Alejandro, perhaps because he was rested, felt a bit better. The pain had disappeared from his guts, but even so, despite the drunken jubilation of nature, a thick sorrow overtook him, as if his lungs were full of oil. He gave each dog a dead hare, and he contented himself by sucking on a round stone. He realized he would never again be able to eat red meat. Not understanding why, he thought it seemed like devouring Teresa. With great tenderness, he carried the Jesus to the highest peak and arranged it facing the immense landscape.
“My friend, I bless the Earth just as you blessed it. And also like you, I bless humanity. Someday our sacrifice will be useful. You are made of wood. I know that soon you will throw down roots and then branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits. I’m leaving, but I’ll still be here with you.”
My grandfather scrambled down from the peak, jumping from rock to rock like a wild dog, and then went his way. He again ate insects and nettles. His skin took on a greenish tone. Catching sight of his reflection in a puddle, he discovered his mane of hair and beard had turned white. As he descended the mountains toward the Chilean side, the three dogs barked, demanding their pieces of overcoat. He handed them over, covering the dogs with kisses. Then he closed his eyes so he would not see them move off to the peaks. Carried along by gravity, he walked blindly. When he opened his eyes, it was already growing dark. Since the mule needed rest, he camped under a fig tree, fighting with all his strength to keep the scent of the ripe fruit from restoring his taste for life.
At dawn he moved on. He fell into a kind of trance, in which, neither asleep nor awake, he advanced as transparent as the wind. At dawn one day, he reached Santiago, crossed half the city, and knocked at the door of the synagogue. A fat watchman, in a nightshirt and bowler hat opened the door, thinking that at this hour it could only be a telegram bearing bad news. In Yiddish, with enormous effort because his tongue felt like wood, my grandfather stuttered, “Adonai sends this holy present to the Chilean Jewish community. Wake up the Rebbe and inform him that the Torah he lacked has arrived.”
“But who are you?”
“No one. It’s the wind speaking. I am a dream of God.”
And Alejandro went off, making leaps and waving his arms, relieved at having fulfilled his mission. The watchman, his eyes veiled by rheum, watched him fly. The dog fur of the overcoat looked like feathers to him. He ran to get the Rebbe out of bed to tell him that an angel had brought them the precious text from heaven. Later the religious folk whispered that it was Moses himself who came to bring them the Divine Book.
Alejandro had no need for recognition. All he wanted was to get back to the tenement and submerge himself forever in the making of his shoes. He did not find the sign Society of Free Brothers and Sisters. We are not the State. In its place there was another: Grand Factory of Warsaw Footwear. The day was growing brighter. In his room, the four children were sleeping naked, in the company of a dozen cats. Alejandro observed them with tears in his eyes. Asleep like that they looked healthy, bigger. The girls already had brilliant bosoms blossoming. On Fanny’s pubis tiny red hairs were growing. He saw the leftovers from dinner: beans, cheese, pork chops. He felt like throwing up. He sat in the doorway to wait for day to finally come.
No sooner had the first rays of sunlight shone like gold through his white beard than a chauffeur-driven car deposited Shorty Fremberg outside the tenement. Shorty checked the three gold watches on his wrist, hastily opened a box set in the wall, and pulled a whistle. The doors of the rooms shook like filthy tongues, and two hundred women wearing blue uniforms emerged to greet the boss. Then they went back into their cells and the dry rumble of machines resumed. Alejandro grabbed Fremberg by his lapels and shook him. To do so he had to bend over because he was tall and the Pole almost a dwarf.
“Machines? Whistles? Uniforms? Where is the Anarchist? The Free Brothers and Sisters? What happened to the Happy Heart Bar?”
“Let go of me, Alejandro. This is legal, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s very clearly stated in the contract you signed that I am the one who decides everything. You, without doing anything, if that’s what you’d like, earn the same salary as a regular employee. Wake up to reality, artist! We’re living in 1912, the Industrial Era! People no longer want handmade products. Machines are the present and the future. Open your eyes! You’re not in some village! You’re living in a great capital city! Around here no one wants to be a saint, and the only God is money! Anarchist dreams are over. The police came and kicked your friends out. I think the most fanatical were shipped to Easter Island. I’ve rented the entire tenement. In each room there are sewing machines or electric saws to cut leather, make heels. It’s a marvel. The orders just keep pouring in. We make hundreds of pairs of shoes every day. And the women we have working follow orders! For three pesos they work a ten and a half hour day with no right to any social benefits. If an agitator turns up, I have him arrested. What do you think? Lose that cemetery face and be happy. Your children are well, though I almost never see them. They only turn up to eat and sleep, but they look healthy and happy. What more do you want? You can work or not, but you get a salary either way. And that’s not all you should thank me for: I kept your room just as it was. I could have put a machine in it.”
From then on, Alejandro said nothing. He sat at his bench, surrounded by the mechanical screeching, and made shoes by hand and to order for the few clients he still had. Few not because his work wasn’t of interest but because he was so stubbornly insistent on making perfect shoes that it could take him a year to make one pair. He would put them together, make corrections, take them apart, start all over again, incessantly, never satisfied. The buyers, fed up with coming back to try them on so many times, ended up never coming back. The perfect pairs of shoes, covered with dust, were stacked in a corner of the room.
Shorty Fremberg was moved. He could not stand to see his partner sunken in such solitude. Now he had six gold watches, two cars, a chalet in the outskirts of the city, and four lovers, drawn from among the workers, who went along with his caprices for a pittance.
“Come on, Alejandro. You’re wasting your time. Perfection is not of this world. Accept that reality has changed. Come along and take a look with me. You’ll see just how beautiful our machines are. And sometimes the girls who run them, too. You’re still young. Not even fifty yet. Make an effort.”
And the Pole pulled my grandfather along by the hand toward the end of the corridor, to the room where the bar had been. He wanted to proudly show him the machine that cut patterns into the leather. It was run by Fresia, the youngest of Shorty’s lovers, thirteen years old, freckled, and with big eyes.
“Why don’t you try to work it, Alejandro? You’ll see how easy and gratifying it is. You push a couple of buttons and the pattern engraves itself. Try it, please. Let’s see now, Fresia, let this gentleman take your place!”
Fresia showed my grandfather how to produce the finished pattern and left him sitting at the machine while she followed Shorty behind a curtain to give him the oral caresses he’d requested by making an imperious gesture with his pudgy fingers. Just when he was ejaculating a flood of warm magma into the young lady’s throat, he heard a howl. The machine coughed as if clogged up. Fresia and Shorty quickly ran over. They found Alejandro in a faint, his right hand caught in the machinery. To get it out they had to take apart much of the machine. My grandfather woke up in the hospital in intense pain. The doctors requested authorization to amputate his hand, but Alejandro refused.