Where the Bird Sings Best

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  “Let no one say that what I am going to do is the result of alcohol. Let’s wait until we’re sober.”

  The master took a notebook out of a drawer and leafed through it. It was covered with his tiny, tortured handwriting.

  “These are the memories of my life. Here is what I really saw in Russia, what I think of Lenin and of the future that awaits us if things don’t change.”

  He put the notebook in a metal tray and set fire to it. The rooster began to crow. Teresa awoke and saw the pistol. She dug through the ashes trying to find a legible fragment. The ashes flew around the dining room like a flock of nocturnal butterflies. She said, with infinite dignity, “Good-bye, Luis Emilio. You know what I feel for you. I’ll never forget you.”

  Recabarren brought the pistol to his head and squeezed the trigger. He fell over with a red rose on his temple.

  The government didn’t dare forbid the funeral procession that would pass on Sunday through the center of the city to the General Cemetery. The coffin, covered with a red flag, was followed by a multitude of workers who filled the streets like a slow, silent, incredibly long river. The union banners paraded with a black ribbon on top of the letters embroidered in the velvet. Delegations of miners, maritime workers, men from the copper and coal mines, peasants, students, railroad men, bricklayers, bakers, and, at the head of the parade, guiding the coffin with a firm step, Teresa. Dressed in workers clothes, she glanced with pride toward the windows of the elegant houses where groups of people gathered to look out.

  A barricade of one hundred policemen, armed with rifles and wearing metal helmets, stopped the procession. The human river paused. The master’s companion, standing next to the coffin, sang with such intensity that her voice could be heard blocks away:

  Without fear of sanctions

  I bid farewell to the subversive man

  Who has known a thousand prisons

  Without committing any crime.

  Thousands of voices united in the melody and, repeating the refrain, the marchers once again moved forward. The soldiers didn’t dare fire and disappeared as if by magic. In the cemetery plaza, every worker became an orator. Thousands of inflammatory speeches launched in spurts, joined in a chaotic chorus, like the sound of a waterfall, to bid good-bye to Recabarren’s remains. As those who were hungry and tired gave up, others took their place. At 6:00 p.m., the ceremony was finished, and the body was left in the hands of the cemetery staff so that on Monday, the gravediggers could place the coffin in the family crypt.

  The next morning, very early, the sun barely giving a yellowish tinge to the cloudy sky, the gravediggers, asleep on their feet, dissimulating with grumbles the ill effects of alcohol, opened the gates to let Teresa, Jaime, and Sofía Lam (who turned up riding a man’s bicycle and wearing a sailor suit) enter. The three marched silently behind the four drunken gravediggers who carried the coffin on their shoulders, zigzagging and tripping amid muttered curses. The iron crypt that belonged to Recabarren’s grandfather was open. A dark-skinned boy, about twenty-five years old, with short, thick legs; a wide, hairy chest; calloused hands; big teeth; and straight black hair, was waiting for them, leaning on the aluminum cross.

  “Yesterday I hid here, Doña Teresa. I forced open the doors and spent the night here, trying to join my family. I am Elías Recabarren.”

  Surprised, Teresa set aside her painful silence. “You are Elías? Luis Emilio’s son?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I came because... ”

  “Let’s get on with the ceremony. Later you can tell us everything.”

  The gravediggers tossed the coffin into a niche as if it were a sack of potatoes. The jolt produced a bell-like sound in the metal crypt. They screwed the cover back on, whispering obscene jokes, and stretched out their right hands in hopes of a tip. Teresa gave each one money. Grumbling, even though the amount was correct, they demanded more. Jaime kicked them out. They went off to sit on a tomb emblazoned with a winged woman playing a trumpet, where they passed around a bottle of wine as they took turns caressing the statue’s marble hips.

  At the coffee shop, The Last Good-bye, across the street from the cemetery, Teresa, Jaime, Sofía, and Recabarren’s son drank their sodas in silence, not knowing how to begin the conversation. Sofía slapped the table, trying to kill a fly. The others emerged from their immobility to keep the glasses from spilling over, and attention focused on the girl.

  “I came today to pay intimate homage to the master and to express my repentance. For obscure sexual motives, I betrayed the most sacred thing, the Party. My vagina and clitoris weighed more heavily than the pain of the exploited working class. Shame made me discover my vocation: I am an atheist monk. Count on me for anything. Are we friends, Lautaro?”

  “Friends, Sofía!”

