Flight of the Swan

by Rosario Ferré

I had often seen Madame naked when I helped her bathe, but her nudity then was as unselfconscious and innocent as Eve’s, the kind we all experience in childhood. She had a beautiful body in spite of her age; her skin was a dusty pearl, the color of powdered snow at dusk, and she had lean arms and legs that glimmered softly as she moved. But when Diamantino began to undress Madame, her nakedness was different—it was a deliberate address to the eyes, a command to envelop and bring close in a consuming embrace. “I love you,” I heard Madame whisper faintly. “I’ll do anything for you.”

  And I, who had never loved, felt weak with yearning and at the same time defeated, as if a wave of mythic proportions had rolled over my head and left me stranded on the beach. My flesh trembled as if I had an ague and I sought refuge against the bristly side of the dune like a poor, ungainly mollusk that had suddenly lost its shell. When the lovers dozed off, I crept silently away.

  That night, after Madame turned out the light, I hardly dared to breathe. All Madame’s life had been a struggle between love and art: Prince Kotschubei, Dandré, Nijinsky, all the leading men in her life filed before me in their elegant attires: the prince in his golden vest and lace-ruffed shirt; Dandré in his dark suit and black bowler hat; Nijinsky in magenta rose petals, as he appeared in Le Spectre de la Rose. I knew that, after becoming temporarily infatuated, Madame had rejected all of them. I couldn’t believe what was happening. For the first time Madame was insisting that Love was more important than Art. The world had turned on its head.

  I lay in the hammock perfectly still, crossing its woven maguey folds over my arms and legs to keep the mosquitoes from biting. I may have looked exactly like a tamale wrapped in a corn husk, but I kept an eye out for any suspicious janglings or rattlings that might indicate a visitor had slipped into Madame’s bed. Thankfully, the house remained as silent as a tomb.

  26

  AT LUNCH THE NEXT day Don Pedro was talking about a band of wild riders called Los Tiznados, who had laid waste to several of the neighboring towns. Their faces were rubbed with sugarcane soot so they couldn’t be recognized, and they carried Mauser rifles as they crisscrossed the mountains shooting at everything in sight. In town they had set fire to the brand-new American post office and to a National City Bank branch. No sugarcane mill was safe from them, and at night, little tongues of fire were often seen licking the mounds of dry sugarcane chaff on the fringes of the pressing installations. One or two choice fields burst into fire every day at dawn, after having been doused with gasoline.

  Don Pedro hardly slept, trying to keep an eye on things. “They should wring their necks like chickens—el garrote vil to all of them, and save the bullets!” he said, pale with anger. “People are talking about the marines coming to help us but nothing happens. As usual, we’ll have to take care of things ourselves.” He patted the gun he was carrying in his holster.

  Molinari was invited for dinner, and he came over from town early. He agreed with Don Pedro wholeheartedly. Even though he was declasse, Molinari was a coffee hacendado and the Batistinis were glad to have him at their table. He had gone off to town the day before and had just come back with a letter from Dandré, which Madame read during lunch. It was from the Gotham Hotel, and she wondered if Dandré had snitched the stationery or if he was really staying there. She had pictured him at his girlfriend’s apartment. Dandré was well and sent his love. Thanks to Mr. Hinojosa, the Cuban ambassador, who was a lot more powerful than the Puerto Rican resident commissioner in Washington, the U.S. government had finally agreed to help him get the English visas. He’d be back in two weeks at the latest. Madame’s hands trembled slightly as she folded the letter and put it inside her handbag. By that time, she was sure, Dandré would never be able to find her.

  I was surprised to discover that Molinari knew Bienvenido Pérez, and that apparently they were friends. They had met while Bienvenido was studying at the university and Molinari had helped the young man out with a loan of some sort. The two men stepped out on the verandah to smoke cigars and converse amicably.

  When we entered the dining room for lunch, Molinari sat in front of Madame and wouldn’t take his eyes off her. “Good news, Madame?” he asked, leaning toward her in his buzzard’s suit, as she began to read Mr. Dandré’s letter. He sat with the sunlight at his back, so his shadow slid over her arms. Madame shuddered at the contact. “Of course. Mr. Dandré will be back soon, and we’ll be able to sail on to Panama.”

