Where the Bird Sings Best Read online

  Teresa felt superfluous. Her father and sister disappeared forever, transformed into lovers. She put what little she had in a sack and went to live with her aunts. Two years later, she received news from her sister, a letter:

  Forgive me, Teresa, for having forgotten you all this time. Dad is dead. You are the only one who knew our secret. I hope you’ll understand. It was stronger than we were, a passion we couldn’t control. No one in the neighborhood dared to imagine anything like that. Whenever I went out to shop, I made my faces and contortions so that no one would speak to me. My father, my lover, only showed himself covered with bees. Our real bodies were a miracle we only enjoyed in the intimacy of the house. To ward off spies, Abraham taught the insects to rest on the roof and exterior walls of the house until they covered it with a thick quilt. We made love inside a gigantic honeycomb, drunk on pleasure, unable to stop, again and again, wishing we could fuse and become one single being. That insatiable quest, that impossible dissolution; mixed in with the pleasure was a constant pain, a dagger piercing our string of orgasms. A short time ago, I became pregnant. We thought we were angels, beings from another world, unaffected by human phenomena: we had to return to reality. After five months, my stomach began to bulge. In dreams, Abraham received a visit from the Black Lady. She was insane with fury and jealousy. When he awoke, he said, “I am going to cause your death. She will not listen to my pleas. Her cruelty knows no limits. You will never be able to give birth and survive. Understand me, my daughter, my wife, I must sacrifice myself, hand myself over to Death, let her carry me off to her palace of ice. That way her love will be satisfied, and she will not devour you.”

  I wept for days, but I could not convince him that it was I who should disappear. He filled a bathtub with honey and submerged in the golden syrup. He died looking at me. He never closed his eyes. A tranquil suicide—he was smiling, and the bees flew, forming a crown that slowly circled over the yellow surface. Under the mattress, I found a note: “I shall never stop loving you. Please look after the bees. Don’t abandon them. They are my memory.”

  I fell into the bed. I spread my legs, and as my stomach shrank I expelled an interminable sigh from my sex. Nothing remained of our child. It turned into air.

  Teresa never answered that letter and hadn’t returned to her paternal home until the day she went to live in Odessa with Alejandro and the four children. An obscure shape came out to meet them. When they walked into the room, the bees separated from Fiera Seca and went to suck at little plates filled with sugared juices. Crying out, Fiera Seca threw herself into Teresa’s muscular arms. She did not seem to notice the presence of my grandfather and the children.

  “Oh, sister! No one knows about Abraham’s death. I still make the atrocious faces when I go shopping, and I receive those who come here to buy honey covered with insects, so they go on thinking it’s Abraham. I never buried our father.”

  As the family was moving in, she led Teresa to the barn. Among the honeycombs, from which came a buzzing similar to a requiem, was the bathtub filled with honey with the smiling corpse beneath its yellow surface.

  “Honey is sacred, sister. It preserves flesh eternally. He never wanted to leave. I feel him stuck to me. He’s waiting for me.”

  As she said that, Fiera Seca took off her clothes. She revealed her naked body, a delicate structure with a skin so fine that the pattern of her veins, like those of a leaf, could be seen. A thick, animal-like pubis contrasted with that angelic delicacy: it was so black it emitted blue sparkles and covered her belly up to her navel.

  “I shouldn’t abandon the bees. They are the reason I remained in this world. That’s what he asked me to do. But now you’ve come, and I can leave. I’m leaving these wise animals in your care. If you look after them carefully, they will feed your whole family.”

  And with no further explanations, she leapt into the tub, embraced her father, and allowed the honey to cover her. She made no signs of drowning and seemed neither to suffer nor to die. She simply became forever immobile, her eyes wide open, staring into the open eyes of the other cadaver.

  Teresa felt as dead as her father or her sister. Only her obligation to her family kept her alive. And hate as well. Especially hate. It was a source of energy that allowed her to tolerate the world only so she could curse it. In all things she saw the presence of a cruel, despicable God. There was nothing that didn’t seem absurd, impermanent, or unnecessary to her. The plot line of life was pain. She could detect the incessant fear hidden in laughter, in moments of pleasure, in the stupid innocence of children.

  For her the world was a prison, a charnel house, the sick dream of the monstrous Creator. But what infuriated her most (a rage that made her curse from the moment she awoke until the moment she fell asleep) was knowing, without wanting to admit it to herself, that this hate disguised an excess of love. In her childhood she learned to adore God above all things, and now, in her absolute disillusionment, she had no idea what to do with that immense feeling. She could not channel those fervent oceans toward her husband or children because they were condemned to die prematurely.

  Just as the Dnieper flooded its bank and carried José away, some accident or other would exterminate them. Security was fragile. Nothing lasted. Everything shrank to nothing. Unthinkable evils were possible. A rock could fall from the sky and smash her family; an ant could lay eggs inside their ears, where armies of tiny beasts would be born that would devour their brains; a sea of fetid mud from down the mountainside could cover the city; mad hens could become carnivorous and peck out the eyes of the children; anything could happen.

