Read The Days of the Rainbow Online
Authors: Antonio Skarmeta
The Days of the Rainbow (19 page)
I join the passengers saying good-bye to their relatives on the platform. A loader puts an old trunk in the luggage storage. He wears a headband with the drawing of a rainbow.
I fear that Patricia has changed her mind. For girls, the decision to make love for the first time is like something from a Greek tragedy. Or at least from a soap opera. They put so many things into their heads, both at home and school, that then they go through life walking on their tiptoes, trying not to break eggs.
And they’re right. Love always leaves a mark on them. Even scars. That’s why it’s weird that Patricia Bettini has decided to be with me. We still have two months left before finishing high school. And Pinochet still has to call for free elections. That will take some time. Like one year, I think. She said to me, “I want to be with you, intimately.”
But not in Santiago.
Santiago is the school, the church, Don Adrián’s unemployment, the cars without license plates in
front of her house, the tear-gas bombs, Professor Paredes’s absence.
She wants me to understand.
It’s fine. To me, loving her is not a matter of geography. Although I’m the least romantic guy on earth, I also like a place where the eye isn’t always bumping into buildings and TV antennas.
I feel like being near the sea.
A sea to see her. Valparaíso.
But me, what’s really me is downtown Santiago. I’m thrilled that the developers didn’t knock down the colonial church and that they had to create a detour in the Alameda to preserve it.
“That’s the way to treat a lady,” Professor Santos said.
When they first announced that it would be demolished, my dad and I went out into the streets to protest along with the Franciscan priests.
My daddy delivered a speech near the fountain in the Pergola of Flowers.
He said that the church was the humble and sweet Francis of Assisi and the government of Pinochet was the wolf.
“Gubbio’s wolf,”
*
he said.
I don’t know where he gets those ideas.
He’s bad at keeping quiet.
But he barely allows me to breathe.
So the cops came. First, they threw just a little bit of water at us. One gets used to their water. In the worst case situation, if the hose stream is too strong, it may push you against a wall and you may break your head. The best thing to do is to throw yourself to the ground.
So they can soak you. So they can leave you there drenched like a dog.
Professor Paredes used to say, bending down under the stream, “Relax and enjoy it.”
Tear-gas bombs are a different matter. If one explodes in your face, you can end up blind.
But I’ve given all my life to downtown Santiago. Eighteen years. Lastarria Street. Villavicencio. The soda stands, with the vendor girls, with as much makeup as cabaret dancers.
Now the driver shouts that the bus will leave in three minutes.
I squeeze the hundred-peso coins I have in my pocket and try to see if there’s a pay phone nearby.
Right at that moment, Patricia Bettini shows up.
And as she comes closer, running toward me, I feel my heart pumping stronger than ever.
It seems as if she’s becoming smaller and slimmer inside my hug. Her brown hair falls loose on her shoulders and there’s not a trace of the school discipline
of bobby pins, headbands, and clips that she uses to prevent her hair from flooding over her face.
Today she’s not wearing the school uniform.
She has on a tight red polo shirt, one size too small.
Her breasts protrude under the fabric, and she’s showing cleavage.
Embellished with furious red lipstick, her lips perfectly match her shirt. It’s a mouth screaming, “Kiss me, bite me.” I swallow. I scratch her cheek with the few hairs that have sprouted in my chin. I breathe in deeply the smell of her skin. The aroma of tropical fruit from her hair gel makes me dizzy.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
She wants to know if I’m ready. I’ve set out on this flight. I live in the country of the
No
, and every one of my nerves knows that nobody will ever take it away from me. I feel it in the pulse of my wrists, in my temples, beating riotously.
In my erection.
Shoot! Democracy is so erotic!
“I’m ready,” I say, only to not say all that’s unutterable.
She puts the ticket in my shirt pocket and then touches my forehead with two fingers, like a doctor who needs to check if you have a fever.
“Then, Nicomachus Santos, your tickets to Valparaíso!”
*
Gubbio is a medieval town in Umbria, where it is said that St. Francis tamed the wolf that terrorized its inhabitants.
PATRICIA BETTINI
shows Nico Santos the notebook with a blue cover where her father was writing his notes for the
No
campaign.
A horse canters in the prairie; it’s the horse of freedom.
A cab’s windshield wipers move; it’s the
No
of freedom.
A heart pumps, systole and diastole; it’s the rhythm of freedom.
An old lady buys a tea bag at Don Aníbal’s store; it’s the tea of freedom.
A policeman hits a student on his head; it’s the hour of freedom. Song:
I don’t want him, Daddy; I don’t want him, Mommy; I don’t want him in English, or in
Mapudungun; or in tango; or in bolero; or in fox-trot; or in cumbia or chachacha; I don’t want him; I don’t want him. What I want is freedom.
Christopher Reeve is in Chile. Film him—he came to protect the actors who have received death threats. Have him say something. Something like—“Okay, folks, you’re right, remember that the vote is secret and that Chile being a free country depends on you.”
Bravo, Superman; in English, he speaks of freedom.
Film Jane Fonda. I don’t know where you may find her, but I heard her saying on the radio—“During all these years, the pain of Chile has been our pain, now the future of Chile is in your hands.”
Let’s include Jane with the boots song—“These boots are made for walking, and they will walk all over you; walk, boots; walk over Pinochet; walk, walk, walk, walk—toward liberty.”
