Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance

by Lloyd Jones

  In future years…whoever thought that a ‘three-minute affair’ would stretch so far? In future years, on Sunday afternoons, Louise and Schmidt would meet down at the waterfront where a long rickety pier probes like an index finger the muddy waters of the River Plate.

  Louise was usually the first one there. There she is, sitting on a bench waiting for Schmidt to extricate himself from his comfortable apartment on Avenida del Libertador.

  He always hoped to see her first. Sometimes he did, and these days hobbling on bad knees he stops to squint into the untrustful distance, admiring the view. The way the river air pushes her skirt against her legs. To his eyes Louise is still young, forever young; the sight of her still excites. On the other hand, the same view can produce a moment’s regret where he feels intensely her exile and solitariness. Once she told him she’d been a victim of a pickpocket. She went on to describe the feeling of a ‘fish nibbling in her coat pocket’. A fish. And just like that his memory tore back through the years to Little River with its lapping tide and crayfish pots.

  The other thing he saw at this distance was her containment, the same thing that you see in nuns and old men for whom the world they move through is not nearly as important as the one they have carved out within. With Louise there was always that other place that she would not always share, even when he tried to draw her out: ‘Why, my dear, are you so sad today?’ Sad? She looked up and saw the piano tuner’s loving concern for her. And as easily as that, responsibility shifted. Now it was her turn to act light, to laugh or pass on an incident. Or simply shrug and say, ‘No reason,’ and to go on staring at the shifting water.

  Schmidt would have suggested a café in Almagro or one of the many parks were it not for Louise being so insistent that they meet at the pier. It’s easy to see why. At the end of the pier you find yourself searching for the horizon. And tucked behind the horizon was the old life Louise had left for this one. The pier was their place. It is also the place of Troilo’s signature departure piece, ‘Danzarin’.

  This, along with the rest of her grandfather’s collection would pass down to Rosa.

  21

  In Sydney, a younger Rosa trawls through the letters. She begins to unpack memories of the strange old woman who worked in her grandfather’s store. She is old enough to know the whole story now. And, she is like Louise now, isn’t she? Young. In a strange country. Without a local’s grasp of the language. She is struck by the similarity of their circumstances. Someone else has trodden this same road.

  It’s here, on the other side of the Pacific, in her new life, that she begins to reconsider the woman she knew as ‘Mrs Cunningham’.

  Mrs Cunningham was always polite to her, although her smile was a bit quick, not quite securely fastened. She was always in a hurry to turn back to her bookkeeping. Nor did Mrs Cunningham have any of the questions which adults usually hold in reserve for children. How is school? What’s your favourite subject? She resorted to none of the easy flattery. I bet you are the cleverest in your class. No. Children have a way of sniffing out the genuine interest from that which is faked. But Louise was a rarer species still. She didn’t care, and nothing pricks a child’s interest more.

  Rosa would stand outside the door marked ‘Mrs Cunningham’, daring herself to knock. She never did. She could never quite bring her fist to strike against the stained wood. Her purpose was too vague and uncertain. She wouldn’t know what to say to ‘Mrs Cunningham’.

  Then her death, followed by her grandfather’s depression. She listened in on her parents’ talk. When she tried to find out more they said it was nothing. But if it is nothing, then why were they talking about it in that way?

  ‘Poppa is sad.’

  ‘Poppa is sick.’

  ‘Poppa has lost his faithful lieutenant.’

  Then her grandfather’s death and the revelation that the outward signs had not been reliable. ‘Mrs Cunningham’ had tucked in all her overflowing bits to make sure that nothing would give her away. In control at every moment; filling in that space the family accorded her with cordiality and good grace. ‘Mrs Cunningham’ had been a fake.

  In Sydney it is hard not to feel a fake. It is difficult to pretend that you belong when clearly you come from somewhere else. When you don’t understand the language. Roberto’s finger had come to a halt on the globe a bit too easily.

