One Man Dancing Page 14

  And the press hails Renga Moi as enthusiastically as it does Pele.

  The next performance venue is Bahia, home to the colonial capital, where their Africanness is greeted even more eagerly by the press and by audiences. They are pursued everywhere they go and photographed as eager tourists. They are shown visiting sugar mills, the engine that helped to create a powerful European empire. They are seen following the steps of African slaves who laboured in the mills and on the enormous plantations that operated the mills. They are photographed among graceful hills and colonial facades, in the Citade Alta of Salvador with its ubiquitous wavering palms and peeling plaster buildings. They are shown the spot where a church was built by slaves in the eighteenth century.

  They follow the twisting and winding streets. They see where slaves were auctioned and publicly punished, tied to a post, stripped almost naked, and whipped with rawhide before the assembled Europeans and their own people. Fellow slaves did the whipping.

  Charles gazes at a peaceful square, barely breathing in Bahia’s noonday heat, trying to understand this land’s bloody African-linked history. Listening for the faint echoes of screams shuddering back through the still air. Seeing blood. Flesh torn. Brothers and sisters falling.

  Robert tells them that anyone trying to escape was hung by a hook through their ribs and left outside until they died.

  They pass a woman cooking at a street stall. Charles notices the jangling collection of silver charms she wears around her waist and asks about it. It is a balanganda, he is told, used in the old days to show off the wealth of a slave owner. He watches her hands busy among gleaming aluminum pots and spattering pans, vibrant with their orange, yellow, brown foodstuffs. He knows she is the mistress of her business and her life. She smiles at him. Then asks him to taste something from her cooking pot.

  “Acaraje,” she explains. “Fried bean stuffed with peppered shrimp,” she announces in halting English, her eyes glinting in the sun.

  “A little Africa in Brazil,” he nods appreciatively.

  Performances each evening. Tourism most days. Robert has arranged for them to see a capoiera performance one afternoon in the fort of San Antonio da Barra. Part martial art, part dance, part song, the actors leap in the air and scream their music. They soar high, eyes wide and muscular arms spread like wings. The sort of acrobatic work that Robert is trying to develop in his own actor-dancers.

  Charles studies the musical instruments that are played so brilliantly in the centre of the arena: the drum-like atabaqu; the berimbaus, stringed, bow-shaped and graceful; the pandeiros, punching the air like tambourines; the double-headed agogo bells; and the rough scrape of the reco-reco with its corrugated surfaces.

  “We could be back in our own villages at home,” he says, “The music and stories are not so different.”

  “Except those stories were born of liberty and prosperity, triumph over adversity. These crawled out of captivity and torment,” Kiri counters.

  In the circle, the rhythm begins slowly, played first on the berimbaus and then on the other instruments. Soon the soloist begins to sing his heart-rending story.

  “Listen,” whispers Joseph, “A Bantu word.”

  This is a zebra dance, prototype of the Brazilian capoeira, they are told, and for them another connection to Africa. The piece increases in complexity and intensity as other players repeat phrases of praise after the solo singer. Then the voices swerve into call and response.

  Two performers have now cartwheeled into the arena. They mirror one another in a rocking side step, teasing, taunting, challenging. As the dancers pace around, they vault suddenly into attack and defense. Carefully choreographed. Nothing left to chance.

  Their bodies are tying knots in the air, thinks Charles, transfixed by their discipline. Yet they barely touch as they hurl themselves around with dazzling invention.

  “Some say,” whispers their guide, “that this was all the original invention of Ganga-Zumba, King of Palmares, the greatest of the quilombos, the escaped slaves. It was so successful that all such communities adopted its name.”

  Charles is eager to know more about Ganga-Zumba, the King of Palmares.

  “Capoeira is really a form of self-defence disguised as a dance,” says Robert. “Art can trick. It can reveal while it hides.”

