The Days of the Rainbow by Antonio Skármeta Read Free Book Online Page A

noise than a train driver, had a head of coarse hair that made him look three inches taller and wore eyeglasses with a thick frame. His mustache fell disheveled over his lips, as if no two hairs rhymed with each other. His outfit didn’t look any better—a black suit polished by the years that shone here and there, in contrast with a few wine and ketchup stains, something that Magdalena de Bettini didn’t notice at first sight.
    “Sir?” Magdalena inquired tentatively, surprised by the man’s puzzling appearance.
    “Is this Adrián Bettini’s home?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “The great advertising agent Adrián Bettini’s?”
    “So they say.”
    The little man bent forward in an old-fashioned bow.
    “I need to talk to him.”
    “What about?” she asks, trying to push the door a little so that the man, on his tiptoes, can’t see her husband in the back of the living room.
    “It’s confidential.”
    “I’m his wife. You can talk to me in all confidence.”
    “Confidential, madam, confidential.”
    “Could you at least tell me on behalf of whom you come …?”
    The man cleared his throat while wiping his forehead with a gray handkerchief. Or a handkerchief that had once been white. Another thing that was difficult for her to discern.
    “I come on behalf of young Nico Santos. My password is ‘Nicomachus.’ For more details—the Aristotelian ethics. May I come in now?”
    The woman opened the door and the little man slipped in like a lizard. In no time, he was in front of Bettini, who replied to the man’s Versaillesque bow with a discreet movement of his neck.
    “Mr. Bettini, I presume?” the man said, with a smile that raised his thick mustache up to his nose.
    “Yes,” the ad agent said.
    “It’s my pleasure meeting you, sir. My name is Raúl Alarcón, but my friends call me Little KinkyFlower. I’m five-and-a-half feet tall, and I’m a poet and a composer.”
    “What can I do for you?”
    “Nico Santos sent me. You know him—Nicomachus.”
    “Well, what is it?”
    “Yesterday at school, Nico told me that you’re going to undertake the ad campaign for the
No
with a joyful approach, that you’re going to tell us all that when the
No
wins, joy will come back to Chile.”
    Bettini made eye contact with his wife and saw her put a finger to her temple, signaling that their surprising guest had a loose screw.
    “That’s what I’d like to do. But up to now, I haven’t gotten too far. I don’t even have the campaign jingle.”
    “That’s the reason why Nico—Nicomachus—sent me to see you. I have the jingle for the
No
that you’re looking for.”
    “Did you compose it?”
    “Oh, no. Johann Strauss did. But I wrote the lyrics.”
    “Sing it, please.”
    Alarcón moved his head in different directions like pecking the living room with his eyes.
    “Piano
habemus
?”
    “
Habemus
,” Bettini said, sensing that his face had suddenly gone pale.
    He led the man to his studio, opened the lid of the baby grand, and invited his guest to sit on the stool. Before sitting, the little man cleaned the plush of the bench with the sleeve of his jacket. He glided his fingers in a pair of scales and inhaled deeply before hitting the keys again in a thundering chord.
    There followed a spirited interpretation of “Blue Danube.” Then the man stopped abruptly and fixed his gaze defiantly on his host.
    “D’ya feel the melody?”
    Despite the paleness that was growing on his face, Bettini couldn’t help smiling at the colloquial “d’ya feel …,” so improper coming from someone who looked like a character from the Spanish Golden Age picaresque.
    “I feel it,” he said cautiously. “Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube.’ ”
    “Can you think of a single man or woman in this country who couldn’t sing this tune?”
    “I doubt it. It’s a pretty catchy tune.”
    Alarcón cheerfully struck his thighs. “Catchy. Exactly. It’s very catchy.”
    “I’m curious to know what all of this is leading