  Schmidt Musical Instruments & Importers is resurrected on a busy road in Parramatta. For days on end Rosa’s father stands behind the counter watching the buses and the foot traffic. Whole days pass without a soul entering the premises. The phone never rings. Rosa watches her father turn a little greyer, and his eyes grow dim with the sad lesson learnt. The name Schmidt and its long association with musical instruments does not invoke the same respect as it did in Buenos Aires. In Sydney there is not the same tradition to trade on. After six months of dismal takings the shop closes and Roberto and Maria open an ‘ethnic restaurant’, the Almagro Steak House on Bondi Road.

  When Rosa isn’t waitressing she is dancing at the academy in Leichhardt. Her dancing pleases her parents.Thank God something of the old country has survived. She is still her grandfather’s girl after all. Roberto’s hope is that she will meet a nice Australian boy.

  What better place than a dance hall that offers proper supervision?

  Roberto has met Mrs Redmond, an impressively framed woman whose blonde-tinted hair rests in coils, pile upon pile. She is exhausting just to look at.

  Roberto has yet to notice the dishwasher, a boy two years older than Rosa.

  The first time Rosa introduced herself she had to get him to repeat his name.

  ‘Ivan,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Ivan. Please, did you say Ivan?’

  She had to peer up under a fringe of hair. Like lifting the lid off a pot. As soon as she comes into the kitchen his eyes lift out of the sink. The rest of him is immobile. Only his eyes move, shift, follow her. And whenever their eyes meet he never blushes. He is shameless in that regard; a mystery, but a good worker. They are never out of plates or saucepans. And every night he leaves the kitchen area spotless.

  At odd times during the day she begins to notice him. In Leichhardt as she is climbing the steps to the academy—there he is, moving out of the corner of her eye. When she stops to look properly he is gone. She starts finding him on the same bus. She looks up from the Spanish bookshop and the movement in the window is him, his narrow shoulders, the mop of untidy hair, the Janola-splotches over his jeans.

  She sees him when she least expects to.

  In Hyde Park, the national flags are flying. Yugoslavia. Italy. Greece. Ireland. Chile. Argentina. The dancers are dressed in their respective national costumes. The Greeks in white tunics.The Irish jiggers with their freckled faces. Every nation is roughly as expected. The Yugoslavs Slavic. The Italians wilfully homogenous. No surprises so far, as the National Australia Day crowd shop around, squinting in the bright sunshine.Though she feels like she is at the zoo, that she is one of the creatures, it is nice to be noticed for a change. That’s when she sees him; pushing foward from the edge of the crowd.

  As the first resonant bars of ‘Danzarin’ an excited woman cries out ‘Look!’ and the crowd switches its attention to Rosa, sitting crosslegged on a wooden traveller’s chest. Her face is pure white. She looks like she’s never been touched by sunlight. The next thing they notice is her bob of black hair—jet black. Once upon a time a crow must have swept down from the treetops and nested. Her eyes are too big, and what people say about thin arms would also appear to be true. They just make a face look sadder. Rosa’s white arms dangle out of a dress made of silver fish scales, and when she stands to walk to her partner she shimmers. She is fish and water in one. As she meets her dance partner and places her hand against his she is thinking of the mop of hair peeping over a shoulder in the crowd.

  That night at the restaurant she confronts him.

  ‘You were at the park today.’

  ‘No,’ he shakes his head
and looks vacant.

  ‘I saw you. I was dancing and I saw you.’

  ‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Must have been someone else.’ And this time his face plunges down into dishwashing sink.

  It is towards the end of the night. Rosa is reaching up to put the cups and saucers on the shelves when she hears her name called. For a moment she thinks it is her father or perhaps someone from the academy has come to look her up. But it Ivan.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You did see me.’

  He doesn’t look apologetic. It’s the same impassive face that greets good fortune and disaster equally.

  Good. She knew it was him. But she doesn’t feel triumphant.

  And Ivan looks far from vanquished. Nevertheless it represents a breakthrough of some unspecified kind.

  The next day she bounces up the steps of the academy in Leichhardt and there’s Ivan, brazenly sitting on the edge of the steps. Right there in her frame; not to the edge. He rises slowly to his feet and gestures vaguely.

