Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance (8 page)

The thought made her cry out loud. Immediately the others looked at her. Billy with that slow up-lidded querying expression of his.

Henry with his clear unblinking sight. ‘Louise?'

She smiled, shook her head. Said it was nothing.

She opened the palms of her hands to release the thoughts.

‘See? All gone.'

Boredom. What to do? What to do? How to fill the hours? She wishes someone would find them. She wishes it would pass. It's Saturday and she wants to go to the cemetery. Is it even Saturday? It feels like it might be. She can't be sure. She's lost all track of time.

They live as prisoners experience life. Without a sustaining present. Without even a future to grasp hold of. So they talk about the past. Billy tells stories. Henry tries to. He never seems sure whether or not he is embarked on a story. He will begin talking, then look at each of their faces unsure in which direction to direct the flow of information. He speaks of events, incidents from the farm. Or of things with a scientific bent. How bees carry honey under their wings and the miraculous creation of the honeycomb. Henry can look at a piece of honeycomb and tell exactly where, and from which flower, the bees have been gathering. But more often it's the piano tuner they turn to. He speaks of a place that sets their dreaming selves loose. Of crazy bars where the white people copy the black people, and dance with all their innermost selves and feelings, where one dancer follows another, and one dance follows another, hour after hour, until the night peels back to dawn.

One night the piano tuner unfolds himself from his place by the fire. He shakes the sand off his trousers and snaps his fingers for Louise to get up and join him. So that they can see for themselves what he's been talking about, he will show them a few steps of the tango.

Before the fire-lit faces of Billy Pohl and Henry Graham she feels the piano tuner's hand arrive at the small of her back. The hand gives a little shove and resettles. It presses and guides; Schmidt hums; it is the same music she heard him play in her front room. She laughs—but that is more for Billy Pohl and Henry Graham's sakes, to make them relax. The piano tuner's eyes are still, concentrated— now they move off. They prospect in one direction, then shift their weight there. They do not hurry. She likes that. The way he moves her with exaggerated slowness. And because it is dark she is able to close her eyes and float in his arms, and smile at the flow of instruction to Billy Pohl and Henry Graham. ‘You see? Yes? Yes?' For a second they hold the position—hold it, hold it. ‘You see, yes?' until the shiny faces by the fire nod back.

Billy Pohl has a turn. Then Henry Graham. Billy holds her too tightly. He doesn't want to so much guide her as possess her, clamp her on to himself and run off with her. With Henry it is like she might crumble into a thousand pieces.

‘Henry,' she whispers. ‘I can't feel your hand.'

She can hear his tremulous breath though.

‘Go on, Henry, don't be shy.'

But her back is a hot coal and Henry can't keep his hand there for long.

The piano tuner sings. He sang in Spanish. Words that none of them can understand. It is the only tango song Paul Schmidt knows in its entirety so he sings it repeatedly until they get to know the words and at a certain bend in the song are able to join in.

When she dances with Henry the piano tuner fits the song around Henry's uncertainty. He slows it down. He even stops it to instruct Henry on some point.With Billy the song tends to speed up; it is a race to the finish and that is Billy's fault. He tries to fit in more turns than necessary. Sometimes Louise thinks she catches a glimpse of the finish tape in Billy's eyes.

The sand on the floor of the cave is quick to cut up. After each dance they move to another area of the cave until that too cuts up, and then they begin over, Paul Schmidt singing, one or the other of the boys clapping to keep the rhythm.

Morning finds the floor of the cave churned up. It looks like a herd of cattle has passed through.

It was Billy Pohl who ‘discovered' the dance floor. An area of flat rock on one side of the cave. It sloped away but other than that it behaved fine. After Billy brushed away the sand they watched Schmidt measure it out in steps. Four to the side, ten to the end where he stopped to scratch his chin and ponder. ‘Louise?' He looked around for her and held out a beckoning hand. She moved inside his arms. He whispered the instructions and they demonstrated the
gancha
—a thigh glance inviting an upward flick of her heel inside his leg that brought a ‘Holy Jesus' from Billy looking on. ‘You see,' said the piano tuner calmly. ‘There doesn't have to be a lot of movement to make it interesting.'

