I turned in my seat, wishing to reassure the nervous man, but then someone else was shaking my hand saying:
‘Thank you, Mr Ryder, thank you.’
‘You’re all very kind,’ I said, smiling at the company in general. ‘Though I … I really ought to warn you …’
At that moment someone pushed against me, almost knocking me into the person next to me. I heard someone apologising and someone else saying: ‘Don’t push like that!’ Then another voice said, close to me: ‘I thought that was you out there just now, sir. I’m the one who pointed you out to Gustav. It’s so good of you to come and see us like this. Tonight will be a night we’ll remember for ever. A turning point for every porter in the town.’
‘Look, I have to warn you,’ I said loudly. ‘I’ll do my very best for you, but I have to warn you, I may not be quite the influence I once was. You see …’
But my words were drowned out by a number of the porters starting up a chorus of ‘hurrahs’ for me. By the second one, the entire company of porters joined in, and then the music momentarily stopped as everyone else in the café joined in for the final, deafening hurrah. Then there was more applause.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ I said, genuinely moved. Then, as the applause began to fade, the red-nosed porter across the table said:
‘You’re very welcome here, sir. You’re a famous and renowned person, but I want you to know we here know a good sort when we see one. That’s right, we haven’t spent so long in this trade without developing a good nose for decency. You’re decent through and through, we can all see that. Decent and kind. You might think we’re all welcoming you now simply because you’re going to help us. And of course, we’re grateful to you. But I know this crowd, they’ve really taken to you, and they wouldn’t have done so if you weren’t a decent sort. If you’d been too proud, or insincere in any way, they’d have sniffed you out. Oh yes. Of course, they’d still have felt grateful, they’d have treated you well, but they wouldn’t be taking to you like this. What I’m trying to say, sir, is that even if you hadn’t been famous, if you were just some stranger who’d stumbled in here by accident, once we’d seen you were all right, once you’d explained you were far from home and were looking for some company, we’d have welcomed you. We wouldn’t have received you so differently from the way we did just now, once we’d seen what a good sort you were. Oh yes, we’re not nearly so stand-offish here as people say. From now on, sir, you can count each of us as your friend.’
‘That’s right,’ said someone to my right. ‘We’re your friends now. If you’re ever in any difficulty in this town, you’ll be able to rely on us.’
‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’ll do my best for you all tonight. But really, I have to warn you …’
‘Sir, please.’ It was Gustav talking gently near my ear. ‘Please stop worrying. Everything will be fine. Why not enjoy yourself for a few minutes at least?’
‘But I just wanted to warn these good friends of yours …’
‘Really, sir,’ Gustav went on quietly. ‘Your dedication is admirable. But you worry too much. Please relax and enjoy yourself. Just for a few minutes. Look at us. All of us here have worries. I myself have to be off shortly to the concert hall again, back to all that work. But when we meet like this here, we’re glad to be among friends and we forget about things. We unwind and enjoy ourselves.’ Then Gustav raised his voice over the hubbub. ‘Come on, let’s show Mr Ryder how we really enjoy ourselves! Let’s show him how we do it!’
This pronouncement was met by a cheer and another burst of applause, then the applause turned into rhythmic clapping all around the table. The gypsies began to play faster in time with the clapping, and some of the other customers looking on began also to clap. I noticed too people elsewhere in the room actually breaking off their conversations and turning their seats around as though to witness an eagerly awaited spectacle. Someone I supposed was the proprietor – a dark, lanky man – emerged from a back room and stood leaning on the door frame, evidently just as anxious not to miss what was to follow.
Meanwhile the porters kept up their clapping, becoming ever more mirthful, some of them thumping the floor with their feet to emphasise the beat. Then two waiters appeared and began hurriedly to clear the surface of the table. Beer glasses, coffee cups, sugar pots, ashtrays all vanished in an instant, and then one of the porters, a heavy bearded man, climbed up onto the table top. Behind his bushy beard his face was bright red, whether from embarrassment or from drinking I could not tell. In any case, once up on the table he seemed to have little inhibition and with a grin began to dance.
