Flight of the Swan

by Rosario Ferré

  From my room, which was next to Madame’s, I could hear her arguing with Dandré about what should be done. The commissioner of police had come by earlier and left a message that he wanted to see Dandré. Did he know what had happened? Would he be able to help us? If it weren’t for the nick in Madame’s arm, she would be hard put to convince him there had been an attempt on her life. They couldn’t agree as to who was behind the shooting: the reactionary sugar barons, who pegged Madame as a Bolshevik, or the radicals who saw her as the czar’s ballerina, a relic of Imperial Russia. Madame believed it was the former; Dandré the latter.

  While they quarreled loudly in the bedroom, I went on with my duties. Dandré was always ordering me about, to keep me away from Madame, but I didn’t mind. Ubiquitous Masha had to be everywhere. I ran upstairs and began to draw Madame’s bath. I washed her underwear, polished her shoes, and ironed the dress she’d be wearing that morning. Then I had to go down to the kitchen to bring them their breakfast tray. I was anxious to finish my chores and go out as soon as possible. The atmosphere on the island seemed charged with danger, and I wanted to find out why.

  I already knew why the governor’s wife hadn’t been present at the reception the night before. One of the waiters at La Fortaleza had informed me of her mysterious illness: Mrs. Yager lived like a recluse in the upstairs rooms of the governor’s mansion and never came downstairs to any of the parties because she had a neurotic fear of the tropics. She lived in terror of being stricken with TB, typhoid fever, or malaria, all of which were rampant in Puerto Rico—especially among the poor. Whenever she went out, Mrs. Yager wore white cotton gloves to the elbows and a veil covering her face so as not to pick up germs. The situation didn’t help the governor, who was a snob who seldom mixed with anyone.

  14

  TWO DAYS LATER JUAN Anduce joined Madame’s troupe. The company needed to be replenished with new toe shoes, so on the second day after our arrival Dandré had put an ad in the paper asking for a cobbler to come to the Hotel Malatrassi, and three of them turned up. Juan didn’t speak any Russian, but he spoke English quite well, and Dandré picked him. Juan had large, coarse fingers, but he had a magician’s touch with shoes. Madame herself taught him how to block the dancers’ toe shoes, dipping them in rosin in order to strengthen them before shaping them into cylindrical molds of paste, then upholstering them in pink silk and sewing ribbons on them. He was so successful an apprentice that Madame used to say to me, “Thanks to Juan, our company literally dances on clouds.” She broke in a new pair of slippers at every rehearsal, and during a performance sometimes used up to three pairs.

  Juan and I immediately became friends and he invited me to visit his workshop, La Nueva Suela, which was on Calle San Sebastian, near the Plaza del Mercado. It was a shed where he had a charcoal stove, a hand basin, and a shower—everything crowded into one room. The shoe repair was two blocks away from La Casa de las Medias y los Botones, and the first time I visited Juan I asked him why that store was always so full of people. I had just passed it on my way over and was surprised to see a crowd already at the door when it was still early.

  Juan looked at me, a curious expression on his face. “That’s something you only understand when you live on an island, my duck. Sanjuaneros are always giving carnivals and costume balls and dressing up as something or other, because they’re always trying to get away.”

  “From what?” I asked innocently.

  “From themselves,” Juan answered with a wink.

  Another time, Juan told me the story of Diamantino Márquez. There was very little to do in San Juan and I visited him almost every other day; el chisme—good old-fashioned gossip—kept us entertained. One afternoon I was watching him block the toe shoes and spread the silk covers on them when he told me about El Delfín.

  “Diamantino’s father,” Juan said, “was one of the most powerful political figures on the island. Don Eduardo Márquez was the island’s prime minister, and he would have been the island’s president if the Americans hadn’t landed at Guánica. His son, with his magnificent mane of dark hair, was looked upon by many as El Delfín, the rightful heir to the throne on which the American governor now sits.

  “A year after the Americans arrived, General Brooke banished Don Eduardo from San Juan. He’d struggled enough, trying to wrest independence from the Spaniards for years. Now he was too tired to start all over again with the Americans. He felt he’d been made the laughingstock of the island.

