“I then divided my work in two parts. During the summer and the spring, I was a clown. During the fall and the winter, a translator, a mascot for the whores, sailors, and smugglers. It’s true that no one bothered to get to know my heart; all they were interested in was for me to transpose what they were feeling from one language to another, that’s all. Another accompanied solitude, but closer and closer. I could feel on my untouched skin the heat of their breath soaked in tobacco and alcohol. A minimal contact for normal beings, but enormous for me. Do you understand me now? Thanks to the earthquake, for the first time, someone has boarded my smelly wagon.
“When you’re all alone, you don’t take care of yourself, and I confess I don’t wipe myself or wash very often. When you, madam, blushed, I saw the Virgin of Dawn. When you fed your fleas and revealed your white flesh, I confused it with the Virgin of the Snows. I know that someday you’ll turn black — I can’t imagine how — and through you the Virgin of the Night will speak. My three saints have sent you. Our meeting was miraculous. Tell me, please, what do your fleas know how to do besides answering to their names?”
“They know how to jump through burning hoops, play tambourines, play ball, and tell the future.”
“Fabulous! You are just what the doctor ordered! The solitary circus is going to expand. If we join together and Madame Teresa presents her little animals, we’ll be a hit in Santiago and the other big cities. Monkey Face and Madame Ochichornia with Her Magic Fleas! We’ll earn a lot of pesos, which we’ll split equally. And that way you two can feed your family.”
Alejandro listened to all that not knowing how to react, but the children were fascinated. Teresa, uncharacteristically nervous and indecisive, felt a tingle. To turn herself into a fortune teller was an idea that — she had no idea why — filled her with joy. Seeing that his proposition wasn’t immediately and indignantly refused, Monkey Face sighed with relief.
“Without a no, there is still the possibility of a yes. Wonderful! I’m going to suggest something good for you. In Santiago, I have an empty room where you can stay and a few neighbors who can be useful to you, among them the Anarchist. Don Alejandro will look for a corner where he can set up his shoe shop, and I’ll introduce you to a dwarf lady who can take care of the children while you, Madame Ochichornia, go on tour with me and return every week with a good amount of money and food. We’re partners! Get up there, Whitey! Get up there, Blacky! We have to be there tomorrow afternoon!”
Lola seemed to hear the flies on that road singing, in tiny female voices, a celestial melody.
Seraphim lived in a tenement in the Independencia neighborhood. At the entrance there was a sign that read Society of Free Brothers and Sisters. We are not the State. When the Spanish word for tenement, conventillo, was translated into Russian for them as “little convent,” Alejandro and Teresa did not understand the name. The place was filthy and miserable. Its architecture seemed more inspired by a prison than by a temple, with a long central passageway and rooms arranged like jail cells along it. The families lived packed into those spaces without windows, spaces that at the same time were living room, bedroom, kitchen, and latrine.
“The Anarchist will explain the situation better than I can. Chile is not Europe. Here there are two separate realities. A few people live in paradise, and all the rest live in the greatest misery. Only the rich can become even richer; all we poor folk can expect is to become even poorer.”
“The Anarchist?”
“First, settle into this room, then I’ll introduce you. I’ll bring in some bags of straw you can use as beds. Other furniture you’ll have to make out of some empty boxes I’ve picked out of the market garbage. Here is a hammer and some nails. And also some onions, goat cheese, carrots, and a little pea soup. Try to use the charcoal stove as little as possible. It’s bad for your lungs. Organize the space, and I’ll come back to pick you up so you can meet your neighbors. Oh yes, I’d forgotten! In this hole in the corner, you can take care of your needs. It’s not very appetizing to mix the smells of the food on its way in with the smells of the food on its way, but that’s how the owners did it to save money on plumbing and make a few more rooms. Money calls the tune. Anyway, you’ll see that you’ll get used to it more quickly than you think.”
My grandparents were happy. No matter how horrible, better a roof over your head than no roof. They had a few morsels of food, an interpreter, nice neighbors, perhaps, and new professions. What more did they need to restart their lives in this unknown land? Teresa, in a short time, used the boxes to make a table, chairs, and dressers. Meanwhile, Alejandro prepared, with great dedication, his shoemaker’s bench. When Monkey Face returned with the bags of straw, he also brought some pieces of fabric, thread, and needles, so my grandmother could sew them together and make quilts, tablecloths, and curtains. He also gave them a collection of empty jars they could use as pots and dishes. He immediately brought them to visit their neighbors. They began with the Anarchist. Monkey Face explained:
“People say that this gentleman is a member of one of the richest families in Chile, but he got disgusted with money obtained by exploiting the poor. The fact is that he came to live in our tenement because he was attracted by the name of the neighborhood: Independencia. And instead of earning abominable pesos, he invents new professions so we can earn a living. In exchange for that, we pay his rent and give him food. You’ll see: he’s a great man. He was one of the few — I can count them with the toes of one foot — to recognize my human intelligence. A wise man who knows more than thirty languages, he taught me just what was absolutely necessary of several and made me into an interpreter. Money, love, food, vice: what more is there to know? We, his disciples, have formed the Committee of Brothers and Sisters, which does not consider freedom “rebellion,” but rather the retention of an imagination without limits under the restrictions imposed by power. Well, he’ll explain things better. Step inside, there’s no problem here.”
He opened the door of Room 9, where it was written, “No Name. Anarchist. Inventor of Professions.” They were received by a short man of undetermined age, bald, with thick glasses under long black eyebrows. He was biting his fine lips and shaking his pale, almost blue fingers, stained with nicotine. The walls of this room were hidden by piles of books that went from the floor to the ceiling. Instead of chairs, there were encyclopedia volumes. The tables were also a mountain of books, as was the object that should have been a bed.
“Greetings, brother Russians. Your homeland, once profound, now mobilizes the new, worldwide error: truth gagged by a centripetal power dictating relationships of vertical obedience. Luckily, you, pariahs of history, have fallen into the best company and belong, from now on, to our anarchist fraternity. But let us understand one another well.”
Alejandro and Teresa, their hair half standing on end, their feet frigid, lost in a miserable neighborhood of Santiago de Chile, the farthest corner of the world, listened to that extravagant being perorate in the most refined Russian they’d ever heard. About politics, they knew nothing. When they heard the “let us understand one another well” part, they tried to dissimulate their donkey faces by opening their eyes wide and cocking, with an index finger, the pavilion of their ear.
“We are not the sort of anarchists who rebel against God, Science, or the State. None of that. That struggle only garners for the poor a rain of beatings and bullets. The State, and through the State, Capital, whatever form it takes, has for two or three centuries won that war. Nothing will change the course of the Industrial Era. The worms have begun to eat the cheese, and no one can stop them. Production will not cease until the complete deterioration of the planet. Few will survive. In a near future, the poor will perhaps have better clothing, housing, and food, but they will still be poor. Which is to say, more and more in debt to power, if not paying with blood and lungs, then giving away something as precious as their laughter and their intelligence. The poor man will become a comfortable, serious fool. The obvious conclusion? The main thing is to survive! That the collapse of society doesn’t destroy us. But sit down, and let me explain.”