Where the Bird Sings Best (3 page)

The Rabbi was not much help to Alejandro in the army. The soldiers’ world seemed impure, and when he saw my grandfather in the mess hall devouring pork chops or other forbidden foods, his face became even yellower and from his slanted eyes poured tears as immaterial as his body.

“If you don’t understand me, Moisés, bless him, will. I have to eat this Russian garbage because if I don’t, they’ll figure out who I am. It’s hard enough to cover up my circumcision. Leave me in peace. What do you know about the pain in my gut when your intestines aren’t even solid? If all you want is to add more suffering to my sorrows, I’d rather you stopped speaking to me.”

During those arduous five years of military service, the Rabbi said not one word more.

Alejandro had other problems. Whenever he held a rifle he went white as a sheet, fell to the ground, and vomited. Tired of trying to cure him with kicks and whippings, the officers made him a kitchen helper and bootblack for the squadron. He also had to clean the latrines and stables. Instead of feeling depressed, he decided, accustomed as he was to the blows of life, to turn his disgrace into an apprenticeship. God had put him here to peel stunted vegetables, to polish smelly boots, to clean up human and equine shit in order to teach him something important.

Amiable, calm, smiling, he peeled tons of potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. Though what was demanded of him was quantity and not quality, he tried to do it all rapidly but well, taking care that the food was clean, the potatoes free of eyes and rotten parts, the vegetables not dried out. He was constantly honing his skill in eliminating skin without sacrificing the slightest bit of meat. And it was in this constant separation of dirt-covered surfaces that he ended up seeing himself, as if in each day’s work he were pulling from his own memory old skins, pains, rancor, and envy. Every vegetable that sparkled naked and clean in his hands gave him the sensation of an internal birth. During his final months of military service, he carried out this task singing with the innocence of a child.

Also with innocence, but that of a thousand-year-old man, he cleared the excrement. Horses and men were one in those evacuations. An immense pity that transformed into tenderness filled his spirit when he purged the latrines. That fecal matter was a testimony to the animal nature of the soul, of the soul’s ties to the flesh. And he marveled when he thought about how in those bodies that produced this fetid magma, faith also could manifest itself, as well as love and so many other delicate feelings. He learned to respect excrement, to consider it his equal, to see things from that humble level. He opened his heart as he emptied the receptacles, trying to be a true servant, one who sees the work of God through misery and who works to make it shine. He recognized in himself the presence of the Divine Superior and desired, with ecstatic joy, to obtain the blessing of being useful to Him. It was there, in those places of defecation, where he learned to pray sincerely for the first time. If a being like himself, an excrement gatherer, was worthy of entering into a relationship with the Supreme Being, the door was opening for other men who had—all of them—more merit than he.

After shinning boots and shoes for almost five years, thousands and thousands of times scraping off filthy crusts; applying polish, oiling, using a cloth; patching soles; flattening rebellious nails; over and over, hour upon hour, he began to like the work. “The feet,” the instructors would always say, “are the most important part of the military. A soldier with badly fitting boots is a soldier lost.” During cold weather, on the incessant marches, during the many combat maneuvers, the infantry had to have its lower extremities very well protected.

Alejandro imagined life as a spiritual war and felt an almost unbearable sorrow for the poor men who advanced barefoot or suffered from shoddily made boots. Being a shoemaker was a profession that fit his modesty. If he were meant to serve, he would transform his labors into works of art. Those who previously only walked would dance in his shoes. This he decided the day that a captain, loudly guffawing through aromatic waves of kielbasa and vodka, gave him a pair of boots stained with Jewish blood. For an hour he polished them, not to make them shine but to erase from them that painful image. He swore he would only make fine shoes that would be as soft and durable as faithful animals, to give health to the body. A man who dances can sing, and all songs, human and animal, exalt God.

As soon as they were liberated from military service, the Rabbi smiled again. After five years of silence among uniformed goyim, he went merrily along with Alejandro toward the Jewish neighborhood. His joy quickly made him fly like a grand crow above the rooftops. When he saw the sparrows flee, my grandfather realized that they could see the phantom. That removed a weight from his mind because, for him, it proved he wasn’t insane.

