Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where the Bird Sings Best

When the attack passed, Recabarren said to them, “Don’t worry so much, children. I’ve withstood worse things — beatings, torture, forced marches, and hunger. No physical ill can bring me down. And it won’t be my age that conquers me. Let’s walk to the mine. We’ll sleep on foot.”

They divided up the heavy propaganda and advanced like sleepwalkers pursued by an enormous moon. Recabarren was muttering a speech to the dunes, taking them for Party militants:

“It’s insane to use capital with no other goal than increasing your amount of capital, comrades. It only leads to the poisoning of the planet and the death of humanity. The solutions offered within society as it is are transitory and fictitious. We should… ”

The miners received them with profound emotion; seeing them walk toward them, a National Deputy on the point of death, covered by the dust of the road, almost unable to speak because his throat was so swollen, his tongue dry, and his lips split, was something like a miracle. Forgetting Marxist atheism, they fell to their knees and began to pray before him as if he were a saint. Furious, Jaime interrupted them:

“Leave off these superstitions, comrades. Don Luis Emilio is a man just like you. Instead of prayers, give us a mattress to sleep on.”

Recabarren protested, “None of that. There is no time to lose. First we’ll do our duty, then we’ll rest. Gather the militants and fellow travelers in the gymnasium during their lunch break. We have pamphlets of the highest importance that must be distributed.”

Even though he’d walked so far without sleeping, Recabarren spoke with overflowing enthusiasm on the subject “Something of What I’ve Seen in Moscow.” When the siren sounded, calling the workers back, he rushed to finish his speech:

“Workers in Russia have in their hands the strength of political and economic power. There is no one in the world who can strip the people of that power they’ve already conquered. The expropriation of the exploiters is complete. Never again will a thieving, tyrannical regime of the kind we put up with in Chile return to that society.”

The workers were able to lend them a school where they slept a siesta that lasted until the next morning. Recabarren used the principal’s office, while Jaime and Sofía slept in a classroom.

Jaime was dreaming that a panther was biting his skull without hurting him, in the way cats play with mice, when Sofía woke him, naked, straddling him and trying to swallow his penis in her sex.

“You are raping me, Comrade Lam. That’s not right.”

“Things belong to the person who needs them. Go back to sleep, Comrade Lautaro. I’ll do all the work. Your instrument has been expropriated.”

“But… ”

“Shut up. Don’t distract me. I have almost no feeling, and it takes a lot of work to have an orgasm. Let me concentrate.”

And she began to move with deep and regular moist kisses that captured him to the root. Jaime opened his eyes wide and looked at her face, hoping that her resemblance to a Pekingese would deflate his erection. But her hard breasts and abundant backside added to the woman’s energy as she pumped up and down on the axis, giving tail switches like a hungry shark, passing from moans to roars, and ending by vomiting out a string of obscenities that would make a saloon drunk blush. It all kept him erect. Amid all this brawling, he tried to say, “Remember, comrade, you are a lesbian.”

But a sucking kiss covered his mouth and absorbed his entire tongue, obviating such an important revelation. His will began to weaken, and the vital liquid began to boil. He was chilled by a strange object that began to work its way into his anus. The comrade was trying to give a humility lesson to his manly pride by introducing a rubber phallus to his sanctum sanctorum.

“Here, there is neither masculine nor feminine, my dear. Let’s be like snails; let’s penetrate each other and simultaneously allow ourselves to be possessed. Equality is born from love.”

In a rage, Jaime tried to push her off, but it was then he realized his wrists were tied with a length of chain. Sofia, with insane strength, immobilized his legs and, despite his groaning, begging, and protesting, penetrated his anus with the thick object. To his shame, all that promiscuity brought him closer to explosion.

“That’s it, that’s it, my androgyne! Come on, give me your syrup! We’re going to make a champion child!”

Desperate, Jaime broke his chains, gave a leap backward, shook off the vampire, fell on top of the propaganda, and ejaculated onto “The Left Wing, an Infantile Sickness of Communism,” translated from the selected works of Lenin. He pulled out the rubber phallus and in disgust threw it at Sofía’s head. He hit her right in the center of her forehead, raising a lump that looked like a bite from a mountain flea.

“The flies have flooded your head, comrade. Too much of a good thing is no good. Your motto ought to be ‘Praise Marx but pass the Lautaro.’ I’ll be a father some day. I feel in my balls a spirit asking me to engender it, but I’ll deposit my seed in the uterus of a woman who shines like the planet Venus, not in a dyke like you.”

Sofía Lam roared out, slamming the door so hard that three tiles fell off the roof. Then, muttering insults, while at the same time slicing the air with a long, sharp stone, cutting off invisible penises, she headed for the coast, entering the immense pampa. I can’t say that I breathed a sigh of relief, because at that time I had no lungs, but I did swing around in joy because there was no way I wanted that woman as a mother.

But I didn’t view her as severely as Jaime did, and I thought his way of cutting her off was exaggerated, this sticking the label “dyke” on her. It was denigrating. She was no hypocrite and had obeyed her instincts without opposing them with prejudices or fears. Her authenticity deserved a more courteous separation, but— and this is what horrified me — when I was on the point of landing in her ovaries, I saw that they were already inhabited by three spirits ready to pass through the frustration of miscarriage. They need to be engendered, to accumulate a few months of hope and only then receive the lesson of failure. They were three prophets wanting to view the promised land from a distance without entering it. Souls that in previous, egoistic lives did not know how to sacrifice themselves to themselves.

Without Sofía, my father and Recabarren continued their travels to Iquique. The people received Recabarren like a hero, and a public event was organized in Plaza Condell. When the leader, standing in the kiosk, was giving his speech, the shout Long Live Chile! Death to Communism! rang out and several shots came from the public. One bullet left a red line on the speaker’s cheek. The workers dove to the ground to avoid the shots.

Recabarren, unperturbed, remained standing and speaking. Five young fascists wearing military shirts, boots, and riding trousers tried to scare the audience. Jaime detached the sickle from the red screen used for decoration and, scrambling around the flattened bodies, went up to the aggressors. One of them, fired up with the power his pistol gave him, tried to empty it at Recabarren’s head. Jaime jumped like a cat and, still in the air, cut off the man’s hand. A steaming spurt poured out of the stump all over those on the ground. Never fearing the bullets, my father ran toward the other fascists, but they, scared out of their wits, fled, carrying their mutilated comrade who never stopped screaming.

Jaime picked up the hand that still held the pistol and placed it on the table behind which Recabarren was standing. He interrupted his speech, removed the pistol from the stiffened fingers, and pointed it at the workers. They ducked their heads in shame.