The Days of the Rainbow (7 page)

THE YOUTH
of the Pro-FESES movement, who want to unite the high school students of all Santiago, think that the fact that my father’s missing is an excellent reason to take over the school, and they have summoned me to a meeting at the library.

I follow my old man’s instructions and tell them I don’t get into politics. According to Patricia Bettini, this isn’t getting into politics because it’s about one’s father, about one’s teacher.

“Not yours,” I tell her, wrapping my scarf around my neck.

But I immediately regret having said that, because her father was taken a few years ago and got his collarbone broken.

I know by heart the principles of the high school movement—destabilize the dictatorship by provoking riots. This would give the impression that the
country is ungovernable. They also want to unite all those who’re against Pinochet—whether or not they belong to a political party—even those who only want to make trouble, just for the fun of it.

We all have taken to saying some phrases in English. We learn them through songs or from our teacher, Rafael Paredes. He’s leaving next month for Portugal, because he was hired to make a movie. My old man thinks this is the perfect time for Mr. Paredes to go to Portugal, Greece, or anywhere else in the world, because he knows very well that the cops are after him and all his family.

My old man and the English teacher are very close, even though they have an eternal dispute. They can never agree on who’s the greatest man in history. My daddy votes for Aristotle—in whom, he claims, everything begins and ends—and Paredes for Shakespeare. Deep in my heart, I tend to agree with my teacher, Paredes, but how could I be against my daddy?

Of course, both of them are pretty “daring.”

It’s less apparent in my father, because he’s a calmer person. Paredes can be as imposing as an opera singer.

If my English teacher went into hiding, they would catch him in no time. He’s more than six feet tall and has a deep voice that resonates against the school’s old walls every time he walks into the
classroom. He teaches in the mornings, and nights he plays with a group of actors. He’s sort of impressive, that’s why he always plays kings, commanders, or ministers. When he walks into the classroom, he throws the attendance book on his desk and delivers lines from Shakespeare’s plays. We have to memorize and then interpret them in writing, and hand in the paper the following day.

The last one was, “Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.” We have to squeeze our brains to guess what Shakespeare meant by it. What happens is that Macbeth is eager to be king, and the fastest way is by assassinating the king himself. Just like Pinochet, let’s say. But it’s not easy for him to make up his mind, even though his wife eggs him on. She’s even more wicked than Macbeth.

Professor Paredes calls Shakespeare “Uncle Bill.”

Actually, that’s the last quotation to be included in the English test we’ll have after the opening of
The Cave of Salamanca
, and Paredes has promised us that he’ll be “compassionate” when grading them if we do well in the play.

After the test, he’ll say good-bye to the school until October, provided that he’s allowed to come back to Chile, because the movie he’ll be filming in Europe is somehow “daring.”

A “daring” movie is one that’s not going to please the regime.

The weather in Santiago’s still pretty bad. The drizzle sticks on our cheeks, and the smog makes us cough. We take shelter at the bus stop on the corner to smoke cigarettes, with no desire to go home yet.

Next to us there’s a boy with long hair and a blue raincoat who catches our attention when he looks in the opposite direction from which the bus is coming. Suddenly, he takes a stack of flyers out of his bag and hands one to each of us in the group. Then he climbs on the first bus leaving and winks at us.

The blue flyer says, “Action,” and it has instructions on how to take over the school as a protest in support of the teachers who have been laid off. I believe we all would feel ashamed of throwing the flyer on the ground, so we end up putting it in our backpacks.

THE LITTLE MAN
who rang the doorbell of the house, making more noise than a train driver, had a head of coarse hair that made him look three inches taller and wore eyeglasses with a thick frame. His mustache fell disheveled over his lips, as if no two hairs rhymed with each other. His outfit didn’t look any better—a black suit polished by the years that shone here and there, in contrast with a few wine and ketchup stains, something that Magdalena de Bettini didn’t notice at first sight.

“Sir?” Magdalena inquired tentatively, surprised by the man’s puzzling appearance.

“Is this Adrián Bettini’s home?”

“Yes, it is.”

“The great advertising agent Adrián Bettini’s?”

“So they say.”

The little man bent forward in an old-fashioned bow.

“I need to talk to him.”

“What about?” she asks, trying to push the door a little so that the man, on his tiptoes, can’t see her husband in the back of the living room.

“It’s confidential.”

“I’m his wife. You can talk to me in all confidence.”

“Confidential, madam, confidential.”

“Could you at least tell me on behalf of whom you come …?”

The man cleared his throat while wiping his forehead with a gray handkerchief. Or a handkerchief that had once been white. Another thing that was difficult for her to discern.

“I come on behalf of young Nico Santos. My password is ‘Nicomachus.’ For more details—the Aristotelian ethics. May I come in now?”

The woman opened the door and the little man slipped in like a lizard. In no time, he was in front of Bettini, who replied to the man’s Versaillesque bow with a discreet movement of his neck.

