The Days of the Rainbow

by Antonio Skarmeta

  “Instead of that,” Bettini thinks while he passes the olive oil to Nico Santos with a gentle smile, “I have disrespected everyone. With the ‘Waltz of the No,’ I have trivialized the relevance of this historic moment. Why did I do that?”

  Nico thanks him with a charming smile. Fatally wounded. And Bettini smiles back.

  “You’re sad, Nico.”

  “I am, Don Adrián.”

  “Then why do you smile?”

  “Me? It may be because of Shakespeare.”

  Patricia spreads butter on a piece of bread. She thinks of the chain of associations that could cause a short circuit: Shakespeare, Mark Antony in the cemetery, a play, Mr. Galíndez, the dagger, Professor Paredes, her father. Nico’s father, Rodrigo Santos.

  “Get some wine. Shakespeare?”

  “There’s a character in Romeo and Juliet, Don Adrián, called Mercutio. He’s Romeo’s close friend. And one day, they’re walking around the market in Verona, and Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, shows up. He’s a naughty guy who’s constantly provoking the Montagues. They call him the Cat, because he brags about having many lives.”

  “I don’t remember that part. I remember the moon—‘Swear not by the moon.’ ”

  “Tybalt starts insulting Romeo and challenges him to unsheathe his sword. But, of course, Romeo’s crazy about Juliet, so he’s not going to start fighting to the death with his beloved’s cousin. So he says to him, look, I’m sorry, but I have reasons to love you that you can’t even imagine. How was Tybalt supposed to know that Romeo was dating his cousin? So when Tybalt hears all that stuff—”

  “Get some wine.”

  Magdalena fills the glasses, but no one drinks.

  “—when Tybalt hears all that touchy-feely talk about I have reasons to love you, he starts baiting Romeo, calling him bland, sissy, scaredy-cat, you know? So when Mercutio hears this, he starts calling him names, and unsheathes his sword in front of Romeo and challenges Tybalt to fight with him …”

  “I remember that part now,” Bettini says, looking out of the corner of his eye at the countdown for the campaign ads on the digital clock of Channel 13, thankful for being taken to medieval Verona at least for a while.

  “And that’s when everything goes to hell. Because to prevent his girlfriend’s cousin and his best friend from killing each other, Romeo grabs Mercutio by his arm. And of course Tybalt takes advantage of that and, seeing him defenseless, drives his sword into Mercutio. Poor Mercutio falls to the ground, bleeding, and Tybalt and his gang split.”

  “Romeo might have felt real awful,” Bettini comments, absentminded.

  “Terrible. Then their friend Benvolio leans over Mercutio, who’s bleeding from his mouth, and asks him … and asks him … how do you feel? And do you know what Mercutio says to him?”

  “Tell me.”

  Bettini turns his back to the TV set not to see the fateful clock advancing.

  “Mercutio answers him: ‘The wound is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but it’s enough, it’ll serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.’ ”

  “And that’s why you were smiling?”

  “That’s why, Don Adrián. Imagine. The guy is on the verge of dying and he comes up with all this gibberish!”

  “And you remembered that.”

  “And when you said … When you said …”

  Nico covers his face with the napkin and suddenly bursts into tears.

  Patricia looks at Magdalena, Magdalena at Adrián. Adrián takes a sip from his glass of wine.

  Fucking Shakespeare, he thinks.

  IF HE HAD BEEN ASKED about dinner, Bettini wouldn’t have known what to answer. He didn’t even know what he ate. His fate as a reborn ad agent was not the only thing at stake, but also the fate of the entire country. There was a small crack in the cave through which some light could come in. He feared having wasted that chance. If the whole country was shaken by violence, how could joy look believable?

  And he had done the TV campaign without answering that question. Actually, sponsoring joy so blatantly, with a waltz by Strauss and a parade of lunatics saying No in multicolor, not having made room in his images for a single tear, knowing, as he knew, that in that precise moment Chile was crying! Everything had been a mistake.

