Where the Bird Sings Best

My Mother’s Roots

If Teresa got mad at God, it was God who got angry with Jashe, my mother’s mother. And along with God, all the Jews in Lodetz, in Lithuania. Her periods began — with mathematical precision — on the same day as those of Sara Luz, her mother, and of Shoske, her sister, revealing immediately the power to hold back such a sacred phenomenon, the pride of Hasidic women because it confirmed that their bodies were regulated by the same laws as the stars. Far away from the men, they would dance without underwear under the moon to allow the plasma to run down their legs and fertilize the land. Jashe confessed, amid tears and wails of joy, her love for the goy.

While her mother, breaking the law, sold plum brandy to the Jewish bankers, Jashe would stroll the streets of Vilna. For her, the smell of the city was like the most exciting of perfumes. Purely by chance, she ended up in front of the Municipal Theater, where Swan Lake was about to be put on by the Imperial Russian Ballet. She’d never seen any theater. Something irresistible made her buy a ticket, the cheapest. Feeling the lecherous stares of beardless Lithuanians with curled side-whiskers, she took her numbered seat in the last row without daring to raise her eyes from the floor. The music exploded, she heard the curtain go up, and then the pattering of steel taps like a confused rain. Little by little, among those uniform tapping feet, she distinguished different ones, coarse and at the same time delicate, in some strange way familiar to her.

A heatwave overwhelmed her belly and forced her to look toward the stage. She did not see the sets, the lights, the dance troupe, or the audience in their seats. All she saw was a gigantic male dancer with skin whiter than marble, with long golden curls, and blue eyes so potent that she could feel them near her face even though he was so far away — thousands of miles from the last row in the balcony, but nearer, much nearer than her own father.

Her sex palpitated with such intensity that, obeying its demands, she got up from her seat and, somewhere between a sleep-walking angel and a burning tree, whipped by an invisible tempest, she looked for the dressing rooms, entered the one that had a crippled Christ nailed to the door, caught the giant naked, and fixed on his member the miraculous gaze that comes only with total surrender. The Russian, himself enraptured, undressed her slowly. That small (Jashe was under five foot four), perfect body, that sex without labia — a docile line crowned by a triangle of savage shadow — engulfed him in such vertigo that for a few seconds the room turned upside-down, and he found himself hung like a chandelier on a floor transformed into a ceiling.

Alejandro Prullansky, without knowing it, had been waiting for this Jewish woman his entire life. Even though he had no experience, even though he had known only the love of men, he knew how to possess her, leading her many times to a state of frenzy on the flower-patterned sofa. Exhausted, he fell asleep in her arms. Jashe, observing his handsome, white foreskin with a tenderness that swelled in her like a river, and knowing she was a prisoner of the Law, ran away without leaving her name or address.

Luckily for the lovebirds, the success of the Imperial Ballet extended the season for several more weeks. My grandfather — first dancer, gold-medal recipient in every competition — was still there, circles under his eyes, desperate, waiting for her. Then Salomón, Jashe’s father, deposited her, pregnant, without luggage or money, right in front of the Municipal Theater. The traitor had been expelled from the village and symbolically buried in the cemetery, for which they filled a coffin with her clothes and personal possessions. Now for a week her family would toss ash on their heads, sit on the floor, and, with torn clothing, drink chicken soup. She would be wept over as if she were really dead.

Alejandro thanked the icon of the Virgin for such a prodigious gift and married Jashe in an Orthodox church, the bride dressed in white and the groom in black, like any Christian couple. With one difference: the groom wore boots of a gaudy red. When my grandmother asked him why he was wearing such scandalous footwear, she learned that the union of their two souls, which seemed like pure chance, had been in preparation for centuries.

As her husband told her the family saga that led him to wear red boots, Jashe too sought out the roots of her love. Led by the memory of her mother, she traveled through time and journeyed all the way to Spain, before the fatal year 1492, when because of that evil, ambitious, thieving witch, Isabel the Catholic — may she lose all her teeth in hell, all but one so it will ache eternally — Jews who did not accept conversion were expelled. Sara Luz, in the middle of the nineteenth century, listened to her father, Salvador Arcavi, lament his fate and curse the kings of Castile and Aragon every single day for depriving them of paradise.

Yes, Spain, before the marriage of those two anti-Semitic monarchs, before the State Police, before the Inquisition, was a paradise for Jews. Muslims and Christians tolerated them. Within the secret zones of their ghettos, free as never before, they practiced their religion. They sought out new paths to satisfy their thirst for that unreachable God. They entered into the text like virulent lovers, and they made it explode, moving vowels around, going mad over numbers, giving an terrible meaning to every letter. They became visionaries, mad men, magicians. They opened interior doors and got lost in the labyrinths of Creation, making their contact with the Torah a personal adventure, assuming the right to interpret everything as they saw fit.

In those good old days, Salvador Arcavi, the first of a long series of Salvadors — traditionally all his descendants had the same name — though respectful of the Holy Book, decided he was not to going to be a prisoner to its letters. Following the prophecy, Jacob made to his son (“Your hand will be on the neck of your enemy. Your father’s sons will bow down to you. Judah is a young lion.”), he became a lion tamer. His way to draw nearer to God was to study those beasts and to live an itinerant life, giving performances in which his union with his animals surpassed the limits of reality and reached the miraculous. The lions jumped through flaming hoops, balanced on the tight rope, danced on their hind legs, climbed up on one another to form a pyramid, spelled out the name of a spectator by choosing wooden letters, and, the greatest test, accepted within their jaws without hurting it the head of the tamer, then dragged him through the sawdust to draw a six-pointed star.

My ancestor had a simple method for making the beasts love him: he never forced them to do anything, and he made their training into a game. Whenever they wanted to eat, he fed them, and if they decided not to eat, he did not insist. If they wanted to sleep, he let them, and if they were rutting, he let them fornicate without distraction. He adopted the rhythm of the animals with care and tenderness. He let his hair grow into a mane, he ate raw meat, and he slept naked in the cage embracing his lions.

One day he found a Spanish girl, Estrella, who, drunk on his beastly aroma, abandoned the Christian religion and followed him so she could give herself to him, lying supine, whenever the animals went into heat. Cubs were born at the same time as human babies. At times, the woman gave her bosom to the tiny carnivores, while her own children crawled toward the teats of the lioness to slake their thirst.

They forgot Hebrew and used a limited Spanish of only a hundred words. The great cats learned most of those words and in turn taught their trainers an extensive range of growls. When rehearsals or shows ended, after dinner, at midnight, in the intimacy of the great cage, humans and animals would sit face to face to stare fixedly into one another’s eyes. In those moments, the lion was the teacher. It was he who was there, present, concentrating, with no interest in the past or the future, united with totality. In his animal body, the divine essence became palpable. The lion taught the Arcavis about economy of gestures, strength in repose, the pleasure of being alive, authenticity of feeling, obedience of oneself. Finally, seeing the nobility of the beast, his majestic inner solitude, they understood why Jacob compared Judah to a lion.

The Kabbalist rabbis of Toledo understood that a new form of biblical interpretation had been born. In silence, with the greatest respect, they entered the cage protected by the miraculous touch of Salvador’s hands. They meditated, staring into the lion’s eyes. They asked permission to bring their brothers in study, and with them came handsome old Arabs dressed in white and pale Catholic monks with sunken, burning eyes. The Koran, the Torah, and the Gospels were eclipsed by those imposing beasts, capable of standing so still that fireflies fleeing from the cold dawn rested on their warm skin, transforming them into phosphorescent statues.

When the first Salvador Arcavi began to die, he asked not to be buried. Instead, his body should be cut into pieces and fed to his lions. Estrella wanted to do it by herself. After the last morsel of her husband disappeared into the animals’ jaws, she went to the river to wash her reddened hands, undressed, stepped into the water, and let herself be carried off by the current. Her son Salvador kept the show going and soon married a good woman. On their wedding day, he changed her name to Estrella, his mother’s name.

The mystics from the three religions continued meditating opposite the lions. The years passed. The political situation changed. Hordes of fanatics began to burn the ghettos. The mystics stopped visiting. The wagons of the lion tamers passed through cities where converted Jews, sentenced to death by the Inquisition, were burning. The thriving communities became sad streets walked by dark rabbis, as circumspect as shadows.

An inexplicable instinct made the Arcavis go to Valencia. As they drew closer to the city gates, they came upon hundreds of families, guarded by soldiers, marching along the road in file upon melancholy file. They could carry little, just a few packages wrapped in embroidered cloth, nothing more. Why more, in any case? They’d been expelled from the country because they refused to convert, and when they reached the gates, the state police stripped them of most of their treasure. Ah, what a terrible year 1492 was! God was punishing them for wanting to plant roots in a land that wasn’t their own — these people whose mission was to wander and to plant the holy Word in all nations — by giving them thieves as their king and queen.

The gold they had honestly saved up for generations would flow into the royal treasury. The only wealth they could remove from the country, without fear of being despoiled, would be the Spanish language:

Holy language

It is you I adore

More than all silver

More than all gold.

Though my holy people

Have been made captive

Because of you, my beloved,

It has been consoled.

They reached Valencia. After painfully handing over their money, the Jews were in no hurry to board ships. As tranquil as a black lake, they slept all squeezed together on the docks and sea walls, ceaselessly praying for the Messiah to come and blast Isabel and Ferdinand. But God’s silence was the only answer they received to their mournful prayers. That multitude could have massacred the few soldiers present, but none of the Jews showed the slightest hint of rebellion. All they did was rock back and forth, chanting their prayers and staring at the heavens: to be humiliated and plundered was normal for them. They had to cut their beards and burn their Talmuds and Torahs. A mountain of burning books sent up sallow clouds.

