The Sisters Mao

by Gavin McCrea

  The speaker on stage, who until this moment had resisted giving Eva any attention, choosing instead to direct his remarks to the front row of the stalls, could resist no longer. He broke off and threw an arm out in her direction.

  —What are you doing? he roared into the microphone. Get down from there! Somebody stop her, she’s going to jump!

  The panel members, previously uncertain of what course of action to take, rose to their feet and barked orders for her to get down. The heads in the stalls turned backwards and up. In the central aisle a group of anarchists heckled and waved their black placards. Behind her, the diffused chatter ceased and individual voices called out.

  —Oh, just push her, for fuck’s sake!

  —Jump!

  —Hysteric!

  —Look at that bitch!

  —It’s not normal!

  —Shake your ass!

  —Tits out! Tits out!

  Once in position on the rail, Eva’s first idea was to keep her torso rigid and her arms held straight up, and to stay absolutely still, so as to create a kind of visual silence, such as a statue, but, fighting against the urge to manifest, she tired quickly. From a neutral standing position, she tested out some small movements while inwardly watching her centre of balance. She found that she could not safely tip forward or to the sides. She could lean backward, but only lightly, for fear that Álvaro would not be able to sustain her. Any slight rotation or undulation made her unstable and would have to be avoided.

  Her limits established, she began to enlarge her gestures, to make them louder.

  All right now, let me show you.

  Her motion soon assumed a recognisable form, which, because determined by the need to keep balance, was rigid and precise and unsparing: technologic.

  —Eva, what the fucking fuck are you doing?

  —One more minute, Álvy. Please.

  In time with the silent rhythm which pulsed about her, she hammered and churned and looped and jerked: arms like pistons and drills, hands like cogs, head like a robot’s.

  Ha ha, this is how.

  Expelling all hesitation and deliberation, finding finesse even in the brutality, she mimicked the movements of machines on the factory assembly line and at the construction site. Then, without needing to modify much, she switched to mimicking the movements of police officers in a riot and soldiers in a war.

  Look, look at what I’m doing.

  For it took someone extraordinary to do it: to draw upon and express a reality that was physical but which transcended objects.

  —Get down! Order please!

  She raised her face to the roof, supposing that it was leaking and that rain was coming in, when in reality it was sweat. The beating in her ears dissolved into taunts and claps and cheers and the yells of the chairman.

  —Order!

  And now Álvaro, hissing:

  —I’m finished with you, Eva. Do you hear me? It’s over.

  —Shut up and take some pictures.

  —What’re you talking about, I’m holding on to you.

  —Let go then.

  —You’re out of your mind.

  —Let go and take my fucking picture.

  She could feel him disobeying her by tightening his grip on her shins and applying a backward pressure. Readying himself to pull her down.

  —Now, Álvaro! Picture! Or we really are finished!

  Her weight passed onto her heels. Álvaro’s chosen method was to tip her back until she fell on top of him. It would have been dangerous to resist, so instead she concentrated her tension on the spot that he could not control: the mouth. It was decision time. In an instant it would be over. Was she going to speak?

  —

  As she toppled backwards, first she lifted up her arms, then her right leg, so that all of her weight pivoted on a single foot.

  —

  Now, with the air rushing past her, through her, she thought: no. Speaking would be a mistake. The physical quality of life, that was communicating.

  Pain: her bones collapsed onto Álvaro’s.

  Pain: the back of her skull collided with his jaw.

  Pain: her shoulder blades slammed against his ribs, and the impact cracked his camera.

  A moment then, and she could feel Álvaro writhe underneath her, could hear him heave. Winded, he was in the panicked state of believing that breath would never return.

  She rolled off him onto the carpet, which felt thick and soft, as welcoming as a mattress. Beside her, Álvaro turned onto his side and pulled his legs up to adopt the foetal position. She watched his face bloat and redden, his eyes balloon. A high-pitched wheeze issued from his throat.

  When finally the first breaths of his restored life came, he used them to gasp:

  —My Rolleiflex. My Rolleiflex.

  Many times in the past she had wanted to smash that camera, for it seemed that Álvaro had grown dependent on it, unable to see the world except through its lens. But the real act of destroying it, however accidental, did not feel good.

  —I’m sorry, baby, she said, and she really was.

  —Fuck you, Eva.

  The other Wherehouse members helped them to their feet and hustled them through the corridor of jeering bodies.

  —Wait! My boots!

  She ran back through the twisted faces, grabbed her boots, and then rejoined the others who were waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Together they went down and outside.

  On the steps of the theatre, a group of students dressed in costumes stolen from the dressing rooms — Arab sheiks, Sgt. Pepper’s Band, Batman, Martians — gave them a round of applause.

  —Oh fuck you, Eva said to them in French.

  Only idiots applaud. Real progressives rage.

  —What was that? said one of the Wherehouse members.

  —Know what you are, Eva? said another. An individualist. So bloody wrapped up in yourself, you don’t care about the group.