It was a curious, static dance, the feet hardly leaving the table surface, with the emphasis on the statuesque qualities of the human body rather than its agility or mobile grace. The bearded porter adopted a pose like some Greek god, his arms positioned as though carrying an invisible burden, and as the clapping and the shouts of encouragement continued, he would subtly change the angle of his hip or rotate himself slowly. I wondered for a moment if the whole thing was supposed to be comic, but for all the exuberant laughter around the table, it soon became clear there was no satiric intention in the performance. As I watched the bearded porter, someone nudged me and said:
‘This is it, Mr Ryder. Our dance. The Porters’ Dance. You’ve heard about it, I’m sure.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Ah yes. So this is the Porters’ Dance.’
‘This is it. But you haven’t seen anything yet.’ The speaker grinned and nudged me again.
I became aware that a large brown cardboard box was being passed around from porter to porter. The box had roughly the dimensions of a suitcase, though to judge from the way it was being tossed through the air, it was light and empty. The box travelled around the table for a few minutes then, at a particular point in the dance, was thrown up to the bearded porter. There was something well-practised about the whole routine. At the precise moment the bearded porter switched pose and raised his arms up again, the cardboard box came through the air, landing smartly in his hands.
The bearded porter reacted as though he had caught a slab of stone – bringing a growl of apprehension from his audience – and for a second or two looked certain to buckle under the weight. But then, with considerable determination, he began to straighten himself, until finally he was standing perfectly upright, the box held against his chest. As cheers greeted this achievement, the bearded porter began slowly to raise the box above his head, until finally he was holding it aloft, both arms absolutely straight. Although in reality, of course, this was no feat at all, there was a dignity and drama to the performance which caused me to join in with the cheering, just as if he really had lifted a huge weight. The bearded porter then proceeded to create with some skill the illusion of his burden getting lighter and lighter. Before long he was holding the box up with one hand, performing little pirouettes as he did so, sometimes tossing the box over his shoulder and catching it behind his back. The lighter the burden became, the more exuberant his colleagues grew. Then, as the bearded porter’s feats grew ever more flippant, his colleagues began to look around the table at one another, grinning, egging each other on, until another of their number, a wiry little man with a thin moustache, began to climb onto the table top.
The table wobbled and tilted, but the other porters laughed, as though this were all part of the drama, then held the table firm as the wiry porter clambered up. The bearded man failed at first to notice his colleague and continued to show off his control over the cardboard box, while the wiry porter stood moodily behind him like a man awaiting his turn with a coveted dance partner. Then at last the bearded porter saw the wiry man and threw the box over to him. As he caught the box the wiry porter staggered backwards, and it seemed he might tumble off the table altogether. But he recovered just in time, then, with much effort, straightened himself, the box held on his back. As he did so, the bearded porter, now joining in with the clapping and smiling happily, came down off the tabl
e assisted by many hands.
The wiry porter went through much the same procedure as his predecessor, though with many more comic flourishes. He provoked roars of laughter as he pulled funny faces and performed stumbles in the best slapstick fashion. As I watched him, the rhythmic clapping, the gypsy violins, the laughter, the mock hoots of astonishment seemed to fill not just my ears but all my senses. Then, as a third porter replaced the wiry man on the table, I felt the human warmth starting to engulf me. Gustav’s sentiments suddenly struck me as profoundly wise. What indeed was the point in worrying so much? It was essential every once in a while to unwind completely and enjoy oneself.
