They were lit by a small charcoal fire that glowed on a metal sheet set between them. They had gone without food for a long time and one of them, sitting straight-backed and cross-legged, was by now so emaciated that his naked torso seemed to consist solely of the levers of its bones and the fine cords of muscle that allow these to move. He wore a turban of white wool and in his face African and Oriental features and a number of individually mordant and volatile qualities blended into a harmonious whole. His name was Rumi and he was a monk of the Islamic Mawlawiyah order.

  His traveling companion had clearly been strong at one time, but starvation had also taken its toll on him, so that even when, as now, he reclined at his ease, he frequently had to shift position to take the weight off his own protruding bones. His name was Jakob Natten and he had once been a dancer at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen.

  There was something natural about the tranquillity of the two men; an observer might easily have overlooked the dilapidated barque, imagining that here were two mariners enjoying some peace and quiet, with time on their hands and obvious reasons for being where they were. While the truth of the matter was, neither of the two was capable of setting sail or plotting a course; both knew that on this night they were living on borrowed time and so amazed were they by the fact of their own existence that they had no idea—not even the Mohammedan—whether they had wound up in Lisbon because it was in their own and the world’s best interest or whether somewhere in the universe an angel had mislaid their particular papers.

  They had met six months earlier on Sardinia, in Oloroso. When the Fascist Italian carabinieri descended on that town they could have taken to the maquis with the Resistance but instead they chose to sail on. It was at this point that they had been struck by the thought that they might be displaced not in space but in time. That they perhaps belonged in a century other than that into which they had been born. Together, since then, they had traveled so far out onto the fringes of society that they had now reached the point where life leaves off and something else begins. But even here it was apparent that they had once been at the center of things: over their emaciation both wore the same flaking dignity; no one could have doubted that what the glow of the embers played upon were two down-and-out child prodigies.

  Accounts of Rumi and his childhood and youth are still subject to exaggeration, even though, then as now, the truth more than suffices. He was raised in Turkey, in Konya, capital of the Mawlawiyah order. By the age of five he knew the Koran by heart. He was taken to Mecca, where, in the square in front of the Kaaba, for five days and five nights he recited the Holy Book to the faithful twice running, with nothing but a very short break for something to drink, and by the age of twenty he had attained such a degree of contact with Allah in the holy whirling dance that he was expecting to be raised up to paradise any day. Two years later Atatürk banned the order and closed the monastery, and Rumi was cast into a sort of insecurity of which he had heard but which he had never really imagined possible. By then he had for some time been something of a celebrity and, like other homeless religious leaders of the day, he would undoubtedly have found a welcome in some European capital, there to be given a foretaste of that paradise of which Allah promises in the Koran (in the seventy-sixth sura) that we shall all sit on soft cushions in the shade of the trees. But this Rumi would not have. The Mawlawiyah call themselves “dervishes,” a Persian word meaning poor, and they have dedicated their lives to seeking Allah through faith, poverty, dancing, and music, and not in Paris. This unwavering conviction had first led Rumi to take to the road and later it had caused him to sin ever so slightly against the Koran when, in order to stay alive, somewhere near Port Said he stole a boat. It had then swept him across the Mediterranean to Sardinia, where he had met Jakob, and from there it had carried him as far as Lisbon.

  Rumi knew nothing of Jakob Natten other than that he had once been a ballet dancer and that he was possessed of an obstinacy that would likely be the death of him. Rumi had once asked his traveling companion what had prompted him to leave his dancing and his native land and all Jakob had said in reply was that circumstances had taken such a turn that, had he gone on dancing in Denmark, it would have been in prison.

  They both knew that this evening a hunt was on for them. Somewhere, a detachment of gendarmes was methodically combing the docks, and now and again the baying of the dogs carried across the water to the two on the deck. One of the harbor police’s low, dark launches moved slowly—almost drifting—downriver, scanning the anchored vessels.

  Neither of the two now questioned what they were wanted for. The day before, in a bar, a man in uniform had asked to see their passports and Jakob had butted him in the face, not for any political reason—so hazy were Jakob’s ideas on politics that they could never have been the cause of his hurting anyone—but out of the panic and paranoia that build up inside those who are sinking to the bottom. They had managed to shake off their pursuers somewhere in Lisbon’s maze of narrow streets and squares, but only by the skin of their teeth, and both of them had sensed the end approaching, because behind this bid for escape lay the memory of all the other times they had fled from places where they had stolen things or from the harbor police or customs officers, and although neither of them (or even both of them together) had any extensive knowledge of society, they were beginning to understand that for someone without a passport or papers or an occupation, someone who has not been married or at least engaged or has run off to join the Foreign Legion, simply staying alive, staying afloat and at liberty for any length of time, is an impossible task.

  So now they were waiting for the conclusion, and perhaps it denotes some act of mercy on the part of nature that, when exhaustion is so great that one must stop and turn to face one’s pursuers, one can do so with the sort of composure that comes from knowing that one has no choice. It was this composure that moved these two men to make themselves comfortable on the brink of the abyss.