The Arcavis, to open a path through the impenetrable mob, released the lions from their cages and walked ahead, leading them as if they were domestic dogs. They reached the dock, where the customs officials were shaving the expelled Jews before allowing them to set foot on the precarious boats. Nearby, in the garbage, lay a venerable old man: the officials thought it useless to cut off his beard because he was dying of fatigue, hunger, or sadness. Salvador recognized him. It was the Kabbalist Abramiel, leader of the group who had followed them throughout almost all of Spain, meditating at night opposite the lions. He brought the teat of a lioness to the old man’s mouth and squeezed in a gush of hot milk. Abramiel swallowed eagerly and then poured out a flood of tears that left white lines on his dirty cheeks.

“What sorrow, what shame, what despair! Sorrow because everything is gone with the wind. Even though we know our books by heart, it’s terrible to see them burn. Not for the words within, since we will someday write them down again, but for the pages we loved so much. For centuries, we washed our hands before touching them. They were our intimate friends, our real mothers. How can the flames devour those angels? Shame, because of those who chose to convert, to eat pork, to work on Saturday, not to circumcise their sons — those people are losing the meaning of life. Despair, because what we had achieved — peace among the three religions — has been destroyed, perhaps forever. The sacred books will become justification for murderers.”

The old man opened a pouch of violet leather, then looked right and left. He took out a small package wrapped in a silk handkerchief that was the same color as the pouch, unfolded it devoutly, and revealed a deck of cards:

“This humble game, which we’ve named Tarot, summarizes, without naming them, the three branches of wisdom — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. We conceived it in the shadow of your lions. Thanks to their example, we were able to pass through the thicket of traditions to reach the single fountain. Staring at the beasts, who were neither asleep nor awake, we received the first twenty-two arcana. Each of their lines, their colors, was sent to us by God. Then we combined them in a game of fifty-six Arabic cards that we modified according to what was dictated to us. These cards are like your lions: you have to observe them in silence, memorizing trait after trait, tone after tone, to allow them to work from within, from the shadowy region of the spirit. The knowledge they will bestow on you will not be sought but received. Hunting is forbidden; only fishing is allowed.

“Salvador and Estrella Arcavi: look at the first card, the card with no number. It shows a fool followed by a kitten. This sacred madman walks with the kitten, is sought by it, but he pays it no attention because he’s chasing an ideal located outside himself. Up ahead, on card number eleven, Strength, a woman with a huge head joins a luminous yellow lion. With her mouth closed, she listens, and he, with his jaws open, speaks, transmitting the message that pours into her the Infinite Profundity. The beast — that is, the body — and the woman (that is the soul) become a single being. Knowledge, the vision of God, cannot be found except within oneself. And finally on the last card, The World: just look at the lion crowned with an aureole, which indicates the sanctification of instinct. Which brings us back to the words of Jacob: ‘Judah is a young lion: from the prey, my son, you have gone up.’ This, the man who understands sacrifices his material interests and ascends, lion transformed into eagle, into pure spirit to give himself to the divine hunter and be devoured by Him.”

The Arcavis did not understand Abramiel’s symbolic language, but as they studied the drawings on the cards they felt themselves invaded by an ineffable feeling that was a mixture of awe and terror.

“My children, your name is Arcavi, which means ‘I saw the ark.’ Take away with you this last vessel, this temple that will pass through the flood, transporting sacred knowledge through the centuries. Copy the deck. Give it to common people. Scatter it throughout the world. Disguise it as a vice, so that people will take it for a mere game and not punish it. By way of thanks, the deck will supply you with food and keep you away from catastrophe. Always remember you are carrying a Being who, little by little, overcoming ignorance, will allow the union of all human spirits.”

While Salvador kept the animals under control, Estella hid the Tarot in her bodice. The wise old man climbed up on the back of the lioness who had given him milk and asked that he be taken to the bonfire of books. The beast, docile and followed by the others, carried him to they pyre. Abramiel, his face radiant, walked into the fire and recited a poem in Hebrew as the flames devoured him.

Every time Sara Luz Arcavi told her daughter Jashe about this sacrifice, tears would pour interminably down her neck. Leaving a dark trail on her starched apron, they would finally fall among the cats, who would gather to lap them up with delight. There was no suffering in her. She would smile sweetly, knowing she was a conduit for sorrow that came from the past, sorrow that would pass through the eyes of countless generations to end up who knew where.

Perhaps she didn’t weep out of sorrow but out of reverence. When the wise man entered the bonfire, memory broke into fragments and reality mixed with legend. Within the family circulated different versions of the event: Abramiel climbs up the burning books as if he were climbing a ladder, he gets to the top of the pyre, spreads his arms out like a cross and burns, blessing the world, cursing the world, giggling, until he turns to ash, ash that spits flames in the form of eagles that fly in a flock toward Jerusalem. Or, he opens a door in the smoke, walks through it into another world, and disappears. No, he was an alchemist who created an elixir that allows anyone who drinks a few drops to live a thousand years. Abramiel, in his protest, sacrificed several centuries of existence. Before his immolation, he gave his precious drink to the lioness who carried him, which is why the animal went on working for a different Salvador Arcavis without dying. No, Abramiel in reality was the philosopher Isaac Abravanel, who tried to commit suicide. The flames, out of respect for his holy wisdom, refused to consume him. He emerged untouched from the bonfire and sailed with Estrella, Salvador, and the lions on a ship whose crew was made up of Moors who promised to carry them to Morocco. This last version was the one Jashe preferred.

After paying the price demanded — which, despite the urgent situation, was fair — they stored the cages on the deck, near the poop, with the amiable help of the crew. How many lions were there? My grandmother did not have exact figures. There may have been twelve, like the twelve tribes; or seven because of the sacred candelabra; or four, like the letters of the unsayable name of God. The family never managed to agree on any of this. They all agreed that the lions over time, because of continuous incestuous couplings, began to be born albino. Their red eyes and white fur infused a hypnotic terror in even the most hardened warriors.

Isaac Abravanel, invigorated by the lion’s milk and his passage through fire, accompanied the Arcavis. Enough families followed him to fill the hold and the rest of the deck. The Moors offered each passenger a glass of tea with mint. The ship set sail, leaving the coast of Spain in its wake. The women sobbed, the men squeezed their lips together, someone took out a guitar and, in a cracked voice, sang a farewell to the lost homeland.

Soon the passengers calmed down. Some yawned, and a general drowsiness caused everyone to stretch out and sleep while the ship cut through the water, pushed by a pious wind. “Adonai seems cruel,” said Isaac the Wise, “but in the moment of our greatest pain, He preserves us by making us fall asleep in broad daylight as if it were night. His love is as great as his severity!” Salvador, despite these words, was very nervous. Between him and the lions there never were differences. If they were hungry, he would eat; if they fornicated, he would mount Estrella; when, for no reason, the beasts, possessed by an irrepressible joy, started to roar, he could not keep from shouting at the top of his lungs, made drunk by a similar feeling. So, how was it possible that God sent him sleep but did not make the lions fall asleep? To the contrary, enlivened by the sea breeze, they wouldn’t stop playing. He fought as much as he could until he fell as if struck by lightning next to his wife who, riding on a gigantic scarab, was looking for him in a virgin forest while she snored with her mouth wide open.

The passengers, thanks to the drug the Moors dissolved in the tea, slept for two days. They woke up in chains. Without their friendly smiles, the sailors showed what they really were: slave traders. The prisoners would disembark in Constantinople, and from there their freedom would be negotiated with some Jewish congregation in Europe. If the ransom was paid, they ran no risk, but if not… A threatening silence ended the sentence.

Salvador, Estrella, and their lions roared with rage and refused to leave the cage. The Moors got out their harquebuses and swore to kill the beasts if they didn’t. The Arcavis followed orders. The pirates tied up Salvador with his arms and legs open and then put a dagger blade into a brazier filled with hot coals. Laughing and drinking dark liquors, they began to pound drums and dance, pushing one another to Estrella, who defended herself scratching and biting.

Suddenly, they pulled off her dress, knocked her down, spread her legs, and before the very eyes of the horrified Jews prepared to rape her. Salvador began to howl. The pirates, out of their minds, stripped off his lion skin tunic, revealing his genitals. A sweaty fat man, muttering curses, seized the red-hot dagger and burned Salvador’s testicles. Seeing her husband castrated, Estella sighed like a dying woman and stopped twisting around.

One after another, the drunken men tried to possess her, but she squeezed her vagina with such force that none of them could penetrate her, no matter how hard they smashed their torsos against her. They would kneel before her, try, and then get up humiliated amid the sarcastic laughter of the others, their penises still erect. Salvador had fainted. They tossed Estrella like a bag of garbage next to Isaac. The pirates moved on to rape other women, and the party continued.

Abravanel, in a calm, deep voice, as if he were speaking to a little girl, said to her, “God will make you understand, my daughter. From the pack in your bosom, take out a single Tarot card and tell me what you see.”

Estrella, numb with pain, dug into the package and extracted The Sun.

“Two children… happy.”

“Well seen, Estrella. Those two children are the ones you will have with Salvador.”

Hearing that, Estrella was overcome with such unbearable suffering that it became an attack of laughter. She laughed and laughed so much that her laughter spread to the Moors who, not knowing why, cackled out laughs like barking dogs. Estrella’s convulsions stopped, and in a tone of despair she whispered, “He’s no longer a man. My womb is dead. You’re mocking me.”

“No my daughter. The Tarot never lies. Believe in the impossible, have faith. Pulling her toward his chest, he put out his tongue, drew a Kabbalistic sign with saliva on her forehead, and began to recite strange words. “Hamag! Abala! Maham! Alaba! Gamah!” He pronounced them with such intensity that the squeals, prayers, drumming, cruel laughter, and songs all ceased.

