Thirty-Two Fouettés en Tournant

‘Mrs Dominique Frey.’ Karen sighed as she read the handwritten notice slotted into the holder on the door. They needed to print a proper sign. Small things matter. Names are important. Even when their owners forget them.

She held her breath for a moment, hoping for a clue to the mood of the occupant. Silence. This wasn't necessarily a good sign. In the months she had tended the old lady, she had learned to read her moods like the weather. She preferred her when she was shouting. Karen assumed this was because Mrs Frey was used to shouting. In amongst the bluster and noise, she glimpsed something. Just for a moment. Not the frail, scared old lady in one of many anonymous rooms, but the diva that took the world by the throat and brought it to tears.

No-one had expected her to recognise her ageing patient. Karen wasn't a ballet kind of person. Her taught polyester skirt did nothing to mask hips that were too wide. She knew people would scoff at the thought of her dumpy legs reforming into an elegant plié. It never occurred to them that she had once been different. Everyone goes through a metamorphosis, it's just that Karen's seemed to have travelled in reverse. It was the butterfly long-dormant who remembered a night many years ago, when she had been lifted skywards by the frail woman behind the dull grey door. Sitting in the gods, hidden in the darkness, mesmerised as Karen watched her turning and twisting on the stage below. The papers had declared that Mrs Frey was 'unique', 'a once-in-a-lifetime talent'. For the first time in decades, a ballerina was going to dance both the black and the white swan. For just one evening, Mrs Frey had transported her from this world. Gravity brought her back down eventually but for a few hours, she was less earthbound.

Karen still wondered, all these years later, what it felt like to be that swan. To ride on the currents of admiration. To fly.

She frowned and shook her head. It was too late to ask that question. Instead, she grasped the handle firmly and entered Mrs Frey's world.

I spin. Rising and falling with metronomic précision. Lifted. Adored. I am Odile. I capture them in my orbit of stiff black taffeta, drawing them closer with centripetal force. Bon! Je suis Odile. I am wild. My eyes return with each rotation to their faces. Enraptured. Spinning, twirling, inside unfurling but always the mask of sévérité. My muscles and sinews tense and release, tense and release. And with each dip, my toes protest their inevitable return en pointe. Still I am spinning but never truly free. It is my stage. I am Odile. A man waits in the wings, but he is nothing as I spin. This is not our stage. I. Am. Odile. And I will spin. I will spin through the scent of the stage lights, make up dusting my skin. I will spin until my calves cry for release. I will spin tales with my feet. Dancers circle me like embers flying from the heat of my fire. And they will adore me.

Her calves still pained her when she stood, even though it had been years since she trod the stage. One of the children pushed a chair towards her.

‘Non!’ Madame Frey stared at her. The child looked away and returned to her place in the line. Madame Frey caught her own reflection in the mirrored wall of the studio, as she drove her stick into the wooden floor.

‘I was exquisite.’ For a moment, she lost herself in time. ‘They know there is no-one like me.’

She watched the girls flinch as if she had discharged a gunshot. Raising her stick again, she prepared to bring it down.

‘Encore!’ Her voice was saturated with scorn. Look at the fledglings. They tried to spin but they were damaged. She saw them turn without her grace. ‘Encore!’

Turning. Twisting. Their eyes returning to hers. Strangers' eyes, drilling her. They dug. They needled. A flock of starlings, blackened feathers crowding her. Fly away birds. Shoo! Take your pecking and your prying, your chatter and your lying.

‘Madame Frey?’

She did not know the face. She did not know this place. Her name. She had lost her name. Something clattered to the floor. She was cleaving, calving.

Who was she? Odile. She was Odile. She danced fouettés en tournant.

‘Little birds. Time to fly my little birds’

‘The results of the scans are clear, Mrs Frey. There is significant deterioration.’

For a moment the world stopped spinning but momentum drove her forward at punishing speed around her own axis. Vertiginous. She clawed her way back. Today she would dance Odile. Obsidian. Hardened. Grounding herself, she withdrew from the precipice, focusing her eyes on the official seal of competence displayed behind the head of the young doctor who was looking at her as if she were already lost.

‘I shall take a second opinion. Someone with greater experience.’

‘Mrs Frey, do you have someone who can advocate for you?’ Eyes coloured with kindness considered her. She flung her response across the divide.

‘No-one. I need no-one.’

‘You must have someone. Your condition requires it.’

