The Unknown University (59 page)

Ambulantes y desocupados,

Oteando

En las colinas

Las hogueras de Sendero Luminoso,

Pero nada vimos.

La oscuridad que rodeaba los

Núcleos urbanos

Era total.

Esto es como una estela

Escapada de la Segunda

Guerra Mundial

Dijo Pancho acostado

En el fondo de la camioneta.

Dijo; filamentos

De generales nazis como

Reichenau o Model

Evadidos en espíritu

Y de forma involuntaria

Hacia las Tierras Vírgenes

De Latinoamérica:

Un hinterland de espectros

Y fantasmas.

Nuestra casa

Instalada en la geometría

De los crímenes imposibles.

Y por las noches solíamos

Recorrer algunos cabaretuchos:

Las putas quinceañeras

Descendientes de aquellos bravos

De la Guerra del Pacífico

Gustaban escucharnos hablar

Como ametralladoras.

Pero sobre todo

Les gustaba ver a Pancho

Envuelto en varias y coloridas mantas

Y con un gorro de lana

Del altiplano

Encasquetado hasta las cejas

Aparecer y desaparecer

Como el caballero

Que siempre fue,

Un tipo con suerte,

El gran amante enfermo del sur de Chile,

El padre de los Neochilenos

Y la madre del Caraculo y el Jetachancho,

Dos pobres músicos de Valparaíso,

Como todo el mundo sabe.

Y el amanecer solía encontrarnos

En una mesa del fondo

Hablando del kilo y medio de materia gris

Del cerebro de una persona

Adulta.

Mensajes químicos, decía

Pancho Misterio ardiendo de fiebre,

Neuronas que se activan

Y neuronas que se inhiben

En las vastedades de un anhelo.

Y las putitas decían

Que un kilo y medio de materia

Gris

Era bastante, era suficiente, para qué

Pedir más.

Y a Pancho se le caían

Las lágrimas cuando las escuchaba.

Y luego llegó el diluvio

Y la lluvia trajo el silencio

Sobre las calles de Mollendo,

Y sobre las colinas,

Y sobre las calles del barrio

De las putas,

Y la lluvia era el único

Interlocutor.

Extraño fenómeno: los Neochilenos

Dejamos de hablarnos

Y cada uno por su lado

Visitamos los basurales de

La Filosofía, las arcas, los

Colores americanos, el estilo inconfundible

De Nacer y Renacer.

Y una noche nuestra camioneta

Enfiló hacia Lima, con Pancho

Ferri al volante, como en

Los viejos tiempos,

Salvo que ahora una puta

Lo acompañaba

Una puta delgada y joven,

De nombre Margarita,

Una adolescente sin par,

Habitante de la tormenta

Permanente.

Sombra delgada y ágil

La ramada oscura

Donde curar sus heridas

Pancho pudiera.

Y en Lima leímos a los poetas

Peruanos:

Vallejo, Martín Adán y Jorge Pimentel.

Y Pancho Misterio salió

Al escenario y fue convincente

Y versátil.

Y luego, aún temblorosos

Y sudorosos

Nos contó una novela

llamada Kundalini

De un viejo escritor chileno.

Un tragado por el olvido.

Un
nec spes nec metus

Dijimos los Neochilenos.

Y Margarita.

Y el fantasma,

El hoyo doliente

En que todo esfuerzo

Se convierte,

Escribió —parece ser—

Una novela llamada Kundalini,

Y Pancho apenas la recordaba,

Hacía esfuerzos, sus palabras

Hurgaban en una infancia atroz

Llena de amnesia, de pruebas

Ginmásticas y mentiras,

Y así nos la fue contando,

Fragmentada,

El grito Kundalini.

El nombre de una yegua turfista

Y la muerte colectiva en el hipódromo.

Un hipódromo que ya no existe.

Un hueco anclado

En un Chile inexistente

Y feliz.

Y aquella historia tuvo

La virtud de iluminar

Como un paisajista inglés

Nuestro miedo y nuestros sueños

Que marchaban de Este a Oeste

Y de Oeste a Este,

Mientras nosotros, los Neochilenos

Reales

Viajábamos de Sur

A Norte.

Y tan lentos

Que parecía que no nos movíamos.

Y Lima fue un instante

De felicidad,

Breve pero eficaz.

