The rigging went up before the sun began to set.
The old man said so as he returned to the props room and hung up his rag. He said all the ropes had been replaced, that the rigging had been hung at the proper height, then added that the roof was unchanged. He said nothing more.
The paper on which I had written down the chalk marks that morning was still in my inner pocket. Marking them was the old man’s job for tomorrow, so I set the paper beside the checklist in the box, briefly recalling the order sheet beside the rehearsal room door.
"Take care."
"Yes. See you tomorrow."
After the old man left, the footsteps in the corridor dwindled one by one. Yesterday, at this hour, I had gone toward the front entrance for hot water. Today, not knowing whether I had anywhere to go or not, I waited in my chair.
I had raised the lamp wick as I had yesterday. I had also pushed two boxes against the wall to clear the space between the shelves, just as yesterday. The empty space looked as though it were waiting for one person.
The door opened.
The clack of angular metal entered first, and Vodianitsa came in wearing her coat, without sheet music. Unlike yesterday, she spoke before the door had even fully shut.
"It went up."
"The rigging?"
"The order. I’m third."
Vodianitsa took out her tin as she sat on the stool. The hand taking it out was not the slow hand from yesterday’s lunch, but her usual hand.
"They did it as soon as the sun came up. Not after everyone had finished. Third."
"I heard this morning. I passed the order sheet."
"You saw it?"
"I did. You were third."
Vodianitsa put a candy in her mouth and rolled it around her cheek before continuing. The sound of it rolling slipped between her words.
"No one knows who changed it. Even the person at the piano said it wasn’t what they’d written, but they were told just to leave it as it was."
"No one knows who wrote it?"
"If it were someone from the troupe, we’d know the handwriting. But nobody knows that handwriting. So no one asks."
Vodianitsa stopped there and moved the candy to her other cheek. She did not say whose name had originally been third, and I did not mention the erased charcoal that had rubbed off on my fingertips.
I had learned at this theater how to leave unknowable things unknown. Whoever had done it, the order had been moved up. And the voice that had risen without cracking beyond the closed door that morning was real, too.
"How’s your throat?"
"Fine. It’s fine when I sing in the morning."
Vodianitsa pressed her coat’s inner pocket. Beside the angular shape of the tin was the round shape of a small bottle.
"I drank that this morning. Half’s left."
"Have some again tomorrow."
"Did you see the rigging go up? They hung something else where the castle was."
"The old man told me. I haven’t gone near the stage."
"The castle’s gone. It’s a different painting."
Vodianitsa fell silent after saying that. She was the person who had once said in the hospital room that only the old man and I knew the castle was supposed to be there, so I did not add anything about it.
"You brushed your hair off."
"I washed at home."
Vodianitsa looked at my hair once more, then shifted her gaze to the empty space between the shelves. The person who had stood there yesterday and sung six times was looking in that direction while seated on the stool today.
"You don’t have to do it today. I did it all this morning."
"I see."
"Tomorrow morning too. All the way through the demonstration."
"That’s good."
The words came out of my mouth. They were true, but as I said them, the empty space between the shelves looked a little wider.
It had only been one day. It was a good thing that the evening when the lamp glass trembled, candy entered my mouth, and things from the shelf rained down on my head would not come again.
Vodianitsa did not take her eyes off that empty space.
"Instead."
"Yes."
"On the day of the demonstration, sit on the stool."
"The stool?"
"The stool beside the stage. It’s your place, isn’t it? Sit there."
Vodianitsa said it while looking at her tin. It was the same stool she had spoken of the day she told Lyuba that it was my place. Back then, it had been an argument with Lyuba. Today, it was a request made of me.
I had thought to myself that, if I had anywhere to sit, it would be the stool beside the stage. I had never said it aloud, but Vodianitsa invited me there first.
"I’ll be there."
"I’ll sing while looking at your eyebrows from up there."
"You can see that from the stage?"
"I can. The stool side is dark, but I can see your face."
"What about the audience?"
"The audience isn’t very visible. The lights are in front of your eyes, so beyond them all you see are human shapes and glittering things. But you can see everything to the side."
I did not know what it meant to sit where I could be seen. I had only ever sat on the stool and watched the stage. I had never been on the side visible from it.
