I found that all emotions began with the fetal position — intense depression, extreme defense, hiding from the world — to arrive at what I called “the euphoric crucifix,” joy expressed with the trunk erect and arms spread out as if to embrace the infinite. Between these two positions was the full range of human emotions, just as all human language stood between a firmly closed mouth and a fully open mouth, just as everything from selfishness to generosity, from defense to surrender, existed between a closed fist and an open hand. The body was a living book. On the right side, ties with the father and his ancestors were expressed; on the left side, ties with the mother. In the feet was childhood. In the knees was the charismatic expression of male sexuality; in the hips, the expression of feminine sexual desire; in the neck, the will; in the chin, vanity. In the pelvis, courage or fear. In the solar plexus, joy or sadness. This is not the place to describe everything that I discovered during this epoch. To deepen this knowledge, I did what many do: I began teaching what I did not know. I started a silent theater class. And, while teaching, I learned a great deal. (Years later, I became convinced that the healer who is not sick cannot help his patient. In trying to heal another, one heals oneself.)
My best student was an English teacher in a boys’ boarding school who had a monstrous but extraordinary physique. He was extremely thin, with a head that looked as if it had been crushed from the sides; even seen from the front, his face looked like a profile. His name was Daniel Emilfork. He had been an accomplished dancer. For sentimental reasons he had tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train; he had survived but lost the heel of one foot. No longer able to dance as he used to, for a few select admirers he would dance to Bach and Vivaldi records in his apartment, balancing on his good foot, moving his trunk, arms, and mutilated leg. Some friends took me to see him. I fell into ecstasy: here was the perfect actor for my silent theater. I suggested he collaborate with me. Daniel, earnestly melodramatic, told me, “I have suffered martyrdom beyond the stage. If you propose that I act in the manner you have described, you come as an angel to transform my life. I shall abandon the boarding school and dedicate myself body and soul to following your instructions. However, you must know that I’m a homosexual. I do not want any misunderstandings between us.”
Around that time, the French film Children of Paradise had come to Chile. Seeing it, I realized I had invented something that had already existed for a long time: pantomime. I immediately christened the future group Teatro Mímico and started looking for beautiful young women to join the company while at the same time satisfying my sexual needs. At first, everything went very well. But after a while, I was astonished to find that the women stopped coming, one after another. I discovered with dismay that Daniel, apparently in love with me, was driving them away out of jealousy. I asked him to explain why what began as sweet wine should so quickly turn to vinegar; I ended up expelling him from the company. Emilfork, determined to continue his life in the theater, asked the directors of the theater school at the Catholic University to grant him an audition. They agreed to his urgent request, because the fame of his talent had spread across all cultural circles.
The audition took place in the school’s small theater. There was a creaky wooden stage with burlap curtains in front of twenty seats. The directors, designers, and actors in this group were amateurs belonging to high society. They wore gray suits, ties, and their severely groomed hair shone. They told Emilfork to lie as if dead, and then, little by little, interpret the birth of life. My former friend, without giving anyone time to stop him, stripped naked and fell to the floor. He remained as he had fallen. Still, like a stone, apparently not breathing. A minute passed, then two, five, ten, fifteen, it seemed as if Daniel would stay there forever as a corpse; the examiners begun to fidget in their seats. After twenty minutes they began whispering among themselves, fearing that the actor had suffered a heart attack. They were about to get up when a slight tremor began in Emilfork’s right foot, then grew more and more and spread throughout his body. His breathing, which had been unobservable, was now growing in volume and deepening until it became the gasping of a beast. Now Daniel, as if in an epileptic fit, dragged himself into each corner of the stage, uttering deafening howls. The energy that possessed him kept on increasing, seeming limitless. With flaming eyes and an erect penis, he now began to take huge leaps, climbing up the curtains, which soon broke free of their rods. Emilfork then shook the wooden walls that surrounded the stage. They shattered into pieces. Next, with incredible strength, he began unpinning the floorboards and waving them around as weapons. Then he jumped into the audience. The honorable members of the theater school fled, squeaking like mice, leaving the deranged actor locked inside. His screams were heard throughout the building for an hour. Then they died down. There was a long silence, followed by a few discrete footsteps inside the door. They opened it, trembling. Daniel Emilfork emerged, impeccably dressed, well groomed, calm, with his usual gestures like those of a Russian prince. He looked at the group from the heights of a profound contempt. “You bunch of ninnies, you’ll never know what life is, and so you won’t know what real theater is. You don’t deserve me. I withdraw my application for admission.” And he not only left the school, but he left Chile. He moved to France, never spoke Spanish again, and lived unceasingly in the world of theater and film, enduring innumerable privations until he finally achieved fame.
We were all affected by Emilfork’s departure to France. Some of us, more than others, felt asphyxiated living in Santiago de Chile. Television was not yet fully commercialized, and one had the sensation that nothing new could happen in this city so far from Europe that was surrounded by a ring of mountains that felt like prison walls. There were always the same people, always the same streets. I knew that there were great mimes in France: Ettienne Decroux, Jean Louis Barrault, and above all, Marcel Marceau. If I wanted to improve my art I should do as Emilfork, drop everything and leave. But I had some very close ties that kept me there. First of all, there were my friends, girlfriends, and my commitments to the Teatro Mímico, which had already held some successful performances. Then there was my ambition to test the effectiveness of the poetic act on a large scale. Finally, deep down in the shadows, there was my desire to take revenge on my parents, to rub their faces in the suffering they had caused me through their lack of understanding. I discovered that rancor can be as constraining as love and entered into a foggy period during which I was unable to make decisions; a deep inertia had taken possession of my soul. I spent the days locked in my studio, reading. I excused this manner of killing time by telling myself that in order to know an author, one had to read all his works. At a forced pace I read everything by Kafka, Dostoyevsky, García Lorca, André Breton, H. G. Wells, Jack London, and oddly enough, Bernard Shaw.
First reunion. From left to right: Daniel Emilfork, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jacques Sternberg, the incendiary anarchist Fedorov, Fernando Arrabal, Topor, Lis (Arrabal’s wife), and Toyen (surrealist painter).
One night my poet friends showed up, almost too drunk to stand, dressed in black and carrying a funeral wreath with my name on it. They lit candles and sat around me, pretending to cry while drinking even more wine. Reality was dancing again: at two in the morning, someone knocked frantically on the door. We opened it. My father walked in barefoot, waving a lamp.