The Sky is Changing (10 page)

“We are in her head,” Anne said. It was fascinating, being inside and walking around the head of the Statue of Liberty. For them, New York was just one huge playground. That's what the Americans were so good at – creating the illusion that everything was just some sort of toy, even a huge, ruthless city like New York.

Claire's stomach churned painfully. Although it was empty and all fluids squeezed out of her, there was still the urge to vomit, with nothing left apart from bitter-tasting foam. For a moment Claire thought she might just die there of alcohol poisoning on the bathroom floor. She tried to remember how much she drank. Two thirds of a bottle – was that enough to die? Her forehead was cold but sweaty, shivers went through her body like electrical currents, just as she imagined suffering from malaria would be like. She closed her eyes, her parched lips half open. Claire didn't know how long she lay there but, when she returned to the living room, she could already see the light of dawn creeping in.

The alcohol had knocked Claire for six and, because she wasn't used to it and had literally flushed her veins with a toxic substance, she had a hangover for almost a week. She felt sick throughout, cursing herself for her weakness. She didn't tell anyone, not even Anne, and did everything not to let on. But it was as if she was oozing the smell of alcohol from every pore. The faint taste of whisky remained on her tongue for days, and she had to force herself to eat. She was surprised and disappointed that her body, a perfectly designed dancing machine, had collapsed so easily.

Even in the ivory tower of the ballet academy everyone was talking about what had happened in New York. Everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who was injured or killed or missing. There was an atmosphere of disbelief and outrage. 90 countries had lost people. Every day new bodies emerged form the rubble, as did new stories of missing people. Soon the faces of the terrorists appeared on the front pages. Somehow she had imagined old, bitter men. But they were young and didn't look particularly mad or stupid or suicidal. Although, what was a terrorist supposed to look like?

Outrage spread through Germany when it emerged that Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers, had in fact lived in Hamburg. In Marienstrasse. The most unassuming of street names. The fact that the terror attack of the century had actually been planned in a room of the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg made it even more disturbing. Especially as Anne knew the place well, having once been to a seminar and having friends studying there. Her phone was ringing frantically; everyone wanted to know whether she had ever met him. She hadn't. “Maybe I passed this guy in the cafeteria or the hallway, you never know. He could have been one of those nerds who don't look you in the eye because they are full of thought and on a mission, but usually they want to build stuff, not blow it up.”

It made Claire sick that her sister may have encountered such a terrorist, or even that she had walked through the same building. There were no boundaries anymore; the world had shrunk to an inextricable wireball, everything was linked up and anything could happen anywhere.

On the S-Bahn, she started to look at people more closely. One evening, only a week after the attacks, Karl had visited for the weekend and he and Anne had had an argument.

Anne confessed that she had actually left a train because of three young men who had reminded her of the suicide bombers she had seen in the papers; they were whispering, and she thought something fishy was going on. “Next they'll probably blow up the trains,” she said.

However, Karl argued that this is exactly what they wanted, to spark fear and distrust, and ultimately to divide people. He thought it paranoid to leave a train just because someone might look suspicious and accused Anne of being judgmental, which she thought outrageous. Claire could sense that they were on the brink of a full-blown fight and left the table, but the air remained highly charged the whole evening.

In the week after the attacks a number of controlled explosions were carried out at train stations and airports around Europe. Claire had a dull apprehension that this wasn't it, that something worse was still to come. If causing angst and confusion is what the terrorists wanted, as Karl had said, they had certainly succeeded with her.

Politicians meanwhile were quick in urging people to go back to business as usual. This was exactly what the ballet company was doing. The shows went on uninterrupted and the curtain went up every evening. It was as if there was a sigh of relief in the audience, relief that on stage there was still this intact perfect world. Princess Aurora fell asleep before she got kissed to life again by the prince so they could get married for the umpteenth time. Stripped bare of the dancing, the storyline of
The Sleeping Beauty
was silly, and it amazed Claire that it had still worked every time since Tchaikovsky wrote it over a hundred years ago.

Watching the dancers warming up for a dress rehearsal one could think the world was indeed a wonderful place where beauty was truth, truth beauty and this was all we know on earth and all we need to know. Claire took the Post-it with the quote from the mirror.

“The world is fucked; what are we dancing
The
Sleeping Beauty
for?” Claire said to a fellow dancer getting into her fairy costume. Suddenly it felt so pointless, even ignorant. What was she doing here, graciously hopping around in a tutu? The answer was persuasively simple, and the fairy delivered it so drily that she was taken aback. “We are here to make people happy, Claire.”

On stage she slipped into her alter ego; she left the worrying Claire with the bad hangover in the changing room and transformed into Claire the dancer. She could feel her muscles tightening and her feet followed the sequence of steps as if of their own accord. Swishing forwards and backwards in a pendulum movement, the supporting leg straight, she glided effortlessly from one position into another. Preparing for a leap, she bent her knees for a grand plie, her back perfectly aligned with her heels and her legs turned out. With the front leg sweeping forcefully, she performed the splits in mid-air in one fluid movement. Every limb reaching out, she felt her old self again. She didn't have to think about it, her body just did what it was trained to do, and for a moment she forgot everything else. It was in those moments, when she was completely immersed, connected with the other dancers through their simultaneous movements, gliding over the floor and jumping through the air, that she felt most alive.

Just as she was in a particularly difficult position, holding arabesque, her leg at a 90-degree angle, she heard Miss Clark's voice shouting, “Get your leg up, Claire!” and in a commanding tone, “Higher!” It shattered her confidence immediately. For the rest of the rehearsal she was out of sync. Like a discord in a piece of music, she created a disharmony in the group.

Suddenly she forgot steps, the lightness disappeared and with it the smile on her face.