  Now, when they had ceased to expect anything of the world, their surroundings granted them everything. The sun had gone down; it was that hour when the importance of friendship and love, punishment and reward, thirst and justice fades and disappears, because Allah reveals that he is blue. The Tagus was a mirror of congealed silver, against the purple hillsides the houses of the city showed as delicate boxes of white marble, and the last light of the setting sun was a sliver of flame fired gold against the blue-black clouds in the west.

  Occasionally the two men drank milk spiced with cinnamon from a kettle set on the coals, the scalding liquid sending a mildly delirious exhilaration coursing through their veins. Though no words passed between them, their thoughts turned onto the same path and fell into step. They reflected on the art of survival, on the squares where they had thieved and the houses at which they had begged, and on the fact that they, who had once danced for Allah and the patrons of the Royal Theater, now danced for passersby. Only at that point did their thoughts elect each to go their own ways and only then did speech become necessary.

  “Rumi,” said Jakob, “have you considered that until not long before we met I believed that I was going to dance my way into everlasting, or at any rate long-lasting, fame? And you were under the impression that you were going to dance your way into paradise. In a sense we had the idea that we were moving, in time with the music, toward eternal life. And now it turns out that the place for which we were headed was a Lisbon jail.” “That will be no more than a transition,” said Rumi. “It could end up lasting a lifetime,” said Jakob, and in a flash of despondency he saw the face of the Portuguese dictator pass before his eyes. “Even then it will be but a transition,” said Rumi, “and there is no guarantee that it will last that long.” “Do you never think, Rumi, that you might have ended up somewhere other than where you now find yourself?” asked Jakob. “The Koran commands us to consider each day how we shall spend eternity,” the Mohammedan replied. “But what about where we will be tomorrow?” Jakob persisted. “I laugh at tomorrow,” said Rumi. “But you never laugh,” objected Jakob. “I laugh to myself. Since coming to Europe I laugh only to myself,” answered the Mohammedan. “You Europeans could put up a gateway at Gibraltar inscribed with the words: ‘Only those who are absolutely serious may enter here.’ Because the countries of Europe are the most serious places I have ever seen.” “The Arabic songs you sing are like one long lament,” said Jakob. “We Mohammedans,” said Rumi, “yearn for paradise, realize that we cannot attain it, and weep and wail. And then we laugh. You Europeans yearn like us and weep like us. But then you whine, hoping that perhaps you might still be able to move your God to put an end to all earthly suffering. I have no desire to be anywhere but where I find myself. I am not about to plague Allah with my whining.” “I don’t ask anyone for help,” said Jakob earnestly. “But shortly before I met you someone asked me something and the question has been ringing in my ears ever since. It is the question of whether we should stay or run away.” “That is for Allah to decide,” said the Mohammedan serenely. “That may be,” said Jakob, “but I have the feeling that he would like to hear—in passing, as it were—my thoughts on the matter. Would you care to hear,” he continued, “how the question of staying or fleeing came into my life?” And without waiting for a reply he straightened up and drew closer to the embers. On the other side of the fire, he knew, sat one whose curiosity was as patient and boundless as his own, and as he settled himself more comfortably, he unwittingly mirrored the Mohammedan’s own posture, so that he who spoke and he who listened became one.

  “In this story I, too, have a part to play. But the main character was a friend of mine. The one whom this befell was Andreas.

  “In order to understand what I am about to tell you, Rumi, you have to know that in my country the rich have stopped propping themselves up against the five pillars of duty on which you say that Islam rests. They have discovered that they can get by on a day-to-day basis without faith and prayer and fasting and pilgrimage and charity.”

  “They will burn in hell,” said the Mohammedan.

  “Not necessarily,” said Jakob. “Because they have instead raised a temple of sorts to these five pillars. And the temple in which the first four are worshipped is a grand theater in Copenhagen.”

  “What about the fifth, charity?” asked Rumi.

  “Charity,” said Jakob, “is dispensed from another theater. It is known as the state. But that is another story.”

  “That one you can tell me in prison,” said the Mohammedan.

  “Which would in a way be the proper place to tell it,” replied Jakob. “But the theater tale is so confined that it’s best to tell it out in the open.”

  “The theater in question is the Royal Theater. On the outside it has the columns and staircases of a temple and the form and gravity of a castle; inside it possesses all the grandeur of a palace and the intimate alcoves and corridors and faded plush carpeting of a bordello. I tell you, so unfathomable place is it that I know that whatever I have picked up about it amounts to no more than snatches. It resembles some vast machine and anyone else who, like me, has passed through it would have a tale different from mine to tell. If they told it, that is. But the strange thing is that they do not. Those who describe the machine are still part of it, are themselves cogs, and the tale a cog in motion tells has to be a muddled tale.

