Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

It was then that the radio listeners began to ask, So who’s this flute-playing boyfriend, and Wait, was living a painful activity for her?

But that was in February of 1967. Nowadays, when the song plays, if it plays, it sings the words as they are. Some know of her story. Others don’t. But any given listener may find themselves thinking, Whoever she was and however she lived, now at least, nothing hurts.

César had no idea what this song from his childhood was now doing on the radio in Paris. It came as it had come in those years to his mother, strange and generous. But now, his mother was not singing along in torment, and his brothers were not making faces behind him, and his father did not lean in and tell them about pain.

Here, the song was filtering through an old stereo system in the corner of the bare office of his telemarketing job. The sound seemed to change the temperature in the room. The air was no longer sourish, but velvety and humid. And as the song finished, he had one clear urge: to sing it to himself, again and again. And so he did, over and over in his head as he worked anxiously to finish the rest of his calls. When his shift was done, he hurried home to his tiny maid’s room apartment and found the song on YouTube. It was a fan-made video consisting of a slide-show of photos of Violeta Parra as the audio track played. All the photos which slid across the screen were so different from one another, it seemed like a montage of at least thirty unrelated women. One, gently smiling to herself. Another, with a gaping, strong mouth. Another glancing up suspiciously. Another joking. Another anguished. Another, simply unwashed.

At first, he sang the lines of the songs quietly, his voice careful to stay hidden under the guitar’s strum. But soon, his heart took hold of these lyrics like a bullfighter. His voice followed the juts of passion, and swung back with a borrowed old pain. He played the song over and over again and sang and sang and sang. Then he closed his computer and sat in silence.

César the actor was named after César the boxer, Julio César Chàvez, a six-time world champion from a city not too far away from where César was born in Mexico. The now legendary fighter had what one could call a modest childhood, growing up in an abandoned railway car with nine sisters and brothers, and a father who worked for the railway. As a child, the future legend watched his mother wash and iron other people’s clothes and decided that his fists would give her hands a break in this world. Just before he turned seventeen, Julio César moved to Tijuana and began his professional boxing career.

At twenty-two, Chàvez won his first championship and delivered on his promise. He made his mother’s eyes glimmer and her hands rub in circles one over the other, and a voice came out of her that he had never heard before, singing, “ DIOS, DIOS, DIOS! ”

The boxer’s story was the old tale every poor family in Mexico prayed would become their own. César’s family took part in such prayers. They owned a restaurant where his father cooked, his mother cleaned, and he and his brothers took the orders and served the food. César had grown up in this restaurant, in front of a small TV in the corner, whose talk shows and soap operas perforated the sound of the sizzling kitchen and the chewing of the customers.

His father and brothers loved sports, especially boxing and soccer. The older boy, Raul, and the middle, Alonzo, were both meaty. Raul’s weight stretched into a thick and firm woven work of muscle, whereas Alonzo’s expanded around him, abiding to gravity and the heat. Raul should have been the one named Julio César because he was a fighter. Alonzo was the wall, absorbent, pudgy, he could take hits. Raul was the rattlesnake, he’d whip his knuckles so quick your ear would ring all day like a church bell.

César was not very muscular like Raul, nor very meaty like Alonzo, but finely built for strength. He was agile and strong-lunged, which made him a quick runner and a clear speaker. His eyes were thin, wide and peering, lustrous in their gaze. His eyebrows bracketed his eyes frankly. His fine, triangular face was balanced by the weight of those two sleek eyes, and held in place by a nose, which one could not call large, but gave the sense of disproportion due to its wide nostrils. His lips were thin and bland and tended to disappear in the configuration of his face. This earned him the nickname of “the gecko”.

Early on, it was clear to César that he was different from his brothers, different from the other boys and men, not because he was shorter, and not because he ran fast, and not because he was called “the gecko”, but because César kept a secret pulsation in his heart, which later his parents referred to as the “artist’s gene”, but which everyone knew meant homosexual .

César himself knew well what the artist’s gene meant. He could not deny what he felt for other boys in class, and men in the streets. His fantasies taunted him. Every time he read a book or saw a film, a male character from the story would nest in César’s head. He’d whisper sweetly for weeks on end, asking César if he’d like to kiss him, if he’d like to press his body into him, if he’d like to put his hand down his pants and feel around a bit. At school these thoughts left César flushed and trying desperately to adjust himself before the bell rang and he had to get up from his seat.

As he entered his teenage years, he stayed away from boys altogether. The girls accepted César as funny or nice. They never saw him as strange, partly because they were too busy explaining themselves to him. César listened generously to what they liked and what they did not like and who they were and who they were not, agreeing on their behalf.

In this way, César learned to keep all of his needs to himself, holding close vigil against all surfacing desires, trying to catch them before they showed, and stuff them far, far away.

César’s father had his views and gut reactions to the idea of homosexuality. That word and the web of connotations that went with it somehow did not seem to fit his son. Yes, his boy was different, but in the way that Julio César the boxer was different, the way that men who make history are different. Perhaps he himself once felt the seed of such a difference, the capacity to leave his signature on history, and this is why when he looked at his Julio César he saw so clearly the type of man he could be. The men who make history grow up as boys of difference, he was sure. They are separated and marked by their uniqueness, which has no way of communicating itself in childhood, but is articulated like poetry in adulthood, if given the chance to survive.

It was his mother who had the hardest time with César’s difference . She expected her husband to set César straight, to make him understand that he couldn’t just live his life without making an effort to correct his defect. He had to marry. His best option was the neighbour’s girl, Rosa, who often gazed at him with her velvet eyes and brushed her long, thick black hair so carefully in the window of her house. The problem was Rosa’s face. No one could say she was disfigured, but her features clashed with each other terribly. When Rosa’s parents first heard her sing by accident, they took it as proof of God’s mercy that their ugly daughter happened to have a very beautiful voice. The word got out. Too bad little Rosa was extremely shy. The more attention her voice received, the more private she became about it. Sometimes walking home from the store or all alone in her room she would sing lightly to herself. But when the family had company, her parents would pull her out and brag, “Sing something, Rosa…!” Mother, father, and present company would all stare at the girl, who responded to their order with a stubborn silence.