  “Now it’s time for me to talk, and I’ll be sincere. About Communism I know nothing. I’ve lived far away from politics, no fault of my own but of my father. As you well know, Doña Teresa, he was married to Fresia Godoy, a maid, my mother, an uneducated woman from the south. Recabarren learned to read quickly, developed his intelligence, found the ideal that would guide his life, went north, and never came near us again. His love for the people made him forget his son. He worried about everyone but me. I grew up humiliated, with no education, in the basement of our bosses. My mother died when I was thirteen. I had no money to bury her decently. She disappeared into a potter’s field. I hated politics, the struggles of the workers, that world that had stolen away my father. I also detested him. He should have come to find me, to teach me what he knew, to give me the chance to prepare the Revolution at his side. He shouldn’t have left me cast aside like a contemptible orphan. I was working for a few days here in Santiago, in a furniture factory. I’m a carpenter. I read the news of his death. I shed not a single tear. To the contrary, I smiled and felt avenged. I asked permission to take a day off, saying I wasn’t well, and I walked downtown intent on getting drunk. It was there the demonstration caught me. That human river following the body of the man who engendered me was pressing against my body, clinging to my skin, to my bones, in order to add me to its flow. I dissolved in the mass, and then, without personality, anonymous, one more cell in the gigantic animal of the people, I felt what everyone else felt, the greatest sadness coupled with an immense gratitude. I admired the honor of a solitary and valiant man who gave everything he had trying to get his compatriots out of poverty. I understood that my hatred was egoistic, and I felt proud to be the son of such a father. When the crowd left the cemetery, I hid so I could sleep in the crypt. Last night I felt no cold even though the walls and floor are iron. Recabarren’s arms were around me. Also, those of my grandfather and great-grandfather. This metal place is a grave for men. In our family, hearts detach from women and immerse themselves in the struggle. That’s the tradition I wish to continue.”

  “Elías, what you’re saying is very beautiful, and I’m sure that if there were such a thing as heaven, your father would be happy to hear you. Luis Emilio often asked himself about your fate. We made inquiries, but we never managed to find your whereabouts. Finally, we reached the conclusion that you were dead. From this moment on, our house is your house.”

  “Let’s not forget Comrade Lautaro Quinchahual. I too want to continue the work of my master and adoptive father. Give us advice, Teresa.”

  “Often, Luis Emilio talked to me about the importance of developing political awareness among the workers. Despite the fact that in the past few months he was crippled by a sadness impossible to explain, he was also very concerned about art. He thought that the best medium to awaken the workers was the theater. He thought about the possibility of forming theater groups of four persons each to travel the country and go to the mines, putting on shows. He wrote several one-act plays. He finished the last one a day before his death. It’s a comic drama for clowns, quite symbolic. If you want to be faithful to the ideal of my companion, I suggest the following: I’ll sell the house, and with that money buy a truck. T
here are four of us, and we can travel the country putting on his posthumous works!”

  A spontaneous and enthusiastic “Agreed!” turned them into traveling actors for several years.

  In January of 1925, a movement led by young army officers staged a coup d’état against the junta of conservative generals and brought Arturo Alessandri back to finish his term in office. But it wasn’t really the president who controlled things. All power was concentrated in the minister of war. Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who on the one hand tried to attract the workers and on the other tried to destroy the workers movement. The new constitution had been approved and left almost all power in the hands of the executive. On June 4, at the La Coruña mine, the police and army massacred more than two thousand miners, women, and children. Discontent grew to such a point that Alessandri had to resign a second time before finishing out his term.

  After two years of tug of war with the judiciary, Colonel Ibáñez was elected president, initiating a dictatorial government that brought with it detentions, exiles, disappearances, executions, and the limitation of civil liberties. Luis Emilio Recabarren’s theatrical work began acquiring more and more meaning as these things took place. Teresa, Sofía, Elías, and Jaime slept in the truck, which, chugging and bucking like an angry mule, carried them from one mine to another. The workers to whom the companies gave no entertainment other than the wine from their company stores, filled, with infantile eagerness, the soccer fields transformed into theaters thanks to the stages constructed from tables in the collective dining rooms.

  Teresa was no longer the discreet woman who had remained silent for twenty-five years next to her idol. Dressed in trousers and a blue work shirt, she drove the truck through the pampa, overcoming the obstacles along the way by means of her ironclad will. Without her, the truck would have collapsed like an old house. She learned how to change tires and fix flats, to repair the motor, take it apart, put it back together, change parts, and, her face stained with grease, to curse at the mist to make it fade and clear the road. At the end of every performance, it was she who took up the collection. In addition to a bit of money, they were also given some food and a tank of gas. With every change in the government, with every important political event, they reexamined their act. And merely by changing their tones of voice, leaving the text intact, they managed to keep it up to date.

  Teresa would announce: “Ladies and gentlemen and children: you are going to witness the grand performance of the International Failure Circus! We shall present on this stage a beast... ”

  (And here Elías, dressed as a bureaucrat, would enter and sit on the floor.)

  “and an implacable lion tamer... ”

  (And here Jaime, dressed as a colonel, would enter dragging a chair and snapping a whip.)

  “Let the action begin!”

  Lion Tamer: “Come along! Get up on that chair!”

  Beast: “Grrr!”

  Lion Tamer: “It’s your property!”

  Beast: “Yes, it is mine! I sit on it. Few beasts manage to own their own chair. I’m happy!”

  Lion Tamer: “Take a look at this chair.”

  Beast: “It’s the same as the other.”

  Lion Tamer: “Apparently it is, but actually it’s very different. Generations of noble beasts have sat on it. It’s an honor to own it!”

