Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance

Christmas Day. As soon as I woke I thought, Ivan’s back. Right now he is in bed with Rosa. It wasn’t just depressing. It completely immobilised me. Yet as I lay on my mattress it also occurred to me that I knew Rosa as Ivan must know her. I knew her as a husband did. Her touch. The feel and taste of her mouth. The amazing stillness of her sleep. Her way of lying on her back in layers and clouds of smoke, her words coming unstuck from the back of her throat as she floated them up at the ceiling.To that extent Ivan and I had something in common.We shared an intimacy with Rosa. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a different intimacy or that intimacy, like dancing, can be a variable experience.

  I got up and dressed. I stood at the window for a while then went out to the kitchen, switched on the jug and returned to the window. This was the first Christmas I’d spent away from my family; away from the farm.

  This was also the time that Louise used to dread. Holiday time. Schmidt’s family time. Stuck in her flat, in a nowhere state of mind, changing records on her RCA Victor, watching the light come and go in the window.

  I reread the short letter from Jean asking me to call home on Christmas Day. They hadn’t heard from me in such a while. Meg was already there. She had come home a week earlier than expected for some reason. My big sister wanted to hear from me. The letter ended: ‘PS. Reverse the charges.’

  I thought of them at home, grouped around the long dining table. I imagine the Wheelers would be over for the dinner, Chrissie in one of her soft woolly tops, my father swaying on his one good leg, uncorking bottles, making sure everyone was happy, that everyone’s spirit was turned up to his own. I found myself back at the window, smiling down at an empty street, a cup of tea in my hand. There was no milk. And no place open to go and get some.

  I didn’t own a TV or a radio. But I did have my tape deck. I put on Troilo and tried to follow the notes on the score of ‘Danzarin’. But after a while this was too much like homework; I put it to one side and stretched out on the mattress to wait for Rosa. I was sure she would turn up. Hour after hour my optimism remained undimmed. Any moment now I would hear her on the steps outside.

  Two deadly boring days dragged by before there was a knock on the door. I sprang up, all my nerve endings jangling. At last. I pulled on a T-shirt and hurried to the back door. But it wasn’t Rosa. It was a younger woman in jeans and brown hair, wearing stylish dark tortoiseshell-patterned sunglasses. She was someone I knew I was supposed to recognise. But for the moment I stood there and said nothing. Then she moved her sunglasses back.

  ‘Meg!’

  My sister was reserved at first. She was angry with me. Fancy me not coming home to see her!

  She marched through the kitchen, full of entitlement. In the middle of the room she stopped and looked around. The morning’s bowl of cereal was still on the floor next to my mattress. She parked her gaze there for a moment. Then she walked to the window and unlatched it. She pulled back one of the curtains to even up the window space.

  ‘So this is how you live?’

  She was staring down at my mattress.

  I said half apologetically, ‘I haven’t had much time to get stuff in. Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘In here? No. I’ll take you somewhere. Big sister’s treat. Not that you deserve it.’

  I noticed she didn’t have any bags.

  ‘Everything is at the airport. I just wanted to check in with you before I flew out. I don’t know when I’ll be back, Lionel.’

  She gave me a look as if between now and that moment in the future anything could happen.

  She didn’t have a lot of time before her flight. Three hours. I saw her looking around for something.

  ‘You don’t have a phone?’ she asked. She was back to her inspection, compiling details I was sure would find their way into a letter back to Jean.

  ‘Things are a bit tight right now,’ I said. ‘So how’s Melbourne?’

  She ignored that question, pulled her tortoiseshell sunglasses back down and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go. This place makes me feel nauseous.’

  I said it was probably the candlewax smell.

  ‘No, Lionel,’ she said. ‘It’s not that.’

  We walked for a while along the empty streets. Meg wasn’t in a talkative mood. She walked quickly; it was obvious that Jean had asked her to look me up, that she was here on an errand.

  ‘Sorry about Christmas Day,’ I offered.