The sea suddenly became choppy. The ship began to waltz up and down. The waves got bigger and bigger. Black clouds came down from the center of heaven, and a powerful wind whistled words that, even though no one understood them, cut off people’s breath and crushed their hearts. A pirate leaped toward Abravanel, waving his scimitar. An invisible hand threw him against the mast with such rude force that his split skull spit out his brains.

“Release my brothers or the ship sinks!” bellowed the old man, surrounded by a greenish mist and looking like a demon.

This part of the story, even though she heard it directly from her mother when she was small, always seemed incredible to Jashe. She wanted to know about the real life of her ancestors, not a fairy tale or a biblical story. But Sara Luz, smiling, explained that the past was a continuous invention, that every character in her family tree was like a stone that with the passage of years, from telling to telling, rose until it reached the sky and shone like a star to give a light sweeter than sugar.

“All the people in your family, my child, will, by the end of time, be converted into champions, heroes, geniuses, and saints. Treat them as if they were savings boxes and day after day deposit in them the treasure of your fervent imagination. Which would you like better, a miserable old man burnt to a crisp in a bonfire or a magician? Let him board the ship so that when the storm breaks, the Moors become terrified and beg for mercy on their knees! Accept the fact that the prisoners will disembark in Nice. Isaac the Wise, disenchanted with philosophy, will dress up as a clown and accept the wandering life of the lion tamers. Estrella will become pregnant and give birth to two boys. This time it’s no miracle: Salvador acquired the wisdom of the lions. When the red-hot blade touches him, he withdraws his testicles into his belly, so only the scrotum is burned.”

Doing their lion acts, card readings, with comic interludes by Abravanel, they traveled the Mediterranean coast from France to Italy. When they reached Padua, the plague robbed them of one of the twins. The little boy, who did not know how to read or write, whispered in perfect Hebrew before yielding his spirit, “Wisdom above all; acquire wisdom. Make it great, and it will make you great. It will confer an adornment of grace to your head, a crown of beauty will it yield you.”

Isaac closed his eyes and his mouth as he murmured with restrained euphoria, “He recited the last verses of the fourth chapter of the Book of Proverbs! This illiterate child died a saint! Hallelujah!” And with patient work, in short sentences and growls, he translated their son’s message to his desolate parents. “Do you understand, my friends? The child asked you to learn to read our sacred books. It’s time to leave off speaking like beasts. Recover your human intelligence.” After the lions ate the small body, Salvador and Estrella took their first Hebrew lesson. They stayed on for seven years, putting on shows in Verona, Bassano, Rovereto, etcetera. By the time they reached Venice, they knew how to read and write. Like them, the lions also spoke Hebrew correctly.

“Yes, Jashe,” said her mother with severity. “The lions learned to speak Hebrew. If you want to draw some advantage from your history, you must accept not only this miracle but also many others. In memory, everything can become miraculous. All you have to do is wish it, and freezing winter turns into spring, miserable rooms fill up with golden tapestries, murderers turn good, and children who cry out of loneliness receive caring teachers who are really the children themselves moved back from adulthood to their early years. Yes, my daughter, the past is not fixed and unalterable. With faith and will we can change it, not erasing its darkness but adding light to it to make it more and more beautiful, the way a diamond is cut.

The Venice ghetto, which could only be entered by way of a bridge with guarded doors at both ends, looked from the outside like a great fortress with all its exits blocked and its windows sealed. The Arcavis and Abravanel entered that tenebrous neighborhood. They found clean streets populated by tranquil Jews, their heads covered with the obligatory yellow yarmulkes. The luminous color emerging from their tallises made them look like a field of sunflowers.

The arrival of the albino lions was taken as an announcement of the arrival of the Messiah. Isaac Abravanel suggested that they might hasten that arrival by adding the voices and magic of the beasts to their daily prayers. They were given lodging, and after midnight, when the doors at both ends of the bridge were locked so that no Israelite could leave the ghetto, in the secret space of the synagogue, the rabbis, in a trance, rocked back and forth more and more rapidly while the lions repeated in their cavernous and powerful voices the invocations and entreaties of the philosopher disguised as a clown. This ceremony was repeated for nine months.

The fortress seemed to sleep, but in reality and without the guards realizing it, it escaped from Venice. Through the power of Kabbalistic words, its matter was frozen, and the astral substance arose out of the stones and human bodies. Invisible, the ghetto traversed the sky like a fleeing star and came to rest next to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

“Yes, Jashe, my daughter,” Sara Luz would say. “May that which we call God bless you. I beg you to believe this and tell it to your future husband, to your children, and to your grandchildren. Every night, for years, the Venice ghetto visited the Holy Land, demanding the arrival of the Messiah. At dawn, when the Marangona, the largest bell in San Marcos, rang, the spectral neighborhood rejoined its empty stones and its cataleptic inhabitants. When the two doors on the bridge were opened, life recovered its normal state.”

Isaac never lost hope and communicated his enthusiasm to the men and the animals: “Tomorrow the world will be fixed.” The divine messenger would unite all religions, impart justice, give them peace, work, health, and felicity. He would lead them back to Israel.

One night, he made so many efforts to hasten the great event, invoked it with such exaggerated fervor, demanded so much of the superior planes, employed such potent enchantments, that an angel appeared before him flashing rays of fury: “Isaac Abravanel, you have upset the equilibrium of the angelic choruses, you have opened in your time and world the door of madness. Just look at what you’ve done!” The magus was transported to the heights, and from there he could see Jewish congregations invaded by divine madmen: David Reubeni, Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Asher Lämmlein, Mordecai Mokiah, Yankiev Leibowitz Frank, Jacob Querido, Sabbatai Zevi, Miguel Cardoso, and many more. Armies of messiahs spread like the plague, demanding (though they were caught between fervor and rapacity, pride and fear of death) holy wars and betraying their followers.

“Your punishment will be lucidity,” said the angel, just before abandoning him. Isaac collapsed on the pews in the synagogue as if struck by lightning.

“Magic is useless,” he said. “I’ve opened the Fifteenth Arcanum and let the demons loose in our world. I searched using the wrong road. The only hope is for us to reach ourselves, because God is hidden in our hearts. What isn’t done here will not be done in the beyond. No miraculous messenger will come to offer us a homeland. We were expelled from the land so that we would transcend it and inhabit pure spirit, not so that we go on clinging to the roots, to childhood, setting up the past as an ideal future. One day, all humans will be wandering angels who dance through the Universe in luminous freedom. Estrella, Salvador, you two were right, forgive me. I’ve led you away from the true path; I interpreted the words of your dying son badly. He wasn’t addressing them to you but to my madness. Forget about the books, go back to being lions, go on voyaging ceaselessly through all worlds.”

Abravanel, making a superhuman effort, awoke from the illusion that is life and entered the reality of death, bursting into a laugh that was heard many miles away. He died the way all true clowns die: standing on his head.

The Arcavis went back to their old ways, slowly forgetting Hebrew. As her only souvenir of Abravanel, Estrella kept the Tarot deck, while Salvador held on to the wise man’s red shoes. From then on, he and his son and his son’s son and all his descendants used them during performances as an important part of the lion tamer’s costume. They traveled for two centuries through Italy and Greece, Sicily, Egypt, and Turkey. They did it surreptitiously, generation after generation, staying poor, using only their one hundred Spanish words as a language. And in that way, as social outcasts, they could live in peace.

At first, Estrella’s Tarot readings were answers to practical questions: Where is the stolen cow? Will the boyfriend be a good or bad husband? Will the harvest be affected by the weather? Will family members get sick? She kept silent about the rest. After so many years studying the cards, it was easy for her to see when and how the client would die. She hid that power. It was painful and useless to know the future, because nothing could be done to change it.

But despite knowing that, she read her own fortune. When the Thirteenth Arcanum turned up next to the Wheel of Fortune, Power, and The World, Estrella felt a chill. The moment they feared so much, that of the lions’ deaths, had come. She turned over one more card: the House of God. It would be in an earthquake! They were in Smyrna. They fled to Constantinople. There was no earthquake in Smyrna, but there was in Constantinople, and a crevice swallowed the lions. It had been time. Their bodies had stretched, and their hides were almost transparent. Each time they breathed it was so deep the lions seemed to sob. They had practically no animal nature left. They were aged nobles with the humble serenity that comes with the acquisition of self-awareness.

Without lions, the Arcavis had to become merchants, to transport cinnamon and camphor over seas infested with pirates. They had to sell furs, swords, eunuchs, export and import textiles, salt, wine, rice, honey, sheep, horses, pickled fish, perfumes — just about anything. The years went by, as did the births and deaths of Salvadors and Estrellas, but they could never free themselves from nostalgia for their lions. The red shoes, which the men never stopped using, aroused mistrust in their business associates. That outlandish footwear showed them the Arcavis were not normal Jews, and little by little they stopped dealing with them.

The Arcavis found themselves obliged to transport a cargo of prostitutes to China. They sailed from Constantinople intending to cross the Black Sea, disembark on the Caucasus coast, and march across the continent to Shanghai. Unfortunately a storm wrecked them. Salvador did not know how to swim, but since Estrella was a strapping lass of 280 pounds, he simply floated on his back and let her swim, pulling him along by the hair.

To keep despair at bay, Estrella mentally reviewed the seventy-eight cards, which she knew by heart. She swam for two days without stopping. Finally, they washed up on a Crimean beach. Salvador left the water with a thirst for God. He went down on his knees in the sand and tried to pray, only to realize he knew no prayers, that money was occupying Adonai’s space. There was nothing Jewish left in him. He had no definition, no race, and the world was fading away around him to such an extent that his penis was nothing more than a useless bit of skin: he’d been with his wife for more than ten years without a child resembling him being born. Recognizing his sterility, he wept so passionately that he seemed to vomit his liver.

