When We Danced on Water (21 page)
Read When We Danced on Water Online
Authors: Evan Fallenberg
“One day you must tell me your story,” she ventured.
He shook his head again. Then he stood to go.
“I am leaving Europe, I have no place on this continent any longer,” he said. “I'm hoping to sail for Palestine in the next few days. May I write to you when I've gotten settled?”
“Of course, my dear brother. We must never lose contact again.”
Teo stepped from the room and walked with his sister to the gate. “Go with God,” she said as he departed, but he did not answer.
Four days later Teo boarded a Palestine-bound ship in Trieste with a visa issued in Budapest. The heaviness in his heart did not lift even when the ship was far out to sea, but he knew at least that at twenty-five he was sailing away to a chance for a new life.
T
his was a new story for Vivi. The themes are the same as the old storiesâcruelty, lust, power, disenfranchisement, dignity, love and hate, obsessionâbut without the concentration camps, the dogs, the rampaging, murderous mobs. For the last hour of his tale she sat shivering; even the afghan pulled round her shoulders could not keep her warm.
She has too many questions but can only begin to formulate one: “Your sister ⦔ she starts, then falls silent.
Unlike Vivi, Teo is sweating. His brow is damp, his shirt clingy. For the past few hours the words had come in a monotone, as if he were reciting, but it is clear to her this was a first telling that had been festering for more than sixty years. “She is still there, in the convent. The last time I saw her was in 1980, when I was invited to Warsaw to receive the White Eagle award. That's when I met up again with Nelly, too. Her father was dead and her brother simply hadn't returned from work one day. Poof, and he was gone. I married her to get her out of Poland and bring her back to Israel with me.”
“She's your wife?” Vivi asks. She had thought nothing more could astonish her after this long, long night, and yet here she is, completely taken by surprise.
“In name only,” he says. “A matter of convenience for us both.”
“And what,” she begins to ask, softening her voice, “what happened to Freddy?”
He glances up at her. At once she sees he is not really looking into her eyes but right through them. “I have no idea,” he says. “I suppose he died out there in Siberia, most of them did.” Quieter now, he adds, “The strange thing is that I feel a certain ⦠ambiguity toward him. As a Pole, I may have been sent to a camp when the Germans entered Denmark, so maybe he really did save me. I even believe that he loved me. Well, at least until his love spilled over into obsession.”
She takes a chance: “And you, in a fashion, loved him as well. In fact,” she says, with a wakening sense of revelation, “I think he was one of the two people you loved. Freddy and Sofie.”
He nods, abashed, as if he has been vanquished, as if he has given up his very last secret. “With Sofie, I never had a chance to find out. With Freddy, love was forced on me. He took so much away from me. But he ⦠gave me something as well. In the midst of his obsession with me there was ⦠I don't know. An iota of something pure and real. Beyond all his charm and culture and knowledge. Beyond the fact that he was a monster, that I was his prisoner. He could see past the beautiful dancer in me to the real person inside, and he loved that person as much as the dancer. Well, I responded to that. Maybe that's as close to love as I've come. I'm not sure, I've never managed to complete the equation. My life changed course in the muddle of all those gains and losses, and nothing adds up.”
She thinks about gain and loss for a moment and wonders: have I exploited him? Did I really use the birthday party as an excuse? She believed she had meant it to be a gift, but now she is no longer certain. How much of what she did was for her own benefit?
And what about this next, final, part of her plan? She could ask herself these same questions about it, but she does not. She has let herself go free in the land of wanting and fulfillment and she cannot stop or even look back now. And anyway, wasn't it he himself who taught her to desire, to aspire? She is his protégée, his quick and eager student.
He is on fire, this ancient young man in the chair facing her. He is flushed and drenched. His body exudes the scent of cubbish maleness. He has finished speaking, but beneath his skin she sees he is smoldering; rather than depleting him, these hours of telling his story have inflamed him. There is more to this story, and it is about to happen. She rises from the sofa, shakes off the afghan, extends a hand. There are no more secrets at all as she leads him into the bedroom.
T
here is nothing new about their lovemaking. Men and women have been matching body part to body part since there were men and women. But for both, this is nonetheless a revelation.
Has she ever enjoyed herself in slow motion before, each movement a priceless gift?
