The Acrobats (3 page)

“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?

 … 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.

If he tried to read a book he soon had to stop as he could not understand the meaning of the print. Once, to convince himself that he had not gone mad, he grabbed a pencil and wrote out the alphabet more than a hundred times. The hell with it, he thought. Never again.

Madre mía!

Slowly María turned towards the other side of the bed, Pepe’s side, towards the window and air and the pinpoint of light that shone from the lamp post, strong and like a star.

The pain, the stabbing pain in her lungs, had awakened her again. This time, anyway, she had managed an hour’s sleep. The hollow sound of other people’s laughter tinkled on the window pane like a rumour of happiness. She heard the noise of a car starting, again laughter, then the rising drone of the motor. She had been ill for two years now, but it always took her by surprise, the sharp pains that came so quickly.
Madre mía
, she gasped,
madre mía
. Again she rolled over in bed, slowly, so as not to aggravate the pain.

On the dresser, she could distinguish, among the other refuse, the doll her grandmother had sewn for her. But that was so long ago, years and years ago, further back even than the times of the picnics under the olive trees, further back even than the time she had refused to marry Alphonso because of the wart on his nose, further back even than the time of the American, the crazy, happy Negro who had pinched her that day.
If only it was true. If only she was going to have a child
.

She coughed – once, twice – and the quick pain came again.

Outside a drunk was singing.

The room was small. The flowery wallpaper had long since faded, and the damp disfiguring blotches on the wall were many years old. Several photos of pompous and ill-at-ease ancestors hung from the walls, all in heavy wooden frames. There was their wedding picture, and a crude landscape of which Pepe was particularly proud. Several drawings that
André had done of María were pinned up over the bed. An assortment of plates and cups (they had been part of Maria’s trousseau) had been arranged on a wall shelf. And then a series of six plates had been nailed in a row down the wall, with slogans from Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and
El Poema del Cid
.

She heard the door creaking, opening.

Pepe sat down on the edge of the bed and kissed her.

Her health has improved, he thought. Her face is filling out, and her body also. But the doctor had said, Pepe remembered, that she must be kept warm and have plenty of fresh milk.

“Are you tired?” she asked.

Gently he leaned his head up against her swollen belly.

“Yes,” he said. “A little.”

“Do you think Luís enjoyed the supper?”

Luís, who had dined with them earlier in the evening, was an old comrade of Pepe’s, from the days of the war.

“Of course he did. Why do you ask?”

“He should get married. He is too bitter.”

“He is an anarchist. He doesn’t believe in God,” Pepe said.

“You shouldn’t joke about such things.”

Pepe grunted.

“You should pray sometimes.”

Pepe grunted again.

“You are going to be a father. Your child will have to reckon with God.”

“Reckon with God? For money a man may buy and sell God, let alone reckon with Him. God? What God? Can there be a God and He makes it a sin to be poor? Our shepherd! Is that what we fought and died in war for? So that superstitious women might taunt us with the lies of the clergy?” He stopped short. His own anger surprised him. “I’m sorry,” he said tenderly. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”