Quilombo
I moved to Buenos Aires to quit. It was working.
I moved to Buenos Aires to quit. It was working. The sun blasted down Avenida Corrientes, an obliterating golden light, as I walked to a public cooling centre to watch a public showing of a classic Argentine film. My face was tender and swollen in asymmetrical ways from mosquito bites so that it looked like I’d made unusual choices around cosmetic surgery. I looked like a different person; a relief. People walked with backpacks or purses held tightly in front of themselves though it was too hot for criminal intent, for any intent at all. I didn’t mind the heat. It pushed out any proto-anxiety, melted anything unnecessary onto the 500-year-old cobblestone streets.
El Centro. The letters glowed in neon-orange cursive. There was a line up. Teenage girls with three-inch platform shoes, their boyfriends with white shirts and skinny jeans, older women with bright red lipstick holding umbrellas. I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place. It seemed more like a concert hall, a repurposed high-ceilinged hanger made of corrugated metal, than a community centre. Then two people carrying a half-conscious man, sweat drenched, his head lolling to the side, ran to the front of the line yelling Ayuda, ayuda and they were taken in. When the door closed, a wave of cool air rolled along to the end of the line—a promise. There were emergency cooling centres in Canada on the hottest days of summer but they were just school gyms with diluted juice and a few benches on offer. El Centro turned the need for collective cool into an event, the place to see and be seen on a Friday night. Inside, people wandered wide aisles eating soft ice cream cones—the type of impossible pleasure that could only exist in here. Their excited voices mixed up into a giddy echoing swirl. There was an AstroTurf area where people lay in beach chairs with packs of ice held against knees, heads, arms. Others were hooked up to donate blood right there in the open, others to receive. Another section of canvas cots where the heat-stroked slept. I didn’t see a movie screen. On one side of the aisle, a man was butchering a cow. The carcass was on its back, legs in the air, its whole skin peeled clean and lying underneath it like discarded clothes while the musculature held intact, the white cartilage seeming to tether it all together. Today was the day I should have arrived in Oymakon, Russia. Instead, I was here. Cuts of meat hung from hooks in the ceiling and swayed in the air currents from the cooling system. No one seemed disturbed. The butcher wiped his bloody hands on his apron and took a hose to wash the blood away, along the concrete floor. He noticed me. “Buenas tardes?” “Disculpé. Estoy buscando la pelicula.” I made a charade-style gesture of a movie camera. He motioned with his chin, up and across, to a deck a half-floor above us with a drive-in sized screen, then waited as if I might have more to say. His eyes a light olive green. I thanked him. “Gracias. Muy amable.” I picked my way through the families who had laid out picnics on blankets, the groups of 20-somethings passing Frenet and Coke. Camila, Basado en una historia real. Camila: Based on a true story. The opening credits were rolling across the screen in an old-timey font. The movie was easy to follow, a Romeo and Juliet story of forbidden love except it’s 1800’s Argentina, the “Romeo” a Jesuit priest, and instead of doing themselves in, Camila and her lover are killed by a firing line for defying the dictates of the autocratic ruler.... “A su lado.” By your side. Then they were riddled with bullets. No way to change the truth.The movie had a hazy romantic filter, a rosy tint to the colouring, and in spite of the naked sentimentality, I let it in. At the end, Camila, pregnant, stood blindfolded next to her love saying, “A su lado.” By your side. Then they were riddled with bullets. No way to change the truth. After the movie ended, I too wiped away tears. People folded up their picnic blankets but no one was in a rush to go back out. I meandered to the back half of the building, just to look. And there it was. A long shallow collection of rust-tinted freeze, crowded full of people laced into skates, clutching each other’s arms and wobbling like newborn giraffes. I sat down on a bench. Of all places to find a rink. I could see now that the run-off from the butcher station ran towards it and froze into the amber-brown bumpy surface. Discarded pieces of foil wrappers, bits of hot-dog, plastic spoons from ice creams—all were frozen into layers of ice. I took a breath—it was just a shitty patch of frozen water. “Te gustó la pelicula?” I startled. There was the butcher, his apron draped over his arm. He offered me a cigarette and sat next to me on the bench. He pointed at himself. “Mathais.” “Anna.” “No me gusta Camila.” I don’t like Camila. He lit my cigarette then his own. He was probably my age, lean, under-slept, with long eyelashes. He looked more like a graduate poetry student than a butcher. “Camila, how do you say, throws her life away, en balde, for nothing. For this amor, this priest. You think this is good?” He shook his head. “She follows her passion. What else could she do?” He shrugged. “Get a better passion?” A man struggling to carry some boxes whistled and Mathais nodded at me, then went to help. His body was nothing like a skater’s, so long and thin I could have lifted him in a partner dance. The buzz of the nicotine on my tongue, I watched two girls on the ice, holding hands, barely moving, but screaming as though they were on a roller coaster. It should have been easy to quit. I had been going to retirement parties since I was 17. There was a graceful path carved by those who’d won three medals and then retired at 25 into a career in law. Even the ones who’d had to leave because of injury had just taken an antidepressant to get over the immediate low and then moved on. No one else needed to flip to the other side of the equator. A pudgy boy was trying to do a spin but was moving more in a circle than on a point.