  ‘So am I,’ she said. And a moment later, ‘So were Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Were the Wheelers there?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Meg was asserting her moral right as my elder and better. My year away hadn’t done anything to close the gap. In Melbourne she had swum ahead in to a larger and more sophisticated pool.

  It was only after we found a pizza place open down at the waterfront that she dropped the brisk manner and resolved to be friendlier. She began by removing her sunglasses.

  ‘So, tell me about your life,’ she said.

  I told her about university, the hostel, the food, Brice Johns. All the while shuffling around the real subject.

  ‘Mum said you work in a restaurant?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Is it open?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Apparently you’re quite a dancer these days?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that…’

  ‘Dad did, and Mum.’

  She took a bite of pizza, her eyes never leaving.

  ‘Tango, they said.’

  ‘Argentinian tango. There’s a difference.’ I recited my usual mantra on this subject—one is about how you look whereas Argentinian tango is about ‘how you feel…’ ‘And Mum mentioned someone…’ she looked away, pretending that the name escaped her.

  ‘Rosa,’ I said.

  My sister smiled, her mouth full of pizza now.

  ‘Mum said she came to the house. Dad was very impressed.’

  ‘She runs the restaurant.’

  ‘And you dance with her?’

  ‘Sometimes we do.’

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Crazy. I dance with her. She’s my employer. She’s married, Meg. She’s thirty-six years old.’ I was half out of my chair with embarrassment.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I want to talk about Peter.’

  She was very worried about him. She hadn’t been home for eighteen months so the changes that I had seen take place more gradually were much more pronounced for Meg. She couldn’t believe how much our parents had aged. But Peter especially. He was virtually lame. No one had written to warn her of this.

  She said, ‘I spoke with the doctor. He told me Dad should have had that hip operation in December, Lionel.’

  Her eyes flashed up at me.

  ‘He got a contractor in, I hear.’

  She gently but firmly corrected that view.

  She said, ‘The Wheelers are not contractors. They are friends. And while I think of it, Chrissie asked after you.’

  She saw me pull a face.

  ‘What? What’s that for? She’s a lovely girl.’

  She looked at her wristwatch and came to the point of what she really meant to say.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Mum and Dad need you, Lionel. When Dad goes in to hospital next month…I can’t do anything from Melbourne and it will be over in time for you to get back here. You won’t miss the start of the semester.’

  ‘I’ve already told them I’ll be back in time. They know that.’

  She didn’t answer immediately. She glanced down at her orange juice.

  ‘Mum is worried that you won’t be…’ ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  She looked back at me quickly and away.

  I said. ‘Of course I’ll be back. I told her. Have you seen that stupid Esperanto she does?’

  ‘She doesn’t think it’s stupid.’

  ‘Well it is. Totally mindless. Dumb. Stupid shit.’

  I was still angry after Meg left for the airport in a taxi. I was glad she was gon
e because the pool had reopened and I had a feeling Rosa might surprise me there.

  I changed into my togs but I didn’t swim straight away. In the shaded area of the bleachers I sat brooding and thinking about my father’s operation. But that was only part of it. I was also dwelling on something that I hadn’t shared with Meg. But she had known as well as I did that in my heart of hearts, once I was drawn back to the farm there would be no leaving it again. Meg could board an aeroplane and fly off to Melbourne. I didn’t have that option. All I had was a little bit of time left.

  The pool superintendent always had a word for me. ‘So, how are we today?’ or, more puzzlingly, he’d ask ‘What do you know?’ Squat, dumpy, Matty Diggs got around in sunglasses and shorts that were obscenely small. He never took his eyes off the pool; even when he caught up for a chat his eyes were on the water. He was like a man who can’t let his wife wander out of his sight. Diggs of course had many wives.

  He joined me now, chewing and talking out the side of his mouth.

  ‘I seen you waiting for someone?’

  Well of course even though he had seen me on an endless number of times with Rosa I still felt bound to describe her. Diggs nodded, and at a pause in the conversation I added, ‘She’s from Argentina.’