Vodianitsa stood. When she pressed her inner pocket again, the tin and bottle made a small sound as they bumped together. At the threshold, she turned back.
"See you on demonstration day."
"Yes."
Her quick, light footsteps left through the back door. I looked once at the empty space between the shelves, then pushed the two boxes back to fill it.
The props room had returned to the props room of yesterday morning. I put out the lamp and shut the door.
The powder in the back alley was as white as it had been that morning. A light glowed in the blue door’s window, and before I could turn the key, the door opened from inside.
The next few days were ordinary.
With the rope work finished, the theater returned to the sounds it had made before construction. There were no workers in the corridor, and the ceiling no longer boomed.
The rehearsal room piano began sounding at sunrise, and the voice rising over it was a morning voice every day. It traveled down the corridor as I climbed the three back-door steps, and continued long after I had shut the props room door.
The person who had been last sang every morning. The old man said nothing about that singing, but every morning his hand, holding a goblet to the light, stopped once whenever the song rose high.
Every noon, Vodianitsa came by shaking her tin. Instead of saying she was third, she told me how far she had gotten that morning, and the place she reached grew a little farther each day.
"Today, I made it all the way through. It didn’t crack either."
"That’s a relief."
At those words, Vodianitsa shook the tin once more, and the sound was louder than usual.
The old man lined twenty goblets on the shelves and lifted one each day to inspect in the lamplight. None were broken, and the eleven candlesticks came out of the box and returned to the shelves.
I wrote down those numbers every day. There was not a day when my writing hand shook.
There was no reason to go toward the stage. The old man said the chalk marks would be redrawn the day before the demonstration, and until then, the stage alternated between the chorus and ballet, leaving no chance for someone from the props room to go up.
I did not see the paper beside the rehearsal room door again, but each morning, the singing through the wall told me that Vodianitsa’s name was still third.
The dirt beneath the back-alley wall dried until it resembled the powder in color. The late snow did not return, and the sound of water from the eaves stopped, but the wind still made me raise my coat collar.
The roof remained unchanged. Looking up from the back alley, black tiles on one side of the round roof caught the morning light from the same place every day. And there was no shortage of talk in the corridors about how only the ropes had been replaced with the money meant to repair the roof.
At the residence, every morning I read the labels on jars and bottles. While I read out salt, sugar, and the small bottles beside them in order, Danika packed bread. Neither of us said a word about the labels.
Every morning, Danika stood beyond the threshold until I rounded the corner. Even after two nights when I came home late, the sight of Danika standing at the threshold did not change in the slightest.
In the evenings, the compress cloth was warmed. Since the day she washed my feet, Danika had not asked again whether she could wash them, and what had happened that night hung unspoken, like the list on the wall.
No new line had been added to that list. The nine lines, and the empty space beneath them, remained unchanged.
The sound of charcoal in the small room returned to its usual length. No night lasted as long as the night we baked cookies, and salted cookies did not appear again.
Soup and bread were served at dinner as they always had been. There were no more days when she asked if it was too salty.
There were no days off. The troupe did not rest before the demonstration, and the props room followed suit, so there was no sitting on the back-door steps to eat bread.
So I could not wash my coat. Danika shook it out every night, and I wore it as it was every morning.
Alyosha did not come either. On every evening when the old man left first, I looked at the doorframe where a hand might appear, but that hand never came, and the old man carried down the boxes every morning.
Over those days, no one knocked on the back door even once. Neither the old man nor I spoke of the absence of that sound, which had once come three times at the same interval.
The troupe was full of talk about the demonstration. The date clung to the end of every conversation I passed in the corridors, and a fourth name was never written on the paper on the inside wall by the back door.
I saw Odette twice in the corridor during those days. Both times she wore practice clothes, and both times, without slowing her steps, she glanced once at the cloth wrapped around my cane handle before passing by.
The cloth had grown darker than when it was first wrapped, stained with the grease of my hand.
The afternoon before the demonstration, the old man returned from the stage side.
His steps were quicker than usual, and the hand not holding a rag swung empty at his side. After shutting the props room door, he looked not at me in my chair but at the five lines on the wall.
"A guest from the court is coming to tomorrow’s demonstration."
"The court?"
"The theater director only said that much before leaving. He didn’t tell even me who was coming."