He shouted to the Rabbi, “Hey, my friend, come down here! Now I know that you are not a hallucination! Let’s resume our conversation.”

The man from the Caucasus left the company of a dead leaf that was being wafted about, landed, and spoke to his companion: “Mr. Levi—pardon me, I mean Mr. Jodorowsky. During these past years, not being able to speak with you, I dedicated myself to reviewing, within myself, the sacred books I know by heart. I had the idea I should summarize them in a single volume. Then, in a single chapter, then in a single page, and finally in a single sentence. This sentence is the greatest thing I can teach you. It seems simple, but if you understand it, you will never have to study again.” The Rabbi recited it. And life, from that moment on, changed for Alejandro. “If God is not here, He is nowhere; this instant itself is perfection.”

Teresa received my grandfather shyly, hugging the twins to her body. Shorn of moustache, beard, without curly payot hanging next to his ears, without long hair, wearing goyish clothes, Alejandro was unrecognizable. His smile had become a meaningless contraction. His wife had put on weight, and his children had grown. The boys were almost seven, the girls around six. Benjamín was completely bald. Fanny had curled her hair and dyed it an aggressive red. Jaime and Lola, he muscular and she spectrally thin, were as alike as two drops of water. My grandmother, aside from being three times her original size (the result of eating only honey in order to save money, she said later), boasted a skull covered by a thicket of gray hair. Her round, young face with ruddy cheeks contrasted violently with those white hairs.

Alejandro burst into tears, sobbing loudly. He fell to his knees. My grandmother recognized him. She pushed the boys into his arms and ran from the room. The children wriggled out of their father’s embrace, flailing their arms every which way, and ran to a dark corner, cringing like frightened chickens. Under no circumstances would they ever accept this intruder.

The Rabbi spoke to him: “Hold back your tenderness. Wait. It’s one thing to give it, but quite another to force someone to accept it. Little by little, they’ll come to you.”

Teresa came back wearing a clean dress and a black, well-combed wig, carrying some pieces of honeycomb in a clay bowl. With a single shout, both fierce and kind, she sent the twins to the barn. While Alejandro ate voraciously, spitting out bits of wax, Teresa got into bed.

With her brow deeply furrowed, she said, “Tell you-know-who he should also leave.”

Alejandro, with great dignity, retorted, “I don’t have to. He left with the children.” And with that, he jumped on top of her, tearing her dress and underwear to pieces. They possessed each other with such passion that the bed collapsed. When it fell, it knocked over a brazier. The burning coals scattered over the floor. The wood began to burn. Enormous flames devoured furniture and walls. My grandparents noticed nothing. Not for an instant did they interrupt their caresses. Perhaps because the sweat from their bodies soaked the sheets, perhaps due to divine intervention, the fire never touched the bed. After the final orgasmic explosion, they returned to reality and found themselves resting in a house reduced to smoking ruins.

“No regrets,” said Teresa to my grandfather. “Things happen when it’s time for them to happen.”

“That I know,” he answered, “because when you’ve got faith, all things happen for the better.”

“Well then, follow me. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

In the stone barn at the far end of the yard, the children, who were pretending to be statues of salt under a cloud of bees, hadn’t noticed a thing. Teresa clapped her hands three times like a circus ringmaster, and the children, grimly, began to bottle the honey as the bees resumed their duties within their little cells.

“Take a good look at the hives, Alejandro. Do any look odd to you?”

No matter how hard he looked, my grandfather could find nothing abnormal.

“Ask you-know-who.”

Obeying his wife, he thought of his friend from the Interworld. The Rabbi, who was floating around in the shape of a tiny cloud, recovered his human form and walked over to point to a hive much like the others.

“Something tells me it’s this one, Teresa.”

“And in what way is it different from the others, Alejandro?”

My grandfather swallowed hard and glanced obliquely toward the Rabbi, who told him, “There are fewer bees entering and leaving through its door.”

“You’re right! You’re a great observer! It took me four years to realize it.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Because it has a false bottom, Teresa.”

