One Man Dancing

by Patricia Keeney

  “Turn around. Bend over and hold your buttocks apart.”

  Aware of the flashlight’s close heat, Charles burns with indignation, could burst into flame as the guard examines his rectum, pressing and poking with a stumpy thumb.

  He is given back his clothes, led away to a holding cell and kept overnight. Next morning a different guard wakes him with a plastic cup of watery orange juice and instructs him to get ready to leave.

  “Can I at least have some breakfast?” The guard, whose English is no doubt perfect, mumbles something brusque in Swedish and leaves him. He is finally given a full meal after which papers are signed under the supervision of two officers who now escort him everywhere.

  “Where is my suitcase?” He is told not to worry. It is already on the plane. Soon, he is shepherded towards the SAS departure gate where a plane for Rome awaits him.

  When he gets off, he is met by an Italian immigration officer and marched yet again into police custody amidst a barrage of curiosity seekers. One passenger from the plane, an elderly lady with a small powdery face wrinkled up like a question mark, keeps asking Charles, “What did you do? What did you do?”

  The police in Rome are very upset with him. They seem to have taken it as a personal insult that a foreigner, a guest in their country — indeed, a refugee seeking shelter — should prefer Sweden to Italy, should risk so much for a cold dispassionate Scandinavian place that cannot compare with the myriad Italian flavours in which they, themselves, so happily swirl.

  “You don’t like Italian food? You don’t like espresso? You are crazy. You had a good life. Now you have messed everything up.” The police stand around him performing theatre, Italian style. Charles recognizes it immediately, having seen love spats on buses, pasta pots flung at husbands’ heads from loggia railings, smiling pickpockets caught red-handed, and beautiful women outraged at the wandering fingers of gentlemen in a crowded market.

  Masters of the grand gesture, the police too grunt and gesticulate, nod and shake, dramatizing all the emotion they feel, bringing it into the public arena so that everyone can emphatically assert what sheer folly it is to have turned one’s back on the life force that is Italy!

  “Please,” says Charles clearly and slowly, “may I make a telephone call?”

  He dials Beth’s number.

  “I knew it,” she says. “I told you not to go.”

  He expects her to help him. She is angry and hurt. Why didn’t he listen to her? Why did he take this risk alone? Doesn’t he trust her at all? Don’t they still care for one another?

  He knows she is right. “I’m not perfect,” he says. “I had to try this. I had to do something.”

  Finally she says she will get Father William to phone back. Minutes later, he does.

  The priest hadn’t even known Charles was gone. “My dear boy. Stay there. I am coming to get you. Now put on the chief officer.”

  “Thank God,” says Charles, handing the phone to his somewhat affronted captor.

  An hour later, in the upstairs offices of the police station, terms are negotiated. Papers signed. The Prodigal Son is finally embraced back at St. Paul’s by Beth, Father William, and an official from the American Church in Rome. God has welcomed him back into the fold. He is forgiven, not forsaken.

  In their rooms at the crypt, Beth faces him. She is in a black-and-white waitress uniform, looking more like an Italian maid than an African dancer. Ready for her first day, Charles tells her, as a servant. “Is this our destiny, Beth?”

  “For now, it is,” she says simply. “We did not choose ordinary lives, Charles. Or safe lives. Or secure lives. Our existence is not routine.”

  “But even when we do nothing, disaster happens.”

  “You did something. Something stupid.”

  “Will you still go to Canada?”

  “Yes,” says Beth.

  She is strong. Standing so straight in her starched squares against the cold dim stone of the crypt, a fierce cat dazzling in sunlight. As strong as he needs her to be.

  “Okay,” he says. “I will find a job here. I’ll become truly Italian.”

  Father William helps Charles get work at the Nigerian Embassy. His new role? A guard on the Ambassador’s personal staff, he will occupy an easy and comparatively lucrative position. Indeed, almost everything at the Nigerian Embassy is lucrative, given that the country seems to be floating on wells of oil. The Embassy adds new staff weekly. Africans are their obvious first choice for employment.

  Charles is to arrive every day at six a.m. Wear a uniform.

  He spends most of his days sitting on a chair outside one office or another reading. No one can get into these offices without walking by Charles and no one walks by Charles without clearance in advance. If someone in the office he is guarding wants something, they buzz and Charles answers over the intercom. When they go out, Charles opens and closes the doors. He plays this role with detachment, indolently sampling its pleasures.

  He luxuriates in the soft muted pinks and blues of the Embassy. To him, these colours are the essence of light, the evidence of life. Colours from the time of his childhood when women were wrapped in rainbows. The Embassy’s arches enchant him and he grows to appreciate the lavish rooms and their luminous glow.

  The Ambassador himself occupies a large pink room with blue brocade curtains, pale seashell tiles and blue satin couches, while the Cultural Attaché — someone Charles is trying to get to know — lounges calmly in creamy caramel.

  He finds himself dreaming often of home. But not today. As he begins his fifth week on the job, he is roused from his seat by unusual noises downstairs. He stands, riveted by the sounds of files overturned, emptied, drawers ripped open.

  He leaps to his feet. No longer merely playing soldier.

