Fiction from The Literary Review

Señor Alvaro

H. E. FRANCIS

S eñor Alvaro! Señor Alvaro! the children shout. How they love a clown! This is his last performance of the day. He is all fire. And the park is all white fire, sunlight everywhere. Even on the alameda leading to the promenade, where the trees are thick with new life, the chestnuts in full bloom are heralds with great white torches. Across the promenade, the water of the estanque streaks in crystal arrows where rowboats and canoes cut the surface. Beyond, the walls of the Crystal Palace shower light. And the air! Acrid sweet with magnolia and acacia and rhododendron and hedges and bushes.
     He darts out from behind his screen. They are sitting in a semi-circle on the ground, new faces and some familiar, some with some parents, others who halt, curious or captured, in their roaming along the promenade, where both sides are lined with vendors and entertainers, all trying to cull a few pesetas. He loves the crowd, everywhere you look people far and near moving and moving.
     He is excited. Today is the day. Long he has spent preparing the new act, strenuous—he must be cautious. Impelled, anxious, he goes through his preliminary antics with summoned agility:
     He is lost in these woods, frantically chasing the echo of his own voice crying Help!
     Now he is a rooster dominating the barnyard and charges to peck the children dodging and ducking gleefully.
     Now he is the board man who cannot bend and must obey his shoes, which pinch, dart, run into each other . . .
     Now, to test. First, his prelude. He stands and raise his arms. The wide, loose sleeves hang like dead wings. He flaps, trying to fly. His arms whip Fly Fly, but fail. He slumps sadly. Suddenly his head cocks toward a limb. He toddles over, climbs high, sits, flaps—hangs his head, sad—falls backward, hangs by his legs, then flips to screams from them, and somersaulting through the air lands on his feet, swaying as they clap and laugh and cry Señor Alvaro.
     He is Señor Alvaro but he is not Señor Alvaro. He is Señor Alvaro to the children. He is Señor Alvaro to the agent who sometimes contracts him to entertain children at schools, church groups, orphanages, private parties. He is Señor Alvaro to his sometime partner, Cruz. And simply from familiarity with his professional name he is Señor Alvaro to his neighbors. But if they knew his name, surely they have forgotten or cannot pronounce it. Only Doctor Martínez at the clinic, months ago now, called him by his name. The very sound of his name made him doubt where he was. It made him afraid this city would disappear.
     In his other city, before he was Señor Alvaro the clown, he was a carpenter. House after house he worked on, years of houses. His own too he built: with a view of green, so green, of the river and the valley she loved.
     But it takes only an instant to destroy a house, a town, life . . .
     This city is a hard landscape, not soft green, no shady trees, noisy, but when silent the silences are different. This is why he loves Retiro park—some green, if not that other green spilling, shrubs and flowers all kinds, and in spring and summer the rosaleda its roses all colors—and why he loves to go down and sit on the bank of the Manzanares and watch the water go and go as if no time, as if nothing ever was but this indifferent motion.
     When he came, alone, to this city, and thought of them, he could not name, he could not name. Names were hot brands that seared his heart, his lips. Names filled his head with fire, ruins, flesh. Like so many immigrants he worked at construction to eat, survive—seeing buildings grow walls of brick and cement, on his way home each night treading stone, no earth responding to his feet—but he had no heart for it. Survive. Back there, then, his one instinct had been escape. He had not thought survive. For what survive? For me survive?
     Night after night their faces blinded, to all else blinded.
     From the window of his piso Señor Alvaro can look down into the pit. After the demolition of the building next door, when digging for a basement the crew found bones—4,000 years old, from the Bronze Age, the TV said. For days he watched the archaeologists brush earth from the skeletons as tenderly as if they were living flesh. The three lay in a fetal position, whole, perfect, smaller than modern men.
     Since the demolition, Señor Alvaro is grateful for more light in his piso, but there is the darkness of bones.
     At last they removed the bones. The escavated basement is empty except for piles of escombros, cement and dirt piled high around that pit as if a monstrous mole had left it. A yellow plastic band cordons it off. Nothing but a hole. Now the City and the builders are still debating whether to build an apartment building according to contract or build without a basement to avoid disturbing possible human remains. He is glad it is over. He is grateful each day for the children, glad to escape the noise and dust of the excavation, the workers' voices, then the voices of the archaeologists bent over bones, dusting.
     Ruins. Hadn't he had enough of ruins?
