Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance (3 page)

I first heard them in the late hours scrubbing pots and pans. Troilo, Gardel and Goyeneche were background noise—a bandoneon now, and then a honeyed voice on the edge of a garrulous crowd as the Anglophone diners sawed through their Steaks Argentine and shouted at one another across a table littered with empty chianti bottles dripping candlewax.

The last hour of a dishwasher's shift is the worse. It drags on for ever. The minute hand on the clock seems held back by some invisible force. Then, when your battery is at its lowest, the pans suddenly pile up and keep on coming until it seems like there will be no end to them.To make things worse, the waitresses are getting into their coats and it's hard not to feel for yourself as the last of them yells ‘ciao' and runs out to the car where their boyfriend is waiting. This was also the hour when the restaurant would go into another little shift that few others knew about. Rosa would turn up the stereo, and at the first heart-breaking bars of ‘Mi Buenos Aires Querido' I'd soon forget that I was actually scrubbing pans and feeding the dishwasher. I'd forget all that and bury myself in these wonderful pick-and-strum tango melodies which eventually I'd come to know and sing along to.

I'd been there a week, and in that time I'd seen Rosa sack a waitress for turning up late once too often. I'd seen her throw a temper tantrum after a huge party she'd gone out of her way for—buying in more provisions and laying on two extra waitresses—phoned in to cancel (she sacked the waitresses later that same night) and I'd learnt to keep my head down and to make sure I wiped the benches and left the kitchen looking spick and span. I hadn't spoken more than two words to Rosa, but all that was about to change.

It was another mid-week night, and after dumping my soiled apron in the wash pile, I came out to the front of the restaurant to find Rosa dancing with her cigarette. She had her back to me. Still, I could make out the circling notion of her arms; the glowing end of her cigarette approximating the distance of a dance partner. That is what she was doing. She was dancing. I wished she wasn't because it was such a private moment, and because of that I had it framed in my mind as a potentially dangerous one. Rosa wouldn't like to be caught out. However, if I was quick about it I could slip out the door without her noticing, saving her embarrassment and me my job.

That's what I was about to do when she glanced back over her shoulder and without any of the humiliation or embarrassment that I had imagined she would feel, that I would have felt in her place, for a brief moment she looked at me as if she was trying to recollect who I was. Most of the time Rosa had the nervy energy of a blackbird in a hedge. All eyes and breast and twitchy feet. With a cigarette she became imperious, a raven-haired Catherine the Great. Judgment rushed into her face. Her eyes narrowed as they did now. Her gaze shifted over to the door, and immediately she seemed to know what I had been thinking. She gave a short snort—as if she'd just come to an appreciation of the facts that separated our lives: she was thirty-six years old, married, and I was a nineteen-year-old improvident student. She was the restaurant owner and manager. I was the dishwasher. These differences came and went as she placed the cigarette back in her mouth and waved me over—then it was like any other instruction that passes between the boss and the hired help.

‘I need to dance,' she said.

I thought she was just airing that thought in a general and speculative kind of way. I didn't think it necessarily included me. But then she snapped her fingers, and gestured for me to join her.

‘I can't,' I said.

She gave me an odd look.

‘I can't dance,' I explained.

‘Everyone can dance.'

‘Not me.'

‘So, are you carrying an injury?'

‘No,' I said.

‘Perhaps you are sick?'

‘No, Rosa, I'm not sick.'

‘So you
can
dance.' Already she was looking for a place to put down her cigarette.

I had no choice. She slipped inside my dishwasher arms with a little smile of triumph.

‘Thank you, Pasta.'

That was the other new thing that happened to me. A nickname, bestowed on me by Angelo, the chef, in acknowledgment of my huge appetite for pasta.

‘Put your arms around.'

I did what she asked; I could feel her smoky breath on my face.

‘Right around and behind,' she instructed. ‘The Argentine way is to dance closer. The other way it is like two people carrying a water tank between them. I do not care for that.'

‘Mi Noche Triste' was playing. She hummed to that while she waited—and waited.

She spoke into my ear. She whispered.

