The Secrets of a Fire King (10 page)

Marc sat down on a bench and took out a cigarette. He leaned back, enjoying the sun, and wondered where Françoise had gone. She was unhappy, that much was clear, and she had been unhappy for several months. Yet whenever Marc tried to talk with her about it, she gave him a quick, evasive smile and changed the subject. And he couldn’t guess, had never been able to guess, the precise sources of her sadness. The things he expected to distress her never did, and the things that did upset her she kept hidden deep away.

It had always been so. He remembered it in the first night he had spent with her, over twenty years ago, the night she’d told
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him that for years, growing up, she’d dreamed of becoming a ballerina.

“Why didn’t you?” he wanted to know. That morning he’d seen her at the competitions, doing an acrobatic routine so precise and graceful that he knew before the announcement that she’d win. “Why ever didn’t you?” he asked.

She lifted one leg slowly. They were lying on a mattress on the floor of his apartment, and next to her were French doors that opened onto a balcony. They were flooded white with the street light, and it was against this background that he watched her leg rise, slowly, perfectly controlled, until it was silhouetted against the glass. Her toe pointed straight to the ceiling. Her leg stayed perfectly still, delicate, yet strong and fi nely sculpted.

“I didn’t have the legs for it,” she said. She rotated her leg, examining it as if it belonged to someone else.

“I can’t believe that,” he said.

“Oh, they’re the right shape,” she said. “They’re the
perfect
shape, in fact. But look at the length. No, I’m afraid they won’t do.

I’m long in the torso, short in the legs. That’s bad, for ballerinas.

You don’t see ballerinas with short legs.” She’d pulled her knee in then, so that the silhouette of her leg looked briefl y like a wing. Then she swung it down, and across his waist, until with one smooth movement she was straddled across him.

“I used to go to the auditions,” she said. “I practiced harder than anyone, I danced all the time. And I was good. All the judges agreed. But once I turned fifteen or so, once my body changed, I was never chosen. They all made sure to tell me I could dance, though. They let me know it wasn’t lack of talent. Even when I knew it was hopeless, I kept dancing. I used to go to the stu-dio alone. I was fifteen, and I danced by myself every Saturday afternoon.”

He could imagine her, lithe and nimble, spinning through a room where sunlight fell in patches on the floor, where even the soft rustling of her shoes had a faint echo. He felt terribly sad-dened by her story. He had liked her from the moment they’d met on the bus. Now, from somewhere in the sadness his affection grew deeper.

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“I’m sorry,” he said to her. She looked down at him.

“No,” she said. “Don’t be. I’m not, anymore.” He reached up and stroked his fingers across her forehead, where she was frowning.

“What are you thinking about then,” he said.

Her mood changed, and she smiled.

“You’ll laugh,” she said.

“Good. Tell me.”

“All right.” She clasped her hands behind her head and arched back, so that her breasts lifted and rose. He dropped his hands and ran them along the bony fan of her ribcage. “I was wondering,” she said, her eyes half closed. “I wonder if it’s possible for two people to make love while standing on their heads. You see,” she added when he burst out in laughter. “What did I say?”

“It would require immense balance,” he said, forcing the laughter from his voice, seeing suddenly that it was important to her, however ludicrous it sounded.

“It would,” she agreed. “That’s what I mean. And immense concentration. Because you’d have to maintain control, even as you lost control. You’d have to achieve an extraordinary frame of mind.” He picked her up, which was easy because she was so lean and light, and because, though thin, he was a gymnast and very strong.

He put her down on the practice mat in the front hallway. She went into a headstand almost immediately, her white body lifting into the air. He did the same, so that they faced each other, only inches apart. He nearly laughed at her inverted face, altered by gravity, the cheeks and forehead plumper than usual, and pink with exertion. Then he felt the rough sole of her foot as it ran down his calf, the back of his thigh. He looked up and saw her narrow body tapering into the far point of her toes. Then her legs opened in a graceful V, they lowered very slowly and caught him lightly by the waist.

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” he said, feeling himself lurch closer to her, caught in the delicate embrace of her thighs.

