Chapter 03
Anaïs caught Dolores pretending to perform en pointe by herself, rising onto her toes.
“What ridiculous thing are you doing?”
Under Anaïs’s clear, questioning gaze, Dolores gathered up her courage and confessed that she had become interested in ballet.
“Keep it a secret.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad is obviously going to hate it.”
“He probably should, but you never know, right? Ask Mom and Dad to let you do it. Sister, it looked funny just now, but it was also cool.”
Anaïs did not seem particularly interested, but neither did she make fun of Dolores.
Looking back now, Dolores realized that the encouragement of her little sister had been the first drop of water that filled the cup of her courage.
When she gathered the courage to ask her parents for something for the first time in her life, the result was devastating.
Her mother merely expressed mild reservations about ballet as a genre of dance, but her father flew into a rage.
Every day, he shouted at her to stop doing something that involved carelessly throwing her body around.
The strong prejudice came from the fact that, in Victoria, her father’s homeland, dancers were generally regarded as members of the lower class.
But this was Bellof, where many children from well-to-do families learned ballet as a hobby.
Even when she explained this, her father was not gentle enough to listen to an eleven-year-old girl’s words.
Why was her father, even five years after immigrating, still living as though he were in Victoria?
Despite her father’s fierce opposition, Dolores did not give up.
She was stubborn enough to surprise even herself.
Whenever her father was in a good mood, or whenever she could rely on her mother’s kindness, she repeatedly begged to be allowed to learn ballet.
She even persuaded Anaïs and Pablo to join her.
“I want my sister to do ballet!”
After about a year of this, during the summer when Dolores was twelve, her mother finally gave in to her young daughter’s pitiful wish.
There was only one condition.
They could not tell her father.
It was a triumph, if only a small one.
Dolores began receiving private ballet lessons twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, instead of attending the ballet classes offered at the parish school.
She could not attend the school ballet classes because they were recorded on the academic report card.
“This is the child?”
The ballet teacher who took Dolores on as a private student was, unexpectedly, a famous ballerina named Marguerite Salle, formerly of the Aquinieu Public Orchestra.
“She is a little tall, but being this slender is actually a good condition. The arch of her foot isn’t particularly high, but… she has good flexibility through the instep. …Her turnout angle is dreadful. …Ah, don’t make that disappointed face. If a child has never properly learned before, we’re not at the stage where we can talk about talent yet. Madam, I would never neglect your daughter. I’ll do my best to teach her.”
Once again, her mother’s connections had proven their worth.
They said Marguerite had been such an outstanding ballerina that even the Lenore Opera Company had tried to recruit her.
In Dolores’s eyes, she truly was a wonderful teacher.
It seemed almost a shame that she was spending her days giving private lessons in a small city like Aquinieu.
So, unable to contain her curiosity one day, Dolores asked,
“Why don’t you perform on a bigger stage, Teacher?”
It was a question asked innocently, without realizing that it might be wrong.
Marguerite’s eyes quickly reddened.
Dolores did not know what had happened to her, but even with a child’s heart, she could understand.
Her teacher had been hurt somehow.
“It’s a good life, teaching children like you without having too many ambitions. Dance is everything to me now.”
It was only much later that Dolores learned that Marguerite had once loved someone, had been more or less abandoned by him, and had consequently shut herself away in this small town.
It was an abyss of emotion, something Dolores could never have dared to comprehend.
Yet even then, she could feel the profound resonance in the words of a teacher who said that dance had become her entire life.
Dolores herself would sometimes become possessed by a chilling, boundless exhilaration whenever she stood before the mirror wearing her soft ballet shoes.
“…I think I understand, somehow.”
“You do?”
Marguerite gave a short, fond laugh.
“When will I be able to walk on my toes like you, Teacher?”
“Who knows? When you learn to listen to the music, and when your toes can speak as though they are writing poetry, the talent you possess will shine like a star. Then you will become an étoile.”
“I already like music. I listen to it all the time.”
“Opening your heart is different from simply listening. What I experienced was… something like that. When you truly connect with something through your heart, it feels as though you disappear. And then you fall into endless love. As though even if you were to die suddenly while dancing with the music as your escort… no. Perhaps that would be the most beautiful death of all.”
For that moment, Marguerite looked almost intoxicated by something.
As though the mere imagination of dancing across a magnificent stage was the one thing that allowed her to remain alive and breathing.
Dolores imagined that feeling every day.
That winter, when Dolores was approaching thirteen, her life encountered its first blue.
That night remained vivid in her mind, the only memory from that hazy year that seemed to have been painted over with fresh color.
Her lesson had ended long ago.
Dolores, a yellow scarf wrapped around her neck, anxiously watched the snow falling outside the window as she waited for her mother.
