When We Danced on Water (10 page)

She was slightly slippery in his hands, but he was accustomed to the nuances of her body and held her tightly. Arabesque, arabesque, glissade, glissade, she floated gracefully in his arms until, spent, she twirled away from him and out of his vision. Teodor was alone at center stage.

Behind him, without looking over his shoulder, he knew the corps de ballet stood posed in small, asymmetric groupings. Close ahead and below were the musicians, just completing the cadenzas that ushered him to this place at the center of the stage. And all around him and ahead, and above him as well, were two thousand faces, white, groomed and plumed, plucked and shaved and oiled. Men in uniform, women in feathers and fur, all sparkling with pleasure and confidence, their faces hungry with anticipation like baby birds.

For a small moment Teodor considered these faces, all assembled here to watch him spin and leap through three minutes of trifling Danish music. But as he planted his feet, as he pulled his torso high above his legs, as he rotated his head slowly, slowly to the left and floated his arms gently into place, the dancers and the musicians and the audience disappeared. Teodor was alone with his body, poised. He could hear the sound of his breathing, slow and deliberate, could feel the pulse of blood coursing to his toes and fingers.

The orchestra sounded the last chord to his introduction, the grand pause that would end only when Teodor broke the spell of silence. The conductor turned his attention to Teodor on stage. The hall fell completely silent in watchful anticipation, but Teodor was in no hurry.

Here it was, this moment. A moment of infinite space, as if he had squeezed his way through a tight, dark tunnel and found himself at this spot, unfurled. This moment of infinite possibility, too, of ways to travel, or not. He could stop right now, crawl back into his safe tunnel. He could freeze, fail to move, crumple. He could rotate his head straight forward, toward the musicians and the audience, and scream insults at them in Polish. Worst of all, he could dance badly.

The audience, the musicians, the dancers. They were waiting for him to move. He knew this moment had gone on too long. He must give the signal to the conductor, and he wished to, he was looking forward to his dance. But he was enjoying this moment of all possibilities too much. He had sensed what he would know to be true only many years hence: that this bubble of freedom and floating would be his last, that he would tumble headlong to one destiny, setting his future, one certain future, in motion. He knew that the moment he moved his foot something would have changed and there would be no return.

At the end of this moment, his moment and no one else's, as his right leg steeled itself to support his weight, as his head craned upward from his neck in a tiny, imperceptible gesture, as his toes strained the cloth of his slippers, as the audience and the musicians and the dancers breathed as one with him, Teodor understood, with great clarity, as if remembering, that he would dance without a flaw, knew this would be the most perfect dance of his life, in fact, its pinnacle. That at seventeen and a half, his body would spin, stretch and soar, that there was nothing he could not do. He was aware, too, of Madame Valentina and Sofie egging him on, daring him to dance unfettered. Now he was ready, and with a touch of melancholy mixed with the unbridled excitement of youth, he sent a wordless farewell to his moment, pointed the toes of his left foot as taut as a freshly sharpened pencil, and sailed into the music.

Chapter 16

“T
o my great surprise,” Vivi says with a smile as she places his usual repast in front of him, “you're not as different from other men as I'd originally thought.”

Teo purses his lips and squints up at her. “I wouldn't even know where to begin to respond to that,” he says. His right hand has been shaking uncontrollably all morning. He will wait until she is no longer at his side before attempting to raise his coffee cup.

“Want to hear?” she asks.

“I'm sure I have no choice.”

“That's right. You don't. So here goes,” she says, and she takes an audible breath. “For the past week I've been doing everything I can to get you to invite me to see your ballet at the gala and you have thickheadedly failed to notice all my attempts. I've asked you who you're taking, I've hinted that I'm free on Saturday night, I've mentioned on three separate occasions how much I enjoyed watching the rehearsal and how I'd love to see the entire ballet performed. Nothing! Frankly, I would be happy to buy a ticket but of course the event's by invitation only so I can't. And now I've been reduced to begging you.”

His gaze is sharp and mirthless when he responds. “And you, my dear, are proving yourself less different from other women than I'd originally thought.”

She gestures for him to continue.

“First, that you tried all manner of wily approaches instead of confronting me man-to-man as it were. But mostly, because you believe that I failed to notice your attempts, instead of giving me credit for being an artful dodger.”

