Read Online The Acrobats by Mordecai Richler - Free Book Online Page B

back into a rooming house all the mattresses had had to be aired. The cracked springs were never mended.
    I know better than he does what he wants, she thought. For one thing this is not his home and the sadness of Europe is wrong for him. So is politics, Guillermo, and Pepe. His anger against his family and his country comes of love and later on we will go to his land. A man should have a home and a family for without it he is a tramp. We will have a fine home in the mountains. He shall have a room full of books, and I shall sew for our children in the parlour. We shall be happy and have many quarrels. When we die our children shall carry on.
    But the new will be strange. Perhaps the people won’t like me?
    André had left early. Last night he had been particularly restless in his sleep and twice Toni had had to get up to cover him. He had left a note.
    Darling,
    You looked so lovely asleep I didn’t dare wake you.
    A.
    Send Guillermo around to my room as soon as he shows up.
    She was in her dressing-gown, moving drowsily about the room, when she heard the knock on the door.
    “Pase.”
    Kraus entered the room and Toni shivered. Oh, my God, she thought. What if he saw him? What if they met in the hall?
    Kraus smiled secretively, trying to affect superiority.
    “You mustn’t come here,” Toni said.
    The room is full of sleeping smells, she thought.
Our
smells. She walked over to the window and opened it.
    “Why?”
    Toni wrapped her gown more closely around her body. Underneath she was naked and she felt he knew. She felt nauseous.
    “Why mustn’t I come here.”
    “You mustn’t,” Toni said. “I forbid it.”
    Kraus sat down on the bed. It was still warm and unmade. She was not alone last night, he thought.
    “Why?”
    “Please, go. Please.”
    Kraus felt uneasy. With men – real men – his exploits were sufficient proofs of his power. But although women were reduced to a groaning and passionate avowal of his manhood in bed they resented and even mocked him in the morning. He was afraid of women. It was a question of needs.
    “I used to collect stamps,” he said. “I had a beautiful collection. Theresa burned it. She burned it on the day the Bolsheviks entered Germany.”
    Toni smiled helplessly. His eyes were hard and grey and vacant. She recognised the mood, and she was afraid.
    “Is it true about you and the artist?”
    “Who told you?”
    “My sister.”
    I wonder if she reads my diary, he thought.
    His eyes never left her. And in spite of herself she was excited and tingling.
    “I love him,” she said quickly.
    “He is only a boy.”
    Toni wanted to conceal their bed from him. She was suddenly ashamed of her body. She would have liked, that moment, to cover herself to her fingertips. He must not see anything.
    “He is no good. He drinks.”
    Last night, for the first time, André had made love to her with the lights on. He had studied her body lovingly and all night long he had held her in his arms. “I love you,” he had said. “You are beautiful.” I remember the taste of his sweat.
    “You don’t understand, Roger.”
    I hate her
, he thought. He held the sheets tightly in his fists. He couldn’t think of anything to say so he said: “He is a friend of the Jew.”
    “So am I.”
    Roger laughed. His laugh was short, and without humour. “Should I kill the Jews?” he asked.
    Toni flushed. “He is not afraid of you.”
    “You are wrong. They are always afraid. Even now, when they are in power, they are afraid.”
    “Please go. I don’t feel well,” Toni said.
    Roger spoke in spurts. He parted with his words grudgingly, as if they were prickly objects stuck in his throat.
    “You do not understand … how … how rotten they are,” he said. “Our landlord, a Polish Jew, evicted my parents from their home because … because they couldn’t pay the rent. My father died under the knife of a Jew. It was a simple operation. He was murdered.
They plan to rule the