He removed six bottles from his suitcase; removed the corks; emptied the gasoline they contained over his entire body; lit a match; set fire to himself; and, transformed into a bonfire, showed human beings what true dance was: a body making sublime movements in full ecstasy as it was being consumed.
Jashe made a shout of horror, then she covered her mouth with her hands, ashamed of herself, of her egoism. The beloved was giving himself to the world, dying for it, and for that very reason, causing an immortal Art to be born. By including Death in the creation of beauty, he ended death.
Sara Felicidad, obeying her father’s order—“You will sing without stopping no matter what happens”—saw him run, leap, laugh, and combine marvelous steps, all with his flesh spurting flames like a sun. That image remained engraved in her mind, and she transmitted it to me, her son, every night during my childhood. So that as I would fall asleep, she would sing me a lullaby where her father, transformed into a star, crossed the firmament, granting men a Destiny:
“Making tracks in the sky is like opening their soul. That torch Alejandro lit, you, who bear the same name, must in turn transmit it so his sacrifice won’t be in vain. Someday, thanks to you, humanity will become aware of this ephemeral spectacle, eternal monument of the art of dancing, and millions of hand will applaud your grandfather with thanks.”
Prullansky, the giant, without realizing he was dying, almost burned to a crisp, made an enormous leap and, like a bird with long red and yellow feathers, fell in the center of the plaza. The people who had witnessed the act, respectful, immobile, fascinated, were suddenly possessed by panic. The beauty seemed to them terrible, and they ran screaming to their houses to close doors and windows, afraid the monster would enter in order to burn up the little they owned. The noise of shutters and wooden frames slamming on sills was interpreted by Jashe as the announcement of future applause. Her husband gave up his soul dancing and, in full flight, fell to the cement pavement to become a pile of smoking bones.
The child stopped singing. Her mother removed the Tarot from her bosom and, card by card, burned it in the glowing coals, where the shoes’ remains were glowing like two red rubies. During the fire, they had recovered their original red.
“There will never be another like him, Sara Felicidad. His memory will accompany us forever. I’ll live alone only so that you can grow up well, but in reality what you see is a body moved by the tiniest part of my soul. The rest went with him. The woman who will marry again, have more children, get old, and die will be a different woman.”
Sara Felicidad witnessed the change to her mother’s face. Her skin, with its mother-of-pearl sheen, darkened; her nostrils became smaller, allowing only two needle-fine breaths of air to pass; from the edge of her lips toward her chin, fine wrinkles snaked along; and her eyes became covered by an invisible curtain that separated her from life. The Jashe of today was possessed by the Jashe of the future, a long-suffering, indifferent lady, her sensibility asleep, passing through the days like a ship with no navigator. Before submerging her daughter in that gray existence, she said, “I’m going to ask that as long as you are with me that you never sing again.”
In that moment, my mother was four years old. Tall, like her father, she looked ten. The same golden hair reached down to her waist, and her eyes were dark blue, translucent at the edges, each one as big as her mouth, they shined with millennial depth. Alejandro’s burning did not perturb her. On the contrary, it was an example of strength, enrichment of soul, treasure of beauty, fountain of joy. But Jashe’s request fell on her like a fatal lightning bolt, a threat that was not only moral but also organic. Her body fell in agony. To take away her singing was also to rip out her tongue, fill her heart with sand, burn her wealth of life in one blow. She had to defend herself. She had to mature in just a few minutes, establish around her innocence the armor of an adult. Down her legs ran a hot, thick, sticky liquid. Blood. At the age of four, she had her first menstruation. She ceased to be a child and became the protector of that semi-empty shell that her mother now was. Since she was forbidden to sing, she also stopped talking. But, absolute mistress of her interior world, she filled it with music. She ceaselessly repeated songs she knew and immediately invented others. She created for herself a symphony orchestra and composed her accompaniments. And that way, developing her mute voice more and more, she became an opera singer who dominated all registers. For years she was a performer as well as her own audience. That permanent interior singing bestowed on her a happiness that allowed her to survive in the sad world that was going to swallow a large part of her youth.
Jashe put the calcified bones of her husband into a cracker box, which she tossed into the Río de la Plata. She tied the box to a rubber ball so it would float until it became lost in the ocean. Then she worked one final week in the hat factory, and one Monday in the morning she went to ask help from the Jewish Colonization Association.
Aboard the Weser, Marla had told her that the Jewish immigrants, who had separate kitchen equipment and livestock so they could eat kosher food, were going to Argentina at the invitation of the Jewish Colonization Association, which had at its disposal more than almost five hundred thousand acres of land and maintained close ties with the highest spheres of both the provincial and the federal government. The purpose of this society was not to extract earnings from its enormous investments but to establish in the new country an ample and solid stratum of Jewish peasants who would, each of them, work their own land and derive from it a convenient living. Therefore, the JCA could easily give her a farm on the pampa. After all, she was still as Jewish as the others, and, despite the tremor that shook her body, she was able to farm a piece of land and get crops that would feed herself and her daughter.
To save the trolley fare, she walked with her daughter from the industrial outskirts to the center of Buenos Aires, twelve miles. They were exhausted when they reached a five-story building with a façade of white marble and no windows but with two enormous, light-blue columns on both sides of its entry gate, where a six-pointed star was shining. The haughty luxury of this palace curved Jashe’s shoulders and made her aware of the hunger biting her stomach. If something could get them out of misery, it was this institution. She nervously looked over at Sara Felicidad. She looked more Russian than anything else. She sighed in resignation. In any case, her husband’s name was written in the passports, and she could do nothing to hide the fact that she was the widow of a goy. She shook her stitched-up overcoat and did the same with her daughter’s, naively trying with a few pats to turn their rags into proper clothing.
She timidly pushed the metal doors, whose hinges were so well greased that they opened wide. Not finding a living soul, mother and daughter wandered the gleaming stone corridor in this labyrinth decorated with pictures representing the life of Moses. Finally they entered a gigantic hall filled with silent men modestly dressed in peasant clothes, pale women with sad backs, and astonishingly thin children. Their fetid breath told Jashe that they, like her, had empty stomachs. They were all staring toward a barred little window, at which an elegant functionary with slicked-down hair, rings, and a gold bracelet arrived to observe them. He was as severe and immobile as a wax manikin.