The Acrobats

by Mordecai Richler

  “But I …”

  “And don’t be so facetious, mon vieux. We know what a burden it is to be intelligent.”

  “You talk as if you despised us,” Jessie said. “Why, you don’t even know us.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just trying to be smart.”

  Jessie smiled brightly. Underneath the table André felt her leg brush up against his own and stay there. “When are you coming back to America?” Jessie asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe one of these days.” All at once André felt very tired, and he wanted to get back to his room. “My family is very wealthy. I’m trying to make up for it.”

  Immediately André felt stupid. He had always been a failure at being bright.

  “Now – is that funny?” Jessie asked.

  “No. Not very.”

  “What outfit were you in during the war?”

  A cigarette dangled from the corner of Derek’s leering mouth. André noticed that he did not inhale. The cigarette was simply a device for striking dramatic airs.

  “I was too young.”

  André felt more pressure on his leg. He wondered if it was just that she was drunk.

  “You’re a smart kid. If you ever get to New York,” Barney said, “be sure and look me up. We can use bright young men like you in our outfit. After you get over this painter crap and all that, I mean.”

  “Thanks. It’s something to think about,” André said, grinning foolishly.

  Another street urchin appeared and presented another dirty palm to Barney. He dug hastily into his pocket and pressed three pesetas into the boy’s hand. “It’s all a racket, André. But you’ve got to hand it to them. Take our hotel bill for instance. The damn thing is double because we come …”

  “Can’t you ever stop thinking about money?” Jessie asked.

  Barney flushed angrily.

  The sun was going down. The buildings seemed taller and fiercer and reached heavenwards pleadingly. The afternoon grin on the falla of the plump Valenciano had swollen into a diabolical leer. The clamour of a lost band shot through the air above the uproar of the crowds. Music came in waves. André looked at his watch and pretended to be amazed at the hour. “I really have to go now,” he said. “Sorry. Thanks for the drink.”

  Jessie giggled. “You know why he brought me to Europe? I was sleeping with a boxer and he thinks if he shows me a good time I’ll forget about it. Isn’t that right, honey-bu … Oh, I forgot. Mr. Lazarus.”

  “She’s drunk,” Barney said.

  “Where are you staying?” André hesitated. “I’ll look you up later tonight.”

  “You’re a liar!” Derek said.

  André paused awkwardly.

  Derek’s face slipped badly. The unknown quality – that which gives unity and is called character – was absent. There was only the choking appeal in the eyes, the lips with a tendency to quiver, and the pain all over.

  I could tell him, Derek thought. About Fox. About the mud. The songs. How the ammunition didn’t fit and the guns jammed. “I’m not what you think. I – look, I fought here. I … Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

  André felt the futility of the moment sorely.

  “I know,” he said suddenly. “Your name is Raymond.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you wrote The Edge, didn’t you?”

  Derek averted his eyes. “That was a long time ago,” he said.

  Barney laughed uneasily. “Don’t forget,” he said. “At the Reina Victoria. We’re staying at the Reina Victoria.”

  II

  Chaim chewed on an unlit cigar.

  Suddenly, his thoughts turned to André. It had been so long since they had had one of those endless talks. He hoped that André was in his room painting. I should have had him over this afternoon, he thought. I shouldn’t have put him oV.

  His mind began to wander again.

  He thought about the Warsaw ghetto where those who were not burnt now walked the cold desert land, tugging at their beards, mourning murdered sons and murdered daughters, wondering if it was truly hot in the Promised Land. Chaim’s teacher, Rab Moishe, had insisted that for two sins only did the common people perish. They spoke of the Holy Ark as a box and the synagogue as a resort for the ignorant vulgar.

  Chaim plucked the wet cigar from his lips, uncorking his ever-handy bottle of muscatel. And after all, he thought, isn’t it written in the Zohar that the pleasure of cohabitation is a religious one, giving joy also to the divine presence. He watched Carmen roll her nylons, which were part of his bribe of love, up her plump legs. How much butter and eggs go into the making of such glorious thighs, he thought? She caught his lewd grin and with a bound left the couch and settled down on his lap. But she failed to understand the disappointment in his eyes when her kiss was only friendly. “Carmen,” he said, “really I wasn’t so old once.” He gazed at her with longing. “Now vamos. I’m expecting a visitor.”

