The ballerina was leaning back on Alejandro’s broad chest with a despotic grin, tugging at his hair. She made him bite the nape of her neck, a task he performed with the face of a penitent. Jashe could no longer control her hatred for that lascivious, cruel woman, and a pain in her stomach kept her from seeing clearly. As if shrouded in fog, the Russian woman knelt before Jashe’s man and swallowed the sacred organ, making little-girl squeals. Then, with the gesture of a tragic actress, she tossed aside the Japanese silk robe that covered her nakedness, and like a white, skeletal worm slithered to the bed and offered her buttocks, imitating the barks of a bitch in heat.
The fog cleared, and hatred gave way to great outrage. She felt herself transformed into the Eighth Arcanum, Justice, with a scale in one hand and a sword in the other — no less implacable for being invisible. She decided that very day that Truth must control the world. Justice meant giving to everyone what they deserved, and Marina Leopoldovna deserved a scandal.
Jashe went to the rehearsal studio and hid behind the piano. Soon, Madame Teodora, an intense, efficient old woman, shook her tambourine, and in a few seconds, the entire corps de ballet assembled with military discipline in straight lines. With her eyes, Madame Teodora consulted Vladimir Monomaque, and he nodded his lustrous head affirmatively, satisfied with his inspection. The pianist played a mazurka. No one moved; they waited for Leopoldovna, standing before the first row, to take the first steps so they could then imitate her with admiration and envy.
The distinguished diva only managed a plié before she was interrupted by Jashe, who emerged from behind the piano, pounced on her like a furious cat, and tore her tutu. The ripped garment flew off, but the other dancers could not intervene, paralyzed as they were by shock. But when the white panties fell and the pitch black of her pubis showed the animal within that body, which moved so skillfully that it seemed immaterial, they all shouted in horror. The Director, popping the buttons of his shirt as he tore it off, ran to cover Marina’s unmasked body. Too late. The truth had come to light. The secret he’d kept for so many years, sharing it only with the first male dancer, had been exposed. Everyone saw that thin, flaccid, bright red penis hanging between the legs of the ballerina. Yes, the celebrated, sublime, lighter-than-air Marina Leopoldovna was a man.
Jashe took her husband by the hand and led him past the stunned Russians until they were opposite the despot, who was calming his sobbing transsexual, hugging him with surprising tenderness. My grandmother understood what no one else had been able to imagine. Speaking with a Jewish accent full of majesty, she said in Russian, “You can’t blot out the sun with a finger. That poor man is your son. Just look at what your ambition has made of him. You stole his manhood in order to make him into a trained monkey. What you deserve is the contempt of the whole world. I want you to know that this man is my husband and that you no longer have any right to rule his private life. Alejandro Prullansky is no longer your slave!”
The Director General fixed his gaze on Alejandro’s eyes, and for the first time, Alejandro stared back.
“Either that woman or me!”
With no hesitation, Alejandro shouted “Jashe!” Lifting her up in his powerful arms, he carried her out on deck to breathe the intoxicating ocean air.
Dropping his usual domineering tone, Vladimir Monomaque spoke with the Imperial Ballet. The future of the entire corps depended on the silence of each and every one of them. A scandal would finish them off forever. With sincere humility, he begged them to erase what they had just seen from their memory. Very soon, this very year, when they reached San Francisco, where surgery was very advanced, Marina would undergo an operation to remove the annoying detail and make her a woman like all others. The company applauded. Alejandro Prullansky would be expelled immediately, but only after receiving a very important sum of money to guarantee his silence. The company applauded again. Marina never stopped crying, seized by uncontrollable convulsions. His father slapped him and dressed him in a new tutu. Recovering his authoritarian voice, more severe now than ever, he ordered his son to go on with the rehearsal or he’d kick his ass to pieces. Marina blew her nose in the hands of her faithful dresser, Tito, and began to dance. Soon the mazurka was danced more enthusiastically than ever.
Jashe, followed by Alejandro, who was carrying the bags and had hidden a thick roll of American one hundred dollar bills in his underwear, descended to third class. None of the religious Jews bothered to greet that tiny renegade accompanied by such an enormous goy. Here, they were fleeing pogroms: what gave anyone the right to impose the presence of a Russian on them? It was like poking a thorn into their wounds. They didn’t move to make room for the newcomers, and went on rubbing their delicate hands with pieces of harsh rope to create callouses — all so people would think they were farmers.
My grandparents had to take refuge in the cursed corner, the den of sin, a back room among crates of apples where Icho Melnik and his six prostitutes had been relegated. “Man does not live by the Torah alone,” he said winking an eye and offering them a swig of vodka as the girls, making off-color remarks, set out the sacks they’d use as beds.
Jashe found a piece of soap and a pail of water. Instead of a sponge, she used a rolled-up cloth belt to wash the giant as if he were a little boy. “Don’t be sad,” she said. “Argentina is a grand country. There’s lots of work. We’ll invest the money they gave us and get rich. You will found your own ballet.”
Alejandro let go of his sadness and began to laugh. They slept in each other’s arms.
In the unheated storage space, the passengers were freezing. Slowly but surely, the whores got closer and closer to the couple to attach themselves to those bodies heated by love. Icho Melnik, a discreet drunk, opened a few crates and made himself a mattress out of apples. A group of old folks, rocking back and forth in their fatigue, querulously read the last prayer of the night. Before starting to snore like thunder, the pimp muttered, “It’s useless to ask God for something you can get for yourself.”
The Farthest Land
After crossing the Atlantic and passing through the Straits of Magellan, the ship rode icy Pacific currents along such a jagged coast that the Rabbi, with an ominous look, exclaimed, “Oy vey! This must be the ass of the world, and God has really kicked it!” Finally, they dropped anchor at the port of Valparaíso.
Teresa had played the mute for four weeks, so now her mouth felt heavy, weighed down by a boulder of stifled insults. Every single day on the rocking ship flooded with smoke she’d been forced to hear the shacharit (morning prayer) and the minchah (afternoon prayer), accompanied by the vulture screeches of the seasick mystics as they vomited. No matter what, they always had their gartels around their waists, those black silk cords used to divide the body in two, the spiritual parts — the hands, the heart, and the brain, worthy of serving the Most High — and the profane parts: the stomach, the sex, and the legs. They could transform any place at all, no matter how vulgar, into a schul or synagogue just so they could drone their prayers to God, hour after hour, all twenty-four: “Oh Terrible One, we carry out our 613 commandments so you do not fulminate us; we are just because we are sodden with fear; you guide us with stabs, bullets, and bites; teach us with your fury and your curses.”