I had heard the word court once in the hospital room. The theater director had said, of a document stamped with a red seal, that it was the seal used at the highest levels of the court. Now I was hearing from the old man that someone from that court was coming to watch the troupe’s demonstration.
"Was it posted in the notice?"
"No. The director told me, then told me to spread it through the troupe."
The person who posted demonstration notices on the wall had sent this word through the old man instead. It seemed there were things that could not be written down and posted, and the theater director always entrusted such things to the old man.
From that afternoon onward, the theater buzzed. The news crossed the corridors to the props room. I did not know who first said the word court, but afterward the word escort was added to it.
People in the corridor also spoke of the three going out for the demonstration. Two were current principals, they said, and one had risen from the back row. Whether those speaking were smiling or not could not be told through the props room door.
It was not the business of someone from the props room to know who the court guest was, or how many escorts accompanied them.
There was only one thing I knew. The guest from the court would sit in the audience, and from the audience, the stool beside the stage could not be seen. Whoever that guest was, there would be no reason for them to encounter someone from the props room.
"So."
The old man picked up his rag.
"Make one final record of the chalk positions tonight. There won’t be a moment in the daytime when the stage is empty."
"Tonight?"
"Do it after everyone has gone. Since the court is watching tomorrow’s stage, by morning there must not be room for even one candlestick to be out of place. You write down the spots I marked, and at dawn tomorrow we’ll compare them together."
The old man went back toward the stage. The last of the five lines became tonight’s job, but he said neither that he was sorry nor that I would be late.
Vodianitsa came briefly before sunset. She shook her tin and placed one candy in my hand, then brought up the court guest first.
"Did you hear? Someone’s coming from the court."
"I heard."
"No one knows who it is. The theater director’s keeping his mouth shut tight."
Vodianitsa said this while rolling her candy, the cheek rolling it moving faster than usual. She was someone who would stand onstage tomorrow, talking about someone who would sit in the audience tomorrow, so I left that quickness alone.
"Will you still sit on the stool even if a guest comes?"
"Sit there. Court or whatever, the stool is your place."
Vodianitsa went off to practice. Since the person who had practiced in the morning was going again before evening, it seemed the rehearsal room did not end with the morning on the day before a demonstration.
The door at the end of the corridor remained closed all afternoon, and everyone passing it lowered their voices.
Even after sunset, the footsteps in the corridor were twice their usual number. Instead of piano music, the orchestra tuned their sound on the stage side. As several voices alternately rose and fell over it, the sound of feet striking the floor mingled in.
The theater director passed down the corridor twice. Both times he carried no papers, and both times he adjusted his glasses as he headed for the stage, never slowing before the props room door.
The old man did not hang up his rag until long after sunset.
"There are still people on the stage, so do it once they all leave. Take the lamp, write down every mark, and come back."
"Yes."
"Once you’ve written them all, just go home. I’ll come at dawn tomorrow."
"What about the stool tomorrow?"
"Leave it there. Even with a court guest, the area beside the stage belongs to the troupe."
After the old man left, I took the lamp and went beside the stage.
There were still people onstage. The orchestra had gone, but several from the chorus remained before the back wall matching their voices, while two from the ballet repeatedly turned through the same spot at the front.
I sat on the stool, set the lamp at my feet, and lowered the wick. Several stage lamps still burned brightly, so my lamp made little difference.
The chorus left first, followed by the two from the ballet. The last person to come put out the stage lamps one by one, then left.
The stage went dark.
The only remaining light was my lamp at my feet, so I raised its wick again. As the raised flame cast a circle around the stool, the stage beyond that circle became darkness.
When I climbed onto the stage leaning on my cane, the floor was rough. White marks on the boards showed where bundles of rope had been dragged and supports had stood. Between them were eleven chalk positions the old man had marked.
I looked up at the ceiling. The rigging hung from new ropes in the darkness, but my lamp did not reach that far, so I could not see how many ropes there were.
The new painting hung in place of the castle was also in darkness, and I could not tell what it depicted. The ropes were for the rope workers to inspect, and someone from the props room looked at the floor, so I quickly lowered my gaze.
I went around and wrote them down one by one. With the lamp in one hand and my cane in the other, I had no hand left to write on the paper.