Is this what his life has been lacking through long years of productivity, creativity, motion?
She feels his body was fashioned for this night, its muscles taut and hard. There is nothing old mannish about himâhis scent, his ardor, his passion.
He drifts in pleasurable bewilderment over decades and continents. Could this be Sofie's soft skin he is possessing at last?
L
ong hours pass and his euphoria abates. He is being pulled down, the comforter weighs on him like a current of rushing water. He succumbs, finally, does not fight; he closes his eyes and lets himself slip beneath the surface of consciousness to a different kind of wakefulness. He is focused and ready for something, and even before that something happens he knows what it will be and so he settles back to enjoy, at long last, his dance.
He has just lowered Kirsten to the floor, the orchestra is making the transition from their duet music to his solo, and Teodor makes his way gracefully across the grand stage to stand in position. He can see everything now, all those details that have escaped him for the seven decades since he actually danced it at the Berlin Staatsoper: he sees the Danish ballet master in the wings; he sees the grand chandelier, the spotlights, the gold filigree on the balcony seats; he sees the festive audience, bright with the news of war and redemption, even picks out Freddy in the crowd. Yes, there he is, in a first-tier balcony seat, the closest one to the stage, next to him a pretty young man, really a boy, looking peeved.
As he stands in that great, long moment of silence before pivoting out to the left, Teodor makes his decision. It is born from the Nazi officer's announcement about Germany having attacked Poland that very day, and from the no jews signs on the Unter den Linden, and the looks and comments in the Adlon Hotel and maybe one hundred other resentments large and small tied in a bundle and thrown in with that other heavy bundle, the will and the desire to become a great dancer, the greatest; and since there are no bundles at all to tip the scales in the other direction, well, no decision really needed to be made; it is a fait accompli.
Yes, here it is at last, the juxtaposition of his Russian training on his acquired Danish style, the change from low leaps to high, dazzling ones, from single, slow pirouettes to frenzied turns, dozens of them. Take that! his body shouts. You are not superior, you are not wiser or stronger than we are, I'll show you what perfection is! Yes, he can see it now, feel every move exactly as he performed it; and more, as if detached he can see their faces, individually, following him in awe as he explodes across the stage. The woman in the third row, her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. The man on an aisle practically leaping from his seat in excitement. And Freddy, gripping the railing, perfectly still and watching with a crazed intensity. Yes, here it all is, the dance that shot his life in a new direction, up to the perfect triple tour en l'air that ends without so much as a quiver.
And with the roar of ecstatic applause in his ears, Teodor Levin leaves the stage forever.
M
artin is gone. The coffee bar is gone. Twenty years of aimless ambling are gone. A new life has begun, here in this bed. There will be art and gurgling laughter. There will be fabrics and clay, scissors and secateurs, there will be a mad jumble of colors and music and movement and games and ideas, ideas, ideas are bubbling, percolating, foaming up like milk heated on a gas flame, they overflow, dousing the heat and finally, as light pierces the horizon, she sleeps.
Hours later, the sun rising high on a perfect spring day, she rolls onto her side and brushes against his arm. It is smooth and cold as marble. She jolts awake and finds him in poised repose, as if he has chosen his final resting position. His splendid eyes are wide open, but she knows right away that their blue-green gaze no longer sees anything at all.
She takes a deep, deep breath. Here, in her bed, an ending and a beginning.
“C
an you hold him for a minute?” she asks.
“Come here, big guy,” Pincho says, lifting the chubby toddler over his shoulder.
They have been promised the ceremony will be short, and she fed Nathaniel as soon as they were inside the President's Residence, but the president is tied up with a visiting dignitary and everything has been delayed. Nathaniel is growing restless.
Vivi may be the only person in the room more interested in the president than the visiting dignitary, for whom a phalanx of photographers stands waiting outside. The spry old president is a contemporary of Teo's, and she wishes to look into his face from up close, if for no other reason than to see if something there, anything, even the smallest flicker in his eyes, can bring back the tiniest piece of the man she misses so keenly.
She turns to her mother. Before embracing her from behind, she takes in Leah's careful coif only slightly flattened during the long drive from Haifa to Jerusalem, and the stiff new suit bought for this occasion. Leah is scrutinizing
Berlin: Martin, Freddy
, the installation her daughter created and the reason they are here today.
