The Days of the Rainbow (8 page)

“He’s a new student,” the teacher explains to me. “A Chilean who just came back from Argentina.”

The student is warming the palms of his hands by breathing into them.

“Where did you come from?” I ask him.

“From Buenos Aires. My old man was exiled there and now he was allowed to come back. They removed the
L
from his passport.”

“What’s your name?”

“Héctor Barrios.”

“And how do they call you? Tito?”

“No. The Chilean.”

“Well, start looking for another nickname, because we’re all Chilean here.”

We run together to the pommel horse, but before jumping he freezes and looks at the teacher in distress.

“What happened, Barrios?”

“I don’t know, sir,” he says, with a strong Argentine accent. “When I got to the thing there I thought I wouldn’t be able to jump over it, I thought.”

“The thing there is perfectly designed for an eighteen-year-old young man. Go back to the line and jump.”

I go back with him to the starting point.

“I jumped one of those once, and I broke my wrist,” he says.

“Okay. Forget it. I’ll tell the teacher.”

“Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Nicomachus. But they call me Nico.”

“In Buenos Aires I had a classmate whose name was Heliogabalus.”

“And what did they call him?”

“Gabo.”

“Like García Márquez.”

“Right.”

I get a running start, keep running, and neatly jump over the leather bar and roll gently on the mat. Then I go toward the teacher.

“What’s wrong with Che?”

“The wrist, teacher. He fractured it pretty badly.”

“In Argentina?”

“Poor guy,” I confirm.

“You’re kidding!” the teacher says to me, and makes a hand gesture asking Barrios to come.

“I spare you this time, Che. In the name of San Martín and O’Higgins’s hug.”
^*

Barrios pokes my chest with his finger.

“I knew that in Chile I was going to be called Che.”

PATRICIA SAW THE MAN
, without even shaking the dust off his jacket, stand up from the sidewalk and leave like a dog with its tail between its legs.

“My God, Dad, what have you done?”

Bettini walked into the house, turning his back to Patricia while she was talking to him.

“I’m trying to write the jingle for the ad campaign, and that fool comes to my house to sing ‘No, no, no, no’ to the tune of ‘Blue Danube.’ ”

“Did you kick Tiny out?”

“Tiny, but with a foolishness that is inversely proportional to his height!”

“But, Daddy. He sang that song at the Scuola Italiana yesterday. And it’s a catchy tune. Today, all the students in my class were singing it.”

Bettini stopped abruptly. “All the ‘undecided’ students?”

“Everyone. That waltz is awesome, Dad.”

They walked into the studio and the ad agent cleaned the keyboard with the sleeve of his shirt as if he wanted to erase Alarcón’s fingerprints.

“Awesome! That’s what your boyfriend Nico Santos told me a few minutes ago.”

“But it’s true! He also went to our school and played it for the students. He goes from high school to high school, from college to college, singing that song. Students help him hide when the cops arrive.”

“It wouldn’t be necessary. He’s so short that if he wore a uniform, he would pass for a student.”

Bettini sat at the piano. He pushed the pedal down for emphasis and played the most emblematic melody of Allende’s years:
The people united will never be defeated
.

“I have to come up with a harmony capable of bringing together Liberals, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Radicals, leftist Christians, Greens, Humanists, Reborn Christians, Communists, Centrists … What a cacophony!”

Patricia stayed with her father until he gently closed the lid of the piano, putting an end to his defeat.

“Don’t be so old-fashioned, Dad! If you want to encourage people to vote
No
with joy, you have to compose something really cheerful.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. But nothing comes to me.”

“A tune with good vibes!”

“Like rock and roll?”

“Sure! Why not? Something light, like the Beatles’ music. You have to make people feel that it’s cool to say
No
!”

Patricia imitated the neck movement with which Paul McCartney used to follow the beat, shaking his head.

“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …”

“Which, in my case, would be, ‘She loves you, no, no, no …’ What the heck will I do with this damn
No
?”

“Something youthful, cute, amusing. Something with a little whoop at the end: ‘No, oh, oh …’?”

Bettini rubbed his eyes, trying to erase the image of this nightmare.

“No, oh, oh …?”

“That’s it, No, oh, oh …”

“Good-bye, Patricia!”

“Are you leaving?”

“Nope. You are!”

LAURA YÁÑEZ
is now at my place. She’s Patricia Bettini’s close friend and, at the same time, the complete opposite of her. While Pati’s a good student and has thin lips, small breasts, and straight brown hair that she wears in a ponytail that she tightens with a barrette, Laura has dark, messy curls that shine with gel. Even in the middle of winter, her skin is copper colored, as if she had just come back from the beach. Her purse is covered with stickers with the images of the new pop stars, and her fleshy lips are enhanced with a vibrant lipstick that she puts on as soon as she leaves the school. Her chest busts out from the uniform shirt, and she unbuttons it enough for us to see the vertiginous curves of her smooth breasts. Her easy smile shows perfect teeth, and she constantly moves her hips as if she were listening to tropical music.