  “Mr. Dandré is a very able manager. You’re lucky to have him,” Molinari said to her.

  “Yes, I know. We make a good team,” Madame answered, looking down at her plate. She was certain he’d read her thoughts if she looked into his eyes.

  “Things here are volatile, Madame,” he rumbled ominously. “You and your ballerinas don’t belong here. I wouldn’t stay on long, if I were you.”

  Juan came up to the hacienda that afternoon, and as soon as Doña Basilisa saw him she ordered him to go to the kitchen to help Doña Basilisa’s maid, Adelina, peel the potatoes and gut the guinea hens, after plucking them in a bucket of scalding water. Juan was an educated man, but because he was black, Doña Basilisa sent him straight to the kitchen. He kept quiet about it, however, and I was lucky he did, because Doña Basilisa let him spend the night at the house so he could help the servants out.

  I liked arroz con guinea immensely; the fowl had the same smoky, bitter taste our game meat had in St. Petersburg, and as I sat at the table during dinner I kept thinking of Madame’s beautiful dining room in Anglisky Prospekt, which was decorated with blue velvet curtains. We often ate partridges there, because Madame’s admirers sent them as presents. I was helping serve at the dinner table when I felt someone step close to me. Juan held the silver platter with the rice and guinea hen to pass it a second time, and he stood so close to me, the heat of his hips and lower abdomen radiated right through my muslin blouse. I felt a delicious shudder as the aroma of the wild meat mixed with the odor of his perspiration. When Juan approached with a new dish, he repeated the operation until a suspicious bundle began to swell beneath his white cotton pants. I gave a start and looked away embarrassed, just in time to catch Molinari staring at me with lecherous eyes. I had to laugh! In St. Petersburg nobody looked at Masha, but here men were flocking to her like flies!

  Juan wore a very handsome pair of shoes which he had made himself before leaving San Juan, but the rest of the servants in the dining room were barefoot. They didn’t make a sound as they moved around the table, serving the wine from cut crystal carafes and other delicious tidbits from silver platters. I was depressed by their presence—pale, thin zombies dressed in rags.

  After dinner, Madame disappeared from the house. She was spending more and more time by herself, and never wanted me to accompany her. I supposed Diamantino was to blame, every time she went for another “walk on the beach.” Juan and I sat in the hammock after we finished picking up the table and clearing the dishes, swinging to and fro on the balcony Juan was feeling very romantic, but I was too worried about Madame, who was probably rolling at that very moment over some dark sand ridge, catering to her own pleasures, to pay him much attention. My innocent flirting was naive; I could never behave like Madame and throw decency to the winds.

  The hammock’s movement made the jasmine bush growing next to us smell more fragrant, and as I inhaled its perfume my head rolled back over the woven straw and the angle of my vision changed. The door to Madame’s room was slightly ajar, and a ray of light wrapped around us like a mantle, came from inside her chamber. Suddenly I saw a shadow flit across it. Quick as lightning, I jumped out of the hammock and flung the doors open. There was Molinari, standing with his back to us, searching for something in Madame’s open suitcase. He leaped away, agile as a cat. “I’ll kill you if you come any closer,” he said, flicking out a shiny blade and waving it at us. I was petrified and couldn’t move. Juan barged into the room in front of me, but it was too late. Molinari jumped out the window, which opened onto the garden, and t
hen he slithered down the mango tree.

  27

  THE NEXT DAY WE kept what had happened to ourselves. Juan was convinced Molinari was an agent and that he was under the police commissioner’s orders; it was better if we didn’t meddle with him. The commissioner still suspected Madame was a Bolshevik and was probably having her followed. That morning Doña Basilisa took us to see her orchid grove, where she grew her rarest specimens that clung like spidery stars to the stems of pygmy coconut palms. As we strolled among the white cattleyas and phalaenopsis, we couldn’t understand why Doña Basilisa kept praying in whispers.

  After a while I got tired of her mumbo-jumbo—her pious Ave Marias and Paternosters—and I asked Doña Basilisa if I could pick some of the blossoms and take them up to my room. But Doña Basilisa refused. “An orchid should blossom and die on the plant, it must never be cut off. Orchids are sacred to us. But we won’t have them for long if the revolution breaks out! God save us.” And she crossed herself. When I listened to this I felt my Bolshevik blood rising. What gall! To talk about the Russian Revolution as if it were unfair.

