The Acrobats (11 page)

“I’m evading the draft.”

“Are you a Red?”

She said it unemotionally. Not alluding to its political implications, but as if being a Red could be embarrassing, like someone in the family having an illegitimate child.

André hesitated. “I’m not even a pacifist. I just don’t want to die foolishly.”

“Are you a coward?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t understand politics. Join us for a glass of champagne?”

“Okay.”

She squeezed his hand.

Juanito frowned when André entered the booth. He appeared nervous. The two Spanish girls were nowhere around.

Barney grinned merrily. “Hiya! What gives?” he asked.

André hoped that Barney wasn’t drunk. He was sorry now that he had accepted Jessie’s invitation. He looked out across the dance floor but he couldn’t see Toni. He wondered if she was watching him.

Juanito poured André a glass of champagne. “André and myself are great friends. We met in Madrid,” he said.

Juanito resented André’s intrusion. He felt that André finding him here like this – lying, entertaining
crudos –
might interpret the situation so as to establish his own superiority over Juanito.

In his corner Derek moped with bellicose deliberation. He had none of the pure lines that imposed a wicked grace on his sister’s face. Only the family malice. He resembled a
roguish caricature of Jessie. “Ah!” he said, smiling drunkenly, “my fan club has arrived – the man who read
The Edge
. Tell me, old boy, did you have an unhappy childhood? Do you think I’m a bit of a cliché by now? Well don’t make snap judgements, you know absolutely nothing about it.
Homme, je suis.…
You too, Canada, may turn out to be
only
intelligent,
just
bright. Meanwhile, I shall be generous, I grant you licence to hate me. Why not?”

André flushed. “I’ve got an idea, Derek. Why don’t you try feeling sorry for yourself. Drink, go to pot! That’s what always happens in the movies.”

Derek laughed bitterly. He recalled, dimly at first, the last of the parties on the terrace of Jimmy’s Bar in Haut de Cagnes. Most of the fags had worn falsies under their costumes and Lila had turned up in a tuxedo. Jon had disgraced him again. Now, it came back to him vividly – the sweet music, contaminated laughter, sad adolescents doodling with deviations, night air stinking of summer and sea, the tourists up from Cannes for kicks. He felt dizzy and lonely and disgusted. “
Ça va
, Canada.… I withdraw. At your age everything is still possible.” I will write to Jon, he thought, and advise him to jump into the ravine. He turned to Jessie. “I’ve had too much to drink. I feel sick.”

Jessie leaned on André’s arm. “We’re touched,” she said.

“Let’s dance, Jessie,” Derek said.

“André has already asked me for this dance.”

“Dance with me! I want to talk to you.”

“Dance with him!” Barney said.

Clumsily Derek directed Jessie out of the booth. Barney brightened up as soon as they were gone.

“Look, kid, this is the score,” Barney said hastily, his eyes bulging with conspiracy. “We’re going to get Jessie off to the hotel and dump her in bed. Juanito here is going to show us what really goes on in this town. He’s going to line us up with
some broads! You come back to the hotel with us and we’ll meet Juanito here in about an hour. Okay?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Juanito averted his eyes.

“I’ll pay the bill,” Barney said.

Juanito jumped to his feet. “No! No! Allow me to pay.”

André laughed nervously.

Derek remained in the café downstairs sipping coffee and composing notes for his letter to Jon. Barney had disappeared down the hall in search of a toilet.

The room in the hotel was small and obvious.

Jessie paced up and down the floor puffing furiously on a cigarette. André relaxed on the bed, also smoking.

“You think I’m drunk!”

Her hair, which she had attended to so faithfully all evening, had finally unruffled itself, falling in angry curls over her round forehead. She was beautiful now – passion compensating for lost youth, dangling curls blending with the heat of her eyes.

“You think I’m drunk?”

“You should be drunk.”

Before they had persuaded Jessie to abandon the Mocambo Club they had had to allow her three quick shots of cognac. Now, her latest whim was, she would not go to bed until she had had a private conversation with André.

Stomping up and down the room she appeared to be stalking an absent beast.

