Where the Bird Sings Best

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  He awoke late at night with his shoulder bandaged, stretched out on a grave in a cemetery. A gentleman with calloused hands offered him hot coffee in a clay cup.

  “I’m the cemetery guard, the gravedigger as well, and in my free hours a bone setter. I fix up twists, breaks, dislocations and give massages for stiff necks. Luckily for you, you got only a dislocation. I fixed it up perfectly. Eleodoro Astudillo, at your service.”

  “Many thanks, Don Eleodoro. How much do I owe you?”

  “Saints don’t pay. Pray for me, that will be enough.”

  “I certainly will. Could you tell me where and with whom you learned your trade?”

  “I learned it here, and my teacher’s name is Don Pepe. Don Pepe, come over here!”

  A gray cat came running through the graves and rubbed itself, purring, against the gravedigger’s legs.

  “He taught me everything. Consider this: if you touch your joints carefully, without allowing yourself to be distracted by any thought, you’ll understand how the animal has been set up by God. A small pressure here, another there, and after a few more, he comes apart. See?”

  The gentleman, not causing Don Pepe any pain, disjointed his legs and neck. The feline was left stretched out on the gravel path like a rug, purring even more loudly.

  “In the same way, digging graves is nothing for me now. Before, yes, it was hard, and that was even when I was young. But little by little, I set pride aside and let the Earth be my teacher. She showed me her hard spots, her soft spots, her empty places. If you take a good look at where and how you sink in the shovel, the ground opens and in you go like a knife through butter.” In a few seconds, he reassembled the cat’s neck and legs, and off the animal dashed, chasing a nocturnal butterfly. “Do you understand the language of things? Look carefully at that small refuge.”

  Jaime realized that Don Eleodoro was enjoying himself immensely talking to him. Perhaps it was the first night in many years he had company like this, drinking coffee under the moonlight. In any case, he turned to look in the direction the knotty finger was pointing. At the end of a branch, a nest glowed.

  “What does it say to you?”

  “It looks pretty, like a magic fruit.”

  “It may be true but that is what you create; pretty or ugly comes from you, not from the nest. The truth is that the little house is built at the end of a fragile branch. The bird calculated by instinct the weight of the branches that crisscross and the weight of the little birds that nest there in order to construct his work at the limit of the bearable. One gram extra and the branch breaks or it bends, causing the chicks to fall. If it constructs its nest on a thick, safe branch, the cats will come to eat everything. As it is, no feline will dare come close. So I understand that sometimes it isn’t good to seek security, because it leads to death. Sometimes it’s better to live in uncertainty. But you know these things because you’re a saint. What work it has cost you to purify you soul. I saw it on your body. You’ve been beaten, had ribs broken. You’ve had to fight against many wills. You feel your parents didn’t love you as they should. All that weighs more than the Christ on His cross. If you like, I’ll lighten you. Memory is like a corset. Your memories stick to your chest, your back, all over your skin, and they form an invisible shell that separates you from the world.”

  The gravedigger stripped him and began to scrape him with a bone knife, inch by inch, with intense dedication, as if he had to pull off a label glued to each part. He began with the soles of Jaime’s feet, using the scraper with such skill that he felt no tickles. Then he went up, along his legs, sex, and anus to his chest and back, not forgetting the arms, neck, and finally Jaime’s entire head. When he finished, dawn was beginning. Since Don Eleodoro had undone the bandage so no part of his body would not be scraped, Jaime had a pain in his shoulder that seemed light because of the joy the rest of his body was giving him.

  He felt that he’d taken off many, many years of suffering. His body breathed like a huge lung. Each pore, transformed into a tiny mouth, sang a hymn to freedom. All his fears had been removed: fear of dying, getting sick, being abandoned, being invaded, failing, losing, suffering, being bored, having no meaning, being unnoticed, growing old. For the first time, he enjoyed his matter, and the flesh was no longer an executioner allied with Time taking away his life in little bites with its seconds, but a paradisiacal garden where his spirit danced like a formless angel.

