The Days of the Rainbow

by Antonio Skarmeta

  It seems as if she’s becoming smaller and slimmer inside my hug. Her brown hair falls loose on her shoulders and there’s not a trace of the school discipline of bobby pins, headbands, and clips that she uses to prevent her hair from flooding over her face.

  Today she’s not wearing the school uniform.

  She has on a tight red polo shirt, one size too small.

  Her breasts protrude under the fabric, and she’s showing cleavage.

  Embellished with furious red lipstick, her lips perfectly match her shirt. It’s a mouth screaming, “Kiss me, bite me.” I swallow. I scratch her cheek with the few hairs that have sprouted in my chin. I breathe in deeply the smell of her skin. The aroma of tropical fruit from her hair gel makes me dizzy.

  “Are you ready?” she asks.

  She wants to know if I’m ready. I’ve set out on this flight. I live in the country of the No, and every one of my nerves knows that nobody will ever take it away from me. I feel it in the pulse of my wrists, in my temples, beating riotously.

  In my erection.

  Shoot! Democracy is so erotic!

  “I’m ready,” I say, only to not say all that’s unutterable.

  She puts the ticket in my shirt pocket and then touches my forehead with two fingers, like a doctor who needs to check if you have a fever.

  “Then, Nicomachus Santos, your tickets to Valparaíso!”

  * Gubbio is a medieval town in Umbria, where it is said that St. Francis tamed the wolf that terrorized its inhabitants.

  PATRICIA BETTINI shows Nico Santos the notebook with a blue cover where her father was writing his notes for the No campaign.

  A horse canters in the prairie; it’s the horse of freedom.

  A cab’s windshield wipers move; it’s the No of freedom.

  A heart pumps, systole and diastole; it’s the rhythm of freedom.

  An old lady buys a tea bag at Don Aníbal’s store; it’s the tea of freedom.

  A policeman hits a student on his head; it’s the hour of freedom. Song:

  I don’t want him, Daddy; I don’t want him, Mommy; I don’t want him in English, or in Mapudungun; or in tango; or in bolero; or in fox-trot; or in cumbia or chachacha; I don’t want him; I don’t want him. What I want is freedom.

  Christopher Reeve is in Chile. Film him—he came to protect the actors who have received death threats. Have him say something. Something like—“Okay, folks, you’re right, remember that the vote is secret and that Chile being a free country depends on you.”

  Bravo, Superman; in English, he speaks of freedom.

  Film Jane Fonda. I don’t know where you may find her, but I heard her saying on the radio—“During all these years, the pain of Chile has been our pain, now the future of Chile is in your hands.”

  Let’s include Jane with the boots song—“These boots are made for walking, and they will walk all over you; walk, boots; walk over Pinochet; walk, walk, walk, walk—toward liberty.”

  And let’s use some cueca—“Tiquitiquití, tiquitiquitá, you say ‘no’ and freedom will light up.”

  And do not forget Violeta*—it gave me the alphabet, and with it the words that I think and declare; it gave me the “N” and gave me the “O”; it gave me the freedom to say “No.”

  They broke his hands, they fractured his femur; he was shot seventy-two times; they punched his belly. Freedom hurts. (No need to say whom we’re talking about; everybody knows; it’s better if people react by themselves.)

  The cops don’t allow Serrat to get off the plane. He shuts himself in the lavatory, and records a cassette with a journalist. “For Freedom” (play that song).

  The young couple looks around; they collect coins and paper bills of very little value. They want to pay for a motel room. Freedom’s cheap love.

  Me, Bettini, I ask Death to wait for a while; we need to pass September. This is my last wish—after October 5, I won’t ask for anything else. I only want freedom to wait with me for that date.

  Girl dressed in black crosses Apoquindo Avenue. It’s the height of spring and her thighs swing to the rhythm of freedom.

  Over the head of the bearded king, a cardboard crown tilts; freedom is coming.

  That hand waving No wants freedom.

  A carpenter saws a piece of wood; the sawdust that jumps is freedom.

  The woman in love plucks a daisy; freedom loves me, loves me not.

  The first spelling book—Dad loves Mom; the boy loves his cat; the girl loves freedom.

  No bird or angel flies higher than freedom.

  The Pacific Ocean elevates blue cathedrals up to the clouds; waves up and down, toward freedom.

  Don’t tell me less, don’t tell me more, tell me just the right word—freedom.

  Let’s see those palms, little ones, setting the beat, once more, clip, clap, clip, clap, once more, freedom.

  Nico leaves Bettini’s notebook on the motel room’s nightstand.

  But Patricia wants him to read one more time the prophecy—she uses this word—The young couple looks around; they collect coins and paper bills of very little value. They want to pay for a motel room. Freedom’s cheap love.

  She asks him to help her with her bra.

  Nico unhooks it, as if he were an expert.

  He’s facing the back of the woman he loves. Her skin extends, pale, and for the first time he dares to touch with his lips a mole on her shoulder blade. The shoulder blade. Anatomy.

  She turns toward him. Now her breasts are facing his mouth.

  She seems to have sprouted up from that excited cloud floating outside the window.

  She looks serious.

  He smiles.

  Together, they had put together the fifteen thousand pesos. A room for three hours. “Don’t fall asleep, kids, or else I’ll have to charge you an extra ten thousand. The two rum and Cokes are included.”

  Freedom, he thinks.

  And his tongue climbs up her neck, all the way up to Patricia Bettini’s mouth, and he sinks his tongue between her teeth.

  She closes her eyes.

  There has to be a way of doing it right.

  A way to do it in style.

  Like they had seen it in the movies.

  Like they had imagined it so many times, amid wet sheets.

  With the slow moaning, the swelling of the breasts, the erudite bulging of the virile member, the moistening of the belly, soaking it, his tongue must know how to find the exact spot, besiege it with the dexterity of a bullfighter, the planet’s tiny electrified spot.

  He has to stay calm; everything is too fast. His hands squeeze and scratch, jumping from one side to another other, like two scared rabbits.

  It would be necessary to be thirty years old, and to be a skin expert, to have a doctorate in breasts, to give pleasure to the beloved Patricia Bettini, pale and warm under the faint daylight that filters through the flower-print curtain—daisies, sunflowers, rhododendrons—in the oppressive shade of that hotel room, afflicted by an insolent sun that seems to want to set the port on fire.

  Patricia leans against the padded green headboard, separates her knees, and lets the middle finger and forefinger of her right hand go down her belly.

  She caresses the spot, the instant, the glass of sparkling champagne, while her other hand goes to Nico Santos’s nape.

  Gently, but firmly, the other hand leads Nico’s head to her belly, defeats him, and the young student obeys, brushes against her straight brown hair, and on this journey he breathes, deeply, the smell of her victorious secretions.

  Skillful, he touches with the tip of his tongue the small tiger hidden in that abrupt vegetation, darker than it appeared in his dreams, a shade wilder than the most Italian, placid brown of her mane, and curled as from a sudden electricity.

  Up to this point there hadn’t been words, not even monosyllables, only the saliva on the skin, the rubbing of the thighs against the sheets, but now Nico Santos hears a word.

  Patricia Bettini whispers “yes,” and repeats �
�yes,” and she says “yes” once and again, and “like that,” “like that,” and her fingers squeeze, electrified, Nico Santos’s skull, and she doesn’t say anything else, she doesn’t say “yes,” she doesn’t say “like that.” She remains ferociously quiet and focused, and she brutally clenches her teeth, and what Nico can’t see, what he doesn’t know yet, is that Patricia Bettini’s crying.

  * Violeta Parra (Chilean songwriter). What follows is an adaptation of her song “Gracias a la vida.”

  PATRICIA DRAWS the printed curtain and opens the small window. The motel is high on the hill. She leans her forehead on the wooden window frame, tilts her neck, and looks out at the distance. The noises from the port sound stronger—cranes depositing huge crates on the ship decks, honks, ambulance alarms, the neighbors’ radios playing the hits of the week.

  “Come.”

  I walk over to her. She remains in the same position. Without looking at me, she takes my arm and puts it around her shoulders. She kisses my hand. It’s weird, because she’s far away and, at the same time, very much here. A divided body. Beautiful, loving, warm.

  “Look,” she says, scrunching up her nose a little bit and pointing at the hills. “If you want to know me better, I’m like them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The hills and all that.”

  “You’re like them.”

  “I was just saying, silly. Me,” she says, tapping her chest, as if to mark the beating of her heart, “I’m this. I mean … if someone painted me and I were a landscape, I’d have many colors …

  “Look here now. What do you see?”

  “Many things.”

  “Roofs, roof tiles, yellow, green, purple, blue, red, brick-red walls, chimneys, seagulls, pelicans, stairs, steps, cables within easy reach, overhead tramways like small houses climbing onto the rails, stray dogs, kites, and everything remains there, as if someone had put it that way, thoughtlessly, leaving everything for later.”

  “And that’s how you are? You left yourself for later?”

  “I mean, all those things that have happened to me in my life have a meaning. They’re here, with the same strong emotion that I felt at that moment, d’you know?”

  “One of the things I like the most about you is that you almost never say d’you know? It’s interesting, because I see you …”

  I stop. I kiss her naked shoulder and breathe in deeply the smell of her neck. Going over her skin helps me find the exact word …

  “How do you see me?”

  “Harmonious, tanned. Elegant, Patricia Bettini. That’s why I’m surprised to hear you comparing yourself with a carnival.”

  She turns toward me, and with two fingers she gently caresses my eyelids.

  “Maybe,” she says, smiling with her eyes but not with her lips, “it’s the typical post-virginity-lost trauma. Do you know where my harmony comes from?”

  “I talked about it with your father.”

  “Do you talk about me with my father!? What does he say?”

  “That that’s your ‘Italian touch,’ an internal commotion but a clear expression.”

  “Harmonious.”

  “Exactly, as if you had made a fair copy of yourself.”

  “And Laura Yáñez?”

  “Laura Yáñez is a draft. Did you ever see the calligraphy notebook of a messy child?”

  “Twisted letters, blots. But she saved your father, Nico!”

  “I love her because of that. But I don’t know if she’ll be able to save herself.”

  Patricia looks suddenly serious. Almost grave. She signals me with her chin to look again at the road.

  “Everything ends in the sea.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re always there and, at the same time, the infinite is there, too. If you’re near the ocean, you put all those tiny everyday things in the infinite.”

  I exaggerate a yawn. “You should discuss these topics with Professor Santos. My old man is a fan of Aristotle and Anaximander.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Anaximander is the oldest philosopher of all. Only a small fragment of his work remains.”

  “What is it about?”

  “I know it by heart. ‘Things perish into those things out of which they have their being, according to necessity.’ And the dude became famous just with that tiny bit of philosophy.”

  Patricia walks to the table and takes her half-empty glass of rum and Coke. She tastes it and makes a funny face. It’s warm.

  “Shall I order some ice?”

  “Just leave it. It’s time for us to go back to Santiago. My old man must be looking for me to kill me. I left a note for him, attached with pins on his pillow.”

  Right after she says that, we hear a police siren, very close to the motel.

  “That’s him.” She laughs.

  “What kind of note was it?”

  “One that, unfortunately, he’ll know very well how to decipher. Three words: “Virginity, Valparaíso, Freedom.”

  She opens her thin lips in a charming smile. Oh, my God! I love her so much! I feel that I want her again.

  “Do you like me?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not even a little?”

  I nod. I don’t like her at all. I frown my lips scornfully.

  “Do you find me ugly?”

  I nod enthusiastically. I find her hor-ren-dous.

  Patricia Bettini draws the curtain completely. She shows her breasts to Valparaíso and sings at the top of her lungs.

