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“I saw it.”

“Well, it’s the same thing. The Amazons step out of their ships, victorious, feeling the peace that settles in the pores once the sweat has dried and everything is over. They come, they see, and they conquer. Still, the mere fact that a poet (especially when that poet is Carlos Ramírez) has testified to their arrival hides the seed or promise of destruction.”

“Whose destruction?”

“Come on, man, the Amazons’.”

“But why? Why would he destroy them?”

“I’ll tell you, but don’t yell. I could quote some sixty psychology books. But I’ll make it brief: the guy has a problem with women…”

“Oh, that’s all…”

“No, that’s not all. He’s got muscle—that’s how I’d put it. The son of a bitch, if I can take poetic license, is an oarsman of fate…”

Cherniakovski Presents Two Images of India at the University of Concepción Poetry Workshop, 1972

The photographs come from two photographers, two books, and two ways of seeing India. Some are by Englishman Frederic Chester, from the book The Wellspring of the Aryan Race. The others, illustrations to The Chaste Secrets, by Dr. (Mrs.) Amalfitano, were taken by the Argentine photographer Eduardo “Lorito” Lozano. I think they complement each other, even if the complementing takes place in a savage realm, full of mirrors and heat. The faces, however, are noble and indifferent, as if they know something that we don’t. As if they’ve come to accept something—perhaps after a millennial struggle—that we likely would not. Cherniakovski’s face was contorted… I remember that it was winter and it was pouring rain. The Pons sisters, Javier Oyarzún, Fuenzalida, and I were all there, talking Rilke. Cherniakovski arrived ten minutes late. He was carrying a slide projector. The projector was wet and so was he. Not bothering to dry himself off, he plugged in the projector and began to show the slides. There was no need to close the curtains: low black clouds covered the sky. Rain streaked the windows. That’s a Brahmin, said Cherniakovski. Shot of a man with white hair and a white beard, dark skin, dark eyes, lips parted as if in conversation with the man on the other side of the lens. Cherniakovski sucked in air through his nose. Then came photographs of villages and cities, though it was hard to tell which was which. Boys in shorts, Talcahuano, said Javier Oyarzún. I searched for Cherniakovski’s face in the semidarkness. His expression was stern and his eyes were glued to the screen. The Brahmin, whispered Cherniakovski. Again we saw the old man with the white beard, now sitting on a stone. Then a bright-red bus with white stripes, packed to the brim, and the statue of a god in a shrine by the side of the road. The god’s eyes were green. The projector made a sound like an eggbeater and between slides the screen went blank: a weirdly illuminated stretch of wall. Some of us lit cigarettes. Cherniakovski said: that’s a Brahmin, do you know what he’s doing? His tone of voice made us shudder for some inexplicable reason. The rain seemed to fall inside the workshop. When we tried to look closer, the slide was gone. Encore, said Javier Oyarzún, but now other snapshots of the city’s streets and inhabitants appeared. Indians eating in markets, old women with goods for sale on the ground, beggars in black Ray-Bans. Outside the rain literally lashed the walls. On the screen: a road, the old Brahmin, and the photographer’s shadow. Then another photograph, closer up, the Brahmin casting a sideway glance at the lens with an apologetic smile. In the next one, the Brahmin’s back was to the photographer and he was walking toward a city that could be glimpsed on the horizon. The city was barely visible and the air was dirty, stung with smoke and fog. There were five or six more slides until the old man disappeared around a bend. Cherniakovski coughed. What is the Brahmin doing? he asked. After some discussion, all we could say was that the Brahmin was walking toward a city. Calcutta? asked Javier Oyarzún. Bombay, said Cherniakovski. And the old man wasn’t just walking, he was staring at the ground. Why? So he doesn’t kill anything. Not even a single ant. Which is why the trip takes so long when he travels by foot—and these saints only travel by foot, I think, though I can’t swear to it. A fifteen-mile walk can take four days, but they don’t care. These people would rather die than hurt a butterfly. Now look at this. We sighed and turned our eyes to the screen again. We were definitely better off with Rilke. A room in India. Candles burning and faces emerging from the darkness as if from a black pool, smiling at the camera. Women? No, men wearing saris, their eyes made up. Transvestites, said Javier Oyarzún. Eunuchs, came Cherniakovski’s voice from the rear of the workshop. I looked at him. His eyes stared, dazzled by the halo of light. The eunuchs were having a party. In a corner of the room, a boy. He’s naked. A man with long white hair ties the boy’s little testicles with a yellow ribbon. Cherniakovski let the white light linger on the wall. Now they go ahead and castrate him, he said. The operation is performed by the eunuchs’ guru. We saw the skinny face of the boy. Ten, maybe eleven. Skinny and smiling. And Gabriela Mistral is dead, we heard Cherniakovski say in a soft, very dangerous voice. On this detail I must insist: his voice was as lethal as a razor-sharp boomerang, and so real that I ducked my head. Where the hell did you get these photographs? asked Javier Oyarzún, shrinking back in his seat, horrified. Cherniakovski didn’t reply. He lit a cigarette and sat down in one of the many empty chairs. The projector kept running on its own. Its rattle gradually meshed with the sound of the rain. The rain seemed to say: get outside and enjoy your youth. Indians walking, working, eating, sleeping, but especially Indians walking. As if the slides were stuck… With my head on fire I took a last look at the screen. I seemed to see Juan Cherniakovski there, very dirty, his hair longer, smoking a cigarette and walking in the crowd. But probably it was just another Indian.

