The Acrobats (17 page)

“Most evils originate in ignorance, which is a lack of wisdom. And, tell me, what is an ignorant man? An ignorant man is he who believes the whole universe exists only for him. As if nothing else required any consideration.”

There was a quality of coolness in the air now.

The sea churned, heaved, gasped – arms of water flinging themselves heavenwards, falling downwards gloomily. Suddenly a star like a pinprick on a faded blue canvas flickered full of hope in the abandoned sky. Far away, just where the sun fell into the sea, the sea yawned, drowning the sun.

“But I like you André because you are not bored. You are not intellectual and uncommitted. You are always taking part, even if not always intelligently. The earth is in your hands and you are dirty.”

Swaggering sea rolled tiny fishing smacks to and fro on its exultant thighs. The tangy stink of seaweed, dead fish, rust, invigorated the breezy air. The resounding roar of the sea, the dying sun captured just now in the sails of the smaller fishing craft, the loud lapping of the waves against the boats, impudent prows jerking upwards then flatly falling, grey gulls swooping down into the foam hungrily, all this traffic was as a song of faith beside the anguish of the unending walk of the unemployed, the stunned men who wandered along the docks with less purpose and no more dignified way of obtaining food than wharf rats.

They were seated in front of Cosmi’s small café on the waterfront. Chaim leaned back in his chair puffing on a cigar and sipping muscatel. André, seated opposite him, was pale and restless. He scratched his head and puffed anxiously at his cigarette.

“Jesus, Chaim! What are you going to do? It took you years to build up the Mocambo. How will you get a job? What will you do for money?”

“Three years to be exact,” Chaim said.

“Okay!” André said quickly. “So you’re three years older now.”

Chaim chuckled. I should have a family, he thought. Kids to comfort me and spend my money when I’m too old myself. I could have a rabbi, a drunkard, a sweet little
nympho daughter all for myself, and a skinny jerk with a
yiddish kop
, somebody serious, who could make money so that the rest of us could enjoy ourselves. “Perhaps I should go to Israel and go into politics?” he said. “I could make a few speeches about the rotten
Goyim
and maybe get a monument put up in my honour? But those communal farms – Riverside Drive Reds wiping their feet on your towel. You come with me, André. We’ll start a kind of S.P.C.A. to protect the Arabs.”

André shrugged his shoulders.

He and Toni had devoted most of the morning to plan-making. They would go to Paris, and he would give an exhibition; Toni would get a job dancing in a small club; later, as soon as they could afford it, they would rent a small place in Provence. After he had left her he had gone down to the Mocambo to consult Chaim. Luís, who had been watching for him, stopped him at the corner.

“Look, don’t worry about me. I told you a hundred times. It’s easy to make money. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Painting is hard. Being a man is hard. Money? Balls!”

Several flies settled on a puddle of cognac on the table. Quickly, André shooed them away. “I’d fight it,” André said. “I wouldn’t show so goddam much discretion.”

“If I hang around they can put me away for the rest of my life for being here illegally. Let them have the club. I’m tired of it anyway. It was very good of Mariano to tip me off.”

“Who in the hell could have told them?”

“I don’t know,” Chaim said. “Mariano wouldn’t tell me. There was only so much he could do.”

“I wish I knew.”

“Don’t be pompous,” Chaim said sharply. “You’ve had far too much to drink.” A breeze swept over the sea: Chaim felt a pleasant draft under his armpits. “It’s all very simple. Take this envelope and on Thursday I’ll be in the Gare du Nord to meet you. A honeymoon in Paris! What more could you want?”

André refilled his glass. “I can’t take the money. Don’t be silly.”

Chaim pushed the envelope towards him. He was glad about the wind. In the evening he felt younger and almost slim. “Look, they are probably raiding the club right now,” he said. “If they find me I’m screwed. Take the money if only for Toni’s sake. How could you ever get out? I’ll have a new passport by nine o’clock. Tomorrow morning I’ll be in Tangier. Wednesday afternoon I’ll be in Paris. It’s all very simple. Take it.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you have a forged passport? I thought you were an American citizen.”