The loss of hockey is a tragedy but who cares about a few figure skaters, sequined costumes glittering in the background.I kept going over the steps in my head as if it were my new routine, so that it would all make sense at an unconscious level. It was impossible to deny that energy resources and significant funding were being used to maintain vast swathes of cool space for a specialized few while public housing units were reduced to one refrigerator per 200 people and heat-related deaths were reaching unprecedented levels. Throw an Oscar-winning exposé in the mix, the sponsors flee, the Olympics cancels ice sports. The loss of hockey is a tragedy but who cares about a few figure skaters, sequined costumes glittering in the background. The boy fell forward onto hands and knees, then got up and tried again, fell again and let out a whimper. I went over. “Visté.” I pointed at the wall opposite and showed him how to spot. Keep the head still and move it only at the last moment. Without thinking, I demonstrated by going into an easy dry-land double axel. When I landed, the boy had an expression that needed no translation. Mathais whistled from across the centre. I left. Out the back door. I would just stay away from El Centro.
Sleep was still the thing I couldn’t control. My eyes would close and go straight to a clean expanse of ice. The sports psychologists had ruined us. I would visualize a routine all night, visualize winning. I chopped my bangs short and put bright red streaks through my hair. I took up smoking. If I replaced myself part by part, maybe I would sneak past my defences and wake up to a different Anna, one who couldn’t and didn’t want to skate. I went for a run in search of an innocent rush of lactic acid, my muscles twitching with the need to train. I went past Casa Rosada and down beside the stinking brown Rio Plata, the river almost solid with sludge. After an hour of running in over 45 degree heat, I cut back up, into the city, but I took a wrong turn somewhere and didn’t know where I was. By the time I saw the orange script of El Centro against the dusty rose of the night’s sky, coloured spots had started to filter in at the side of my vision. I had no choice. I went to the public water fountain and drank and drank and drank. Goose bumps popped on my heat-blotched skin. There was a woman in the butchering area this time, processing chicken carcasses where the cow had been before. Her black hair had a bright streak of purple down the centre of a French braid so that it looked like the tail of a lizard, ready to drop at a moment’s notice. It felt like a twilight zone, with Camila playing again on the movie screen. The last of the ice-curious Porteños were just leaving the rink and then it was empty, trashed from the day of picks and blades. I poured the water from my paper cup out over the ice, filling in a few scars. A pair of skates had been left at the side—the blades dull and rusted. What could it hurt—I tried them on. As I stepped on to the makeshift rink, my mind quieted. Basic footwork, toe loop, salchow—I kept going until the overheads snapped off. Only one ghost light was left on. I heard clapping and there was the butcher, Mathais, holding a piece of paper: “5.6!” “That’s the old system. It’s totally corrupt.” He shrugged. “Bienvenidos a Argentina.” I went to the bench to get the skates off, aware that I was keeping him. “Tranquila,” he said. “Soy el director. Ven cuando quieras. No me molesta.” I’m the director. Come when you like, it doesn’t bother me. I had come to Argentina to quit. I lasted 10 days.
Every night around closing time, I went to El Centro for my fix, and in exchange, I took care of the ice. I expanded the rink, flooded it with the runoff water from the butchery and melt from the vegetable cold storage. I sealed it with a clean layer of water from the exhausted ice bags at the medical station. A few weeks in, I laced up then skated into a butterfly jump, legs scissoring. Then a candlestick spiral, head down alongside my leg, the other leg raised high into a split. “Podrias monstrarme.” Can you show me? It didn’t sound like a question. One of the young female butchers, the one with a streak through her hair, was standing there, watching. Black lipstick, a septum piercing. “It’s not easy.” I said. “Creo que puedo hacerlo.” I think I can do it.