  “Don Eduardo sold his tobacco plantation and went to live in New York with his family. Ten years later he got sick and had very little money left. He sailed back to Puerto Rico, and Don Pedro Batistini, a millionaire hacendado and the Liberal Party’s vice president, welcomed him with open arms. He offered him his mansion in Miramar, and Don Eduardo moved in with his family. It was a grand gesture, although Don Pedro could well afford it: he owned the most profitable sugar mill in the north: central Dos Ríos, near the town of Arecibo.

  “To have Don Eduardo Márquez convalesce at home offered the elderly Don Pedro and his wife an endless source of entertainment. They were both getting on in years, and growing lonely. But most of all, they had suffered a tragedy they were trying to forget: Don Pedro and Doña Basilisa had had a daughter, Ronda, and an only son, Adalberto, who was twenty-two, two years older than Diamantino is now. He had become infatuated with a young Spanish diva who had visited the island some years before. When the singer left the island, Adalberto was devastated and disappeared.

  “No one knew where he’d gone, but the neighbors gossiped. Some swore he’d stolen his father’s gold pocket watch, and that with the money he had sailed to New York, where Angelina had gone with her father to perform. Others were sure he had committed suicide and that, because Don Pedro was so religious, he had kept the boy’s death a secret to avoid a scandal: Catholics believe suicides go straight to hell. Don Pedro was furious and forbade his son’s name to ever be mentioned again in his presence. ‘You must erase him from your mind,’ he ordered his daughter, Ronda, and his wife, Doña Basilisa. ‘Forget we ever had a son.’ This, for Doña Basilisa, was of course impossible. She could just as well forget her son as she could banish the sun from her eyes or the darkness from her heart. But she loved Don Pedro and tried her best to obey him. The story of what had happened was veiled in mystery and all their friends were told the young man had gone away on a trip. Eventually people forgot all about him.

  “Don Eduardo’s presence in Don Pedro’s house proved to be an amusement which kept the couple’s mind away from this tragedy, and it also gave them the opportunity to exercise their largesse. The house became a mecca for the island’s intellectuals, the artists and writers who were always visiting. When Don Eduardo took a turn for the worse, politicians with the most controversial views came to stand, head bowed and hat in hand, next to the great man’s bed, which was moved from the second-floor guest room to the front living room of Don Pedro’s house.

  “Those difficult days were not without their light moments, however. Don Eduardo, no matter how much he begged, wouldn’t allow Don Pedro to hang over his bed a silver crucifix he had brought from Jerusalem during one of his travels. It was said to possess miraculous qualities because it contained, in the round crystal locket embedded at its center, wooden fragments from Christ’s cross.

  “‘Let the priest apply the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to you, my friend. These splinters from the Holy Cross may still cure you, and protect you from pain,’ Don Pedro would say.

  “‘Take away those rats nibbling, my friend,’ Don Eduardo would reply. ‘It’s better to meet death in Spanish and face to face than mumbling spells in Latin no one can understand.’

  “Diamantino, in spite of his grief, had the opportunity to mingle with the island’s most gifted poets and musicians thanks to his father’s illness. They all came to pay their respects at Don Pedro’s house. He heard them play the piano and read from their works, and he took part in the heady political discussions that
were held on Don Pedro’s ample terrace overlooking the lagoon. Diamantino was a poet himself, and read voraciously—literature, history, and sociology. Over and over he listened to his father explain, in the slow, measured terms which befitted his aristocratic mien, the need to fight for the island’s independence (autonomy he called it, so as not to seem too radical to the Americans, who immediately grew alarmed at the word) through a law-abiding, parliamentary process, and not through violent means.

  “‘Our countrymen are a peaceful people,’ Don Eduardo would say. ‘Fighting for self-determination with guns would go against our nature. We’ll gain freedom with a clear conscience by democratic means.’ Diamantino would sit, head bowed, listening. He revered his father and had always obeyed him, but a secret anger seethed inside him.

