The Days of the Rainbow

by Antonio Skarmeta

  “Of course not.”

  “She’s your close friend.”

  “She’s my close friend, but she’s pretty prudish, too.”

  I get up from my chair and open the window, looking out onto the terrace.

  It’s a few minutes after six, but it’s already getting dark in Santiago. The tires of the buses squeal on the wet pavement and the whistles of the traffic cops are unable to ease the traffic congestion. The drivers honk their horns as if it makes any difference.

  I pour more tea. I wonder when Dad will come back.

  “I need your help, Santos.”

  “What for?”

  “I just found a job close to here.”

  “Where?”

  “Across the street.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t tell my parents that I’m quitting school. I’ll wear my uniform when I leave home, but I’ll need your room to get changed. I have to wear something sexy. It won’t take me more than five minutes.”

  “Look, Laura, you shouldn’t drop out of school. I can help you with English and philosophy. Patricia can help you with math.”

  “And chemistry, and physics, and history, and visual arts?”

  “I’d rather not help you with your scheme.”

  “Please, Santos. It’s only five minutes. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “No.”

  “You’re my best friend.”

  “Patricia Bettini’s your best friend. Not me.”

  “Why don’t you want to help me?”

  “Just because! I don’t feel like helping you!”

  Laura Yáñez stands up and gives me an evil look, as if she wants to kill me. “You’re a moralist, Santos.”

  Coming from her, that sophisticated word sounds awkward.

  Because what she really wants to say is that I’m a scaredy-cat.

  Or, like my old man would say, “You’re not ethical, Nicomachus.”

  “Do whatever you want. You can use the apartment as you please. Here, you can have my father’s key.”

  AFTER TRYING DIFFERENT HARMONIES, filling ashtrays with half-smoked cigarettes, sipping whiskeys sometimes straight, sometimes on the rocks, Bettini let himself fall on the keyboard—half drunk, half exhausted—and had a dream. The images had the grandeur and precision of a wide-screen movie.

  On the stage of the Teatro Municipal, a chorus of about one hundred elegantly dressed men and women—the men in smoking jackets, the women in long silk dresses—await the conductor’s entrance, while in the orchestra, string and brass instruments are tuned following the first violinist. This lively hubbub is accompanied by the cheerful talk of the audience sitting in the red velvet armchairs and the tinkling of bracelets of the ladies, who’re looking at the box seats, where some of the prominent figures of Chilean society pose nonchalantly.

  In his dream, Bettini sees himself behind the scene and concludes that his job there is to signal when the chorus and the conductor have to take their place at the stage. He perceives the nervousness in the audience’s coughs and the cracks of the fans the ladies use to prevent sweat from smudging their makeup.

  Little by little, the tuning of instruments comes to an end, replaced by an expectant silence. The first violinist has taken his place and looks toward the stage wings, nodding. An official from the Municipal, holding a clipboard with technical instructions, approaches Bettini and, touching his elbow, tells him, “Your turn, Maestro.”

  In a flash of fatal illumination, Bettini realizes that he’s wearing an impeccable frock coat with an immaculate starched white dickey, and that he’s holding a baton in his hand. He remembers now that he hadn’t felt his throat so dry since his conversation with the minister of the interior. His feet feel heavy, as if they were made of iron, and he’s unable to move until the man, kind but also compulsively professional, smiles gently at him.

  But the man next to him steps over the line: he gently pushes Bettini to the proscenium, and when the musicians see him coming, they all stand up and the audience gives him an ovation.

  Completely certain that the baton he’s holding in his right hand is a dagger that he won’t know how to use, Bettini delays his imminent cataclysm with theatrical bows to the audience. The ovation comes to an end only to start again immediately, a total and massive applause from those thousands of spectators who simultaneously have turned their faces toward the left side of the stage. Bettini’s gaze follows theirs, and he thinks he’s having a bad dream inside his bad dream when he sees that the person who comes to stand next to his podium to perform as a soloist is no other than Mr. Raúl Alarcón, Tiny, Little Kinky Flower.

