The Europe That Was (13 page)

TECHNIQUE

The curtain flopped on to the dusty boards. The crowd roared for more.
Una mujer estupenda—
a stupendous woman! So the playbills called her, and so she was. The crowd hammered on the tables and shouted at the fallen curtain to give them back their Isabelita. There were three tiers of them in the music hall: on the sawdust-covered floor the labourers from dock and market and factory; a yard higher on the surrounding dais, where the drinks were a little more expensive, the minor employees of commerce, the sailors with money to spend; in the gallery of boxes, the
capitalistas—
moneyed youth, shopkeepers, travelling salesmen, a foreigner or two.

They were roaring jovially now, but at times they could terrify. What they shouted for they got—the management saw to that. And, since there was no limit to what they might shout for, it was up to the lonely woman on the stage to dominate them. She must be, as Isabelita put it, a Danielita in a den of lions.

Even when the lions were out of hand, the true artiste knew how to tame them and harness their undisciplined ferocity to her own triumphal car. A jest would do it, a swing of the hips, a laugh of provocative contempt. And above all, a girl had to hold them with her eyes. Isabelita had no trouble with them, though even if she had danced like Argentina herself it might not have been enough. A Spaniard among Spaniards, she understood and loved her audiences. Her triumph was not only that of a consummate artist; it was that of the orator who masters a potentially hostile crowd.

The blue curtain drifted irregularly up into the wings. The stage was empty. The click of the castanets began behind the backdrop and the orchestra followed the rhythm with accompaniment more conscientious than they would ever have given to the human voice. Isabelita believed in making the lions hungry before they were fed. She showed them an arched instep; she showed them the flounce of a skirt; she showed them a hand. The quick rhythm of the castanets stirred their hair with a pleasurable wind of expectation. Then she was there. She was not a very lovely woman. A plump body she had, and blue-black oily curls swinging free around the white neck. But her eyes glittered. The mouth smiled distantly, ironically. Every movement of the little feet travelled upwards through her whole body. Even
the flower behind her ear was alive.

Isabelita's art was perfect. The Madrid professor who taught her was as exacting as the priest of a complex religion. His ritual of shawl, heel, hip, skirt and hand was unvarying and established by the experience of centuries—a highly conventionalized technique for expressing a limited number of simple emotions that could be understood by any human being. Intellect played but a small part in his and Isabelita's style, yet such were the dash and precision of performance that the dancing was intensely exciting. There was no suggestion of inhumanity. A girl was not a bird, a machine, a flame, an abstract thought. A girl was a girl; and it was in this that Isabelita excelled.

She beckoned to her lovers. She fled from them. She led them over strange cities and seas to high adventure—for the desire of her truly seemed high adventure when she danced. She raised them from their seats with a swing of her shawl and flung them back again with a flick of her skirt that had all the salaciousness of a bawdy jest. She shook the golden brandy in the glasses with the rattle of her impatient heels, and stood motionless except for the swift hands that wove a belt of clicking, tempestuous music around her waist. Then, with a great sweep of her panelled skirt, she sunk before them in a foam of white lace and raised her eyes once. Isabelita's glance at her audience was a masterpiece of irony. It asked: ‘My lords and masters, have I pleased you?' And it added: ‘God help us, what shameless dogs!' It touched a chord of humour common to every man in the house, and they thundered back their enthusiasm.

Isabelita slipped back into the public dressing-room. Being the most highly paid artiste, she had a curtained corner of it to herself. The crowd yelled for a second encore. There were only a thin curtain and a canvas backdrop between the dressing-room and the audience. The applause came through, not in the muffled waves of a theatre, but loud and ferocious, with every exclamation distinct.

Isabelita sighed happily. ‘You see, Maruja,' she said, ‘it's worth the trouble to learn to dance.'

‘They always like the classical stuff,' answered Maruja, ‘if the woman can put it over.'

‘It's not classical if she can't,' said Isabelita proudly. Isabelita always danced for her audience as for a lover. She considered that a step without a definite glance at a definite member of the audience was not a step at all. Being almost illiterate, she could not analyse her art, but what she unconsciously knew was that, in her particular style, technique without personality was not technique at all.