And it’s all been done before, André thought. The young artist and the bored Mrs. Whatsit abroad for the first time.
Only the poets in fact perpetually disagree as to who seduces whom. What perversion of curiosity brought me here when I really want to be with Toni? Okay, so she’s hot stuff. But why do I always allow myself to drift into a situation, why do I always lack the guts to pull out when it’s time?

“You’re just a child!”

“Maybe.”

“A nasty, ungrateful child.”

Looking out of the window, he could see into the darkness of the plaza, just above where he knew was the doomed wooden
falla
, still leering. “You are without hope or reason or direction.” Not if I act.

She turned on him angrily. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“Is that all? And how long have you been painting?”

“About ten years.”

“Is your painting any good?”

“Good enough to have been suppressed twice.”

She flung her cigarette to the floor and ground it to bits with her heel. A shudder ran through her body, very much as if some inner string had been pulled, and as if by pulling it she surrendered her self-control. The moment will be mine, she thought. Even if it is no good it will be mine. Mine, always.

“I don’t understand modern art.”

“Must you stomp up and down the room like that? You don’t understand modern art. You feel proud and superior about it. What in the hell do you expect us to do? Stop painting just because you don’t understand?”

You are a weakling, he thought. Take it out on her, that’s right.

“Can you support yourself with your painting?”

“No.”

She lit another cigarette. “I’ll ask Barney to buy a few. Just tell me how much you want for them.”

“Barney can’t have any. He wouldn’t understand them.”

“Aren’t you the proud one? I suppose in your childish mind you think it’s quite an accomplishment not to be able to earn a living?”

She is an American woman, he thought. No dental odours, armpits shaven, no facial hairs, birthmarks removed in early childhood. No possibilities of human smells.

“You’re just as bad as Derek,” she said.

“If you mean that we both don’t fit in, then yes.”

She whirled about suddenly. A lock of hair fell over her forehead.

“Now, now, Jessie dear. Don’t panic. I can assure you that the best of American society looks upon my sexual appetites with nothing but approval.”

Jessie walked over to the window. “God, that
falla
makes me nervous!” she said.

“Tomorrow night they’re going to burn all the
fallas
. It’s the
Día de San José.”

And now André remembered how as a child he used to dodge his governess to run off by himself in the newly fallen snow. As he would trample in the freshly fallen snow he used to say to himself: André Bennett, you are the first person in the world to step in this snow since it fell from heaven and God.

“You miss your father, don’t you?” he asked.

“Get off my bed!”

Grinning shyly, he stood up. He brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Your buttons are undoing again,” he said. “I undid them.”

“Christ! Not now.”

She folded her arms about his neck, holding the hurt of his melancholy head, grasping his hair tightly in her hands. Slowly she pulled his head down towards her own. Her mouth was urgent. Her eyes were shut. He held her in a halfhearted embrace.

And the stink of his sweat, the feeling of his damp shirt, ran through her, kindling flames. The tensions relaxed. The heaving and turmoil of her body sweetened. She lingered limply in his arms.

He let go of her.

“You’re trying to get rid of me!”

But her body had been soft, resilient; her mouth warm.

“No. I’m not.”

Her wet brown eyes filled with hatred. “I know where that
Yid
is taking you,” she said. “Or did you think I was a Jew as well as Barney?”

André laughed. “I knew you were okay the moment I saw you,” he said.

“What has he got to give a whore? He’s only curious. He can’t even …”

“With luck he’ll catch himself a dose. That’ll fix the
Yid
bastard.”

“Look, pretend you’re going. Agree with them. Then come back here to me.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

She clung to him again. “You have to come! I can’t start and stop. I just can’t! It drives me crazy. I won’t be able to sleep.”

“I … There’s someone I have to …”

She dug her fingernails into the back of his neck. “Do I have to beg you?” she asked.

“Look, I have to …”

“Don’t be afraid.” Her voice had gone husky. “From here we can go to your place. They’ll never know.”

“No. I can’t.”

She kissed him pleadingly now.

“Do I remind you of your father?”

She pulled away from him and slapped him sharply across the face.

“Don’t be filthy!”

Dizzily he held on to her – remembering he loved Toni, remembering Ida who was out of reach, remembering his mother who was hardly a bit more subtle than Jessie, remembering other women, other embraces. Nausea suddenly swept over him. Everything rising upwards to his throat.