  ‘You know some interesting people,’ he said and stretched out his leg to shift his crotch.

  Over the course of the week, at different times he shuffled over to ask me, ‘What’s doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  He nodded like that was pretty well what he expected. He looked at his wristwatch.

  ‘Another no show, huh?’

  I shrugged. We both looked up the pool to the turnstile. He looked at his watch again.

  ‘I’d give her another half hour. I hear there’s some traffic piled up from the Shore lane off the bridge. So, what can I tell you?

  Frère Jacques.’

  Frère Jacques. Didn’t he mean que sera sera?

  The next day he sided up with the usual ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Frère Jacques,’ he said.

  I didn’t want to embarrass the pool superintendent but this time I said to him, ‘Actually, the expression is que sera sera.’

  He turned his sunglasses on me. His jaws stopped rotating.

  ‘You’re shitting me?’

  ‘I’m not shitting you.’

  ‘So what’s Frère Jacques?’

  ‘Brother Jack.’

  His jaws started swiftly rotating.

  ‘Brother Jack, you say. Well that doesn’t make any sense, does it?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. But I wanted to be more encouraging than that so I added, ‘Well, it depends on context.There could be a place or a moment when you say Frère Jacques.’

  He nodded impatiently.

  ‘Right. Right. Anyway, moving along, how did a young guy like you get shacked up with Mrs Argentina?’

  ‘I’m not shacked up with anybody.’

  Diggs stopped chewing. His smile seemed to dangle in midair. ‘Right’, he said. ‘That’s cool.’

  One afternoon Diggs let it be known that he was looking to hire a pool attendant. Actually someone even more junior. An assistant pool attendant.

  ‘That sort of thing interest you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘You got a life-saving certificate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have to have a life-saving certificate before I can hire you.’

  He went off and got me an instruction booklet. He explained the procedure. At the end of a written examination and ‘practical’ Diggs would sign the certificate and hire me. It sounded easy enough.

  ‘Have you got someone to practise on? You need someone to practise on for the practical,’ he said.

  No one came to mind. Diggs thought for a moment.

  ‘What about Argentina?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Diggs was in more of a hurry than that. ‘When the kids come back from holiday it’s mayhem in here. I can’t do it all on my own. You know what I mean? Que sera,’ he said, and shuffled back to his office.

  So far only my sister had shown up to the flat. Where was Rosa? She knew where I lived. She knew I must be sitting here twiddling my thumbs or at the pool. It didn’t make sense. I was desperate to see her, if only for a moment. A glimpse would do. Then I started to think, what if something has happened? Something that I don’t know about? For all I knew she might be trapped with the same thought, where is Lionel? This fresh concern was more honourable that mere longing. It gave me an excuse to take the bus past Rosa’s house.

  The first time there was no movement in the windows. No sign of life. A small kid on a tricycle looked up at the pale longing face in the row of bus windows.The bus picked up speed and the colours of the houses began to run.

  I wondered if she had gone on holiday. I got quite worked up thinking that if she had, why hadn’t she bothered to tell me?

  Then on the last morning I struck gold.

  It’s amazing all the information that a single glance can gather. Ivan’s van parked in the drive. The panting faces of two dogs misting up the side window. Then, as the bus slows and the driver searches for the gear, the front door to Rosa’s opens and out she steps in a white bathrobe. She stands aside for Ivan, resplendent in his dog grooming uniform. A blue cotton shirt. Blue cotton trousers. The bus finds its gear and we lurch away from Rosa’s peck on Ivan’s cheek and something from Ivan that appears to make her laugh. The final view is of her raising a hand to her mouth, a playful shove from Rosa and Ivan dropping down the steps with a self-satisfied smile.

