Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where the Bird Sings Best

“My friend, holy penitent, in this region there are many witchdoctors who call themselves wizards. They’re going to offer you plants that grant visions and take you to other levels of reality. In my opinion, seeing things as they are, united, not separated, that’s a miracle. Are you sleepy?”

“A bit. We haven’t slept all night.”

“Make an effort. Come with me. Out in the fields stands a solitary apple tree. If we know how to see it, it will speak to us about this plane, which is as marvelous as one of those hallucinations.”

He led Jaime out of the cemetery. At the entrance, was the cross, standing upright in a niche in the high wall. Christ looked so well there it seemed as though He’d been carved for that site, like the figurehead on a ship manned by all the dead. They followed a path bordered by lavender bushes that purified the air with their sweet perfume. In the middle of a field of dark, almost black earth grew a leafy tree covered with yellow apples transformed into gold by the rays of the rising sun.

“What do you see?”

“A tree with lots of ripe, shiny apples.”

“Is that all?”

“I can’t say it’s beautiful or ugly, because that would come from me.”

“Don’t look with your eyes but with your spirit.”

“My spirit tells me those fruits are very sweet, and my stomach believes it.”

“Since you feel half-blind, you don’t face the bull and you start playing. It would be better to dance. Here everything is dancing, from the stars to the smallest speck of dust. Realize this: the tree stuck into the planet spins with it around the sun. Each apple, according to its position, receives the sun’s rays in a different way. Some, those that hang on the side where the sun rises, will be bathed by a young light that will go from weakness to strength; others, those who face the sunset, will receive an aged light that will go from strength to weakness. Those that grow at the top of the tree will be fed by a mature vertical light, short but always intense. Each apple is different, because during their growth each receives the sun in a different way. Each has a different taste; some are friends of the morning, others of the afternoon, and a few of midday. But there is one apple, the highest and most central, in intense communication with the zenith, that is the queen.”

The gravedigger stretched out his arm and cut off an apple. Then, with astonishing agility, he climbed to the top of the tree to cut another.

“Take a bite of one from below. Now eat a piece from this one, the queen, and compare.”

The first fruit, fresh, with hard, sugary flesh, seemed delicious to Jaime. He bit the other, and a concentrated, vibrant, unbreakable force overwhelmed him. The tense and juicy flesh, like sweet crystal, crunched melodiously. When it dissolved into juice, beneficent acid, it instantly penetrated Jaime’s tongue and went into the river of his blood, which heated up, giving him a euphoric fever. When he finished eating that apple, he felt that his life had been prolonged.

“I think we are the same as the trees; in each situation, we grow a thousand gestures. We have to prefer the kingly gesture, the one closest to the vital principle. And we should make that one, not the others. But never disdaining them. They are the power behind every realization. Well, I’ll let you sleep. Get into this grave. I’ve put a blanket in it. You’ll have to get used to this deep bed because I have no other to offer you.”

Jaime dropped into the grave and, lulled by the sweet and sour smell of the earth, fell asleep. He dreamed he was in the arms of a dark-skinned woman. Between their two naked bodies, he noted there was a huge quantity of white jelly.

“What’s this?” he asked the woman.

“Don’t worry, it’s my depilatory cream.”

“You like to lose your body hair, but I, a man, feel it to be a catastrophe.” He felt anguished for a moment, then he said to her, “Rub my back with it. My shoulder blades are covered with hairs. When they fall out, two wings will be able to grow there.”

My father awoke full of energy and came out of the grave like a newborn. The gravedigger was waiting to offer him two fried eggs, bread, and a cup of coffee.

“You won’t be able to carry your cross for two weeks, friend. What will you do? You can’t stay here; a multitude will come to see you to request miracles. In their fervor they will trample the graves and the plants. Maybe one of those believers will lend you a room. Meanwhile, I’ll take care of your Christ. When you’re better, you can get back on the road of penitence.”

“Don Eleodoro, I have other plans. I’ll take the train to visit my brother in Santiago.”

“Wearing that cassock and with no cross, you’ll look odd. I’ll undress a dead man. He’s fresh. I buried him yesterday. A traveling salesman with no relatives or friends.”

After half an hour he came back with a suit of a brilliant, exaggerated green, plus a shirt and shoes.

“I hope you don’t mind the color. The more you use the suit, the less noticeable it will be.”

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Thanks. The shoes I won’t take. I’d rather keep these boots. I thank you as well for all you’ve taught me.”

“It’s the all-knowing cemetery that’s the teacher, not me. I’ve got death so close to me that I see life everywhere. When you think you’re suffering, look at yourself in a mirror and remember where your suit comes from. That will give you spirit. Good-bye, friend. It was good to speak with a living man.”

In the train station, Jaime bought a newspaper; the two principal candidates both claimed victory. He looked for the details of the voting; in Valdivia, Luis Barros Borgoño received 2,500 votes, Arturo Alessandri Palma, also 2,500, and Recabarren 1. Jaime boarded the train proud to be the cause of that single vote.

The third-class car was packed with poor people traveling with packages, baskets, dogs, and chickens. The arrival of the gringo wearing the parrot-green suit produced a hum of laughter, but all it took was a defiant clearing of the throat by my father to shut them up. His black beard and short hair gave him a ferocious air. Fearful, they offered him a seat next to an old lady, and soon the rumble of the steel wheels put him to sleep:

Looking out the window of a building under construction, he observed the recreation area of a school where a teacher was showing his students how to manipulate invisible objects. He realized that the teacher’s technique was imperfect and that he masked his lack of precision with a confusing rapidity of gestures. Then the students raised their eyes to him, asking for help. From above — impassive, slow, and precise, with impeccable technique — he manipulated an invisible object in order to show them how to proceed properly in such cases.

The teacher abandoned his class and entered the building, climbing the precarious ladders that led to the seventh floor. Pursing his red lips, he pointed his index finger to his inside jacket pocket and asked him for a four-word motto he might embroider there.

He answered, “Permanent impermanence, nothing individual.”

Despite the teacher’s expression of admiration, he said to himself, “In any case, I have to teach you the technique for the perfect manipulation of invisible objects.”

A screech of brakes made him wake up. The train had stopped at a small station surrounded by vineyards. Through the door at one end of the car entered three drunken soldiers, each one with a full bottle under his left arm and an almost empty bottle in the right hand. Their swallows were as long as their guffaws. Through the door at the other end entered a short, hunchbacked man, carrying a white bag. When the train started moving, he sank his hands into the sack and pulled them out full of eggs. In a high voice, he began to shout, “Get your hardboiled eggs! For every rooster’s trick you buy, I’ll give you a packet of salt!”