Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #23
‘Oh yeah. Ballet is all about lineage, you can’t learn it from a book.
You have to show up in front of a teacher who apprenticed themselves to someone else and to the art itself, and yes, that’s elitist and unfair but that’s how it is.
There’s no democracy in ballet, no negotiation; there’s only the form.
And then you’ve got to kind of kneel in front of this ideal, like, you sacrifice yourself on the altar of what ballet is even though you’ll never attain it.
No one will. It doesn’t live in this realm. ’
She waves her arm vaguely in the direction of the as yet empty auditorium. ‘That’s why they come to the show, you know? Because they’re drawn to the beauty of human bodies striving and yearning for that ideal. They feed on that space in between the dancer and the dance.’
She takes a breath and shoves her hands under her thighs to sit on them. He’s frowning, but in a go-on-tell-me-more way, so she keeps going.
‘So when you do an arabesque,’ she says, ‘you’re doing your own version of an arabesque, a version which aims for the ur-arabesque but will inevitably fall short.
Your leg will be a little too low, or a little turned in, or your back will fall too far forwards and spoil the line.
Maybe it’ll be your foot spoiling the line with a sickle at the ankle.
You’ll place your arm just as the choreography says, one arm draped behind you and the other guiding your gaze forwards, with your chin lifted to match but something about the picture will not be quite good enough.
Cecile will correct you, and after you do what she says your arabesque will be better, but there’ll still be something in the pose that’ll fall from the ideal in some way and you’ll hardly ever be able to say what it is. ’
What a wanker she sounds. What made her say all that?
She’s gabbing on like bloody Derek the follow spot.
Watch him excuse himself now, mumble something about how he must be going, doesn’t want to get her in trouble with Cecile.
Soon she’ll see him in the Grub with Jessica, or Anita and the next time a young, half-decent straight man pledges here Kavi will take him aside and say yeah, she’s fit you know but she’s kind of intense.
‘That’s nothing like poetry,’ he says.
‘How do you mean?’ she says, and her stomach does a one-two bounce-then-dive. Of course he’s a poet. That’s the way this place works. The Crow hates her. Who else would it give her as a boyfriend?
‘Well, when you write a poem you’ve got nothing but the words in your head, right? And you don’t know if it’s good or not and that becomes an obsession. How can you know if it’s good? Why do some people think it’s good and some think it’s bad and some are totally indifferent to it?’
He’s looking at her like he wants her to answer, but she’s still trying to figure out if she is more or less interested in sleeping with him now, so she shrugs apologetically and he carries on.
‘That’s because there’s no such thing as an ur-poem, no ideal poem that all the other poems are trying to live up to. It’s just a jumble of words that have to be persuaded into poem shape after they’ve done their day job in lists and love letters and lullabies.’
She smiles. ‘Words have day jobs?’
‘Of course.’ He leans in to her, conspiratorially.
She knows they’ve been noticed by now. One of the girls waiting in the other wing will have seen their heads drawing together in the darkness as Cecile’s counting drones on and the news will be drifting among the rest of the dancers by the half-hour call tonight.
‘Some words, like… Okay, I’ve thought of some: exquisite and caress and gleam – well, you don’t have to ask them twice.
They love being written into poetry and they jump right into the lines, snuggle down between the commas and coo.
Other words, like mud and water and baby have to be, like, cajoled and teased and tickled. But—’
He holds out a finger to her and she tries not to be impressed because she is still – still – trying to figure out if this poetry thing is good or bad.
‘If you can settle them there, tuck them inside a metaphor or something, let them get comfy. Well, then they’ll sing the sweetest song you’ll ever hear.’
She cocks her head, not sure if she can tease him yet. ‘Is that one of your poems?’
He laughs. ‘The Crow isn’t keen on me writing. I’ve lost every single notebook I’ve ever written in, the notes app on my phone crashes constantly and any time I ask to borrow Mackie’s laptop he says yes but it never works out.’
She winces in sympathy. ‘It does that sort of shit, doesn’t it?’
She’s just about to tell him how the Crow used to trick her in the first month after her pledge, moving her cabin up and down the corridor after the show, until she got fed up and went to sit in the caboose one day after ballet class.