Emiliana started to show up every night. She had gymnastics training and it was true, she could do a version of what I did, but I was more interested in what she came up with on her own. Flips, a roundhouse on skates. She started to bring the other female butchers and they formalized a punk-gymnastics aesthetic on ice. We started to work together—my classical training merged with this slashing, slushing, athletic team—muscular flips, ice chips flying. The male butchers, tattooed, slick-haired lefty-activists, started to loiter nearby during practice. Then one of them picked up a drum, the others followed suit, and they all became the band—a riot of loud marching drums of the sort used in protests. We stayed later and later and El Centro started to feel like the arenas where I’d learned to skate as a kid, a place anyone could go, a place where skill on ice was a point of pride, not something about which to be ashamed. Emiliana suggested we try a pyramid on skates, took the most dangerous position, then jumped off into the arms of her comrades. Mathais passed by and yelled over the drums, “Que quilombo!” And we had our name. Quilombo. A chaos, clash of disparate elements, a shit-mix, a celebration.
I heard the tone in my voice when coaching Emiliana, urging her towards a triple like it was the only thing that mattered. She couldn’t get enough—and I recognized it—the edge, the thrill of landing the jump, the rush of adrenaline that could be found nowhere else. They were pushing themselves harder and harder—analyzing old videos on YouTube—and Emiliana started to become something of the team captain or rehearsal director. I thought back to my Junior’s coach, Alvin Statko, his infamous welcome speech at skating camp. “If any of you have the courage to leave right now and go and become plumbers, you’ll have done better than I ever did.” Of course we laughed, we thought it was a test. The only problem with skating was a low chance of success and that didn’t concern us. 14 years old, hair slicked up into buns, muscled thighs and lip-gloss sticky in the cold, we were winners. Alvin wouldn’t give up. “I will only teach you if you acknowledge that skating will break your heart.” We all said, “Sure, sure,” and at night, braces glinting in the streetlight, drinking Red Bull like the rebels we were, we said what we wanted to say to Alvin, “Just take a Prozac already and help me nail a fucking quad jump.” We all wanted broken hearts anyway.
It was after practice as the younger ones, the butchers’ younger sisters, cooled down and sucked on honey sticks—hummingbirds too tired to digest anything more than simple syrup—that I wondered if, even recreationally, it was good for them. I caught Emiliana smoking out back of the centre one night and knocked the cigarette out of her hand like my coaches would have done. She just looked at me—her unflinching butcher look. She was only two years younger than me. I corrected myself. We weren’t building to anything, she could do what she wanted. I pulled out my own smokes and offered her one. I did say, “It doesn’t have a future, you know.” Which made her laugh. She stubbed the cigarette against the wall, kissed my cheek as Argentines do, and said, “There’s no future? What else is new, querida?” There was a roar of approval from inside, high-hat whistles. Someone must have invented a new move and I wanted to be there. At the end of the night, I waited with Mathais as he locked up. Before we turned to go our separate ways, he winked and said, “There’s no problem, Anna. Let it be good.”
A few weeks later, Quilombo practice had finished, we had re-flooded the ice, and the girls had all gone home. There was no sign of Mathais so I went to look for him to tell him we were done. The light in the window of a white metal door that led to the storage area was on. I had never had a reason to go in but it wasn’t locked so I opened it and called, “Mathais!” No answer. At least I would turn off the light. I walked down the long concrete hallway until I reached an open door, and saw Mathais there with his back to me. I saw the body before he saw me. It was a man with his chest sliced open, three-dimensional, as though a piece of cake had been cut out. His skin was the colour of mushrooms, plums, brownish-red, a rotting fall forest. “Mierda.” I started to go. “Anna!” Mathais followed after me, whispering urgently “Anna! Para.” Stop. He caught me by the wrist and quickly dropped it, putting his hands up. “Anna. Son autopsias.” They’re autopsies. “To help.” We stood facing each other, too close in the narrow, cold hallway. “Why would you be doing autopsies in a community centre?” I didn’t know if I wanted the answer. “It’s not um—no es official.” “It’s not official? No shit.” He rubbed his face. “Venga. Puedo explicarlo.” Come on. I can explain it. I stayed back, outside of the doorway looking in, as he zipped up the body bag, went to a sink to wash his hands, then set the kettle on. He took out the macerated yerba for maté and as he scooped the dusty tea into a gourd, he said, slowly, finding the English, “It is two things. One is organos. If you are poor and sick it’s hard to get access to a um—” He put his hand over his liver. “Transplants?” “Trasplantes. Sí. The other thing is autopsias. If someone dies en una manera extraña, something seems not right, the family can come here. How many heat-deaths in Buenos Aires?” “No sé.” “Nadie. No one dies of heat. If you listen to the government, read the papers. And then, what are all these bodies, do you think?”