“Oh,” she says, “I had no idea—”

“Now don't get all offended on me, it has nothing to do with you. I would love nothing better than to spend an evening with you. But since I myself will not be attending the gala I cannot ask you to join me.”

“Not attending the gala? What are you talking about?”

He rubs his temples. “It's complicated,” he says.

“Everything's complicated,” she says. “Just tell me why you can't make it to a gala that's staging what you consider to be your very best work. What could possibly be more important than that?”

“Look, Vivi—”

“Don't you dare tell me it's not my business. I won't take that for an answer.”

He closes his eyes. “It's one thing for me to see the ballet in bits and pieces in rehearsal when I'm focusing on every finger and toe, every angle of every head, that sort of thing. It becomes just another dance. But watching
Obsession
on the stage, hearing the music … I just can't. It's too difficult …”

“I still don't understand. What's difficult? Because it was your best? Because the dancers don't do it exactly as you wish? Because you once danced it and now you can't anymore?”

“No. No. None of that.” He does not meet her gaze. “It's too … personal. Painful, even though I hate to use that word. Watching this ballet makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. I've avoided it for a quarter century now.”

“You certainly are a mystery sometimes. Your best work and you can't watch it. Don't you think it's time to change that?”

“Why should I?”

“For the same reason you've been trying to get me to be serious about my art: a person has to be able to look into himself and examine everything, learn from it, use it.”

“I've already done that.
Obsession
is that precisely, a look into my own personal abyss.”

“So if you did that in order to create that work then why should it be so hard to revisit?”

“I suppose it was a kind of purging, a once-in-a-lifetime act meant to solve something. Something internal.”

“Well, excuse me for saying so, but if you can't watch this ballet being performed then it seems to me you haven't solved anything at all.”

He smiles wryly.

She says, “Come on, you know I've won this argument. Just say yes and I'll dress up nicely and you and I will sit next to one another in the theater and I won't ask you all sorts of questions if you don't want me to. But you've got to attend. And if you're attending, it may as well be with me.”

“Where did you learn to argue like that?”

“I've told you: my mother.”

“There's a reception beforehand that I should attend. If you will agree to be my date for that and if you will agree to escape the theater the very moment the ballet ends, then I'll go. I don't want to talk to a soul about it afterward.”

“Agreed.”

“And you must be willing to come out for dinner following the ballet. Just the two of us. And I may be sad and speechless.”

“So I'll be happy and talkative. And hungry.”

“I hope I won't regret this.”

“There's nothing to regret. Didn't you once tell me we regret what we haven't done, not what we've done and failed at?”

“Touché, my dear. You're a quick study.”

“I'll be ready at seven.” She leans over and kisses his forehead before she walks away.

Chapter 17

T
he first time Vivi came to this building she expected it to have some special aura, but even the apartment itself gave nothing away: no beaded curtains, no incense, no Eastern music. The front door was decorated with children's drawings and the doorbell chimed a tune Vivi thought might be a Christmas carol.

By now, perhaps her sixth time, she knows it is not the building or the apartment that is special but Daniella Klein-Paz, the occupant, herself. Her insights into Vivi's past, her psyche, even—frighteningly—her future, are uncanny and inspired. Whether she reads the coffee grounds, scrutinizes the palm of her hand or studies tarot cards, she is always accurate. After the first several meetings Vivi overcame her shock and was more attentive and better able to make use of these sessions in her daily life.

Daniella ushers Vivi into the little room just to the left of the apartment door, brings a pot of tea and a plate with homemade biscuits, and sits down so that the two women are facing one another. She has a pad in front of her with handwritten notes.

“Is this usual?” Vivi asks. “I mean, getting a reading for someone else?”

“Oh sure, people do it all the time.”

“Because it almost seems … unethical. Like I'm going to know things I shouldn't. Private things.”

“That's precisely why people do it. There are things they often need to know but have no way of discovering.” Daniella pours them each a cup of tea from the pot.

“So, what did you find out about him?” Vivi asks as she takes a sip of her tea.

“Well, first of all you were of course right that all the twos in his birthday are quite significant. I can tell you that this man has had a difficult life filled with enormous changes. He may have had a twin sister who died at birth. He is very brave and very opinionated. He comes from a closed family and he himself is very closed to others, even though he is loving, gentle and extremely sensitive. He was very close to his mother, and family life was absolutely holy to him. In fact, I would say his biggest regret is the fact that he never built a family environment as he wishes he could have. He feels unfulfilled, and that would be the greatest source of his frustration.”

