TARANTELLA

 

We had been living in our new house for over three weeks without even the trace of the presence of an insect, without having to open the cans of repellent or the small pots of powder my wife had bought intending to spread around the floor upon the first sighting of anything creeping or crawling. She accepted the new surroundings quite well, but we both lived in permanent fear of our peace being disturbed. A larger than usual fly or a strange sound was enough to send my wife, Marta, hurtling into a world where creatures of all forms and sizes preyed upon human flesh. I was convinced that one of these attacks would result in her becoming so disturbed that she would never return to my world.

 

Marta was easily frightened, terrified of anything with “too many legs”, as she called it. She would, in the old house, shout out to me in hysterical tones, so that I would arrive to find her static, staring at a spot on the skirting-board. I would discover, after persuading myself that I was not, too, afraid, and venturing into an unknown corner of the kitchen, that it was a spot of grease on the white wall, a paw-mark left by the cat, or, more than occasionally, nothing. Nothing at all.

 

On those evenings when Marta and I used to sit watching TV together, holding hands as we used to do, we would sometimes be surprised between programs by short clips about wildlife, the eagle catching a fish, the spider and the fly, or the scorpion’s dance. Then I would feel the cold sweat forming on my wife’s hand, and would turn to see her, mouth open, white, horrified.

 

One morning, early, before I went to work, and now in the new house, I found the cat, Xerxes, sitting in the kitchen watching the movements of a roach. Xerxes offered not even a paw-thrust. Nothing. We both stood observing the creature as it now disappeared into the woodwork. Perhaps one of us should have killed it; perhaps it should have been me.

 

Marta had become accustomed to believing that I did not love her, but merely tolerated her in the same way that I admit I put up with many things I cared little for. At times she was sure that I really felt nothing for her. And I did very little to change this her view of me. She accused me of being inhospitable to her friends. Whenever we went shopping and she asked me my opinion about some article of clothing or other I would reply in less than interested tones. I didn’t feel that this was unfair or evidence of a lack of care or attention. In return, I didn’t find it an offense that she showed little desire to hear about my work.

 

We had met on one of those strange, wild nights that can only be allowed to accountants like myself. For some reason or other I had ended up in a discotheque. I was drawn to my wife by the way she danced. I stood and watched, and was eventually attracted, drawn in, and then caught in the web. We saw each other more often. Marriage was something which happened, a natural progression of the dance.

 

When dancing one isn’t aware of what is going on around. Shapes come into the field of vision, are blurred, and move away. Someone touches your shoulders. We look down at the floor, at our feet, at other people’s feet. I catch a glimpse of an ankle, of a pretty leg, and I feel the sweat rolling down my back. There is always the concern, the very real concern, that someone is now sitting at my table, in my still warm seat, and is raising my whisky to his lips, enjoying what is mine. These are the risks that those who dance have to take, should they wish to enjoy the pleasures offered.

 

The house in the country was my idea. Tired of living in a city too large and fast to be welcoming, I had decided to accept the sacrifice of the long drive on the freeway in order to benefit from the noise of the stars, the smell of the silence, the sounds of summer, and the peace that is brought by knowing that out there, yards from my window, was a desert teeming with life and death. I had imagined the flowers, the palms, the scents drifting softly in through the kitchen window, and even the slight danger had excited me.

 

I remember once in the house in the city when I came into the bathroom while Marta was still in the shower. She didn’t, from behind her blue, butterfly-patterned plastic curtain, know I was there. “Xerxes!”, she shouted. “Xerxes!” When I pulled back the shower curtain she was shaking and panic-stricken, naked and wet. “It’s a bluebottle”, she said. “Kill it.” Xerxes ambled past the open bathroom door.

 

Returning to the table after dancing is the moment of greatest risk. The suspicion of someone having decided to occupy your seat or of your drink being missing build themselves into a fear of discovering them. When you find that which you have always expected you are least prepared to deal with it, and it is so much easier to ignore it, to go to the bar and buy another drink, to sit somewhere else, to light a cigarette.

 

The main problem facing us, living where we did, was the separations this demanded. I would leave in the morning, a kiss and a wave, only to return late, late in the evening. The sound of the tires eating up the gravel would disturb my wife from her Margaret Drabble or Françoise Sagan. Even so, if I had the gift of understanding happiness I would say that those long days in September were happy ones. My life was where I wanted it to be, we had a lot to be thankful for. I was doing well, Marta seemed pleased, and we had our own space, our own piece of paradise. It was going to be her birthday soon, and, as we always did, we would go dancing. I was going to give her an imitation Egyptian pendant.

 

We went to a club together. I remember the heavy lights and the dark noise of the music. I was talking with someone, someone from the office; it was an evening after work. Marta was dancing with someone. The next day we argued. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink, she said. She had wanted to dance. She had danced, she said, with one of my colleagues from the office. She hadn’t wanted to. She wanted to dance and I wasn’t there. She danced with someone else; perhaps it should have been me.

 

It was towards the end of September, a few days after my wife’s birthday. I returned home early. Marta always left the gate to the driveway open for me, but she wasn’t expecting me now. I left the car in the lane and I walked in the orange of the afternoon sun as it picked out the cactus and highlighted the prickly-pear. I stepped through the nettles which now lined our gravel driveway I had labored so hard to lay. I swiped at the mosquitoes. Just inside the open front door I trod in a pile of white powder. I was immersed in a smell of insect repellent and sweet tea. I called out to my wife and there was no answer. I fixed myself a scotch and ice. I stood for a while staring out of the French windows at the garden. Xerxes was prancing up and down on the lawn, chasing a butterfly. Then he gave up, and was licking a paw when he noticed me. He seemed surprised.

 

I don’t think I heard a noise or anything, but I became worried. I crept up the stairs. I crept past the open bathroom door. I came to the bedroom. My wife insists to this day that she had only called him because she was afraid of the insects. It almost doesn’t matter whether this is true or not – the insects were certainly present. All that really matters to me is that the scorpion in the bedroom stared at me, offering its claws, as if challenging me to kill it, waiting for its Tarantella to begin. I looked down at my feet. I looked at my wife. I looked at this man, drinking my whisky, sitting on my bed, sweating and staring at me, mouth open, white, horrified.

(First published in "Sinning in Sevens", Ed. Silvana Moreira et al, Simetria 1999)