When someone you love disappears, you can talk to me about conspiracies.He raised his eyebrows, poured the hot water to the rim of the gourd, saturating the wad of tea and held it out. I shook my head. He drank. I tried to see the person who had gently taken the pulse of an older woman who’d fainted, who’d jimmied together double-bladed skates for one of the kids, who replaced light bulbs and toilet paper and ran this rangy centre. He filled the maté with hot water again. “We need autopsies to have records. For the future. The best thing a corrupt government can do is have no record. Nothing happened. Entiendo?” “It’s a publicly funded centre, Mathais. The government’s trying to keep people alive, not kill them.” “Yes. It’s incredible. No one dies of anything except heart attacks, aneurysms, and old age in Argentina.” The hot water burbled through the metal bombilla. He paused, smiled. “If you are a government spy, you can arrest me now.” “If I were a spy, I would get more information first.” I stepped in and leaned against the frame of the doorway. “What if there is no conspiracy—” “Cuando alguien que tu amas desasparecé, puedes hablar conmigo sobre conspiraciones.” When someone you love disappears, you can talk to me about conspiracies. He filled the gourd with hot water again and held it out. I took it this time. “How did he die?” I pointed to the man. “Heat.” He pointed his chin towards a smaller body bag. “Hay otros sin una explicacíon facile.” There are others without an easy explanation. “You do—um—you do it yourself?” “A doctor. There is someone who takes the data.” He rubbed his face. The silver bombilla was hot in my mouth and the bright white of the room vibrated. “No puedo decir mas.” I can’t say more. Too white, too small, too many black body bags. I passed the maté back to him. He finished and tapped the yerba out into the garbage. “I will walk you home.” He turned off the lights, locked the doors, like any other night. On the way out, he took an ice chip to suck and handed me one too. The hot mouth of the city swallowed us and the smells neutralized inside the centre rose up. Sweat, fried meat, the urine stench of the street. We were quiet for a long time then it started to pour in a spontaneous flood. Rain the temperature of blood, filling the drains until it coughed back out. People were sleeping on mattresses in doorways and there was a baby moving on one of them, so small that it looked like it had been born the night before—not crawling so much as wriggling like a detached limb, a garbled proprioceptive reach. The mother scooped it back towards her, reattached. “What if Quilombo did a show?” I asked. “To raise money?” “Puedes hacer lo que tu quieres.” You can do whatever you want. “El centro es para la gente.” For the people. We stopped on a bump in the middle of the road where the cobblestones had buckled up, like we were two people who cared about getting to higher ground. When we kissed, his mouth was still impossibly cool.
A month later, the week before Quilombo’s first show, the team was warming up. They threw one of the skater’s younger brothers up into the air. “Cuidado!” I yelled. Careful. But then he was caught by Emiliana. She lifted him horizontally, her muscles bulging as she skated him around the rink, beaming. I noticed a policewoman and whistled, ostensibly to the team but also to notify Mathais who was at the butcher station. He went off towards the storage area—good. There had been talk of privatizing cooling centres in the paper and we’d had two health inspectors drop by that week. “Buenas tardes,” I said. The policewoman didn’t smile but kept her eyes on the ice as if recording each of our faces for memory. Finally she said, “Increíble. Tengo una sobrina que adoraria esto.” I have a niece who would love this. I was turning into Mathais, conspiracy theories mixed in with my morning coffee.
Mathais paced as the wooden bleachers were dragged into place. He pulled me aside to say, “No me gusta eso. Demasiada atención, Anna.” I don’t like it. Too much attention. Two hundred tickets had sold. “Let it be good,” I said. He was the one to squint up at the fluorescent lights and shake his head. He found a grid of piping and attached rows and columns of PAR cans to create a wall that glowed warm yellow light. “Mejor,” he said. Better. All of us stood in the dark. I was in the back row, part of the chorus. The roar of the crowd sounded like a rock concert not a community charity show. The drumming started, the lights blared on and cut out a silhouette of 25 distinct bodies, not of skaters but of butchers, students, activists—muscled and ready. The quilombo began. I couldn’t think about how little room there was for error. It would only be safe if we all threw ourselves in equally, pure back-brain focus as we spun, spotted, twizzled, flipped, slashed, stomped, and gave into spectacle. It was only while bowing that I noticed how many people had showed up, the crammed benches, all available standing room packed. I scanned the audience for Mathais and landed for a moment on someone who looked like my coach from back in Junior’s. Alvin. I scanned back. It was him. Alvin Statko. His Argentine wife who had taught us to tango on ice all those years ago sat next to him. They gave thumbs up. It felt like the lights had been turned on too quickly and I’d been caught doing something wrong. The team bowed together one final time and then I exited quickly and busied myself hauling buckets of vegetable runoff to the rink. Alvin and his wife still found me. “Kid. Café Torini tomorrow at ten, okay?” They left before I could think of an excuse.