Estrella, tossed among some rocks after her monumental effort, almost dying of fatigue, saw her husband drowned in himself, scrutinizing himself with the anguish of a castrato, not even bothering to find out if she was alive. She used a remnant of energy to extract the violet leather bag from between her bosoms and throw the Tarot, with perfect accuracy, at Salvador’s head. The jolt restored him to reality. He compassionately ran to his wife, his homeland, his identity. He took her in his arms, licked the sand off her face, kissed her hands, caressed her icy body. She did not try to react. She let herself slip, sighing with relief, toward death.

“Now that you have been saved, Salvador, understand that I have to die. God made me enter your life with the sole purpose of showing you how deeply you’d sunk. You were an absurd repetition, a bone without marrow, a man without traditions. Study, seek the Truth, and when you find it, you will see next to it the woman who befits you, the mother of your children.”

He buried the voluminous dead woman right there and with her what little money he had left. Without knowing why, he traveled on foot, to Lithuania, as if pulled by a magnet, begging for food in Jewish communities. One dark night, covered with dust after having walked hundreds of miles, he knocked on the door of Gaon Elijah of Vilna, a great teacher of the Talmud and of Kabbalah.

No one opened the door. He waited five minutes and knocked again. No answer. For half an hour more he knocked. A strong wind was blowing, rustling the leaves of the trees with a metallic whisper. Salvador could hear through all that noise another murmur, also continuous, coming from within the school. It was the sound of human voices lamenting. He pushed the door, which opened easily, and made his way along a frozen corridor. The lamentations grew louder. He passed through several rooms with clean hearths, as if no one, despite it being winter, wanted to use them. The collective sobbing became intense. He went up a staircase and entered a vast salon with pews arranged in synagogue style, where a hundred or so rabbis, seated with their bare feet submerged in pails of icy water, were praying, weeping, tearing their black vestments. In the center of the classroom, so cold that vapor clouds came out of every mouth, on top of a pedestal made of books, there was an open coffin where the body of the great master reposed, as if in sleep.

While they were moaning, the disciples enumerated again and again the merits of the Vilna Gaon or sage:

“You who were a teacher starting at the age of seven.”

“You who in order to study more only slept two hours a day.”

“You who in order to obviate laziness never lit a fire and kept your feet in a pail of icy water.

“You who protected us from the Hasidim, that lying sect that believes in ecstasy and visions, you who studied seven thousand books and taught us to reason.”

Salvador, without anyone’s stopping him, made his way to the dead man; echoing in his ears was not the desolate chanting of the students but Estrella’s last words: “When you find the Truth, you will see next to it the woman who befits you.” Next to Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman, wearing a dress so white it seemed silver to him, was his daughter. Once and for all, even beyond the day of his death, his pounding heart revealed to him, repeating it myriad times, the girl’s name: Luna, Luna, Luna, Luna. Queen of night, essence of all the Estrellas, from woman to woman, the Salvadors had moved toward her, and now, he, face to face with the incarnate dream, could do nothing but give thanks to God for leading him to the end of the road. He walked toward her, clasped her hands and removed them from the casket to draw them to his chest, which was bursting with each heartbeat. Luna immediately knew his name, and when she said it, erasing the pain caused by her father’s death, there arose within her a tremendous joy that brought heat for the first time to that cold world: “Salvador!” In a single glance, they fused their souls, and that meeting, sought after for a thousand years, made the world change.

Another chorus of voices flooded in from outside, bringing with it a jubilant song mixed with laughter and ecstatic shouting. More than two hundred Hasidim, smelling of alcohol and tobacco, followed by robust women and their children, made their peasant boots echo in the lecture hall. The glow from their torches chased away the shadows, and the gray walls became golden. A warm air dissolved the clouds emanating from the open mouths of the rabbis, who were paralyzed by this sacrilege.

The euphoric horde was led by a small but muscular old man crowned with a huge fur hat. Smoking a pipe and staggering, he stopped opposite the Vilna Gaon, waved his arms around, guffawed so loudly the pews shook, rolled back his eyes, and, leaping up, made a kick that sent several of the coffin boards flying.

“Enough with this comedy, Elijah! Through my mouth the voice of Israel Ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, he who knows the secret name of God, speaks to you! I can do nothing; he can do everything. Riding on me, his mount, he has come to show you that you’re mistaken.”

This possessed man raised his hands: the coffin rose in the air and stuck to the ceiling. The peasants applauded, but a painful sigh shook the rabbis. The chief of the drunken mystics paid no attention whatsoever to them and went on hectoring the dead man.

“You anathematized us by having the horn wail as you put out the candles in your school so that our spiritual life would be extinguished along with them. You decreed us cursed by day and night, when we retired and when we got up, when we entered and when we left. You asked God not to pardon or know us. You asked Him to erase our names from the Earth. You forbade people to speak to us or write to us, to help us, or to live under the same roof with us. You insinuated that we should be denounced to the Christian authorities so they could eliminate us. You forgot that we were brothers. You locked the windows and submerged yourself in cold and sleeplessness. You murdered the language of dreams. You gained intelligence, but you lost love. For a month now, you’ve been lying here pretending to be dead. You don’t rot because you are alive but overcome by boredom. Breathe again! Awaken and come dance with us! Joy! Joy! Joy!”

The coffin fell from the ceiling onto the floor and shattered. The Vilna Gaon opened his eyes, looked at his audience, suffered an attack of laughter, stood up, and ran to give his daughter a long embrace, gave Salvador another, blessed them both, danced with the old man and his Hasidim, dragged the rabbis by the beard and made them join in the round. Violins and tambourines were played. Vodka moistened throats. The women brought a white veil and the men a tent and a velvet hat. They covered Salvador’s head with the hat and Luna’s with the veil. The Gaon, seconded by the drunken old man, paused in front of the couple and offered the Bible to the future groom.

“I cannot deny the feelings consuming my daughter. Show us you’re worthy of the bonfire. Tell us what you see in the seven words of the first sentence of Genesis.”

Arcavi, bathed in sweat, trembling from head to toe, opened the Holy Book. He did not know how to read Hebrew and had no knowledge. In his soul, full of love for Luna, there was no room for God.

The old Hasid whispered with the voice of Baal Shem Tov, “The first and last letters of the Torah form the word heart. There is no greater knowledge than Love. You can do it. Be daring. You are a lion tamer, and each letter is a lion.”

Salvador stopped doubting. With the same concentration his ancestors employed staring at the lions, he fixed his eyes on the letters without trying to guess what they said. They were beings, not signs. The first word began with a descending arc, a horizontal base, and a period: B. He observed the form emptying itself of itself, allowing his eyes to see without the interference of his person. Slowly, the arc and the line transformed into an open jaw and then, within it, the period vibrated like the roar of a beast, a total, generative scream.

He focused his attention with such force that the small stain grew and acquired depth to become an endless tunnel, an insatiable throat that began to swallow all the other letters. Finally, all that remained on the page was that enormous, deep period. Salvador felt that its voracious center was absorbing him, extracting him from his body. He let himself be swallowed with no fear, and his soul entered that dark passageway. He felt he was dissolving, but with faith he went further and further.

At the far end, an immense sphere of light awaited him, a sun that did not burn. Entering into it, he began to lose his memory, but the beats of his heart continued repeating: Luna. His chest was a golden temple with an altar of living flesh at its center. Above him was a cup of fire filled with holy water. He knew he would never be thirsty again, that his mouth was the arc, the line, and the period, a divine fountain, and he allowed love to overflow and experienced a pleasure that was the explosion of his cup. And the water flooded the world, and he awoke preaching in Spanish or Yiddish or Hebrew (he never found out) among the rabbis who wept, the Hasids, who danced ecstatically listening to him, and the women, who kissed his hands and placed them on the heads of their children so that they might be blessed.

The great Vilna Gaon kneeled before him, and with a voice like a deep river sang to marry him to his daughter. When he finished the ceremony, he handed over the keys to the school, asked forgiveness for his errors, bade farewell to everyone, and set out on a trip to Palestine. Luna never learned another thing about him. Sadness was forbidden. Solemn meetings became festivals, where thanks to God was shown by offering Him continuous joy. Salvador and Luna had the same trances and visions, which they shared with the poor. Together they cured a multitude of sicknesses.

For the first time in the history of the Arcavis, a girl was born. Since she was the fruit of a year of matrimonial happiness, they named her Felicidad. They did try to have a boy so he could be baptized Salvador according to custom, but two years later another girl was born. She was named Sara Luz, a combination of her luminous gaze with the name of Luna’s deceased mother. Now, she was a saint who one day suffered an attack of fervor and devoured a complete volume of the Talmud. Unfortunately, she was incapable of digesting the thick sheets of parchment and died with the swollen stomach of a pregnant woman.

The first girl was given Abravanel’s red shoes as a talisman and the second, the violet leather bag containing the Tarot. Thirteen years went by. The two little women, despite the difference in their age, had their periods on the same day, at the same hour. Luna woke them at midnight and led them out of the house while Salvador pretended to be asleep. A group of ladies was waiting for them. Their mother ordered her daughters to remove their nightgowns, and then she undressed as well. Other women who were also menstruating joined them. They began to dance among the recently made furrows in the fields so their blood would flow down their legs and make a good crop of wheat grow.

They were having the time of their lives, beating drums and singing, when they saw in the distance a group of husbands waving torches. They quickly put their clothes back on and anxiously waited. Until then that feminine ceremony had never been interrupted by men.

Pale, Salvador spoke to the women: “We’re very sorry, but you have to return to the village immediately. There’s been a fresh outbreak of anti-Semitism. Over in the next village, they first raped Rabbi Scholomo’s widow, then cut her into pieces and burned down her shack.”

As they all ran to lock themselves inside their houses, Felicidad said to her mother, “Papa should take up a collection so we can buy weapons!”