She waited with a five pound note in her fist until the Crow showed up and put the money in front of it, told it to stop dicking about, she loved the show, the other dancers were complimentary about the way she’d covered for some injuries and Belinda had just put in an order for fifty pairs of pointe shoes for her so give it up, she was staying, when Kavi speaks first.
‘So what about music?’
‘What about it?’
‘Does it strive for perfection or is it a jumble like poetry?’
She considers that for a few moments. ‘Music is like ballet,’ she says.
‘More like ballet than like poetry. There’s the note, the precise pitch of the sound that was created along with everything else in the instant of the Big Bang, but any time you make a noise it falls short of that perfection, which only just exists, like the way a quark or whatever is kind of there and not there at the same time. ’
‘You know, I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘Music is more like poetry because we make sounds all the time, we’re constantly hitting things and moving air and causing vibrations to ricochet everywhere but only some of those sounds are music.
The rest is just Belinda arguing with Mackie and the curfew bell and, like, Zach farting. ’
‘Fine.’ She laughs. ‘Music is like poetry and dance is a world apart from everything. You win.’
‘Or you win. Your art is further from the mundane and closer to the impossible than any other art.’
She grins. ‘You’re right. I win.’ She slides off the props table with one fluid movement, and as she moves she catches sight of a wolfish hunger in his eyes and her skin fizzes with pleasure.
‘Alors, les filles!’ Cecile calls from her stool at the front of the stage. A quick mark through of the Pearl waltz for spacing, please!’
He smiles at her. ‘See you later.’
She lifts a hand lamely to wave as she hears the patter of too-hard pointe shoes on the stage behind her.
Does he mean see you later as in, Bye, probably won’t chat to you again until we next bump into each other, or does he mean it as in, If you’re in the dining car after the show tonight let’s get a drink together?
The logistics of this seduction suddenly escape her.
How exactly is she meant to seal this? Just knock on his cabin door after curfew and hop into his bed?
No time to figure it out. She mumbles ‘see you later’ and trots on to the stage to take her place among the ten girls dressed in their woollen leggings and baggy jumpers.
Cecile counts them in and when she passes the prop table a few moments later, her limbs moving automatically through the choreography to Cecile’s croaks of and a one and a two and a three to keep them all in time, she glances into the wings to see if he’s still there, watching her as she swoops and bends and stretches, but he’s gone.
* * *
In the stage left wing Zach and Lara stand on either side of a small flight case marked PEARL.
‘The thing to remember is never to touch it. Mackie and Belinda are the only ones allowed and really, I’m only supposed to show you because Mackie thinks new people should see it at rest, so to speak, on their first day so they don’t come over all funny during the show.’
‘What happens if I do touch it?’
Zach sighs. ‘Belinda fines you three days salary.’
‘Three days?’
Zach grins and flicks open the latches. ‘I told you she’s harsh.’
They lean over it, faces illuminated by its fluorescent glow. It’s about as big as a beach ball, teardrop shaped, with a smooth and glossy surface. It smells a little like the acrid smoke of singed plastic and Lara rears away from it. She’s never wanted to touch anything less in her entire life.
‘Can you imagine the size of the oyster that made that thing?’ she murmurs as Zach shuts the case. He shrugs.
‘Makes sense that monsters live in the sea. It’s the monsters that share the land with us that keep me up at night.’ Zach wheels the flight case over to the wall next to the props table and shoves his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot.
‘All right. I need to visit the – uh – little boy’s room and then we can get something to eat. You be okay here for a minute?’
‘Sure.’
He smiles shyly. ‘You’re doing really well. I’m impressed. You’re hard to freak out. I guess your psychic auntie is really doing you a favour now.’
She slumps into a chair and shuts her eyes.
Her mind is a whirl of faces and names and her face aches from holding it in a pleasant, neutral expression no matter what crazy thing Zach has just said, no matter who has just introduced themselves with an instantly forgettable name.
No wonder no one’s ever heard of this show, no wonder Belinda was cagey during her interview, no wonder the pay is double the starting salary for a lighting technician.
Fairies and magic trains and crows who can see into your soul.
What would Mum and Auntie Doreen make of this?
On stage, Cecile shouts, ‘Have a moment to compose yourselves then we’ll run it one more time.’ There is a murmur of relief and a patter of light footsteps.