  ‘I thought I’d like to learn,’ he says.

  There is time to notice his teeth. He has good teeth, which is a relief. At the dance academy she often finds herself paired with older, European men whose gums have retracted, their teeth outlandish, almost tusks. Or those with tobacco stains and sour breath. ‘One or two of them may try to brush against your tits,’ Mrs Redmond has warned her. ‘There’s always one to try it on.’

  In the mirrored dance room it is Ivan’s youth that catches her attention. The way he holds his arms high as if strings are connected to his hands and she is his marionette. Or as if there is a river running between them. His face is taut with uncertainty. He keeps apologising, ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’

  That night at the restaurant she comes into the kitchen to see him tracing out the steps to ocho basico. He hasn’t quite got the sixth and seventh step right. She is showing him this when her father, flushed, sweating in his chef ’s high white collar, sweeps through the door and stops short. His face turns a deeper crimson. Ivan releases her. He feels like the dog that is found playing with his master’s shoe. He returns to the sink, head down, his cheeks that chalky white.

  The following week she has to tell Ivan that he can’t attend the classes at the academy any more. Her father has spoken with Mrs Redmond and told her in no uncertain terms that it isn’t ‘a proper relationship. It is not suitable.’

  Rosa would like to argue with him, not because she feels anything for Ivan, but because of the principle at stake here. Her mother neatly anticipates this and cuts her off.

  ‘Rosa,’ she says, and it is the tone that carries the message. Anything for peace; that, and her mother’s face, with its collapsed ridges and dashed hope, which prevents her speaking out.

  Besides, these days her father isn’t his usual self. He is depressed. He is drinking more. More than is good for him. The path of least resistance is the desired path at this point. She understands. The compliant nod is for her mother’s sake.

  As a result, Ivan creeps back to the periphery. That’s him seated to the rear of the bus she takes. And there he is, again, in the corner of her eye as she mounts the academy steps. It is Ivan’s shadow that passes in the window of the dress shop. Her mother has asked her to accompany Roberto to a soccer match. It will be like the old country. The pitch with its familiar markings and boundaries.The call of the referee’s whistle. Perhaps Roberto will forget himself, and his depression disperses in wave after wave of the crowd’s cheer?

  The two sides are ancient foes in the local competition. One is predominantly Greek, the other Turkish. And within moments of the game starting a Turkish player hacks at the legs of a Greek player and the Greek section of the crowd rises as one. The game resumes and this time it is Turkish player who sags to the ground. As he writhes the Turkish section rises. Back and forth injuries and indignations are exchanged. Towards the end of the half Rosa persuades her father to shift to another part of the ground, to distance them from the supporters of either side. Throughout the trade of insults and abuse, violence, her father’s attention clings grimly to events on the field. Rosa’s floats to different parts of the ground. It is not what she had imagined. Young men waving their fists at other young men. Once she suggests that they leave but her father doesn’t say anything. He’s sunk to a place deep within himself, bundled in his suede jacket and scarf, his eyes popping large and unblinking above a grey cropped moustache.

  The referee blows up the game ten minutes from the end. Neither side is ahead. Players from both sides remonstrate. They beat their chests. They start to shove at one another. A Turk and a Greek player fall to the ground in an angry exchange, one atop the other. Rosa can see the elbows of the one on top. At this point one section of the crowd becomes enraged and spills on to the ground, quickly followed by the other section. Now spectators are grappling with one another. She pushes her father towards the exit. People are shouting. Shoving from behind. They ride this tide of panic out of the ground.

  In the street young men are running in all directions. Her father is confused. He stops. He starts. His hands paw the air. She pulls him in the direction she wants to go. His breath is hoarse. It is the first time she has seen her father so frightened. She has an idea of what he must have looked like when he was a toddler.

  They are hurrying up the street when a line of young men fan across the way to block them. That’s their intent. To cut them off. Rosa slows down, clings to her father’s side. One of the men jabs his hand in their direction. ‘Greek bastards!’