“Weapons? How can a daughter of mine talk like that? God will punish you! If we deserve to be defended, He will do it. The sacred commandments forbid Jews to spill human blood.”

That night they had trouble falling asleep. The moon tinged the sky with red. The dogs never stopped barking. Sara Luz got out her Tarot, shuffled the deck, and picked three with her eyes closed. When she opened them, she screamed. She refused to say what she saw. The hours passed. Just before dawn, concealing themselves in the noise of a heavy rain, ten black shadows opened the door of the school with professional skill.

On the second floor, they found three families who shared the farm work with the Arcavis. In minute they bound and gagged the men, who made not the slightest gesture to defend themselves. They stripped the women — three adults and four children — bare and locked them in the bathroom. They then went out only to return, following, making great signs of respect, a corpulent man wearing a leather mask and a bearskin coat.

In despotic fashion he stretched out his enormous hand, and a shadow, saluting the whole time, handed him a well-sharpened kitchen knife. The masked man took off his overcoat and revealed his erect phallus, itself of extraordinary size. His servants, kicking her and dragging her by the hair, pulled a woman out of the bathroom. As soon as she saw the monster, she ran for the door, went out into the rain, and began to shriek. The aggressor caught her there, and with one blow cut off her head. He took hold of her body and drank the steaming spurts of blood from her arteries. Then he threw himself on the headless corpse to penetrate her while he grunted with pleasure. Staggering like a drunk, he went back into the school. Making brutal gestures, he shook the knife. They let loose a little girl. He chased and cornered her. The child fell to her knees and showed her face bathed in tears. The first thrust of the knife hit her in the eye. Ninety-nine more followed.

Upstairs, on the third floor, Salvador, Luna, and their two little girls heard everything: the cries of the women, their bare feet scrambling over the cold floor, the deep breathing of the murderer, the weapon slicing the air, the watery noise of bodies being sliced open, the guts spattering against the walls, the blood falling onto the floorboards like a fountain of thick water, the heavy body of the beast wallowing in the viscera, and his triumphant shout in orgasm.

They counted the victims: seven. And now the thirsty monster was climbing the stairs. Salvador, impotent, trembled as he prayed. Luna took off her clothes to offer herself as a sacrifice, hoping that way to save the girls. Sara Luz ran and hid under the bed, kissing her Tarot again and again. Felicidad, with anger so great that it seemed about to explode her little body, slowly and carefully put on the red shoes and lit the candles in the menorah.

A violent blow opened the door, smashing against the wall and breaking off chunks of plaster. The criminal entered the room, his body soaked with blood and the mouth of his mask overflowing with chewed up intestines. Reflecting the candle flames, his knife threw off a web of golden rays. Salvador opened his arms, hopeless. Luna walked toward the blade, offering herself resignedly. The murderer hunched over to give his stab more force, and for fragments of a second the world stopped in an eternal silence.

Then everything accelerated. Felicidad shouted an order so loudly that the roof beams creaked and a curtain tore open: “Halt!” Raising her right hand, she stopped the criminal. She completely cut off his movement. There was not the slightest speck of fear in her attitude, only perfect self-control. A superhuman will inhabited that fragile little body. Through that will, the spirit of all the lion tamers revealed itself. For Felicidad, descended from so many Salvadors, dominating a ferocious beast was a natural, necessary act. She’d never felt better.

The monster stopped short, fixed his gaze on the burning eyes of the tiny woman, roared, and clutched his stomach as if his liver had just exploded. He dropped the knife, fell on his knees, and sank his enormous head on the girl’s chest. In a sweet voice, saturated with love, he whispered in Russian, “Forgive me.” The other assailants climbed the stairs as a mob and tried to enter the classroom. A single gesture from their master stopped them. Another gesture made them bow, and a third compelled them back downstairs and out of the school.

The girl took the belt from her robe, tied it around the giant’s neck, and led him like a pet toward the patio. The rain had stopped. Salvador, Luna, and Sara Luz heard the galloping of horses that faded into the distance. Felicidad disappeared from their lives forever. Never again were murders like that committed in the villages.

From that moment on the lives of the Arcavis were no longer the same. On the one hand, the congregation praised the girl’s heroic sacrifice, but on the other they could never forget her triumphant smile as she tied the belt around the murderer’s neck. Also, he did not try to kidnap her. It was she who forced him to walk down the stairs like a dog and then disappear into the darkness. What happened after that? The madman could have reacted by shaking off his enchantment and cutting her to pieces as he did with the others. But why had the murders stopped?

One day at first light, Luna awoke, screaming. Hugging Salvador, her breath short and eyes wild, she told him, “What I’m thinking is atrocious. The night of the seven murders, I saw in the encounter between the monster and Felicidad something similar to what happened to us: in her eyes there was love — a huge, sudden love that survives beyond death.”

Sara Luz never wanted to hear another word about magic. She locked the Tarot in a coffer and tried her best to forget it. All three widowers asked for her hand in marriage. Together with her parents, she chose Salomón Trumper, much older than she but simple and tranquil.

On the way home from the wedding ceremony, the coach carrying Salvador and Luna crashed down a ravine because a yellow dragonfly flew into the horse’s ear. They both died. A year later, at the same time, on the same day, in the same month, Sara Luz gave birth to Jashe. And a year later, also at the same time, on the same day, and in the same month, she gave birth to Shoske. Jashe and Shoske, two common names with no greater meaning, deliberately chosen to bring an end to all the miracles.

The two sisters were brought up in the same way: they slept together, dressed identically, and learned to embroider, cook, plant wheat, and clean the house so that every Shabbat everything would shine. Shoske was happy in that life and hated anything out of the ordinary. Jashe began the same way, but one day, as she raked the garden, a yellow dragonfly began to fly around her, getting closer and closer until it entered her head through an ear and began to buzz, as if trying to give her a message.

Jashe imagined that the same insect that had caused the death of her grandparents came to pay its debt. She thought she understood what it was saying: “Forgive me, my child. I never wanted Salvador and Luna to die. In exchange for that, I’m going to give you the most valuable treasure in the world.” The insect flew to the school. The girl followed, all the way to the attic. The dragonfly landed on the old coffer, then it flew out the window. Jashe opened the box and found the Tarot. For years, in secret, she studied the cards, and they became her Master, teaching her to See. Everything changed. She became aware of the madness in which they were submerged; religious law seemed like a prison; and she tried to escape, to abandon her many absurd obligations, all superstitions, and arranged marriage. She wanted to live the holy life every day and not just on Saturday, to love freely and without tribal limitations, to eat whatever she wanted, to travel the world, to live not just one life but thousands, to recover magic. She was in that effervescent state when she found the door, the light, the road: she found him, Alejandro Prullansky.

As soon as Jashe finished telling him the story of her ancestors, the Russian dancer took her in his arms, hugging her so tight it was as if he wanted to absorb her through his skin and said, “Chance is a subtle form of Destiny. My mother’s name was Felicidad. She was Jewish and was stolen by my father. My family history doesn’t go back as far as yours for a simple reason: my grandmother, Cristina Prullansky, burned all the documents and pictures that tied her to the past.”

An only daughter with six brothers, much older than she, descended from nobility, Cristina had been educated by governesses brought from Germany. During the maudlin afternoons, these women would usually stroll among the pines on the estate, stomachs swollen from the rape by her father Ivan, a hunchbacked widower who could not restrain himself when drunk. After a few months, a black carriage would bring a new governess and carry away the old one, who was never seen again. She had fifteen governesses in ten years.

In that isolated place, more than thirty miles from Minsk, with her brothers in the army and a father who never spoke, the only entertainment possible was beating the maids — for any conceivable reason. She pulled up their skirts, pulled down their linen underwear, and with her short, hard whip she left garnet furrows on their milky buttocks. In her family, there were only invisible women and dead soldiers to defend Peter the Great, Catherine I, Ivan VI, Paul I, Peter III, and other czars in their wars with France, Turkey, Sweden, Great Britain, and many other nations. Her grandfathers, her uncles, and her brothers all gradually metamorphosed into portraits, medals, and posthumous decoration that covered the walls in the enormous hall. Only her father, stinking of vodka, urine, and vomit, would walk there, ashamed of his monstrous body, which would not allow him to take part in the continuous massacre.

When Cristina was fifteen, the French governess, imported as a birthday present, was raped the night she arrived. Ivan, poisoned by alcohol, his buttocks filthy with excrement, howling like a dog, smashed the door down with an ax, threw himself on top of the young woman, squeezed her breasts until they burst, and, at the moment he achieved his orgasm, bit off her nose. The piece of flesh choked him to death. The governess’ heart stopped, and Ivan suffocated. Cristina was left alone, surrounded by myriad attendants, servants, and serfs.

Her father was buried in the family mausoleum and the governess next to some boulders in the forest. That year, the winter was harsher than ever. On three occasions, the wolves dug up the victim’s body. In the long corridors of the manor house, Cristina saw the noseless woman move along, floating like a silent ship. She was beginning to bite her nails to the point of ripping off bits of flesh when the message inviting her to the coronation of Alexander I arrived.

She wasn’t even aware of the assassination of the previous emperor. In the governess’ trunk, she found a nightgown whose stylish European cut excused the modest quality of the fabric. Her grandmothers’ jewels more than made up for whatever was lacking in her costume. During the entire voyage, dressed up like a lady, in that Spartan coach built to carry military men, she — accustomed to letting the days pass without bathing, clad in the trousers and boots of her brother, killed in the Swiss Alps fighting the French — felt strange.

As the strong horses carried her toward Moscow, she had the feeling that those bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, that light cloth, those silk undergarments were awakening her body. She began the journey flat-chested, and now her breasts were growing, hard, big, with nipples so sensitive that the rubbing of her brassiere with each lurch of the carriage gave her a pleasure she had to admit, though she was distracted with shame. The pores of her pubis opened to make way for an exuberant triangle of hair, and for the first time she felt the heat from her labia. She slowly spread her legs, and with her face red and her eyes tight, she understood that she was going to the Czar’s coronation in search of a man.