  —Bollocks, Eva said. I formed the bloody group. The group is my life.

  —Then you should have told us beforehand what you were planning.

  —I wasn’t planning anything. It just happened.

  Looking at their faces, Eva saw them changed. As she herself felt changed.

  Everything you do changes you a little.

  —Let me deal with this, guys, said Álvaro.

  In his shivering hands, a bit of plastic that had broken off his camera.

  —Deal with what? said Eva.

  —Do you have the key? he said. To the room?

  She took it from her pocket.

  —Give it to them, he said.

  She obeyed:

  —I didn’t want to be in charge of it in the first place.

  —Keep it safe, Álvaro said to the others. Make your way back to the room whenever you want. We’ll see you there later, or in the morning for the meeting. Me and Eva are going to go and have a little talk.

  He turned and set off through the throng towards rue de Vaugirard.

  Eva stayed where she was and watched him go.

  After a few strides, he glanced back. Seeing that she was not following, he returned. Threw his camera, the main body of it, at her feet.

  —Come the fuck on, Eva.

  Sighing, she knelt down to pick the camera up.

  —Leave it! he said. It’s useless.

  She stood back up and held out the camera, an offering.

  He opened the flap of his satchel so that she could put it inside.

  —There goes the photo exhibition, he said. None of the work we do in Paris will be documented. Are you happy?

  —No.

  —God, what a waste. What am I supposed to do now?

  —We’ll get you a new one.

  —With what money, Eva?

 
—I don’t know. You might have to wait till we get back.

  He jammed his fingers into his hair:

  —Fucking pointless being here now.

  —Don’t be like that. When we get back—

  —What? When we get back to London, then what?

  She could feel the other members, and beyond them the Odéon crowd, watching, relishing their quarrel.

  —I’m sure our parents wouldn’t mind paying for a new—

  —Whose parents?

  —Mine. We’ll ask mine.

  He laughed:

  —Your father? He’s broke.

  —He’s not broke.

  —Only because he’s a leech. Living off other people. First your mother. Now Doris Lever.

  —Shut up. You know I hate when you use information I’ve given you in confidence as a weapon against me.

  —What you don’t like is hearing the truth.

  —Look, I’ll ask Mama for some money.

  —Pah! You’re too proud to ask her for anything. No, no. As always, we’ll have to go to my parents—

  —Correction. Most of the time it’s my uncle Simon who bails us out.

  —except this time it’s not going to happen. I refuse to call them for more money. You broke my camera, so you’re going to have to replace it. Now, come on.

  He grabbed her arm and dragged her off.

  —We’ll see you guys later.

  Although his grip hurt and his pace forced her into a trot, she did not fight him.

  Further down rue de Vaugirard, when it was certain that she was submitting, he let her go. Released, she slowed her walk. Asserting his continued authority, he marched on, two steps ahead, all the while discharging an unbroken wind of Spanish curses.

  —I should have known when the vote went against you—

  —What vote?

  —You voted against going to the Odéon. I should have known that, when it went against you, you were going to act up. You don’t like—. Forget it.

  —What, Álvy? What don’t I like?

  —You don’t like losing to the group. You always want things to go your own way.

  —Look who’s talking.

  —Eva, if you don’t mind, we’re talking about you right now. And I think you know why.

  —For me it was just a stupid vote. And I wasn’t acting up in the theatre, I’m not a child. I’m a performer. It was spontaneous. It just came out of me.

  —What came out of you? I mean, what the hell was that?

  —I don’t know. What did it look like to you?

  —Pathetic. Pathetic was how it looked.

  —Now you’re just trying to shame me.

  —How can I shame someone who doesn’t have any shame?

  She folded her arms as a defence against this: it was not true. Shame was one of the few constants in her life. Regular and reliable, its attacks deformed even the undeformed joys. Often, when thinking about past performances, even the most successful of them, the shame was so acute that she could not bear to be inside her skin.

  —Someone had to do something, she said. You saw what was happening in that theatre. I saw your face, you hated it as much as me.

  —I didn’t hate it as much as that.

  —All of that spouting off?

  —I’ve never seen anything like it before. You’d never bloody see it in London. In Spain you’d be arrested.

  —And now that you’ve seen it, you’re a believer?

  —Jesus, that pisses me off.

  —What?

  —That you’re always already past things. Like you’ve seen everything, done everything, and can only get excited about the next thing that doesn’t exist yet. You’ve never seen a theatre occupation before either, or any other kind of occupation for that matter, so don’t put on the blasé act with me.

  —Oh do forgive me if I don’t get misty-eyed about some people camping out. And a student debate.

  —You’re impossible. De verdad.

  —Look. Álvy. As far as I could see, the yappers in that theatre were nothing but hypocrites. Did you see all of them sitting at that table? Pretending they’re involving people in the revolution when in fact, with their little show, they’re doing the reverse, inhibiting their involvement?

  —The revolution wasn’t happening in there, is that what you’re saying? Where is it happening then?

  —That remains to be seen. We’ve only been here a few hours.

