The Days of the Rainbow

by Antonio Skarmeta

  “What do you mean? What am I going to do for what?”

  “To end the dictatorship. To put an end to Pinochet.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Patricia!”

  “Why are you so shocked, Father? Instead of wasting my time doing cheap politics, I’m going to get good grades, I’ll apply for a fellowship, and I’ll go as far away from this country as possible. I’ll leave it all to Pinochet and his ass kissers.

  Bettini got closer to the lamp, and Patricia could see his astonished expression.

  “So you don’t have any courage to fight?”

  “What for, Dad? Look at yourself. You haven’t had a job in years. Everybody says wonderful things about you, but just like they would say wonderful things about someone who’s dead. About Napoleon, for example! Times have changed. The rules of the game have changed, too. I find your moralistic attitude very nice but totally naïve.”

  The girl raised her hand and caressed the man’s cheek.

  “I see,” he said.

  “Am I hurting you with my words, Dad?”

  “No, no.”

  Slowly, Bettini moved away from the edge of the bed. He felt as if the ceiling had fallen onto his shoulders.

  “Don’t leave so sad, Father. I love you a lot.”

  “I know, my dear.”

  “And it’s important to tell the truth to the people we love.”

  “I agree.”

  Right at the moment when Bettini was about to open the door, the girl jumped out of bed and hugged him tightly.

  “Dad?”

  “Patricia?”

  “If you lead the campaign for the No, then I’m going to vote No.”

  PATRICIA BETTINI is kind of a hippie, but she doesn’t want to have sex with me before we graduate from high school. She sees the end of high school as a moment of liberation. She thinks that all good things in life will come together—going to college, having sex, and, of course, the end of Pinochet.

  It’s like when Catholics make a vow. She got it into her head that if she can hold on for the next six months, she’ll get a great score on the aptitude test, get accepted into the architecture program, and Pinochet will be overthrown.

  Last Tuesday we were supposed to get together, but she didn’t show up. Later that evening, I called the same number and a voice said, “I’m sorry, kid, we have no news about your father.” On Wednesday, early in the morning, it’s drizzling again, like last week. Some buses go through the Alameda Avenue toward Barrio Alto, where blue-collar workers, maids, and gardeners go to work at the rich people’s houses. The smoke from the exhaust pipes rises and mixes with the stagnant gray air.

  Nobody seems to be doing anything to change the situation. They are paralyzed, just like me.

  Actually, I obey my dad. He’s a philosophy teacher, and if he said that we’re in the Baroque syllogism, I believe him. While I’m at the school gate, staring at the sidewalk looking for a lit cigarette butt to smash, I have a brief daydream. I’m walking into the classroom a little bit late, and Professor Santos is taking attendance, and when he calls my name, I say, “Here.”

  I’m a little late, but I get to class in time to get a piece of paper with questions that Professor Valdivieso is handing out. He wants us to explain how one can ascend, according to the allegory of the cave, from the world of shadows to the brightness surrounding the ideas.

  My classmates work in silence, filling in the first page fast.

  I hear the paper rustling every time they turn the page to write on the other side. I know the allegory of the cave by heart, and Dad and I have read Plato’s dialogues a few times. He plays Socrates and I play the other character, but instead of answering I keep on thinking about Patricia Bettini, about Dad’s raincoat, the one he took from the chair the morning they came for him, and about the lyrics of Billy Joel’s song, “Just the Way You Are.”

  Five minutes before the class ends, I think I was able to remember the entire first stanza of Billy Joel’s song. I write it down in Spanish on the test page, while I sing it in English:

  Don’t go changing, to try and please me

  You never let me down before

  Don’t imagine you’re too familiar

  And I don’t see you anymore.

  I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble

  We never could have come this far

  I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times

  I’ll take you just the way you are.

  I don’t write anything at all about the allegory of the cave.

  “How are you, Santos?” Professor Valdivieso asks me when I hand him the test.

  “Still here,” I say and walk out to the schoolyard amid my classmates.

  WHEN BETTINI LEFT the place, he was determined to tell Olwyn that he was going to quit. After all, the sum of factors yielded the same product: a demoralized population, acceptance of the dictatorship, discouragement mixed with tedium, isolated heroic acts of resistance crushed by the regime, not even one bright idea to start the campaign, and Dr. Fernández’s voice resounding in his head like a bitter warning: “If you want to give me a thrill, don’t agree to lead the ad campaign for the No.”

  He entered Olwyn’s office without a greeting so that he wouldn’t have to regret it.

  “I cannot think of anything,” was the only thing he said.

  “How come?”

  “This country’s emotionally devastated by Pinochet. People feel hopeless. I resign.”

  “Your task is to come up with a campaign that would give them courage.”

  “Courage! They see everything gray!”

  “Think of a strategy that would make them see the future in a different color. I’m sorry, but I cannot waste my time with you right now. I have to work my butt off to keep the sixteen political parties that are with us together, to keep the coalition from breaking apart, and you dare to come with your little metaphysical quibbles?”

  Bettini let himself fall in the old leather sofa. “I feel so lonely, sir!”

  “But why? The Chilean people and sixteen political parties are on your side!”

  “I’d rather have just one opposition party with a clear identity, instead of this jumble.”

  Olwyn struck a hard blow on the table. He seemed to have lost his patience. “ ‘Jumble’! Where did you get that word, Bettini?”

  “From my daughter, sir.”

  “From your own daughter?”

  “Yes, sir, my own daughter.”

  “By Saturday, at the latest, I need the logo for the No, the jingle for the No, and the poster for the No.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to have a whiskey.”

  “You’re a genius! Couldn’t you think of anything at all?”

  “Just stupid things. Things like ‘Democracy or Pinochet.’ ”

  “What a bore!”

  “Instead, I came up with a good one for the campaign in support of Pinochet, ‘Either me or chaos.’ It has all the precision that we don’t have. Besides, people don’t want freedom. They only want to consume. They look at the commercials, totally captivated, and get into debt so they can buy everything. And Pinochet tells them that if he loses, the shelves will be empty.”

  Olwyn stared at him while rubbing his hands together, like a priest.

  “Would you feel more comfortable working for the Yes?”

  THE VOLUNTEERS who wanted to testify about how they were enduring the dictatorship gathered in the studios of Movie Center Productions—mothers of disappeared children, women who had been raped, teenagers who had been tortured, blue-collar workers with kidneys beaten to a pulp, deaf old people, jobless men and women who had lost their homes, students thrown out of the university, pianists with broken wrists, women whose nipples were bitten by dogs, office clerks with absent looks, hungry children …

  A fifty-year-old woman accompanied by a guitarist approached Bettini. “I want to dance a cueca on
your TV show.”

  “A cueca is fine,” the advertising agent said. “It’s something cheerful.”

  “This young man’s my son, Daniel. He’s a guitarist.”

  “Hi, Daniel.”

  “This cueca is for my husband, a missing detainee.”

  “Whom are you going to dance the cueca with?”

  “With him, sir. With my husband.”

  She pulled a white handkerchief out of her blouse, and holding it with her right forefinger and thumb, waved it delicately. The boy played the first strums, and in a high-pitched voice she sang the first verse: “My dear, there was a time when I was happy …”

  The fact that the woman responded to her missing husband’s dance steps in such a decent, simple way made her dance even more devastating. Bettini made a vague gesture to excuse himself and went to the restroom.

  He let the water from the sink run over his neck, not caring if he was sprinkling his shirt, and rubbed his face under the faucet as if he wanted to wash away his pallor.

  His tears, too, dissolved in the sink.

  AFTER HIS FIRST WHISKEY there was a second one, and he softened the third with so many ice cubes that the glass overflowed.

  In between sips, he played a few arpeggios that distracted him rather than helping his imagination focus. The aversion he felt for the political apathy of the Chilean people was so strong that he wondered whether President Allende’s suicide, in such a pusillanimous country, had really been worth it. What was left of all the energy of the seventies? Just tons of skepticism, a somber burden that prevented them from flying.

  On TV there were only game shows, old stars hoping to make a comeback, bolero dancers in effeminate sequins, plummy voices announcing that a street in Ñuñoa had been recently paved.

  And commercials.

  The frenzy of advertising—apartments, lingerie, jeans, lipstick, chocolate milk, perfume, bank loans, mattresses, supermarkets, sunglasses, wine, tickets to Cancún, private colleges. The ads were much better than the soap operas and the pop singers.

  No wonder! All his friends in the movie industry who had been laid off were now making cameo appearances for advertising agencies under pseudonyms. People were used to that. And that’s what he should use to advertise No. Present it as a tempting product, like strawberry ice cream or French champagne, like a vacation package to Punta del Este, a Falabella suit, or a crispy rotisserie chicken.

  At the dinner table, he talked to Magdalena about it. His wife listened, rolling crumbs from the bread basket into balls. Finally, she could not keep quiet anymore, and brushing off the tablecloth with the palm of her hand, confronted her husband.

  “The No to dictatorship is not a product. It’s a profound moral and political decision. You have to convince people that their dignity is at stake. You were always an ethical person. Don’t sell out now.”

  Bettini raised his voice, too. “I know that the No is not a product. But in order to convince people, Pinochet has been advertising on TV for fifteen years. I get only fifteen minutes to convince the ‘undecided’ to vote against him. I have to encourage the Chilean people to buy something that’s not yet in the market.”

  “What is it?”

  “Joy! Let’s start with a drawing, a simple image that could be the campaign poster.”

  He extended a white poster board on the tablecloth.

  “Let’s take it one step at a time,” his wife proposed. “That simple image, what should it convey?”

  “The drawing must show at first glance that there are sixteen political parties that are very different from one another but have united to win.”

  Magdalena took the black felt-tip pen and drew a sketch on the poster board.

  “A hand. What do you think? There are five fingers, but they make up one hand. It gives the idea of unity and diversity at the same time.”

  “Hmm. There are some fingers missing from that hand.”

  She changed the image. “Then let’s have two hands shaking. Ten fingers.”

  “But all those fingers are the same color.”

  Magdalena poured India ink on the board.

  “A white hand and a black hand.”

  “Who’s going to look at it? This is the only Latin American country where there are no black people.”

  “Look at this—a hand squeezing a tube of paint.”

  “Not bad. But a hand squeezing something is a fist. A fist may please the Socialists and the Communists, but not the Liberals or the Christian Democrats.”

  “Let’s forget about the hands. The text that goes with the image, what would it say?”

  “No.”

  “Just that?”

  “The No will be better alone than in bad company. Everybody has to have a reason to vote No, and the poster should be broad enough.”

  “It must be more explicit, Adrián. ‘No more torture,’ ‘No more poverty,’ ‘No more missing people,’ ‘No more exile.’ ”

  “Oh, nooooo! Don’t come to me singing the same sad tango we have being dancing all these years, please. The new thing must be joy. The promise of something different.”

  “Frivolous and banal.”

  “My broken collarbone appreciates your compliments.”

  “You don’t have any principles.”

  “But I have goals. And my goal’s to make the No win. And I can assure you that with your pathetic militant and melancholic help I won’t get too far.”

  “What do you need, then?”

  “Joy. Light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “How can we make something positive out of a negative word? The Yes campaign has it made: ‘Yes to life!’ ‘Yes to Chile!’ ”

  “I need a break. Give me a breather. I need a miracle.”

  The doorbell rang, tinkling like a Christmas sleigh bell. Both turned toward the clock on the wall, and they kept looking at it with their question hanging from their jaws.

  When the doorbell rang again, Magdalena pulled her hair back, tied it with an elastic band, and walked toward the door.

  “I’ll open,” she said.

  THE YOUTH of the Pro-FESES movement, who want to unite the high school students of all Santiago, think that the fact that my father’s missing is an excellent reason to take over the school, and they have summoned me to a meeting at the library.

  I follow my old man’s instructions and tell them I don’t get into politics. According to Patricia Bettini, this isn’t getting into politics because it’s about one’s father, about one’s teacher.

  “Not yours,” I tell her, wrapping my scarf around my neck.

  But I immediately regret having said that, because her father was taken a few years ago and got his collarbone broken.

  I know by heart the principles of the high school movement—destabilize the dictatorship by provoking riots. This would give the impression that the country is ungovernable. They also want to unite all those who’re against Pinochet—whether or not they belong to a political party—even those who only want to make trouble, just for the fun of it.

  We all have taken to saying some phrases in English. We learn them through songs or from our teacher, Rafael Paredes. He’s leaving next month for Portugal, because he was hired to make a movie. My old man thinks this is the perfect time for Mr. Paredes to go to Portugal, Greece, or anywhere else in the world, because he knows very well that the cops are after him and all his family.

  My old man and the English teacher are very close, even though they have an eternal dispute. They can never agree on who’s the greatest man in history. My daddy votes for Aristotle—in whom, he claims, everything begins and ends—and Paredes for Shakespeare. Deep in my heart, I tend to agree with my teacher, Paredes, but how could I be against my daddy?

  Of course, both of them are pretty “daring.”

  It’s less apparent in my father, because he’s a calmer person. Paredes can be as imposing as an opera singer.

  If my English teacher went into hiding, they would catch him in no time.
He’s more than six feet tall and has a deep voice that resonates against the school’s old walls every time he walks into the classroom. He teaches in the mornings, and nights he plays with a group of actors. He’s sort of impressive, that’s why he always plays kings, commanders, or ministers. When he walks into the classroom, he throws the attendance book on his desk and delivers lines from Shakespeare’s plays. We have to memorize and then interpret them in writing, and hand in the paper the following day.

  The last one was, “Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.” We have to squeeze our brains to guess what Shakespeare meant by it. What happens is that Macbeth is eager to be king, and the fastest way is by assassinating the king himself. Just like Pinochet, let’s say. But it’s not easy for him to make up his mind, even though his wife eggs him on. She’s even more wicked than Macbeth.

  Professor Paredes calls Shakespeare “Uncle Bill.”

  Actually, that’s the last quotation to be included in the English test we’ll have after the opening of The Cave of Salamanca, and Paredes has promised us that he’ll be “compassionate” when grading them if we do well in the play.

  After the test, he’ll say good-bye to the school until October, provided that he’s allowed to come back to Chile, because the movie he’ll be filming in Europe is somehow “daring.”

  A “daring” movie is one that’s not going to please the regime.

  The weather in Santiago’s still pretty bad. The drizzle sticks on our cheeks, and the smog makes us cough. We take shelter at the bus stop on the corner to smoke cigarettes, with no desire to go home yet.

  Next to us there’s a boy with long hair and a blue raincoat who catches our attention when he looks in the opposite direction from which the bus is coming. Suddenly, he takes a stack of flyers out of his bag and hands one to each of us in the group. Then he climbs on the first bus leaving and winks at us.

  The blue flyer says, “Action,” and it has instructions on how to take over the school as a protest in support of the teachers who have been laid off. I believe we all would feel ashamed of throwing the flyer on the ground, so we end up putting it in our backpacks.