Flight of the Swan

by Rosario Ferré

  “I know you think Diamantino is too young for me, but I don’t agree. He’s very sensitive to other people’s feelings. He doesn’t dictate his opinions like Dandré; he asks you what you think. Diamantino and I are kindred souls, Masha. We both dream of the same things.

  “Dandré, on the contrary, is like a blob of putty. You punch him and your fist goes in all the way and then you can’t pull it out. Dandré never risks anything, never gets excited about anything. God! How have I been able to bear him all these years?”

  I was impressed by her confession, and only disagreed with one thing. I didn’t dislike men: Madame was, as usual, taking me for granted. But I didn’t have the heart to contradict her. I just took her in my arms and cradled her until she fell asleep.

  21

  THE GIRLS JUMPED OFF the train and began jogging next to it, calling out to Madame to join them. She woke up in her seat, but was content just watching them. She couldn’t help feeling proud at how beautiful and strong they were. That morning they hadn’t had their exercise class, so they decided to race the train. Six amazons, their golden manes trailing in the wind, ponytails flicking from side to side, the muscles of their legs rippling under their short exercise tunics. The train was traveling slowly because there were cows crossing the rails, men pulling carts loaded with sugarcane stalks, barefoot children playing at every junction. The passengers, their heads sticking out the car windows, were all watching the crazy Russians, mouths agape at the spectacle.

  People on the island were easily amazed by us. They weren’t used to Russian women, who are often as brawny and strong as the men and capable of any physical feat. Everything here seemed minuscule to us, coming from the Russian steppes, where distances are measured in thousands of kilometers. It gave us a feeling of power and made us believe we could do anything.

  As the train went through the poorer areas, urchins in rags ran alongside it, calling out to the girls to throw them pennies and sometimes hopping on the steps of the last car for short rides. A lone vendor was going up and down the aisle selling fish fritters—empanadillas de chapín—and goat cheese wrapped in plantain leaves. Madame promptly bought some of each and distributed them among the girls.

  Madame dozed off, her head on my shoulder, and when she opened her eyes we had left the city behind and were picking up speed, riding out into the countryside. A breeze came up and dried the perspiration on our faces and necks. I racked my brain wondering how I could make her understand how important she was for me. I had sacrificed much more than she had because in leaving Russia I had betrayed the revolution. I was a member of the working class and I had everything before me—but Madame, in spite of being the daughter of a washerwoman, was identified with the nobility. She was a White Russian, and her solo The Dying Swan was the personification of the aristocrats’ agony.

  I loved her and hated her for it. In Russia, the czar’s family is sacred; the czar is head of church and state. He is our paterfamilias and we love him almost as much as we love God. Even Nicholas we felt affection for, in spite of his weaknesses; the country blamed Alexandra, who was German, for the mass murders he committed. Madame, because she had met the czar personally, shared in the mystique of his family. This didn’t keep her from being democratic. As in the train, when she began to hand out tidbits to the dancers, and Nadja and Marina both curtseyed to her.

  Diamantino returned and sat next to us in our compartment. If what he said was true, everything we saw belonged to the sugar barons. On the left a caravan of mogotes rose from the cane fields like a school of humpback whales. I had read about these exotic rock formations in some magazine; they also existed in the China Sea and were many millions of years old, among the oldest mountains in the world. The clouds above looked like lambs shedding fleece. On our right the sea stained the lower part of the sky a darker blue, like melted oil paint.

  Five hours later the train neared the town of Arecibo. Several sugar mills appeared on the horizon, their funnels smoking like huge cigars. “That’s Dos Ríos over there,” Diamantino said, pointing to a red-brick building. “My godfather’s sugar mill.” Madame got up from her seat to get a better look. A large house with a gabled roof stood on the plain; it had a verandah and a wide, fanlike staircase leading up to the front door. Suddenly the train lurched and threw them off balance. Diamantino put out his hands to steady Madame and I heard him whisper: “I want you more than anything in the world; just the two of us, going deeper and deeper into the cool interior of the island.”

