My father, determined to become the king of the neighborhood, hired more and more extravagant loudmouths to attract customers outside the shop door: a surgeon-clown stitching up a bloody doll with a dollar sign on its forehead (“El Combate forces prices down!”), a guillotine on which a magician decapitated fat men who represented exploitative businessmen, a dwarf with a booming voice dressed as Hitler (“War on high prices!”), and so on. Despite the prevalence of shoplifters he placed all the merchandise in piles on the tables, always wanting to give the impression of abundance. He set up a wooden counter with an opening in the center where he sat in plain view of customers using a sharp knife to cut thick cotton fabric according to patterns copied from American clothes. He hired girls who would sew the pieces of fabric together on the spot, making cheap articles of clothing that went directly from production to the consumer. He installed loudspeakers that played cheerful Spanish songs, always with lewd lyrics, at high volume: “Garnish the cock with cherries. While I put the moves on the hen. cinnamon, sugar, and cloves. ” Fascinated laborers filled the shop. Many came in carrying baskets. I was forced to go to El Combate after finishing my homework to keep watch on the hordes of customers. If I saw some wretch trying to hide a wool vest, skirt, or some other piece of clothing at the bottom of his basket I would give a sign to my father. Jaime would then leap over the counter in a single bound, fall on the thief, and demolish him with blows. The poor man, feeling culpable, would meekly accept his punishment without defending himself. If the thief was a woman he would deliver huge slaps, rip off her skirt, and push her out into the street with a single kick, her knickers about her ankles.
In no way whatsoever did I approve of my father’s violence. My insides tied in knots and my chest burned when I witnessed these bloody faces, accepting their punishment as if they were receiving the wrath of God. It was less serious for a man to have a broken tooth or nose than it was for a woman to have her naked buttocks and torn-off knickers, sometimes full of holes, revealed to the eyes of the mocking public. The poor woman would be paralyzed, overwhelmed by embarrassment, hands covering her crotch, unable to reach for the torn-off underwear to pull it back up. Someone had to come — a friend, a parent — and cover her with a jacket or shawl in order to remove her from the hostile crowd. Every time I signaled a thief with my index finger, a bitter taste invaded my mouth; I did not want to harm these people, who stole because they were hungry, but I wanted to betray my father even less. The boss had given me an order, and I had to obey it, even when I felt that I was the one who was being humiliated and whose flesh was being wounded. After each beating, I shut myself up in the bathroom to vomit.
My body, which contained so much guilt, so many suppressed tears, and so much nostalgia for Tocopilla, began to turn sorrow into fat. At age eleven I weighed a little over 100 kilograms. Overburdened, I had trouble lifting my feet off the ground; my shoes scraped the pavement as I walked, and I breathed with my mouth half open, struggling to draw in the air that resisted me, my formerly wavy hair falling limp and lackluster on my forehead. Having forgotten that above me there was a sky without end, I walked with my head hanging down, my only horizon the rough concrete sidewalk.
Sara appeared to notice my sadness. She came back from her mother’s house carrying a black-varnished wood box in her arms. “Alejandro, the holidays are over. In a month you’ll be able to go to school and make friends, but now you need something to keep you busy. Jashe gave me her son José’s violin, may he rest in peace. It will make her extremely happy if you learn it and do with this sacred instrument what my poor brother was not able to do: play us “The Blue Danube” during family suppers.”
I was forced to take lessons at the Musical Academy, which was run by a fanatical socialist in the basement of the Red Cross building. I had to walk all the way across Matucana to get there. Instead of being curved in the shape of a violin, the black box was rectangular like a coffin. Seeing me walk by the shoe shiners would jeer sarcastically, “He’s carrying a dead body! Gravedigger!” Blushing with shame, my head hunched over between my shoulders, I was not able to hide the funereal casket. They were correct: the violin that it contained was José’s remains. Not wishing to bury him, Jashe had made me into his vehicle. I was an empty vessel used to transport a lost soul. Or better, I was the gravedigger for my own soul. I carried it, dead, in this horrible case. After a month of lessons, during which the black notes seemed to me to be in mourning, I stopped in front of the shoe shiners and looked at them without saying a word. Their jeering grew to a deafening chorus. Slowly, their hilarity was drowned out by the sound of an enormous freight train the color of my violin case. I threw the coffin onto the tracks, where it was reduced to splinters by the oncoming locomotive. The ragged people, smiling, began gathering up the pieces to build a fire, paying no heed to me as I stood before them, shaken by age-old sobs. An old drunk walking out of the bar put a hand on my head and whispered hoarsely, “Don’t worry, boy, a naked virgin will light your way with a flaming butterfly.” Then he went to urinate, hidden in the shadow of a pole.
This old man, made into a prophet by wine, pulled me out of the abyss with a single sentence. He had shown me that poetry could emerge even at the bottom of the bog where I was buried. Jaime, in the same manner that he mocked all religions, was merciless with poets. “They talk about loving women, like that García Lorca, but they’re all queers.” Later on he broadened his contempt to include all the arts, literature, painting, theater, and singing. They were all despicable buffoons, social parasites, perverse narcissists who were starving to death.
A Royal typewriter languished in a corner of our apartment, covered with dust. I painstakingly cleaned it, sat in front of it, and began my struggle against the image of my father that occupied my mind as a gigantic presence. He looked at me with disdain: “Faggot!” Transitioning from submission into revolt, I furiously destroyed the mocking god in my mind and wrote my first poem. I still remember it:
The flower sings and disappears.
How can we complain?
Nighttime rain, an empty house,
My footprints on the path
Begin to fade away.
Poetry brought about a radical change in my behavior. I stopped seeing the world through the eyes of my father. I was allowed to attempt to be myself. However, to keep the secret, I burned my poems every day. My soul, naked and virginal, lit my path with a butterfly on fire.
Once I could write without feeling shame and without feeling that I was committing a crime I wanted to keep my poems and find someone to read them to. But my father’s power, his worship of strength, his contempt for weakness and cowardice, terrified me. How could I announce to him that he had a poet son? Late one night I awaited his return from El Combate, determined to confront his tiredness and bad mood. As was his custom, he arrived home with a wad of banknotes wrapped in newspaper. The first thing he said to me, bitterly, was, “Bring me alcohol! I have to disinfect this stink!” He threw the wrinkled, foul-smelling, dirty bills on his desk and sprayed a sanitizing cloud over them. Putting on surgeon’s gloves, he began to sort and count them. Occasionally, cursing, he flattened out greenish bills that looked to me like the cadavers of marine insects. “Put on some gloves, Alejandro, so you don’t catch something from this filth, and help me count them.” I got up the courage to begin my confession.