  “One of the things I never understood was the audience. But this much I did grasp: that for our spectators—who were small in number, so small that I have wondered whether the public for which we danced did not in fact consist of the same few thousand people filling the theater day in, day out—for them, that place was a temple. They made a sort of pilgrimage to it. They came to see people on the stage who had faith, perhaps because they themselves did not trust anyone, even God. And they came to hear how it sounds when someone prays to something or other, perhaps because they themselves did not know of anyone or anything they believed would listen to them. And they came to see fasting, and I am convinced that this had something to do with the fact that in their daily lives they were so busy accumulating things that they had to come and see people who willingly practiced self-denial in order to catch a glimpse of God.

  “Obviously there must have been other reasons, too, for their turning up. But right now, this evening, I cannot think of any.

  “Andreas and I joined the theater’s ballet school as small children. What brings parents to enroll their children in such a school? The belief that children can act as some sort of straw through which the adults may drink in real life. And don’t ask me for any better answer to that question, because just the thought of these parents incenses me and this is not meant to be a bitter tale, or, at any rate, not solely a bitter tale.

  “There was no inscription over the school door. But I see now that there could have been one that read: Only those who have hung their independence in the cloakroom admitted here. Because, as soon as one stepped through that door every and any form of free will became an impediment, like lead in one’s shoes, because at this school one entered into a freedom so great that it ruled out everything else: freedom from having to think about one’s own life.

  “We were taught to jump by a teacher whose experience and love of the dance resided in a short switch with which he hit us across the legs if we didn’t jump high enough. After a while we began to believe that the world was ordered in such a way that somewhere in the universe there sat a God with a switch.”

  “That God was not Allah,” said the Mohammedan.

  “No,” said Jakob. “And I’m not at all certain that there was any God. I’m not blaming anyone. I am merely trying to come up with a metaphor. And you’re right, the God metaphor is no good. More than for any other reason we worked because we ourselves wanted to. In Denmark everyone agrees that the greatest mystery is that of diversity. In our society the incomprehensible individuals are those who are out of step, who keep tripping over their own feet, or who have raced on ahead because they feel something burning at their backs, or who cannot catch up with the rest of us because they happen to have a wooden leg or to weigh three hundred pounds. Trying to understand these people has become an art. For me, Rumi, it’s different. Or at least it has become different. For me, the great secret is why so many stay in line; my mystery is the mystery of discipline.

  “I’m no longer sure how things stand regarding suffering in the world. Having seen that one can be in need of almost everything and still be as happy as a clam, I tend to think twice before identifying people as suffering. But this much I will say: most people had a hard time of it at the theater. And it may not even have been the one or two students in each class who were thrown out each year because they weren’t good enough who were the most unhappy.

  “They were always telling us that the ballet school had flourished like a plant. It had been a seed and a tender but promising shoot, and then, in the last century, it had been taken over by a great gardener and ballet master, a born general who danced a military polka by his father’s deathbed and who swore that he would construct his theater like a barracks and train his dancers like soldiers. During his time the school and the dancing produced a large rose that has been blooming ever since, and the reason it has succeeded in lasting so long is that it is made of stucco. In those days, for a while at least, the dancing must have been soft, and then it was molded to imitate life, after which it hardened, like the plants adorning the theater itself, into a stiff, white, and everlasting instruction to posterity as to how to envisage the living.

  “Maybe that’s why we did as we were told; maybe the theater explained itself, as it were. Maybe we put up with the pain because everything around us vouched for the fact that, now and forevermore, there would never be any real life but this.

  “For a long while my friend Andreas was a vital component in this machine.

  “If he were sitting across from you this evening you would be thinking to yourself that he, like me, was ready to be turned into glue; like me he would remind you of something that was to be carted off this very night by garbagemen. But until not that long ago his body constituted the perfect instrument for a god who bows his violin with a switch. And I use the word body deliberately. I know there are those who believe there is no way we can dissociate the soul from the body but that is because they have never seen what Andreas and I saw. He and I, we know now that it is possible to dance without your soul and with your head under your arm and still persuade the world at large that dead things live.

  “Our hours are numbered, Rumi, and they are too few for modesty on others’ behalf. When Andreas danced, the audience out there in the darkness saw their dreams come true. I don’t know how such things come about. Perhaps it was his technique. His pirouettes, his cool-headed preparation, his centering, and his sharp yet perfectly poised turns. Or his slightly premature takeoff in the jumps, the culmination of his leap just before the first beat and the way he hung there until, just when everyone expected him to land, to come back down to earth and the rest of us, he would stretch out and continue to soar. And at that moment those of us in the wings and the two thousand people in the house would hold our breaths, unable to tell if it was the angel of life or the angel of death that had blown on the backs of our necks.

  “That is how Andreas danced, so effortless in his balancing feats that he might simply have been taking a stroll. And yet that was not the key factor; his technique is no more than incidental to this story. The important thing here, and for everyone else who will remember and understand Andreas, was his way of becoming one with the dances he performed, the way he could mingle with the rest of us, smiling and hardworking and of his time and yet like something forgotten and left behind in the theater a century ago. The way he, more than any dancer before him, embodied the stucco of which the ballet is formed.