The Musical Brain: And Other Stories

The Topiary Bears of Parque Arauco

THE PHOTOS WILL BEAR ME out: on either side of the entrance to the mall on Avenida Kennedy are topiary forms, clipped from a plant with small, dark (perennial) leaves, which represent:

On one side, a perfectly proportioned polar bear, thirty-five feet high, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola in his right paw (the bottle is to scale, i.e., huge). Some way off, there are two smaller forms, clipped from the same plant, representing two bear cubs, one standing and reaching out toward the full-grown bear, the other sitting on the ground but also looking at the adult.

On the other side, at the opposite end of the mall’s façade, about a hundred yards away, another big bear, just like the first, with the same bottle of Coca-Cola, and a single cub, but this one is up against the adult with his front paws outstretched as if he wants to be picked up or is trying to reach the bottle.

The sequence of figures sketches out a little story. In the first scene, you might say that the bear is appearing before his cubs and saying, “Look what I’ve brought.” In the second, one of the cubs has rushed up to him and is trying to scale his big body of green leaves, reaching out for the bottle, which the father is holding aloft as if to say, “Not yet.” The cub’s little brother has disappeared.

It’s a happy Laocoön, a living sculpture made from plants that grow and thrive and renew themselves. And since there are two sculptures, as opposed to the Laocoön, which is a single group, they suggest an outcome, a formula that divides the passion into installments. The formula of death has become the formula of life: the formula of Coca-Cola, which is at once secret and universal, a secret within everyone’s reach.

The cars whiz past on the avenue, anonymous, indifferent. The bears are a fleeting vision, so fleeting there’s hardly a fraction of a second between the two groups, as in a flip book. The drivers, concentrating on the hellish traffic in this part of the city, don’t notice them. But the children do: it’s a favorite scene; they press up against the windows to see it. If they regularly pass this way, they know when to start looking out: a bit before the mall so they can savor the anticipation and be sure not to miss anything. If not, they’re taken by surprise, but even so they understand what it’s about, they interpret, they get the message, even the youngest.

It’s a universal language, and universal languages are aimed at children, not at adults. But in this case there is something more than a message, and something more than a language. The children passing by in cars or joyfully entering the mall, led by their parents, are not the only beneficiaries. There are others: the invisible, hidden children who are the protagonists of this fable, the fable of the topiary bears of Parque Arauco.

When the sun rises over the massive Andes looming beyond Las Condes, poor children from all the slums of Santiago come with empty plastic Coca-Cola bottles, one bottle each (no more than one: this is an unwritten rule). It’s a daily pilgrimage; they come from near and far, some from very far away, with such humble little steps it seems they’ll never get anywhere and yet they cover enormous distances. Some have to set out well before dawn. As day breaks, they converge on the mall opposite Parque Arauco, but not all together, not in groups; some delay their arrival, or hurry up, or stop and wait patiently, quietly, giving way to another child who got there first. One by one, they approach the bears. .

And there, in that dawn communion, a little miracle of charity is repeated over and over. A poor child approaches one of the bears (either one) and raises his or her old, dented, empty Coca-Cola bottle in both hands. With the slightest rustle of vegetation, the bear moves his head of green leaves, and fixes his gaze on the child. Without an expression, without a smile, perhaps without even what, in this world, we refer to as a gaze, he seems to gauge the child’s poverty, to understand and love that need. And then, with movements of infinite precision, he tips his big bottle to fill the child’s, mouth to mouth, without spilling a single drop. Clasping the treasure that refreshes, the child withdraws, and hurries home, making way for the next in line. And so they all have their turn, all the poor children of Santiago. Not one goes away empty-handed, because the big magic bottles of the topiary bears are never empty.

There are no bad dawns. There is no drought, neither in winter nor in summer. And when the day barges in and the big orange buses begin to discharge the multitudes who come to work in the mall’s stores and restaurants, the last of the poor children is already far away, with his bottle full of bubbling Coca-Cola, and the bears resume their majestic stillness for the rest of the day.

Like a sundial, the giant tower of the Marriott throws its shadow, which falls like a friendly caress over one bear at a certain hour of the day, and then over the other. I’m in the Executive Lounge on the twenty-third floor, with nothing to do (I never have anything to do), drinking whiskey and thinking about the sublime reality of the world.