  Arecibo’s train station was on a tongue of land overgrown with hyacinths on the far side of the Río de la Plata. The main street went along the coast; its houses all stood with their backs to the ocean and faced the narrow streets of the town, as if the islanders were afraid of the wide open space through which foreigners always reached them—first the Spaniards, then the British, the Dutch, and finally the Americans.

  “Everybody out!” Diamantino cried as we reached the platform, and we clambered stiffly off the train. A few minutes later the engine whistled and started up again, going on toward Ponce. Our troupe walked to the center of town in a little caravan, the girls skipping ahead of Molinari, a dusty giant dressed in black who fanned himself with a piece of cardboard. Everyone was complaining about the heat. Grigoriev, the flute player, was perspiring so much and was so red in the face, he looked as though he were about to have a stroke. Juan Anduce and I carried heavy baskets full of costumes which Madame ordered us to balance on our heads.

  I didn’t like it one bit that Diamantino had now become the leader of our group, and that even Molinari and Novikov were taking orders from him. Diamantino did everything: he checked the luggage to see that nothing was left behind on the train and directed the group toward the Hotel Las Baleares, on the main square. Most important, he never left Madame’s side, not even for a second. It was as if everything we had shared until then—our spiritual as well as our material adventures—had gone up in smoke. I was so angry at my mistress, I kicked the stones on the road and muttered under my breath. How could she be so blind? Didn’t she realize she was being used?

  No more ideal of perfect beauty; no more swan acting out the rite of death for the destitute to accept it more readily. Madame was sick with love. She was thirty-eight; her milk-white flesh was beginning to curdle on her bones. She should have been thinking of retiring and going back to Ivy House in London, where she promised me she’d found a school for young dancers. Instead, she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with a stuck-up Spanish grandee’s son. How could she preach the sanctity of art to her followers when she was fucking away happily with that Young Turk? I’ll stay awake all night if I have to, I told myself, in order to prevent it. How could she dare insist that her only purpose in life was to take the joy of ballet to the unfortunate of this world? Claim that “dancing is a form of prayer, a reaching out to God,” and that “nothing should come between the dancer and her sacred task”? She’s a hypocrite and a libertine, I murmured to myself as I sat down angrily on a large tree trunk by the road. Madame saw me hanging back. She came over, sat down next to me, and put her soft, white arms around my shoulders.

  “What’s the matter, Masha, darling? Is that basket too heavy for you? Here, let me help you carry it.”

  I only hated her more.

  22

  I PICKED UP THE wicker basket with the costumes and toe shoes and set off determinedly down the road, walking between Madame and Diamantino, although I could tell I wasn’t wanted there.

  Why is it that in mature women lust is always offensive? An older man with a young girl is immoral, but there’s a celebration of life implied in the relationship—death and infirmity are vanquished. An older woman with a young man, however, is unforgivable. It means the triumph of death over life: the woman can’t conceive; the seed is lost, sown on sterile terrain. When an older woman falls in love with a handsome swain, it’s an insult to nature. She turns into a clown—her wrinkled, made-up face becomes a mask of death next to he
r lover’s blossoming countenance. And that’s exactly what will happen to Madame, I told myself.

  The town of Arecibo—which Diamantino absurdly called a “city”—was small, it couldn’t have had more than fifty thousand inhabitants. The streets were mud; there were no pavements anywhere. And instead of the luxurious Studebakers, Peerless Eights, Franklins, Cadillacs, and Willis Overlands that teemed in the streets of San Juan, the well-to-do here went about on horses and tilburies, or in covered carriages of all sorts. The poor, of course, went barefoot.

  When we walked in from the train station, a military band was playing and a large group of soldiers marched down the street, which opened onto a spacious, beautifully kept square. This was Arecibo’s Plaza Mayor, where the Spanish battalions had held their parades and military maneuvers in the past, and now the Americans did the same. Teatro Oliver very conspicuously faced the Plaza Mayor at one end, its back to the open sea. A whitewashed church stood at the other end of the square, with a three-tiered facade, a clock over the main door, and a strong, squat belfry with a red-brick dome which echoed the square design of the plaza.