Cristina’s virginal beauty dazzled the court. That petite, delicate princess whose eyes radiated a savage power attracted a flock of nobles prepared to love her unto death. She remained unmoved. None made her flutter. There were young men as handsome as battle stallions, intelligent and possessive forty-year-olds, august old men willing to offer the intoxication of power. They seemed paltry. Her newborn femininity wanted a total lover, perfection incarnate.

When the bells rang, when the trumpets blared, when the coronation began, Cristina saw the object of her desire enter in the person of Alexander I. He was an impossible ideal, but her heart would hear no objections. She pledged her hymen to the emperor — or to no one. Standing before that adolescent Christ, delicate and tense, much more shadow than body, unfettered like all peaceful hearts but also an implacable warrior capable of transforming his soul into a sabre of ice, all other men became mere cadavers.

As soon as they approached, the stench that arose from their mouths turned her deaf to their advances. She saw them eaten by invisible worms. The Russian nobility was a charnel house sustained by a living fountain. She knew that loving the Czar was like loving the Sun: a consuming dream. She didn’t care. She stretched her soul until it became a thread wrapped around Alexander’s ring finger, like a wedding band. She left the court knowing she was forever married to the emperor. She forced her driver to wear out several horses because she wanted to reach her estates as quickly as possible. There she would begin to share, isolated from the world, the life of her beloved.

She had the portraits of her ancestors taken down and burned along with their uniforms, diplomas, medals, letters, and any other document that might preserve the slightest particle of their existence in her memory. “When you know the ocean, you’re not interested in the rivers flowing into it.” Every night, without exception, for years, she dreamed the Czar came and took her from her bedroom, carried her through the air to the top of a century-old oak tree and there, in a nightingale nest, possessed her, depositing in the depth of her vagina a gold coin bearing his bearded likeness.

Following the axiom of a Chinese sage, taught to her by one of her many governesses, “The well-ordered desk of a good notary is worth as much as the well-ordered country of a good Emperor,” she began to follow, on her estates, the policies of the Czar. When Alexander I saw the ignorance of the Russian people he put education at the forefront of government programs, she transformed the right wing of her mansion into a school and forced her servants to learn Greek and Latin. She struggled, not sparing the whip, but the brutes were incapable of learning more than three words. Then, when the Czar’s councilors thought of creating a new constitution, she spent whole months dictating laws. She wanted the servants to learn self-government. To give them a taste for freedom, she decreed two days of independence per week, when her employees could make decisions as they thought proper. As a result, they all got drunk, fornicated, fought, and burned down a few cottages. Cristina felt lost. She lacked her idol’s wisdom in solving social problems.

Where her property ended began the vast hunting grounds of the imperial family. To reach that borderland, she had to gallop nine miles, which is what she did every morning, hoping to see the Czar in person. Her desire was never satisfied. Occasionally she would hear the barking of a distant pack of dogs, but nothing more. She had to accept the nocturnal lover who filled her womb with gold coins.

Napoleon’s invasion created a better opportunity to commingle with the Emperor. The night of the battle of Borodino, Alexander I visited her, accompanied by 42,000 dead Russians. Her bedroom had to expand a few miles in length and breadth to accommodate them all. On their knees, the dead observed their habitual coitus, whining like pathetic dogs. The Czar tossed his gold coin into her weakly, and within her his image looked blurry. Cristina begged him not to lose faith, to never give in to the enemy. She arose from the bed and used her whip to cast out the tearful ghosts. Her beloved swore to carry on the struggle. Then Cristina spread her legs and let fall into those noble hands a stream of coins, all she’d accumulated on those conjugal nights. That was her contribution to the Emperor’s war effort.

When Napoleon sacked the Kremlin and the Russian army retreated, she decided to fight the invading troops on her own. She ordered three barrels of vodka loaded onto her carriage and told the driver to go to Moscow. She proceeded through devastated fields, saw skeletal children wearing army overcoats and cutting chunks of meat off dead horses, passed right by drunken French soldiers busy raping peasant women. No one tried to stop her.

She made her way through the great capital city, looking for a neighborhood where the wind was blowing in the right direction. The carriage stopped at a solitary corner. Cristina breathed in the smell of all the wooden houses, she shed many tears, and ordered the coachman to soak as many walls as possible. All she had to do was touch them with a torch. In seconds the entire neighborhood was on fire. The wind made the flames gallop toward the opposite end of the city. No Russian tried to fight the fire. Moscow turned into a rose of flames.

After Napoleon’s defeat, Cristina lost all sense of time. She sewed a military uniform exactly like the one her idol wore and began to speak in a man’s voice. One night, the smiling Czar appeared naked, his pubis streaming blood. He offered her his severed member so she could carry it between her legs. Cristina awoke screaming. Someone was knocking on her bedroom door, a messenger: “Alexander I is dead!”

Foaming with rage, she called the servants and whipped them across the mouth until they cried. Later, in the court, the rumor circulated that the Czar, exhausted by power, had fled to Siberia to live as a holy hermit. The corpse with the rotten face that was seen in the imperial coffin belonged to his syphilitic cousin. To go on living, Cristina forced herself to believe those tales.

Five years after the possibly false death of Alexander I, the murder of sheep began. With each full moon, there appeared on the farms near the imperial forest female sheep, their sex and anus destroyed and showing traces of sperm a doctor identified as human. The animals were raped, their throats bitten through, their stomachs ripped open, and their intestines scattered in an attempt to form letters.

One night, when the moon was at its fullest, Cristina tied up a flock of sheep at the entrance to the forest and waited, hiding in a ditch. After a few hours, a naked man covered with mud and grunting like a savage beast appeared. He raped the animals, pulled off their heads, yanked out their intestines and used them to write, “Forgive me, my God.” Then he fled into the brush.

Cristina, with the skill of a hunter, followed his tracks, which led to an enormous oak. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would break her ribs. The tree was identical to the one in her dreams. How many times, at the top of the old tree, had she given herself to her beloved? She’d lost count. The man, standing under a small waterfall, began to wash himself with a surprising delicacy. Soon the cold stream cleansed him of mud and blood. In the silvery light, Cristina, hidden in the thicket, could make out some details of that firm body, which seemed to be about fifty years of age. By piecing together the shape of his nails, the arc of his eyebrows, his protruding lower lip, his marmoreal skin, the beauty mark on his left ear, his blue eyes, his slight limp, and the horizontal wrinkle that furrowed the nape of his neck, Cristina concluded that the man was His Majesty Alexander I, Emperor of Russia. Holding back a scream, trying to be silent, she knelt in exaltation.

The Czar entered the oak tree through an opening in the trunk and did not come out. Cristina waited for several hours, immobile as a statue. Raucous snoring from within the tree startled her out of her stillness. She walked cautiously through the opening and found seven stairs that led down to a cave. On a straw pallet with neither blankets nor pillow lay Alexander I. Wearing a white cassock and a crippled Christ that hung from a bone necklace, he was deeply asleep, lit up by a candle.

Aside from three dead serpents on a hook and an icon of the Virgin surrounded by sheep, offering her bosom to the Child, the place was empty — movingly so in its voluntary poverty. The Czar, master of immense Russia, was living there, solitary, eating reptiles, transformed into a saint, a degenerate. Cristina bowed over the bridegroom of her nightly dreams, made the sign of the cross, and left without turning her back on the Czar. She galloped back to the manor. A hurricane-like rain soaked her to the skin, but she never noticed; her body and soul were burning.

She shouted to wake the servants. She had the furniture from the grand salon thrown out into the yard and installed a herd of sheep. She lived for a month among the animals with the windows closed, never leaving, not caring that the animals’ dung was staining the sumptuous Turkish rugs. She suffused herself with animals’ odor. When the full moon came, she drove the sheep to the edge of the forest, tied them up at the foot of a tree, and killed one in order to skin it. Then, naked, she covered herself with the still-warm skin and got down on all fours, her backside toward the oak.

She’d chosen a corner covered by a thicket so the moonlight wouldn’t expose her. The bleating of the sheep attracted the Czar who, transformed into a monster, threw himself on top of the most appetizing sheep. Cristina felt the impact, stifling a shout of happy pain. Her hymen, hardened by so many years of waiting, exploded into fragments that cut her like shards of glass. None of this kept her from pushing toward the testicles, squeezing out the longed-for liquor. The hermit ejaculated with monumental spasms and then sank his teeth into the Cristina’s neck, trying to sever her aorta. Cristina had developed masculine muscles in her legs from so much riding: they were as strong as tree trunks. She slipped free and fought her attacker, squeezing his torso between her thighs and cutting off his air. Then she tied him on his back to some roots. Paying no attention to his howls of fury, she sat on top of him, making herself seven times the repository of his sperm. At the end of the final orgasm, the man wept, muttering, “Forgive me, my God!” and fainted.

Cristina carried him in her arms to the great oak and, after bathing him in the cold water, brought him to where her flock was, dressed him in the white cassock, and put him to sleep. Soon fever made the Emperor delirious. He was seeing lascivious sheep coming to devour his testicles, all wearing his mother’s velvet and ermine dresses. At dawn, when his fever dropped and he recovered his senses, he kissed Cristina’s hands to show his gratitude. Nothing had ever been easy for him. Dominated by his family, forced into marrying a woman he did not love, unable to make her pregnant, obliged to be an accomplice to his father’s murderers, overwhelmed by power, unsuccessful in leading his people to freedom, he abandoned everything, trying to become a saint. But his soul was rotten.