  Doña Basilisa’s admiration for Madame stemmed from her connection to the Old World, and she didn’t see anything wrong with Diamantino’s infatuation with the dancer. It was simply a passing fancy, a romance a lo divino, which would leave them both with beautiful memories once Madame’s dance tour moved on and the swan again took flight.

  Later that afternoon at Dos Ríos everybody had a siesta. I managed to doze off in the hammock after I put Madame in bed and tucked the mosquito net around her. When we got up around four, Doña Victoria had just arrived from town with Rogelio Tellez, riding in her nephew’s Willis Overland. They were sitting on the verandah drinking tea and fanning themselves with large panderetas made of pale green braided palm leaves. Diamantino was explaining to Doña Victoria with sign language what the Bacchanale was all about. She disapprovingly shook her head. Diamantino repeated her answer out loud: “You mean Madame and you will actually dance the myth of the God Dionysus and Ariadne of Naxos? But nobody will understand what it’s all about! Do you think people in Arecibo know anything about Greek mythology? It’ll be Greek to them, my dear!” I scowled at her, but since I couldn’t talk with my fingers, I didn’t answer.

  Rogelio began to ask Don Pedro about Los Tiznados, and if they had committed any terrorist acts lately. Doña Victoria read his lips, immediately sat up in her rocking chair, and stopped fanning herself. Her hands moved incessantly: “They’re not terrorists. They’re freedom fighters. That’s what you should be choreographing, my dear,” Diamantino interpreted. “Stravinsky’s Firebird, dressed in workers’ overalls, instead of Saint-Saëns’s The Dying Swan in musty, moth-eaten feathers. Art must be committed and denounce injustice if it’s going to be any good.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. In Russia, Madame had renounced her belief in Bolshevism precisely because she wanted to remain loyal to her aesthetic values. She remained bound to the czar and his court even when she knew Nicholas was a tyrant and his generals were butchers, and we Russians pardoned her because she was a great artist. And now she was letting this half-demented old hag, with hair as straggly as an ancient lion’s, accuse her, in this two-bit town on this two-bit island, precisely of the nightmare we were running away from. “Go to hell!” I yelled at the needling little woman, who was now leaning forward, shaking a finger at us. Madame got up and left the verandah, but instead of going to her room she went angrily down the stairs and took one of the paths close to the house that led to the mill.

  I followed Madame, walking behind her as quickly as possible and holding an open parasol over her head. Her skin was very delicate and she couldn’t stand the sun, so I always went with her when she went out—especially in the afternoon. Suddenly we heard steps coming down the gravel path. It was Molinari.

  I walked on rapidly, but Madame stopped by a hibiscus hedge. My heart beat like a snared bird’s. I hadn’t told her about Molinari’s sinister visit to her room the night before because I didn’t want her to know I’d been secretly meeting with Juan.

  “You mustn’t mind Victoria,” Molinari said, drawing closer. “Her deafness has made her resentful and she’s a bit off her rocker. She’s mad to defend Los Tiznados; there’s a price on their heads, you know. But why am I worrying you with all that? Please forgive me. Would you like me to take you on a tour of the grounds? All the hacienda’s machinery was made in Scotland and it’s fascinating to see how it works.”

  Molinari looked at me, as if sizing me up. His invitation, after what had happened the night before, made me go cold. He guessed I hadn’t told Madame about it.

  Madame tartly refused. She had a headache, she said, and wanted to go somewhere quiet to be alone. When Molinari insisted, she turned around and walked quickly back to the house. I shut the parasol and tucked it under my arm like a weapon. I should have run away then also, but I didn’t. Maybe it was the thrill of danger; maybe it was something darker, the need to experience evil at first hand, as I had in my childhood. Most of all, I didn’t want him to think I was afraid of him. I was about to turn back when Molinari clamped his hand on my shoulder.

  He gave me a lecherous look, dragging his yellow eyes over me like a vulture. I just stood there, rooted to the spot.

  “And how is my hefty Russian milkmaid?” Molinari asked, smirking. “You promised you’d cooperate with me in San Juan, remember? You wanted to get rid of Diamantino too.”

