The Acrobats

by Mordecai Richler

  “Nothing!”

  Derek looked around, but the German was nowhere in sight. Still, he was jealous. He required, as always, constant confirmations of love. “I got you a gift,” he said. “Here you are.”

  It was a gold cigarette case. The initial J had been engraved on it.

  Juanito pressed Derek’s hand. “Thank you. It is very beautiful.”

  “Tell me that you love me.”

  “Here?”

  “They don’t understand English!”

  “But I …”

  “Quick!”

  “I love you.”

  The man at the bar got his bottle of champagne. He said, in a booming voice: “Ole! Vivan los maricones! Arriba!”

  “Shall we go?” Derek asked.

  “Did you, I mean for my friend …”

  “I brought you the money.”

  “Let me finish my cognac, and we’ll go.”

  Derek waited.

  “Will you take me to America?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  And why not, Juanito thought? I am a Spanish gentleman and in America there are many wealthy ladies. If André can steal, why can’t I do this? It was very common among the great men of Rome.

  “Hurry!”

  “You promised to arrange everything. Papers, passage.”

  Derek laughed. He raised his glass. “Vivan los maricones!” he said.

  The man roared. His stomach shook. “Viva!”

  III

  “Get more twigs. The fire is going out.”

  “The fire is not going out.”

  “López has caught a frog. He wants to put it in the soup.”

  López grinned boyishly and knocked a bit of ash off his new shirt. The sleeves were too long. They hung down over his wrists.

  “Sometimes your jokes aren’t so funny, López.”

  “The French eat frogs.”

  “To hell with the frog! When is the soup going to be ready?”

  All five of them were huddled around the tiny twig fire underneath the bridge. Juan, their leader, stirred the soup. The others held on to their tin-cans impatiently. The ground was damp.

  “We have two new tenants tonight.”

  Ortega giggled. “Send around the manager to ask them for their marriage licence.”

  “I’m hungry!”

  “How can you talk of food in a time of crisis?”

  “Do you want our hotel getting a bad reputation?”

  A car shot across the bridge. They sat silently until it passed.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “You can never tell.”

  “It would not look so good for you, eh?”

  “Aren’t you wearing his shoes?”

  Old José, seated slightly apart from the others, shook his head. “It was wrong. A catastrophe is going to happen. I can feel it.”

  “Quiet, you old fool!”

  “What? Is God going to punish us?”

  Renato laughed over-enthusiastically.

  “No, not God. Man will punish us. We have sinned against man. That is dreadful.”

  López made a sign of the cross. “Forgive me, Saint José.”

  “Enough of this,” Juan said authoritatively. “Are you a bunch of old women?”

  “Ruíz is worried about the body.”

  “Body?”

  “Who saw a body?”

  “We have done a dreadful thing.”

  “Shettup!”

  “Wasn’t he rich?”

  “It does not matter what he was.”

  “Your two sons died in the war and now you worry about fascists.”

  “My sons died so that things might be different.”

  “Go ahead, tell us they died for the fascists.”

  “The fascists are to be pitied. They do not know what they are doing.”

  “They will suffer in the next world, eh?”

  López howled with laughter.

  “When they shot Julio it did not matter that they did not know what they were doing. They shot him and he is dead.”

  “But we can’t go on this way. Don’t you understand?”

  “We were just being kind. We thought he would be more comfortable in the cave.”

  “Poor lad.”

  “Sh!”

  A small, worried man stepped out of the shadows. They knew him and they knew what he represented. Sometimes he gave them pamphlets to read. Often he came with others, and they passed out sandwiches, clothes.

  “Buenas noches, Guillermo.”

  “Salud!”

  “Would you like some soup?”

  “No.”

  Juan smiled thinly. “We haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.

  “I’ve been away.”

  “How long have you been standing in the shadows?”

  Guillermo sat down on the grass and lit a cigarette. He noticed Ortega’s shoes, but he said nothing.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  Renato wandered around behind Guillermo.

  “Sit down, Renato. Don’t be a fool,” Guillermo said quietly, his eyes brilliant and cold in the flickering light.

  “I was just going for a walk.”

  “Sit down!”

  “Have you brought us any pamphlets?”

  “I read the last one from cover to cover.”

  “What did you do with the body?”

  Juan looked blank. The men looked down at the ground.

  “I want to see that he is properly buried.”

  Juan stopped stirring the soup. “We know of no body,” he said.

  Guillermo seized López by the collar. He pushed him up against the concrete wall and shook him back and forth. “It takes much courage and nobility to steal a shirt from a dead man,” he said. “Doesn’t it, comrade López?”

  He let him go.

  “We did not kill him.”

  “I know.”

  “He was dead when we found him.”

  “It would have been better if we had killed him,” José said, “but to find him dead, another man, and …”

  “What need had he of such fine clothes?”

  “We are poor, honest men. You are supposed to protect us.”