  —It’s happening in your mind, by the sounds of it.

  —In my mind, yeah. And in your mind. And in the people’s mind.

  —An illusion? Revolution is one big fantasy, is that it?

  —No, it’s life.

  —Revolution is life?

  —Yeah. If it’s a real revolution, it doesn’t just happen in theatres. It happens everywhere. On the streets. In people’s homes. It’s like the Wherehouse manifesto says, Don’t enact. Act. Don’t imitate life. Live.

  They had reached the crossroads with boulevard Saint-Michel. Álvaro took her elbow before crossing through the debris on the road.

  —More revolutionary than the revolution, he said. That’s you, through and through.

  —Well, more revolutionary than those men in there, I hope so.

  —And me? he said. More revolutionary than me?

  —I didn’t say that, she said.

  Her relationship with Álvaro was in its essential ingredients a competition between ambitious minds. Am I able to form this man? It was a question of personal success. At the end of an argument with him, her mind would be exhausted. But she rarely lost.

  Álvaro had struggled through two years at the School of Economics. Ingrained in him was a Spaniard’s reverence for loyalty as the highest of human virtues, and at the LSE he failed to find anything with which he could form a lasting attachment. In his studies he was easily bored. As soon as he encountered a difficulty with a subject, his interest wandered away to another subject, often in a different field, where it stayed until it met a problem there. In his social relations the pattern was similar. One person seemed to embody the ideal of friendship until that person showed himself to be anything less than devoted, at which point another person had to be found and another friendship formed. In this way, life at the LSE provided him with a series of frustrations which led him to cease attending lectures altogether and to join the Radical Student Alliance. When even this turned out to be a disappointment — radicals, it transpired, understood less than anybody the meaning of allegiance — he began to question the value of life itself and ultimately to condemn it.

  After a string of bad grades in his second year, his parents procured, by unethical means, a doctor’s letter which won him a year’s leave of absence. Instead of catching up on his studies as they had intended, he spent the year running around with the theatre and film people, and dancing at the Ad Lib on Leicester Square — with such a lack of self-consciousness, Eva remembered, that he put all the professional actors in the shade. They met at a New Year’s party there, and he joined Wherehouse soon after, at first as a chronicler of the collective’s work, and subsequently as a full member. The following year, much to the outrage of his parents, he did not return to university. By then radical performance had become his employment; Wherehouse, with Eva at its core, his family; already in his relations with both, he had developed the angry loyalty of the old domestic animal.

  When Eva met him, he was depressed and drinking heavily, sleeping all week and partying all weekend; his parents were threatening hospitalisation. It was Wherehouse that saved him. That got him off the drink. Gave him a purpose. Lifted his spirit. It was Wherehouse that built him up from the ruin the LSE had made of him. Yet the curious thing was, once he was better and happy, Álvaro began to speak of the LSE in the fondest of terms, nostalgically, as upper-class boarders sometimes
came to speak of their alma mater: as a harsh and unforgiving environment, a kind of hell, but one which had made him what he was. Álvaro’s commitment to Wherehouse had not expunged from his mind the dream of future success in the world — success which he could visualise in no way other than going back to a university he hated, to study a subject he had scant interest in, and to pursue a related career, as a journalist or indeed as an economist, which actually would succeed in hospitalising him. Before agreeing to participate in a Wherehouse performance, he gave serious thought to what damage it might do to these magnificent prospects. Alone in his room, the door locked, he made lists for and against participating. Would the performance take place in a public space? Would the media be present? Would masks or make-up be used to hide his likeness? Was there the risk of arrest or of a future employer finding out he was there? It made Eva sad to know he struggled with such questions; that still he feared being a failure in his parents’ eyes. It was what made her pity him.

  She herself had attended drama school. Which was an exquisite rebellion against her own parents, whose perception was that drama schools were merely dressed-up finishing schools. The only people that went to the Royal Academy, they said, were girls who would once have been debs, rich Americans desirous of an English accent, and the less able daughters of the bourgeoisie who needed to be kept out of mischief until marriage. It was an old-fashioned view, formed in their youth and barely modified since, yet it was not entirely false. Two girls in her class of sixty-six had indeed been titled. And most of the rest were only a couple of strata below: the pillars of society.

  In common with her parents, Álvaro thought that drama school was a lesser kind of education. And she could not say that he was wrong. The Royal Academy did not have a system. A philosophy. When the teachers introduced the students to a method, they were quick to remind them that there was no single way to good acting; there was room for all kinds of approaches and for none at all. In class, references were made to Stanislavski and Brecht, but no one suggested a close reading of their theories. If so inclined, a student was expected to find out about them in her own time and decide their value for herself. It was Eva’s first real encounter with English eclecticism, and she was astonished and maddened by it. Presented as an open-minded acceptance of the equal validity of all methods, in fact it concealed a hostility to any method in particular — and went some way to explaining why the individual excellence of England’s actors was matched only by the general impotence of its theatres, which were the laughing stock of the continent.