Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Creator of El Topo

In a sordid room, Nana was lying on a bed of burlap potato sacks stuffed with cotton. A dark veil covered her pockmarked face as she sang a song of farewell to life. Suddenly, a huge drunken man in the front row started yelling: “No clothes! No clothes!” I shrank in my seat. This sort of hoi polloi came here only for sexual excitement. In some of the city’s theaters, a rumba dancer would even challenge a spectator to copulate with her on stage “because you’re so macho.” Such men had not the slightest interest in scenes of dying singers covered from head to toe. At first the Tigress merely gave him a baleful look without halting her swan song, but now he was standing and leaning over the stage, shouting even louder and adding phrases such as, “Show your tits!” and “Show your ass!”

Suddenly, she leaped off the bed and walked off stage. She quickly returned with a large pistol, walked up to the big man, and pressed the barrel against the front of his head. “Now listen, you son of a whore of a mother who gave birth to you! I don’t come harassing you in the middle of your work. So don’t come here fucking around with us artists! You either shut your mouth or you’ll wake up in hell with a hole in the front of your head! You understand?” By now the drunk lowered his upper body face down upon the stage and began kissing her feet. He answered in a child’s voice, “Yes, my little mother.” A large ovation from the audience supported her. Then the Tigress resumed her place upon the bed — still holding the pistol — and finished her song. There was a religious silence at the end; the curtain had already begun to fall when thunderous applause broke out. I could feel fascination, desire, and fear in the air. The big drunk applauded louder than anyone.

Gloria came for me and had me sit behind the curtain on a corner of the stage. “The boss is freshening up. She’ll have to sign a few autographs, and then she’ll receive you. She wants to see you alone. Chucho will keep you company while you’re waiting.” Chucho had long false eyelashes, fluorescent red lipstick, and a plaster cast on his right wrist. Uncomfortable with his arch winks, I asked him about the cast.

“Oh! During the scene when the Tigress sings and dances, fondled by her admirers, I squeezed her leg too hard. It enraged her, and right there in front of everyone, she broke my wrist. Then — though you’ll find this hard to believe — she dragged me off stage by the hair of my head!”

My mouth was dry and I was feeling distinctly ill at ease. I noticed that the stagehands, seeing me talking with Chucho, were making obscene jokes about my manhood. Offended, I strode backstage and gave a sharp knock on the Tigress’s door. A husky, mocking voice answered, “Enter if you dare.”

It was as if I had entered the cage of a wild beast. A person never forgets even a glimpse of a woman like that. The carnivorous look in her large eyes showed no sign of any sort of pity. Her lush, black hair surrounded the face of a country girl transformed by skillful surgery into that of an Aztec princess. Her teeth had even been filed, though not pointed, in order to suggest knife blades. Two silicon-enhanced breasts strained at an almost transparent bodice. Her very large legs were resting upon the dressing table. With her back reclining against the wicker chair, she regarded me in the mirror. A carelessly painted beauty mark glistened between her eyebrows, a little off-center. I wondered if this error might be due to the length of her clawlike false nails. It was impossible to guess her age. The surgery made her look thirty, but she might have been more than forty. Her voice was impossible to describe. Every word she spoke floated upon a muffled growl. At any moment, her words could become daggers. I tried to gather my courage.

“I have very much wanted to meet you, Madame. I congratulate you for your performance!”

“If you want to have an affair with me, don’t ever lie to me, you bastard. When I perform, I’m aware of everyone in the audience. When I was crying, you had to keep from laughing. Of course, this isn’t your sort of avant-garde cinema. But anyway, I also wanted to meet you.”

She lowered her legs. Her fine-pointed high heels scraped the floor, making a wailing sound. “I’m tired of standing up. The surgical filling in my calves weighs four pounds, but the masses get hysterical when I expose them.”

From a closet filled with gaudy costumes, she took a bottle of mezcal. Its label showed a crow perched on a skull. “Now let’s see if you’re an hombre ,” she said, filling two water glasses full of this corrosive liquid. “Bottoms up!”

I accepted the challenge and drained the whole glass without stopping. She did likewise and filled the glasses again: “Bottoms up!” And again, we drained our glasses.

“Steady on now, don’t fall by the wayside!” she said.

“I’m quite steady, thank you, Madame — more so than you.”

After seven glasses, I saw a greenish aura around the empty bottle. “She is calling for her sister,” said the Tigress, and set down another full bottle. I was so drunk I had to hold on to my chair, but I continued to imbibe. She began to make a halting speech, finding it difficult to get from one concept to the next.

“I am what I want to be, that is my law. . When I first came here from my village, I felt defenseless before men. By luck, Diego Rivera had me model for his murals. . One afternoon, an Indian whom the painter knew well arrived from the mountains with a package. ‘Here you are, boss,’ he said. ‘Good fresh human meat. I guarantee that it was a Christian in good health. I killed him myself.’ Diego roasted the bloody meat on a spit, cut it into small pieces accompanied with chopped onions, coriander, and chili peppers, and made tacos, which he shared with me. . As I chewed this delicious meat, the beast that had been sleeping in me awoke. I could eat men. . I could make them fall to their knees before me. . In order to accomplish this, all I would have to do is transform my body into the body of their ape dreams. Big breasts? I’ll give them big breasts. Big buttocks? I got them with three hundred gelatin injections. Little by little, as my songs became hits, I saved up money for surgery on my cheeks, my chin, my full lips, my eyelids, hair implants, a thin waist. . Hell, creating your own body is just as impressive as creating a painting! I am the daughter of my own willpower. In my shadow, not even God calls the shots. . Besides, I’ve sent God to hell and chosen the devil. He’s a lot more useful. He buys your soul, he gives you power — and that’s everything in this world. . What do you think? Anyway, no matter what you say, you’re risking your life with me. My master is a jealous one. .”

In the dense alcoholic fog, struggling with my swollen tongue and my lust to possess this arrogant woman, I found myself reciting a koan: “What is the way?”

Quickly, the Tigress interrupted me, “I’m not a railroad track; don’t ask me. And you — do you know what the way is?”

This contemptuous retort made me aware of my mental confusion. The crow and the skull, life and death, good and evil, truth and lies — how to choose? In my all-consuming desire to master consciousness, I had lost the way. Tears came to my eyes as I quoted Master Haryo: “Because I was an open eye, I fell into the well.” The Tigress burst out laughing. She rocked so hard against the back of her chair that it fell over. Sprawled on the floor with open legs, showing me that dark mouth that all Mexicans desired to see, she said: “Good. Now, open your eyes and forget your bullshit way. Fall into my well — but I warn you, it has no bottom.”

Suddenly, all my reason vaporized. Heedless of the consequences, I leaped at this wild beast on the floor, lifting her up with great effort (her body seemed to weigh a ton). Then, half undressed, I had her straddle my back. She giggled like a girl. We both arose and staggered out of the dressing room. Laughing constantly, we stumbled on, ignoring the astonished stares of the stagehands, dancers, and striptease artists. We walked out of the theater toward the street exit. Gloria ran behind us, speaking with urgency: “Beware, my boy! Get her into the car very quickly so that the caliph doesn’t find out and make mincemeat out of you!”