  The scale of this destruction is large. Fine things seem to be breaking everywhere. Charles moves quietly along the Renaissance railing that marks the musician’s gallery for evening parties, and peers carefully down. Through the thick plaster pillars, carved capitals and niches of tile and stone, past a black Madonna smiling serenely aloft, he sees huge potted plants being smashed, crockery shattering onto stone floors, and the large patio windows splintering.

  He watches as four young men and two women, about his own age, shout in unison with each new attack on some exquisite item in the room. The vandals are Africans, not Italians. Nigerian students demanding to see the man in charge of educational grants. When the attaché opens his office door, the students stop their rampage and let loose a volley of vituperation.

  “We are hungry. We are broke,” they are saying. “We were promised grants for study abroad. But the grants have stopped and we can’t live anymore. No one will listen to us.”

  “The government that promised you money,” says the attaché, “did not get re-elected. The new government is not honouring previous promises. I am sorry about that but your actions are not going to help you. This is no way to communicate. We have already called the police.”

  “What are we supposed to do? We cannot live this way.”

  “I have no instructions from our government about this. I am only a civil servant.”

  Sirens scream around the building.

  Charles unlocks an office and looks out the window to see what is going on in the street. Carabinieri have surrounded the embassy. He watches them storm in (grateful they are not on his floor) with sub-machine guns and tear gas. He hears them shouting to one another something about “terroristi.” Their compatriots outside are trying to tell the police that this is a legitimate protest.

  In the next moment, the students in the Embassy all drop to their knees and do not move. One by one, they are handcuffed and led away. Everyone is arrested. As they are shoved out, they can be heard imploring the attaché to help them.

  Charles tries to make sense of the situation. They have been brave, if mor
e than a bit foolhardy, in their quest. He admires their boldness and determination, the way they have taken it upon themselves to correct an injustice.

  But it is not his fight. He has deserted his fight.

  Robert remains among the missing. No doubt, thinks Charles, the man is still moving in circles of power and pleasure for political ends. Organizing parties. Spending his time impressing people, elegantly sporting new clothes, nibbling finger foods, sipping fine wines, nudging beautiful women. Or waging war against corruption.

  While Charles tortures his own head with images of himself, playfully flexing his muscles for photos with beautiful women in his starched embassy uniform.

  But when he looks in the mirror, he sees a ghost. Drifting. If he looks long enough there is nothing but vapour. He has begun to disappear.

  When he looks again he sees a very different Charles dancing out of the blankness.

  The worst news is sudden. On the Spanish Steps. Late one night where he sits arm in arm with Beth. Inventing a future.

  “Robert is dead.” Kiri arrives in near hysteria.

  “Not true.” Charles’ statement is absolute.

  “He is dead,” says Kiri through tears. “In Kenya.”

  Charles watches her dazed, traversing the full width of each step, struggling, as she climbs, with words. “He is gone. I heard it on the radio. The reports were unclear but he is dead….”

  “How?”

  “They think he was poisoned. In his hotel room. They found him dead. A woman followed him upstairs. An hour later, someone called, asked them to investigate. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

  Charles folds up inside. Grinds to a halt. Robert. The Priest. Trapped, burnt out, ravaged by visions. And a woman.

  The three of them make their way awkwardly down the steps, clattering like spilled marbles. Weaving and swaying in sorrow, barely holding each other up. Then stop at a fountain. Incredulous.

  “He loved his lives. All of them,” says Beth.

  “He loved us.” Kiri barely whispers the words.

  “And he died for all his lives,” murmurs Charles.

  Collecting themselves, they hurry back to St. Paul’s.

  The next day, still dazed, he knocks quietly on Father William’s door. Inside, among the painted china cups, behind a thick wall of brocade curtain, he tells the priest that he must leave.

  “You have a good life in Rome and a safe one,” says Father William.

  “I need to start again.”

  “So will you go with Beth to Canada?”

  Father William is convincing with his descriptions of a land that is a gentler version of America, a land with fewer politics to worry about. “And employment opportunities falling from the sky like snowflakes.”

  Charles begins to think more and more of Canada. He looks through library books and tourist guides. He and Beth discuss a joint move. She would love him to be with her. A land without political upheaval. A stable place. No more embassy work.

  Father William has agreed to check into the forms, the interviews, the complications.

  “I will go to Canada,” Charles finally decides.

  Robert, he recalls, had spoken once of Canada. A summer festival. A few of the company had done a very truncated version of Renga Moi in a place called Edmonton.

  Charles would ask to go to Edmonton. A city obviously interested in African theatre. He applies for a visa to Canada. “I have always wanted to go to Edmonton,” he tells the surprised immigration officer at the Canadian Embassy.

  He and Beth will formally become a couple, at least for visa purposes.

  Beth’s visa comes first. Clearly they have nothing against African women in Canada. When the two inquire about employment, they are told that she can always go into domestic service.

  “Ah,” says Charles knowingly, though he is not quite sure what that would involve in Canada. However, the Canadians remain unconvinced that he — listed for visa purposes as a dancer with some drumming skills — will find work as easily as this young woman will. “But she can ultimately help sponsor you,” he is told.