It was cool enough to want the heat of skin against skin.It was five in the morning and everyone else had gone home by the time Mathais and I had finished putting the centre back to normal, ready to open at seven a.m. for the low-income seniors who needed blood transfusions or cold packs. We leaned against the metal crossbars at the back of the bleachers in the half-light of the closed-down centre. “We could send one of the butchers to electrician school,” I said, “to hack more energy for the centre. Would that work?” “Estas loca.” You are nuts. I stretched my arms up and back, caught on to one of the cross bars and pulled up, lifting to sit on one of the horizontal supports. My head was above Mathais’ now. I could see the checklist, all the things to do, still running behind his eyes. I bent down to kiss him, his hands on my thighs. It was cool enough to want the heat of skin against skin. Runners still on, skin sticky from the sweat of the show, the aluminum frame of the bleachers creaked as we spent the last of our energy on each other. After he had come, he put his head against my chest, both of us so tired, the early morning grey, pixelating in from the windows high above. I jumped down and pulled up my shorts. I just wanted to skate again. Qué quilombo.
Alvin Statko. There he was. A four-time silver medalist renowned for his rotations and kung fu moves sitting in a classic Buenos Aires café, waiting for me. He must have been close to 50 but he looked almost the same—a touch more grey in his spiked hair. “How are you, kid?” Our connection was only on ice, in action, coach to coach-ed. It felt off-kilter to just sit at a table across from him. “Well, I quit.” “The Olympics quit.” He drained his little espresso shot and gestured for two more. “It wasn’t my birthright to go for gold.” I saw myself in a sliver of mirror on the wall. Black eyeliner, a ripped shirt. I looked like one of the butchers. I almost looked Argentinian. “How would you like to skate at Casa Rosada?” “Sure.” I laughed. “The president wants me to do a flip jump over his desk?” Our espressos arrived. When the waiter left, Alvin leaned in. “I’m serious. They want to redefine the space.” “People are dying of heat stroke and the government want ice-capades in Evita’s casa? Have they looked at the papers lately? Or the thermometer?” He was nodding. “It’s green-technology, developed in Argentina, a solar-powered cooling system.” “That only the rich could afford.” “It could be applied to places like the cooling centre. It’s a large-scale model of what is possible. The government gave approval but they’re not producing it. Have you heard of Fuerza Bruta? Argentine spectacle-factory. They’ve hired me to direct. We’ve got creative control. Think Cirque du Soleil but wilder. I want what you were doing with Quilombo.” I wanted a glass of water but the waiter stood at the counter with his face stuck directly in front of the fan, his white shirt soaked through with sweat, the outline of his singlet underneath. “I’m not a skater anymore.” “You don’t get to choose what you’re meant to do, Anna.” “What if I am good at something that’s wrong? If I am great at training killer whales or being a sniper—” “It’s not wrong. Zero-emissions technology.” I watched him go around the emotion. “If you are the star, you can advocate. You will do more for El Centro by skating than by volunteering in obscurity. Build the show with me.” “Why? There are better skaters than me.” “You’re more than an athlete. You’re an artist.” “I’m an addict.” I chewed on my lip and drew blood. “What’s the show? Evita on ice?” “Have you ever heard the story of Camila?”