     Since the discovery, they have unearthed other evidence of Bronze Age dwellings when digging for highway M-45, of a Mussulman community under the Plaza de Ramales, of Roman dwellings in Carabanchel when excavating for line five of the Metro. What more? To dig to find death, this increasing tribute to death in monuments and museums? Under Madrid must be layers of cemeteries.
     Bones, the archaeologists want?
     He could take them to bones.
     In his own town he liked seeing houses burgeon like plants, refuges for happy families; seeing his city grow, extend, flower into a future; hearing familiar voices in the street, schoolyard, park, garden. He had never realized the joy, the comfort, of voices. Then, he could not imagine a time without their voices.
     When he thinks then, he thinks Don't think! but he sees his three, mine, and her.
     Now these, every day these children are his. He wants nothing more than to give them the habit of laughter, the comfort of laughter, this invisible wall against—
     Pain.
     But, Doctor Martínez said, it is necessary that you come regularly, to build up your body. If not . . .
     My body's always been very strong.
     Sometimes even a very strong body cannot resist . . .
     Doctor Martínez cannot know what this body has resisted.
     Invisible things are always looking for the weak spot.
     I know.
     We have to rid the body of them or, if that fails, keep them at bay. That's why I'm here.
     And me. Señor Alvaro laughed, to mask.
     And we want to keep you here.
     Doctor Martínez could not know who is not here, and what.
     But you mustn't fail your body or one day in the future . . .
     Future.
     What your lungs show is a new, resistant form of what we had thought completely obliterated, which, to be frank, if not treated . . . The body is a battleground.
     Everywhere, even in the air, killers.
     Señor Alvaro left but drifted along the sidewalk, feeling disoriented, till he entered the Retiro. Walking along one of the circuitous dirt paths on the slopes beyond the Crystal Palace, he was startled when a little boy came screaming out of the bushes, hysterical with fear of a dog twice his size. Behind him, the dog halted, head cocked, curious. The boy threw himself against him, clutched, and climbed up till he gripped his neck. The shock of such closeness, the sudden warmth, made his blood surge. Don't be afraid, he said. But the boy cried Don't let him bite me. From the far side of the shrubs a woman called Federico! Federico! But the boy did not respond, his fingers dug in, eyes fixed on the dog. The dog just wants a friend. Don't you? No, he cried. Look. He's sad. You don't want him to go away hurt, do you? No, he said, if dubious. Can I set you down now? Just take my hand. Federico! the woman called, closer. Your mother? Yes. But the boy was watching the dog, curious now, so he said Look, let's make friends with it. Crouching, with his hands and soft words he lured the dog—Come, come on; here, boy. More than trusting, eager, the dog came to him, let him caress his head and back, and pressed for more. When he stood, the dog leaped straight up against him. He seized his chance, took the dog's paws. See, he said and, turning, made a kind of dance with his partner. The boy broke into laughs. Even the dog seemed to delight in it because he barked like talking. Now you, he said. Calm now, the boy took the paws, so heavy those paws that the boy had to rest them on his shoulders. They circled like strange mates when suddenly the woman appeared between the bushes, evidently startled and then delighted because instead of breaking into a scold she burst into laughter at that pair, clapped her hands like a child and cried out in delight Oh, Federico, Federico. He released the dog, laughing heartily with his mother, eager, so eager he couldn't speak fast enough:
     HesavedmefromthedogItscaredmeHecalledthedogHeletmedancewithitWatch me—
     But his face went puzzled. The dog was gone.
     His mother said How'd you get away from us so fast? Your father's waiting. I thought you—
     Oh, forgive me, señor . . . ?
     And spontaneously he uttered—for the first time in how long, and how strange it sounded from his own mouth spoken!—his name.
     Which she bungled.
     Which came from her mouth Aaaa—al—vaaa—ro.
     I'm so grateful, she said. Anything could have happened to him. You know how quickly children slip off. And I hate to think what the day could have been . . . Come, Federico. Say goodbye to the señor.
     Wait. Tell me your name?
     Aziel, the boy said.
     Aziel.
     The boy smiled and waved. Goodbye, Señor Alvaro.
     Alvaro.
     That day he discovered laughter.
     The solace of laughter.
     And that night he conceived Señor Álvaro, Clown. He discovered a way of dying into.That night began his new life; and each night, after all day bricking and cementing, he planned and invented for the day when.
