The Acrobats (19 page)

“Our turn? What need have they of an idiot colonel and his old maid sister? Will they put you in charge of the inspection of brothels?”

Her joke seemed to delight her. She giggled, held her hand to her mouth, and giggled again.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Drinking? Roger, you surprise me!”

Roger shrugged his shoulders and laughed playfully. He made a funny face at her.

“Stop it!” she shrieked menacingly.

“But I don’t mind if you have been drinking.”

“I have not been drinking!”

Roger looked down at his boots again.

“What would you do without me, Roger?”

“Without you?”

“What if something should happen to me? Or if I should run away with a man?”

“Oh, you are only joking. You wouldn’t run away with a man!”

She lurched, falling into the armchair by the table. “Do you mean that a man wouldn’t run away with me?”

“No, Theresa. No, not at all.”

Now, for the first time, he noticed that she was wearing lipstick. Her hair had been done in a new style and she was wearing high heels. He smiled and she realised that he was amused.

“Where were you all afternoon?” she asked coldly.

“Walking.”

“Where, walking?”

“Just walking.”

“You still lie like a little boy. Here you talk of ideals and position but all you can really think of is your ugly sexual lusts. Is that the way Hermann got his position?”

“You talk nonsense!”

“They make baby-talk, they joke about you, then they drink and make love again. What do you expect? He is so much younger than you are. Oh, it’s a wonderful joke!”

Roger’s lip began to twitch.

“She is a whore, Roger.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about!”

“Fine, colonel. You don’t know. But I should watch out for the Jew. He is shrewd and not unintelligent. But then I forgot, you have so much in common. Both of you are whoremasters!”

“I will not stand for this!”

Theresa laughed, holding her hands to her mouth. “I should watch out for gonorrhoea, my boy. I doubt if she is very particular about her bed companions.”

“I am going out.”

She got up and shouted into his ear. “Do you know what he did? He sent up one of his comrades, a bartender, to spy on us. He made improper advances. I had to throw him out. But you are afraid of the boy. You are afraid!”

“I do not want to fight the artist!”

“He sent up a spy. To me, your sister!”

He was sweating. “I don’t want to kill. Not any more.”

She held him in her thin arms and shook him.
“They hate us
. Show them a weakness, just once, and you are done for. They will organise. He, the Jew, and the others. Let them know, let them even suspect, and we are done for. You must kill him, Roger. You have no choice!”

“I’m going out. I …”

He raced down the stairs.

“Go! Run to her! Satyr!”

As soon as the door had been banged shut she picked up his diary.

“Derek?”

It was still not midnight. Derek, two pillows propped under his head, lolled carelessly on the bed. On the night table beside him was a bottle of gin and a half-filled glass. The
window was open and the curtains fluttered. His shoes were off, he was barechested. He was twirling the hairs on his chest and wiggling his toes. His eyes were blood-shot and not focusing properly. “I am ruminating,” he said.

Barney hesitated in the doorway. Not in all the years that he had known him had he ever been alone with Derek. But now the idea of sipping gin in a hotel room with another man, even if that other man was Derek, appealed to him. “May I come in?” he asked.

Derek indicated the armchair by the window with a sweeping gesture of his left leg.
“Avante,”
he said.

Barney collapsed in the armchair. He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped the sweat off his forehead. “I can’t find Jessie,” he said. “I’m worried. I don’t know what’s happened to her.”

“Jessica. Faithless Jessica. Perhaps she has eloped with a Bengalese banana planter? No, that’s not it. She’s gone into a nunnery. Elected silence and all that. Cut off your left ear and send it to her in a box.”

“Don’t be so funny!”

“Pour yourself a drink,
compañero.”

Barney got up and poured himself a gin. He found the ice-water on the floor beside the bed.

“So Lazarus drinks with the
Goyim,”
Derek said.

“Why not?” Barney sat down again. “And I don’t mind you calling me Lazarus.”

Derek refilled his glass. “What’s wrong, Barney?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“I found her kissing André in the room last night. We quarrelled, and she tossed me out. I … Well, I didn’t come home until morning. She wasn’t in the room.”

“You think she spent the night with André?”

“After I left the club last night two hundred bucks were missing from my wallet. Either Jessie took it and gave it to
André, or he took it himself.” Barney pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead again. “It’s not the money, but …”

“Why don’t you leave her?”

Barney trembled. “How can I leave her?” he asked.

“What do you mean, how?”

“We’ve got two kids.”

Derek gulped down his drink and poured himself another glass. Barney got up and looked out of the window. “Those falyas are kind of pretty. Too bad they’re gonna burn them.”

“Maybe they have to burn them?”

“Why?”

“Perhaps in all of us there is some evil and we’re just too weak to burn it. So we build evil toys and dance around them, later we burn them. Hoping, perhaps, that it will help.”

“You think they have to burn them then?”

“It all depends on who’s watching.”

“I don’t understand.”

Derek tittered. “Okay then, let’s talk about me.”

Barney turned towards Derek, his eyes were startled and afraid. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

Derek sat up in bed and bowed from the waist. “I am a homosexual,” he said.

Barney blushed. “Yeah, well, I mean we all know.”

“Yes, we all know! But nobody talks about it. Okay, so let’s both sit on the floor and talk about me being a homo.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

Derek snickered. “Barney, you
are formidable!
Sometimes I wish Jessie and myself just hadn’t happened to you.”

“You could see a doctor, I guess.”

Derek giggled. He caught a peek of himself in the mirror and he shook his head so that his hair would get all mussed up.
“Ole!
Sit down, amigo. I regret that I have only one bottle to give up for America. Pour yourself another drink.”

Barney sat down again and his shoulders sagged. He took a sip of his drink. “Why do you always treat me as if I was a jerk? You guys who went to Spain and all that were supposed to be interested in your fellow men. Well, waddiya think I am?”

Derek smiled solemnly. “I am no longer the man who went to Spain. The years since then have separated the men from the boys.
Et voilà
, one of the boys!”

Barney lit a cigar. “I know what you people think. I’m vulgar, I haven’t had an education, I never read any books. Everything I’ve done I had to do for myself. I would have liked to be cultured and to be able to say nice things in company, like you or Jessie. But I had to grow up quick. Okay, so it’ll be different for my kids. They’ll go to college and be doctors or something. Not only that but I’m going to get them both life subscriptions to the Book-of-the-Month Club and the
Atlantic Monthly
. I know that literature does good things for a person. It gives him class. When I get home I’m going to get the kids a gramophone and a few hundred bucks’ worth of classical music. We Jews are a musical people you know.

“I come from an orthodox family. Not that religion does a guy any harm, but my old man was sort of old-fashioned for America. I mean when I married Jessie he went into mourning for me just as if I was dead. He died a little later and he wrote in his will that I shouldn’t come to his funeral. My mother is helpless with rheumatism. Three times I offered to send her to the springs or Florida but my money isn’t kosher. She won’t even see my children to bless them – her own flesh and blood. So you see Jessie cost me a lot and I want to keep her.”

Barney took another sip of gin, mopped his forehead again, and laughed helplessly.

“You know that song,” he said. “I think it goes
It’s Only a Barnum and Bailey World, Just as Phony as Can Be
. I’m not good at tunes. But that’s the way I feel about things. That’s the way life’s been kind of. Barnum and Bailey. Phony.

“When you’re fifteen, well you figure that when you’re twenty-one everything is going to be fun and games, but then it isn’t so. So you figure that maybe when you’re thirty you’ll be able to relax, but you just go on and on.

“You get real worked up about a movie star. She looks like a million bucks on the screen. So you see her in real life and she’s just another whore. Or when you’re working damn hard on the road you think one day I’m going to get married and everything will be fun and games and love, like in that picture
Claudia
with Dorothy McGuire. So you get married and you find out. Or you really admire some couple you know, make them out for heroes, they’re always so happy and crazy about each other. So you pick up the paper one morning and you find out they got a divorce. And then the bright guys, I mean the kids who always got good marks and stayed home to read books, well you figure that at least they made out good. So you walk into a bar one day and they’re drunk and trying to stick you for a fiver. And the guys I used to know who became commies. Well they either turned out to be queers or they married a rich girl and became clothing manufacturers like everybody else.