  He had given himself up to an irresponsible fiction. A desperate way out. Trying to leap into the void without a net. He explained to Olwyn that Pinochet had had total control of the media for fifteen years to impose his orders on TV screens. But he was given fifteen minutes, only fifteen minutes, a handful of seconds to break, once and for all, the relentless assault of dictatorship.

  He didn’t have time for subtleties. It was fifteen minutes against fifteen years. And of those fifteen minutes, almost five were dedicated to the insanities of the “Waltz of the No.”

  By dessert, Nico Santos’s napkin looked like the canvas of a sunken sailboat. Bettini didn’t want to comfort him. He wished he could be comforted himself. Impatience demolished him. On the screen, the images of the Yes campaign were flowing—hooded terrorists with bombs in their hands throwing stones at car windows: that was the joy of the No coming up. Chaos, the rape of teenagers, children slaughtered by a red bulldozer. The same way he was playing the card of the joy of change, Pinochet’s ad agents were staging the hell of debauchery.

  He didn’t want to wait the few remaining minutes. Watching his images flow in front of his family would surely embarrass him. He grabbed Nico’s napkin and tossed him his own. He put the wet cloth in his jacket pocket and announced to the group that he was going out for a walk.

  “What are you going to do?” Patricia asked, suddenly standing up.

  “Just what I said. A walk.”

  “But, Daddy. This is your shining moment. All of Chile is glued to the TV screens at this very moment.”

  “That’s the problem, honey—everyone will see that their emperor is naked. I’m not in the mood for another hara-kiri.”

  “Dad, what are you really up to?”

  “I’m taking a walk!”

  Magdalena threw herself on him and challenged him to look her in the eyes. “Patricia’s right. Where are you going?”

  He squeezed Nico’s wet napkin in his pocket.

  “I won’t throw myself in the Mapocho. At this time of the year, there’s not even that much water …”

  “So?”

  “I’m just going to take a walk, ladies. A simple and athletic walk to breathe some fresh air.”

  Embarrassed, Nico stood up, and walked to the bathroom. “Excuse me.”

  Bettini responded with a blink of his eyes.

  “You should take better care of him. Right now, he has no one to call his own.”

  He felt like slamming the door but decided to be gentle, closing it as if he were kissing it good-bye.

  The night was cool. He buttoned his shirt’s top button and looked at the moon, fractioned by the branches of the trees. He had always lived in Ñuñoa. He had the habit of feeling and admiring the old cobbled streets. The grand old trees grew without control, inhibiting the arborists with their height. There was something successfully familiar in this middle-class neighborhood. His street was far away from the supermarket, the malls, and the stops of the main bus lines.

  On the corner, there was a grocery store whose owner still paid something for empty glass bottles. And when the kids went to buy bread or oil for their mothers, he still gave them a candy or a bubble gum as a bonus.

  The guy from the newsstand kept the Sunday paper for him till noon, because he liked to stay in bed until lunchtime, and if he didn’t go to pick it up, the guy rang his doorbell and handed him El Mercurio with a cheerful smile.

  He had credit at the Chinese restaurant on Manuel Mott Street, and if he didn’t have enough to invite Magdalena and Patricia for dinner, old Tin-Lung, laughing out loud, would write down the check amount in a huge notebook with a calendar picture of Marilyn Monroe. Everything had remained the same since h
is childhood, except for two details.

  The TV antennas in every window, launched into the clouds.

  And the Italia movie theater.

  After going bankrupt, its 35-mm projector had been sold at a flea market. Those premises were now in the hands of some evangelical Christians, dressed in brown suits, white shirts, and ties, and with tons of hair gel, even in the hottest summer. Their wives, skinny, with olive faces. Some of them wearing socks up to their knees. It was still possible to see under the cobbles the tracks of the tramways that had stopped working decades ago. His neighborhood had witnessed his furtive kisses to the prettiest girl on Antonio Varas Avenue. And the day he turned fourteen, the blond girl with untidy curls who worked at the unisex hair salon allowed him to do everything on a Friday night, after closing the door behind her last customer. Then, cleaning his surprised sex with a wet towel, she whispered in his ear, “Happy birthday.”