  “Don Eduardo’s health deteriorated even further and his family realized he was going to die. On his last day, Don Pedro held his friend’s hands and didn’t leave his bedside until he passed away. He paid for all the expenses of Don Eduardo’s funeral. The wake was worthy of the president of the republic. The caravan of automobiles, with the flagless steel bier covered with funerary wreaths at its head, wound slowly up the mountains, girding the island from end to end with its coils. Diamantino and his mother rode with Don Pedro and his family in Don Pedro’s splendid Pierce-Arrow—the one that picked Madame up at the pier—all the way to Manantiales, the small town in the heart of the mountains where Don Eduardo was born and where he wanted to be buried. His tomb was a plain slab of marble with his name, two dates, and no cross carved on it.

  “After the wake, Diamantino’s mother left for New York. She preferred to live in Manhattan, where she could get minor roles onstage and would live with relatives—she didn’t want to be dependent on a stranger’s charity. Diamantino was about to depart with her when Don Pedro approached him.

  “‘Stay here, Tino. You’re already like a son to us. Basilisa and I would like to make you our beneficiary when we pass away.’

  “Diamantino decided to trust his father’s friend and he canceled his plans for returning to New York. From then on he looked on Don Pedro as his new parent.

  “His studies in journalism helped Diamantino find part-time work at El Diario de la Manana, one of San Juan’s most prestigious newspapers. He also loved music and played the violin. When his mother passed away unexpectedly from pneumonia in New York, Don Pedro adopted him legally and Diamantino relaxed. He knew he’d be expected to make a living eventually, but he could take his time. He thought he’d finish work on a book of poems he was writing. ‘It’s good to study,’ Doña Basilisa told him reassuringly. ‘But don’t worry your handsome head about it. The purpose of education is to be able to enjoy life more, not to make your nerves sick!’ Diamantino kept on freelancing for several newspapers, and spent the rest of his time writing poetry and getting together with his intellectual friends to play the violin in the cafés at night.

  “Don Pedro waited for a year, and didn’t mind bumping into Diamantino in the dining room at lunchtime, his hair tousled and his eyes puffy with sleep because he had just gotten out of bed. But one day he finally got tired of his bon vivant godson. ‘The moon isn’t made of cheese, you know. If I were you, I’d get a serious job. Don’t press your luck.’ And he took away the young man’s allowance. ‘Either he gets a job or he starves,’ he told Doña Basilisa sternly. Her tears failed to move him. ‘He can dig trenches or split stones by the road, for all I care. But he has to learn to live off the sweat of his brow!’

  “Then, in April, the Americans joined the war in Europe, and Puerto Ricans were urged to volunteer. Don Pedro thought it was a wonderful opportunity for Diamantino to prove himself. It would turn him into a man, and he could also see the world. But Diamantino refused to even consider it.

  “‘I’m not going to join the army if it kills me,’ he said. ‘I’d rather go to jail than fight someone else’s war!’ To Don Pedro this was the last straw. Soon after that, he told Diamantino to get out of the house.

  “Diamantino disappeared from San Juan for a while and no one knew where he had gone. Doña Basilisa was hysterical, but then he turned up unexpectedly at the YMCA. He still didn’t have a job, except for an occasional freelance piece at El Diario de la Mañana, and he would have starved if not for Doña Basilisa, who turned up every afternoon at the Y with a steaming ambrera at the bottom of which there were always a number of folded dollar bills conveniently hidden under the large, bland-tasting Maria biscuits. The boy was proud. He wore his linen suit and his father’s diamond studs whenever he undertook a freelance piece at the newspaper, or just sat in a café reading. His linen shirts were soiled and crumpled and his fake collar and shirt cuffs were scruffed, but he didn’t care. Then he appeared unexpectedly at La Fortaleza the night of Madame’s reception. He hadn’t been invited, but everyone knew who he was and no one dared turn him back at the door.”

  This was the story Juan told me about Diamantino Márquez, better known on the island as El Delfín. I found it fascinating, like everything else in his baroque, tropical paradise.

  15

  MR. DANDRÉ LEFT FOR New York the next day and we all felt a huge weight lift off our shoulders. He stifled Madame, and she had been pulling at the bit for some time now. She was so pleased at being on her own, she forgot all about the sniper at La Fortaleza’s garden. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of being left alone. After all, she had Masha to protect her and her dancers to keep her company. We were all elated.

