Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
"The Nazis interrupt theatrical performances. With noise, with threats, with stink bombs—even with chamber pots. If they actually want to attend our performances, I won't deny them for a moment. It might do them some good."
"You don't draw a line about whom you would play for?"
"Anyone," Aviva said. "Or no one—it's all the same. It's not any one particular audience I am trying to reach. I have my own reasons."
Al-Cerraz gave up on stopping the conversation and tried to steer it away from my grasp instead. "I think," he said, nodding genially, "that I would have to convince myself first that the person wasn't a monster. I'd have to see his human side—everyone has a human side."
"Nonsense," I said, but already I felt terrible. I had not meant to start an argument with Aviva.
She stood. "Gentlemen, you've tired me, and the day has just begun. I'll be resting in my berth."
"If she only ate a little more," Al-Cerraz mumbled after she left, nibbling the leftover crusts on her lunch plate. "What did she mean, about wanting to die in 1924?"
That week, after a concert in Lisbon, the three of us went to a nightclub. We were tired, and we had yet another train to catch the next day, but a local patron of the arts had invited us, and we felt it necessary to accept. To a fast-paced jazz band, Aviva danced with the patron, a Senhor Medina. Then she danced with Al-Cerraz, as Medina hovered nearby, ready to grab her hand again.
Instead, she took the seat next to me, her cheeks flushed, her collarbone shining. She shouted, "I suppose you hate this music."
I shouted back, "No, I don't hate it."
"Well, then?"
I laughed. "You're expecting me to dance? I've finally worked my way up to waltzes, but any faster and I'd never walk again."
"What?"
"Never mind," I shouted, smiling, indicating the music.
She moved closer, so that she could speak directly into my ear.
"Does it hurt?"
"What?" I said, though I had heard her.
She leaned closer. Her hair touched my cheek. "Your hip. Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," I said. From the first time we met, Aviva had been more sympathetic about my infirmity than Al-Cerraz had ever been. Since she had joined us, there had been no more mad dashes to concert halls, no bullying to walk farther or carry more, no forced swims. She had accommodated me without speaking, without even asking—until now.
"Have you seen a doctor?"
My forced laugh was swallowed by the roar of the nightclub. "It happened at birth. There's no point." I turned back, with my ear next to her lips, to hear her reply.
She cupped her hand against my cheek and leaned close. "Why are you punishing yourself?"
I did not move. I did not dare even turn, because then she might move away, or worse, I might see that what I had heard as tender sympathy was really only curiosity.
"You don't have to live with pain." Her hand was still against my face.
When she didn't say anything else, I reached up and took her hand, holding it there as long as I dared.
She whispered something. It sounded like: "Come outside with me." But I didn't want to move, didn't want to gamble this moment for another that was less certain. And all the while, my eyes tracked across the table, counting the emptied glasses, feeling my heart thud in my chest.
"I won't ask again," she said.
Just then, the song ended and Al-Cerraz collapsed back into his seat, with Medina not far behind. "Won't ask what?" our Portuguese host asked, panting and smiling.
Aviva pulled her hand away from me and sat up straighter. "For another drink, of course."
"Shame on you," Al-Cerraz said, hitting my back. "Letting this gorgeous girl get thirsty while we were away."
"Interesting," Dr. Gindl said. "But not unusual."
This was two weeks later, in Switzerland. I had laughed at Al-Cerraz for dyeing his hair to impress Aviva. But I was trying to impress her, too. I intended to follow her advice. And perhaps I had even higher aims. Perhaps I imagined that I might find a way to dance with her someday.
I told the doctor, "It doesn't give me too much pain, except when—"
"It will," he interrupted. "You're thirty-seven, you said?"
"—an occasional twinge..."
"In the forties, the arthritis tends to accelerate. You bear weight on your left side, do you? The pain may become considerable. Later on, you'll want a cane."
Up until now, I had been smiling, attempting to mask the discomfort I felt as the doctor manipulated my leg.
"Dysplasia of the hip," he said, lifting and rotating my thigh one last time, sending a hot ache into my groin. "The head of the thighbone doesn't sit properly in the socket of the pelvis. Go ahead, you can sit up now."
