Mai at the Predators' Ball (10 page)

Venice in a Night
, Venice, once grandiose, a marriage of art and sea, all those mythical centuries, and all we saw of it now was an invasion of water, floods and high tides, destructive winter winds, underground galleries already eroded, it was common knowledge that the water level had risen overnight, submerging cathedrals, streets, the city of a thousand bridges awash in sullied waters, and the casual denizens of cafés, like those praying in the churches, would be swallowed up in their chairs and armchairs, coffee cups or missals in hand, and everywhere the deluge, women’s and men’s hair leaving upward-spiralling traces modelled in the water like salt or ice sculptures, how could he capture that erosion by water from a creeping climatic devastation that no one expected to set in so rapidly, now, today, in a single night, this is what Samuel wrote to Mélanie, and oh how he loved these dawning hours and slightly before, when he could spread out his pages of notations and choreographic directions while his wife Veronica and their son Rudolf slept in the bed where he would join them, the green lampshade hanging over him adding its tinge to the hesitant light from outside, already the sounds of New York, never fully asleep or silent, echoing voices, the ever-blazing furnace beneath his feet, then soon breakfast and an end to peace and relative quiet, Rudy’s toy planes buzzing overhead and all around the kitchen, his passion for planes and his sturdy legs that distracted the others in his beginning ballet lessons, overactive, too much so, not a thought for his steps, the barre, or anything but running about, playing, and throwing open the window to watch those other planes in the sky, solitary, anarchic, impersonal, on their way to who knows what target as in the painting by Hiraki Sawa, both motion picture and motion painting, Samuel would be that artist depicted in the portrait or video in black and white, the choreographer of notes and directions, while the planes streaked across the sky and in through their kitchen window, then landed on the table, alone, anarchic, impersonal, and pilotless, would they land here or in the bedroom and on the bed where his wife and son slept, impersonal as images on their plasma flat-screen, Samuel could only follow their path helplessly, waiting for one of them to sow its mushroom cloud, would the bomb land on him or on the captivating face of Veronica, fast asleep with her little boy held tight to her breast, on them or on Samuel in the abandon of all his sheets and pencils lying on the table, or perhaps on his computer, and would this be a dawning of cataclysm or of creation, the sleepers knew none of this, still anchored by the cornerstones of buildings and by steel bars, all there during this sky traffic, always there, were they ready to see their own legs, arms and hands waving white flags, the inhabitants of this city, and the late Tanjou with them, Tanjou, Pakistani student and family friend, and in
Venice in a Night
every canal spilling its water over palaces, cathedrals, houses, a man reading the paper in a café, first seeing the sinister sky-coloured Adriatic as it ebbed, then seeing the hand that held his cup shaken, the coffee still boiling hot, then his hand, his entire body sliding beneath the waves, this is the mirage dancers will create, the illusion of dancing beneath the corrupted waters Samuel wrote to Mélanie, oh how I love this hour of rich solitude when I experience complete serenity and I can write to you Mama, and here I am, Mama, a father myself, surely the best role of my entire life, and would the planes land on the bed where Veronica and Rudy slept or on this table turned to mute debris he thought, the mushroom cloud abolishing them all, Rudy who still sucked his thumb at four, Veronica near him and deep in sleep, would today be the day those legs fell, those arms, round and desperate, floating with the planes in the blue, you know, Mama, I worry when I hear so little about Grandmother, when she writes she never mentions her health, I want to know, I’m so far away from all of you, Augustino in Calcutta, Mai, you, and Papa, do be careful Mama, I know how committed you are to what you’re doing, visiting prisoners, attending conferences, and all that, do be careful Mama, you are all we have, me and incorrigible Mai and all those others you care so much about, I told Rudy I named him in tribute to Nureyev, the great Soviet choreographer and dancer of such incomparable beauty, he gets bored when I tell him stories and asks his mother more, more planes and tanks, I liked that last one, and I tell him the story of the dancer Rudolf, the story of a virtuoso, first a miserable child beaten by his father, then overcoming that and all the other dangers that lay in his path, and this is how we must live, Rudy, overcoming all obstacles in our way, fleeing the beatings, Rudolf exiled himself and became one of the greatest dancer-choreographers of all time, more planes and more tanks Rudy says, running all over the apartment on those stocky legs, sometimes he comes over and sits on my lap and asks me what it is I do when he hears me shifting notes and drawings around on the table, it’s my work for a piece of choreography I tell him,
