The Acrobats

by Mordecai Richler

  Chaim poured himself a glass of muscatel. He stood up and stretched his plump body with pleasure and a sense of sensual comedy. He felt for his stomach with his pudgy hands as if he found its presence reassuring. I’m not drunk after all, he thought. “Toni,” he said, “qué pasa?”

  “Guillermo is back.”

  “So?”

  Toni set the kitten down on the bar.

  “Nothing. I just thought I’d mention it.”

  “Does André know he’s back?”

  Toni looked away. The band was playing a shapeless tango without feeling. Putrifying puffs of smoke hung over the dancers. There was a lot of shouting and laughter. “Why don’t they stop dancing? Why don’t they stop?”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “No.”

  “But André and Guillermo are friends.”

  “Friends,” Toni said. “Guillermo doesn’t want friends, he needs enemies. And André … André is always alone.” She pulled at the leather on the bar stool. “Even with me he is alone. He can get André into trouble. It is dangerous.”

  “That’s André’s business.”

  Toni brushed an imaginary bit of dust off her skirt. She bit her lip, and her eyes were wet.

  “André is a child, Chaim. He has no skin. Only blood.”

  “No chica, that’s not his problem. It is that he knows and understands all the things that he is against but he still doesn’t know what he is for. André has the temperament of a priest but none of the present churches will do. That makes it very difficult.”

  “He wants to bleed for everybody.”

  Chaim dropped his hand on her knee and squeezed hard.

  A spotlight was turned on the tiny dance floor. The couples on the floor, like an army dispersing, shuffled wearily back to their tables. They seemed to leave something of their sweat and something of their sorrow behind them, exposed under the hard and unwavering light. The lights around the club darkened and for an instant there was the illusion of coolness. Small bulbs under pink lampshades popped on on every table. They, the people, reached for each other’s hands – clammy, un reassuring, and red under the lamplight.

  “When a person is in a state of apprehension and cannot make out the cause of it (the star that presided at his birth and his genii know all about it), what should he do? Let him jump where he is standing four cubits, or let him repeat, ‘Hear O Israel, etc.’: or if the place be unfit for repetition of the scripture let him utter to himself, ‘the goat at the butcher is fatter than me!’ A Jewish joke, you understand?”

  A drunken Frenchman in a dinner jacket stood up in one of the quasi-private booths that flanked the right wall of the club and began to applaud furiously. But the show wouldn’t begin until all the tables had been replenished with drinks.

  “Chaim, I’m pregnant.”

  “Well, that’s not so bad. Does André know?”

  “It’s not his child.”

  Her eyes seemed very vulnerable in the dim light. We have different memories, Chaim thought; that makes this kind of talk difficult. He took a sip of muscatel.

  “Chaim, I tried everything. I took pills. Hot baths every night. One night I jumped down the stairs three at a time. Another night I carried a heavy suitcase around until I fainted.”

  “Now don’t get excited. It’s not that serious. How long?”

  Eulalia – lithe hips swaying under the spotlight, breasts very evident, muscular legs peeping through a slit gown – España, no hay más que una, and singing it very badly. The women in the audience sucked their lemon drinks, puffed languorously at their cigarettes, or eyed the man at the next table. The men, depending on their temperaments, followed the sway of Eulalia’s hips or imagined the plenty of her breasts.

  “Three months. It was before we began living together.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Eulalia bowed, her gown dipping slightly away from her, and the men applauded.

  “I hate him! He forced himself on me. He used to pester me night after night. Finally, I … Well, I gave in, that’s all.”

  She began to sob.

  “You can tell him,” Chaim said. “André will understand.”

  “He won’t. You don’t know him like I do. He thinks I’m naïve. Isn’t that funny? In spite of everything he thinks I’m a child! He wants to protect me. Lovely Toni, he calls me. It would all be spoilt if he knew.”

  “Do you love him, chica?”

