Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  Though I had penetrated the mood of the committee members, I also had to take into consideration that now only one bale—the longest, which had been sewn up more painstakingly than all the others—remained untouched. It was going on four o’clock in the afternoon, and so the deputation could stay in the hall for only another half hour. The hall, naturally, was then to be locked in order to take stock and put away the goods, while the Spaniards withdrew to a meeting room to conclude the business side of their visit to KUBU. Because of all this, I was convinced there would be no trouble.

  The Spaniards seized the long bale and stood it on end. With their knives they cut at the ropes obliquely, so that they frayed and burst, falling around the bale like snakes. The bale had been sewn up in several layers of cloth. A pile of white ribbons heaped up as they unwrapped it. Then, glittering and glinting gold, an enormous roll of silk, around fifteen feet wide and almost the length of the entire hall, emerged from its huge cocoon. As they fanned and unfurled it, the Spaniards dispersed among the parted crowd to opposite corners of the hall; one of them, hunching over, unrolled the bundle, while two others, on arms that reached higher and higher, bore the end of the material as far as the wall and there, hopped on top of two chairs and nailed it beneath the ceiling. Thus were all the disorderly piles of goods covered by a splendidly skillful pattern, which sloped down across the distance; the design was embroidered on gold silk with carmine flamingo feathers and the feathers of a white heron—the precious feathers of South America. The pearl, silver, and gold sequins, the rose and dark-green beading against the other material imparted a savage and striking beauty, steeped in the tenderness of the composition whose essential motif may have been borrowed from lace patterns.

  With noise and gasps, multiplying the noise with yet more noise, and amid the noise becoming noisier still, the onlookers mingled with the committee as they drew nearer to the glittering article. There arose the disorder of satisfaction—our true order of being. The hanging began to flutter in the dozens of hands that touched it from all sides. I withstood an attack from enthusiastic women, who demanded that I immediately ask Bam Gran where and by whom such rare luxury had been crafted.

  Looking at me, Bam Gran slowly and imposingly pronounced:

  “This is the work of young girls from the island of Cuba. It was made by twelve of the most beautiful girls in the capital. They spent half a year embroidering this design. You are right to look on it with deserved favor. Read the names of the seamstresses!”

  He lifted the edge of the silk for all to see a little wreath embroidered in Latin letters; I translated what was embroidered: “Laura, Mercedes, Nina, Pepita, Conchita, Paula, Vincenta, Carmen, Inés, Dolores, Anna, and Clara.”

  “This is what they have asked me to tell you,” I continued loudly, accepting a sheet of paper from the Spanish professor: “Our faraway sisters! We, twelve young Spanish girls, embrace you from afar and press you to our hearts! May you affix this hanging we have embroidered on your cold wall. May you look upon it and think of our country. May you have thoughtful bridegrooms, faithful husbands, and dear friends, among whom every one of us ranks! We further wish you happiness, happiness, and still more happiness! That is all. Please excuse us, unlearned and uncultured Spanish girls, who are growing up on the shores of Cuba!”

  I finished translating, and for a while complete silence reigned. Such silence occurs when something within us seeks to escape, something we wish to say that cannot be translated into any language. It flows in silence …

  “Our faraway sisters …” These words contained the graceful purity of those swarthy maidens’ fingers that pierced the silk with needles for those northern women whom they did not know, so that in their snowy country weary eyes would smile at their fantastical and ardent embroidery. Twelve pairs of black eyes lowered over the Rose Hall from afar. With a gentle laugh, the south greeted the north. It outstretched its warm hand to those frostbitten fingers. This hand, fragranced with rose and vanilla pod—an airy hand of a creature bearing twelve names, as jittery as a goat—has brought to this tale of potatoes and cold apartments a naive design, like those Thompson Seton makes in the margins of his books: an arabesque of petals and rays of light.

  IX.

  When the effect of this had reached a climax, there was a noise at the doors—the insistent words of someone wanting to break through to the middle of the hall.

  “Let me through!” the man was saying somberly and portentously.