  A dozen handsome oak trees planted in front of the church spread their pink blossoms on the ground. An octagonal wrought-iron gazebo of Moorish design rose in the middle of the esplanade where the military band performed. A regiment of U.S. Army troops marched to the music, the same one we had seen in San Juan: battalions B and C this time. The army was recruiting Puerto Rican soldiers from all over the island, and they brought them together at the main towns like Arecibo. The next day they would board the train to San Juan and from there sail on to Panama on the Buford.

  People streamed into the square from the side streets to listen to the band and watch the parade. A sea of women in white uniforms, with wide red crosses sewn to their starched caps, marched into the square to the same music as the soldiers. Some of them were matronly and had children in tow; the younger ones came from Arecibo’s Central High School, or so their banner read. Behind them were at least a hundred children, also dressed in white. They lined up around the kiosk singing “America the Beautiful” with thick Spanish accents. Another battalion, the Home Guard, brought up the rear of the parade. These young men were dressed in civilian white pants and shirts, with jíbaro pabas on their heads and machetes secured to their belts. Once they walked past, the spectators lining the street followed behind in a formless mass, swaying and dancing to the music. A powerfully built man with a red shock of hair falling over his forehead marched in front and waved to Diamantino as he went by.

  “That’s Bienvenido Pérez; the son of Arnaldo Pérez, Don Pedro’s overseer,” Diamantino said. “Don Pedro is his padrino also—his godfather. Now that the troops are leaving, he’s the leader of the Home Guard. They’re supposed to defend the town from enemy attack after the soldiers leave.”

  “With machetes?” Madame asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “You’d be surprised what they can do with them. Cutting sugarcane is good military training. They can’t use guns, in any case. Puerto Ricans aren’t allowed gun permits.”

  “Bienvenido grew up in Dos Ríos,” Diamantino added, “and he’s my best friend. When I was a child, whenever my parents came here on weekends to stay with the Batistinis, he’d play with me. He’s just come back from Río Piedras, where he’s studying to be an engineer, thanks to Don Pedro’s generosity.”

  A tall, thin man wearing a white linen jacket began to give a speech in front of the orchestra—Arecibo’s mayor. He was explaining the purpose of the volunteer movement of the Red Cross: since Puerto Ricans were being recruited into the army, it was only natural that they should donate money to buy Liberty Bonds and provide food for the troops overseas. And if they couldn’t buy food, they could certainly grow it. The mayor was urging citizens to plant corn, tomatoes, sugarcane, and coffee in their backyards and to take the proceeds to the offices of the Red Cross every week. A cargo ship bound for Europe, the Liberty Bell, would dock near the town in a few months to take the food to the soldiers. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was almost as bad as Minsk, where I once saw the mayor take food from the starving peasants to feed the czar’s troops.

  “We’ll win the war with food instead of with bullets!” the mayor cried, as if cheering on the home team. By which I suppose he meant that, since the Arecibenos couldn’t pay for ammunition, they could at least grow food for the soldiers. Children began to mill around the mayor, who was giving away hoes—they’d soon be taught how to use them at the agricultural camps to be set up on the outskirts of town on government land. Women were selling lemonade, cookies, and all sorts of sweets made of coconut and molasses in order to raise money for the army. When the mayor stopped talking, nobody clapped. A heavy silence fell on the crowd.

  Suddenly one of the men from the Home Guard ran to where the mayor was standing, leaped over the banister, and landed on the platform. He wrenched the mayor’s megaphone away from him and began to scream: “The Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, the Liberty Bonds are all part of the same campaign. Who are we? Nobodies from nowhere. We have no citizenship, no political rights, no civil rights. The United States won’t give us independence, but they refuse to give us statehood because of prejudice!” At this point, the man was overwhelmed by the police, who clambered onto the dais and pinned him to the floor. The rest of the Home Guard, evidently restless, was surrounded by soldiers in navy blue uniforms and marched toward the train station. “The idiot!” Diamantino cried. “We’ll all have to pay for this!” The soldiers looked his way but no one dared move. We stood there flabbergasted.

