“Emile couldn’t take his eyes off you last night.” Kitten pushed herself up onto her toes until the muscles of her calves stood out like thick twisted rope. “He’d be a terrific catch, Lucia.”
“You mean because of his money?” I extended my leg, stretching until I felt my muscles pulling at my bones. Pale wintry sunlight sliced through the windows, throwing serrated shadows across the floor of the dance studio. Other dancers stretched and spun and examined their reflections in the mirrored wall as we waited for the dance master.
“Pa says the Fernandez family’s worth a fortune. But I wasn’t thinking of that. Ma says Emile could be the next Beethoven. Just imagine! He could compose entire symphonies for you.” Kitten pushed back her neck, rolled her shoulders and sighed longingly.
“He’s very talented, but I’m not sure he’s Beethoven,” I said. Emile’s cousin was Darius Milhaud, one of Paris’s most celebrated composers, renowned for his stylish blending of classical and jazz. Emile longed to be like him and often talked animatedly about reconciling the rigour of Bach with the energy of jazz. What if Kitten’s Ma was right? I felt a small lump of pride lodge in my throat. “I do love working with him – he’s one of the few composers happy to have his music governed by my choreography. Every other composer thinks choreography should play second fiddle.” I shook out my hands in an exasperated way.
“Oh I think it’s more than work. And you know it.” Kitten looked down the line of her nose at me, a knowing smile on her fashionably-painted rose bud lips.
“I admit it – I’m very fond of him. He took me to the Bois de Boulogne last week in his new motor and kissed me for hours and hours.” I recalled the rasp of his stubbly chin and the way his moustache had tickled my nose and how his hands had fumbled eagerly beneath my dress.
“Was it delicious, darling?” Kitten’s head snapped back into position, her shoulders braced in readiness for my next confession. But then we heard the clatter of piano keys and the collective shuffle of feet as all the dancers turned. Monsieur Borlin, in a white three-piece suit, his hands in white kid gloves, swept into the room and rapped the silver tip of his cane against the side of the piano. I breathed out, relieved I didn’t have to disappoint Kitten, for Emile’s dogged embraces had left me oddly cold and disconcerted. I’d wanted so much to feel like a brazen flapper. Instead I’d felt my blood cool and my insides curl up like a fist.
“Straight into third position,” Monsieur Borlin commanded. “Reach open your arms … lift your palms … and extend.”
“I have a hunch Emile might propose,” Kitten whispered.
“Don’t be silly! I’m poor, I’ve got a squint and I’m not Jewish.” I splayed out my fingers towards the ceiling, stretching until every muscle and sinew ached. But Kitten’s words made my scalp tingle. Could Emile really feel that passionately about me? I thought of his huge house with its cream stone façade and its elaborate balconies at every blue-shuttered window. Of the artfully-placed flowers and thickly-daubed paintings his mother loved. Of his admiring aunts and sisters who fussed over me as if I was a new puppy. And I thought of Emile, his hands skimming the piano keys, his contented cheerfulness, his soft loving eyes.
“Very nice, Miss Joyce, hold it there.” Monsieur Borlin rapped on the floor with his cane. “Class! Please observe Miss Joyce. Note the position of her feet, how they hold her steady. Observe the elegance of her arms.”
“I think you’re wrong,” hissed Kitten. “I think Emile’s in love with you. And why shouldn’t he be? You’re beautiful, you’re one of the most talented dancers in Paris, you’re clever and kind. And your Pa’s the most celebrated writer in the world.”
“First position … raise your arms, extending all the way through … push!” Monsieur Borlin bawled over the crashing chords of the pianist. “Now extend the left leg … Higher … Higher!” His cane struck the oil stove, making it spew out a column of black smoke. “And rotate!”
I could feel the muscles in my legs burning and the perspiration rising on my lip. And yet I loved this feeling, the tautness and control, the sense of every muscle at its perfect pitch, the way my teeming brain stilled in the effort.
“Emile would be impossible to turn down, darling.” Kitten twisted her head to look at me. “He’s so jolly, always smiling. He’s rather handsome too, in a Jewish way.”
“Jews don’t marry gentiles and certainly not when her father’s a well-known blasphemer without a penny to his name.” I kept my eyes on my left foot as it pointed high into the air, willing it to stay steady and trying to avoid Kitten’s stare as I pushed back the myriad thoughts that had begun to swarm inside my head.