     Saturdays and Sundays, late mornings and early evenings, as part of the crowd he browsed the acts of the clowns and puppeteers in the Retiro all the hours they worked, like the children submerging himself in the experience but also as the clown observing. He discovered in himself, as if born for it, something latent burgeoning late in him. He could throw a shadow, take a pose, make a gesture, dramatize a basic characteristic, but above all invent and improvise in the act. And he realized the joy which the children's reactions must give those payasos and titiriteros performing with such heart.
     That was where he met la argentina, Cruz, immigrant too, or exile. She was small, lithe, sensitive to the least flagging in the children's transport, in an instant shifting, innovating, adapting. Remarkable!
     She had—how could she help it?—spotted him.
     You're the most frequent and oldest child at my show.
     You make me one, he said. It's wonderful.
     You're a clown and won't admit it?
     Yes, but not you yet.
     She laughed. Now you are a clown! But are you really?
     Tomorrow. Next week. Next month.
     Why not now?
     Now?
     Show me.
     You mean it?
     Why say it if not? Show me.
     So he did his boa constrictor, on the ground feeling his own miraculous coiling, and up a thin acacia climbing, and down head first, approaching her till he was close upon her now with his hands making a mouth to swallow her.
     Bravo! She clapped.
     I made a whole zoo, a catalog of animals and rare ones too—to teach the children the names, if I can make the animals impressive and memorable.
     Obviously you're inventive and have plenty of ideas.
     I think so!
     Would you want to try some teamwork with me for the schools?
     Almost, he could not speak.
     She must have realized. Tell me next Saturday, she said.
     No, no. It's just that . . . I didn't mean no . . . Yes.
     She took his hand. I'm Cruz Amparo.
     Alvaro.
     But . . . Alvaro? Her question held up to him his Slavic accent and his uncertain tongue.
     It's who I am.
     Because . . . Wasn't he?
     She doubted, he saw, but accepted.
     He loved inventing, enjoyed practices with Cruz; reveled in the faces in classes, in the park; felt at home after, when he and Cruz stopped at the San Millán or La Bobia or at her place with her German shepherd, Zeno, nudging his thigh affectionately.
     Cruz. She was relief of another kind, and soon knew it and accepted and wanted no more if, she seemed to intuit, he could not—even with all his tenderness, as she must have imagined with all her understanding—give, again.
     What he was for were the children.
     Survival now meant the children.
     And how they loved the acts! They—he and Cruz—were constantly inventing new ones, not to repeat, nothing to stale by habit. Performing with her he could talk less, no accent, no butchered words.
     How the children screamed with pleasure when Cruz grabbed his hand—and it came off! Grabbed his head—and off it came! He fell to the ground and wriggled in his cloth skin like a worm as Cruz asked his fallen head what its name was—earthworm it replied—and asked his head to name other creepy-crawlies—centipede, millipede, woodworm . . . And she called out to them You say them, and with each new word came the chorale of voices: earthworm, centipede, millipede, woodworm . . . He and Cruz gave prizes to students who remembered and recited all the names.
     When they sang, even the light sang.
     Sometimes another clown or puppeteer came to watch, as he used to watch Cruz, without animosity but with open admiration, which flattered and animated him.
     Sometimes in a class he suddenly leaped into the midst of the children and twirled his arm until it stopped at the chosen one: What's your name? Elvira! You be the clown, Elvira. And how they giggled at Elvira's hilarious attempts, which made even the teacher join in.
     But most he loved when the littlest ones sat on his knees or in his lap, so at home. Home! But the youngest were all questions, terrible because innocent:
     How many clowns in your family? We're all clowns. We're a whole country of clowns. Where do they live? Live? He laughs, gestures. In fields and woods and valleys. Fields! Only animals live in fields. Yes, only animals. Far away? Very, very far. Where? Out there. East. All those clowns must need a big house. Oh, very big, big as the world, big as yours. Oh no, my piso's just big enough for me and mamá and papá.
     Now the moment comes. He disappears behind his screen. In an instant he emerges crawling on all four and halts before the platform. Then, hands still on the ground, he poises and daring his body as never before he makes a lithe leap onto the platform, stands a second, and spreads his arms out to fly. The children gasp as he makes a leap skyward, jerks the hidden cords, makes a swooping arch; and to the children's screams of fear he falls—but instantly inflates, miraculously transformed into a fat man. When he hits the ground, he bounces upright on his feet to wild cries of joy, a frenzy of clapping and, faces happy with excitement, they shout Señor Alvaro! Señor Alvaro! And when he suddenly deflates and sinks back into the slack, thin clown, they scream louder, clapping and shouting Señor Alvaro! Señor Alvaro!