  The teeny tiny individual doesn’t seem to be a victim of Bettini’s fears and cheerfully holds out his hand to him. The conductor shakes it and, not knowing who, when, how, or why someone wrote this script for him, raises his arms, and with an energetic strike of his wrist pulls out from the orchestra the initial notes of the “Waltz of the No,” opus 1, by Strauss and Kinky.

  He doesn’t understand anything, but he shakes the baton as if he were conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. After a suspenseful moment, Bettini indicates with his chin for Raúl Alarcón to begin. Mr. Alarcón, exultant, proud, self-satisfied, bursts into song with the first verse of the piece he coauthored with Strauss:

  We start to hear now “No, no. No, no”

  all over Chile, “No, no. No, no.”

  In no time, a huge wave of sopranos, contraltos, baritones, basses, and tenors noisily converge in the exquisite refrain:

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

  No, no, no, no, no, no …

  The sumptuous chandelier of the Municipal tinkles with the vibrations and reflects like a magic carousel the sparks of the ladies’ jewels.

  Bettini feels the baton starting to slip in the sweat of his hands. He feels the perspiration boiler that is soaking his starched collar, the big drops blurring his eyes.

  But it’s almost over.

  Only one more push. Just the baritones’ vibrato bringing to a closure the “no” that will give rise to the blast of the sopranos’ high-pitched notes, and we’re finally, at last, at the end, and the applause gets louder and louder, and Bettini knows that he must turn and bow to the audience, but he can’t, he can’t because something unheard of has happened—the powerful voices of the chorus have hit and broken the theater’s ceiling, and through that hole, descending from an impeccable turquoise sky, a rainbow of endless colors compels him to kneel down and, in a trance, he prays to that God that has been instantly created right there.

  Bettini feels that he’s being hugged and shaken.

  He opens his eyes and, behind the multicolored curtain in the last scene of this dream, he sees his wife accompanied by Olwyn, who’s pointing a finger at him.

  “Bettini, I’m here with the tailor who’s going to manufacture the T-shirts for the No, the visual artist who’s going to design the flags for the No, the graphic specialist who’s going to print the poster for the No, and the filmmaker who’s going to film the image of the No for our TV spot. Bettini! Do you have the campaign logo ready for me?”

  The ad agent extends his arm to the highest black key on the piano, presses it, and, with the pedal, keeps it vibrating in the air.

  “A rainbow,” he mutters.

  “Bettini?”

  “A rainbow. The logo of the No campaign is a rainbow.”

  Olwyn shares his silent bafflement with the creative team and then fixes his gaze on Magdalena. She shrugs and Olwyn points reproachfully at the half-full glass of whiskey on the piano.

  “A rainbow, Bettini?”

  “A rainbow, Senator.”

  “Don Adrián, this is a political campaign, not a carnival. It’s true that the American flag has funny-looking little stars, but … a rainbow! I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Well, then, now you’ll see it.”

  “You were recommended as the best ad agent in the country, Bettini. Don’t let me down.” />
  Suddenly Adrián seems to be coming out of his trance. He feels it in the rhythm of his new response. That staccato with which he used to dazzle clients in the good old days.

  “Listen, Senator. The rainbow meets the conditions we need. It has all the colors, but it’s only one thing. It represents all the political parties that are for the No, and no one loses its individuality. It’s something beautiful that appears after a storm, and all those colors have exactly what you wanted, Mr. Olwyn—joy!”

  The political opposition’s leader experiences a moment of intense doubt—he doesn’t know whether to surrender to the fear that threatens to overtake him or to the slight hope that is now bringing a smile to his face.

  He snaps his fingers and addresses his team: “Gentlemen, the logo of the No campaign is the rainbow. Print it on the T-shirts, the flags, the posters, the avenues, the walls, and the sky!”

  Then, with more willpower than faith, he pounces on the ad agent and wraps him in a hug.

  “Was it hard, Bettini, to come up with such a brilliant idea?”