“Perfect, Miss Joyce. Push out those toes, Miss Neel. Extend!” Monsieur Borlin raised his cane and tapped its silver tip on Kitten’s left foot. “Keep extending, Miss Neel.” When Monsieur Borlin had passed, Kitten lowered her voice again. “How’s Giorgio? He certainly wasn’t staring at me all night.”
“He’s exhausted from his singing lessons. Babbo’s quite made up his mind that Giorgio is to be a famous opera singer. It’s what Babbo wanted to do before he became a writer.” I looked at my left foot, still hovering in the air, and wished Giorgio had chosen a different path. I still remembered the day we both enrolled at the same music school, a month after arriving in Paris. Babbo insisted on singing all the way there, even on the tram. A few months later I decided there were too many aspiring opera singers in the Joyce family and made my escape. But Giorgio had persisted, saying singing was the only thing he could do.
“I’ll wager Giorgio’s music master isn’t half as demanding as Monsieur Borlin.” Kitten slowly lowered her leg, her face pink and beaded with small pearls of sweat.
“Dancers, relax! Now we will work on improvisation. Imagine yourselves as cubist portraits. Make your bodies into squares, rectangles, lines. I want you to feel the joy, the spirit of Debussy’s music, its subtle rhythms and its bold expressions.” Monsieur Borlin gave a series of loud sniffs as if he was trying to keep a marble up his nose. “Listen closely to the geometry of the music. Mimic this in your movements. This is the beauty of free-form dance, of modern dance!”
I arched my back and reached for my ankles with my hands, flattening my ribs, my stomach, my chest. I could hear Monsieur Borlin shouting between sniffs. “A beautiful triangle, Miss Joyce. Dancers! If you are not indisposed, observe Miss Joyce’s triangle!” He paced the room prodding and poking dancers with his cane and barking instructions. “Let the music flow through your limbs. It should inform your shapes and lines … That’s very good, Miss Neel.”
I breathed deeply and slowly and, with my forehead pressed against the floorboards, I thought about Emile and everything Kitten had said. Emile could never marry me, but it was gratifying to be admired and the words ‘Madame Fernandez’ sounded good on my tongue, shapely and elliptical.
And then I thought of the man with the bird-bright eyes, and my heart soared and plunged. Should I tell Kitten I’d been touched by premonition? She believed in my clairvoyant powers almost as much as Babbo. But even she would think that ridiculous – the fleeting gaze of a complete stranger! And I remembered the peculiar way my heart had jumped. Many years before, when Babbo first claimed me as ‘his Cassandra’, Mama had grilled me on every aspect of my ‘Cassandra moments’. When I described the strange physical sensations that accompanied each occasion, Babbo had swiped his pewter paper knife through the air and said, in a voice hoarse with emotion, “Won’t you believe her now, Nora?”
But I said nothing to Kitten. I didn’t want to think about my premonitions any more. Sometimes they felt like stones sitting on my chest. So I closed my eyes. Felt the music rippling through me. Heard the crack of Monsieur Borlin’s cane against the floor, the piano, the stove. Heard him sniffing and proclaiming. Opened my eyes again.
“Margaret Morris from London is giving a movement master class next weekend. Shall we go? Apparently she’s all the rage in England.” Kitten peered at me from beneath her armpit and for a second her eyes seemed silvery with tears. But then she blinked and I wondered if it was only dust in her eyes.
“I’d love that, Kitten. And I’ve got a new idea for a dance I want to choreograph. Can I show you after class?”
I thought about the new dance that was forming slowly in my mind. A Keats poem had inspired me and I wanted to include rainbows, and perhaps some tribal dancing, to help Babbo with his book. I wanted to create a frenzied dance of joy that would have the audience on the edges of their seats. It was an ambitious idea involving several dancers, each of whom would be dressed as a single rainbow stripe. I thought of weaving them together, pulling them into knots and strips of colour, then scattering them across the stage where they would gently whirl like winged sycamore seeds falling to earth. I hadn’t mentioned it to Emile but I hoped he’d write me another score, one heavy with the restless rhythm of several beating drums.
“Oh yes please! I don’t know where you get all your ideas from. I never seem to have any.” Her words were drowned out by the nasal voice of Monsieur Borlin telling us to “Breathe! Breathe! Do not forget to breathe!”
Yes, dancing was the answer. Whatever life might throw at us, we must keep dancing.