A Dancer

Lynn, David H.

a Dancer DAVID H. LYNN Ariel Abrams was a small boy with startling blue eyes. They were unlike anyone else's eyes as far back as could be remembered on either side of the family. The mystery...

...He was very popular...
...Oh, yes...
...And soon, soon as he could stand free, he raised both arms above his head and spun oh so slowly in little circles on the floor, singing la la la to all the world...
...Ariel panted and hurried on nowhere...
...Before the meal was served, she'd glanced about with a distracted son of interest, ignoring the conversation, while toying with her fork to let them know she was hungry...
...Anthony Malakar was reciting a tale that rang deep and familiar...
...She would have been maybe your age, right, Ariel...
...On a summer afternoon, Harry might hoist Ariel on his shoulders and carry him down to the old carriage house...
...Mind you, not lhat she was incapacitated...
...For Anthony had a smile that was full of magic...
...I throw urass .it you...
...It took some little while, therefore, before Harry and Sarah began to suspect that Miss Ruth was a bit simple, and a while longer before they confessed their suspicions lo each other...
...Sarah was soon able to share this particular duty with a friend, Maryanne Malakar, whose family was one of those recently arrived...
...The idea was to introduce her gradually to the larger family...
...Padnos...
...Anthony could mock because he knew, and neither his own parents nor Ariel's could ever fathom it...
...Once a week, in Sarah's old Studebaker or Maryanne's new Lincoln, the boys traveled together, shrieking their new Hebrew chants out the windows...
...Her son, Anthony, a good two years older than Ariel, also began to make the short trip across town...
...He could dance the marrow-deep ache right out of Harry's wounded arm and chase the dark brooding that often attended it...
...We're all supposed to look after her—aren't we, Ariel...
...The girls watched him...
...As a hostage to the affeet;on between his mother and Maryanne Malakar, Ariel was to stay here overnight with Anthony and his cousin Ned...
...On this one particular day, however, the other boy had learned something new...
...Every few days, not to overdo it, friends dropped round for tea or dinner...
...Harry Abrams had years ago restored an old carriage house just off Court Square...
...Ariel's mother, Sarah, had been a newcomer lo the town: mel, wooed and married by Harry while he was stationed in Baltimore...
...She is a virgin...
...And as they would have done in Eastern Europe, had there been any Jews remaining in Eastern Europe, the community looked on this as a special claim...
...Maybe she even liked it...
...Another day of chauffeuring was added to Sarah's schedule when Ariel turned nine...
...She's your aunt and my aunt, all one big family...
...She didn't close her mouth when she chewed, hunching over the plate with such undisguised pleasure...
...Trouble was, Harry became attached to his stock in the small shop...
...Dancing, with a partner or not, he'd be alone—a solitude different from other times and not so lonely, alone and yet caught up in the dance, connected to all the world...
...How he fidgeted, wanting only to return to the dance, when Sarah swept him up in her arms and twirled in a bigger circle, she at the center, eyes closed tight as she gloried in this gift of joy...
...Padnos chopped short like a boy's, was never quite clean...
...It felt good to dance in the moonlight and against the motion of the earth, dancing to clear his mind and cleanse his sou...
...Because the story was Anthony's, it was potent beyond measure...
...And the little boy did disconcert people, the way he stared at them with undisguised curiosity or, worse, out beyond them as if they were mere intervening figures on the landscape...
...Ah, of course not—sorry," said Ned...
...In the shadows his face seemed twisted into a grinning mask...
...For Anthony's benefit, and no doubt for Ariel's, Ned lifted a fork and, with the slightest of stabs at a pea, mimicked her, a flash of mirth in his eye that seemed wicked and no less than the witness of truth itself [f Miss Ruth was shy to be in a strange house for Sabbath dinner, and one of such wealth, its mahogany table heavy with silver and crystal, she gave no sign...
...No, she was young, and she was so beautiTul when it happened...
...No, there he'd be alone at the center of a crowd of boys, unmindful of them all, laughing offhandedly or sharing a sly secret with his cousin Ned, who visited regularly from the north...
...He was a promising dancer, yet dreamy...
...There was, of course, no steeple...
...He wasn't sure what it was about the way Anthony carried himself...
...Anthony was piecing the story together to the same rhythm he was telling it...
...There were problems enough, of course...
...After what had grown to a number of months with ihe Abramses., she moved lo a pleasant boarding house along the same street...
...Ualf a dozen delicate silver bra- -llceletsjangled on Mrs...
...Ned snorted...