The audience roared incessantly.

‘Won't you give them another encore?' Maruja asked anxiously.

‘No! If they want more, they can stop for the second show.'

‘A little more. Just for a minute,' pleaded Maruja.

‘
Chica
! Are you in love with the manager?' asked Isabelita reproachfully.

‘I can't go on—not with them in this mood,' Maruja said desperately. ‘I can't! You must understand—I can't!'

Maruja's act, the next on the bill, was a simple one. She came on with a large Teddy bear and sang songs to it. As and when the lions roared for her to do so, she removed garments. If they were yawning after a full meal, they allowed her to depart with some remnants of modesty. If they were hungry, she got off the stage with the Teddy bear only. Again, it was a question of domination. When Maruja was swift in repartee and outrageous in speech, when she made the audience feel definitely inferior to her, the act was not in the least brutal; it had a certain Rabelaisian piquancy quite devoid of nastiness. But the trouble was that Maruja was a very pretty girl. The act should have been put on—and usually was—by some motherly old soul with an abominable body and a sergeant-major's voice. If Maruja could not tame the rows of males in front of her, she became merely a shrinking girl; the bottom fell out of the act; everybody went home feeling a little ashamed, and the management cursed.

It was impossible for Maruja to go on until the audience were in a quieter mood. Isabelita gave her a comradely spank.

‘I'll cut them down to shape for you,' she promised.

She ran on to the stage and put her head through the slit in the curtain. The house greeted her with a wild wave of applause.

‘Thank you, children,' she said to them. ‘I will give you one little one. And then no more! Shall it be a
jota
?'

‘Jota! Jota
!' roared the house, and each one found individual expression for his admiration. ‘What you will, Isabelita!'… ‘Let us see your pretty feet!'… ‘Beauty! My tripes move when I see you!'

Isabelita talked to them through the curtain while she changed. She lifted the mantilla and slid off the foaming skirt. The dresser handed her the Asturian peasant costume. High heels to low slippers—flowered bodice to the generous bulge of the country blouse—no hesitation! She threw the two halves of the curtain away from her with both hands and was on them with the fury of the village dance, feet leaping to the imaginary skirl of bagpipes. One could smell the hills and the winds off the Atlantic.

It was over in two minutes of wild action. The audience stared, mouths half open, amazed at her agility.

‘
Ya
! And don't follow me home!' said the country virgin. ‘I'm going to be married next week!'

She vanished, and the crowd shook itself loose with applause and laughter. Cigars were relit and glasses drained.

Isabelita was radiant. She swung into the dressing-room hand on hip, acting for herself, enjoying her own force and humour.

‘Ay
! What utter children are men!' she cried. ‘It is we who count for something in this world—we,
chicas
! Get in, Maruja! By God, they don't deserve to have a wench like you to look at!'

There was one girl who did not join the group around Isabelita. She sat by herself, making up, and every now and then looking at the triumphant Isabelita with curiosity. She was a slim, bronzed German. Isabelita, the Latin, was white as ivory, for she kept carefully out of the sun. The fair-haired Northerner was golden-brown from the midsummer beaches of the Baltic.

Primitive and essentially coarse, Anna thought. She was a little contemptuous of Isabelita's triumph. She resented the brutality of the audience and she disliked the whole business of intimacy with them. She had in a muddle-headed way adopted a theory of dancing—that, since the art of the dance was universal, beauty of movement was alone enough to hold any audience. It seemed to be as true in Spain as anywhere else, for her act was watched in respectful silence and greeted with moderate applause. Actually, it was puzzled applause. The patrons on the floor, who were essentially polite when an act did not conform to the recognized conventions of impoliteness, felt that applause was expected; so they gave it.

