Antonio Skarmeta - The Days of the Rainbow

Suddenly, he had the feeling that all that liquid fogging up his glasses was giving rise to a hallucination.

There, on the other end of the square, something vague was taking place.

A creature turning around giddily.

Or were there two?

The closer it came, the more real it looked. Until it became clear. Definitively true.

A young couple was turning around incessantly, as if dancing a waltz without music, as if dancing to the memory of a waltz in the starry night. As they danced, they moved freely around the empty square, and when they were so close that they could touch him, the dancing woman shouted, “We’re going to win, sir. We’re going to win.”

Bettini took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirttail, and, looking at the hallucination, as real and precise as it was, he told them, “No kidding! I’m about to have a heart attack.”

I TAKE THE SUBWAYto go downtown.

Laura Yáñez wants to see me. She can’t tell me anything on the phone. Only in person.

I’ve done this many times, but today there’s something strange in the air. Although it’s hot and the train’s crowded, nobody seems annoyed. They greet each other. They move to make room for new passengers getting in.

They look carefree. There’s something mischievous in their eyes. They talk. I don’t see anyone with his eyes fixed on his shoes. A group of women wearing the uniforms of a supermarket are smiling, even though they’re not talking to each other.

On the front page of the most popular newspaper that the retired man is reading, there are two huge pictures.

In one of them, Pinochet, smiling. In the other, Little Kinky Flower with a presidential sash across his chest.

The headline says: DUEL OF TITANS.

We’re approaching the plebiscite and, from what I can hear while I move from one train car to another, nobody talks about anything else. Like a constant tic-tac I hear yes-no, no-yes, no-no-no, everywhere.

Santiago seems different nowadays.

Everybody looks so healthy. Did they drink some fruit juice? Did they rub themselves with seaweed in the shower? And the laughter! A red-haired high-school student with green eyes describes the scene from the night before, when the firefighter holding a glass of water imitated the siren of his fire truck, howling, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” The adults smile at him. An older man gives him a pat on the shoulder. So the redhead says to him, “I could do it again if you want.” And there’s more laughter. It looks like a different country. Everybody says that Brazilians are this lively. “Apesar de você amanhã há de ser outro dia.” I feel happy for Mr. Bettini. For Patricia Bettini. For Mrs. Magdalena. When he went back home, the phone rang until three in the morning. Congratulations. Bettini was now giving interviews to foreign newspapers. He had a call from a Mr.

Chierici, from the Corriere della Sera . Long distance. And from another one — a Spaniard, from El País . They wanted his analysis and predictions for the plebiscite. The calendar is burning. How many days until October 5?

When the train arrives at a station, some passengers leave, and the ones who get on look as if they were charged with fresh batteries. Like when in the second half of a soccer game the coach sends an exhausted center forward to the bench and a substitute comes in, running a little bit to warm up. Even the train seems to be running faster. That’s what my old man hates — the subjectivisms that prevent us from perceiving the objective reality. He can’t stand the Sophists. Good at talking and wasting time. But deep down, it’s all rubbish. Aristotle, on the contrary, he goes right to the point. Nico Santos. Short for Nicomachus.

I feel that I’m the only one in this car who’s getting more and more absorbed in his own thoughts. The sadness of Dad’s absence gets me down. I’m on a different frequency from the rest of the city. There’ll be free elections, but my dad’s in jail. In jail and missing.

That guy, Samuel, is doing as much as he can. Patricia Bettini insists that I need to talk with the bad guys. The good ones can’t do anything. Now’s probably a good time to do it.

Now that people seem more spirited.

Sure , I think, but I wonder how Pinochet is feeling.

Furious. He might be red with anger. It seems that it backfired on him. The lady in green who carries the bag of vegetables is humming the “Waltz of the No .” Maybe this is just a dream and now a military commando will storm in and start shooting everyone.

I skipped school today. I’m afraid that the text I read at the cemetery will have consequences for me. Lieutenant Bruna wasn’t there, “due to decency.” But the snitches who were there might be waiting for me at the door of the institute.

Or sitting in my classroom.

With their short hair.

Sunny day.

They have an investigator’s badge that they show by opening their jackets. They’re detectives. But I was told that, afterward, the detectives hand the prisoners to the political cops.

That’s when their trail is hard to follow.

The last time I talked to Samuel, he told me not to lose hope. He said that we could have good news at any time. “But also bad ones,” I shouted over the phone. He remained silent for half a minute, and then he said, “Yes, but also bad ones, my boy.” I apologized.

I get off at Alameda with Santa Lucía Hill and walk to Forest Park. That’s where Laura Yáñez lives. She wanted to get together because she has something to tell me. I don’t know what it is.

But she said that it was urgent.

It’s a good idea to disappear from home and school for a while.

Laura Yáñez is so beautiful! At school, they call that kind of woman “a hell of a brunette.” She told me once, “I want to be Chile’s hell of a brunette.” Her friendship with Patricia’s based on their interest in theater. My girlfriend always looks for intellectual plays, with some political vein. She cracks up laughing with Beckett or Ionesco. Theater of the absurd. Laura’s crazy about John Travolta. She knows all the dance steps in Saturday Night Fever . But she’s never found a guy her age who could dance along with her. With her and Travolta. That’s why she’s always hanging around with older guys.

Sometimes, after the Scuola Italiana, Laura and Patricia go to the movies. They’re so different! My beloved Bettini wants to go to Italy to visit the museums in Florence and to get to know Fellini in person. Amarcord drives her out of her mind. Instead, Laura … Laura wants to be on the cover of Vanidades or Fotogramas someday.

She’d like to play the role of femme fatale in a soap opera. But the funny thing is that she’s as nice as they come. If she were rich she would be sharing everything with her friends.

She’s the superfriend. But with her body, everyone wants to hook up with her.

Those dudes don’t want to be just friends with her. That’s why she came to me. Because she knows I’m neutralized by my love for Patricia Bettini. She knows I’m not going to cheat with her best friend.

I finally agreed to let her use my apartment so she could change. I didn’t ask her anything else. I’m fucked-up enough. I don’t need to start fucking up others.

And now she becomes very mysterious and tells me she wants to see me. She tells me she appreciates it but she doesn’t need the apartment anymore. She wants to give me back the keys. She has her own place now, in Mosqueto, near the Palace of Fine Arts. “Come with Patricia one of these days. She likes paintings.” Her parents shouldn’t find out. Patricia Bettini better keep quiet. If she says something at school, and Laura’s parents find out, they will kill her, literally. Anyway, by December, she’ll have to tell them the truth. She hasn’t been to school for a month.