As a child, he was often sent to study with his grandmother, Catherine the Great. On her lap, he learned military strategy, politics, and many other things. As she spoke to him about her battles, court intrigue, and the engagement of her granddaughter to King Gustav of Sweden, the old woman slid her arthritic hand into his trousers and played with his penis. Then on her knees before him, with an rapacious, imperious look on her face, she sank her rotten teeth into his foreskin. He didn’t dare move, for he feared amputation. Later, after an interminable moment, she would release him and laugh like a crow, showing the stinking depths of her throat.

He hated his grandmother, his mother, and his wife. Three women but at the same time one woman. He sought refuge in the Virgin Mary. He thought that in the solitude of his arboreal hideaway, he would attain sainthood, but one night, when the moon was full, the nightmare began. Possessed by a bestial desire, he was forced to rape and slaughter herds of sheep. Now, after what Cristina had done for him, he realized that beneath the skin of those animals he was seeing the naked bodies of the women who smothered and perverted his youth: Catherine, Maria Feodorovna, and Isabel.

Cristina, her eyes wet with tears, listened without saying a word. It wasn’t an emperor speaking to her, but God. Alexander I picked up a shepherd’s crook, kissed her on the forehead, and bade farewell to her and the world. He would walk to Siberia, and beyond, reaching the polar ice where he would die in the whiteness and purifying cold. Cristina watched him drift away among the trees. The green leaves that hid him also made him disappear from her life. Feeling herself to be pregnant, she returned to her manor; gathered together servants and administrators to announce that she would be living in the forest as a hermit. She promised to visit them every lunar month to see to the proper functioning of the estate, and then she returned to the oak of her dreams.

There, dressed in a white cossack, she prays, bathes in the waterfall, eats snakes, gives birth to Ivan, cuts the umbilical cord with her teeth, and devours the placenta. She goes on living that way for fifteen years. She sprouts a white moustache and a beard of fine, translucent hair. She doesn’t teach her son to read or write. When the boy’s pubis blackens and he starts to get erections every time he looks at the icon of the Virgin, Cristina offers him a sheep so he can vent his passion. For many days the boy doesn’t touch the animal, but when the full moon comes, he throws himself on top of it, penetrates it, bellowing angrily, ejaculates, bites open its stomach, and enjoys himself while pouring out its guts. His mother thinks it’s a miracle. She believes that within Ivan’s body lives the spirit of the Emperor. She brings sheep until the boy, transformed into a powerful giant, rolls around in the mud and then leaps from tree to tree, making his way to the farms of her servants. At dawn, he returns, covered with blood. Then he sleeps, smiling and satisfied. In the morning, when Cristina goes to the manor house and delivers her monthly abuse to the servants, she hears talk of the night before, when eight women were raped and torn apart. Cristina takes a knife from the kitchen and gallops out to the oak tree to castrate her son. She’s caught in a blizzard. Dropping from fatigue, she reaches the refuge, where a hungry bear attacks her. Hearing her screams, Ivan comes out of the oak tree just in time to see the enormous beast bite off his mother’s head. He picks up the kitchen knife and buries it in the bear’s heart. He feels happy as never before. He looks toward heaven and says, “I forgive you, my God.” With the skin of the bear he makes a coat and a mask. He then takes possession of his mother’s estate and chooses ten of the most muscular servants. He cuts off their testicles and makes them his personal guard. So the authorities will suspect nothing, he commits his murders in the Jewish villages, covered by anti-Semitism. One day, he attacks the school of the Vilna Gaon. When he sees Felicidad, he realizes that his entire being, transformed into a beast, was seeking a tamer. That fragile woman is his soul. To destroy her would mean immersing himself forever in darkness. He gives himself to her as only an animal can. His ferocity now is obedience. Felicidad is the Law. If she unleashes him, he will eviscerate the world. Felicidad, descendant of countless lion tamers, understands that her existence only acquires meaning by dominating the beast. That beast is a part of her, her home, her foundation. If before she languished, far from the wetlands that could nourish her flower of fire, now, standing before that beautiful monster, she feels herself reborn. By dominating vice, she will bring virtue to the world. Virtue, which is nothing more than putrefaction transformed. In order for the man to become light, the woman will have to extinguish her lamp in the darkness. She will unite her life to that of the murderer to calm his voracity, make him release the prey, convert his roars into prayers, teach him to give and receive at the same time, transform him into a prism that will absorb colors and transform them into a single ray.

Ivan had all the furniture in the manor house piled up in the garden and set it all on fire. Then he ordered his eunuchs to paint the walls, ceilings, and floors white. White was the only color he could stand now; all others made him sick. Felicidad’s spotless skin made even snow seem filthy. He locked himself up in that dazzling space with his tamer. She resolved never to go out again. Her mission, in this profound solitude, was to fabricate the stone that would transform base metals into gold: a prophetic son.

Ivan and Felicidad prepared for months, perhaps years, without speaking, staring into each other’s eyes, stock still for entire nights. He only ate fruit; she, raw meat. When she felt the spiritual union had been consummated, Felicidad stretched out on the white floor and ordered Ivan to give himself over to the only sexual act both would have during their entire lives.

Slowly, delicately, tenderly, the man entered the woman, who in turn opened wider and wider until she lost all boundaries and fused with the entire Earth. The semen descended to the core of the planet, fell into a dark abyss where the galaxies dance. The Universe absorbed the rain of fire. Felicidad was pregnant. Now Ivan could disappear.

“I want you to cut me into pieces and eat me,” he said to his lover and softly expired in her arms. She buried his body in the snow, and for the nine months of her pregnancy nourished herself on it.

The child arrived in a breech birth. The midwife brought him, feet first, into the world in a single great pull. “His feet will be more important than his head,” she declared. Felicidad understood: Alejandro Prullansky would be a great dancer, not a prophet. For humanity, art was more important than an unreachable God — art that transformed matter into soul. His family tree told of the struggles of sensitive souls in search of the beauty, the glow of the hidden Truth. Thanks to the sacrifice of the murderous instinct, violence could metamorphose into poetry. And there was no poem greater than a dancing body. When the boy was five years old, Felicidad sent him to the Imperial Ballet School in Moscow.

That morning, Felicidad opened the windows and let in the frozen, fragrant air from the snow-covered park. All the hair on her body had turned white. “You will never see me again,” she said to Alejandro. “I’m not going to die, but I am going to dissolve into the whiteness. Always remember me.” The boy saw his mother, so pale she looked like a plaster figurine, remove all her clothing, press against the wall and blend into the white stucco. When she closed her eyes (the only dark spots on her body), he could no longer see her at all. He ran to the wall, groping it desperately. All he felt was a smooth surface.

The giant dancer began to weep in Jashe’s arms — for the lost maternal kisses, for the tortures of apprenticeship in classical dance, for the boys who had their sexes kissed in the dressing rooms, for that old choreographer who raped him behind the piano when he was eleven. Whenever he was given a room with white walls, he would hurl himself against them until his forehead bled. He could have died of sadness had it not been for Abravanel’s red shoes. Those century-old, impervious boots that changed size, adapting to the child’s feet and stretching as they grew, proved to him that he was the bearer of a collective soul that would allow him to reach the end of Time, beyond all space, where only Truth exists.

Jashe placed the red shoes on top of the violet bag containing the Tarot, and with those sacred objects next to her, coupled with her husband to give my mother, Sara Felicidad, the chance to incarnate herself in a place of love.

The alarm clock did not work. The newlyweds ran out of the hotel only half dressed and just managed to reach at the station in time for the train that would carry them to the port of Bremen. There they boarded the Weser, an impressive ship whose first-class passengers included members of the Imperial Ballet, on their way to Buenos Aires for their debut in the famous Colón Theatre. The Weser boasted cabins in Chinese-French style, dinners enlivened by a string quartet, steam baths, spacious entertainment rooms, and long passageways with wood paneling that imitated ebony. In third class — that is, in the hold or on the poop deck — were packed 1,200 Russian Jews accepted by the Argentine government on the condition that they work on the pampa as farmers.

No sooner had Jashe set foot on the packet boat’s ladder than she sensed a threat to her happiness. Someone, one of the group of dancers who leaned on the railing of the upper deck, was watching them with a look like an invisible larva full of hatred. Alejandro too felt the ominous attack. His face pale, he said between his teeth, “Walk behind me and carry the bags as if you were a servant. I’ll explain later.” When they entered the spacious bedroom assigned to him as a principal dancer, the giant embraced Jashe, muttering apologies.

The situation was complicated: in a sense, he belonged to the Imperial Ballet, and the members of the corps were not allowed to marry. This of course was not written in their contracts, but it was accepted as an unspoken rule. The Director General, whose real name no one knew, went by Vladimir Monomaque in honor of the ancestor of the princes of Moscow. In the eleventh century, one had distinguished himself with his talent as an organizer and administrator. He enforced a ferocious discipline on the dancers, making them to rehearse all day long, never giving a thought to whether they had time for satisfy their emotional needs.

Monomaque’s possessiveness kept outsiders from the intimate life of the Ballet. Equally possessive was the sublime Marina Leopoldovna, the prima ballerina and the tyrant’s pampered pet, whose many caprices were tolerated because the success of the tours depended on her. Her immense talent and technical perfection attracted multitudes in every country.

Well, he was telling her all this because there was something very unpleasant he had to confess. One afternoon, yielding to the demands of the temperamental diva, Vladimir Monomaque entered Alejandro’s dressing room and, after reminding Alejandro of everything he owed him and the school — a refuge for the orphan such as him — ordered him to satisfy Marina’s sexual appetites, which seized her on the twenty-first day of every month. No one argued with the Director General. Unfortunately, because of the precipitous nature of events, Alejandro had not had the time to communicate to — let’s call things by their proper names — his lover the news of their marriage.