“Mr. Bettini, I presume?” the man said, with a smile that raised his thick mustache up to his nose.

“Yes,” the ad agent said.

“It’s my pleasure meeting you, sir. My name is Raúl Alarcón, but my friends call me Little Kinky
Flower. I’m five-and-a-half feet tall, and I’m a poet and a composer.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Nico Santos sent me. You know him—Nicomachus.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Yesterday at school, Nico told me that you’re going to undertake the ad campaign for the
No
with a joyful approach, that you’re going to tell us all that when the
No
wins, joy will come back to Chile.”

Bettini made eye contact with his wife and saw her put a finger to her temple, signaling that their surprising guest had a loose screw.

“That’s what I’d like to do. But up to now, I haven’t gotten too far. I don’t even have the campaign jingle.”

“That’s the reason why Nico—Nicomachus—sent me to see you. I have the jingle for the
No
that you’re looking for.”

“Did you compose it?”

“Oh, no. Johann Strauss did. But I wrote the lyrics.”

“Sing it, please.”

Alarcón moved his head in different directions like pecking the living room with his eyes.

“Piano
habemus
?”

“
Habemus
,” Bettini said, sensing that his face had suddenly gone pale.

He led the man to his studio, opened the lid of the baby grand, and invited his guest to sit on the stool. Before sitting, the little man cleaned the plush of the bench with the sleeve of his jacket. He glided his fingers in a pair of scales and inhaled deeply before hitting the keys again in a thundering chord.

There followed a spirited interpretation of “Blue Danube.” Then the man stopped abruptly and fixed his gaze defiantly on his host.

“D’ya feel the melody?”

Despite the paleness that was growing on his face, Bettini couldn’t help smiling at the colloquial “d’ya feel …,” so improper coming from someone who looked like a character from the Spanish Golden Age picaresque.

“I feel it,” he said cautiously. “Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube.’ ”

“Can you think of a single man or woman in this country who couldn’t sing this tune?”

“I doubt it. It’s a pretty catchy tune.”

Alarcón cheerfully struck his thighs. “Catchy. Exactly. It’s very catchy.”

“I’m curious to know what all of this is leading up to.”

The little man’s eyes lit up. “Dude, you’re getting into it, aren’t you?”

If, awhile before, Bettini couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Little Kinky Flower in his timeless
outfit, now he couldn’t believe his ears hearing such broad anthology of Chilean slang.

“I’m getting into it, Alarcón. Very much so.”

“Now, feel this,” he said. He cleared his throat and licked his lips. “Excuse my voice, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

After a brief and florid piano introduction, Raúl Alarcón, aka Tiny, also called Little Kinky Flower by his friends, delivered the following verses to the tune of Strauss’s “Blue Danube.”

“May I interrupt you for a moment, Mr. Alarcón?”

“Sure, Mr. Bettini.”

“I have to make a phone call right now.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll be back in a second.”

Bettini dialed Nico Santos’s number as if he were stabbing him.

“Nico?”

“Don Adrián!”

“He’s here, in my house. Alarcón, I mean.”

“Tiny?”

Bettini looked at the man, who made a friendly gesture at him with his hand.

“Yes, Tiny.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think that if you ever send me another mad man like him, I won’t let you walk into my house again. And I’ll forbid Patricia from seeing you.”

“But what’s the matter, Don Adrián?”

“You know what’s wrong? That in this country there’s no room for more foolishness. And you sent the king of fools to my place.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Didn’t you want joy, Don Adrián? There it is. ‘No, no, no, no, no, noooooooooo …’ I find it awesome!”

Bettini hung up with a somber expression, and with his head hanging down, he walked toward Alarcón, who was eagerly waiting for him.

“So, Mr. Bettini? What do you think about my ‘Waltz of the
No
’?”

The ad agent let each syllable drop like a stone from his mouth: “Awesome, Mr. Alarcón. Awesome.”

“Thank you. But I only take credit for half of the work. The other half comes from Strauss’s talent.”

“Alarcón and Strauss.”

“A winning duo.”

“Strauss and you make a great team.”

“Like identical twins.”

“As thick as thieves.”

“Exactly.”

Bettini grabbed the man by his neck and without much effort lifted him off the piano stool. Keeping him up in the air, he took the man to the door and gave him a final push.

“Get out!”

Only then did he realize that Patricia Bettini, holding the key in her hand, had just witnessed the unusual scene.

IN GYM CLASS
we are jumping over a pommel horse, rolling over the mat, and then running back to the end of the line to start all over.

We’re wearing white T-shirts and shorts, and the exercise is not enough for us to overcome the cold weather. We rub our thighs and forearms. The teacher blows a referee whistle every time he wants us to change the pace of our jumps and somersaults. He should be feeling warm in his blue sweatshirt. Next to him, there’s a boy about our age. The teacher makes him watch everything we do. After a while, he asks me to make room for him before me in the line.