  “I love you,” Carmen said passionately.

  “You’re goddam right you do,” Chaim said in English. “Me, and my cabaret, and my nylons. But it doesn’t matter.” Still his gaze lingered on her childish stupid face. He flung his pudgy hands up in the air in a gesture of lamentation. “What’s going to happen to our yiddish children?” he asked.

  There was a knock at the door. Carmen climbed clumsily off his lap, hugging him still. He waited until she had slipped into her skirt before he ushered Fräulein Kraus into the room.

  He had been expecting this visit ever since Colonel Kraus had taken to loitering about the club. Now she sat before him, her quick blue eyes hard with contempt because she had been obliged to seek an appointment with her brother’s employer, the Jew Chaim. Fräulein Kraus’s hair was straight and fell in sharp lines from her face like a meticulously combed wig of string. Her face was bony and dry and tanned. Wrinkles were evident. Her body was thin, without sex, and the colour of old paper. She wore a short plaid skirt and a neat sweater. A pair of heavy woollen stockings were pulled up to her knotted knees.

  Chaim spared Fräulein Kraus an introduction to Carmen. He nodded briefly when Carmen left the room. He felt as if Carmen and himself were part of a human conspiracy, and he enjoyed that thought.

  “Well, Fräulein Kraus. Are you enjoying the Fallas?”

  “No. Not very much.”

  “You would prefer the festival at Bayreuth? Or Munich?”

  “You do not like Germans,” she said, smiling coldly.

  Chaim had a short, plump body. He was conscious of his dull physique so he preferred sitting to standing. His face was round and ordinary and his grey hair was thinning. Only his eyes illustrated the particular man. Liquid grey, profoundly expressive, they were the eyes of a melancholy clown, the eyes of a man who had absorbed so much of anguish that he was inclined to defend his human vulnerability behind a deprecating jest.

  Chaim shrugged his shoulders. “Why should I dislike Germans? Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Goethe – I could go on. Even Karl Marx was a …”

  “Marx was a Jew.”

  They sat in his office above the Mocambo Club. The reflected light of the desk lamp glittered sternly on her steel-rimmed spectacles.

  “Will you join me in a glass of muscatel?”

  “I do not drink.”

  He refilled his own glass. First they must murder the human spirit, he thought. Stifle small selfishnesses, pleasures, then the organisation of inferior society might begin.

  “We dislike each other, Herr Chaim,” she said stiffly, “but … Spain is not my country and to be frank I find Valencia dégoûtant. Yet the Bolsheviks have made it quite impossible for a decent person to exist in my homeland today. I am a fascist.” Fräulein Kraus paused. She felt it was necessary for Chaim to protest. But he said nothing, so she continued. “Don’t think for a moment that I am prejudiced against you because you are a Jew. I respect a man for what he is. The only important thing in the world today is money. Avec de l’argent même un juif peut épouser une comtesse française
.”

  “Then you are a bit of a philosopher, Fräulein Kraus?”

  Fräulein Kraus folded her hands in her lap. “You are making fun of me,” she said.

  Chaim lit his cigar. Yes. Fun, he thought. The fun will be for André and Toni’s generation. They will have to pay the unpaid bills of the past, account for the dishonesties, the vagrancies, of Fräulein Kraus and myself. He switched off the desk lamp.

  “You are fatigued, Herr Chaim,” Fräulein Kraus said dryly.

  “Please, you must have come about something in particular.”

  Suddenly she realised that if Alfred still lived, had he not perished on the Malaga front, he would now be about the Jew’s age, perhaps a trifle younger. “It is Colonel Kraus. My brother. He frequents your club often. I believe the fool is infatuated with one of the prostitutes in your employ.”

  Chaim felt spiteful. “Not the girl you just saw leaving my office,” he said. “That would be most …”

  “No.” And to lay her tired ugly body down nightly, the taste of fifteen-year-old kisses still clinging to her lips moistly, ridiculing the pain of her unshared bed. “No,” she said firmly. “Her name is Toni.”