“Fascinating,” Vivi says, already engaged.

“He is a man understood by very few people. He is brilliant, highly original and afraid to find his true self. He comes from a good family, well educated but not wealthy. Eastern Europe, I think, Russia or Poland.”

“Yes, he was born in Warsaw.”

“He is not assertive. He lost his mother too early in life. He trusts few people and is most fearful of manipulative, powerful men. On the surface he seems calm but inside he is very tense.”

“I should be taking notes,” Vivi says, fishing in her purse.

“I've prepared a copy for you, Vivi,” Daniella says, “there's no need.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“As a child this man possessed an exceptional beauty that attracted quite a bit of attention. His eyes were particularly arresting.”

“Yes, yes,” Vivi says with fervor. “He's got one blue eye and one green one. It's a bit spooky but really lovely.”

But Daniella is not looking for confirmation. She pushes ahead. “He also possessed an understanding of the world, highly unusual for a child. His mother, who may have been called Anna or Hanna, loved him very much.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Your friend should have been born a woman, he has a strong feminine side, he learned to appreciate beauty from his mother, he works from emotion and not from logic. He is honest but secretive. He could have been a Buddhist master, but as a Jew he is undeveloped. He is not in good health.”

“Anything about relationships?”

“His wife—something with an L, Lily perhaps—she is closest to him, but still distant. He should have one child, a son, born late in life.”

“No,” Vivi says, almost disappointed. “He's never married or had children.”

“You might want to check that,” Daniella says vaguely. “He is full of mystery, and layers. Contradictions. Things you feel absolutely certain about could prove to be dead wrong. Assume nothing about this man.”

Vivi nods, contemplative. A question percolates. “And what,” she asks, “is his role in my life?”

Daniella Klein-Paz looks squarely into Vivi's eyes for the first time. “What
is
his role in your life?”

They stare at one another until Vivi looks away.

Daniella says, “Let's get started on you, now, shall we?”

Vivi downs the last sip of her tea, places the cup in its saucer, and looks expectantly at Daniella across from her. But all the while she is thinking of Teo and his life of duality.

Chapter 18

H
e is standing at the window watching Nelly down in the garden pulling weeds that sprouted after a recent cloudburst. She spends hours there every day, planting flowers or harvesting the vegetables they dine on. He marvels at her patience. Of all the Hebrew she has learned in her twenty-odd years in Israel, he figures the overwhelming majority has to do with food and gardening.

A bird flutters at the window, hovers there as if asking to enter, and Teo raises his face to watch. His left arm rises, too, as he imitates the bird; his upper arm is all grace and elegance, a long fluid motion, while his hand down to the fingertips quivers in tiny, rapid jerks. Teo's eyes fall shut as his right arm rises, too, his back extends and his neck climbs higher and higher. He is floating now, beating his wings, lifting himself, strong and unimpeded, high above this building, this neighborhood, this city. He extends a hand to a partner just a short reach away and pulls her close, only to discover Vivi suddenly in his arms. They move in perfect silent unison until a large truck, bouncing noisily through the neighborhood, causes Teo's eyes to flutter open and his arms to drop to his sides.

When the telephone first rings he makes no move to answer it. He has never enjoyed speaking on the phone, does not own a mobile, and often simply refuses to pick up when it rings. But it is Saturday morning, an odd time for a call, and he is mildly intrigued. When the caller speaks to him in Danish, he knows who it is at once.

“Sofie, darling,” he says. “What a pleasure!” They speak only rarely anymore, but he is always happy to hear her raspy voice. It is only after they hang up that he feels a deep sadness, a malaise of missed opportunity and loss.

“Happy birthday!” she enthuses.

“Oh dear Sofie,
plus ça change
…”

“What? Have I missed again this year?”

“Only by a month or so.”

“But isn't your birthday the twenty-second?”

“Yes. Of
February
. So I am still officially only eighty-four and would ask that you not rush me.”

Sofie laughs her deep smoker's laugh until she coughs. He worries about making her laugh, which she loves to do, simply because it always nearly brings her to asphyxiation. “Did I have the date right last year?” she asks between spasms.

“Last year you forgot entirely, then wrote me a card in May or June. It is still on top of the piano.”