...And as this considerable feat was in its last stages, these two aunts, Sophie and Bessie Mendelsohn, proceeded to die, one within weeks of the other...
...A secret about Ariel: he danced...
...Max Malakar, a dark, bearish little man, blessed the wine in a quick growl without chanting, as if this were a prank from a long time ago that still embarrassed him...
...Anthony hesitated as if he were squinting, trying to make the story out...
...Think of it...
...In the town where Ariel Abrams grew up, there was a little synagogue shaped like a church...
...Ariel, for his part, danced across the stone-mottled shallows, bobbed from one foot to the other with a gay splash and twisting leap, his face alight...
...She said nothing...
...At twelve Anthony Malakar was already something for the girls, though he'd have nothing to do with them at school...
...Afterwards the grownups were going to drop Miss Ruth off and then go on themselves...
...My friend Ariel wouldn't lie...
...One day when Ariel was tour, another boy from all of a block and a hall'away ventured down the sidewalk...
...Her meals she look with the landlady, Mrs...
...The two boys might have been taken for brothers, were Anthony not dark enough to be Ariel's shadow...
...Yet when conversation grew ever so slightly abstract—alxjul why tin" price of eggs had soared or why it might be that Ariel was somewhat tardy in learning lo speak—a look of ronlenled distraction appeared on Miss Ruth's fare...
...Of course evei-yone understood—allowance upon allowance had lo be made for all she roust have been through—it frightened them lo imagine...
...Malakar's arm as she struck a match for the Sabbath candles, and Ariel thought it was silly, the solemn pout she wore while doing it...
...Jooboy...
...Along the way they'd stop at the boarding house to fetch Miss Ruth along if she wished...
...How coarse Anthony's parents seemed in comparison...
...And Miss Darcy, the instructor, didn't know what to do with the quiet boy with chose blue eyes...
...Yet this dancing did at times embarrass his father as well, as if Ariel were truly a gift, a changeling who didn't entirely belong to them...
...Yet tonight the high moon had blanched all Jile and color from the earth, and the brick glimmered grey...
...For their part, the other boys treated him as an outsider, some of them because he was a Jew, some because thev thought he thought he was loo good for them, some because he seemed to want it that way...
...Miss Ruth's cheeks had very soon plumped up pink and healthy above a modest chin and a jaw that had a tendency lo go slack...
...She grew up over there and only got away free afterwards...
...His throat was dry, his heart pounding...
...In- sat down in the grass...
...Or burn her, maybe with cigarettes, against her white skin...
...What he wanted was to walk until he could not walk any more, to keep breathing in as much air as his lungs would hold...
...Ah," whispered Ned, his voice flush with a breathless ache...
...If Anthony felt like talking, sharing the secrets he knew, Ariel mighi learn what it meant to be nearly thirteen instead often...
...He'd take his turn kicking or catching a ball, watching his teammates and watching himself too...
...There'd be days when he'd walk right off the field in the middle of a game and find a sheltered place by the wire fence until recess was over...
...A young girl, naked and vulnerable, a silent "oh" on her lips, chased after Miss Ruth...
...With a snort, contemptuous of it and of himself, Ariel drifted that way...
...With eight or ten students to make it worthwhile, a young teacher, himself new to the area, was now offering private Hebrew lessons at Blair...
...He stood, solemnly lifted his arm, and hurled the green Made lulu ihr air...
...He danced ever so slowly, his arms crossed tight around his body, only his legs moving...
...What...
...Anthony began to speak again, but his voice had changed, grown sing-song as he told them a tale...
...She may he yours, not mine, Cousin...
...Yeah," Ned interrupted...
...Maybe they all did it to her, one after another—think of it...
...On she'd rock, smiling a calm, faraway little smile while conversation swelled lightly around her...
...Step, Ariel pleaded silently, the magic turning nasty...
...There was no answer, but Ariel, who lay on the guest cot while the others shared the room's big bed, saw Ned rise up on an elbow beyond Anthony...
...A million years ago...
...Ariel had no specific goal in mind...
...Most...
...It scared him and, oh, how he yearned for a peek at it...
...The secret of his dancing he kept largely to himself...
...Ariel shouldn't have listened, shouldn't have heard, but now he'd heard and if it made him sick it excited him loo...
...Anthony, lying hands behind his head, chanted the tale to the darkness and silence and waiting ears...
...And yet at the root of his tongue he tasted something cold and tarnished...
...Miss Ruth stepped ashore with one suitcase, and found wailing for her only what little money her aunts had left after the expenses of rescuing her and of their own modest funerals...