Mathais was out back of the centre, scraping the tough hide off of a hog carcass hanging from its hoofs. A strip of flesh fell away. He came to lean on the wall next to me to have a smoke. The hog hung there, waiting, in no rush. “When’s the next Quilombo?” Mathais rolled sideways on the wall to kiss me but I moved away, annoyed, as if it were his fault that I hadn’t yet told him. I owed Alvin an answer the next day. After explaining to Mathais, I preempted his response. “I don’t think I should do it.” He squinted and looked up at the sky, orange-brown. “Quieres hacerlo?” Do you want to? “Wanting it doesn’t make it right.” “I want you. That feels right.” He stubbed out the cigarette and sighed. “No necesitas permiso.” You don’t need permission. He started up a chainsaw and sawed the head off the pig. The head spun and landed flat on the ground looking up at its own neck, blood dripping down onto the snout. “Estas enojado?” I asked. Are you mad? He lowered the hog’s body down. “It doesn’t matter my feelings.” He was trying to unhitch the carcass. It was a two-person job but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. Sweat streaming down his face, alone with the task, he heaved it off the chain. “I’m still here.” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I’d arrive at Casa Rosada at five in the morning and get a nod from the national guards, their guns slack at their sides. The ice was new-flooded each morning with immaculate precision. A Zamboni had somehow been assembled and it moved through the same halls Evita had passed through on her way to advocate for the poor. I would warm up for an hour on my own before the other skaters trickled in: all former Olympians finding sanctuary on the rink. Emiliana was there too, playing Camila’s sister and confidante, and she was holding her own with the best. Six hours of skating each day and another six with Alvin, storyboarding the show. I didn’t have time to be at the centre every day but I still did what I could. When Teen Vogue wanted to do a feature to coincide with the Camila opening, we went to El Centro. I tried to convince Mathais to give an interview. He rolled his eyes, “Maybe you want to hand out my home address and phone number too?” and stayed in the storage area for the duration of the shoot, which was just as well. He wouldn’t have been able to tolerate the photographer who couldn’t get enough of the dilapidated industrial aesthetic. Casa Rosada had sent their experts in to groom the ice for photos, and Quilombo, even though we hadn’t practiced as a team in two months, put on their old ripped-up jeans and shirts and gamely set about flipping, chipping, spinning. In the interview that followed, I made sure there wouldn’t be a single pull-quote without mention of the need to support public cooling centres. The reporter surprised me when she asked, “How do you reconcile your advocacy work with being in a large-scale ice show like Camila?” The Quilombo girls were filling in some of the larger divots in the ice with their water bottles and they paused, their preternatural ability to hear when something was going down. “It’s a revolutionary love story. Camila and Ladislao, the priest, are revolting against injustice by pursuing a forbidden love. They try to change society by running away. I’m trying to draw attention to the importance of access to the temperatures necessary for life, by looking at the problem head on and staying with it.” Before leaving, the journalist said, “Lo siento. I have to ask or my editor will be after me. Are you in love with anyone?” “Ice.” She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, come on.”
“Will you come to my opening?” Mathais groaned. We lay on his bed, naked in the heat, too hot to touch, on my one morning off. “Come on. It’s going to be beautiful. What do you have against beauty?” “Did you change the ending?” He propped himself up on his elbow. “Or is Camila still the same? She still decides to stay with the stupid priest and get killed?” “How do you want me to change the ending?” I took the pillow and tossed it on his head. “You want them to just get together and have lots and lots of sex?” “Well, not with skates on. That would be dangerous.” I lifted the pillow, his curls stuck to his forehead, a grin.
The audience gasped in unison at the opening image, a gigantic ice sculpture of a church with stained-glass ice windows. A waterfall of golden fireworks streamed down from the church and the live violin music rose—Camila’s cue to enter—for her first meeting with the priest, Ladislau (Otto, from Germany). Our palms met in the middle of the ice and I was up in a cartwheel lift. The audience cheered. I was not thinking about public access to vegetables, blood transfusions, government corruption or autopsies. I was Camila, I was falling in love, I was tracking my pick-point in the lasso lift, working towards speed, precision, grace, and a death spiral. As the dictator’s forces closed in, a chorus of soldiers skated on. Otto whipped himself into a quad, I flipped over his back, he pushed me away, I pulled him to come with me, and, as we locked eyes, everyone on the ice exploded into the technique perfected by Quilombo—a synchronized flip—and then they were stomping and carving into the ice as the stained-glass windows fell and smashed—a controlled disaster. A blast of water rushed out over the surface of the ice, a flood effect that we’d tested for two weeks. The soldiers and chorus skated to the perimeter to avoid the freeze while Otto and I, Camila and Ladislau, were locked ankle deep, frozen into their fate. The firing squad skated out. A blindfold placed over our eyes. Loud pounding drums. The crack of the gun sound effect reverberating through the hall, our bodies fell, touching, next to each other, and then, silence. Clean, cold silence, which broke into applause. There was a standing ovation, my lungs still heaving. My parents had flown in and stood out in the crowd, whistling and holding up a sign, “Go, Anna, Go!”—their own little Olympic moment. At the post-show reception, I came up to Mathais’ height in my heels. All he said was, “You don’t look like yourself.” Alvin swept in and picked me up into a hug—“Wasn’t she phenomenal?!”—and then was off to shake hands with the funders. Mathais looked around at the gold-gilded walls. “This place just sits empty all night?” My parents were standing beside the fondue fountain, a huge ice sculpture of a heart, chocolate fondue flowing through the ice arteries, dipping strawberries. My little mom in a rose-coloured dress—she couldn’t look at me without crying. “A man died at the centre today,” said Mathais. “Mierda.” I squeezed his hand. “ANNA!” The whole company was gathered and holding a huge bottle of champagne, about to open it. They waved me over and when we finished the photo ops, Mathais was gone.