  The man looks with a certain melancholy at the glass of whiskey, and bringing his lips closer to the former senator’s face, whispers in his ear, “Nocte dieque incubando.”

  “What’s that, man?”

  “Latin. Religious school, Senator.”

  “And what does it mean?”

  “Thinking about it day and night.”

  PROFESSOR PAREDES comes in late to class with his raincoat all wet. He carries a paper bag with mortadella, bread, and a bottle of mineral water. He hasn’t had lunch. He says that he’s late because in a private school in the province there’s an English teacher who’s undergoing chemotherapy and he’s substituting for him, so that his colleague could keep getting paid. All six feet of Paredes are full of solidarity. On Mondays he has to spend half the day on a bus to go to Rancagua and come back. He spends part of his own salary on transportation, but at least he prevents the teacher’s family from dying of hunger while he applies for a subsidy from the Teachers’ Union for his sick colleague. What he doesn’t mention is something we all know—that the president of the Teachers’ Union is in jail.

  Meanwhile, Professor Paredes hurries to do his own things. He already got the plane tickets to go to the filming in Portugal, and he doesn’t want to leave the play we have been rehearsing half done. So one day next week, at noon, we’ll have the dress rehearsal, something that will make us, the actors, appear as heroes, because all the students will be allowed to skip class to attend the performance. And skipping classes is what we like the most at school. The brats don’t know squat about theater, but they’ll pack the auditorium just to free themselves from physics or chemistry.

  The play’s Cervantes’s short farce The Cave of Salamanca. It’s a funny story in which a husband says good-bye to his wife to attend his sister’s wedding in another town. As soon as the man leaves, the lady of the house and her maid get ready for an orgy with their lovers—the barber and the sacristan of the village.

  Well, I play the sacristan.

  The wardrobe stylist has brought me a purple robe and some medallions to hang from my neck. When we’re in the height of the feast with the maid and the wife, the husband comes back. So a guest who had arrived earlier to the house, a student from Salamanca, makes the scorned husband believe that barber and I are ghosts. The cuckholded man is satisfied with the magic from Salamanca, and we all end up happily toasting like good friends. The principal, the entire school faculty, and Lieutenant Bruna, who’s in charge of our school, will all attend the premiere. Lieutenant Bruna’s a big supporter of students participating in extracurricular dramatic and literary activities so that they stay away from political turmoil.

  Lieutenant Bruna doesn’t know that, when the school’s security guard leaves, he gives us the keys, and our rehearsals of The Cave of Salamanca come to an end. Then two professional actors come in to rehearse with Professor Paredes a very “daring” play by Tato Pavlovsky called Mr. Galíndez. That’s a whole different thing. The play’s about two torturers who, while waiting for their next political victims, torture two whores sent to them by their boss, Mr. Galíndez.

  Che Barrios brought Pavlovsky’s play hidden inside a copy of Treasure Island.

  Because of these kinds of things, my old man thinks that his colleague Paredes should take his vacation in Portugal immediately. Even though Mr. Galíndez will be performed clandestinely and only in underground theaters, there are snitches everywhere who may rat on him.

  Several actors have received death threats. Last week, the very popular actor Julio Junger celebrated his birthday, and a messenger arrived at his place with a gift for him—a funeral wreath. Junger and Professor Paredes acted together a few years ago in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.

  I’m safe playing the cunning sacristan. But you never know, because last week the minister of education banned a play by Plautus written two thousand years ago. He said it was blasphemous. Of course, the title of the play was The Braggart Soldier. It seems that Pinochet took it personally.

  I’d rather be in Mr. Galíndez than The Cave of Salamanca, but my father would die three times over if he ever found out. Besides, there are two big shots playing in it, two actors who’re not allowed to perform in soap operas. Here the entire TV network belongs to Pinochet. Anyone who admits to not being a supporter of Pinochet is shown handcuffed and is accused of being a terrorist.

  Patricia Bettini wants to leave the country as soon as she graduates from high school. She says that this country’s hopeless. I would leave, too, but I can’t leave my old man alone.