About her school life she says only, “I’m a lioness in a cage.” This motto’s confirmed by her report card, where, by the end of the semester, the grades in red look like a cherry festival.

I make her some tea and don’t ask what brings Laura Yáñez by herself to my place, because I prefer not to know. Her contribution to “teatime” is a pack of Triton cookies, the round chocolate ones with white cream filling. After the first sip, she tells me she came to ask me for a favor.

She has arrived at the conclusion that even if she burns the midnight oil studying from now on, she’ll never be able to make up for those red grades, so she’ll have to repeat the year.

“Just imagine,” she tells me, “the effect that would have on my mood. All of my girlfriends are going to college, or they’re going to start dating so they can get married, and I’d have to stay in that cage, but with the young girls in the lower grade, whom I can’t stand. And that’s the best-case situation, because my parents already told me that they don’t have any more money to keep paying for the Scuola Italiana. They’re tired of making so many sacrifices. They told me that if I get held back, they would send me to a technical school or to the Culinary Institute, and I’ll end up as a cook in a hotel.

“In conclusion,” she says between melancholy bites of a cookie, “I’ve decided to drop out of school
right away and start working and make money to buy the things I like.”

My tea tastes bitter without sugar, but I keep drinking it in silence.

I know what Laura likes: older guys, being the queen of the disco when she dances salsa, polo shirts two sizes too small so that the fabric makes her breasts even more noticeable, jeans chiseled on the curves of her hard bottom, and watching soap operas dreaming that someday she’ll meet a producer who will discover her and give her a part, and she’ll become famous and rich.

On the other hand, Laura doesn’t give a damn about Aristotle or Shakespeare. The only scene she likes from
Hamlet
is when Polonius asks him what he’s reading and he answers, “Words, words, words.” For Laura, world culture is expressed in words, and words are a bad check. According to her, everybody talks too much about democracy, but we should take a look at what’s happening in Chile. Her philosophy—live intensely today, because you could be killed at any moment.

Conclusion—she wants to drop out of school right away and get a job.

She stares at me as if she had lit a bomb and was now waiting for it to explode.

But I don’t say a word because I’m thinking about what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing in my
mind, like on a movie screen, is what life holds for her if she drops out of school.

I shove half a cookie in my mouth and make it crunch as I chew it just so I don’t have to talk. She raises her brows and asks me what I think. I know very well what I think, but I also know very well I’m nobody to start giving my opinion. Deep inside, what bothers me is knowing why Laura comes to me with her story instead of going to, for instance, Patricia Bettini.

“So you want to know my opinion?” I ask her.

“Actually no, Santos. I’ve already made my decision.”

She takes a makeup case out of her purse and checks the corner of her mouth in the oval mirror. Then she runs her tongue over a small wound that surely stings.

“Did you tell Patricia?”

“Of course not.”

“She’s your close friend.”

“She’s my close friend, but she’s pretty prudish, too.”

I get up from my chair and open the window, looking out onto the terrace.

It’s a few minutes after six, but it’s already getting dark in Santiago. The tires of the buses squeal on the wet pavement and the whistles of the traffic cops are unable to ease the traffic congestion.
The drivers honk their horns as if it makes any difference.

I pour more tea. I wonder when Dad will come back.

“I need your help, Santos.”

“What for?”

“I just found a job close to here.”

“Where?”

“Across the street.”

“So?”

“I can’t tell my parents that I’m quitting school. I’ll wear my uniform when I leave home, but I’ll need your room to get changed. I have to wear something sexy. It won’t take me more than five minutes.”

“Look, Laura, you shouldn’t drop out of school. I can help you with English and philosophy. Patricia can help you with math.”

“And chemistry, and physics, and history, and visual arts?”

“I’d rather not help you with your scheme.”

“Please, Santos. It’s only five minutes. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“No.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“Patricia Bettini’s your best friend. Not me.”

“Why don’t you want to help me?”

“Just because! I don’t feel like helping you!”

Laura Yáñez stands up and gives me an evil look, as if she wants to kill me. “You’re a moralist, Santos.”

Coming from her, that sophisticated word sounds awkward.

Because what she really wants to say is that I’m a scaredy-cat.

Or, like my old man would say, “You’re not ethical, Nicomachus.”

“Do whatever you want. You can use the apartment as you please. Here, you can have my father’s key.”