“Bravo! Congratulations, Alejandro! That is the case.”

This praise was a painful blow to my grandfather’s humility. Embracing her judgment as his own, his eyes filled with tears and his throat with sobs.

“You’re more of a child than the children,” said my grandmother. “When will you learn to accept your merits? Being just serves only to make you unaware of those who humiliate and take advantage of you!” And to console him, Teresa sank his face between her bosoms.

To him it seemed that his nose traced a mile of cleavage before it touched the warm depth that vibrated with each beat of her enormous heart.

“Come along with me!” she said.

My grandmother led him by the hand to the hive. She pulled out a few nails and freed up the rear door. Within the hiding place was a leather coffer. When she opened it, Alejandro stopped weeping, lost control of his facial muscles, and opened his eyes so wide that his eyeballs were ready to pop out. The jewel box was filled with gold coins!

Teresa burst into a nervous giggle. “Yes, my friend, this cramped neighborhood, filled with bearded fanatics and bald witches, is finished! We’re going to a free world where we don’t have to believe in that cruel God who demands our absolute adoration and rewards us with massacres!”

“But Teresa, where did all this wealth come from?”

“I’m going to read you a letter from my father that I found under the coins.”

I’m writing this in case some day you find this treasure, which for me has been useless. For three generations or more we’ve been building it up by making huge sacrifices. Moisés, my father, received a large part of it from David, my grandfather, who was a state tax collector in Hungary. That was the only position the gentiles allowed Jews to occupy, because for them it was despicable to debase oneself by charging money. He lived, destroying wealth, between the hatred of the people and the contempt of the aristocrats.

One day, after counting up his savings and looking at himself in the mirror, he was so disgusted by his reflection that a tumor sprouted in his left eye. In less than a month, he was blind in that eye. Then his hands became covered with warts, his back with sores. He stopped eating until he died, skinny and white, like a paraffin candle. My father received the leather coffer, two-thirds full, as his inheritance. After burying David, he fled toward the Ukraine and settled down in Odessa as a moneylender. The gold coins multiplied at the same rate as the rancor of his debtors. Finally, a nobleman who refused to pay had his hounds bite my father and his servants daub him with hog excrement. Moisés, naked, foul smelling, and bloody, reached the synagogue looking for consolation. In despair, he recited Psalm 102: I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. The rabbis chanted along with him: I watch, and am as a sparrow alone on the roof. Mine enemies reproach me all the day. Moisés, counting on the support of his coreligionists, who covered him with a tallis, bellowed out the end of the psalm, straining his vocal chords, while the white silk became blotted with red. Just at that moment, a bee flew through the window and, after fluttering around the sacred candelabra, landed on the chest of the wounded man and for no apparent reason—he made no abrupt movements, concentrated as he was on communicating with God—buried its stinger in his heart. My father felt that all his blood had settled in that organ, then that his chest was exploding, and then that a boiling flood washed over his brain. He fell to the floor, trembling like an epileptic. For half an hour he howled and then lost consciousness for three seconds. When he awoke, he was a different man. His narrow personality split open, allowing a sensitive, much vaster being to appear. He announced that God had given him a message by inoculating him with a love for bees. The filthy money he obtained from loans would be exchanged for perfumed honey. He forgave all debts and became a beekeeper. He hid the jewel box full of gold in a hive, promising himself he would never use it as long as the honey business gave him enough for him and his family to live on. His wife, Ruth, could not accept the change, felt terrified about the future, and after converting to Christianity, ran off with a Cossack, leaving her only child, me, in the cradle. The brutish Cossack, during one of his drinking sprees, realized that she was drunk on a Saturday and cut off her head with a slice of his saber. I think it was then that Death put on my mother’s face as a mask. And from then on, Moisés lived covered with bees in order to erase his body from the world. For me, he was only a blur of vibrating insects. I can’t even tell you what color his eyes were, so hidden were they by the shimmer of beating wings. When did he die? I never knew. One day, I realized that the human form composed of bees was empty. Perhaps when he felt himself dying he asked the bees to eat him. I went among them, filling the space my father had left and taking my turn. I never had to use a single one of those coins.