I did so, slowly.
"A difficult breech birth?" he asked. Then, seeing my incomprehension: "Rear end first?"
I nodded.
"Fairly common result. Caught just after birth, it could have been splinted."
He kept a hand on my knee. "Anyone discuss childhood surgery with your parents?"
I shook my head.
"Well, that's fairly recent. Special footwear is important—I'm sure you've experimented with that. Exercises are essential."
"It does fatigue easily."
"All muscles fatigue—and then they become stronger. You're from the countryside? I trust your parents kept you busy as a youth—running, carrying, working that leg. There's nothing to be gained from letting the muscles wither. A century ago, people were more ignorant. They would have kept you as inactive as possible—and made a weakling of you in the process."
When I turned away from him, he said, "I do hope it hasn't hindered you."
My jacket was across the room. I climbed down from the examination table and walked toward it, as evenly as I could, ignoring the pain lingering from the manipulation. I was almost out the door when he said, "For the pain, you could try this." He handed me a small brown vial from his bag.
I read the label. "Isn't this very strong?"
"It does the job."
"I don't think I'd feel comfortable taking it. My hip isn't that bad."
"It lasts only four to six hours. Some patients require it to sleep. There's nothing shameful in it."
I was thinking of the people I admired who had accepted discomfort and surrender in their lives; but I was also thinking how their hopelessness had tainted my own life. I felt ready to move beyond those memories. Aviva had said pain wasn't necessary. I wanted to believe her.
Aviva's twentieth birthday, later that spring, coincided with a concert in Milan. We bought her a set of matching luggage, to replace the small wicker valise that Al-Cerraz had, at first glance, mistaken for a lunch box. At a restaurant following the performance, we toasted her health and Justo gave her a pair of fine leather gloves—a sneaky addendum to the gift we 'd bought together, allowing me no time to match it.
Later that night, after Aviva and Al-Cerraz had returned to their own hotel rooms, I wandered off by myself and found my way to a bordello where, after the requisite services had been rendered, I spent some part of the predawn paying extra for my buxom, yawning bed-mate to keep me company. She darned socks while I rambled on about birthdays and age differences and the proper age for marrying.
"Twenty isn't so young," the not-so-young damsel informed me.
"Soon she'll be gone. When I see her next, she'll be twenty-one." I couldn't bear to say Aviva's name aloud in this disreputable house.
"Let her out of your sight that long, and for certain she'll be married when you see her again."
"No. She's a musician—an entertainer."
"I'm an entertainer," the woman said. "I'm married."
I must have glanced nervously toward the door. She laughed. "You met him already when you came in. He took your money."
"Besides," I said, searching the rumpled bedclothes for my trousers, "she's not likely to find a husband. There are complicating factors."
"Previously married?"
"No."
"Ruined reputation? Non-Catholic?"
I stared at her. "Both. How did you know?"
She laughed. "What other problems would a pretty young woman have in Spain?"
"She isn't Spanish. She'll be living in Germany soon."
"Well, then." She plumped the pillows behind her and resumed her darning.
"What does that mean?"
"In my better days, I spent a summer in Berlin. I worked in a
variété
—you know, a cabaret? We had every type there: unmarried mothers, gypsies, Jews, an American Negro—God he was beautiful, as shiny purple as an eggplant. It was a very open-minded place. More open-minded than here. I don't know why I left." She frowned at the door, then turned the same scowl on me. "She won't be judged harshly, if that's what you're counting on."
Fool,
she wanted to add—I'm sure of it.
She asked, "What line of work do you do, anyway?"
"What do you think I do?"
A tasseled red scarf covered the bedside lamp, infusing the room with a pink glow. She tugged it off suddenly, and blinding white, stomach-turning light flooded the room. From her regally supine position, she squinted at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
"Some kind of bureaucrat, I'd say. Or a plumber. Those little hard spots at the end of your fingertips remind me of the lines at the end of pipes—what are they called?"
"The threads."
"Right. See?"