Condition. Her life was built on conditions, exacting, carefully choreographed. Her eyes returned to the man, their sharpness a complement to the acrid taste of burnt pride.

‘How long?’

The doctor's brows creased. Without realising, she was lost for a moment in the fragmented light reflected in the lenses of his glasses.

‘It isn't an exact science Mrs Frey. With conditions like this, it's not possible to predict how quickly your memory will decline.’

Fragments. She was becoming fragments. In each, she could see a hint of herself but when she reached out to catch it, her touch sent a myriad of tiny slivers upwards, the light catching her reflection as it became a stranger. Even her voice betrayed her, cracking.

‘There is no-one.’

‘I can give you the details of some people who can help. They have experience with this kind of thing.’

Imperceptibly, she inclined her head. A concession.

So it begins.

The room was familiar, but she was unsure why. A young, black-haired man with sympathetic eyes sat across the desk from her. The woman to her right had a kind face but she was plain, with dull brown hair and her clothes lacked style and finesse. Madame Frey considered her for a moment. Too fat to dance. No muscle tone. They were talking but the conversation flowed over her as she catalogued her surroundings. Madame Frey realised she couldn't recall why the woman had brought her here. She was tired, bone-deep. The woman had introduced herself as Karen, but her purpose was lost on the ageing lady. Glancing around, she noticed that someone was missing.

‘Where is Mikhail?’ Their conversation stuttered to a halt at the interjection.

The man looked at her questioningly. ‘Mikhail?’

Idiots, she was surrounded by idiots.

‘My husband. My Siegfried. Where is he?’ She invested her voice with all the poison she could muster. ‘Even you should recognise him.’

The man looked troubled. So he should because she knew that her husband would be incandescent at the time wasted here.

He asked softly, ‘Mrs Frey, where do you think you are?’

As if he didn't know, she thought. She considered answering but why give them the satisfaction. It was clear they wanted to confuse her.

Karen turned to her and spoke with a voice better-suited to addressing a child. ‘Mrs Frey, you're at the specialist's. He needs to talk to us about your condition.’

Condition? For a moment, the harsh electric light glinted off the corner of the specialist's glasses and drew her attention away from the woman. It was as if a fragment of light spun off and for a moment, she sensed a memory just out of reach. She had been here before. The hard back of the chair cutting into her slight frame. The smell of expensive cologne. A medical qualification pinned to the wall. Thoughts fractured like fireflies but the harder she tried to snare them, the further they flew from her reach.

‘My husband should be here.’

The woman and the specialist exchanged a glance and she noticed him gently inclining his head, taking ownership of something.

‘Madame Frey. You husband died 15 years ago.’

The old lady watched the dull grey door to her room open. Her face was prepared to receive her visitor. Did the stupid woman think that she could just stand outside without notice? The smell from the insipid dinner was making her feel sick. She would complain, she decided.

‘Hello Mrs Frey.’

‘Madame! Madame Frey.’ Imbécile. Couldn’t even get her title right. She wasn’t surprised though. What more could you expect from a place that didn’t even give their staff uniforms. Cheap. Like the woman.

‘How are you feeling this morning? Hungry?’

Madame Frey observed her scornfully as she crossed to the tray, drawing it up to the chair. Lifting the cover, the woman sniffed deeply and smiled.

‘How about some lunch?’ Pulling up a chair, she sat down and loaded up a spoon with some of the unrecognisable mush from the plate. Madame Frey shook her head. The food was fine for people like that woman, but she was not ‘like that woman’.

‘It’s not bad you know? I think it’s shepherd’s pie.’

‘Non!’ Madame Frey lashed out towards the bowl, which hit the wall with a satisfying crash. It disgorged itself, a Rorschach test gradually forming and revising itself as it passed down the wall. That would teach her. Learn her place. For a moment, the woman looked as though she might snap. Go ahead. Madame Frey was looking for an excuse to get rid of her anyway with her cheap polyester skirt and too-tight blouse. The sweat patches under her arms came from indolence. Not like the clean sweat of a dancer.

The woman looked at the wall, a patchwork of images that watched over Madame Frey from crumpled, faded Polaroids. So many eyes. Fossilised. Entombed in cheap photographic paper. Children wrapped in cotton-candy skirts, caught in flight like delicate songbirds. Newspaper clippings. A program, carefully preserved. Fragments of memory that reminded Madame Frey that she once had her own wings. She fingered the edge of the black shawl covering her legs, playing with the soft fronds, disguising the fact that she was lost.