They looked at each other, eye to eye, and it seemed to him that he had never seen another person so clearly. Something about their inverted pose removed all distractions. Françoise had small eyes,
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The Secrets of a Fire King

with an intensity and quickness that sometimes made him think of a bird. Yet from such a distance her eyes were all he saw; they changed, grew larger, and the darkness of her pupils seemed to draw him closer, then closer still, the most intimate knowledge of her he had ever had.

“It will,” she said. “I’m sure.”

But it didn’t. They started laughing, simultaneously it seemed to Marc, though later Françoise insisted he was the one to begin.

Either way, once they started they couldn’t stop, and they had ended up falling, gracefully of course, because they knew how to fall. They didn’t try again for several weeks. Then the posture felt more familiar and they didn’t laugh, but it was still diffi cult, the most difficult thing Marc had ever attempted. That time it was Françoise who moved too quickly and lost her balance.

“Still,” she said later. “I’m sure now it’s not impossible. It’s just something that will take some work, that’s all. Some time.” She spoke as if they had all the time together in the world, and Marc drew her close.

“Maybe you should move in here,” he said. He tried to make it sound very casual, for he had observed her independence and didn’t want her to be frightened away. From any angle, he knew he was already in love with her. “It would give us more opportunities.” He ran his hand up the back of her thigh. “To practice.” The sun had grown stronger, and Marc stretched his arms against the back of the bench, closed his eyes, imagined that small rays of light pierced like healing needles to his bones. He was very tired. They had been doing this act for fourteen years now, and he was tired. Several times he had mentioned to Françoise that they should quit, but her answer was always the same: She tightened the line of her lips, and worked more quickly at whatever was in her hands.

“We’re not old,” she said once. She was sewing sequins onto her costume, and the needle began to jab in and out with tremendous speed. Then she threw the garment down and plunged forward into a somersault that ended in a handstand. Her narrow legs pointed to the ceiling, and her short skirt fell around her chin.

“See these legs,” she said, making small scissor kicks in the air.

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“These legs are not ready to retire.” She let herself slowly onto the floor. “Besides,” she said, not meaning to be cruel. “It was for you we started this.”

Well, it was true, that part. Sometime in their middle twenties it had become clear to them both that they would never be famous gymnasts. This was a painful discovery because fame was something they had both expected from their earliest years on the fl oor.

They were both very good, just not quite good enough. Younger and younger people were coming, with firm and supple bodies that bent in impossible ways. They were winning the prizes. Soon Françoise was offered a position as assistant instructor and Marc, realizing that his gymnastic days were at an end, packed the things from his locker and became an apprentice plumber.

He was a good plumber. He didn’t mind the work, and at fi rst it required all of his attention to learn the intricacies of joining pipes, the tricky dynamics of water. Soon, though, it became routine, and he became restless. He took up juggling, and sometimes he amused the older men by juggling his wrenches, tossing them in high arcs and amazing patterns. “That’s it,” they’d say, spellbound, “that’s it, Marc.” Later, he’d hear them telling the others about it. After work, drinking beer in one smoky tavern or another, they’d hand him things: boiled eggs, spoons, balls from the pool table. He remembered those days as happy ones, some calm equilibrium between the expectations of his youth and the quieter life to come. In his mind it existed as a perpetual summer, though surely it was longer than a summer’s length. He walked home every night through the golden dying light of the solstice, the feel of round, weighty objects in his fingers, and found Françoise, freshly showered and dressed in something loose, pouring wine into clear glasses.

It ended soon enough. He scarred a marble floor when a wrench slipped through his fingers, and a week later he’d taken out a chandelier with a piece of pipe that flew unexpectedly high.