Venice in a Night
, we were always on Papa’s lap when he wrote, remember, he said he couldn’t do it without us, I’m like that with Rudy, I like having him near me always, but he’s not getting any tanks, you and Papa wouldn’t let us have any in the house and neither will I, this piece has to be weightless and delicate like Arnie Graal’s work, we want to see the dissolved city, the living city of poets and writers who lived and worked there, there it was, clear as a scene or an outline, yes he thought, a film unwinding in a stream that sliced open the surrounding space with its ghosts as if they still walked the earth, souls of poets and artists, supernatural in their resilience and benevolence, the spirit that survives always, no matter if they were impotent witnesses to disaster, back to a time of serene arrogance when they knew nothing of the threats that face us nowadays, buried underwater and the earth corroded, the palaces and regal homes they inhabited, Lord Byron in his palazzo writing
Don Juan
, miserable in marriage and soon to gondola away to his mistress, less tyrannical than his wife or perhaps not, writing while buried in the commands, the words of one’s wife, in chaos, consoled by the company of caged birds, monkeys and dogs, writing as did they all, or Henry James in his Gothic palace, honourable guest in this mythic city, his own stone-vaulted gateway, mysterious visitor leading a monastic life, writing among the portraits of doges, searching in his books for sovereign links between Europe and America and not knowing if he will find them, tracing the imperishable portraits, or the poet Ruskin, living twenty-two years in the Pensione La Calcina, which would later bear his name, and rejoicing in being there, dazed and obsessed by the city as he wrote about its features, its stone, and its mystery, knowing them all the way back to its origins, all these shades drifting through the luxurious restaurant terraces now crumbling to the depths, where their lives had been so very fine and their nerved skin tanned by the summer sun, through the grand hotels about to melt into the lagoon, still writing before the seascape, whether shining or grey with its beaches and a sky filled with birds and the deep melancholy that was its gift to them, some fragile in health or hypochondriac as Thomas Mann in his prescience, for he had seen the oncoming plague, not quite ours though, the cholera that ate away at the city will be replaced in my choreography by the plague of water, vitiated and poisonous, causing cramps in its own way, killing after its own fashion as surely as the cholera once did, such ruination, human and natural, ruins drifting in the grip of the howling tides, yes the set will rotate and howl too, and music as though we are locked in a soundproof room, we will need that young Japanese composer with some cello parts, it will have the heavy rhythm of the waters, of the rushing flood which overturns bodies, while he wrote all this to Mélanie, blinded by the words on his screen even as he added to the notes on the table, still multi-tasking and enrapt, knowing his son would soon be by his side waiting for his breakfast in whining impatience, and Samuel felt he’d given his mother an over-idealized family picture, the couple, the sentimental image of mother and child in bed, his all-exclusive love for Veronica and the boy even as he sat all night at the table working till dawn, still this was a result of problems he had to face during the day, precisely with them and Molly the babysitter, because Rudy couldn’t always be at daycare, so Samuel the good father was nevertheless an egotist, more so than Daniel had been with him and his siblings he thought, was he really ready to give up his career as his own father would have done if called upon, was he really that devoted and concerned when sometimes nothing seemed less natural than fatherhood, especially while the child was still young, loud, and aggressive, not yet the charmer his parents dreamed he would be, his parents going out to dinner and paying the sitter, so many monotonous annoyances of life as a threesome couple these days, but here at his table he could see the planes taking off and criss-crossing the sky over the city, anarchic, impersonal, would there ever be a target for them tonight or tomorrow or whenever, more sleep and less work would surely have made Samuel a more loving husband and father he thought, poor sleepers are unstable, out of sync, but just a few more nights and
Venice in a Night
