The Acrobats Read Free Page B

talented artist and a good man. They will soon be married.”
    “You do not understand. Colonel Kraus is infatuated with the girl. I think it would be wisest to forbid him entry to your club.”
    Chaim stood up. He circled the room, his pudgy, calloused hands clasped behind his back. “You hate him, don’t you?” he asked.
    “The Colonel? My brother?”
    Chaim turned and looked at her. She sat unnaturally, almost off the chair – a wary hawk, he thought, unsafe, never trusting in the security of her perch. God, how she must have suffered!
    “But you know how bright he is,” she said. “What would he be if not for me?”
    Chaim thought of saying “what is he?” but he knew what she would reply. He is a colonel. He was decorated by Hitler, and again by Mussolini. He was captain of the Olympic bobsled team.
    Chaim conjured up a picture of Kraus. A man tall, awkward, and with an always troubled face, slow to comprehend but quick to violence. “I will not forbid him entry to the club,” he said.
    But she is probably right, he thought. I should warn André, for Toni’s sake.
    “If she is living with another man it would be best. Colonel Kraus can be difficult when he doesn’t get his way.”
    “I’m sorry,” Chaim said.
    She got up. “There is something else,” she said hesitantly. “You meet many people in your business. I was wondering.… You know I am a very well-educated woman. I won university prizes in psychology and I have published papers on … I have a doctor’s degree. My favourite professor was a Jew.I tried to help him when … As you know we are not prospering here. I …”
    “So you would like to give lessons now. Perhaps you would like me to …” Chaim stopped short. Suddenly be felt an overwhelming compassion for her. He realised what it must have cost her in pride to ask a favour of a Jew. “Certainly, Fräulein Kraus,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    After she had left, Chaim walked over to the window. The streets were crowded: soon there would be another display of fireworks. The others are dead, she must go on living. Who am I to judge, he thought?
III
     … as if in his sleep, long, untroubled, deep, he had made voyages to foreign lands, all of them hot and dry. In Xapolis of the Four Winds he had disembarked from his ship beneath the jutting crags that flanked the bay. Naked he had walked in the sun along the beaches of sands and shells, seeking the lovely Princess, Apoo, daughter of the great King Agramoo, so that he might ask of her that which sent him flying like a wild wounded bird up against so many distant shores. A question so far unanswered, so that he was prevented from winging homewards, windwards, across the big sky to his cave on the far side of the green green mountain, homewards where his faithful Aduku awaited him on the hearth rug admiring the pictures of many colours that he had painted on the rocks. And on the sands now, lovely Apoo walked towards him, flaxen hair filled with the Four Winds, herself naked except for the flowers circling her neck. And she said: I do not know but I think perhaps that you are guilty. Then I must go, he said sadly, and seek the Word of the Oracle ofAmkawa on another shore. So he set sail again, looking into the wind.…
    The floor was a litter of paint-soiled rags, linseed drippings, brushes, paints, discarded sketches, and cigarette butts. A makeshift library was piled up underneath the window. A greasy kerosene burner and a coffee pot had been set up on top of the books. The pot had been stained many times by overflowing coffee so now it was almost all brown. Against the wall, in the corner, was a trunk that was used as a table. An overturned canvas served as a tablecloth. The cloth was strewn with breadcrumbs, pencils, two unwashed cups, an opened bottle of cognac, and a baited rat trap. There were two more rat traps on the floor. Several canvases – some unfinished, others untouched – were thrown up against