As an acclaimed former principal dancer, Miss Clark had no mercy. Back in her heyday she had famously danced the Black Swan. She was perceived by her students as a living legend and her training was notoriously strict. Not even the tiniest slip escaped her eagle eye. One of her practices was to hold a burning cigarette close to the thigh so the terrified girl would get her leg as high as possible.

At the end of class, Miss Clark took Claire aside, asking what was wrong with her. Claire admitted having nightmares since the 9/11 attacks and problems concentrating. “Have you lost anyone?” She shook her head. “So, what's the problem then? Why does it concern you so much? We have no time for problems like that, Claire. If you need to see someone, then go and see someone, but don't bring your personal problems into class. You have to compartmentalise, you know? That's the only way to stay focused and professional. You can't let world matters affect you like that.”

Of course there was no such thing as taking some time off at the ballet company. If she left for just two weeks she would be out forever. There were plenty of aspiring dancers out there waiting to take her place.

When Anne informed her the same evening over dinner that she was leaving Berlin to live in Hamburg with Karl, it was a slap in the face. Anne's decision to live with Karl was hardly surprising, anyone in the family had seen that coming, but somehow Claire thought Anne would never do that to her, leave her in Berlin on her own. In her imagination they were inseparable. The two sisters, a perfect item. No man before had ever had the power to come between them. But with Karl it was different. “Don't look like that!” Anne said. “We will visit. It's not like we're not going to see each other anymore.”

It hurt. Claire smiled with pursed lips. The parts were cast and she just happened to get a minor role in a film she didn't even want to be in. It all coincided. The terror attacks, Anne's decision to leave Berlin and her fading enthusiasm for ballet. Everything she'd built was falling apart quickly and she felt unable to stop it.

In hindsight, it was only by chance that she had opened the e-mail an old friend from ballet school had sent her. She suspected one of those impersonal e-mails containing jokes forwarded to a random list of friends, something she normally deleted immediately. She knew, however, that her friend was involved in theatre and liked quirky perfomances that weren't mainstream. Once she went to see a performance she had choreographed, which, in Claire's view, was a complete mess and on that evening had made her mind up that she wasn't into experimental dance; Claire saw it as a synonym for mere lack of skill.

Therefore, when she clicked on the link, she expected some strange, edgy stuff that would at the best amuse her. But to her surprise she was immediately captivated by what she saw. A group of dancers were throwing themselves to the floor, crawling forward and suddenly flipped backwards. Then, they were spinning on their heads, before jumping through the air, light and effortless as if flying over the stage. In a sudden change of rhythm, they were moving in slow motion, trying to get out of an invisible net, in the next second they backflipped and walked on their hands, making their bodies look like they were made of rubber. It was the dynamic of their movements that was most arresting. Highly skilled, they mastered all the different dance forms. Merging elements of ballet, modern dance, acrobatics and breakdance, using every single muscle of their bodies, they created something that was beyond boundaries, something completely new. A dance like an attack.

Claire had never been particularly interested in contemporary dance, but this performance was a revelation. Compared to classical ballet, with all its rules and limits, this seemed like a huge liberation. Engrossed, she searched the internet for everything she could find about them, and came across similar dance groups and dance schools, most of them based in London.

Berlin had changed or maybe it was her, looking at the city differently. Everyone was raving about how international and open Berlin had become, but to Claire the city felt suddenly constricted. As she slogged along, she dreaded the day Anne would move out and leave her behind.

The house-warming party of one of her colleagues came as a welcome distraction. Iris had an unusual and refreshing number of friends who were not dancers. Normally, dancers only mixed with dancers and Claire was looking forward to talking to people who had nothing to do with ballet. A friend of Iris was DJing in the living room. A chandelier was hanging from the ceiling. Even if young Berliners didn't have any furniture, for some reason they would always have a chandelier.

The spheric sound of Goldfrap, and Air's
Moon
Safari
filled the enormous white painted rooms. Iris had knocked down several walls. Knocking down walls and making big apartments even bigger also seemed a favourite pastime of Berliners. Almost everyone was renovating – at the party Claire saw several people with paint on their hands. Iris lived on her own and had three bedrooms and two bathrooms which were now cramped with people drinking Corona beer and cheap white wine.

A man in his mid-twenties with fair hair staggered in her direction. “I really want to fuck you,” he said, a strong smell of alcohol escaping his mouth. Sweeping away his blonde fringe he looked at her as if he had just offered her something truly amazing.

“That's very funny,” she replied, stepping away from him. But in a sudden aggressive gesture he grabbed at her elbow, leaving a red mark on her skin. Without another word he went to the dancefloor where he made some grotesque moves, almost tumbling over.

Claire was rubbing her arm, hoping he would bang his head on the floor, when she overheard someone say, “My friend just came back from New York. A bit of rubble from Ground Zero is now more expensive then a piece from the Berlin Wall. They sell the stuff in little plastic sachets like cocaine.”

Claire turned around. The voice belonged to a small man with a nose ring and leathery skin. He looked like he had spent too much time in the sun. The woman he was talking to was very slim; Claire suspected she was a model. There was a hint of a nod and the tiniest of smiles. “The nice thing about dancers is that at least you know they shave,” she said, completely ignoring what had just been said.

Claire had had enough. She was just about to leave when someone slapped her on the shoulder. “Are you always just drinking juice?” a man with an Italian accent asked, and offered her a glass of wine. Claire explained she was still recovering from a bad hangover. “The best way to overcome a hangover is to drink even more,” he insisted.

Claire took one of his cigarettes. It tasted good with the wine. Enzo. She liked his name. He was a photographer. When she asked him what he photographed, he said dismissively, “fashion stuff”. She told him she wasn't particularly happy with her job either.

“Maybe it's time to change,” he said.

“It sure is,” she replied, and drank the wine in big gulps.