  I couldn’t yet see him. He would cry out loudly and raise a voice that cut the ear whenever somebody tried to stop him:

  “Let me through, I say! Citizen! Why won’t you listen to me? Citizen, let me through, I beg you! This is the second time I’m telling you, and all you do is pretend it doesn’t concern you. Let me through! Let me—” But already the onlookers had parted hastily, so used were they to making way for any angry oaf with a high opinion of himself.

  Then, two paces from me, an elbow forced its way through, pushing aside the last professor blocking his way, and onto the very edge of the precious hanging stepped a man of indeterminate age with thick lips and a bushy red moustache. He was small in stature and looked puffed up—he held his diminutive figure very erect and wore a half-length fur coat, felt boots, and a bowler hat. He stood there, chest thrust out, head thrown back, arms outstretched, and legs astride. His spectacles glittered boldly; a briefcase poked out from under his arm.

  It seemed as if that ineffable, womanish principle that ordinarily accompanies hysterics had passed into the face of this man. His nose resembled a three-dimensional ace of clubs, his puffed-out cheeks pinched toward the nostrils, while his eyes glinted mysteriously and haughtily.

  “Well, now,” he said in the same disgruntled tone that he had used as he elbowed his way through the crowd, “you must know who I am. I am the statistician Ershov! I saw and heard everything! This is some kind of madness! It’s stuff and nonsense, an outrageous scene! This cannot be! I don’t … I don’t believe any of it! None of this exists, and never did! These are phantoms, phantoms!” he cried. “We’re hallucinating or being poisoned by the fumes from the iron stove! There are no Spaniards! The hanging doesn’t exist! There are no mackintoshes or ermines! Nothing! It’s all hocus-pocus! I see it, but I disavow it! I hear it, but I reject it! Come to your senses! Pinch yourselves, citizens! I’ll pinch myself! You can throw me out, curse me, beat me, bribe me, or hang me—it’s all the same—but I still say: none of this exists! It’s not real! It’s a fiction! Smoke and mirrors!”

  The members of the committee jumped up one after another and ran out from behind the table. The Spaniards exchanged glances. Bam Gran also stood up. Head thrown back, eyebrows raised, and arms akimbo, he smiled menacingly; this smile was as enigmatic as a rebus. The statistician Ershov was breathing heavily, as though in a delirium, and staring everyone in the eye defiantly.

  “What’s the meaning of this? What’s wrong with him? Who is he?!” the exclamations resounded.

  Begun, the secretary of KUBU, placed his hand on Ershov’s shoulder.

  “You’ve taken leave of your senses!” he said. “Get a grip of yourself and explain the meaning of this outburst.”

  “It means that I cannot take any more of this!” the statistician, whose face was becoming covered in red blotches, screamed in his face. “I’m hysterical, I’m shouting and making a scene, because I’ve reached my limit! I’m seething! That hanging! What the devil do I want with that wall hanging? Does it even really exist? I’m telling you: this is psychosis, an apparition, the devil knows what! But they’re no Spaniards—they’re no more Spanish than I am!”

  Standing closer to Bam Gran, I translated, insofar as I could, quickly and accurately.

  “Yes, this man’s no child,” said Bam Gran mockingly. He began to speak slowly—so that I could interpret—with a somewhat malicious smile, bearing his white teeth. “I ask Caballero Ershov, what does he have against me?”

  “What do I have against
you?” exclaimed Ershov. “This is what: I come home at six o’clock in the evening, I have to break up my cupboard just to warm up my shoebox of a room, I bake a potato in the stove, wash the dishes, and clean the linen! I don’t have a servant. My wife is dead. The children have turned gray with filth. They bawl. There isn’t much butter, there’s no meat at all—ugh! And you’re telling me that I should accept some shell from the ocean and ogle Spanish embroidery! I spit in your ocean! I’ll roll a cigarette from your rose petals! I’ll caulk the window frames with your silk! I’ll sell your guitars and buy myself boots! I’ll put you, you exotic birds, on a turnspit and roast you without bothering to pluck you. I … oh! You don’t exist, because I won’t allow it! Avaunt, apparition, and, amen, disappear!”

