Chapter 63
MONTHS
After my second Romeo and Juliet with Max, I came home to a blinking light in the dark: there was a message on my answering machine.
‘Patricia. Erin Desborough here, about a quarter past six. You said to ring in the event I made any headway with Aleksander’s note…’
I grabbed the original from my coat pocket, the nearest biro that worked, and the jotter I kept beside the phone.
‘… I don’t want to make any promises, because the thought only just occurred to me about five minutes ago.
At any rate, by the time you hear this you’ll probably be exhausted from the performance – I hope it went well, all things considered – and I don’t know if this will be useful in the slightest, but I’ll tell you nonetheless.
The first letters down each row, you or one of your fellow dancers mentioned the possibility of names, but I wonder if they could be months? ’
I stared at the note, lining up my hand with the first column of letters: S F F F J.
One September, three Februarys, and a January, June, or July.
“B pdd” and “x x x” remained outliers at the end of the list; even so, Erin had just struck a match in a pitch-black room.
‘… Anyway, just thought it was worth throwing out there. Do let me know if that helps, and if there’s anything else on which I can offer my limited expertise.
I’m still reeling, in all honesty. By the time I returned to Danseuse HQ after our meeting, I had forgotten almost everything that we’d discussed.
You were right to give me a copy of the note – I’ve now sellotaped it to my desk to ward off forgetting again. ’
The pause lasted for so long, I thought the machine had stopped.
‘I’ve never been one for believing in higher powers, the celestial, the supernatural, what have you.
But the last few days, well… I don’t see how any of us can dismiss out of hand the thought that there might be some nebulous, ethereal thing behind what we refer to as “our world”.
Aleksander’s disappearance, the erasure of his name from memory itself…
it’s like something out of a fairy tale. ’
When the machine’s tape reel clicked, there was nothing in my kitchen but the silence that comes after midnight.
I’d been thinking about midnight ever since the meeting. The power it holds in fairy-tale worlds and human ones. A slate wiped clean.
Looking at Sander’s note again through the prism of months, I turned to the next page on the jotter and wrote out another version, this time filling in the gaps.
Sep 1986 rep. Aug (or Apr?) 1989
Feb 1987 I Aug (or Apr?)
Feb 1988 II Oct 1
Feb 1986 II No. 18 Entr.
Jan (Jun/Jul?) 1987 TD
B pdd
x x x
The meaning of the note as a whole still eluded me, but a tiny step forward was better than none. If the letters were indeed months, then the years between 1986 and 1989 were the only ones that fit – Sander hadn’t joined the company until 1979.
In this new version, the fourth line leapt out at me. I had been unconsciously thinking “Entrance” for “Entr.”, but what if it was short for something else?
I went to my cassette shelves and ran my finger along the plastic spines until I found the one I’d labelled Tchaikov TSB.
Act II, Scene 2, No. 18 Entr’acte.
I didn’t need to play it to hear the music: the taut, barely there violins and wind section guiding the audience between the waking world of Prince Florimund, the shadowy dream realm of Aurora, and the misty otherworld of the Lilac Fairy.
I returned to the note and wrote “Act” before every roman numeral. I still didn’t understand the list in full, but at last I knew what I was looking at. Not names, places, or stage directions. Musical scores, from the years Sander and I had danced together.
The next, even more elusive question, was why.