  Beast: “I want it for myself!”

  Lion Tamer: “Impossible. It belongs to the director of the circus!”

  Beast: “I’ll trade the one I have for that one!”

  Lion Tamer: “Yours is vulgar.”

  Beast: “I’ll give you all my money too!”

  Lion Tamer: “You don’t have enough money.”

  Beast: “What can I do? I’m ashamed of living on an ordinary chair.”

  Lion Tamer: “If you kill the director of the circus, I can get it for you.”

  Beast: “I’ll get the chair, but what will you earn?”

  Lion Tamer: “I’ll get to direct the circus!”

  Beast: “Perfect! I’ll rip his guts out! Let’s go!”

  The bureaucrat Elías and Jaime, the colonel, went over to a corner where Sofía, the circus director, dressed as the president of the republic, was standing. Jaime would give her a shove and throw her to the floor. Elías threw himself on her, biting her stomach, pulling out of the vest a long intestine made of rags. With a tricky sleight-of-hand it looked as if he’d eaten it. Teresa, sitting in the audience, would applaud and shout, “Bravo! Great, magnificent, they killed him! Now the circus will work really well!”

  Lion Tamer: “Take the second chair. You’ve earned it.”

  Beast: “Grrr. It’s delightful to sit in it.”

  Lion Tamer: “Even so, your first chair, despite being ordinary, had a warmth the other does not possess.”

  Beast: “That’s true. My new chair is cold.”

  Lion Tamer: “The first is so agreeable that other beasts have decided to buy it.”

  Beast: “Never! It must be mine again!”

  Lion Tamer: “But you already have a chair.”

  Beast: “I want both of them!”

  Lion Tamer: “I can get it for you.”

  Beast: “How?”

  Lion Tamer: “First, obey me blindly.”

  Beast: “Give me orders!”

  Lion Tamer: “Fight, shoot cannon, gas them, invade, destroy, massacre!”

  Beast: “Grrr! Ready! What next?”

  Lion Tamer: “Take the chair you want by force!”

  Elías would then leap toward the chair, imitating the attack of a ferocious soldier, and, after liquidating his invisible enemies, would take control of the chair, place it next to the other, and lie down on both with his hands under the nape of his neck.

  Beast: “Now I’ve got both! Now I’m happy!”

  Lion Tamer: “This place is full of people in chairs. What are your two chairs next to all these? You’ve got to expel the audience so that the entire circus is ours!”

  Elías would then leap toward Teresa and hustle her around to drag her off the floor. Then he would return and stand on top of his chairs.

  Beast: “We’ve expelled the audience! The circus is ours!”

  Lion Tamer: “Stupid beast! You deserve a thousand lashes! Who do you think you are? The circus belongs to me!”

  Beast: “Oh dear! Forgive me! You keep the circus. I’ll be happy with my two chairs.”

  Lion Tamer: “Why? Have you got two backsides? This chair where generations of noble beasts have sat belongs to the person who gives the orders. I’m taking it back.”

  Beast: “Oh, first chair of mine, I’ll find you again. I never should have abandoned you.”

  Lion Tamer: “Delusional beast: not even this chair belongs to you. I’ve decided to appropriate it. Animals don’t need to sit down. Stretch out on the ground.”

  Beast: “So what are you leaving me?”

  Lion Tamer: “Freedom!”

  Beast: “Freedom to do what?”

  Lion Tamer: “Freedom to eat just enough to stay alive. Freedom to obey me without arguing. Freedom to move around within a square yard. Freedom to receive the blows I might want to give you. Freedom to die for me!”

  And Jaime would then take out a rifle and fire at Elías. He would fall down dead with red ink pouring from his mouth. Then my father, in anguish, would lament:

  “And now what do I do alone in this enormous circus?”

  Teresa would pass around the hat, whispering into the ears of the spectators, “Without a beast, there is no lion tamer.”

  Dressed as miners, Elías, Jaime, and Sofía would appear with guitars to sing a cueca. The public would abandon their chairs and start dancing.

  At dawn, March 15, 1927, the Communist Party was declared illegal. Radio Mercury transmitted the high-pitched, incisive voice of Carlos Ibáñez:

  The definitive moment for settling accounts has come. The malevolent and socially corrosive propaganda of a few professional agitators along with a handful of daring
outsiders is no longer acceptable. We must cauterize society above and below. The time has come to break completely the red ties to Moscow. The Communist press will be shut down. All the organs of the Party, beginning with the Central Committee, will be under strong and constant siege by the police. We shall jail hundreds of their militants and leaders, relegate them to the most inhospitable places, submit them to severe torture, and assassinate some of them. After this operation, the nation will be at peace: happy within, and respected abroad.

  Teresa removed the hammer and sickle that adorned the hood of the truck and began to paint it black. They went on giving performances without changing a thing, but with other costumes, more innocent in appearance. Elías would wear a tiger suit. Jaime would exchange his colonel’s uniform for a blue lion tamer’s costume, and Sofía, the circus director, would wear a tuxedo. Teresa would introduce the show dressed as a clown.