The Acrobats (23 page)

“What happened?” Guillermo asked.

“López saw.”

López laughed nervously.

“Well?”

“There were two men fighting on the bridge.” He got up and pointed. “They had been fighting for some time. The dead man was taking a bad beating. He got up again and again. Finally the other man threw him over. It was about one o’clock. I know the time because just as he fell over I heard the noise of the big
falla
exploding.”

“Was he still alive?”

“He was groaning something awful. But only for a short time.”

“Why didn’t you go over to him?”

“Do you think I’m a fool. They would say that I killed him.”

“López is right. It is not as if he was a comrade.”

“He was a foreigner.”

Guillermo lit a cigarette. He passed around the pack. “We are all comrades. Do you understand?”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“He was a friend to all of us.”

“How were we to know?”

Guillermo shivered. He felt deeply ashamed of himself.

“What did the other man look like, López?”

“I couldn’t see him very well. But he was tall.”

“Did you hear him say anything?”

“I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t Spanish.”

Guillermo waited until Juan poured the soup for the men.

“You see, Guillermo. You can do nothing. Bad is bad.”

“You are much too cynical, José.” Guillermo turned to the others. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring coffee and cigarettes. Don’t go away.”

“Do we have to bury him?”

“Yes.”

“Do we have to return the clothes?”

“He doesn’t need the shoes. He is not going to walk away.”

“You may keep the clothes,” Guillermo said. In the flickering light he searched for José’s face. “What would you give them, old man? What would you do?”

“I don’t know.”

Guillermo said nothing.

“I wish I knew,” José said. “Mercy, perhaps …”

“You cannot eat mercy.”

She was dressed as if ready to go out. If her arms had not been hanging limply from her shoulders, if one of them had been raised and pointed towards the door, she might have been making an absurd face at someone. She had never been an attractive woman, but now hanging from the dining-room chandelier she seemed longer and thinner than she had ever really been. Her head, tilted slightly forward, fell to her shoulder. Her tongue hung dumbly from her mouth. The chair, the one she usually sat on, had been kicked over. She had hanged herself with his old skipping rope, the one he had used when he was in training for the Olympics.

When he had first entered the room he had shuddered, but that had been shock. Now he eyed her with repugnant interest. He walked around her and around her. At last he was able to study her without fear. He poked her in the ribs, and she swung back towards him, hitting him on the shoulder.

He read the note again.

He had never learned how to disobey or question her so he walked over to the window almost automatically. The small, worried man, Guillermo, was still there. Another man was talking to him.

Yes, Theresa had told him about Guillermo. She had first seen him waiting by the lamp post across the street on Tuesday night. Immediately, she had been suspicious. So
Kraus had checked with Mariano and had discovered that Guillermo was a suspected communist. But Mariano had done nothing about it, and this made the fifth night that Guillermo had passed by and stood sullenly by the lamp post.

Roger studied his sister blankly. He did not know what to do next. He was a puppet and he had suddenly been cut down from his strings. Should he dance? Collapse? He tried hard to think. Reflexes, emotions, reactions. But nothing dignified by either the logical or the intellectual.

“I killed him for you. You made me kill him. You made me kill all of them.”

The boy had fought stupidly.

Once, Kraus remembered, when the boy had fallen down again, he had thought: All right. He has had his lesson.

But somehow the boy had managed to scramble to his feet again. And even then Kraus would have let him go. But it was the expression on the boy’s face that had settled it, an expression not so much superior as triumphant and composed. He had – and Kraus still did not know how – conveyed to him that he was ugly and didn’t matter. So in a moment of rage Kraus had picked him up and heaved him over the bridge.

He had felt compelled to do so. Just as he had felt compelled to climb down after him and watch him die.

He remembered that Theresa had been jubilant. He had entered the house quietly and she had had only one look at him when she had said: “You have killed the artist.” And then she had laughed in the same way she had laughed when she had said: “It doesn’t matter.” But she had refused to listen to the details. She had said: “At last we are equal. I don’t want to hear one detail. I want you to keep it.”

He had not understood what she had meant by that.

Why? Why did they go on fighting? You killed one, and another came along! An endless parade of angry men. Why did they go on fighting? Didn’t they know?

“Why?”

The corpse stared back at him dumbly. The eyes were bulging.

“What would you have said had it been me who had committed suicide?”

He climbed up on a chair and shut her eyes. Then maliciously, he ripped open her blouse. Her breasts horrified him. He jumped down from the chair. The left eye refused to remain shut. It stared.

“It’s a lie. You believed. You always believed.”

He poked her, timidly at first, then he punched her solidly in the stomach. She swung upwards, backwards, crashing down to the floor. The chandelier swung madly.

“I have to believe.”

He thought he heard a noise at the door. He rushed downstairs and fastened the bolts. He drew all the window shades. He locked the back door. Then, when everything had been attended to, he sat down on a chair in his own room, his Mauser on his lap, sweating.

“What will I do?”

“Are you coming to the meeting?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are supposed to give a report on the activities of our comrades from Barcelona.”

“I’ll come along later.”

Manuel cupped his hand and lit a match. His hollow cheeks flared in the brief light. “You are an idiot, Guillermo.”

“Look! He just drew the blind.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Doubtlessly they will shoot you, doubtlessly they will exploit the incident to round up ten or twenty comrades, doubtlessly they …”

“All right! I know.”

“Look, he was not murdered. He committed suicide.”

“Wasn’t he thrown off the bridge?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“You did not know him like I did.”

“I met him once. He committed suicide.”

“I would like to revenge his murder.”

“That’s a very pretty thought.”

“He was in love with a girl here. He was such a damn good painter.”