I closed my eyes and let the pleasant atmosphere wash around me, only vaguely conscious that I was still clapping, and that my foot was thumping time on the floorboard. A picture entered my mind of my parents, of the two of them in their horse-drawn carriage approaching the clearing outside the concert hall. I could see the local people – the black-jacketed men, the ladies with their coats and shawls and jewellery – breaking off their conversations and turning towards the sound of horse hooves coming from the darkness of the trees. And then the gleaming carriage would burst into the wash of lights, the handsome horses trotting to a halt, their breaths rising in the night air. And my mother and my father would be peering out of the carriage window, on their faces the first traces of excited anticipation, but also something guarded and reserved, a reluctance to give in completely to the hope that the evening would turn out a glittering triumph. And then, as the liveried coachman hurried to help them down, and a line of dignitaries formed to greet them, they would adopt the wilfully calm smiles I recalled from my childhood, from those rare occasions when my parents invited guests to the house for lunch or dinner.
I opened my eyes and saw there were now two porters up on the table together, performing an amusing routine. Whichever one was holding the box would stagger about on the verge of collapse, threatening to fall off the edge, only to relinquish the box to the other at the last moment. Then I noticed that Boris – who presumably had all this time been sitting somewhere in the café – had come right up to the table and was looking up at the two porters with obvious delight. From the way he clapped and laughed at all the right moments, the little boy was clearly very familiar with all the routines. He was sitting between two large swarthy porters who looked similar enough to be brothers. As I watched, Boris exchanged a remark with one of them, and the man laughed and tweaked playfully the little boy’s cheek.
All the activity seemed to be drawing in more and more people from the square and the café was becoming very crowded. I noticed too that although there had been only two gypsy musicians when I had arrived, three others had now joined them and the music of their fiddles was coming from all directions with greater energy than ever. Then someone at the back – I had the impression it was not one of the porters – shouted out: ‘Gustav!’ and in no time the call had been taken up at the front of our table. ‘Gustav! Gustav!’ the porters shouted, turning it into a chant. Soon even the nervous-looking porter who had spoken to me earlier and who was now taking his turn up on the table – a spirited if not particularly skilful performance – joined in, so that even as he manipulated the box down his back and around his hip, he did so chanting: ‘Gustav! Gustav!’
I looked around for Gustav – he was no longer by my side – and saw that he had gone over to Boris and was saying something into the little boy’s ear. One of the swarthy brothers put a hand on Gustav’s shoulder and I could see him imploring the elderly porter to take his turn. Gustav smiled and shook his head modestly, to be met only with an intensification in the chanting. Now virtually every person in the room was chanting his name, and even those standing out in the square seemed to be joining in. Finally, giving Boris a weary smile, Gustav rose to his feet.
Being by some years the eldest of the porters, Gustav appeared to have more difficulty clambering up onto the table, but many hands reached forward to help him up. Once on the table, he straightened and smiled at his audience. The nervous-looking porter handed him the box, then promptly got down.
From the start Gustav’s routine departed from that established by the earlier dancers. Rather than pretend the box was extremely heavy on first receiving it, he tossed it effortlessly onto one shoulder and made a shrugging motion. This produced loud laughter all round and I could hear cries of ‘Good old Gustav!’ and ‘Trust him!’ And then, as he continued to make light of the box, a waiter broke through to the front and tossed up onto the table an actual suitcase. From the way he swung it and the loud thud it produced, the suitcase was clearly not empty. It had landed close to Gustav’s feet and a murmur went around the crowd. Then the chanting picked up again, faster than ever: ‘Gustav! Gustav! Gustav!’ I could see Boris following carefully every move his grandfather made, immense pride across his face, clapping his hands vigorously and joining in with the chanting. Gustav, noticing Boris, smiled once more to him, then reached down and grasped the handle of the suitcase.
As Gustav – still hunched over – brought the suitcase up to his hip, it seemed clear to me he was not faking its weight. Then as he straightened himself, the box still up on his shoulder, the suitcase in his hand, he closed his eyes and his face appeared to cloud over. But no one seemed to notice anything untoward – quite possibly this was a characteristic mannerism of Gustav’s before he performed a feat – and the chanting and clapping continued deafeningly over the squealing violins. Sure enough, the next moment, Gustav had opened his eyes again and was smiling broadly at everyone. Then, lifting the suitcase up further, he managed to grip it under his arm, and in this posture – the suitcase under one arm, the box on the opposite shoulder – he began to dance, making some slow shuffling movements with his feet. There were cheers and whoops, and I could hear someone near the entrance asking: ‘What’s he doing now? I can’t see. What’s he doing now?’