  He flew into a rage, began to thunder and stamp his feet. This consternation went on for a minute, after which, with a sigh, Bam Gran straightened himself, quietly shaking his head.

  “You’re a madman!” he said. “A madman! So be it, keep those things that have rent your heart: firewood and potatoes, butter and meat, linen and your wife—but nothing else! The matter is closed. The damage is done, and so we shall leave—leave, Caballero Ershov, for the country you shall never see! You, however, Señor Kaur, may come whensoever you wish, and I shall repay you for your work as an interpreter with anything you desire. Ask the gypsies, and any one of them will tell you how to find Bam Gran, who has no reason to conceal himself any longer. Farewell, learned world, and hail to the pale-blue sea!”

  Thus he spoke. Scarcely had I managed to utter a dozen words of the translation, when he bent over and seized a guitar; his fellow travelers did likewise. Laughing quietly and haughtily, they withdrew to the walls, standing in a row, each with one leg to the side and his head held high. Their hands touched the strings … With a chill, I heard those rapid, muffled chords, the rude beat of a melody so familiar to me: the “Fandango” began to ring out. Like a kiss to the heart, those robust strings burst forth, and to the gathering tempo was added the dry clacking of castanets. Suddenly the electricity cut out. A powerful blow to the shoulder caused me to lose my balance. I cried out because of a sharp pain in my temple, fell, and—amid the roaring din, the shouts, the frenzy of darkness glittering with the thunder of guitars—I lost consciousness.

  X.

  I came to with a heavy feeling, as though fettered. I was lying on my back. From the ceiling hung an electric light, shining beneath a green lampshade.

  There was an unpleasant numbness in my right temple. When I turned my head, the numbness developed into a dull ache.

  I began to survey my surroundings. A narrow room, all in white, the floor of which was covered with a white oilcloth, appeared to be an ambulatory care clinic. There was a narrow glass cabinet with instruments and medicines, two stools, and an empty white desk.

  I had not been undressed and therefore concluded that nothing serious had happened. My cap was lying on a stool. There was no one in the room. Feeling my head, I found that it had been bandaged, so I must have cut myself on the corner of a table or some other hard object. I removed the bandage. Behind my ear blazed a terrible bruise that gave me intermittent shooting pain.

  The hands on the round wall clock showed half-past four. Well then. I must have been in this room for around ten or fifteen minutes.

  They had brought me here, bandaged me, and left me alone—most likely by accident, which was no great inconvenience, since I was free to leave whenever I wished. I was in a rush. Recalling everything that had happened, I experienced an acute, agonizing worry and the irrepressible urge to get moving. But I was still weak, as I soon learned when I got up to button my coat. However, where there is medicine, help is at hand. There was a set of keys dangling in the lock of the glass cabinet, and, having quickly sought out the alcohol, I filled a large beaker and drank it with a sense of relief and great satisfaction, for in those days vodka was a rarity.

  I covered up the traces of having taken the law into my own hands before heading down the narrow corridor; there I reached an empty canteen, and so I proceeded down the stairwell. Passing the doors to the Rose Hall, I tried one but found that it was locked.

  I stood there for a moment, listening. The staff had already left the building. I didn’t come across a single soul as I made my way toward the exit; only in the foyer, the caretaker was sweeping up litter. I was wary of asking him about the Spaniards, since I didn’t know exactly how the affair had ended, but the caretaker took it upon himself to strike up a conversation.

  “Going out through a door,” he said, “is the right way to do things. Not like ghosts or evil spirits!”

  “Through a door or through a window,” I replied, “what’s the difference?!”

  “Through a window …” said the caretaker thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you, it’s a different matter if somebody goes out through a window. But after that scene the Spaniards went right through the wall. Straight onto the Neva, they say, and, hear this, where they came down, the ice broke, they say. They all ran out to look.”

  “What’s one to make of it all?” I said, hoping to learn something further.

  “They’ll know what to make of it up there!” The caretaker spat on his palms and began sweeping. “It’s a wonder.”