  I said I had no idea what he meant and tried to shake him loose, but he had me in a vise grip. He propelled me toward the mill, a huge building built of corrugated zinc sheets, and we walked past dozens of roller presses, vats, and vacuum pans and several huge Catherine wheels. I couldn’t have cared less if they were made in Scotland or Finland. I was terrified. The roar was deafening and there was febrile activity everywhere. After a few minutes, a thin film of sugarcane chaff was sticking to my arms and face. None of the laborers had shoes on, and they wore their pants tied at the ankle with bejucos, dried strips of plantain leaf, in order to keep the centipedes from crawling up their legs and into their crotches. They all looked away as we walked by, pretending they didn’t see us.

  Molinari pushed me toward a shed at the back, where the discarded roller presses, their grooves eaten by rust, were stored. He made me go in, shutting the door behind him. I was as tall and strong as he was, but the smell of camphor and mothballs overwhelmed me as he pushed me against the wall. All of a sudden I was back in Minsk, locked up in a closet in my father’s house. I closed my eyes.

  28

  THAT NIGHT I SAT next to Madame under the mosquito net while I tenderly massaged her feet. I was still shaken, but I put my anger about what had happened with Molinari aside and managed to control myself. After I came out of the shed that afternoon I had dragged myself to a deserted stretch of beach, removed my clothes, and soaked in the salt water for nearly an hour, hoping to cure my wounds.

  Madame lay back on her bed and looked reproachfully at me.

  “Where were you this afternoon, Masha? I looked all over for you.”

  “I took a walk down the beach, Madame. But I’m here with you now, so you mustn’t worry.” She was suspicious, but I could easily fool her. I knew her weaknesses.

  It took me a long time to quiet her down. She complained that she still had a migraine, and I rubbed her temples with eucalyptus oil as delicately as I could. “Where is Diamantino? Have you seen him?” she asked.

  “He went into town with Novikov, Madame, he had errands to do,” I answered quietly, not rising to the bait. I knew she wanted to talk about him but refused to comply.

  I should have been thinking of myself, of the terrible thing that had happened to me that day, but I could only think of her. I wanted to bring her out of her depression and didn’t know how. “The roly-poly ladies of Arecibo never wear red because they say it’s the whores’ favorite color,” I spoke out like a parrot as I got up to hang her clothes in the wardrobe and bega
n to look for her nightgown. “They say it makes bulls aggressive when they go for a walk out of town!”

  But Madame didn’t laugh at my halfhearted joke. She sat up on the bed, incensed. “This time I’m not going to throw my lot in with the oppressors as I did in Russia, out of loyalty to the czar!” she cried, with no small measure of melodrama. She was going to help that zealot, Diamantino Márquez, bring justice to the world.

  “We can’t get rid of the past that easily,” I cautioned her. “In the eyes of the world you’ll always be the czar’s ballerina.” Madame didn’t answer. It was as if a sheet of ice had formed between us.

  The next morning Madame, Diamantino, and I rode into town in Don Pedro’s Pierce-Arrow for the first rehearsal at Teatro Oliver. Novikov and the girls looked haggard, as if they hadn’t slept all night. They complained that the beds at the hotel were iron cots, and that they were full of bugs; the rooms were separated from each other only by low wooden walls, so there was no privacy. At least the beach was very near to the hotel, and the girls went swimming in the morning. When they saw Madame they greeted her icily, and I wondered at how fast news got around about what was going on at the house. I was sure they would have returned gladly to San Juan if they could have done so.

  We rehearsed at the colonial theater, which was surprisingly large and elegant for such a small town. Spaniards have no sense of proportion; when they build something they do it to last forever, even at the bitter end of the world. Madame immediately felt the influence of her grand surroundings, and as she lifted her arms in an arch over her head and let Novikov circle her waist, she became transformed. There was an old stand-up piano at the back of the stage and Smallens sat down before it. “Order and you shall be obeyed!” he said to Madame with a little bow. “Monteverdi’s Orpheus,” she said with a thrill, “because today Eurydice has risen from the dead.” She danced as I had never seen her dance before. The arpeggios rose and fell under her feet like silver ladders from the bowels of the earth.