Chaim sighed. It seemed so long ago. The silly women on the boat, Le Havre, Isaac thin and worried. Becky, Becky. It has been so long since you left me. So much has happened.

“I was broke. I sold my American passport in ’47.”

“You sold it!”

“There is no need to go into that now. Take the money.”

André, slightly drunk, stared out at the sea. Bombs had made a ruin of the port years ago. The guts of several maimed sheds raised themselves like ghosts into the cool and darkening sky. About fifty feet out to sea a garden of barnacles climbed out of the oily water and held the hull of a sunken tanker in a death-grip. The rotting hull, wallowing in filth and mud, was bloated and like a corpse. The slogan
SIEMPRE FRANCO
was painted on it. André lit a cigarette off his butt. “It’s wrong, you know. They have no right. Stay here and we’ll fight it.”

“Child, fight what? They say I was a smuggler. That’s true. They say I’m here on a false passport. That’s true. You’ve had too much cognac. Also, I’m sorry to say, you are very young. There are the times to fight and the times to run. Knowing that is the difference between being a foolish hero or a useful man. Take the money!”

André swallowed his cognac belligerently, but he stuffed the envelope in his pocket.

Chaim called for the bill. “I’m going to miss the flamenco,” he said. “Tell Toni I’m sorry I didn’t see her. Have a nice
wedding,
Mazel Tov
. Thursday night I’ll take you to the Café de Paris for dinner.”

“Was it Kraus?”

“Always it has to be your fault. Maybe you’re only an intellectual after all. How could he have known about my passport?”

“He worked for you. He might have heard gossip.”

“It wasn’t Kraus,” Chaim said. “But you keep out of his way.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t like you. He likes Toni.”

“I’m not exactly nuts about him myself.”

“Don’t be a tough guy.”

Chaim paid the bill. “Well, so I’ve been to Spain,” he said.

“And what did you find?”

“Find?”

“Yes.”

“You are very young.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Don’t be angry. It’s just that
my
hair is falling out.”

The sky was softening, André noticed. It was the colour of melancholy. The cognac felt warm in his belly, his arms dropped languorously beside him … if it would stop now,
right now.…

“Why are you helping me, Chaim? Got my salvation all figured out?”

“Don’t be a silly boy.”

André grinned nastily.

“I have faith in men,” Chaim said. “I would rather act on that faith than be miserable and without it like you.”

“But maybe I’m right just the same, eh, Chaim?”

“Maybe, but is that really important?” Chaim got up. “It’s stupid to talk,” he said. “Paint this; the sea, the sky, evening, two men talking, one angry, the other old.”

“What if I loved her and I was mad?”

“Now where in the hell did you get that idea?”

“My grandfather was mad. In his last years anyway. They say I get it from him.”

“You’re not mad, André. A bit crazy perhaps.”

They shook hands. André felt small and poor in spirit.

“André …” Chaim began shyly. He shuffled from one foot to another. It was the first time André had ever seen him embarrassed. It made him, André, feel insecure. Chaim was, had to be, unshakable. “In case …” He began again. “No, that’s silly. Look,
boychick
, you’re a fine painter. Paint always. I believe in you.”

André smiled self-consciously. “I’m going, Chaim. This kind of farewell stuff upsets me. Good luck, old man.”

“I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Well, I hope so, anyway.”

Chaim watched him walk away. I will never see him again, he thought. “Cosmi,” he called. “Cosmi, bring me another bottle of muscatel.”

Chaim was gone.

André sat in a bar on the Calle de Sangre and he ordered another drink. He felt trapped and alone and the cognac was not doing him any good yet. His head was full of pain and he could not think clearly. One more drink, just one, he thought, and then I’ll go up to Toni’s.

The next bar was practically empty and he left after one drink.