At each position, I set the lamp on the floor, wrote, then picked it up again. I bent and straightened eleven times for the eleven spots, and those eleven times were harder than one trip through the back alley.
The second position from the right was half a step inward. The person I had told about that half step would turn one step away from this spot tomorrow.
Writing down all eleven took longer than I expected. When I returned to the stool, below my knees felt heavy, but I still had enough leg left to walk down the back alley.
I lowered the lamp wick again and read the eleven entries on the paper within its light. I could hear the theater emptying, but the quiet of a wide place was louder than the quiet I heard in the props room.
The darkness beneath the round roof had no shape, unlike the darkness of the props room shaped by shelves and boxes. Only where the lamp light reached was stage.
I started to stand, then stopped. I told my legs we would sit a little longer, then leaned my back against the wall from the stool with no backrest.
I did not know how much time had passed when I heard a sound.
It was not footsteps. Something touched the stage floor very lightly in the darkness, then stopped.
I raised my head.
Someone stood at the center of the stage. They were beyond the circle of my lamp light, so I could only see an outline. The outline was small and straight, as though drawn taut in a single line from toe to crown.
It was Odette.
She wore practice clothes and held nothing. Her feet wore the shoes she used for practice, rather than golden heels. That was why she had made no sound in the corridor or at the backstage door.
She did not look toward the stool. With its wick lowered, the lamp by the stool was only a tiny ember in the darkness as seen from the stage, and she could not have known someone sat behind it.
I knew I should say that someone was here, yet my mouth would not open. Odette rose onto the tips of her toes at that moment.
I held my breath.
Odette began to turn. I could not see her feet in the darkness, only her outline spinning, but each time she turned, I heard the faintest sound of her toes touching the floor.
The sound came at even intervals. It did not falter even on the rough floor, and not one board made an out-of-place sound.
Her feet did not go where the chalk marks should have been.
Even without seeing them, I knew. Having just written down all eleven, I could identify where the chalk was even in the dark, and the sound of her toes passed only between them.
It was the same body that had turned at the center of the stage on performance day. Then, the stage had been bright, and there had been an orchestra and audience. Tonight, all three were absent, but the body was the same.
She repeated the same movement. She would return to where she had stopped after turning, then turn again, so her stopping place was the same every time.
Sometimes, she stopped and tested the floor with her foot. It was a foot searching for lifted boards. The places where nails had been driven down made no sound, and her foot avoided them before turning again.
I could hear her steadying breath where she stood. It was more ragged than the breath I had heard beside the stage on performance day, and the time it took to settle that ragged breath grew a little longer with every repetition.
Once, her outline brushed the edge of the lamp light. A pale beige shoe entered and left the light, and something like a pearl attached to it glittered, then went dark. Yet the sound of that foot on the rough floor was the same in the light and in darkness.
I did not count how many times she repeated it. I felt that I might miss the sound while counting, but sitting on the stool, I could not tell why it was a sound I did not want to miss.
It was the section the two dancers had repeated that afternoon. Where the two ballet dancers had turned before leaving, the principal was now dancing the same passage alone at night. The darkness of the stage did not tell me why she was doing it alone at night.
She stopped.
After turning one final time, Odette took a long breath while standing, then came to the edge of the stage and sat down.
She was about three steps from the stool. The person who had measured six steps from the hospital room to the door sat within three steps today, and I was the one measuring those three steps.
Only after she sat did the pale color of her practice clothes show in the thin edge of the lamp’s circle. Only then did Odette’s eyes come toward me.
"You were there?"
"...Yes."
"Since when?"
"I came to write down the chalk positions. I was here before you came, Odette."
Without looking surprised, Odette looked from me to the lamp in turn. Then, without saying anything, she lowered her gaze to her feet.
I felt I should apologize for not speaking. The words started to rise, then sank again when I saw Odette untie the ribbons of her pointe shoes.
The ribbons were long. Her hands were slow as they unwound the ribbons wrapped several times around her ankles. The loosened ribbons trailed across the stage floor, and the shoes, seen up close, were more worn than they had looked from afar.
Odette took off one shoe and turned her bare foot toward the lamp light. She looked at the tips of her toes and lowered her foot to the floor. The hand holding the shoe grasped only its edge, as it did when picking up papers.