  “My friend, holy penitent, in this region there are many witchdoctors who call themselves wizards. They’re going to offer you plants that grant visions and take you to other levels of reality. In my opinion, seeing things as they are, united, not separated, that’s a miracle. Are you sleepy?”

  “A bit. We haven’t slept all night.”

  “Make an effort. Come with me. Out in the fields stands a solitary apple tree. If we know how to see it, it will speak to us about this plane, which is as marvelous as one of those hallucinations.”

  He led Jaime out of the cemetery. At the entrance, was the cross, standing upright in a niche in the high wall. Christ looked so well there it seemed as though He’d been carved for that site, like the figurehead on a ship manned by all the dead. They followed a path bordered by lavender bushes that purified the air with their sweet perfume. In the middle of a field of dark, almost black earth grew a leafy tree covered with yellow apples transformed into gold by the rays of the rising sun.

  “What do you see?”

  “A tree with lots of ripe, shiny apples.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I can’t say it’s beautiful or ugly, because that would come from me.”

  “Don’t look with your eyes but with your spirit.”

  “My spirit tells me those fruits are very sweet, and my stomach believes it.”

  “Since you feel half-blind, you don’t face the bull and you start playing. It would be better to dance. Here everything is dancing, from the stars to the smallest speck of dust. Realize this: the tree stuck into the planet spins with it around the sun. Each apple, according to its position, receives the sun’s rays in a different way. Some, those that hang on the side where the sun rises, will be bathed by a young light that will go from weakness to strength; others, those who face the sunset, will receive an aged light that will go from strength to weakness. Those that grow at the top of the tree will be fed by a mature vertical light, short but always intense. Each apple is different, because during their growth each receives the sun in a different way. Each has a different taste; some are friends of the morning, others of the afternoon, and a few of midday. But there is one apple, the highest and most central, in intense communication with the zenith, that is the queen.”

  The gravedigger stretched out his arm and cut off an apple. Then, with astonishing agility, he climbed to the top of the tree to cut another.

  “Take a bite of one from below. Now eat a piece from this one, the queen, and compare.”

  The first fruit, fresh, with hard, sugary flesh, seemed delicious to Jaime. He bit the other, and a concentrated, vibrant, unbreakable force overwhelmed him. The tense and juicy flesh, like sweet crystal, crunched melodiously. When it dissolved into juice, beneficent acid, it instantly penetrated Jaime’s tongue and went into the river of his blood, which heated up, giving him a euphoric fever. When he finished eating that apple, he felt that his life had been prolonged.

  “I think we are the same as the trees; in each situation, we grow a thousand gestures. We have to prefer the kingly gesture, the one closest to the vital principle. And we should make that one, not the others. But never disdaining them. They are the power behind every realization. Well, I’ll let you sleep. Get into this grave. I’ve put a blanket in it. You’ll have to get used to this deep bed because I have no other to offer you.”

  Jaime dropped into the grave and, lulled by the sweet and sour smell of the earth, fell asleep. He dreamed he was in the arms of a dark-skinned woman. Between their two naked bodies, he noted there was a huge quantity of
white jelly.

  “What’s this?” he asked the woman.

  “Don’t worry, it’s my depilatory cream.”

  “You like to lose your body hair, but I, a man, feel it to be a catastrophe.” He felt anguished for a moment, then he said to her, “Rub my back with it. My shoulder blades are covered with hairs. When they fall out, two wings will be able to grow there.”

  My father awoke full of energy and came out of the grave like a newborn. The gravedigger was waiting to offer him two fried eggs, bread, and a cup of coffee.

  “You won’t be able to carry your cross for two weeks, friend. What will you do? You can’t stay here; a multitude will come to see you to request miracles. In their fervor they will trample the graves and the plants. Maybe one of those believers will lend you a room. Meanwhile, I’ll take care of your Christ. When you’re better, you can get back on the road of penitence.”

  “Don Eleodoro, I have other plans. I’ll take the train to visit my brother in Santiago.”