The news — he was sure of it — was going to cause a lot of trouble. Knowing Marina as he did, he knew she would faint and then wake up a few seconds later, foaming with rage. Then she’d refuse to dance, and finally, forced by the steely Director, she waged silent war by spreading animosity among the troupe until she made their lives impossible. All this could stop if Vladimir only found her another lover in the group — impossible, as they were all effeminate.

“I’m very sorry, Jashe. You have to eat and sleep in the servants’ area. The crossing will be long; it will last thirty-five days, and the tour will last six months or more. Aboard the ship, we will make love when you bring me my breakfast, and on land, if they give us a day off each week, we’ll go to some discreet hotel. When the tour is over, when we’re back in Moscow, we can finally return to normal. But if the star of the show finds out the truth and we have a crisis, Monomaque will instantly find someone in the school to replace me.”

Jashe held in her bitter tears, knowing that there was no solution but to accept the arrangements for now. The only thing she couldn’t understand was how her husband could have lied to her and said she was his first. He lowered his eyes in shame for five minutes that seemed like five hours. Finally, he whispered in a broken voice, “Tomorrow is the twenty-first. Marina Leopoldovna’s desire comes on with mathematical precision. Any moment now she will walk into this cabin. You should leave without looking back and wait in your place until the next day. I suggest you not talk with the servants, because they will fill your ears with obscene gossip. Ah, Jashe, how we suffer! You have to believe that this repulses me and that I suffer as much as you.”

Jashe’s love knew no limits. They threw themselves into each other’s arms and made more passionate love than ever. A gong sounded, announcing dinner. The liner was now rocking on the high seas. They said goodbye with a deep and furtive kiss, and Jashe, despite her seeming fragility, showed her impeccable moral strength. She picked up her suitcase, went to the servants’ quarters, accepted the suspicious looks of the little old ladies in charge of costume, and did not argue when she was given a tiny cabin with no windows that smelled of rotten beets. Impassive, she turned on the faucet, ran water onto the floor, and set about cleaning until everything sparkled. Every once in a while, some stagehand would open the door and look her up and down obscenely or mockingly.

The foreman, a fat Ukrainian who breathed through his mouth, emitting a slight but perpetual whine, escorted her to the dining room and gave her a place at the shared table. Barely able to keep from vomiting, she had just tossed a sack of gelatinous beets overboard. Now, as the only accompaniment to her breaded cutlets, she was served a few of those red tumors. A sour wine, made from powder and water, was passed around freely. Men and women, drunk, began to mimic a ballet. Showing their backsides, which they kept bare under heavy, long skirts, the assistants, the makeup women, and the seamstresses all spread their legs shamelessly so the workers could slip their calloused hands into the dark stains of their sex and raise them like awkward swans.

Up in the air, they imitated flying birds, erupting with crass squawks, and dropped onto the table chest-to-chest with their men. Trying not to call attention to herself, Jashe got up from the table and walked along the passageways to her cabin. Like an immense pelican, the Ukrainian, reeking of sugary sweat, fell on top of her. Staggering, he dragged her out on deck and laid her down under a lifeboat. She offered no resistance. She allowed him to raise her skirt and pull off her panties. She spread her thighs and took his fat member in both hands as if to show him the path. Then she delicately slid her fingers toward his testicles and crushed them with murderous intensity. The brute twisted and howled, but she kept squeezing until he fainted. Then she went to her pigsty of a cabin and slept peacefully.

The next morning she ordered a breakfast at the first-class kitchen and brought it to her husband, to whom she said told nothing, to spare him suffering. When he finished his tea with lemon, he gazed with anguish through the porthole, drew the curtains, and bolted the door. Then he undressed Jashe and took her to bed. After an hour, when the two of them had forgotten where they were, Marina Leopoldovna urgently knocked on the cabin door. Jashe had barely enough time to dress, snatch up the brush, kneel at the toilet, and pretend to be cleaning it.

Alejandro, without bothering to cover his nakedness, let her in. The diva stood in the center of the bedroom, stamping her little foot. Her steel toe smashing against the linoleum floor made a thunderous echo. Jashe exited with averted eyes and closed the door, biting her lip. She felt the click of the lock like a knife in her heart; the ballerina’s light steps were like bullets as she ran to throw herself into her giant’s arms. She had difficulty making her way along the passageway, which seemed soft and sticky, back to her own dark room. She wanted to vomit, to expel blood from her sex in a violent gush. Her face became violet red, the soles of her feet were burning. Stifling a roar, she made a half turn and with bared teeth returned to the cabin and peeked through the window.

The ballerina was leaning back on Alejandro’s broad chest with a despotic grin, tugging at his hair. She made him bite the nape of her neck, a task he performed with the face of a penitent. Jashe could no longer control her hatred for that lascivious, cruel woman, and a pain in her stomach kept her from seeing clearly. As if shrouded in fog, the Russian woman knelt before Jashe’s man and swallowed the sacred organ, making little-girl squeals. Then, with the gesture of a tragic actress, she tossed aside the Japanese silk robe that covered her nakedness, and like a white, skeletal worm slithered to the bed and offered her buttocks, imitating the barks of a bitch in heat.

The fog cleared, and hatred gave way to great outrage. She felt herself transformed into the Eighth Arcanum, Justice, with a scale in one hand and a sword in the other — no less implacable for being invisible. She decided that very day that Truth must control the world. Justice meant giving to everyone what they deserved, and Marina Leopoldovna deserved a scandal.

Jashe went to the rehearsal studio and hid behind the piano. Soon, Madame Teodora, an intense, efficient old woman, shook her tambourine, and in a few seconds, the entire corps de ballet assembled with military discipline in straight lines. With her eyes, Madame Teodora consulted Vladimir Monomaque, and he nodded his lustrous head affirmatively, satisfied with his inspection. The pianist played a mazurka. No one moved; they waited for Leopoldovna, standing before the first row, to take the first steps so they could then imitate her with admiration and envy.

The distinguished diva only managed a plié before she was interrupted by Jashe, who emerged from behind the piano, pounced on her like a furious cat, and tore her tutu. The ripped garment flew off, but the other dancers could not intervene, paralyzed as they were by shock. But when the white panties fell and the pitch black of her pubis showed the animal within that body, which moved so skillfully that it seemed immaterial, they all shouted in horror. The Director, popping the buttons of his shirt as he tore it off, ran to cover Marina’s unmasked body. Too late. The truth had come to light. The secret he’d kept for so many years, sharing it only with the first male dancer, had been exposed. Everyone saw that thin, flaccid, bright red penis hanging between the legs of the ballerina. Yes, the celebrated, sublime, lighter-than-air Marina Leopoldovna was a man.

Jashe took her husband by the hand and led him past the stunned Russians until they were opposite the despot, who was calming his sobbing transsexual, hugging him with surprising tenderness. My grandmother understood what no one else had been able to imagine. Speaking with a Jewish accent full of majesty, she said in Russian, “You can’t blot out the sun with a finger. That poor man is your son. Just look at what your ambition has made of him. You stole his manhood in order to make him into a trained monkey. What you deserve is the contempt of the whole world. I want you to know that this man is my husband and that you no longer have any right to rule his private life. Alejandro Prullansky is no longer your slave!”

The Director General fixed his gaze on Alejandro’s eyes, and for the first time, Alejandro stared back.

“Either that woman or me!”

With no hesitation, Alejandro shouted “Jashe!” Lifting her up in his powerful arms, he carried her out on deck to breathe the intoxicating ocean air.

Dropping his usual domineering tone, Vladimir Monomaque spoke with the Imperial Ballet. The future of the entire corps depended on the silence of each and every one of them. A scandal would finish them off forever. With sincere humility, he begged them to erase what they had just seen from their memory. Very soon, this very year, when they reached San Francisco, where surgery was very advanced, Marina would undergo an operation to remove the annoying detail and make her a woman like all others. The company applauded. Alejandro Prullansky would be expelled immediately, but only after receiving a very important sum of money to guarantee his silence. The company applauded again. Marina never stopped crying, seized by uncontrollable convulsions. His father slapped him and dressed him in a new tutu. Recovering his authoritarian voice, more severe now than ever, he ordered his son to go on with the rehearsal or he’d kick his ass to pieces. Marina blew her nose in the hands of her faithful dresser, Tito, and began to dance. Soon the mazurka was danced more enthusiastically than ever.

Jashe, followed by Alejandro, who was carrying the bags and had hidden a thick roll of American one hundred dollar bills in his underwear, descended to third class. None of the religious Jews bothered to greet that tiny renegade accompanied by such an enormous goy. Here, they were fleeing pogroms: what gave anyone the right to impose the presence of a Russian on them? It was like poking a thorn into their wounds. They didn’t move to make room for the newcomers, and went on rubbing their delicate hands with pieces of harsh rope to create callouses — all so people would think they were farmers.

My grandparents had to take refuge in the cursed corner, the den of sin, a back room among crates of apples where Icho Melnik and his six prostitutes had been relegated. “Man does not live by the Torah alone,” he said winking an eye and offering them a swig of vodka as the girls, making off-color remarks, set out the sacks they’d use as beds.

Jashe found a piece of soap and a pail of water. Instead of a sponge, she used a rolled-up cloth belt to wash the giant as if he were a little boy. “Don’t be sad,” she said. “Argentina is a grand country. There’s lots of work. We’ll invest the money they gave us and get rich. You will found your own ballet.”

Alejandro let go of his sadness and began to laugh. They slept in each other’s arms.

In the unheated storage space, the passengers were freezing. Slowly but surely, the whores got closer and closer to the couple to attach themselves to those bodies heated by love. Icho Melnik, a discreet drunk, opened a few crates and made himself a mattress out of apples. A group of old folks, rocking back and forth in their fatigue, querulously read the last prayer of the night. Before starting to snore like thunder, the pimp muttered, “It’s useless to ask God for something you can get for yourself.”