  That was his Santiago. The splendor of democracy and street demonstrations. As a student, he had shouted along with thousands of citizens, “Allende, Allende, your people defend you.”

  In front of the police academy, on Antonio Varas, he had seen the tanks of the coup d’état, going to La Moneda. He had been awakened by the fighter planes that were going to bomb the palace.

  The same week he had been obsessed with Bob Dylan’s song, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

  So was that his style? Every historical episode came with the emotion of a particular melody, of the lines of a poem. Of course, one thing had nothing to do with the other. One was reality, and the other was fantasy. Dreams. Dissolving foam. Thin clouds.

  Even though his pace was firm and energetic, he realized that his efforts were in vain. As he walked down the side roads under the smell of spring jasmines, the “Waltz of the No” was coming out from the windows of each one of those houses and apartments.

  Paradox: he had fled that circus, and now he was overwhelmed by hundreds of TV sets.

  In the vegetal darkness of the bushes, the TV screens flashed like ghostly sparks. He felt like a condemned man walking to the gallows who has to bear one more agony—to hear the music of this infamous life at a high volume.

  My goodness! Oh my God, my dear God, he thought, as he started to run without any direction. All of Santiago is watching it!

  Soon enough, sweat bathed his pale face. Although he felt his heart pumping way too fast, he didn’t slow down. His heart was showing him the right way. His much desired end. Just like on New Year’s Eve when the fireworks crossed the sky, he was now having his own fanfare—the flashes from all the screens in all the Chilean homes that were witnessing his fifteen minutes of fame, his absurd and ridiculous libertarian song.

  There was no need to throw himself to the Mapocho, jump from a building’s terrace, hang himself from a tree, fall under the wheels of a bus.

  Everything could be much neater—keep running and running until his heart exploded like a grenade.

  Suddenly, the music stopped, indicating that the ad for the No had ended.

  Now the ordeal would begin.

  In that precise moment, all the inhabitants of his country, the sailors at sea, the rebellious students, the sons and grandsons of the executed and the disappeared, their mothers and girlfriends, would be puzzled, looking at each other, wondering, “What was that?”

  No! “What the hell was that?”

  The desired end.

  His own apocalypse.

  The ignominy of his entire career.

  He was exhausted. When he arrived at the square, he stopped near a fountain and let the drops of water splash his face.

  Suddenly, he had the feeling that all that liquid fogging up his glasses was giving rise to a hallucination.

  There, on the other end of the square, something vague was taking place.

  A creature turning around giddily.

  Or were there two?

  The closer it came, the more real it looked. Until it became clear. Definitively true.

  A young couple was turning around incessantly, as if dancing a waltz without music, as if dancing to the memory of a waltz in the starry night. As they danced, they moved freely around the empty square, and when they were so close that they could touch him, the dancing woman shouted, “We’re going to win, sir. We’re going to win.”

  Bettini took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirttail, and, looking at the hallucination, as real and precise as it was, he told them, “No kidding! I’m about to have a heart attack.”

  I TAKE THE SUBWAY to go downtown.

  Laura Yáñez wants to see me. She can’t tell me anything on the phone. Only in person.

  I’ve done this many times, but today there’s something strange in the air. Although it’s hot and the train’s crowded, nobody seems annoyed. They greet each other. They move to make room for new passengers getting in.

  They look carefree. There’s something mischievous in their eyes. They talk. I don’t see anyone with his eyes fixed on his shoes. A group of women wearing the uniforms of a supermarket are smiling, even though they’re not talking to each other.

  On the front page of the most popular newspaper that the retired man is reading, there are two huge pictures.

  In one of them, Pinochet, smiling. In the other, Little Kinky Flower with a presidential sash across his chest.