  ‘Se refiere a nosotros?’ asks her father. ‘No puede ser.’

  Now he calls back to them, ‘No Greek bastard. What you mean, Greek bastard?’

  The other man, thickly moustached, black trousers and a white T-shirt, goes to reply, then stops and looks up the road.

  Rosa and her father hear it too. A gear shift, and another gear shift; then a block of air wallops against her and with a screech of tyres a car slides between her and Roberto and the advancing thugs. It is Ivan. She recognises his lid of brown hair. For once he doesn’t look so impassive. She can see his mouth working. He is shouting at them to get in quick. ‘Move!’ he shouts.

  She bundles her father in the back and slides into the front. Before she has slammed the door fists are pounding on the roof. Ivan jams the gearstick forward and reverses. Then they surge forward, her father’s feet flying into the air. More screeching of rubber and they hurtle away from the mob.

  At some point they are driving in a calmer fashion. At some point Rosa’s breathing returns to normal. At some point her father recovers to a sitting position whereupon he leans forward to pat the dishwasher’s shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, Ivan.’

  And to Rosa, in Spanish, he asks, ‘How did he happen to be there?’

  She shrugs, as Ivan would, or as a smart alec might say, ‘Since when have the rings of Saturn parted from their planet?’

  ‘Luck,’ she tells her father.

  ‘Luck,’ he nods.

  This is how it will go down in history, then.

  22

  She is lying in a cold bath listening to her parents talk in the kitchen. From this distance they sound like two caged birds. Everything that was good in their life is behind them. Everything that was once beautiful is fading. They sit lost in this new world, her mother’s elbows on the table, her father’s arms dangling at his side. Her mother blames the humidity for Roberto’s depression. In this heat everything goes off. It is too hot to do anything. It is too hot to think. Rosa sits up in the cold bath and draws a wave of cold water between her legs and waits for it to wash back over her groin.

  In another hour Ivan will draw up in his old new car. A Holden with this and that and the other.

  ‘Get in. We’ll take her for a spin.’

  ‘Her’ refers to the car? Or, is she ‘her’? And if so, what is this ‘spin’?

  Their relationship is developing along the keel of curiosity and explanation.

  The ‘spin’
takes her along Bondi Road. Over the tops of the brick houses she can see the deep lines in the ocean. A white sailboat is bobbing against the immensity of the white and blue world.

  They will park at the end of the beach and take the coastal track around the bays as far as the Bronte Cemetery. There, Ivan will conduct his English lesson. Here, where Rosa’s beginner’s guide is written over the tombstones, they walk up and down, Rosa reciting:

  ‘Gone to a better place…On this day…Gone from the earth but not from our hearts…In ever lasting memory…a veteran of Crimea…a veteran of Crete…a veteran of Gallipoli…good mate of the Coogee Bowling Club…missed by members…tragically taken from us…mother of, son of, daughter of, father of…fondly remembered…forever anchored in our hearts.’

  23

  Roberto’s trip to the Bronte Cemetery begins at home with him patiently awaiting his death, in a high-back chair, wrapped in blankets that disguise his wasting body, while he watches his favourite film on video. Roberto is too weak to move from his place so Rosa and her mother take it in turns to rewind the video. All hours of the day and night the barking voice of the dance marathon impresario shouts at the walls of the living room: ‘Roll up. Roll up and get your number. Around and around we go, and we’re only at the beginning, where will it all end, only when two dancers are left standing at the end.’ They Shoot Horses, don’t They? is part of the home atmosphere, common and regular as the furnishings. On her journey through the house Rosa will stop and pause to note the stumbling progress of Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin. They are still struggling and it seems so pointless given that all the protagonists in the room know the outcome. Sarrazin will comply with Fonda’s request and aim a handgun at her temple to end her misery. This is the end they are struggling towards, and so, given Roberto’s ambition to starve himself to death, there is a certain empathy. The only time her father shows any sign of life however is to move his lips along with the song sung by the young pregnant drifter: