Read The Acrobats for Free Online

shouting and laughter. “Why don’t they stop dancing? Why don’t they stop?”
    “Are you going to tell him?”
    “No.”
    “But André and Guillermo are friends.”
    “Friends,” Toni said. “Guillermo doesn’t want friends, he needs enemies. And André … André is always alone.” She pulled at the leather on the bar stool. “Even with me he is alone. He can get André into trouble. It is dangerous.”
    “That’s André’s business.”
    Toni brushed an imaginary bit of dust off her skirt. She bit her lip, and her eyes were wet.
    “André is a child, Chaim. He has no skin. Only blood.”
    “No
chica
, that’s not his problem. It is that he knows and understands all the things that he is against but he still doesn’t know what he is for. André has the temperament of a priest but none of the present churches will do. That makes it very difficult.”
    “He wants to bleed for everybody.”
    Chaim dropped his hand on her knee and squeezed hard.
    A spotlight was turned on the tiny dance floor. The couples on the floor, like an army dispersing, shuffled wearily back to their tables. They seemed to leave something of their sweatand something of their sorrow behind them, exposed under the hard and unwavering light. The lights around the club darkened and for an instant there was the illusion of coolness. Small bulbs under pink lampshades popped on on every table. They, the people, reached for each other’s hands – clammy, un reassuring, and red under the lamplight.
    “When a person is in a state of apprehension and cannot make out the cause of it (the star that presided at his birth and his genii know all about it), what should he do? Let him jump where he is standing four cubits, or let him repeat, ‘Hear O Israel, etc.’: or if the place be unfit for repetition of the scripture let him utter to himself, ‘the goat at the butcher is fatter than me!’ A Jewish joke, you understand?”
    A drunken Frenchman in a dinner jacket stood up in one of the quasi-private booths that flanked the right wall of the club and began to applaud furiously. But the show wouldn’t begin until all the tables had been replenished with drinks.
    “Chaim, I’m pregnant.”
    “Well, that’s not so bad. Does André know?”
    “It’s not his child.”
    Her eyes seemed very vulnerable in the dim light. We have different memories, Chaim thought; that makes this kind of talk difficult. He took a sip of muscatel.
    “Chaim, I tried everything. I took pills. Hot baths every night. One night I jumped down the stairs three at a time. Another night I carried a heavy suitcase around until I fainted.”
    “Now don’t get excited. It’s not that serious. How long?”
    Eulalia – lithe hips swaying under the spotlight, breasts very evident, muscular legs peeping through a slit gown –
España, no hay más que una
, and singing it very badly. The women in the audience sucked their lemon drinks, puffed languorously at their cigarettes, or eyed the man at the next table. The men, depending on their temperaments, followed the sway of Eulalia’s hips or imagined the plenty of her breasts.
    “Three months. It was before we began living together.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    Eulalia bowed, her gown dipping slightly away from her, and the men applauded.
    “I hate him! He forced himself on me. He used to pester me night after night. Finally, I … Well, I gave in, that’s all.”
    She began to sob.
    “You can tell him,” Chaim said. “André will understand.”
    “He won’t. You don’t know him like I do. He thinks I’m naïve. Isn’t that funny? In spite of everything he thinks I’m a child! He wants to protect me. Lovely Toni, he calls me. It would all be spoilt if he knew.”
    “Do you love him,
chica?”
    Toni tossed her head back sharply and laughed. Her long black hair fell back on the bar and the kitten struck out at it with his paws. She was trembling. “He could take me to America, Chaim. His family has