¿Y cuál es la relación, dijo Pancho,

Entre Morfeo, dios

Del sueño

Y morfar, vulgo

Comer?

Sí, eso dijo,

Abrazado por la cintura

De la bella Margarita,

Flaca y casi desnuda

En un bar de Lince, una noche

Leída y partida y

Poseída

Por los relámpagos

De la quimera.

Nuestra necesidad.

Nuestra boca abierta

Por la que entra

La papa

Y por la que salen

Los sueños: estelas

Fósiles

Coloreadas con la paleta

Del apocalipsis.

Sobrevivientes, dijo Pancho

Ferri.

Latinoamericanos con suerte.

Eso es todo.

Y una noche antes de partir

Vimos a Pancho

Y a Margarita

De pie en medio de un lodazal

Infinito.

Y entonces supimos

Que los Neochilenos

Estarían para siempre

Gobernados

Por el azar.

La moneda

Saltó como un insecto

Metálico

De entre sus dedos:

Cara, al sur,

Cruz, al norte,

Y luego nos subimos todos

A la camioneta

Y la ciudad

De las leyendas

Y del miedo

Quedó atrás.

Un feliz día de enero

Cruzamos

Como hijos del Frío,

Del Frío Inestable

O del Ecce Homo,

La frontera con Ecuador.

Por entonces Pancho tenía

28 o 29 años

Y pronto moriría.

Y 17 Margarita.

Y ninguno de los Neochilenos

Pasaba de los 22.

THE NEOCHILEANS

to Rodrigo Lira

The trip began one happy day in November,

But in a sense the trip was over

When we started.

All times coexist, said Pancho Ferri,

The lead singer.
Or they converge,

Who knows.

The prologue, however,

Was simple:

With a resigned gesture we boarded

The van our manager

Had given us in a fit

Of madness

And set off for the north,

The north which magnetizes dreams

And the seemingly

Meaningless songs of the Neochileans,

A north, how should I put it?

Foretold in the white kerchief

Sometimes covering

My face

Like a shroud.

A white kerchief unsullied

Or not

On which were projected

My nomadic nightmares

And my sedentary nightmares.

And Pancho Ferri

Asked

If we knew the story

Of Caraculo

And Jetachancho

Grasping the steering wheel

With both hands and

Making the van tremble

As we looked for the exit

From Santiago,

Making it tremble as if it were

Caraculo’s

Chest

Carrying a weight unbearable

For any human.

And I remembered then that on the day

Before our departure

We’d been

In the
Parque Forestal

Visiting the monument

To Ruben Dario.

Goodbye, Ruben, we said, drunk

And stoned.

Now those trivial acts

Get confused

With screams heralding

Real dreams.

But that’s how we Neochileans were,

Pure inspiration

And no method at all.

And the next day we rolled

On to Pilpico and Llay Llay

And shot through

La Ligua and Los Vilos

Without stopping

And crossed the Petorca River

And the Quilimari

River

And the Choapa until we arrived

At La Serena

And the Elqui River

And finally Copiapó

And the Copiapó River

Where we stopped

To eat cold

Empanadas.

And Pancho Ferri

Returned to the intercontinental

Adventures

Of Caraculo and Jetachancho,

Two musicians from Valparaíso

Lost

In Barcelona’s Chinatown.

And poor Caraculo,

The lead singer said,

Was married and needed

To get money

For his wife and children

Of the Caraculo lineage

So badly he started dealing

Heroin

And a little cocaine

And on Fridays a little ecstasy

For the subjects of Venus.

And bit by bit, stubbornly,

He was moving up,

And while Jetachancho

Hung out with Aldo Di Pietro,

Remember him?

In Café Puerto Rico,

Caraculo saw his checking account

And his self-esteem grow.

And what lesson can we

Neochileans learn

From the criminal lives

Of those two South American

Pilgrims?

None, except that limits

Are tenuous, limits

Are relative: reeded edges

Of a reality forged

In the void.

Pascal’s horror

Precisely.

That geometric horror

So dark

And cold,

Said Pancho Ferri

At the wheel of our race car,

Always heading

North, till we reached

Toco

Where we unloaded

The amp

And two hours later

Were ready to go on:

Pancho Relámpago

And the Neochileans
.

A tiny

Pea-sized failure,

Though some teens

Did help us

Load the instruments back

In the van: kids

From Toco

Transparent like

The geometric figures

Of Blaise Pascal.