They were learning in their different ways. Billy Pohl had a turn; then Henry. But it was Schmidt whom Louise waited for. Billy and Henry were just something to get through. They liked the womanly feel of her. They liked to feel her close, Billy especially, he became like a vine, clamping on to her; Henry, on the other hand, wanting to but not quite able to and going slack with shame. She danced longer with Schmidt. For one thing, the piano tuner could carry the song and add as many verses as he wished. He could hum in her ear. Not only was he the master of technique he was in charge of music, which gave him a distinct advantage over Billy Pohl and Henry Graham. In their hands the dance was a clumsy, awkward thing. Whereas it flowed out of Schmidt. Well, it was in him to start with. Bit by bit Louise found herself stowing bits of the dance inside of herself, the sandwich, for example, and when the piano tuner dragged her foot back with her own she felt a glass chandelier must be hanging over them, a band playing onstage, floorboards gleaming in the lights.

10

At low tide the world reconfigured. The sea drew back and the tide turned lazy with sloppy brown kelp beds. Rocks emerged, and seabirds found new quarters to rest on and watch the day.

Louise was sitting on a rock watching Billy Pohl show the piano tuner how to reach down and feel for paua. Both men were in their long johns, Schmidt with the side of his face flat to the water; his eyes squeezed tight with concentrated effort. She thought of him tuning the piano, feeling for the notes.

It was the same when they danced together. She watched his eyes. They coaxed her, assisted by his shoves and tips; and his quiet words of encouragement. ‘Good, Louise. That's it. You've got it.' When his mouth closed a line ran from the corner to halfway up his cheek. Once they were safely through the step or series of steps the lines of his jaw would soften again. She was picking it up. Her progress seemed to please Schmidt as much as it did her. He told her, ‘You can dance, Louise. You can do it.'

Once, while gathering firewood, she felt sufficiently light and confident enough to ask him, ‘Are you married, Mister Schmidt?' Falling back on formality in a jokey way.

‘No,' he said. ‘Are you?'

‘No,' she said.

They left it at that.

These days it was too hot to linger. The sun hogged the sky and scorched the grey beach, making it too hot to walk barefoot on. During the hottest part of the day they holed up in the cave, huddling in the highest corners to protect their red bitten shins from the sandhoppers and sandflies.

There were duties to perform. Small tasks that in themselves were diverting. In the next bay there was water to collect from a hill stream where they would drop to their knees and dip their faces and drink as the cattle did. Separately they took themselves off to the creek to strip off their rags and soak them.

They went swimming, Billy Pohl and Henry Graham several times a day, Schmidt not so often. He was just as happy with his rock where he could sit alone and think.

To get a moment by herself, or to bathe, Louise would walk all the way to the end of the beach where a finger of rock pushed out to sea like a breakwater. Inside it were a number of rocks and rock pools to choose from. Billy Pohl and Henry Graham entered the sea in their long johns. But she could not bear the way her dress stiffened with the saltwater once it dried, so she went in naked.

There were days when the wind blew up and flung spit across the beach. Summer squalls that sent them running for the cave. Then the wind would stop dead and the head of a dandelion would come to a complete rest on the beach. It was as though the weather had stopped to pause and think, ‘What now?' before deciding it might as well rain. And rain it did. Inside the cave they looked out at the tiny waterfalls cascading over the entrance. Out to sea heavy grey lines like guy ropes held the sky in place. And when the rain stopped and the sun came out they left the cave to find jets of fresh water spurting out of the limestone bluffs above the beach. Some of these fell thirty feet and they ran to stand under them, squealing with pleasure and gasping at the cold.

After three days the waterfalls slowed to a trickle. They made wet streaks against the rock face. Then just a line of mist as the last of the waterfall evaporated. Finally, nothing. Or at least it returned to bare rock face. And at dusk they could lean against the limestone and feel the warmth of the day where, just a few days earlier, it had spurted with water.