...His face was dark with fury, his eyes flushed already with tears...
...Dance, dance, like a girl," he'd cry...
...Yet his cousin Anthony granted him a privileged intimacy...
...None of the buildings and trees, not even the great equestrian Lee himself, possessed any substance at all...
...Almost no pause this time...
...Anthony dressed with infinite carelessness and a considerable style that the other boys copied quick as they could— and the very effort set them apart...
...She looked a bit dazed, Miss Ruth did, and Harry and Sarah, catching a glimpse of tell-tale ankles and wrists, glanced at each other and didn't sigh out loud...
...Boy, you are one stupid shit," said Anthony slowly and decisively...
...He was very serious and he was very upset...
...Twice a week Sarah met him out front of the school, Miss Ruth often beside her on the front seat of the Studcbakcr...
...Go ahead and dance- like a girl, joolwy," he sang...
...On and on the story went...
...She wasn't always this way, you know...
...She was ladling peas onto Miss Ruth's plate and, as automatic as buttering bread, used her own knife to slice some of the chicken off the drumstick on her friend's plate...
...It took Ariel's breath away...
...Sometimes Ariel climbed up into her lap and they would rock, the two of them, without a word or a thought for anyone else...
...The fact that he was a Jew bothered him not at all...
...The dark coy glance up from under...
...They cabled money to intermediaries and messages and more money, and swept Ruth clear of Europe when it already seemed loo late...
...There was something about the cock of her elbows as she did this, efficient, graceful and thoughtless, that almost made up for the rest of it, for her trying so hard to be sophisticated, to show Maryanne Malakar and her husband that she came from a good family in Baltimore and knew how things should be done—the way she held herself stiff, as if the chair were soiled and she didn't dare lean back...
...She's really not his aunt...
...Yet secretly— he couldn't entirely deny it lo himself—a certain thrill of anticipation for what might come later made his legs pump nervously...
...Once the music on the phonograph began—even during warmups and routine drill—Ariel could close his eyes and lose himself...
...He'd be standing there against the rail, cold and bored, or watching one or another of the girls who might make him shiver if she happened to glance his way and smile...
...Its roof peaked gracefully...
...Moon or no moon, the town hardly seemed real to him, he or it or both of them disembodied and no part of each other...
...It seemed so small, a stage prop or a joke, costumed like a church, an embarrassing fraud he'd only just learned to recognize...
...During these calls, she would sit quietly rocking in a rocking chair...
...Couldn't they see what he saw—what all the kids at school saw—that Anthony was the one who mattered, the one who carried it off, the one who knew the secrets...
...Down the steps, gripping the rail for support, came Miss Ruth...
...of Anthony Malakar's magic...
...Or they lit out into the piedmont, the paths cool in early morning, Harry walking slow, Ariel trundling along quick as he could...
...The sneer might as well have been visible, "Now, Ned, cut it out...
...As customers browsed, he'd stand aside, filling the air with pipe smoke and shrouded faraway looks while Ariel slipped and darted through a broken reef of bookcases, sofas, shards of china...
...A couple of blocks from the old courthouse, sharp against the night sky, arched the roof of the little synagogue...
...But some, some who were young and beautiful and who they'd do things to, they let 'em go afterwards...
...Stop, thought Ariel...
...Ned was coaxing and wheedling now, unable to resist mimicking the chant with a faint sarcastic burr of his own, yet intent on drawing Anthony out, for he was excited too...
...Now thai they were gone, the community assumed responsibility for welcoming Ruth Mendelsohn into the family and for helping her get on her feet...
...He knew the other boy's spell would never capture him again...
...Up he'd clamber onto his feet, leaning an arm against a wooden chair or table leg, and swing his other arm as Sarah sang songs in the kitchen...
...Inside the house Harry and Sarah heard the cries and hurried to the screen door...
...I thought they just killed 'em...
...A little intimidated, a little disturbed...
...Others teased him for not being much of a boy, though he wore sweatpants instead of a leotard...
...If only he knew, perhaps he wouldn't always feel such an outsider...
...No way I've got any aunt who's so dumb and so ugly...
...Malakar, who didn't really close his mouth when he chewed either, Maryanne Malakar with her bony, furtive fingers and her silly giggle when she was trying to please Mama...
...He spun round and fled away home...
...Oh shit, don't stop," Ned panted...
...AN-THON-Y," sang Ned, "she's probably still one—what changed her from this princess of yours into such a witch...
...simple...
...But it was really deep in his eyes themselves, a teasing, knowing look, scorning any other knowledge...