  “Wearing that cassock and with no cross, you’ll look odd. I’ll undress a dead man. He’s fresh. I buried him yesterday. A traveling salesman with no relatives or friends.”

  After half an hour he came back with a suit of a brilliant, exaggerated green, plus a shirt and shoes.

  “I hope you don’t mind the color. The more you use the suit, the less noticeable it will be.”

  “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Thanks. The shoes I won’t take. I’d rather keep these boots. I thank you as well for all you’ve taught me.”

  “It’s the all-knowing cemetery that’s the teacher, not me. I’ve got death so close to me that I see life everywhere. When you think you’re suffering, look at yourself in a mirror and remember where your suit comes from. That will give you spirit. Good-bye, friend. It was good to speak with a living man.”

  In the train station, Jaime bought a newspaper; the two principal candidates both claimed victory. He looked for the details of the voting; in Valdivia, Luis Barros Borgoño received 2,500 votes, Arturo Alessandri Palma, also 2,500, and Recabarren 1. Jaime boarded the train proud to be the cause of that single vote.

  The third-class car was packed with poor people traveling with packages, baskets, dogs, and chickens. The arrival of the gringo wearing the parrot-green suit produced a hum of laughter, but all it took was a defiant clearing of the throat by my father to shut them up. His black beard and short hair gave him a ferocious air. Fearful, they offered him a seat next to an old lady, and soon the rumble of the steel wheels put him to sleep:

  Looking out the window of a building under construction, he observed the recreation area of a school where a teacher was showing his students how to manipulate invisible objects. He realized that the teacher’s technique was imperfect and that he masked his lack of precision with a confusing rapidity of gestures. Then the students raised their eyes to him, asking for help. From above—impassive, slow, and precise, with impeccable technique—he manipulated an invisible object in order to show them how to proceed properly in such cases.

  The teacher abandoned his class and entered the building, climbing the precarious ladders that led to the seventh floor. Pursing his red lips, he pointed his index finger to his inside jacket pocket and asked him for a four-word motto he might embroider there.

  He answered, “Permanent impermanence, nothing individual.”

  Despite the teacher’s expression of admiration, he said to himself, “In any case, I have to teach you the technique for the perfect manipulation of invisible objects.”

  A screech of brakes made him wake up. The train had stopped at a small station surrounded by vineyards. Through the door at one end of the car entered three drunken soldiers, each one with a full bottle under his left arm and an almost empty bottle in the right hand. Their swallows were as long as their guffaws. Through the door at the other end entered a short, hunchbacked man, carrying a white bag. When the train started moving, he sank his hands into the sack and pulled them out full of eggs. In a high voice, he began to shout, “Get your hardboiled eggs! For every rooster’s trick you buy, I’ll give you a packet of salt!”

  The hairless face of the hunchback had something womanish to it, and his voice trembled like the clucking of hens. The soldiers, elbowing each other, pushed their way to him, snatched the white sack and began to eat the eggs so gluttonously that they swallowed them without removing the shell. In a few moments, they devoured three dozen, the man’s entire stock. They went back, emptying their second bottle, to the bench they used as bed and urinal. The hunchback followed them, demanding payment. The soldiers grabbed him by one leg and held him upside down shaking him: “Empty the gut you’ve got on your back. It must be full of eggs!”

  Carried away with their game, they began to beat his head against the floor, clearly intending to smash it.

  “Stop immediately!” shouted Jaime, without even having considered matters. His roar of indignation was involuntary, as were the gestures that followed: with a feline leap, he flew over the passengers’ heads, landed in the center aisle, leapt again, and found himself facing to the savages. Then, using his good arm, he punched them in the mouths. Teeth flew all over. Then he smacked their chest and sides, knocking them down between the seats. Finally he kicked them in their heads, leaving them unconscious and bloody. When he snapped out of his furor, he found himself carrying the hunchback, who was both sobbing and laughing triumphantly, thanking Jaime a thousand times.

  “Listen, sir, you have nothing to thank me for. The fact is I don’t like bullying, that’s all. I didn’t attack them to defend you but to defend an idea.”