For a spell it was stifling hot and none of them had the energy to climb up to the hill creek for water or to wash. The fatigue Louise felt had nothing to do with the dancing at night. It was dehydration. The light headacheyness. The sandbagged weariness. The effort it took just to drag herself up the beach. They weren't drinking enough water. She knew that. But immersion in the sea momentarily revived her; then she felt her body solidify and gather its old self. Now she slid up on to a rock, found a place to sit.With her fingers she brushed her wet hair back from her face. The salt cleared from her eyes and when she looked to the beach there was the piano tuner. Something inside her gave a start. On the surface though she was perfectly calm. He nodded to her. She did the same. Then he turned and walked back down the beach.

They danced again that night. She danced with Henry first, then Billy. The piano tuner got the song going. In the light of the fire Schmidt approached her with a smile. ‘Louise.' When he spoke her name she had an idea he was thinking of her as he had seen her that morning, naked, and drying herself on the rock.

One night they failed to notice the ‘music' stop, and continued to rock back and forth in each other's arms, a slow, rhythmic motion. It was as though she was floating—a liquid kind of contentment. Then all too suddenly she was aware of a change. She felt Schmidt's hand leave her back. She lifted her face off his chest, and the two of them looked over at the fire. The pair of boiling eyes belonged to Billy Pohl. The slack face was Henry's, injury and perhaps awe combined there.

She felt Schmidt move to distance himself. A shift in his attention. And in a bid to focus on Billy and Henry he cleared his throat. ‘Do you see what I mean now. You only need minimal movement to make it interesting. Minimal movement.'

Henry found a twig to divert himself. Billy dropped his gaze.

‘Billy, you want to try?'

Billy looked up; his eyes burned a trail through the shadows to Louise. ‘Nope,' he said.

Now Louise joined in. She said, ‘Come on, Billy. Please. Pretty please.'

‘Henry,' asked Schmidt. ‘How about you?'

Henry stole a quick look at Billy and shook his head.

Henry was the easier of the two to pick on.

Schmidt placed his hands on his hips and tried to look amused.

‘Henry, I'm surprised at you.You don't stand a lady up.'

Henry rubbed his shoulder.

‘I've got sunburn,' he said.

That night Louise lay down in a special sand bed that Henry had lovingly made for her earlier in the day; it was raised and covered with flax, and almost comfortable. She could have kissed him and it would have felt the most natural thing in the world but she pulled back with the thought that then she would have to kiss them all evenly and fairly. And what was an innocent impulse would be turned in to something else like ‘an equal share', and such an arrangement would seem too much like commerce.

11

By Louise's estimation they had been living in the cave for more than three weeks when another being came into their lives.

She saw him after swimming one morning. She had climbed over the point for the view south. And there he was. She'd forgotten what other people looked like. He was a heavily built man with white and brown rippling folds of flesh. The water rippled too. It rippled against that part of his torso that rose out of the water to a wide back, round shoulders and two club-like arms. Had he looked up and turned his head he would have seen her. Yet she felt there was almost no chance of him doing that. All his attention was concentrated on the minute task of peeling black shellfish off the rocks. It was like watching someone search for nits in another's scalp. The rest of the world didn't concern him.

She climbed back down to the beach where she dressed and hurried back to the cave with her news. She had seen someone from the ‘other' world. Aside from the lights of the fishing boats they saw at night the shellfish gatherer was the first visitor they'd had from the world they'd abandoned. Now she had another thought and this one slowed her. What if the man was to make his way into their bay? That he would seemed inevitable. In the short time she watched him he had progressed from rock to rock in her direction. Now a different thought occurred to her. What about Henry? What if she told them of the visitor, and Henry took the opportunity to slip away? How long before the rest of them were rounded up, and then what? There would be no more dancing lessons. That was the first thing. Secondly, Schmidt would disappear from her life. His firm hand would slide from her back forever. His soft brown eyes would turn away, never to look back. There would be no more exotic stories of impoverished songwriters who walked the streets selling their lyrics or of animals ghosting their way into houses at night, or accounts of lives that had changed in the course of a single dance. Thirdly, her life would stop changing. She would go back to the old one. The old routine of taking in boarders and travellers and of visiting the cemetery on Saturdays. She thought of Jackson with his white paper bag of sweets. She thought of her parents and they seemed more dead than they ever had before. Dead, and unreclaimable. By the time she reached the cave she'd made up her mind. She wouldn't say anything to the others. For now, at least, the shellfish gatherer would be her secret.