“So I'd better send something really special for your eighty-fifth.”

“Good health is all I really need.”

“Yes, that makes two of us. I seem to be the only unhealthy Sonnenfeld, you know. My brothers are the picture of health, not a single thing wrong with either of them. This lung business makes me the black sheep.”

“You always did have to be different.”

“Hmmm. Teo, I don't know if you heard, but your old ballet partner, Kirsten, passed away last month.”

“Kirsten? Oh,
Kirsten
!” He is at first grateful to recover the name, then sad to lose her so quickly. “Oh. Oh dear.”

“Sorry, Teo.”

“Lovely Kirsten.” He can hear the allegretto music from their duet in
The Konservatoriet
. “Was she ill?”

“No, not at all. She was leading some master classes in Stockholm and didn't come down to breakfast one morning. They found her in her hotel bed, she simply never woke up. That's perfect, don't you think? She was still so elegant and good-looking. Anyway, I attended the funeral—I find funerals are wonderful for catching up with people you'd never see otherwise—and I met the young man who's now the artistic director at the ballet. Oh bother, I've forgotten his name again. Well, he knows that you and I keep in touch and he asked me to tell you that he'll be contacting you soon about permissions because the Royal Danish Ballet wants to perform several of your ballets in the coming seasons. Don't ask me which ones or when, I can barely remember my twin brother's name anymore. But I thought you'd like to know.”

“Yes, thank you. I would love more than anything to see them danced well.”

“So that means you'll come over here?”

He looks out the window. Nelly is lugging a large bundle of weeds to the garbage bin. “I doubt it,” he sighs.

They both fall silent.

“Not likely I'd be here to greet you, anyway,” she says, and they fall silent again. He thinks she may be weeping.

“Come, Sofie, let's not be morose. We've tried to live full and productive lives, haven't we? We've stuck around longer than most, too.”

“I've done little more than having and raising two children who, I might brag, turned out to be rather wonderful. But you've done enough for ten people.”

“Nonsense,” he says, and then again, angrily: “Nonsense! I was meant to be a dancer but wound up on a small stage in a country that despises ballet. I've taught several generations of middling dancers, choreographed a few decent ballets, even collected a prize or two. It all means nothing, though. Do you believe me, Sofie? Nothing. I should have married, had children.”

“What? Teo, what are you talking about? You're one of the best choreographers of the century. And you were only thwarted in your dancing career by the bloody Second World War! Anyway, since when have you wanted a wife and children? That's news to me.”

“It's been on my mind lately. Do you never think about what we leave behind, eventually? Our legacy?”

“Not really. I'm content with thinking about how I've lived, what people have meant to me and what I've meant to them.”

“Even worse,” he says, “never to have felt that. I have been a dance teacher to hundreds but I've never meant to any of them what you mean to your small circle of family and friends.”

Sofie sighs deeply into the phone. “Do you really regret it all, Teo?”

Teo feels as if something is pressing down on him, his arms like anchors. He can barely hold the telephone anymore. “I just, well, I've missed a few things, Sofie. A few important things.”

When they say good-bye he places the receiver lightly in its cradle and lifts his fingers to his nose, straining for just the tiniest whiff of her scent. It was early evening in August 1939, just one week before the ballet's departure for Berlin. The long northern summer had trapped the sun high in the sky and the day gave no indication that it would ever capitulate. Teodor was alone in the studio; Sofie appeared in the doorway as he positioned himself before the mirrors for yet another go at his solo. He caught her reflection just as he raised his arms. Tall and fair in a soft flowery skirt. Teodor was happy to see her.

“Sofie, hullo, how long have you been standing there?” He let his arms drop but talked to her reflection in the mirror.

“Just got here,” she said, taking a few steps onto the wooden dance floor. “Mother sent me to call you home, she wants to get one good meal into you today.”

“She sent you all the way down here just for that?”

“Teodor, you've been working on this performance like a madman for weeks. I think she's worried you'll exhaust yourself.”

“I just want to get it right, that's all. This is very, very important to me.”

“Of course it is. Come, show me a little.”

Teodor needed no further prompting. He turned to face her. “Well, you know, the scene takes place in the dance school of the Paris Conservatory. My role is that of a ballet student desperate for attention, out to prove himself. Well, that's the way I see him, anyway.” He moved to the phonograph and lifted the needle, but did not place it on the record yet. “I do a few lifts with this girl Kirsten, really just a crossover from her solo to mine, in fact. Then I dance for three minutes on my own. My big solo,” he said, attempting to laugh it off.