  Toni tossed her head back sharply and laughed. Her long black hair fell back on the bar and the kitten struck out at it with his paws. She was trembling. “He could take me to America, Chaim. His family has money. I wouldn’t have to live like this.” She laughed again. “Don’t you think his family would adore me? After all, how could they know?”

  Chaim ordered Toni a cognac and waited silently until she had drunk it.

  “Do you want to have an abortion?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the father?”

  “He is far away,” she said. “He … no, he isn’t. But I don’t want to have his child.”

  “Does he want it?”

  “No.”

  The new quartet – orgastic trumpet, wailing saxophone, despairing piano, and neurotic drums – made an attempt at jazz. They had the beat wrong though, and it sounded quite forced.

  “Tell André. He would want to know.” Yes, I’m drunk, he thought. Now, I’m really drunk. “Tell André,” he said.

  Toni lit a cigarette. “What about the girl. Didn’t she die of an abortion?”

  Chaim shrugged his shoulders inscrutably.

  “You won’t tell me about it?”

  “If he wants to he’ll tell you.”

  The quartet was enthusiastically applauded. They had played an American song, and everybody applauded. Even the florid waiter stopped, and applauded. He thought: I have got a cousin in America. Roosevelt was an American, and he was a great man. The drunken Frenchman in the dinner jacket applauded. He thought: In America everybody is rich. Chaim didn’t applaud because he knew the song, and the words, and it was badly played. Chaim said to himself:

  Con-ju-ra-tion

  Is in his socks and shoes;

  Tomorrow he will have those

  Mean Sundown Blues!

  Toni got a handkerchief out of her bag and began to dab at her eyes. “You think I’m weak, sinverguenza. You think it has been dishonest of me not to have told him long ago,” she said. “I never thought I’d meet a man like him. I’d do anything for him, Chaim. Only he mustn’t think badly of me.”

  “You tell him about it, chica. If you decide to have an abortion I’ll arrange it.”

  “Do you remember, Chaim? The first time I spoke to him it was here and he was drunk. He had been drinking for a week and I took him home. It was about four in the morning, and a lovely child was dancing in the street for small change. There must have been about five or six people watching her and André began to fight them. I couldn’t stop him! He wanted to take her home with him, the fool! But the child was scared and she ran away.”

  Chaim motioned for Luís to bring Toni another cognac.

  “Don’t chica. Everything will be all right.”

  “I never told you what happened when I got him back to the hotel. His room, madre mía! The bed had been moved into the centre of the room and it was surrounded by a pile of books, suitcases, canvases, and bottles, built up as a dam. He said it was to protect him from the rats.”

  “Tiere maidele, he is neither a child nor a boor. You did more than anyone else to make him well.”

  Toni took a sip of cognac and coughed.

  The spotlight was turned off. The bright lights went on again.

  “Look,” Toni said, “they are going to dance again.”

  “Yes, they are going to dance again.”

  “Do you think he’ll want me to have the child?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would always be between us.”

  “Not nec
essarily.”

  “I’m so afraid,” she said.

  Chaim stood up and kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll have supper together tomorrow night, chica. Just you and me. The hell with André.”

  Toni embraced him. She felt relaxed and warm in his arms. She kissed him on the cheeks.

  “Chaim, I’m afraid.”

  “Tell me,” Chaim said, “just between the boys. Did you try hot gin?”

  Toni laughed.

  “Oh, yes, he’s waiting for you at Ruzafa’s. He was in earlier but he left again. He wanted to see the dancing.”

  VII

  They began to assemble sober and even shy on the corners and plazas and alleyways shortly after midnight. Wooden bandstands had been erected on the street corners, and for a long time the jerky music of pasodobles swelled in the slums. Old men who had been searching the gutters for butts, pickpockets, beggar children, plump mothers nursing bawling babes in their arms, pimps, ragged soldiers far away from home, aged cripples and the blind sellers of lottery tickets, unemployed workers and young girls – all the discarded junk and wonderful humanity of the slums joined hands for the dancing. Drunks tumbled out of bodegas to join in or at least harangue the womenfolk. The noise was tremendous, booming, wonderful, and crazy. Empty bottles crashed to the pavement, wineskins were flung up into the air. The shouting of one band soon got mixed up with another and nobody knew what kind of dance was being played. As long as there was noise, and shouting, and laughter.

  Finally the whores showed themselves as well – dressed in sheer black gowns or form-fitting sweaters or slit skirts, drinking and joking and belching, just to show the wives how much they gave a damn. The gypsy boys appeared, cheap guitars slung over their shoulders, and they sat down on the kerb to play a flamenco or a jota.

  “It is very colourful,” Mrs. Ira Birks – visiting dignitary from the United States, wife of a Harvard Law School graduate, applecheeked, native of Little Oak, Conn., aged fifty-three, sexually incompatible with Mr. Birks, antivivisectionist, Vassar, class of ’22, member – D.A.R., S.P.C.A., wrote poetry from 1920 to 1924 and still does the occasional watercolour, virginity lost in the back seat of a ’19 Ford, favourite poet, John Keats – said, turning to Cardinal Megura y Paenz, Archbishop of Valencia. “I simply adore your fiesta! If only I weren’t obliged to attend the bull-fights.…”

  The Ambassador laughed heartily.

  The Archbishop smiled his thin and malodorous smile.

  “Mrs. Birks is only joking,” the Ambassador said.

  They stood by one of the huge windows in the Exchange Building overlooking the Plaza del Mercado. The ball they were attending was in honour of the Fallera Mayor, and the twenty-five piece orchestra was playing the Merry Widow waltz.

  Red-eyed drunk now, mad with the flamenco wail, the whores began to dance. Bleached blondes, jerking, twisting their bodies angrily; blackhaired bitches lifting their arms overhead and clapping desperately; old sluts shaking themselves into a frenzy and stamping their feet down on the pavement; giggling novices scream-singing until they soaked themselves in sweat. All for the dance, all for the song, all for the music.

  Moaning guitarists, their hands ripping up and down the twanging strings and beating on the hard wood of their instruments, made with their magic joy or sorrow of the maddening mob.

  Ai-aiii-ai-aii,

  Oooh aii yooii,

  En cárcel,

  En cárcel.

  “It is a good thing there is a strong hand over them,” General Mellado – veteran of the Blue Division, son of a parish priest, first officer into Guernica – said. “Otherwise … No, I won’t talk politics in the presence of such a beautiful and distinguished lady.”

  “Oh, but I adore politics, don’t I, Henry?”

  The Ambassador laughed heartily.

  Sweaty hands clapping, swelling hands clapping. Voices upgoing, high, high. Soul music reeling on, on, on, tumbling, jerking, screaming:

  Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

  Como huele a chamusquina!

  Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

  Ay que no, que son sardina!

  Bodies rattling with spiritpain, cavorting on the alive street. (A man grabs a woman and retreats into the shadows.) Eyes cravefilling, paining. (A girl bites the neck of her partner.) Mouths of disbelief and hunger, heads filling with blood and want. (A young girl swoons.) Veins of the neck swelling purplish, chests thumping and sweatful. (Pedro quells his quaking wife with a slap, and holds her to him.)

  Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

  Mundos y planetas en revolución

  con el fuego! De mi corazón!

  “What do you think of Graham Greene, Cardinal?”

  “Greene …?”

  “Oh, it is nothing,” the Ambassador said quickly, “just a writer. Mrs. Birks is something of an intellectual. She often addresses clubs …”

  … and the guitarist slaps his guitar bang bang bang bang, and all is quiet. The buildings are quiet, the streets are quiet. So quiet, so still. Only the sound of breathing and only the stink of sweat. Even the clouds don’t move, even God is wondering. (I shall walk up to heaven and turn off the stars one by one. I shall rub out the Milky Way with my heel and paint the moon in black. I shall kick the sun sizzling into the sea and I shall spit comets on all of Spain. If God is in I shall tell him why.) And the guitarist laughs. Laughs madly and like a devil. Dinero, he says, dinero. A crippled child moves among the crowd, collecting centimos. The people rest and drink.

