24
PARTISAN REVIEW
met him, she shuddered, and her face broke into an expression
of disgust. But then, she saw he was strong and husky with
broad shoulders, ·and smiled, offering him a limp hand, and
sweetly telling him that she knew they were going to be the
wmners.
The dance marathon was conducted in a public dance hall
on the south side of Chicago. A ring was placed in the center
with an orchestra dais at one end. Around it there were box
seats, and behind them, rising rows of bleacher benches. The
opening was described, in advertisements, as gala. An announcer
talked through a microphone, and the promoters and judges in
tuxedoes also addressed a full house. The contestants were
introduced, and some of them, but not Takiss, spoke to the crowd
and the large radio audience all over America.
It
was all a
new and promising if confusing world to Takiss, and he walked
around the floor, feeling as lost and as out of place as he had
on those first days in America. But it was leading at last to
paradise.
The contest swung into action. They danced for three
minutes out of every ten, and walked around and around the
floor for the remaining time; and they were given fifteen minutes
rest out of every hour. There was glamor in being watched
by so many people, in eating sandwiches and drinking coffee
before them, in receiving attention from doctors and nurses, and
meeting all the others who, like himself, saw at the end of this
contest, five hundred dollars and fame. As the contestants got
to talking to each other, Takiss heard them using one word
over and over again-celebrity. A celebrity was somebody who
was important, like Jack Dempsey, and the movie stars. They
all wanted to be a celebrity. And Takiss too, he determined
that he was going to be a celebrity.
Takiss had not imagined that anyone could dance for more
than a week like this, and that maybe after a sleepless and tiring
week, he would be the winner. In less than twenty four hours,
he learned that it was a grind harder than he had calculated,
and while he doggedly gritted his teeth, he determined that he
would not let himself drop out. Still, he wished that he had not
entered it. He wished he were back working in fruit stores
and ice cream parlors the way he had before hard times had
come. He wished that he were a shepherd back in the Grecian
mountains where his old mother had lived until her death.
When his partner was tired, she put her arms around his