  “Where is the body?”

  “In the cave.”

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t any of you go away. Juan, I’m holding you responsible.”

  They waited until Guillermo had disappeared into the darkness.

  “Where would we go?”

  The cave was dark and damp, moisture dripped from the walls. André lay naked on the ground. Not quite naked, for there were newspapers strewn about him. There were bruises on his chest and his abdomen had turned a sort of greenish-yellow in colour. His body smelled sweet and putrid. Guillermo was sweating and he had gritted his teeth. He lit a match, and looking into André’s face he saw that his eyes were drying and shrinking back into his skull. They were cloudy. His facial skin was grey and his mouth was shut. His expression was not angry or surprised or benign. It was exhausted but still somewhat eager. As if he was waiting for something which had not yet arrived but could be expected shortly, an abysmal something perhaps.

  But Guillermo could only guess.

  And guessing, he sighed also. He felt weak and discouraged. I’m not used to it yet, he thought. I wonder how many more times I will have to see it before I can get used to it?

  Toni will be difficult, he thought. She will want to see him. He turned away from André. It is too bad that the Colonel’s sister has seen me so often, he thought. She knows that I am watching the house. That will also mean difficulties.

  Ortega waved a lead pipe in the air. It was the first pair of shoes he had owned in eleven years. They fit well. “He is alone,” he said. “Just say the word, Juan.”

  “Throw away the pipe!”

  Renato spit. “He will have a fine job talking me out of the pants.”

  “There will be a catastrophe. We have broken fa
ith.”

  “Quiet!”

  Guillermo was pale. He held a handkerchief to his nose. “I thought that he would need a shave,” he said.

  “Did you know him?”

  “I want three men. I’ll get shovels. We are going to bury him in the cave.”

  “It stinks in there!”

  “I’ll come, if you like?”

  “Have some soup first,” Guillermo said, sitting down. “Juan, have you any coffee?”

  “Have some soup. It’s hot.”

  “Do we have to return the clothes?”

  Guillermo sighed. “I’ll leave it up to you,” he said.

  “I’m keeping the pants. He doesn’t need them.”

  Guillermo accepted a tin of soup. It was hot. He did not want the men to see that he was shivering.

  “What happened?” Guillermo asked.

  “López saw.”

  López laughed nervously.

  “Well?”

  “There were two men fighting on the bridge.” He got up and pointed. “They had been fighting for some time. The dead man was taking a bad beating. He got up again and again. Finally the other man threw him over. It was about one o’clock. I know the time because just as he fell over I heard the noise of the big falla exploding.”

  “Was he still alive?”

  “He was groaning something awful. But only for a short time.”

  “Why didn’t you go over to him?”

  “Do you think I’m a fool. They would say that I killed him.”

  “López is right. It is not as if he was a comrade.”

  “He was a foreigner.”

  Guillermo lit a cigarette. He passed around the pack. “We are all comrades. Do you understand?”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “He was a friend to all of us.”

  “How were we to know?”

  Guillermo shivered. He felt deeply ashamed of himself.

  “What did the other man look like, López?”

  “I couldn’t see him very well. But he was tall.”

  “Did you hear him say anything?”

  “I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t Spanish.”

  Guillermo waited until Juan poured the soup for the men.

  “You see, Guillermo. You can do nothing. Bad is bad.”

  “You are much too cynical, José.” Guillermo turned to the others. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring coffee and cigarettes. Don’t go away.”

  “Do we have to bury him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do we have to return the clothes?”

  “He doesn’t need the shoes. He is not going to walk away.”

  “You may keep the clothes,” Guillermo said. In the flickering light he searched for José’s face. “What would you give them, old man? What would you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Guillermo said nothing.

  “I wish I knew,” José said. “Mercy, perhaps …”

  “You cannot eat mercy.”

  IV

  She was dressed as if ready to go out. If her arms had not been hanging limply from her shoulders, if one of them had been raised and pointed towards the door, she might have been making an absurd face at someone. She had never been an attractive woman, but now hanging from the dining-room chandelier she seemed longer and thinner than she had ever really been. Her head, tilted slightly forward, fell to her shoulder. Her tongue hung dumbly from her mouth. The chair, the one she usually sat on, had been kicked over. She had hanged herself with his old skipping rope, the one he had used when he was in training for the Olympics.

  When he had first entered the room he had shuddered, but that had been shock. Now he eyed her with repugnant interest. He walked around her and around her. At last he was able to study her without fear. He poked her in the ribs, and she swung back towards him, hitting him on the shoulder.

  He read the note again.

  Roger,

  I told you I was going away. Now what will you do? Little, wooden soldier.

  You killed the boy out of jealousy and now they will get you. I’ll wager that even now the small man is waiting by the window. Go, go, have a look. Idiot!

  I never believed in it – never! It was all because of him.

  Theresa Kraus Ph.D.