  “But Toni is in love with somebody else. A Canadian. He is a very talented artist and a good man. They will soon be married.”

  “You do not understand. Colonel Kraus is infatuated with the girl. I think it would be wisest to forbid him entry to your club.”

  Chaim stood up. He circled the room, his pudgy, calloused hands clasped behind his back. “You hate him, don’t you?” he asked.

  “The Colonel? My brother?”

  Chaim turned and looked at her. She sat unnaturally, almost off the chair – a wary hawk, he thought, unsafe, never trusting in the security of her perch. God, how she must have suffered!

  “But you know how bright he is,” she said. “What would he be if not for me?”

  Chaim thought of saying “what is he?” but he knew what she would reply. He is a colonel. He was decorated by Hitler, and again by Mussolini. He was captain of the Olympic bobsled team.

  Chaim conjured up a picture of Kraus. A man tall, awkward, and with an always troubled face, slow to comprehend but quick to violence. “I will not forbid him entry to the club,” he said.

  But she is probably right, he thought. I should warn André, for Toni’s sake.

  “If she is living with another man it would be best. Colonel Kraus can be difficult when he doesn’t get his way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chaim said.

  She got up. “There is something else,” she said hesitantly. “You meet many people in your business. I was wondering.… You know I am a very well-educated woman. I won university prizes in psychology and I have published papers on … I have a doctor’s degree. My favourite professor was a Jew. I tried to help him when … As you know we are not prospering here. I …”

  “So you would like to give lessons now. Perhaps you would like me to …” Chaim stopped short. Suddenly be felt an overwhelming compassion for her. He realised what it must have cost her in pride to ask a favour of a Jew. “Certainly, Fräulein Kraus,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  After she had left, Chaim walked over to the window. The streets were crowded: soon there would be another display of fireworks. The others are dead, she must go on living. Who am I to judge, he thought?

  III

  … as if in his sleep, long, untroubled, deep, he had made voyages to foreign lands, all of them hot and dry. In Xapolis of the Four Winds he had disembarked from his ship beneath the jutting crags that flanked the bay. Naked he had walked in the sun along the beaches of sands and shells, seeking the lovely Princess, Apoo, daughter of the great King Agramoo, so that he might ask of her that which sent him flying like a wild wounded bird up against so many distant shores. A question so far unanswered, so that he was prevented from winging homewards, windwards, across the big sky to his cave on the far side of the green green mountain, homewards where his faithful Aduku awaited him on the hearth rug admiring the pictures of many colours that he had painted on the rocks. And on the sands now, lovely Apoo walked towards him, flaxen hair filled with the Four Winds, herself naked except for the flowers circling her neck. And she said: I do not know but I think perhaps that you are guilty. Then I must go, he said sadly, and seek the Word of the Oracle of Amkawa on another shore. So he set sail again, looking into the wind.…

  The floor was a litter of paint-soiled rags, linseed drippings, brushes, paints, discarded sketches, and cigarette butts. A makeshift library was piled up underneath the window. A greasy kerosene burner and a coffee pot had been set up on top of the books. The pot had been stained many times by overflowing coffee so now it was almost all brown. Against the wall, in the corner, was a trunk that was used as a table. An overturned canvas served as a tablecloth. The cloth was strewn with breadcrumbs, pencils, two unwashed cups, an opened bottle of cognac, and a baited rat trap. There were two more rat traps on the floor. Several canvases – some unfinished, others untouched – were thrown up against the wall. An easel stood in the centre of the floor.

  In contrast to this disorder the walls had been painted white. They were spotless, surgical, and blank. André had attended to this himself. For on first entering the room, one glance at the huge window facing northwards had satisfied him about the light.

  Lying back on the bed now André reached drowsily to the floor for a wet brush. Selecting a particularly heavy one he flung it at the canvas that hung from the easel. What drives us on, he thought, is the sense that we haven’t tried everything. That perhaps somewhere there is God.