  “Whatever you say, but the truth is you saved my life. You punched all three with only one fist. You can see from a mile away you’re a boxer, and a good one. It’s a shame God didn’t give me your body, that way I could work in peace. If you’ll forgive my curiosity, could you tell me where you’re going?”

  “I’m going to Santiago, but I have to get off in Rancagua. I didn’t have enough money to go farther.”

  “What a coincidence! I live in Rancagua, and if your pockets are empty, I can offer you a job, even though I appear poor.”

  Going up a steep hill, they took advantage of the train’s slowness and jumped off to avoid reprisals from the army. Luckily they were only two day’s walk from the city, and the hunchback, whose name was Jesús de la Cruz, made the walk shorter by singing beautiful tunes in his tenor voice.

  “Well, as my name says, I’m a victim nailed to the cross of my hunched back. A load like this is very hard to carry. When I pass through the taverns to sell my hardboiled eggs, the drunks always end up beating me. I understand them. They, workers, peasants, miners, are constant victims of the injustice of their bosses. They discharge their accumulated rage on me. I have a German hurdy-gurdy that contains pretty melodies. I can sing as I crank the handle and then sell bananas and eggs. You, strong as you are, disguised as a gorilla—I have a costume I found thrown in the garbage after carnival—could protect me. Many organ grinders are accompanied by little monkeys who collect money in a little can. Mine would be bigger. Admit it: the idea is good, my friend. Wearing the mask, no one will recognize you, and after a short time, we can split the profit between us. You’ll save up enough to buy a ticket to Santiago.”

  Jaime was not surprised that fate would transform him into an ape-man. His mother had fallen in love with one, and perhaps for him it was good to identify himself with a simian form, which, indirectly, would give him the sensation of receiving the maternal love he lacked.

  Meanwhile, the two presidential candidates, after each claimed the win, accused each other of fraud. Amid turbulence among the people, along with the threat of military intervention, the election was decided by an honor tribunal that gave the presidency to Alessandri.

  My father lived a year submerged in the gorilla suit, visiting bars and restaurants every night of the week. At first he had to bloody a few drunks so that they’d learn to respect the hunchback, bu
t later the job was easy. Everybody wanted to shake his hand or hug him, smiling like children. One night, out of pure boredom, he took a hanky out of the pocket of a customer and began to dance a cueca. A general clapping of hands ensued, and many wanted to accompany the gorilla, pounding their heels intensely. Jesús sold all his merchandise.

  During the day, my father did not take off the disguise and, seated in the town’s main square, he amused the children. It did him good to live anonymously, within a hairy shell. He needed to lose himself, to discover the zero point. Deep down in the depth of his soul, he believed in nothing. He felt intensely separated. He’d been dropped in a world full of locked doors but given no keys. He looked for meaning to existence, always finding that nothing was worthwhile.

  Hidden within the gorilla suit, as if in an alchemical crucible, he was dissolving, transforming into a formless spirit without personality or definition, with no values to affirm, free of models, of ties. He stopped being a gringo. A false monkey was accepted but a Russian immigrant was not. He challenged himself, dressed that way and without taking off his mask, to conquer a woman. Why just one? Many! His weapons of seduction were his eyes, his bare hands, his voice, and an interior force that pierced the animal skin and surrounded him with an erotic aura that married women, his preferred victims, perceived as blue-green waves.

  Between three and five in the afternoon, when those ladies were preparing dinner and their husbands were far away at work, he easily managed to possess them in any old corner of the kitchen. It was best for them not to know his name or his face. They yielded to pure pleasure with no ties, free of all guilt. When the act was over, they slipped him a banknote or a packet of flowers and food. These impersonal relationships allowed my father to know the root of pleasure, a brutal enjoyment that was mysterious, devoid of modesty, where each female showed her basic heat. He didn’t exist, and the mask, granting him the quality of being a mask, transformed him into the ideal male all women bear within. Each one of them molded him to make him into an excrescence of their own flesh and that way they could possess themselves. Jaime knew he was walking through a space where there was no becoming.