The Acrobats (21 page)

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” he said. He jumped off the bed and grabbed her in his arms. “I’m sorry.”

She pushed him away. “Take your clothes off!”

“I can’t. I don’t want to.”

“Hurry!”

“No, please, no.”

“Then pay me. You wasted my time. Pay me now!”

He shuddered, and laughing, he grabbed her in his arms. “I’m not going to fight him. No, not at all! I don’t understand, but I’m beginning to. It’s coming. No, I’m not going to fight him. I’m going to live. I’m going to get her now. I do love her. Yes, I do.”

“Give me my money!”

He pulled the envelope out of his pocket. Holding it high, he overturned it. Money spiralling, tumbling, falling to the floor. She fell down on her hands and knees and began snatching up the notes.

“It’s no good,” he said. “Don’t pick it up.”

But she had not heard him. She was sprawled out on the floor, naked, gathering up the notes quickly.

“I’m free,” he stumbled absently. “I don’t understand, but …”

He left the room, stepping over her, and she hardly noticed.

Suddenly all the street lights were extinguished and the fireworks display began.

A thin nervous line of red light shot up into the sky, ripping the darkness, exploding into shivering streaks of red and orange and green. Another scratch of light darted skywards, shattering itself in mid-air and momentarily illuminating the plaza in an eerie yellow. The people sighed ominously. Some recoiling, others tittering. Soon the sky was exploded in a multi-coloured grandeur, bleeding a myriad of trickling starlets, shot through with gaping holes and oblique pin-lines of firecracker lights.

A man in the crowd fell into a fit of laughter.

The giant
falla
of the wooden gypsy burst into flames. The crowd gasped. They trembled.

Another send-off of rocket lights swooshed into the sky, blossoming open above the flames of the burning
falla
, spluttering and hissing, pumping more angry rents into the sky.

An elderly woman, quivering, clutched Toni by the arm.

Still another flurry zoomed heavenwards, rattling, spluttering, dribbling coloured stars on the plaza.

He heard the first of the explosions, he saw the lights in the sky, all around him minor
fallas
were going up in flames.

He saw Kraus as well, but he did not pay any attention.

He walked across to the bridge still feeling puzzled about some things but richly resolved about others. The bridge, the dead river, the madly lit sky, all seemed wonderfully good. He stood silently for a moment, feeling amazed with himself, remembering that somehow it had started in the room. But he remembered nothing in particular, no incident, no idea,
just a vague kind of pain. A duty, perhaps. Something, anyway, that he had undertaken long ago. The duty itself was unremembered, but the need to act, the dignity that was truly wanted, came through clearly.

First off, they would have to get back to Canada. There had been enough of this, now he had work to do. He would work with what he knew, that would have to do. Jesus, he wanted to talk to her!

Below, on the river bed, a group of men were huddled around a twig fire. André felt that he wanted to join them. It would be just fine to tell them how he felt or maybe joke about women and the system. I am a bigger man now, he thought. My feelings are more than anger. His laugh began slowly then swelled up and broke out happily. But he was not yet certain what was happening to him. It will take time, he thought.

Kraus put a hand on his shoulder and whirled him around. “What are you laughing at?” he asked.

André started. “Kraus. Roger Kraus.”

Kraus snatched his hand away. He saw André’s face wild and drunk and brilliant in the quick light of an exploding
falla
. He was suspicious of the way André had used his name. He had made it sound as if there was some doubt about whether he was Roger Kraus or not.

André laughed again.

Kraus moved back quickly and felt a hard knot of something form in his stomach. “Why are you always laughing?”

André grinned, trying to be reassuring. “I’m fine. Honest I am,” he said. “You know, I feel like working. I’m going back to my room to paint.”

Kraus stood in his way.

“What’s wrong?” André asked hoarsely. “What do you want?”

Kraus cocked his head to a side, incredulously. “Don’t you remember? Are you mad?”

André passed his hand over his forehead. He felt dazed. But I’m not mad, he thought. “Remember what?”

“You said that you were going to kill me.”