Bibiano Macaduck’s Lecture at the Cortapalos Club of Concepción

When the war was over, Cherniakovski left the country. I guess he was looking for adventure or a break or he was trying to wipe the visions of delirium from his head. The fact is that he went to one of those Latin American cities that do their best to simulate hell. It had it alclass="underline" gunmen, beggars, whores, child exploitation, everything you could ask for. Cherniakovski moved in with a reporter. In those days, of course, his name wasn’t Cherniakovski. Let’s say he went by Víctor Díaz. At first he lived a relatively quiet life. Maybe that was because he never went out. Víctor Díaz was a homebody. He got up late, past noon, brewed himself some coffee, and took his time drinking it. According to the reporter, Víctor Díaz wrote poems, short ones and not many of them, but all very polished, as was the norm among his old friends from Concepción. If you were born in the forties, you wrote short poems. If you were born in the fifties, you wrote epics. If you were born in the sixties, you wrote flatlined electroencephalograms. Ha ha, that’s a joke. Anyway: Víctor Díaz went back to writing little poems and he left the reporter’s house only to buy food and the like. Until one night he agreed to go out partying with some friends (the reporter’s friends) and he was introduced to the red-light district. Bad news. His eyes, which had seemed to soften in the peace and quiet, grew sharp again. His whole body was on fire after that first night. The next week, he ventured out again, but this time alone. And every night after that. According to the reporter, Víctor Díaz was asking to be stabbed or shot, but you and I know how tough Cherniakovski was. The lucky bastard! End result: he took a prostitute as a lover. She was fifteen or sixteen, and she had a twelve-year-old brother. The pimps of the red-light district wanted to sell the kid. Whether as a rent boy or as fresh meat for organ transplants, it’s not clear. Both were lucrative prospects. Víctor Díaz inhaled all the information he got from his lover like an addict going through withdrawal. There are men, I swear, who have some mysterious—even supernatural—ability to get their hands on any kind of weapon in any situation. Víctor Díaz was one of them. One night, he turned up with a Spanish Luger and he shot two pimps and three bodyguards. The sight of blood went to his head. Though according to other versions, he only killed one person. And I have a strong hunch of my own: the dead man was the prostitute’s father (though not the little brother’s). Either way, a crime was committed. There was blood. And it would all have turned into your typical tropical catastrophe were it not for the woman in this story. We can thank our lucky stars that the teenage prostitute had more sense and smarts than anyone could have imagined, because otherwise Víctor Díaz would be dead. Though we have our doubts about that. Anyway: the girl hid him, and we can guess that sooner or later they left the country. The prostitute, her little brother, and Víctor Díaz. The latter had contacts, and it seems that his companions came along for the ride. The three of them set off for some European country. Did Víctor Díaz marry his teen lover? Did the little brother go to school, did he make a place for himself in that strange and extraordinary culture? Did he learn to speak French, English, German? What was Víctor Díaz’s victory, exactly? Was it finding them a home in a suburb of Development? We’ll never be able to answer these questions with full confidence. Víctor Díaz got them settled, and after a while he left again. International terrorism was summoning our compatriot to other tasks…