  He had never learned how to disobey or question her so he walked over to the window almost automatically. The small, worried man, Guillermo, was still there. Another man was talking to him.

  Yes, Theresa had told him about Guillermo. She had first seen him waiting by the lamp post across the street on Tuesday night. Immediately, she had been suspicious. So Kraus had checked with Mariano and had discovered that Guillermo was a suspected communist. But Mariano had done nothing about it, and this made the fifth night that Guillermo had passed by and stood sullenly by the lamp post.

  Roger studied his sister blankly. He did not know what to do next. He was a puppet and he had suddenly been cut down from his strings. Should he dance? Collapse? He tried hard to think. Reflexes, emotions, reactions. But nothing dignified by either the logical or the intellectual.

  “I killed him for you. You made me kill him. You made me kill all of them.”

  The boy had fought stupidly.

  Once, Kraus remembered, when the boy had fallen down again, he had thought: All right. He has had his lesson.

  But somehow the boy had managed to scramble to his feet again. And even then Kraus would have let him go. But it was the expression on the boy’s face that had settled it, an expression not so much superior as triumphant and composed. He had – and Kraus still did not know how – conveyed to him that he was ugly and didn’t matter. So in a moment of rage Kraus had picked him up and heaved him over the bridge.

  He had felt compelled to do so. Just as he had felt compelled to climb down after him and watch him die.

  He remembered that Theresa had been jubilant. He had entered the house quietly and she had had only one look at him when she had said: “You have killed the artist.” And then she had laughed in the same way she had laughed when she had said: “It doesn’t matter.” But she had refused to listen to the details. She had said: “At last we are equal. I don’t want to hear one detail. I want you to keep it.”

  He had not understood what she had meant by that.

  Why? Why did they go on fighting? You killed one, and another came along! An endless parade of angry men. Why did they go on fighting? Didn’t they know?

  “Why?”

  The corpse stared back at him dumbly. The eyes were bulging.

  “What would you have said had it been me who had committed suicide?”

  He climbed up on a chair and shut her eyes. Then maliciously, he ripped open her blouse. Her breasts horrified him. He jumped down from the chair. The left eye refused to remain shut. It stared.

  “It’s a lie. You believed. You always believed.”

  He poked her, timidly at first, then he punched her solidly in the stomach. She swung upwards, backwards, crashing down to the floor. The chandelier swung madly.

  “I have to believe.”

  He thought he heard a noise at the door. He rushed downstairs and fastened the bolts. He drew all the window shades. He locked the back door. Then, when everything had been attended to, he sat down on a chair in his own room, his Mauser on his lap, sweating.

  “What will I do?”

  V

  “Are you coming to the meeting?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are supposed to give a report on the activities of our comrades from Barcelona.”

  “I’ll come along later.”

  Manuel cupped his hand and lit a match. His hollow cheeks flared in the brief light. “You are an idiot, Guillermo.”

  “Look! He just drew the blind.”

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doubtlessly they will shoot you, doubtlessly they will exploit the incident to round up ten or twenty comrades, doubtlessl
y they …”

  “All right! I know.”

  “Look, he was not murdered. He committed suicide.”

  “Wasn’t he thrown off the bridge?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “You did not know him like I did.”

  “I met him once. He committed suicide.”

  “I would like to revenge his murder.”

  “That’s a very pretty thought.”

  “He was in love with a girl here. He was such a damn good painter.”

  “In prison there are many men. Some of them married, some of them with children. I’m going now. I’m going to ask that you be expelled. You are too romantic for this kind of work. It would be dangerous to trust you with further responsibilities.”

  “If it was you what would you do?”

  “Nothing. I would feel nothing. We can’t afford it.”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “I guess so.”

  They walked for a bit, then Guillermo stopped. He said: “Manuel, it is going to be beautiful!”

  “Let go of my collar!”

  “All this is not for nothing!”

  “Yes. It is going to be beautiful.”

  VI

  The baby was wailing again, and soon María would have to be fed. Luís poured the coffee into the cup, laboriously checking so that it would not overflow, and then he carried it in to her.

  “You are so good, Luís.”

  He laughed. Her gratitude embarrassed him. “Drink the coffee,” he said. “It’s hot.”

  She held her hand to her mouth and coughed. She accepted the cup gratefully.

  He did not own a bed so he had prepared a mattress for her on the floor. All morning he had hunted for coal and in the late afternoon he had returned and prepared a coal fire for her in the basin. Now the basin, glowing warmly, was beside her on the floor. The room was small, the paper on the walls was peeling. Old crates served as dressers, cupboards, and a table. On the wall, hanging very conspicuously, was André’s picture, the unfinished nude. Luís had liked the picture very much, and just to surprise María he had mended the tear with a string and hung it on the wall while she was dozing.

  “Is the baby sleeping?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I hear him crying. Bring him to me.”

  He brought her the baby. He was wrapped in several towels, and bawling.