  The governor sent Madame a message, inviting her to stay at his house for the duration of her husband’s trip. He was worried that something might happen to her in the Malatrassi after the attempt, and at the mansion she would have police protection at all times. Madame was grateful—La Fortaleza had large, airy rooms and she would be a lot more comfortable there. “You’ll have to go with me, Masha,” she said. “You know I’m lost without you!” I moved our things to the mansion that same day, and the rest of the troupe stayed at the hotel. Dandré left in a dark mood. Now he had no recourse but to leave Madame with me. We went shopping in the old city, which had many European-style boutiques and cafés, and visited the medieval forts. Every night she was wined and danced by the governor himself. What more could she want?

  A few days later one of the secret-service men at La Fortaleza knocked on Madame’s door to let her know she had a visitor. It was a reporter from the Puerto Rico Ilustrado, who wanted to do an interview. Madame herself opened the door: she was wearing her exercise clothes and I had just combed her hair, which she wore tied back at the neck in a chignon with a yellow silk handkerchief. Madame invited the young man to sit down and went on with her routine, doing pliés and ronds de jambe as she held on to the back of a chair.

  The reporter was stylishly dressed, with a vest and a silk butterfly tie, and he was wearing sunglasses. Assuming a pose, he took out his notebook and gold pen.” Rogelio Tellez, pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “Is it dark enough for you?” my mistress asked maliciously.

  Rogelio shook his head. “Cats can see better in the dark, Madame. And so do I,” he joked conceitedly.

  Rogelio was the son of a rich hacendado who wrote for the Puerto Rico Ilustrado as a hobby. He had his poems published there as payment for his work as a reporter. The magazine was enormously popular with the bourgeoisie, since they showed up in it constantly. Rogelio brought us a copy: there were photographs of all the elegant dinner parties, picnics, and thés dansants attended by the well-to-do. When I saw the magazine, I knew immediately our ballets were going to be a success in San Juan. The well-to-do on the island reminded me of the Russian nobility. They were living in a dream world, with palaces by the seashore and summer homes in the mountains, while everybody else starved. Maybe we ought to dance Le Miroir for them, I thought. They might wake up before it shattered.

  Unfortunately, the young man hadn’t done his homework and he asked Madame all the wrong questions, blinking behind his thick glasses like a
myopic bat. What did she think of the Russian Revolution? Did Madame believe it was justified? Would she say that her art was an anachronism in a world of striking workers, violent coups, and peasant massacres?

  So the red fox was out of the hole; the young man was a Bolshevik sympathizer! Madame didn’t let him know she had caught on. She talked only about the weather, the impossible heat, the tasteless American food at the Malatrassi. The reporter had to come down a notch. Where did Madame learn to dance? Who were her mentors? Whom did she emulate when she danced? And then finally the worst faux pas of all: How old was she?

  My mistress blanched and began to arch her toes, as she did whenever she got angry. “Madame has always been Madame,” she said in an icy tone. “I don’t copy anyone. When I was admitted to the Imperial Ballet I was already prima ballerina. And my age is a secret no one has ever dared ask.”

  The young man was so wrapped up in his role as “dance critic” that he didn’t notice anything was amiss. Rogelio fumbled with his notes, looking for his next question, and silence followed, during which one could have heard a pin drop. “Tell the young man the interview is over, won’t you, Masha, dear?” Madame ordered, turning her back to Rogelio and glancing at me over her shoulder.

  Her right foot began to beat impatiently on the floor and I signaled to the young man that he had to leave, but a photographer squeezed in the door and began taking “flashlights”—as the recently invented flashbulb photos were called. Madame was furious. “How dare you!” she said, wrenching the expensive camera away from him. Quick as lightning, she ran to the window and let it drop four floors below. “I’m not going to let a provincial little twit like you snatch my image and publish it for free in your magazine when I’m paid thousands of dollars in Paris and New York to pose!”

  I was screaming and dragging Rogelio out the door—fortunately he was at least six inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than I—when the young man, who was hanging on to the doorjamb, turned around and begged: “Please sign my shirt cuff, Madame. I promise I’ll never wash it.” Instead of getting angrier, my mistress burst out laughing. And she signed the cuff before the secret service took Rogelio away.