  Leaving him to prevail over the unfathomable, I stepped out into the courtyard. The guard sitting by the gate, wearing an enormous sheepskin coat, took his time getting up off the bench, clutching a set of keys, and—not before scrutinizing me—went over to open the gate.

  “What are you looking at?” I shouted, seeing that he kept following me with his eyes.

  “It’s my job,” he declared. “I’ve got my eye out because I’ve been ordered not to let any suspicious characters pass. Haven’t you heard?”

  “I have,” I said, and the gate slammed behind me with a rattle.

  I paused, weighing up how and where to find the gypsies. I wanted to see Bam Gran. It was a burning and implacable desire—one that a gambler might understand as he searches for his hat, which his wife has hidden.

  Alas, my poor head! It had been set a task in the ill-befitting conditions of the street, the frost, and the emptiness intersected by the lights of automobiles. Perplexed, I ought to have sat down by a fireplace in a deep, restful armchair—that would have been conducive to the flow of my thoughts. I ought to have surrendered to the furtive footfalls of inspiration and, sipping a century-old cherry-hued wine, listened to the slow striking of the clock as I gazed upon the golden coals. As I walked, an unpleasant residue formed, no longer allowing me to brush aside questions as they arose. Who was the man in the velvet cloak, with the gold chain? Why had he recited a poem to me, imparting a special meaning in the tone of his whisper? And finally, there was the “Fandango,” played by this scholarly deputation in the midst of a ruckus, the sudden darkness, and the disappearing act, and my being carried to a bed in the sick bay. What explanation could quench reason’s thirst, when the super-rational went on unconcernedly imbibing a copious diamond-like liquid, without putting itself to the trouble of imparting to the thinking apparatus even the slightest notion of the pleasure it was experiencing illicitly and absolutely—the pleasure of that very incoherence and inexplicability that constitutes the bitterest agony to every Ershov—and, just as there is an Ershov in everyone (albeit suppressed), I, too, was in this sense most inquisitively inclined.

  I paused, trying to work out where I was now, having rushed ahead half-unconsciously, without a thought for the direction. Judging by several of the buildings, I gathered that I was not far from the railway station. I thrust my hand into my pocket for a cigarette and touched a mysterious solid object; I took it out and, by the light of one of the few illuminated windows, discerned a little yellow leather bag that had been tied very tightly. It weighed at least two pounds, and only my feverishness could explain why I had not noticed this heavy weight in my pocket until now. I could feel the edges of coins through the leather. “Lost in conjecture …” they used to sa
y in such cases. I cannot recall whether I was lost in conjecture back then. I believe my mood was more inclined than ever before to expect the inexplicable. I hastened to untie the little bag, thinking more of its contents than of the reasons behind its appearance. Examining it on the street as one might at home, however, left one open to danger. I espied some ruins off to one side and headed for their snowy breaches along a mound of packed snow and debris. Inside this chaos a multitude of muddy tracks headed off in all directions. Here rags and frozen waste lay scattered; apertures alternated with pillars and collapsed beams. Moonlight wove the pits and shadows into one gloomy pattern. Picking my way deeper still, I sat down on some bricks and, untying the yellow bag, shook out some of the coins onto my palm and immediately recognized them as gold piastres. Having counted them and recounted them, I found that there were in all two hundred coins—no more, no fewer—and, feeling somewhat feeble, I lapsed into thought.

  The coins lay between my knees, on the hem of my coat; I turned them over, listening carefully to the distinct, transparent clink of metal, which rings only in the imagination or when you place two coins on the tips of your fingers and touch their edges together. And so, in my unconscious state, some benevolent hand had sought me out, depositing in my pocket this small capital. I was not yet in any condition to make mental purchases. I merely gazed at the money, heeding, perhaps unconsciously, the admonition of some remarkable person, who had taught me the art of looking. In his view, it was possible to comprehend the soul of an object only when the gaze is deprived of impatience and effort, when he, serenely becoming one with the object, gradually becomes aware of the complexity and character concealed in the apparent simplicity of the commonplace.