She seemed so much more relaxed, happier, than when I first met her, but maybe that was safety, money, or maybe this was always the real Emiliana.Later, Emiliana pulled me out for a smoke on the balcony and waved it away. “Let it go. I have nothing against Mati but he’s…pesimista. Sure, there are problems, but things would be perfect and still he’d be talking about all the things that are wrong.” Her brown eyes, the diamonds in her ears, her muscled arms in the strapless dress, both our bodies coursing with the same post-show adrenaline. She seemed so much more relaxed, happier, than when I first met her, but maybe that was safety, money, or maybe this was always the real Emiliana. She took me by the shoulders and shook me in faux outrage. “Tienes un corazon!” You have a heart. “Put it in front of him and he won’t even recognize it, he’ll just say, what good luck, use it for a transplant, it can go to the cause!” We looked out at the red moon, the beautiful quilombo of the city and Emiliana let out a rebel “Woot!” from the balcony. The soldiers at the front gate turned and looked up. Emiliana blew them a kiss.
Mathais wasn’t answering his phone, so two days later I took a taxi to the centre after the show. It was one in the morning and the door was ajar. The centre seemed beaten and broken but maybe it had always been this way and I just hadn’t noticed. Mathais was lying flat on one of the bleachers next to the skating rink, his arm draped over his eyes. I sat on a step beneath him and he moved his arm. “Ah, The Ethical Ice Queen returns.” The Teen Vogue spread was open beside him. There I was in my red Camila dress, the Quilombo team behind me, my own centrality and not that of El Centro, undeniable. He picked up the article and read aloud. “Every minute that she isn’t at Casa Rosada, she can be found advocating for ice-awareness, working with underprivileged youth at the Cooling Centre. Toss out all your assumptions about figure skating, Anna Zhu is a warrior on a mission to make the world a bit more cool.” Mathais tossed the magazine. “I didn’t realize I was sleeping with the second coming of Evita.” “Camila.” “Me chupa un huevo.” He threw his cell phone and it splintered on the ice, electric confetti that would be frozen into the next layer. “The government cut our funding. We’re too political.” He started to cry. I tried to put my arm around Mathais’ shoulders but he shook me off. “I told you it was too much attention.” I didn’t know what to say. The magazine spread-eagled open, glossy and full colour on the step. A tu lado said the text superimposed on the picture. By your side. Mathais looked at it. “You know why people like your show, Anna? They like watching Camila get shot. They like it when idealists die.”
I started to stay at Casa Rosada after the show. I just kept skating and skating. Finally, I’d sit in the middle of the ice, legs splayed to cool my muscles and would drink a carton of chocolate milk. I didn’t ever feel tired anymore. At a certain point, my body would just give out. The show was a hit. Audiences seemed able to support the idea of one rink in the world. It was fuelled by renewable resources, it was the last ice show on earth, and 20 percent of profits went to “cool” charities. The New York Times featured it in their 48 hours in Buenos Aires feature. We were sold out every night.
The silence after all the guns went off, the wet trickle of my sweat mixing with the blood pack. I looked forward to it. It was my favourite moment of each day.The truth was that if it was cathartic for the audience to see Camila get shot; it was cathartic for me too. The silence after all the guns went off, the wet trickle of my sweat mixing with the blood pack. I looked forward to it. It was my favourite moment of each day. I started to send anonymous cheques to the cooling centre to keep it afloat and sometimes took a taxi past just to make sure the lights were still on.
The night that the president was coming with an international delegation we received the news that the show was going so well that we were being extended another six months. As we were pulling on our tights Emiliana whispered, “Did you hear?” “What?” “An ammonia leak at the centre. It was an accident, apparently.” All the chorus girls were putting their red lipstick on, taking off candy-coloured skate guards, getting their knives ready, burbling about the president and his wife. I kept my voice low. “What about Mati?” I tried to find the old Emiliana, the butcher with lizard-tail hair and piercings behind the gauzy violet dress. She shook her head. “No sé.” I don’t know. “We can’t do the show.” My hands were drained, cold and white. She handed me my dress. “Of course we can.” She was right. There was no way to think about Mathais and land my jumps at the same time, to keep body awareness in a vertical lift with cantilever without pure focus. After the bows, the encore, the second encore, I stayed centre ice and, roses at my feet, said that we were taking donations in support of El Centro. I hadn’t asked for approval, but it was fine, people cheered. I was the star of the show. Coins rained down, bills were passed along rows. Everyone got to feel good about themselves and nothing really changed.