  E che m’importa a me

  se non sono bella

  se ho un amante mio

  che fa il pittore

  che mi dipingerà

  come uns stella

  e che m’importa a me

  se non sono bella.

  “Let’s go back to Santiago,” I say.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “A little bit. I don’t think that Don Adrián would kill you. He’s Italian and sentimental, so he would feel bad committing a filicide, but he wouldn’t have the same scruples with me. At this very moment, I might be the number-one candidate on his hit list.”

  She opens her arms with a wild yawn accompanied by a deep “Ahhhhh.” When she’s done, she raises a didactic finger, like a rural teacher.

  “Then I think that we’ll all go back to the sea. I mean it, for Anaximander.”

  The rum is warm but I don’t care. I drink it in one gulp.

  “The No has driven us all crazy,” I say while closing the window and taking a last look at the sea. “He’s out of himself, he says yes, he says no, and no and no, he says yes in blue, in foam, in a gallop, he says no and no.”

  “Neruda?”

  “The great Neruda. Or, as your dad would say, the fucking Neruda.”

  PROFESSOR SANTOS has never seen his son wearing a tie. They’re going to walk together to the graduation ceremony. Before leaving the apartment, he checks if he put a pack of black tobacco in the inside pocket of his jacket, along with the Ronson lighter, which has survived life’s vicissitudes, and which he refills every Saturday in a cigarette and locksmith stand on Ahumada Place.

  He then checks the knot of the green tie with blue polka dots that Nico has borrowed from his friend Che.

  The event is taking place in the afternoon, but neither the father nor the son changes his morning routine. They leave the apartment and, before getting off the elevator, the philosophy teacher lights his cigarette, takes Nico’s arm, and smokes while walking the two blocks to the gate of the National Institute.

  There they will perform what is usually a routine practice, except that today it has special relevance: Nico Santos will graduate from high school with a more than acceptable average.

  He was able to survive the turbulence of the dictatorship; he remained cautiously quiet, obeying not just his father’s advices but also his strict orders. He’s spoken out very few times, sometimes not so well, and sometimes okay, and sometimes very well, but in t
his last case he was prudent enough to do it in English. “To be or not to be.” His son had opted for the be, and Professor Santos thanked his late wife for it. Certainly, the not to be would’ve ended up destroying him.

  Then, with a histrionic gesture that reminds Nico of Professor Paredes’s irony, he throws the cigarette butt on the ground, and bowing to his son, tells him that the prince may proceed to crush it with his shoe.

  Nico Santos obeys with boundless joy. A triviality that he’s happy to comply with. He draws his own conclusions, “The No won.”

  His father is alive. If he dies one day, it will be because of that stupid black tobacco and not the freezing cold of a prison cell.

  Besides, his sperm had shot out like a big bang into the womb of the woman he loved. His experience proves that the world was created so that he could live his love with Patricia Bettini.

  Today she’s invited to the graduation ceremony. After his triumph with the campaign, Bettini has gotten new clients. The distributors of a French car have already given him their portfolio. At any rate, Le Monde had acknowledged his talent. Ooh-la-la. He bought his daughter a dress of the finest embroidered satin, open between the thighs like a mineral slash, with beads and Armani’s unruly signature.

  He paid more than he had, but he accepts that Pinochet was a genius when he put in circulation the credit card—that’s the only way to get what you cannot afford. After him, the deluge.

  Yet Adrián did this on one condition, which the girl humbly accepts—she has to wear the same dress at her own graduation ceremony, which will take place in the Scuola Italiana in three days. She better not dream of changing her wardrobe every two hours, as if she were an international movie star.

  By the entrance to the auditorium there is a wreath of white roses, with some green leaves, and a few red carnations. Above, there is black poster board taped to the wall on which someone has written in yellow, “We don’t forget our martyrs.”

  There are five names—two students and three teachers. One of them, Don Rafael Paredes.

  As they walk into the auditorium, people pretend not to see the poster board. Since the triumph of the No, Lieutenant Bruna decided not to come back to the school. He sent the soldiers in a jeep to pick up his stuff.