Flight of the Swan by Rosario Ferré Page A

could,” she answered across the rows of empty chairs. “Come right up and join us.”
    Diamantino walked jauntily down the aisle and up to the stage. Madame ordered Smallens to accommodate him in the orchestra, next to the piano and the flute.
    As soon as Madame began to dance to Diamantino’s violin, she was transformed. I had never seen her dance like that, her sweat-slick body curling and uncurling, her body turned into a sign that could only be deciphered by another body’s mute language. She forgot all about our sacred mission. Under Diamantino Márquez’s appreciative gaze, Glazunov’s Bacchanale burned sublime.

17
    M ADAME WENT EVERYWHERE WITH Diamantino, and she insisted that I go with them. She still hadn’t fallen completely under his spell and was worried about what people might say. I was, as usual, blindly devoted, and went innocently tagging along. Diamantino insisted he wanted Madame to experience life on the island as it really was, and Madame fell for it, hook and line. We went to the casino in the evenings, to church on Sundays, to the meetings of poets and artists in the cafés of Old San Juan in the afternoons. Madame spoke French and English as well as Russian, but when they went out together, Diamantino often spoke to her in Spanish, as if Madame could understand him. At first, Madame found this amusing and enjoyed trying to guess what he said, but later it became a nuisance because the meaning of entire sentences escaped her. Fortunately it didn’t matter because I could understand Spanish and I translated.
    I suspected one of the reasons Madame felt drawn to Diamantino was because of her secret Jewishness. Her mother had feared pogroms in Russia because Poliakoff, her daughter’s father, was a Jew. She commiserated with the independentistas because she understood how they felt. “You lost your country, but I’ve never owned mine,” Diamantino would say. “You’re not the only one,” Madame would answer in a low voice. “Think of the Jewish people.”
    “This island has been in chains for four hundred years; first because of the Spaniards and now the Americans,” Diamantino would grieve. And Madame would try to console him: “Being so near to the United States is like living next to a boiling cauldron. Every time the heat goes up and it boils over, you get scalded.” They went on and on about island politics until I had to stuff my fingers in my ears because I thought I was going to go mad.
    Gone was our privacy, our marvelous days together when we enjoyed the small satisfactions of intimacy and catered to each other’s needs. No talk of war, politics, or money had ever crossed our lips, only pleasing words about art, beauty and love. I realized that, with Diamantino present, I had lost Madame for good.
    The evening of our first performance I had to make a huge effort to pretend nothing was amiss. Teatro Tapia was completely full and I picked out Diana Yager and Estrella Aljama sitting conspicuously in the first row. They were next to the governor, and were dressed in glittering gowns with orchid corsages pinned to their breasts. All of San Juan’s bourgeoisie was present, and the gowns were again ablaze with jewels. Madame tore herself from Diamantino long enough to peek from behind the curtain, and gave a sigh of relief when she saw the large audience. When Mr. Dandré left for New York, he had taken most of the funds remaining from our performances in Cuba, and we needed the money from that night’s show to tide us over until his return. Everything went smoothly at first. The music was adequate, and Smallens didn’t have to whistle to remind the musicians of how the melody went, as had happened before on several occasions when provincial orchestras had played for us in the small towns.
    We danced Glazunov’s Bacchanale , one of the few ballets I truly dislike, because it’s so chaotic, asserting the supremacy of tumultuous passion over reason’s wise counsel. In it