In the story “ Singing and Dance ”, the Chilean writer Manuel Rojas
invites us to go for a walk to the interior of
a brothel of the Santiago of
last century. Everything happens on Saturday night, when the red
lounge of the
house of Mrs Maria de los Santos turns into mute witness of the meeting between
Atilio and Tobías, being the death the manager who annihilates the diversion,
taking under his dark cloak one of two men. The house of Mrs Maria was ancient
and big.
whose center languid bambúes were growing. But the most important of the
house was the lounge. A big lounge of red walls and old armchairs of the same
color. The black piano and a chandelier suspended from the roof, they were the
perfect contrast for that ambience. Four strategically hanging big mirrors,
they could reflect during the day the solitude and in the night the images of a
cavern in which the alcohol, the cueca and the payed love were the kings. To
the dusk the parishioners came to the big red lounge. A brave woman was singing
cuecas. Some men were laughing and others were dancing with the
women. But they
were wanting to take wine up to losing the senses. Between screams, music,
guffaws and heavy smell of wine mixed with the perspiration of the bodies, were
passing several hours and many of the men, scarcely being supported in foot,
went away with the woman chosen to the bedrooms.
Some of them remained asleep on the armchairs and others simply went out
of the house of Mrs Maria, making a show of his drunkenness, losting them in
the darkness of the night, shouting only incoherent phrases. And when the women
and Mrs Maria were thinking that the night of work it was touching his end,
there appeared “ Atilio “, a dirty villain with face of dead person in life, of
the lowest level in the scale of the crime, expert at killing with knife for
the back, always protected in the shades of the night. The singer and the women
had to encourage up to dance again and
flirt with Atilio and his followers. Mrs Maria, to grief but to avoid problems,
they gave a glass of wine to each one. After a little bit of rejoicing, and
without waiting for it at least, the thief “ Tobias “ and his band appeared.
These were of another lineage, they were thieving, they were not walking dirty
and had better treatment with the women. By the same, the women preferred them
and left of side Atilio and his men. The snub of the women lit the hate in Atilio
and only it was enough that one of them, by mistake, was taking one of his
glasses of wine, so that which Atilio began to untie an extraordinary uproar in
and Tobías started struggling knife ended up by being surrounded in hand, until
one of them fell down fainted to the soil.
The hand of someone took charge of break the lamp and the lounge
remained completely dark. When came the police there was nobody in the red
lounge, only Atilio''s lifeless body was lying in the middle of his own blood.