would be done, yet still, lately Veronica had seriously criticized his absence of female characters, who sometimes thought very differently, yes that’s it, he’d simply forgotten about them, he’d go over it again tomorrow, no point talking about it the minute they woke up, he had to be in class by eleven,
Venice in a Night
, oh and he had to see the musician at three this afternoon, light sleepers get so they just don’t understand the lives of ordinary people, unstable, out of sync, between worlds, he mused, no such thing as an ordinary life of course, these days anything and everything is out of the ordinary, especially if you’re a choreographer and dancer, what could be more amazing he wrote to his mother, what could be more amazing, though he was besieged by doubts now, just at this, the breaking of a new day, was this a dream or was Petites Cendres awakening to a kind of intimate nocturnal stage play, no music, soundless, only Yinn dancing nearby, his arms keeping waltz time, his long bare legs beneath a pink tutu so short his black G-string could be seen, a black bra strap dangling from his shoulder while he moved forward, black hair in a bun on top, repeating what he said at the bar to his friends a few hours ago, dancing then too, that at thirty-three he’d be leaving them, not just for a few days in New York with Jason for a film, Herman of course had laughed, saying our star Yinn’s going to be in a super-production, they’ll be no talking to her from now on, our indestructible queen, nossir we’ll never break her of that, will we, our sleek and muscular queen, consort to King Jason, Geisha put in whatever’s gonna happen to me when my sneakers get on your nerves, whatever will you do then Yinn, will I be subject to my sovereign’s commands to get those sacrilegious things out of here, and so they railed and mocked on, Robbie wondering if he’d get a part beside Queen Yinn, who answered, maybe a little drunk on rum, why they were all her stars and queens all, oh but we aren’t all wardrobe mistresses, makeup girls, dancers, and singers like you, Yinn, Robbie picked up again, they’d all be in the film Yinn said, we’ll see exactly how it turns out later, but at thirty-three he’d be leaving them all, that was exactly what he’d said, and Petites Cendres heard it just that way, but now it was still nighttime and the red night light under the cabaret’s poster haloed Yinn as she danced, soon the street noises would be welling up but now Yinn must be waltzing to the sound of the girls’ voices Petites Cendres thought, Geisha, Cobra, Robbie, Defeated Heart, Herman, every one of the girls, during the seaside procession for Fatalité’s sea burial, voices like those at Mass, pure, Reverend Stone cut in sometimes with his prayers and saying that Fatalité had accomplished what she had to do on this earth and now it was up to her father in heaven, but Robbie stopped singing and started yelling, more of this stuff about the father, I’ve had enough, and the singing of the girls in the choir in the January wind from the sea, amid the sound of happy students putting their boats into the water beneath the quay, irreverent, but then how could they know what ceremony was unfolding over the water, and it rose in the wind, Yinn holding the ashes under an armful of orchids, modestly dressed in his red vest and shorts, sober and boyish, so sober on that day that not a soul would have taken him for the queen and star, though all the other girls were dressed for the night, coats hastily thrown over their outfits to ward off the cold, and Robbie asked him, asked Yinn so what happens to all his actions, his deeds or the things she didn’t do, like mentioning the sad heroism Fatalité had showed under a life of blows and insults beginning in childhood when his mother sold him to buy heroin, right up to the age of thirteen, when he was in court for child pornography after having sex with a girl of thirteen like himself and other kids too in a friend’s house while the parents were away, why was it forbidden to want to know about sex at thirteen anyway, even with friends, so Robbie said to Yinn why did they have to prosecute him, spy on him, and there he thought his performance had been so good they wanted the video, what else was stored up in Fatalité’s mind, profiting from sex, why his own mother fed him that way, all the kids, every one a suspect identified by detectives in the video, and this pervert Fatalité arrested, no family to come to his defence, his mother busy debauching herself in some other town, not even the same county, who would tell his story, this time Robbie said it to Petites Cendres, and still he had the guts to live life to the hilt, so where now would his mistakes land him, deeds no one understood or else judged without understanding, sold by his mother for some heroin, a junkie himself from childhood, shot through and through with the stuff, uh-huh, so where exactly were Fatalité