  “In the seventeenth century,” their guide continues, “there were many Palmares. Begun as bush hideouts where palm trees grew, these developed into communities of escaped slaves. One of the largest had over two hundred huts, a church, smithies, and even a counsel house. All surrounded by lush stream-watered fields. The escaped slave kings of these communities ruled with extraordinary wisdom and fairness. They also occupied splendid jungle palaces with fine accommodations for their families, attendants, and public officials. In their presence, subjects had to kneel and strike palm leaves with their hands. The kings often had many wives and children.”

  Charles travels easily back to such kingdoms, the storied palaces he has heard of since childhood.

  “The Palmares have become one of Brazil’s symbols of freedom and fairness. All contemporary African-Brazilian social movements — and there are many — acknowledge those roots.”

  Robert sees his young actors begin to glow, blooming visibly on the rich fare he’s offering them. But he saves the best for last — tickets for the entire company to see Maria Maria, a controversial sold-out production that has been playing to admiring houses. Abafumi are to be guests of honour at this performance. Robert has spoken about abstraction in the theatre. He says that this is one of the great examples of how it can work.

  As Charles watches, he is filled with many Marias. He lives all her lives.

  On stage, the familiar shacks that crawl one over another, up dark hills, stretching away to places where only vultures hang. Maria waits in long lines of women to fill her water bucket. She moves from rural poverty, isolation and boredom, to urban poverty with its greater dangers of disease and crime.

  He goes back in time with her. Maria becomes a female slave taken two hundred and fifty years ago. The slave vessel arrives on the African coast. A barricade is placed above the upper deck. Cradling her first-born, Maria is led in shackles to the ship. She turns to look for the last time at her homeland. The vessel trades for beads, textiles, and gold while filling the lower decks with more and more bodies in chains, each sharing tales of terror in other languages, some overcome with panic and grief. Mime. Music.

  As the middle passage begins, Maria sings a song of loss. Writhing bodies in mournful rhythms create her agony. She is a rainbow whirling through childhood. Her manacled hands move only in pain. Chained to a rod with other slaves, the chorus staggers and weaves as the whip comes down.

  Maria is now a puppet on a stick, poked and prodded to perform. The actors arch and bend, trapped in the music of their story.

  Maria, in billowing white, throws back her head, lifts her arms, and rolls her eyes. In the grip of her special orisha, her spirit self swaying and singing; when she transports herself, Charles goes to his own place, with Maria. Dancing and singing her life.

  At the end of the performance, the two companies embrace. Their bond is artistic, visionary.

  “You have understood. You have understood,” says Robert.

  “No,” says their beaming host, “you have understood.”

  Over drinks, they all agree that Renga Moi and Maria Maria belong to the same family.

  “They are brother and sister,” Robert says enthusiastically. “Power and misery danced. All of our history danced. All of the contradictions danced. Making love and finding liberty, danced. Life, the dance of our own truth. May we always dance together in joy,” he shouts in his heartfelt toast.

  There is one more thing Robert wants for the company in Brazil. It requires an extension of their tour, along with the complications of visa renewals, many trips to the police station,
and the passing of generous gifts of cash to officials.

  But Robert believes that Rio’s Carnival — only an extra week away — is an essential experience for Abafumi — as a popular and multifaceted art form, as a highly indigenous eruption of cultural energy that is both tempestuous and disciplined. He wants them to understand what it is and why it is. To feel its fire.

  Charles and Beth spend days in anticipation stretched lazily on Ipanema beach. They spend evenings making love, their newly-awakened relationship heralding Carnival itself. Festive. Wild.

  And it is all around them. Headdresses and veils, bangles and billowing silks vie with each other while musicians spin tambourines on their fingertips.

  The air is jittery with streamers and confetti. Unfurling, floating, spinning. Charles breathes in the sweet scent of tropical flowers squirted incessantly by “perfume shooters” aiming their fine spray onto his hot skin.

  They are startled by a large beaded ox head in black velvet with blue eyes and golden horns towering over dancers who mime the animal’s story: how it prances, grows sick, and returns to life amidst great rejoicing. Bush Cow masks rise up before them in black and white squares, faces hard and sharp, rough fibre bodies shaking furiously.

