m sure that my classmates thought that out of sheer instinct I should’ve jumped and defended my old man.

  But my father has told me a hundred times already that he isn’t afraid of anything in the world except that something bad happens to me.

  And everybody around here knows that a seventeen-year-old boy disappeared months ago and he isn’t back yet.

  I have to ignore those looks because I can’t explain to my classmates that I’m applying the Baroque syllogism.

  If they had made my father disappear without any witnesses, we would be facing the Barbarian syllogism, and I would’ve probably died already of sadness.

  After they took Professor Santos, Inspector Riquelme came and gave us a reading-comprehension exercise.

  And when we finally got to recess, I went to the restroom. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want anyone talking to me.

  MR. BETTINI dug up a tie from a trunk and knotted it unenthusiastically in front of the mirror. He sent his daughter, Patricia, in a cab to school and asked his wife to go with him up to the gate of the presidential palace. Once there, he kissed her, and after getting out of the car, he gave her the keys to the vehicle, “just in case.”

  At five to ten, Adrián Bettini entered the dictatorship’s central headquarters.

  The receptionists in the lobby were dressed in fuchsia uniforms, spoke softly, were polite and smelled good.

  They took him from one office to another, from one elevator to another, from one officer to another, until finally they made him sit in an office with soft leather armchairs and quiet carpets.

  Behind the desk (“behind the desk,” Bettini said to himself, as if he were telling someone the story that he was never going to have the chance to tell), the minister of the interior himself was sitting.

  Bettini was about to faint. Dr. Fernández was considered the regime’s toughest man. Only General Pinochet beat him in these matters.

  He knew, even in his strict silence, that if he had to speak right at that moment, his voice would come out hoarse.

  The minister of the interior smiled at him. “Thank you for coming, Don Adrián. I want to inform you that in two months the government will call a plebiscite. Why are you smiling?”

  The man tried to hide the grimace on his lip. Then he closed his hands tightly inside the pockets of his jacket and answered, “A plebiscite like the one in 1980, Mr. Minister?”

  “The 1980 plebiscite was not fraudulent. Pinochet won with seventy percent of the votes. But I understand all too well that, in view of such strong evidence, you, being a leftist, would resort to demagogic clichés and accuse us of fraud.”

  Bettini brushed off his lapels as if he wanted to remove an ash. Arguing face-to-face with the minister of the interior was making him feel unexpectedly calm. If they were going to kill him or torture him, anytime, whatever he could say would be irrelevant. A sort of sudden suicidal dignity filled his mouth faster than his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression, Mr. Minister. But people tend to think badly when there are no other legal parties represented in the voting booth, when the ballots are counted only by members of the government, when there is no electoral commission, and when there is no independent press to write about any political opposition. But aside from these tiny details, the plebiscite that Pinochet won back then must have been fair.”

  The minister swiveled in his armchair and smiled, showing perfect teeth that made him look younger.

  “This time, everything will be done to perfection. We want our October fifth plebiscite to be irreproachable and unimpeachable. Members of the opposition will be allowed to be at the voting tables, there will be delegates of our political enemies working at our computer centers, we won’t ban international election observers, and as of tomorrow, martial law will be lifted throughout the country.”

  “Sounds good! And what are we going to vote on?”

  “Yes or No.”

  “Yes or No?”

  “Yes means that you want Pinochet to stay another eight years as president. No means that you want Pinochet to leave and to have presidential elections, with several candidates to choose from, one year from now.”

  “Elections!”

  “And that’s not all. Since we want to democratically legitimize Pinochet in the eyes of the entire world, we’re going to allow the o
pposition to campaign for the No to Pinochet option on TV.”

  “On TV!”

  The minister offered him a glass of fizzy mineral water.

  “I don’t have any champagne here for you to celebrate. But please have this glass of cool water.”

  Bettini’s mouth was so dry that he rinsed it discreetly before swallowing.

  “Well, Mr. Minister. Congratulations on these democratic outbursts. Can I ask you now why you summoned me?”

  The official got up from his armchair with a solemn and indecipherable gesture, and caressed the tassels that adorned the curtains of his large window.

  “I know you’re a bitter enemy of our regime,” he told Bettini, with his back to him. “I also know that, on one occasion, some of my men taught you a little lesson.”

  “A lesson? What a notable euphemism, Mr. Fernández!”

  The minister turned around and waved a finger in front of Bettini’s nose. “For your information, I severely reprimanded them for that.”

  “My broken collarbone thanks you. Now, can you tell me what you want from me?”

  Fernández brought his hands together and put his fingers over his chin.

  “Fifteen years ago I was working as a top executive for Coca-Cola and I got to admire you as our competitor’s advertising agent, when you came up with a commercial for a new soft drink called Betty, which had a funny taste, a bitter flavor. It was very difficult to introduce such a bitter-tasting beverage to the market because back then everybody was used to sweet sodas. Remember?”

  “I remember, Mr. Minister.”

  “Do you remember the slogan of that successful campaign?”

  “Yes. Betty, a bit bitter, like life.”

  “Brilliant, Bettini, brilliant!”

  “I can’t believe you summoned me just to congratulate me on a slogan I wrote fifteen years ago!”

  The minister rubbed his right fist against the palm of his left hand.

  “No. But now I have to sell a product that people consider bitter—another eight years of Pinochet.”

  Bettini didn’t know whether to smile or to look undaunted.