  “Oh, but they dance divinely!”

  The General laughed jovially. “Men will be men.”

  Mrs. Birks smiled.

  The Ambassador laughed heartily.

  “God bless them,” said the Archbishop.

  They danced until their bodies ached from excess of pleasure (and they thought the earth had fallen out of the sky), they danced until their eyes were swollen with need of sleep (and they saw the buildings were of gold and the streets of soft silk and the lamp posts lit by glowing diamonds), they danced until they were too drunk to stand (and they believed the sun was hot and the earth was friendly and the grass was green in spring), they danced until Sunday’s dawn filled the sky gloomily and without promise (and they believed in the day and God and they were no longer afraid).

  VIII

  Kraus was not drinking. He was seated alone at the bar, his eyes fixed and brooding. He seemed to be pursuing a memory which had evaded him in the past, and which – considering his expression – he knew would evade him always. Chaim sat down beside him. He had had a lot to drink and he was feeling belligerent. “Roger,” he said, “are you in love with Toni?”

  Kraus grinned insipidly. But Chaim had startled him. “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

  “You have been following André.”

  Kraus frowned. Until now following André had lacked excitement, but since Chaim was so concerned perhaps he had not wasted his time after all. Only that afternoon Kraus had tried to make out what André was saying to the Americans, but they had been speaking too quickly for him to understand. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said.

  Chaim gripped Kraus by the arm. His face was flushed. It was the first time Kraus had ever seen him angry. “Roger, I have never threatened you,” he said, “but I’m warning you now. Do you know how easy it would be for me to have you carried off to France? Do you know what it would mean if they found you in Toulouse?”

  Kraus laughed cockily. “You wouldn’t,” he said. “Theresa says you haven’t the courage.”

  Chaim let go of his arm. “Don’t you understand? Theresa despises you.”

  Kraus got up. A waiter came between them and he pushed him out of the way. His face was drained of colour. His eyes were hard and vacant. “I know about your passport,” he said. “If I was making threats I should remember that.”

  Chaim lit his cigar. It serves me right for making threats, he thought. “Why are you following him?” he asked wearily.

  “I’m goi
ng.”

  Chaim stood in his way.

  Kraus seemed unsettled. “I don’t know why. I’m not … Theresa says he is … He fascinates me.” He stopped. “I’m human too, you know. It was only a war. Why shouldn’t I have a girl as well?”

  He looked at Chaim as if he was startled by what he had told him. He pushed him out of the way and hurried towards the door.

  Chaim turned to Luís. Luís poured him a glass of muscatel. His eyes were burning. “If you need me or the others, Chaim,” he said, “all you have to do is say so.”

  Chaim looked up sharply. “Tough guys,” he said. “The world is full of tough guys.”

  Luís looked away. He began to wash glasses.

  IX

  André noticed her just as she started across the street – her hips pushing against her gay print skirt, her breasts very nice in her summery blouse, her legs quick, and taking small steps patiently. She paused to let a taxi go by. She curled her lower lip fretfully, so that now she was not only lovely but wicked-looking also. André suddenly felt clumsy, restless also, the way he always did until she sat down beside him. Nice, graceful Toni, he thought.

  “Querido!” she said, as if it was a wonderful surprise to find him waiting for her.

  “Hullo, yourself,” he said shyly. “Sit down.”

  “I looked for you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you call today?”

  “I was on my way up to your place this afternoon, but I ran into some Americans.”

  “I’m so tired, guapo. My feet are stinging like many bee bites: I have danced with so many clumsy brutes tonight. Please buy me a cognac.”

  André called the waiter and ordered two cognacs.

  “Tell me a funny story,” she said.

  “I don’t know any.”

  “Then make one up.”

  “Toni, please!”

  “Act your age, Toni,” she said, mimicking his hard baritone.

  He laughed uneasily. He felt she was forcing herself and he wondered what was wrong.

  “Let’s do something silly tonight,” she said.