  In the morning he had begun his work in an orgy of enthusiasm. For two or three hours he had been certain that thiswas going to be his best picture yet. He had felt form and colour on his fingertips, just the way it had always been when he was painting right. And then, after a cup of coffee, he had decided that the flesh on the woman who lay dozing on the bed was lifeless. And he had begun to swear – swear, because he had wanted that if just anyone would touch that woman with a razor that the canvas would not tear but the flesh bleed. So he had gone back to work.…

  It was bad, really bad.

  André poured himself a cognac and flopped back on the bed. Just one is okay, he thought. I’m well now. He held up the glass before him, he enjoyed the warm gold colour. He thought: Ida is dead (I never loved her) and can’t see colours. The cognac warmed his chest and he began to sweat. Ida is dead, he thought, and she cannot taste. He refilled the glass. I love you Toni, he thought. I love you so that you can destroy me. How long can it last? I love you and I am afraid.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Pase.”

  It was Pepe. He was one of the desk clerks at the Hotel Central. Their friendship dated back to the days when André had first moved into the hotel.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” André said.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “I’m all right now, Pepe.”

  “You were very ill.”

  And Pepe remembered how André had been afraid to sleep. And he, Pepe, would come up to his room and make coffee. They would sit there for hours, smoking under the hard yellow light, André not speaking but Pepe understanding he was not to leave him. And finally André would stop sweating and Pepe would go. How he used to call out her name in his sleep, Pepe remembered.

  “You’re so much fun when you’re well,” Pepe said. “The way you joke with María and make her laugh. Then you start to drink. Not that it was your fault anyway.”

  André grinned. He thought of telling Pepe about the man who had been following him but he changed his mind. He’ll think that I’m being squeamish, André thought. He emptied the glass in the sink. “All right. I won’t be morbid. I just like to hear you say it, that’s all.”

  Pepe sat down on the trunk. He had a soft, big-featured face. His nose was too big and his black eyes showed all he thought. He had a trick of looking at you as if he didn
’t mean to forget – not what you said and not how you looked when you said it. It was nearly twelve o’clock. “Are you going to see Toni?” he asked.

  Pepe didn’t approve of Toni. At the bottom, he thought, she is a whore – vale nada. There will only be trouble. He is too sentimental about these things.

  “Are you …”

  “Claro!”

  André began to strut about the room. It was always as if his body was new, and he was just going to try it out to see if it fit. He walked like an American – his long arms swinging loosely, his skinny legs taking big steps.

  “Do you like my picture?”

  Pepe got up and rolled himself a cigarette. He examined the picture carefully. “Hombre, what do I understand about art? Of course I like your picture. I like all your pictures because they make me feel good. Well, no. Sometimes they make me feel bad. But in a good way. Like the one you did of the crippled beggar, the green one.”

  André gave him a light. “How’s María?” he asked.

  “She wants you to have supper with us on Monday.”

  “Wonderful! But she might give birth any day now. I don’t think …”

  “She insists.” Pepe scratched his head. “What are you looking for, André? Sometimes I think about it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Pepe shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s something beautiful. Stalin isn’t beautiful – he always wears a uniform,” André said. “When I find it I’ll know.”

  Pepe got up. “André. It isn’t just that you’re running away, is it?”

  “No. At least I hope not.”

  “In your pictures you are running away. There is something missing.”

  “I know.”

  Pepe left.

  André lay down on the bed and lit a cigarette. He remembered that time in Paris when he had decided that it, life, was a sardonic joke; and he had suffered from one of his worst migraines since childhood. Time had passed by aching inches and for purposes of simplicity he had divided it into the hours of light and the hours of dark. When he awakened it had always been too early for lunch or too late for breakfast. The burden of his migraine returned in full, he would get up and stroll along the quais. Then, he would return to his room and crawl back into bed. Sometimes he would watch the cockroaches slide slowly along the wall: other times he would try not to remember. Around seven he would get up again, eat, and go to a movie. Then he would return to his room and lie back in bed with his eyes open, unable to sleep. He always left the lights on because of the rats. Life had become a job for him, a mumbo jumbo with rules to be followed. Every night he would vow that he would not sleep in the next afternoon. But the next afternoon it was raining, or he was only going to lie down for a moment to digest his food. At night he would go to another movie. One night he saw three Technicolor Westerns.