  He doesn’t have anyone else to take care of him. I miss him a lot.

  It seems as if nothing is changing and Chile is going to rot with Pinochet. A couple of months ago they laid an ambush for him. The car he travels in was shot at. But of course nothing happened to him; the bullets shattered against the bulletproof windows. That night, Pinochet was on TV showing how the bullets had damaged the windows. He said it was a miracle that he was alive—indeed, the bullets’ impact had drawn the face of the Virgin Mary on the glass. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he now asked the pope to canonize him.

  That shooting made the military very nervous. In retaliation, they immediately went out into the streets to kill people. I don’t think that my dad had anything to do with that. He’s a pacifist. He says that violence only brings more violence. But I’m not sure. Everything I’ve studied at school shows that history progresses through acts of violence—the revolt of the slaves, the French Revolution, the world war against the Nazis. But Chile is so small!

  Who cares about what happens to us?

  If Patricia Bettini leaves Chile, I’ll lose any will to live. She studies at the Scuola Italiana, and I study at the Nacional. We share Professor Paredes.

  He teaches English in both schools and directs plays in both places. Here, Cervantes (and Pavlovsky in parentheses), and there, Ionesco.

  With me he directs Cervantes. With Patricia Bettini, Ionesco.

  She has an Italian grandfather in Florence. She doesn’t have any problem understanding Italian movies. She can watch them without reading the subtitles.

  She sings Modugno’s songs and knows a Leopardi poem by heart—“Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, / Amore e morte ingenero la sorte” (Children of Fate, in the same breath / Created were they, Love and Death).

  I get goose bumps, because that happens so often! We study Romeo and Juliet with Professor Paredes, and it’s exactly the same.

  Actually, it would be better if Patricia left for Italy. She wants to do something for my father. Who knows the mess she can get into. But if she leaves, I’ll slit my wrists.

  Nicomachus in Verona.

  THE CAST OF VOLUNTEERS that Magdalena brings together as the producer of the TV campaign for the No includes the following specimens whom Adrián Bettini—not yet used to the hustle and bustle of the eccentricities created by Alarcón, the angelorum—watches with fear.


  A bearded university student stands in front of him and asks Bettini to pose a question to him.

  “What kind of question?”

  “Ask me what I would say to a dictator.”

  “Okay,” Bettini says. “Sir, what would you say to a dictator?”

  The young man looks to the right, then to the left, and to the front, and then sticks out a huge tongue with a drawing of a rainbow on it, and on top of it, the word No. Then the man anxiously awaits for the ad agent’s reaction.

  “It’s fine,” Bettini says, meaning something else.

  Actually, he wanted to say that he was sliding into a pit of nonsense, as if the whole country were using a drug that was unresponsive to any antidote.

  “If you allow me to make a suggestion,” the bearded man says, “I’d recommend that when I stick out my tongue with the No, you play the sound of a lion’s roar.”

  “Okay,” Bettini says, trying to understand why everything seems wrong.

  Then Magdalena asks the second candidate to appear on the TV campaign to come in.

  This time, it’s a firefighter.

  In a firefighter suit.

  And a firefighter helmet.

  He says hello to Bettini by gently striking his forehead, and solemnly says, “We, Chile’s firefighters, are for the No.”

  Unable to think of anything more sophisticated, Bettini asks the man in what way he thinks a firefighter could be of help to the No campaign. The man gets a glass of water from behind him, raises it as if to toast and, imitating the sound of the siren of a fire engine, sings, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooooooo.”

  When he finishes, he smiles and takes a sip of water from the glass he’s still holding in his hand.

  Bettini hasn’t had even a drop of alcohol in the entire day, but he feels as if he were drunk. He walks to the wall at the back of the set, and there he sees his daughter’s boyfriend, Nico Santos, the instigator of all this, trying to memorize some lines from a book.

  “Are you volunteering to appear on the TV ad, too?”

  “No, Don Adrián. I’m studying for Professor Paredes’s test on Shakespeare.”