...But now that door stood gaping ajar...
...He and Sarah rode the Crescent up to New York to fetch the refugee home...
...whispered Ned and Ariel together...
...Dark as a gypsy, fine-boned without a hint of anything feminine, Anthony was neither shy nor self-conscious...
...Her elbows dimpled she was so heavy, and her slate grey hair, which Mrs...
...The story had turned a hidden corner and revealed a door Ariel had never guessed was there—or it had been there all along and sealed tight by silent conspiracy...
...Harry might take off his boots and wade a stream...
...And Ariel, who was remarkably self-possessed, ignored this would-be tormentor and continued his play to the strange music of the taunts themselves...
...No one knew why this was so— whether it had once been the fashion or merely the expression of a desire not to stand out, not to stand apart...
...They paid especial attention to Miss Ruth...
...Just think...
...Back deep in his calf, down low, he felt the first snap and pulse, yes, spreading like flame...
...This other boy was a year older than Ariel and he was a bully...
...And what scared Ariel most of all was the queer sensation that he'd pecked here before, unremembered...
...Ignoring the low iron gate, he slipped past a hedge and into the yard...
...Just sitting here, an audience to this dark boy mocking them all, made Ariel long more than ever to be in his confidence...
...Anthony didn't stop...
...This time Ariel faced the other boy...
...The screen door slapped...
...Ariel Abrams watched this dark and magic boy from a distance...
...They found a woman younger rather than older, wearing a mannish overcoat and heavy dark shoes, the kind hospital matrons wore...
...The bully, amazed perhaps at such unexpected success, paused for a long moment...
...He wanted to hear more, Anthony to go on...
...Ariel lay tense, glimpsing the promised magic...
...I hat auntie of yours sure is a doll, I Ariel—one pretty lady...
...Across town at Blair Elementary, Ariel could dance—the only boy among seventeen dancers in the class—and not risk teasing by kids from his own school...
...And such small, small breasts...
...Her eyes were watery behind the thick lenses, her face flushed...
...The big bad wolves got her, boy—those Nazis did it to her...
...Miss Ruth was, after all...
...It seemed to him as he lay in the darkness that the subject, the questions, the not-daring-to-know had been hidden away by his family, by everyone, for so long that they'd almost been forgotten...
...He knew his way, knew every step, every locust tree and red brick...
...Or she's his aunt and everybody else's at the same time...
...They did things to her, hurt her, things you'd do to a girl like that, slowly and for a long time, so when it's over there's no need to say anything anymore, and you're not young and beautiful anymore...
...Padnos knew whom to visit with a plain piece of [Ktper marked neatly in penril...
...It barked feebly, snuffled, and slept again...
...When time came for school, Ariel played kiekbal) during recess with his classmates...
...Sarah caught Harry by the sleeve...
...he cried furiously in his turn...
...Wait," she said, A lew feet away Miss Ruth sal quietly in her chair, stilf and attentive, not rocking...
...He'd cock his head, eyes narrow and knowing and wry...
...He wanted desperately to know...
...He wanted to crawl into bed between his parents, to smell their warm sleep smell, to be held and caressed for no reason...
...For a community of Jews had belonged to this town a very long lime, and their little red brick synagogue was well over a hundred years old by the lime Ariel was born...
...But Ariel, now that it was too late not to know, felt soiled, the last gift of magic...
...Sarah Abrams became herself again, at least in Ariel's eyes...
...out of it he ran a business in second-hand furniture and antique books...
...And not long afterwards, Harry oil" to [he fight in Italy and Ariel already more than a glimmer, the war was preparing to cast up on the town another new arrival, a Miss Ruth Mendelsohn...
...Ariel snorted again...
...Ariel, serious as could I« . -.un ijx-d to (Kt- ground arnl lore oil a fi«i -ful of grass...
...He'd been dreading the evening...
...He bobbed up and down on his toes, absently at first...
...It was never apparent to Miss Rulh that the small income from her aunls' bequest wasn't nearly enough to cover expenses...
...As he walked, Miss Ruth's face floated in and out of his thoughts, flushing him with fleeting snatches of disgust and affection, all haunted with echoes of Anthony's chant...
...Not that Pop didn't embarrass him too, and Miss Ruth...
...Here al their end of the dining room table, as Ariel writhed, Anthony and Ned were observing the visitors and flashing secret little glances and smiles to each other, not even caring that Ariel could see...
...He swayed and circled slow in front of the synagogue...
...they continued what they'd begun, sharing responsibility for Ruth Mendelsohn...