Then Gustav raised the suitcase up further and continued the dance with the suitcase up on one shoulder, the box on the other. The fact that the suitcase was much heavier than the box obliged him to lean very much to one side, but otherwise he looked at ease and his steps continued to have a sprightliness about them. Boris, beaming with delight, shouted to his grandfather something I could not hear, to which Gustav responded with a wry twist of the head, provoking further hoots and laughter.
Then, as Gustav continued his dance, I became aware of something going on behind me. For some time, someone had been jabbing an elbow into my back with annoying regularity, but I had assumed this had simply to do with the crowd’s eagerness to get a good view of the performance. But I now turned and found that, directly behind me, despite the crowd pushing against them on all sides, two waiters were kneeling on the floor packing a suitcase. They had already filled much of it with what looked to be wooden chopping boards from the kitchen. One waiter was arranging the boards into a more dense formation while the other was gesturing impatiently to the back of the café, pointing angrily at the spaces that remained inside the suitcase. Then I could see more chopping boards arriving, two or three at a time, passed hand to hand through the crowd. The waiters worked quickly, packing the boards in until the case seemed full to bursting. But more chopping boards – sometimes just the broken sections of boards – were still coming down, and the waiters with practised ingenuity found ways to squeeze these in too. Perhaps they would have continued to pack more and more into the case, but the jostling of the bodies around them seemed finally to exhaust their patience and they pushed down the lid, tugged at the straps and, pushing past me, heaved the suitcase onto the table.
Boris gave the new suitcase a stare then looked uncertainly up at Gustav. His grandfather was performing a slow shuffle not unlike that of a matador. For the moment the effort required to hold the box and the suitcase on his shoulders seemed to prevent him from noticing the fresh challenge placed before him. Boris watched his grandfather carefully, waiting for the moment he would see the second suitcase. Clearly ev
eryone else was also waiting, but his grandfather went on and on with the dance, pretending to have noticed nothing. This was surely a trick on his part! Almost certainly, his grandfather was teasing the audience, and any moment now, Boris knew, he would pick up the heavy suitcase, perhaps discarding the empty box to do so. But for some reason, Gustav continued not to see it, and now people were shouting and pointing. Then at last Gustav noticed and his face – sandwiched between the box and the first suitcase – took on an expression of dismay. Everyone around Boris laughed and clapped all the harder. Gustav continued slowly to rotate himself but kept his gaze fixed on the new suitcase, his expression still troubled, and for an instant it occurred to Boris that his grandfather was not entirely faking his concern. But then all around him people were laughing, people who had seen his grandfather perform this same routine many times before, and the next moment Boris too was laughing and urging Gustav on. The little boy’s voice caught Gustav’s attention and once more grandfather and grandson exchanged smiles.
Then Gustav brought the empty box off his shoulder, and as it slid down his arm, with a contemptuousness that was almost graceful, he flicked the thing into the crowd. There was again a mixture of laughter and cheering, and the box, passed back over the heads of the spectators, vanished into the recesses of the room. Then Gustav glanced down again at the new suitcase and hoisted the first higher on his shoulder. He put on once more an expression of grave concern – this time it was without any doubt entirely mock – and Boris laughed along with everyone else. Then Gustav began to bend at the knees. He did so very slowly, whether because of infirmity or out of showmanship was not clear, until he was crouching, the first suitcase still held on one shoulder, his free arm reaching for the handle of the suitcase at his feet. Then steadily, slowly, as the clapping continued, he raised himself again to a standing position, the heavier suitcase coming up with him.