I didn't tell her she was wrong. But the rest of what she'd said stayed with me. I hadn't meant to rely on Aviva's past or her identity to improve my own chances. I wasn't counting on anything. One of the things that attracted me to her was her determination, her clear sense of purpose—a purpose that was leading her away from Al-Cerraz and me.
A few days later, we took her to the train station. Weill had asked Aviva to join the school-music program rehearsals for
Der Jasager,
a short children's opera he 'd written, beginning in May. She promised to return to Spain during the first long school break, the following summer.
As we stood on the platform, waiting for the train, Al-Cerraz asked her, "You're not fond of this fellow, are you?" Damn Justo for his newfound paternalism; bless him for his inappropriate curiosity. It was, of course, what I wanted to know, too. Weill was formidable: only thirty, successful, evidently brilliant, and Jewish.
"Herr Weill?" She screwed up her face. "He's married to Lotte Lenya, the beautiful actress! I love his violin concerto and all his theater pieces. But—with that cue-ball head? Those glasses? The way he sprays spittle when a musician misses the pickup? Sorry—no."
Which meant that I still had a chance.
I felt less secure a moment later, when Al-Cerraz said, "But you know—I'd like to see this 'school opera.' Why not? I'll come along for a few days, if it's the same to you."
I swiveled toward Aviva, studying her face for ambivalence, so that I'd have a reason to talk Al-Cerraz out of his plan. But she was digging in her handbag, seemingly unbothered by the notion of sudden company.
"We 've been together for half a year," I ventured. "A break might be good for all of us, artistically speaking. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, don't you think?"
Al-Cerraz said, "No one's making you come along."
The train blew into the station, rattling our platform. Passengers crowded around the doors immediately, pushing past us with their bags.
"Our luggage is back at the hotel," I reminded Al-Cerraz.
"You didn't think I'd escort her at this very moment, did you?" But I could see him warming to the idea. He smiled. "Why not? I can buy a toothbrush anywhere. Maybe that composer friend of hers will lend me a nightshirt. If I walk around in his clothes, perhaps his success will rub off on me."
Aviva was smiling, too, tickled by Al-Cerraz's sudden eagerness, or perhaps by my discomfort. She shook my hand coolly, then said to Al-Cerraz, "I'll wait for you onboard."
He waved and started walking toward the ticket window, talking to me over his shoulder. "Just tell the hotel to hold my bags. Three or four days should do it. It's a shame to come back at all—maybe you could have them forward the bags directly to Spain."
"I'm not your luggage handler," I said to his back, but he was busy talking with the ticket seller. "And I'm not your chaperon, either. I won't feel pressured to come along, just to keep you out of trouble."
He finished his business at the window, thanked the ticket seller grandly, and then turned around. "Keep
me
out of trouble? Why would I ever want you to do that?"
"This deserves celebrating," Aviva said when she saw me on the train, and began rummaging in her purse again until she pulled out a flask. She sent Al-Cerraz to the dining car to fetch three teacups while I basked in her festive mood. When he returned, she poured a healthy dram of amber liquid into each and held hers aloft. "To Feliu's first spontaneous act!"
I hesitated, stung by the caustic edge to her tone, which undermined the brief elation I'd felt at her evident pleasure upon seeing me. After a few minutes, Al-Cerraz said, "I'll finish that if you don't." With effort, I drained the cup, feeling the burning in my throat turn to warmth.
"It's not my first spontaneous act, by the way." I patted my chest.
This only made Aviva laugh. She dribbled more liquid into our cups and toasted me: "To Feliu's second spontaneous act!"
When Al-Cerraz set down his empty cup and looked my way, I drank again, quickly.
"I had a dog like that, when I was a kid," he said. "A skinny mutt. Almost hairless. His ribs stuck out so far that if you rubbed a wooden spoon against his side, you got a washboard sound. He was a living instrument. We were terrible to him."
Aviva was fumbling through her purse again, not listening.
Al-Cerraz looked directly at me, "He wouldn't finish the food in his bowl, but if you went near it, if you shook the bowl"—here he grabbed my arm playfully—"then he'd nod his head as if he were waking up out of a daze. He'd start growling at us. Then he'd start eating. He seemed not to know he was hungry unless he thought you were hungry."