...Two of Ruth's distant aunts who lived in the town had beckoned lo her from across the sea...
...He knew she smelled funny too, musty...
...The mystery delighted his mother, Sarah, and vaguely embarrassed Harry, his father...
...Ruth even spoke a schoolgirl's English...
...Bui why did Mama have to fuss over these people—Mr...
...Some of the girls resented the intruder...
...It was things like that that got him in trouble—his teammates screeched, the other team hooted, and next time he might not be picked at all...
...it had something to do with money and something to do with arrogance, but was more...
...Then he shouted it aloud again...
...Maybe they'd scratch her, not deep, just for the taste of it...
...And he did see...
...Anthony laughed a faraway laugh, as ir enchanted with the image he was creating...
...There the boy took his place on a horsehair sofa while Pop read aloud from a tattered Walter Scott...
...No, no," came the gentle croon, dismissing the coarseness of such an image...
...On Wednesday afternoons now, as well as Tuesdays and Thursdays, she and Miss Ruth drove him over to Blair Elementary, though not to dance...
...Younger and still stupid and ugly...
...He swayed from one leg to the other and back...
...Ned had a toothy leer, and skin already deeply pocked...
...Every so often he'd catch Ariel playing on the grass in from of the house and taunt him from a little ways away...
...The enchanting slit of Anthony's delicate eye repelled him and held him fast...
...Ariel ached with shame...
...Thank you very kindly for loasi," she'd chirp, as if in recalling vocabulary lessons, she had also to recall the girlish pitch of her own youth, while gazing at Sarah earnestly...
...Her eyes were a blanched, nearly colorless blue...
...Call 'em tits, why don't you," murmured Ned...
...It was in his elegant slouch and the cock of his head...
...io ahead, why don't you dance, jooboy...
...For the time being Miss Ruth was to have a place at their house...
...It was a dreamy dance...
...Sophie and Bessie, who were also aunts by blood or tradition to most every Jew in town, and not a few gentiles, had not operated in secret, however...
...Shaking his head again and again didn't clear it of dreams and images that left no room for breath...
...Not even any hair down below, or maybe the lightest little bit...
...A hound woke in its pen as he passed an alley...
...And he was dancing without intending it, to no music in the quiet night...
...Much later in the night, when the cousins were long asleep, Ariel Abrams snuck out of the Malakar house and wandered towards the heart of town...
...Even before Mama had finished cutting chicken from ihe bone to help her, Miss Ruth began mixing mashed potatoes and peas together and spooning them greedily into her mouth...
...Bui Mrs...
...Its arched windows shone with stained glass...
...And as Anthony followed where the tale led him, Ariel stared up towards the ceiling, horror crawling dead-cold along his belly and spine...
...The high windows were blank in the night...
...Other than on these weekly forays, however, they rarely spent time together...
...He stared up at the synagogue as if he'd never quite seen it before...
...So she's beautiful and young, and she's pure as a virgin...
...He was hugging himself, chin pressed against his chest...
...Already the dance of the older boy's voice made him shiver...
...In recent years a number of Jewish families, along with many others, had moved to the growing town...
...He was afraid to close his eyes for what he might see without any light at all...
...Ariel watched him go and after a little while, sad...
...Court Square loomed ahead, ghostly, neither dark nor light in the moonlight...
...The words drifted like smoke through the darkness, caressed with Ned's affected drawL "She's not—not my aunt," snapped Ariel, hating Ned and hating the squeak of his own voice and feeling thai he'd already done something shameful...
...She settled herself down awkwardly not far from Ariel and uprooted one fistful of grass after another and sprinkled the blades and dirt into her wide lap...
...was somewhat awed by the older boy, Anthony Malakar...
...They'd all come to the Malakars' for Friday dinner...
...Oh, Ariel hated him—hated him...
...You hear, Ned...
...Harry Abrams, himscirhome from the war by this time with a crippled arm, had pul mosi of the arrangements in place by the time Miss Ruth arrived...
...The ashes in his mouth were the end of Anthony's magic...
...You should have seen her as a girl...
...In a few hours, come Saturday morning, his parents would stroll up the hill from the other side of the square...
...And she was his Miss Ruth, as far as Anthony Malakar was concerned...
...Anthony lay with his hands behind his head, musing it through aloud, Ariel could just make out his shape in the darkness...
...Stunned and amazed, mystified and alarmed, the bully's eyes filled with tears of their own...
...It left a hollow place deep inside him...
...Ariel Abrams stood in the moonlight, hugging himself...

Vol. 12 • January 1988 • No. 10


 
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