  What was to be done with that unclaimed love building up in her bosom, shaking her heart so violently that its pounding could be heard up and down the street at night, drowning out the chorus of snores? Suddenly, without being able to understand why, she discovered the only thing deserving of her love in this world: fleas! She remembered a circus act she’d seen in her childhood and decided to train those insects. She always carried out her tasks as wife and mother. She provided her family with a clean home, she cooked and ironed, all the while delivering insults. Before her four children went to bed, she made them get down on their knees and recite: “God does not exist, God is not good. All that awaits us is the cat who will urinate on our grave.” And when they slept under the huge eiderdown next to the brick stove, she, hidden in the cold basement, dedicated herself to domesticating her fleas.

  When she fled her father’s house, Teresa stole his pocket watch, the only souvenir she wanted to keep. Now she emptied it of its movements, removed the white dial with its Roman numerals and hands like a woman’s legs, and pierced its cover with holes so that her pupils could get the required oxygen. There were seven of them. To each she gave a different territory to suck blood: her wrists, behind her knees, her breasts, and her navel. She bought a magnifying glass and other necessary instruments and made them costumes, decorations, tiny objects, furniture, and vehicles. She reduced her sleep time and spent entire nights teaching them to jump through hoops, to fire a miniature cannon, to play drums, to swing, to play ball. Little by little she got to know them. They had different personalities, subtly different bodies, individual forms of intelligence. She named them. She communicated better with them than she had with dogs. The link was profound. After a long while, she could speak and plot with the fleas against God.

  She compared the affection of fleas with what she got from the Jews, and her revulsion against them intensified. She wanted to change her race, to go off and live with the goyim. But her last name, Levi, was like a six-pointed star carved into her forehead. My grandfather—who was still seeing the Rabbi from the Caucasus, though he never admitted this to Teresa, wishing to forestall those flights of rage that were so strong they shifted the furniture—found some nobles of Polish origin who did not want their only son to do his military service with peasants. The family supplied him with official papers bought from a venal functionary so he could join the army in the place of t
he delicate heir. It happened his name was Jodorowsky. With that Polish last name, he and his family could move to another country, cross borders without major problems, dissolve among the non-chosen races in just five years, when his enlistment was over.

  While waiting for her husband to return, Teresa supported her family by selling honey and sweet rolls shaped like moons, towers, and crabs. At night, she relieved her solitude by working with the seven fleas to create—by reading the lines they traced while dancing on a dusting of flour—a method that would allow her to read the future.

  The Rabbi was not much help to Alejandro in the army. The soldiers’ world seemed impure, and when he saw my grandfather in the mess hall devouring pork chops or other forbidden foods, his face became even yellower and from his slanted eyes poured tears as immaterial as his body.

  “If you don’t understand me, Moisés, bless him, will. I have to eat this Russian garbage because if I don’t, they’ll figure out who I am. It’s hard enough to cover up my circumcision. Leave me in peace. What do you know about the pain in my gut when your intestines aren’t even solid? If all you want is to add more suffering to my sorrows, I’d rather you stopped speaking to me.”

  During those arduous five years of military service, the Rabbi said not one word more.

  Alejandro had other problems. Whenever he held a rifle he went white as a sheet, fell to the ground, and vomited. Tired of trying to cure him with kicks and whippings, the officers made him a kitchen helper and bootblack for the squadron. He also had to clean the latrines and stables. Instead of feeling depressed, he decided, accustomed as he was to the blows of life, to turn his disgrace into an apprenticeship. God had put him here to peel stunted vegetables, to polish smelly boots, to clean up human and equine shit in order to teach him something important.

  Amiable, calm, smiling, he peeled tons of potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. Though what was demanded of him was quantity and not quality, he tried to do it all rapidly but well, taking care that the food was clean, the potatoes free of eyes and rotten parts, the vegetables not dried out. He was constantly honing his skill in eliminating skin without sacrificing the slightest bit of meat. And it was in this constant separation of dirt-covered surfaces that he ended up seeing himself, as if in each day’s work he were pulling from his own memory old skins, pains, rancor, and envy. Every vegetable that sparkled naked and clean in his hands gave him the sensation of an internal birth. During his final months of military service, he carried out this task singing with the innocence of a child.

  Also with innocence, but that of a thousand-year-old man, he cleared the excrement. Horses and men were one in those evacuations. An immense pity that transformed into tenderness filled his spirit when he purged the latrines. That fecal matter was a testimony to the animal nature of the soul, of the soul’s ties to the flesh. And he marveled when he thought about how in those bodies that produced this fetid magma, faith also could manifest itself, as well as love and so many other delicate feelings. He learned to respect excrement, to consider it his equal, to see things from that humble level. He opened his heart as he emptied the receptacles, trying to be a true servant, one who sees the work of God through misery and who works to make it shine. He recognized in himself the presence of the Divine Superior and desired, with ecstatic joy, to obtain the blessing of being useful to Him. It was there, in those places of defecation, where he learned to pray sincerely for the first time. If a being like himself, an excrement gatherer, was worthy of entering into a relationship with the Supreme Being, the door was opening for other men who had—all of them—more merit than he.