André looked hard at Kraus and he remembered him or thought he remembered him striking old Mr. Blumberg. He remembered him in bed with Toni (while he himself, André, sat stupid in a chair, listening to time passing) or Ida who was dead, his filth inside her. (In that chair, rocking on a cloud perhaps, being unused and unknown.) Yes, it was Kraus. It had been Kraus always. “I don’t know. I – I seem to remember so many things. I don’t …” What if he is stronger than I am, he thought? What if he should kill me? Right now, when it is beginning. “Why have you been following me?”

“You were unfaithful to her,” Kraus said vehemently, and as if by saying it he had put everything right. “You went up to the room with the whore. I saw you.”

“Did you see the girl? She had …” No, André thought. He wouldn’t understand if I told him about her hair. “What business is it of yours?”

Kraus said nothing. He was growing anxious. Always, they wanted to talk. Why couldn’t they get it over with?

André tried to walk past him but Kraus stood in his way again. “I thought you were going to kill me,” he said.

“I was, but …” But there was Toni. Painting. Chaim. “It would be stupid to die this way.”

“You are afraid.”

So that’s it, André thought. All I have to say is that I’m afraid. And God knows I am.
But I am other things too
.

Suddenly André seized him by the collar. “Look, I’m afraid, is that okay? Christ, I don’t want to die now. It would …”

Kraus stamped his foot. His face was red. His eyes were wet. “I can’t stand you,” he said. “You – you won’t let me alone. You, why do you look at me?” And then, panting, he pulled back and smashed André in the ribs.

André wobbled. He gaped, trying to suck in air.

Kraus watched, not knowing what to do. His eyes bulged.

And just before he struck out at him, André noticed the men around the fire again, and he thought: Now, I will never joke with them. His punch caught Kraus on the nose.

André knew it was wrong. He knew that he should not have wasted that first punch. But it was his face that was so ugly.

Then nothing.

Stillness.

The plaza was lost in a fog of fumes. The old woman had disappeared from Toni’s side.

Where is he right now, Toni thought? I knew that morning on the river. Strange, it seemed years ago now, long ago and in a different country, when they had still been young and still been foolish. Actually, all they had had together had been an exciting weekend.

The doomed gypsy, burning, leered from within the yellow gloom. The crowd backed further and further away. Suddenly, the gypsy’s belly – which had been packed with firecrackers – exploded. The sky went up in flames.

Somewhere, she hoped he was watching. She knew he had always wanted to see it burn. She knew, that if he saw, it would make it easier for him.

André was watching all right.

Lying face upwards, half on the grass and half in the mud, he was watching the burning sky which was full of winking and exploding stars, real and unreal. He was watching the sky swinging around the bridge or the bridge rocking against the sky.
Toni, I want you to know that I was afraid and that I told him
.

The ground was sinking away from him. He felt that it was improper for he was lying flat on it, but the ground was sinking away from him as if he was going up and away from it in an elevator.
Toni, don’t you be afraid
. He gasped. His breath was sporadic and his mouth was warm and thick with blood.
If the men by the fire hear me and come to me, I wonder what I will tell them?

He was not certain whether he was still in his room or with Toni or Chaim or hitting Mr. Blumberg.

I will tell them yes and ask for a cigarette. If’s not much to ask for if you’re dying. I’ve given away quite a few myself in my day
. Now I’m urinating, he thought. Usually I would think now I’m pissing or having a leak. But dying is very medical.

He wanted to roll over because he felt that the jagged end of a rock was in his back. But he could not move himself. Or he did move himself and his body did not go with him.
Yes, that’s funny. I must tell Chaim. I mean watching yourself going like this and thinking about your own thoughts while they’re going on
. My mother will say that I passed away. She is afraid of the word death.

He felt a lump in his throat, but only dimly as consciousness was slipping from him. He was sobbing.
No. No. All I ask is that I know what’s going on. That’s all. Never mind the cigarette. Just knowing, eh. Or feeling
.