“In prison there are many men. Some of them married, some of them with children. I’m going now. I’m going to ask that you be expelled. You are too romantic for this kind of work. It would be dangerous to trust you with further responsibilities.”

“If it was you what would you do?”

“Nothing. I would feel nothing. We can’t afford it.”

“It’s difficult.”

“Are you coming?”

“I guess so.”

They walked for a bit, then Guillermo stopped. He said: “Manuel, it is going to be beautiful!”

“Let go of my collar!”

“All this is not for nothing!”

“Yes. It is going to be beautiful.”

The baby was wailing again, and soon María would have to be fed. Luís poured the coffee into the cup, laboriously checking so that it would not overflow, and then he carried it in to her.

“You are so good, Luís.”

He laughed. Her gratitude embarrassed him. “Drink the coffee,” he said. “It’s hot.”

She held her hand to her mouth and coughed. She accepted the cup gratefully.

He did not own a bed so he had prepared a mattress for her on the floor. All morning he had hunted for coal and in the late afternoon he had returned and prepared a coal fire for her in the basin. Now the basin, glowing warmly, was beside her on the floor. The room was small, the paper on the walls was peeling. Old crates served as dressers, cupboards, and a table. On the wall, hanging very conspicuously, was André’s picture, the unfinished nude. Luís had liked the picture very much, and just to surprise María he had mended the tear with a string and hung it on the wall while she was dozing.

“Is the baby sleeping?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I hear him crying. Bring him to me.”

He brought her the baby. He was wrapped in several towels, and bawling.

“I’ll hold him until you finish your coffee.”

He rocked the baby to and fro in his arms. He felt awkward, ashamed also. He tried hard to visualise the baby as some day being a man but he could not see it.

“You are funny with the baby.”

He smiled sternly. He had meant to laugh, but Toni was huddled on a pillow in a corner of the room and her presence had inhibited him. Her eyes were sad and moist. Her face had in it a new quality of pain or maturity and she was huddled
in such a way that it seemed her intention was to repudiate the beauty of her body.

Toni had stayed up most of the night waiting for Guillermo. She had not heard from him since he had said that he was going down to the river, and that had been two days ago.

“You will make a good father,” María said. “Here, give him to his mother.”

He lay the baby down beside her. He was so wrinkled and pink. Luís thought he was very ugly.

“Little Jeem André José Villian-Rodríguez.”

“I saw him today,” Luís said. He smiled at Toni and Toni smiled back at him.

“When?” María asked.

“This afternoon, in Cosmi’s.”

“Was he sober?”

“Well he wasn’t drunk. I mean he looked much better.”

“Did you tell him about the child?”

“Yes. I also told him that you were staying here with me.”

“What did he say?”

“He feels badly about not having a job. He, I think he’s sick. I told him, I said, you have a son. I knew it would be a boy, he said. But the expression on his face never changed. Aren’t you pleased? I said. Why should I be pleased? he said. If he is any good they will get him like they got the others. And if he is going to be bad I do not want him.”

“Is he coming home?”

“He didn’t say. We had a long talk though.”

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t understand most of it. All that talk about harmonicas! I don’t think he has eaten a meal since he found out Why is it always the good ones, again and again, he said that to me. I tried to reason with him. I told him that if a man thinks too much he goes crazy. Why? Why? All the time he wants to know why.”

“You are a good friend to him.”

Luís grinned shyly. “We fought together.”

Luís had also told Pepe about how troubled he had been ever since that afternoon in Fräulein Kraus’s house. He had told him that the only reason why he had not made love to her that day had been that she was ugly, and that had worried him so much that he had hardly slept since that day.

Suddenly Luís remembered something. He turned to Toni. “André once told me that politics didn’t interest him as such. He said it was poverty that was ugly, and that so-called justice was beside the point. He said that the poor must have more because they were human and no human should be ugly.”

Toni smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “I was in love with him. I like it when you talk about him.”

“Does Pepe still not believe that he committed suicide?” María asked.

“He says André would never do it.”

“Poor Pepe.”

“They arrested most of the gang. It looks bad for them. They were wearing his clothes. There were bruises on the body.”

“They didn’t kill him,” Toni said.

“What do you think, María?”

“I do not think. I pray.”

“Do you pray for Pepe?”

“Yes.”

Luís laughed. So did Toni.

“Why is it funny?”

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“I should tell him. That would make him laugh.”

Pepe entered the room very quietly and they did not hear him come in. His eyes were red and his lips were dry, but he was sober and he had shaved and shined his shoes.

“Pepe!”

“They got Guillermo before I even got a chance to talk to him.”

Toni bit her lip. She squeezed her belly in anger. I will kill him, she thought. I will invite him up to my room and stab him.

“What’s the charge?” Luís asked.

“Barcelona. Also, they know about his pamphlets.”

“But he is usually so careful. How did they get him?”

“It was an accident. There was a meeting but it had been called off. Guillermo didn’t know, he hadn’t seen the others. He arrived late with another man and they were both arrested.”

“He’s a good man.”

“Yes.” Pepe turned to Toni. “There is a special letter for you at Cosmi’s. It’s from Chaim. Cosmi got word to him.”

Luís got up. “Come, Toni. We’ll go to Cosmi’s.”

Toni looked as if she was going to protest. Her face was hot with grief. She grabbed her belly. “I …” She stopped short. “He had no skin. Only blood!”

Luís helped her up. She looked at him imploringly and he blushed. “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

She kissed him. “You are good, Luís. You …”

Pepe turned to Luís. “Bring her right back. She’ll eat with us. Chaim is making arrangements. Meanwhile … Well, bring her right back.”

Luís nodded. “Until later,” he said.

As soon as they had left, Pepe laughed nervously.

“How are you?” María asked.

“All right. And you?”