The chief inspector howled, “Captain, send barbers! No one gets off this ship wearing a beard, sideburns, and long hair! And to salute our flag, they all have to take off those ridiculous little hats!”
When some of the stewards appeared waving razors and scissors, the women went down on their knees howling doggish lamentations, and the men gathered behind them intent on dying before they let anyone cut off a single hair. Not knowing what to do, the immigration authorities went up to the bridge to communicate with their superiors by telegraph.
Icho Melnik said, “Our compatriots worry a lot about something that matters little. After all, how important can it be to avoid for more or less time what is inevitable? They’ll end up shaven!” He spread his arms to receive his brother Yumo, who came to Buenos Aires three years earlier. It was he who sent the tickets. He ran a bordello for the wealthy in the center of town. All the girls were foreigners, preferably Jews, because they were the most sought after.
The fat pimp spoke with his brother in hushed tones, and then said to his new friends, “Alejandro, Jashe, Simón, following what my master teaches, the site where we stop matters little, as long as we can arrange a good exit. For the moment, you have no place to stay. It would be better if you came to our bordello. There, no one will bother you and, in exchange for some small services, you can stay as long as you need. There are lots of empty rooms. While Jashe helps in the kitchen and Simón makes the beds and brings fresh towels to the rooms, Alejandro can give dance classes to our protégées so their backsides fatten. Agreed? Well? Then come along with us. The authorities, with regard to whores and money discretely allotted, will provide all the facilities we need to disembark.
In the car that carried them to the center of the city, distancing them from miserable neighborhoods and bringing them closer to baroque constructions where myriad styles and luxurious materials all mixed together, Alejandro was discovering within his spirit an infinite field of new possibilities. Unable to contain himself, he poured into the ears of my terrified grandmother words so optimistic that in this world, sinister for being so unknown, they glittered like demented jewels.
“Do you know, Jashe, until now I never thought. I lived like an animal, only feeling things. But that young anarchist’s speech caused a moral earthquake in my soul. You said my body was a temple, and you were right because within me God has appeared. He speaks to me ceaselessly. Listen to what he says:
My son, you are what you are in the present. Leave the past behind; don’t carry blame. Eliminate all anxiety about the future. Prepare to work for your evolution until the last instant of your life. Let no one be your judge; be your own judge. If you want to triumph, learn to fail. Never define yourself by what you possess. Never speak about yourself without allowing yourself the possibility to change. Think that you do not exist individually, that what you do does itself. Only by accepting that nothing is yours will you be the owner of all. Become a total offering. Give, but oblige no one to receive. Make no one feel guilty; you are an accomplice to whatever happens. Stop asking for things and start thanking. Obtain in order to give away.”
With tears in her eyes, Jashe kissed her giant even though he was unable to cut off his monologue. Their four lips stayed together, and he deposited in her throat his incessant necklace of phrases:
“Discover the universal laws and obey them. Don’t eliminate; instead transmute. Teach others to learn from themselves. With the little you have, do the most you can. Give a hungry man something to eat, but don’t keep him at your table. Don’t ask yourself where you are going; just move ahead taking proper steps. Leaping is as beautiful as crawling: don’t compare yourself; develop your own values. Change your world or change worlds.”
Alejandro said so much that Jashe, to her profound regret, was only able to remember a tiny bit. They reached the bordello. A sumptuous house surrounded by rose bushes, quite proper looking, but with a red light at the door. They were received by twelve girls dressed in bright costumes, wearing exaggerated makeup, which, even at that time of day, could not hide their dry faces. They passed through a salon covered with golden drapes, containing furniture with red velvet upholstery. They marched up four flights. There they were given an attic decorated in bohemian style with lots of cushions and a grand but low bed opposite a huge mirror. Alejandro, still in a trance, was aware of nothing. Like an infinite river, he spoke without eating or sleeping for three solid days:
“What is necessary is possible. If you want to end the vices of others, purify yourself. What you see is what you are. Sicknesses are your teachers. Do not touch another’s body to get pleasure or to humiliate him; touch him to accompany him. Don’t boast of your weaknesses. Act for the pleasure of acting and not for the favorable results it may produce. Forgive your parents.”
Then he slept for three days. Meanwhile, my grandmother, who had already learned, while still on the ship — from the lips of Marla, who spoke Ladino — the words necessary to survive in this country. With unbreakable energy, she had flyers printed up praising the qualities of the ex-first dancer of the Imperial Ballet and distributed them among the people who formed immense lines outside the ticket office of the Colón Theatre. In the neighborhood of the bordello, she found a large study, rented it, and received the inscriptions of enthusiastic girls and effeminate young men who wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to learn classical dance with a high-ranking professor.
On the fourth day, she woke her husband, bringing him breakfast in bed, fresh fruit. Waiting for him in the gymnasium were 150 students. Alejandro ate an entire pineapple, threw on his clothes, and noted with surprise that one of his red shoes, the right, had turned blue.
“The grand change is beginning. From intervention I’m passing on to reception. I will not teach classical techniques, because they correspond to the limitations society imposes. To the contrary, I shall liberate their bodies so they once again find their natural expression. Animals are a continuous dance. So is man. God creates the gestures, which is why every sincere movement is a revelation.”
The Argentine students, the children of the rich, knew little about the history of dance and did not intend to dedicate their lives to art. What they were looking for was some cultural varnish to justify their idle lives. And for that, the classes given by the Russian were perfect. Alejandro, without realizing how frivolous his students were, dedicated his entire being to the exercise. He felt a constant interaction between his body and the Cosmos, coming to believe that the slightest movement of his fingers could influence the Destiny of the galaxies. One night he excitedly embraced Jashe and declared, “I’m going to recount a miracle. Today I made a chain of dance steps so beautiful that up in heaven two suns were born.”
The months passed. Alejandro, never weakening, like a shepherd of wild goats, buried himself in his academy, making his inconstant students rehearse a ballet titled Life about a thousand times. He only returned to the bordello to kiss his wife — who was showing a belly that was more and more prominent — spread her legs, visit the secret temple, rapidly deposit his offering, and then sleep like a stone. From time to time, Icho Melnik and his brother Yumo would visit the attic Jashe had transformed into an enchanted palace by decorating it with paper flowers and pieces of bottles. There they would drink boiling, highly sugared tea with lemon and complain about the cruel manias of their clients and consult the Tarot.
The good life was making Icho fatter day by day. In the kitchen he had a personal refrigerator full of prize beef, two hundred pounds, and at every meal he would eat six steaks along with the other dishes on the menu. He justified his gluttony quoting Seneca: “If you do not take control of time, time will run away from you.”