Finally he found a bar that suited him. It was dilapidated, anonymous, and there were many flies. Labourers, leathery-faced, sat around woodenly. The oily waiter, who waddled and had no neck, was probably a German. André called him over.
He was a Belgian.
Oui
, he had been in the Legion and fought in
many guerres. Afrique du Nord
, Spaneesh land
(oui
, he spoke Eng-lissh), against
les nègres
when there were
grèves
, and against
les boches, claro
, in the Great War. Àndré told him to go away. And to himself he thought, feeling fine on the cognac now, how do you say f— off in Spanish. He must ask Pepe.

Pepe. He was invited there for dinner.…

André spilled his drink on the table and with his finger he traced wet designs on the wood. He did a drawing of the waiter. He was lying on a tray, surrounded by vegetables, and there was an apple in his mouth.

André got up.

It was still twilight. He thought: This is the interval, all the world is sighing human, time for vermouth and mild applejack, whisky blanc for the habitants in St. Jovite and a lucky other few, rest for the unknowing men, unfocus.

Whoops, don’t totter.

The street, hazy, was cradled by a warming light. On a street bench an aged gypsy woman held a newspaper cupped under her chin. She smiled into the cooling sky, a saucerful of sun quivering in her frail grip. Her hands were livid, death was coming. But squinting into the going-away sun she seemed happy at last to be unaware of people warped by greed and misery passing quickly.

André kneeled down by the bench and kissed the gypsy woman’s hand. He looked up at her, and he said: “Sing me a song.”

He let his head fall on her lap.

She laughed. Her teeth, there were only three, were yellow. “I’m too old,” she said.

“Then I’ll sing for you. But, mind you, it’s in American.” He began:

The old woman applauded. André kissed her again, and skipped away.

In the next bar André made a speech in French. The men applauded, wineskins were passed around, and altogether they sang
Los Quatro Generales
. Afterwards André stood up on a table and recited, or tried to recite,
I Sing of Olaf
in Spanish. He told them the poem had been written by a great man in a stifled land where, nevertheless, there were many great men. He told them stories about the great men and he tried to teach them how to sing
Alouette
. Then, he confided in them. He said: “I am a mad man.”

He left the bar, and the men made him promise to come back. The bartender said:
“Como su casa.”

Outside, André sang:

He stepped into the doorway of her rooming house and suddenly a chill came over him. He began to climb the stairs and on the second landing he met Kraus. André, tottering,
stopped and stared. Kraus, oddly enough, appeared frightened. André laughed.

“I’m charmed to …”

“Oh, not again. What are you doing here?”

“Are you going up to her room in your drunken condition?” Kraus asked.

André shoved his hands in his pockets. He hoped that Kraus would not notice that he was shivering. “What do you want from us?” he asked.

A twitch developed on Kraus’s lip and André felt triumphant.

“Well …?”

Kraus’s face seemed ashen in the poor light of the hallway.

“I do not want to fight you,” Kraus said.

“What?”

“She, Theresa …”

“What about Chaim?”

Kraus shrugged his shoulders.

“So it was you!”

“Yes.”

Yes, just like that. Yes.

André laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed because Chaim was a useful man and he laughed because Kraus was a brute. He clutched the banister and doubled up laughing. He laughed because Ida was dead and he laughed because probably he did not love Toni. He laughed because he was drunk. He laughed and laughed. He laughed because he was feverish and he laughed because the doctors said he would go mad. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he laughed.

Kraus slapped him and André stopped laughing. “You are mad,” he said.

“She wouldn’t let you touch her.”

And for an instant, briefly, they stared into each other’s eyes.

“I am going to kill you,” André said, and he continued up the stairs again, trying not to stagger.

His head was throbbing and he was soaked in sweat. He knew the symptoms of his migraines backwards, but he pretended not to know. He opened up the door to the room. Toni was dressing.

She jumped up when she saw him. “André!”