  The audience, however, didn’t seem surprised at what they’d seen. Molinari drew near and explained that espontáneos were a common sight in the local parades, but that Americans never shot people for this sort of thing. The man would be locked up for a few days and then let loose.

  “Americans are much more careful than the Spaniards about their image,” Molinari said with an ironic little smile. “‘We are bringing democracy to the island,’ General Miles proclaimed grandly in 1898 when he landed here. But Spain never had qualms about turning rebels into martyrs.”

  Molinari led us to a small square behind Arecibo’s cathedral, the Plaza del Corregidor, where public executions used to be held. “Many men died here after conspiring against Spain,” he said. We could see a series of trees planted equidistant from each other, with a seat at the base of each. “The condemned men were tied to the seats, eyes covered with black hoods, ropes lowered over their heads, and tourniquets rapidly tightened until their necks snapped. Thus they sat corrected.”

  We stared at the gruesome sight. Molinari actually relished telling us such stories. “It’s amazing that people on the island haven’t rebelled,” Molinari added. “They’re just a bunch of cowards with no pride; no wonder the lamb is their national symbol.” When Diamantino heard this he went pale. Molinari looked at him with pursed lips. “I’m glad I’m not a Puerto Rican. I was born in Corsica,” he said. And he smiled, baring his rotten teeth.

  Arecibeños did everything differently: it was as if every house in Arecibo were trying to sail inland, toward the mountains, instead of away from them. In contrast to San Juan, the town had no walls around it. For centuries it had been the target of the pirate ships that plied the Caribbean by the dozen. While in the narrow cobblestone streets of San Juan you heard only the Castilian Spanish of the king’s ministers, in the dusty alleys of Arecibo you often heard French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese. In San Juan, people looked to Spain, la madre patria, for their material well-being and spiritual sustenance. But in Arecibo the whole world was la madre patria, and immigrants from all over Europe settled in its environs.

  Diamantino took us to a modest, two-story house next to the church and knocked on the door. Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto came pouring out of the house and practically drowned out the John Philip Sousa march the military band was blasting at that moment. Diamantino wrote down something on a piece of paper and gave it t
o the girl who opened the door. “Give this to Doña Victoria Tellez, we’d like to say hello,” he said. Doña Victoria soon came to the door and opened it wide herself. “How wonderful to see you, Tino!” she said. And she ushered us in graciously.

  She was a small woman with unruly snow-white hair that surrounded her head like a halo. She led us into an inner patio shaded by a lemon tree, with hibiscuses in bloom everywhere. We were all introduced. Then we sat in rocking chairs under the shady arcade, gratefully fanning ourselves and drinking cool lemonade.

  Diamantino began to make rapid movements with his hands, as if he were playing an invisible instrument; I realized it was sign language. Doña Victoria was totally deaf. She got up, leaving me with my mouth open in midsentence, so amazed was I at her abilities, and walked over to the piano in the adjacent living room. She sat down on the bench and began to pound the keyboard. Beethoven’s Emperor silenced Sousa’s dutiful little march again. The old lady went on playing until the band finished, and then, as the last measures of the brass instruments reverberated from the walls, Doña Victoria lifted her hands from the keyboard and smiled smugly. There was complete silence in the room.

  “She always plays that whenever the U.S. Army marches around the square,” the young servant girl who opened the door told us with a laugh. “She does it to drown out the Americans.” We laughed politely, but were left totally in the dark. I began to suspect there was a lot of resentment in Arecibo toward the army. But this wasn’t our country, and I didn’t see why we should get mixed up in someone else’s war.

  The maid went on picking up the empty glasses and putting them on a tray as Diamantino spoke quickly with Doña Victoria. Then she carried the tray out to the kitchen, her sandals flip-flopping after her.