Where the Bird Sings Best by Alejandro Jodorowsky

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