“Hit me like I hit you,” she whispered throatily.

“Later.”

“Now, now!”

The door opened.

“Damn it!” she said. “Damn it!”

Barney absorbed the scene instantaneously. His big vulgar face was angry and beaten and afraid. But he just stood there, hanging on to the door, whimpering like a scared animal. Always coming down on him, his house-of-cards life.

“I didn’t see you come in,” André said, smiling feebly.

Barney laughed and laughed. Exultant, and sorrowful also.

“Please let go of the door. Please don’t stand there like that.”

Barney’s knuckles were white around the door-knob. I am as bad as her, André thought. I don’t want to see him cry.

“If you so much as touch him you’ll never see me again!” Jessie screamed.

“Please …”

This would thrill them, this would make them happy, Barney thought. Go marry her. A Gentile! Nothing good will ever come of it. Only sadness. For us Jews, only sadness.

“You don’t understand. I …”

“Get out!” Barney shoved him towards the door. “Tramp!”

Still protesting, André left. He shut the door behind him.

Barney collapsed in a chair and lit a cigarette. His hands shook badly. He was sweating. My children have
their
names, he thought. I don’t drink, I’m not like them.
“So look, Berel. I’m warning you for always. Marry that girl and you don’t step into this house again. Is this what for I came to America? So my sons …”

“Get out, you!”

“Why? What did I do?” His voice was breaking. “Was it my fault?”

“Was it my fault?” Jessie giggled hysterically. “What a man I’ve got for a husband! Go, beat it! Go find yourself a whore. I haven’t enough patience for your fumbling tonight. Get out!”

“I won’t go. I have certain rights.”

Her buttons are undone, Barney noticed.

“Beat it!”

“Where will I sleep? I’m so tired.”

“Get out, dammit!”

He rushed out of the room.

So many stars shining down from the black sky, so many laughing shivering eyes.

Barney sat down on the kerb and waited.

He sat down at the bar.

The big German with unfeeling eyes and big brutal hands was following Toni about like a lap-dog. She kept pushing away his hands from her as she spoke. “You must speak to him, André,” Toni said. “He is crying like a child in the booth.”

André gargled his coffee before swallowing. He noticed that Toni’s lipstick was smudged. The big German was grinning. His arm was around Toni’s waist. He was trying to drag her away from André.

Toni toyed with André’s shirt collar. “He says he will commit suicide. And his blood will be on our hands,” she said.

“Your lipstick is smudged.”

Toni bit her lip. “Shall I get him?”

“No. Not yet.”

The German smiled stiffly at André: as if, since they were both gentlemen, certainly André would have sufficient tact not to further insinuate his company upon himself and the young lady.

“You’re Colonel Kraus. You seem to be everywhere I go,” André said absently.

Kraus straightened up, stiffened, satisfying some inner compulsion. He understood the situation. Bowing coldly, he extended his hand. “I am very charmed to meet you,” he said.

André laughed, but he shook hands. “Well, I’m damned if I know what to say.” He grinned at Toni and then back at Kraus. “How are you?”

Toni was angry. She knew André when he was in that mood.

“I know all about you,” Kraus said in English.

“You are the second person who has said that to me today.” André remembered Manuel’s hands, black sores instead of nails. “You don’t look so tough, Colonel. Do you collect lampshades? What kind of soap do you use?”

Up until that moment Kraus had been following André simply because he was bored and had been trained to hunt men. Also, he had enjoyed or loved Toni and André was a rival. But now that he had actually spoken to André he realised that he was afraid of him, and that he would have to do something about it. He did not know why he was afraid of André. He had not been afraid of Alfred. He had met Guillermo and he was not afraid of him. Perhaps it was that Guillermo knew and understood and hated him for the crimes he had committed, but André – although he pretended belief – could not truly
believe that men did such things. So when he looked at Kraus his eyes were full of shock. And Kraus was forced to remember, if only dimly, so many other shocked eyes out of the past. Actually, it was not the eyes he remembered but his own feeling of bewilderment. A feeling that only now, because of this quick contact with André, was assuming the shape of guilt. André, perhaps, was his accuser.