One of the pearl-like decorations had fallen off, leaving only thread. Through that thread, I could see inside the shoe.
The inside of the shoe was wet.
Even by lamp light, I could tell it was not wet with water. The toe area of the pale beige lining was soaked dark red, and the color had seeped through the outer shoe and stained its tip.
I looked at her toes.
The tips of her second and third toes were rubbed raw, blood seeping from them. There was another split between the toes below them. That blood had soaked the inside of her shoe.
Odette was unmoved even as she looked at that foot. After glancing once at her toes, she began untying the other shoe, her hands moving at the same pace as before.
Something clicked inside me.
On the day the backdrop fell onto the stage, my body had moved before I could think, and the thinking only caught up in a hospital bed. Tonight, thought came first.
After the thought ended, I took hold of my cane.
"Your foot."
It was my voice. For a sound from the mouth of someone who had been holding his breath, it was loud. Odette’s hands stopped at the ribbon.
"What about it?"
"It’s bleeding. There’s blood pooled inside your shoe."
Odette looked at her own foot again. She saw it, then saw the dark red stain on the tip of the shoe, but she looked at it as though it were someone else’s foot.
"It is."
That was all she said. After acknowledging it, she finished taking off the other shoe. One toe on that bare foot was rubbed raw too.
It took longer than usual to rise from the stool, and longer again to take those three steps. Odette simply watched those three steps. When I stood before her, she looked up.
"Can I take a look?"
"There’s nothing to see."
"There is. Your blisters burst."
There was one thing I had learned in the army after marches. If burst blisters were left alone, more would form over them, and if you put shoes over torn skin, the damage would go deeper.
So they needed to be washed with water and covered with dry cloth. An instructor had taught us with our feet held out before him, but I had never had reason to use it afterward.
There was no chance for blisters to burst in an office. In this land, my feet had only frozen and my leg had broken.
"Do you have water?"
In the darkness at the stage edge where Odette indicated with her chin sat a small water container. Its lid was open, perhaps because she had left it there to drink between dances.
"Wait a moment for cloth. There’s some in the props room."
"It’s fine."
"No. If you leave it like that, it’ll get worse."
After saying that, I turned around. The reminder not to trust the words it’s fine had been directed at me, but now I was using it on someone else.
The sound of my cane echoed through the empty corridor. Entering the props room, I felt along the shelves without a lamp until cloth caught beneath my fingertips.
It was the only clean cloth. On the second day of the rope work, it was the cloth the old man had used to cover only half of the twenty goblets. Afterward, it had been washed and folded away inside the shelf.
I returned holding the cloth against me. When I reached the side of the stage after crossing a corridor that seemed longer than before, Odette sat just as she had earlier.
She had not left. She had not put her shoes back on, nor hidden her feet. She sat at the edge of the lamp light and waited for me.
I rinsed my hands first with water from the container.
I put my knees to the floor.
It was closer to sinking down than kneeling. I laid my cane down and lowered my right knee first. It took two breaths to pull my left leg aside and sit down.
The board beneath my knees was cold, and the chill rose through my trousers.
Odette only watched me lower myself. She neither stopped nor helped me, but when I held out my hand, she gave me her foot.
The foot in my palm was small, its heel resting at the base of my palm and its toes touching my fingertips. It was the foot that had turned at the center of the stage.
I scooped water into my hand and let it run over her toes. Her foot did not flinch when water touched the raw places, and I took that lack of flinching for endurance.
Blood washed away in the water and fell to the stage floor. Beside the darkly spreading stain was one of the old man’s white chalk marks, and red water pooled between my fingers before running off.
I tore the cloth.
I tore it lengthwise by hand, making thin strips and wrapping each toe one at a time. I wrapped the second and third toes separately, covered the split between them by winding a strip diagonally over it, and loosened the strength in my hand with every wrap so as not to bind it too tightly.
While I wrapped the strips, Odette did not watch my hands. She looked toward the darkness on the far side of the stage. Only the person looking knew what was in that darkness.
I remembered the hands that had wrapped cloth around my cane handle. Then, this person had wrapped it, and I had only said that it fit perfectly when I gripped it. Today, I was wrapping cloth around this person’s foot.
