Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where the Bird Sings Best

Then everything accelerated. Felicidad shouted an order so loudly that the roof beams creaked and a curtain tore open: “Halt!” Raising her right hand, she stopped the criminal. She completely cut off his movement. There was not the slightest speck of fear in her attitude, only perfect self-control. A superhuman will inhabited that fragile little body. Through that will, the spirit of all the lion tamers revealed itself. For Felicidad, descended from so many Salvadors, dominating a ferocious beast was a natural, necessary act. She’d never felt better.

The monster stopped short, fixed his gaze on the burning eyes of the tiny woman, roared, and clutched his stomach as if his liver had just exploded. He dropped the knife, fell on his knees, and sank his enormous head on the girl’s chest. In a sweet voice, saturated with love, he whispered in Russian, “Forgive me.” The other assailants climbed the stairs as a mob and tried to enter the classroom. A single gesture from their master stopped them. Another gesture made them bow, and a third compelled them back downstairs and out of the school.

The girl took the belt from her robe, tied it around the giant’s neck, and led him like a pet toward the patio. The rain had stopped. Salvador, Luna, and Sara Luz heard the galloping of horses that faded into the distance. Felicidad disappeared from their lives forever. Never again were murders like that committed in the villages.

From that moment on the lives of the Arcavis were no longer the same. On the one hand, the congregation praised the girl’s heroic sacrifice, but on the other they could never forget her triumphant smile as she tied the belt around the murderer’s neck. Also, he did not try to kidnap her. It was she who forced him to walk down the stairs like a dog and then disappear into the darkness. What happened after that? The madman could have reacted by shaking off his enchantment and cutting her to pieces as he did with the others. But why had the murders stopped?

One day at first light, Luna awoke, screaming. Hugging Salvador, her breath short and eyes wild, she told him, “What I’m thinking is atrocious. The night of the seven murders, I saw in the encounter between the monster and Felicidad something similar to what happened to us: in her eyes there was love — a huge, sudden love that survives beyond death.”

Sara Luz never wanted to hear another word about magic. She locked the Tarot in a coffer and tried her best to forget it. All three widowers asked for her hand in marriage. Together with her parents, she chose Salomón Trumper, much older than she but simple and tranquil.

On the way home from the wedding ceremony, the coach carrying Salvador and Luna crashed down a ravine because a yellow dragonfly flew into the horse’s ear. They both died. A year later, at the same time, on the same day, in the same month, Sara Luz gave birth to Jashe. And a year later, also at the same time, on the same day, and in the same month, she gave birth to Shoske. Jashe and Shoske, two common names with no greater meaning, deliberately chosen to bring an end to all the miracles.

The two sisters were brought up in the same way: they slept together, dressed identically, and learned to embroider, cook, plant wheat, and clean the house so that every Shabbat everything would shine. Shoske was happy in that life and hated anything out of the ordinary. Jashe began the same way, but one day, as she raked the garden, a yellow dragonfly began to fly around her, getting closer and closer until it entered her head through an ear and began to buzz, as if trying to give her a message.

Jashe imagined that the same insect that had caused the death of her grandparents came to pay its debt. She thought she understood what it was saying: “Forgive me, my child. I never wanted Salvador and Luna to die. In exchange for that, I’m going to give you the most valuable treasure in the world.” The insect flew to the school. The girl followed, all the way to the attic. The dragonfly landed on the old coffer, then it flew out the window. Jashe opened the box and found the Tarot. For years, in secret, she studied the cards, and they became her Master, teaching her to See. Everything changed. She became aware of the madness in which they were submerged; religious law seemed like a prison; and she tried to escape, to abandon her many absurd obligations, all superstitions, and arranged marriage. She wanted to live the holy life every day and not just on Saturday, to love freely and without tribal limitations, to eat whatever she wanted, to travel the world, to live not just one life but thousands, to recover magic. She was in that effervescent state when she found the door, the light, the road: she found him, Alejandro Prullansky.

As soon as Jashe finished telling him the story of her ancestors, the Russian dancer took her in his arms, hugging her so tight it was as if he wanted to absorb her through his skin and said, “Chance is a subtle form of Destiny. My mother’s name was Felicidad. She was Jewish and was stolen by my father. My family history doesn’t go back as far as yours for a simple reason: my grandmother, Cristina Prullansky, burned all the documents and pictures that tied her to the past.”

An only daughter with six brothers, much older than she, descended from nobility, Cristina had been educated by governesses brought from Germany. During the maudlin afternoons, these women would usually stroll among the pines on the estate, stomachs swollen from the rape by her father Ivan, a hunchbacked widower who could not restrain himself when drunk. After a few months, a black carriage would bring a new governess and carry away the old one, who was never seen again. She had fifteen governesses in ten years.

In that isolated place, more than thirty miles from Minsk, with her brothers in the army and a father who never spoke, the only entertainment possible was beating the maids — for any conceivable reason. She pulled up their skirts, pulled down their linen underwear, and with her short, hard whip she left garnet furrows on their milky buttocks. In her family, there were only invisible women and dead soldiers to defend Peter the Great, Catherine I, Ivan VI, Paul I, Peter III, and other czars in their wars with France, Turkey, Sweden, Great Britain, and many other nations. Her grandfathers, her uncles, and her brothers all gradually metamorphosed into portraits, medals, and posthumous decoration that covered the walls in the enormous hall. Only her father, stinking of vodka, urine, and vomit, would walk there, ashamed of his monstrous body, which would not allow him to take part in the continuous massacre.

When Cristina was fifteen, the French governess, imported as a birthday present, was raped the night she arrived. Ivan, poisoned by alcohol, his buttocks filthy with excrement, howling like a dog, smashed the door down with an ax, threw himself on top of the young woman, squeezed her breasts until they burst, and, at the moment he achieved his orgasm, bit off her nose. The piece of flesh choked him to death. The governess’ heart stopped, and Ivan suffocated. Cristina was left alone, surrounded by myriad attendants, servants, and serfs.

Her father was buried in the family mausoleum and the governess next to some boulders in the forest. That year, the winter was harsher than ever. On three occasions, the wolves dug up the victim’s body. In the long corridors of the manor house, Cristina saw the noseless woman move along, floating like a silent ship. She was beginning to bite her nails to the point of ripping off bits of flesh when the message inviting her to the coronation of Alexander I arrived.

She wasn’t even aware of the assassination of the previous emperor. In the governess’ trunk, she found a nightgown whose stylish European cut excused the modest quality of the fabric. Her grandmothers’ jewels more than made up for whatever was lacking in her costume. During the entire voyage, dressed up like a lady, in that Spartan coach built to carry military men, she — accustomed to letting the days pass without bathing, clad in the trousers and boots of her brother, killed in the Swiss Alps fighting the French — felt strange.