‘You used to dance?’

Dance.

‘Used to? Non! It is my life. I am Odile, always Odile.’ She had found herself. The tiresome woman looked at her questioningly. ‘Swan Lake. I dance thirty-two fouettés en tournant. No other dancer can spin with such grace.’

The woman hesitated.

‘But I watched you dance Odette.’

The old lady stroked the white cashmere cardigan that wrapped her slight frame. It was larger now. Or had she somehow receded?

‘Odette. Oui. Sometimes I am the white swan. Beautiful. Fragile.’ She took refuge in silence. Her eyes flashed. ‘This place. It isn’t what I am used to. You keep me here, but I have to perform. Without me, it cannot go ahead. Do they know you are keeping me here? When my husband finds I am gone, when he finds where you are keeping me, he will have you fired!’

‘Mrs Frey, that was a long time ago.’

‘Madame! It is Madame Frey. Stupid girl.’

‘Madame Frey. Don’t upset yourself now. Let’s see if you feel like eating some of the pudding.’

The chocolate pudding mesmerised her. She was unmoored. Drifting.

‘He will find me. My husband will find me.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Where is this? Where is he? I don’t know you.’

‘My name’s Karen, Madame Frey. I’m here to look after you for a while. You just need some rest.’

Rest. Just for a moment.

‘But the performance?’

‘They have an understudy Madame.’ Kind eyes watched her.

‘She can’t spin like I can.’

‘No Madame. No-one can spin like you can.’

‘Odette. Tonight, I shall dance Odette. One last time.’

Their eyes locked for a moment, a fleeting instant of shared understanding.

Then the old ballerina simply opened her mouth and accepted the offering without complaint.

I pull on my shoes, soft white satin encasing the hard, wooden block stained already with my blood. Tonight, I will dance Odette. My skin, illuminated by the late afternoon sun, now tainted and unrecognisable. I touch the yellowing flesh, dry as parchment. How can I not know my own skin? But tonight, I will dance Odette and they will be watching me from the darkness. I will take the stage and be greeted by faces that have trodden alongside me. The white taffeta concealing the bloody stains left by those who have broken against me. I hear the music and close my eyes, transported, weighed down by an age that is not mine. My companions stand watch, caught in yellowing paper and pinned in timeless moments. Why do you never answer me? You punish me for a betrayal that only you can see. In the end, it is the dance that remains with me. Tonight, I will dance Odette and I will be as fragile as a snowflake - touch me and I will melt away and you will weep to see me again.

One by one, Karen unpinned the clippings and photographs from the walls. Fresh green paint emerged where the sunlight had failed to penetrate.

Ghosts of ghosts, she thought. Holding the fragile sheaf, she sat on the edge of the bed, already stripped of its identity, sheets piled by the trolley outside the door. She looked at the handful of brittle paper, reluctant to destroy the hoard. It was all that was left of the old lady she had tended so kindly. She still existed in this collection of words and images and Karen couldn't bring herself to carry the responsibility for laying her to rest.

‘“A Virtuoso Performance!”’

She began to read them aloud, an unconventional elegy but it seemed right. As she finished, she gently placed the clipping to one side and moved on to the next. Madame Frey looked out at her from the tattered photo, a younger woman who was already marked by the severity that Karen had become accustomed to. Her black tutu looked funereal, her face a mask of displeasure. Next, another press clipping but this time from a local paper.

‘"Prima Ballerina to tutor local students."’ Karen wondered where the beautiful students surrounding Madame Frey were now. In the time that she had known her, no-one had visited the lady, but it seemed that once, she was surrounded by small, frosted imps.

‘"Tears of a Swan: Dominique Frey mourns the loss of Mikhail Komorowski."’ Although she hadn’t known at the time, it would not be the last time that Madame Frey mourned her husband.

As the pile beside her grew, it was as if she was rebuilding the old lady in the place where she had lain for so long and Karen remained there until the afternoon sunlight dimmed in the windows. Laying the final piece to rest, she stood up and surveyed her work. It was good enough.

In one last act of remembrance, she gathered up Madame Frey's white cashmere cardigan, folded it gently, and laid it on the bed alongside the jet-black shawl.

She stood at the threshold, resting her palm on the handle, and closed her eyes. Slowly, she lifted herself up onto the points of her toes. Returning her heels to the floor, she stepped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her without turning back.