In grade six B listen now Miss Crankshaw had read Toni from a book which said do not move injured bodies you know until an MD arrives yes even if it is raining catsanddogs snow
burning
falla
and one fine day she asked me André saying it Anne-dree what please is the capital of Poland O Apoo visiting princess lovely of my dreams and I couldn’t answer for I was intent on the hairy thing on her cheek which was colour ugly
if I feel tomorrow
so 8¼ years later on I joked with Collins
if you don like my apples
no I never stuffed Miss C oh God no ugly like father saying that’s filthy or Serge hugging me saying don’t tell please don’t God no but
why do you shake my tree
not Jean-Paul who was alright when my father says there is no second best in war or business oh stop this ohgoddingno crap you dont believe in it for ½ second no you don’t (now there is a man standing over me) and mama saying now still I bet do not leave me ever in the dark not ugly the girl’s hair or the sun at oh Apoo on the église in French of St. Germain-des-Prés or Toni o my love I didn’t did I mean tell him I was afraid her breasts dipping full (the man is waiting for me to die) why doesn’t the sky stay still for one just one second eh but I do not want to die with my eyes open not closing like Ida in my dreams o

“Oh.”

Suddenly, his fists digging into the mud, he pulled himself upwards. He thought he was screaming but his voice was small. “No. Just a bit – yet.”

Then he fell backwards, his face in the mud.

His eyes remained open, but the man saw that he was dead and he walked away.

A
T 3 A.M.
Barney staggered up to the room again to see if she was in. Jessie was lying in bed, smoking, and sipping gin. Barney nodded shyly.

“Hello,” he said.

“Thanks for the flowers.”

He noticed the flowers, slightly wilted, lying at the foot of the bed.

“Well, where were you?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You had quite a bit to drink last night.”

“Oh, stop it! My head is bursting.”

“Her head is bursting.”

She smiled wryly. “Evidently I didn’t have enough to please you,” she said.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Did you get to the brothel last night, honey-bunny? Regardless of the fact that you are the father of two small children, regardless of the fact that you might have contracted some dreadful disease and infected me.”

“I found you here kissing that tramp!”

“I’m not deaf!”

She had half-forgotten André. Now she remembered him tenderly, so that she felt a need to protect him. A joyful need
that having an unloved man’s children had never given her. “We were both drunk,” she said. “It meant nothing.”

“What did you expect me to think?”

“I didn’t expect you to think anything.”

“Put yourself in my place I mean …”

“Oh Barney, stop being a child.”

He winced. He tried not to reel.

“What did we want to come to Europe for?” he said. “Let’s go home. I’ll buy you a convertible.”

“Thanks, honey-bunny. But I’m too old for toys. In fact, I’ve been doing some thinking. I want to be loved. I’m tired of this.”

She climbed lazily out of bed. Long-legged, slim, smiling trimly, she might easily have stepped out of any number of popular cigarette ads. She stretched, yawned, and brushed ashes off her black lace nightgown.

Barney grabbed her roughly. “Gimme a kiss, baby,” he said.

She pushed him away easily, and then she laughed. “Why, Barney, you’re drunk!” she cried.

“Sure, I’m drunk. Why not? Kmir baby!”

“Oh, don’t be foolish. You’re a grown man.”

He grabbed her again. Her mouth was cold, unopened. He was drunk, still he shivered. She tried to push him away but he clung to her stubbornly. They fell down on the bed. He squeezed her to him and she began to struggle. He was breathing in short puffs. He was hurting her. With a great shove she managed to break away. She slapped him across the face and jumped off the bed.

“Darn you!”

Barney sat up. “You wouldnta moved away so quick if it was André, huh? You would have been crazy for that pinch coming from him!”

He got up unsteadily and walked towards her.

“André? Don’t be an idiot!”

“I know all about the others too,
honey-bunny!
There’s a name for women like you.”

She laughed, her lips quivering. “You never had it to give to me. Never! Impotent fool!”

He slapped her.

“Impotent!”

He slapped her again.

“Slut!”

And suddenly he turned away, and he was sick.

He collapsed on the edge of the bed. His head hanging between his knees he was sick again and again. He felt his eyes popping, sweat soaking him, and his nose stinging. Staring downwards dreamily – his head hanging limply, jerking alive again as his whole body shook in another fit of vomiting – all he could see was his own spew. Finally, he had no more to bring up. He lay back on the bed exhausted. He felt an odd sensation of wellbeing flutter through him.