‘You are not doing anything.'

‘I told you I can't dance.'

‘Everyone can dance.'

‘I can't.'

Rosa wasn't one to let a slight inconvenience get in the way of what she wanted. We parted so she could make the necessary adjustments. ‘I want you to bend your knees. Not too much. Just so.' She looked into my eyes to see what was residing there. I felt her hand adjust my chin. ‘You are not relaxed. How are you to dance if you are not relaxed? Breathe!' she commanded. I breathed. ‘Good. Well, better. Now you are starting to relax, I can tell.' She instructed me to place my hands on her shoulders and to walk her backwards. And once when I looked down, she asked me, ‘Have you dropped something? Did you hear something roll on to the floor? No. So why are you looking down?'

‘Sorry.'

‘There is no need to be.You are just beginning.'

And then, ‘Now you are trying to walk around me. Walk like you want to walk through me. If you kick me it is my fault. No problem.'

I seriously wondered about that. I had seen her sack a waitress for much less, for what had seemed little more than wilfulness on Rosa's part. I wasn't relaxed. I was extremely nervous.

‘Wait,' she said, and detached herself to dispose of her cigarette. She looked back from the table and smiled as if she had just caught up with the fact of my clumsy youthfulness.

‘Lionel, you are still not completely relaxed, are you?'

‘No.'

‘So how can you dance if you are not relaxed? Come.'

She eyeballed my hands and smiled when I woodenly raised them for her to step back inside my embrace. We were close enough now for me to feel her thighs on mine. Her breasts pushed up against my ribcage. On the beat I began to walk her backwards. To my surprise it worked. Rosa was a receding obstacle. She moved with surprising lightness. In fact, she moved expertly. Happily, for me, ‘Almagro' was the last track on the tape, and as it ended we found ourselves by the reception where she released me.

I could hear the tape whirring over the speakers. I thought for a moment she would put another tape on. Instead she looked vaguely over towards the bar.

She said, ‘I'm going to have a glass of wine. Would you like something?'

I made a thing of looking at my watch. It was already late. But that wasn't the problem I made it out to be. Sheepishly I told her I had an early morning lecture which while true was neither here nor there. Even to my ears it sounded unconvincing, and before I could change tack Rosa was walking towards the door.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘You must go. It is late. Look at what time it is and I'm holding you up. Go.'

She had walked quickly, much too quickly; now she waited at the door for me to leave.

In the short time that I had been the kitchenhand rumours about the state of Rosa's marriage had made the rounds. When the waitresses came back to smoke and gossip in the loading bay I'd hear Ivan referred to. A couple of times I was still cleaning up when he swung by the restaurant to pick up Rosa. The first time I was bringing out Angelo's pans when I saw him hovering near the door. I was surprised not so much by what he was or looked like but what he didn't look like. I had expected someone older. Or by that do I mean someone more confident? Someone who wouldn't be shy of leading Rosa around the dance floor. Ivan wore a shapeless woolly jumper. His hands slumped in his pockets. His sideburns were too bushy. One glance at shambling Ivan and you knew why the running of the restaurant was left to Rosa. He looked uncomfortable to be there. A man given to complaint, I thought then.

Rosa looked up from her little adding machine, saw me, and called out across the empty restaurant: ‘Say hallo to our new kitchenhand. His name is Lionel.' Ivan raised his hand and looked away. He really didn't want to know. He just wanted to get out of there. He jangled change in his pocket while he waited for Rosa to lock up. But she couldn't do that until I had finished out the back. In the meanwhile she was gentle and solicitous with him. ‘Ivan, why don't you sit down and have a drink? Lionel will be done by the time you've finished. Why don't you pour yourself a brandy? Or a soda or something?'

Ivan just shrugged and jangled change in his pocket.

Then there was a period when I didn't see him at all. We all assumed he was waiting up at home, planted before the TV or in bed. Ivan was referred to less and less. I'd been there a month when one night a waitresses came back to say that Rosa had left Kay in charge while she drove Ivan out to the airport. We took that to mean that the marriage was over. Ivan was flying back to Melbourne. Or was it Sydney? Someone said Ivan ran with some Yugoslav crooks. Ivan had come to mean bad business. So we were all relieved for Rosa's sake that she'd finally pulled this sick thorn from her side.