“That was the best one yet.” Alvin brought me a flute of champagne. “The president loved it.” We were all out on the large balcony of another palace, in another part of the city, probably built when the real Camila was alive. I had taken a micro-dose of ecstasy on the way to the reception for the president. Mathais wasn’t answering his phone and I had needed something to get me through. I put the tip of my finger in the flute and felt the small bubbles burst against it. Palm trees were lit from below, there was seafood on ice, there was always a reason to celebrate. A photographer passed by and motioned to Alvin and me. I put my leg forward, sliced through the high slit on my dress. A folkloric singer started singing in the corner. A woman with a rose in her hair and red lips. The colours and textures around the reception brightened and moved, but were also softer, sadder seeming somehow. It was a song about lost love, as they all are really. The president’s wife came towards me from across the courtyard, the sequins on her dress were small streaking stars. She pressed her hand over her heart. “Increíble,” she said, tears sparkling beneath her eyes. “Su coraje. Camila es una inspiración.” Her courage. Camila is an inspiration. “She just does what she wants. She’s a selfish c-u-next-Tuesday, don’t you think?” “Si, si!” The president’s wife didn’t seem to understand the English. “Exactamente!” “Anna, just—careful,” whispered Alvin. I could say anything. People would hear what they wanted to hear. A zap and everything fritzed in unison, some screams. The humidity was instant, the dark in every direction of the city, the mosquitos taking the opportunity. A burble of fear as cell phone flashlights lit up. It was probably only 30 seconds before the whir of a generator started up and the breeze from the outdoor air conditioner was against our skin. The palm trees lit up. A cheer from the crowd. Looking past our island of overexposure, there was nothing but dark. The cooling centre somewhere in the middle of it.
I went to El Centro four days later in the middle of the day heat. The power hadn’t come back on and the rank smell of rot, decomposition and vegetal putrefaction reached a 10-block radius. A large wet spot spread from the base of the centre as though it had lost control of its bodily functions. An inspection had been done and the papers reported that one body was found but the death was unrelated to the leak. A heart attack. I had no way to know if it was Mathais. He wasn’t responding, he wasn’t at home. I tested Emiliana. What if we went on ice in the ripped black Quilombo outfits to protest, or sabotaged the cooling system, but she just said, “Anna, calmate. Mathais can take care of himself.” She’d become, or maybe she always was, a true skater. A true artist. Opaque. Compartmentalized. She had probably learned it from me.
I had seen enough performers leave competition to know that you don’t let on that it’s your final show, even to yourself. Don’t think, “This is the one.” Think of it as the second to last show, just a boring Tuesday. And so I skated out. Confident, clean, calm. The space between the audience and me did feel different, like the surface tension had given way, and there was no fourth wall. The stage lights caught the audience in pieces. A portion of eye, a cheek, a gold watch, red lips, their faces sweet and slack, not expecting to be seen. When the slam of the jail door sounded, I began Camila’s final dance capped by a layback camel spin. The water began to flow in, rushing towards us, every night the same unbelievable fate. It was only then that I diverted fully—no way to do it halfway. I threw the blindfold aside and, toes forward, ran on pick-point instead of staying put as the ice layered up. The violin music arrived at a sustained tone and we were supposed to be locked in, but I was free, I could do anything.
I imagined a trampoline. Nothing revolutionary, just a trampoline. Back flip, front flip—jump—as my blood pack broke and ran down my back, dripping onto the ice.It was then that I began to flip and chip. The audience cheered, thinking they knew what was being asked of them. In my periphery, I saw the chorus men, the firing squad, skate in. They raised their guns towards where I was supposed to be standing with Otto and fired. He crumpled as planned, obediently dying. I imagined a trampoline. Nothing revolutionary, just a trampoline. Back flip, front flip—jump—as my blood pack broke and ran down my back, dripping onto the ice. My hair flew out of its bun. The curtain-call music came in, full of brass. Everyone bowed. There was a standing ovation. I paused to catch my breath, then started again. Flip, slash, jump. The rest of the cast skated off the ice as if I weren’t still going, as if not looking at me would stop it all. The audience kept cheering. Throwing roses. I kept, spinning, chipping, more and more reckless until the crowd did eventually stop. The lights went to black, then came up again. A dare. “Señoras y Señores,” the voice of the stage manager on the God-mike, “Gracias por venir. El espectaclo ha terminado.” Thank you for coming. The show is over. They knew I couldn’t do it forever. My chest felt like it would burst, my legs thick, burning, straining. Alvin started to walk towards me across the rink, his shoes slipping on the ice. The Casa Rosada security guards moved into position at the edges but none of them had guns raised. I almost wished they did. I wished there was a quilombo in the streets, that the people were waiting to storm the casa, but I couldn’t hear anything other than the cooling system and the stillness of the audience, watching, watching, waiting.
I skated to centre, unlaced my skates without ceremony, then turned and walked off, bare feet burning against the ice.