Not a single carriage passed along the road, while the street’s gas lamps merely flickered.
As time passed, fear began to sprout inside her heart.
It was an anxiety she had been feeling more and more often lately—a vague fear that she might not be able to see her family again.
That day, the anxiety felt almost like reality.
And, of all days, an excessive amount of snow had fallen near their home.
Her mother could not come to pick her up.
“Why are you so worried? You’ll only have to stay with your teacher for tonight.”
“…I don’t know.”
“Dolores, you’re a clever and intelligent girl. You must know how much your mother loves you.”
For some reason, Dolores began to cry.
She missed her mother.
She missed her father.
She missed Anaïs and Pablo.
Now that she was older, she could understand how adolescence had begun to visit her young heart.
But back then, she could not tell what exactly made her sad, or what exactly frightened her.
The sound of pointe shoes approached with the little click-clack that Dolores had admired so much.
Marguerite came toward her and gently pulled her into a warm embrace.
“Then, shall I tell you one of my secrets tonight?”
Her teacher whispered like the snowy night.
“A secret?”
“Yes. We’re going on an adventure.”
And so.
Segno.
It began with a plié.
Her knees bent gently, and her body came into contact with the music.
Then came a relevé.
The body that had paused for a moment rose lightly, as though it had forgotten gravity.
Wearing an elegant silk dress, Marguerite moved across a geometrically patterned carpet like a butterfly.
Tendu.
Her toe pushed along the floor, drawing out a long line.
Then relevé, followed by another tendu.
As the music descended into a lower register, her toe brushed against the floor before lifting away, slicing through the air.
She quickly transitioned into a passé, raising one leg until the foot reached knee height, then moved into an arabesque without the slightest disruption.
The long line of her back was as beautiful as a mountain ridge, while her gaze, fixed upon some distant point, was filled with longing.
Then she bent her body slightly into an attitude.
And at the moment the sound of the viola grew more intense—
As though she had been waiting for it—
She pushed off with her toes and spun.
Once.
Twice.
Again and again…
The moment the final turn came to a stop, the music ended.
The dance was over.
Marguerite spread her hands wide, then brought them together gracefully and bowed, breathing heavily.
Dolores watched how her teacher’s throat rose and fell, how her fingertips trembled, how she breathed.
It had been a breathtaking performance.
“Not bad.”
A woman with richly curled brown hair swept neatly back from her face spoke.
It was an appallingly rude remark.
How could anyone watch a ballet like that and say nothing more than not bad?
The arrogant spectators chattered as they pleased.
“As one would expect from Madam Rou’s eye for art, this is about what I anticipated.”
“A ballet perfectly suited to an atmospheric evening like tonight.”
“As expected, Madam Rou’s artistic sensibility is…”
Dolores could not understand.
How could they judge Marguerite’s performance like that?
And who exactly was Madam Rou that everyone behaved this way around her?
But Marguerite bowed her head as though she were accustomed to it and stepped away from the stage.
It was hardly a stage at all.
Just a narrow platform at the far end of a spacious living room.
The place Marguerite had brought Dolores to was the salon of a woman named Madam Anne Rou.
Sir Raymond Rou was a highly respected public official and prominent local figure in Aquinieu, but Madam Anne Rou was even more famous.
If Madam Rocheize de Moltemar was enormously popular in the west, then in Aquinieu, Madam Anne Rou was said to be even more influential than Madam Moltemar.
Madam Rou held a salon once every quarter, spending time with a select group of prominent figures.
Whenever the salon was held, Marguerite earned extra money by entertaining them with short performances.
Dolores felt strangely miserable.
While she waited absentmindedly for Marguerite, she heard voices moving back and forth like the tips of pens, letter openers, and broken fingernails.
“…They’re such ridiculous, stingy women…”
“…At the textile guild meeting last time, they said that a clothing company called Crepin has been rising lately…”
“You’re joking. What kind of creativity can you expect from people who grow mustaches and swagger around?”
“The Bonnels are still practically rookies…”
“Come to think of it, have you heard about that?”
“I have a relative in Lenore…”
“Have the Kiwis’ gatherings been banned? A law was passed this time…”
“I’m looking forward to it…”
“There have been so many rumors lately. Ah, the Romerto Journal published an article about it recently…”
“I was invited by a gentleman who has ties to Count Peregrine’s nephew…”
“Then isn’t he practically a stranger?”
Sharp points were hidden among the countless conversations.
“But what about Baron Billy, the one who moved here recently?”
“He’s an ‘transplanted person,’ isn’t he?”
“One of those people.”
“You can sense it just from hearing the name.”
“Unpleasant.”
Without realizing it, Dolores hunched her shoulders.