  After shinning boots and shoes for almost five years, thousands and thousands of times scraping off filthy crusts; applying polish, oiling, using a cloth; patching soles; flattening rebellious nails; over and over, hour upon hour, he began to like the work. “The feet,” the instructors would always say, “are the most important part of the military. A soldier with badly fitting boots is a soldier lost.” During cold weather, on the incessant marches, during the many combat maneuvers, the infantry had to have its lower extremities very well protected.

  Alejandro imagined life as a spiritual war and felt an almost unbearable sorrow for the poor men who advanced barefoot or suffered from shoddily made boots. Being a shoemaker was a profession that fit his modesty. If he were meant to serve, he would transform his labors into works of art. Those who previously only walked would dance in his shoes. This he decided the day that a captain, loudly guffawing through aromatic waves of kielbasa and vodka, gave him a pair of boots stained with Jewish blood. For an hour he polished them, not to make them shine but to erase from them that painful image. He swore he would only make fine shoes that would be as soft and durable as faithful animals, to give health to the body. A man who dances can sing, and all songs, human and animal, exalt God.

  As soon as they were liberated from military service, the Rabbi smiled again. After five years of silence among uniformed goyim, he went merrily along with Alejandro toward the Jewish neighborhood. His joy quickly made him fly like a grand crow above the rooftops. When he saw the sparrows flee, my grandfather realized that they could see the phantom. That removed a weight from his mind because, for him, it proved he wasn’t insane.

  He shouted to the Rabbi, “Hey, my friend, come down here! Now I know that you are not a hallucination! Let’s resume our conversation.”

  The man from the Caucasus left the company of a dead leaf that was being wafted about, landed, and spoke to his companion: “Mr. Levi—pardon me, I mean Mr. Jodorowsky. During these past years, not being able to speak with you, I dedicated myself to reviewing, within myself, the sacred books I know by heart. I had the idea I should summarize them in a single volume. Then, in a single chapter, then in a single page, and finally in a single sentence. This sentence is the greatest thing I can teach you. It seems simple, but if you understand it, you will never have to study again.” The Rabbi recited it. And life, from that moment on, changed for Alejandro. “If God is not here, He is nowhere; this instant itself is perfection.”

  Teresa received my grandfather shyly, hugging the twins to her body. Shorn of moustache, beard, without curly payot hanging next to his ears, without long hair, wearing goyish clothes, Alejandro was unrecognizable. His smile had become a meaningless contraction. His wife had put on weight, and his children had grown. The boys were almost seven, the girls around six. Benjamín was completely bald. Fanny had curled her hair and dyed it an aggressive red. Jaime and Lola, he muscular and she spectrally thin, were as alike as two drops of water. My grandmother, aside from being three times her original size (the result of eating only honey in order to save money, she said later), boasted a skull covered by a thicket of gray hair. Her round, young face with ruddy cheeks contrasted violently with those white hairs.

  Alejandro burst into tears, sobbing loudly. He fell to his knees. My grandmother recognized him. She pushed the boys into his arms and ran from the room. The children wriggled out of their father’s embrace, flailing their arms every which way, and ran to a dark corner, cringing like frightened chickens. Under no circumstances would they ever accept this intruder.

  The Rabbi spoke to him: “Hold back your tenderness. Wait. It’s one thing to give it, but quite another to force someone to accept it. Little by little, they’ll come to you.”

  Teresa came back wearing a clean dress and a black, well-combed wig, carrying some pieces of honeycomb in a clay bowl. With a single shout, both fierce and kind, she sent the twins to the barn. While Alejandro ate voraciously, spitting out bits of wax, Teresa got into bed.

  With her brow deeply furrowed, she said, “Tell you-know-who he should also leave.”

  Alejandro, with great dignity, retorted, “I don’t have to. He left with the children.” And with that, he jumped on top of her, tearing her dress and underwear to pieces. They possessed each other with such passion that the bed collapsed. When it fell, it knocked over a brazier. The burning coals scattered over the floor.
The wood began to burn. Enormous flames devoured furniture and walls. My grandparents noticed nothing. Not for an instant did they interrupt their caresses. Perhaps because the sweat from their bodies soaked the sheets, perhaps due to divine intervention, the fire never touched the bed. After the final orgasmic explosion, they returned to reality and found themselves resting in a house reduced to smoking ruins.

  “No regrets,” said Teresa to my grandfather. “Things happen when it’s time for them to happen.”

  “That I know,” he answered, “because when you’ve got faith, all things happen for the better.”

  “Well then, follow me. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  In the stone barn at the far end of the yard, the children, who were pretending to be statues of salt under a cloud of bees, hadn’t noticed a thing. Teresa clapped her hands three times like a circus ringmaster, and the children, grimly, began to bottle the honey as the bees resumed their duties within their little cells.

  “Take a good look at the hives, Alejandro. Do any look odd to you?”

  No matter how hard he looked, my grandfather could find nothing abnormal.