and his courageous heroism headed with all this living on the edge, that’s what Robbie asked Yinn, and everyone was surprised by the answer, nothing is lost, it’s exactly his mistakes that proclaim his innocence and it will all be made up for in the next incarnation, though this did not seem entirely convincing despite repetition, no, nothing could be done for Fatalité except to love him or at least admire him as he fully deserved, this was to be Fatalité’s coda, and whether dozing or fully asleep, Petites Cendres still felt the hollow need in his belly and on his sweating temples, no clients tonight it seemed, he was bound for a long dive into the empty depths of this vertigo he thought, yet why on earth would he need it with Yinn dancing right there in front of him, what was it, why yes, dancing without a partner, Yinn occasionally turning in his direction with a smug smile on his lips, red lips, breathe in the jasmine perfume on my body Yinn said from his slow waltz, and most of all don’t listen to those bells tolling their angelus for Fatalité in the night, no don’t listen, then maybe there really was music playing Petites Cendres thought, was he hallucinating or asleep anyway, from the street below came the plaintive sound of a violin played by his old father, oh my old, mixed-blood parents, are they already sitting out there on their portable benches on Esmeralda Street and selling Bibles to passersby while they preach to anyone who will listen those unbearable sounds they bow out from the pained strings, have you not read what is written in the Bible my son, thou wilt not lie down with a man as with a woman, yeah so what’s the difference, the son wanted to ask, were they really there in the streets already, his dishevelled parents, father playing his sharp and bitter music, get you hence evil son, may we never see you again, Bible held high in Petites Cendres’ face, oh he had run all right, these same sins will win back your innocence, that’s what Yinn had said as he danced, don’t listen to that bell tolling in the night, just breathe in the jasmine that’s on me, rose and jasmine petals all over the city, don’t listen to the funereal tolling in the night, my voice, listen only to that, my provocative smile, see only that, Reverend Ézéchielle would welcome him to her Community Church, come lost lambs, my little chicks, whatever your condition, Petites Cendres would find refuge in the white folds of her surplice, there really would be chickens at the church door, cocks too, pecking at the lawn with the pigeons and mourning doves on the church gables, come and eat at my table the Reverend would say, drink at my fountains, then Petites Cendres could forget about his scruffy old parents selling their Bibles in the streets, and those screechy violin noises on Esmeralda, could it be a good thing that Petites Cendres heard them with Yinn now dancing so sensuously right in front of him, the sharp sounds of bigots who had never loved him, don’t listen to the bell Yinn had said, just don’t listen, if it tolls today for Fatalité it isn’t tolling those macabre sounds for you, but tomorrow, tomorrow it will be thought Petites Cendres, in the shark-infested water rushing beneath the boats and rafts with hands, hands of Haitians, holding on for dear life in the never-ending migration of the desperate and landless, hands on, Petites Cendres, hold on to your own little boat for dear life, for it is the hour of horses stolen from the fields, taken out to be killed, oh their misery will be long and hungry, legs smashed by garden hoes and dying in ignominy as though eaten alive in the hour of madness, the hour of the tolling bell thought Petites Cendres while Reverend Ézéchielle was saying come, come one and all just as you are and tell me, what is that Petites Cendres, how can your father raise a hand against his son, what is this you’re telling me, creature of God, it is written love one another, and I do love you my son, it is written that you are loved and protected in this life, it is also written that you must pray for your soul my son, and that you must steer clear of saunas and dives if you can and that love is not hatred, Petites Cendres repeated all this to himself in his sleep or when he dozed, love is not hatred, and all the while Yinn danced for him under the reddish night light, a waltz just for him, Petites Cendres, and in the garden of Daniel and Mélanie, on the patio by the pool, Mère, recollecting the bitter taste of a martini and the feelings of joy at cocktail hour with those she felt close to, had come back to her own private place with Franz and Mélanie, leaning on both their arms, wrapped in tenderness and caring, remembering, yes, but what an odd detour of memory weaving its way in from the past, a memory of these trees she’d had brought in before any of the kids themselves had started to grow, Augustino had learned every single name,