"Doesn’t it hurt?"
I asked as I wrapped. Pressing cloth over torn skin had to hurt, but the foot in my palm did not move.
"I don’t really know pain."
Odette said it.
It was brief. Her voice was the same as when she called something work, and in that voice she spoke about her own foot.
My wrapping hand stopped.
I had experienced a body that did not know pain too. It had been when sensation in my feet had stopped above my ankles in the snowfield. Back then, what frightened me was the loss of sensation. But she said those words without fear.
I did not ask why she could not feel it. Her face looked like one that would not answer, and I did not want to fill another unanswered space with other words.
Instead, it hurt.
It was not my foot, but something rose from the tips of my own toes. As I covered the raw places with cloth, the wounds throbbed as though they were on my toes, but my hands kept wrapping the strips.
In the hospital room, I had once said that it had simply happened. At those words, this person’s face had crumpled, and at the time I had not known why.
Hearing her say she did not know pain, I felt I understood a little where that place was. The person who had received my words then was now saying something similar to me, but I could not find words to return to her.
Instead of words, I wrapped another layer of cloth. As more strength entered my hands, the strip adhered more firmly to her toe.
"Can you dance tomorrow?"
"I can."
"Won’t the cloth catch inside your shoes?"
"It won’t. The shoes stretch to fit your feet."
"..."
"Is this cloth from the props room?"
"Yes. It was the only clean one."
"Won’t the old man say something?"
"He won’t."
"..."
"Do you do this here every night?"
"It’s work."
For this person, many things were covered by the word work. Wrapping cloth around my cane handle was work, and turning alone at night was work.
Odette looked at her foot as she said it. Her eyes as she looked at the cloth-wrapped toes were the same eyes she had used to look at the blood earlier, but those eyes paused once on my hand.
She offered me her other foot before I asked for it. Only one toe was raw, so washing and wrapping it in the same order took only one strip.
After I was done, I remained with that foot supported in my palm.
I had to stand. To do so, I needed to pick up my cane, and to pick up my cane, I had to put down her foot. Yet my hand remained still, as though my body had forgotten the order of those things.
The small foot wrapped in cloth rested on my hand, and lamp light lay in a circle over it.
Odette’s eyes moved past my shoulder.
There should have been nothing where she looked. There was only darkness beside the stage, the stool, and the corridor, yet Odette’s eyes stopped there and became different eyes.
They were neither measuring eyes nor watching eyes.
Seeing those eyes and what happened next were the same instant. Odette’s arm shot out beside my ear, and a gust brushed past, making her clothes rustle.
A sound rang out.
At the sound of palm striking palm, the nape of my neck tingled. The lamp flame at my feet bent to one side, then straightened. On the floor beside my kneeling knee, something white spread like a thin crack, then vanished.
I turned around.
Danika stood behind me.
She wore a black coat and a white head cloth, and I had not heard her arrive. The two women held hands and looked at one another. Danika’s hand enclosed Odette’s, making them look like people shaking hands.
Odette was seated, and Danika stood. The seated woman’s arm rose over my shoulder and was caught in the standing woman’s hand. Neither let go, and both looked only at the other’s face.
There was nothing on either face. Odette wore the same expression she had worn onstage, and Danika wore the same expression she wore in the kitchen.
"You two have gotten close already."
The words came from my mouth. Sitting between two people holding hands, I could think of nothing else to say. Only after speaking did I remember why Danika was here.
"You were late, so I came to escort you home."
Danika spoke. It was addressed to me, but her eyes were on Odette. As those eyes rose from Odette’s hand to her face, the hands they held came apart.
Danika’s hand fell away first. Odette’s hand descended after it, folding over the other on her lap as though nothing had happened.
"This is Danika, who works at our house. Odette, you came to the house that time, so you know her, right?"
"I do."
"I know her."
Odette had seen Danika just once, beside the residence door. I remembered how her eyes had swept over Danika’s feet and shoulders that day before withdrawing. Tonight, those eyes did not sweep over her; they simply looked at Danika.
The two gave words with the same meaning but different endings. Neither added anything afterward, and the tingling at my nape faded between them.
The stage floor was cold. Since it was a stage at night, the boards must have cooled, and frost must have settled on them before melting in the lamp’s heat.
