Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where the Bird Sings Best

For months, along the roads on the pampa, they passed gray trucks full of soldiers. They passed them by without being bothered. The truck, now decorated with circus designs, aroused no suspicion. From time to time they were stopped and, after a rapid scrutiny, would be asked to tell a few jokes. Which was something Sofía knew how to do very well; she had a repertoire, learned from the whores at the port, that was so obscene she made those insensitive male pigs wet their pants with laughter. Then they’d be sent on their way. Those same soldiers, if they saw a miner walking the hills, wearing a white cotton outfit, would shoot him just to watch him wave his arms like a dove. The vultures, attracted by the abundance of carrion, began to darken the sky as they followed the army patrols.

After each show, Teresa would invite Party members and, in secret, dodging informers, meet with them in some mine tunnel. For long hours she would recount her conversations with the man she’d venerated. Soon her gaze wandered, her voice would change along with her rhythm and gestures, and she would begin speaking as if she were Recabarren. Calm, profound, she would quote Engels, Lenin, Marx, and others to show her comrades the roads they ought to follow in the future. Elías would sit down near her legs, and she, never ceasing to lecture, would massage his hairy head, always shedding tears. Jaime and Sofía Lam, respectful, their bodies dried out after so many trips in the arid mining zones, would listen to her realizing that through a love that did not recognize death as a limit, that faithful woman kept the thoughts of the master alive.

One Saturday night, so starry that they could see one another’s faces without lighting a lamp, forty comrades gathered secretly a half hour away from the Huara nitrate mine, listening with religious respect to the words of the “old lady.” They were interrupted by a messenger who arrived almost out of breath, madly pedaling his bicycle:

“We’ve been betrayed, comrades! We caught an informer telephoning the soldiers at San Antonio. We made him confess; he gave them a list of our names and descriptions. All of us are marked men. He also squealed on our four friends, telling about the subversive labor they were carrying out. Right now, a truckload of soldiers is coming to arrest us. If we surrender, they’ll shoot us. If we run away, we’ll die of thirst in these arid hills or we’ll be shot by the patrols out ‘pigeon hunting.’ It’s better we fight, even if we have to throw rocks and die on foot!”

Like a single man, they all began to pile up stones and dig a trench in the soft soil.

“You, friends, do not have to sacrifice yourselves. Take your truck and run for Arica. If you get there, burn the truck and hide out in the home of some sympathizer — you’re all on the list.”

Teresa embraced the miners one by one, sat in the truck, and, with painful rage, drove off. Her three collaborators, their eyes lowered, got in too, not wanting to see for the last time those men who would be massacred. Sofía began to cry:

“They’re going to die, and it’s our fault. We brought them together.”

Teresa abruptly changed direction; instead of driving north, she turned onto the road to San Antonio. “They won’t die. I can save them. You three get out! I’m going to ram the soldiers’ truck!”

“I will accompany you, ma’am. I want to be worthy of my father. In any case, the police know who I am. Sooner or later, it’s all the same.”

“The soldiers have killed off almost all my friends, of both sexes. Being homosexual in this idiotic dictatorship is a crime. One of these days, they’ll tie a stone to my ankles and toss me into the sea. I too will accompany you, Teresa.”

“Allow me to sacrifice my life for the freedom of this country, which is now mine. We started out together, let’s end the journey together.”

And with that my father, seated next to the door, locked it and held on to the seat. Far in the distance, the two headlights of military transportation blinked.

“We’ll soon see you, Luis Emilio,” said Teresa, pressing hard on the accelerator. The stones from the desert valley began to run backward like rabbits. With savage hunger, the truck ate up the road. Sofía howled with enthusiasm, kissed Elías and Jaime on the mouth, lit four cigarettes and distributed them. They smoked avidly. Jaime smashed a fist through the windshield so they could feel the mountain air. Their blood was so hot they didn’t even feel the biting cold.

The collision was imminent, and the body of my future father was going to be destroyed. I began to protest. All my efforts to get him to La Tirana, where the woman I wanted as a mother awaited him, would be in vain. I might need centuries to find another couple appropriate for my plans. Damn it! This young man was heading straight to his death, AND I WANTED TO BE BORN!

Desperate, I emerged from the hiding place I’d made in Jaime’s testicles and sought out the Rabbi. He understood the situation immediately. He was horrified. My father was breaking many of the 613 commandments of his religion. It is forbidden to kill. When He created the world, God ordered men to increase and multiply so it would be inhabited. To destroy others and oneself is to destroy the world. Abstain from all labor on Saturday. Causing a collision is work. It is forbidden for any tribunal to sentence anyone to death on Saturday. The Eternal One has desired, in honor of that holy day, that even criminals and sinners find repose and tranquility on Saturday. It is forbidden to take vengeance. What happens to us, be it agreeable or annoying, has been desired by the Lord. The men who hurt us are instruments in the hands of the Creator. Our faults constitute the first cause of what happens to us. It is forbidden to hold rancor. It is unworthy to fix the offender in our memory and later imitate his conduct. It is forbidden to cut one’s own flesh…

By now the trucks were so close that the Rabbi stopped enumerating the commandments that were being broken. He gathered strength and, transformed into a transparent spider, seized Jaime’s brain, and taking control of his body released the lock, opened the door, jumped toward the dry ground, and rolled away in a cloud of dust.

The two trucks collided. The noise echoed throughout the silent pampa with such force that it seemed the sky had split. The boxes of hand grenades exploded. The pieces of bodies flew through a sphere of flames. A herd of guanacos, dazzled, crossed the road, trampling the bloody flesh. The Rabbi, his mission accomplished, returned to the Interworld, and I returned to my genital hideaway.

Jaime, feeling himself a traitor, ashamed, limped over to see if anyone was still alive. But the vultures got there first. Nearly burning their feathers in the flames, they stretched out their black spines and began to devour the roasted remains. My father saw one of the raptors perch on Teresa’s decapitated head and a haughty gesture sink its beak into her eyes. The order of the world began to collapse. What meaning did a life so short have? Was sacrificing it worthwhile? How could a woman like that end up as food for vultures? Was it true that there was no fucking Destiny that rewarded virtue?

If this sordid Universe was only able to give these heroes the gullet of those carrion-eating birds as a tomb, he, Comrade Lautaro Quinchahual, would take charge of their remains until he found them the sacred place they deserved because of their sacrifice! He took a piece of burning wood and, shouting his head off, attacked the vultures. The screeching cowards flew off in a compact cloud, leaving behind a rain of excrement. Jaime looked everywhere, trampling the guts and pieces of soldier that remained in the bonfire. The fire had consumed the bodies of Elías and Sofía. Of Teresa only the head remained, with the eye sockets empty and bloody. He took it by the hair and ran into the pampa, heading for the mountains.