He’d had to pay for that one, and he’d nearly been fired. That was the end of his on-the-job performances. He was back to solid plumbing, though his fingers itched now with the urge to toss small objects in the air. At home he juggled everything: eggs and
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The Secrets of a Fire King

bananas, matching bars of soap, the teacups Françoise’s parents gave them when they fi nally married. The great restlessness that had entered him grew into an obsession. He exercised rigorously, morning and night, horrified by the slow softening of his fl esh. He arrived home before Françoise and waited, some wild position trembling in his mind.
Come,
he’d say, as soon as her key was in the lock. He took her hand and led her to the practice mats, without giving her a chance to rest or shower or even put down her purse.
Come, let’s try this.
He became obsessed with the thought of making love in a headstand. When Françoise, exhausted from a day of teaching, slipped or fell, he lost his temper. He knew it was irrational, but he felt as though everything depended on it, suddenly, that if they could not achieve this thing together then everything else would be lost.

“We have to do something about this,” Françoise said, fi nally.

They were lying on the practice mats, and Marc was turned away from her, his arms hugged close to his body. In his state of mind those days, he thought she meant they should be divorced.

“Marc,” she said, touching his shoulder with her callous and chalk-smoothed palm. “Marc, you have to get your life back. This is what I think.” She had stood up, pulling on a black silk robe with a dragon embroidered on the back.

And so it had begun, their troupe. Over the years the other members had changed, grown younger or older, more or less skilled. Drunkards had been fired, a woman who was fl awless in practice but who shattered things in front of an audience was also fired. But always, at the center of it all, were he and Françoise.

They went to nearby towns and villages, they performed for the children of the wealthy. Françoise kept her job as an instructor, and he was a plumber all week long. But on the weekends they were transformed, masters of a balancing act they had sustained for fourteen years.

Now it was Françoise who needed to continue. Eight months ago she had been retired as an instructor, promoted into the management of the school. The day she received this news she had stood before her three-sided mirror for a long time, fl exing muscle
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after muscle and glancing back and forth, from flesh to glass.

Then she had turned away sharply, closing the mirrored wings across the flat center piece. She had bought six new suits and had never mentioned her promotion again. Three days later she had found Peter tossing urns in the park, and had invited him to join the troupe.

Peter’s youthful presence had forced Marc to look around. He noticed that the sword dancer was slower than others had been and that Frank, the magician, was growing fat. He wondered how much longer they could continue. Yet Françoise showed no signs of stopping. Marc imagined them years from now, he juggling bi-focals, false teeth, pill bottles, all the evidence of his age, while Françoise twirled on the trapeze, her hair a blaze of white against the vivid sky.

The rattling of carts woke him from his pleasant drowsing in the sun, and he looked up. Their lockers were being wheeled across the park. He saw the trunks come fi rst, containing equipment and costumes. Then came the trapeze, dismantled into long poles and bars and ropes. It took four men to carry it, balanced on their shoulders. Finally three men followed carrying the large boxes marked fragile. These were Peter’s porcelain urns, packed in layers of bubble plastic. The man before had used ordinary urns, the cheapest he could find, but Peter poked around in an-tique shops and flea markets, looking for pieces that would make the audience gasp as they floated through the air. Between shows he was very careful of them, treating them delicately, hovering anxiously around as they were unpacked.

Marc stood up from his bench, stretched, and followed the men at a distance across the diagonal of the park. As he had anticipated, they stopped at the edge of the square, at the junction of the two bricked streets, and began to unpack and measure, pausing now and then to point at the sky. In a while the trapeze would go up and Marc would climb up to test it, to check the sway and balance. But now he was hungry. He went into a cafe on the corner and ordered a cheese sandwich and tomato soup, taking some kind of reassurance from the ordinary food.

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The Secrets of a Fire King

When he came out, Françoise and the others were already there. They were all dressed in sweatsuits and tennis shoes, but already Françoise stood at a slight distance from the others, a distance that marked her as the star. And it was true—though they had started the troupe together, it was because of Françoise that it continued. The man who could balance Oriental urns on the nape of his neck or the bridge of his nose, the man whose dancing partner was a bright flashing sword hugged close to his body, the man who could stand on half a dozen eggs without crushing them—all these came together because of Françoise. Every crowd knew this before she ever appeared. The trapeze hung above all the other acts, swaying in the slight breeze that came through the city streets.