  I sat back and looked up the aisle, thinking about what I had seen. That laugh of Rosa’s—it was more jousting than anything I was used to. Usually, at least around me, whenever she laughed it was always a controlled response as if the thought processes had to click through the gears of deciding—yes, now I will laugh. With Ivan it had been more spontaneous, more trusting. More intimate? I desperately fished for an explanation that would erase these doubts. And from what felt like an age ago I cast up the piece of old dancer’s advice: ‘Every partner brings something new out in you.’

  Two days later, I saw Rosa and Ivan walking hand in hand in the gardens near the pool. They walked in that way that lovers do. A slow amble, their hands swinging between them. Their shoulders touched. Ivan raised his wife’s hand to his lips. Rosa smiled. I noticed the soft glow of her face. The demure slope of her shoulders. We had never held hands like that. There was that time on the beach on the way to the cave when she had stumbled and reached for my hand; but that didn’t count. I’d taken hold of it and released it soon afterwards.

  Ivan bought ice creams for them both and they dawdled along in no hurry. Once they stopped so Rosa could have a lick of Ivan’s ice cream. Some must have dribbled because Ivan caught it on his fingertip and licked it off. They stopped at a kids’ playground. And as she pointed to something Ivan shuffled closer. I don’t know what held their interest for so long. There was just a bunch of kids doing what kids do in playgrounds. When I looked back Rosa had laid her head on Ivan’s shoulder.

  They moved on across the grass for a bench under a tree. I saw Ivan remove his jacket and spread it over the bench for Rosa to sit down. She rewarded him with a kiss.

  For some time I watched from a circle of trees. Rosa laid her head in Ivan’s lap. And Ivan spread his arms along the back rest, looking like the man who has everything. At a certain point, he held up his wristwatch and Rosa sat up. She stood and waited while Ivan shook out his jacket. Then he took Rosa’s arm and guided her from the park across the road to a small grey house. They entered the gate and wandered up the path. I waited until they had gone inside then jogged across the road. There was a brass plaque on the gate with name of a doctor. I looked back at the windows once and ran on.

  The next day Rosa is getting into her car when she looks up and sees me in the window. There was no dou
bt about it. She definitely saw me. And it was like we were viewing one another from two separate worlds for which there was no overlap or intermediary space. The bus and driveway flew by one another, and I was left with the view of her snatching off her sunglasses so as to see better, and then smiling. With that one glance she’d found me out. Though that isn’t what ended my trips past her house. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to help myself. I would have found an excuse to risk more humiliation but for a scratchy throat and runny nose developing into a full-blown flu.

  For the next two days I lay shivering on my mattress. On New Year’s Eve I listened to the drunk neighbours partying across the street. I saw a skyrocket fly up past my window. I heard the chains down in the street. This would have been the time for Rosa to arrive at my door and take over. This is what Schmidt had done; he would let himself in to Louise’s apartment with ‘his’ key. After removing his jacket he would take a mop to the tiled floors and open the windows for fresh air and the cheerful noise off the street. Then he’d make Louise a lemon drink and sit by her bed and read to her. For the first time I thought about all the occasions he wouldn’t have made it, all those times his imagination must have run bare and he was unable to find an excuse to sneak off to Almagro, and I saw the cost of all that: Louise, ever lonelier, sinking deeper and deeper into exile.

  On the day the restaurant was due to reopen, in the early hours of the morning the fever broke. Sweat rolled off me. The sheets stuck to my legs and feet. As the fogginess lifted it was replaced by a scene of horrible clarity. I saw my father struggling on to his farm bike; I saw the gritted teeth of his effort and wave after wave of guilt convulsed me.

  Late that afternoon, cars stacked with surfboards blasted by for the beach. Small kids ran in and out of lawn sprinklers. I walked in a deathly sweat all the way to La Chacra.

  Only two waitresses were on duty. Kay and the others were still on holiday. We were down to a skeleton staff; we were expecting a quiet time to begin with. Angelo was setting up in the carvery. He sang out to me as I came in to the door.

  ‘It’s the dancing man. You’re back!’

  He sounded surprised. Why wouldn’t I be back? I wondered if Rosa had said something.