The Favourite Game

By ten o’clock the floor was jammed with sharply dressed couples, and, seen from the upstairs balcony, their swaying and jolting seemed to be nourished directly by the pulsing music, and they muffled it like shock absorbers. The bass and piano and steady brushdrum passed almost silently into their bodies where it was preserved as motion.

Only the tilt-backed trumpeter, arching away from the mike and pointing his horn at the revolving mirrored sphere, could put a lingering sharp cry in the smoky air, coiling like a rope of rescue above the bobbing figures. It disappeared as the chorus renewed itself.

‘Right dance hall, Krantz.’

They scorned many public demonstrations in those prowling days but they didn’t scorn the Palais D’Or. It was too big. There was nothing superficial about a thousand people deeply engaged in the courting ritual, the swinging fragments of reflected light sweeping across their immobile eye-closed faces, amber, green, violet. They couldn’t help being impressed, fascinated by the channelled violence and the voluntary organization.

Why are they dancing to the music, Breavman wondered from the balcony, submitting to its dictation?

At the beginning of a tune they arranged themselves on the floor, obeyed the tempo, fast or slow, and when the tune was done they disintegrated into disorder again, like a battalion scattered by a land mine.

‘What makes them listen, Krantz? Why don’t they rip the platform to pieces?’

‘Let’s go down and get some women.’

‘Soon.’

‘What are you staring at?’

‘I’m planning a catastrophe.’

They watched the dancers silently and they heard their parents talking.

The dancers were Catholics, French-Canadian, anti-Semitic, anti-Anglais, belligerent. They told the priest everything, they were scared by the Church, they knelt in wax-smelling musty shrines hung with abandoned dirty crutches and braces. Everyone of them worked for a Jewish manufacturer whom he hated and waited for revenge. They had bad teeth because they lived on Pepsi-Cola and Mae West chocolate cakes. The girls were either maids or factory help. Their dresses were too bright and you could see bra straps through the flimsy material. Frizzy hair and cheap perfume. They screwed like jack rabbits and at confession the priest forgave them. They were the mob. Give them a chance and they’d burn down the synagogue. Pepsies. Frogs. Fransoyzen.

Breavman and Krantz knew their parents were bigots so they attempted to reverse all their opinions. They did not quite succeed. They wanted to participate in the vitality but they felt there was something vaguely unclean in their fun, the pawing of girls, the guffaws, the goosing.

The girls might be beautiful but they all had false teeth.

‘Krantz, I believe we’re the only two Jews in the place.’

‘No, I saw some BTOS on the make a couple of minutes ago.’

‘Well, we’re the only Westmount Jews around.’

‘Bernie’s here.’

‘O.K. Krantz. I’m the only Jew from Wellgreen Avenue. Do something with that.’

‘O.K. Breavman, you’re the only Jew from Wellgreen Avenue at the Palais D’Or.’

‘Distinctions are important.’

‘Let’s get some women.’

At one of the doors in the main hall there was a knot of young people. They argued jovially in French, pushing one another, slapping back-sides, squirting Coke bottles.

The hunters approached the group and instantly modified its hilarity. The French boys stepped back slightly and Krantz and Breavman invited the girls they’d chosen. They spoke in French, fooling no one. The girls exchanged glances with each other and members of the party. One of the French boys magnanimously put his arm around the shoulder of the girl Breavman had asked and swept her to him, clapping Breavman on the back at the same time.

They danced stiffly. Her mouth was full of fillings. He knew he’d be able to smell her all night.

‘Do you come here often, Yvette?’

‘You know, once in a while, for fun.’

‘Me too. Moi aussi.’

He told her he was in high school, that he didn’t work.

‘You are Italian?’

‘No.’

‘English?’

‘I’m Jewish.’

He didn’t tell her he was the only one from Wellgreen Avenue.

‘My brothers work for Jew people.’

‘Oh?’

‘They are good to work for.’

The dance was unsatisfying. She was not attractive, but her racial mystery challenged investigation. He returned her to her friends. Krantz had finished his dance, too.

‘What was she like, Krantz?’

‘Don’t know. She couldn’t speak English.’

They hung around for a little while longer, drinking Orange Crush, leaning on the balcony rail to comment on the swaying mob below. The air was dense with smoke now. The band played either frantic jitterbug or slow fox trot, nothing between. After each dance the crowd hovered impatiently for the next one to begin.

It was late now. The wallflowers and the stag-line expected no miracles any more. They were lined along three walls watching the packed charged dancers with indifferent fixed stares. Some of the girls were collecting their coats and going home.

‘Their new blouses were useless, Krantz.’

Seen from above, the movement on the floor had taken on a frantic quality. Soon the trumpeter would aim his horn into the smoke and give the last of Hoagy Carmichael and it would be all over. Every throb of the band had to be hoarded now against the end of the evening and the silence. Soak it through pressed cheeks and closed eyes in the dreamy tunes. In the boogiewoogie gather the nourishment like manna and knead it between the bodies drawing away and towards each other.

‘Let’s get one more dance in, Breavman?’

‘Same girls?’

‘Might as well.’

Breavman leaned over the rail one more second and wished he were delivering a hysterical speech to the thick mob below.

…and you must listen, friends, strangers, I am bind ing the generations one to another, o, little people of numberless streets, bark, bark, hoot, blood, your long stairways are curling around my heart like a vine…