On stage, dressed in black, Katherine looked like a tall, elegant man wearing a woman’s hat, and the fine silk of my shalwar kameez shimmered against her suit. The opening twelve bars of “New Thing” were hers and then the second piano came in as the lights came up on the dancers. We got to work. No intermission. Straight through. One moment. One story.
The lovers wore bodysuits under their wedding clothes and during the violent slow-motion attack scene in the second movement, the young woman’s fancy silks were torn off as she was pulled away by her brothers. Her lover was left holding a scrap of her torn dress, his own clothes also in tatters. That movement ends with the chorus, faces covered by veils, dancing to “I Miss You, Mor.” Before the allegretto, Katherine looked across the piano at me ready to complete the long unbroken piece.
The final tableau is my favourite part of the dance. The first piano answers the second. On the bare stage the ghosts of the lovers dance a passionate pas de deux of lost love. They move in and out of unmoving pools of blue light. I had been preparing to play this moment with Katherine from the time I first sat beside Abbu on the piano bench as a small child.
When it was over, in the dark, on stage, Katherine hugged me, said, We played well.
I knew we had.
I’m going to check with the recording engineers to see if they got it, she said. Go and enjoy the party, I’ll be there in a minute.
I was not aware that he had come until I was off stage and saw him standing half-hidden near the door in the hallway to the green room. Kamal. In New York. A group of young dancers jostled by the door, running with great excitement in and out of their change rooms, and a student who was amiably drunk, a dancer’s boyfriend, stumbled between us. He looked from Kamal to me and asked, Sorry. Is this your guy?
No.
The drunk looked at me in surprise, as if I had tried to tell him that the earth is flat, said, Then do you wish he was your guy?
I laughed as I used to with drunks in the hotel bars and said, I’m just getting my sweater.
The drunken young man moved along and I whispered to Kamal, I have to go. Even a drunk can feel us.
Kamal said, Not yet.
I have to get my things.
In the dressing room were empty water bottles, dancers’ bags, coats in a pile on a couch. When I turned, Kamal was standing inside the door and we were alone.
Mahsa, you played beautifully.
Kamal, thank you for coming.
We heard people in the hall and I moved away from him and he slipped into a side room as a stage manager showed Ali in.
Ali said, Mahsa, you know I am waiting. What are you doing? Who was that?
One of the theatre staff, I said.
Come, I have someone waiting to meet you.
At the reception, I felt the unpleasant confusion I used to feel with people after performing. Ali guided a French-Canadian businessman I had met several times in Montreal through the crowd to me and he said, Mahsa, it was magnificent. Then to Ali he said, Where have you been hiding her? He pulled in a young man and said, This is my son Sebastien. He wants you to play at his boîte, Nuage bleu, when you get back to Montreal.
Ali said, Of course she will play for you.
Where were Asif and Lailuma?
A mandala of light bulbs was strung over the tall windows of the Lepercq Space. Along the walls of the cavernous room were risers and scaffolding and the centre was set with round tables and a long bar and candles and big trays of food that the dancers wheeled around like small flocks of starlings. Some were wrapped in scarves and heavy leg warmers and others wore light silk camisoles and their parents approached, to tell me they’d never heard two pianos, that their children had been inspired by the work. Katherine brought Harvey, who wore a plaid jacket and a black fedora, to see me. He wanted me to meet people from the school board. I had not imagined how many people Katherine knew, or what this production meant. Finally I made my way back to Ali and asked, Where are the children?
They went to the hotel with my parents to make a latenight celebration for you. We will meet them there.
I wanted them at the reception with me. I wanted to stay here all night with everyone else, to enjoy this moment.
Ali said, It is late.
I made my way round the party one more time and saw Bea who was excited about her first choreography and she asked, Where’re Lai and Asif? I haven’t seen them.
I found Katherine who said, Mahsa, this is the fun part. She turned to Ali and said, Stay a bit longer. Everyone wants her at the opening-night party.
He answered her charmingly, You’ll understand, my parents leave in the morning, early. Tomorrow night I hope you’ll allow me to invite you and your family to a postperformance dinner.
When I nodded Katherine shrugged and said, All right. Meet me here tomorrow at five thirty.
In the cab Ali said, I hate that kind of theatre.
I looked out the window at the Carnegie Hall tower with its glazed bricks. I thought, I won’t let him spoil my night.
Almost naked dancers, said Ali. This is the sort of theatre you choose. Hell is full of women.
Inside our hotel, under the chandeliers, walking over the thick carpet, past heavy wooden desks with fresh flowers, I still did not know. I was looking forward to celebrating with my children. I still did not know, walking down the long hotel hall, thinking about performing again tomorrow.
But I knew when I stepped inside the door and we switched on the lights, when Ali closed it behind us and swung the brass security bar across. I knew this kind of emptiness.
She’d never made it to the concert. No one had. Not Asif. Not Ali’s parents. While I was settling behind the piano on the darkened stage, while we played the first notes as the dancers appeared, they slipped away. They forced her. They forced her into a cab. The door to the cab closed. The car pulled away to the airport.
That is how fast a life can change.