  At the airport twelve weeks later, they are both tearful. “I will do anything to join you in Canada,” he tells her. “Wait for me.”

  “We are together now Charles. I trust you. And because I trust you I will wait. We really will be a couple.”

  With fear and sadness, he watches her disappear into the departure lounge. He knows she is frightened. He realizes he has come to love her. He is also her brother, her protector and shield. Together, he consoles himself, they will start their own small village among giant trees, a garden off the dirt track that disappears into the warm midday bush.

  Letters from Edmonton begin to arrive. In the beginning they arrive regularly. Letters detailing how strange she feels on her own. How strange her life seems without him. How polite Canadians are. How comfortably hot it is in August. How she is searching for work. How she has found a job as housekeeper. Then as a waitress.

  Eventually, the letters stretch from daily to weekly. Ultimately, he is surprised when they come at all. She has met someone Charles thinks.

  One humid afternoon in the chilly crypt, Father William approaches him. He asks Charles to rethink his plans. Once more. To help a young lady named Christina. A Swede as it turns out. A careful chiseller of ecclesiastical song. Christina. She is stuck in a convent in frosty Stockholm and yearns to melt her voice and expand her art in the warmth of operatic Italy.

  “The Vatican organization that sponsors this congregation has offered her board and lodging but she needs a sponsor here. A sort of family here. You could be that family.”

  “Family?”

  “She needs a husband, Charles. At least on paper.”

  Charles is now beginning to see what Father William is really saying. “You mean marry her?”

  “You could see where it leads. Perhaps it could lead back to Sweden. She is a Swedish citizen. If you married her, you would be eligible for Swedish citizenship as well. You could get a proper passport. You could travel more easily.…”

  Since Beth’s departure, Father William has watched his loneliness grow. His own inquiries to the Canadian Embassy have confirmed that Charles’ refugee status is far down the immigration list. The only way Christina could stay in Italy for any length of time would be to have a relative here. Perhaps, thinks Father William … perhaps he can help them help each other.

  Charles begins to see possibilities. There is virtually no one left in Rome of the original Abafumi company now. Everyone has moved off. He has become a solitary musical note looking for its own special tune in a city flooded with sculpture.

  Charles keeps returning to the Spanish Steps to speak to Robert there, a ghost in the night. They linger together watching couples cupped in one another. Robert whispers devilishly in his ear something about white women who let you make them laugh.

  A Swedish wife? Well, maybe.

  Yes. He’ll do it.

  Six weeks later, Christina arrives. Charles follows the priest through buttery sun slabs on the church floor, groomed and shiny as a colt in his new church-bought suit.

  “Come and meet your bride.”

  In the dim recesses of the cloister, he sees her. Still as prayer, she twines among slender stone stems, a pale green vine stretching from its root. Bleached to crystal by a life of nuns and sacred music. Christina, the Lord’s snowy sister.

  They meet. They talk.

  For days on end, they whisper and grow to know one another. Gradually, they accept the proposition. Each has an agenda. Unspoken. They wander together. Innocently and unwittingly, they allow each other perilous freedom.

  A week later, they marry in Father William’s study.

  Charles borrows money from the priest to book a honeymoon night at a large hotel. Christina tiptoes into the room, like an angel try
ing new wings. Birdlike and ready to pounce, she perches on the edge of a chair surveying, her eyes berry bright. Delicate as alabaster, a butterfly from a dark chrysalis, she understands his need this night.

  On the big blue bed of a suite in the Albernini, over a mirror of blood red tiles they allow themselves to drift in a shallow lake of love.

  Six weeks later, Christina announces to Charles that she is pregnant.

  “Wha-a-at?” he stammers. “You didn’t fix anything?”

  “Fix anything? Isn’t that up to the man?”

  Charles suddenly realizes how innocent she really is.

  “I didn’t know. The nuns didn’t tell me anything about that. Except that I must be married if I wanted to come to Italy.”

  Charles is in shock. This marriage was just a temporary thing. But a child! He is confounded. He sees his dilemma clearly. He has begun an entirely new life.

  Even Robert clucks in his ear. “How can you spend yourself so carelessly, scatter yourself this way? Soon there will be nothing left.”

  Charles smoulders. Christina slowly turns to ice, a frosty madonna singing over her immaculate conception, glass hardening around the divine spark she carries inside.

  In her sixth month, she tells him that she will return to Sweden. Alone. They sit on narrow sun-drenched stone steps. “I will take care of the child,” she says simply. “Father William assured me that the marriage shouldn’t cause you any problems in Canada. It was never registered in a civil court. Only God knows that we were married. I will agree to say whatever you need me to say.”

  They sit silent for a long time. Charles takes her hand — a wayward flake of snow — and touches her swollen belly. He feels proud and unnerved that this was so easy to do, begin another being, some version of himself that will go on and on now. With or without him.

  They know that whatever brief moment they had here in Rome ended as quickly as it began. She stands and Charles lets her go. Watches her walk up the shadowed steps, out the door under the winged angels of a yellow street lamp. Back into her world.