     After his show as usual he will go back to his tiny rooms in the Rastro. He does not like to end the shows, does not like the thought of leaving the children and the park to return to his routine of each afternoon. But the dogs will be waiting, expectant, and he anticipates seeing their heads rise and turn when they recognize his footsteps, leap to life and rush to meet him, wagging, crowding for his hand.
     Two Sundays ago when he came to the excavation, the three dogs—thin, mangy pariahs—were lying like comrades in hunger. One raised its head, but at once as if unable to hold it up rested it again on its paws. The excavated pit was already filling with shadows. Behind the buildings, the dark was waiting. In his cubicle he put together some leftovers and went down to feed them. They came to life, impatient to gulp and swallow, lingering, eager at each move of his hand, wagging. He stroked each a little. They followed to the door and gazed up, insatiate or grateful.
     Always he walks home. He does not like underground or the enclosure of busses and taxis. He walks through the Centro, along the assuring streets, past assuring walls, people. He carries the children's scents on his clothes, in his head the high innocent pitch of their voices, their untarnished laughter. He enters the dark corridor and touches the light switch, which begins ticking its three minutes of life, weak light in the dark. In that decaying labyrinth, he can find his way blind to his door. He misses the sunlight. The walls are too close; after the park they feel tight. He wants more light. Electricity is expensive here, but before the darkness falls he puts all the lights on. He does not look out the window down into the pit.
     After a bite, he sits in the kitchen nook. At his little table he makes crude sketches of acts he will give life to. Before bed, though he is no believer, he prays for the children. Lying in bed, slow to sleep, he relives the day, lets the children run visual before his eyes in those Retiro paths of light.
     Then to lie down in darkness.
     In rooms without.
     Now the afternoon is waning, but to catch all sun the crowd in the Retiro stays. Busy, the promenade. Couples are lined up at the boathouse, canoes streak through the lake of light, the popcorn and ice cream stands are flushed, bold their yellow and white stripes, and from all along the lake comes the sporadic music of guitars, recorders, violins, flutes sometimes overridden by the vendors' cries as they hawk ceramics and watches and caricatures and Tarot readings . . .
     Now the moment comes, his finale. He disappears behind the board screen. His stick, a kind of pogo stick, is as tall as he is. It stands at some distance from him, manipulated by fine nylon thread invisible to them so that he can make it bob toward him, then retreat. He walks away from it. The stick moves toward him. He turns, startled—You called me? He approaches. When it bobs toward him, he leaps back. The stick menaces. It is alive. He circles closer, trying to be friends, but it bobs frenetically. The children are laughing, but something . . . He quick closes his eyes. Something . . . He opens them. He bolts. A skeleton! This he has not planned. Bones. Natasa! At the thought of her he goes weak. Bones. He sees his three. Mine. Bones. The skeleton bobs at him, he dodges, the children scream with delight, but something, the stick . . . Ibrahim! Meli! Mileva! He is sweating. Pain erupts at his temples. He must keep it from the children. I must not let it, must not—His head reels. But he must not lose the children's attention. He charges at the skeleton, misses, withdraws, circles; and as he circles closer and closer, the children become quickly absorbed, silent, tense. He has them back, yes, but must now startle with laughter, laughter thrown up around them to ward off, keep them from. He sees the pit, the three lying there. The skeleton stands waiting. He sways, wobbles, falls—they shriek—but he bounces—they laugh—and he falls again and bounces up. But he can hardly stand. The children are floating up into the trees, catch in the leaves, water glitters over them, the promenade wriggles, people fold and tumble, everything is quivering. He stops. He sets his legs apart, wide, to brace. His legs tremble, his heart palpitates, his lungs suck hard, but he laughs with them. More! they cry, más más más!—shrieking, laughing, clapping. He falls again, but in a sweat stands; and as they shout laugh scream he thrusts out his arms, jerking the cord, and falls and bounces, laughing. This time, sweating weak worn, he cannot stand. To the sound of their laughter, he rolls—not part of his act, this, not—rolls away, off, without collecting, with no farewell, fleeing into the darkening alameda toward the end, where the city waits.
     Señor Alvaro! they cry after him. You forgot your stick. Your stick, Señor Alvaro! Señor Alvaro!