“Like the really smart-looking girls you used to know and now you meet them on the street and they’re fat and trying to get you to make them even if they’ve got husbands. Well I was brought up to believe that you married a woman and she was yours and she loved you, like my parents, but I found out different. Why do guys always fool around with each other’s wives? I respect other people’s property. Why can’t we all work and mind our own business? I mean if a guy’s not lazy and he’s got a bit of brains he can still make his way. I don’t ask no favours. Why can’t everybody be like that? Do you see what I mean? I mean I know that there are some things you can’t buy with money, like friendship or health. But I don’t see why if I worked so hard all my life so that I could have it easy when I was old I should give my money to guys who were
just too lazy to sweat like me. Do you think communism is fair? It’s sort of robbery in a way. I’m not unkind, I support charities. But what I worked so hard for should be for me and my children.”

Derek began to pick furiously at a particular hair on his chest. Suddenly he yanked it out. “It was grey,” he said.

Barney poured himself another drink.

“Barney, leave her. She’s rotten. She hates you.”

“Hates me?” A shudder ran through him. “Did she ever tell you that?”

“No.”

Barney grinned. Suddenly he turned to Derek. “Why do you drink so much?” he asked.

Derek sat up in bed. “Why don’t you divorce Jessie?”

“But what’s the real reason? I mean before Spain you were never like that. You were always writing or going to meetings. Maybe Europe isn’t good for you?”

“It had nothing to do with Europe or Spain. It all happened inside me,
compañero
. Slowly. It wasn’t dramatic so I fabricated the drama. I hated America so I joined picket lines, I loved Spain so I fought in a war. But I didn’t truly love Spain or hate America, I
decided
to feel these things. I keep telling myself that some day I’m going to snap out of it and produce something. A play, one poem, a thought, an act, anything! Meanwhile I keep on drinking and hating myself and waiting for death. The truth is I’m bored. I can enjoy nothing. Barney, I’m an impotent man!”

Barney began to fidget in his chair. He did not know what to say. So he smiled lamely, and he said: “I guess we all have our troubles.”

Derek poured himself another drink. “If I decided to go back to the States would you give me a job?” he asked.

“Yes. Certainly.”

“No. It wouldn’t work.”

“Why? We could be friends.”

“As a matter of fact we couldn’t.”

Barney got up and stared out of the window. There was a faint ringing in his ears and he felt dizzy. He put down his drink. “You know I was in a whorehouse last night,” he said.

“Sweeney among the Nightingales.”

“What?”

“I was just being supercilious. Pay no attention.”

Barney began to sweat again. “Look, I’ll be frank. You have a lot of influence over Jessie, right?”

“Perhaps.”

“You come home with us and stick close to her. Live with us. See that she doesn’t screw around. Tell her that she’s got kids. Well, you know what I mean. I’ll give you a good allowance. You won’t have to work or anything.”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“Why wouldn’t it work?”

“You can’t do these things with money.”

Barney laughed cynically. “You may have been around but so have I. You’d be surprised what you can do with money. For five hundred bucks I could get that André kid to lock her out of his room.”

“What makes you think she’s fooling around with him?”

“Come home. I’ll give you two hundred bucks a week.”

“Don’t be silly!”

“I know how you get your money. Jessie sends it to you. I could have you cut off.”

“I guess I’ve been underestimating you.”

“I won’t have our marriage broken up.”

“Would people laugh at you?”

“That’s no way to talk.”

“Get out, Barney.”

“What?”

“I’m expecting a boy-friend.”

“You’re just a goddam queer. I should have known better.”

Derek got out of bed and opened up the door. “That’s no way to start off a business relationship,” he said.

“I’m sorry. It’s … well, I lost my temper. Come on, let’s shake on it.”

“So long, Barney.”

“You mean you’re not coming?”