  The headline says: DUEL OF TITANS.

  We’re approaching the plebiscite and, from what I can hear while I move from one train car to another, nobody talks about anything else. Like a constant tic-tac I hear yes-no, no-yes, no-no-no, everywhere.

  Santiago seems different nowadays.

  Everybody looks so healthy. Did they drink some fruit juice? Did they rub themselves with seaweed in the shower? And the laughter! A red-haired high-school student with green eyes describes the scene from the night before, when the firefighter holding a glass of water imitated the siren of his fire truck, howling, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” The adults smile at him. An older man gives him a pat on the shoulder. So the redhead says to him, “I could do it again if you want.” And there’s more laughter. It looks like a different country. Everybody says that Brazilians are this lively. “Apesar de você amanhã há de ser outro dia.” I feel happy for Mr. Bettini. For Patricia Bettini. For Mrs. Magdalena. When he went back home, the phone rang until three in the morning. Congratulations. Bettini was now giving interviews to foreign newspapers. He had a call from a Mr.

  Chierici, from the Corriere della Sera. Long distance. And from another one—a Spaniard, from El País. They wanted his analysis and predictions for the plebiscite. The calendar is burning. How many days until October 5?

  When the train arrives at a station, some passengers leave, and the ones who get on look as if they were charged with fresh batteries. Like when in the second half of a soccer game the coach sends an exhausted center forward to the bench and a substitute comes in, running a little bit to warm up. Even the train seems to be running faster. That’s what my old man hates—the subjectivisms that prevent us from perceiving the objective reality. He can’t stand the Sophists. Good at talking and wasting time. But deep down, it’s all rubbish. Aristotle, on the contrary, he goes right to the point. Nico Santos. Short for Nicomachus.

  I feel that I’m the only one in this car who’s getting more and more absorbed in his own thoughts. The sadness of Dad’s absence gets me down. I’m on a different frequency from the rest of the city. There’ll be free elections, but my dad’s in jail. In jail and missing.

  That guy, Samuel, is doing as much as he can. Patricia Bettini insists that I need to talk with the bad guys. The good ones can’t do anything. Now’s probably a good time to do it.

  Now that people seem more spirited.

  Sure, I think, but I wonder how Pinochet is feeling.

  Furious. He might be red with anger. It seems that it backfired on him. The lady in green who carries the bag of vegetables is humming the “Waltz of the No.” Maybe this is just
a dream and now a military commando will storm in and start shooting everyone.

  I skipped school today. I’m afraid that the text I read at the cemetery will have consequences for me. Lieutenant Bruna wasn’t there, “due to decency.” But the snitches who were there might be waiting for me at the door of the institute.

  Or sitting in my classroom.

  With their short hair.

  Sunny day.

  They have an investigator’s badge that they show by opening their jackets. They’re detectives. But I was told that, afterward, the detectives hand the prisoners to the political cops.

  That’s when their trail is hard to follow.

  The last time I talked to Samuel, he told me not to lose hope. He said that we could have good news at any time. “But also bad ones,” I shouted over the phone. He remained silent for half a minute, and then he said, “Yes, but also bad ones, my boy.” I apologized.

  I get off at Alameda with Santa Lucía Hill and walk to Forest Park. That’s where Laura Yáñez lives. She wanted to get together because she has something to tell me. I don’t know what it is.

  But she said that it was urgent.

  It’s a good idea to disappear from home and school for a while.

  Laura Yáñez is so beautiful! At school, they call that kind of woman “a hell of a brunette.” She told me once, “I want to be Chile’s hell of a brunette.” Her friendship with Patricia’s based on their interest in theater. My girlfriend always looks for intellectual plays, with some political vein. She cracks up laughing with Beckett or Ionesco. Theater of the absurd. Laura’s crazy about John Travolta. She knows all the dance steps in Saturday Night Fever. But she’s never found a guy her age who could dance along with her. With her and Travolta. That’s why she’s always hanging around with older guys.