And let’s use some cueca—“Tiquitiquití, tiquitiquitá, you say ‘no’ and freedom will light up.”
And do not forget Violeta
*
—it gave me the alphabet, and with it the words that I think
and declare; it gave me the “N” and gave me the “O”; it gave me the freedom to say “No.”
They broke his hands, they fractured his femur; he was shot seventy-two times; they punched his belly. Freedom hurts. (No need to say whom we’re talking about; everybody knows; it’s better if people react by themselves.)
The cops don’t allow Serrat to get off the plane. He shuts himself in the lavatory, and records a cassette with a journalist. “For Freedom” (play that song).
The young couple looks around; they collect coins and paper bills of very little value. They want to pay for a motel room. Freedom’s cheap love.
Me, Bettini, I ask Death to wait for a while; we need to pass September. This is my last wish—after October 5, I won’t ask for anything else. I only want freedom to wait with me for that date.
Girl dressed in black crosses Apoquindo Avenue. It’s the height of spring and her thighs swing to the rhythm of freedom.
Over the head of the bearded king, a cardboard crown tilts; freedom is coming.
That hand waving
No
wants freedom.
A carpenter saws a piece of wood; the sawdust that jumps is freedom.
The woman in love plucks a daisy; freedom loves me, loves me not.
The first spelling book—Dad loves Mom; the boy loves his cat; the girl loves freedom.
No bird or angel flies higher than freedom.
The Pacific Ocean elevates blue cathedrals up to the clouds; waves up and down, toward freedom.
Don’t tell me less, don’t tell me more, tell me just the right word—freedom.
Let’s see those palms, little ones, setting the beat, once more, clip, clap, clip, clap, once more, freedom.
Nico leaves Bettini’s notebook on the motel room’s nightstand.
But Patricia wants him to read one more time the prophecy—she uses this word—
The young couple looks around; they collect coins and paper bills of very little value. They want to pay for a motel room. Freedom’s cheap love
.
She asks him to help her with her bra.
Nico unhooks it, as if he were an expert.
He’s facing the back of the woman he loves. Her skin extends, pale, and for the first time he
dares to touch with his lips a mole on her shoulder blade. The shoulder blade. Anatomy.
She turns toward him. Now her breasts are facing his mouth.
She seems to have sprouted up from that excited cloud floating outside the window.
She looks serious.
He smiles.
Together, they had put together the fifteen thousand pesos. A room for three hours. “Don’t fall asleep, kids, or else I’ll have to charge you an extra ten thousand. The two rum and Cokes are included.”
Freedom
, he thinks.
And his tongue climbs up her neck, all the way up to Patricia Bettini’s mouth, and he sinks his tongue between her teeth.
She closes her eyes.
There has to be a way of doing it right.
A way to do it in style.
Like they had seen it in the movies.
Like they had imagined it so many times, amid wet sheets.
With the slow moaning, the swelling of the breasts, the erudite bulging of the virile member, the moistening of the belly, soaking it, his tongue must know how to find the exact spot, besiege it with the dexterity of a bullfighter, the planet’s tiny electrified spot.
He has to stay calm; everything is too fast. His hands squeeze and scratch, jumping from one side to another other, like two scared rabbits.
It would be necessary to be thirty years old, and to be a skin expert, to have a doctorate in breasts, to give pleasure to the beloved Patricia Bettini, pale and warm under the faint daylight that filters through the flower-print curtain—daisies, sunflowers, rhododendrons—in the oppressive shade of that hotel room, afflicted by an insolent sun that seems to want to set the port on fire.
Patricia leans against the padded green headboard, separates her knees, and lets the middle finger and forefinger of her right hand go down her belly.
She caresses the spot, the instant, the glass of sparkling champagne, while her other hand goes to Nico Santos’s nape.
Gently, but firmly, the other hand leads Nico’s head to her belly, defeats him, and the young student obeys, brushes against her straight brown hair, and on this journey he breathes, deeply, the smell of her victorious secretions.
Skillful, he touches with the tip of his tongue the small tiger hidden in that abrupt vegetation, darker than it appeared in his dreams, a shade wilder than the most Italian, placid brown of her mane, and curled as from a sudden electricity.
Up to this point there hadn’t been words, not even monosyllables, only the saliva on the skin, the rubbing of the thighs against the sheets, but now Nico Santos hears a word.
Patricia Bettini whispers “yes,” and repeats “yes,” and she says “yes” once and again, and “like that,” “like that,” and her fingers squeeze, electrified, Nico Santos’s skull, and she doesn’t say anything else, she doesn’t say “yes,” she doesn’t say “like that.” She remains ferociously quiet and focused, and she brutally clenches her teeth, and what Nico can’t see, what he doesn’t know yet, is that Patricia Bettini’s crying.
*
Violeta Parra (Chilean songwriter). What follows is an adaptation of her song “Gracias a la vida.”
PATRICIA DRAWS
the printed curtain and opens the small window. The motel is high on the hill. She leans her forehead on the wooden window frame, tilts her neck, and looks out at the distance. The noises from the port sound stronger—cranes depositing huge crates on the ship decks, honks, ambulance alarms, the neighbors’ radios playing the hits of the week.
“Come.”
I walk over to her. She remains in the same position. Without looking at me, she takes my arm and puts it around her shoulders. She kisses my hand. It’s weird, because she’s far away and, at the same time, very much here. A divided body. Beautiful, loving, warm.