He placed the needle carefully on the record and moved quickly to the center of the room. “I'll do the end of our duet straight into my solo,” he told Sofie as she folded herself into a sitting position on the floor in the middle of the room, directly in front of him.

The music, scratchy on the phonograph, picked up in a few seconds. Teodor was aware of all the elements merging in him, he had control of all the pieces of this dance as he performed leaps and jumps, pirouettes and arabesques.

Sofie leaned back on the heels of her hands and spoke up the moment he finished dancing. “Your style has changed, my friend. You're a real Danish dancer now, aren't you, like all the other boys?”

Teodor frowned. “Do you really think I dance like all the others?”

She widened her eyes and turned up her palms in a look of calculated innocence. “Well, that was the point, wasn't it? You were too much the Russian dancer when you came here. Now in less than two years they've got you dancing Danish. The real thing, Bournonville would have loved you.”

“It's how I got the role, Sofie. And it
is
a Bournonville ballet.”

“Oh I'm sure, I'm sure it's just the thing. Never mind. Why don't you teach me the pas de deux. I still remember a thing or two about ballet.”

She rose to join Teodor. He dropped the needle to the gramophone, then approached Sofie, whom he turned around so that her back was to him. He placed his left hand on her left hip, and slid his right arm under hers into a long stretch. “It's simple, really,” he said, “just two arabesques en l'air, one to the left and one to the right, then a set of glissades, and finally a pirouette. Then you twirl out of the way, upstage left, so that I can dance alone.”

Sofie felt different in his arms than Kirsten. She was taller, nearly as tall as he, and her limbs were longer, her arabesques rather low and lacking grace, but she was warm to his touch. When he lifted her he felt her thigh, softer than Kirsten's hardened muscles, and he caught her scent, a mix of lavender and roses and something earthy and pungent, like forest mushrooms. Her skirt fluttered in his face and he breathed her in deeply. When he returned her to the floor he did not continue with the glissades; instead, he held her waist.

“What happens now?” she asked quietly.

He was uncertain. All he knew for sure was that it no longer had anything to do with dance. Her back was to him, and he slipped his arms around her and pulled her close so that she pressed into his body from shoulder to heel. They stood like that for a moment, breathing in rhythm. The needle skipped and the music evaporated.

He kissed her ear, soft and hesitant.

She tilted her head, exposing her long neck. His mouth moved downward while his hands roamed, first hovering then caressing. When his lips reached her shoulders he turned her around slowly to face him. A boy and a girl in their late teens in the center of a large, airy room filled with summery yellow light, their arms at their sides, their bodies leaning toward one another, their faces nearly touching. A lock of her fine hair fell loose over one eye; tiny freckles he had never noticed dotted her cheeks. They continued to breathe in rhythm. His body felt as though it were pulling toward her, as though gravity itself had shifted directions. He thought his heart might burst through bone and skin to fly to her. They watched one another in silence.

After a very long moment, Teodor held out his hands, palms up. “Dance with me,” he said, and she stepped into his arms. There was nothing to this ancient dance. No choreography. No flash and sparkle. No moves to learn. Just two bodies speaking to one another. The gramophone scratched out a tuneless love song.

She pressed her ear to his cheek. “We have to go,” she said without conviction.

He moved his head so that they both nodded.

After another moment he said, his voice gravelly with desire, “You shouldn't have stopped dancing, you know. You could be really good. I wish we could dance together.”

She pulled her head away so that she could look into his face. “Don't mind what I said before,” she told him. “Your dancing is tremendous. I can see how far you've come here. You'll really be a dancer one day, won't you?”

“Yes,” he said, “I will be a dancer one day.”

During the busy week that followed before the troupe left for Berlin, Teodor and Sofie had barely a moment alone together. Then, while Teodor spent the war languishing in Berlin, Sofie, along with her family and most of the Jewish community of Copenhagen, fled to neutral Sweden in 1943. After the war Teo found the Sonnenfelds back in Copenhagen, intact and healthy, cheerful even, and thrilled to see him. They were careful not to ask too many questions about his survival, and he volunteered little information. But he was devastated to learn that Sofie had stayed in Malmö, married to a Swede. She was expecting a baby.