A weather watch went out on Rosa. Everyone figured this would not be a good time to ask Rosa for any favours or to be late. We were expecting a fire storm. So it was a surprise to find Rosa more subdued; well, we figured that was also to be expected. It was over, and even if it had been a bad marriage (we'd decided that was the case) a certain amount of grieving was understandable. Kay, who was the oldest waitress (she may have been as old as thirty-two) set the tone by speaking in a hush and generally moving about as though in an intensive care ward. She'd been through a marriage break-up herself. ‘Believe me, once is enough.' Her quiet efficient manner carried through to the kitchen. Plates were placed delicately rather than dropped in a pile. Angelo would come all the way down to my sink rather than yell out to ask when he could have the meat pan back.

Some things continued the same as before. The low dismal cloud of smoke hanging over Rosa. When I stopped to say goodnight she forced herself to smile, parted with a quick ‘Good night, Pasta' and went back to her adding machine. I found myself wishing that I'd accepted that offer of a drink. I should have just swallowed my nerves and gone with the moment. Because the other thing that had happened, and it was something I wanted to draw to Rosa's attention, was the music. For whatever reason she'd stopped turning it up after the last waitress ran out at the stroke of midnight. So that final hour I spent scrubbing without the salve of Troilo, Gardel and Goyeneche.

I resolved to mention this and one night as I was leaving I called across to Rosa in her booth. I said, ‘What's happened to the music, Rosa? I miss it.'

She kept looking down at her figures, her whispering lips moved to the end of the adding machine printout. It was only a matter of seconds but I felt like I'd interrupted her with some unforgivable triviality. Finally, she looked up and studied me through the grey smoke.

‘What you want? You want to dance?'

‘Yes,' I said. Though this wasn't true. I didn't mean that. I just missed the music.

Still, I would have thought she would be pleasantly surprised to hear this. Instead, her expression didn't change at all. She just ground out her cigarette in an ash-tray. A boy at primary school used to sit on the hot asphalt and grind red ants to a pulp under his fingertip. Rosa rotated her finger the same way and with the same relish when she ground out a cigarette.

‘Well,' she said, after what was a drawn-out consideration. ‘I don't think so.' That was all she said. She stuck a new cigarette in her mouth and felt around in the coils of adding machine paper for her lighter. The matter was apparently at an end. So I nodded back. That was fine with me. Better in fact. It was a huge relief. I'd done the right thing. Now I could go. ‘However,' she said. ‘If you are interested…' The blackbird in the hedge suddenly stopped twitching; its eyes glowed back at me.

‘Yes,' I heard myself say.

‘Then you will need to take some lessons. The lessons I can arrange and then, perhaps I will dance with you.'

6

The white lights, the long brown floorboards. The soft pastel reflections of the dancers catching on the dark glass. Dancers finding a place to sit and change out of their street shoes, then standing to press their weight into every corner of their shoes. One foot, then the other. The men less experimental, more in a hurry to tie their shoelaces. One man's eyes glinted madly behind his glasses; the jaw of another set with canine anticipation. I watched a number of women step forward from the fringes; like reluctant swimmers, wanting, desiring, but not quite trusting. Big women in heavy lipstick and in dresses that were too short. Skinny ones who held their hands in front of themselves and looked much like they must have once behind a school desk.

This scene repeated itself in dance classes across the city.

My first lesson was in a small school hall off a road leading to the rubbish dump. This was in early spring. I got off a bus full of sneezing people, and as I crossed a tennis court, I could smell the gorse on the hills. The puffy white clouds. It didn't feel like either the right time of day or the right time of the year to be taking a dance lesson.

A single car, a Lada, was parked on the tennis court. It occurred to me that I had the wrong school or the wrong time. Either possibility would have been fine. I'd tell Rosa that I'd got the time wrong. And the idea of dance lessons would slowly fade.