The tingling at my nape must have been static from my collar brushing against dry air. It was something that happened every winter at office doorknobs. Once I thought that, both the tingling and the white hairline crack had an explanation.
Once there was an explanation, my gaze returned to the foot in my hand. When I put down the cloth-wrapped foot, Odette lifted it and slipped it into her shoe.
Her hands were slow as she tied the ribbons. While she wrapped them around her ankle several times and tied them, Danika remained motionless behind me, and Odette did not look away from the ribbons.
As I picked up my cane and tried to stand, my legs did not obey. My left leg, which had remained bent so long, would not straighten. My right knee would not leave the floor either, and only the hand gripping my cane tightened.
A hand caught my arm.
It was Odette. She stood on the foot whose ribbons she had tied, grasped above my elbow, and pulled me upright as strength entered her hand.
She said nothing. While raising me, she did not look at my face. Once I was standing, she let go.
Her released hand immediately folded over the other, and Odette stood at the edge of the stage in her shoes. What the cloth-wrapped foot was like inside the shoe could not be seen from outside.
"Thank you."
"It’s work."
Odette stepped toward the darkness. She wore pointe shoes rather than golden heels, so she made almost no sound. As that soundless sound disappeared backstage, Danika remained standing behind me.
The loose end of a ribbon briefly dragged along the floor, then stopped.
Danika was watching.
She had watched the foot in my hand, the hand that gripped my arm and raised me, and now the back disappearing into darkness. Her face was always the same face. What she saw with that face was not written upon it.
"Let’s go."
"All right."
Danika reached for the lamp first, but I carried it. As I put on the coat draped over the stool, Danika waited half a step behind me.
I looked back at the stage. When I lifted the lamp, the eleven chalk positions shone white, and among them remained one dark red mark, spread by water.
When we passed the props room, I put out the lamp and set it on the shelf.
At the back door, Danika looked at the bolt. It had been left unfastened from inside, but Danika said nothing about it.
After we descended the three back-door steps, Danika turned her head toward the theater. Her eyes were not on the back door but on the round roof. She took as long to withdraw them as she did every morning when she watched me leave from the threshold.
The back alley was pitch-dark. My cane pushed through the powder, and noiseless steps followed half a step behind.
That half step was the same as it was in front of the house. It had always been that far behind whenever I left the blue door, but today, that half step had followed me into the theater’s back alley.
"How did you know? That I’d be late?"
"Because you were late."
That was where Danika’s answer ended. A person who had never left the residence except to go to the market had come all the way to the theater’s back door and stood in the darkness beside the stage, then ended the reason with a single sentence: because you were late.
I also wondered how she knew where the back door was. From the residence, she could know that the theater stood at the end of the back alley, but not which corridors led to the side of the stage. Yet Danika had come that way without making a single footstep.
"Odette’s foot was hurt. It’s a dancer’s foot, so I couldn’t just leave it alone."
"I saw."
"That’s why I was late."
"I understand."
The answer came only after she had heard the entire reason for my lateness. Even afterward, the distance of half a step neither narrowed nor widened.
"Have you eaten dinner?"
"I will eat after you have eaten, Master."
I had never seen Danika eat before me in this house. From that answer, I learned that when I came home late, she ate that much later too, and tonight that delay was long.
Whenever we passed sunken stones, wall shadows, and cracks beside corner stones, the footsteps half a step behind slowed to match mine, then resumed. At the blue door, Danika came forward and opened it.
I washed my hands first in the kitchen basin. While the red left beneath my nails dissolved into the water, Danika stood beside me holding a towel.
The soup was warm. Without saying I was late or asking where I had been, she had placed the compress cloth beside the stove.
While I ate the soup, Danika stood in her usual place by the kitchen. Today, she was watching my hands rather than my face, though there was nothing on them.
When she wrapped the compress cloth, Danika looked only at the cloth rather than my leg as usual. Tonight, though, her wrapping hands paused twice before continuing.
"Were you kneeling for a long time?"
"For quite a while. How did you know?"
"Your knees are white."
Looking down, I saw chalk dust from the stage floor roundly staining them. It seemed Danika had been looking at my knees even when I told her why I had been late.