  “The square where we are standing, Praca Onze, was called Little Africa,” one of the actors from the Maria company tells them. “It was a centre,” he shouts, “for the African community. Today there are attempts to give it back to the black community. But the government is a bit nervous. They think this will encourage protest.”

  “Are they right?” asks Robert. Mara, Robert’s constant companion now, presses in to hear.

  “Probably, but our group is supporting its development. We want to find the political centre of Africa in Brazil once again. But we must do it carefully. The government is always watching us.”

  The way Abafumi is watched. And watches.

  That night Charles and Beth observe Robert and Mara exchange documents with another stranger in the hotel lobby. Quickly. Slyly. Almost unnoticed. Charles will keep the secret to himself. He knows that Robert knows this. Without words, power and responsibility have been conferred.

  On Charles.

  Riding the chaos of Carnival, Charles and Beth whirl into Brazil’s hot hedonistic heart. Still shy with one other, they bear the burn marks of passion awkwardly. It is love they talk of now.

  “Robert should not have brought Mara into his life,” Beth says one evening. “He was asking for trouble. And now he has it.”

  “Every couple quarrels,” says Charles. “And it is obvious how much he loves beauty. Beautiful women. As I do. Women like you.”

  “And his wife puts up with it,” says Beth disconsolately. “Mara just wanted to shine for a while, have a few nights with someone powerful. Then Robert fell in love with her.”

  “I didn’t see that,” says Charles curiously.

  “No, men never see those things. She is selfish. She just doesn’t realize what she’s doing to all of us. They snapped at each other in public this afternoon,” she finishes angrily.

  Abafumi was supposed to be above all this. Petty squabbles. Jealousies.

  “Perhaps,” says Charles, “extending the tour wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “No,” says Beth. “Giving us time off was the problem. Taking time from his wife for Mara.”

  “What can he do now?”

  “I think he should send her home.”

  In the morning, the company flies to São Paulo for another run. Robert sits quietly with his wife at the front of the plane. Neither one speaks.

  But Sao Paulo cannot hide Robert’s tumultuous affair with Mara. It is spinning them both out of control. They miss workouts, warmups. But Robert has to consider his wife. Mara taunts him. Robert tries to ignore her but she is a lion in heat. Pacing now on stage and displaying. Nudging and pawing. With Robert picking up every cue, playing the superior alpha in a pride of fine physical specimens. Tensing for a last preening lick, trying to turn his chosen female glossy and languid.

  While the rest of the troupe bristle and squirm.

  Robert has re-cast Mara as Renga Moi’s wife.

  Kiri, whose role it was, is livid.

  But Mara is good and everyone recognizes it. In her stage agony she hauls up jagged moans of despair from a cold dark cave. Edgy, dangerous. Robert, like everyone, is impressed with her work.

  There is a qualitative difference between his two actresses, both women who have enthralled him. Kiri, rooted in tragic sorrow, rocked by her grief. Rolled her deep sleepy voice up from some dark place, like the very spirit of the underworld itself, like a tree sighing in strong wind, like grass hissing in rain. Kiri was Robert’s best student. His best advertisement. His creation. Kiri’s solemn face shines like fine carving, a perfect female form sculpted to timeless serenity.

  Kiri’s eyes bore into Robert now while his appraise the volatile combustion that is Mara. Kiri will not allow herself to be relegated to the status of occasional mistress. She has seen the parade of Robert’s beautiful women come and go. She will not be merely one of the pack. Petted and sent off. Like a wife.

  Outside the theatre, Kiri cultivates other admirers. In and out of the company. And then suddenly decides to step out of the ring entirely. Into the arms of someone else.

  The company follows this new drama with uneasy curiosity.

  Lorenzo, Abafumi’s official tour guide in Brazil, is Italian. Slick as a grass snake, he is especially watchful of his female charges. With the practiced smoothness of a Venetian gondolier, he slides up and down his practised scales admiring clothes, makeup, the way skirts flutter as his women walk. Slithering along the street like ribbons in the wind, his charms intrigue Kiri and, she notices, deeply irritate Robert.

