Hector was a teacher of the dance style known as salsa. Four
times a week he would give a class to beginners and always he would call out
the timings of the steps, “One, two, three... five, six, seven...” and he did
this to stress the fact that there was a pause on the fourth beat in which the
dancers weren’t really expected to do anything.
For so many years did he call out
the numbers in this way that he finally forgot four existed at all. And so he went through life unable to cope
with anything related to that particular integer. Thus he had to increase the
frequency of his lessons to five nights a week. This made him richer and more
popular but worsened his problem with fours.
His four-blindness or fourophobia
intensified and deepened to the extent that even the words ‘for’ and ‘fore’
were affected. Hector never did anything for
any reason now, but only because he felt like it. He refused to acknowledge his
forebears and gave up the art of foreplay, much to the dismay of his wife. He
no longer had any fortitude.
Aware that he had changed in a
way that put him at a disadvantage when compared with other men, Hector decided
to do something remarkable in order to regain his feelings of self-worth. Dance
instructors were nothing unusual and even those who put on big parties and
spectacular events weren’t uncommon. His approach had to be devastatingly
original.
It occurred to him that maybe he
could find a way to harness the energy expended by salseros and salseras.
All those movements were an outpouring of physical force and it was a pity this
force couldn’t be captured and used to do positive work rather than be wasted
through dispersal. His first thought was to modify the dancefloor in order to
generate electricity.
This might be accomplished by
connecting the sprung wooden floor to levers and gears below that turned a
dynamo. The electricity produced could power the sound system, so the dancing
would enable the music that accompanied the dancing, a perfect loop. But after
giving the matter a little more thought, Hector realised that this arrangement
wasn’t really so unique.
Something more ambitious was
required. One night the idea came to him as he lay awake in bed. Because the
time 4am was one he was unable to
accept as real, the night was always one hour shorter for him than for a normal
person. To compensate for these missing sixty minutes, he went to bed an hour
early, before he was properly ready for sleep.
Thus he often tossed and turned
not only his wakeful body but ideas in his lucid mind. And now he constructed
in his imagination a curious vessel, a huge raft that was actually a floating
dancefloor, with a rudder and a propeller that could move it along on still
waters and without obtrusive sails that would flap in the faces of the crew and
passengers, who would all be dancers.
The more he pondered this
peculiar marvel of maritime engineering, the more excited Hector became, to the
point that he leaped out of bed and ran about the house on a quest for a pen
that worked and paper that hadn’t already been written on. When he found what
he was seeking, he sketched the design with a few bold and deft strokes. The
salsa raft!
A vessel powered by the
vibrations of the feet of those who danced on its deck, these vibrations being
converted into electricity that powered a motor driving the propeller. And he,
Hector, would be the captain and navigator with his hand on the tiller,
steering a course to their destination, for a destination was another essential
component in his glorious vision.
What more appropriate destination
than Havana? That steamy tropical hive of vibrancy that forms the ultimate
pilgrimage for all serious salsa dancers was the only viable option. The end
result of such an amazing voyage wouldn’t merely be to bolster Hector’s
somewhat battered confidence but to also provide a solution to a riddle that
had long bothered him.
This riddle concerned the haunt
of the best salsa dancers in the world. A fine teacher, Hector had nonetheless
on his travels to clubs in other cities often been awestruck and intimidated by
the quality of the dancers who thronged the dancefloor. Some of them were truly
astounding. The spins they did were more complicated and elegant, the styling
more stylish.
Yet these dancers, when he went
to praise them after the music ended, always insisted they weren’t as good as
the dancers in some other club. So Hector had gone seeking and had found and
entered those other clubs, but the dancers who frequented them also insisted
the best could be found elsewhere. Always there was a better club with better
dancers.
But the process had to end
eventually. Somewhere in this wide world of ours there must be the best club of all and in that club
must logically cavort the most stupefying dancers that had ever moved or could
move to salsa rhythms. And he, Hector, naturally nurtured a dream of locating
that club one day. His best guess was that it was probably in Havana.
It might not be there, of course,
but it was worth finding out. The raft would take him together with his regular
class of learners and once they reached Havana he could begin his explorations
and investigations. Even if he was unsuccessful in finding the ultimate salsa
club, the remarkable and unusual journey itself would make him famous.
He shared his scheme with his pupils
at the earliest opportunity and they were enthusiastic. They even contributed
donations to the building of the raft, which he had expected to fund entirely
from his own savings. The vessel was constructed in a couple of months and its
launching was attended by television reporters and journalists from many newspapers.
The raft set off from England one
morning in summer and Hector pointed the rudder towards Cuba. For the first few
days everything went well. The dancers danced and their dancing made electricity
that kept the music playing and also turned the propeller. It was going to be a
long voyage but that was part of its appeal. “One, two, three... five, six,
seven...”
Unfortunately, the island of Cuba
lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer and to get there the raft had to cross
the latitude line 44ºN. The two fours in that number were like the double
barrels of a shotgun to Hector and his frenzied attempts to avoid them led to
him capsizing the raft. It is not easy to capsize a vessel as stable as a raft
but he managed it.
Or maybe huge waves were
responsible and no effort was made to avoid the storm because he was unable to
check the weather forecast. It was an
insane mission from the start and the authorities should have prevented it, but
how could anyone forbid anything to
Hector? All the same, he lacked tremendous foresight
and it is time now to forget all
about him.