Before wrapping the cloth, Danika brushed the powder away once with her palm.
"They will ache tomorrow morning."
Danika left the cloth in place longer than usual, replacing it with newly warmed cloth each time it cooled. Only after wrapping a third cloth did she take her hands away.
"The demonstration is tomorrow."
"I heard."
"A guest is coming from the court."
"I heard."
Danika pressed another layer of cloth into place. She did not say where she had heard it, and I did not ask how someone outside the theater heard words from inside it.
I looked at the list on the wall. What had happened tonight, her coming all the way to the theater, was written neither among the nine lines nor in the empty space beneath them.
Before sleeping, I looked at my palm. Nothing remained on the palm that had supported her foot, but that palm remembered first what it had done today.
That night, the charcoal in the small room crackled as long as it had on the night we baked cookies. Listening to it, I fell asleep wondering what the cloth-wrapped foot would be like inside its shoe.
When I woke in the morning, below my knees ached. Before saying take care, Danika added that I should grip the railing first when climbing the back-door steps.
On the morning of the demonstration, the theater woke before I did.
Before I climbed the three back-door steps, sounds from within already spilled outside. For a morning, the corridor was full of many footsteps, and no one stood before the paper on the wall.
Sound rose and fell from the rehearsal room direction. It seemed she was still performing third even on the morning of the demonstration, and the sound came not through an open door, but from beyond a closed one.
The door at the end of the corridor, which had slammed shut the morning the demonstration notice was posted, made no sound at all today.
The old man was in the props room. The lamp was lit, and he held the paper I had written on the night before, chalk dust clinging to its edges.
"I checked them at dawn. All eleven match."
"We said we’d check them together."
"I couldn’t ask you to come at dawn on those legs. Instead, since it is the floor that will be presented before the court guest, go and inspect it with your own eyes."
The old man handed back the paper. The cloth folded away inside the shelf had been reduced by more than half, but he said nothing more about either the cloth or having checked the marks alone.
I took the paper and went beside the stage.
The corridor was unlike usual. People from the front entrance came through carrying rags and buckets. The people who cleaned the floor on the guest side had come all the way to the rear today.
The theater director was coming from the front entrance and encountered me in the corridor. His eyes moved from my cane to the paper, then from the paper toward the stage. He passed without a word.
The stool beside the stage was in its place.
Where I had put the lamp last night, only the stool stood in the darkness. I tested it, and it did not wobble. Without sitting, I climbed onto the stage.
I checked the eleven chalk positions one by one. The old man’s freshly drawn lines were thicker than last night. None had been stepped on, and the second from the right remained half a step inward.
The feet that had turned between them during the night had not touched a single position.
The dark red mark was gone. Where the water-stained mark had been was cleaned, and though the cleaned place was a little lighter than its surroundings, who had cleaned it was not something to write on the paper.
The water container at the stage edge was gone as well. Nothing of last night remained anywhere on the stage except the eleven chalk positions.
I looked toward the darkness beside the stage. The stool was there, and the voice of the person who had told me to sit there today was still rising from beyond the wall.
I lifted my eyes.
I could see the audience seating. I had never looked at it from the stage before, but today the doors on the front-entrance side stood open, and morning light stretched inward from the back of the hall.
Rows of chairs stood there. Light filled the place that had been dark on performance day, enough to count the rows of chairs, and the chairs gleamed from being freshly wiped.
One chair at the center was different.
It was at the center even among the rows. The other chairs stood empty and polished, but that one chair alone was draped in white cloth.
The cloth covered the chair in the shape of its back and seat, hanging all the way to the floor. It was new cloth with crisp folds, and only the chair’s four legs emerged beneath it.
It seemed the people on the guest side had cleaned around that chair alone. Their rags had not touched the cloth, and only the floor around it shone more brightly than elsewhere.
There was no writing to say who would sit there. It must be the chair for the guest said to be coming from the court, and even the theater director had not said who that guest was.
There was a stool in the darkness beside the stage, and a white-draped chair in the center of the audience. Between them was the stage.
The stool was my place. The person who told me to sit there would stand on that stage today, and cloth from last night would be wrapped around the feet that turned at its center.
The chair was empty.
There was no one beneath the white cloth. Morning light lay long over that cloth alone.
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