And after Toco, Quillagua,

Hilaticos, Soledad, Ramaditas,

Pintados and Humberstone,

Playing in empty banquet halls

And brothels converted

Into Lilliputian hospitals,

A really rare sight, rare they even had

Electricity, really

Rare that the walls

Were semi-solid, in short,

Places that kind of

Scared us a little

And where the clients

Took a liking to

Fist-fucking
and

Feet-fucking
,

And the screams that came

Through the windows and

Echoed through the cement courtyard

Through outhouses

Between stores full

Of rusted tools

And sheds that seemed

To collect all the moon’s light,

Made our hair

Stand on end.

How can so much evil exist

In a country so new,

So minuscule?

Might this be

The Prostitutes’ Hell?

Pancho Ferri

Pondered aloud.

And we Neochileans didn’t know

What to answer.

I just sat wondering

How those New York variants of sex

Could go on

In these godforsaken

Provinces.

And with our pockets emptied

We continued north:

Mapocho, Negreiros, Santa

Catalina, Tana,

Cuya and

Arica,

Where we found

Some rest — and indignities.

And three nights of work

In the
Camafeo
, owned by

Don Luis Sánchez Morales, retired

Official.

A place filled with little round tables

And pot-bellied lamps

Hand-painted

By don Luis’s mom,

I suppose.

And the only really

Amusing thing

We saw in Arica

Was the sun of Arica:

A sun like a trail

Of dust.

A sun like sand

Or like lime

Tossed artfully

Into the motionless air.

The rest: routine.

Assassins and converts

Chit-chatting

With the deaf and mute,

With imbeciles turned loose

From Purgatory.

And Vivanco the lawyer,

A friend of don Luis Sánchez,

Asked what the fuck we were trying to say

With all that Neochilean shit.

New patriots, said Pancho,

As he got up

From the table

And locked himself in the bathroom.

And Vivanco the lawyer

Tucked his pistol back

In its holster

Of Italian leather,

A fine repoussé of the boys

Of Ordine Nuovo,

Detailed with delicacy and skill.

White as the moon

That night we had to tuck

Pancho Ferri in bed

Between all of us.

With a 40 degree fever

He was growing delirious:

He didn’t want our band

To be called
Pancho Relámpago

And the Neochileans
anymore,

But instead
Pancho Misterio

And the Neochileans
:

Pascal’s terror.

The terror of lead singers,

The terror of travelers,

But never the terror

Of children.

And one morning at dawn,

Like a band of thieves,

We left Arica

And crossed the border

Of the Republic.

By our expressions

You’d have thought we were crossing

The border of Reason.

And the Peru of legend

Opened up in front of our van

Covered in dust

And filth,

Like a piece of fruit without a peel,

Like a chimeric fruit

Exposed to inclemency

And insults.

A fruit without a rind

Like a cocky teenager.

And Pancho Ferri, from

Then on called Pancho

Misterio, didn’t break

His fever,

Murmuring like a priest

In the back part

Of the van

The ups and downs,

The avatars — Indian word —

Of Caraculo and Jetachancho.

A life thin and hard

As the soup and noose of a hanged man,

That of Jetachancho and his

Lucky Siamese twin:

A life or a study

Of the wind’s caprices.

And the Neochileans

Played in Tacna,

In Mollendo and Arequipa,

Sponsored by the Society

For the Promotion of Art

And Youth.

Without a lead singer, humming

The songs to ourselves

Or going mmm, mmm, mmmmh,

While Pancho was melting away

In the back of the van,

Devoured by chimeras

And cocky teenagers.

Nadir and zenith of a longing

That Caraculo learned to sense

In the moons

Of the drug dealers

Of Barcelona: a deceptive

Glow,

A minute empty space

That means nothing,

That’s worth nothing, and that

Nevertheless exposes itself to you

Free of charge.

And if we weren’t

In Peru?
we

Neochileans

Asked ourselves one night.

And if this immense

Space

That instructs

And limits us

Were an intergalactic ship,

An unidentified

Flying object?

And if Pancho Misterio’s

Fever

Were our fuel

Or our navigational device?

And after working

We went out walking

Through the streets of Peru:

With military patrols,

Peddlers and the unemployed,

Scanning

The hills

For Shining Path’s bonfires,

But we saw nothing.

The darkness surrounding the

Urban centers

Was total.

This is like a vapor trail