Vivi hooks her chin over her mother's shoulder, snakes her arms around Leah's middle. At least there is nothing new about her scent, the same perfume she has been wearing for Vivi's whole life.
“I think I understand the meaning of the KaDeWe department store sign,” Leah says with uncharacteristic equanimity, “but why the video with those old Dutch paintings by ⦠what was his name?”
“Vermeer,” says Vivi softly into her mother's ear.
“That's it, Vermeer. So what do they mean?”
Before Vivi can decide whether to answer her mother's question, a double door at the end of the large reception room opens and the president emerges arm in arm with an impressive middle-aged blonde whom Vivi, and everyone else, recognizes at once. On their way past tables laden with pastries and cold drinks, figs and watermelon, the visiting dignitary stops to coo at Nathaniel as he gurgles blissfully in Pincho's arms.
“What a beautiful, happy baby you have,” she says in an American accent as flat as the plains from which she hails.
“Thank you,” Vivi answers.
“What's his name?” the woman asks.
“Nathaniel. It's Hebrew for âa gift from God.'Â ”
“Well, he certainly is that, isn't he? Oh and look, one blue eye and one green. You're gorgeous, aren't you, little man!”
The president says, “His mother is about to receive a prize. She's a very talented artist, you know.”
“You're a lucky woman,” says the dignitary, her eyes sliding from Nathaniel to Pincho.
“Oh, don't I know it,” says Vivi, a broad smile settling onto her face.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the following, all of whom took an active role in helping me create this book: Abby Frucht, Mary Domenico, Mary Grimm, Jenni Tsafrir, Joan Leegant, Kathy Jacobi and George Eltman, for reading the manuscript at various stages and providing excellent suggestions; Ayelet Hadar, for sharing her love and knowledge of Vermeer, and a theory all her own; Miriam Wrobel, for immeasurable help with all things concerning ballet, choreography and Denmark; Peter Koeppe in Berlin, the late Lui Beilin in Copenhagen and Terry Goodman Lipman in Jerusalem, for deepening my familiarity with my characters and their milieux; Jill Horowitz, for hospitality and the Sophie Calle exhibit that changed everything; Carolyn Starman Hessel, for ongoing encouragement and advice over excellent food; agents Deborah Harris and Robert Guinsler, for knowing when to say no and when to say yes; Rakesh Satyal, for unparalleled editorial acumen; Vermont College of Fine Arts and the MacDowell Colony, for the space to create; Rosalie Fallenberg, for behind-the-scenes assistance; and, especially, Yariv, Yonina, Micha and Hagai, my four reasons why.
EVAN FALLENBERG
is the author of
Light Fell
, winner of numerous prizes, including the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and an American Library Association award for literature. His translation of Meir Shalev's
A Pigeon and a Boy
won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and was short-listed for the PEN Translation Prize. He lives and teaches near Tel Aviv.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Light Fell
Cover photograph © NordicPhotos/Wildcard Images, UK
“Prisoner of Love” by Leo Robin, Clarence
Gaskill, and Russ Columbo. Copyright © 1931 (Renewed) Leo Robin Music Co.,
Colgems-EMI Music and E. H. Morris & Co. All rights for Leo Robin Music Co.
administered by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP). International copyright secured.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“The First Time I Saw You” words by Allie Wrubel.
Music by Nathaniel Shilkret. Copyright © 1937 (Renewed) by Music Sales
Corporation, Chappell & Co., and Nathaniel Shilkret Music Co. International
copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
WHEN WE DANCED ON WATER
. Copyright
© May 2011 by Evan Fallenberg. All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been
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FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fallenberg, Evan
  When we danced on water : a novel / Evan
Fallenberg. âFirst edition.
      pages cm
ISBN 978-0-06-203332-1 (pbk.)
  1. ChoreographersâFiction. 2. Older
menâFiction. 3. WaitressesâFiction. 4. Middle-aged
womenâFiction. 5. Tel Aviv (Israel)âFiction. I. Title.
PS3606.A43W48 2011
813'.6âdc22
2010053600
EPub Edition © March 2011 ISBN: 9780062033437
11Â Â 12Â Â 13Â Â 14Â Â 15Â Â Â Â
OV/RRD
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