The lions roared. Maruja ran into the dressing-room as naked as the day she was born and thoroughly happy. She had given of her best—plenty of spirit and an instant of flashing physical beauty—and it had been appreciated. Anna was shocked. She had no false modesty, but her body was to her a religion. Athletic and good to see, she danced with only a short sarong. She had little interest, however, in admiration for herself as a woman; she wanted admiration for her movements, and to have those movements properly seen, for in her way she was an artist. She belonged to the cabarets of capitals, of Berlin and Paris and Warsaw, but what she had to give was not yet good enough for the capitals—therefore the tour of provincial music-halls in Spain.

Isabelita and Maruja went up to the stage box reserved for artistes, hung their shawls over the balcony, and ordered drinks. Maruja had seen Anna's act for several nights. To Isabelita, just come from San Sebastian, it was new.

‘How is she?' she asked Maruja.

‘I do not know,' answered Maruja. ‘She can't dance and she's a lady and she's very indecent. I do not understand her.'

Anna had the lights lowered for her act. She set a small cruse of burning oil in the centre of the stage and around that she danced. The lithe limbs moved beautifully and naturally, but style was wanting. As music she preferred one of the Indian Love Lyrics. She had evidently studied rhythmic dancing, free expression, sun worship, and heaven knows what. The lamp dance represented a Vestal Virgin
watching the sacred flame. Had it been just a shade better, it would have been very good. But to Isabelita, trained in a hard school, it was nothing at all, and, as Maruja had said, it was indecent. For why expose yourself to no good purpose? The customers didn't even yell.

The three tiers of males stirred unhappily as Anna danced. The Spanish prudery was awakened—a prudery depending entirely on environment. There was no sentimentality in it, for Anna neither suggested purity nor reminded her audience of carefully guarded sisters and daughters. But she was out of place—discordant though not irrelevant, as if her almost naked body had suddenly flashed upon a bevy of travelling salesmen exchanging stories on that very subject. The floor customers hesitated to sip their drinks—this from a sense of economy, since liveliness was not at the moment called for. The
capitalistas
were bored; their glances strayed around the hall, coming to rest at the box where Isabelita and Maruja sat.

To Anna, too, Isabelita was important. She watched Isabelita, not consciously seeking approval, but interested to see what the reaction of the star would be. The patrons, Anna hoped, would be moved by the romance of her golden body prowling catlike around the lamp, of the studied—but false—gesture with which she loosened the wreath around her forehead and let fall her veil, of the clean line from wrist to hip as her uplifted arms worshipped the flame; but she desired her sculptural poses and the long patterns woven by her bare feet to be suggestive to the star. She had little respect for Isabelita's art, but a measure for Isabelita's success. Success, sweet anywhere, had an even more notorious glamour in the world of the Spanish cabarets. Triumph was peculiarly triumphal. So, when Anna glided from the stage to the accompaniment of the usual modest applause, she had a glance for Isabelita, a comradely glance which asked for approval and return.

Isabelita's eyes were otherwise engaged. She was arranging a carnation behind her ear. Her movements parodied with rare humour and all the skill of plump arms trained to the limit of expression the gesture of Anna undoing her veil. Anna's look did not rest long enough to catch Isabelita entertaining herself; she saw only indifference. But the patrons in the opposite box, watching those eloquent arms as the curtain fell, guffawed with the loud relief of men just come from church or boys from school. It was the end of the first show. The house began to empty.

Anna was utterly homesick as she dressed: a false homesickness since she had no real longing for the office in the stuffy provincial town to which she had once been tied. But, being out of harmony with her audience and her environment, she felt gloomily alone. She did not expect a rousing welcome such as that given to Isabelita and the handful of other popular artistes; she did not even want it. She
prided herself that here in Spain her art was for the few. She wished the music-hall to lead not to the gallant atmosphere of bullfighters, grandees and the best champagne, but to the concert hall. She would not admit that she had come to the wrong shop with her wares, but she felt that the Spanish market was very foreign to her. Even the memory of a German provincial office was a refuge.

‘Why can't I throw myself into it?' she sobbed—and then to herself, unonsciously recalling the gentle accents of her father: ‘Thou must, little one! Thou must!'

She draped a green Manila shawl over her shoulders—a concession to Spain—and went up to the artistes' box.