  In extraordinary Brasilia where they spend two days. She giggles as he shows her buildings floating on colonnades, ramps swirling from one level to the next, massive concrete bowls — congress halls, conical cathedrals — flung up into the air on concrete slanting beams and looking as fragile as spider’s webs. She doesn’t stop smiling at him.

  He makes a special stop for the group before two huge bronze forms: women seated on a bench in a clear pool, washing their hair before the presidential palace.

  “You see,” says Lorenzo, “you women tempt kings and presidents and poor Italian tour guides.”

  Lorenzo does his work with cheerful efficiency, eventually ending the tour at the theatre where they begin to prepare for the evening show. Kiri thanks him on behalf of the company. He publicly invites her to dinner after the show.

  While Robert fumes.

  And fights with Kiri. “You are wasting yourself on that cheap gigolo. He will destroy you,” Robert barks at her when Lorenzo leaves.

  Charles stands with several of the others in uneasy silence listening to Robert and Kiri spit fire at each other.

  “I will love him,” says Kiri defiantly. “And I don’t need your permission.”

  She is challenging him to a duel in the arena of the erotic. Ranking them equal and opposite. Robert knows she is right, declaring war on male privilege that, until this time, only Robert’s wife has ever questioned. Robert storms out of the theatre and Charles, fearing the worst, follows him into the street.

  Lorenzo is there waiting for Kiri.

  “You are finished working with us,” Robert shouts. “If I catch you here again, I will kill you. I will kill you.”

  “Is this because of Kiri?” Lorenzo asks coolly. “If so…”

  “Don’t come back for Kiri or for any of us.”

  “You must be crazy,” says Lorenzo baffled. “No woman is worth this!”

  Robert pauses for a moment. Then turns away. Screaming at the sky. Hating all women.

  In the theatre, Mara and Kiri are together, whispering, crying. Robert is back.

  “You t
wo,” he thunders at them. “You have caused all this trouble.” They turn from him, walk into the women’s dressing room and slam the door. “You are the twins,” Robert rails. “You have split Priest and Warrior. You have robbed them both of their power.”

  “No,” says Kiri from behind the door. “You are the problem. You and your ego. And your appetite.”

  “Kiri is right,” adds Mara. “You are the problem. I am sorry.” Her voice breaks, shallow water over splintered stones.

  “Just know,” says Robert, “Lorenzo is gone.”

  Everyone is nervous about that night’s performance.

  In darkness, the onslaught begins. A flash of spears and a flurry of drums. The Village of the Seven Hills is attacked. Renga Moi takes up arms. Ignores the taboo.

  And on this night, Robert begins adding unfamiliar text. Scowling and muttering, he shrieks out, “You will all perish at my hand. I will kill you, personally, one by one, because you have defied me.”

  “We have not defied you Priest,” says Charles, growing before his comrades, improvising lines.

  Mara and Kiri stand frozen in fear.

  The Priest rises, perilously waving a flaming torch in the frantic search for his children. Scattering the rest of the cast. The audience is enthralled. Theatre and life merge though they don’t know it.

  Flames. Weapons. Anger and argument.

  Nakazzi is suddenly pulled to the centre of the stage by her husband. Kiri stays rooted in one spot. Robert swings at her, knocking her arm roughly as she steps back. Another line is added. “You will be the downfall of us all,” she tells him.

  The audience is taking sides, shouting their support or their condemnation.

  “You are drunk, Priest!” yells Charles in full fury. “You are not going to kill anyone because we are stronger. We do not need you the way you need us.”

  Robert suddenly stops, looks around, returns to character.

  Somehow the play finishes.

  In the Green Room, there are accusations. Embarrassment. Charles cannot look at Robert who is sitting in silence. Beth adjusts an ice pack on Kiri’s arm where she has been bruised by Robert. It is black and blue.