As stools, he passed them two histories of philosophy, one in French, the other in German. Monkey Face gave the children a bag of marbles and sent them out to the street to play. Alejandro and Teresa still understood very little.
“We, labor, instead of continuing to be exploited by the rich, should figure out some way to exploit them. Not robbing them, of course. None of that. We have to act where they can’t, where they don’t know how. This is not a solution for the majority, only for a few fleas with talent. The hog must eat garbage to make blood. The fleas, without getting dirty, suck the blood of the hog. So, when they roast the animal, they also burn the parasites, because the parasites are stupid. They could have jumped off in time and passed to the heads of the butchers. But let’s get to the point. Power is not creative, and rich people get bored. They have everything, but they do not have themselves. And it’s logical. To find oneself, it’s necessary to let go of everything. They, on the other hand, are appropriating everything. See?”
“Yessir! We see!”
“Any man with a known profession — shoemaker, baker, miner, carpenter, painter, watchmaker, doctor, engineer, etcetera — is easy prey for the State, which will exploit him until it sucks out his very marrow. Having a normal profession means losing your freedom. We have to have unknown professions that do not intervene in material life but do produce states of consciousness. We have to create new needs for the rich. To do that, we need no other raw material than our imagination. The pig is dexterous but stupid. We can live off his stupidity until the self-destruction takes place. Please visit my foster brothers. I’ve given them new activities that will enable them to survive any collapse of the world economy. Those so-called crises really only affect the poor and the lesser capitalists. The big ones, the few and supreme, do not lose power, which is to say, they lose nothing. The hog passes through the change in fine style. My disciples, in those obscure moments, will hang on to their sows even more tightly.”
The Russians were about to leave, guided by Monkey Face, who had listened to the peroration, applauding from time to time with hands and feet, when the Anarchist stopped them.
“Brother Alejandro, allow me to ask you something: your companion says you want to be a shoemaker. Is that so?”
“That’s the truth, sir.”
“It isn’t worthwhile. It’s a known profession. The State will end up exploiting you. When you finish making your visits, come back. I’ll create a new profession for you. ‘Sweetener of Voids’ or ‘Corrector of Shadows,’ something.”
“Thank you sir, it won’t be necessary. I think that by the way in which I’ll work, shoemaker will become a new profession.”
Monkey Face led Teresa and Alejandro through the tenement, introducing them to the members of the Society of Free Brothers and Sisters. They met the “Disinfector of Mirrors,” the “Professor of Invisibility,” the “Fantastic Biologist-Body Inventor,” the “Funeral Clown,” and many others who were unable to explain what their activities were because Monkey Face, accepting a drink at every door, staggeringly drunk, forgot not only Russian but also all the other languages and translated their words into a strange tongue composed of belches, hiccups, and drooling. At the beginning, they at least managed to find out what the “Freckle Trainer” did.
He was a pudgy, dark-skinned man who gave off a strong smell of wine, as did all the other goys they’d see in the tenement. A woman with few teeth accompanied him along with eight children who ran around the single room unconcernedly. The trainer beat a small drum and, opening his eyes with strange flashes of light, ordered the beauty mark to move. In effect, many ladies wanted to have their beauty mark next to the place where their lips met or on a cheek or between their bosoms or even in more secret places. The naïve client would be told that, over the course of time, the blemish would move, bit by bit until it reached the desired spot.
Naturally, the drum, the flashing eyes, and the trainer’s hypnotic orders were not enough. The client also had to pray with faith. After a few sessions, the client would be told in no uncertain terms that the beauty mark had indeed moved several fractions of an inch. If the lady became bored with the large number of sessions necessary or if she began to complain about the slowness of their progress, the trainer would shrug his shoulders as if he were terribly offended and answer that the fault did not lie with him but with prayers without faith. And off he’d go in search of another victim. There was no lack of silly ladies to help him feed his numerous offspring. Sometimes, very rarely, the beauty marks did move.
After visiting his comrades, Seraphim, thirstier and thirstier, led them to a room at the end of the corridor, just like all the others, but bearing a large sign: Happy Heart Bar. About fifty goys — men and women, shoeless, their tattered clothes stitched together, packed in to form a sweaty block with a harsh stench — were buying, for a few coins, glasses of wine that a short, potbellied Andalucian drew from a barrel painted bright red, which was in the center of the room. With the skill of a sailor, the quasi-monkey threaded his way through that wave of flesh and returned, hopping on his right foot, holding three glasses — two in his hands and the third in the toes of his left foot. He drank from the one in his left extremity and held out the glasses in his upper extremities to the Russians. Alejandro immediately made a sign of refusal. Certain religious principles prohibited him from drinking in a bar. The fifty goys wore offended faces, and one insisted, “Don’t insult us, comrade.”
Sensing a storm brewing, Teresa raised her glass and emptied it down to the last drop. The block of bodies approved with a jolly grunt.
The Rabbi advised my grandfather, “Look here, Alejandro, Hillel the Wise said: ‘When you’re among people wearing clothes, wear clothes; when you’re among the naked, go naked.’ Wine for these people is a kind of communion. I don’t think you can say no. They might kill you. Drink and apply the proverb: ‘As long as you’re going to sin, you might as well enjoy yourself.’”
Then Alejandro took the glass and swallowed the wine with pleasure. He shivered five times, and a stubborn burning followed from his throat to his stomach. He began to cough. General laughter. Applause. Monkey Face returned with three more glasses. And the “Let’s drink to happiness” toasts went on for hours. My grandparents, trashed, crumpled, ended up as part of the human block, humming Chilean tunes amid fits of laughter and vomiting. The party was over when the barrel was empty. They awoke the next day stretched out on the cement floor of their tiny room, with thick tongues and tremendous headaches. The new life had begun. The children were hungry.
Five years went by. Alejandro was a shoemaker, and Teresa a fortune teller. Madame Ochichornia went out on tours that lasted three or seven days, at times two weeks, and always returned with a wide smile and a basket filled with eggs, chickens, loaves of bread, fruit, greens, candy, and other foodstuffs along with a good number of pesos. Thanks to the veneration of Monkey Face, who never stopped idolizing her, she learned Spanish quite well, but of course retained her Russian accent, the better to impress the audience. The fleas told the future with incredible accuracy, and whenever they reached a town, their fame preceding them; the poor lined up to ask, almost always, the same things: Does so-and-so really love me? Did I make a mistake marrying this woman? Will my lost love return? Will I get over this illness? Will I find a better job? What good thing does life hold for me?